Sir, I beg to give notice that on Friday next I shall move that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will be graciously pleased to give directions that a Monument be erected in the Collegiate Church of St. Peter's, Westminster, to the memory of Sir Robert Peel, with an inscription expressing the public sense of so great and irreparable a loss, and to assure Her Majesty that this House will make good any expenses attending the same. On the present occasion I cannot ask the House to agree to the Address, because it is necessary that the House should first go into Committee, and therefore it is that I give this notice.

said, he had always felt and did still feel the greatest possible reluctance in taking a prominent and active part in the discussion of a measure of this description; but, entertaining the strongest conviction that if it were allowed to pass into a law it would be utterly subversive of the best interests of society, and tend to destroy the confidence and security, and the peace and happiness which now prevailed in our English homes, he could not refrain from adding his voice, to that of others, in deprecation of a measure so faulty in principle and so fatal in its consequences as he firmly believed this to be. On former occasions the question had been regarded in two points of view: first, as a religious, and, second, as a social question. As a religious question, it was very ill suited to the arena of the House of Commons; but since they were dragged into this discussion against their will, he did not see how they could well avoid it. He had always thought, and he still thought, notwithstanding the admirable tone, temper, and ability with which it had been discussed, that if it were right to bring forward such a measure at all, it ought to have been introduced into the other House of Parliament rather than into this. In the House of Commons they had no means of solving the religious difficulties with which it was surrounded. In the House of Lords, at all events, it might have been referred to a Select Committee of theologians and divines; and thus before they were called upon to act, they might have known upon something like authority whether these marriages were or were not within the prohibition of the Levitical degrees. In the absence of that authority, and in the exercise of his own unassisted judgment, he knew of but one rule which ought to guide them; and that rule was, that on all occasions, where a doubt was entertained upon a practical point of religious duty, the safest course was the wisest and the best. He contended, then, that unless the strongest reason could now be shown for making such a change as that which was proposed, common prudence and common propriety would alike suggest that they should give the benefit of the doubt in favour of that side where no risk was run, instead of doing anything which might by possibility be a direct violation of the Divine law. With this remark he would willingly have left the religious part of the subject; but when it was last brought under discussion they were boldly challenged by the hon. Member for the West Riding as having abandoned their religious objections; but as he (Mr. Walpole) had not abandoned them, and as he felt that this was perhaps the last occasion on which he should have an opportunity of speaking against the Bill, it would not perhaps altogether misbecome him if he stated shortly a few of the reasons by which he had satisfied his own mind that the religious objections were valid and well-founded. Let the House consider what appeared to be the principal grounds upon which the prohibitions were originally made. He doubted much whether they were mere special grounds which were locally peculiar to the Jewish nation. He believed, if they examined the subject, it would be seen that these prohibitions were founded upon moral grounds, which were generally applicable to the whole of mankind. The object of the prohibitions, if he understood them aright, appeared to be this—to throw a guard round the sanctity and purity of domestic life, so that all occasions for criminal thought, and all temptation to criminal conduct among members residing in the same house, should be checked in the bud by the moral impossibility of gratifying them with impunity. There was one circumstance which had not been adverted to in the course of the debates upon this Bill, but which he owned had struck him with peculiar force. It was never to be forgotten, that all these prohibitions were prefaced by this general remark, "None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him." Now, the word "kin" was translated in the Septuagint by the term, signifying clearly that the restriction was meant to apply and extend to all who were members of the same household or family; to all, in fact, who were naturally living under the same roof. Bearing this in mind, there were several observations which would illustrate what he meant. The first observation he would make was this, that all those prohibitions were addressed to the male sex only; but since the laws relating to incest could not be effected by the sex of the parties, what was prohibited to the man must also be prohibited to the woman, when her case, in its surrounding circumstances, was equal and parallel to his. His second observation was, that if the marriage of two brothers with the same woman was condemned as an unclean thing, it must follow that the marriage of two sisters with the same man must equally fall within the like prohibition. This was exactly what Jewell said:—

"When God commands me that I shall not marry my brother's widow, he commands me also that I shall not marry my wife's sister, because between one man and two women and one woman and two men there is a like analogy."

His third observation was, that the Levitical prohibition was not confined to cases of consanguinity, but they equally extended to cases of affinity. Thirteen, in all, were there enumerated; and out of those thirteen, no less than seven were of kindred by marriage, while only six were of kindred by blood. His fourth observation was consequent on the third. For, if affinity was put on the same footing with consanguinity, it then followed that, even according to the Levitical law, the effect of marriage was to make man and wife so completely one, that the kindred of the husband became the kindred of the wife; and, vice versâ, the kindred of the wife became the kindred of the husband. Such a conclusion was completely in harmony with all that we knew of the Divine will respecting this subject. For the institution of marriage at the commencement of the world, ratified and restored to its former purity by our Saviour's injunction, appeared to have thrown round the marriage state so deep a mystery—to have created, as it were, such a perfect oneness in the marriage union, that they who contracted to live with each other according to the terms of the Divine appointment, must necessarily contract at the same time all the obligations, all the sympathies, and all the feelings which each of them owed to themselves and others in all the relations and intercourse of life. Assuming it, however, to be a matter of doubt, and nothing more, what was the course which ought to be pursued in order that this doubt might properly be solved? Why, surely on this as on other occasions where they were called upon to put an interpretation upon a written law, and the meaning of that law was in itself uncertain, they ought first to have recourse to contemporaneous exposition; and if that failed, they ought then to be governed by general usage and concurring consent. Taking that course, there was a wonderful uniformity of sentiment and decision. For six centuries the whole of Christendom had condemned these marriages as unlawful and incestuous. In the ninth, it was laid down by the Council of Orleans that a surviving brother should not ascend the bed of his deceased brother, or dare to ally himself to the sister of his deceased wife. In the tenth, the Church of Alexandria declared—"A man may not have his brother's wife, or his wife's sister." In the Eastern Church, the Canon of St Basil was equally emphatic—"A man ought not to marry two sisters, nor a woman two brothers." In the Western Church the law, and the reason for it, were clear and explicit:— Sicut mulier debet consanguineos proprii viri vitare, ita et vir consanguineas uxoris suæ, cum enim una caro sint, utrique parentela est illis communis. Taking our own country, they would find it laid down by a council held in London that no man should contract a marriage with a blood relation of his wife. Now, this custom was so universal, that it was invariably observed and never departed from until one of the worst of the Popes, Alexander VI., the infamous Borgia, granted a dispensation to the King of Portugal to enable him to marry his wife's sister, both of them being the daughters of the King of Spain. This was followed by the dispensation given to Henry VIII., to enable him to marry his brother's widow; and though similar dispensations have since been conceded, it is always to be remembered that prohibition was the rule, and relaxation the exception. Under these circumtances, it is clear, to say the least of it, that there was a serious doubt; and where there was a doubt, the wisest and safest course—indeed the only safe and the only wise one—was to abstain from sanctioning these unions, lest the Divine law should be violated and broken. He now came to the social question. The grounds upon which the proposed change had been advocated might be summed up under these three heads: first, that all marriages ought to be free, and that these prohibitions were an undue restraint upon religious liberty; secondly, that by allowing these marriages they gave to an orphan family a better protector than they would otherwise enjoy; and, thirdly, that so many of them had already been contracted, that the law in its present state could no longer be maintained, and that therefore they were bound to alter it. Now, when they talked of religious liberty, it would be well to ask what was meant by that phrase? Did they mean that higher kind of freedom into which man had been brought by the restraining influences of Christianity; or did they mean that lower kind of freedom which man possessed in his natural state, when he chose to make a law for himself, by which alone he consented to be governed? Did they mean that sober and rational feeling which upheld the law because it was the law; or did they mean that daring, proud, and rebellious spirit which would pluck the fruit from the forbidden tree, when there were thousands of others within their reach? His idea of the freedom which should be maintained with respect to marriage was, that it was that combination of freedom and restraint which curbed the passions, whilst it enlarged the affections; which extended the range of our domestic feelings, while it threw a fence round our domestic habits; which checked desire by the impossibility of gratifying it; and which kept us pure by keeping us safe. If the plea of liberty should induce them to alter the marriage law in this respect, he wished to know on what principle and for what reason they would not be bound to alter the law in other respects as well as in this? If, under this plea, they said that a man was to be at liberty to marry his wife's sister, why not extend it to the more distant relationships—to the wife's niece, to the wife's aunt, and even to the wife's daughter? And then, if they gave this indulgence to the man, why not give the same latitude to the woman also? The answer was plain. They knew that if a law were proposed in this House, by means of which a man was to be enabled to marry his brother's wife, it would be generally resisted. But depend upon it if they once began, they must go on. Each prohibition was at present a fence to that which lay beyond it. Break down the first, and they would open a gap by means of which the second could be assailed. Once descend from the high position on which they stood, to go along the inclined plane of a lower morality, and they would not find any rest for themselves until they learned by sad experience that the force and impetus of a downward descent must be measured in morals, as it was in mechanics, by the fearful law of a constantly accelerated and accelerating velocity. This plea then, he contended, was not to be maintained. The next ground that was taken in support of these marriages was, that they would give an orphan family a better protector. But that was an argument with two edges. It cut both ways. If it favoured the alteration of the law, it equally favoured the maintenance of the law. For he believed there were twenty cases where a widower would prefer to see the aunt in the character of aunt, the guardian of his children, for one in which he would make her their stepmother by marrying her himself. Once change the law, and that could not be so; for there was an instinctive feeling of delicacy and propriety in the breast of a female which taught her that she must not remain under the same roof with a single man whom she might marry. Therefore, when this change was effected, the sister of a deceased wife would be forced to keep aloof from the widowed husband. She could not reside with him on the same terms as she now might. She could not observe the same unrestrained and unsuspected confidence, and so, for the sake of a few exceptions, a father would lose, in numberless instances, that sisterly care in the management of his children which he now obtained, and ought to obtain, as the best of substitutes for a mother's care. But this was not all. He apprehended mischief would not be confined to the death of the wife. It would operate with tenfold more severity while the wife was living. If this law were changed, there would be at once a complete change in all our social and domestic habits. It would alter painfully the daily habits of our domestic intercourse. It would constrain the husband to keep a watch even upon the growth of his own brotherly feelings. It would force the unmarried sister to keep henceforth at a comparative distance; and it would expose the wife, from a fear of suspicion, to the partial surcease of a sister's affection. Such a change in our social intercourse would be very detrimental. The instances in which it might operate advantageously would few and rare. The mischief which it would occasion would be general and constant. With respect to the measure derived from the number of marriages which had taken place in violation of the law, he considered that to be the argument in support of the necessity for the last position which could fairly be taken up. They should be very careful of having a change in their legislation dictated to them on the score of parties violating the law because they did not choose to observe i. But was it really true that so many of these marriages had been contracted that the law in its present state could not be maintained? Before they attended to such a reason as this, they ought to take care to weigh well the evidence upon which it rested. Of forty-one witnesses who were examined before the Commission, ten were paid agents, fifteen were interested either by reason of themselves or their relatives having contracted those forbidden marriages; ten were members of the Church of England, as if to show that the Church of England was really very decided, when it certainly was not; only three were Dissenting ministers; and of the remaining, one was a foreign priest, who would find it hard to persuade them all that the social condition of England was inferior to that of the Continent; one was a Roman Catholic, who would not allow these marriages in his own church without a dispensation; and one was the Lord Advocate, who candidly admitted that the feelings of his own country were decidedly opposed to them. Could it be said that this kind of evidence represented the general opinion of the country on the subject; or could it be said to be favourable to the change? The case had been analysed by his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford; and what was the result of that analysis. Out of 1,568 cases which the Commission had reported, 1,400 were from the middle classes, 105 from the upper ranks, and not 50 from what were called the lower orders, and yet it was called a poor man's question. If ever there was a measure to benefit the rich and the interested few, that measure was then before them. It was got up by the rich, and paid for by the rich, and the rich alone were the main promoters of it. Let them not say that this was a law which could not be kept—let them not alter it on such a plea as that. If those who combined to break the law were to be at liberty to come to Parliament and say, the law must be changed, for it cannot be kept, there was an end at once of all obligations, and the bonds which held society together were rent asunder. For these reasons he deprecated the change which was then proposed. There was no subject with reference to which they should deal so cautiously as the marriage law. The rule respecting it should be well defined; and, being well defined, it should not be altered except for reasons of the greatest urgency. There might be a doubt as to whether these marriages were, or were not, within the prohibition of the Levitical degrees. There might be a question with reference to the extent to which the practice of the early Christians had been recently dispensed with. But there could be no doubt, and there could be no question, that the institution of marriage by the Divine appointment, restored by our Saviour to its original purity, had made man and wife, by a wonderful mystery, so completely one, that, if there were sense and meaning in words, the relation, the duties, and the privileges, of the one became, by the force of the marriage union, the relation, the duties, and the privileges of the other. Adhere to that rule, and all was plain; but once depart from it, and no one could tell what a wrench it would give to the pure simplicity of those social habits, which formed, as it were, a second nature in the great bulk of the community. No one could say what a change it would effect in all that frank and innocent familiarity which constitutes the charm of an English home; no one could foresee what an injury it would inflict on those whose feelings ought first to be consulted on such a subject as this, even on those who had none to represent them within those walls. He, therefore, implored them, as they valued the blessings of their social state, as they hoped to maintain, as they wished to preserve them—by every consideration that could touch their feelings and influence their judgment—by the voice of Christendom for fourteen centuries—by the wisdom which turned a religious doubt into a religious duty—by the watchfulness which was imposed on a husband's care—the security which was given to a confiding wife—by the continued attachment which an unmarried sister had a right to enjoy—by every thing, in short, that was holy and happy in their social interests, he begged them, at that, the eleventh, hour, to reject the Bill at once and for ever. He should move that the Bill be read a third time that day three months.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."

said, if ever an example was wanted of the slender and the microscopic, it was generally to be found in a theological argument. It was not his doing, if the French sarcasm, Ami le théologien, vous raisonnez comme un théologien, had passed into a proverb. The hon. and learned Gentleman, however, having insisted on introducing a theological controversy, he would say a few words in reply; for which he would excuse himself by the fact of his having come of a controversial family, or at all events one where he lived within the whiff and wind of controversial debate. The hon. and learned Gentleman relied upon the circumstance, that the term "near of kin" was rendered in the Septuagint by "to vex her, beside the other in her life, time;" by sensible implication authorising the taking her when the life of the first was ended. As to the hon. and learned Gentleman's proposition that a woman might not marry her husband's brother, the fact was precisely the other way, for by the Levitical law a widow was in certain cases entitled to call upon her deceased husband's brother to marry her; and if he refused she was authorised to inflict upon him the indignity of spitting in his face in the presence of the elders. And when this very case was brought before the Founder of Christianity in the exaggerated form of a woman who had married seven brothers in succession, that authority expressed no doubt of the legality of the supposed proceeding, but only replied there was misunderstanding on the subject of a future state. It was remarkable that in the whole of the debates connected with the subject, no reference had been made to the principle on which certain connexions had by the consent of mankind been prohibited under the title of incestuous. There was invariably one element, the preservation of the purity of tender years. Hence connexions were prohibited in the ascending and descending line, that the infant might not be exposed to temptation from its seniors of an elder generation; and connexions were prohibited between the children of the same parents, that infants might not corrupt one another through the domestic intimacy which necessarily existed. And so far did this go, that, as was observed by Montesquieu, in polygamic countries, from the times of the patriarchs till now, a man is permitted to marry the daughter of his father, but not the daughter of his mother; the explanation being, that under polygamic habits the households of different wives are kept as far apart as domiciles in different extremities of the location can effect, and certainly do not live under greater opportunities of familiarity than in the case of cousins in Europe. Now, the case of the wife's sister comes under neither of these heads. The parties are not infants, for they are both of marriageable age; and there is no undue influence of an elder generation over a younger, for they are of the same generation. It was highly important, that in the words of a dignitary of the Established Church (Archdeacon Hare) whose name ought to go down to posterity, we should "resist imaginary rules and imaginary rulers." If this was not done, there was no saying where we might be landed. He had heard that an eminent prelate of the Anglican Church had been attempted to be troubled, because he had married again; evidently a perversion of the Christian statute, which directs that a bishop should be "the husband of one wife," intending that he should not be open to the suspicion of either polygamy or concubinage. He had not believed "the courageous monogamist," Dr. Primrose, had followers in the present day. The hon. and learned Member had diverged into discussions upon liberty, and obedience to the law. Had not the hon. and learned Member confounded disobedience to the law with the desire to alter the law; and was not the liberty now demanded, the liberty of repealing a bad law, and substituting a better? When masses of men were found ignoring a law, it was almost invariably a sign that the law wanted altering. There was no greater proof of a bad law, than that it could not be executed; in fact the natural end of a bad law was, that it was given up in consequence. And he trusted it would be so here.

said, he thought it ought to be a matter for consideration by the House whether they would adopt this measure, when they were aware that it was opposed to the almost unanimous feeling of the people of Scotland. The opinion of the religious bodies in that country was decidedly against the adoption of this Bill. The Confession of Faith declared that marriages ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden in the Word, nor could such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man or consent of the parties. That article of the Confession of Faith, which had been ratified by the Parliament of this country, expressed the religious opinion of 19–20ths of the people of Scotland. The effect of the Bill now before the House was, that because in certain parts of this country a number of marriages, about 1,500 he believed, had taken place between men and the sisters of their deceased wives—because a strong desire existed among certain parties in England to have the present law altered, and because a diversity of opinion existed on the subject among members of the religious community in England, they sought to impose upon the people of Scotland, where no such ambiguity or doubt existed, an enactment which would declare that their interpretation of the word of God was not a correct interpretation. For three centuries past the law of Scotland had been uniform on this subject; and all the great legal authorities of that country had concurred in the opinion that between affinity and consanguinity there was no distinction. He considered, then, that it would be an act of cruel injustice to force upon the people of Scotland this alteration of the law. He might be told that this measure would not compel the people to adopt such marriages, but merely declared them to be lawful. Upon that principle, they might declare all marriages within any degree of affinity to be lawful, for it might be urged in support of such a measure that by permitting such marriages they did not force people to contract them. He felt it his duty to enter his protest against this Bill. He would ask hon. Gentlemen whether, supposing that there had been a difference of opinion in Scotland on this question, and there had been a desire on the part of a portion of the Scotch people that such a measure should be adopted, while the opinion of the English people was unanimously opposed to it, they would have compelled the people of England to give way to the opinions of a portion of the people of Scotland? On these grounds, he would oppose the third reading of the Bill.

said, as this question had already been very fully discussed, and as he had trespassed largely on former occasions upon the indulgence of the House, he would not now detain them at any length in replying to a few of the arguments which had been urged against the Bill. He would ask, whether it was intended by the opponents of the measure to leave things as they were? A commission, presided over by one of the most eminent Prelates of this kingdom, had declared that the present state of the law on this subject led to great and continually increasing evils, and operated most perniciously, by causing open disobedience to the law. No practical remedy for the disastrous state of things described in the report had, however, been proposed by any one of the opponents of the Bill, although those evils had been avowedly and confessedly produced by the enactment of that law of 1835, which he now sought partially to repeal. The question for the House to consider was, whether they would leave this increasing and accumulating evil without attempting to apply any remedy, or whether, by adopting this Bill, they would endeavour to prevent its fur- ther progress. The hon. and learned Member for Midhurst had alluded to a part of this question which he (Mr. Wortley) always approached with the greatest reluctance. That hon. and learned Gentleman, referring to the religious part of the question, had admitted that there was considerable doubt on the subject. He (Mr. Wortley) contended, then, that the only safe course was, to avoid any legislative interference with a question about which so much doubt, in a religious point of view, existed. The safest course was, to leave the matter to the consciences of individuals, or, if they liked, to the consciences of bodies of men—of Churches. The Roman Catholic Church held that these marriages were not forbidden by the law of God; for if that Church had believed such marriages to be prohibited, its ministers would not have done what they had assumed the right to do—to grant dispensations to persons contracting such marriages. His hon. and learned Friend had contended that, in a social point of view, this measure would be attended with the most fatal consequences; that it would make a total change in society; that it would introduce jealousy into married life; and would prevent the enjoyment of that blessed and sacred intimacy which existed between the husband and his sisters-in-law. Before 1835, however, such marriages had been continually contracted in this country; they had been, and were, formed in the United States among the most moral classes of the people; and yet all testimony went to show that no such consequences had resulted from them as were anticipated by some hon. Gentlemen. He had been called upon, in the course of the discussion, to pay respect to the feelings of the people in Scotland on this question. He would feel the greatest regret if he thought that, in the course he was taking, he was in any degree justly open to the imputation of disregarding the feelings of the people of that country; and he must be allowed to doubt the statement of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Argyllshire, that the people of Scotland were perfectly unanimous on this question. Meetings had recently been held in Scotland, which, although convened by what was called a paid agent, had been perfectly open; and at those meetings this subject had been discussed, and petitions had been adopted in favour of the Bill. He had presented petitions from large bodies of persons in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and ten other prin- cipal towns of Scotland, in favour of the measure; and this fact was enough to show that the opinion of the people of that country was not unanimous on the subject. His hon. and learned Friend had alluded to the Confession of Faith. The article of that confession on this subject was distinct and plain, and the members of the Church of Scotland were bound by its canons. But the Dissenters of Scotland formed no inconsiderable portion of the population of that country; and what was their opinion? He admitted that even the greater portion of that body were opposed to this particular kind of marriage; but he held in his hand an elaborate letter from one of the most learned professors among the Dissenters of Scotland, who stated that, although he had himself no wish to see such marriages take place, he conceived that his opinion, and that of those who thought with him, ought not to bind the consciences of their fellow-countrymen who might entertain different views. He had also an extract from the United Presbyterian Magazine, which, he was told, represented 500 congregations in Scotland, in which it was stated that, as true Voluntaries, they could not seek, by means of an Act of Parliament, to force their interpretation of Scripture on this question upon the acceptance of others. For his own part, he could only say, that if the old law, which did not extend to Scotland, was restored, he would be perfectly content. They had been told, on a former occasion, when this subject was under discussion, that the Bill was regarded with the greatest aversion by the people of Ireland. Weeks and months had elapsed since that statement was made, but no proof had been afforded that the Irish people entertained the slightest aversion to the measure; and, with the exception of a few petitions from the North of Ireland, the Irish people had not petitioned Parliament at all on the subject. He hoped the House would give their assent to this Bill, which he firmly believed would have a most beneficial effect.

said, he must protest not only against the application of this Bill to Scotland, but against the general tendency of the measure itself to violate the best feelings of the people of this country. By adopting this Bill, Parliament would give direct encouragement to the people to infringe the law, for the Bill was intended to protect persons against the consequences of the infraction of an Act of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bute had told them this Bill was necessary to remedy a growing and increasing evil. What, then, was that evil? It was the infraction of a law as distinct and positive as any on the Statute-book. Every argument which had been used on that point would apply with equal force to the case of bigamy. He would venture to say that there were as many cases of bigamy in this country as there were marriages to which the present Bill would apply, and, therefore, it might be argued, that because bigamy was so frequently committed, Parliament ought to repeal the statute which made bigamy a crime. The remark would apply particularly to the poor, and to old soldiers who went abroad, and forgot that they had contracted marriage, and so married again. The best feelings of his (Mr. F. Maule's) countrymen were against this Bill. It was against the Confession of Faith; it would sanction a principle as to marriage which, had never yet been in force there. As to there not being cases brought to trial, the voice of public opinion had disposed of any such cases, and the parties had been obliged to fly the country, or go and live where they were not known. Scotland was opposed to the measure, and he would therefore give it his opposition, as well as because he believed it to be contrary to the law of God.

did not see why, in deference to the refinements of some over-scrupulous consciences which appeared to abound, especially in the Church of Scotland, there was to be laid upon the whole realm a burden which the law of God, as he believed, did not impose. This was a question of common law, of common sense, and of common liberty. The House should disregard idle, and bigoted, and narrow prejudices. This Bill would impose no load upon conscience. Let it not be answered that that might be said of a Bill to authorise bigamy, which would not require any one to commit bigamy. The cases were different. Bigamy was clearly against the law of God, and was never lawful by our common law, as marriage with a deceased wife's sister was. The "affinity" in question in this case was a strictly canonical affinity, constituted not by virtue of the marriage, but of consummation, and the opponents of this measure ought to bring in a Bill to declare marriages illegal when contracted with the sister not only of a deceased wife, but of a concubine.

Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided:—Ayes 144; Noes 134: Majority 10.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read 3°.

proposed a clause providing that the Bill should not extend to Scotland.

feared that it would be impossible to proceed with the Amendment that day, and did not desire to stand in the way of the other business on the Paper being disposed of; he hoped there would be no objection now to taking the Bill at an early sitting on Tuesday next.

would move the adjournment of the House if the hon. Member did not persevere in his Motion.

Clause brought up, and read 1°.

Motion made, and Question put, "That the said Clause be now read a second time."

The House divided:—Ayes 130; Noes 137: Majority 7.

And it being Six of the clock, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House till To-morrow, without putting the Question.