SECOND READING. (Hansard, 14 September 1887)

LORD DENMAN

said, that Lord Lyndhurst had often reviewed a past Session on the second reading of the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill. He (Lord Denman) ventured to remind the House that the Laud Transfer Bill named in the Queen's Speech had been withdrawn in "another place." He would further remind the House that the clause for dividing the lands of intestates, like personalty, was introduced by a former Government 16 years ago, and never again brought forward. He had, since the third reading of the Bill, been into Franca to inquire as to its working in a family of seven, one of whom told him that, 52 years ago, each 551 child must have an equal share of its parents' property; and he found that it had caused the destruction of property. He hoped that it might not injure the Government to lose one of the Bills named in the Queen's Speech, as reform had been mentioned in 1852, 1859, 1860, and again in 1866, when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Lord John Manners quoting from Lord Tennyson's A Land of Settled Government, said the noble Lord ought to have gone on, and quoted, from the epistle dedicatiory to the Queen, verses in praise of the measures of reform. The words that really follwed were— Where Faction seldom gathers head. The Chief Rabbi, Dr. Adler, had quoted the words before— Where, begirt by friends of foes, A man may speak the thing he will; but the words before those words were applicable still— It is a land which freemen till, Which sober-suited Freedom chose. It is true now, as it was then. He had great confidence in the present Government; and he hoped that such measures as the Law of Evidence—so called—Amendment Bill would not again be supported, and part of the Land Transfer Bill might not again be brought for ward, although partly alluded to in the Queen's Speech.