• Mr. Bereaford Hope did not get much support for
his "Increase of the Episcopate" Bill, of which he moved the second reading on Wednesday. Candid friends in all parts of the House assured him it would not do. Mr. Henley remarked on the happy-go- lucky system of trusting so important a matter to the discretion of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, without assigning them any guiding principles to work upon. Mr. Walpole said the Bill was so bad that no one could expect the House to, assent to it, and that the Government must take on themselves so responsi- ble a matter as providing for the increase of the Episcopate, if the House were to be expected to feel any confidence in he proposal. Mr. Cross endorsed Mr. Walpole's opinion that it was a bad Bill, and deprecated the notion of getting up a controversy on Church and State, on every occasion of the subdivision of a diocese ;—yet this would be necessary if the plan of leaving the schemes to the Ecclesiastical Commission and then laying the schemes so devised before Parliament were adopted. The Bill was not rejected, but the debate was adjourned to the end of July, in order to give the Government time to consider their own view and to announce it, before this unfortunate Bill is finally disposed of. It will be a rather delicate question for the Govern- ment to consider, and we suspect that when the 26th of July comes, their view on the subject will still be unshaped, and perhaps not even rough-hewn.
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