The Burials Bill debate in the Lords on Tuesday was
marked by the adoption of two bad amendments, and the rejection of one still worse. The bad amendments were moved by the Arch- bishop of York, and their object was to compel Dissenters buried with their own services to be buried in the unconse- crated ground, wherever there is an unconsecrated ground avail- able, and not in consecrated ground. The first of these amendments was carried by a majority of 24 votes (130 against 106), and the second by a majority of 19 (127 against 108). But Lord Salisbury's proposal to exempt from the new law all portions of burial-grounds given within sixty years to church- yards, except with the consent of the donor or his representatives, was rejected by a majority of 13 (104 votes against 91). Lord Brabourne (Mr. E. Knatchbull-Hugessen) made his maiden speech in the House of Lords against this amendment of Lord Salisbury's, and a very able one it was. Lord Salisbury proposed, he said, to extend to churchyards also the -" scientific frontier" which had proved so disastrous in India, and everybody now knows that scientific frontiers are apt to be both dangerous and unintelligible.
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