The House of Commons on Thursday gave a triumph to
the Salvation Army. Mr. H. Fowler moved the second reading of a Bill to repeal the tenth clause of the local Act which forbids. processions on Sunday, and carried it by a majority of 269 to- 122. The division was not a party one, many Conservatives, with Mr. Matthews as spokesman, holding that any Act restricting religious liberty should be a general one, and many more thinking that the Act, instead of preventing breaches of the peace, encouraged them, by stimulating, as Mr. Courtney said, "lawless upholders of the law." We agree in the main with Mr. Fowler's object, not seeing why a proceeding treated as innocent or commendable in London should be con- sidered criminal in a watering-place ; but we regret that the law, though local, should have been successfully defeated. The Salvation Army ought to have been heavily fined every Monday morning, and those who assailed it sent to prison in batches. The Eastbourne Magistrates say they had not the force to act decisively; but they ought to have had the force, even if it had been necessary to increase the police by a thousand men. The Act was a mistake; but every Act should be carried out at all hazards, and at any expense.
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