progress, contending that the committee had now an
entirely new bill before them, and that time should be
allowed to consider it.—Mr. ROEBUCK thought the
request for further time far from unreasonable. They
should also have some explanation from the first
minister, or the law officers of the Crown, as to the great
alterations that had been made in the measure.—Mr.
GLADSTONE thought that the house had a right to
expect from the law officers of the Crown their views of
the scope and legal effect of the bill as it now stood.
The circumstances that had attended its introduction
and progress were, he believed, unexampled in
parliamentary history. As it first stood, the measure was
pronounced by government adequate, and no more than
adequate, to a strong national feeling. After the house
had consented to introduce the bill, by a majority of six
to one, ministers thought proper fundamentally to
change its character by withdrawing two out of its
three clauses, thus leaving out its most stringent
features. But now, a new set of provisions, of an
entirely opposite tendency, heightening and enhancing
its penal effect, and first suggested by those who
proclaimed this to be their object, had been inserted. No
two of the legal gentlemen had agreed in their view of
the measure, and he wished particularly to know the
effect of the clause annulling and declaring illegal the
papal brief. Mr. Gladstone then gave a masterly view
of the original provisions of the bill, and the effect of
the proposed changes, pointing out the anomaly of
leaving wholly untouched the papal brief constituting a
new see of Ross, in Ireland, and defining its jurisdiction,
whilst professing to apply uniform legislation to England
and Ireland. It appeared also, as the bill now stood,
that although the papal rescript of 29th September was
declared unlawful and void, yet if the Pope should
think fit to reissue a rescript of exactly the same purport,
it would be good to all intents and purposes, except as
regarded the penal clause.—After a discussion in which
Lord John Russell, Sir R. H. Inglis, Mr. P. Howard, Mr.
Horsman, Mr. T. Duncombe, Mr. Roche, Mr. Keogh, Mr.
Walpole, and others took part, the gallery was cleared,
but no division took place, and the motion was
negatived. The bill was then read a first and second time.
The question that the preamble be postponed having
been put, Mr. REYNOLDS again moved that the chairman
report progress. The committee divided—for reporting
progress, 46; against it, 262; majority against, 216.

Immediately after the division, the ATTORNEY-GENERAL
rose to state the effect of the bill as it now stands.
"The preamble, (he said) recites, that certain of the
Queen's Roman Catholic subjects have, under colour of
authority from a brief from Rome, assumed the titles of
certain pretended sees, &c.; that by the 10th George
IV, chapter 7, the assumption of the titles of existing
sees is subjected to a penalty of £100; that it is doubtful
if this enactment against assuming the titles of existing
sees, &c, applies to the offence of assuming the titles
of the pretended sees, &c.; that the attempt to establish
such sees is, however, illegal and void; and that it is
expedient to prohibit the assumption of such titles.
The second clause [the first of the bill as it stood last
week] then simply enacts that the assumption of the
pretended titles shall be put on the same footing as the
assumption of the real titles, and be punishable by a
penalty of £100. But it is said that the first clause, now
introduced on the basis of Mr. Walpole's suggestion,
makes the bill a now one. It does not do so; it merely
declares that to be the law, which the preamble recites
to be the law. The clause is superfluous; but as there is
a strong feeling in favour of making a national declaration,
in the form of a statutory enactment, that the
assumption of these titles is illegal and void, and as the
declaration can do no harm, the government accedes to
the insertion of the clause in the bill. To the objection
against the second clause that it will invalidate Roman
Catholic gifts under the Charitable Bequests Act, the
reply is, that the 10th George IV has not in practice
done that against the real titles; therefore the extension
of that enactment against the pretended titles will not do
so against them.—Mr. REYNOLDS again moved that the
Chairman should report progress.—Mr. Roebuck, the
Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and Mr. P. Howard,
remonstrated against a course that was merely obstructive;
but Mr. REYNOLDS persevered, and took two
divisions. On a motion to report progress, he was
defeated by 271 to 30: on a motion to postpone the
preamble, he was defeated by 258 to 45. The Earl of
Arundel and Surrey now again asked for a respite; and
Mr. Maurice O'Connell hoped that the lateness of the
hour would suspend further progress: but Sir George
Grey insisted on going on. After some further discussion,
however, Sir G. Grey assented to an adjournment
till Friday.

On Tuesday, May 20, Sir W. MOLESWORTH moved
an address praying the discontinuance of Transportation
to Van Diemen's Land. He detailed the substance of
a great number of petitions from that Colony signed by
all classes, in which the evils resulting from the continued
influx of convicts were painted in the darkest
colours, and contended that our Australian empire was
in peril from the continuance of this practice.—Sir G.
GREY admitted that the transportation system was
productive of grievances, but contended that it was
necessary, there being no other way of disposing of a large
portion of our criminals. He maintained that a hasty
adoption of the resolution before the house would
impose on government greater difficulties and embarrassments
than naturally attend the carrying of sentences
of transportation into effect. The debate was put an
end to a "count cut," it having been observed that
there were only 33 members in the house.

On Thursday, May 22, Mr. EWART brought forward
his motion respecting Capital Punishments, to the effect
that it is expedient that the mitigations which have
been made in the laws inflicting capital punishment in
England, be extended to Scotland, and, if possible, to
the colonies.—Mr. MAULE, in the absence of the Lord
Advocate, replied for the government in respect of
Scotland. There was no objection to the proposition;
but the House of Commons had better not commit itself
to vague resolutions.—For the colonies, Mr. HAWES
observed that already the law was the same in eighteen
colonies as in England; and in the rest, though the
letter of the law might vary, the practice was very much
the same as ours.—Sir George GREY added, that he had
communicated with the late Lord Advocate about the
law of Scotland; and he would communicate with the
present Lord-Advocate on that branch of the subject.—
Mr. Ewart then withdrew his motion.

Mr. W. J. Fox moved a resolution that "it is
expedient to promote the Education of the People in
England and Wales by the establishment of free schools
for secular instruction, to be supported by local rates,
and managed by committees elected by the ratepayers."
He adverted, in the outset, to the backwardness of
education among the humbler classes in this country, to
the advantages the state would derive from their
instruction, and to their claims upon the legislature. It was,
he observed, not an act of compassion, but a debt of
justice to the national character itself, to furnish better
means for universal instruction. Under the existing
machinery for this purpose, voluntary contributions, with
occasional aid from the public exchequer, not intentional
partiality, but inevitable disparity, inseparable from
religious and other difficulties, tended, he said, to check
co-operation; and he enumerated other objections to the
present system, and obstacles to its success which he
considered insuperable. There was no economy in this
imperfect system; we paid now as much as we need to
pay for a complete system of national education. His
plan proposed not only local taxation by an educational
rate, but local administration, which would improve by
means of competition, the modes of instruction, while it
would preclude the evils which some anticipated as
connected with the introduction of the new system.
Secular and religious instruction must, he insisted, be
separated, otherwise there could be no combination,—
no plan whatever of general education. In urging this
separation he proposed nothing new; high authorities
supported his view, that religious teaching failed of its
effect for want of due secular instruction.—Sir G. GREY
assured Mr. Fox that while he must withhold his assent
from the resolution, in the terms in which it was
expressed, it was not from any unwillingness to extend
the means of sound education among the great body
of the people. He was not prepared to dispute the facts