Sir Wilfrid Lawson made one of his amusing harum-scarum speeches
at Carlisle on Wednesday night, saying he would have preferred to enact, instead of the Public Worship Regulation Bill, that whenever a clergyman breaks the law he should be brought up before the magistrates and fined 5s. and costs. But Parliament, he says, never likes simple laws, and that is why it go much hates the Permissive Bill ;, so it would have the Public Worship Regula- tion Bill, instead of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's alternative. Further, Mr. Disraeli supported the Public Worship Regulation Bill because he saw it was so popular, and Sir William Harcourt gave it his support because he wanted to overtrump Mr. Disraeli's trick. "There was a friendly emulation between the two which of them should show himself the most eminent Protestant statesman. And there they stood in the House of Commons, as they expressed it, on the broad platform of the Reformation, these two holy men, these two pillars of orthodoxy, the modern Luther and the modern Melanchthon, and in tones of moving eloquence implored the House of Commons,—that great Assembly of Jews, Turks, here- tics, and infidels,—to maintain religion and put down Ritualism" Mr. Disraeli and Sir William Harcourt, representing Luther and Melanchthon, in an attempt to put down Ritualism on the broad platform of the Reformation, is not a bad suggestion for a politi- cal burlesque,--Sir Wilfrid Lawson standing by and suggesting, sotto voce, that their intrinsic eloquence is melodramatic and superfluous, since to fine the offenders 5s. and costs would fully meet the exigencies of this critical situation.
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