News of the Week
The Coal Mines Bill.
TUESDAY in the House of Commons was memorable for two speeches which displayed debating power at its highest. The speech of Mr. William Graham, who moved the second reading of the Coal Mines Bill, was a speech of quiet exposition and a prodigious feat of memory. He spoke without a note, and though he deprecated the use of detailed figures he fell a victim now and again to his memorizing talent and to his passion for statistics, a passion as strong as that of the Dean of St. Paul's: And it seems that he was not once in error. The other great speech of the day, Sir Herbert Samuel's, was a devastating effort in critical analysis. One might think that no Bill could survive such a merciless dissection, but when we write before the continuation of the debate on Thursday it seems more likely than not that the Bill, inadequate though it is, will receive its second reading. Mr. Graham obviously laid himself out to be conciliatory and to make the way easy for amendment Ill - CoMmittee, and Sir Herbert Samuel's onslaught was Probably designed to show how bad the Bill was, not because he wanted to annihilate it, but because he wanted to prove the extreme need for radical alterations.
