SHIRE, AND STRATFORD-UPON-AVON the first time, and referred to the RAILWAY (EXTENSION OF TIME) BILL. Read the second time and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection. HAMILTON WATER BILL. [H.L.] Read the third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons. Examiners. GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY COMPANY AND MIDLAND AND GREAT NORTHERN RAILYAYS JOINT COMMITTEE BILL. Brought from the Commons; read the first time, and referred to the Examiners. FISHERIES (SCOTLAND). Sixteenth Annual Report of the Fishery Board for Scotland, being for the year 1897; Parts I., II., and III.: Presented (by command), and ordered to lie on the Table. SALMON AND FRESH WATER FISHERIES (ENGLAND AND WALES). Thirty-seventh Annual Report of the Inspectors of Fisheries (England and Wales) for the year 1897. Presented (by command), and ordered. to lie on the Table. Abstract of accounts of loan societies in England and Wales to 31st December, 1896, furnished to the Central Office for the Registry of Friendly Societies. Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table. PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS. ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL DEATH OF MR. GLADSTONE. *THE PRIME MINISTER (Marquess of SALISBURY): My Lords, before we go to the business of the day, it is our duty to record the occurrence of a great calamity. The most distinguished political name in this century has been withdrawn from the roll of the living. It will be in accordance with tradition, in cases somewhat similar, and I am sure in accordance with the feelings of this House, that we should address the Queen on this sorrowful occasion, and combine our voice with that of the House of Commons in urging that the greatest possible public honour may be bestowed To be read the second time on Monday on the memory of him who has been away. I propose, therefore, to next. ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6.) BILL. [H.L.] To be read the second time on Monday next. LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL taken move "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will be graciously pleased to give directions that the remains of the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone be publicly interred in the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster, and that a monument be there erected, with an inscription expressive of public admiration and attachment, and of the high sense entertained by the House of his rare and splendid gifts and of his devoted labours in Parliament and in great offices of State, and to assure Her Majesty that this House will concur in giving effect to Her Majesty's directions." My Lords, very few words are necessary, or would be fitting, to commend this Motion to your acceptance, or to dwell upon the great career which yesterday was closed. His history, his merits, his wonderful qualities, have been dwelt on by many tongues and many pens, and to I need not repeat them here. But the point which seems to me remarkable, LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL was and which, I think, will attract the atten- | not, they could have issued from nothing tion of foreign nations and of future but the greatest and the purest moral generations, perhaps more than any aspirations; and he is honoured by his other, is the universal consent of all countrymen because through so many persons, of all classes, and of all schools years, because through so many vicissi of thought in doing honour on this tudes and conflicts, they have recognised sorrowful occasion to a man who has been this one characteristic of his action which more mixed up in political conflict than has never left it, never ceased to colour probably any man that our history it. He will leave behind him, especially records. The conflicts of the past are to those who have followed with deep inso far forgotten that there is no differ- terest the history of his later years-I ence of feeling or of opinion in the might almost say the later months of his honour which we pay to his great life the memory of a great Christian qualities, or in our desire that that statesman, set up necessarily on high, honour should be duly displayed before from which the sight of his character, the eyes of all the world. What is the his motives, and his intentions cause of this unanimous opinion? Of situated so that it could strike all the course, he had qualities which distin- world. It will have left a deep and most guished him from all other men; and salutary influence on the political thought you may say it was his transcendent and the social thought of the generation intellect, his astonishing power of attach- in which he lived, and he will be long ing men to him, the great influence he remembered, not so much for the causes was able to exert upon the thought and in which he was engaged, or the political the convictions of his contemporaries. projects which he favoured, but as But these things would not explain the great example of which history hardly attachment and the adoration of those furnishes a parallel, of a great Christian whose ideas he represented. They man. I beg, my Lords, to move the would not explain why it is that feelings Motion. almost, if not quite, as fervent are felt and expressed by those whose ideas he has not expressed, and whose policy he has invariably withstood. My Lords, I do not think the reason is to be found a My *THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: Lords, I am under no ordinary difficulty in following the noble Marquess, because I do not conceive that anything could be said better, anything more appropriate, anything more touching, than the speech in which he has introduced this Motion. He has undoubtedly struck the keynote of the universal feeling towards the Statesman we have lost. I agree en tirely with the noble Marquess that, whatever we on this side, who have acted with him so long, may think of his political career—which naturally we sympathise with in its details far more than the noble Lords who sit opposite-but, whatever we may think of that, we are as much aware as the noble Marquess is that this extraordinary manifestation of public feeling-I suppose such a manifestation is without parallel in this country-is not caused by his splendid political achievements-I speak of his eloquence, his guidanco of Ministries, and the high position which he occupied so long in the counsela of the Crown. We are as well aware as the noble Marquess is that that is not the cause of this great manifestation of regret. It is, as the noble Marquess said, the appreciation of the moral qualities of the man, of the highmindedness of his conduct, of the unvarying uprightness of his conduct, and the sense which the nation feels, as the noble Marquess has justly said, that in him we have lost not merely a Statesman of great power and great reputation, but we have lost a man who set an example to all who have occupied high places in this country, and to all the people of this country, whether high or low, of a life nobly spent, pure in its intentions, pure in its conduct, and which, I agree with the noble Marquess, will hereafter be considered a bright example to this nation. My Lords, I can add no more. I need hardly say how strong my personal sympathies are upon such an occasion. It so happens that I am now the only person remaining who sat in all the Cabinets over which Mr. Gladstone presided; but this is not the occasion to enter into any details. I merely wish to repeat that I am sure we on this side of the House warmly acknowledge the manner in which the noble Marquess has proposed this Motion, and I am certain it will meet with the concurrence of the whole House. *THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: There are some Members of your Lordships' House, some of whom belong to the Government and others who give & general support to the Government, who, however, occupy a position somewhat distinct from that of those in whose name the two noble Lords have just spoken. On behalf of those I desire to associate myself absolutely and unreservedly with what has fallen from the two noble Lords who preceded me. It has been my lot to serve in Parliament as a supporter, a colleague, and an opponent of Mr. Gladstone, and for that reason I and those whom I represent are, perhaps, better able even than any others to appreciate the full force of all that has been said by my noble Friends on both sides of the House. But for the events of 1886. it would have been unnecessary, and it would even have been an impertinence on my part, to add anything to that Earl of Kimberley. which has been said as to the great qualities of Mr. Gladstone or any of the incidents of his great career. As to those events I only desire to say this: to be placed in acute opposition to one with whom as a trusted Leader we had been in relations of intimate confidence and warm personal friendship must sarily have been, and was, to us a most painful position. But, although it was not in the character of Mr. Gladstone to shrink from letting his opponents feel the full weight of his blame or censure when he considered that blame or censure was deserved, I can truly say that I can recall no word of his which added unnecessary bitterness to that position. My Lords, deeply as we regret the difference of opinion which caused the separation between Mr. Gladstone and so many of those who had been his most devoted adherents, we never doubted, and we do not doubt now, that in that, as in every other matter with which during his long public life he had to deal, his action was guided by no other consideration than that of a sense of public duty, and by his conception of that which was in the highest and truest interests of his country. My Lords, I beg, on behalf of some of the noble Lords in this House, to express our sincere concurrence in everything that has been said by the noble Lords who have preceded me. *THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: My Lords, at there would first sight appear little left to be said after what has been so eloquently and feelingly put from both sides of the House; but as Mr. Gladstone's last successor in office, and as one who was associated with him in many of the most critical episodes of the last 20 years of his life, your Lordships. will perhaps bear with me for a moment while I say what little I can say on such a subject and on such an occasion. My Lords, it has been said by the Prime Minister, and I think truly, that the time has not yet come to fix with any approach to accuracy the place that Mr. Gladstone will fill in history. We are too near him to do more than note the vast space that he filled in the world, the great influence that he exercised, his constant contact with all the great movements of his time. But the sense of |