QUESTION. (Hansard, 1 August 1873)

MR. GLADSTONE
said, he proposed that the House should meet to-morrow at 12 o'clock, and he hoped the Business would be finished at an early hour. He understood that his hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) intended on Monday to withdraw his Factories Act Amendment Bill. His hon. Friend had moved the second reading, to which an Amendment had been moved by the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Fawcett), who was entitled to speak on the Amendment. The discharge of the Order would be an entirely separate matter. It was the intention of the Government to give his hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield the means of having his Order moved, and then to allow him to move that it be discharged.

§ MR. FAWCETT
said, he did not object that his hon. Friend (Mr. Muttdella) should have an opportunity of speaking on his Bill; but he wished to know whether, being an Order of the Day, it would come on before the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Charles Adderley) on the Gold Coast?

MR. GLADSTONE
said, that at that period of the Session all the arrangements were made at the shortest possible 1439 notice, and no one could tell beforehand the exact rate at which the business would be cleared off. What he hoped was that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Charles Adderley) would not have to wait until Monday. He might, perhaps, find an opportunity that evening, or, if not, to-morrow.

§ MR. J. LOWTHER
said, that a Motion having been made for the second reading of the Factories Act Amendment Bill, and an Amendment having been moved to that Motion, the matter was in the hands of the House. Until that Motion and Amendment were disposed of, the Order could not be discharged without debate.

MR. GLADSTONE
then moved— That the Orders of the Day appointed for the Evening Sitting this day be postponed until after the Notice of Motion relating to the Widows and Families of Civil Servants of the Crown and the three Notices of Motions next following.

§ MR. BUTT
complained that he would be prevented from bringing on his Motion on the "treatment of prisoners removed" on the Four Courts Marshal-sea (Dublin) Bill, by the arrangement now made.

MR. GLADSTONE
replied that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Charles Adderley) would have all the assistance which the Government could give him in bringing on his Motion on the Gold Coast. The hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Butt) would suffer no detriment from the arrangement now made. The business of that night might, be divided into three categories—first, the Motions which would have been moved in case the Motion for the Adjournment of the House could have been put; then the Orders of the Day; and lastly, the ordinary Motions, in which category the hon. and learned Member's Motion came.

§ MR. BUTT
repeated that by the arrangement now proposed, he should be placed in a worse position than before.
In reply to Mr. WHITWELL,

MR. BRUCE
said, that many accidents having happened, he had desired the Factory Inspectors to put themselves in communication with the manufacturers of these threshing machines to see whether they could not be fenced off so as to prevent accidents. A Bill—the Threshing Machines Bill—had passed through 1440 the House of Lords, and now stood for a second reading; but unless it met with general acceptation, it could not become law at that period of the Session.