§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
LORD DENMAN,in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that the question of interments, at a distance from a church, was forced upon his notice in 1866 by the warnings of an eminent medical gentleman; and he had last year watched with anxiety every Bill upon the subject in "another place," and rejoiced to see one of them carried in this House by the votes of 13 spiritual Peers, against Amendments tending to increase the Burial Board system; but he regretted to find that, although the noble Earl now the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had at one time expressed a wish that a rate might be legalized for maintaining cemeteries, yet there was no easy method for the local sanitary authorities to levy a rate for the purpose, as had been the case with church rates. He (Lord Denman) could not hope to carry this Bill through a second reading this Session; but as a noble Earl (the Earl of Feversham) had declined to complete an intended gift of two acres of land to Churchmen and Dissenters, severally, through the state of the law, he (Lord Denman) had persisted in advocating this Bill, which only differed from the Bill read a first time last March, in exempting small parishes alone from the burdensome need for providing a chapel or chapels in cemeteries; and as, in the words quoted by the right hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) at the recent Cutler's Feast—"All things come round to him that waits!"—he would not abandon this Bill, which, in order to preserve the just rights of founders, might—in any event, as to the Bill sent from the Commons—continue now and hereafter to be necessary.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2ª."—{The Lord Denman.)
§ On Question? Resolved in the Negative.