I rise, Sir, to move the second reading of a Bill which I sincerely trust is destined to close one of the most prolonged and painful controversies which has ever harassed and divided this House. Be that as it may, I believe that anyone who has studied the rise and progress of that controversy will agree with me in thinking that if the question is to be settled at all it can only be settled upon the lines of this Bill. For what is the state of things with which we have to deal? By the Common Law of England—which no one, I believe, has ever attempted to alter—every parishioner is entitled to be buried in the parish churchyard. That right is a right dependent in no way either upon the creed he professes or the Church to which he belongs. In other words, it is a civil and not a religious right; and it is a right, moreover, depending upon the highest grounds upon which any legal right may be said to rest—the ground of necessity. For, as was said by a very learned Judge more than a century and a half ago, if no such right existed, then persons who had no land of their own could not be buried at all, because no man can be compelled to permit the burial of another in his own land. But then it is sometimes said that this civil right is subject to, or coupled with, a condition—namely, that the Service of the Church of England shall be read over the grave. Well, I do not think that is a very accurate way of stating the law. In the first place, the proposition is by no means universally true; because we know that in the case of un-baptized persons, to whom the right of interment in the churchyard belongs by the Common Law, and in the case of suicides, to whom it has been given by statute, the law, so far from enjoining such Service, does not even permit any religious service whatever. It is quite true, no doubt, that since time immemorial every person who had been admitted to the Church by baptism, and had not been cut off from it by excommunication, was, as a matter of right, entitled to be buried with the only rites then known to the law—that is to say, with the Service of the Holy Catholic Church; and no doubt that right has, by degrees, been extended to all baptised persons upon the express ground, as stated by a very learned Judge, that the interment of Christian men and women without any religious service was an act of indecency unknown to the English law. But that right was not the right of the clergyman; it was not for his edification, or his benefit, or his comfort, that the Service was established. It was the right of the parishioner; and one of the strangest results of the growth of Dissent in this country has been that the very Service which was originally claimed as a privilege by the orthodox Churchman is now sought to be imposed as an obligation upon the unwilling Dissenter. Well, now, it is said that that is not a grievance; but I think that those who, like myself, have been brought up from their childhood in a country where Dissent is the rule and not the exception, will be disposed to take a very different view of the case. Let me put a case which may happen—nay, it does happen any day in the week in the country in which I reside. A man has lived the whole of his life not only outside the communion of the Church of England, but it may be in avowed and open hostility to the Church of England. He may have never crossed the threshold of the Church from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. On the contrary, he and his family have every Sunday worshipped in the little Baptist, or Independent, or Congregational, chapel at the other end of the village, and have, of course, done so with the full sanction and approval of the law. Well, the man dies. Scarcely is the breath out of his body than the Church of England comes down upon that man, and says to his friends or his relatives—"As the price of this man being buried in that churchyard, which the law has said is to be his proper and legitimate resting place—in other words, as the price of his being buried at all, he must be brought there as a member of the Church of England; and you, his relatives, if you wish to do that which nature and affection dictate, must appear there as members of the Church of England, and perhaps for the first and last time in your lives conform so far as to take part in a Service to which, rightly or wrongly, you may feel the greatest repugnance and aversion." Well, I ask the House is not that a grievance? Is it consistent with religious liberty, or with the smallest modicum of religious toleration? Would it be tolerated in any other civilized country in Europe except this free Protestant country of ours? In my judgment, I should have thought it was a grievance of which not only the Nonconformists but the clergymen themselves had a right to complain. During the many years that I have been connected with this subject I have made it my business to try and look at it from every point of view, including that of the clergyman; and I must say that if I were a clergyman no more painful duty could be put upon me than that of being compelled to impose upon persons in that melancholy position a Service which, however beautiful in itself, becomes little more than a cold and cruel mockery when addressed to unwilling and unsympathetic ears. I remember reading a short time ago a letter from a gentleman who had been down to attend the Funeral Service of a relative of his—a Unitarian—who, of course, being a baptized person, was not only entitled, but was required by law to be buried with the Service of the Church of England. It so happened that this gentleman attended Divine Service at the Church on the Sunday previous, and had heard the very clergyman who afterwards performed the Funeral Service over his relative read the Athanasian Creed, in which, as the House probably knows, Unitarians are not treated with any very great consideration. Well, the writer of this letter remarked, with a good deal of force—and, as it seems to me, with a good deal of justice—upon the strange anomalies of our law, which compelled a clergyman to condemn one of his parishioners to eternal perdition on the Sunday, and then required the same clergyman to consign the same parishioner to the earth in the sure and certain belief of a resurrection and eternal life on the Monday. [Laughter.] Now, do not suppose I wish to say anything in the least degree disrespectful or irreverent of the Church Service. I only want to point out how hardly this law bears upon the very men who seem most anxious to uphold it. At any rate, this, I believe, is a matter of fact—that when some 30 years ago or more, in consequence of the unhealthy state of the urban churchyards, cemeteries were opened all over the country, Parliament, without a dissentient voice, declared that whenever these cemeteries were opened a certain portion of them should be set apart for Nonconformists, who might be buried there with any Service they pleased. And it is sometimes said that owing to the growth of these cemeteries, and of the simultaneous, or rather consequent, closing of the churchyards, all the churchyards in the country were being closed, and that this grievance would, in a short time, disappear altogether. Well, if that be the fact, this Bill will do no very great harm, because in a very short time it would have no operation whatever. But, as a matter of fact, there is not, nor ever was, a more unfounded statement; and if hon. Gentlemen will listen to a few figures taken from a Return I moved for three or four years ago, I think they will agree with me in that view. In the year of that Return—which is dated the 12th of June, 1877—it appears that there were in England 14,066 churchyards, as against only 639 cemeteries. Out of these churchyards only 1,476 were closed, leaving 12,590 open, so that the churchyards open were to the churchyards closed in the proportion about of 10 to 1. But, if you take Wales by itself, the results are still more startling. In Wales there are 1,016 churchyards, of which48 are closed, leaving 968 still open, so that the number of churchyards open in Wales to the number closed, is in the proportion of 20 to 1. Now, I believe that the Nonconformist population of Wales has been roughly estimated at something over 900,000. If from this number you deduct those who live in the urban parishes, and also the congregations who have cemeteries of their own, I think you will find the number of persons in Wales alone, who are directly or indirectly affected by this grievance, is something like 600,000, or nearly the half of the entire population. Well, that is what is called an infinitesimal grievance. I have endeavoured to make a calculation as to how long it would be—taking the average of closing during the last 20 years—before the last churchyard in England and Wales would be closed, and I find it would not be before Anno Domini2182. That is to say, towards the end of the 22nd century of the present era. Well, now, I hope I have shown that a grievance exists. It is called by some people a sentimental grievance; but I do not know that it is less of a grievance because it is a sentimental grievance. I do not know that it is less of a grievance than the grievance of the poor Puritan, or of the Scotch Covenanter, who faced death and torture rather than celebrate Mass. And I hope I have shown by the figures I have quoted that it is a grievance that is distributed over a very large area, and that it cannot come to an end for what is, practically, an unlimited period of time. Now, I come to the remedies; and, certainly, if the grievance has existed down to the present time it has not been for want of nostrums, because I have counted not less than a dozen Bills from that side of the House which have had for their object the removal of this infinitesimal grievance. As regards a great number of them I do not think we need trouble ourselves; but in the year 1877 the late Government, pressed by their own supporters, made a serious attempt to deal with the question. And they adopted a mode of dealing with it, which, if it had no other merit, had at least the merit of originality. They said that this question of the burial of Dissenters was not primarily a religious question at all. It was a sanitary question, and they would deal with it upon sanitary grounds. Well, Sir, everybody would admit that the Burials Question has, unfortunately, its sanitary side; but the worst of it is that if you solve the sanitary problem to-morrow you will leave the religious difficulty just where it was; whereas, if you reverse the process and begin by solving the religious problem, I think you will soon find the sanitary difficulty will settle itself. However, we will go back to the proposal of the late Government. They brought into the other House a Bill called the Burials Act Amendment Bill. The object of it was shortly to enable a small number of persons in each parish to move the Home Office to close churchyards and build cemeteries—of course, at the expense of the ratepayers—and in some cases to build cemeteries even where the churchyards were not closed. Well, the advocates of that measure pointed, with a great deal of force, to the fact that there were hundreds of churchyards which, upon sanitary grounds, required to be closed. Of course, nobody contended against that at the time, and many of my supporters would have been only too glad to see that done. But these gentlemen forgot that there were also thousands of churchyards in the country districts of England to which no such consideration applied. Now, if any hon. Gentlemen doubt what I say, if they will do me the honour to pay me a visit and take a drive with me a few miles away from my house, I will show them half-a-dozen churchyards which will not be full for generations. But to tell the unfortunate people in these districts that, because in the counties of Staffordshire, and Lancashire, and Warwickshire, there are churchyards that ought to be closed, therefore their own churchyards must be closed too, does seem to me to be the most unreasonable thing that ever was said to mortal man. Well, but how did the Government propose to deal with the religious question? They went so far as this. They said—"We will dispense with the religious service in the case of persons who conscientiously object to it; but that shall only be done on one condition, which is, that you are to be buried without any religious Service at all. Now, I believe there are some sects in England who do inter their friends without any Service at all; and, of course, it is quite right that the case of such persons should be provided for, and I may mention, incidentally, that this Bill does provide for them. But I may say that the immense majority of Nonconformists look upon burial without a religious Service as a sort of indignity, and the reason is not far to seek. The law has made it an indignity by imposing it as a stigma upon suicides. As I said just now, one of the most learned Judges on the English Bench once said that such a mode of interment is an indecency unknown to the English law. And yet this indignity—this stigma, this indecency—was looked upon by the late Government as quite good enough for Nonconformists. Is it surprising that the proposal produced a storm of indignation, not merely among Dissenters, but also among the ratepayers, who naturally objected to be saddled with the enormous expense, calculated at between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000, of carrying out the provisions of that Bill, simply to preserve a clerical monopoly? Well, all these arguments were urged, far more forcibly than I can urge them, in the other House by a noble Lord, certainly not a political Dissenter, but, on the contrary, a most steadfast and staunch Churchman, and the father of one of the most popular and most respected Members of the late Administration—the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool (Viscount Sandon)—I mean the Earl of Harrowby. And an Amendment, which was, in fact, this Bill, was carried in the House of Lords by a majority of about 16. Well, that Amendment being carried, the then Government threw up the Bill; and it seemed to me, by doing so, threw away a golden opportunity of settling a vexed question. And I am bound to say that they never again attempted to deal with the question upon sanitary grounds. But there are those who "rush in where Home Secretaries fear to tread;" and I must now refer to a short Act of Parliament which was passed last Session; and I do so, first, because it is the only legislative attempt to deal with this grievance; and, secondly, because some persons labour under an impression that it has done something to abate or remedy this grievance. In the year 1875 a very excellent Bill, called the Public Health Act, was passed, for which every credit is due to my right hon. Friend who was then the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Sclater-Booth). Well, Sir, that Act contained a provision—a useful and proper provision—enabling, and even requiring, Local Sanitary Authorities to provide mortuaries for the reception of persons who had died of small-pox, and other contagious diseases of a virulent type. Now, it seems to have occurred to some wise men from the East of England that if they could only take this Bill, and for "mortuaries" read "cemeteries," and treat Dissenters as infected persons, they might settle the Burials Question off-hand. Accordingly, a short Bill was introduced by my hon. and learned Friend, Mr. Marten, the late Member for Cambridge, of whom I wish to speak with all the respect that is due to one who has passed away from us—I am happy to say only in a Parliamentary sense. It was called the Public Health Act Amendment Bill. Well, there must have been something very seductive about the title of that Bill; because it took in not only my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), who I thought was rather too old a Parliamentary bird to be caught with such a trap, but also the present Secretary to the Local Government Board (Mr. Hibbert). I will not dwell now upon the way in which the half-past 12 o'clock Rule was evaded, and the Bill sent through this House in the small hours of the morning; but I do think the history of that measure after it became law should be a warning to those who believe in this 2 o'clock in the morning legislation. Now, this Act, as I have said, was very short. It was only 20 lines long; but it incorporated in itself two other Acts, one of which contained 235 clauses and several Schedules, and the other contained 69 clauses. Well, Sir, of course I need, hardly say that the effect of jumbling together a number of provisions of Acts of Parliament which had nothing to do with each other was to produce something very like nonsense. I will just mention that the result of the Act practically is, that under that Act every cemetery must be inclosed by a wall eight feet high. Then, even if there is a church close by, the ratepayers are to erect a chapel upon the unconsecrated ground; and, though they are permitted to erect a chapel upon the unconsecrated ground, the use of that chapel is fenced round by provisions which make it practically impossible for many Dissenting sects to use it. The Act, moreover, makes no provision for the incumbent's fees—in fact, it does not recognize the incumbent at all—but it enables the parishioners, by a vote of their own, to disestablish their own rector by appointing a stranger as chaplain of the cemetery over his head. But how is he to be paid? By salary, and the salary is to be raised by a sort of church rate, which will, of course, be levied both upon Churchmen and Dissenters, and the practical effect will be that the Nonconformists will be compelled to contribute to the burial of Churchmen. So that, in fact, the Act, on the one hand, is an Act to disestablish pro tanto the Church of England, and, on the other hand, a revival, in their most obnoxious form, of church rates. Therefore, the Act has been a dead letter; and its only effect has been to lose to the Party opposite half-a-dozen or more seats, including the seat of the hon. and learned Member who introduced the Bill. I think, after that, that I am entitled to say that hitherto every attempt to remedy this grievance has ended in signal failure. But I see that my hon. Friend opposite, the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton), undeterred by former failures, has proposed a new remedy. What he proposes is to throw open all the graveyards in the country to all classes of Her Majesty's subjects, whatever be their religious faith or denomination. Well, if my hon. Friends means public or parochial graveyards, then I think he will not find many of us who will disagree with him on this side of the House. But if he means to invade private graveyards, whether belonging to the Churchmen or Nonconformists, all I can say is that a more Communistic proposal I never heard. Talk about the invasion of private property ! If that is not an invasion of private property I do not know what is. However, I will leave that proposal for the moment; for I think, by what I have shown, I am justified in saying that every attempt hitherto to remedy this grievance has ended in failure. Well, if that be so, is it not time to revert to the proposal which we have been urging for many years, and of which the principle may be stated in a sentence? We have got this civil right that I described, this civil right of interment coupled with, or it may be more correct to say entangled with, an ecclesiastical condition. You must either do away with the right or the condition. You cannot retain both. You cannot do away with the right; therefore, you must do away with the condition. Well, that is the principle of this Bill; but before I address myself to the Bill, I should like to say one word upon the application of the Bill to what are called statutory cemeteries. Of course, I admit that the arguments I have been endeavouring to press upon the House have no application to those cemeteries, because they always contain a portion of ground in which any persons may be buried with any rights they pleased. But, on the other hand, the objections to the Bill, depending partly upon sentiment and partly upon the supposed proprietory rights of the clergymen in the church- yards, have no application either. As everybody knows, the cemeteries are vested not like churchyards, in the clergymen and churchwardens, but in Burials Boards; and the rite of consecration is in their case nothing more than a civil act of dedication, which the Bishop can perform in his own study quite as well as on the spot. And I need hardly say there are grave practical inconveniences arising from this division of the cemetery with consecrated and unconsecrated ground. As a general rule, the land is divided in halves, one-half being consecrated and the other half unconsecrated. Now, I could mention one case—the case of Mountain Ash—where the unconsecrated part of the ground is quite full, and where the consecrated part is nearly empty. On the other hand, there are many other cases, probably the majority, in which the consecrated ground is full, while the unconsecrated part is empty. But for the purpose of my argument it comes to exactly the same thing. I am exceedingly obliged to the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir Alexander Gordon) for the Return for which he moved, showing how the case stands, though it is confined to the district within 10 miles of London. From that Return it appears that the number of persons last year buried in the consecrated ground in these cemeteries is 45,916. The number buried in unconsecrated ground is 37,908, so that those buried in consecrated ground and those in the unconsecrated ground are in the proportion of about 5 to 4. Well that is not a very great disproportion; but if you take particular cemeteries the disproportion is something astounding, sometimes one way and sometimes another. Take the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery. There the number of persons buried in consecrated ground is 4,503 as against only 1,021 in unconsecrated ground. But now, take the next case, that of the East London Cemetery. There I find that the case is exactly the reverse. There are 1,092 buried in the consecrated ground, and 5,150 in the unconsecrated ground. I really do not know how to account for this, unless it is owing to the old saying that carriage horses drive to church, but, of course, it leads to very great practical inconvenience. But that is not the whole question. We all know that members of the same family do not all belong to the same church, or profess the same belief, and what happens in consequence? Why, the father cannot be buried with his child, or the husband with his wife, or the brother with his sister, and thus you get the separation of those who in death ought certainly not to be divided. Perhaps the House will allow me to read a letter which I cut out of The Times, which puts this separation in almost a ridiculous light. It is signed by "A Sufferer," and he says—

"My first wife, a member of the Church, of England, died and was buried in the consecrated portion of our public cemetery. My second wife was a Roman Catholic, and, of course, I laid her remains in the Roman Catholic portion. I am neither a Churchman nor a Romanist; but I had hoped that one of those two graves at least might be made available for myself. Our local authorities, however, say 'No,' unless I agree to the religious Service; and when I complain of the hardship of having to pay for a third grave in the cemetery in which I have already purchased two, they point out that, under the circumstances, my proper course would have been to have married two Nonconformists."

Now, that is the absurd—and, may be, worse than absurd—result of the present law; and I believe that many of the most strenuous opponents of this Bill, as its stands, are anxious that we should get rid of this distinction of divided cemeteries and double chapels. That, Sir, is not the opinion merely of Nonconformists, but of several distinguished Prelates, who are opposed to the Bill as it now stands. Now, the Government thought the easiest, the simplest, and the most practical way of getting out of the difficulty was to give the clergyman power to perform his Service in the un-consecrated portion of a cemetery; and, on the other hand, to give to the Nonconformists the power of having their Service in the consecrated portion, so as to give to everybody all round the same rights. But the House of Lords, during the progress of the Bill through that House, did a thing which, I think, they could hardly have intended to do. Indeed, I do not see how it is to be defended. They struck out, by a small majority, the clause which gave Nonconformists the power to have their Services in the consecrated part of the cemetery; but they left untouched that part which gave the clergyman power to perform the Church Service in the unconsecrated part. Now, I appeal to anyone to say whether that is fair; and I can only say that when the Bill gets into Committee I shall endeavour to restore that part of it to its original shape with, I trust, the assent of the whole House. There is just one other Amendment introduced into the Bill as it stood by the House of Lords which I ought to mention. That is an Amendment excluding the operation of the Bill, whenever there is in the parish a cemetery containing unconsecrated ground. At first sight it would seem that that exclusion would have no operation at all, because in almost every case where there is a cemetery the churchyard is closed; in fact, the reason why there is a cemetery is that the churchyard is too full. But, unfortunately, having been behind the scenes on this question for a good many years, I think I understand the object of the Amendment, which is simply this:—It is to enable the clergyman and his supporters to agitate any parish for the construction of a cemetery to be paid for out of the rates. Indeed, I do not hesitate to say that the agitation in this direction has already begun, the effect of which will be simply to buy the Nonconformists out of their rights in the churchyards at the expense of the ratepayers. So that if this Bill passes as it stands, there will be an agitation in every parish, where Churchmen and Dissenters are about equally divided, for the construction of what I may call sham or "bogus" cemeteries. But there will be another inconvenience. You will have one Burial Law applied to parish A, and another law to parish B. And not only that, but when the cemetery is not full you will have one law in existence; but when the cemetery is full, of course you will have to go back to the old law, and the parish churchyard will be once more open to Nonconformists, so that there will be no end of confusion. I say that rather than pass the Bill with that alteration I would tear it up altogether. Therefore, when the Bill gets into Committee, I shall move to expunge that Amendment. Now I come to the Bill itself, and I will go shortly through its principal clauses. The Bill enacts that—

"After the passing of this Act, any relative, friend, or legal representative having the charge of, or being responsible for, the burial of a de- ceased person, may give forty-eight hours' notice in writing, indorsed on the outside 'Notice of Burial,' to or leave at the usual place of a bode of the rector, vicar, or other incumbent …. that it is intended that such deceased persons shall be buried within the churchyard or graveyard of such parish, or ecclesiastical district, without the performance, in the manner prescribed by law, of the service for the burial of the dead according to the rites of the Church of England, and after receiving such notice, no rector, vicar, incumbent, or officiating minister shall be liable to any censure or penalty, ecclesiastical or civil, for permitting such burial."

Well, we propose to add a Schedule at the end of the Bill, giving the form of the notice to be adopted. But then came the Archbishop of York with an Amendment excluding from the operation of the Act any cemetery of which a portion should be left unconsecrated. The Amendment I shall propose will remove that provision, and I shall also propose to omit other words, which will bring the clause to what it was when it was originally introduced. The 2nd clause deals with paupers, and provides that in such cases, instead of giving notice to the incumbent, the notice may be given to the master of the workhouse where the pauper died, by the husband, wife, or next-of-kin, and that the guardians, after such notice, shall permit the burial of the body in the manner provided by the Act. The 3rd clause provides that in the notice of burial the time of the burial is to be stated, subject to variations, should some other Service, previously appointed, have been fixed upon at the same time; and it also provides that the person receiving the notice shall, unless some other day or time is mutually arranged, signify to the party giving such notice at which hour of the day named in the notice, or (if such day shall be a Sunday, Good Friday, or Christmas Day) of the day next following, such burial shall take place. The 4th clause says—

"When no such intimation of change of hour is sent to the person from whom the notice has been received, or left at the house where the deceased person is lying, the burial shall take place in accordance with, and at the time specified in, such notice."

I may say at once that, although it was thought necessary to guard against any possible collision between the Church Services and the Services under the Act, I should hope that in 99 cases out of 100—indeed, in 999 cases out of 1,000—good feeling and good sense would prevail, and the burial would be allowed to take place as the poor people wish. The 5th clause deals with the regulations as to the making the grave, and it leaves those regulations as they were, and the persons who are at present entitled to receive the fees will receive them still. The House is aware that the church and graveyard are vested in the clergyman and the churchwardens. We have no desire to make any change in that. If we did, it would be necessary to create a Burial Board, but that would have been very expensive and troublesome; and, therefore, we have left matters as they were. It has been said that it is unfair to pay a man for a service which he does not perform; but these fees are not paid for the service; they are paid for breaking the ground which, as an incumbent, the clergyman is bound to keep in order; and we do not propose any other means by which the incumbent can keep up the churchyard; and, therefore, we leave these fees untouched. They are not very large, in some cases not coming to more than 1s. or 6d. Well, now I come to the 6th clause, and that, no doubt, will raise a good deal of discussion. It provides that—

"The burial may take place, at the option of the persons having the charge of, or being responsible for the same, either without any religious service, or with such Christian and orderly religious service at the grave, as such person shall think fit; and any person or persons who shall be thereunto invited, or be authorised by the person having the charge of, or being responsible for, such burial, may conduct such service or take part in any religious act thereat. The word 'Christian' in this section shall include every religious service used by any church, denomination, or person professing to be Christian."

["Oh!"] Of course, I know the objections that have been raised to this clause as it stands. I have been told—"Here have you been appealing for the last 12 years for this civil right of interment, discharged from what you call a religious condition; but here you take away one religious condition only to impose another." But we must look at this as a practical thing, and from a practical point of view. There is an infinite-simally small number of persons who would wish to be interred in rural churchyards with non-Christian Services. On the other hand, it would be idle to deny that there is a strong body of sentiment opposed to the admission into the churchyard of non-Christian interments. I think it is quite clear that to authorize any hut Christian Services would be fatal to the Bill; and, therefore, the question we have to consider is whether it would be worth while to wreck the Bill upon that? And I must remind the House that we are endeavouring to effect a settlement of this question, and a settlement does not consist in having one's own way in everything. Well, then, there is the 7th clause, which I purpose to strike out altogether. That is a clause which says that the Act shall only apply to parishes where there is no unconsecrated burial ground for the parishioners. The 8th clause provides that burials shall be conducted in a decent and orderly manner and without obstruction; and the 9th clause re-enacts the powers for the prevention of disorder which were originally given by Sir Robert Phillimore's Act. Well, then there is the 10th clause. Why the 10th clause should excite so much comment I do not know. That clause provides that the Act shall not give the right of burial where no previous right exists. We do not profess to deal with civil rights of interment. We do not profess to give the parishioners of any parish the right to be buried in any other parish; and, therefore, I do not see why the 10th clause should have excited so much comment. The 11th and 12th clauses are what I may call mere machinery, and now I come to what I may call the clergyman's clauses. The 13th clause gives to the clergyman the right to perform services in the unconsecrated part of the churchyard. It is very doubtful whether he has that power or not. One great authority says he has, and one says he has not. However, we propose to make the matter quite clear, and to give him that power, so as to get rid of all doubt in the matter; but, of course, it must be on condition that the Nonconformists have a reciprocal right to perform their Services in the consecrated portion. The 14th clause will require some explanation. The House is aware that, by the law as it now stands, the clergyman is not allowed to perform any religious Service over any unbaptized persons, or excommunicated persons, or persons who have laid violent hands on themselves, and on whom a verdict of felo de se has been pronounced. But excommunication has ceased, and persons who have committed felo de se are, happily, exceedingly few. We have, therefore, to deal chiefly with unbaptized persons. But if this Bill is passed, the number of unbaptized persons who would be buried by the clergy would be enormously diminished, because they consist mostly of Baptists and Quakers, and the ministers of their own denominations would bury them. Now, I have always thought it right that in these cases the clergymen should have some relief. I have always thought it a shocking thing that where, on account, perhaps, of a parent's neglect, a child is not baptized, that, therefore, its body is to be thrown into the grave without any religious Service at all. The only other remark I have to make is this. The Amendment was laid before Convocation, and Convocation approved a plan of Service which it shall be lawful for the minister at the request of the kindred or friends of the deceased to use in the case of unbaptized or excommunicated persons, or suicides. Now, I see no objection to that Service. Indeed, I should not have the slightest objection to have it read over me, though I hope I shall not die by the hands of justice, or lay violent hands on myself. But I know there are some persons who object to any mention of Convocation in an Act of Parliament; and perhaps, therefore, it will be desirable to postpone what I have to say on that subject until the Bill is in Committee. Well, the 16th clause enacts that the Bill shall extend to the Channel Islands and to the Isle of Man. I have, however, had a communication from the Isle of Man, which states that the Parliament of the Island—the House of Keys—were willing enough to pass the Bill, but they prefer to pass it for themselves, instead of having it passed by what is there called the" Parliament of the adjacent Islands of Great Britain and Ireland. "I, therefore, propose to strike the Isle of Man out of the Bill; but the Channel Islands will be left in. The Bill next provides that the Act shall not apply to Scotland or to Ireland, for the very good reason that the law which we are trying to introduce into England has prevailed both in Scotland and in Ireland for generations. Well, that is the whole of the Bill, because I have really anticipated what I had to say upon the Schedules. And there is one question which I have often asked myself—if this Bill were to be passed to-morrow, what possible injury would it inflict upon any human being? It certainly would not injure the congregations worshipping in the church, because every care and caution is taken to prevent the Church Services from clashing with the Services authorized under the Act. It is sometimes said that the owners of land who gave it for the construction of these churchyards would be injured if this Bill were passed, because their property, which was given for one purpose, would be diverted to another. I am utterly unable to follow that argument. In the first place, where is the diversion? There is not a single purpose for which these lands are to be given which will be in any way prejudiced or invalidated by this Act of Parliament. Of course, it was quite competent for these donors of land to have done what has been done by donors who have given their land to trustees for the purpose of what I may call private denominations. They might, instead of giving their land to the clergymen and the churchwardens for parish purposes, have given it to private trustees, and they may do so still, unless the Communistic proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for North Staffordshire is adopted. But what I say is this—you cannot allow them to blow hot and cold. They cannot treat the Church of England, on the one hand, as a National Institution, and on the other hand, as a private sect. And allow me to say that if they adopt the latter alternative they will do more to disestablish the Church of England than all the Burials Bills that ever were passed, because you may depend upon it the first step towards the disestablishment of the Church of England will be to denationalize it. Besides, I need not remind lawyers that the law of England recognizes no right upon the part of owners of property who have once given their land for a public purpose—that is, who have dedicated it to the public—to reserve any right to object to any other use to which it may afterwards be put. But it may be said—"Oh, but you ought to consider the feelings of the clergymen, which will be lacerated and wounded by these Services in the churchyard, which they are not even compelled to witness." And one right rev. Prelate has gone so far as to compare the feelings of these unhappy gentlemen with the torments ex- perienced by the early Christians when they were torn by wild beasts in the Circus or the Arena. Well, the best answer to these rhetorical exaggerations was given by a man, now no more, who was always listened to with respect by this House—I mean John Arthur Roebuck. In 1875, speaking of the dislike which clergymen felt to seeing Nonconformists in their graveyards, the late Mr. Roebuck said—

"Now, I regret such, a feeling towards one's fellow-creatures. In my opinion, it is much to be desired that such people should be taught to have right feeling and to act like Christian men; to feel for people in affliction, and seek to soothe their sorrow, rather than to entertain narrow-minded prejudice against them. Would it not be more in accordance with Christian feeling that the relatives and friends of the dead should be allowed to be soothed in their sorrow and gratified in their feelings by the one to whom they had been in the habit of looking? Lot us get rid of the narrow-mindedness which opposes this Bill."—[3 Hansard, ccxxiii., 1388.]

Well, it may be said, perhaps, that it is rather late in the Session to discuss this Bill; but if there ever was a question which was ripe for discussion it is this question. Why, it has been debated for more than a quarter of a century, through nearly 1,000 pages of Hansard; and I really believe that even the ingenuity of my right hon. Friend who has charge of the opposition to this Bill (Mr. Beresford Hope), will be unable to contribute anything new to the discussion. There is our old friend, "the thin end of the wedge." Hon. Gentlemen opposite are never tired of telling me that if the Nonconformists get into the churchyards they must also get into the church, because the church and churchyard are one. I can only answer that as I have done before. I am sorry to contradict hon. Gentlemen so flatly; but I must tell them that the church and churchyard are not one. In the first place, the church is a place set apart for the performance of a particular religious Service. The churchyard is set apart for the interment of the dead, not necessarily with any religious Service at all. But there is this further difference. The use of the church is optional. The use of the churchyard, unfortunately, is not optional. And I cannot help thinking that that argument is as dangerous as it is illogical; for I have yet to learn that it is the part of a prudent general to imperil the safety of an entire fortress by the defence of an untenable outwork. Would it not be far wiser, as well as more generous, to follow the advice of a Prelate to whose generous and courageous advocacy of this Bill I wish to bear my hearty testimony—I mean the Archbishop of Canterbury—and decline to be a party to refusing to men that which was just because there were some among them who wished for something more? Or that of the Bishop of Manchester, who warned the Church of England not to intrench herself behind rights and privileges that were becoming well-nigh intolerable. Sir, there is just one more argument againt the Bill which I ought not to pass by. It has been said—it is still said—that, notwithstanding the stringent safeguards by which this Bill is fenced round, there will be those who will take advantage of it to desecrate the churchyard by unseemly altercations, and will select the interment of their own friends and relatives as an occasion for insulting the clergyman in his own church. And I regret—I say it more in sorrow than in anger—to see that the Lower House of Convocation, offering in that respect a marked contrast to the Upper House, has actually passed, by a majority, a Resolution condemning this Bill as an act of dishonour to Almighty God. Sir, I can hardly trust myself to answer these insinuations. In my judgment, they are a calumny—they are a libel, not only upon Nonconformists, but upon Englishmen. Why, the very law we now seek to introduce into England has been in force in Ireland, in one shape or another, for generations. In Scotland it has been in existence for centuries. Will anyone dare to say that the churchyards of Scotland and Ireland are disgraced by scenes which bring dishonour upon Almighty God? But we need not go to Scotland, and we need not go to Ireland; we have the experiences of our own cemeteries, which have been established for more than 30 years, and in which millions of persons have been buried. We have the concurrent testimony of every person who has had anything to do with these cemeteries, that the burials in the unconsecrated part of the ground are conducted with at least as much decorum and solemnity and religious feeling as those in the consecrated part—some people say a great deal more. But I deny that it is neces- sary to appeal to the testimony of experience. We have something in this case better than experience to appeal to. We have the unerring instincts of the human heart. Will the House allow me to read a single sentence from the speech of one of the most distinguished Members of the Lower House of Convocation, of a man of whom some hard things have lately been said, but who is, nevertheless, one of the largest-hearted, as well as the largest-minded, men that ever adorned the English Church—I mean the Dean of Westminster. Dr. Stanley, speaking on this subject, said—

"These occasions—the most solemn in human life—are exactly the occasions on which the common principles of belief and the common principles of humanity come most visibly to the front, and the common principles of religious belief and the common principles of humanity are most fully vindicated on the most solemn and serious occasions of our life—

'Tears waken tears and honour honour brings, And human hearts are touched by human things.'"

Sir, I will only add that I believe that when this Bill has been a few years—aye, a few months—in operation, all these dismal forebodings will vanish like the phantoms of a diseased imagination, and men will reflect with amazement that so small a concession should have awakened such grave and groundless apprehensions. And now, Sir, I have only to thank both sides of the House for the kindness with which they have listened to my somewhat lengthy statement. In making it I have endeavoured to avoid all personal allusions, and all irritating topics; and I hope and believe that the debate will be continued in the same spirit, and that the second reading of this Bill will be arrested by no factious and unnecessary delays; because I cannot help feeling that the time has at last come when men of all parties and of all opinions must be sincerely anxious that the curtain should fall upon this painful and protracted conflict. And it is for this reason that in asking this House to read the Bill a second time, I venture for once to appeal, not merely to the drilled forces of a Party majority, but to that higher and nobler sentiment which prompts men to feel for sorrow and suffering—for the bereaved mother and the orphan child, for the poor widow in her desolate home—and which, I feel sure, will no longer refuse to the little knot of village mourners the only boon they ask—to be allowed to bury their own loved ones in their own way, and, in that supreme hour of their grief, to forget for a moment the bitterness of a common sorrow in the consolations of a common hope.

I have listened, with the attention due to his position and ancient advocacy of this measure, to the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend. Interesting as that speech was as a specimen of psychology, and an exposition from an able, eloquent, and erudite man of a long and complex mental process directed to the history of this question, I think that some of it would have come better if he had reserved it for his autumnal triumph in the green vales of Denbighshire, for the delectation of an exultant and happy constituency. But my business is with the present, and not with the past; and my right hon. and learned Friend must excuse me if I pass over a good many of the topics with which he dealt, particularly at the commencement of his speech. There are one or two things, however, which I will say at starting. First, in regard to the peroration of his speech. It was very ingeniously constructed. You saw the hand of the skilled advocate in it. For us to let it pass unnoticed would be to admit his claim, and thus throw overboard the very principle on which we rest our opposition. Everyone, of course, wishes to see the curtain dropped on a troublesome and anxious contention. It was not necessary to throw in our faces the widow and the little lot of mourners, graceful specimens as these are of that genre painting in which my right hon. and learned Friend is such a proficient. But if that peroration is to pass without a protest, we, who oppose the Bill, must confess ourselves fighting a cause which not only may be beaten, but which ought to be beaten. I regret these Burial Bill contests as much as anybody can do; but unless the curtain is to drop on the conversion to a wiser and better mind of my right hon. and learned Friend, then, I say, let the agitation go on in secula seculorum. My right hon. and learned Friend threw a good deal of ridicule upon those who can believe that there is any congruity be- tween the church and the churchyard. Only foolish and ignorant people could fancy that taking possession of the churchyard ought to lead to the church. Had any Member on this side of the House rested his case on the admission of the notion, we should have deserved all, and a great deal more than the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been pleased to bestow upon us for so dangerous an admission. But will he give me his ears to the following words? I am not very conversant with the private relations of Nonconformists, and I am not aware that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is, for I believe the Church of England owns him as a devoted son; but I have heard that among the Dissenting clergy there are few men who stand more high as a devout minister of the Gospel, earnest in his sacred calling—an eloquent preacher, and a Christian man who loves his sacred calling—than the Rev. Dr. Landels, the minister of what was once the Diorama, in Regent's Bark. I will now ask the House to listen to a few words from that eminent Christian divine—

"Do not conceal the fact that this taking the 'fortress' [by which the reverend gentleman, means the church] is our final aim, and that we cannot rest satisfied until that aim has been realized. Our clerical friends, in arguing against the Burials Bill, tell us, with refreshing simplicity"—

I think my right hon. and learned Friend will find he has been refreshingly simple by the time I have got to the end of my extract—

"Our clerical friends, in arguing against the Burials Bill, tell us, with refreshing simplicity, that if we get into the churchyards, we shall want to get into the church next."

The Judge Advocate General repudiates that inference—"What charming innocents they must be to put it thus." I hope my right hon. and charming innocent Friend is listening—

"What charming innocents they must be to put it thus! I think that if, by getting into the churches, they mean that we shall demand to have national property employed for national purposes and not reserved"—

["Hear, hear!"] I see Dr. Landels has a large congregation on the Benches here—

"And not reserved for the exclusive use of a sect; why, then, of course, we mean to got into the churches. And, what is more, if our right to the churches is as good as our right to the churchyards, we will succeed in getting what we demand."

The Judge Advocate General, as a Churchman, says one thing as to the intentions of the Dissenters; but Dr. Landels, who is himself a Dissenter, says quite another thing. ["No!"] I fall back upon the old maxim,"experto crede," and I am more inclined to believe Dr. Landels.

Now, I come more directly to the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend. I feel bound, as a layman, and not as a lawyer, to traverse the way in which he puts the case. His facts I grant; his inferences I do not accept. He says that as a common right, and in Common Law, there is a right of burial in the churchyard. I grant that. It is perfectly true. Then he argues that it must exist without condition. I demur to that assertion. I do not demur to the facts which this pretension may be supposed to cover; but I do demur to the inferences which the right hon. and learned Gentleman means to draw from those facts in his way of putting them. Undoubtedly, all persons, as human beings, have a Common Law right to be buried in the churchyard of the parish to which they belong. This leads us to consider the double character of the parish. It is an ecclesiastical institution in one respect, and it is a civil one in another. There is, accordingly, an ecclesiastical side to burial in the parish, churchyard, and there is a civil one. Well, then, as to the conditions of burial, the way in which I read the law is this. In the eye of the Common Law burial means merely putting the body into the ground. The religious ceremony, which may or may not accompany the putting of that body into the ground, belongs to another order of things—namely, the spiritual. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman told us, every dead man must be buried; and, from the first, although the right hon. and learned Gentleman dealt with the matter very lightly, the Civil Law has assumed that we must all be put into that plot—namely, the parish burial ground—which the State has recognized as existing for that purpose. On the other hand, the being buried with religious rites is an act of the highest decency and of the highest reverence. At the same time, these rites are not an essential element in putting your dead out of sight. This brings us to that other order of things, which ordains that, simple interment being essential, and interment with religious forms pious and desirable, then that pious practice in connection with mere burial is a proper subject for regulation. Here the Ecclesiastical Law of England, incorporated as it is into the law of the land, steps in; and it is with the condition of things so created, and not with the abstract right of burial of all men, that we are now dealing. On the one side, the necessity of burial is absolute; while, on the other, it may, and, morally speaking, ought to, carry with it the condition of a Church Service. Yet that condition cannot be an inseparable adjunct of the universal necessity. The mere interment affects the burial ground as a civil institution; but the use of some Burial Service brings us face to face with that ground in its connection with the Established Church. So, then, we have now to consider the alternative of the silent burial. I know there are clergymen who fancy that they must force the Burial Service on the body of any baptized man put into their churchyard. Although not a lawyer myself, I have considered the question in its historical aspect, and have reached the opinion that that presumption is both fallacious and unfounded, and that the Judge Advocate General is fighting men of straw in setting up the idea that every man must, in the churchyard, be buried with the Burial Service. The Clergy, generally, are, I believe, with me too. I will offer one defence for my assertion, and I think it is worth 10,000 arguments. I suppose everyone will agree that, among Churchmen, there never was a man who was both a more staunch Churchman and a more thorough lawyer than the late Bishop Phillpotts; and it is well known that Bishop Phillpotts held, and laid down most strongly, the view which I am presenting, and, under correction, I believe that Bishop Phillpotts' law was right. I have always opposed the Burials Bill on that principle. Certainly, if I believed that the point required clearing up, I should be an advocate of any measure that would clear it up; but, not believing that, I looked upon the provision for silent burial in the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's Bill of 1877 as something like surplusage, if not even as weakening the original obligation.

Now, Sir, I come more closely to the present state of things. Looking on it as a question of high policy, why do I regard it with so much dread? It is because he only who is wilfully blind can refuse to admit that it is a move in the campaign of Disestablishment. No doubt, it is easy enough to deny that assertion. I have given the evidence of Dr. Landels. I will give now that of other men, who are as great leaders on their side as Dr. Landels, and their evidence is even stronger. Not only is it a move in that campaign; but I say it in this House, and as I would desire to say it in the market place, and on the housetop, that the claim set up in this Bill is a distinct breach of faith and a repudiation of moral obligation. In 1868, Churchmen, for the sake of peace, and mainly following the counsels of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), surrendered the obligatory character of the church rate. What was the result of that concession? That the churchyard was as open to the Dissenters as ever previously; but that the burdens which had been distributed equally upon Churchmen and Nonconformists thenceforward fell exclusively upon Churchmen. Churchmen consented to this surrender for the sake of peace and goodwill. Yet, in "another place," a noble and learned Lord, from whose antecedents I should have expected other words, almost sneered at this, and asked, "Where can you find the evidence?" He said, in fact, "Show it in the bond?" Of course, it is not there. It is one of those understandings which cannot be written down except in the consciences and minds of intelligent and honourable men, and there it is graven deeply. In 1868, you induced us, or rather we came forward, to abandon the compulsory church rate; and who was it that was foremost to accept the compromise? The foremost Churchman in this House then to do it was the present Marquess of Salisbury, and it was his influence, as much as that of any man, that induced the Conservative Party willingly and cheerfully to accept it. All I can say is, that we voluntarily abandoned compulsory church rates then, and thereby we took upon ourselves the sustentation of the churchyards. And we did not, by one hair's breadth, attempt to diminish the liberty of Dissenters to be buried. What was the reward we got? Simultaneously with that concession came this agitation. We are, I know, the "stupid Party;" but the "stupid Party," at least, will be allowed the privilege of being able to affirm, without contradiction, that two and two make four. I do not ask for any higher exercise of our intellect. Well, simultaneously, or within a few months of that concession, the Liberation Society came to the fore. In the first programe of the Liberation Society we find these words, as defining the object of that Society—

"The application to secular uses, after an equitable satisfaction of existing interests, of all national property now held in trust by the United Church of England and Ireland and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and, concurrently with it, the liberation of their Churches from all State control."

The batteries were unmasked, and the future campaign was ostentatiously, I may say rashly, proclaimed by the chiefs of the spoliation party. I have given you the words of a London Nonconformist. I know that there is much jealousy of London in the large provincial towns; and, therefore, I will give you the words of an eminent provincial Nonconformist, who hails from Birmingham, and is, therefore, well-known to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I refer to Mr. Dale. I believe that he is one of the leaders of the Nonconformist party in Birmingham. Now, what says Mr. Dale? Mr. Dale tells us—

"Nonconformists had not concealed what their real intentions were. What they were going in for was complete religious equality in life as well as in death, and as they asserted the graveyards belonged to the parish, so they asserted that the church belonged to the parish."

You see that Mr. Dale does not agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Judge Advocate General in the distinction he draws between the church and the churchyard. "They did not intend to disguise how far their principles carried them." I say that, taking all these things together, we should indeed be worthy of contempt, and worthy of defeat; we should be worthy of a worse discomfiture than Her Majesty's Government may be preparing for us to-night, if we pretended to accept the lip-service of those who assure us that this is nothing but a philanthropic movement, and that anything like an assault upon the fortress of the church was the last thing they hoped, expected, or intended.

Now, I come to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman calls, in one phrase, "the clergyman's point of view;" in a second, "the feeling of the clergy;" and in yet another one which, I think, on reflection, he will agree, was not so commendable in point of taste, "the clerical monopoly." I want to present to the House, if I can, what the feeling of a country clergyman would be as to the present state of things, and as to the state of things which would exist if the Bill now before us should become law. My right hon. and learned Friend has smoothed the way before me; because he has laid down, very strongly and very clearly, that what he calls "a sentimental grievance" might be, and ought to be, as real a grievance as any other grievance of a material character. If the picture I desire to draw presents a merely sentimental grievance, my right hon. and learned Friend will, I am sure, thinking as he does, defend and vindicate me. Why is it that the zealous clergyman values the use of the Burial Service? Is it for the sake of inflicting insult on his Nonconformist brethren? I repudiate so abominable an insinuation. Is it for the sake of parading sacerdotal power and pomp? That supposition is ridiculously preposterous. When I explain what the clergyman's real feeling is, Churchmen will understand me, and Nonconformists, whether they understand me or not, will see that it is a motive which claims respect. The Burial Service is part of the body of devotions which makes up the Christian life of the Church of England. The Church of England presents itself with forms and ceremonies—not, indeed, with such elaborate forms or lengthened ceremonies as those of other Churches in the West and East, but still such as are as really ceremonial in their simplicity—for it holds that forms and ceremonies are part of God's Ordinance in this world, ordained, as it is, by Him, not of disembodied spirit, but of matter controlled by spirit; and it thinks that it finds, both in the Old Testament and in the New, ample warrant for that belief. Taking, then, the Prayer Book in due order, there is, first of all, in the English Church the ordinary Service, not only on Sundays but on every day. Then there is Baptism, which is the initiation into the Christian Church; there is likewise the admission to higher privileges at Confirmation; there is the Holy Communion of the Lord's Supper; and there are other occasional Services mixed up, for the most part, with the joys and cares, and the happiness and the responsibilities of domestic life; and, finally, there is the last event for all of us—the Burial of the dead ! A clergyman who strives to do his duty as a minister of that Church—the Church in which he has taken his Ordination vows, belonging, as he knows himself to be, to that Church, sworn to carry into effect its machinery of consolation for the souls committed to his charge—accepts the work of giving effect to these Ordinances as God's embassy to the world. To him, all and every one of these Services is an occasion of teaching. It is a sermon, as well as a rite; it is a means of bringing Heaven and earth together to the mind, and for the benefit of man. When he measures the spiritual effect of the Burial Service, he does not merely make account of the momentary impression caused by each repetition of that Service. He does not only rely upon the warnings and the consolations which it offers when the human mind is most open to such impressions. He dwells upon the power which it places in his hands, whenever he wishes, of pointing to the vanity of human wishes and the shortness of life, not by quotations from Horace, but by words, which once heard at the open grave, can never be forgotten. He knows with what double force he can from his pulpit press the warning, that "man that is born of woman" hath short stay. He anticipates the responsive thrill, when the drooping soul is bidden to take comfort with the glorious assurance, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Such teachings come to all as the echo of some occasion, or occasions, which give to them a personal influence beyond their sacred origin. Such is the Burial Service to the Churchman, as part of the Church system; while that system to be real must be consistent. I am not the optimist which my right hon. and learned Friend is. I do not put aside as preposterous the risk of ill-disposed men abusing the privileges which this Bill would give. Still, I will waive my fears for the purposes of this discussion. I presume that every Service in the churchyard will be performed in fulness of heart by him who officiates, and that he will attempt to improve the occasion by offering his own exposition of Christianity as he holds Christianity to be. But the more his Christianity differs from that of the Church of England the heavier will the burden be upon him of proclaiming what he believes to be the Gospel, the more necessary will such a man believe the duty to be of making a loud, sharp, and clear pronouncement of what he believes in terrible earnestness. Figure to yourselves what an energetic, probably a truly devout, but, perhaps, a narrowly fanatic representative of some small introspective sect, will feel to be his moral duty whenever he has the opportunity of officiating in a churchyard, and you will have no difficulty in appreciating how far the clergyman of the parish will like the funerals which will have become by Act of Parliament possible in his churchyard. He will find that churchyard crowded, not by the mourners, but by the idle throng which gathers and crowds to a fair when Wombwell is there, or gathers and interrupts round some heartrending accident. ["Oh!"] It is very well to say "Oh!" but I cannot understand the great squeamish-ness which has come over the House to-night. Why should not irreligious people go to hear a popular preacher as they go to see a show? ["Oh!"] Hon. Members may cry "Oh!" but I have no doubt that my right hon. and learned Friend, who is justly popular in Denbighshire, would be glad if he had the same sort of audience at his autumnal speeches as that which is secured by a popular exhibition. Certainly, when I myself was a borough Member, such were my feelings. The clergyman sees his parishioners gathered together in the churchyard to hear the eloquent words of some famous minister, say, of the Primitive Methodists, or of some other of those sects which still hold the terrible doctrines of Calvin in all their grim severity. That clergyman would hear, no doubt from earnest lips, in burning language, fraught with many Scriptural phrases, words that would make his blood run cold in his veins, because they would be to him so horrible, so unloving, so impossible a representation of the Gospel of love and of the God of love; and yet the man who used them would be untrue to his God and his duty, living as he did upon the terrible code of Calvin, if he did not brandish the menaces which make the parish clergyman sick at heart. ["Oh!"] I trust that those hon. Gentlemen who call out "Oh!" would go home sick at heart under similar circumstances. Well, now, there is another funeral service in the same churchyard in the following week. The clergyman goes there too. The funeral in this ease is conducted by a Universalist. The Universalist minister had probably been as much shocked as the parish clergyman, though not so wisely, at the Calvinistic doom pronounced in the preceding week, and his address would simply be a practical wiping away of any future responsibility which was practically worth anything as a deterrent to frail and sinful man. So the clergyman would find his once quiet flock thrown into confusion between the Universalist and the Calvinist, and utterly perplexed over the teaching of the Prayer Book and of the Burial Service, on which he had so painfully built up their belief. The House would hardly believe that that clergyman would go home in a very affectionate mood towards the Judge Advocate General and the Lord Chancellor.

There is one concession which I hope to obtain from the good sense of the House and of my right hon. and learned Friend. I claim that women's services may not be allowed in the churchyards. By this Bill they are so. The question was put to the Lord Chancellor a short time ago, and he answered directly that as the Bill stood they were. Hon. Members may have read that chapter of St. Paul, in which, unlike some discourses we have heard from the Treasury Bench, he argued with much force, but with no vituperation, against the indecency of women performing public ministrations. What would the clergyman's feelings be when, on a Monday, strolling into his churchyard, he saw, perched upon a tombstone, some holy Moenad, inebriate with pious zeal, screeching out in the wildest accents the most ultra-Calvinism? I have endeavoured to treat the question as plainly and simply, and with as little exaggeration, as possible. ["Oh!"] I recall that expression, and I say, with no exaggeration at all, I have endeavoured to picture what may be, and what will be, the results of the Bill. To show what the state of things is now, the House will, perhaps, allow me to read an extract from a letter which I have received this morning from a Kentish clergyman, vicar of a parish, of old no- torious as a head-quarter of Dissent, the birth-place and the burial-place—with the Church's Service—of a well-known founder of a sect. This gentleman says—

"It is the country clergy who will be affected by this legislation. It is a matter of little surprise that Liberal Bishops should vote in favour of the Bill, since, however eminent they may be, they are practically ignorant of parochial matters. The Nonconformists of our parish value the Services of the Church, and of the Clergy of the Church. Frequently have I officiated at the funerals of Nonconformists, having met the procession headed by the Nonconformist minister at the church gates. The minister has remained by my side throughout the Service."

Is that the state of things you wish to see universal? If so, why do you destroy it? Who is the person who will suffer by the Bill? It is, of course, the parish clergyman. If you want to know the character of the parish clergyman, I think I cannot do better than quote the words of another eminent Dissenter. It is that holy man, that truly eloquent preacher, that pastor of souls—Mr. Spurgeon. Mr. Spurgeon published a work called The Sword and Trowel, in 1872, and he asks—

"Is the priest with his communicant for ever to be quartered upon us as an ecclesiastical dragoon, and, for his insult, to be fed with tithes and offerings? If there be justice among our statesmen they cannot allow such wrong to be perpetual. Since there is justice with the Most High, He will not suffer them to go unpunished. To the eternal God"—

I really must apologize to the House for reading these expressions, but, happily, they are only few—

"The Nonconformists appeal against the tyranny of that Popish Church which now lords it over us. Oh Lord! how long?"

That is Mr. Spurgeon's declaration of policy; and you expect the clergy to be hoodwinked by sentimental appeals such as those which have been made by my right hon. and learned Friend. Yet, even the clergy have human feelings; although, as Mr. Spurgeon says, in another passage—

"To raven like the wolf and to plunder like the freebooter has been the peculiar prerogative of the Church of England."

I am glad that my right hon. and learned Friend has not fallen back upon the charitable fallacy of "burial like a dog," to define silent burial. This is a fallacy long since demolished by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), who reminded us that the persuasion to which he belongs cherishes this silent burial. It is the law of all the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland; and in the great Roman Catholic Church all over the world the Service in the church is immeasurably the more important one. I only refer to that matter now, in order to point out a very curious singularity—that this strong passion for the use of a Service should have been so suddenly developed among sects to whom ecclesiastical forms and ceremonies used to be abhorrent, concurrently with the abolition of the Irish Establishment and the establishment of the Liberation Society.

I will now go on to my right hon. and learned Friend's analysis of the Bill. On one point, I was very much cheered. I thought that since the General Election old things had vanished and the world clean gone round; but, all at once, I found myself on the footing I occupied in the Parliament of 1874. I was actually astonished, Sir, to find myself sitting on your left hand, and still listening to the old stories we used to laugh at before from my right hon. and learned Friend—the excellent story of the widower, by which he can always secure his laugh—the widower of two wives, disconsolate, no doubt, but irreligious and parsimonious, who was sorely troubled because he would have to buy a third grave for himself. All that the poor gentleman has to do will be to take care that his third wife shall be of some faith, or the reverse, which will enable her to be his companion after death. Old wine, no doubt, is better than new; but I am not sure, in the House of Commons at least, that old stories are always the best. The right hon. and learned Gentleman raised the strongest objections to, and expressed the utmost contempt of, the clauses which have been introduced into the Bill by Lord Mount Edgeumbe and the Archbishop of York. We heard yesterday afternoon from the Home Secretary that he was prepared to tear another Bill into tatters rather than to accept some Amendments;; and I can only congratulate the Judge Advocate General upon so close and so speedy an imitation of this rhetorical declaration. As to the controversy in itself, all I have to notice is that when, many years since, the Judge Advocate General first introduced this Bill, a Select Committee sat upon it upstairs, under the Chairman ship of the then Home Secretary, now Lord Aberdare, and that my right hon. and learned Friend cheerfully accepted substantially these very Amendments. Year after year he continued introducing his Bill so clothed upon. It was long before it appeared naked, but not ashamed. May I not then appeal to my right hon. and learned Friend to remember his fresh, ingenuous Parliamentary youth, when he saw no harm in the arrangements which are now so abhorrent to him? I must now say a word or two upon the Convocation Clause, as it is called. It is a Convocation Clause in the sense of avoiding the offer of what has been recommended by Convocation, but of preferring something which was only a colourable likeness to the scheme Convocation recommended—a certain series of new Rubrics, covering the whole Prayer Book. But Convocation accepted even these only as part of its more important recommendation of an easy way of legislating for the future on Rubrics. It prepared a Bill for this object, to which then already prepared Rubrics were added as a Schedule. But what Convocation particularly avoided doing was to invite the Government or Parliament to pick and choose at their pleasure one or more of these Rubrics, and drop the rest. This scheme of alteration was to be taken or left as an entire body of new Rubrics. It equally intended to avoid Parliament considering the Schedule in any way without taking up the Convocation Bill. So much for the Convocation of Canterbury. The Convocation of York differed in one material point over what are currently called the second and third classes of Burial Service; so what the Government now proposes is to give us a fragment of the Convocational scheme under conditions which Convocation distinctly would not accept. Well, the proposal, as it stands, may be a good one, and it may even receive the full approval of hon. Members below the Gangway; but they must not think that they are carrying out the suggestions of Convocation by accepting Schedule C. I have not much more to say. I cannot be so blind to the present condition of politics as to think my appeal to the House will be successful. But I am not afraid to make it; for it is better to be beaten in a good cause consistently, and standing to one's colours, than by accepting any perilous compromise to palter away the power of making a stand else- where. History, I believe, will do that justice to the cause for which I appeal, which I do not expect this House to render now. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time on this day three months.

said, he was not sure that the strain of eloquence to which they had just listened, however amusing it might be in itself, or however characteristic of his right hon. Friend, was altogether calculated to promote that gravity of feeling and temper with which the House ought to treat an important subject. He would not attempt to rival his right hon. Friend in the length of his speech; but would merely offer a few remarks on the Bill before them. His right hon. Friend had expatiated rather too freely, perhaps, on the probable consequences of the Bill with regard to the admission of Dissenters to the churches as well as to the churchyards. That question was not as yet before the House; but when the time came he should be ready to make as good a defence for the Church as the occasion might require. The subject, however, that they were now discussing had been before them for many years; and, as his right hon. Friend was aware, the proposed measure had received the assent of the responsible Leaders of the Church in the other House. That circumstance alone might have entitled the Bill to his right hon. Friend's respectful consideration, or might, at least, have induced him not to oppose it by a direct negative. His right hon. Friend had even admitted the first half of the argument on which the Bill was based, but had failed to admit the logical necessity of the other half. He had admitted that every parishioner had, by Common Law, a right to interment in the churchyard. That point being admitted by his right hon. Friend, he wondered that so clearheaded a man should have been able to resist the conclusion to which the argument led. Granted that the right of interment in the churchyard belonged as a civil right to every citizen, it followed that the friends of a deceased citizen had a natural right to see that his interment was accompanied by such a religious Service as commended itself to their judgment. Granting the civil right of a parishioner to be buried in the churchyard, on what ground were they to refuse him the right of having his funeral accompanied by such a religious Service as his friends might approve? He had never yet received an answer to that argument. He advanced it, of course, with the qualification that the religious Service was not to be of such a character as would be calculated to give offence to other people, or to provoke a breach of the peace. His right hon. Friend had argued that religious ceremonies in the churchyard were no necessary part of interment, and that silent burial was all that people had a natural right to ask for. With great truth, his right hon. Friend stated that public opinion in certain religious bodies had undergone a great change on this subject within the last 300 years. No doubt, it was a fact that on this subject, as well as in regard to other ecclesiastical matters, the opinions of Nonconformists had changed. For example, in former times they were content with more modest buildings than they were content with now. They now erected splendid edifices, with stained-glass windows, spires, bells, and all the paraphernalia of the most advanced Episcopal churches. So, no doubt, there had been a change with regard to the feeling in favour of devotional Services at funerals; for at the period of the Reformation the Nonconformists generally were opposed to Services in the churchyards. He desired to call his right hon. Friend's attention to the following passage from an author whom he would respect more than the writers he had himself quoted on the present occasion:—

"The greatest thing of all others about this duty of Christian burial is an outward testification of the hope which we have touching the resurrection of the dead. For which purpose, let any man of reasonable judgement examine whether it be more convenient for a company of men, as it were in a dumb show, to bring a corpse to the place of burial, there to leave it covered with earth, and so end—or else to have the exequies devoutly performed with solemn recital of such lectures, psalms, and prayers, as are purposely framed for the stirring up of men's minds unto a careful consideration of their estate both here and hereafter."

The writer of those words was Richard Hooker, who, it would be noticed, did not draw a distinction between Christian burial and legal burial. As far as this Bill was concerned, it was confined expressly to Christian burials. But the point to which he wished to call his right hon. Friend's attention was that the argument in favour of silent funerals was most emphatically condemned by this writer, whom he knew his right hon. Friend would acknowledge to be as great an authority on Church discipline as ever lived in the Church of England. This Burials Question had excited men's feelings for a great length of time; and he was very much struck by being accidentally reminded of it the other day by the opening of one of Sir Walter Scott's most beautiful and touching stories—The Bride of Lammermoor. The story began with a description of the funeral of the Master of Ravenswood in the Presbyterian churchyard. The author described the circumstances of his death, and gave the numbers of his retainers and friends who passed from the castle to the churchyard. Contrary to the custom of the period, there marched at the head of the procession a clergyman arrayed in the robes of the Episcopal Church of Scotland. At the churchyard the procession was met by the Presbyterian minister, who, as soon as he saw the rival clergyman, laid his hand upon him and forbad him to open the book. The young Master of Ravenswood ordered the clergyman to proceed with the Service. The Presbyterian minister again interposed; the young Master of Ravenswood drew his sword; whereupon the Presbyterian minister retired to a corner of the churchyard, and the Episcopalian Service was performed in defiance of him. Upon this incident turned the intense vindictiveness of the character of the hero of the story when his feelings were directed into a different channel by another painful circumstance. Such was the feeling which prevailed in Scotland in those days. Was it surprising that a somewhat similar feeling should prevail in our own day; and that, although swords wore not now drawn, much bitterness and wrath should be sometimes manifested in many a Welsh village churchyard? The other day he received a letter which confirmed the existence of this feeling. It was from an old acquaintance of his, who was a Member of that House 40 years ago. He said—

"I remember some years since attending the funeral of a much respected Roman Catholic at Dorchester (in Oxfordshire), whose ancestors were in the churchyard for many generations. The Roman Catholic Bishop attended at the grave, when, in order to show their distaste to a Protestant Service, he and all the relatives turned round their backs to the officiating clergyman. I never have forgotten the scene, and in order to prevent such a repetition I gladly accept the measure which will allow their burial by their own pastors."

The writer, he might observe, was a strong Conservative when he sat in that House. The object of the Bill had been so often discussed, its principle had been so generally accepted, and the necessity for legislation so generally admitted in both Houses, that he did not think he need follow his right hon. Friend, or his right hon. and learned Friend the Judge Advocate General, into the arguments they had adduced. With regard to the cemetery question, it had always appeared to him that the only logical way to get out of this difficulty—and the best and the kindest way also—was to treat the churchyard as the cemetery of the parish for the time being. For years past he had advocated that principle pure and simple; and he was prepared to abide by its consequences. He did not think, however, that the present measure adhered to that principle in all respects. One clause in the Bill could not be defended upon strictly logical grounds. He referred to the clause which excluded all but purely Christian Services from the churchyard. No doubt, it would be painful to most hon. Members to see any but Christian Services in the churchyard. Still, the principle on which he defended the Bill was that burial in the churchyard was a civil and a necessary right. That being granted, he did not think it was right to introduce words of limitation of that kind, except so far as they might be necessary to prevent possible breaches of the peace. With regard to the cemetery, he recently had an opportunity of testing the feeling of a parish. There was a large church and a small churchyard, which had been used for eight centuries. It became necessary either to enlarge the churchyard or to provide a cemetery under the Act which had been referred to. He expressed to the parishioners his willing- ness to do either the one or the other, as they might desire, and they unanimously wished the churchyard to be enlarged, although they knew very well what would be the result of an Act like the present. Therefore, although he had no doubt that in some cases churchyards would be closed and cemeteries adopted, yet he believed that, in a great many cases, the churchyard would be retained as a place of interment. He would only make one or two remarks on that clause of the Bill which provided that a "Christian and orderly" Service should be used. In his opinion, any danger which might be apprehended from the desecration of the churchyard, or from offence being given to the parishioners, was provided for by the 8th clause, which enacted that burials should be conducted in "a decent and orderly manner." But he did not think it was possible, with regard to consistency, to limit the Services or quasi- Services to be performed in these burial-yards to Services of a professedly Christian character. They must remember that, after all, there were persons in this country who were not Christians; that they had a right to be buried; and that they had friends whose feelings must be respected. He found that many clergymen were opposed to this clause. In the Schedules of the Bill a curious expression occurred, to which he wished to draw the attention of the Law Officers of the Crown. It was provided that a certain thing "shall not be unlawful." Now, a great deal of time and learning had been expended in interpreting the words, "it shall be lawful;" and, unless explained, the words referred to would probably give rise to a fresh crop of difficulties. The use of the words, "it shall not be unlawful," was all the more remarkable from the fact that the draftsman, in a subsequent part of the Schedule, fell back upon the usual phrase, "it shall be lawful." It was important to know whether any subtle distinction was intended to be conveyed by the two forms of expression employed. There were one or two other points in the Schedule which required explanation. It appeared that the Bill provided for three modes of interment, which might be compared to the first, second, and third classes of railway carriages. There was, first, the whole Service of the Church of England; then, an abbreviated Ser- vice; and, lastly, a Service applicable to persons for whom the other two classes were not available. In the original Bill there was a fourth class which might be compared to an open truck, there being no Service at all. Now, it was provided in Sub-section 2, that in case neither of the aforesaid Services—that was to say, the first and second-class Services—might be used, it should

"Not be unlawful for the minister, at the request of the kindred or friends of the deceased, to use after the body has been laid into the earth prayers taken from the Book of Common Prayer and portions of Holy Scripture approved by the ordinary, so that they be not part of the Order for the Burial of the Dead, nor of the Order of the Administration of the Holy Communion."

According to that provision, it would be unlawful for the clergyman to read the beautiful passage beginning, "Man that is born of a woman"—which he should have thought, in any circumstances, admissible—or even to read the Lord's Prayer. That seemed a very queer sort of Service to use. He did not know what particular form of conscience it was meant to relieve. He was not there to deny for a moment that there was a clerical grievance. If he were a clergyman, he should feel that the clerical grievance was the greatest of all. It seemed to him an extremeful painful thing for a clergyman to be compelled to read the Church Service over a person who, to his knowledge, had died an unbeliever; but he was bound to confess that the clergy did not appear to feel it so much as he should have expected. It was, no doubt, very much a matter of taste. He did not see that the Bill provided any substantial remedy for such a grievance; but unless a strong wish were expressed by the clergy that something should be done, he was disposed to leave the matter as it stood. He would not detain the House longer; but would at once conclude by expressing his hope that hon. Members generally would recognize it to be a matter of justice and propriety that the friends of a person deceased should be allowed to hold at the grave such devout and religious Services as seemed to them most suitable.

, who had on the Paper the following Notice of Amendment:—

"That no alteration of the Law of Burial will afford a just settlement of the question which does not give to all Her Majesty's subjects equal facilities of burial in all the graveyards of the Country;"

said, he considered it in the highest degree desirable that this question should be approached with a perfect freedom from sectarian jealousy or religious intolerance. Although the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had charge of the Bill had said almost the same, he did not appear to have carried out the principle in his speech. He charged the right hon. and learned Gentleman with having departed from an opinion he had expressed in a published letter, to the effect that Nonconformist graveyards should be dealt with in the same manner as churchyards.

said, he had expressed that opinion with reference to public burial grounds only.

maintained that the terms of the letter did not bear that construction. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had chosen to hold up almost to ridicule part of the Creed of the Church of which he was a member, while he had also sneered at the Convocation. He (Mr. S. Leighton) was sorry the right hon. and learned Gentleman had used such expressions.

I never used such expressions. I never reviled Convocation or ridiculed the Creeds, and I did not utter any words which would convey that impression.

said, the House had heard what the right hon. and learned Gentleman had said; but he was glad to accept his disclaimer. But, for the same reason, he thought the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) was unwise in referring to the violent language of a certain minister of religion. He was willing to admit that the Burial Laws required amendment, and he thought the State had neglected its duty in this respect. He pointed out that the burial-grounds of the Nonconformists were under the control of the Home Secretary, fell under the Charity Commission, were exempted from local taxation and succession duty, and were limited in use, and could not be regarded altogether as private property. No churchyards were national property in the same sense that the British Museum and National Gallery were national property. They were vested in the incum- bents, in the same way that the property of the Nonconformists was vested in trustees; but it was absurd to contend that everyone had a Common Law right to be buried in the churchyard of the parish church, when, in many instances, there was no such churchyards at all in existence. His inclination, he might add, did not prompt him to break through cherished associations; but he did maintain that, in the absence of other solutions, equity, convenience, and sentiment alike required that they should deal with even-handed impartiality towards all. He believed that neither Nonconformists nor Catholics would be animated by an exclusive spirit in this matter; and he held that it was a libel on them to suppose that they would bring forward shadowy pleas of proprietary right in order to save themselves from doing to others as they would be done by.

said, that, as a Churchman, he could not yield to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Beresford Hope) in his desire to respect the true interests of the Church of England; but, at the same time, he could not share his apprehensions. He had long regarded this measure as an act of simple justice to a large and important body of his fellow-countrymen. He did not think that they, as Churchmen, gained any legitimate strength by preventing Dissenters from receiving at the solemn moments when their friends were interred the ministrations of the clergy and pastors of their own body. It was no answer to the question with which the Bill dealt to say that Dissenters were at liberty to provide burial grounds for themselves. It was impossible, and indeed childish, to assert that, having regard to the scattered and thinly-populated places all over the country, the Dissenters could provide themselves with such accommodation as they were entitled to in the interment of members of their own Body. The provisions of the Bill, if carried out in a liberal spirit, would ultimately promote unity and good feeling between Dissenters and Churchmen. These two Bodies would, at any rate, unite in keeping our churchyards in a condition which would be satisfactory to all. Referring to the clause prohibiting interments on Sunday, Good Friday, and Christmas Day, except by the consent of the officiating clergyman, he said that in many quarters, and especially in many manufacturing towns, it was felt that this provision was calculated to cause inconvenience and inflict hardship. Working men were often unable to lose a day's employment, so that the prohibition of Sunday interments might, in many cases, cause actual money loss. As to the Conscience Clause, he thought it would have been desirable to give the clergy relief from being compelled to use certain words over irreligious persons, or persons of immoral lives. He hoped these two points would be amended in Committee.

felt that he was, in a measure, placed in a difficulty by the speech of his right hon. and learned Friend who had moved the second reading. He had always been anxious for the settlement of that question, and believed that it was for the interest of the Church that it should be set at rest; and if that Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, had been advocated by his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Osborne Morgan), he would have voted with him for the second reading. But, remembering what his right hon. and learned Friend had said as to the 7th clause, he must consider whether he was not debarred from giving him that support which he otherwise would have given. He had always thought that the grievance of the Nonconformist was that he was prevented from having funeral rites performed according to his own persuasion in the churchyard of the parish where he lived. And if the matter stood, as it originally did, as a claim to burial in the churchyard, that Bill would have had his sincere support. When he read the speeches of those who were the guardians of the Church—the Archbishops and the Bishops—approving that Bill, and when he found so many other strong and earnest Churchmen supporting the measure, he confessed that he had great misgivings as to whether he ought, on a question of that kind, to put his own opinion in opposition to theirs. But his right hon. and learned Friend must not quote those as authorities in support of the speech he had made with reference to the Bill he intended to bring forward. He did not think that they would have approved of the Bill with the 7th clause omitted. If the Bill now before them had been the Bill they were to go upon, he would have voted for it; but, as it was to be altered, and his right hon. and learned Friend said if the 7th clause were not erased he would tear the measure up, he could not support it. He was sorry, therefore, to have to take a course which was unsatisfactory to himself—namely, not to vote at all on an important question; for, after the speech of his right hon. and learned Friend, he could not vote for the Bill. However, when the Amendments were proposed, he should be happy to hear what arguments could be adduced in their favour; and he might take a part in the discussion, with a view of rendering the Bill a satisfactory settlement of that question.

said, that the Burials Question had been before Parliament and the country for so many years, that it would be altogether unsuitable now to go through the general question; but he should like to make one or two remarks upon the Bill of the Government. He recognized the intention of the Government to deal fairly and liberally with this question; and it was not with any desire to hinder the passage of the Bill, or in any way oppose it, that he ventured to point out one or two matters in which he thought it fell short of a comprehensive settlement. He agreed with some of what fell from the hon. Member for Shropshire (Mr. S. Leighton); and he thought that the Government, if they had had time, would have done well to remember that there was a side to this question besides the side of ecclesiastical differences—namely, the sanitary side. He held that no Bill for regulating the Burial Laws could be satisfactory which did not provide a public authority to control all the burial-grounds of the country, and vest them in some public body which should be charged with their maintenance, and, if need be, their extension. Apart from that, however, he hoped the Bill would allay a good deal of ecclesiastical squabbling that stood in the way of that comprehensive settlement. He should be glad, therefore, to see the Bill passed, because everyone would then see that they had been fighting over a matter that had no fight in it. He did not propose to follow the right hon. Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope); because, if he would excuse him for saying so, the topics he had introduced, and the way in which he had handled them, were topics and tone by keeping clear from which they would add to the value of the debate. The right hon. Gentleman made a comparison between mourners following a Dissenting minister and a mob of curious people going to Wombwell's menagerie.

Allow me to explain. I said distinctly not the mourners, but people to whom the dead man was a stranger, but who would gather for the unusual sight.

said, he did not think the explanation improved the matter. No doubt, some persons might regard a Dissenting minister as being as much of a mountebank as the man who beat the big drum outside a show; but if such persons did not show any respect to a Dissenting minister, they might, at least, have some respect for the common feelings of human nature. They had heard a great deal about consecrated and unconsecrated ground. He maintained that consecration was a legal, and not a religious, ceremony. It was true that some Bishops had tried to give an ecclesiastical character to the proceeding; but it was only owing to the good feeling and the good sense of the community that their conduct had not been resented. But the real consecration was that which was effected by the dead who occupied the ground. No one felt any sacredness attaching to a brand new cemetery such as belonged to an ancient graveyard, the resting-place of former generations. He was glad to find that the Government repudiated the Amendments which had been introduced in "another place," and that the 7th section and the latter part of the 1st section had not their support. But he held that it would be entirely inconsistent with the principle of the Bill to limit the civil right of interment by setting up a new denominational restriction, even though it included the bulk of the population. He hoped the Government would endeavour to put the Bill on an intelligible and consistent basis by not withholding from a small section of the community the right which it gave to the rest. Then there was the 14th section, upon which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge had made some criticisms. That section was meant to be conciliatory to the feelings of the clergy. But the manner in which that purpose was effected was objectionable. Instead of altering the Rubric, it enabled the clergy to break the law, and gave them an indemnity for doing so. He hoped, however, that the House was going to settle the question—so far as it was a religious question—once for all. He should object to any pretended settlement which should give Dissenters only a provisional right of being buried in churchyards until cemeteries should be provided. What largely influenced Nonconformists in the matter was the desire to be buried where their friends had been buried before; and it would not be right to say, in effect—"You may be buried in the churchyard; but when a cemetery is furnished those who come after you must be buried there." The time had come for the sweeping away the obstructions and prejudices of the sects in regard to burials. The opposition to the measure was purely ecclesiastical, and came mainly from the country clergy. He believed that the concession of a popular right would go far to abate the feelings of hostility which prevailed between Churchmen and Nonconformists on this question, and to remove sectarian animosities.

said, the opponents of the Bill were placed in the difficult position, by the circumstances under which it had come down from the other House, of laymen "rushing in" where Archbishops "feared to tread;" but as laymen they, probably, had a nearer view than did the Prelates of the politics of this wicked world. They saw that this Bill would create, rather than remove, a grievance. It took the property of one religious body and transferred it to another, and compelled the clergy, who considered that they held their churchyards in trust for interments of parishioners with the Service of the Church, to stand by and see other Services introduced. That grievance would long be keenly felt by the clergy in the rural districts. As to the alleged grievance which the Bill was intended to remove, he would remind the House that, in the eye of the law, everybody was a member of the Church of England. And no right of interment existed by law except according to the ceremonies of the Church. His authority for that statement was no less a person than the noble and learned Lord who had introduced the Bill. On the second reading of the Bill, the Lord Chancellor said—

"The present legal right is a right to burial in the churchyards, and I admit that it has always been subject to certain ecclesiastical conditions."—[3 Hansard, cclii. 1064.]

With those conditions Nonconformists had, of their own free choice, ceased to comply, and, ceasing to comply, they had parted with the right of burial. The noble and learned Lord also said—

"We have been told, and, I believe, quite truly, that in cemeteries, where the ground is divided into consecrated and unconsecrated, and where every man is free to choose the mode of burial which he prefers, a great majority of Nonconformists prefer to be buried with the Church Service in consecrated ground."—[Ibid. 1066.]

It came to this—that the legal grievance had no existence; and the grievance founded upon sentiment must, from the practice of Dissenters where cemeteries existed, be put far lower than that which the Bill would set up and keep alive in the breasts of the rural clergy. And when they were asked to respect the religious opinion of every class, was it too much to ask that the feelings and the rights of the clergy of the Church of England should be respected in their turn? Could they, as practical politicians, expect that, by yielding their rights, they should settle this question? He apprehended not, with the question of church rates still fresh in their recollection. The Dissenters formerly complained that they paid for the churchyards though they did not use them; but the complaint of the Churchmen now was that the Dissenters used churchyards for which they did not pay. The abolition of church rates left Dissenters without a leg to stand upon in the argument. Whether the Dissenters would be more likely, when they got the churchyard, to get the fabric of the church, or whether the people who had been unsuccessful in resisting Services in the churchyard would be able to sustain their objections to Services in the church, depended, in his opinion, on which was the stronger party in that House, for they had to deal with an enemy who knew no law but that of the stronger. They could protect the Services and endowments of the Church exactly in proportion as they were strong. If anyone thought that peace was to be purchased by making this concession, he was as about as wise as that man—he thought it was Sheridan—who, when he renewed a bill, thanked God that that was off his mind. The lessons of history did not teach him that peace was to be purchased by buying off the barbarians. He thought it the better plan to buckle on their armour and fight them; and if they were to fall, let them fall fighting on the threshold of their rights, and not when principles which they knew to be fatal had effected a lodgment within the lines which it was their honour and their duty to defend. He should give a hearty vote against the second reading of the Bill.

said, that Nonconformist chapels and burial-grounds were in no respect public property over which, as such, Parliament could have any control. It was only within the last 10 years that Nonconformists had been able to hold property for public purposes; and the result was that most of the Nonconformist burial-grounds were private property, or were vested in trustees. He was, personally, the absolute owner of the fee-simple of two burial-grounds. The importance this question had assumed was due, not to the nature of the question itself, but to the opposition which had been offered to an attempt to do an act of simple justice, and to the arguments that had been adduced in justification and explanation of that opposition. It had been said that this was only the first step on the part of the Nonconformists in an effort to seize the property of the Church of England, and that they wanted to get through the churchyard into the church itself. Such a suggestion was entirely unfounded, or, at any rate, founded upon a misapprehension and misunderstanding of the opinions of Nonconformists, and of the position they took up in reference to the question of Disestablishment. There was not a single Nonconformist in England who would for a moment accept a farthing of the property of the Church of England. They said the Church was a National Institution, and, because it was so, they claimed their rights as parishioners—because, as the late Home Secretary said, it was the Church, not of the priest, but of the people of England. He approved of the Bill which had been introduced year after year by his right hon. and learned Friend the Judge Advocate General, and he regretted that in the present measure concessions had been made to certain important interests. In many parishes in Wales the operation of the Bill, as it stood, would leave a great grievance unrepressed. With reference to the word "Christian" in the 6th section, its interpretation was wide enough to include all but a very small minority in this country. Still, there was a minority of earnest and good men, however much they might err on matters of religion, who would be condemned to silence in burying their dead. He should be content with the words "orderly and decent," or "Christian or orderly;" and he would allow those who, though not professing to be Christians, claimed to be good citizens and to cultivate high aims and hopes, to utter the words of consolation and encouragement to those who were closing the grave over their departed friends. If it was a question of passing the Bill with the word "Christian" in it with its present meaning, or striking out the word and not being able to pass the Bill at all, he had no doubt that many hon. Members would agree with him that the word had better remain. He was not one of those who objected to the word; but, still, he was charitable enough to put himself in the position of other people, and, consulting their rights as parishioners, try to give them justice. He hoped the Bill would now pass a second reading, and that the question would speedily be settled once for all. It was full time the agitation was terminated; and he was glad the Government had signalized its advent to power by making this fair effort to achieve a legitimate settlement of this difficult question.

, in supporting the rejection of the Bill, said, he did not believe the Nonconformist Body regarded the alleged grievance for which this Bill was to provide a remedy as a real grievance. It might be partly a sentimental grievance; but it was one of a series which were put forward by a few political Dissenters, such as Mr. Carvell Williams, and those whom he represented. The measure was an unwise one, and he could not help feeling it was also unjust. Why should the Nonconformists have an almost equal use of the churchyard which they did not contribute to maintain? Besides, this was a mere stepping-stone to something further. When the Nonconformist minister had to conduct a funeral in inclement weather, would it not be asked why he should be exposed to the fury of the elements, while the Churchman had his Service in the church? He was glad to find that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Judge Advocate General intended to retain the word "Christian," although, having swallowed the Northampton camel, he did not see why the Government should strain at the "gnat" in this Bill. As to consecration being a mere civil matter, the great mass of Churchmen did not look upon it in any such light. He was sorry to hear, in the last debate on this subject, the right hon. Gentleman who was now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) impair the effect of his great eloquence by an unnecessary and unworthy sneer at consecration. He (Colonel Makins) could assure him that that rite was held by Churchmen as a most sacred one; and their feeling against this Bill was much more caused by reason of the effect which it would have in casting a slur on consecration than from any supposed invasion of their rights. With regard to cemeteries, he rejoiced to have been a supporter of the Bill which Mr. Marten carried in the late Parliament. It might be true that there had been only 10 applications under the Act; but if longer time had been given those applications would have increased, and in that way the question might have been settled. He only hoped that the prophecies that the Bill, when passed, would work smoothly would be verified. Some of the clergy with whom he had conversed on the subject said that when it was passed they would endeavour to carry it out loyally. There would be no feeling on their part but one of soreness. The right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Osborne Morgan) had spoken with some scorn of the dividing wall in cemeteries. For his own part, he took much the same view as Abraham Lincoln did, who, when asked to subscribe towards building a wall around a burial-ground, said—

"He didn't see the use of a wall, because he didn't think there was anybody outside who wanted to get in, or anybody inside who could get out."

An imaginary line, in his opinion, would be sufficient. The vote which he would give against the Bill would be caused by no religious animosity or political feeling; but simply because he believed the effect of the Bill would be not to promote peace and goodwill, but rather to raise difficulties and animosities which it was the duty of the House in every way to avoid.

congratulated the Judge Advocate General on being able to bring forward a Bill embodying the principle for which he had so long contended. Referring to the charge made by the right hon. Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope), that the Nonconformists were guilty of a moral breach of faith in pressing the Burials Question after the abolition of church rates, the hon. Member pointed out that the right hon. Gentleman had not offered any evidence whatever in support of this serious charge; and he (Mr. Woodall) was sure that no Dissenter ever thought of giving up his rights as a member of the Established Church in consequence of church rates being abolished. In view of this mistake on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, it would be well to guard against any misunderstanding of the Nonconformist position on this occasion. For himself, he did not shrink from saying that he adopted the passages which had been quoted by the right hon. Gentleman from Dr. Landels, Mr. Dale, and Mr. Spurgeon. He had the honour of being a member of the Council of the Liberation Society; and he would say that they were not prepared, for the mere purpose of carrying this Bill, to compromise the great principle of religious equality. They thought they were consistent in demanding that national property should be applied to national purposes. Hon. Members opposite must know that this question had been a useful one. Public opinion had grown—and he ventured to say it would continue to grow—under the discussion of it; and it might be a matter of policy for hon. Members opposite in dealing with it to prevent its leaving the germs of a new agitation, and which he and others would do their best to take advantage of. The main question for the House to consider was whether they would now apply themselves to the settlement of this long-agitated question in a spirit which would make it a definite settlement. He was glad to hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman say that he was willing to amend the Bill as it came down from "another place" in a way which would make it more acceptable to the Liberal Party. He would ask the House to consider specially those parts of the Bill that had been expunged, and that had reference to cemeteries It was a little surprising that, after having surrendered the churchyards, the other House should wish to continue the strange delimitation of the cemeteries. Speaking as a member of a Burial Board, he knew that public opinion and feeling did not demand the present restrictions. There were charges and expenses connected with them which were a constant source of irritation and annoyance, and he ventured to think the country generally saw with great satisfaction some words which fell from the late Home Secretary in the course of the discussion on this subject in the last Session of the late Parliament. He (the late Home Secretary) there stated the fact that, as he traversed the country, he saw here and there two or three chapels in the several cemeteries, and he was perfectly certain—and he knew it from the expression of opinion which had come from people representing all sections' of religious opinion—that there had been in many parts of the country a strong desire to see one building for the common service of all religious denominations, and they had been prevented by the—should he say—antiquated, or, at all events, irritating provision in the present Cemetery Laws. They were being continually reminded in this House, and "elsewhere" certainly, that there were two classes of Dissenters—the political Nonconformist who lived by agitation, and that of a very exemplary character, the religious Nonconformist—and yet he should like to know where the association or community of Nonconformists, nay, the individual Nonconformist, could be found who would say that the existing Burial Laws were sufficient and did not need rectification? As a Nonconformist by birth and conviction, he should be sorry to occupy the time of the House in speaking as one of that body; but he did think, as a Member of this House, that the Bill now before them was a practical, common-sense, business-like settlement of a question which had not only encouraged religious animosities in the country, but involved a vast amount of inconvenience, and which, when once settled, he hoped would be so settled as to cause it to be regarded with satisfaction like that with which they all now regarded those other great Acts which embodied that great principle of legislation—the perfect equality before the law of all citizens.

said, that the House had reason to thank the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Mr. Woodall) for the clear, distinct, unqualified, and uncompromising way in which he had raised the issue. He had identified himself with the opinions of Dr. Landels, Mr. Dale, and Sir. Spurgeon. The Bill, then, was now openly advocated in the House as an instalment of a larger measure. That gave a very pleasant prospect of an additional controversy. His right hon. and learned Friend the Judge Advocate General had, like himself, been accustomed to hear many speeches on the subject; and he could not help contrasting the modest tone in which the measure used to be introduced by Sir Morton Peto with the way in which it was now supported. Formerly, Sir Morton Peto had told the House that it was a very small measure. It was alleged that the religious tenets of the Baptists and the Quakers were such as to preclude them from the use of the Church of England rites at their interments. Sir Morton Peto's Bill, therefore, had reference mainly, if not solely, to those persons. It was supported, further, not on the broad ground that the churchyards belonged to the nation at large, but because all persons in the parish contributed to the rates, and were, consequently, all entitled to the same privileges. They were told that the churchyards belonged to the nation. If that was so, by whom were they maintained? Not by the nation, certainly, but by the members of the Church of England. Those who held that the nation at large had a right to the churchyards ought to be willing to restore the church rates, and order the Dissenters to contribute to their maintenance. After all, what was the grievance? To a great extent it was a grievance of the Principality. His right hon. and learned Friend practically admitted that fact, and spoke of the support they received from the Welsh Members. But, with the exception of Wales, the extent of the grievance was much less than it was usually represented to be. To a very large extent cemeteries had supplied the wants of Nonconformists for the last 30 years. And in many parts of the Kingdom the Dissenters had provided themselves with graveyards of their own. As for the Bill itself, the hon. Member who had just sat down had spoken of it as a comprehensive measure. That was undeniably true of the Bill as originally introduced. It was the first Bill which included the consecrated portions of the cemeteries as well as churchyards. It was a very large measure. But, after all, what was the measure which they were asked to consider that night? It was not the Bill as sent down from "another place." The Judge Advocate General had thrown over the clauses of the Archbishop of York and of Lord Mount-Edgcombe. The Judge Advocate General had said the Government would insist on the retention of the word "Christian." What, then, became of the comprehensive and national character of the Bill? Where was the provision for the interment of Jews? What recognition of the opinions represented by the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh)? The Judge Advocate General had spoken ambiguously about Clause 14, and the important Schedule of the Bill. The Judge Advocate General wished to consider the feelings of the clergy. He had no objection, indeed, to Convocation. But he would reserve his views on those points until the Bill got into Committee. He wished to know whether the Government intended to adhere to the Schedules; because if they were to legislate in a comprehensive way, it would be necessary to have some consideration for the consciences and feelings of the clergy. The Bill invaded the freehold of the incumbent. A great constraint and degradation was put upon a clergyman when he was compelled, under the penalty of misdemeanour, to register burial performed by ministers of other denominations in the churchyard in which he had a freehold. It might remedy a small grievance, but it would not produce harmony. It would wound the consciences and exasperate the feelings of 15,000 clergy. It would introduce discord and confusion into 10,000 rural parishes. It would infringe the rights of the Established Church. According to the admission of the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent, this Bill would be a stepping-stone to the demand for Dis- establishment. The clamour for the churchyards would be followed, a few years hence, by a clamour for the churches; and, consequently, he had no alternative but to give his vote against the second reading of the Bill.

said, he was not at all surprised that the clergy of the Establishment were opposed to this Bill, as they, like other classes of Englishmen—such as landowners, employers of labour, military and naval officers, and lawyers—naturally objected to their interests being threatened, as they supposed they were in the present instance. No doubt, a great many of the clergy firmly believed, rightly or wrongly, that this measure was another step towards Disestablishment, and that an attempt would afterwards be made to have matrimonial and other Services conducted in the churches by Nonconformist ministers. That was the conviction of a large body of the clergy throughout the country, and it was a conviction which ought to be treated with respect and consideration. But as to the allegation that the adoption of the measure now before the House would be a step towards Disestablishment, he believed that the passing of the Bill would be a step from Disestablishment. So far from leading to Disestablishment, he believed it would postpone that question, if not altogether put it off. At various dates between 1828 and the present time, on the occasion of the disabilities of the Nonconformists being removed, the cry was raised that the Church was about to be disestablished, but in each case the prophecy had been unfulfilled; and, as a matter of fact, the Church of England had made immense progress in the affections of the people during the last 50 years, as was shown by the increase of the Episcopate and the enormous sums raised by voluntary exertions for Church purposes. On this Burials Question all Nonconformists of the country were absolutely unanimous, be they Independents, Baptists, Congregation alists, or Wesleyans; but this was not the case with regard to Disestablishment. The great Wesleyan Body, for instance, was not opposed to the Church of England. The burials grievance of the Nonconformists was as old as the year 1833; and its abolition would, he believed, tend only to strengthen the position of the Church. The less the Church depended for her strength upon the rotten scaffolding of her invidious privileges, and the more she depended upon the hard, honest, self-denying work of her clergy, the stronger would she be, and the further from Disestablishment.

attached a great importance to the 7th clause, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Judge Advocate General proposed to leave out, inasmuch as it secured to the Church a reversionary right in the churchyards to take effect as soon as the practical grievance of the Dissenters was removed by cemeteries being provided or otherwise. The grievance of Dissenters, which he perfectly admitted, would be removed by the Bill with that clause in it; and he regretted to learn that the Government, by condemning that clause, had taken a course which would alienate Churchmen and encourage those political Nonconformists whose object was the Disestablishment of the Church. The intention of the Government to oppose the clauses which had been introduced into the Bill was sufficient to justify him in voting against the Bill. No doubt, the Government would have a majority; but he had always felt that the Church, in fighting this question, had been forced to take up the ground which was least defensible of all. It was not that the arguments by which the position of the clergy could be supported were weak; but because they were not arguments which could for one moment compete with the arguments on the other side in their extreme simplicity. Nothing was easier than to dilate in rhetorical language upon the grievance which must be felt by every man whose relations were buried with Services which in their lifetime they would not approve. This was an argument which appealed to feelings that were strong in the mind of every Englishman. It could easily be put before the people—and it came naturally to any orators so to put it—that in preventing a man being buried with the Services he would have approved they were doing an injury to him and to his relations. On the other hand, the argument of the clergy depended upon historical considerations which were not known to all. It depended upon a knowledge of the circumstances of the parochial clergy, and considera- tions, difficult to weigh, with which everybody was not familiar, and which it was not easy to throw into the form of an eloquent peroration. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had shown how easy it was to use vague and eloquent phrases in support of the measure; and no doubt, before the debate closed, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) would indulge in that kind of rhetoric with which so great a master of the art easily-appealed to the feelings, and which did not tax the understanding to any great extent. ["Oh, oh!"] No one admired the right hon. Gentleman more than he did; but he thought everyone must agree that the strongest part of the right hon. Gentleman's eloquence was not his reasoning. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, he would not pursue the point any further. As the Government intended to omit the 7th clause, he should feel bound to vote against the Bill; though if it terminated the long and painful conflict on the subject of the Burial Laws, he should not view its passing with unmixed regret, for it would put an end to a controversy which was a source of strength not to the Established Church, but to those who wished her destruction.

regretted the introduction into what was otherwise a peaceful and conciliatory speech of a most unfortunate attack upon the right hon. Member for Birmingham. He pro-tested against the question of Disestablishment being mixed up with that of the burial of the dead; but if the subject were to be introduced, he would say that the persistence in the retention of this unfortunate privilege would strengthen the arguments for Disestablishment. The measure came from "another place," where the advocates of Disestablishment were not numerous, and it was based upon a Resolution introduced by a Conservative and a devoted Churchman. Dealing with the measure as one to remove a grievance, they ought to discuss it upon its merits alone. It was to be regretted that the right hon. Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) had not studied the opinions, works, character, and Ritual of the Nonconformists. If he had, he could not have made a speech so ungenerous and so unjust. Nor would he have ridiculed the Services of the Nonconformists. The Wesleyan Service for the burial of the dead was the Office of the Church of England; others used portions of Scripture, with the offering of prayer, and, occasionally, an address when the deceased was a person of distinguished character. The funerals of the Society of Friends were generally conducted in silence. It was not fair to argue upon the possibility of some eccentricity which never had occurred, and which there was no probability ever would occur. Let them give Dissenters credit for being human; let it not be believed that, on the most sad and solemn occasion, when controversies were hushed, and strife was closed, they would desire to say anything offensive or distasteful, still less to cast a slur upon the common religion of all. The grievance was this. Every Englishman had a civil right to be interred in the churchyard of his parish; the law of the Church of England prohibited the reading of the Burial Service over an unbaptized person; there were many Dissenters who were not baptized in infancy, and many persons from other causes were not baptized. Therefore, a great number of persons were left, so far as the Church was concerned, to be "buried like a dog." Many Nonconformists did not object so much to the Service of the Church of England, as they claimed the presence of their own minister. These were the grievances the House was called upon to remedy, without regard to any ulterior purpose, the existence of which he denied. It was proposed to remedy them exactly upon the lines of the Bill of the hon. Member who had just spoken. His Bill spoke of the rites of the denomination to which the deceased belonged; and this Bill spoke of such Christian Service as the person in charge of the interment should select. The avowed intention was to allow a religious Service to persons who, by the law of the Church of England, were not entitled to have it. The Amendment introduced in the House of Lords limited the proposed relief. He could appreciate the country clergyman objecting to the presence of a Nonconformist minister in his churchyard. But he could not understand how such sentiments as were aroused by old English churchyards could ever be excited by cemeteries. Yet he had heard the author of that Amendment state, as a reason for it, that ancestral associations had not had time to gather round cemeteries. He (Mr. H. H. Fowler) could understand that some representative of one of our great houses, whose family history had run side by side with our national history, would regard it as an extreme dishonour to be excluded from the last resting-place of his illustrious forefathers; and he could understand that to such a one the ancestral association would be a reality which would not attach to any modern cemetery. But for a man sprung from the middle class himself, the son of a Cumberland tradesman, who by his own marvellous ability had won for himself the second prize of his Profession—for him to utter that little sneer at the Nonconformists of the middle-class and of the working class, was as unworthy of a Christian Bishop as it was discreditable to an English Peer. To Nonconformists, the words "father," "mother," "husband," "wife," "parent," "child," were as dear as they were to the proudest Peer that ever sat at Westminster; and though Nonconformists might lack "ancestral association," they cherished in its deepest intensity that feeling of kinship, friendship, and affection which to-day, as 3,000 years ago, found its truest expression in the pastionate utterance of the Jewish widow—"Thy people shall be my people, Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried." Not as Nonconformists, not as professing any creed, but on the ground of our common humanity, they claimed and clung to the common right of which nothing but an intolerant or vindictive legislation could deprive them—that of unbroken union in the last home, the family grave. He was very glad to hear that the Government intended to resist an Amendment which was at once purposeless and unjust. Then, as to Clause 7. He objected to that clause, because it would impose a burden upon every parish in England for the purpose of providing new cemeteries in order to perpetuate a grievance. The ratepayers would have to pay for those cemeteries, and the more straightforward way of effecting the same object would have been to provide separate cemeteries for the Dissenters. He thought the Government was quite right in excluding that clause. He would then refer to the 14th clause, upon which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge had addressed the House. It would be un- generous in a Nonconformist to refuse to redress a grievance of the clergy. He would be glad to relieve the clergy by legislation. But it did not follow that Clause 14 was the best way of doing so. But he hoped that hon. Gentlemen who objected to the clause would not object to giving the clergy fair relief. He wished, however, to call attention to the way in which the clause was drawn. Attention had been directed to that question by Lord Cairns. As the clause stood, the House must pass the Schedule or reject the clause. But the Rubric referred to in that clause was a Rubric made in the worst period of English history—the Parliament of 1662—which placed in one category the unbaptized, the excommunicated, and suicides. Convocation had proposed a new Rubric—a Rubric which classified Baptists, Quakers, and little children with suicides and felons, which ranked Elizabeth Fry and Joseph John Gurney with the vilest criminal and the most profligate suicide. This measure, like all wise English measures which dealt with questions of controversy, was a compromise; and he accepted it as closing a long and bitter controversy. He deplored the perpetuation of that sad, strange, and unique peculiarity of English cemeteries—their double chapels, boundary walls, and imaginary lines, which seemed to proclaim that their minor theological controversies to be of far greater importance than the great verities on which they were all agreed. He hoped this would be one of the first steps towards wiping away that reproach; and that the downfall of this gallantly-defended stronghold of ecclesiastical exclusiveness would lead to one more advance to that truest charity, which, after all, was the foundation and bulwark of all religious liberty.

congratulated the House on the calm and moderate manner in which the debate had been conducted on both sides of the House. He had listened to many debates on that question, but never had he experienced such satisfaction at the tone which had prevailed. He had, however, three objections to make to the Bill. First, he objected to the mode of its introduction; secondly, to what it did not do; and, thirdly, to what it actually did. First, then, he objected to a Bill of that magnitude coming on for discussion on the 12th of August. The Government might say they could not help it; but he thought they were to blame, and that they ought to have managed to bring on such a question at an earlier period. There was a well recognized though unwritten law, that no measure of importance such as this should be brought before Parliament at so late a period. The second reading of the Government measure was moved at the winding-up of a languid Session, and he, therefore, emphatically protested against its being proceeded with. That the second reading would be carried by the majority which Her Majesty's Government had at their command he quite believed; and, that being so, the interest in the debate would centre in the discussion which must take place in Committee. The whole gist of the Bill lay in its details, and these they could only imperfectly discuss on the second reading. The passing of the present stage of the Bill was said to be demanded with a view to meet not only a sentimental but a real grievance; but he begged to remind the House that though Wales was stated to be the centre of the grievance, he never remembered the question being raised, either by Question or Motion, as a Welsh grievance. The Liberals of Wales were very strongly represented in the House; and he was greatly struck by the vehemence with which the other day they pressed upon the House and the Government a grievance under which they imagined they were labouring, and yet he found that this Burials grievance had not formally been brought under the attention of the House. An Irish grievance they were sure to hear of; indeed, they sometimes heard of a Scotch grievance; but who had heard of a Welsh grievance in connection with this Burials Question? He did not deny that a sentimental grievance existed; but the existence of a real practical Welsh grievance he did deny. There was a real, substantial grievance to be met—namely, the sanitary grievance, and he challenged any hon. Member to point out how it was to be met by the Bill. He wondered why this sanitary aspect of the question was so little regarded; in private affairs we thought much of sanitary matters, but anyone who dwelt upon the sanitary aspect of this question could gain little attention. Yet there were very grave sanitary scandals connected, belonging both to the ancient churchyards and to the condition of the cemeteries. Then, again, there was a second grievance—namely, that if the burial-ground of a parish became full, there was actually no existing power to compel anyone to provide another. There was no provision in the Bill to meet such a state of things, and he did not think it should be left to the charitable feelings of the community to do what was the duty of the community. But in attempting to remove one grievance the Government were about to inflict another. The hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Marriott) had spoken with great candour; but he would beg to assure him that the ground on which the thinking portion of the clergy were opposed to the Bill was not because, as he seemed to suppose, it would interfere with their privileges so much as with what they deemed to be their duties and obligations. They thought they were charged with the conduct of the churchyards, and that they were appointed guardians of the church, and that, if the present Bill became law, they could not exercise in that capacity due control; for who, he would ask, was to see that nothing offensive was done in the churchyards if the Bill were passed? [Mr. OSBORNE MORGAN: The incumbent and the churchwarden.] Then an invidious duty would, he contended, be imposed on both the incumbent and the churchwarden; and he was justified, he thought, in saying that no words were too strong to describe the alarm which the Bill was calculated to create in the minds of the clergy. The hon. Member for Brighton said that if the Bill became law, Disestablishment would be put off further than ever, and that the Church of England would be strengthened in the affections of the people. Those remarks were, however, received with silence on the Liberal Benches. There was not a single cheer; and he could not help feeling that the admirable sentiments expressed by the hon. Gentleman were, so far as the opposite side of the House was concerned, very much confined to himself. As to the views of the members of the Liberation Society, as a Representative of which one hon Gentleman (Mr. Woodall) had spoken, there was no need to enlarge upon them. Their simple aim was to sever the time-honoured connection between Church and State in this country. [Cheers.] That cheer proved that he was not wrong in thinking that the Bill was supported, not only by men like the hon. Member for Brighton, but by others who entertained entirely different views, and that it was calculated to create not unnatural alarm in the minds of the clergy. If, in his opinion, it was a measure which would remove any real grievance, or establish still further the Church in the affections of the people, he would do everything in his power to assist in passing it into law. But because he believed it would do nothing of the kind, while it would inflict a serious affront on a body of men than whom there were none more loyal or more zealous in maintaining order and good government in this country—he meant the clergy of the Church of England—he, with whatever reluctance, deemed it to be his duty to vote against the second reading.

I asked my right hon. Friend who was sitting near me whether the hon. Gentleman had said anything that he had noted down during the five minutes that I was absent from the House, and I was surprised when he told me that the hon. Gentleman had said that no cases of grievance had been brought before the House. I understand him to mean during this debate, and that no case of grievance had been brought before the House even with regard to Wales. I think he mentioned Wales especially; and now, at the conclusion of his speech, he has justified the vote he is about to give by saying that whilst the measure, if carried, would inflict very great injury and cause great alarm to the clergy of the Church of England, it would not have the effect of removing any real grievance from any other portion of the population; so that, from the beginning to the end of his speech, he was consistent in asserting that there really is no grievance and no occasion for any Bill on this question. Now, I should like to give him two or three facts with regard to Wales, and I will not argue upon them, because they speak for themselves. If the hon. Gentleman will pay attention to these figures, he will never again, I am quite sure, make the observations with which he concluded his speech. These figures are extracted from a statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr (Mr. Richard), and no man in this House is better acquainted with Wales than he is, and there is no person, I believe, in whom, on a subject of this nature, the Welsh people have greater confidence. He says—

"In Carnarvonshire the Calvinistic Methodists, Independents, and Baptists have 240 chapels—of these 35 have graveyards and 205 have none. In Anglesea, there are 147 chapels belonging to the same Bodies—25 have graveyards, and 122 have none. In Flintshire, the Calvinistic Methodists and Independents have 113 chapels—13 of these have graveyards and 100 none. In Merionethshire the three denominations have 173 chapels—of these 46 have graveyards and 127 have none. In Denbighshire the Calvinistic Methodists and Independents have 133 chapels—of these 27 have graveyards and 106 have none. In Montgomeryshire the same two denominations have 155 chapels—of these 27 have graveyards, and 128 have none. In Cardiganshire the Methodists and Independents have 150 chapels—of these 48 have graveyards and 102 have none. In Carmarthenshire the three denominations have 225 chapels—of these 149 have graveyards and 76 have none. In Glamorganshire the Calvinistic Methodists and Independents have 332 chapels—of these 162 have graveyards and 170 have none."—[3 Hansard, ccxxiii. 1396.]

The total result is that, out of 1,668 chapels, only 532 have graveyards, and 1,136 have none. And my hon. Friend has since stated an additional fact—namely, "The Wesleyan Methodists (as distinguished from Calvinistic Methodists) have in North Wales 210 Welsh chapels; of these three have graveyards and 207 have none. In South Wales they have 101; of these 18 have graveyards and 83 none." Therefore, in 1,426 out of 1,979 cases no burial grounds are attached to Dissenting chapels in Wales. I need not tell the House that, exclusive of Scotland, there is no portion of this Southern part of the Island in which the Established Church has done so little for the people as in Wales; and whenever you travel in Wales you find these chapels, and if you are there on the days when public worship takes place, especially, of course, on the Sundays, you will find that a much larger portion of the population of the country through which you pass is attending places of worship than is the case, I believe, in any part of England. I do not ask the hon. Gentleman here publicly to make an apology for the extreme ignorance which he has exhibited on this question. ["Oh!"] I am not, I think, saying anything that is offensive when I say that if he had known of these facts he would have been candid enough to admit that, at least as far as Wales is con- cerned, there is a grievance which it is the duty of Parliament to meet.

I beg to explain what I said was that I never heard any such grievance mentioned in this House with regard to Wales.

That is even a more astonishing statement, because we have had it stated to-night, and even from that side of the House, that for 25 years at least this question, of what we call now the Burials Bill, has been brought almost constantly before the House. Having stated these facts, I do not think it necessary to press upon the House that opinion further than to say that there is a grievance, and that the Government, at least, are not to be blamed in endeavouring to meet it. In fact, the Government, of which the hon. Gentleman was a Member, undertook to meet it in their fashion. They brought in a Bill, and nobody could tell exactly whether it meant something to do with sewage, and matters of that kind, or whether it had anything to do with a great national grievance. But what we know is this. When their own Friends in the other House of Parliament altered the Bill, and put into it an Amendment which met at least one great grievance—and what we think the greatest—the hon. Gentleman and his Friends on that Bench had not the courage to bring it down to this House, and ask the House to support them in the Amendment which had been put in in the other House. If they had done that, we should have given them a most friendly support; and the matter we are now discussing would have passed into history. The whole grievance would have been removed; and, no doubt, an element more would have been withdrawn from ecclesiastical and religious life in England—an element, I mean, of discord and unpleasantness which is very strong in connection with the question we are now discussing. However, there is one thing on which I agree with the hon. Gentleman. In his opening sentences he expressed his satisfaction at the general tone of the debate. I think the debate has been very satisfactory. I have always noticed that hon. Gentlemen opposite when they feel that their case is pretty nearly at an end, that the great question they have been fighting over for a long time is given up, and that they are obliged to come face to face with the terrors which have caused them so much alarm, pluck up their courage, and they really go to the perdition they have feared in a very happy state of mind. I appeal to every man who heard the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope). There was a positive vein of humour running the whole of his speech. He said some things that from the lips of some other men would have been unpleasant of Dissenters, and of some of the leading and authoritative characters in the ranks of Dissenters; but, still, whatever he said he said with a humour, somewhat grotesque it must be admitted, but which disarmed the offensive observations of their sting; and I could not help thinking all the time that, considering the tremendous issues that we used to hear were concerned in the question, there was not a particle of anything tragic in the speech from beginning to end, but that it seemed rather a pleasant comedy that he was performing on the floor of the House. I observed, too, that his argument in this failing cause appeared to be even more feeble than usual. He, and several more speakers on that side, have argued that if a Dissenting minister once gets into the churchyard he will get into the church. I really think that is about the last hobgoblin we should hear of. It would not be so bad if he did get into the church. You would not find that dreadful if it had once taken place. You know that in some countries of Europe it is quite a common thing for a Roman Catholic congregation to worship at one period of the day in the same building in which a Protestant congregation has worshipped at another period of the day. But in those countries religion does not perish, and the two congregations do not tight; and I am not sure that they are not on much better terms than Protestants and Catholics are in the United Kingdom. But another hon. Gentleman said it would be very awkward in case the weather was bad and there was a Dissenting funeral in the churchyard. I suppose he imagined the rain, and hail, and snow coming down and the Dissenting minister and mourners suffering from the inclement state of the weather; and, I suspect, he had a fear that though these men were Dissenters, and though he was a Churchman, still human nature and charity would over- come ecclesiastical differences, and it would be impossible not to invite the Dissenters into the church. I am quite sure that there are many clergymen of the Church of England who would be willing to do that now, and who would even deem it a happiness to have the opportunity of doing it; and, more than that, I have no doubt whatever that a single transaction of that kind would sweeten the social life of the parish where it occurred. Therefore, I hope hon. Gentlemen will not be afraid of the terrible destruction which is to come if this Bill should pass. There will be no more destruction than there has been after many other things that have been done in the face of your adverse votes. The right hon. Gentleman who treated us to a little dissertation upon Calvin and his opinions, and upon Universalism, whatsoever that is, said—"You may have the doctrines of Calvin uttered"—the bitter doctrines of Calvin, as someone calls them—and the doctrines of the Universalists, and then, harder beyond all others, you might even have some lady—some"woman,"I think, was the term he used—attending a Dissenting funeral in the parish churchyard, and taking some part in what are called, the Services on that occasion. I have been at a great many funerals, in which I have heard women, to some extent, exhorting or comforting those who are around the grave, some who have knelt and offered up prayer which was quite as impressive upon the minds of those assembled as if it had been delivered by a Dean or a Bishop, or an ordinary clergyman, or a Dissenting minister, or any man, or any dignitary in any Christian Church in the world. And, therefore, if this should happen, I do not think it would upset the Church, or that Christianity itself would feel that a perilous wound had been inflicted upon it. So that the more you examine these difficulties and dangers which present themselves to the minds of Members for the University of Oxford, the less one is impressed by them. I recollect once in this House referring to the University of Oxford. I spoke of it as being "a place of dead languages and undying prejudices." I am told by my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Thorold Rogers), an eminent man in the town of Oxford, much connected with the University, that there is great liberality in Oxford, and that the illiberality which we witness in this House is shown by people who do not live in Oxford, but who have been partly educated there, and who do not appear to have carried on their education much since they left it. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University spoke about the crowds who would come to see a Dissenting minister perform the Burial Service in the parish churchyard. But it is not at all uncommon in England, especially in rural parishes, to see Dissenting ministers engaged in the solemn office which belongs to them on the occasion of funerals; and I do not believe there will be that kind of excitement caused, and this crowd gathered there, from which the right hon. Gentleman seemed to forsee such unpleasant consequences. In fact, the more you handle and try to get hold of the terror which has so much effect on the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite, the more you find that it is nothing but mist or fog. There is nothing solid in it. It vanishes as you approach it; and you will find now, as you found in time past, that all the eloquent and passionate speeches which you make now, as you made then, are just so much passion and language absolutely thrown away. I am surprised that hon. Members opposite take the course to-night which they do after the course which has been taken in "another place." We all know that in the other House of Parliament Peers sit without dependence on what we understand as our constituencies who send us here. They are there without any pressure, or I suppose not much, from the clergy—or it is not very effectual—and influenced by no portion of the population. They have as great an interest in the Established Church as you have. I suppose it would be very difficult to pick out half-a-dozen men in the House of Peers who do not belong to it, except, perhaps, some members of the Catholic Church, and they are not against the Establishment. Therefore, if there be these dreadful influences in the background or in the foreground, the Peers have not been able to discover them; and, surety, when you know—I think my right hon. and learned Friend who introduced the Bill to-night said so—that both Archbishops and a majority of the Bishops voted for this Bill, you are not at liberty to say that Dissenters, such as I am, and such as many hon. Members on this side of the House are, wish to destroy the Establishment, when they are only following in the wake of the Archbishops and Bishops in the other House. Another statement which has been made, and made with considerable assurance, to my mind has no foundation in fact. It has been said that the Dissenters pay nothing for the burial-ground since the church rates were abolished. ["Hear, hear!"] I see that is what hon. Gentlemen opposite believe. It is perfectly well known to everybody acquainted with the case that church rates were not applicable to burial-grounds, but only by law to the fabric of the church. [Sir R. ASSHETON CROSS: No.] Do you deny that? I think anybody who was ever concerned in a great law suit in the Ecclesiastical Court—which is about the worse thing that can happen to a man—would find out that church rates only applied to the fabric of the church. With regard to the churchyards at present, I will be bound to say that in this country there are thousands of Dissenters who subscribe to churchyards. This a great argument with the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford (Sir John R. Mowbray). Now, I will undertake to say, on the chance of being put right, that I have subscribed more to church burying grounds within the last 15 years than he has. And when this Bill is passed, does not everybody know that when a voluntary contribution is made in any town or parish for the purpose of enlarging or maintaining or beautifying the churchyard and burial place, that the Nonconformists will be as ready to subscribe as Churchmen? You know perfectly well that from the necessity of the position of Nonconformists, they have been brought up far more than Church people have in the habit of giving. You know that the subscriptions which are given Sunday after Sunday in the Nonconformist places of worship of this country, comprising the rank and position and wealth of the Nonconformists, are not behind those which are given by Churchmen in connection with their religious Services. And there is no doubt whatever that, so far as the church rate question goes, churches are better maintained now, and more money is spent on them twice over since the church rates were abolished, than in the times when they were in existence. With regard to that, I was going to follow a question mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton (Mr. Marriott), that this Bill will not move in the direction of Disestablishment so far as to alienate any members of the Church. That question is one which, in the future, will not depend on comparatively trifling matters of this kind. The public of this country will, in due time, solve it. Perhaps they will determine for generations to maintain the Church as it is; perhaps not. But, whether I was a Churchman or a Dissenter, I should be quite willing to leave that question to the determination of my countrymen. When Churchmen used to come, not to my house—for they never visited me on that account—but when they visited my father's house to take a handful of silver spoons, perhaps for payment of church rates, I do not suppose that would bring me to a state of mind to allure me to the Established Church. Well, now, with regard to this question, just examine it in the same way. What are the sentiments of the people, men and women, and all persons, with regard to the spot of ground where their nearest relatives lie buried? What does a man think of the little plot where his wife lies; the widow of the plot where her husband lies; the parents where some innocent children that have been taken from them lie; or the children, when they remember the place where their parents are buried? Is there not an attachment to that place—a sympathy with it—something that one can never express in words—beyond what you will find in the minds of all of us with regard to any other plot of ground on the face of the earth? I knew a poor man—a very old man, now—I think he is 90. I think he boasts he is the oldest man in the town in which I live, and he is as proud of his age as it is possible to be. I have heard that he, after the loss of his wife, perhaps 20 years ago, walked two miles every Sunday for years to the cemetery where his wife was buried. There he went to think of her he had lost, to shed a tear, probably, over her grave, to offer a prayer in the hope that the separation was only temporary, and that as he grew older the time during which they would be separated would be every day shortened. Well, if this grave was in one of your churchyards, and if he were a Dissenter, his affection for that place of burial would be just as great as if it had been in a cemetery or in a Dissenting chapel-yard, and you would find that he would visit it, his affections would linger round it; he would be, no doubt, lured, time after time, to visit the burial-place, and enter your church; and if he did not become a member of your Church, and one of your constant congregation, it would be absolutely impossible that he could be hostile to it. Now, I put that before you as an argument. Instead of being a measure of Disestablishment, it will lessen what feeling of hostility prevails; and in cases such as I have described—and there will be thousands of them every year—there will be set up a tie between persons who have hitherto been strangers to the Established Church, which would bring them nearer to it, and, it may be, unite many of them to your constant congregation. I submit to hon. Gentlemen opposite that is one reason why they should not be alarmed at the passing of this Bill. I believe it can have no evil effect whatsoever upon anything that is good in connection with the Established Church. I shall not go into the question of clauses, because we shall have an opportunity of discussing them very soon, no doubt, when they will receive the attention due to them. There are clauses in it which I could wish were out. I do not think, myself, there is much objection to the use of the word "Christian," because, no doubt, when legislating upon matters of this kind, we are bound, sometimes, to pay respect to the vast bulk of the opinion of the country, and, as it were, not to insist upon an extreme principle which is scarcely necessary in the case, and which certainly would not express an objection that would meet the views of the great body of the people. With regard to the 14th clause, on which the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) has spoken so admirably to-night, everybody in this House must know that I cannot feel it a complimentary clause which classes persons in my circumstances with persons who are not baptized, and who are put in the same sentence with—I will not speak of suicides, for they are greatly to be commiserated; but with those who have committed very horrible crimes. I do not think that is a neces- sary thing; but, still, for all that, so anxious am I that this irritating question should be settled; so much do I appreciate the great liberality and the great wisdom of the Archbishop of Canterbury with regard to this matter; and so much also am I anxious to give any relief that is possible to those clergymen who are dissatisfied with the existing state of the Burial Law as regards their office, that I think I may be induced, probably, to consent to the clause as it stands, although I can see no good object in professing to build our legislation upon the views not of Convocation exactly, but, if the right hon. Member for the University is correct, upon some partial views of Convocation. But I do not want to quarrel with the Bill, and I do not want the House to quarrel with the Bill; and I think it is no more to the interest of the Party on this side than of the Party on that side to quarrel with the Bill. We have had this question discussed for 20 years, and for the last six or eight years or more discussed most carefully, and sometimes with a great deal of passion in this House. I think the time has come when we ought to close the door upon it, to settle it once and for ever, and to offer another and a convincing proof to hon. Gentlemen opposite, who are so afraid of us, that all the steps we have taken yet, and the steps we are taking now, not only do not injure the Christian religion in this country, but are not in the least hostile to the true interests and the true strength of the Established Church. I have said all I have to say. In fact, it is a question on which I have spoken so often that it is not easy to say anything new or useful; but I have endeavoured to place the matter before the House just as it presents itself to my mind. I am not speaking as a Nonconformist, I am speaking as a Member of this House and and as a Member of the Government; and I am anxious that the House should, if possible, get rid of their passion, of their errors, of their excitement, and of the extravagance which prevail on both sides of the House, and should take this measure, and adopt it, and let it be one of the good and wise Acts of the Session of 1880.

said, he wished to congratulate the House on the manner in which this question had been discussed on the present occasion upon both sides. He willingly bore testimony to the spirit of the speeches which had fallen from several hon. Members who had addressed the House for the first time. He could assure the House that nothing would fall from him which would disturb the spirit in which the measure had been discussed. He had had many opportunities, on various occasions, of making speeches in the course of this controversy; but after the action which had taken place in the House of Lords, one could not help feeling that the time for practical argument had gone by, although he still claimed the right of protest was one which ought to be reserved to every Member of the House, especially to one who had taken such an interest in the matter as himself throughout the whole contest. He would remark, with regard to the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, that although his speech had been delivered with great temper and moderation, everyone knew that he approached the question from a totally different point of view from that occupied by hon. Members on that side of the House. The right hon. Gentleman would be glad to see the Church of England disestablished, and he had no fear upon that point. He was glad that members of the Liberation Society in that House had expounded their views, as they had done that evening, because he thought the House would think they had given justification to everything which had fallen from the clergy of the Church of England in that respect; for it would be seen that the present Bill was really a step in the right direction of action against the Church of England itself. He was not going into the whole controversy of church rates; but he was bound to say he thought the right hon. Gentleman was wrong when he stated to the House that the church rates could not be applied to the repair and keeping in order of the churchyards or their walls. He believed the church rates were largely applicable to this purpose, and certainly to the maintenance of the walls of the churchyard. It was curious that in one of the early Petitions presented to the House on this subject, it was distinctly upon the ground that as the Dissenters were required to contribute to the support of church rates, they ought to be allowed to bury their dead in the churchyards of the Church of England. He wanted to impress this on those who differed from members of the Church of England, that he hoped the time was coming when, whether this Bill passed or did not pass, that strife between religious Bodies might, to a great extent, cease, and that they might join in seeing the great danger that all religious Bodies were in, and that they would unite, as far as possible, against what he believed to be the great danger they laboured under at the present moment—namely, the growth of infidelity, unbelief, vice, and crime. He hoped they might all put away sectarian differences, and carry out the object of all true religion throughout the country. The right hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced this Bill (Mr. Osborne Morgan) said there existed a civil right, but that it had got entangled with the ecclesiastical law, as to burial in the churchyard of a parish. He would put it to the House, that if the right of the parishioner existed to be buried in the churchyard with a truly religious Service, that such right was not touched. The parishioner would continue to have the right to be buried by the clergyman of the parish with the Christian Service. The right hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced this Bill had felt the ground upon which they based it to be a weak one, and one upon which they could not stand. They had said that it was the right of every parishioner to be buried in the churchyard of his parish, with any Service that his friends might choose; but when they came to define what Services were to be read, they said those Services were to be of a Christian character. It might be expedient to put it in that way; but, as he had said before, it absolutely cut the ground from under their feet, and he felt he had a right to say they had placed the Bill upon a basis on which it was impossible that it could stand, because, as they knew, it would not receive the support of the public. They were obliged to admit that there was a sentiment which they could not overcome, and they dare not say that all manner of Services were to be read in the churchyards of the Church of England. The people who opposed this Bill were supposed to be narrow-minded and bigoted; but, he asked, what was the feeling of the Nonconformists? If they invited the Services of other denomina- tions in these burying-grounds, would the Wesleyan or the Baptist ask Roman Catholic Priests, for instance, to conduct the Service? The only open-heartedness which he knew of with regard to this matter was that of the denomination to which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster belonged. That denomination had passed a resolution that any denomination might conduct their Services in the churchyards belonging to Quakers, and that, certainly, was more open-hearted than the conduct of any other body in this respect. But there was attached to it this peculiar restriction—namely, that the dead of other denominations were to be buried according to the rules which had been laid down by the Quakers for their own burials—that was to say, in silence. At all events, it was established that the Service should be conducted as if the person buried had been a Quaker. Now, that was precisely the equivalent of what the late Government had proposed with reference to the Church of England churchyards. They said—"If you are content that your burial should take place there, it must be with a Service of the Church of England." One objection had been taken by the right hon. Gentleman and others, upon which he was bound to say a few words. The late Government had been accused of proposing, in the event of the relatives not wishing the Church Service to be read, that there should be silent burial, and that that would be very like the burial of a dog; but that they had been guilty of any such conduct in introducing the Bill of 1877 he utterly denied. What happened in Scotland over and over again, what had been alluded to in the course of the debate, and what he should like to see in the Church of England also, was that the Service should be conducted in the church or chapel of the denomination to which the deceased belonged, or in the private house, before the grave was reached. But the grievance as now put forward was a new grievance. The creation of cemeteries had taken away a great part of that which formerly existed, and the effect was that the Dissenters did not in former times feel the grievance of which they now complained. It was one of the grievances brought before the House in the first Session after the Reform Bill; but if hon. Members would take the trouble to look at the Petitions presented on the question of burials, they would find that this question did not enter into the minds of Dissenters at all for a period of 10 years. It was Sir Morton Peto who, practically, brought it before the notice of Parliament, and it was from his speech that the agitation arose. The right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had quoted, with triumph, the very large number of chapels in Wales to which there were no burial-grounds attached, in order to show the magnitude of the grievance. Now, he was willing to admit these facts, but for the purpose of drawing from them a totally different conclusion. No doubt, in many parts of Wales, where these chapels had been built, the value of land was very small; and no doubt, also, the expense of building a chapel, as compared with the cost of the land, was very great; and, therefore, it would be seen that to give a pound more or less for the ground would not be felt as a hardship at all. That, he said, was one of the strongest facts in proof that the Dissenters did not feel at all the grievance at the time those chapels were built. The Bill had been drawn in a manner which showed that the object in view was to take possession of the churchyards, which had hitherto been under the exclusive care of the Church of England. But it made no provision for the future. He would have thought that in a Bill of this kind, which was intended to settle the question, the starting-point would have been this—that it would have been declared to be the duty of somebody to provide burial-grounds for persons who died and had to be buried. There was no law by which, at the present time, persons could be compelled to form burial-grounds for parishes. He would take the case of Northampton, where all the burial-grounds were closed by order of the Secretary of State, many years ago, and where, consequently, there had not since been any place in which the inhabitants had a right to be buried. There was the cemetery, where interments could be purchased; but there was no place where they might go as a matter of right. There was no doubt that there were a number of cases in which the churchyards ought, practically, to be closed, and would shortly have to be closed, which would show that the grievance complained of was diminishing every year. The right hon. Gentleman said that it would be many years before they were closed. Notwithstanding which, he would have supposed the Bill would have begun by imposing upon some sanitary or other body the duty of providing burial-grounds where they were wanted. Had the matter been approached in that spirit, and had the Bill gone on to say there were places which could no longer be used as places of burial, and that it was desirable that the Dissenters' Services should be carried on in the churchyards of the Church of England, it would have been an entirely different thing. But, by introducing the Bill in its present form, he thought that the Government had placed upon the clergy the maximum amount of irritation, the maximum amount of grievance, while, at the same time, they gave the minimum of advantage. He would be contented if the law in England were the same as in Scotland, where all the burial-grounds belonged to the heritors, who were bound to keep them in order. There was this advantage in Scotland—that the burial-grounds were, in great part, a distance from the parish church, and he wished the churchyards of the Church of England were also not close to the churches on sanitary grounds. But if, as in Scotland, they were at a distance from the parish church, these fears of the clergy would never have been excited, and the present question would never have been raised; because it would have been totally against the feeling of the parishioners, the clergy, and sincere people throughout the country, to have two sets of Services going on at the same time; and that was the fear of the clergy and of the people. It was totally against all the spirit of legislation in this country, that the feeling of the clergy should not, in such a matter, be considered; and, therefore, he said that the Bill was framed on wrong principles, and he did not think it would lead to that peace and happiness which the right hon. Gentleman anticipated. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken, as he always did, with great depth of feeling and sympathy; and no one listened to him with more pleasure than he did when referring to those who claimed to be laid by the side of a father, mother, or children in the same churchyard. No doubt, the natural feeling was to be buried in the same graveyard with their deceased relatives; but that feeling did not prevail when the churchyards were closed. He made a solemn protest against the Bill, because he felt it to be unjust, because he felt it would produce an amount of irritation without any sufficient balance on the other side, and because he did not think it tended to strengthen the Church of England, or weaken the attacks of those who were opposed to it.

I am a very humble Member of this House, and I belong to a denomination which, it appears, is to receive a lesson in humility. I have listened with astonishment to the tone of the speech just delivered by the right hon. Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross). In that speech he treated the principle of this Bill as admitted, because the Bill has come down from the House of Lords. I have rejoiced that the House of Lords has vindicated its independence on a recent occasion by rejecting a Bill sent up to it by this House; but I am not prepared to admit that the decisions of the House of Lords ought, on all occasions, to rule this House. As a layman of the Church of England, I hold that the principle of this Bill is grossly unjust to the denomination to which I belong, and I know that that is the feeling of the portion of the laity of the Church of England which I represent, and is also the opinion of 15,000 of the clergy of that Church. It appears that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire thinks that when he and his former Colleagues are not in Office all the measures proposed by Her Majesty's Ministers ought to pass—that the great body of the Church of England are to consider that the penalty for not having succeeded in retaining the right hon. Gentleman in Office. I hold, further, that the right hon. Gentleman, and the other Members who have spoken in the same sense as he has done from the Front Bench on the left of the Speaker's Chair, are forgetting the duties of an Opposition. The performance of the duties of the Opposition are essential to the proper conduct of Parliamentary Business. Without a legitimate Opposition the Parliamentary system of Government cannot work; for the existence and action of a legitimate Opposition are essential to the due expression of public opinion in this House. I have said that I consider the principle of this Bill most unjust. If adopted, it will place the denomination to which I belong in a position of inferiority to all other denominations. The churchyards, and the fabrics of the Church, are held in trust for us, the laity, by the clergy on precisely the same title—the proof of the title to the possession of the churchyards as well as the fabrics of the Church is identical. I take the case of the property held by the Nonconformists in their chapels and graveyards by way of illustration. That title is based on the judicial decision of the House of Lords in the case of Lady Hewley's Charity. In the reign of Charles II., Lady Hewley left certain property in Yorkshire in trust to support "Godly preachers of Christ's Holy Gospel." Unitarians were not heard of in that day, but were, in 1828, found in possession of this property. After protracted litigation, the House of Lords, as the final Court of Appeal, judicially decided that the Unitarian ministers, who denied the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, were not the "Godly preachers" of His Gospel, intended by the donor of this property, but that it should belong to Trinitarian Nonconformists, and placed the claimants, the Presbyterians, in possession. From this, it is evident that proof of the uniformity of doctrines and services is essential to the title—to the possession of property for religious purposes. This decision was given in 1828, and in 1844 the Dissenters' Chapels Act, founded upon that decision, passed both Houses; and, by virtue of that Act, all the Nonconformist property in this country, including that of the Roman Catholics, is held, and so far as regards the effect of this Bill, if passed, will remain secured. Let the House remember that the proof of continuous identity in doctrines and services is thus shown to be essential to the validity of the title to all religious and denominational property. By the principle of this Bill, the introduction of the various and diverse Services of different denominations into the churchyards of the denomination to which I belong will fundamentally invalidate our title to that property, and, in this respect, place the Church of England, as a denomination, in a position of inferiority, as compared with every other denomination in this country. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Bright) knows how to adapt the tone of his speeches to his purpose. He appealed, in support of the principle of this Bill, to the House on the ground of Christian charity, and the avoidance of strife between the Church of England and the various Nonconformist bodies of this country, among whom are the Roman Catholics. The right hon. Gentleman spoke with so much confidence, that I think he must have received a commission from His Holiness the Pope. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel perfectly confident that Cardinal Manning entertains, and is actuated by, the exaggerated notions of toleration which the right hon. Gentleman expressed? Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that this extreme tolerance is consistent with the profession of a Cardinal? Can the House suppose that the principle of this Bill, which is that of incipient and disguised confiscation, will stop at the point indicated—at the point he seemed to intimate? Did not the right hon. Gentleman himself allude to foreign countries in which the fabrics devoted to religious purposes are occupied by various denominations and their Services in turn; fabrics in which Protestant and Roman Catholic, and I know not what other Services are performed, turn about? Was it not clear to the House that the right hon. Gentleman contemplates the extension of the principle of this Bill, which is limited to the churchyards, hereafter to the fabrics of the Church of England. And if this be done, am I not right in assuming that the title of the denomination to which I belong—the Church of England—to all her property, for the purposes of religious worship, will be gone, for the legitimate and necessary proof of it will be destroyed? I know not what the Church of England has done that she should be subjected to such injustice. If no one else votes against the second reading of this Bill I will do so; because, if enacted, it will inflict a manifest inequality and hardship upon a body that has always proved itself loyal. I remember the debates on the Bills which proposed the abolition of church rates. I remember the promises of perpetual religious peace as the sure consequence of the abolition of church rates, in which the right hon. Gentleman and the other advocates of that measure indulged, and the sequel to that measure is the Bill before the House. I remember the debates on church rates, in which peace and undisturbed possession were promised to the Church, if Nonconformists were relieved from the payment of church rates. How could the House place any confidence in these promises of future peace? The right hon. Gentleman has assured the House that there will be an end of strife between the various denominations; but can he answer for the Roman Catholic clergy? The House has had ample and recent evidence that they are not an eminently peaceful body. I look upon this Bill simply as a measure of incipient confiscation. The right hon. Gentleman has virtually warned the House to look forward to the day when the same principle may be applied also to the fabrics—the fabrics of the Church of England alone—as the churchyards will now, if this Bill pass, hereafter be rendered available for all denominations; while the chapels and the property of the Roman Catholics, much of which is illegal, while the property and the chapels of all other Nonconformist bodies will be held sacred to their exclusive use. That, assuredly, will be the case, in spite of the fact that the large and increasing property held by the Monastic Orders in England is distinctly illegal, but would remain undisturbed. I consider the principle of this measure grossly unjust, and that this injustice is all the greater, because, if this Bill pass, it will be inflicted upon the most loyal, the most tolerant, and the most peaceful of Her Majesty's subjects.

asked if the Government could state when the Committee on the Bill would take place?

MR. OSBORNE MORGAN said, that he could not fix the date accurately at present, but that it would not be before Friday the 20th instant.