§ COMMITTEE.
§ Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
§ LORD BASINGMy Lords, I do not propose to move the Amendments of which notice has been given, but to reserve that for the Standing Committee.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBURY)My Lords, before the matter is disposed of I must say this. In addition to the very odd collection of Statutes which are engrafted into the Bill by—I was going to say the draftsman, but I will spare the susceptibilities of my noble and learned Friend (Lord Thring)—I do not see him here—by the author of the Bill, I will say, in his drafting, I observe that among the Amendments suggested one is to get rid of one of the provisions of the Mortmain Act, viz., that which renders it necessary that a person who makes a present of land for the purposes suggested should survive at least a twelvemonth. I am not enamoured of the Mortmain Act, as I have said more than once; but, if that provision is wrong, it ought to be repealed, and it ought not, for this particular purpose, to be got rid of in this way. I do not understand that we have got to do it now, but that it is to go to the Standing Committee, and I wish to give warning what will happen to it when it gets there.
§ LORD BASINGI am certainly very willing that these Amendments and any others shall be discussed in the Standing Committee, and I only wish it were in my power to secure that this and other Bills—I think I may say Government Bills—should set out the whole of the provisions in previous Acts to which they refer.
§ House in Committee (according to order); Bill reported without amendment, and re-committed to the Standing Committee.