SECOND READING. (Hansard, 22 January 1891)

THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH

In asking your Lordships to be good enough to give a Second Reading to this Bill, I must trouble you with a very few words of explanation. Your Lordships will, doubtless, remember that last year you gave a Second Reading to this Bill, and afterwards referred it to a Select Committee to take evidence and report thereon to the House. The end of the Session came before the Committee were able to report, and it of course put an end both to the Bill and to the Committee. It is, therefore, necessary that the Bill should be re-introduced as a matter of form, in order that they may complete their work. This, my Lords, is precisely the same measure that was introduced by me last Session. I think it right to state, however, that it contains the 2nd clause of the Bill of last Session, commonly known as the "undertaker's clause," and it does so although the Committee resolved that the Bill should be amended by omitting that clause. The reason for its inclusion is not that I desire in the very least the re-enactment of this clause—in point of fact, I was the first in the Committee to move its omission; but having moved its omission, I had no right, until the Committee had finally reported the Bill as amended to your Lordships' House, on my own authority to amend the measure. I therefore feel myself bound to re-introduce the Bill in the same form in which it was presented to your Lordships 787 last year; but, of course, the Resolution to which the Committee came to omit the 2nd clause will take effect when the Bill is reported with Amendments to the House. I thought it necessary to offer this explanation in order to prevent misapprehension out of doors as to the omission of this particular clause, which excited a good deal of opposition, and if it had appeared now without this explanation which I have given your Lordships it might have created misapprehension. I venture, after this explanation, to ask your Lordships to read this Bill a second time, and that it may then be referred to a Select Committee of this House to receive evidence thereon, and to report the Bill with Amendments.