§ Order for Second Reading read.
MR. OSBORNE MORGANsaid, that it was not his intention to enter into any discussion on the Bill at the fag-end of a Wednesday afternoon. But he had another reason for not proceeding with the Bill, and that was that the Government had introduced in the other House a professedly sanitary measure dealing incidentally with the question raised by the Bill. And it 249 would hardly be consistent with Parliamentary propriety to have two discussions, one in each House, proceeding upon parallel lines. He had originally intended to postpone the Bill; but, on looking at the state of the Order Book, he found there was no possibility of its coining on again this Session, and he therefore thought the more judicious course would be to ask the House to allow him to withdraw it altogether. At the same time, he begged to give Notice that when the Government Bill came on for second reading in that House he would move a Resolution embodying the principles of his Bill, and asserting the right of Nonconformist parishioners to have their dead friends and relatives buried in the parish churchyard with services of their own selection, and by ministers of their own choice. In case the Government Bill should not reach that House — and such a contingency was within the bounds of possibility—he reserved to himself the right to bring forward his Resolution as an independent Motion. He would now only express the fervent hope, in which he was sure every party, he might almost say every man, in the House would join, that this unhappy and distressing controversy, which had agitated the country for so many years, might be closed speedily and for ever. The hon. and learned Member concluded by moving that the Order for the Second Reading of the Bill be discharged.
§ MR. RIDLEY,who had given Notice that he would move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months, remarked that the hon. and learned Member in the course he had just taken had consulted the convenience of the House, no less than the interests he had in view. He would only add that he cordially joined with him in the hope that the controversy on this subject might speedily be settled.
§ Motion agreed to.
§ Order discharged: Bill withdrawn.