Mr. Cross’s Licensing Bill was introduced early in May, when the publicans, who had worked hard to put the Government in power, expected Mr. Austin Bruce’s restrictions on the hours of opening public-houses to be swept away. Mr. Cross, however, found that the magistrates and police, and more respectable inhabitants of every town and parish, were of opinion that these restrictions had done good. He was, therefore, forced to disappoint his clients. He left the Sunday hours untouched. On week-days he fixed the hours for closing at half-past twelve in London, half-past eleven in populous places, and eleven in rural districts.[72] He cancelled the permission given by Mr. Bruce to fifty-four houses to remain open till one in the morning, in order to provide refreshments for playgoers and theatrical people. Inasmuch as the Government were at the mercy of the publican vote in a great many constituencies, the Bill was most creditable to Mr. Cross. It was, in truth, a Bill not in extension but in further restriction of the hours of opening, and in passing it he risked giving offence to Ministerialists who had won their seats under a pledge that the existing restrictions would be relaxed.[73] Quite unexpectedly the Ministry plunged into the stormy sea of ecclesiastical legislation, and as was hinted at broadly, not without encouragement from the Queen. This much might also have been inferred from two facts. The churchmen who had most strongly influenced the Court in matters of ecclesiastical government were Dr. Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Norman Macleod, Minister of the Barony Parish in Glasgow. The Bill dealing with the English Church represented the ideas of Tait. That dealing with the Kirk of Scotland embodied the policy of Macleod. Indeed, pressure of an unusual character must have been applied to the Prime Minister to support the former measure, which he knew only too well must provoke dissensions in his Cabinet. It was on the 20th of April that Dr. Tait introduced the Public Worship Regulation Bill in the House of Lords, and the best and briefest description of it was that which was subsequently given by Mr. Disraeli, who said, in one of the debates in the House of Commons, that it was a Bill “to put down Ritualism.” At first Ministers did not give it warm support, in fact, Lord Salisbury opposed it vigorously. After it had passed through the House of Lords the fiction that it was a private Member’s Bill was still kept up, the Second Reading being moved in the House of Commons by Mr. Russell Gurney. Mr. Hall, the new Tory member for Oxford, moved an amendment to Mr. Gurney’s motion, and Mr. Gladstone opposed the measure as an attack on congregational liberties, which had been consecrated by usage. The three great divisions of the Established Church, the Evangelical, Broad, and High Church Parties, had each been allowed a large scope of liberty. Why single out the last for an invidious assault? Mr.