On the 17th of June the India Bill, based on the resolutions of the Government, and vesting the sole dominion of India in the Crown, was introduced by Lord Stanley, and it passed into law on the 2nd of August. Another measure was passed in July, though opposed rather venomously by the Tories in the House of Lords--namely, the Bill providing that either House might resolve that henceforth Jewish members of Parliament might omit from the Parliamentary Oath the words, “and I make this declaration on the true faith of a Christian.” This ended a long and bitter controversy. On the 26th of July Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild came to the table of the House of Commons, and was sworn on the Old Testament, the House having agreed to resolutions in terms of the new Act.[28] The exceptional heat of the summer soon exhausted the energies of legislators. Mephitic odours from the Thames even caused some to demand that the Houses of Parliament should be shifted to another site. “We have,” writes Lord Malmesbury, on the 27th of June, “ordered large quantities of lime to be thrown into the Thames; for no works can be begun till the hot weather is over. The stench is perfectly intolerable, although Madame Ristori, coming back one night from a dinner at Greenwich, given by Lord Hardwicke, sniffed the air with delight, saying it reminded her of her ‘dear Venice.’” Perhaps this nuisance induced the House of Commons to pass with unlooked for rapidity a Main Drainage Bill, which was to prevent sewage from being turned into the Thames as it passed through London. All intrigues set on foot to reconcile Lord Palmerston to Lord John Russell,[29] and the Radicals to both, failed, so the Tory Ministry successfully weathered the storms of faction, and closed the Session, on the whole, with credit, on the 30th of July.