§ Order for Second Reading, read.
§ MR. WHITWELL, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, its object was to enable corporations, with the assent of the Home Secretary and the Treasury, to appropriate land belonging to them for the purpose of erecting dwellings for working men upon it; the Bill would also provide facilities for the acquirement and transfer of property of this description.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Whitwell.)
MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he did not intend to oppose the second reading of the Bill, but reserved to himself the right of raising any objections which he might think it his duty to take to the details of the measure, either on going into Committee or in Committee. He had no doubt the House would approve the principle of the Bill, which was in fact a step in a small way towards the larger measure which he had himself undertaken to introduce in another Session. He was sure that anything which tended to an improvement of the dwellings of the poor all over the country—provided it did not infringe those laws of political economy by which they ought to be bound—would be hailed with satisfaction by the House.