MR. FITZROYsaid, he rose to put a question to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department. It would be in the recollection of hon. Members that, among the Orders of the day that stood for yesterday there was a bill entitled Operatives and Masters Bill, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Rye (Mr. Mackinnon). That Bill was read a second time owing to a mistake of the hon. Member for West Surrey (Mr. Drummond), who imagined when the title of the Bill was called, that it was one which he was promoting under the title of Combinations of Work men Bill. There were considerable objections to the Bill of the hon. Member for Rye, which had thus been read a second time by mistake, and considerable inconvenience would arise, to say nothing of the irregularity, if this stage of the Bill was allowed to be taken under a mistake. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he intended to move a Resolution that the proceedings of yesterday, so far as they related to that Bill, should be held null and void, or what other course he intended to take, so that no inconvenience might be sustained by this mistake.
§ MR. DRUMMONDsaid, he was exceedingly sorry if, by any mistake on his part, he had transgressed the rules of the House, or put the House to inconvenience. The fact was that his Bill had been put down for the second reading, and when the Masters and Operatives Bill was called on, several hon. Members came to him one after the other and said to him—"Is not that your Bill?" Overcome by this iteration, and supposing from the similarity of the title that it was his Bill, he moved the second reading. The fact was that, so far from wishing the Bill to be read a second time, he had a great aversion to it, and indeed had given notice to move, on going into Committee, that the Bill should be postponed for six months.
§ MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURTsaid, that two Bills had been introduced; one by the hon. Member for Rye, and the other by the hon. Member for West Surrey. To the latter measure no objection, he believed, was felt in any quarter; but the other was likely to meet with very considerable opposition. It had, however, been read a second time yesterday under a mistaken impression on the part of the House generally that it was a Bill to which they would all be disposed to give an immediate assent. 817 Under these circumstances he proposed,' in accordance with what he understood to be the precedents in such cases, to move that the Order of the preceding day be discharged; but he would give full notice of that Motion, and would afford the hon. Member for Rye an ample opportunity of defending his measure.