I have been suggesting considerations which are very discouraging, and which afford but a poor look-out to us undertakers. But, gentlemen, we have one great comfort still. It has become the fashion to inter bodies with parade and display. Fashion is fashion; and the consequence is that it is considered an insult to the memory of deceased parties not to bury them in a certain style; which must be respectable at the very least, and cost, on a very low average, twenty-five or thirty pounds. Many, such as professional persons and tradespeople, who cannot afford so much money, can still less afford to lose character and custom. That is where we have a pull upon the widows and children, many of whom, if it were not for the opinion of society, would be only too happy to save their little money, and turn it into food and clothing, instead of funeral furniture. Now here the Metropolitan Interments Bill steps in, and aims at destroying our only chance of keeping up business as heretofore. We have generally to deal with parties whose feelings are not in a state to admit of their making bargains with us—a circumstance, on their parts, which is highly creditable to human nature; and favourable to trade. Thus, in short, gentlemen, we have it all our own way with them. But this Bill comes between the bereaved party and the undertaker. By the twenty-seventh clause, it empowers the Board of Health to provide houses and make arrangements for the reception and care of the dead previously to, and until interment; in order, as it explains in a subsequent clause, to the accommodation of persons having to provide the funerals—supposing such persons to desire the accommodation. Clause the twenty-eighth enacts “That the said Board shall make provision for the management and conduct, by persons appointed by them, of the funerals of persons whose bodies are to be interred in the Burial Grounds, to be provided under this Act, where the representatives of the deceased, or the persons having the care and direction of the funeral, desire to have the same so conducted; and the said Board shall fix and publish a scale of the sums to be payable for such funerals, inclusive of all matters and services necessary for the same, such sums to be proportioned to the description of the funeral, or the nature of the matter and services to be furnished and rendered for the same; but so that in respect of the lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and solemnity.” Gentlemen, if this enactment becomes law, we shall lose all the advantages which we derive from bereaved parties’ state of mind. The Board of Health will take all trouble off their hands, at whatever sum they may choose to name. Of course they will apply to the Board of Health instead of coming to us. But what is beyond everything prejudicial to our interests, is the proviso “that in respect of the lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and