Lord Selborne on Thursday introduced the Burials Bill of the
Government into the House of Lords, in a speech of very great ability, in which he showed how impossible even the Con- servatives had found it to reject this measure of relief by any majority approaching to that of their average party strength ; how useless last year's compromise, which goes by the name of Mr. Marten's Act, has proved ; and how essential it is to add to the civil right of burial, the right to use such religious services as are most approved by the relatives and friends of the deceased. The Burials Bill of the Government gives this right in full, except that it qualifies the service to be used as "such Christian and orderly religious service" as the friends of the deceased think fit. There is no real reason for demanding that it should be Christian. It ought not to be anti-Christian, or indeed, to involve attacks on the faith of any body of men whatever. But so long as it limits itself to enforcing any con- siderations consolatory to the feelings of the mourners which are not assaults on the views of others, it ought to be sanctioned. The Bill of Lord Selborne not only permits the friends of the deceased to have any Christian service they please, but per- mits the official clergyman, if he shall be called upon to read the service, in spite of this alternative, to use forms of Church burial which may be in certain cases less open to objection than are passages of our existing Service. The second reading of the Bill is to be taken in the House of Lords on Thursday next.
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