that in the extremity of our prosperity and happiness we should not be satisfied until we had pulled down by our own hand the noblest fabric of liberty and justice that human hands ever raised, or human folly ever destroyed. Mr. Bright, in supporting the motion, said that some of the top stones of the noble fabric referred to by Mr. Lowe were the very stones against which the right hon. gentleman had protested ten years before. Having traced the recent history of Reform, Mr. Bright said it was admitted by every one that the results of what was done in 1867 with regard to the borough franchise had been satisfactory, and given no cause whatever for alarm. If they now extended the same suffrage to the counties, it would be the best means of putting an end to an apprehended agitation for manhood or universal suffrage. The ignorance of the agricultural population was lessening every day; their independence was increasing; and there was a gradual but general movement in the direction of asking that they should be placed on an equality with their fellow-countrymen in the towns. It is not a party question,' said Mr. Bright. There is scarcely a member on the other side of the House with whom I have spoken on this question who has not said that it cannot be put off for very long; and when the right hon. gentleman at the head of the Government proposes that it shall be done, no doubt it will be accepted and adopted by an overwhelming majority even in this House. And when it is done, a great thing will be done. We

shall have the counties put in as favourable a position for legislation on their behalf as the boroughs occupy now. The freedom of the towns will be extended to the counties, and we shall have what I fear is a great amount of social tyranny in the counties broken up. We shall have what I have described as the paralysis of half the political interests and power of the country removed and healed, and we shall have the industry, the intelligence, and the freedom of both town and country brought to combine in the election of a really free Parliament, that shall be a credit and a permanent safeguard to a great and a free people.' Mr. Disraeli opposed the motion, and it was defeated by a majority of 99, the numbers being-for Mr. Trevelyan's resolution, 165; against, 264.

Twice during the session of 1877 Mr. Bright spoke on questions which excited considerable interest. The first of these speeches was delivered in connection with a proposal made by Mr. Hanbury Tracy, that the debates of the House should be officially reported. It was shown during the discussion that, with the exception of the Times and the Standard, the newspapers were ceasing to report the debates at length, that nothing was reported after 12.30 a.m., and that the public appetite for debates was diminishing. Mr. Gladstone supported the proposal, on the ground that reporting was declining. Mr. Bright took a similar view. He said that the reports of the debates in Parliament were not only much shorter than they once were, but also that they were much

worse. It was therefore advisable to have an inquiry into the matter. Newspapers found their profit very much more from what they contained of advertisements than of Parliamentary debates; therefore speeches went to the wall. He did not, however, believe that there was less interest now than formerly in reading Parliamentary debates; but except on very stirring occasions the newspaper record of the debates was very deficient. The grievance would increase with every year, and they would be compelled before long to make the inquiry asked for. Members would require as an historical record, and for their own reference, some record of the debates more satisfactory than the present lame and impotent reports. He did not agree with Mr. Beresford-Hope that an adequate report of the debates would vastly ' enlarge the extent of talking; but if there should be a disposition on the part of any member to speak too often and too long, the House had its remedy in its own hands. A committee would devise the best mode of solving the present difficulty. Sir S. Northcote opposed the motion, on the ground that it would tend to multiply speeches addressed to constituents, etc.; and in the end the proposition was defeated by a vote of 152 to 28. Many of the newspapers, in commenting upon this decision, expressed an opinion that the existing reports were ample for the requirements of their readers; but some of the ablest of the weekly journals feared that the tendency of the House to become an unreported debating

club' might result in weakening its hold upon the country.

The other occasion on which Mr. Bright rose this session was in connection with the abolition of capital punishment. Sir J. Eardley Wilmot having introduced a motion for the reconsideration of the law of murder, Mr. Pease moved an amendment for the abolition of the punishment of death. The latter hon. gentleman brought forward some remarkable statistics in support of his amendment. Mr. Bright-who, as we have seen, had already delivered many speeches during his career upon this questiononce more spoke eloquently against capital punishment, and upon the special horror of the English method. He observed that in this respect our law had always been more barbarous and more cruel than that of any Christian State of which he had been able to inform himself. We committed a mistake which, a hundred years to come, men would point to as one of the most extraordinary mistakes a Legislature could commit, when we endeavoured to promote the sacredness of human life and the reverence for human life by destroying it in cold blood, and by one of the most barbarous methods which the most barbarous nations ever employed. Mr. Bright argued that the substitution of private for public execution had only given a new field to the reporters. In former times they told us all about the crowd, and how the street was filled with spectators; but now, in a space perhaps not half the size of that

room, they saw every line of the convict's countenance, they saw his troubled eyes, the pallor on his cheek, the terror in every limb; and all that was given, with the embellishments which newspaper writers were so well able to add; and these details were carried into every house. He believed that the executions were exerting an influence as evil, sometimes even more evil, upon the public mind than they did in times when they were enacted under the canopy of heaven and before the faces of thousands of the people. 'I have spoken,' said Mr. Bright, 'to a Home Secretary on questions of this nature, and I have told him, in respect of a particular case, "You know if you hang this man there is no other Christian country in the world in which he would be hung." He did not deny it,—it was a matter notorious; and I have seen him burst into tears; I have seen the tears rolling down his cheeks, and himself greatly agitated with the burden upon his conscience, which he knew not how to shift from it, the law having compelled him to decide this case,-his sympathy carrying him one way, and his fear of not doing what the law required compelling him the other. The time, I say, is surely coming when we shall have a Home Secretary who shall revolt against the terrible duty thus imposed upon him, and when we shall have a Parliament, too, which shall raise itself to the height of this great argument, and will believe that Christian law is of more worth than the barbarism that comes only with heathen times. And I hope the time will