§ COMMITTEE.
§ Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
§ THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (Earl CADOGAN)My Lords, in the absence of my noble Friend the Prime Minister, I have been requested to take charge of the Bill at this stage, and I propose to move that your Lordships go into Committee upon it; but perhaps it will save time if I say that the objections raised to certain provisions in this Bill, to which I think the noble Marquess referred yesterday, are of a description which, in our opinion, renders it almost impossible to press the clauses which contain those provisions. The noble Marquess has told us that he has been reduced to a state of seething excitement, and I confess that I think it is probable that a large proportion of that metamorphosis is owing to the provisions contained in these clauses; and I hope that now he will be to a certain extent cooled. I therefore simply move that your Lordships go into Committee on the Bill.
§ Moved, "That the House do now resolve itself into Committee upon the said Bill."—(The, Earl Cadogan.)
THE EARL OF ARRANMy Lords, after what has fallen from the noble Earl I have nothing to say, except that I should like to point out the extreme inconvenience of drafting clauses of this sort in the way in which these clauses 1878 are drafted. Here is a clause, involving the transfer of a liability to repay something like half-a-million of money, and the only means your Lordships have of arriving at the true meaning of it is by wading through a number of Acts of Parliament, admittedly very difficult of construction, and which it probably would require a legal head to understand.
§ Motion agreed to; House in Committee accordingly; Amendments made; Standing Committee negatived; The Report of the Amendments to be received To-morrow.