LORD BROUGHAMbegged leave to repeat the expression of his thanks to his noble and learned Friend (the Lord Chancellor) and the other members—his (Lord Brougham's) colleagues of the Statute Law Commission—for the manner in which they had examined his Religious Liberty Bill of last Session, postponed in order to undergo that examination. The result had been their proposing three Bills to repeal the statutes, or parts of statutes inconsistent with religious liberty, respecting the propriety of repealing which no question could arise. The objectionable, and, in some instances, obsolete enactments were fifteen in number, and the three Bills which he had presented to their Lordships repealed all these, including the penal clauses, hardly ever enforced, but which he had likened to torpid snakes, ready to be warmed at any time into noxious life by evil passions or misguided zeal. But of the 104 others, which his Bill of last year proposed to repeal, many could raise no more serious question than the fifteen—and the Commissioners had not at all considered that many more of them should be passed over. He wished once more to press upon his noble Friends opposite, and especially his noble and learned Friend, the great subject of law taxes, especially those affecting the County Courts. When he so often renewed his demands for the removal of this grievance, and trusted to the effects of reiterated attempts, of often times repeated blows—reminding them of the well-known line—
Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed sæpe cadendo,he intended nothing like a comparison of his noble Friends to stocks and stones, long as they took to be affected by his feeble efforts—it was applying to himself the non vis, and not to his noble Friends the lapidem. However, he trusted that at length he might hope to find he had made some little impression upon them. The subject was of incalculable importance, and one in which the country took the greatest interest.
THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he would not renew his promise that it should be done, for it had already been done by the Bill which he had presented to their Lordships on Tuesday last, but without stating the nature of its provisions. It contained, among other things, the part required for the relief of the suitor in the 123 County Courts, but, of course, in the usual form of a suggestion to the other House, where the money part of the measure must originate.