22 FEBRUARY 1879, Page 3

Mr. Balfour's Burial Bill, which proposes to entitle Noncon- formists

to burial with their own rites in any churchyard which is distant three miles or more from a cemetery, and which has not been given to the Church within the last fifty years, was talked out on Wednesday by the Conservative party. The Tories, headed by Mr. Beresford Hope, were evidently much afraid of it, as differing from Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill only by restrictions which might easily be omitted in Committee. On the other hand, the Liberals were not, probably, at all in a hurry to have the matter settled before the next general election, when it may play some part at the polls. Mr. Osborne Morgan, in the course of the debate, happily remarked that Cyprus had been of some use, after all. It had shown us that an English soldier might be buried with his own rites in the churchyard of a Greek church, without any of the difficulty that would be made in England in doing the same for a soldier of the Greek Church.