COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 19 July 1883)

§ VISCOUNT CRANBROOK
said, he would not oppose the Motion; but he looked with great suspicion on this measure and all similar legislation. The wisdom of allowing one part of the United Kingdom to have a system of law peculiar to it was very questionable. Under this Bill, that which would not be an offence in Devonshire would be an offence in Cornwall; and a Cornwall man, by crossing over the border of his own county, would be able to do that which was there prohibited. The Government had rejected a system intended for the prevention of disease in certain towns; yet every place in which the Contagious Diseases Acts had been enforced was still in favour of their continuance. If the Government were going to support the communistic legislation—the system of legislating for small communities—of which this Bill was an example, would they give to the towns to which the Contagious Diseases Acts applied the same power of interference with the principle of individual liberty which they proposed to give to counties by measures such as the present?

§ LORD ABERDARE
observed, that a great number of important legislative experiments had been made in particular boroughs. There were boroughs in which certain acts were punished as offences, though they could be committed with impunity in neighbouring towns. Was it not also the fact that when local Acts were passed the districts to which they applied were placed under a special law? He strongly approved the experiment which the Bill proposed to allow in the county of Cornwall.

§ THE EARL OF WEMYSS
said, he must protest against the Bill for the same reasons as those urged by the noble Viscount (Viscount Cranbrook). He objected to all piecemeal legislation; and, feeling so strongly on the question, he begged to give Notice that he should move the rejection of the Bill on the third reading.