in moving—"That the Bill be now read a second time," said, that it proceeded upon the conviction entertained by many persons, that in the present day, when there was so much energy and activity, and so much desire on the part of many important persons in the Established Church to render that Church more widely useful for the great purpose for which it was established, the best thing that Parliament could do for the Church was to remove restrictions which had been imposed upon its free agency and free activity by the State, and which. were not justified by any considerations of sound policy and were not required by the circumstances of the present time. The particular restriction which the Bill was intended to remove imposed upon the Church a character of exclusiveness not in harmony with the tolerant and liberal spirit which belonged to it, and deprived the congregations of useful teaching. A beneficed clergyman was free to call in the help of any other clergyman of the Established Church, with the consent of the Bishop of the diocese either implied or expressed. Since the year 1840 a beneficed clergyman might also invite a minister of the Episcopal Churches of Scotland and America. But here the limit ended, he was prevented from getting the assistance of a clergyman of the Established Church of Scotland, or the Free Church of Scotland, or anyone who was not a member of the Episcopal Body, and if he wished his congregation to hear any American or German missionaries, who might have been associated with English churchmen in Asia or Africa, he could not do so. On the occasion of the Great International Exhibition of 1851 various foreigners, who were renowned for their gifts of eloquence and knowledge, came to this country with a warm enthusiasm for a land where there was so much religious freedom; but found to their surprise, that the law of the English Church was more exclusive in this respect than that of any other religious community. In the ancient Church men who were not ordained as priests or deacons were allowed by the authority of the Bishop to deliver discourses to the congregation. There were many laymen, among the most famous of whom was Origen, who was so allowed to preach. At the time of the Fourth Council of Carthage the practice of laymen preaching in the congregation had become so well established that it was necessary for the Council to regulate the custom; and in the 12th century, a large number of lay friars who had not received Orders were in the habit of preaching sermons to congregations with the assent of the authorities of the Church. In the Roman Catholic Church there were no restrictions on the right of the authorities of the Church to allow any person who was not a priest to preach in the public assemblies of the Church, and in the Archbishopric of Posen the practice still existed for laymen to preach in public congregations during funeral services. Among Nonconformists in this country and in Scotland the interchange of pulpits was general, and in the Church of England itself, after the Reformation, there were many instances where Nonconformist preachers who had not received Episcopal ordination were allowed by the authority of the Church to deliver sermons; and even since the Act of Uniformity there was the well-known case of Richard Baxter, who, under the sanction of the Bishop's licence, did address congregations assembled in Churches of the Establishment in Hertfordshire. As gifts of eloquence and wisdom, and the power of awaking the consciences and of appreciating the difficulties that trouble the present generation were not restricted to the circle of episcopally ordained clergymen, was there any necessity for shutting the ears of the congregation against all teaching that came through other than professional lips? Ought the State to maintain a restriction which was not imposed by the law of the Church, or by the rules of any other religious community? It might be feared that preachers who had not bound themselves by a professional tie, and by subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, might disturb the minds of the audience by delivering sentiments different from those which they were accustomed to hear from their pastor; but the understanding on which he would be admitted would be a better guarantee than any number of Articles. Experience had shown that assent to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Prayer was of no avail for producing an unanimity of opinion in a Church containing within its bosom High Church-ism, Low Churchism, and Broad Church-ism, the subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles was no guarantee for the teaching of the Church. The guarantee lay not in the subscription of the Articles, but in the personal examination by the Bishop who ordained the incumbent. Now, that guarantee was not destroyed by the Bill, because the Bishop or his Ordinary was the person who was to exercise his discretion, whether a person should be permitted to preach an occasional sermon or not. Nor could even the Bishop and the incumbent together grant such admission, for under the Bill the churchwardens, as representatives of the congregation, must join the incumbent in applying to the Bishop, and might at their option refuse to do so. As the consent of these authorities was thus required, no one who was objectionable could be admitted under the Bill. The chief advantage which he expected to derive from it was the removal of that exclusiveness which was not in harmony with the spirit of the Church itself, nor with the feelings of the people; but which had been imposed, not intentionally, but by doubtful inferences drawn from the Act of Uniformity. If anyone would take the trouble to visit all the places of worship in London on a Sunday—[Laughter]—well, he believed there were statisticians who would take that trouble, on successive days, if not on a single Sunday, they would find similarity of teaching on practical subjects of daily conduct and on the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and that important degree of unity between people inside and outside the Church of England ought to be legally recognized, whereas, at present, the law set up a barrier of exclusiveness where no real antagonism existed. The Bill could not contain any definition of the persons to whom it might apply, it merely provided that he might be "anyone not in Holy Orders." The selection of the individual, the duration of the permission, the renewal of the repetition of it, were left to the concurrent discretion of the Bishop, the incumbent, and the representative of the parish or congregation. If this Bill were passed it would probably be used chiefly for the admission of professional preachers. But if a Bishop or the ordinary of a Cathedral wished an audience to hear some distinguished layman gifted with special wisdom or knowledge, some writer reverenced as a teacher on moral and spiritual subjects through books, who might be willing to teach orally doctrines that he wished to bring home to the hearts of men; why should the congregation be deprived of this benefit, and it might be of some advantage to the clergyman himself. Were they real friends of the Church who would drive people to lecture halls and concert rooms, to seek that which might be put before them in the buildings of the national Church on occasions distinct from the ordinary morning and evening services held in theatres and other places, taken part in by men of all denominations, without the utterance of anything sectarian, had shown that there was a wide field of teaching on points on which all Christians were agreed. This united action should not be excluded from the Church of England, which in many respects was more comprehensive and tolerant than any other community. To some minds the different churches and religious demominations appeared as hostile camps or rival forces, intent on seizing every opportunity to assault and weaken their competitors. Incumbents who took that view would never open their pulpits to Nonconformists, and the Nonconformist Ministers who took the same aggressive view would not enter them by invitation. But to other minds the various religious communities appeared as separate regiments in the same army, waging war against the common enemies—infidelity and vice. Though known by different badges and by different watchwords, and armed with various weapons, and using various tactics, they seemed to move as allied forces, working by a common purpose towards the same end, and under the same general orders. Those who took this view, whether within or without the Church, would hail with satisfaction the passing of this Bill. They would see in it a recognition of the fact that the points of attraction binding Christians together are more important than the points of repulsion that separate, and that more co-operation and more tolerance were required for a successful issue to the great campaign in which they were engaged. It was with this object he had introduced the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the second reading.

in moving "That the Bill be read a second time that day six months," said, he would not follow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hants (Mr. Cowper-Temple) into his dissertation about the Council of Carthage, but he would affirm that there never had been a Church at any time which admitted persons into its pulpits who ostensibly belonged to a hostile community. With regard to the Begging Friars, it was notorious that they belonged to the Church which admitted them into its pulpits. Now, before they proceeded to alter the law which existed on the subject, they should inquire whether there was any reasonable number of persons in the country, either Churchmen or Nonconformists, who wished to have a measure of that sort? One would suppose that the right hon. Gentleman imagined that the Church of England was in contradistinction in the practice to other Churches throughout the world. In the Episcopal Church of America, the daughter Church, the very same rule prevailed as that to which the right hon. Gentleman objected; indeed, an American clergyman was once suspended or admonished for breaking it, and he challenged the production of any indication on the part of those self-governed bodies of a wish to open their pulpits to outsiders. In the English Church of South Africa, in the English Church of Australia, in the English Church of New Zealand, and in the English Church: in the West Indies, he had yet to learn that a different rule had been introduced. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of the Episcopal communion in Scotland and America, but he must be perfectly well aware that there was no analogy between admitting anyone to preach and admitting clergymen of sister or daughter Churches, who, though not having precisely the same Prayer-Book, had yet substantially the same creeds and formularies. As to the Scotch Episcopal Church, many of its Bishops and clergy had English Orders, and had held English benefices, so that there was no analogy between its relation to the Church of England and that of Nonconformist communities. He denied that the restriction had been enacted by the State; it was really a restriction of the Church of England itself, and at a recent meeting of the Synod of Salisbury, in which it was the custom for the laity and clergy to vote separately, the laity, who were composed of persons of all politics, had unanimously rejected the proposal in the Bill, although a small minority favoured the Burials Bill. The House was told that the Bill could only be worked with the consent of the churchwardens; but the Church of England was not a Congregational body, and it was not wished that every congregation should do exactly as it liked, irrespective of the larger body to which it belonged. He had a great respect for Bishops, but he did not think it would be sufficient that it should be left to the Bishop to decide upon this question, nor would it be sufficient that the majority in any parish should decide. It was the fashion now-a-days to talk as though the minority had no right to rights; but the laity of the Church of England had by law rights which ought not to be taken from them at the will of a mere majority in any particular parish. The present Bill was one which he believed was not asked for by anybody—either by Churchmen or by Nonconformists. Another point was that there was no proper definition of what was meant by the term "occasional sermon;" and unless there was some restrictive meaning applied to it, the liberty given by the Bill would lead to great abuse. He objected to separate congregations in the Church of England taking an independent course of action, and setting up a little Bethel of their own, in spite probably of the remonstrances of a minority, and to allow a Bishop, acting without concert with his brethren or his clergy, to put the Bill into operation would be inconsistent with the safeguards which existed for the benefit of the laity. Everybody respected clergymen like Mr. Baptist Noel and Dr. Manning, who left the Church from conscientious feelings, but this was no reason for allowing them to occupy Church pulpits, and he believed Dissenting Ministers would think it a degradation to go cap in hand to churchwardens, clergymen, and Bishops for the purpose of preaching on sufferance in a Church from which, on political or doctrinal grounds, they dissented. Were the existing rule relaxed, a Bishop might be induced on the eve of an election to permit a candidate who advocated the rights of the Establishment to address the electors from the pulpit, perhaps, in order to lessen the irreverence, at a different hour from that of Divine service; or the hon. Alderman representing Lambeth might wish to discourse in some deserted City church on the enormities of the Endowed Schools Commissioners. He hoped never to see the day when the affairs of the Church of England should be converted into mere party questions; but it could hardly be maintained that it was a national Church when such a state of things should have been brought about. The House would have no right to legislate in this particular matter in the teeth of the wishes of the members of the Established Church, and surely there were not 5 per cent of Churchmen who desired any such legislation, whilst at the same time the Nonconformists did not ask for it. He would, for those reasons, move the rejection of the Bill.

in seconding the Amendment, said, the time had again come when some protest should be entered against the kind of ecclesiastical legislation with which the House was being perpetually deluged. He had entered a similar protest in 1871 and had then shown that no less than 19 Bills affecting the Church of England were before the House, and he was quite certain that these "Ecclesiastical Wednesdays" were subjects, he would not say of ridicule, but of great surprise to many persons out-of-doors. He felt sure that no such Bill as the present one could for a moment be seriously discussed in any assembly having a moral right to represent the Church of England, and would deny that the clergy were seized with a violent desire to see Nonconformist ministers and laymen occupying their pulpits. Indeed, he believed their feelings were adequately expressed by an eminent Church dignitary who said he wished his pulpit to be as chaste as his wife. Although they had some grievances, which he believed to be well-founded, yet the Nonconformists themselves did not ask for that measure; neither did the congregations of the Established Church. In the discussion on that subject last year, it was said that if people did not like the occasional sermons that would be preached under that Bill, they might go to some other church; but, in the country districts, at least, where the churches were sometimes many miles apart, that argument would not apply. Then with regard to the alleged difficulty as to the practicability of Churchmen hearing celebrated preachers who did not belong to their own communion, there was really none. For instance, he (Mr. J. D. Lewis) recollected himself going one day to hear Mr. Spurgeon, not then in the zenith of his fame, but he could not get in except by the assistance of a friendly policeman, to whom he subsequently gave 5s. Afterwards he had. reason, upon reflection, to think that that was not the best expenditure of 5s. which he had ever made in his life. Upon his leaving the chapel, he saw a long line of carriages with armorial bearings and other devices, which seemed to his mind to show that many members of the Church of England were probably among the congregation. He asked, was the present Bill intended to give eccentric clergymen the opportunity of placing clever Dissenting "stars" in their pulpits? He thought that that was a very dangerous principle for the House to accept, and that if they did they would get into endless difficulties in the matter. If there was such a violent desire on the part of congregations of the Established Church to hear Baptists, Moravians, and other Dissenters, in his opinion, the time for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Established Church had come; because, why should we go on paying a clergyman to do that which we wished others to do? It was not worth while making a revolution in the Church system for so difficult and doubtful an object. There were now two growing parties in the Church—the Ritualists and the Broad Churchmen. The late Bishop of Norwich—Bishop Hinds—carried Broad Church principles to the highest conceivable pitch, and wrote pamphlets which many persons would describe as infidel. Under that Bill, what security would they have that a Bishop of still more advanced views— and there might be such—might not allow Mr. Bradlaugh to occupy a Church pulpit, or, on the other hand, that a Ritualistic Bishop might not give a similar permission to a Jesuit preacher? He supposed it would be said that in such a case Mr. Bradlaugh would soon be prevented from preaching Atheism, and the Jesuit from preaching the doctrines of the Church of Rome. If, indeed, that were not prevented, then his argument against the Bill was all the stronger; but even on the assumption that it would be prevented, the effect of allowing such persons to put in an appearance in the Church's pulpits would be very mischievous. In reading The Spectator newspaper he found that a clergyman of the Church of England—the Rev. J. Josling, a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge—expressed a wish to have a downright honest man like Professor Fawcett in his pulpit on Sunday afternoon to instruct people in political economy. That, he supposed, might include a dissertation on Indian finance. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton was united to an amiable and talented lady, who was also in the habit of addressing public audiences; and it was uncertain whether she also would not be admitted to the pulpit under the terms of the Bill. If not, in these days of women's rights agitations, a claim to equality between the sexes in this respect would no doubt soon be set up. The Quakers already had female preachers; and, in fact, one of the most able sermons he (Mr. J. D. Lewis) had ever heard was delivered by a lady, and why, under the measure before them, should not ladies be allowed to preach? Was the House really prepared for that? If they permitted all that, the doctrine and discipline of the Church would soon become—to use a metaphor of the Prime Minister, in what might almost be called an occasional sermon—as unsettled and as floating as the island of Delos. Those who were really opposed to the Church as an Establishment should vote manfully for the proposals of the hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. Miall); but they should not seek to impose on the Church, in consequence of her present shackles, legislation which would never be submitted to for an instant by any other religious denomination.

said, the adoption of the principle embodied in the Bill would, he had no doubt, lead to a great deal of good. He was sorry to have to complain of the tone of exaggeration indulged in by the hon. Mover of the Amendment, and he maintained that, even if the supporters of the Bill were a minority in the Church, still they were a considerable minority, and as such their opinions and their rights were entitled to respect. The Episcopal Churches in the colonies, referred to by the hon. Member for Boston (Mr. Collins), were narrower in doctrine and discipline than the mother Church in England; and if the latter set them an example by giving more freedom in the use of her pulpits, the daughter Churches would, no doubt, soon do the same. He could not admit the broad assertion of the lion. Member, that such a practice as that proposed by the Bill was totally unknown in the colonial churches. He was inclined to think that lay preachers were allowed in some colonies, but had no positive proof to offer, any more than the hon. Member had for his assertion. Although the Church was never more vigorous and active in doing good than at present, yet the luxury and the materialism rapidly spreading over the country, with the scepticism which always followed in their wake, called for all the efforts, not only of the national Church, but of every other religious community, to keep them down. It was therefore a time for making common cause with all Christian denominations, and not for standing apart. There was no pretence for saying that the Bill would revolutionize the Church, for at that moment the clergy of the Church of England could preach in the pulpits of other denominations. Two years ago the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Winchester occupied pulpits and took part in services other than those of their own Church, and he honoured those Prelates for setting so good an example. The change, therefore, now asked for was not so very great. It was only giving clergy of other denominations the opportunity, if requested by proper authority, to do what our Prelates had done. He wished to see more of the established clergy acting in the same way, and a reciprocal Christian feeling displayed between different Churches. If, for example, a clergyman of the Church of England had Dr. Livingstone, the African explorer, who was a minister of a Nonconformist community, staying with him on a visit, why should he not be able to give the use of his pulpit to that great and good man, for the edification of his parishioners? He was surprised that anyone could imagine there was any impropriety in the proceeding. The Bishops knew their clergy well, and would not grant that power to men who were not likely to exercise it discreetly. The Nonconformists did not at all seem to appreciate the true position of the Church of England. The hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. Miall) had spoken scornfully of the Established Church as a Department of State, like the Army or Navy. For his own part, he was quite ready to admit that that was true. The Church was much more than a Department of State, but it was also undoubtedly that. For some purposes it was just as much the business of the House to deal with the property and the government of the national Church, and if necessary also with its doctrines and discipline, as with the organization and administration of the Army or the Navy. Some Dissenters seemed to think they had nothing to do with this particular question; but surely they hail as much right to express their opinion upon it as though it belonged to a purely secular matter. He would liken the various religious Bodies of the country to the Army, comparing the Established Church to the Regular Forces and the Dissenting denominations to the Volunteers, contending that as both those great branches of the military service were intended to act harmoniously together against the visible enemies of the State, so the Church of England and the Nonconformist auxiliaries should fight side by side against its invisible enemies—their common foes. He had been asked who desired the Bill, and he might say that it originated with the Church Reform Association, of which he was a member, and which desired to see the national Church re-adapted to the requirements of the present state of society, instead of being confined in the fetters of the Act of Uniformity, which was entirely out of sympathy with modern thought and ideas. That was a task from the performance of which the House and the Government ought not, any more than they had done in the case of the Army, to shrink. As the proposed change was, after all, only a minute one, the House would, he hoped, read the Bill a second time, and thus do something to reorganize the Church of England and adapt her more to the wants of modern society.

Sir, I think it is the first duty of anyone who addresses himself to the consideration of this important, and by no means minute, subject, to acknowledge frankly that there is no exception to be taken to the manner, the motives, or the intentions of my right hon. Friend who has brought forward the present Bill, the Member for South Hants (Mr. Cowper-Temple), or of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Frome (Mr. T. Hughes), by whom it is supported. Of the Church Reform Association I am almost ashamed to confess I have hitherto been in deplorable ignorance. I am unacquainted with its members, its organization, and until to-day did not know even of its existence. I nevertheless fully admit that any proposal made by two hon. Members of this House, like those by whom this measure is submitted to our notice, is in every way entitled to our consideration. Up to this, I have taken no part in the debates on the subject; I advisedly abstained from doing so last Session, for I was desirous to stand by and see what was the view of the House with regard to it; and it is not, I may add, in an official capacity, nor as a Member of the Government, that I venture to interpose in the discussion on the present occasion. I should like to invite the attention of the supporters of the Bill to what occurred last year. No attempt was then made to treat this as a party question. My right hon. Friend then laid before the House, with great force, all the arguments in favour of this proposal, but his Bill was rejected on the second reaching by 177 to 116 votes, the majority not being composed according to the lines of party, but consisting of hon. Members who had freely and conscientiously formed their opinions on the merits of the case. Is it under these circumstances wise—I would almost say is it equitable to the House—that it should from year to year, in obedience to the wishes of the Church Reform Association, be invited to expend some hours of that most rare and precious commodity, its time, in the discussion of this question? My hon. and learned Friend, not content with that, has brought a charge against the House, the justice of which I, for one, cannot admit. He says the House of Commons is most grossly shirking its duty in this matter, that there is a great province of legislation into which it has shown itself unwilling to enter. But surely the fact mentioned by the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. J. D. Lewis) that there are not fewer than 19 Bills dealing with the internal organization of the Church of England now before Parliament, bears unchallengeable testimony against the justice of the view which he takes, and that the House and the Executive Government have in this respect by no means shown themselves neglectful. I cannot help thinking, however, that my hon. and learned Friend is preaching to deaf ears. I so far agree with the hon. Member for Devonport—to the excellence of whose speech I bear my most ready testimony—that, although the Established Church in a country ought not to be held to be entirely beyond the scope of legislation, yet that it is wise for an Assembly like the House of Commons, to restrain its intervention with it to matters within the limits of strict necessity, and not to charge itself with a duty which I venture to say neither the Constitution nor the practice of Parliamentary government imposes upon it. My hon. and learned Friend might have been more humane than to have brought such a charge as that of shirking its duty against an overtaxed and overburdened House, which finds itself unable year after year, notwithstanding that it taxes all its mental and physical energies on the work, and goes through an amount of labour which has never been equalled by any deliberative Assembly in the world, to cope with the enormous mass of business which it has to transact. I do not think, moreover, that it is reasonable to ask this House, which is a mixed body, and which grows more and more mixed from Parliament to Parliament—I hope it will long continue to be a mixed body, because otherwise it would not be a fair representation of the people of this country—to deal with proposals of this kind. I deny that the House of Commons is well adapted by its own internal constitution to interfere beyond the limits of necessary intervention in the details of ecclesiastical legislation. What has been our practice? When important changes affecting the doctrine and discipline and property of the Church have been made, the initiative has always been taken by the Crown. I do not think my hon. and learned Friend will find in the whole range of his constitutional studies a single case—certainly, extremely few cases—where a great ecclesiastical change has been undertaken by this House without that initiative. That is an important fact, not as relating to the power of the House, but as testifying that both it and the country have thought it wise that the initiative of the Crown should be employed in the first instance before those great changes were made. The questions themselves, too, have passed under the consideration of the clergy, and we have generally been content in these cases to allow the legislation with respect to them to be matured in the House of Lords before submitting them to the deliberations of the popular Assembly. In taking that course, I do not believe the House of Commons has displayed any cowardice, but rather a wise abstinence and a forbearance than which nothing in its conduct is more remarkable; for while it is thoroughly adapted to deal with all other departments of legislation it has seen, as it were intuitively, that in the course of a work for which it was less adapted, it would be well to restrict its intervention. I would appeal, then, to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Hants to consider for a moment the reception which his Bill has met with on the present occasion. He has manfully and ably argued in support of it; but I would ask him whether he himself thinks that the opinion of the House is in its favour? Is it not clear that the House shrinks from experimenting in these matters? It is all very well to talk of the rights of a minority; but when men desire to make important changes in the most critical subject-matter in opposition to, and in defiance of, the feelings and convictions of those who are to be affected by those changes, it is not possible, under the plea of rights of a minority, to justify a proposal such as the present; for if those rights are to be respected—and they are to be respected—we must not forget that the majority has rights also. There is such a thing as what is called moral unanimity, and in my opinion, the moral unanimity of the members of the Church of England is opposed to the change which is now proposed. My right hon. Friend has mentioned the case of Origen, to show that there are precedents for addresses from the pulpit from others besides clergymen; but when Origen addressed a congregation as a layman he did so subject to the laws and regulations of the Church, and my right hon. Friend omitted to tell us, that this Bill proposes to introduce solemn addresses for the first time to be made to Christian congregations by persons who are to be under no limitations and under no responsibility whatever as to that which they may say. They are not to be called upon to subscribe to anything beforehand, and if they choose to preach that which they know to be odious to the congregation they are addressing, and opposed at every point to the laws of the Church, they are to undergo no punishment and to be subject to no reproof, while the offence may from day to day be repeated. Compare that with a state of things in which you have an Establishment with regular teachers, who are limited by subscription, and who are liable to be severely censured by an Ecclesiastical Court for misconduct or for any deviation from an established standard, and let me ask, do you think it desirable to set up alongside those men another set of teachers such as I have just described, without the slightest responsibility of any kind, either before or after they have given expression to their sentiments? It has been well said by my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport that as matters now stand, the Bishop is well able to form a judgment with respect to his own clergy, because he knows them; and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Frome contends there will be the same security under the Bill, inasmuch as that when an application is made to the Bishop by one of his clergymen that some one else should take his place in the pulpit, the Bishop will know whether the applicant is a man who is to be trusted or not, and that if he is to be trusted he will grant the application, and otherwise will refuse it. It seems, according to the argument of my hon. and learned Friend, that the Bishop is to divide his clergy into two classes—those who are to be trusted and those who are not, and that to the one class he is to say—"True, I know nothing of the individual whom you recommend to supply your place, but I know you are to be trusted, and therefore he may preach." To the unfortunate clergyman, however, who happened to be in the category of those not to be trusted, a refusal would, as a matter of course, be given. I do not think that is a state of things which the House would like to see established throughout the country. But one of my strongest objections to this Bill is the total absence from it of any protection for the congregation. I venture to say that what is called the liberty of the clergy—the unrestrained liberty of the clergy—is the slavery of the laity. To the introduction of such slavery I, for one, will be no party. The congregations of the Church of England have some right to know what is to be preached from their pulpits. The spirit of the Church of England is tolerant and liberal, but in conjunction with her liberality there is law, and the limits fixed by that law are real limits, and these the Bill of my right hon. Friend would altogether remove. He provides, indeed, as a security that there is to be the demand of the incumbent and two churchwardens, and that the assent of the Bishop and Ordinary to any application under the provisions of the Bill will be required. Now, I would observe that the addition of the Ordinary is a very important addition indeed. I have not been able to lay my hands on a perfect account of the legal meaning of the word "Ordinary" in the ecclesiastical law of this country. I see opposite to me a right hon. and learned Gentleman (Dr. Ball), who has just entered the House, and who, no doubt, would be able to explain the matter. I believe I may safely say that an Ordinary is not always a Bishop, and that a Bishop is not always an Ordinary. A Bishop is a person of great responsibility, of high station and character, whose acts are carefully watched by public opinion. There are, however, many churches in which the Bishop is not the Ordinary. In cathedral and collegiate churches, I apprehend he is not, and Ordinaries are in a great many instances men of whom public opinion knows very little, and over whom it exercises, consequently, scarcely any check. That being so, I object altogether to substitute for the known fixed laws of the Church of England restraints which would depend on their mere arbitrary will. My hon. and learned Friend has told us that the unity which he advocates is actually to be found in St. James's Hall, but let me remind him that those who assemble there go there willingly. They do not go there, because it is their parish church; they do not go there to have inflicted upon them, by what I think would be offensive legislation, teachings which they do not desire to hear from persons whose authority they do not acknowledge. "But," says my hon. and learned Friend, "are we not all merely different regiments of the same Army?" Well, the Bill says nothing about the Nonconformists, or the members of the Established Church of Scotland, and, as was very ably argued by the hon. Member for Boston (Mr. Collins), any person whatever, and not any particular person, may be qualified to preach under its provisions. Every man who has left the Church of England on grounds of conscience, or because he could not accept its doctrines, or because he found himself impelled by irresistible impulse to join some other religious communion, or because he had been dismissed by the lawful authorities of the Church from her fold, may preach, according to the proposal of my right hon. Friend, if he can only find an Ordinary, an incumbent, and two churchwardens to make an application on his behalf. As to the churchwardens, they are, in some cases, not the representatives of the congregation at all. One of them is, as a rule, the representative of the incumbent, and the other of the ratepayers. What security, then, have the congregation against the great wrong which, in my opinion, this Bill threatens to inflict upon them? When we are told that we are all regiments of the same army, I, for one, am fully prepared to respond to the feeling which prompted that observation. Acting within proper limits, nothing can be more amiable and wise than that frame of mind and temper which endeavours to establish bonds of sympathy and cooperation between the members of different religious Bodies. That principle of moral co-operation I hold it to be a high duty to recognize; but to revert to my hon. and learned Friend's illustration, borrowed from the Army, I must say that I do not think it is open to a Volunteer on the march to announce that he is about to leave the ranks and join the Militia; or, on the occasion of the Autumnal Manœuvres to declare it to be his intention to try what he could do with the Regular Army. There is, I may further observe, a fundamental fallacy in the idea that laws are in themselves evil, and that all restraints are to be regarded as mischievous. Of course, laws that are unnecessary, frivolous, and minute beyond the necessities of the case are evils, and ought to be done away with; but laws intended and calculated to secure the necessary condition of order and regularity are vital to the health of the body, and we ought not to allow ourselves to be inveigled, under the name of liberty or any other name, to assent to that destruction of discipline which is the real harbinger of religious chaos. I do full justice to the motives of my right hon. Friend. The promotion of goodwill is the object which he has in view, but if he proceeds, though animated by the best intentions, to force legislation of this class on a body unprepared for it, or I should rather say prepared for it in the sense of being determined to resist it, it is idle for him to suppose that he will succeed in attaining the end at which he aims. A very serious blow will be inflicted upon the very liberty which the Bill professes to achieve; for it is inconsistent to suppose that we can force men peaceably into a state of goodwill by violent legislation of this kind. He begins by sacrificing order for what he imagines will be religious peace, and he will find he has ended by sacrificing religious peace for the sake of what is a real chimera.

said, he thought it would be premature to force legislation of the character contained in the Bill upon the country; and he was satisfied that if it passed, the result would be that the new law would become a dead letter, for the simple reason that the Nonconformists had no desire for legislation under the operation of which they might be smuggled into the pulpits of the Established Church, to preach, as was suggested, on Sunday afternoons, when it was probably supposed the respectable portion of the congregation would be at their homes, and the addresses made would have to be delivered to members of the servant-girl class. He looked upon the Bill as utterly useless, and as likely to be regarded by the Nonconformists rather in the light of an insult than otherwise. He objected to all such tinkering as this measure proposed until the Church was rendered completely independent, and if the hon. and learned Member for Frome (Mr. T. Hughes) really wished to undertake a work that would greatly tend to promote goodwill he would introduce a measure to disestablish the Church.

expressed a wish on behalf of his fellow-countrymen that Parliament would revert to its old views and ancient usage. He held in his hand a work printed by the King's printer in the reign of Charles II., by which it appeared that the Parliament of that time and more than 4,000 ministers of religion agreed in this—that the Churches of God in the three kingdoms should aim at the nearest conjunction and uniformity of religion. They went too far, but Christians of these days had unfortunately determined that we must preserve religious distinctions. Why should there not be an occasional interchange of pulpits to mark that though we were in different regiments we were all marching under the same glorious banner? As a non-Episcopalian Scotchman, he contended that the object of this Bill was not to restrict religious liberty, but to extend it, and to allow the Church of England, through her officers, to do that which other Churches found it both right and expedient to do.

said, he had the greatest sympathy with preaching laymen, but he deprecated the interference of Parliament in this matter, being of opinion that the Church of England ought to be left to settle her own internal affairs.

believed that a large body of Nonconformists were actuated by feelings very different from those of the hon. Member for Knaresborough (Mr. Illingworth). After the appeal which had been made to him by the Primo Minister he would not occupy the time of the House by asking for a division, after the small amount of support that had been given to it.

in moving "That the Bill be now read a second time," said, its object was to provide a remedy against the crime of infanticide by creating a new offence midway between murder and manslaughter on the one hand, and concealment of birth on the other. The murder of newly-born infants, like the murder of adults, was punishable by death; but juries in these days were as reluctant to pronounce a verdict of wilful murder in a case of infanticide as juries were formerly to pronounce a verdict of guilty against persons accused of the then capital offence of sheep stealing. It appeared from Mr. Neilson Hancock's "Judicial Statistics" for 1872, that in Ireland the number of infanticides committed annually was about 27 times the number of other murders committed annually in that country; and that in England the proportion of infanticides to other murders was about 66 to 1. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, in giving evidence before the Capital Punishment Commission, said that "In nine cases out of ten a trial for infanticide was only a cruel farce," in consequence of the reluctance of juries to pronounce a verdict of wilful murder in such cases. The law itself threw many difficulties in the way of a conviction by enabling the jury to find a verdict of concealment of birth on an indictment for murder, and by requiring proof that the child was completely born alive at the time it was destroyed. If the crime was made punishable in a manner more in accordance with public sentiment, convictions would be more frequently obtained. It was important at the same time that the Legislature should show that the life of an infant was as precious in its eyes as the life of a person of maturer years, and therefore the Bill did not interfere with the law of capital punishment, but it gave the alternative of proceeding for murder or for the new offence created by this Bill, which was founded upon the recommendations of the Commission which reported in 1866 on the subject of Capital Punishment. That Commission were of opinion that an Act should be passed making it impossible for a jury to find a verdict of concealment on an indictment for murder, and declaring it to be an offence punishable by penal servitude or imprisonment, at the discretion of the Court, to inflict malicious injuries upon an infant during its birth or within seven days afterwards. The House of Lords passed a Bill "for giving protection to new-born children," in 1866, which had been followed to some extent in framing this Bill. There were very eminent authorities in favour of a course being taken similar to that proposed by the Bill. For instance, Mr. Avory, clerk of arraigns at the Central Criminal Court, in his evidence before the Commission of 1866, said, there was a growing disposition not to convict of murder for killing new-born children, and when convictions did take place, not to carry the sentence into effect. Mr. Baron Martin was of opinion that some punishment short of death should be inflicted. Mr. Justice Willes also gave evidence as to the the difficulty of proving the offence, and said that there should be a distinct Act of Parliament to meet the case, by analogy to the principle of the Treason Felony Act. Mr. Walpole also was of opinion that infanticide should form a distinct offence, and not be treated as murder, and Lord Cranworth expressed. a similar opinion. Lord Wensleydale, Mr. Serjeant Parry, Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, and the Lord Chief Baron were in favour of a similar change in the law, Lord Wensleydale observing that concealment of birth should be more severely punished than was now the case. The Bill had been brought forward under the auspices of the Infant Life Protection Society, and he hoped that there being so overwhelming a weight of authority in favour of its principles, the Government would see their way clearly to support the second reading of the Bill. That Bill was, in all probability, the last which he should have the privilege of bringing before the House on behalf of that society; for their efforts in future would be directed less to legislation, and more to utilizing the legislation which had happily already been obtained. The present Parliament, if it passed this Bill, would have the satisfaction of knowing that it had availed itself of every opportunity of affirming the sacredness and strengthening the securities for the protection of infant life.

admitted the lamentable prevalence of infanticide, and that juries too often returned verdicts not in accordance with the facts, in order to avoid convicting for murder. At the same time, the question of infanticide was only part of a very much larger question which had formed the subject of inquiry by a Royal Commission. He saw on the opposite bench two Members of that Commission (Mr. G. Hardy and Mr. Hunt) who, no doubt, must have felt the great importance and difficulty of the whole subject, or they would have availed themselves of the opportunities they had when in office to introduce a measure dealing with it. The evils which were now to be deplored in this country, arising from the frequency of infanticide, were so great that he should be sorry to throw obstacles in the way of the Bill, if it were not that the Government were themselves prepared to deal with the whole subject. Indeed, in answer to a Question, he had already stated that the Government had prepared a Bill. But the hon. and learned Member for Salford (Mr. Charley) must know that infanticide was not the only case in which juries returned verdicts in evasion of the law; and all these cases must be considered together. It was true that the Government had not introduced their measure, for they had learned by experience, that the best way to obstruct legislation was to attempt to do too much at one time. The passing of that Bill, therefore, or even its introduction that Session, would depend upon the progress made with the other business before the House. As to the measure under consideration, it was proposed by the 3rd clause to make all child murder at or immediately after birth a felony punishable only by a maximum sentence of 10 years' penal servitude. Such a provision would apply in cases where an inconvenient heir of an estate was made away with; it would apply not only to the mother but to other persons aiding her, and it might thus extend to crimes which ought not to be placed in the same category with murders committed by the mother at the moment of birth, when she might be pressed by hunger or despair. During the last 20 years there had been no instance in which a mother had been executed for infanticide. At the same time it would be most rash and dangerous to say that that which might not amount to murder in a mother, or in most cases, was not murder in any case. The whole subject must be before the House before a proper decision could be come to; and it was for this reason, without questioning the propriety of the legislation proposed by the hon. and learned Gentleman, that he asked him to withdraw the Bill and leave the subject in the hands of the Government.

said, the subject under consideration was very simple, and did not demand any great degree of carefulness on the part of hon. Members. Considerable experience led him to the conclusion that the criminal law as to infanticide was highly unsatisfactory and required amendment. In fact, he did not remember a case in which a woman indicted for the crime of child murder had been convicted when the murder was committed at the time of birth or soon afterwards. In order to make out the offence, it was necessary to prove that a child was born alive and that an independent circulation had begun in the child's system. In 99 cases out of 100, however, medical men were unable to state with any degree of positiveness that the child had been born with a complete circulation; and then, though you might have the clearest proof of the mother's intention to take life, a loophole of escape was afforded to the jury, of which they availed themselves in order to avoid returning a verdict of wilful murder. Again, the fact seldom warranted a conviction for concealment of birth, because, in order to make out that offence, it must be shown that there had been an attempt to dispose secretly of the body, and thus the mother escaped punishment altogether. If this Bill passed, it would not, in heinous offences, prevent any woman from being indicted for the capital crime along with anybody who aided and abetted her, while it would insure punishment in more common cases where punishment was deserved. Believing that the Bill was a useful though an unambitious amendment of the law, he should support the second reading.

as a Member of the Royal Commission which had inquired into the law of murder, did not recede from the view that the law respecting infanticide was in a most unsatisfactory condition, and he thought the House might safely affirm the principle contained in the Preamble of the Bill—that it was expedient to amend the law on that subject. He might mention that when the Government of which he was a Member were in Office, his right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) had brought in a Bill on this subject, but through a multiplicity of business it was not pressed; and he would remind the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary that the Government of that day were not allowed much time to carry that or any of their measures. The difficulties connected with the law of murder were greater than those relating to infanticide. It was quite clear, however, that the Bill as it stood would require much amendment. For example, it would apply to the whole world the punishment which should only apply to the mother under the peculiar circumstances in which she was often placed, and even the mother might destroy the life of her child for other reasons than those stated. Of course, you might still prefer a charge of murder; but if the Bill passed an indictment for murder would hardly ever be resorted to. Since the passing of the statute creating the offence of treason-felony, indictments for treason had been, and would be, very infrequent. It was found that there was a greater certainty of conviction upon the minor offence; and here also, though you reserved the power of trial upon the capital offence for murder committed at birth, pleaders would never in practice recommend an indictment for murder under such circumstances, unless the offence were of a very atrocious character indeed, and such as to ensure conviction. At present there was, as his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Salford (Mr. Charley) had pointed out, great difficulty in proving the birth of a living child, and a mother could not even be convicted for concealment of birth unless there was a secret disposal of the body. Even then, upon conviction for concealment of birth, the punishment was almost a nominal one, so that the mother obtained practical immunity for a great crime. He rejoiced that the Government had taken up the whole subject, and suggested that, meanwhile, the right hon. Gentleman should at least bring forward a Bill to amend the law respecting infanticide, because upon that question he believed there would be no difference of opinion in the House. Upon that understanding, he would recommend his hon. and learned Friend to withdraw the Bill after its principle had been affirmed by the House.

said, no one could feel more deeply than he did the anomaly of the existing law and the expediency of altering it; but after the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, it would be better to leave the subject in the hands of the Government. He would suggest to his right hon. Friend that the Government measure might be properly introduced in the other House of Parliament; for as the Bill had been prepared, Parliament ought not to lose a chance of passing it even in the present Session, and there were Members of the other House eminently qualified to deal with it. There was another point to which he would direct attention. By the law as it stood, the Judge was compelled in cases of murder to pass sentence of death in open Court; but after sentence passed in this way on women for child murder the Judge almost always wrote to the Secretary of State recommending a mitigation of the punishment. There were also various degrees of murder in some of which the Judge felt that it was not expedient that the sentence he passed should actually be inflicted. The Secretary of State invariably acted upon the recommendation of the Judge, though he appeared to the public to be setting aside his decision. It was clearly better to adhere to the sentence passed in open Court; and this sentence should, as far possible, be made conformable with the actual punishment inflicted.

joined in the recommendation addressed to the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Charley) to leave the subject in the hands of the Government, who would be responsible for legislation.

agreed that the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said was ready might with advantage be introduced into the other House of Parliament. He also thought that if the House of Commons were in favour of the principle of the Bill now under consideration, there was no reason why it should not pass the second reading, and by thus affirming its principle give a certain stimulus to the Government. Everyone who had spoken had agreed that some amendment of the law was required, and he hoped, therefore, that the Government would allow the Bill to be read a second time. If so, he understood the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Charley) would be willing to withdraw the measure.

said, if the House desired to pass the second reading, there would be no objection on the part of the Government on the understanding just mentioned; but they could not pledge themselves to many of its provisions. As to the Government measure, its general principle might be gathered from a Bill brought in last year by the right hon. Gentleman the Recorder of London. That was a largo measure, dealing with the whole subject of the law of homicide, and incidentally with that of infanticide.

in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, if, in the excess of his anxiety that a measure should pass that Session dealing with the more obvious and easily remediable cases of loss of life at sea, he should show any intemperance of language or feeling, he trusted the House would grant him some indulgence, because it would arise from his conviction that the lives of many hundred men hung in the balance at that moment. He had been repeatedly and from many quarters charged with making exaggerated statements respecting that great evil, and some of these charges were probably made in perfect good faith. Hitherto, however, he believed he had made no specific statement whatever which was incapable of proof; but he thought it desirable to supplement his own statement of the case by the evidence of one or two witnesses who would be accepted by the House as unimpeachable. The underwriters at Liverpool might be supposed to understand the question under consideration; and at a meeting held by them some time ago, he found that a question submitted to the shareholders was the increase apparent not only in the magnitude, but the number of marine disasters; and that, notwithstanding our boasted improvements in naval science, and when we seemed to have reduced within narrow limits every element of danger. Unfortunately—it was said at that meeting—underwriters had to deal occasionally with men who cared little about the profits of the carrying trade; men whose whole commercial history was made up of accommodation bills, average statements, liquidations, and composition deeds; who were always on the lookout for some crazy craft to insure; who stood in the same position as to underwriters which Palmer stood in as to Life Assurance Companies; who pursued their nefarious calling under an honourable garb, and sometimes under the cloak of religion; and it was such men who were responsible for the heavy losses which underwriters had to sustain. He had stated that he believed these were the practices of but a very small number of men; and he thought it wonderful that in the absence of all legislation on the subject, things were no worse than they were, and that the great majority of those who were connected with our shipping trade had so much care for the lives of their seamen. The next case he would refer to, in order to prove that his statements were not exaggerated, was that of a well-known shipowner of Shields, who had made over £100,000 by these practices, in such a way that when he died the police had to be brought to protect his remains to the grave, on account of the indignation of the multitude of women and children who followed to pelt the hearse with mud. He would now read a letter from Mr. James O'Dowd, a gentleman who had conducted for many years all the investigations of the Board of Trade into cases of wreck, but who had at last retired in disgust from the task, alleging that he was ashamed to be a party to it. Mr. O'Dowd, who had kindly permitted him to mention his name, wrote from the Custom House, February 24, 1873, as follows:—

"Sir,—You have made a move in the cause of humanity for which you deserve immortal credit. I have not seen your book, but I read a review of it in The Times with the deepest interest. Cases have occurred where delinquents have been executed for murder who deserved the gallows less than the moneyed barbarians who have sent overladen ships to sea. I send you enclosed an illustration of the justice of my statement. But, to judge accurately of the disgraceful ease, you should read the evidence on the inquiry. It was proved that the decks were so laden with bales of cotton that the crew had to stand and walk on the top of them so as to navigate the ship; and Mr.—, a shipowner examined for the defence, swore that the higher the bales were piled the more it conduced to safety, as, if the ship went down, the crew and passengers would have a better chance of escaping."

Briefly, the facts were these—2,700 and odd lives were every year lost by shipwreck. He did not think that a fourth of that loss could be traced to well-found, well-loaded, well-manned ships. We had no records in this country to account for the loss of such ships except in fog; though, no doubt, some casualties were due to negligence. Many people talked of shipowners being "unfortunate." There was no such word. If an old woman was brought before a magistrate for trying to persuade some credulous servant-maid that the stars had some malign influence over her destiny, she was, very properly, sent to prison as an impostor. And yet we were asked to believe that the winds had favourites. No such thing. When the winds blew, if they found a ship well-manned she was buffeted about, but those on board were in no danger. But in those long, low, narrow, overladen beasts of ships, when the ship could not ride over the waves, the waves rode over the ship, with the men in her—often a thousand times better men than those who sent them to sea. In fact, he believed that by proper legislation, they could so reduce the loss of life from shipwreck as to make everyone wonder that the attention of the Legislature had not been directed to the subject before. It was said he ought to be satisfied with having got a Commission. Well, he sincerely hoped and believed that the Commission would do much good; but, if so, it ought to have plenty of time to investigate that important subject in all its bearings. But it could not have all the time required, unless some temporary measure was passed; if that were not done, we should incur all the danger of an ill-considered and hasty Report. On the other hand, if a temporary measure were passed, which need not infringe at all on the dignity of the Commission, there would be no occasion to hurry, and then we should have proper measures recommended. It was perfectly competent by the forms of the House to pass a temporary Bill, and move for a Royal Commission. It was also said that his head was turned with the favour which he had received from the public and from that honourable House. No such thing. In the book which he had published, it would be seen that he had already traced for himself the course which he was now pursuing. He had done nothing hastily, nothing rashly; he had discounted beforehand, and still did discount, all the annoyance that might come upon him, and he was able to bear up against it, because he was prepared for it. He had taken up the matter calmly and deliberately, believing that no good would be done until seine one should take it up regardless of consequences. His course, therefore was a resolute and consistent course, taken up after full deliberation and pursued through good and evil report. It had been alleged that the survey which he proposed would create enormous inconvenience to the shipping interest. But if the House would now consent to the second reading of the Bill, he should not propose to proceed with the Committee until the end of June, because he should hope in the meantime that the Government would offer a measure based perhaps on an ad interim Report of the Royal Commission. Further, the inconvenience to the shipping interest might be lessened by postponing the operation of the Act, should it become one, until the 1st of November. Another thing that would lessen the inconvenience was this—ships built within the last four or five years, and, therefore, presumably seaworthy, might be exempted from the operation of the Act, until they were five years old. He now came to the load line, which, most unfortunately for him, had been described as a "hard-and-fast line." It appeared so in the Schedule, but was not intended to be so. What he desired to arrive at was such a degree of immersion as, in the opinion of the most experienced men, a ship might safely put to sea with. The principle he had in view was this—that ships needing repairs should not be allowed to go to sea until they had been repaired, nor should ships be overloaded to a degree that would endanger their safety. What he proposed in this respect would be capable of instant application. On Saturday last, he was at Newcastle, and some shipowners there pressed him to attend a meeting of their body at the Guildhall. He did so, and a deputation was appointed to proceed to London this week to confer with him and the President of the Board of Trade. Having given in detail an account of what he proposed, the Chairman said that he had never heard the matter put in that light before, and another gentleman remarked that if they had known before what he had proposed there would have been no opposition from them to it. They then submitted to him a scale of freeboard proposed by a gentleman of Hartlepool of considerable experience, and he thought it very excellent. He had since consulted persons of authority on the subject, and they said that it was possible before winter to apply the principle in question, and he should gladly adopt it, and be willing to see it accepted in Committee. He did not want to subject respectable shipowners to the slightest inconvenience. His object was to put his foot on those who wore unsound. Now, with regard to deck-loading, the law prohibiting the practice altogether had been swept away in 1862, as it was said, in the interests of trade, and with the most mischievous results. He proposed that it should be revived under certain regulations. It was said that other nations would have an advantage over us if we imposed restrictions in this respect. No such thing. It was we who gave the law to maritime nations, and Canada, with her seaboard frozen up four months of the year, had not been slow to set us a good example, for she had that year passed an Act prohibiting deck-loading between certain months and limiting it in others. He had been asked by the assembled shipowners at Newcastle whether he would accept certain limitations which they approved instead of his own, and he should be very glad to do so in Committee. With reference to fees, it was said that to charge shipowners fees would be unfair. He admitted the abstract justice of the objection; but he could not omit fees in the measure, lest, in any way, he might inflict an injury upon Lloyd's and other shipping associations. Before the Royal Commission finished its labours he believed it would be necessary to subsidize those great agencies, to give them the protection of the law, and ask them to undertake certain work which he felt sure the State could not perform. He was told that Lloyd's and the Liverpool people were about to amalgamate, and if they did we should have a magnificent staff of able and competent men capable of doing everything that would be required. They already surveyed 11,000 out of a total of 26,000 ships. He believed that the Bill now before the House, the second reading of which he was advocating in the interest of hundreds of living men, who would cease to be living men within 12 months if it did not pass, would be received with favour by the shipowners of the country generally. He felt warranted in saying so from the assurances he had received. The compulsory survey of unclassed ships would be a great advantage to the President of the Board of Trade. He often had occasion to make remarks with reference to the Department of the right hon. Gentleman, which were not intended for himself personally, but for certain officials connected with the Board of Trade of whom he had a very bad opinion. It was not his fault when he spoke of the Board of Trade if the President appropriated those remarks to himself; but this he would say, he believed that Board to be one of the worst managed Departments of the State. In The Westminster Review of that quarter was a most able article on the subject of our Mercantile Marine, which he would recommend to the perusal of hon. Gentlemen; and there was another splendid article in Engineering of last week, which he had got reprinted, and a copy of which he would send to every hon. Member of the House. When he saw the Prime Minister there that morning, he thought his presence was owing to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman felt some anxiety in the fate of our seamen. Unfortunately, however, the right hon. Gentleman had to go away in order to attend a meeting elsewhere. Now, it was impossible, without the consent of the Government, to get a second reading for the Bill that day. If the discussion was drawn out, the Order would become a dropped one, and he must search for another day with very little hope of accomplishing his object. He began to recognize that it was impossible to protect those people without the co-operation, active and sympathetic, of the Government; and it had been painfully borne in upon his mind that the interests of the working classes, when the issue lay between them and the capitalists, were safer with the other side of the House than with his own. Did they suppose that the working men of the country would be slow in arriving at that conclusion which had been forced upon his mind? He did not want to embroil himself with a party, or to say anything which he might afterwards wish he had not said; but this he knew, and he felt bound to state it, that the other side of the House had supported him with one single exception, and the Gentleman to whom he alluded was an example how evil communications corrupt good manners, for he had placed a Motion on the Notice Paper of the House at the instance of the Government; which, however, being threatened with the loss of his seat, he was induced to withdraw. His Bill would therefore inevitably be talked out, unless the House came to his assistance, under the peculiar circumstances of the case. He hoped the House, considering the vast interests at stake, would now give the Bill a second reading, for nothing was more uncertain than the tenure of life of an individual; but, on the other hand, nothing was more certain than the average length of human life under given circumstances. It might, therefore, be put down as a mathematical certainty that, in the absence of survey and of the load-line, many hundreds of men now living would not be living next year; and under these circumstances, forsooth, the House was asked to let things alone in order to save the dignity of the Royal Commission. He would be sorry to show any disrepect to the Royal Commission; but what he proposed was no disrespect. That was no ordinary matter of expediency or politics; it was a matter of life or death to hundreds of men to whom life was as dear as to any hon. Member of this House. He begged, he entreated, he implored the House to read the Bill a second time. If they could fancy that just outside the House they saw a ship before them on the rocks and the waves beating upon it, he believed there were many now present who—just as Lord William Hay leaped from Her Majesty's ship into the Tagus to save life while the tide was running 20 knots an hour—would risk their lives in the effort to save others. He hoped, therefore, the House would now pass the second reading of this Bill, and pass it with acclamation.

seconded the Motion.

in moving, as an Amendment—

"That, in the opinion of this House it is undesirable to legislate upon this subject until the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Regulations for preventing Overloading and Undermanning in the Mercantile Marine has reported,"

said, he wished to assure the House that in moving the Resolution he was not actuated by any hostility towards the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll). On the contrary, he sympathized with the objects of that hon. Member, and if a different course had been pursued by him, he should have been ready to co-operate with him. The House was aware that a Royal Commission had been appointed at the instance of the hon. Member, upon which were a distinguished Statesman and a number of hon. Members known for their knowledge of the subject and for their sympathy with their fellow-men while no one had been appointed to sit on it, who could be said to have a close connection with the matter into which the investigation was to be made. That being so, what did the hon. Member do? He came down to the House and asked them to legislate on the very subject for which a Royal Commission had been appointed. He (Mr. T. E. Smith), however, submitted that it would not be respectful to the Commission, while prosecuting its inquiry, if the House should proceed to actual legislation. That Commission commanded the confidence of the public and of the shipping interest; but he (Mr. T. E. Smith) thought he might fairly complain on the part of the shipowners of the country, of the way in which the Commission had thought fit to carry on the inquiry. It was, he believed, contrary to precedent when the character and honour of individuals were concerned, for the Commission to carry on the investigation with closed doors. But that was not all, for it allowed the hon. Member for Derby to be present at its proceedings, and if he was not able to attend, he was represented by a solicitor. The only explanation of the matter that he had been able to obtain was, that the hon. Member seemed to occupy the position of a public prosecutor, and that it was for the advantage of the Commission, that they should have full and free communication with him in reference to every witness. If the hon. Member desired to occupy the position of a public prosecutor, he (Mr. T. E. Smith) was not the man to blame him; but this he would say—that it was a principle unknown to English legislation, that a public prosecutor should discharge his functions, except in the presence of the accused. He wished to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade to the matter, and to press upon him to consider whether something could not be done to render the proceedings of the Commission accessible to the public. When a witness came before the Commission opposed to the views of the hon. Member for Derby, that hon. Gentleman had it in his power to telegraph to his friends all over the country to bring up their evidence to rebut anything that might be said on the other side. But, on the other hand, the shipowners had no opportunity afforded them to rebut any evidence which the hon. Member for Derby might lay before the Commission. Having asked Gentlemen to give their time, labour, and experience to investigate the subject, would it be in accordance with the feeling of the House or ordinary respect, without waiting for their Report, to take a leap in the dark and legislate without reference to any conclusion to which they might come? Such a course had never been taken before, and he did not believe the House of Commons would be inclined to adopt it on the present occasion. The hon. Member for Derby had at first excited a good deal of sympathy by the statements he had made in Liverpool, Hull, and other ports, and men of great eminence in the shipping interest had tendered him their support; but those who had been studying the subject were aware that a considerable change had been made since the hon. Member had produced his Bill. Mr. John Burns, of the Cunard line, who, by letter read at the Liverpool meeting, expressed strong sympathy with the hon. Member's views, had, within the last few days, in the Chamber of Commerce of Glasgow, supported a Petition, praying the House not to legislate till the Royal Commission had reported. A similar feeling prevailed on the Tyne, the Wear, and the Humber. The Resolution he desired to move might seem inconsistent with the fact that the Government themselves had brought in a Bill on this subject; but that Bill involved no new principle, and was only intended to extend the power already possessed by the Board of Trade under an old Act; and when it came on for a second reading it would be time enough to deal with it. The Bill of the hon. Member for Derby, on the other hand, did involve new principles and new legislation on matters which had been directly referred to the Royal Commission. Besides, the Bill now in the hands of hon. Members was altogether different from what it now appeared the hon. Member was prepared to make it. In fact, the hon. Member was so anxious to pass some Bill that he did not care exactly what its nature might be if he could only persuade the House to legislate on the subject. ["No!"] The hon. Member, had himself admitted this, if not, in words, at all events, in fact, for he had avowed his readiness entirely to alter two-thirds of the Bill. ["No!"] Why, he was prepared to alter the conditions of survey, and also the provisions as to deck-loading. Legislation on the subject, which might seriously affect a most important interest, should be well advised and well considered. The hon. Member recommended his Bill as a temporary and provisional measure; but provisional legislation was apt to be hasty and rarely worked well; it was seldom ever a step in the right direction, and often presented a hindrance to satisfactory legislation. They ought not to forget how easy it was to transfer ships to a foreign flag; and common rumour at some of our out-ports indicated that if this Bill were passed several shipowners were taking the steps preliminary to such a transfer. The consequence might be, that instead of having the bulk of the Mercantile Marine of the world, we should find trade carried on in British ships sailing under another flag, and manned by foreign seamen. This was a technical subject, and the details must be treated in a scientific manner. With respect to compulsory survey by the two bodies proposed for that purpose, Lloyd's and what was called the Liverpool Book, neither shipowners nor Government had any control over them, they were entirely irresponsible, and they had both altered their rules and regulations within the last few years. A department, therefore, must be constituted which should have the whole matter under its charge. The Board of Trade would have great difficulty in finding a sufficient number of competent surveyors, and it would be quite impossible to send ships to sea at all this summer. The adoption of a general survey might diminish the amount of wrecks and casualties, but would not diminish proportionally the loss of life. He could refer to figures to show that the great loss of life from shipwreck occurred on first-class regularly surveyed vessels—the Royal Charter for instance, where 440 lives were lost, the London, where 223 were lost, and the Northfleet, where 285 were lost. Those were all ships of the highest class in the Register, and had been officially surveyed by more than one authority.