aggravated form of political polygamy by asking a man to marry three or four widows. The House need not be afraid of my pursuing that branch of the subject. The best that can be said for the Ministerial Bill--at least what has been said for it--is that it is intended to remove anomalies. I really know of no other defence that is offered for it than that. Well, sir, mankind will tolerate many anomalies if they are old, and if as they have grown up they have got used to them. They will also tolerate anomalies if they have been necessarily occasioned by the desire to work out improvements. But when people set about correcting anomalies, and so do their work as to leave behind them and to create even worse anomalies than any they found existing, neither gods nor men can stand it. Is not that the case here? I would briefly call attention to two or three of the proposed groups. In Cornwall you have Bodmin, Liskeard, and Launceston, with 18,000 inhabitants between them, thrown into a group; but the towns of Redruth, Penzance, and others, making up altogether 23,000, in the same county, are left without the means of representation. Then, in the county of Devon, you are to have Totnes joined with Dartmouth and Ashburton, and by putting the three places together you only get 11,500 people; but there is Torquay, with 16,000, that you leave entirely unrepresented. I should not object to that, because if a thing works well you do not do wrong in leaving it alone; but if you do begin to meddle with it, it is monstrous to turn everything upside down, and then introduce a thousand times greater anomalies than those you have removed. People will bear with anomalies that are old, historical, and familiar, and that, after all, answer some useful end; but they revolt at them when you show them how flagrant an injustice and inequality the House of Commons or the Government will perpetrate in the name of equality and justice. Then there is the group of Maldon and Harwich, thirty miles apart. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was much shocked at our objecting to these boroughs being joined in this extraordinary way; but, sir, were we not told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that these things were done upon geographical considerations? The geographical considerations referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer appear to me to mean, as interpreted by his Bill, that the members for the towns to be grouped should learn as much geography as possible by having as large distances as possible to travel over. Then we have in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, Cirencester, Tewkesbury, and Evesham, with 16,000 inhabitants; but in Worcestershire alone you have Oldbury and Stourbridge, with a population of 23,000, which remain utterly unrepresented. Again, there is the case of Wells and Westbury, which scrape together 11,000 inhabitants, while between the two we find Yeovil with 8000, and for which nothing is done. In