Mr. Monk, M.P. for Gloucester, though a supporter of Mr.
Osborne Morgan's Burials Bill, moved, on Wednesday, the second reading of an ad interim Bill of his own, providing for adding a slip of unconsecrated ground to existing churchyards, in which Nonconformists should have a right to be buried with their own services. The Government lent a not very cordial support to Mr. Monk's Bill, which was opposed, however, by the Liberals, and only faintly and rather contemptuously supported by the Church Conservatives, like Mr. Beresford Hope and Mr. Hubbard. The truth is that the Bill, though it might diminish the mischief of the present law, would not in any way remove it, and probably would prolong its life. Mr. Beresford Hope compared the reluct- ance of the Liberals to have anything to do with it, to the reluct- ance of a landed proprietor who had but a single snipe on his estate to having that snipe killed. After that, he could no longer boast of the sport for the appearance of which his snipe was a sort of guarantee. Of course, there is some truth in the sneer. Politicians do dislike parting with a good cry. And they are right only to part with it by a just settle- ment of the case. Mr. Monk's was not a just settlement of the case.
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