pared to make in Committee on the tithe-redemption clauses, the
rateable value clause, and others. He wished to make tithe. redemption compulsory within a certain number of years, but he thought that with certain considerable amendments in Committee, the Bill would prove a useful measure. Sir Hussey Vivian, like other Welsh Members, made a Disestab- lishment speech about as pertinent to the issue as the answer of the boy to a question in optics, who remarked that, before the question could be answered, he must " prove the binomial theorem," and then proceeded to expatiate on his one fragment of mathematical knowledge. After a desultory debate, Sir W. Harcourt attacked the Bill as neither putting the tithe effec- tually on the landlord, nor abolishing distress in all cases, nor reducing the tithe where the fall in the value of land required it ; and Mr. Raikes remarked that Sir W. Harcourt never interested the House more than when he was replying to him- self, as he had been that evening while endeavouring to refute the arguments which he had used last Session in favour of a Bill of this kind. Mr. Raikes showed that Sir W. Harcourt had approved cordially last year of amendments proposed by the Attorney-General in the very words embodied in the present Bill. The second reading was carried by a majority of 125 (289 to 164). But the real tug of war will come in Committee. The division shows that 453 Members voted, who, with the Speaker and the four tellers, make up a House of 458. There were also 47 pairs, which accounts for 94 other Members, so that considerably more than a hundred Members can neither have voted nor paired.
