The House of Commons has at last entered upon the discussion of the principal measure of the session. On Tuesday Mr. Balfour moved the Second Reading of the Government of London Bill, and _immediately Mr. Herbert Gladstone, in a very forcible and eloquent, if not alto: gether convincing speech, moved its rejection. The differences between the two parties as to the measure do not really at its root, and Mr.
Gladstone admitted that if it were not for the pro-debility of a wholesale use of the closure he would have been content to let the Bill be read a second time and tried to amend it in Committee. The Bill proposes to divide London up into five-and-twenty or thirty boroughs, each with a Mayor and Aldermen and Corporation, but it still proposes to keep the London County Council supreme over all. Everyone admits that a certain amount of decentralisation is necessary, and that the Vestries and District Boards which now do most of the work which will devolve on the new Corporations ought to be transformed into more dignified bodies. The Liberals have no objection to making the Chairmen of Vestries into Mayors, but they complain that the Bill is designed to cripple the London County Council and to destroy the unity of London, particularly in the in-forests of the Gity of London. They' remember the famous speech of Lord Salisbury, in which he declared that the County Council was suffering from megalomania, and announced the introduction of a Bill which was to cripple its powers and split up London into " number of separate boroughs, That policy was not carried out, owing to the emphatic condemnation w London passed upon it at the county Council elections which took place just afterwards but the Liberals profess to cee in the present Billa mere modification of that policy. That there are many details which will have to be altered in Committee is certain, from the attitude of sororal Conservative members'; but there is no doubt that the measure will pass into law without any vital alterations.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.