Lord Aberdare is a good-humoured man, but we doubt if
he can abstain from a smile as he watches his successor trying to amend, the Bill which is said to have destroyed the Liberal party. Mr. Cross is trying to make the Licensing Bill pleasanter to every- body, especially the publicans, but cannot manage it in the smallest degree. He never loses a division, but he does not know what he wants. He changes his mind every day under some invisible pressure, And then gets snappish because people say so. He stuck stoutly last week to seven as the limit of-close-time on Sun- days, but this week he has given it up, and accepted 6 p.m. instead. He wished to fix the hours by law, and leave magistrates no discretion ; then he thought they might have discretion to decide what was a "populous place ;" then he thought a populous place was one with 2,500 people, and then he accepted a .definition with which number -has nothing to do. Tie ,ppaposed to abolish the power of the police to enter pub- licansl_private rooms, to search for adulterated liquor ; and then revived the clause under which the police can enter them, "on their responsibility," with no excuse whatever. On Thursday the House got so bewildered that Liberal Members would not. stand it any longer, and by repeated motions for adjournment com- pelled Mr. Disraeli to postpone the debate to Friday at two o'clock. Mr. Cross had much better have withdrawn his Bill, and confessed that Tory administrators are very humble folk, even when com- pared with Mr. Bruce. They came in to the cry of "Bible and Beer !" and can do nothing for either.
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