Sitting of 11 May 1874

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First Reading—Valuation of Property * [98]; Alkali Act (1863) Amendment * [99]; Rabbits * [100].
First Reading—Marriages Legalization (St. John the Evangelist's Chapel, in the Parish of Shustock) * [101]; Marriages Legalization (St. Paul's Church at Pooley Bridge) * [102]; Hertford College, Oxford * [103].
Second Reading—Intoxicating Liquors [83]; Bishop of Calcutta (Leave of Absence) * [93]; Board of Trade Arbitrations, Inquiries, &c. * [86].
Report—Offences against the Person * [13–97].
Withdrawn—Universities (Scotland) * [67].

SCOTCH FISHERY BOARD—HERRING BARRELS.—QUESTION.
MR. FORDYCEasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether the Scotch Fishery Board has recommended the removal of the restrictions on the use of fir wood in the manufacture of herring barrels; and, if so, whether it is intended to carry out these recommendations?
SIR CHARLES ADDERLEY: Sir, in the year 1849 the Scotch Fishery Board conducted some experiments in order to test the fitness of fir and larch wood for herring barrels, the result of which was against the use of fir wood, and, consequently, the then existing restrictions against the use of that description of wood in the manufacture of herring barrels were not interfered with. During the past herring fishing season, the Fishery Board have, at the desire of the Board of Trade, made further experiments with a view of ascertaining whether fir wood may not, if duly seasoned, be fit for this purpose, and the result of these renewed experiments, in the opinion of the Fishery Board and of the Board of Trade, justifies the use of fir for herring barrels; and the Board of Trade have referred the Papers for the consideration of the Lord Advocate of Scotland, with a recommendation that the prohibition should be repealed.

INDIA—THE AMIR OF KASHGAR.

  QUESTION.
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Treaty of

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  Commerce lately made with the Amir of Kashgar, includes or involves recognition of his independence and definition of his territory?
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTON: Sir, the Treaty of Commerce lately made with the Attalik Ghazee has not yet arrived in this country, and we are, therefore, unable to state accurately what the terms of that Treaty are.
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: In consequence of the Answer of the noble Lord, I shall put some Questions to him on the subject on Friday next.

CRIMINAL LUNATICS—BROADMOOR AND COUNTY ASYLUMS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. PAGETasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether Her Majesty's Government are prepared to take steps for enlarging the existing Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Broadmoor, or to build others elsewhere, and thus do away with the practice of keeping Criminal Lunatics in County Asylums?
  MR. ASSHETON CROSSin reply, said, it was not the intention of the Government to do so; but what they were at present considering was, whether arrangements could be made with regard to other Prisons in order to take away the worst class of criminal lunatics from Broadmoor altogether.

ARMY—MILITIA STOREHOUSES.

  QUESTION.
  MR. PAGETasked the Secretary of State for War, What steps Her Majesty's Government propose to take under 35 and 36 Vic., c. 68, with a view of relieving Counties from the expense of maintaining Militia Storehouses; and, whether the Government are prepared to purchase or to pay rent for Militia Storehouses now in use, or when they would place at the disposal of the Counties such Storehouses as are not required for Militia purposes?
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY, in reply, said: Five storehouses at Brigade Head Quarters have been purchased—namely, Ayr, Bodmin, Canterbury, Chester, and Winchester; others will be purchased in cases where the construction, price, and available land justify
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  purchase. Otherwise they will be placed at the disposal of counties, as soon as other accomodation for the Militia can be provided; and until then the usual lodging allowance for the Militia Permanent Staff, will be paid to the counties. Militia storehouses other than those at the Brigade Head Quarters, will be hired from the counties at a rental of £30 each, when their sites are selected as those of outlying Militia regiments.

THE ASHANTEE WAR MEDAL.

  QUESTION.
  MR. PRICEasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether, as a war medal is to be granted for the Ashantee Expedition, he is also prepared to recognize the claims of those who have served in previous expeditions on the Coast of Africa to a similar distinction?
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY, in reply, said, he had not felt himself called upon to review the decision of his Predecessors on the subject to which the hon. Member's Question referred, and had confined himself solely to the recent Ashantee Expedition in advising a medal to be struck.

THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON— AWARD OF THE MIXED CLAIMS COMMISSION.—QUESTION.
MR. BENTINCKasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to follow the precedent established by the Act 18 and 19 Vic. c. 77, and to bring in a similar Bill enabling the Treasury to distribute among the British claimants the sum payable to Her Majesty's Government by the final award of the late Mixed Claims Commission, under the Treaty of Washington 1871?
MR. BOURKE: Sir, the arrangements to be made for the distribution of the sums awarded by the Mixed Claims Commission are under the consideration of Her Majesty's Government. No decision has as yet been arrived at as to whether or not it may be necessary to ask Parliament to legislate on the subject.

INDIA—H.M. ROMAN CATHOLIC SERVANTS.—QUESTION.
MR. O'REILLYasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether any final answer has been received from the Governor General to the Despatch from the Indian Department in London of the month of May 1872, relative to the provision made by Government for the religious wants of Her Majesty's Servants in India professing the Roman Catholic religion; and, if so, whether he would have any objection to lay the Papers upon the Table?
LORD GEORGE HAMILTON: Sir, the last Despatch alluding to the matter raised by the hon. Member's Question received from the Indian Government is dated the 19th of August, 1872. In that Despatch the Government of India reserves its opinion on this question, until the general principle has been decided upon by which the Church Establishments in India are to be regulated. It is the intention of the Secretary of State to again address the Indian Government upon the subject. The Correspondence alluded to is at the hon. Member's disposal, but, as it tells us little or nothing, it would be useless to lay it upon the Table of the House.

DR. LIVINGSTONE.—QUESTION.
MR. LEEMANasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether Her Majesty's Government is prepared to recommend the adoption of the prayer of a Memorial presented to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for a grant to the family of the late Dr. Livingstone?
MR. DISRAELI: Sir, Her Majesty has already granted a pension of £200 a-year to the children of Dr. Livingstone, and £200 is the sixth of the moderate—I might say, perhaps, too moderate—sum which Her Majesty is empowered under Act of Parliament to grant. There are other relations of Dr. Livingstone besides his children. Their claims will be considered by Her Majesty's Government, and, if they think they ought to be provided for, we shall not hesitate to ask the House to grant such a Vote as would be proper under the circumstances.

THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION.

  QUESTION.
  MR. ALEXANDER BROWNasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If the Commission about to be appointed to inquire into the organisation of the Civil Service will include within the scope of its inquiries the position and cases of the literary, scientific, and other gentlemen employed at the British Museum, the South Kensington Museum, and similar institutions, or whether its inquiries will be limited, so far as these departments are concerned, to the administrative staffs?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, the Question is one that I should find it difficult to answer; because so much will naturally depend on the discretion of the parties appointed to deal with the subject. However, as the Commission has caused a great deal of interest, perhaps the House will allow me to read the letter I have addressed to the right hon. Gentleman who has undertaken to preside over it. The letter is as follows:—
  "11, Downing Street, 27th April, 1874.
  "My dear Mr. Playfair,—The inquiry which the Treasury desire to institute, and upon which you have been so kind as to promise us your assistance, has reference to the following points:—

  "1. The method of selecting Civil Servants in the first instance.

  "2. The principles upon which men should be transferred from office to office, especially in cases where one establishment has been abolished or reduced in numbers, and where there are consequently redundant employés, whose services should, if possible, be made available in other departments.

  "3. The possibility of grading the Civil Service as a whole so as to obviate the inconveniences which result from the differences of pay in different departments.

  "4. The system under which it is desirable to employ writers or other persons for the discharge of duties of less importance than those usually assigned to established clerks or duties of a purely temporary character.

  "I need not enter into any details upon these points beyond placing in your hands the several Orders in Council and other official documents relating to the matter, and referring you to the proceeding's which were held last year before the two Select Committees of the House of Commons, which inquired—the one into the Civil Service expenditure, the other into the alleged grievances of the Civil Service writers. Any further information which you may desire and which we have in our possession shall, of course, be placed at your disposal.
  "I will merely say with reference to the first of the questions which I have mentioned that, while the Government desire as a general prin-

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  ciple to uphold a system of selection according to merit as opposed to selection by the simple exercise of patronage, they are anxious that the Commission should look thoroughly into the action of the present system of competitive examinations, and should give their opinion upon any modifications which they may find it desirable to recommend in it with perfect freedom.
  "An important question will arise out of the division of the service according to what are technically known as Regulations I. and II. respectively, and we hope that the Commission will give us their advice as to the maintenance of that division, both in regard of admissions and of promotions."

WAYS AND MEANS—COUNTY LUNATIC ASYLUMS (IRELAND).—QUESTION.
MR. W. JOHNSTONasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the contribution of four shillings per head from the Consolidated Fund, towards the maintenance of pauper lunatics, is intended to extend to those in the County Lunatic Asylums in Ireland?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, the contribution will be extended to county lunatic asylums in Ireland.

IRELAND—THE CONSTABULARY.

  QUESTION.
  MAJOR O'GORMANasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether the statement relating to the Royal Irish Constabulary which appeared in the "Limerick Reporter" of the 13th March last is correct; and, if so, whether Her Majesty's Government approves of the system of occupying by drill and catechising the attention of the officers and men of that force when assembled for the discharge of their duties of detecting crime and prosecuting offenders; and, whether there is any objection to furnish the name of the officer referred to as "Inspector General?"
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH, in reply, said, that the statement was not accurate, and would lead to still more inaccurate inferences. In March last the Deputy Inspector, under orders of the Inspector General, inspected the County Constabulary of Limerick, and on the last day of the inspection he found 100 men employed at the Assizes which were being held in the City of Limerick, whom he had not seen during his tour through the county. He therefore directed that they should be assembled for one hour's drill for the purpose
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  of inspection, but at such a time as not to interfere with the special duty on which they were engaged. When men were assembled in this way in a county town in considerable numbers, advantage was often taken of a spare hour for the purpose of drill; the object was to avoid the expense which would be incurred if the men were brought together from distant stations specially for this purpose.

WAYS AND MEANS—PAUPER LUNATICS.—QUESTON.
MR. M'LARENasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, before taking the sense of the House on his proposal to pay, at the rate of 4s. per head, for certain classes of pauper lunatics, he will lay upon the Table a Statement showing the total number of pauper lunatics in each of the three divisions of the United Kingdom, and the proportional sums which will be paid to each division by the arrangement proposed?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, in reply, said, he would be happy to do so.

THE ASHANTEE EXPEDITION—CAPTAIN NIVEN.—QUESTION.
MR. W. JOHNSTONasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether Captain Niven, 1st West India Regiment, having been with his regiment in the Ashantee War, was left with three other officers at Prahsu, in command of a small garrison; and, whether three of the officers have not been carried back to the coast, in fever, leaving Captain Niven alone, without medical assistance?
MR. GATHORNE HARDY, in reply, said, that no such information had yet reached the War Office.

IRELAND—IMPROVEMENT OF THE SHANNON.—QUESTION.
MR. W. O. GOREasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether he intends to introduce before Whitsuntide, or soon after, any measure for the improvement of the River Shannon?
SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH, in reply, said, the duty of introducing such a measure, if it were introduced by the Government, would devolve either upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Secretary to the Treasury. After making

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a careful examination of the facts, he had placed the result before the Treasury. The matter was still under the consideration of the Government, and if his hon. Friend would repeat his Question in a few days, he hoped to be able to give him a more definite answer.

GREECE—DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS— THE GUARANTEED LOAN.

  QUESTION.
  MR. HANBURYasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it is true that the Greek Government is about to re-establish diplomatic relations with various European Courts; and, if so, whether that Government has taken any steps towards repaying the large amounts due by it to the British Government and other public creditors in this country?
  MR. BOURKE: It is true, Sir, that the proposal mentioned in the Question of the hon. Gentleman is contained in the amended Budget which has been prepared for the approval of the Greek Parliament; but since that amended Budget was presented, there has been a change of Government in Greece, so it is possible that no further steps may be taken upon the subject.

POST OFFICE—WEST INDIA MAIL CONTRACT.—QUESTION.
MR. TORRasked the Postmaster General, When will the Contract for Service to the West Indies be laid upon the Table of the House, and will he furnish at the same time Copy of Advertisement calling for tenders; also the amount of Sea Postage accruing to the Post Office in respect of Mails carried in 1873 to and from the ports embraced in the new Contract, showing separately the amount derived during the past year from Correspondence conveyed by the Packets between this Country and the West Indies?
LORD JOHN MANNERS, in reply, said, that the contract would be laid on the Table in the course of a few days, with a Minute from the Secretary to the Treasury, stating the grounds on which the contract was recommended to the House for its acceptance. It was not usual to lay on the Table the advertisement calling for tenders, but if his hon. Friend would move for it there would be no objection to its production.

CHILDREN EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE.—QUESTION.
MR. FAWCETTwished to know, Whether the hon. Member for Chippenham was prepared to lay upon the Table the Resolutions relating to the employment of Children in Agriculture, which he intends to move to-morrow?
MR. GOLDNEY, in reply, said, his Notice and Resolutions were as follow:—To call the attention of the House to the Act regulating the Employment of Children in Agriculture, and to the requirements prescribed by the Education Department with respect to Parliamentary Grants, and to move—
"That in order to insure the fair and beneficial working of the Agricultural Children Act (1873), the regulation of the Educational Code should be so far modified as—1, To allow children from whom 150 attendances only are required to attend schools without making a reduction from the Parliamentary grant unless additional pupil or assistant teachers are provided in respect of such children; 2, to allow the grant on a satisfactory examination in extra subjects without children from whom 150 attendances only are required being reckoned in the percentage of passes in the standard examination; 3, to allow grants to day schools in agricultural districts for scholars who complete the required number of attendances and pass in the standard examinations without requiring the principal teacher in such schools to be certificated."
VISCOUNT SANDON, in reply, said, that considering the importance of the subject, and that the Resolutions had not yet been in the hands of hon. Members, he must appeal to his hon. Friend to defer the discussion until a later day. His hon. Friend, he felt certain, was only anxious to secure the efficiency of the Act, but the effect of such a discussion, if prematurely taken without due time for consideration, would only injure the object he had in view.
MR. GOLDNEYsaid, he had great pleasure in yielding to the appeal made to him by his noble Friend, and would postpone his Motion until the first day after Whitsuntide.

LORD SANDHURST—MR. ANDERSON'S NOTICE OF MOTION.—QUESTION.
COLONEL BARTTELOT, after giving Notice of his intention to ask certain Questions next Thursday relating to the Martini-Henry rifle, said, that the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) had given Notice of a Motion of a serious kind, for which no day had been

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fixed, affecting the character of Lord Sandhurst as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Ireland, stating that that gallant officer had been absent from his duty for 17 months, and had made certain erroneous Returns. The charge involved such a dereliction of duty as to call for some stronger mark of censure than the return of the money allowed to have been wrongly received; and he wished to ask the hon. Member, Whether, considering the importance of this Motion, affecting as it did the character and conduct of an officer of such high distinction, he could not at once state the day on which he intended to bring forward his Motion, for it was unfair, at once, to the Nobleman in question, and to the House, that the question should be delayed one hour longer than was necessary? He was informed that there was some Correspondence which ought to be known to the House, and which was to be found in the Library, but he trusted that the Motion would be at once brought before the House.
MR. ANDERSONsaid, he could assure the hon. and gallant Member that it was with very great pain that he felt himself obliged to put down the Motion, and he freely admitted that it would be an inconvenience and a hardship to let such a Motion stand for any indefinite time. The difficulty, however, was to get an early opportunity for the discussion of it. He should go on balloting to get a place, and if he did not succeed, he should put it for some evening on the Motion to go into Committee of Supply. As regarded the Correspondence which had taken place in reference to this matter, it had not been printed, partly because it was very voluminous, and partly because after consultation with the librarian it appeared that no amount of printing would show the real points at issue. It was, however, to be seen in the Library by any hon. Gentleman who desired to look at it.

INTOXICATING LIQUORS BILL.
(Mr. Raikes, Mr. Secretary Cross, Sir Henry Selwin Ibbetson, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
INTOXICATING LIQUORS BILL.

  [BILL 83.] SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Secretary Cross.)
  MR. MELLY, in rising to move as an Amendment to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words—
  "In the opinion of this House, no measure for the regulation of the sale of Intoxicating Liquors will he satisfactory which affords increased facilities for drinking, and which deals unequally and unfairly with a considerable branch of the liquor trade,"
  said, he was sorry to interpose between the House and the second reading of the measure, but he thought it was desirable to consider at that stage the two principal features of the Bill: the extension of facilities for drinking, and the new distinction attempted to be created between spirit dealers and beer sellers. He would have simply moved the rejection of the Bill, but it contained one or two police regulations of value, and should the House in Committee accept the Motions made by the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Ralph Assheton) and the hon. Member for West Kent (Mr. J. G. Talbot), the Bill might be made an amending Bill; as it stood it was a retrograde measure; in two respects a step backwards, as he would endeavour to show. It aggravated the very points complained of by the Act of 1872, and in a material degree reversed the policy adopted by both parties in 1872. It went against the feeling of the people, as had been shown by the Petitions presented that night, and against the best interests of the trade, all for the purpose of keeping open the public-houses by an additional miserable half-hour. In asking the House to discuss the question, he was aware that they laboured under some disadvantages. Lord Aberdare had been removed to "another place," and by the death of Mr. Winterbotham, Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, who, with the noble Lord, had been instrumental in carrying the existing Act, they had lost a Member whose eloquence and whose practical knowledge were most valuable, and whose simplicity and refinement of character endeared him to his friends. But, at the same time, he might say that they entered upon the discussion of the question with some advantages. In the first place, it had never been discussed as a party question. It had never been so treated either in that House, or in the other House of Parliament, and certainly it was not his

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  intention to treat it in a different spirit on this occasion. The main object of the Act of 1872, as originally introduced, was to secure uniformity in the hours of opening and closing, with due regard to the actual wants of the inhabitants of different localities: London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other large centres of population, where it was proposed to be open between 6 and 12; town with 10,000 inhabitants between 7 and 11; and towns with 2,000 inhabitants between 7 and 10 o'clock. There was also no distinction made between different classes of drink shops. In 1872 there were three Bills on this subject before the House. The Government Bill was introduced into the House of Lords by the Earl of Kimberley; there was a Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Fife (Sir Robert Anstruther); and a third brought forward by his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) which he should have been glad to see adopted, because the blame of passing it would not then have fallen upon them, and because it was just the sort of measure that the present scheme, when properly amended, would develop into. But all these Bills adopted the same time for closing, and the discretion given to the justices, which found its way into the Government measure, was inserted by the House of Commons, and was not to be found in it as it originally came from the House of Lords. The beer-seller was placed by the Bill of the present Under Secretary of State for the Home Department in the same position with respect to hours as the licensed victualler. After very long discussions, carried on not only upon Mondays and Thursdays, but on hot Saturday afternoons, it was agreed to leave a discretionary and elastic power in the hands of the licensing magistrates. The present Bill proposed to take away that discretionary power, and to fix the hours within the four corners of the Act. He could show by the reports of the police Inspectors, the opinions of magistrates, and even of the trade, that the Act had worked satisfactorily; but he did not wish unnecessarily to take up the time of the House by quoting from those documents in detail. He had summarized the Reports of 160 superintendents of police. They were aware that the country was divided into three great
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  police divisions—the Northern, Southern, and Midland divisions, with the Metropolitan district as a fourth and separate division, under Colonel Henderson. The chiefs of the whole of these four divisions had expressed their complete approval of the working of the Act with respect to the hours of closing. The superintendents of police in 117 boroughs had in their Reports stated, "the Act works satisfactorily," "the Act is a boon," "the Act does much good;" and 49 chief constables of counties stated distinctly that it had greatly promoted good order during the night. The fault of the present measure was, that it proposed in all cases to extend the hours, while it took away the discretionary power vested in the magistrates. The fixing of the hours by Parliament might to some extent be regarded as an improvement, but he did not think that the power had been arbitrarily or capriciously used to the extent that was generally imagined. There were 890 licensing benches in England and Wales. By only 201 of these had the hours been altered. In 689 the hours stated in the Act of 1872 had been adopted; and in 112 out of the 201 where alterations had been made they were of a very trivial character. The justices had been too discreet to use their discretion. In Wales the greatest alterations had been made in 43 districts, but no doubt, good reasons could be shown for that by the hon. and learned Member for Denbighshire (Mr. Osborne Morgan.) They were all for shortening the hours. In four English boroughs the hours had been shortened, but in 154 boroughs, with a population of 6,036,000, the Act had been adopted in its entirety. The public-houses, with the exception of Liverpool and Hull, which opened at 7, opened at 6 in the morning, and with that exception the whole of the beer-houses and spirit-houses, together, 34,886 in number, closed at 11 at night. He should be told that the late General Election showed that the publicans, at all events, if not the beer-house keepers also, were largely dissatisfied with the legislation on this point. He did not, however, think that that was a fair statement of the case. What they were dissatisfied with was, not what had been done, but what had been threatened, and what they were afraid of. They objected to

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  the discretion of the magistrates, because they feared that teetotal or temperance magistrates might get on the bench and create a majority for measures of a restrictive character, which would make the houses they had purchased become bad bargains. It was that fear which made them hostile to the Act of 1872; and now, in consequence of that feeling, the House was asked not only to fix the hour of closing—to that he would make no objection—but to fix it half-an-hour later than it had been during the last 18 months, and that in face of the Petitions that had been presented against such a step from all parts of the country, and of the police Reports of the improved state of affairs throughout the length and breadth of the land. The Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary created a diversity in the hours of closing in every single thoroughfare in every town and village in England, inasmuch as the public-houses were to be closed at one hour and the beer-houses half-an-hour earlier. Now, it would be very easy for hon. Members to say—"what a deal of fuss you are making about half-an-hour;"—but in The Times of that day the case was put very concisely—
  "To an ordinary observer, unacquainted with the details of the controversy and the interests of the trade, it may appear strange that so fierce a clamour should be raised about so small a fraction of the hours of business, but the truth is, that the period in question, though measured by minutes, is the most profitable of the whole day. The last hours, or oven half-hours, are those that pay best."
  Yes, they pay the best, but they cost the most—in disorder, in riot, in drunkenness, in abandoned children and penny-less widows, in ruined homes, in increased rates and taxes.
  "More liquor, and that of a more paying kind, is consumed, and more money spent as the night draws on than at any other time. It is then that the Trade becomes brisk and thirsty souls abound. The house which can keep open the longest is the best house, and the most popular house."
  He wanted to say one word as to the operation of the Bill in London. There were 5,341 spirit-houses and 2,791 beerhouses in the metropolis. On the 23rd of December last the Licensed Victuallers' Protection Society sent out a circular inquiring what the trade preferred as the closing hour. Replies were received from 455 stating
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  12.30; 2,000 did not reply; and 2,874 were for 12 o'clock. The Home Secretary, in fixing 12.30, had therefore obeyed 455, and refused to obey the 2,874 who had absolutely repudiated his proposal. There was no doubt the present law was a very great inconvenience to respectable and hard-working people who were employed during the night. He was most anxious that persons whoso business began when individuals in private life—he did not mean in that House—went to bed, and who were engaged during the night in preparing those sheets of information, and those reports of the speeches made in that House, which they found upon their breakfast table in the morning, should be considered. But half-an-hour after midnight would be a very small accommodation to the workers on the Press of London, who, it might be said in sober earnestness, turned night into day; and he thought they must make up their minds to undergo some inconvenience for the sake of the great benefits which arose from this restrictive legislation. He had been told the other day of a man who, having visited his father, the Recorder of a great city, at an hotel, was told by the waiter at exactly 11 o'clock, that he must leave, as he was not lodging in the house. The father was very angry; but he forgot to tell him (Mr. Melly) that his work at quarter sessions had been diminished by the Act of 1872. With regard to such a case as that, he would throw out a suggestion which he thought might be worked up by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. Could there not be some extremely expensive licence granted to hotels of magnitude, which were not gin palaces, with their long mahogany bars and their gaudy and glaring lights, but which were really for the accommodation of a class who, in the very nature of things, were out half-an-hour or more late at night? He simply suggested whether something could not be done in that direction. But because a few hundred gentlemen of the upper classes were inconvenienced in an hotel once or twice a-year, that was no reason why something like 18,000 drinking shops should be kept open from one end of England to the other during the whole of the 12 months. The present hours were from six to 11 in 154 out of 156 towns with a population of

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  6,000,000. There were 17,654 spirit-houses which, without one single request sent up by them, and against the evidence of their magistracy and police, were to have an extra half-hour forced upon them. The House must not forget that the hours from six to 11 were fixed after due consideration. But what was the key-note lying at the bottom of that settlement? It was to meet the beer-house hours of the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, who, in 1869 and 1870, while the powerful Government of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich was on the opposite bench, had brought in two of the most important measures for the promotion of temperance, sobriety, and order, that had ever been brought forward in that House. He would make an appeal to every borough Member, and ask whether there was one of them who was pledged to an extension of hours? They might be pledged for or against the Permissive Bill; to less penal clauses; to allow a publican to entertain his friends as he ought to do—and he (Mr. Melly) could not help thinking that the decisions which had been given by magistrates against publicans who had been entertaining their friends after hours in their private rooms, were the decisions of Justice Shallows, who, by such unwise decisions, did great injury to such legislation as they were now considering—but were they pledged to an extension of hours? He believed they might be pledged to uniformity of hours, but not to an extension of them. Now, who had asked for this extension? There were 450,000 inhabitants in Liverpool. Its magistrates had condemned the extension during the past week; its clergy had condemned it; its police had reported against it; and he was prepared to say that its licensed victuallers wished to be left alone. Let one single borough or county magistrate, to whom the maintenance of law and order was entrusted in his district, and to whom its peace and sobriety were dear, tell him in whose interest he would vote for that half-hour? He did not want his opinion about large cities, or about Stoke—these places were represented by hon. Members who would vote with him (Mr. Melly). Did his own constituents want this extra half-hour? He closed his case on this challenge as regarded the
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  extension of hours to spirit-houses. Now, as to the unequal treatment of beer-houses. As regarded the second part of his Resolution, the Bill would reverse the whole policy of the last six years, which was the policy of the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, and which aimed at taking beer-houses out of the hands of the Excise and putting them into the hands of the magistrates—at raising their position. The policy of the hon. Baronet had been to raise the character of beer-houses by making the rental higher, and placing them under the strictest police supervision and the most penal clauses. It was rather curious to remark what the Home Secretary called logic in connection with this subject. The right hon. Gentleman said—"If you look to the number of licences of beer-houses forfeited, you will see that in 1869"—before they were dealt with by the hon. Baronet opposite—"it was 1,479, but in 1873 it was only 13. From those figures you may judge that the conduct of those houses was greatly improved, I trust it will be still more improved, and we are anxious to do all we can to improve them." But how did the right hon. Gentleman propose to improve them? By treating them with the grossest injustice, and tempting them to break this law. There were 682 beer-houses in his borough; the owners did not, he believed, vote for him at the last election, and he hoped he should say that night nothing which would cause them to vote for him at the next. He was no friend or advocate of any drinking house, but he was an enemy to unjust treatment of any individual or trade. But how had the beerhouses behaved? There were 62,261 spirit-houses in the Provinces, and the convictions against them in 1873 were 2,297, or one in 27; there were 40,923 beer-houses, and the convictions in their cases were 1,495, or one also in 27. But if it was recollected that among the spirit-houses were reckoned hotels, these figures showed how much better behaved were the beer-houses than the spirit-houses strictly so-called. In Liverpool, where the spirit-houses were 1,934 and the beer-houses 325, one in 26 of the population got drunk; but in Manchester and Salford, where the spirit-houses were 599 and the beer-houses 2,347, only one in 43 of the population got

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  drunk, showing greatly in favour of the beer-houses. Liverpool, however, was a seaport town, and the comparison might not be altogether fair. He would, therefore, take Northampton and Leicester, midland towns; in one, they made shoes, in the other, stockings. Northampton had 70 spirit-houses, and three times as many beer-houses, and the drunken cases were one in 199¾ but Leicester had 270 spirit-houses, and exactly the same number of beer-houses, and the drunken cases were one in 200½. Therefore, it was not by records of convictions or statistics of drunkenness that they could make out a special case for dealing with the beer-houses. The Home Secretary, in speaking of the night houses, had told the House that they were the resorts of persons who were turned out of the public-houses. "These houses may be summed up in three words," he said, "they are simply the resort of prostitutes, and are kept by persons carrying on an illicit trade in spirits. Therefore, we propose that these houses shall close at half-past 12." If he (Mr. Melly) had summed up the case of these refreshment houses, instead of making such a proposal, he would have summed up in four words—"shut them up altogether." It was no great compliment to the 2,791 beerhouses in the metropolis that they should be closed half-an-hour earlier than the night houses, which had been so accurately described by the Home Secretary as the resort of unfortunate women, and as illicit dealers. Now, what was a beer-house? A beer-house in Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Cheshire, at least, was a club kept by working men's wives for the accommodation of their husbands and their husbands' friends. It was the Carlton and Reform of that large section of the working classes who were not members of the Alliance, and did not belong to the mystic brotherhood of Good Templarism. It was a place furnished with wicker chairs and deal tables; it might be it possessed a snug parlour in which men sat, in contradistinction to a place which was unfurnished, except as regarded half a mile of mahogany counter and 100 lights, and in which men stood to drink. The House would create a most unfair distinction if it dealt with these places in the unfair and unequal manner which this Bill proposed. If it did so deal
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  with them, it would be committing a breach of faith against the beer-house keepers. Under the 45th section of the Act of 1872, they had been compelled to improve their properties, and to increase their value from, say £8, £10, to £15, £20, and even £30, and now that legislation had made them so expend money, it would be obviously unjust to them to pass a Bill which reduced their goodwill value by shortening their hours of sale, while houses which did an opposition trade were allowed to remain open. He knew that beer-houses were unpopular. He knew that the worst characters occasionally congregated in low beer-houses. But those characters would not be improved by a Bill which turned them out of beer-houses at 11 o'clock, and allowed them to top up with another glass of gin at the nearest public, and mix their liquors between 11 and 11.30 P.M. He would now call the police into court in his favour. They said that the proposed distinction had raised a great deal of feeling amongst keepers of beerhouses, and would be very injurious. The Chief Constable of Stafford, Captain Congreve, had written him a letter, in which he said—
  "The extension of hours proposed by the Bill will, I think, be in the interest only of the publican and the drunkard. Hard-working men do not want late hours. Again, the re-imposed distinction between beer-house and licensed victualler will benefit no one but the licensed victuallers. Every beer-house, or nearly every beer-house, has a licensed victualler within 20 yards, and the effect of clearing the former half-an-hour before the latter will be to accumulate all the drinking and drunken population for a short time in a very diminished area, with a probability that the several streams confluent from several rival beer-houses may develope, on meeting, quarrelsome tendencies. There will be a great temptation to the beer-house to break the law, in the hope of not losing his customers in that most profitable half-hour, when they are most drunk. Again, the inducement for a beer-house keeper to become a licensed victualler is enhanced; greater efforts will be made, and the result will be that in a greater or less degree the number of houses which sell spirits will increase. Lastly, I find that many licensed houses in this county are inferior in accommodation to many beer-houses, and in such cases especially there seems to be no reason for exceptional favour to the former."
  Hon. Members of the House of Commons gave similar evidence. He was really sorry for his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department. What a speech he would have

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  made against parts of this Bill had he been in a non-official position. How he would have smashed some of the provisions of the Bill of his Chief, and demonstrated that it was dead in the teeth of the legislation of recent years. What said the hon. Baronet in 1872? Speaking on the 11th of July in that year, he said he believed that irregularity in the hours of opening and closing would be injurious, as men, turned out of an early house, would make their way to one which kept open later, adding that the keeper of the later house would not know the state they were in and would serve them with drink; that they would get intoxicated, and so find themselves in the hands of the magistrates. Then, again, the hon. Member for Chippenham (Mr. Goldney) said the other evening that he highly approved the Bill; but its main principle was opposed to that of 1872, on the back of which the name of the hon. Member appeared, under which the uniform hour of 11 was provided. There was one more quotation he would make, and it was from the speech of a right hon. Gentleman who did not now sit on the front bench, but whose name was revered in the country and respected by both sides of that House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) said—
  "He thought it was clear that the public interest required that all houses where liquor was sold should he closed at the same time. They could arrive at but one conclusion—that if parties who had got three-parts drunk at a house which had to be closed at an earlier hour than another house close by, they would be sure to go to the one that was left open and take what was termed 'a fresh start,' and in such cases it was easy to see that convictions under the Act might he indefinitely, and in some cases unjustly, multiplied; on the other hand, if they closed all houses at the same time, men would then go home and go to bed."—[3 Hansard, ccxiii. 329, 330.]
  It was not necessary to add a word of argument to that quotation. It was a privilege to be able to call the right hon. Gentleman as a witness on that side of the question. He should now turn to the way in which the Bill proposed to act in respect of diversity of treatment of the different towns. The object of the Bill was said to be to accommodate the public. If it were so, its object was accomplished in a strange way. In the Metropolis there would be 5,300 spirit-houses open at 12.30; 2,800 beer-houses
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  closed at 12. In Liverpool it was the fashion to have spirit-houses, and so, even when all the beer-houses were closed, the public would be well accommodated. But in Manchester and Sal-ford the fashion was to have beer-houses, and therefore when these were closed the state of Manchester would, according to the right hon. Gentleman the Homo Secretary, be most miserable. This proposal to grant spirit-houses an extra half-hour would work most unequally as regarded almost all provincial towns. In Liverpool, spirit licences having been largely granted some years ago to beerhouses, so as to bring them under the control of the police, there were 1,934 spirit-houses and 325 beer-houses; in Manchester and Salford, where a different policy had been pursued, there were 599 spirit-houses and 2,347 beerhouses. Thus, in Liverpool, between 11 and 11.30 P.M., there would be 1,934 open houses for the sale of beer and spirits, or one for every 230 inhabitants, while in Manchester and Salford there would only be 599 houses open, or one for every 734 inhabitants. In Norwich the Bill closed 49 beer-houses, and left open 596 spirit-houses; in Coventry it closed 11 beer-houses, and left open 262 spirit-houses; in Hanley it closed 249 beer-houses, and left open 54 spirit-houses; in Birmingham it closed 1,141 beer-houses, and left open 684 spirit-houses; so much for the inequality in the treatment of towns; if it was said that the proposed change was rendered necessary for the purpose of affording accommodation to the public, those statistics would show that that object would not be attained. He had now closed his case in reference to the two main portions of his Motion, and had endeavoured to show that the extra half-hour was asked for by nobody,—that it was refused by everybody; further, that closing the beer-houses before the spirit-houses would lead to riot and disorder—would double the work of the police—would unduly interfere with that class of working men by whom the beer-houses were owned and frequented. Before sitting down, he wished to say a single word as to the general position of the trade. Under existing legislation, which it was said was unjust to the trade, the trade had got its monopoly restricted, and the value of its goodwill practically recognized. The Act of 1872 was the first

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  Act in which the value of the licence was recognized as part of the value of the house. That was a great concession to the trade. Considering the whole of the circumstances under which the trade was, he throw out a challenge. He had heard the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department say that he wished to induce respectable men to enter the trade. But respectable men were induced to enter the trade by encouragement to capital, and were not frightened by penal clauses, which were not for the punishment of the respectable, but of the disrespectable man. Every conviction, every endorsed licence, every forfeited licence, every closed house, added to the money value of the respectable house by increasing its legitimate business, for even the most disreputable publican did some legitimate trade. That was the challenge he threw out. If the licensed victuallers did not like the legislation of the last eight years, if they did not choose to carry on the trade under the restrictions which Parliament considered necessary, lot them sell their houses and leave the business. He knew that in Lancashire and Yorkshire and throughout Staffordshire, since 1872, the value of spirit houses had risen by 25 percent, and he had heard from a high authority, that throughout London the increase amounted from 12 to 15 per cent. Since 1871, the effect of their legislation had been to increase the monopoly of the trade; and there were now a thousand fewer houses in England and Wales. So much for the assertion that the trade had been "harassed,"—unjustly dealt with. Prom the year 1870 the action of the Legislature had been to make the trade more strictly a monopoly. Since that year there had been a reduction of exactly 997 houses in England and Wales. Now, look at the money those took over the counter. In 1871 it had been shown that the total consumption of Foreign and British wines, spirits, beer, and all other liquors in the United Kingdom, was in value £119,000,000. In 1873 it was £146,000,000. Professor Levi said that the labouring classes drank two-thirds of all that was drunk in this country. That meant that the labouring classes drank 75 millions worth of drink in 1871, and 97 millions worth in 1873. He was not making a temperance speech, but showing the increased
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  value of the monopoly. The houses had been decreased by 1,000, and to those which remained there was an increased trade of from 16 to 18 millions across the counter to the poorer classes of the community. He thought the trade had no claim upon the House on the ground of injustice; and if it had a claim, it was, according to this Bill, a claim for increasing riot and disorder in all our cities by half-an-hour every night, a claim he moved to disallow. He must make a remark upon the inconsistency with which the Home Secretary and the Government were dealing with these social questions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had regretted the increased consumption of spirits. The Home Secretary now brought in a Bill to increase the time during which spirits might be consumed. Last Wednesday the Home Secretary promised a Bill to reduce the hours of labour in factories. This was a Bill to increase the hours of hard work of those engaged in tap-rooms and gin-palaces. Was the atmosphere of gin-palaces less unhealthy, or their moral influence purer than that of cotton or woollen factories? Was nothing to be done in these days of Nine Hours Bills for the potboy and the barmaid? Had these no bodies that might be tired, and constitutions that might be ruined as well as the workers in factories? The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had told the Royal Academy that—"There must be in a Government, unity of design, unity of purpose in their policy, a firm and flowing outline in their measures." He saw no unity of purpose, and nothing flowing in their measures except brandy and gin from 11 to 11.30 P.M. in all the great towns. He was bound to say he saw no unity of design in the various Bills of the present Government dealing with social questions, some of which might be excellent; but that particular one was not such as the country had a right to expect from a Government which was far too strong to be compelled to pander to any trade, and which sat on the Treasury Bench not to represent a party, but to govern a nation. As they were strong, so let them be firm to resist class claims, and to prefer the welfare of millions to the interests of a pampered trade. Power carried with it great responsibility, and the Home Secretary was especially responsible for the

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  maintenance of law and order, which every provision of this Bill was calculated to endanger. In conclusion, he thanked the House for the indulgence shown him. He might have argued his case upon higher, upon religious grounds, instead of basing his arguments upon law and order only. This, at least, he would assert—as there was probably not a Judge, a Recorder, or a superintendent of police who was in favour of this extension, so there was not a rector, responsible for the moral welfare of a large parish, a Nonconformist minister, labouring for the salvation of his flock amid the millions in our manufacturing districts, a Catholic priest, wearing away his life in the fœtid courts and back slums of the Irish quarter of our large towns, who was not opposed to increased facilities for drinking. Had the ministers of religion a vote here to-night, he should with certainty await their decision. But it was not without confidence that he left his Resolution in the hands of an Assembly so largely composed of chairmen of quarter sessions and justices of the peace for counties and boroughs, whose duty it was not only to make laws in this House, but to administer them in the country. In conclusion he would move the Amendment of which he had given notice.
  MR. PEASE, in seconding the Motion, said, he heartily agreed with the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) in regretting the absence from the House of Commons of Mr. Bruce, now Lord Aberdare, and of the late Mr. Winterbotham, who were so intimately associated in the promotion of the state of the law that it was now proposed to change. He was not going to use the strong language used in "another place," with regard to the way in which the Bill had been forced forward; but what were the facts? The Bill was brought down on the 2nd of April. It was formally "brought in" on Monday the 27th ult.; it was not delivered until the 1st of the month, and it practically did not get into the country until the 5th; and now, on the 11th, they had the second reading! The country had not had time to consider the Bill. From letters he had received up to that morning, he considered that if more time had been allowed there would have been a still stronger expression of opinion with reference to it. They had not, had
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  much more than 12 months' experience of the Act of 1872—as a matter of fact-there had only been one Brewster Sessions since it came into operation—and yet they were already called upon to amend that Act! He thought the House was entitled to some strong proof that the alterations which were proposed would amend the Act of 1872. Who was it that asked for an alteration of the law? Generally, complaint came from those who administered a faulty law, or those who suffered from its administration, or from on-lookers in the general interests of the country. Had any of these conditions been complied with in regard to the Act of 1872? Had it been found to work injuriously? Was it shown that this Bill, if passed, would make it work better? On the contrary, he should undertake to show that that Act, for the short period it had been in operation, had worked most successfully so far as the country was concerned; and that the present Bill would not have the effect of amending it. The publicans had not asked for the Bill; and., if they did not require it, he was certain from the meetings that were taking place every day that the middle classes did not ask for it; the ministers of religion viewed it with undisguised alarm; officers of the peace reported against the proposed alterations in the existing law, and the magistrates without exception were opposed to it. The Bill dealt with four points—the hours of closing; the abolition of clauses with regard to adulteration; the endorsement of licences; and the fixed minimum fine. Before speaking of the country, he wished to say a few words with reference to the metropolis. The Bill of Lord Aberdare defined the metropolis as "the City of London, or the liberties thereof, or any parish or place subject to the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Board of Works, or within four miles radius from Charing Cross." What was the district of the right hon. Gentleman? It was thus described in the Bill—"The metropolis, as defined by the Metropolis Management Act, 1855, and the adjoining places here-inafter named—that is to say"—blank! Then, what? Was the district larger or smaller? It seemed to him that the mind of the Government was not made up when the Bill was printed. Therefore, he proposed to ask the Government what they meant by their metropolitan

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  district. If the district was larger than before, so many more public-houses would by inclusion have their hours of closing extended from 11 to 12.30. If smaller, where was the consistency? The houses excluded would have their hours curtailed from 12 to 11.30. He complained of the removal of the power as to the theatre licences, the argument urged in support of its abolition being the weakest he ever heard; and he asked, were the whole 6,000 public-houses of London to be kept open for the accommodation of the few theatre-goers who frequented public-houses after leaving the 44 theatres existing in the metropolis? It was not pretended that the middle classes of London had asked for that alteration of hours. Had the working classes in the metropolis asked for the Bill?—and by the "working classes" he meant those British workmen of whom they were all proud—men who did not spend their evenings in public-houses. What about the publicans themselves? He was told the figures quoted by his hon. Friend who brought forward the Motion were very strong indeed—stronger than he represented them. Of the total 6,000 odd hundred licensed victuallers of the London trade applied to, and that replied to the circular, only 445 asked the hours to be extended to 12.30 or 1 o'clock; while 3,329 desired no change, and the rest cared so little about it that they did not reply! Therefore they were practically forcing on the unwilling publicans an extra half-hour, which would be a bane to the whole of the metropolis. He did not speak without authority in alluding to the feeling of the London trade. A few more answers subsequently dribbled in, but they were in much the same proportion—that was to say, about 13 per cent, or 890 out of 6,700, being the proportion who asked for an extension of the present hours. He thought that fact should be known, as one highly honourable to the trade. He asked the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary if he had ever gone into the East of London at a late hour of the night, and seen who it was that entered the public-houses, who were swinging the gin-palace doors backwards and forwards, the last hour during which they remained open? They were the most abject children of penury and want; a generation whose neglect and debasement were a disgrace a like
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  to our laws, our civilization, and our Christianity; and it was to these the Government proposed, by this measure, to give increased facilities to drink. Among these East London men, the education of the gutters and the public-house had already produced some lamentable fruits. A correspondent in the country, alluding to some who had been, in the spring of 1872, transplanted to an industrial district, wrote this description. He would trouble the House with a passage, showing the results as compared with others of the same class reared under happier auspices—
  "Amongst the men who were brought from London in the summer were some of the worst characters I ever saw. Most of them were intemperate men, and for a while made our village look like a little Pandemonium, and especially on pay nights. For weeks after they came, I devoted two or three nights a week threading my way amongst them at their lodgings. Almost every word an oath. Not many of them could read or write. Both the vicar and I tried to induce them to attend some place of worship on the Sabbath-day, but very few could be found in such places. They crowded the three public-houses every Saturday night, and many of our old hands were crowded out by the fresh comers."
  Such were the habits fostered by late drinking! For his own part, he felt it would be better for society, better for the police, less destructive of the morals of certain districts of London, were they to licence 1,000 extra public-houses for theatre purposes than that they should have an hour's more drinking in the licensed houses that now exist. With respect to the rest of the country, what was the state of feeling? At a meeting of Barnard Castle and surrounding district licensed victuallers, hold on the 13th of January, 1874, there was some discussion on the draft Bill of the Licensed Victuallers' Protection Society of London—a Bill, by the way, whose proposal was a universal closing hour of 12 o'clock—and the second resolution passed at that meeting was as follows:—
  "That in rural districts, villages, and most towns having a population under 10,000, it would needlessly entail on the publicans a serious loss of sleep and expense, by requiring them to keep open their houses to the general public until 12 o'clock (midnight), their customers being usually in bed by 9, 10, or 11 o'clock."
  Then the Barnard Castle Victuallers, like sensible men, went on to say that they ought not to be so compelled. The intelligent chief constable of the borough

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  of Middlesborough, reporting on the 5th of May this year, delivered his view of the question in these words—
  "In my opinion, extending half an hour at nights is not required, and I believe the majority of publicans in my district do not want it. If the Bill should pass into law, the licensed victuallers would he subject to annoyances, by men in a half-drunken state turning out of the beer-houses at 11 o'clock, and then for a short time these would flock into the licensed houses and cause disorder, &c. I think it is a pity to disturb a Bill that has worked so well and done so much good."
  Another correspondent in the country supplied him with the following:—
  "Called on——, formerly a sergeant in the police; he keeps the——public-house. He is all for short hours, and thinks it would be sad indeed if the publican was compelled to keep open longer hours than he does now. He would like to close much earlier. It would add much to the comfort of the publican and his family, and to the welfare of the country at large. He gave me full leave to make use of his opinion as thus expressed."
  The same correspondent wrote—
  "I saw also——, of the Turf Hotel, at——, once a policeman. He said the best thing that ever happened to us was the shorter hours. I hope the time will not be extended. He hoped your efforts would be attended with success; he felt sure the trade would support your views."
  Another correspondent, a secretary to one of our agricultural societies, sententiously put his opinion thus—
  "Pity but the 'publics' were closed earlier, rather than later. All publicans with whom I have spoken like the earlier time."
  From what he observed in the newspapers of his own part of the country, the present measure was, in its main features, received with marked disapproval. At Darlington, the town council had discussed the question, and the corporation petitioned against the Bill; one respectable licensed victualler, a member of the town council, expressing the opinion that, "as a body, the licensed victuallers of the country cared nothing about the half-hour." Again, at Stockton, Mr. T. Carrick, of Newcastle, at a public meeting held to protest against the present measure, said—
  "They had heard a great deal about 'plundering and blundering,'—Mr. Cross had certainly 'plundered' and 'blundered' by proposing a measure of this kind. That extra half-hour meant more drunkards, more paupers, more jails, more executioners, more everything for which sober ratepayers had to pay."
  The fact was, as Mr. Councillor Prior, of Darlington, put it, the licensed victuallers, "as a body," had not asked for
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  the extension; and the few who did desire it were not those to whom the House of Commons ought to listen. He would further point out that the interests of the peace-loving well-to-do middle classes of the country were altogether opposed to extending the hours to that period of the night, which an hon. Member of that House had described most graphically as "the hour in which drinking merges into drunkenness;" and neither could it be pretended that any request for the extra half hour had been made by the working classes. How could such a thing be supposed? "I have gone to talk to the men about it," was the language of S. Leicester, in speaking on the Sunday Closing Bill; "they sincerely wish the drink was 1,000 miles away; that it was a guinea a pot; that is the general expression of the working men." He (Mr. Pease) could cordially join the right hon. Gentleman in deploring the extent to which the wages of working men went in the purchase of drink; but let him assure the right hon. Gentleman there was another side even to that gloomy picture of his. Workmen's wages had not all gone that gate. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of the recently increased earnings had gone into houses, furniture, and increased home comforts. In introducing the Bill the right hon. Gentleman said the country would have been so much richer, if so much drink had not been taken, and if so much waste and profligacy had not existed. The right hon. Gentleman dwelt on that theme, and pointed out how much happier the homes of the working classes might become, if their habits were different; and, then, what did he propose to them, in order to cure those evils which he admitted? Why, to remedy the evils of drunkenness and crime, and to add to the national wealth, improve the dwellings of the poor, improve their education and general condition, he proposed to keep public-houses open half-an-hour longer. Anything more ghastlily illogical than that prescription of the Home Secretary had hardly ever been brought before the House. Having already stated that the publicans of the metropolis did not ask for the extension of hours, what he asked was the opinion of the licensed victuallers in the country? In his own district, wherever he went during the last Elections, he was told on all hands by the publicans that

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  whatever he did he must vote against an extension of hours. He was not one of those who declared they had no publican supporters. He had publican supporters, and he did not want to reduce their number. Many of them told him that what they wanted was, rather to shorten than to lengthen the hours during which they might keep open. Then, the publicans in the rural districts did not require extended hours. As it was, many of their customers were in bed before the closing hour arrived. He contended that the half hour's extension was not required. With regard to the anxiety of the right hon. Gentleman about improved dwellings for the working classes, he could assure him that a great deal of their savings went into building societies for the purpose of providing their own houses, and so protecting themselves from the temptations of the public-house. Would the right hon. Gentleman increase those temptations by adding half-an-hour to the present hours? Would that not check, rather than promote, the object the right hon. Gentleman had at heart? And if the middle and working classes of the people had not asked for this legislation, neither had the clergy. Ask the Northern and Southern Houses of Convocation, whose formal resolutions in favour of restriction, not extension, of hours gave the answer! Ask those who deny themselves an indulgence which in moderation they regard as harmless, that their fellows may not be ensnared into evils inseparable from excess; and they reply, in the language of Mr. Charles Buxton, M.P., in The North British Review—
  "We are convinced that if a statesman who heartily wished to do the utmost possible good to his country were thoughtfully to inquire which of the topics of the day deserved the most intense force of his attention, the true reply—the reply which would be exacted by full deliberation—would be, that he should study the means by which this worst of plagues can be stayed. The intellectual, the moral, and the religious welfare of our people, their material comforts, their domestic happiness, are all involved. The question is, whether millions of our countrymen shall be helped to become happier and wiser—whether pauperism, lunacy, disease, and crime shall be diminished—whether multitudes of men, women, and children shall be aided to escape from utter ruin of body and soul? Surely such a question as that, enclosing within its limits consequences so momentous, ought to be weighed with earnest thought by all our patriots."
  Adopting that language, he asked his
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  right hon. Friend if he had weighed this proposal with the earnest thought of a patriot when he brought in the Bill? He asked him further, had he taken counsel of those who sat on the same bench with him? And, if so, was that wretched Bill the result of his deliberations? At all events, he could not have consulted the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool (Viscount Sandon), for according to Hansard, that noble Lord was reported to have said on July 27th, 1872—
  "There could be no doubt that drinking at late hours was the cause of great demoralization. …. He appealed to the state of his own town for confirmation of this view. The justices, stipendiary magistrates, merchants, ministers of religion, all concurred in saying that those evils were to be traced to drinking after 11 o'clock at night."—[3 Hansard, ccxii. 1967.]
  He must further contend that the Act of 1872 had been carried amid a general chorus of approval; that it had effected manifest improvements, and driven no respectable man out of business. Hardly anyone asked for that Bill except black sheep, who were to be found in every profession, and who were, of course, to be found among the publicans. Were places like Kingston-on-Hull, which had decided to close at 10.30, to be compelled by the Bill to have the public-houses open to 11.30? The one plausible principle of the Bill was not carried out in its provisions—it took discretion from justices, but not to repose it in the Imperial Parliament—the option was transferred from the licensing magistrate to the licensed publican. As to the extension of hours being popular, it ran right in the teeth of the most popular movement of the day—that for early closing; and it was about the worst exception to that rule that Parliament could conceive, or the law enforce. With regard to the adulteration clauses, there was no doubt some plausibility in legislating to prevent adulteration in the food of the people; but he submitted that these special provisions might as well be left out of the present Bill, as our general legislation would, to a large extent, meet the case; and it was much better to have a common law than a number of special enactments. Besides, the inquisitorial character of the search given by the present adulteration clauses was one to which he thought the licensed victuallers of the country had a right to object. But his main objection was, to that which the

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  right hon. Gentleman had laid most stress upon as the principle of the Bill. If on that he had spoken warmly, it was not that his feelings, though keen, were in this matter either prompted by personal considerations or by party bias. It was because in his own native county of Durham he knew and felt the importance of the ameliorative legislation of 1872. In that county they had many provident working men; new schools, chapels, churches, built for the most part and supported by the same class; new houses, and increased home comforts, all resulting from the industrial prosperity which had prevailed; but amid all this—side by side with all this—recklessness and disorder had been seen, consequent upon excessive drinking, the convictions for drunkenness rising from 4,759 to 9,926, while crimes, even murders, had marked this saddest phase of our social degradation. Much had been done to cure that one monster evil. The clergy and ministers of all denominations had zealously co-operated in endeavouring to stay the plague; large employers had done much to aid and stimulate every good work; many teetotal organizations had, in another sphere, worked effectively to the same end; and yet they heard learned Judges on the bench, at recurring Assizes, lament the prevalency of a vice closely associated with the spread of fearful crimes. It was in answer to the appeals of such authorities as these that some slight restriction was conceded in 1872; it was now, when from the same quarters more restriction was demanded, that the power to close a little earlier than before—so recently granted—so much prized by respectable licensees and by society—was proposed, by a responsible Minister of the Crown, to be taken away! It was, therefore, he appealed to the right hon. Gentleman—and appealed to him in the name of that law and order of which he was the expositor and guardian—it was, therefore, he prayed him to stay his hand ere he asked the House of Commons to pass a Bill which, once made law, must add to the already fearful category of drunkenness, of poverty, and of crime which stained the social annals of our country.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words
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  "in the opinion of this House, no measure for the regulation of the sale of Intoxicating Liquors will he satisfactory which affords increased facilities for drinking, and which deals unequally and unfairly with a considerable branch of the liquor trade,"—(Mr. Melly,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, he had listened with great attention to the speeches of the hon. Mover and Seconder of the Motion now under discussion, and while stating that he coincided with them in lamenting the extent to which drunkenness had increased during the last two years, he should like to bring the House back to the real question contained in the Bill of the Government, and the reasons why they had brought it forward. It was quite true the Act of 1872 had been passed by the common and general assent, and with the aid and assistance of hon. Members on both sides of the House; but he would remind those who had been Members of the late Parliament that it had been passed at a time of the year when a fair discussion of its provisions was impossible, and that in consequence of that hurried consideration, errors had crept into it which rendered it absolutely necessary that Government should now or ere long endeavour to remedy those defects; and he ventured to think that one of the gravest of those defects was one which he himself had then protested against, and that was the discretion given to the magistrates to fix the hours of closing. Those hon. Members would remember that from the very first, and during the passage of that measure, he had advocated that Parliament itself should fix the hard-and-fast line of closing, and so settle a question of such importance. In fact, there was an Amendment of his own on the Paper to that effect, and the reason why he had not moved it was simply because the clause vesting the discretion in the magistrates seemed to give so much pleasure to every section of the House at the time it was proposed, that he felt he could not obtain any support in opposition to it. They all knew that, however zealous the magistrates might be in the discharge of their duties at the Brewster Sessions, there was generally

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  a bias in their decisions; and if there was not any such bias, still the people thought that such a thing did exist. The members of the bench often entertained extreme views on this question, and it came to this, that however honestly they might act in carrying out what they believed to be for the public good, their decisions often showed that they were biassed by extreme views, and so long as that discretionary power was entrusted to them, so long would there be a constant agitation to get the hours altered. That was a grave fault in the existing measure. If they looked to the Returns of how the magistrates had exercised the discretion vested in them they could not help coming to the conclusion that the provision in question had not worked well. In most instances the magistrates had refused to incur the responsibility of fixing the hours, and that accounted for the fact that there were as many as 690 licensing districts in which the hours had not been altered. It was therefore that his right hon. Friend thought that it was objectionable to rest this discretionary power in the magistrates, and that in the Bill he made it a cardinal point that that power should cease, and that Parliament itself should fix the hours of closing. The question what the hours should be was quite a different thing, and what Government had done was merely to suggest to the House the hours which they thought the information they had received would bear out as the best and most suitable for the public convenience. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) knew how difficult it was to obtain reliable information on those points. He (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) had information of a satisfactory nature from the police, from clergymen, from magistrates, and from the trade itself; but the difficulty which always existed, and which existed as much now as in the past, was that of ascertaining what the wants of the people really were. Hon. Members of the House representing their constituencies, and not any particular section of them, were, he thought, the men who were best able to interpret what the wishes of the country really were, and therefore while the Government were determined to make it, as he said, the cardinal point of the measure that Parliament should lay down the hard-and-fast line, they were prepared
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  to take hon. Members of the House into counsel in determining where this hard-and-fast line should be drawn. The idea of the trade was in favour of uniformity of hours, and that 12 o'clock should be the hour of closing throughout the country generally. He believed that this proposal had secured a large support from the trade generally. It had certainly secured the support of the metropolitan trade. But then came the question whether the London trade, in sacrificing the half-hour offered to themselves in order to arrive at uniformity, fairly represented the wants of the public; and if they did not represent the wants of the public, ought they to be heard on this point of closing at 12 o'clock, instead of at 12.30? He would leave that matter then with the remark that the Government considered uniformity of closing an impossibility. That was another cardinal part of the Bill. Having, then, fixed on those two cardinal points—first, to take away the discretionary power from the magistrate, leaving it to Parliament to determine the hard-and-fast line; and, secondly, to have nothing to do with the principle of universal uniformity—it was but right that he should now state the reasons which had led the Government to suggest to the House the hours mentioned in the Bill. First, with respect to fixing 12.30 as the closing hour in the metropolis. The Act of 1872 provided for the issue of exceptional licences to meet the wants of a certain class of the public; but they had now a large amount of evidence as to the working of that measure, which showed that the 54 houses to which those exceptional licences were granted drew away the business from other houses in their neighbourhood, which was an injustice to the trade generally, and they had, too, the most complete evidence that the class of people who frequented these houses was not the class for whose accommodation they had been intended. Instead of being frequented by those who left the theatres after 12, these houses were the haunts of those who, driven from the other houses at 12, wished to prolong the time of their dissipation. Again, the evidence showed that as a rule the theatres closed at 11.45, so that those who might have been there to witness the performance had a quarter of an hour during which they could

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  provide themselves with refreshments. However, to cover the possibility of their not being able to do so, it was thought better to insert 12.30 in the Bill for the whole, rather than continue the practice of licensing those exceptional houses. Then, as to the hour—11.30—of closing, about which hon. Members had raised such a storm, he was willing to admit that the Return obtained by the hon. Member for Stoke would, at first sight, favour the impression that the larger portion of the country was satisfied with the present arrangement; but then they had evidence from the mayors and police in different boroughs which showed a state of things which he looked upon with dread—namely, that in many places where the hours had been restricted illicit drinking had become the custom, almost the habit. The mayor of Worcester said, that in that city the curtailment of the hours had led to an increase of secret drinking. The mayor of Warrington told them that if the hour of closing were fixed at 10 o'clock, a large increase of illicit drinking would be the consequence. The mayor of Kingston-upon-Hull complained of an increase of drunkenness in consequence of private drinking occasioned by shortening the hours. The mayor of Kendal told the same story. The police of Gateshead complained of a great increase of drunkenness arising from high wages, fewer hours of labour; but, above all, from street drinking, under what was called the bottle system. People bought the spirits in the public-houses before closing hours, but drank them either in the street or in private houses. The police of Halifax, of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Salford, and Bradford made the same representation, and stated that any further restriction of the hours would cause a great increase of drunkenness.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERasked if these Papers were on the Table of the House?
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, the letters of four of the mayors were not on the Table, being answers to letters written by himself. The statements of the police were in a pamphlet which had been circulated among hon. Members of the House.
  MR. MELLYasked if these Reports, when they spoke of illicit drinking, meant drink bought and drank in unlicensed houses?
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, that they meant that the drink was purchased in the public-houses before they closed and then drank in unlicensed houses.
  MR. MELLYobserved that that was not illicit drinking.
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, the Reports proved the evil results of drawing the line too tight; for if they reduced the hours too much, the result would be a large increase in the traffic for illicit drink. The difficulty in his mind was as to the propriety of reducing the hours; and in laying down 11.30 as the hour of closing the Government were influenced by the wishes of the population of large towns, who required a different system from those of small towns and the rural districts generally. As to the latter, the Return, which on the Motion of the hon. Member for Stoke had been placed on the Table of the House, showed that out of these districts, only four wished to have the hours extended, while in only 38 had they been at all curtailed, thus proving that in by far the largest number of cases the local authorities had not ventured to touch the hours at all. For those reasons the Government had placed the same hours that now existed in rural places in the Bill. There was, however, one part of the country—namely, Wales—in which singular unanimity had been shown in shortening the hours, 29 districts out of 33 having adopted that course; but it was impossible that Wales should give its hours to England. But the Government had by a clause in the Bill given the publicans liberty to reduce the hours where there was unanimity on the point, and where practically, as the wants of the district admitted, the houses were closed at an earlier hour. With regard to the morning, the Government had had endless remonstrances against the hour of 6, which was placed in the Bill; but the evidence generally was in favour of opening at an earlier hour than 7, and therefore it was thought better to leave the morning hour in the Bill as it stood. In short, the hours in the Bill as submitted to the House were merely suggestive. The hon. Member for Stoke stated that the action which he (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) was now taking was contrary to that which he had before taken on this subject; but he would ask his hon. Friend to remember that

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  when he advocated uniformity it was the right hon. Gentleman the then Home Secretary who defeated him, and he believed the hon. Member for Stoke himself was among the majority. The hon. Member was, however, not justified in saying that the Bill of 1872 set up the principle of uniformity, and the Government were now endangering it. One of the chief merits of the Bill would be found in the restriction which it would impose on so-called refreshment-houses, which were really used for the purpose of carrying on drinking when the public-houses were closed. Then, as to the power of entry given to the police by the Bill of 1872. This power had not been generally abused, but it had in some instances—black-mail having been levied by the police under the provision—and therefore the present Bill, while enabling the police to enter or repress anything wrong, would take away from them the power of meddling. With regard to the record of convictions, he felt when the Bill of 1872 passed, and he felt still, that the magistrate should take on himself the responsibility of his action, and that it should not be left to depend on accidental forgetfulness whether a conviction was recorded or not. Under the Bill of the Government, the magistrate would have before him in every instance a full record of the convictions, and he would decide with perfect knowledge whether a person was fit to hold a licence or not. With regard to occasional licences, hitherto it had been open to a publican in any part of the country to set up a booth at any fair, or on a race-course, and to carry on a trade without being subject to police supervision. It was thought that this ought not to be, and that the magistrates of a district ought to decide whether the applicants for occasional licences should have them. In these minor details the Bill was framed in the spirit of the Act of 1872, and it would be found not to weaken, but rather to strengthen, what Parliament did in that year. The object of legislation should be to improve the character of the tenancies as much as possible, and to make the tenants of the houses the guardians of public order, and the result of the present measure would, he believed, secure that result. The object of the House ought to be an attempt to regulate the trade rather than to suppress it, by removing hardships
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  which at present existed, and he believed that the cardinal points of the Bill would tend to the improvement of the whole of our licensing system. As to the hours of closing, he could only repeat that, while the Government suggested what they believed to be best, they were quite prepared to let the House join them in determining what the hours should be.
  MR. JAMESasked, why it was Her Majesty's Government were so eager to introduce an uncalled-for measure like the present, so early in the Session, when there were so many other questions of social importance more deserving of consideration? The Government had referred the question of the Master and Servant Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act to a Royal Commission, Why were they unwilling that the wrongs of the publican should remain a little longer at the bar of public opinion? A distinction had been drawn as to the operation of the licensing system so far as it affected the rich and the poor; but if the working classes wanted to have intoxicating liquors they could have them as well as the rich by acting on the co-operative system: in his opinion, a good one. They did not do so, however, because they were well aware the evils intoxicating drinks were to them. As to the limit of hours in keeping public-houses open, he thought it would be better to leave this matter to the discretion of the magistrates than define it in an Act of Parliament. The Bill of 1872 arranged the matter well enough. Uniformity of hours would, in his opinion, stimulate local agitation. In the rural districts, in the harvest and hop-picking season, the magistrates should have the power of permitting publicans to open earlier than usual. In large towns a later hour was desirable. Another evil underlying the Bill was not only the extension of the hours of closing, but its tendency to increase the number of licences. It would have been better if the Government had remained firm, and said they would not allow any more licences, and only sanctioned the transfer of them from those districts where their number was so great as to make the business unprofitable. In the large towns it was not the old-fashioned public-houses that did any harm, but the large spirit bars, which were most objectionable, In the

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  northern towns, companies of Scotch brewers were buying up the public-houses to convert them into dram shops, and were acquiring adjacent houses in order to get as large a frontage as possible. Though there were certain vices in contradistinction to crimes which the Legislature could do very little in repressing, and drunkenness was one of them. The more he considered this question the more he regretted being unable to perceive any bridge to unite the great gulf which separated the fanaticism—he would not say the hon. I Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), but some of his followers were so fond of upholding—and the plausible optimism others in the House were fond of advocating; but if the Government Bill became law, he felt sure the results, in the best interests of society, would be most disastrous, and he could not understand the logic of those Gentlemen who said that it was in the cause of temperance they were working, and simultaneously gave facilities for drinking. The hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department had announced the intention of the Government to be guided by public opinion in the matter of hours, and he was glad to hear so from him, but he thought he detected in his manner and in his voice some misgiving, as if a course no less famous than that of his predecessor was opening to him, though he was sure that the Government intended to act in reference to this question in a manner perfectly honourable. He did not wish to restrict anyone, but the whole circumstances of this trade were so exceptional as to justify exceptional legislation. The one feature of the subject which he viewed with alarm was the political influence which the trade had shown itself capable of wielding. Some said that they were going to be overwhelmed by democracy under the Reform Act of 1867. Some viewed the landed interest as overbearing, and others, the Church as tyrannical, but they were trifling in comparison with the powers put forward at the last Election by this interest in general. He was sorry that at the Election, trade considerations should have been placed above every other; and that either party was to obtain the support of the trade by merely outbidding the other on the principle of competition. He thought
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  the course taken by the Government in reference to this subject was a mistaken one. Though the Act of 1872 was certainly not a perfect one, and had for a time led to some confusion, like every other Act of local administration, the public and the trade were gradually perceiving it gave satisfaction; notwithstanding it was made a "cry" at the hustings, and thrown out as a bait for candidates. He could only say that if the right hon. Gentleman was not already bewildered by the diversity of opinions he met with, there was only one suggestion with which he could honour him, and that was that after the Bill was passed, he and his Colleagues should settle down in the vicinity of one of the low spirit-bars which it was favouring, and see whether it conduced to the decency, the peace, and the comfort of the homes of the people whose well-being was so important to everyone.
  MR. HERMONsaid, he had had the honour of presenting a Petition complaining of the proposed extension of the hours of public-houses, and he was glad the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department had so clearly explained the views of the Government on the Bill. Had the Bill dealt only with the extension of the hours, he should certainly have opposed it; but he hoped the House would, after the frank statement of the hon. Baronet, assent to the second reading. He thanked the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) for having moved the Amendment, since it gave hon. Members an opportunity of stating their views on the subject. He was far from being insensible to the influence exerted by the licensed victuallers at the last Election, and the pressure brought to hear upon candidates with a view to pledge them to this or to that course, But the licensed victuallers of this country were not a bigoted class of people, and nothing in the world would have induced him to advocate an extension of hours, for he saw that the moderate hours lately acted on had proved beneficial to the country. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State said he had adopted the views of the House on a branch of the labour question, and that they had been embodied in a Bill which would soon come before the House under the title of the Fifty-six Hours Bill. When they considered that that

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  Bill would have the effect of giving operatives in the North, and in the manufacturing districts generally, an additional half-hour which they might devote to the library, to recreation, or to the public-house if they pleased, that circumstance, in his opinion, took away one of the arguments for the extension of the hours. He hoped, after the statement that the House itself should be the arbiter of the hours throughout the country, that it would take the measure into its consideration; because the Bill not only dealt with the hours, but with disadvantages—he might call them grievances—with which the licensed victuallers certainly had to contend. He referred in particular to a system of espionage, or inspection, which was conducive neither to the comfort of the public, nor to the satisfactory conduct of public-house business. There were several details of that kind which the Bill dealt with, and on that account it should have the attention of the House. He was aware that in urging the limitation of hours and confining them to those already fixed, he was not taking a course that was very popular. At the same time there were higher considerations than that of obtaining a seat, or of retaining it when it had been got, and he, for one, was willing to run the risk of losing it by doing that which he considered to be right. He thought the Government had taken a bold and manly course when they announced their intention of taking the vote of the Committee on the Bill to decide the question whether the public were favourable to the extension of hours or not. If the Bill was thoroughly examined it might be brought into a very satisfactory state. He was glad the Government had taken into their consideration the question of the additional half-hour given to houses in the vicinity of the theatres. It was his opinion that if it was found necessary to give that half-hour to those houses, it should have been extended to the whole of the metropolis. But if it was necessary that those who frequented those houses should have half an hour for refreshments after the performances were over, the proper course would have been for the theatres to commence their performances half an hour earlier, so that there should be no necessity for the exceptional licence. He believed that the proposed change in extending the
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  hours was unwise, as he thought the public throughout the country had become accustomed to the new hours, and beyond that, he thought the course proposed would create much harm, and would have the effect of increasing immorality, pauperism, and the poor rates. There had been of course exceptions, and in some towns in the North he believed much public inconvenience had been felt. In his town they had suffered as much as they had anywhere. He believed, however, that they had now before them a Bill which, with the assistance of the House, could be moulded to the advantage of the country. The complaints of the licensed victuallers could be redressed without destroying the good results which the public expected from this legislation. In every point of view he thought the extension of the hours would have been bad, and he was glad the Government had taken a reasonable view of the subject, in deference to the judgment and wishes of the country generally, and instead of extending hours which he thought ought rather to be reduced, were ready to accept the view of the country and of the House upon the question.
  MR. EVANSsaid, that having had more experience on the question than many hon. Members of the House, he might, perhaps, be allowed to make a few remarks on the Bill. He had been a magistrate and chairman of quarter sessions in his county, and also a town councillor and a mayor, and in those various capacities had had opportunities of noting the working of the different Licensing Acts passed at different times. He begged to assure the House that it was not his intention to criticize the Bill in any unfriendly spirit. He looked upon the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary as a man of the best possible intentions, who had had great experience as a magistrate and at quarter sessions, and he was sure he would not press on a measure which he believed to be objectionable. If he had been desirous of opposing the Bill, he should not have felt inclined to continue that opposition after the speech of the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, and indeed some of the things he had mentioned had given him great satisfaction. First, he had cleared up that portion of the Bill which related to the metropolis.

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  At first he was not prepared to give an opinion on that portion of the Bill, as he knew that late hours in the metropolis were very usual; but he was glad the hon. Baronet had completely cleared up his difficulties on that part of the Bill by stating that the special licences to houses near the theatres had been altogether a failure. He therefore thought that this fact took away the reason for extending the hour from 12 to 12.30. The decision of the Government to re-consider the hours of closing throughout the country, and to take the sense of the House and the country upon it, was very satisfactory, and he regarded with favour the proposition that early-closing licences should be issued at a reduced rate, believing that they would be largely taken out in small country places. The proposal to give a discretionary power to the magistrates in regard to penalties for the first offence would be advantageous, because it was in accordance with the general spirit of our criminal legislation. He could not, however, say the same with respect to the proposed alteration in reference to the endorsement of convictions upon licences. He thought it far better the law should be left in its present state especially with regard to endorsements for second offences. The public and the magistrates ought to understand that the intention of the law was that upon second offences the licences should be endorsed. The infliction of a fine, however heavy it might be, was a very small instrument for keeping order in public-houses; while the endorsement on a licence not only affected the publican, but it obliged the landlord—that was the owner of the house—to be very careful in seeking a responsible and respectable tenant. One thing he thought would be a great improvement in the existing law—namely, the suggested definition of the bonâ fide traveller question. It would strengthen not only the hands of the magistrates and the public, but it would be a security to publicans who wished to observe the law. The adulteration clauses had been entirely inoperative, and he could see no objection to their repeal. With regard to the question of hours, he had found that in the large town which he represented there was a universal consensus of opinion in favour of closing at 11 instead of 11.30; but it was suggested by some
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  persons that the time of opening should be 5 instead of 6, for the convenience of the working-men who came from a distance, and who were engaged in connection with the Midland Railway and large manufactories in the neighbourhood. This, however, was not his own opinion. From the number of Petitions that had been presented, and from the speeches that had been made in that House, it would seem that the opinion of the House and of the country was strongly against the extension of hours, and he believed that the result of the Government consenting to re-consider the matter and be guided by the general feeling of the country would do honour to both the House and the Government.
  MR. ASSHETONsaid, he regarded the present measure, which was simply an amending Bill to round off some of the angles of the Act of 1872, as an almost insignificant one. The original Act—that was, the Bill of 1872—was, in his opinion, one of the best measures passed by the late Government, and it had done untold good throughout the country; but it did not receive fair play, and had been blamed for the faults of the Bill of 1871. It was quite true that the measure of 1872 had certain defects, and the Government Bill aimed at remedying those defects. And what, after all, were the alterations that were made in the existing hours? The hours on the Sunday in London were the same in this Bill as they were in the existing law; and the other alteration, as regarded the metropolis, only extended the hours at night to 12.30; and the alterations in the hours of closing seemed to be only in accordance with the requirements of the places to which those alterations applied. He did not think that the alterations proposed would in any way increase the facilities for drinking on the part of the people, for the alterations with respect to opening and closing were as a general rule, so small, that in practice there would be no appreciable difference in many places. If he thought that the Bill of the Government was calculated to afford increased facilities for drinking, he trusted that he should have the courage to oppose it, but he did not see that it was fairly open to that objection. He should have been glad, however, if the Government had gone further in the

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  direction of diminishing the facilities for drinking. He did not think, for instance, that it was desirable to extend the hours of closing in places where it was the habit of the people to go early to bed. It was his intention, in Committee on the Bill, to submit certain Amendments, including a scale of closing hours which he thought might with advantage be adopted. What he would propose was that the closing hours should be as follows:—11.30 in towns with above 50,000 inhabitants, 11 in towns with 10,000 inhabitants, 10.30 in towns with 5,000 inhabitants, and 10 o'clock in country places. He was not wedded to that scale, but he thought that something of the kind might be found to work beneficially. He should vote for the second reading of the Bill, believing that it contained no objectionable provisions which the House might not in Committee satisfactorily deal with, and he trusted the Government would enter upon that stage of the measure unpledged in any respect as to details.
  SIR FRANCIS GOLDSMIDsaid, he desired to call attention to a portion of the Bill which had hitherto been but slightly mentioned, and to which he entertained the most serious objections. He wished to do so at once, in order that the House and the Government might have an opportunity of considering the matter before the Bill went, if it was to go, into Committee; and the candid manner in which the Government had met the representations made to them respecting the hours of closing led him to hope that they might treat with equal candour the point on which he had to remark. The proposed enactments to which he referred consisted of the 12th clause of the Bill, and the 4th sub-section of the 28th clause. These would render almost nugatory the provisions for recording convictions on licences, which he regarded as among the most effective portions of the Act of 1872. Under the 5th, 6th, and 35th sections of that Act, convictions for allowing drinking in or near a house licensed only for the sale of liquor to be drunk off the premises, and for refusing admission to a constable, were to be recorded on the licence unconditionally; and, under the 13th, 14th, 16th, and 17th sections, convictions for permitting drunkenness or gaming, for harbouring prostitutes, or for bribing
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  or improperly entertaining a constable, were to be recorded on the licence "unless the convicting Justices otherwise direct." After three convictions recorded on the licence within five years, certain serious consequences would follow, under Sections 30, 31, and 32, in disqualifying the persons convicted from holding licences, and in temporarily disqualifying the licensed premises from being used for the sale of spirituous liquors. But by the present Bill it was proposed that a conviction should only be recorded on the licence if the Court should declare that it was to be so recorded; and if that declaration were made and the conviction was appealed from, power was to be given to the Court of Appeal to cancel the order for recording the conviction, even though the conviction itself were upheld. But there was to be no power, on the other hand, for the Court of Appeal to order the conviction to be recorded on the licence when no such order had been given by the convicting magistrates. The hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department had that evening defended the proposed change, on the ground that, as the law now stood, the magistrates might frequently fail to advert to the fact that the conviction would be recorded, without any direction being given by them for that purpose. But that was surely to impute great carelessness to the magistrates and their clerks, and great dulness to the publican, who would, in fact, be sure to apply to the magistrates for an order that the conviction should not be recorded, if he thought he had any chance of succeeding in his application. On the other hand, the necessity of maintaining the present stringency of the law was shown by some very obvious considerations. It should be remembered that for the various offences now effectively-punished by records of convictions leading to forfeiture of licence, the only other penalties were mere fines; that offences of the kind might be committed again and again without a conviction, because in most cases, all persons present—for instance, the landlord who permitted drunkenness or gambling, and his customers who indulged in those practices, liked the offence, and did not like that it should be punished; and that it might therefore pay very well to risk, for the sake of profitable

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  business, convictions which, if the law were altered as proposed, would, unless the person convicted were very unlucky, lead after all only to fines. The intended alteration was, in fact, altogether opposed, both to the general principles that should guide the framing of penal laws, and to the principle adopted by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in framing other portions of that very Bill. As to the hours of closing, the discretion given to Justices by the 24th section of the Act of 1872 was to be taken away. He (Sir Francis Goldsmid) had some doubt whether that was advisable, and whether, considering the difficulty of fixing by Act of Parliament the most convenient closing hours for every part of the country, it was not better to leave some discretion on that head in the hands of justices. But whether that were so or not, it was at least clear that the new discretion proposed to be given to the magistrates as to recording convictions, was one much more difficult to exercise than the discretion as to hours of closing proposed to be taken away. The discretion as to closing hours applied to the district generally, not to individuals, and might therefore without difficulty be exercised by a fairly sensible body of magistrates. But, how was it possible that magistrates should be impartial as to making a declaration that a conviction was to be recorded? In the first place, a magistrate could not vote for such a declaration without denying himself the luxury of indulging, at the public expense, in leniency to a neighbour who would be represented as having committed a mere venal act of misconduct. In the second place, he could not vote for such a declaration without probably damaging the property of a brewer, perhaps a sociable and agreeable gentleman whom the other magistrates liked, with whom they went shooting and hunting, and who sat with them on the bench, except while that class of business was being transacted. All those things would give the offending publican every chance of escaping a direction that his conviction should be recorded. If, nevertheless, such a direction were given, he would have the further chance of getting the direction set aside on appeal. With all these things in his favour, a man who lost his licence by convictions recorded
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  under the proposed law might well think, not that the loss was the necessary consequence of his own persevering misconduct, but that, in addition to the misconduct, it was to be attributed to a rare want of good fortune. Such uncertainty of punishment, as all who had thought on the subject would tell them, rendered the penal law well nigh useless for any deterrent or preventive purpose. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department suggested, indeed, that to make the law less stringent would bring more respectable persons into the trade. He (Sir Francis Goldsmid) was of a precisely contrary opinion. It would be admitted that the respectable person was one who determined to keep the law, and that the person not worthy of respect was he who cared not about observing the law so long as he could make a profit. He contended that nothing could be more discouraging to a man of the former class than to know that he might have to compete with one systematically exposing himself to the risks of fines in order to get an illicit but profitable business. The right course, therefore, was to adhere to the existing provisions, under which there was a reasonable certainty that a man perseveringly committing offences would be unable to remain in the trade. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State had a few days ago announced that he and the Government saw their way to a measure for improving the dwellings of the working classes in large towns, and he remarked that to provide better dwellings was the most effective mode of diminishing the temptation to drunkenness. In that view he (Sir Francis Goldsmid) quite agreed. But if there was a hope of diminishing the temptation to drunkenness on the one hand, he could perceive in that no reason why they should at once increase that temptation in another direction; and he was convinced that they would increase it, if they relaxed the stringency of the existing law, as was proposed by the Bill. He wished, before concluding, to call attention to a letter published almost immediately after the recent General Election, which appeared to him to throw considerable light, not on the reasons why this and similar changes were really proposed, but why the persons specially interested—who called themselves the trade—believed

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  them to be proposed. The author of the letter he referred to was Mr. C. Earle, who occupied no less distinguished a position than that of chairman of the Licensed Victuallers Provincial Defence League. The whole production, which appeared in the eleventh column of The Times of the 20th February, would well repay perusal; but he (Sir Francis Goldsmid) would only venture on a short extract. After demanding various changes of the law, and among others, of the provisions as to the recording of convictions, Mr. Earle proceeded as follows—
  "Mr. Bruce was appealed to last Session, and refused to interfere with the working of the Act under the plea of not having had sufficient time to see how it worked. Therefore, the Licensed Victuallers of the United Kingdom met at Birmingham, formed the National Licensed Victuallers' Defence League, and passed resolutions to the effect that for a time they would sink their political opinions, and support no candidate at the next General Election who would not pledge himself to vote for a modification of the clauses complained of by the trade. Now, with respect to Conservative reaction, I believe the Conservatives could see a, little further than the Liberals, and promised to see, at least, justice done to the trade should they be elected; hence the Tory majority in the recent elections."
  Hon. Members would remark that Mr. Earle stated that "the Conservatives had promised to see at least justice done to the trade, should they be elected." This called to mind the renowned servant, who being asked, on leaving with his master a friend's house, whether he had packed up his master's clothes, replied "At least." When the letter writer asked for "at least justice" to the trade, he of course meant more than justice, and to this he (Sir Francis Goldsmid) would not object, were it not for the fact that more than justice to the trade meant less than justice to the public. He of course did not intend to imply that the Secretary of State would propose any change as to which he had not persuaded himself that it was for the advantage of the country. Yet it was disagreeable to find that the things proposed were not very unlike those which were demanded by the trade as an actual payment for value received in the shape of electioneering support. He (Sir Francis Goldsmid) would say no more, except to express his confident hope that the Government would, before the Bill should reach its next stage,
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  seriously consider whether the provisions for recording convictions were not of the essence of the Act of 1872, and whether it was possible, consistently with the public interest, to deprive those provisions of all vigour and efficiency, as was proposed by the present Bill.
  MR. FORSYTHbegged to remind hon. Members that the Motion before the House was the second reading of the Bill. The discussion which had been going on during the greater part of the evening was, not whether the Bill should be read a second time, but about the merits or demerits of particular clauses in the Bill. What had such considerations to do with the second reading? If they agreed to the Motion, the discussion of the clauses and all the details would come on in due course, when they got into Committee. The Amendment moved by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Melly) was open to the same objection. It did not attack the principle of the Bill; it did not ask the House to reject it, but called upon the House to express an abstract opinion upon a question as to hours of opening as between two classes of persons engaged in the trade. With respect to hours of opening, he had taken a great deal of pains to ascertain the views of the trade, and so far as he could gather they were almost unanimously in favour of closing at 12 o'clock in the metropolis. They did not ask for the extra half-hour, and if it was granted, it would be in deference to the wants of the public. There was in some districts of the metropolis, in the neighbourhood of theatres, of markets, and of businesses which had to be carried on during the night—there was, he believed, a desire for later hours; but that did not affect the trade at large, who did not want longer hours, and were altogether opposed to exemptions and to favouritism of one man over another. With regard to the 2nd clause of the section, he could not help thinking that the Home Secretary had drawn the line too low. He could not help thinking that in the case of rural and small provincial towns it would not be a boon to have the hours of closing at night changed from 11 to 11.30. There was an old proverb which said it was the last straw which broke the camel's back, and he believed that the last half-hour was that which

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  was most objectionable. If he felt strongly with regard to towns of upwards of 10,000 population, he felt still more strongly with regard to towns below that number. To extend the hour would be nothing but an injury to the community. He should reserve his opinion on the clauses of the Bill until they were under consideration, but in the meantime he would say that in the borough of Marylebone they did not wish the hours to be extended, but were very desirous that they should be uniform.
  MR. RATHBONEsaid, he shared in the common surprise that one, generally so wise and so prudent as the Home Secretary, could be brought to consent to some of the provisions of the present Bill. Though there had been a great outcry against the Act of 1872, the canvass of many hon. Members had shown them that the outcry was caused far more by what had been attempted than against the Act as actually passed. The present Bill would be found anything but a benefit to the respectable licensed victuallers; for that very large party in the country, described by the Home Secretary as looking for improvement from measures regulating the monopoly in the trade of drink, were content to wait in patience to see the effect of the present Act; and thus the fears of the licensed victuallers were, for the present at least, practically kept alive only by the action of the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), and his Friends. But the attempt thus prematurely made to disturb the recent legislation, to use the words of the Home Secretary himself—
  "Shows that the public-houses, and all houses when? intoxicating liquors have been sold, have been fewer in number than in 1869; that they have been much better conducted; that, in consequence, the streets have undoubtedly been much more quiet and orderly; that there have been much fewer publicans convicted; and that there have been still fewer licences forfeited for the houses being badly conducted."—[3 Hansard, ccxviii. 1229.]
  To alter that legislation by increasing-facilities for drinking and diminishing the precautions against abuse, would most assuredly tend to unite all the great religious bodies of the country and the advocates for regulating the monopoly against the proposals for monopoly with ineffectual regulation. But if the question was to be thus re-opened, it surely was of the greatest importance that there
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  should be no inaccurate information laid before the House and the country upon the subject. Now, hon. Members would remember that the right hon. Gentleman, in introducing the Bill, stated that an experiment called free trade—but, more correctly, open licensing—was tried to a great extent in Liverpool, and that the result was that drunkenness increased to an enormous extent; that a change was made in the regulations; that a very much smaller number of licences were granted; and that since the change-there had been less drunkenness in the town. Now, he could not allow such an incorrect statement as that to go forth to the public with the high authority which must attach to a statement made by the right hon. Gentleman in his place in Parliament. Now, what were the facts? The experiment was tried for a short time in Liverpool; but the result was not that drunkenness increased to an enormous extent. A change was made in the regulations. A very much smaller number of licences were granted; but he regretted to say that it was the very reverse of the truth that there had been less drunkenness in the town since the change. He would state that fact on the authority of one of the very magistrates who took a leading part against the system of open or free licensing. He wrote—
  "In the first place, the magistrates who introduced the system of free licensing—that is, of giving every respectable applicant who had suitably constructed premises a licence—never recoiled from their own experiment. The system was abandoned at a licensing session, when the composition of the Bench bad, by the retirement of some magistrates and the addition of others, been changed from what it had been when the system was adopted. None of the magistrates who had favoured open licensing ever gave in their adherence to a return to the restrictive system. The free or open licensing system was adopted at the licensing session held in the autumn of 1866. The number of apprehensions for drunkenness during the official police year which closed in the autumn of 1862, was 12,362; and for the year 1866, 12,494; so that, allowing for the increase of population in four years, se far from drunkenness having increased to an enormous extent, there was in proportion to population less drunkenness during the last year of the system of open licensing than there was in the year which preceded the introduction of that system."
  The figures in that letter were supplied by the police to a committee of magistrates who were appointed to report on the state of crime in the borough, and

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  were included in their report. But now, as to the remaining part of the right hon. Gentleman's assertion. He said, the restrictive system of issuing licences having been returned to at the licensing session of 1866, and Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson's Beer-house Act of 1869 having brought the issue of beerhouse licences under magisterial control, there had been a steady decrease in the number of drinking houses; and the number of public-houses and beer-houses, which in 1866 amounted to 2,806, was now only 2,313. The steady decrease in the number of drinking-houses had been accompanied by an equally steady increase in the number of apprehensions for drunkenness, which for the last year of free licensing (1866) was 12,494, while for the police year ending in autumn 1871, after five years of restrictive policy, it was 22,947. He would repeat the result concisely in figures. In the last year of restrictive licensing, before open licensing was tried, the convictions for drunkenness in Liverpool were 1 in 36 of the population; in 1866, the last year of the open licensing, instead of drunkenness having increased to an enormous extent, the convictions had fallen to 1 in 37 of the population; in 1871, after five years of restrictive licensing and a diminished number of licensed houses, instead of there being less drunkenness in the town since the change, the convictions had risen to 1 in 21 of the population; in other words, they were 50 per cent more in proportion to the population than they had been during the last year of the experiment of free trade. Instead of there having been much less drunkenness in the town since the restrictive system was returned to, drunkenness nearly doubled in the five years that followed the return to the restrictive policy. This might, to a great extent, be explained by the rise in wages, which, though small compared with the rise that had since taken place, had even in 1871 begun to be felt; but no such explanation would apply to the decrease of the numbers of convictions in proportion to population during the period of free licensing. It was not surprising that with these facts before him the writer—who, as he had said, was one of the magistrates most active in opposing this system of open licensing—had now joined the school of licensing reformers at whose head stood one of the most
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  sagacious Colleagues of the Home Secretary, the Chairman of his own Court of Quarter Sessions—he meant Lord Derby. He was convinced that the Bill before the House, if it passed in its present shape, would add very materially to the number of those who advocated that system in preference to one which was neither one thing nor the other, and by which the vested interests in drunkenness alone profited. But that was really not all. The system of free trade was not only tried in the town of Liverpool. It was also tried by the Conservative bench of magistrates in the neighbouring district of Preston and Much Woolton, which contained not only a large rural, but also a large town population, many of them being of a very rough character. The magistrates adopted that system 10 years ago, but not being Radical town magistrates, fond of change, and ready to upset any legislation a year or two after it was passed, but good honest, steady country gentlemen, they adhered to their experiment until they had a fair chance of seeing what the results were. They adhered to it still, and it was entirely unquestioned by the bench of magistrates who had carried it out. He would read an extract from the evidence of Captain Fowler, the head of the police in that district, who, being asked by one of the magistrates what had been the result of that system, replied that—
  "There had been a marked improvement in the class of landlords, and consequently there had been less convictions since the magistrates adopted the principle of granting licences in Woolton, Prescot, &c., to all respectable men with suitable houses."
  The district contained large numbers of navvies and Irish labourers, and one of the magistrates said it was really surprising how orderly they were. The policy pursued was unquestioned on the bench; and when he mentioned the names of Mr. Neilson and Mr. Gibbon as two of those who were thoroughly convinced as to the wisdom of the policy the Home Secretary knew that they were two of the oldest, the most influential, and the wisest of the Conservative magistrates of the county. Now, it would be absurd to pretend that experience so limited as this, settled the question as between restriction or open trade; but he did think it important, as the question had been re-opened, that the

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  real facts of the case should be before the public, and he boldly challenged any one to show that the facts were different from what he had stated, or that they bore out the assertion of the right hon. Gentleman as to the results of the experiment on free or open trade in Liverpool. What he did say unhesitatingly was, that the worst system of all was one that gave them the evils of monopoly without those precautions which monopoly was intended to secure for them; and he hoped he might ask the attention of the House for a very few moments to testimony the weight of which he was sure the right hon. Gentleman would be the last to question, that such was the tendency of some of the provisions of the present Bill. [The hon. Member then read a letter from the stipendiary magistrate of Liverpool; a resolution passed at a meeting of the Liverpool magistrates held to consider the present Bill, and an extract from the Report of Major Greig, the chief constable of Liverpool, to the magistrates in 1873, to show that the present system of minimum penalties and endorsing licences was most salutary and ought not to be altered, and that it was not thought desirable to alter the hours of opening and closing public-houses on week days, as settled by the magistrates, from 7 A.M. to 11 P.M. He then read a letter from a Liverpool licensed victualler, the owner of several public-houses in different parts of the town, to show that the publicans of Liverpool were well content with the hours of opening and closing fixed by the Act of of 1872. Having read a letter from a great engineering firm in Liverpool, showing the advantage which had occurred to the 6,000 men employed in that and similar firms from the closing of the public-houses until 7, instead of being opened at 6 A.M., the hon. Member went on to say]:—There was another question which the Bill dealt with, and that was the endorsement of licences. The Act as it now stood gave perfect discretion to the magistrates as to whether they should endorse the convictions on the licences or not. It merely said that unless the magistrates should otherwise direct, the conviction should be endorsed on the licence. It was perfectly notorious that it was a very unpleasant task for a magistrate, who might, in addition, be a town councillor and dependent on
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  popular support, to direct that a penalty should be endorsed on the licence, and therefore the object of the provision proposed originally by the hon. Member for West Kent was to strengthen the hands of the magistrates when they felt that the conviction ought to be endorsed, but shrunk from the odium of directing such an endorsement to be made. The head constable of one of the midland counties strongly confirmed the evidence of the stipendiary magistrate of Liverpool as to the importance of that provision. He wrote—
  "The Bill takes away from justices the disagreeable duty of making invidious distinction in hours, and at the same time restores to them an option equally invidious as to the mitigation of penalties. As a matter of fact, not one conviction in a thousand occurs when the publican has not earned within a week, by breaking the law, far more than the fine. He is always in a position to employ counsel; he has always sinned with his eyes open; and I cannot therefore see that a minimum fine of 20 s. is excessive. The abolition of this minimum will be found to bring back some very anomalous scenes. The element of uncertain and singular action is again re-introduced in making the endorsement of licences the exception rather than the rule. In no other class of offence I think is it optional with the judge to declare whether or not it shall be brought in judgment against the offender in case of his again offending. If a man, after one conviction, resolve to sin no more, the record on the back of his licence can never do him any harm, and I am quite sure that the dread of its possible future consequence has a wholesome deterrent effect on publicans. There should, I think, be a uniform and unvarying record of convictions, and they should be carried forward against subsequent occupiers of premises; otherwise an unscrupulous landlord has no inducement to look for a respectable tenant. He simply lets his house from month to month, and as soon as one tenant is convicted gets a transfer of the licence. A transfer is easily got, and most difficult for the police to resist. Little by little, we have managed by repeated convictions to get rid of some of the lowest houses, but if the endorsement is to be made the exception and not the rule, we shall practically lose this power."
  Now, had that provision inflicted any hardship? The right hon. Gentleman stated distinctly that the number of convictions had fallen off largely, and that under the existing law the number of forfeitures of public-houses had actually fallen to 1–10th of their former amount, and of beer-houses to 1–100th of their formeramount. What better testimony could they have of the admirable working of the law, if the object of the law were, as he took it to be, not the punishment of offenders, but the prevention of offences?

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  The right hon. Gentleman said there was a growing feeling among respectable persons that they would not enter a trade under such stringent regulations. What evidence could he show of that? Was it in the largely increased value of public-house property? Did that show that there was any disinclination to enter the business? No; it was not the respectable man who would object to enter a trade because it had been made more respectable, as the Home Secretary admitted that it had been. It was the very disreputable man, who wanted to do a drunken trade, that the present stringent regulations would prevent from entering it. He did regret most deeply this proposal to unsettle legislation so recent, the effect of which, so far as it had gone, was admitted on all hands to have been beneficial. The experiment of shorter hours and more stringent police regulations had not had a fair trial. No one supposed that closing the public-houses earlier and opening them later would reform drunken people. What was contended was that the sitting late in drinking houses got people into drunken ways, and that shorter hours would therefore "gradually" increase temperate habits among the people. No one in his senses expected to influence suddenly, by any changes in the law, deep rooted habits. Now, sufficient time had not elapsed to enable the general community to judge whether the shortened hours were producing good results. No one could say what the consumption of excise liquors might have been with the high wages had not the hours been reduced. Now, he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman, convinced by the overwhelming testimony which had been given in that House, and received by him from magistrates, from the police, from the clergy, and from employers of labour, would consent to fix for the different districts the hours which had been found by the magistrates to be the most suitable for them; and that he would retain those precautions against disorder and excess which the magistrates and the police were so anxious to maintain, and under which, in the words of the right hon. Gentleman himself—
  "Public-houses, and all houses where intoxicating liquors have been sold …. have been much better conducted; that, in consequence, the streets have undoubtedly been much more quiet and orderly; that there have been much
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  fewer publicans convicted; and that there have been still fewer licences forfeited for the houses being badly conducted."—[Ibid.]
  MR. RUSSELL GURNEYsaid, he must confess that if the Legislature had to choose a particular time for amending the law, the earlier in the history of the present Parliament the better, for there could be nothing more undesirable than to legislate upon this subject late in the history of a Parliament, especially as they hoped their present legislation would be final. He sympathized so thoroughly in the object which the Home Secretary had in view, and in the statements and arguments upon which he grounded this Bill, that he could not support the present Amendment. At the same time, he had come to the conclusion that it was undesirable to extend, the time of keeping open public-houses in the country districts. The evidence showed that the restriction of hours had worked well in the country, and there was reason to believe that the slightest extension of time in the country would have a bad effect. But he could not agree with hon. Gentlemen opposite as to the metropolis. He had communicated with some of the most intelligent magistrates in the metropolis, and he had been assured by them that it was absolutely necessary for the convenience of the public, that there should be some extension of the time during which the public-houses in the metropolis were now allowed to remain open. He, however, felt so strongly against the extension of time in the country that if he were called upon to take the Bill as it stood, and if he were called upon to say "Aye" or "No" upon it, he should be compelled to vote "No." But as the House had been told by the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department that the Government were willing to take the House into counsel on the Bill, the question of hours might be regarded as no longer a vital question. What should be the hours in the country was to be left to the House to decide, and it would be more convenient to consider them in Committee upon the clause. The question to be put from the Chair would be, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question," and there was so much good in the Bill and so many evils to be corrected, that he should not feel the least difficulty in voting for the second reading, although

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  he should join heartily in Committee in amending the provision which extended the hours in the country.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, the great difficulty in which the House found itself was to know what the vital principle of the Bill was. He ventured to say that, out-of-doors, the question of hours was regarded as the vital principle. He knew not what else could be so regarded. His right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southampton (Mr. Russell Gurney) said, that so far as the hours for the country were regarded as the vital principle of the Bill, with respect to any intended alteration of them he would vote "No." But he (Sir William Harcourt) would say that the question of the hours for the country was considerably more considerable than could be the question of the hours for any single city, even if that city were London. Now, he had great respect for the opinion of his right hon. and learned Friend, especially on all matters relating to the metropolis; but there was another authority on matters relating to the metropolis for whose opinion also he had much respect—he meant the hon. Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith). That hon. Gentleman on a warm afternoon in 1872 took part in a hot discussion on the subject of the hours for the metropolis, and this was what he said—
  "There could be no doubt the great mass of the people of this metropolis wished that the time of closing' should he 12 o'clock. Even licensed victuallers themselves looked upon that hour with favour, because they were thus relieved from the very heavy pressure of business entailed upon them, and an end put to a competition which must of necessity entail upon them great labour, anxiety, and hardship."—[3 Hansard, ccxii. 1988.]
  If it had not been for the advice of his hon. Friend the Member for Westminster the hour of 12 might not have been adopted. One thing characterized the Act of 1872 which he had never known with respect to any other important measure. The responsible Leader of the Opposition offered no opinion on any part of the Bill, and on all those questions affecting great and harassed interests, not a single observation fell from the present Premier, nor any of the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who then sat around him. It was not, however, because they were unable to enlighten the House, for there were among
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  them those quite capable of stating their views. He did not recollect that the present Home Secretary said anything, and there was only one Member of the present Government who did give very useful and influential advice, and that was his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department. In point of fact, to him belonged really the honours of that Bill, the advantages of which the Liberal party had reaped. Hos ego versiculos feci tulit alter honores. But his hon. Friend now told them that the hours were nothing, though there was one thing which was vital in this Bill, and that was that the discretion must be taken away from the magistrates. He (Sir William Harcourt) could not help recollecting the miserable minority in which he stood when he protested against leaving the discretion to the magistrates, and pointed out the consequences that would flow from it, and that the originator, certainly the most influential author of that very principle of the discretion in the magistrates, was his hon. Friend the Under Secretary for the Home Department.
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONexplained that at that time he had an Amendment on the Paper fixing the hours, and he assented to the principle of discretion as introduced by the Government.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he was aware of that fact, but the idea of discretionary powers originated in "another place." The first suggestion came from a very eminent person, the Marquess of Salisbury. He moved an Amendment to this effect—"Such hours not being earlier than 10 o'clock at night, or later than six o'clock on the following morning, as the licensing justices shall appoint." The noble Marquess said, and he (Sir William Harcourt) perfectly agreed with him, that drinking intoxicating liquor was not in itself a sin, and that people had as much right to drink beer just as they had a right to eat mutton, so long as they did not overdo it, and he saw no objection to allow the authorities in each county to fix the hours of closing. The noble Marquess added, that he did not think it fair that because the inhabitants of Manchester wished to enforce the closing of public-houses at 10 o'clock, the population of Hertfordshire should be obliged to adopt that hour also, and that what he desired

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  to effect was that the law should be made local in its application on that point. When the Bill came down to the House of Commons, the first suggestion of this discretionary power—which he recollected was known in that House as the elastic theory—came from his hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Sir Robert Anstruther), and thereupon the hon. Baronet the Member for West Essex said he had a Notice on the Paper in reference to the question, but that after some consideration he believed the House would do better to adopt the suggestion of the hon. Member for Fife. But more than that. The actual Motion for leaving a discretion in the magistrates proceeded from the hon. Member for West Essex, who drew up a Proviso, to the effect that in all places where the population was over 2,500, the local authority of any licensing district should have the power to vary the hours of closing or opening, as fixed by the Bill, between the hours of 10 and 12 at night and 5 and 7 in the morning. In doing so, the hon. Baronet said it was not easy to draw a hard-and-fast line, because the circumstances of some towns varied so much from others. Such was the proposition of his hon. Friend, who now came and told them that the vital principle of the Bill was non-elasticity. He (Sir William Harcourt) protested at that time against this discretionary power, and always thought it an extremely good thing to have the hours fixed. On that occasion the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool (Viscount Sandon) agreed with him, and said the stipendiary magistrates, the ministers of religion, and the leading inhabitants all concurred in attributing the poverty and crime of that town to drinking after 11 o'clock at night. Surely, he might remind the noble Lord that he was now a Member of a Government which proposed to create all those evils against which the magistrates, the ministers of religion, and the merchants of Liverpool had protested. So much for the question of leaving the hours of closing to the discretion of the magistrates, and he had now to ask what was to become of the customers? Were the hours suggested in the Bill to be adhered to, or was the noble Lord to come forward and propose 11.30, when all the evils he had enumerated arose from the public-houses being kept open after 11 o'clock? Now, he had
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  always held the opinion that the more these matters were left to the good sense of the public themselves the better it would be. In fact, he held it would have been better to allow things to remain as they had been before 1872. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, he knew he was in a minority on that question, as he had been before; but he had never hesitated to express his opinion upon it. He had, too, always thought that the rule with respect to the endorsement of the licences was a harsh rule, and that more discretion ought to have been left to the magistrates; but when the question came on for discussion they were placed in a position of difficulty in being deprived of the guidance of the then Opposition, which led the hon. and gallant Member for West Sussex (Colonel Barttelot) to complain that the front benches were vacant, and to say there were two ways of voting. Hon. Gentlemen might vote by being present, or they might vote by their absence in a permissive sense. When the question came up for discussion, some of them who were in a minority wished to resist it, but they found discussion impossible. In fact, the strict alliance which existed between the hon. Baronet the Member for West Sussex and the then Home Secretary settled all the material questions of the Bill, and that was one of the questions they had settled. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Southwark (Mr. Locke) had an Amendment on the Paper providing that that arbitrary rule should not be enforced; but who was the person who opposed him? Why, it was the hon. Baronet the Member for West Essex, now the Under Secretary for the Home Department, declaring that he thought it entirely opposed to the principle of the Bill. Here, then, was an Act passed in the late Parliament through the powerful assistance given to the then Home Secretary by the present Under Secretary, and there was not a single finger raised by hon. Gentlemen opposite to prevent its passing. The House had been placed in a very difficult and embarrassing—if not an unfair—position by the Bill, and he ventured to say that there was not sitting on the Treasury Bench a single Gentleman who could rise and say he either remonstrated against it or advised Parliament not to accept it. Yet now they came down to

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  the House, and said, "Here is a Bill, the vital principle of which is to take away from the magistrates that discretionary power which was originally recommended to the House of Lords by the present Secretary of State for India, and to the House of Commons by the Under Secretary for the Home Department." With regard to what had been stated to be another vital principle of the Bill, when the Government came to the question of hours, they stated that they had no opinion of their own upon it, but were ready to adopt any hours the House might determine; and to show that the time of keeping open ought to be extended, the Under Secretary furnished them with what he called evidence to show that owing to the early closing, illicit drinking had been on the increase. Well, if he understood the hon. Gentleman aright, he called a man's drinking at home, after the closing hour, the spirits which he purchased before that hour illicit drinking; but in his (Sir William Harcourt's) opinion, that was the most licit drinking, unless, indeed, Government was going to propose that a man should not drink anything in his own house. It was natural a man should do so, and he had a perfect right to do it if he pleased. Then there remained the other question—he did not know if it was also a vital part of this Bill—with respect to the distinction between beer-houses and public-houses in respect to the time of closing; and here again the hon. Baronet the Member for West Essex was a convert from the opposite side, inasmuch as on the 2nd of August, 1872, he made a strong speech in favour of those establishments being, as regarded that point, placed on the same footing as public-houses; and he would advise him to take courage now and adhere to those views. He knew that there was a vague suspicion among hon. Gentlemen opposite that there was some connection between beer-houses and the disappearance of pheasants, but those were the days when the beer-houses were independent of the magistrates; now that they were under the thumb of the bench, hon. Gentlemen ought not to mind the indulgence which had been granted to them under the Act of 1872. Upon what principle was it that the beerhouses were to be placed in a more inferior position than the houses of the licensed victuallers? Was it because
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  the beer-house keeper did not sell spirits? Well, his right hon. Friend had left that question also to the decision of the House, and he might find that the House might not be disposed to agree with him. He (Sir William Harcourt) did not know whether his hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) would go to a division on the question. He probably would be satisfied with the triumph he had achieved that night. For his (Sir William Harcourt's) part, after what had taken place that night—after the declaration of the Government—he did not think it would be necessary to go to a division. He always thought the Licensing Bill ought to be amended, and though he would vote with the hon. Member for Stoke if he divided the House, he would prefer going into Committee for the purpose of amending the Bill.
  MR. J. G. TALBOTsaid, the House had heard from hon. Gentlemen opposite, in opposition to the second reading, a great deal about the Bill being a most flagitious measure, because it would afford enormous facilities for increased drinking. But he understood from the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just spoken that, provided the House was allowed to settle the hours, he would not vote against the second reading. If the only objection to the Bill was that it would allow an additional half-hour for drinking, it did not deserve all the obloquy which had been thrown upon it by hon. Gentlemen opposite. He did himself think that it was a bad thing that an addition should be made to the hours at which public-houses should be open. He would suggest that in rural districts the beer-houses and public-houses should be closed at the same hour—10 o'clock—and then the invidious distinction of which the hon. and learned Member had such a horror would disappear. He based his suggestion on the ground that Parliament should legislate in accordance with the habits of the people. In the country people went early to bed, and if public-houses were kept open late, they became the resort of the more dangerous classes of the community. The question with regard to London was a difficult one. He had been struck, however, by what had been stated by the hon. and learned Member for Marylebone (Mr. Forsyth) in a

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  speech which, among other merits, had that of brevity, that, as far as he could ascertain, the licensed victuallers were quite satisfied with 12 o'clock. But the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Locke) a few years ago told the House that it was absolutely necessary to keep open until 1 o'clock. The Government had adopted the golden mean. He would suggest, however, that while in the centre of London, where the places of amusement and the large hotels were situated, there was considerable difficulty in closing at 12, the hour should be made half-past 12, in the outer parts of the metropolis it should be the same as in other large towns. He was the person who suggested the Amendment in the Bill of 1872 with respect to the endorsement of convictions. The proposal of the then Home Secretary was that the convictions should necessarily be endorsed; but he suggested that they should be endorsed, "unless the convicting magistrates should otherwise direct," which was the present state of the law, and that Amendment had worked well. There were, however, three points in the Bill of the Government for which they deserved credit—the first was the closing of night refreshment houses, which would be a benefit to morality; the second was providing early closing licences; and the third was allowing persons to apply for licences before the houses were built, for magistrates now found it difficult to refuse a licence to a person who had built a house and laid out money with the view of obtaining a licence: and by by means of this pressure, licences were sometimes granted upon a principle of an appeal ad misericordiam, and not upon the merits of the case. Now, as applicants would have the power of obtaining a prospective licence upon the production of plans, no such case ought to arise. He trusted the House would assent to the second reading.
  MR. OSBORNE MORGAN(the latter part of whose speech was imperfectly heard, owing to the impatience of the House for a division) said, that whatever might be thought of the Bill, he considered the House was to be congratulated on the tone of the debate and the eminently conciliatory spirit which had been exhibited throughout, from the speech of his hon. Friend who had moved the Amendment to that of the hon. Member who had just sat down.
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  For his own part, he could conceive nothing more derogatory to the character and influence of that House than that a question in which such large social and moral issues were involved should be treated in a party spirit, and he was glad to see that of all hon. Members who had risen on the Ministerial side of the House to support the Bill, not one of them had ventured to give it their unqualified assent. He would say, if he were a party man—which he was not—that he was glad the Bill had been brought in, because he was convinced that the Government would discover they had made a great mistake. But the grounds on which he should feel compelled to vote against the Bill were broader and deeper-seated than any party or temporary consideration. Of late years there had been strenuous and persistent attempts made to diminish drunkenness, and in that sense he said this Bill was a great step backwards. Before, however, going into that question, he would ask whether the right hon. Gentleman had proved the Preamble of his Bill? Was the Bill a good or a bad Bill? Was there any need for such a Bill at all under existing circumstances? He agreed with the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department in many of his observations with respect to the machinery of the Act adopted two years ago requiring repairs and adjustments; but was that any reason for retracting our steps altogether? There had been a great deal of unfounded abuse and misrepresentation heaped on the Act of 1872, and his noble Friend Lord Aberdare, who carried that Act, had been the most unfairly abused man in the Kingdom. It ought to be remembered that all parties in the House consented to the passing of the Act, and that whatever its merits or defects, Parliament as a whole was responsible. There were two somewhat inconsistent grounds on which alteration was demanded. One was that under the Act of 1872 drunkenness had not diminished, and the second was that the Act unduly lessened the facilities for drinking. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, in the able speech in which he moved the first reading of the Bill, had frankly stated that he believed the apparent increase of drunkenness was partly due to increased care on the part of the publican, and

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  partly to increased vigilance on the part of the police. But that was not all. He contended that two years was not a sufficiently long time in which to test the operation of such an Act. Especially was that true when they remembered what kind of years they had been. The working men had had more money and more time to spend it in than at any former time. How they preferred to spend it might be illustrated from an anecdote he heard the other night from a Yorkshire ironmaster and large employer of labour, in the Smoking Room where many valuable bits of practical knowledge might be picked up. The ironmaster had a very large contract for a supply of iron to be delivered at Liverpool within a certain time. He called his men together and said to them—"Now, men, if you'll work five days a week instead of four, I'll raise your wages 25 per cent." The answer was—"Nay, master, that'll never do. We shall have more money than we want for drink and no time to drink it in." So long as working men had not acquired the habit of self-respect which now restrained gentlemen from habits of intemperance there must be restraint. It was not so long ago since even in that august Assembly, hon. Gentlemen were to be seen under the influence of liquor. In that respect the working men might be expected to improve also, and become a law to themselves, especially when they were removed from their squalid homes and placed in wholesome, cheerful, and healthy dwellings such as were advocated by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, when he told the House that he looked to them as one means of permanently diminishing the temptations to drunkenness. All that, however, as he had said, required time. Improved dwellings required time to build them; it required time to develop a taste in workmen to live in them; and the question was, whether in the meantime we were to stand aside and do nothing to arrest or diminish the progress of intemperance, so far as it could be done by preventive measures. We might as well refuse to do what was possible to be done to mitigate the effects of the famine in Bengal until we had introduced a complete system of irrigation. With respect to the actual operation of the Act of 1872, he had taken
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  the greatest care to collect the opinions of all classes in his county—magistrates, ministers of religion, farmers, and working men of all kinds—and their unanimous cry was—"Let us alone." They wanted the Act to have a fair trial, which as yet it had not had. There were two kinds of drinking which were dangerous—early drinking, and late drinking. If a man began by breakfasting on a dram, he was not likely to be either healthy or industrious. Late drinking was even more objectionable. It was in the last half-hour or hour that drink created riot and inflamed evil passions. That had been recognized in all times, and Milton had mentioned it in the lines—
  "——When night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine."
  If ever there was a ease in which that eminently Conservative principle—"Let well alone." should have been applied, it was in the case of the Act of 1872. Then as to the interest of the publicans. He had no desire to bear hardly upon them. But it must be remembered that they carried on a trade, which except when placed under certain restrictions, became a noxious trade. The very necessity for licensing their business implied a right to restrict it, for where there was nothing to restrict, there was nothing to licence. In all cases in which the interests of the public and those of the publican clashed, it was those of the public that must be paramount; and when they considered that last year £147,000,000 worth of drink was sold, they must surely think that pity was thrown away upon a trade such as this, which had put the greater portion of that large sum into its pockets. ["Divide!" "Divide!"] But it was the duty of the House to look to the general convenience of the public, and he found everywhere in the country evidence in favour of the Act of 1872. He paid periodical visits to his constituency, at which he was careful to ascertain their views on the principal questions of the day,—["Divide!"]—and he found among them but one opinion on the Act of 1872; and, in fact, where-ever he went, people said to him "We all like it." The magistrates, the ratepayers, and the respectable publicans liked it; and the only ones that did not like it were a few disorderly characters,

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  the curse of their neighbourhood, and one or two black sheep among the publicans. [Cries of "Divide!"] There would be no division that night, and the debate had not lasted so long that a few speeches on the Bill could not be heard. The hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State said it was all very well for them in Wales to wish for the early closing of public-houses, as their habits and their hours were early, but that hours were late in London, and London could not be bound by the hours that prevailed in Wales; but the public convenience there and in large towns required that public-houses should be kept open later than 12 o'clock. That argument, however, would not hold water, for it admitted of an obvious retort. They could say that it was not because London hours were late, that public-houses in Wales were to be kept open for hours after there was any occasion for it. They might say, also, that the 6th section gave publicans the right to close at 10 o'clock, together with certain advantages for doing so. He did not wish to be a prophet of evil, but he could not help predicting that that permission would be a dead letter; because, as a rule, the maximum hour was the only hour. ["Divide!"] The vital part of the Bill, however, was the provision that Parliament, and not the magistrates, were to fix the hours; and from whichever side of the House the proposal for giving a discretionary power to the magistrates to fix the hours of opening and closing had come, he confessed that he had looked upon it with some misgiving, as he was bound to say he did not look on country magistrates with that profound veneration which the right hon. Gentleman on the other side of the House did. He had known many decisions of magistrates which he did not like at all; but in this matter the magistrates were beyond all blame. When the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) said that the meaning of the Bill was an additional half-hour a day for drinking, he greatly understated his case, as it was really half-an-hour added at each end. No wonder the publicans were jubilant, when they had a Secretary of State who was ready to do so much to oblige them. It was hardly too much to say that the right hon. Gentleman opposite reigned by the grace of the licensed victuallers. That was one undoubted fact. Another
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  was that this Bill was drawn in the interest of the publicans. Now, did they not think that men generally would put these two undoubted facts together and would see in this measure the natural fruits of that unholy alliance? [Loud cries of "Divide!" "Divide!"] This was what might be termed the publicans' Parliament, as evidenced by the fact that more than one hon. Member on that side of the House had said to him, "I wish I could vote with you against this Bill; but I dare not." This Bill had shown that the publicans were again a power in England, and woe to the Government, woe to the party which dared to lay its little finger on them! They might disestablish Churches—they might sap the foundations of property—they might let the Army and Navy go to perdition—they might even educate pauper children—but there was one thing they must not and dare not do—they must not shut up public-houses. [The calls of the House for a Division, with other cries and interruptions, had now become so continuous that the hon. and learned Member resumed his seat.]
  MR. LOCKEsaid, he had listened with deep attention to the hon. and learned Member for Denbighshire (Mr. Osborne Morgan), for he himself had Welsh blood in his veins, and had frequently been there, and a more drunken set of people than he had found in Wales he never knew. It was pleasing to know that the hon. and learned Gentleman could only find fault with the licensed victuallers, and admired, he (Mr. Locke) presumed, the teetotallers. Now that was a class of persons not admired by many of his countrymen. They did not unite with them, nor did they look forward to carrying out their plans; in fact, Wales would not be what she was now, if the views his hon. and learned Friend represented were carried out. He (Mr. Locke) thought that a great deal too much fuss had been made about the Bill. It appeared to him to be a very simple Bill indeed. They must all recollect that when the Act of 1872 was passed there was a great diversity of opinion with respect to it. There were many points which were decided in a hurry; but he did not think the diversity of opinion that prevailed was of a party character. He found himself opposed on that occasion to hon. Friends

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  on his own side of the House, many of whom had vanished. Some of them were deeply regretted, while as to the absence of others they did not care a straw about it. He was bound to say that from the then Opposition benches he met with the support which he always deserved. The hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Sir William Harcourt) had referred to him, and had said that he made a great struggle with regard to the magistrates being compelled to place upon the licence the offence which a man committed. He fought against that strenuously, but it was nevertheless carried out to a certain extent, and he was delighted to find that the present Government entertained the same view as he did, and had come to a conclusion which must be extremely satisfactory to that House, and which was peculiarly so to himself. They intended to carry the matter a step further even than he could have expected. However, he hoped they would succeed in their object, for he considered it would be an excellent Amendment, as indeed he thought all the proposed alterations would be. He looked at the present Bill merely as amending the Act of 1872, and when he heard the violent speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) who commenced the debate before dinner, he was astounded at the number of dreadful things which awaited them all if the Bill were passed. The House was not tied down to the precise words of the Amendments proposed, but every reasonable person seemed to desire that the Bill should be read a second time. There was one point to which he should like to draw attention with regard to the metropolis, because he had been connected with it for a great many years. There would be great difference of opinion as to whether the hour of closing should be 11, half-past 11, or 1 o'clock. Now, many of his constituents were theatrical, and the theatres were popular and filled well. When the performances were over, the playgoers were naturally thirsty and desirous of getting something to drink. With regard to the north side of the Thames, the hours of the public-houses in the neighbourhood of the theatres were granted an extra hour, but on the Surrey side such extension was refused. Consequently, he took upon himself to go to the Home Office and represent the
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  facts of the case, and on the following day the privilege was granted to houses near the Surrey and other theatres, and subsequently extended to Greenwich, and the then Prime Minister made no objection to it whatever. Now, having made those efforts to get the time extended till 1 o'clock, he felt it rather hard that the time should be fixed at 12.30 for all houses. When he used to practise at the Surrey Sessions he frequently visited the Surrey Theatre on his way home, and was very grateful for the pleasure which he derived from it, and he thought that those who remained to the last ought to be able to procure needful refreshment. He considered that this system of privilege should be maintained, and did not know who were opposed to it. On the other hand, why should a publican be obliged to keep open his house till 11 o'clock at night? Why not allow him to say—"I will pay less for my licence, and you must allow me to shut up if I choose at 6 o'clock in the evening." If they wished to reduce the number of public-houses in the metropolis, let them be practically diminished by allowing the publicans to close early if they desired to do so, rather than by forcing the whole of them to keep their houses open till 11 o'clock at the earliest; and where it was absolutely necessary for the convenience of the public, publicans would keep open their houses till 1 o'clock. He did not think there would be any objection to such a proposal. At all events it was well worthy of consideration. For his own part, he regarded the Bill then before the House as well calculated to improve the Act of 1872, which much required amendment and alteration, and he hoped those alterations would be carried out in a satisfactory manner.
  MR. GREENEsaid, he must at once take exception to the statement of the hon. and learned Member for Denbighshire (Mr. Osborne Morgan) that that was a publicans' Parliament. There was no foundation for any such assertion. The Conservatives did not sit on the Ministerial side of the House because the licensed victuallers' interest did not like the Act of 1872, but because the whole country, after the confiscation of property and spoliation scheme brought in by Lord Aberdare, had no longer any confidence in the Liberal Government. The rights of property were upheld by

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  the Conservative party, and that was one of the reasons why they received and enjoyed the confidence of the people at large. As Her Majesty's Government was about taking the House into its confidence on the most important point of the Bill, it would not he necessary for him to enter upon any discussion of its details; but he hoped hon. Gentlemen on both sides would carefully consider the proposal to deprive magistrates of discretionary power with reference to the hours of closing. That which suited one part of the country would be found an inconvenient hour for another district. Indeed, he believed it would be the most difficult thing in the world to pass a Bill as regarded hours of closing and opening upon a hard-and-fast line. There should, in his opinion, be a uniform system of regulation for the licensed houses and beer-houses, for he could not, for his part, see why any difference should be made between them. For that reason, whatever restrictions and conditions were sanctioned in the one case ought to be carried out in the other.
  MR. LOWEsaid, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, that the Bill should come as a whole under any one principle. It was simply a Bill to amend a previous Act, and it contained a number of provisions on some points of which everybody would probably approve, however much they might disapprove of others. It should be looked at fairly and impartially, and brought forward as it was, on the responsibility of the Government, they were called upon to give an opinion whether it was or was not worthy of a second reading at the hands of the House. He could not agree in many things which were stated by the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department in his interesting speech. The only reason the hon. Gentleman expressed for keeping houses in some districts open up to 11.30 was, that if they closed them at 11 o'clock, people would buy liquor, take it home with them, and that there would be illicit drinking. That was the first time he had ever heard that it was illicit to drink at any time in one's own house; for the fact was that there was nothing wrong in a working-man purchasing liquor and drinking it when and where he pleased, and it was an utter confusion of terms to call such drinking illicit. Another
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  point to which he wished to refer was the argument of the hon. Baronet with regard to keeping public-houses open until 12.30. As the law now stood, houses were obliged to close at 12 o'clock. The Home Office, however, had power by exceptional licences, to allow some houses to keep open to a later hour. The hon. Gentleman was in favour of keeping open until 12.30, because he said he had found that houses allowed to be open until 1 o'clock under exceptional licences were not frequented by playgoers—that they never went there at all, and on that ground he based his reason for keeping open until 12.30, so that they might go there. Another point seemed to him worthy of consideration. It related to the proposal to do away with the magisterial obligation to endorse each conviction on the licence. The endorsement he (Mr. Lowe) regarded as being of great value in the preservation of order and decorum, and it must be so felt by the publican himself. He, therefore, hoped the House would consider carefully before they gave their assent to the removal of that power. In the Bill he felt bound to say there were many things most worthy of consideration, and which it was very proper for the Government to bring before the House. With regard to the question of hours, resting as it did at present on local authority in separate districts, he thought it better there should be one uniform system, and he regarded that House as the best tribunal to come to a right decision as to what that system should be. Objection had been urged to the hours named in the Bill. Well, the Government had thrown the hours down on the floor of the House to be dealt with as the House liked, and it would be for the Legislature to decide. All the Government asked was for the adoption of some uniform system. It was impossible to act more fairly in the matter. The House of Commons might not be a perfect tribune, but to his mind it was best suited for the work. Another point most worthy of attention was the Government proposal for the bettor regulation of what were known as night-houses, which was much required, and which had heretofore been neglected. That had been the subject of great abuse. Lastly, there was this great evil, which was intended to be remedied by the Bill, that Government should pick

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  out certain publicans in particular localities and confer upon them lucrative privileges to the prejudice of their competitors in the trade. Speaking not only for himself, but also for his Friends he would say that that was the view which they took on this subject, and therefore he was encouraged to hope that his hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) might be induced to say that he felt he had carried all he desired—namely, the two points relating to the hours and to the beer-houses, as he understood those were points which the Government were willing to submit to the decision of the House, and he was sure the hon. Gentleman would do wisely in withdrawing his Amendment. He hoped the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department would place on the Table those documents which he had that evening read to the House.
  MR. ASSHETON CROSS: It is not my intention, Sir, to take up the time of the House in referring to the various speeches which we have heard in the course of this debate. There is no one, I think, who can say that we have had a very lively discussion, except in the case of the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Denbighshire (Mr. O. Morgan), who, if hustings speeches have been done away with, seems to have a very lively recollection of what they used to be. Her Majesty's Government have been accused of unsettling this question before the time came when it ought to be discussed again; but I think the very candid statement of the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has taken the answer to that accusation out of my mouth. It will be recollected that the Act of 1872 was passed late in the Session, and in a great hurry—indeed in such a hurry that if we trust Hansard, every hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten what took place on that occasion. When I say the legislation on this point was hurried, I must say that I am not stating that for the first time, and therefore I think the right hon. Gentleman has very justly described the Bill as a Bill amending in a great number of its details an Act passed some time ago. In that view, it should be recollected that the Government are not approaching the question for the first time, they are rather in the position of a physician who is called in
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  to advise on a case which several other doctors have treated and have failed to cure. After all, it is but an Amendment Bill, and as I stated on the evening when I introduced it, I am quite prepared to find it canvassed by three different schools of thought. I was perfectly prepared to find any one of those particular schools fix on any particular portion of the Bill which did not coincide with their views, and drag it into prominence, forgetting all the rest of the measure that they might approve; and therefore I was not surprised that those who objected to the hours suggested in the Bill, should have pounced upon that one question and harried it, forgetting the character of the Bill, which was to amend in detail, and partly, too, in spirit, an existing Act of Parliament. Many Gentlemen have come to me and raised objections to the Bill, and the first question I have invariably asked them is—"Have you read the Bill?" The answer—I will not say always, but very often, nay, in the majority of cases—has been—"No, I have not read it, but there is in it, I understand, a clause increasing the drinking hours by half-an-hour." That notion has got abroad, and hence a number of Petitions have been got up against the Bill. People seem to have run away with the idea that that was the main object of the measure, and in that they have been most materially mistaken. Public opinion has, however, I am inclined to think, approved of the Bill, and all the remarks made upon it in the country Press, where we generally look for the expression of public opinion, take the broad and not the narrow view of the Bill, and have looked upon it in the light of a healing measure, and one calculated to place the trade and business of the licensed victuallers on an improved footing, and as a Bill, too, in the interests of the public at large. The Act of 1872 was, as I have said, passed in a hurry and late in the Session, and in the framing of it, I can detect the hands of two hon. Gentlemen opposite—I mean the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Rathbone) and Stoke (Mr. Melly)—and therefore I am not surprised, knowing the views of those hon. Gentlemen, at the opposition which they have offered to this measure, which proposes to amend their handy work. It seems to me that at the time when that

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  Act was passed, it was present in the mind of the late Home Secretary that the Act would surround this particular trade with pains, penalties, and police regulations, and treat those who were engaged in it in the light of criminals. No doubt, with the best intention, these hon. Gentlemen thought that the best way to stay intemperance was by putting a heavy hand on the traders in drink; but I am bound to say it was the wrong view to take. I think those traders should be treated more generously, and more like other traders, and that we should endeavour to introduce into that trade—which we cannot stop and which we must regulate—the best class of men you can, men whom you can trust to carry on the trade properly. With that view, we have proposed the clause to sweep away the adulteration clauses, which were never enforced, and were still more offensive to the trade. At the time that Act was passing through Committee there was no Adulteration Act in force, and therefore it was quite proper that those clauses should have been put into the Bill, but inasmuch as the very same day it received the Royal Assent, the Adulteration Act also received the Royal Assent, there is no reason why they should be retained, as if the licensed victuallers were to be treated differently from the other tradesmen in this country. For the purpose of carrying out those adulteration clauses, there was placed in the Bill another clause, which inflicted on the trade a greater hardship than any other. There is no doubt it was introduced with the best intentions, but it has had the worst possible effect, for it gave instructions to the police, just as Committees of this House are instructed in the Order of Reference, to enter public-houses and search every room, even the sleeping rooms, in search of any adulterated liquors, or of any articles which might be used for the purpose of adulteration, which might be concealed there. I believe that the powers Conferred by that clause have been very injudiciously worked, and that the police have acted under it in a way in which there was no necessity for them to do. However, as the Government were not prepared to carry out the adulteration clauses by sweeping them away, they swept that away also, restoring to the police the necessary provision
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  for maintaining order. Then, in order to place the publicans on the same footing with other traders, we thought it would be wise to do away with what was called the minimum penalty, and gave the justices a discretionary power to order the licence to be endorsed, instead of compelling them to do so, thereby placing them on the same footing with the other Judges, by giving them the power to use their own discretion as to what ought to be the extent of the penalty they might think proper to inflict. We also propose that instead of police supervision following conviction as a matter of course, it shall be a part of the sentence of the Judge whether such supervision shall follow or not, and we have taken care that the Judges who sit to try the matter shall have full information, because we have introduced words into the Bill which will compel the magistrates' clerk to place the record of previous convictions before them. With regard to the matter in the Metropolitan district, I have seen the record of convictions, and I find that in some instances one or two convictions have been recorded for very small offences, where the minimum penalty is one pound. Now, a man who is fined twice for a small offence of that kind will be in a worse position than one who has been fined £20 once for a very grave offence, and that is a thing which requires to be remedied. There are other parts of the Bill which have received unqualified approval from the House, and upon those I will not dwell, for I trust when they become law they will be found of the greatest possible use and value in maintaining order; but there is one matter which I feel bound to explain. It has hitherto been the law that persons who take their licences in London may go through the country, attending all the fairs and races; and they frequently take with them disreputable characters, and set up their booths in entire defiance of the local magistrates and the police. The Bill will compel them to go Before the local magistrates before they set up their booths, and the magistrates will take care that this pest is banished from the land. The next and last question is whether the magistrates shall have power to fix the hours. I will not enter into a discussion of the question now. Great dissatisfaction exists on the subject, for it is said, at one time that

  145
  the magistrates are given to teetotal views, at another that they are influenced by the licensed victuallers, and that from the changing constitution of the bench of magistrates there is no certainty as to what their decision will be. What the people want is that certainty; and the view of the Government is this—that if the House takes upon itself to regulate this monopoly, as it must do, and to say that the houses shall close at certain hours, it should also say what those hours shall be. Much has been said about the Bill extending the hours of drinking in London, but it does precisely the reverse. In all the exempted houses, which are fixed by the Commissioner of Police, the licence is, that they may keep open doors until 12.15; but then the people who are inside are allowed to remain drinking as long as they like up to 1 o'clock. The consequence is that these houses are frequented not by people who have been at the theatres, for whom they were intended, but by disreputable characters. Therefore, the Bill will restrict the hours of drinking, so far, at least, as those houses are concerned. A great deal has been said about illicit drinking. Now, in the City of London and the metropolis generally, the police have found that after the public-houses are closed people who have bought spirits in them are in the habit of going to refreshment-houses and cigar-shops and drinking there, and often, when the police get into the back parlours of these shops, they find two or three bottles of spirits and wine on the table. In fact, it has been ascertained that owners of public-houses take places which they open as cigar-shops, and allow those who have bought spirits from them to go and drink in those cigar-shops after their houses have closed. That is a practice which is growing in London, and that I call illicit drinking, a practice which I hope the Bill will effectually stop. As to the hours, the Government have taken the best counsel they can get, and they have suggested to the House what they believe to be the best hours; but they are quite prepared to give to any Amendments on the subject the most candid consideration. I will take the opportunity before concluding, of remarking with regard to the taunt of the hon. and learned Member for the City of Oxford (Sir William Harcourt) that Her Majesty's
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  Government when in Opposition, had not taken any sufficient part in the legislation of 1872, to remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that the strongest opposition to the measure came from himself. I have stated the views of the Government fully and frankly, and I hope the House will now read the Bill a second time, with a view of going into Committee upon it.
  MR. SULLIVANmoved the adjournment of the debate.
  MR. EDWARD JENKINSseconded the Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
  —(Mr. Sullivan.)
  MR. DISRAELI: I think, Sir, the debate has been maintained very fully, and, as I understand there is no intention to divide upon the Motion, I think it would not only be unusual, but extremely inconvenient if the hon. Member should press his Amendment. The hon. Gentleman will have many opportunities of expressing his opinions on the subject when the Bill goes into Committee.
  MR. SULLIVAN: I do not move the adjournment for the purpose of obstruction—my object is bonâ fide. Not a single Irish Member has expressed his opinion on the Bill. Hon. Members should recollect that the debate has been about a Bill not before the House. We were promised by the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that clauses should be laid before the House relating to Ireland, but we have not seen them. I therefore move the adjournment of the debate, in order that we may know exactly what is to be proposed, for our country.
  Question put, and negatived.
  Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he wished to say a few words as to the position in which the House stood in the matter. The Bill was only an amending measure, and if the second reading were to be opposed, it must be either on the ground that the time had not arrived for further legislation on the subject, or because it was in itself radically objectionable. For his own part, he regretted that the Government had thought it their

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  duty to bring forward an amending Bill that year. But inasmuch as they had done so, it was rather a serious thing for the House to say in a matter of such administrative importance, that it would refuse to consider the Bill in Committee. When he came to look at the clauses he must say that if he had no alternative, in the event of the Bill being read a second time, but to accept them, he should at once vote against the Bill. That, however, was not the position in which the House was placed; there would be an opportunity of considering the clauses in Committee, and he thought that what most concerned the public after all was the extension of the hours; and it had been proved by the debate of that night, and by the general feeling of the country, that the proposed change was not called for, and would do great injury. He believed, too, that the sense of both sides of the House was that the Government had better withdraw that portion of their Bill. ["No, no!"] Why the Government almost acknowledged that they took that view, for that was plainly the understood meaning of their proposing to take the public into council with them. If the House could come to some general conclusion on the subject of hours now, well and good. They could not do so in 1872, and that was the cause of the discretionary power being given to the magistrates, but he did not see how the ground could be taken of refusing to consider this discretionary power in Committee. There were other provisions in the Bill which raised questions in reference to the operation of the Act of 1872 that might perhaps be open to re-consideration, and with that view, hon. Members who had supported the Motion to adjourn the debate had better leave the further discussion of the Bill for the Committee. He would also recommend his hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) to withdraw his Amendment, and allow the Bill to be read a second time. He hoped the Government would not persist in the portion of their Bill which related to the hours. He wished to observe, however, that it would not be fair to the House, if the Government did persist in that portion of their Bill, for them not to produce to the House the Correspondence on which they based their recommendation.
  MR. MELLYsaid, that his object in moving the Amendment was to raise a discussion, and in that discussion they had heard from all parts of the House a condemnation of the proposal to extend the hours. He candidly admitted that the Government had quite met his views on that point in engaging to hold the question of opening and closing hours as an open question, upon which they would take the House into counsel, and with the leave of the House, he should therefore withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House will, upon Monday next, resolve itself into the said Committee."
  SIR WILFRID LAWSONobjected that that was not time enough for the country to consider a Bill of so important a character.
  MR. DISRAELIsaid, that it was a whole week, and considering the rapid means of communication which now existed, that was equivalent to double the period 35 years ago.
  MR. LOWEsaid, he did not wish to put any pressure on the Government, but he thought it would be very desirable if a longer time was given before the Bill was considered in Committee. He would also urge the Government to have the Correspondence with magistrates and others laid before the House.
  MR. SULLIVANprotested that Ireland was being taken by surprise, as the Bill was intended, by the introduction of certain clauses which had not as yet been laid on the Table, to apply to Ireland, and no Irish Member had yet spoken in the debate.
  MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, that the Irish clauses would be introduced in a separate Bill.
  MR. GOSCHENalso hoped that the whole of the Correspondence and evidence to which the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department had referred as the grounds upon which the Government had introduced the Bill, would be laid upon the Table before the House was asked to go into Committee.
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, that what the right hon. Gentleman had referred to had been unduly

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  magnified, and he did not think them so important as had been assumed. He had only quoted from a few letters, which, if required, he would put into the printer's hands at once, and they might be laid upon the Table to-morrow.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERreminded the hon. Baronet that he justified his proposal with regard to the hours by the letters to which he alluded. The House ought to be enabled to judge of the evidence relied upon, and what was produced should not be confined to three or four letters.
  MR. DISRAELIsaid, what was promised was, he understood, that all the letters should be printed.
  In reply to Mr. O'REILLY,
  MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, that none of the clauses in that Bill would apply to Ireland, unless a separate Bill was passed for Ireland.
  MR. DODSONurged that all the answers received by the Government to the Circular issued ought to be produced.
  MR. WHITWELLconcurred in that view.
  MR. FAWCETTsaid, he never knew an important Bill go into Committee after such a short interval as a week. It was nothing like sufficient time.
  MR. MELLYsaid, that the first clause which would have to be considered in Committee was that of dealing with the question of hours. The magistrates in boroughs and counties in a great number of instances had not yet met to consider the Bill, and it was therefore hardly fair to fix the Committee for Monday.
  MR. RATHBONEmoved, as an Amendment, "That the House go into Committee on the Bill on Thursday, the 4th of June."
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the words "Monday next," in order to insert the words "Thursday the fourth day of June next,"—(Mr. Rathbone,)—instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words 'Monday next' stand part of the Question."
  MR. W. E. FORSTERagain rose, and earnestly urged upon the Government to give a longer time and more information. Hon. Members on his side of the House had made a great concession in accepting the second reading
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  without a division, and the course proposed appeared to him to be riding rather rough-shod over the House.
  MR. LAIRDhoped the Government would see their way to a postponement otherwise many of the magistrates would not have time to consider the question.
  MR. DISRAELIsaid, his recollection of the time given in previous cases of important measures was very different from that of the hon. Member for Hackney (Mr. Fawcett). It must be recollected that a fortnight had elapsed since the introduction of the Bill, and, generally speaking, a week was allowed to elapse between the second reading and Committee, and he did not at that moment recollect any instance to the contrary. However, in the conduct of the Business of the House, it would be disagreeable to press anything opposed by a considerable minority, for a considerable minority ought to be considered, and therefore with regard to the present point, perhaps the best thing would be for the House to defer the matter till to-morrow, when he would be prepared to state the course the Government would take.
  Amendment and Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Bill committed for To-morrow.

IMPRISONMENT OF MR. WHALLEY FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT.

  RESOLUTION.
  MR. WHALLEY, who had given Notice of his intention to move, "That the Petition presented to this House on the 24th April, from the electors of Peterborough, be printed with the Votes," said, that he had given this Notice for the purpose of placing himself in Order with a Motion which stood for to-morrow, and which was based upon the Petition which he asked this House to order to be printed. As this would be asking the House to overrule the decision of the Petitions Committee, he had thought it right to consult his hon. Friend the Member for Walsall (Sir Charles Forster), who had pointed out to him the passages to which they took objection—namely, statements calling in question the proceedings of the Court of Queen's Bench, and designating especially the Lord Chief Justice in

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  respect of certain words and acts of his as well in his judicial as in his personal capacity; and he (Mr. Whalley) concurred with the Committee that statements of that nature should not be printed unless accompanied by proof. He was fully prepared to prove the same if he should be fortunate enough to obtain a Committee of Inquiry as to this Contempt of Court; but in the meantime wholly disclaimed any desire to give publicity to ex parte statements such as were contained in this Petition. Under these circumstances, he should not press his Motion; but knowing now what it was that was objected to, he would refer the matter back to his constituents, who might, if they thought fit, then present another Petition with the omission of the passages to which his attention had been called by the Chairman of the Petition Committee.

  NEW WRITS.
  Ordered, That every Motion for a new Writ, of which Notice has been given, pursuant to the Resolution of the 30th day of April last, he appointed for consideration before the Orders of the Day and Notices of Motions.—(Mr. Disraeli.)

  VALUATION OF PROPERTY BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. SCLATER-BOOTH, Bill to amend the Law respecting the liability and valuation of certain property for the purpose of Bates, ordered to be brought in by Mr. SCLATER-BOOTH and Mr. CLARE READ.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 98.]

  ALKALI ACT (1863) AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. SCLATER-BOOTH, Bill to amend "The Alkali Act, 1863," ordered to be brought in by Mr. SCLATER-BOOTH and Mr. CLARE BEAD.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 99.]

  RABBITS BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. PELL, Bill to amend the Laws relating to Trespass in pursuit of Rabbits, ordered to be brought in by Mr. PELL, Sir WYNDHAM ANSTRUTHER, Mr. WALSH, and Mr. MONTGOMERIE.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 100.]
  House adjourned at One o'clock.

MINUTES.
REPRESENTATIVE PEER FOR IRELAND—Lord Castlemaine, v. Lord Blayney, deceased.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Courts (Straits Settlements) * (60).
Second Reading—Oyster and Mussel Fisheries Orders Confirmation * (36); Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation * (37); Public Worship Regulation (30).

DWELLINGS FOR THE LONDON POOR.
  WITHDRAWAL OF NOTICE.
  LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICKsaid, that since he had given Notice of his intention to call the attention of their Lordships to the subject of dwellings for the London Poor, the question had been brought forward with much ability in the other House, and the statement made on behalf of the Government, in answer to the hon. Gentleman who had introduced it, was regarded as so satisfactory that he and those with whom he had the honour to act were desirous of leaving it in the hands of the Ministry. There would be no occasion, therefore, for him to act on the Notice which stood in his name for to-morrow.
PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION BILL.—(No. 30.)
(The Archbishop of Canterbury.)
PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION BILL.—(No. 30.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2 a."—(The Archbishop of Canterbury.)
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: My Lords, as there has been a good deal of misapprehension and unintentional misrepresentation on the subject of this Bill, I am very anxious that your Lordships should give it that dispassionate consideration which you are always disposed to give to any measure which may come before you, in order that it may be judged solely on the merits and not on those comments which have appeared in the public Press for some time past: and I crave the indulgence of your Lordships that I may correct many unintentional misrepresentations which have been made upon the subject. The Petitions which have been laid on the Table do not tend to show that the feeling of the country has been correctly represented in the Articles to which I refer. I might, if I chose, select cases of hardship and

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  grievance to the laity; but I do not think I ought to weary your Lordships by entering into details on this point after the facts stated on Friday evening by the most rev. Primate, in reply to a Question which, I think, was inconsiderately put to him. The answer given by the most rev. Primate was to this effect—that the clergy being bound by the Articles of their ordination to follow the doctrines of the Book of Common Prayer, and none other—except so far as law and authority might order—a considerable number of them use, in silence, prayers which are not to be found in that Book, and which convey doctrines it does not contain. It is clear that the extracts read by the most rev. Primate are not in conformity with the doctrines in the Book of Common Prayer. I hold in my hand now a little publication entitled The Penny Liturgy, which purports to contain "the Service for Holy Communion, with Preparation, Thanksgiving, and other Prayers." It seems, at first sight, to be a copy of the Communion Service of the Church, with additional prayers in the same tone; but, on examining the book, I find in it passages utterly at variance with anything which the Communion Service in the Book of Common Prayer contains—
  "Accept, O holy Trinity, one God, the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which I desire to offer thee this day in union with the sacrifice which he offered once for all upon the cross, and now presents in heaven. Receive it (1) to the praise and glory of thy holy name; (2) in memory of the death and passion of our Saviour Christ; and (3) in thanksgiving for all thy benefits, especially ……. grant also (4) unto me, a sinner, pardon of all my sins, especially …. and grace to obtain all virtues, especially …. and (5) unto all thy faithful, living and departed, especially ……. the graces that they need. Lastly, I desire to offer it for (6) …. [here name your special intention] I beseech thee to accept this sacrifice, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
  There are other passages which are almost too solemn to read here; but the passage which I have just quoted, and the altar cards quoted by my most rev. Brother on Friday, are sufficient to show that some of the clergy use prayers drawn up in a very different spirit from that to be found in the doctrines contained in the Book of Common Prayer. I shall not multiply particular instances; but I may refer to a case which came within my own knowledge. About a
  4
  year ago a question arose about the consecration of a church in the diocese of Winchester. The late Bishop of Winchester found that there was in that church a second communion table, which was to be called the "Altar of the Virgin." That lamented Prelate stated that unless this communion table were removed, he would not consecrate the church. The church was consecrated on the condition of its removal. The Bishop has since died; but the altar which should have been removed stands there fixed and firm, with the words, "Pray for us," sculptured upon it, so that all in the church may read. It is there, and will remain so, I presume, till some power interposes to remove it. My Lords, we, the Bishops, know that there exists in the minds of the laity deep dissatisfaction. We are not able to give them redress, but we are obliged to listen to complaints which, I assure your Lordships, are very numerous. It is admitted on all hands that the Bishops are powerless to check the things complained of, and each incumbent being master of the situation, he may set the Bishop and the laity at defiance if he be disposed to do so. It is not upon isolated cases that we rely; but still the cases in which this is done are not so numerous, considering the hundreds and thousands of faithful clergy to whom we can point, as may be supposed; but those exceptional cases are sufficiently numerous to be a cause of grievous irritation, and they are increasing in number, and no one can tell how far they may go. It is this sense which creates the irritation that prevails, and which renders it necessary that a speedy remedy should be provided for the evil. It may be said, and it will be said, that there are remedies already in our hands, and we have nothing to do but use them. We may be told that we have nothing to do but refer the case to our Chancellor, and then take it to the Court of the Province and have it heard on its merits, and we may thence carry it back to the Court of Appeal—being, in the whole, five hearings. We are told that we have thus a remedy in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and that if we adopt the remedy the thing is done. Now, my Lords, not to speak of the delay caused by sending a case from one ecclesiastical tribunal to another and then sending it back again, let us see what are the costs incurred in the

  5
  Ecclesiastical Courts. I shall take only three cases by way of illustration. In the case of "Martin v. Mackonochie" the costs were £1,991 4s. 4d. in the Court below; and in the Privy Council £1,486 11 s. 7d.; but the sentence not having been obeyed, further steps were taken to enforce it, and the cost of obtaining an order to enforce the original sentence was £1,459 5s. 3d. In the case of "Elphinstone (afterwards Hebbert) v. Purchas" the costs in the Court below were £1,389, and those in the Privy Council £2,510. I may observe that of the costs in this case not a single farthing was ever recovered by the promoter. The third case was that of "Sheppard v. Phillimore and Bennett," and the costs were £2,735 1s. There were two appeals, and in the case and the two appeals the costs were respectively £296 1s. 8d., £420 5s. 2d., and £1,573 3s. 2d. So much for costs; and I think your Lordships will agree with me that such costs prevent anything like a steady and consistent administration of a diocese. It is impossible that costs like these could be incurred in five or six different cases, and I do not say more would be likely to arise in a diocese. Something has been said about counsel's fees. I find that in "Martin v. Mackonochie" they amounted to £2,783 11 s.; in "Hebbert v. Purchas" to £1,962; and in "Sheppard v. Bennett" to £5,023 10 d. Now as to time. In "Hebbert v. Purchas" the offence was in 1868 and 1869, and a final decree was not obtained until December, 1871. There were four hearings, and nearly four years were spent in Court. In the case of "Sheppard v. Bennett" the offence was charged in 1868; there was a second appeal, which was not heard till June, 1872, or nearly four years after the offence was charged. In all, there were five hearings. In the case of "Martin v. Mackonochie," also, there were five hearings. The offence was charged in 1866; but it was not till 1870, or four years after, the last order was made. In these cases there were two separate motions to enforce obedience. Far be it from me to say that the most extended time should not be given for the hearing of a cause in which the life or reputation of a fellow creature is at stake; but your Lordships will remember that in these causes the proceedings were in the main to enforce
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  what the Court of Appeal had decided to be right. I would ask your Lordships to bear in mind that in this Bill we are not endeavouring to find what punishment can be inflicted for any of the offences with which it is proposed to deal. I should regret very much if any of them were ever treated as criminal offences. We are in this Bill trying to divest them as much as possible of any such character—we are endeavouring to prevent the doing of that which should not be done, and to re-assert the established doctrine, that certain things are not to be done at the pleasure of the incumbent, but only in accordance with the decision of the Bishop and his Court. If a case has not been made out for our action in this matter, I am afraid that nothing which I can say will establish one, and therefore I shall leave that part of the case. Coming to another part of it, my Lords, I may observe, it appears from what has passed here and in the other House that the relations between this measure and the Convocation of Canterbury are rather delicate. I have the greatest respect for Convocation and shall always be found ready to defend its privileges; but the request to have a Bill introduced in Parliament laid before Convocation to be discussed, clause by clause, is an entirely modern claim. It is not in accordance with the constitution and the history of Convocation. Will it be contended that all great measures affecting the Church have been laid before Convocation in this way? Of all the important measures in the Statute Book I remember but very few in which Convocation was consulted at all. The great Act of Uniformity was brought under the notice of the Convocation of the Southern Province, but the Convocation of the Northern Province was not allowed to consider it at all. And I cannot help remembering that last year when the Judicature Bill was before Parliament, although that Bill contained a provision changing altogether the tribunal of ultimate appeal in ecclesiastical cases, it passed without any intimation here or any suggestion in Convocation that it ought to be sent to Convocation for its consideration and examination. I will not use an expression in reference to that Bill which has been applied with respect to this, and say it was passed with "indecent haste;" but it did pass rapidly, and

  7
  that without any such intimation from any quarter as to that to which I have just referred.
  Now, coming to the Bill before your Lordships, I say that in its leading principles it is very much what the Lower House of Convocation recommended in 1869. The Report condemned the Clergy Discipline Act on, among other grounds, the ground that it superadded a preliminary inquiry. As to the form in which proceedings should be instituted, I think the only points of disagreement are that by the Bill as it now stands one parishioner may move, whereas the Report recommended three, and that he may hold property and not be resident, and that he may be a Churchman only and not a communicant. I am afraid the test of being a communicant is one that cannot be adopted for reasons that will appear in course of the debate. But in other respects we have substantially adopted the recommendations in that portion of the Report. As regards the Court, the Report recommended that the Bishop should sit in his own Court. We have surrounded him with assessors, but if the constitution of the Court is not satisfactory we are prepared to alter it, if necessary. Objection is now taken to the powers which, it is said, the Bill will give the Bishops. My Lords, it is curious that when the Sees are far off we display great anxiety for an increase of the episcopacy and are very anxious for episcopal supervision and the upholding of episcopal authority; but when a Bishop comes within our view, and his diocese is nearer, our ideas on that subject appear to undergo a change. How far this may be the case in the Province of Canterbury I am not prepared to say. When we drew the Bill we had the opinion of the Convocation of Canterbury, given in 1869, before us. I wish we had the opinion of the Convocation of York; but it would have been impossible for me to obtain that opinion before the month of May. What course may hereafter be taken will depend upon the events of to-night. As I have already observed to your Lordships, when we were preparing the measure we did not seek to punish any one for what he had done. We took every care to divest of even the appearance of a penal proceeding the action to be taken against clergymen who have been acting according to
  8
  their conscientious convictions; but we did wish to re-assert that the Bishop in his Court, and not the incumbent acting according to caprice or to his discretion, was to be the exponent of the law of the Church in the matters treated of in this Bill. In the Preface of the Book of Common Prayer and in the Table of Lessons Act—a statute of so recent a date as 1871—the jurisdiction of the Ordinary in all such matters is distinctly recognized. In the part of the Book of Common Prayer entitled "Concerning the Service of the Church," it is among other things provided—
  "Forasmuch as nothing can be so plainly set forth, but doubts may arise in the use and practice of, the same; to appease all such diversity (if any arise) and for the resolution of all doubts, concerning the manner how to understand, do, and execute the things contained in this Book; the parties that so doubt, or diversely take anything, shall always resort to the Bishop of the Diocese, who by his discretion shall take order for the quieting and appeasing of the same; so that the same order be not contrary to anything contained in this Book. And if the Bishop of the Diocese be in doubt, then he may send for the resolution thereof to the Archbishop."
  If there are in your Lordships' House any persons who think it desirable that the incumbents of parishes should be possessed—I will not say of independent power, but of unlimited and arbitrary power—now is the time for him to record that opinion. On the other hand, if your Lordships are of opinion that the Church of England, while recognizing, as she always has recognized, the independence of the incumbent as the pastor of his parish, lays down that he should be subject to those laws and regulations of which the Bishop is the exponent, then I ask you to vote for this Bill, because that is the principle affirmed in its various clauses. But, my Lords, if you find that there is any truth in the allegation that through this Bill the Bishops are seeking an addition to their power with the view of rendering it arbitrary, your Lordships will, of course, vote against the measure. I can assure your Lordships that if you can devise any means better calculated to allay irritation which is dangerous to the existence of the Church Establishment we are ready to co-operate with you and to adopt your Amendments so far as they are consistent with the principles of the Bill. I do not understand how it can be said that this is a penal measure. I speak under the correction of those

  9
  learned in the law when I say that to my mind an application to the Court of Chancery to obtain a perpetual injunction for an infringement of right is in every respect as penal a proceeding as that proposed in this Bill. There is no penalty except as to costs, and that is inevitable. Much has been said about the hardship of subjecting the clergyman to interrogatories; but, my Lords, that principle has been already recognized in the Act 1 & 2 Vict. c. 106, s. 52, which provides that questions concerning non-residence sent to incumbents must be answered, although the replies may subject the incumbent to deprivation. Again, under the present Dean of Arches, the clergyman was allowed to tender himself for examination. That amounted virtually to a rule that he should do so; because, if he did not, an unfavourable inference would thereby be raised. A paper which I have no doubt has been sent to most, if not all, of your Lordships, assigns Fourteen Reasons why your Lordships' House should not assent to this Bill. This is a very remarkable paper. It states that if your Lordships do so "there is very little chance that the House of Commons would pass a measure so obviously beyond its proper sphere and so monstrous in its details." Now, my Lords, let us see some of the allegations made in support of that assertion. As Reason No. 12 there is this statement—
  "Because, by a clause which yet stands in the Bill, it is provided that, contrary to the whole spirit of English law, when a judgment of the proposed Court has been appealed against, its sentence shall nevertheless take effect at once; which puts the clergy as a class in the exceptional position of being liable to be punished as guilty during the time necessary for proving their innocence."
  I remember that in a prosecution which made considerable noise—that of the Rev. Mr. Voysey—the gentleman proceeded against was subjected to the effects of the decree pending the final appeal, and I never heard of any remonstrance in that case. Again, if I turn to Section 58 of the Judicature Act of last year I find this provision—
  "An appeal shall not operate as a stay of execution, or proceedings under the decision appealed from, except so far as the Court appealed from, or any Judge thereof, or the Court of Appeal, may so order; and no intermediate act or proceeding shall be invalidated except so far as the Court of Appeal may direct."
  10
  I am aware, my Lords, that in the Bill now before your Lordships there are not those qualifying words "except so far as the Court of Appeal may direct;" but if that is regarded as a valuable qualification, no one connected with this Bill will object to it. The clause itself is, however, a vital part of the Bill. And why? You are dealing with a particular class of cases, in which the greatest mischief is done by the continuance of the thing condemned. I have pointed out that Mr. Mackonochie's case lasted three years, during which time that gentleman, no doubt, doing what he thought right, repeated those acts for which he had been brought before the Ecclesiastical Courts. What would be the effect of such a proceeding in a parish church? If the first of these acts offended the worshippers, so did the second and third; and if the practices were continued for three years the original congregation would have dropped away from the church, so that by the time the decree of the Bishop could be enforced it would be of no use to those for whose benefit it was sought—it would be of no use to say that what had been done should not have been done. To prevent any hardship arising from the clause there are two remedies, the first of which is in the clause itself. By the Bill, as introduced by the most rev. Primate, the Bishop may prevent the monition from taking effect pending the appeal; and if it is thought that there may be a danger of his acting unreasonably, power may be given to the Court of Appeal to arrest the judgment. Then as to the mode in which the Bill would operate. As the Bill stands, any one of the persons named might make his application to the Bishop—we are disposed to allow the objection to a single parishioner being entitled to make application by way of complaint to the Bishop. We are prepared to insert "three parishioners," instead of one, and we are also prepared to give the power to one churchwarden. It has been thought that the introduction of any new services should be included in the Bill. There can be no doubt that the law is that the directions of the Prayer Book must be observed—that nothing must be omitted and nothing added. The clause would therefore be made to apply to any new or additional service not directed by authority. I now

  11
  come to the constitution of the Court, and I hope I may ask for your Lordships' favourable consideration in respect of this part of the Bill. Now as to the construction of the Court to try these cases. The original draft of this Bill was entirely different. We had determined that it should not be said the Court was one set up to give the Bishops undue power, and originally we proposed that the Bishop should be assisted by a Council, one half of which should be clergymen and the other half laymen elected by laymen. I cannot say that this plan of election ever commended itself very much to my mind, because I thought it might lead to great heart-burnings. However, when we took legal opinion upon the question we found it was entirely opposed to the plan. Accordingly we recast this part of the Bill, and we took as our model the existing Court of First Instance—a Court which, though not much used, has been in existence during nearly the whole of the Queen's reign under the Church Discipline Act. We thought we would take it, put it on your Lordships' Table, and have your Lordships' opinion on it. Well, opinions have reached us on all sides, and from the two parties who take an interest in this question we gather that this part of the plan requires modification. The clergy in the Convocation of Canterbury have suggested that the Bishop with his Chancellor, the latter being a lawyer, should constitute the Court to hear the complaint in the first instance. I believe the most rev. Primate is willing to adopt that suggestion. At the outset the Bill gave the Bishop the power on receiving the complaint to exercise his discretion as to sending it to his Court. The reason for this is that we know by experience that frivolous complaints are often made—we know that there is sometimes a disposition to complain of things as illegal which are perfectly legal. We think then that the Bishop ought to have power to refuse to send a complaint before the Court. The Archbishop may send the appeal either to the Court of Appeal of the Province or to the Privy Council. That discretion is, I think, a desirable one. My Lords, as in these cases it often occurs that there is very little doubt of the facts, it has been thought desirable that the Bishops' Court should in the first instance have
  12
  power to state a case for the Court of Appeal. In this way a case might be sent up for hearing, and argued and decided without the clergyman appearing at all. With the view of making such a provision this Amendment is suggested—
  "The Bishop may, if he think fit, on the application of the person or persons making a representation, or the incumbent, and upon such security for costs being given by the applicant as the Bishop may require, state a case in writing for the opinion of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal, upon any question arising out of the representation, which in the opinion of the Bishop, is a question of law, and such Court shall hear and determine the question or questions of law arising thereon, and any judgment pronounced by the Bishop shall be in conformity with such determination. There shall be no appeal from the judgment of the Bishop upon any question of law so determined by Her Majesty's Court of Appeal."
  As to the interrogatories to be sent to the clergy, the great object of them is to shorten the inquiry; and as to the monition pending inquiry, it is analogous to the proceeding in Chancery. All Civil Courts have the power of making themselves obeyed—it is only in the Ecclesiastical Courts that one party is permitted to refuse obedience to the judgment of the Court. My Lords, I think we have not had for some time a more important Bill than this brought before your Lordships' House. I believe it is regarded in that light by your Lordships and the country. A Member of the House of Commons has recently said to me, "If you pass this Bill you will win me to vote against disestablishment." My Lords, this question should not be looked on as a squabble between the Bishops and a section of the Church. It ought to be looked on as a vital question affecting the constitution of this country—affecting the existence of the Church of England. Your Lordships are guardians—you claim it—guardians and conservators of all the political and constitutional landmarks of this country, and it is not needful for me, in conclusion, to ask your Lordships to see that the institutions of England shall not suffer from any want of a due appreciation of the matters now under the consideration of your Lordships' House.
  THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY*: My Lords—Having, for four consecutive years, introduced Bills into this House for the reform of the Ecclesiastical Courts, I may, perhaps, be indulged

  13
  by your Lordships with permission to say a few words on the present occasion. And, in the outset, I will say that I am not prepared to oppose the second reading of the measure before us. When the two Archbishops and the whole of their brethren on the Episcopal Bench declare that we are in a serious crisis of the Church, and that they have a remedy for many of these evils, they have a right to demand our most respectful consideration. That "something must be done," is the cry that, at last, we hear from all quarters. I fully agree, but I maintain that this something cannot be done after the proposed fashion. This is not the way in which it can be done; and if it could be done in this way, it ought not to be so. Now, my Lords, I am speaking of the Bill before your Lordships' House. I could not follow, and I question whether your Lordships could, the alterations and amendments announced by the Archbishop; but most assuredly they did not touch the principal objection to the Bill, the constitution and construction of this new Court; and the Bill, as it now stands, would be, as a remedial measure, no better than waste paper. And, first, I would ask, Why are we to have a new Court? Half the opposition made to this Bill arises from the novelty of the proposition. The old Diocesan Courts, bad as they are, have jurisdiction to correct all breaches of laws ecclesiastical; and they are maintained, moreover, at the cost of between £70,000 and £80,000 a-year, levied by fees and licences, and available for any purpose of improvements in administration and procedure. Next, there is no provision for security that suits shall not be instituted by frivolous, vexatious, and destitute persons. Any one parishioner may promote the Judge's office; and in the Interpretation Clause the definition of parishioner is short and picturesque—"a male of full age." Now, in my Bill, I provided that the laws could be set in motion only on the combined representation of three persons; and to ensure a certain respectability as to position, and to prevent harassing suits, I also provided that the Judge should require security for costs, and, moreover, possess a power of inflicting "costs as between attorney and client." But here we have nothing of the sort—no care that the prosecutor be, either in morals or finance, a fitting person. Yet when,
  14
  in a former year, I had stated my proposed enactments, a right rev. Prelate called me to task, after a serious fashion, rebuked my neglect to secure morality in my proposed agents, and used unsavoury language, which, although episcopal, my modesty, as a layman, will not allow me to repeat. Now, my Lords, I have a right to say that when a Bishop has censured me for wild and immoral legislation, he ought, himself, to take good care that he is not guilty of the same in any Bill to which he is a party.
  Now, though I do not intend to make, or to follow, any Motion against the second reading of the Bill, I may be allowed to say a few words on clauses that I hold to be very objectionable, inasmuch as they contain principles which might be drawn into precedents for further limitation of lay and clerical rights, and introduce various novelties which might afterwards plague their inventors. First, I protest against the constitution of the Courts. It is provided by Clause 10 that it shall be the same as that appointed by the Church Discipline Act of 1840. Well, nothing can be worse, and the Bishops themselves think so, for in thirty-four years they have only in a very few and those exceptional cases, ever had recourse to it. Now, here is the Body—the Bishop, who nominates his own Court; an assessor without any limitation whatever; a barrister of seven years' standing; the dean of his cathedral; or an Archdeacon of his diocese; or his Chancellor, who may be an ecclesiastic; all subject to the Episcopal authority. My Lords, by the Bill that I introduced these glaring objections would have been avoided. I carried—and the Bill as it went down to the House of Commons contained it—a provision that the Bishop of the diocese should send letters of request to the Archbishop of the Province, who, thereupon would send down the Provincial Judge, a barrister of 15 years' standing, who would, on the same principle as an Election Judge, try the case on the spot, securing thereby sound legal decision, with a vast saving of time and expense. But the appointment even of this Court is left to his discretion. Clause 9 says "the Bishop may, if he think fit," do so and so. Now, then, have we advanced a step? The Archbishop promised that the Bishop should have no discretion in the matter, unless he could conscientiously assert

  15
  that the application was frivolous and vexatious. Again, my Lords, it is highly objectionable that the Bishop should perform two offices in the same suit. A case is brought before him to determine whether it shall be prosecuted or not. He determines in the affirmative; and then passes into an adjoining room, and tries the issue! How can this be right? Is it not as though the foreman of the Grand Jury having found a true bill, should suddenly be seen in the chair of the Quarter Sessions, trying the very case on which he had half pronounced? The temptation is too great, human nature is very weak; and even were there no danger of partiality, the appearance of it is bad. Why such an exceptional rule as this? Why should we not follow, in all cases, a sound English form of procedure? My Lords, if the Bishops were not allowed to interfere at all, and every suit were adjudged by sound lawyers, the public would have some confidence in the decisions of the tribunals.
  I pass now to the absolute powers entrusted to the Bishop by this Bill. He may enforce, or not enforce, the law as he pleases; he may fix the time and place of hearing the parties; he nominates his assessors, and he is not bound to follow their advice. An obstinate and wilful man—and Bishops may be such—could overrule his entire Court. He is, in fact, lord and master of everything contained in Clause 8 and its three subclauses. He may bring into life disused rubrics; in fact, he must do so, for this Bill proceeds on the grant of new powers, new action, and in consequence the attainment of complete obedience. No Bishop, if he resolves to act, can falter. He must go forward on the principle of even-handed justice; and if he prunes the excrescences of the Ritualists, he must—for the Ritualists will keep him up to the mark—rebuke and punish the shortcomings of their opponents. Thus we shall have perpetual striving before the Bishops—conscientiously, no doubt—for the minute observance of everything in the Prayer-book. A faculty will be required for the smallest doings in the fabric and furniture of the Church. He will be called upon to settle the question of the white and black gown, and no end of other matters; and as there are 27 Bishops, we shall probably have 27 decisions. But a more serious con-
  16
  sideration arises. Your Lordships will remember that a year or two ago much feeling was excited on the subject of the Athanasian Creed. A memorial was presented to the two Archbishops, with a prayer that the reading of it in the public service might cease to be compulsory. It obtained many signatures of great importance. Now many congregations have come to an understanding with their ministers to that effect. But if this Bill pass into a law the Bishops, whatever their wishes, must yield to the urgent representations of the Ritualistic party, and enforce the reading of the Creed at every appointed season. I foresee from this nothing but disturbance and irritation. The Bill, no doubt, presses equally on both sides. The High Church will be restrained from doing what they wish, and the Low Church will be compelled to do what they do not wish. But, my Lords, here is a smaller affair, no doubt, yet worthy of note. The Bishop, by sub-clause of Clause 11, has power of himself to summon witnesses and call for the production of documents, a power given only by Act of Parliament, or possessed by a Court of Record. But, surely, as we are asked to confer on the Bishops powers to affect the rights and property of many individuals, we are bound in duty to inquire whether they possess the requisite qualifications of legal knowledge and judicial training. I appeal to the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Salisbury); did he not state last year that the Bishops were utterly devoid of all judicial qualifications, that they had not a judicial mind? And by a recent Act has not the Parliament eliminated the episcopal element from the Judicial Committee of Privy Council? They may attend as advisers, as referees, in any form but that of Judges, from which they are excluded altogether. And it is almost unnecessary to mention the universal cry that their Chancellors should be laymen. But, worst of all, these great powers, which involve such serious consequences, are to be exercised in camerâ, in secret. By sub-clause 6 of Clause 11, the Bishop has power to exclude every representative of the Press, and every other person who might possess a controlling influence. On this point, a legal gentleman has given me his opinion—

  17
  "The power to hear in camerâ"he says, "has always been very sparingly exercised by Judges of the Courts of Law and Equity, and only in special cases. In a recent case before the Court of Chancery the present Lord Chancellor refused an application to hear a case in camerâ, and expressed himself unwilling to strain the usual practice of the Court, which was not to hear a case in private except with the consent of both parties. In the clause of this Bill power is given not to hear special cases for special reasons in private, but to make rules which would operate in all cases."
  So we are called upon to grant a power to the Bishops, which the Lord Chancellor himself would scruple to exercise. Here, then, with his full discretion and in entire secrecy, the irresponsible power of the Bishop is complete. And yet, my Lords, what do weighty authorities say upon discretion in any Judge? I have here an opinion—it is from a great man, and I will give you his name presently—
  "The discretion of a judge," he says, "is the law of tyrants. It is different in different men; it is always unknown; it is casual, and depends upon constitution, temper, and passion. In the best it is oftentimes caprice; in the worst, it is every vice and passion to which human nature is liable."
  Now this is the opinion of the Lord Chancellor Camden, a personage of weight, and it may be found in the first volume of Fearne's Essay on Contingent Remainders. But, if such be the case in respect of professional and trained lawyers, how much stronger is the statement in reference to Bishops, who, though rising into Judges, have never enjoyed the benefit of legal education and experience? Why, in some aspects, my Lords, the better the Bishop is as a Bishop, the less qualified he would be as a calm and dispassionate Judge. It would be beyond human nature to expect that a Bishop, sitting in power and authority in a Court, a man of earnest piety and zeal for the cause of religion, should not feel a strong, almost an irresistible bias towards the decision that seemed to be the most conducive to the interests of the Church. My Lords, I am called a Low Churchman—and I dare say I am so—but I most solemnly declare that, even were I sure of Low Church Bishops for half a century to come, I would not confer on them the discretion contained in this Bill. No one, whoever he may be, ought to be entrusted with absolute power. Again, it may be apparently small, but it shows
  18
  the hasty way in which this Bill has been drawn—Clause 13 gives to the Bishop an absolute discretion in the matter of costs, a duty to which no one is equal but a practising solicitor. Will the Judges of the land take on themselves this office? No such thing; and how then can a Bishop undertake a task so technical and minute, without the slightest knowledge of the mode of operation?
  But we come now to a very important part of the Bill. It has been, and it is asserted, that this measure affects the status of the clergy. It is, I knows stoutly denied; but the affirmative can be proved. Now, observe two very leading provisions—
  "The Bishop of the diocese, having received a charge against an incumbent, is to send a notice thereof to such incumbent."
  Here, my Lords, attend to sub-Clause 3 of Clause 11, and mark the requirements of it—
  "The incumbent, within eight days of such notice being given to him, or within such further time as the Bishop may, for some special reason, think fit to grant, may transmit to the Bishop an answer in the form prescribed by the rules and orders, denying the truth of any statement of fact made in the representation; and if the incumbent "—let me entreat your attention to the words—"and if the incumbent shall not transmit an answer, or shall not in his answer deny the truth of any statement of fact made in the representation, such statement"—can it be possible?—"shall be deemed to be true."
  Deemed to be true because the charged person is silent! Why, my Lords, this is a hard-and-fast revival of the law repealed in 1827, a return to an oppressive and ignominious state of things. There is no proof required that the notice has reached him. It shall go, says a subsequent clause, as a registered letter. But do letters always arrive at their place of destination? The incumbent may be absent, he may be sick; but, no matter—it is enough that the notice has left the Bishop's hand, who, if he receive no answer, or an answer not directly denying the charge, may pronounce him guilty, and proceed accordingly. This is very serious, for it reverses a protective and existing statute, passed, as I well remember, in the House of Commons by Mr. Peel, the first year that I sat in Parliament. The law of evidence, which, though not then acted on, was still in existence, is well described by Mr. Archbold, in his Criminal Pleadings—

  19
  "Formerly," says he, "the consequences of standing obstinately mute in cases of felony was forfeiture of goods and peine forte et dure."
  The Act of 7 and 8 Geo. IV., cap. 28, sect. 2, provides as follows—
  "And be it enacted that if any person being arraigned upon or charged with any indictment or information for treason …. or misdemeanour, shall stand mute of malice, or will not answer directly to the indictment or information, in every such case it shall be lawful for the court, if it shall so think fit, to order the proper officer to enter a plea of Not Guilty on behalf of such person, and the plea so entered shall have the same force and effect as if such person had actually pleaded the same."
  Why are the clergy, and the clergy alone, to be shut out from the protection accorded to civilians? Is there no touching of their status here? Is there not a distinction, and an unfavourable one, placed between them and the rest of Her Majesty's subjects? But Clause 18 is the most serious of all. "Give me this clause," said the most rev. Prelate who, the other night, propounded the Bill, "and take away, if you will, all the remainder"—an awful request, to which your Lordships will certainly refuse to accede. Here it is—
  "If at any time after the service of a monition, whether such monition shall have been appealed against or not, it shall be shown to the satisfaction of the Bishop, by affidavits duly sworn, that due obedience has not been paid to such monition, …. the Bishop shall thereupon inhibit the incumbent from performing any service of the Church, or otherwise exercising the cure of souls within the diocese."
  So far so good. But listen to what follows—
  "The Bishop may during such inhibition make such provision for the service of the Church, and for the cure of souls, as he shall deem necessary, and the moneys due during such inhibition to the incumbent, in respect of the performance of Divine service, and other rites and ceremonies, or for the cure of souls in the parish in which the church is situate, or for the use of which the burial-ground is legally provided, in relation to which church or burial-ground such monition has been issued as aforesaid, shall be paid to the Bishop, and shall be applied by him in first instance to defray the cost of such provision;"
  And then, will your Lordships believe it?—
  "Afterwards to such other ecclesiastical purposes connected with the parish as the Bishop may determine."
  Is this in the spirit of the law of England—is it a rule that a sentence, though appealed against, is to be executed? The most. rev. Prelate (the Archbishop
  20
  of York) may quote one or two isolated cases, appearing to border on the case before us; but, I ask, is this the spirit and the usage of the law of England? Why, then, should the clergy be taken out of the category of English citizens, and be subjected to such enactments? All the revenues of the accused incumbent are to be seized; the surplus, after providing for the church service, is to be at the disposal of the Bishop. The appeal may last a year or more, and at the end, the appellant may be declared to be in the right; but all his income has been forfeited; and the Bill holds out no hope of compensation to the acquitted clergyman. He may have a large family to maintain—clergymen have generally large families. It may have been, for example, £1,000 a-year, £300 of which would suffice for the church service, and thus £700 would be at the disposal of the Bishop. A High Church Bishop might set up a reredos—all Bishops do not dislike reredoses. One was inaugurated, the other day, at Worcester Cathedral. There were Bishops present, and deans, besides abundant clergy and laity, and much glory was given in the sermon to the wealthy man who had recently so decorated that ancient place of worship. But suppose a Low Church Bishop, full of zeal—a Puritanical Bishop, as has been suggested—held the See of London. He would fall, at once, on Mr. Mackonoehie's church, tear down the gold and silver, and, at Mr. Mackonochie's expense, cover the walls with whitewash, and possibly with texts denouncing the abominations which had been perpetrated there. The most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of York) says that this is no penal measure; not so in his intention, I am quite sure; but as a matter of fact, what can be more penal than this proposed enactment? My Lords, I do protest most strongly against this mode of segregating the clergy more than at present from the laity. The more the clergy and laity are, so to speak, part and parcel of each other, the better will it be for both of them. And to close, I cannot omit to notice the the power taken by the Bishops, under the Interpretation Clause, over the cathedrals. The deans must look to it. The clause defines a cathedral, to be in fact, a parish church, thereby settling, in a few words, the long denied claim of episcopal authority.

  21
  My Lords, I will not pause to show how little is the hope of a diminution of expense or delay under the provisions of this Bill. I will simply ask to what purpose are you now directing your legislation? A few years ago—perhaps even five years ago—a measure of some kind might have been effectual. But great changes have occurred. Ritualism has got very far ahead, and it would not be possible to do more than lop off some of its excrescences. Ritualism, moreover, has become of secondary importance. Other issues far more deadly in their nature demand our attention. The other day the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of Canterbury) quoted to your Lordships some passages from books and things called Altar Cards, of a dark—I might also say—a desperate character. They give us ample proof that the worship of the Virgin, the Invocation of Saints, and prayers to the Apostles, are taught by ministers of the Church, and find favour among a section of its members. But how, in any way, can the provisions of this Bill touch these grave matters? Will it prevent the distribution of leaflets full of pernicious doctrine? The minister will shrink from action so material and tangible; and will reserve his heresies for the pulpit, the vestry, the ear in the closet, and the private visitation. How, I ask, will it reach the Confessional? Do not suppose that the Confessional is the idle phantom that it used to be. It is spreading very rapidly; nor is it confined, as some suppose, to a few fine folks in Belgravia and the parts adjacent. It is penetrating into all classes of society. I speak from knowledge. I know the books—books, too, bearing the names of respectable publishers—by which the poison is circulated; and I know how the minds of young and tender women of every grade are so influenced by their spiritual guides as to become familiar with things from which, at the outset, they would have recoiled with horror. I spoke to the Lord Chancellor on the subject, and showed him the passages. He commented on them, as you will readily believe, with just indignation. My Lords, if the Confessional continue unchecked—and checked it cannot be by any ordinary legislation—it will produce an entire change in the spiritual, moral, and political character of the English people, and will eventually
  22
  sink the Establishment in inevitable ruin. Some one may say, "What, then, is nothing to be done?" I see but two courses. One by creating a strong, persistent, and united sentiment of disgust, which, being publicly pronounced, shall penetrate into private and domestic life. But this is difficult. For though there is a party hostile to these practices, there is a powerful one in favour of them; and the bulk of the nation is thinking of other things, and living in a state of utter indifference. The other, if it could not extinguish, might for a while retard, the progress of the mischief. I look to a wide, deep, and searching reform of the whole Church. But this no one will listen to. Yet certain I am, that a Bill such as this propounded to-night, will leave all the greater evils as it found them, and we shall have reason to be thankful if it do not contribute to make them very much worse.
  THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH: My Lords, I am compelled, by some observations that have fallen from the noble Earl (the Earl of Shaftesbury) in regard to myself, again to cross swords with him on the subject of clergy discipline. Under other circumstances I would not have troubled your Lordships with any observations, partly because on many of the details with which the noble Earl has so forcibly dealt I entertain views that are similar to his own, and also because I am aware that most of his objections will vanish in the form of Amendments to be proposed in Committee. In order to induce your Lordships to listen favourably to the few words I have to say, I must first endeavour to clear myself from the charge of inconsistency which the noble Earl brought against me in the commencement of his speech. He reminded your Lordships that upon a previous occasion he introduced a Bill giving three persons—he omitted to say that it was three persons of the diocese, not three persons of the parish—the right to prosecute a clergyman, without discretion on the part of the Bishop, and leaving, as the only protection against vexatious proceedings, the liability to pay costs in case of failure—a perfectly futile protection, inasmuch as the costs might be paid by a large Association. One of my objections to that measure was that, while parishioners had a legal right to

  23
  have the services of their church conducted according to the law of the Church, other persons who, although in the same diocese, were yet strangers to the locality interested, had neither the same grievance nor the same right to interfere. If the noble Earl's measure had been passed, any parishioner might have proceeded to harass and worry any clergyman in the same diocese without the discretion of the Bishop; and it is strange that the noble Earl, who has been the strongest advocate to-night of the liberties of the clergy, should then have been so anxious to withhold from the Bishop a discretionary power which would in reality be a great protection to the clergy. It seems to me I am quite consistent in maintaining now, as I did then, these two principles—that the persons who have a right to complain are the parishioners, and that the proper protection to give to the clergy is the discretion of the Bishop, and not the futile protection which results from the liability to pay costs. The noble Earl has paid me the very high and rare compliment of adopting a great deal of the language which I used on the occasion of our former unfortunate encounter. He has sought to show, in regard to the present Bill, that while it facilitated prosecutions on one side, it would at the same time open the door to reprisals from the other, and that we should not only have Low Churchmen prosecuting High Churchmen, but High Churchmen prosecuting Low Churchmen. I spent much time on the occasion to which I have alluded in speaking on this very point, and I am so pleased to find the noble Earl adopting in the present discussion the part which I then took that I can bear with equanimity the language which he has used in regard to myself. The noble Earl has accused me of having employed "unsavoury" language in addressing this House. I trust I have done nothing to merit the charge; but I can say that the noble Earl himself has used—not in this House, it is true, where he could have been answered—but in the heat and excitement of public meetings—language with regard to the Bishops, and in their absence, which some persons might think verging on the "unsavoury."
  THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY: Will the right rev. Prelate be good
  24
  enough to repeat the expressions to which he refers, and which he seems to regard as improper?
  THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH: I did not use the word "improper." What I said was that the noble Earl used language with respect to the Bishops which some persons might think verging on the "unsavoury." The noble Earl, for instance, described us as being "mealy-mouthed;" but I admit that was a small matter. He, however, went on to point out that we referred certain matters to a Committee—which, by the bye, were not referred to a Committee at all—and he was pleased to add that we did this in order to ascertain whether certain practices were or were not in accordance with the rubrics, we knowing perfectly well that they were not in accordance with the rubrics. The meaning of that is that we, knowing certain practices were opposed to the rubrics, affected to consider they were not, and were thus guilty of false pretence and hypocrisy. Now that I think is language which somewhat verges on the "unsavoury," and which, as a Bishop, I should be very sorry to use respecting the noble Earl. The noble Earl objected at great length this evening to the details of the Bill before your Lordships, and strongly protested against placing the Bishops in a judicial position, for which, he tells you, they are totally unfitted. The noble Earl goes even so far as to say that the better a Bishop is the less judicial his mind is likely to be. Well, I listened, I confess, to that statement of the noble Earl with some astonishment, because in a Bill relating to Ecclesiastical Courts and Registries, which was introduced in 1872 by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, on behalf of the noble Earl, who was then abroad, and which I must take as representing his mind, I find it provided that among the Judges of the Provincial and Diocesan Courts the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York shall each within his own Province be the chief Judge in the Diocesan Court, and each Bishop within his own diocese. Now, there are Bishops and Bishops, but the noble Earl tells us they are all entirely devoid of anything like a judicial mind, and yet he proposed, only two years ago, that all these unjudicial Bishops should be

  25
  Judges. The only inference I can draw from this is that—taking the noble Earl's own principle—that the better the Bishop the less fit he is to be a Judge—he has come to the conclusion that every Bishop was two years ago as good, but is now as bad as he can be. The noble Earl laid great stress upon the proposal that if a clergyman did not plead in reply to a statement of fact, he would be regarded as guilty. But if a clergyman does not plead in answer to the statutory declaration required in the Bill, he must be held to deny the fact or to admit it; and this is not like the ordinary plea of "Guilty" in a Criminal Court, as the noble Earl was pleased to say, for the clergyman by his silence will simply be held to have admitted the truth of a statement as to a matter of fact which is afterwards to be tried as a matter of Law. You must also bear in mind that the clergyman is protected by the discretion vested in the Bishop, and that he is not, in the second place, pronounced guilty in the same sense as an accused person in a Criminal Court, in which punishment follows the sentence. He will merely be told if he has done certain things, not to repeat them; and if he says he has not done those things, what possible harm, I should like to know, can the sentence do him? The effect of the sentence will simply be that the clergyman will be required to refrain from doing or saying certain things which he may or may not have said or done. The question whether this provision be wise or not still remains, but that is an entirely different one from that which the noble Earl sought to impress on your Lordships' attention. The noble Earl also dwelt on the severity of fining a man with £1,000 a-year £700 before he might have been found to have been guilty of the practices alleged against him. Now, the answer to that is that he will not be fined a single shilling pendente lite if only he does as a man of common loyalty ought to do—obey the sentence of the Court of Primary Instance until his appeal is decided. Yet it was in speaking of such a provision that the noble Earl felt it to be his duty to draw the moving and sad picture of a poor clergyman compelled to pay £700. If ever it should be my fortune to be a defendant in a Court presided over by the noble Earl, I hope I might appeal
  26
  to his sense of charity—when not dealing with Bishops—for a better measure of justice than has characterized his remarks this evening. He went on to tell us that the Bill, which aimed at certain practices, would not stop others to which he called your Lordships' attention. Now, as to the "other practices" which he so eloquently denounced, I will only say that I agree with every word which fell from him with respect to them. I do not believe it is possible to exaggerate the danger to the Church—and what is more, the danger to the character of the English nation—than the introduction into this country of the Roman practice of auricular confession. In saying that, I wish to abstain from using language which would be in the slightest degree offensive to the members of the Roman Catholic religion. I am sure they will pardon me when I tell them that I am as strongly opposed to having my church Romanized as they are to having theirs Protestantized. There was not a word, therefore, which the noble Earl uttered on that subject which does not find an echo in my heart; and in spite of all he has said against us I most heartily thank him for what has fallen from him on this point. But to what does the argument of the noble Earl amount? Simply to this—that a measure which is aimed against certain practices is to be rejected because it will not have the effect of repressing others. That is an argument against all legislation whatever. I have now dealt with some of the objections which have been urged against the Bill, but, in consideration of the time which I have been compelled to devote to answering the noble Earl's charge against myself, your Lordships will perhaps permit me to trespass on your attention a little longer while I say a few words as to the unhappy necessity for this legislation, and as to what the real evils are with which we have to deal at the present moment. Without entering into details, which will be better discussed in Committee, the questions which we have now to consider are—Is the proposed legislation necessary, and, if so, is the principle on which this House is asked to proceed sound or unsound? All the rest is matter of detail and machinery. Now, as to the necessity of this legislation, I frankly admit there is something anomalous, and even, per-

  27
  haps, dangerous, in cheapening and sharpening the processes of ecclesiastical procedure, when the law itself is in any respect doubtful, ambiguous, and uncertain. The natural and logical course of proceeding would be in the first place to let people know what the law is which they are expected to observe; and then, if the law were found to be defective, to amend and simplify it, and then to take strenuous measures for its enforcement. To cheapen ecclesiastical procedure before you reform and define the law may not tend to increase discipline, but to multiply litigation. In this instance, however, I contend we are under the unhappy necessity of proceeding more rapidly instead of waiting to some remote period for a complete reform of the law. I say this not merely because individual acts excite, on one side or another in the Church, dissatisfaction, but because there are clergymen who tell their congregations that, law or no law, they will not read the Athanasian Creed, and who, if they receive the admonition of their Bishop, say that they will send it to their lawyers. We are told that we should govern the Church by fatherliness. Now, I must be allowed to say there is something very one-sided in this cry for fatherliness from the Bishops when they meet with no filialness, and I should like to have some reciprocity. When a monition is to be flung back in my face, and I am to be told that I am "neither a gentleman nor a divine," and that "my conversion to Christianity is to be prayed for," I must say I should bike to see a little filialness on the part of those who are demanding this fatherliness. I honestly desire, as far as I can, to be fatherly towards these men, but when I hear this advice given to us I am reminded of the solitary instance in which a ruler attempted to govern in this fatherly fashion, and that his name was Eli, while his sons were Hophni and Phineas. Well, but will these men obey the decisions of the Courts? They say they will obey no decision of a secular Court, simply because it is secular. What are the words of a gentleman, a leader of this party, who favours us with a book every now and then, denouncing the tyranny and iniquity of the Bishops?—
  "That the Church of England is at present
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  in possession of no courts of law, free from the infection of secularity, which can be recognized by Catholics."
  But it might be expected that these men would obey the decision of a Spiritual Court or of a Synod. On the contrary, they say a clergyman is first a priest of the Catholic Church before he is a clergyman of the Church of England, and if he finds that anything is required of him which is opposed to what he considers to be, or is pleased to say, is Catholic usage, that his allegiance to his own Church is thereby dissolved, and he is not only free, but bound to disobey that Church and obey his own interpretation of what he calls Catholic usage. Now, as you cannot have a General Council sitting en permanence to decide disputes between incumbents and Bishops; if the incumbent is to take what he deems Catholic usage, and is to be its sole interpreter, it comes to this—that he is to do simply what he chooses. The same writer, speaking of a decided violation of the rubric, as he admits it to be—namely, the rubric which says that the Sacrament shall not be reserved, and he proposes that it shall be reserved—proceeds to say how this shall be dealt with—
  "We may in the first place appeal from the letter to the spirit of the English Church, disregard the written law, and cast ourselves on the unwritten instinct of the Catholic Church."
  What will be the condition of a parish in which the incumbent, in defiance of the complaints of the parishioners, casts himself on the instinct of the Catholic Church? We have heard a great deal about the tyranny of the Bishops. I ask whether there may not be such a thing as the tyranny of the incumbent over his parishioners? It is the fashion to sneer at the "aggrieved parishioner," who sometimes may be, and often is, an unreasonable and cantankerous animal; but the parishioner who walks into his parish church, and finds a man who has turned it, without faculty, leave, or licence, into the most absurd imitation, in his view, of a Roman Mass-house, and sees performed before his wife and children the full-blown service of the Roman Mass, with the only consolation that the incumbent is throwing himself on the stream of "Catholic tradition and usage," is a very aggrieved parishioner indeed; and as the law holds there is no wrong without a remedy, it is, I

  29
  think, incumbent on your Lordships to find some immediate remedy for this grossly outraged and aggrieved parishioner. When we find a clergyman in the city of Bath, at a meeting presided over by a genial and robust Archdeacon, standing up and saying that "incumbents are to be Bishops in their own church, and to be subject to no interference from any person whatever," it is high time to pass a law to meet such a state of things. There is a wide difference between a man's doing a thing which may be illegal, believing that there may be a great deal to be said for his own view of the law on the subject, and hoping to have the law reversed in his favour, and a man's saying that he will obey no law, and will do what pleases himself. No Church and no institution can safely continue to disregard open, deliberate, and avowed insurrection like that. And to stay your hand in putting down rebellion until you have reformed the law may result in this—that by the time you have reformed the law you may have no Church in which to enforce the law. I say, then, most reluctantly I am brought to the conviction that some legislation to arrest this defiant lawlessness is necessary. Therefore, I will vote for the second reading of this Bill; nevertheless, hoping that it will be largely modified in Committee, and believing that it is not required for the great majority of the clergy, who I know are loyal to the heart's core to their own Church, and who are sneered at and even detested for their loyalty by these extreme men. It is with great reluctance I would do anything that even appears to trench on the liberties of the loyal clergy—men whom I know to be as loyal to the Church as men can possibly be, and whose position I nevertheless believe to be unfortunate, although in some respects they have made it so themselves. I wish they had done that which they ought to have done a few years ago, when an unfortunate prosecution was brought to an unfortunate decision. If they had submitted under protest to what seemed to them to be bad law, and had then used all their energies to bring about a repeal of that law—in which I would heartily have aided them, as I would do to-morrow—and I know what bitter obloquy this would bring upon me—if they had done that they would have been in a far better position
  30
  now, and the Church would also have been in a far more peaceful and happier position. But those men got themselves into a false position from which I should be glad to see them extricated, as I hope they will be, by the reversal of that unintelligible judgment. I am happy at last to come round to a point of agreement with the noble Earl (the Earl of Shaftesbury). I agree with him that legislation of this kind will not touch the real root of the evil. What is the real root of the evil? It is that we have governed—or rather we are attempting to govern—the Church of England by obsolete law. The laws of the Church were passed more than 200 years ago. There was then distinctly a compromise between two great parties in the Church. The word "compromise" is written all over the face of the Anglican Prayer-book, and I rejoice in the fact. But that compromise has necessarily shifted its limits and its position in the 200 years that have passed since it was made; and the position in which we are now is this—that the rubrics of the Church, having been framed for a state of things existing 200 years ago, will not fit the present state of the country, just for this reason, that they did perfectly fit, or may be supposed to have perfectly fitted, the country 200 years ago. The more perfectly they suited the England of the Reformation the less likely are they to suit perfectly the England of the 19th century. Wherein lies the real difficulty? It is that for years past those obsolete laws, hard-binding the Church as they do in garments 200 years old, have been found to straiten and hamper the clergy in their most legitimate work in every direction; and the consequence has been that the clergy have long been obliged to set aside the rubrics here, and that with what I call the wise connivance of the Bishops. When the clergy have consulted me about some small deflection they have made from the rubric that was necessary in some part of their work I have said to them, "Do it and don't tell me of it." That means that the law is so unsuitable that you can neither fully enforce it nor fully obey it. The Bishop has before him three courses. He may enforce the law all round, or relax the law all round, or he may select certain portions of the law and enforce them. To enforce the rubrics on everyone equally all round is an

  31
  impossibility, and the Bishop would be simply mad if he tried to do it. On the other hand, to relax all the rubrics would be to subvert all discipline and authority, and to create chaos and confusion; while the former course would produce tyranny and dead-lock. If you are to avoid these evils, then, you must have that very discretion of the Bishops which the noble Earl so strongly condemns. But you must have some such discretion as long as you have a human system of laws to deal with. No human system of law can be self-acting. There is only one system of laws which is self-acting; and He who appointed that self-acting system of laws, with its occasionally severe incidents, has another world in which to set right the seeming inequalities and hardships which arise in this world. There is no human system of law but will require a great degree of discretion in those who administer it. If, then, neither general interference nor general relaxation is practicable, and if it is dangerous to extend too far the necessary discretion of the administrators of the law, does not this point to the need of a thorough and searching Church reform? [The Earl of SHAFTESBURY: Hear, hear!] I am glad to have the approval of the noble Earl, who would not, perhaps, altogether agree with me in the direction he would take, but who, advocating greater laxity for those whom he so eloquently represents, would, I hope, in common justice extend that laxity to those from whom he most differs—always excepting the Bench of Bishops. You need some alteration of the laws of the Church—to re-make, in fact, the compromise made at the Reformation. You need, above all things, to give the Church some power of internal self-regulation as to these minute details of rubrics. The difficulty of the Church has been the being obliged to come to Parliament for the smallest alteration in the rubrics and canons; so that things have remained unaltered which her Synods would in a few days or weeks have altered from time to time to meet the varying exigencies of the moment. I am far indeed, from desiring independence of the State, but I desire the power possessed by the sister Establishment, the Scotch Kirk—the power of self-adjustment that prevents the constant breaking out of bickerings and strife, tearing the Church asunder. Representative
  32
  assemblies—the representation of the laity being as necessary as that of the clergy—should have the power of fixing such re-adjustments as shall suit the varying exigencies of the Church's position and work, subject to any veto from Parliament you choose, but treated with a generous and hearty confidence. The good sense and good feeling of the great majority of the English laity and clergy, left to themselves in the free play of such assemblies, would very soon find out a modus vivendi, a happy solution of these unhappy differences which, wanting some such solution, must continue from time to time to rend the Church, distract the attention of Parliament, and seriously strain the tie that binds together the Church and the State.
  LORD EBURYsaid, he should support the second reading of the Bill. If the right rev. Prelate who had just sat down was gratified on hearing his own remarks adopted by the noble Earl who preceded him, how great must his (Lord Ebury's) satisfaction be in listening to the right rev. Prelate repeating all his arguments, showing the absolute necessity for a reform of the canons and rubrics of the Church? He would remind their Lordships that some years ago he himself had introduced a measure for their revision, which, however, did not find favour, but which, if adopted, would have prevented many of the evils now complained of. He hoped that the introduction of the present measure would bring to light many of the difficulties that now existed, and by showing where the shoe pinched, compel such a revision of the laws of the Church, and in some respects of the Prayer Book, which placed impediments in the way of the free working of the Church.
  THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGHsaid, that the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Peterborough) had to a great extent thrown over the principle and object of the Bill when he asserted that what was required was a thorough and efficient reform of the Church. If that was his decided opinion, the right rev. Bench were beginning at the wrong end, and were proposing a remedy by means of the most imperfect legislation. This Bill, if the reforms so eloquently sketched out were actually required, put the cart before the horse, and would initiate a confessedly imperfect policy

  33
  instead of striking at the root of the evil. The two most rev. Primates had drawn a fervid picture in order to show that a Bill was necessary, and therefore this Bill; and one of them (the Archbishop of York) had defended it as in conformity with the Report of the Lower House of Convocation in 1869. That Report, however, recommended, not the creation of a new Court, but a reform of the existing Consistorial and Diocesan Courts, so that they should be made efficient for administering the law for remedying abuses of this kind. That was a most important distinction, because under the Bill a third Court was to be established, and a Court of almost unknown powers. The objections to that course had been so fully and ably stated by the noble Earl (the Earl of Shaftesbury) that it was not necessary for him to do more than allude to them in passing. In his opinion, it would be a cause of the gravest apprehension, and even of danger, that a Court should be constituted in each diocese, as was proposed in this Bill, with unlimited power of dealing with cases of the most difficult and complicated kind—such as those which were certain to arise out of the manner of conducting the services and ritual of the Church. How were such cases to be presented to and argued in those Courts? They all knew that cases of a similar kind had been investigated by the highest tribunals, and had engaged the attention of the most learned men who practised in those Courts; and they knew, too, what time the causes had occupied, and what trouble and expense they had involved. Could it be supposed that a different state of things would exist in the proposed Bishops' Courts? Why, in those Courts these difficult cases would be decided by a Judge having no legal training, assisted only by his Chancellor, who might or might not be a legal man. But, even supposing that those Courts could be regarded and recognized as adequate tribunals, what would happen? Courts which expounded law to a certain extent, made law by making precedents. They were to have 24 such Courts—who might, perhaps, give 24 different decisions—and he could conceive no greater state of confusion than would arise from such a diversity. Differences of religious conviction prevailed among clergy and laity,
  34
  and in that respect Bishops were like other men—they had their own proclivities and their own religious convictions; and who could doubt that the decisions of the Court would be influenced by the particular bias of the Bishop's mind in respect of the question on which he had to pronounce judgment? Again, the clergy who practised those performances in the churches which were the subject of reprehension were earnest men, who were not likely to be satisfied with the decisions of the Bishops' Courts, and it was idle to suppose that they would not carry those decisions by way of appeal from Court to Court, backed by their own funds or by funds contributed for the purpose. Then, after a time, the jurisdiction of those Courts would be found so unsatisfactory, and their decisions so uncertain, that it would be found necessary to transmit the cases brought before them direct to the Superior Court. So that it was idle to suppose that litigation would be either checked or cheapened by this Bill. Their Lordships could not fail to recoggize the importance of the subject, and that being so, he would urge upon the most rev. Primates the desirability of their not proceeding with this hasty legislation, but that they would rather be content with the steps they had taken and the expression of opinion that would be elicited by the second reading of the Bill, that the subject was one which required to be dealt with. The Bill bore evidence on the face of it of having been drawn in a hasty and ill-advised manner—and, indeed, the most rev. Prelates had invited their Lordships to consider Amendments which they were prepared to recommend in its provisions, thus acknowledging and apologizing for its failings and short-comings. The most rev. Primates had brought before their Lordships' House the great and glaring abuses to which they desired to apply a remedy, but he was strongly of opinion that a matter of such great importance should be taken up by the responsible Government of the country. His noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack had completed the Herculean task of framing a system of judicature for Ireland and Scotland, and it would be a light and trifling task to him so to amend the procedure of the existing Ecclesiastical Courts as to make them available for the purposes sought to be

  35
  obtained by the Bill. He appealed to Her Majesty's Government seriously to consider this question, with a view to producing a measure which he had no doubt would meet with the sanction of their Lordships' House.
  EARL NELSONsaid, that their Lordships were placed in this anomalous position—that they were asked to consider, not the Bill which they were called upon to read a second time, but a Bill which was to be largely amended at a later stage. The most rev. Primate (the Archbishop of York) had deliberately stated that the Bill was framed on the lines of the Report of Convocation in 1869; but certainly, according to that scheme, a single parishioner could not set the law in motion.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORKexplained that he said there were very few points in the Bill which had not been deliberately considered by Convocation and reported on in 1869.
  EARL NELSONsaid, he was under the impression that the most rev. Primate had asserted that the provision respecting the one parishioner had been assented to by Convocation. That body in reality thought the law ought not to be set in motion by a fewer number than three parishioners, who were, moreover, to be communicants of the Church of England. He very much doubted whether the Amendments which were to be proposed would meet the difficulties which must arise. At all events, he hoped considerable time would be allowed to elapse before the Bill went into Committee, in order that the Convocation of the Northern Province might have an opportunity of expressing its opinion on the merits of the measure. It was, he admitted, essential that the existing state of resistance to authority should be put down; but, at the same time, it should be remembered that the lawlessness was caused to a great extent by a want of cordiality and affection between the Bishops and the clergy; he was very much of opinion that if the Bishops had been more in the habit of taking counsel with their clergy, a better state of things would have prevailed than existed at present. He was justified in this belief by what had occurred in his own diocese of Salisbury, where, owing to the wise rule of Bishop Denison, the loving rule of Bishop Hamilton, and under their present Diocesan, who had called together
  36
  his clergy and laity in a diocesan synod, no such lawlessness was found to exist. Again, much of this lawlessness was more apparent than real; for many of the faults which were now imputed to the clergy, arose from their earnest desire to regulate their service according to the Prayer Book—in doing which they probably oft-times misinterpreted the law. It was true, there had arisen a new sect—with which he had no sympathy—which, instead of appealing to the usages of the early Church, was deliberately trying to introduce Mediævalism into the Church of England. What, then, ought to be done, was to ascertain what practices were legally permissible, instead of instituting a kind of Star Chamber in our anxiety to put them down. Certainly, we ought not to wish to create a schism. If the Bench of Bishops had endeavoured to obtain the confidence of the clergy, he believed that confidence would have been won. If they had told them what they were going to propose, and had laid their proposed legislation before the two Houses of Convocation, they would probably have found no difficulty in obtaining their co-operation in providing a remedy for admitted abuses. The way in which the Bishops had acted in bringing forward this measure had tended to aggravate the minds of the clergy. 1st. By an attack by two of the Bishops through the curates upon the incumbents. 2nd. By bringing out an abortive measure, just announced in the columns of The Times. 3rd. By refusing at first to put off the Bill before the meeting of Convocation. He regretted, also, that the most rev. Primate (the Archbishop of Canterbury) should have brought forward the question of the "altar card"—a question which had nothing to do with the measure before the House, and its introduction was calculated only to cause feelings of irritation—and had referred with approval to the action of the Bishop of Durham in his opening address on the introduction of the Bill. The passing of this Bill would make the clergy think that every man's hand was against them—that none of them would be safe from the action of the Bill. He was in favour of giving discretion to the Bishops, but not until some rules were made, clearly defining how that discretion should be exercised; otherwise, a great deal of confusion and heart-burn-

  37
  ing would be caused by the conflict between the decisions of different Bishops. What was more likely to ruffle the feelings of the clergy than the enforcement of the powers which the Bill would give to promoters? A man who had bought merely a pig-sty in a parish might disturb the whole parish by starting proceedings against the incumbent, and before his charge was heard he might go off to America. Of what avail would it be to the incumbent if, at the last, he succeeded in getting an order that that man should pay the costs of the inquiry? On the other hand, official objections would actually pre-judge the case. If he (Earl Nelson) read the Bill rightly, a clergyman under it would be subject to punishment for an act of his predecessor in placing something in the church which might be declared to be illegal, or of a churchwarden who refused to remove things which had been ordered to be removed. If this Bill passed, the clergy would be liable to proceedings against them in three different Courts—the old Consistory Court, the Court under the Church Discipline Act, and the Court under this Bill. If the Bill were passed hurriedly now, when the minds of the clergy were ruffled on the subject, it would be impossible to carry it out—because, to carry out a measure of this sort, it was necessary that the clergy should be in favour of it. He believed that, with the aid of the Report of the Committee of Convocation of 1869, the old Consistory Court could be rehabilitated in such a manner as to make it a simple, speedy, and inexpensive means of dealing with the matters to which this Bill related. It did not appear to him that in a matter of this kind speedy legislation was absolutely necessary, and he therefore implored their Lordships not to hurry through a Bill which might possibly create more evils than it proposed to remedy.
  THE EARL OF HARROWBYsaid, that the advice of the two noble Lords who had preceded him was, that they should wait and do nothing. Everybody admitted that a great and pressing evil existed—that there was a cry throughout the country that something should be done; everybody had said for years past that the Bishops were blameable because they did not take more active steps in the matter. He thought the very last charge that could be brought against the
  38
  Bishops was that they were now interfering precipitately. It was said that they should have consulted their clergy, and checked these proceedings by adopting a firm, but "paternal" course towards them. Why, what had the Bishops been doing for the last 20 or 30 years, but waiting and paternally remonstrating? The Bishops in the Upper House of Convocation had passed the most solemn condemnation on the practices in question, and in the strongest and most feeling manner had urged their clergy to abandon those practices. And what had been the result hitherto? Their "paternal" advice, as it was called, had been laughed at, and consequently there was a loud and universal cry that some remedy must be proposed; and when at last the Bishops came forward, under the conviction of an overwhelming necessity, every kind of objection was raised. The Bishops were compelled to confess that they were powerless to do what was necessary, and asked that more powers should be confided to them—and they were immediately met with the cry that they were tyrants. The Church did not exist simply for the benefit of the clergyman, and to enable him to indulge his whims with an immunity that was denied to his parishioners. Yet some of these clergymen snapped their fingers' at their congregations, as though nothing but the whims of the clergy was of the least consequence, and drove their congregations either to dissenting meeting houses, or to attend services that were condemned by the highest authorities. It was the habit of Englishmen to obey the law, and there ought to be no exception from this principle in the clergy more than in any other order of the people. It was no use fighting a battle over dead clauses—clauses already abandoned by the proposers of the Bill. He would rather express his thanks to the right rev. Bench for having come forward manfully and in a body to give the House an opportunity of dealing with this serious difficulty. Our churches were more and more departing from those of our ancestors and from those of our childhood, and we had now to go into gewgaw buildings covered with all sorts of ornaments in imitation of the churches of the Middle Ages. One of the great difficulties of the case was that when any attempt was made to check the growing

  39
  evils of Ritualism, even the moderate men of the High Church party threw their shield over extreme practices in which they did not themselves take part, and complained, without any reason, that they also were attacked. Herein lay the great difficulty of dealing with the matter. He hoped the Amendments which were to be proposed from the right rev. Bench would meet the chief objections that had been raised to the Bill as it stood. The great thing was that there should be an easy means of complaint to the Bishop, that there should be a speedy hearing, and that he should hear the matter in open Court. The best security that there would be a wise discretion exercised was publicity, and there was every reason to hope that, with a legal assessor at his side, the Bishop would be able to draw a distinction between minor matters which did not call for interference and serious departures from the principles and practice of the Church of England. For himself, he thought that having before them the practices of the Church of England during three centuries; and, admitting with the Ritual Commission the force of practice in the Church, there ought to be no difficulty in providing for uniformity and propriety of worship.
  LORD HATHERLEYexpressed an earnest hope that the Bill would become law in the course of the present Session. They had heard much of the ruffled state of the minds of the clergy—but he should like to refer to the ruffled state of the minds of the laity. He had enjoyed agreeable intercourse with men of all parties in the Church; but on two occasions only, and then by accident, had he been compelled to join in observances of the kind now under discussion, and he had then been a witness of the perplexity, annoyance, and pain which were caused to many worshippers by gross departures from the services given in the Book of Common Prayer. While the minds of the worshippers should have been absorbed in the performance of the highest acts of religious devotion—when their minds should have been filled with peace and goodwill to all mankind—they were disturbed and irritated by the introduction of hymns not in accordance either with the directions or with the doctrines of the Prayer Book, and the sense of which it was sometimes impossible to follow. When
  40
  strange customs like these were set up it was high time to apply a remedy. The very essence of "common prayer" was that it should be prayer in which all were agreed, as set forth in the preface to the Prayer Book, and nothing should be introduced that was not therein contained. The Act of Uniformity was conceived in a spirit of entire charity and love. Every effort was made to secure that prayer should be at once as comprehensive and as simple as possible. Under the rubrics, doubts that might arise as to the directions given might be settled by a reference to the Bishop. But, instead of the Bishop continuing to hold this paternal position, it had become common for young clergymen, within the last 30 or 40 years, to say, "If he can force us, well and good; if not, we shall do as we please." One of the clergymen who had been examined before the Ritual Commissioners assured them that he had made no changes in the services at his church which were not made at the desire of the congregation; but it turned out that his congregation were not his parishioners, and he (Lord Hatherley) drew the inference that the parishioners had been driven away from the church by the practices which had been introduced, and their places supplied by a number of persons who sympathized in these practices. The number of clergymen who pursued the courses complained of was, he was happy to think, exceedingly small, but then it was an increasing number; for while the large parish churches, such as those of St. Margaret's, Westminster, St. James's, St. George's Hanover Square, or St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, were, he believed, totally unaffected by the particular species of dis-obedience to the law, against which the Bill was aimed—because in them the parochial system was well carried out—there were churches whose congregations, drawn from different quarters, felt no interest in that system, so that the clergyman found no difficulty, in large towns like London, in surrounding himself with a body of sympathizers. He knew a church, built by a munificent Member of the other House, which that hon. Gentleman was prevented from attending owing to the practices in question being carried out to the fullest extent. Now, that was a state of things which surely called for some remedy.

  41
  He denied the inconsistencies that had been alleged in the judgments in ecclesiastical causes which had been delivered within a short time of each other. In reply to the noble Earl who had spoken last (Earl Nelson) he might be permitted to say that the judgment to which he alluded had been most carefully considered, that it was the law of the land, and that so long as it continued to be so, it ought to be obeyed. If any of the clergy thought the law, thus declared, unjust or defective they might seek to have it altered by all lawful means; but where it existed it was their duty as good citizens to obey it. In saying they would not obey the law, some clergymen took, in his opinion, a most extravagant view. Was it not one of their highest obligations, he would ask, as citizens, to render that obedience? If everyone were permitted to act in accordance with his own peculiar doctrines, how could those great works to which the noble Earl opposite and the noble Earl below him had that evening directed attention ever be achieved? He trusted the time would arrive—and would arrive shortly—when the clergy of the Church would rise to a higher tone of mind than that which led them to dissipate their energies in disputes about ceremonies, and that they would become duly impressed with the work that they had to perform against sin and evil, and seek how they might live to unite against the common enemy. They had a great work to perform—a work which could only be accomplished by the action of an united body of clergy and laity, acting in accordance with the law which had been sanctioned by the practice of 200 years, and which he trusted would endure for all time. He trusted that many of those who now resisted the law, would some day remember the dying thought of one of the saints of our Church (Hooker) who said—"I am meditating on the beautiful order and obedience of the holy angels, without which there would not be peace in heaven; would it were so on earth!"
  THE MARQUESS OF BATHwas prepared to admit the necessity for some legislation on that subject, although he should like to know what that legislation was to be. A right rev. Prelate had told them that a series of Amendments was to be proposed in Committee which would practically meet the objections
  42
  taken to the Bill by the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Shaftesbury). They were virtually asked, therefore, to assent to the second reading of a measure the provisions of which were not before them. The evils sought to be remedied by the Bill were the want of discipline in the Church, consequent on the length and expense of the hearing of cases before the present tribunals; the want of obedience to the law on the part of the clergy; and the want of uniformity in the services of the Church, whereby the feelings and even prejudices of congregations were offended. Now, ecclesiastical offences might be stated as being of three kinds—they were against morals, against doctrine, and against ritual. Of all the three, the offences against ritual were clearly the least important; and yet it was with them alone that the measure exclusively dealt. Ritual was only the sign of doctrine—it was, as it were, but the shibboleth of party; and they might make ritual signify one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. As to obedience to the law, which the clergy were called upon to observe, he maintained that the Bill did not in any way enforce obedience to the law. What it did was to make the clergy obey the Bishops, while it left the Bishops perfectly free. He denied that the measure would promote uniformity; it would rather promote that most dangerous heresy, the doctrine of Papal infallibility. That doctrine was defended in the Church of Rome on the ground of the uniformity it produced. But in the present case they would have infallibility without uniformity. They would have 24 different infallible authorities, leading to wide divergences in different dioceses, according to the views and feelings of the particular Bishop. They proposed to call on the clergy to give implicit obedience to an undefined law—a law resting on the judgment of a fluctuating tribunal appointed at the will of a Minister. In the same voice that they were called upon to obey the law, the clergy were told that the law was obsolete and impracticable; yet under that law they were placed at the mercy and discretion of the Bishops; and the Bishops themselves were, under the Bill, practically placed in the invidious position of being both prosecutors and judges. Obedience to the Bishop was substituted for obedience to the law,

  43
  and in the name of repressing lawlessness greater lawlessness was created by-making everything depend on the arbitrary power of the Bishops. It might be said that the episcopal order could be trusted with that power; but the Bill implied that the clergy could not be trusted with liberty; and if that were so, how could right rev. Prelates be trusted with commands, being, as they were, selected by the Minister of the day, and not always for their skill in governing or in dealing with men? The Convocation of Canterbury, and the clergy wherever they had had an opportunity, had expressed an opinion against the Bill, which would create difference instead of uniformity. With regard to one objection that had been raised, he would venture to propose a remedy. Instead of allowing one or two persons in a congregation, who might be incited by societies, to initiate proceedings, he would suggest that the power should be confided to a majority or large minority of the congregation, represented by the churchwarden, who, with the minister, should go before the Bishop, who should give his decision in open Court, subject to appeal to a proper tribunal of ecclesiastical Judges. He thought that a proposition of that kind, as being least likely to give offence to any party in the Church, would be a better settlement on that point than the proposals contained in this Bill.
  LORD SELBORNE: My Lords, in the eloquent and remarkable speeches of the noble Earl (the Earl of Shaftesbury) and the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Peterborough) many large and important topics were introduced, which, I think, were in great measure extraneous to the subject now before the House, and on some of which I would rather not commit myself without necessity. Into those questions I do not propose to enter. I must, however, emphatically dissent from the noble Duke (the Duke of Marlborough), who objected to the introduction of this Bill by the most rev. Primate—as though he were a mere private Member—and argued that such a Bill ought only to proceed from the Government. I can imagine what the noble Duke would have thought of a Bill on this subject introduced by a Government not composed of those united with him in political opinion; but I must suppose, that he would have
  44
  been more lenient to one proceeding from his political friends. I do not myself say that there are no circumstances which could justify Government in introducing a measure on such a subject; but from no quarter could it have emanated with so much propriety and authority as from the most rev. Primate—more especially when he was understood as authorized to speak to a great extent on behalf of the right rev. Bench. Had laymen taken on themselves to initiate this legislation, the many and formidable objections urged to-night would have been multiplied tenfold; and the clerical objectors, who are the strongest opponents of the Bill, would have asked with considerable appearance of reason why the Bishops, the rulers of the Church, did not propose legislation, if legislation were necessary? Whatever difficulties there may be in the subject—and they are undoubtedly great—whatever criticisms friend or foe may offer, your Lordships will not only do justice to the most rev. Primate's purity of purpose and simple desire to perform a plain duty, but will make allowance for the inherent difficulties of the matter, in judging of those provisions of the Bill which may appear most questionable. Some of these are details on which it is not necessary or proper that I should now dwell. I reserve till the Committee my opinion on such points as those relating to alterations in the fabric of the church and to the cathedrals, and even the question how far judgment should be executed pendente lite; but I am bound to say that some of the objections urged on that point are founded on a very narrow acquaintance with the present principles and practice of the law. Not only is the general rule laid down in the Judicature Act of last Session that the judgment of all the Superior Courts shall be executed pending an appeal, unless the Court pronouncing that judgment, or the Court of Appeal, shall make an exception in any particular case; but the same has been down to this time the settled rule of the Court of Chancery—to say nothing of the practice of any other tribunals—and that Court deals with an amount of property greater than that dealt with by all the other tribunals put together. The principle therefore is not new, and provided the judgment so to be executed is obtained in a satisfactory

  45
  way, I am not indisposed to accede to the proposal. I am not sure that I should regard it, like the right rev. Bench, as a vital provision of the measure; but the fact that they do so regard it inclines me to entertain it favourably, knowing as I do that it is not contrary to the general principles or analogy of the law. As to the fear expressed by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Bath) and others that the Bishop would become a sort of Pope, and that we should have twenty-four Infallibilities and, consequently, as many laws, I do not think the Bill could have that effect. It must be remembered that an appeal lies to the Archbishop. There are, indeed, two Archbishops; and it is theoretically conceivable that, were no use made of the power of sending these questions to the highest Court of Appeal, there might be divergences between the two Courts; but there is hardly likely to be such a general and ready acquiescence in all the dioceses of the twenty-four Bishops, considering the keen interest felt in such matters, as to make it probable that there would be no appeals to the Archbishops' Courts, and to the highest Court of Appeal, which would tend to remove those differences. The noble Marquess used language from which persons ignorant of his real opinions might suppose that he wished to dispense with the government of Bishops altogether; for if a Bishop is to do anything, I suppose he must, to bear out his name, exercise some kind of supervision. If the argument of the noble Marquess meant anything it amounted to this—that while each clergyman, because he is a clergyman, is to do everything he pleases, a Bishop, because he is also a clergyman, is to have no power of control. But, surely, the possibility of some divergence in the exercise of the power and control sought to be obtained, is a less evil than the far greater divergence which must exist under the system so advocated and recommended. The noble Marquess said that there was, at all events, one doctrine held by a foreign communion, which would never be accepted even by extreme Ritualists, and that is the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. But there is one doctrine which might possibly result from the views expressed by the noble Marquess—and I am sometimes tempted to think that it is a doctrine held by some of those clergy whose proceedings have
  46
  rendered this legislation necessary—namely, that every clergyman ought to to be his own Pope: and, if so, it does not seem to me that the doctrine of Infallibility is after all so inaccessible to the extreme Ritualist. Those who have rendered this legislation necessary really do appear to take this kind of line—they habitually put what they think proper to describe as the law of the Church against all other authority whatsoever, especially that of the law of the land: and then, as often as the law of the Church pronounces itself against them, they set up against it every possible impediment which the law of the land can furnish them with. Well, I, for one, am content that the Bishops should have some authority in the Church in-trusted to them; and the real question seems to me to be, how far the present Bill offers the best mode of making that authority felt within proper limits; and whether that object could not be better secured by some more extensive Amendments than those explained this evening by the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of York). It may be within the recollection of your Lordships that when the Bill was introduced, I ventured to throw out, for the consideration of the right rev. Prelates, whether means might not be devised of obtaining legal decisions of doubtful questions in a manner which would command the assent of really loyal clergymen, between whom and those who set all law at defiance I drew a great distinction. In drawing that distinction, I made use of an expression which seems to have been misunderstood in reference to some recent decisions. I did not mean to say anything whatever as to the probability of a successful attempt being made to obtain a reversal of those decisions from the tribunal that pronounced them on the part of any persons who might be accused. What I said was, that on account of the unfortunate circumstance, which the tribunal had no means of controlling, that there had not been argument on both sides, it was impossible to deny that those clergymen might have honestly persuaded themselves that had it been otherwise the decision might have been different, and that they might have retained practices which they had honestly adopted, because they believed it to be still possible that the ultimate decision, after argument, might still be different.

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  I never expressed any opinion on the question whether the tribunal would, or would not, hold itself absolutely bound by what had taken place, and still less as to the possibility of any new view being presented to it which would lead to new conclusions; I only drew a broad distinction between clergymen who defied the law, and clergymen who believed themselves to be obeying the law, and only hesitated to accept a decision, pronounced under those particular circumstances, as necessarily final and conclusive. To this class of men, whether their opinions or the advice on which they are acting be right or wrong, I was unable to impute any wilful violation of law. Having said so much, I wish now to observe on those provisions of the Bill which I confess I could desire to see altered. The 8th clause requires that there should be in every case a "representation" made to the Bishop, which is in substance an accusation or charge making the whole proceedings litigious and judicial, and I think unnecessarily so. I was very much struck by the reference made by the most rev. Prelate who introduced the Bill to the Declaration as to the Service of the Church which is prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer. In my opinion, the best mode of proceeding would be that which adhered most closely to the spirit and substance of that part of the existing law of the Church; bearing in mind that the object is not to alter the law of the Church, but to enforce it. Now the function which, according to that Declaration, the Bishop has to discharge is administrative and directory—it is not judicial. The three great principles in that Declaration are these—first, that when doubts and diversities arise as to the proper mode of interpreting or putting in practice anything contained in the Book of Common Prayer, the Bishop may be appealed to, and he may by his discretion—mark, "by his discretion"—make order for the removal of those doubts. It appears to me that we shall be going on the true lines of the existing law and intention of the Church, if we set in motion machinery strictly consistent with that principle. But there is also this other principle—that no such order of the Bishop "shall be contrary to anything contained in this Book;" so that a clergyman who knows or believes it to
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  be contrary to the Book of Common Prayer is really under no conscientious obligation to obey; and the third principle is that if "the Bishop be in doubt, then he may send for the resolution thereof to the Archbishop." For my part, I think we ought to act upon those three principles. The Bishop need not wait for a charge to be preferred by a churchwarden or other person, but should be enabled to act on his own responsibility in his administrative capacity, when he believes that the directions of the Prayer Book are not properly observed, or that anything is being done which is not authorized by it. In such case he should be authorized proprio motu to issue his monition, directing the clergyman to do one thing or not to do another. And I would suggest that after the lapse of a limited time, if the clergyman did not signify to the Bishop that he conscientiously believed those directions or some part of them to be invalid, or contrary to law, he should be bound by the monition until it was revoked or declared to be invalid; but that, if he did within that time signify such an objection, he should not be bound, till a decision on the question of law should have been pronounced, in accordance with the Bishop's view, by a competent Court. I think it would also be a very prudent plan to give a limited time to the Bishop, to the clergyman, or to any parishioner, to appeal to the Archbishop's Court for a declaration as to the validity or otherwise of any such monition by a short and inexpensive process, and thus to raise the question of law only, whether the monition is binding or not. I would also suggest that there should be a power of appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal in all such cases. The next suggestion I have to make may be an impracticable one; but nevertheless I will submit it to your Lordships. It is that if no costs were awarded on either side, this would have a great effect in keeping the expenses within a moderate limit, unless there were a large public purse behind one party or the other. After much deliberation I have felt it my duty to submit these suggestions to the consideration of the House. Nevertheless, if they should fail to meet with your Lordships' approval, I shall not, on that account, be unwilling to concur in any reasonable settlement of this question,

  49
  which in your Lordships' judgment may be more satisfactory.
  THE EARL OF LIMERICKsaid, he regretted very much that the most rev. Primate, when he introduced the Bill, should have made statements which were calculated to prejudice their Lordships' decision, and which gave to the Bill the aspect of a party measure. Surely it was injudicious to introduce questions which were not at all appropriate to the subject of the Bill. The sweeping condemnation pronounced by the most rev. Primate the other evening on the subject of altar-cards had given pain to many of the clergy. It was said that on one of these cards was a prayer containing invocations to the Holy Virgin and the Saints. Since then, however, the most rev. Primate acknowledged that this was not wholly true in the full acceptation of the word "invocation." It could be shown from the writings of the most esteemed Anglican Divines since the Reformation that the Church of England sanctioned the paying of reverence to saints and angels. It was said that among the clergy there was a state of lawlessness which did not exist among any other class of people in this country—that the clergy were equally regardless of the law and of monitions of their Bishops. The fact, however, was that, owing to contradictory judgments on questions such as this Bill related to, it was difficult for clergymen to know what the law was on some matters. The High Church clergy had not been lawless as had been represented. They thought it hard to be accused of acting in violation of their ordination vows when those of another party were allowed to disregard the plainest laws of the Church as to daily service and weekly Communion. He believed the Bishops would excite a great deal of ill-feeling against themselves by enforcing this measure, because the steps they might take would be attributed to personal feeling. One side would accuse them of doing too little, and the other side of doing too much. He regretted that the measure had been introduced at this particular time. Peace, he thought, would have been much better promoted by seeking to unite those who differed on minor matters, in great works worthy of all their energies, and calculated to carry forth the great objects which Churchmen of all shades of opinion
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  should rejoice to accomplish. It would detract from and not promote the peace of the Church, that decisions should be given which would add to the embarrassment, already sufficient, in defining clearly the doctrine of the Church, and in enforcing the observance of rubrics, some of which had become obsolete. In his opinion, a great cause of the unsatisfactory state of things was the numerical weakness of the Episcopal Bench. What was needed was more Bishops, increased activity on the part of the diocesan synods, and a larger representation of the parochial clergy in Convocation. In these ways clergy would be able to make their wishes known, and a good understanding might be expected to be brought about. It was said that there were, many clergymen who desired only to be a law unto themselves; but for his part he believed that if the law in regard to rites and ceremonies were distinctly laid down by an authority like Convocation, it would be found that but few clergymen would refuse to submit to it. At present the law was in an unsettled, contradictory state, and the Courts that now and then pronounced upon it were in reality legislating.
  THE EARL OF SHREWSBURYsaid, that though he was in favour of the principle of the Bill, he disliked it in its present form. He thought that the Bill as it stood gave excessive powers to the Bishops, but hoped that it would be so modified in Committee as to make it a measure which the country would welcome.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, it is easy to see from the empty state of the benches that it is well understood there will be no opposition to the second reading of this Bill. It is felt, no doubt, that to resist the second reading of a Bill introduced by the most rev. Primate and backed by all the authority of the Episcopal Bench would be inconsistent with the spirit which it is always the pleasure of this House to exhibit towards that Bench, and would, at the same time, be treating an important subject in a manner quite unequal to its claims upon our attention. Speaking on behalf of the Government, I have to say that we do not oppose the second reading of the Bill. At the same time we do not hold ourselves responsible for its introduction. We are not responsible for the selection of this par-

  51
  ticular moment for the moving of the question. Nor can we admit, what a noble Duke (the Duke of Marlborough) contended early in the evening, that it properly falls to Government to deal with subjects of this kind. Surely, if there be any duty which the Episcopal Bench has to discharge, it must be to take the initiative in a matter specially relating to the government of the Church. My Lords, no one can say that this Bill has been introduced without a cause. Whatever the difficulties may be which surround the subject, the lawlessness which a certain portion of the clergy have exhibited certainly calls for legislation, if legislation can be discovered of a kind which can check that lawlessness. I think an error has been made by the most rev. Prelates in assuming that these lawless feelings are shared very largely by the clergy of the Church. I believe the conspicuousness of the cases in which they occur is quite out of proportion to the number and influence of the clergymen implicated. But although the number of clergymen who act in contravention of the law is, I believe, extremely small, no one can deny that the lawlessness does exist; and it is difficult to condemn it in language which is too strong if you only consider the nature of the offence. Yet, when speaking of the acts of those clergymen, it is impossible to forget that which is attested by all who know either them or the sphere of their work—that in self-denial, activity, intelligence, in sacrificing everything for the cause they believe to be true, they are second to none and equalled by few among the clergy of the Established Church. Their moral excellence must not, however, be permitted to blind us to the political evils of the course which they pursue. It is not merely that they offend against the rights of their congregations, that they drive from many churches those who who have a right to attend them; they do much worse—they excite bitter feelings on the part of persons who never see their ministrations, but who draw from them the inference that there is an influence in the Church of England tending towards that Church from which three centuries ago she separated. The feelings of the pious portion of the community are aroused in that way, and the Church loses in their affections and in its stability in the hearts of the people.
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  But while I fully admit that the most rev. Primate has good reason to move in this matter and to try what legislation can do with respect to it, it is at the same time, I think, impossible not to be struck—and this is a consideration which weighs much with the Government—by the extreme difficulties by which such legislation is surrounded. What, in the first place, are the points with which the most rev. Primate proposes to deal? If you compare with the offences against which this Bill is meant to guard the other offences which it leaves untouched, you will find that the latter are those in reference to which the feelings of the country are most strongly excited. Nothing, for instance, has been felt so deeply as the idea which has gone abroad that confession is being encouraged in our English families in a way in which it has never been before, and especially encouraged among those who are most impressionable—the wives and daughters of English Churchmen. Now, that being so, I do not see in this Bill a single clause which will in any degree diminish the danger which is so keenly felt in connection with this subject. Again, the most rev. Primate called our attention the other evening to the use which was made of altar cards, and actually produced one, which he laid upon the Table; but I am not aware that there is any one clause in his Bill which will prevent those practices. The same may be said of those Penny Rituals to which your Lordships' attention has also been called. Again, my noble Friend whom I do not now see in his place (the Earl of Harrowby) is shocked at the amount of gewgaws and gilded ornaments which he sees in our churches—I wish he could whitewash them; but will this Bill, I would ask, do anything to remedy the evil of which he complains. The noble and learned Lord opposite (Lord Hatherley) objects to the introduction of hymns in the course of the Communion Service. Well, it may be a matter of taste as to whether such things are desirable or not; but when we come to a question of dry law, I put it to the legal conscience of the noble and learned Lord, is there, except in the Third Collect, any difference between the Communion Service and any other part of the Service? The hymn before Service, which, I venture to say, occurs in every Church throughout the Kingdom, is just

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  as illegal as the hymn during the Communion Service to which he refers. In fact, the class of difficulties which you desire to meet is precisely that which no legislation can reach. It must be borne in mind, too, that in dealing with the rubrics you are dealing with a code of laws which not only is not, but cannot be observed. The Athanasian Creed has been alluded to this evening. How many clergy, I should like to know, decline to consider themselves bound by law to read it? I remember a most excellent Prelate who would never read the Commination Service. The fact is, you cannot sharpen your law so as to make the whole of this obsolete code observed, and in trying to do so you will strike High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church alike. There would be the greatest difficulty attending any legislation which would go simply on this principle, and if you wish those laws to be obeyed you must carry reformation to some extent into the code itself, because as you apply to it the sharpening process, in that proportion will the reformation of which I speak be necessary. There is, of course, another mode of action open to you. You may, as was suggested by the noble and learned Lord opposite, give unlimited powers to the Bishops.
  LORD SELBORNEwas understood to say, that his proposal was to give to the Bishops the power of initiation.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Well, my noble and learned Friend will give the Bishop the power of initiating, and the proposal, I think, would place him in so invidious a position, subjecting him to pressure and all sorts of imputation, that I fear the office of Bishop would become one not worth having. Now, you must either reform your law in order to apply to it a reformed procedure, or you must encounter all the difficulty which surrounds the conferring of an extensive discretion on the Bishops. It is that circumstance, among others, which makes legislation on this subject so extremely embarrassing and difficult. On the details of this Bill I express no opinion—and I maintain that reserve because I do not know what those details are. It is a Bill, I confess, which was produced under circumstances which gave me the impression that no very long time was taken in its preparation—and it certainly
  54
  bears on its face great marks of haste. This has been recognized by the right rev. Bench to this extent—that they now propose to make large and extensive alterations in it; and until we know what these alterations are it would be premature to discuss the details of the measure. But the noble and learned Lord (Lord Selborne) seemed to treat with some contempt the objection taken to enforcing a monition pendente lite, because the Court of Chancery exercises a similar jurisdiction over much larger sums of money than those involved in these cases. The noble and learned Lord, however, should see that this is a matter much more important than any mere sum of money. No sum of money would compensate a clergyman for having to obey a monition which he believed to be contrary to the Prayer Book, and which may be afterwards set aside by a Court of Appeal. I fear that great difficulties will arise in regard to the feelings of the clergy from any legislation which contemplates the enforcement of monitions pendente lite. These are grounds which make the Government desirous of reserving their opinion on the Bill; but there is a larger ground of anxiety which it is impossible for any of us to forget. The most rev. Prelates have made much of the circumstance; and have taken credit to themselves for the fact, that this is not to be a penal law. I think that is a very doubtful and ambiguous benefit. A penal law is always interpreted by the Courts with great favour towards the accused; in fact, I have heard it said that some recent decisions would have assumed a different aspect if the rule which the wise and generous policy of the law applies to penal litigation had been imported into litigation of this kind. But it must be remembered that if this is not in one sense penal legislation, it strikes at interests much higher and reaches persons far more numerous, than those concerned in other trials. Unfortunately, you cannot enter upon legislation of this kind without running the risk of affecting feelings and interests far more important than those represented by any single litigant—you cannot touch this question without some anxiety lest you should interfere with the compromise under which the Church of England exists. I do not say that consideration is to debar you from legis-

  55
  lating, but it must counsel the utmost caution. I have heard people take a very military view of this subject. They have talked as though there was nothing but Articles of War of which you have to secure the observance, and if men would not observe them, let them be cashiered. It has been too much the fashion to say, "Never mind whether these people threaten secession or not; we don't care whether they secede or not; the Church of England will be better without them." Undoubtedly, that statement may be true as applied to a very small number of very lawless persons; but it is very much the reverse of the truth if it extends to one of those schools of which the Church of England consists. I doubt whether it is not very much of an anachronism to talk of secession in this matter at all. Secession has been practised from time to time by parties in the English Church. It has always left the Church weaker than before; it has always been ruinous to the prosperity of almost all the seceding parties themselves, with perhaps the solitary exception of the Wesleyans. I doubt very much whether in existing circumstances, and in the present temper of men's minds, secession would be followed now. Secession means disestablishing yourself without disestablishing your opponent—it means yielding up vantage ground; and because any such course would bring, to my mind, the greatest evil which either the Church or country could suffer, I very much fear that if your legislation could be justly accused of oppressing a large party in the Church, that large party would not secede, but would rather seek to free the Church from its relations with the State. Anything more deplorable I cannot conceive; but men's minds are so excited, there is so much bitter feeling abroad, that such a course is not out of the bounds of probability; and as prudent legislators you are bound to remember upon what hidden embers you tread when you enter on the path of such legislation as this. I take it that no more fatal act could be done than to interfere with or put in jeopardy that spirit of toleration upon which, as upon a foundation, the stately fabric of your Church Establishment reposes. There are three schools in the Church which I might designate by other names, but which I prefer to call the Sacramental, the Emotional, and the
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  Philosophical. They are schools which more or less, except when they have been crushed by the strong hand of power, have been found in the Church in every age. They arise not from any difference in the truth itself, but because the truth must necessarily assume different tints as it is refracted through the different media of different minds. But it is upon the frank and loyal tolerance of these schools that the existence of your Establishment depends. The problem you have to solve is how to repress personal and individual eccentricities if you will—how to repress all exhibitions of wilfulness, of lawlessness, of caprice; but, at the same time that you do that, you must carefully guard any measures which you introduce from injuring the consciences or suppressing the rights of either of the three schools of which the Church consists. On this condition alone—and it is this which gives the question its difficulty, and which imposes so intense a responsibility on all those who touch it—on this condition alone can your legislation be safe. If you accomplish this end; if you solve this problem, no doubt you will remove causes of irritation and conciliate many hearts and minds to the Church which are now alienated, and you will have done a good work. But if you legislate without solving this problem; if you disregard this condition; if you attempt to drive from the Church of England any one of the parties of which it is composed; if you tamper with the spirit of toleration of which she is the embodiment, you will produce a convulsion in the Church and imperil the interests of the State itself.
  EARL GREYsaid, that some of the objections raised by the noble Marquess to the Bill had been answered by anticipation by the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Peterborough), and the noble Marquess seemed quite to ignore the fact that it had been distinctly brought under their notice that there existed in the Church, practices which afforded the justification for this Bill. He admitted that legislation might not prevent clergymen dishonest enough to accept the offices and emoluments of the Church of England, while departing from its doctrines on points of the highest importance, from going over to its most determined enemy, and adopting practices against which the Church had always

  57
  protested; it might, however, prevent their parading such practices before the public and in the services of the Church. A certain number of the clergy—he hoped very few, but he feared not so few as represented by the noble Marquess—had notoriously been introducing practices intended to imply the adoration of the elements in the administration of the Sacrament, though the Church of England knew no Sacrifice of the Mass—a doctrine on which was built the system of priestly tyranny which for so many centuries weighed so heavily upon Europe—a religion of forms and ceremonies and outward observances being substituted for the pure spiritual religion taught by Christ and his Apostles. Even devout Roman Catholics did not deny that before the Reformation the state of the clergy was fearfully corrupt, wickedness prevailing in the highest places in the Church, and many Popes and Bishops being among the vilest of mankind, and that even in nations which had adhered to the Papacy the influence of the Reformation had been very marked. In this country there was a revolt not only against the corruptions in the Church, but against the doctrine believed to be the root whence they had sprung, and he was sure the English people would not allow that yoke to be re-imposed. But there were a number of clergymen of the Church of England who were labouring to bring that Church nearer to the Church of Rome. He cordially agreed with the noble Marquess in deprecating the secession of a large body from the Church, for he recognized the importance of giving the largest possible latitude to men of various opinions; and he desired more liberty as regarded certain rubrics; but, at the same time, parishioners must have security that there shall not be introduced into their parish churches, practices painful to the feelings of men who had been brought up in the Church; and, admitting the danger of raising a cry for disestablishment by producing a sense of ill-treatment among a large number of the clergy, he would remind him that in the present state of opinion our national Establishment could only be maintained as long as it enjoyed the confidence and support of the people, which would undoubtedly fail it, were practices odious to the great body of the people allowed
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  to become common in the Church. At present neither the authority of the Bishops nor the law could restrain such practices, and it was vain to wait for a more perfect remedy. He agreed with the right rev. Primate that there ought to be some means of reforming the law, that that law should be more effectually administered, and that some new authority should be devised. Parliament without assistance could not legislate effectually, and Convocation, brought together under an obsolete and antiquated system, could not be called upon to perform a work like this—for it did not represent even the clergy, whereas the laity were also entitled to representation. That question must, sooner or later, be considered, but there was no immediate prospect of its settlement, and there was an urgent necessity for legislation on the present subject. Amendments might be necessary in the Bill, but not, he believed, so extensive as to change its character and object. He thought it furnished a fair basis for legislation, and he hoped the Session would not pass without some legislation.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, at this late hour of the evening I will not trouble your Lordships with many words. I must first express my obligations and those of my right rev. brethren to the House for the compliment they have paid us in so generally agreeing to the second reading of this Bill; and, perhaps, the compliment is not the less because, in two notable instances, at least, the speeches which urged the second reading of the Bill have been directed, during a greater part of the time occupied by the speakers, to a criticism of its provisions. I trust the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) will excuse me if I say I hope he is not to be taken as in the latter part of his speech representing the full sentiments of the Government, any more than the noble Earl who spoke early in the debate (the Earl of Shaftesbury) is to be considered as fully representing that great Evangelical party of which at one time I was in the habit of considering him the chief. I must say of the speech of the noble Marquess that I think there was some inconsistency between its beginning and its end. He said in the beginning of his speech that this was but a small matter; that the number of clergymen who were affected by this

  59
  Bill was small; but at the end of the speech we were warned, in words which I fully appreciated, to be on our guard lest a great body of the clergy, through the passing of this Bill, should be alienated from the National Church. Now, the noble Marquess will excuse me again if I say that I think the tone he adopted in the end of the speech, and during the greater part of it, was greatly calculated to swell the number of those who might consider themselves affected by the Bill. The difficulty which has stood in the way of all former attempts to legislate on this matter has arisen from the circumstance that what are commonly called moderate High Churchmen—men who are sincerely attached to the Church of England—have too often thrown their protection over those with whom they have really but little sympathy; and I think that the speech of the noble Marquess this evening must be regarded as having erred in that direction. He has spoken as strongly as I should myself on the evils to remedy which, this Bill is directed; but there still was that tone of apologetic sympathy which seemed to say to those persons who were violating the law, "After all, you are very near to us, and any attempt which is aimed against you must in some degree be aimed against us." Now, my Lords, I have appealed twice in this House during these debates, to that great party to which the noble Marquess alluded, and have besought them to express their disapprobation of the practices against which this Bill is directed. I trust that these appeals will not be in vain, and that the noble Marquess and his Friends will separate themselves from those who are bringing the greatest injury on the Established Church of England by open defiance of its laws. The noble Marquess, in a vein of, so to say, suppressed sympathy with those whom in the beginning of his speech he very distinctly condemned, dwelt not unnaturally upon the merits of some of the clergy alluded to in their peculiar spheres. No one can be more ready than myself to acknowledge the great amount of zeal which is displayed by such persons, and no one can be more ready than myself to lament that it is necessary to restrain men who devote their lives in a manner which any of us might be proud to imitate, to what they believe to be
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  the advancement of the Church of Christ. But perhaps we sometimes hear too much of this—as if there were no earnest clergymen in the Church of England except themselves. I think I could point to churches which have been emptied by the frivolities practised in them, and to neglected parishes—neglected because the whole time of the clergyman is occupied by these follies, instead of giving himself to the real ministry of the Word. I am quite ready to allow all that is good in the persons of whom the noble Marquess has spoken, but I am not ready to allow that they have any monopoly of zeal in the Church of England, and I am not ready to allow that there are not many of them in whom there is wanting zeal for anything that is really worthy of calling forth zeal. My Lords, I will allude for a moment to certain newspapers which are published, I believe, by clergymen. Those papers are written in a spirit which, if your Lordships ever read them—as I trust you never do—would at once show you that there must be persons engaged in this particular cause who have very little appreciation of the virtues of the Christian religion. My Lords, the noble Marquess has pointed out that it is not in our power to put an end to confession in the case of persons who desire to confess. He has said that this Bill, if it should become law, will be wholly inoperative to put a stop to that practice. Well, my Lords, I read to your Lordships, when I had the honour of introducing the Bill, a statement to the effect that it was the desire of the small party of which we had been speaking to introduce all the outward signs of confession into their churches by having confession boxes, or, where that could not be attained, to have portions of the church curtained off in order that confession might there be carried on. I think I may appeal to the right rev. Prelate who presides over this diocese as to such attempts being made in at least one of the churches of his diocese. [The Bishop of LONDON: Two.] Well, if we cannot put that down, we can restrain it, and I say it will be something to compel these people to abstain from the outward and public manifestation of their intentions. Again, it has been said also that the altar-cards which I mentioned, and which, perhaps, have assumed a degree of importance beyond

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  what they deserve, would not be restrained by this Act. Of course they could be, because they are not "ornaments" of the Church, and, therefore, would be removable under the provisions of this Act. It is quite true that a man may in his secret thought say or do what he pleases, and we are not to be blamed if we are unable to compass that which no power on earth can do—namely, control the thoughts of the heart, by outward legislation. But, my Lords, we do something if we declare that Church of England congregations are no longer to be treated with this extreme levity, which introduces the palpable outward signs of the Mass into the administration of the Holy Communion in our churches. The noble Marquess alluded to a certain book, which, I presume, was the book which, as I understood, lay in the church, and on which was written that it was not to be taken out of the church. It must, I think, have contained something in common with that book which I produced here some nights ago, which was the Liturgy of the Church of England and the Service of the Mass dovetailed into each other, and put into the hands of the clergy that they might be used on the Communion tables. The Bill would, my Lords, deal with such a case; it would prevent the clergyman bringing into the service of the Church such a book. A great deal has been made by some speakers, and not least by the noble Marquess, as to the supposed lawlessness of other bodies in the Church besides those we are speaking of. Now, I believe there is this distinction between the violation of the law on the part of others and the violation of the law in these particular cases—that the persons who neglect any of the regulations of the Church are ready to act as directed by authority, and evince a loyal willingness to obey the law when called upon by authority, while on the other side is evinced a determination to resist authority when it calls upon them to obey the law. Only last week a deputation waited on me in reference to this Bill, consisting of persons not likely to err on the side of Romanism, and it was at once stated by them that they quite expected that they would be obliged to be more accurate in their observance of the rubrics than they had been, and that, if it were shown there was anything in which they failed, they were ready to obey. I do not say there
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  are not extreme persons on both sides; but I think that the three great parties to whom the noble Marquess alluded are heartily loyal to the Church of England, and are ready to obey its laws when pointed out to them; while other persons of whom we have spoken hold those laws in derision. I do, as earnestly as the noble Marquess, trust and pray that those three great parties—if we are to call them parties—may still remain united and loyal to the Church of England, and that the differences of opinion between good and loyal men which have always existed in the Church may still continue to exist there. I fully believe that the authority of the Bishops, if it be your pleasure to make this Bill an Act, will be supported by all those three parties. My Lords, I have said it is a compliment to us that the second reading of this Bill has been advocated even by those who have spoken most bitterly against it. I confess I expected there would be a great deal of opposition to the Bill. When some time ago we became aware of the absolute necessity of going carefully into the matter, I naturally expected to meet with violent opposition from those who were likely to have their offences visited under any Bill we might bring forward, for, knowing the great activity of the small minority of whom we are now speaking, I was aware they would leave no stone unturned to raise a feeling against the measure. I confess, however, I was hardly prepared for the sort of opposition we have heard from my respected Friend the noble Earl (the Earl of Shaftesbury) who spoke early in the debate. The noble Earl was not contented with assailing our Bill, but in order to damage us he assailed his own, particularly in regard to the constitution of the Court. If people are determined to find fault with whatever we propose, of course there is no meeting them even by incorporating the provisions of their own Bills into ours. It has been often stated as a great offence on my part that I wished to allow the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury only one day to consider the Bill. Well, at our first meeting some five months ago the report of the Convocation was mentioned by one of the right reverend Prelates who was present at the meeting, and we were therefore aware that they had already discussed the subject. Therefore, we thought an additional day for con-

  63
  sideration would be enough; especially as we found that their Report was in substance the Bill we are now proposing; and as they are not pleased at our proposing their own measure, I cannot help thinking that they, like the noble Earl, object because we propose it, and not because of any demerits in the Bill itself. This remark applies also to a great number of the provisions which have been assailed in this Bill. The very persons who assail them are in favour of the measure with some slight alteration—instead of objecting to the principle of the Bill, they are really in favour of it. Allusion has been made to what fell from my most rev. Brother (the Archbishop of York) respecting certain alterations which we are willing to introduce. I am willing to go into Committee pro formâ, in order to reprint all the Amendments, and thus the Bill will stand for regular discussion in Committee perhaps immediately after Whitsuntide, or earlier, if such be the pleasure of the House. But although we are quite willing to make some modifications in the Bill, its principle remains exactly the same—namely, that there ought to be in every diocese a reference to the Bishop to regulate that independence of the clergy which has run into lawlessness—there ought to be an easy and inexpensive process by which you may apply to the Bishop, and also a lessening of that complicated system of appeals which at present causes so much delay and expense. It was naturally to be expected that every sort of opposition would be raised against this measure, for it is very difficult indeed to please men by a Bill which is intended to make them obey the law, which they habitually violate. It happens that long before this Bill can come into operation the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council will, in regard to this matter, have practically passed away, and it will be the new Court, which was established because you were dissatisfied with the Privy Council, that will have the decision of these cases. My Lords, I have but a few more words to say. Endeavours have been made in various quarters to set forth the confusion and the heartburnings which will arise in consequence of this measure. I take a totally different view of the matter. I have a full reliance on the good sense and loyalty of the great majority of the
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  English people, whether they be clergy or laity, and I believe that if you appoint a tribunal to which they can have speedy access, and which can speak with the unfaltering voice of authority, you will find that they will be satisfied with the decisions of that tribunal, and that an end will be put to the disputes which at present distract the Church of England.
  THE DUKE OF RICHMOND: My Lords, I do not know that I should have ventured to trouble your Lordships on this occasion with the very few remarks I now intend to make, had it not been for a statement which fell from the most rev. Primate in reference to the noble Marquess near me (the Marquess of Salisbury). In commenting on the speech of my noble Friend, the most rev. Primate said, he was sorry to find that the end of that speech did not at all coincide with his opening remarks; and he went on to state that which, on the part of my noble Friend, I distinctly deny—namely, that my noble Friend has a suppressed sympathy with the extreme party in the Church. Now, this was to impute that my noble Friend had in his mind other views than those which he publicly expressed in your Lordships' House.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYsaid, he had no intention of making such an imputation.
  THE DUKE OF RICHMOND: I thought it was impossible that the most rev. Primate could impute that to my noble Friend, but certainly the words he used gave one the idea that he spoke about a person expressing one opinion while he secretly entertained another. I think it is evident, from what has passed this evening, that it is absolutely necessary that there should be some legislation on this matter. That, I believe, has been admitted by all. My noble Friend behind me, in addressing your Lordships, I think, went no further than this—that lawlessness in the Church had reached a point past endurance, and ought to be restrained; but that when you came to deal with that lawlessness in a practical manner, you found it a most difficult task to accomplish. It has been the duty of Her Majesty's Government to go through all the details of the measure brought forward by the most rev. Primate for the suppression of these practices; and it is only by looking at this Bill carefully, and analyzing it

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  clause by clause—and I might almost say word by word—that the real difficulty presents itself to your notice as to the way to put down these practices; because this point must not be lost sight of, that the Church consists of more than one body, and therefore, as my noble Friend has stated, in endeavouring to restrain one party, care must be taken that you do not also annoy and discomfort the other. The right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Peterborough) pointed out one of the great difficulties connected with this subject—namely, that you are attempting to deal with rubrics some of which to a great extent are obsolete, while it would be very difficult to enforce others. That which we all desire to do seems to me to be such as is stated in the preface to the Prayer Book to be the object of compiling that Book—namely, not to gratify unreasonable demands, but to preserve peace and unity in the Church, to secure reverence, piety, and devotion in the public worship of God, and to cut off occasion of cavil or quarrel with the Liturgy of the Church. That, I think, is precisely the view which everybody must bring to bear in dealing with this question. I think the most rev. Primate has taken a very wise course, which I hope will be assented to by the House—namely, that of suggesting that if the Bill should be read a second time to-night, it should be committed pro formâ to-morrow, for the purpose of having the Amendments which the most rev. Primate proposes to insert in the Bill put into the Bill, that the Bill should be reprinted; and then we shall know when we go into Committee on the Bill the precise form in which it will remain, and we shall be better able to see what amendment is required. I believe the great object and desire of all parties is to put an end to the extravagances of one party in the Church, and to deal with—perhaps I may say—the shortcomings of the other.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

  COURTS (STRAITS SETTLEMENTS) BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to extend the jurisdiction of Courts of the Colony of the Straits Settlements to certain crimes and offences committed out of the Colony—Was presented by The Earl of CARNARVON; read 1a. (No. 60.)
  House adjourned at Twelve o'clock, 'till To-morrow, half-past Ten o'clock.