Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/118

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110
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

composed of such men as Airy, Babbage, Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, Max Miller, Tyndall, and others, but he thought it better to leave the field open to Mr. Lowe, and stood, instead, for West Kent, where he was again defeated. In 1870 he was elected for the borough of Maidstone, and again, in 1874, after a keener contest than the preceding one, but a good-natured one. In 1880 he lost his seat for Maidstone, but was returned a few days afterward by the University of London. In recommending him for this seat a number of gentlemen, among whom were Messrs. Alfred W. Bennett, Grant Duff, Thiselton Dyer, F. W. Farrar, D. D., Dr. Michael Foster, H. E. Roscoe, and Dr. Samuel Wilks, said that, since he combined in himself eminence in many branches of knowledge and walks of life, he might be said to represent, as few (if any) others could, the different faculties which combined to form the university. He has made his mark in Parliament as an industrious, discriminating, working member, more distinguished, perhaps, for the merit of the measures he has introduced and supported than as a brilliant orator, although he has acquitted himself excellently in the latter capacity, and earned the reputation of a speaker who always has something to say that is well worth hearing, and the faculty of saying it well. The following list of the bills which he has introduced and promoted in their passage through the Houses attest that his labors have been to the purpose, efficient, and successful. The bills are, to use the peculiar phraseology with which their titles are legally expressed, the Apothecaries' Company Medical Act Amendment Bill; the Bank Holiday Bill; the Falsification of Accounts Bill; the Banker's Book Evidence Bill; the College of Surgeons' Medical Act Amendment Bill; the University of London Medical Act Amendment Bill; the Absconding Debtor's Bill; the Factor's Acts Amendment Bill; the Bills of Exchange Bill; the Dental Practitioners' Bill; the Compromise Acts Amendment Bill; and the Ancient Monuments Bill, which was lost in the House of Lords. All of these acts have a practical bearing on every-day life, and show the stand Sir John has taken in Parliament as the elected member for the University of London, and the representative, by an unrecorded vote, of science and the banking interest. The best known of his bills is the Bank Holiday Bill, which has added four new statute holidays to those that were already in existence, with a result that has been in every way satisfactory, both to employers and to the persons in their employ. Speaking of Sir John in connection with the Ancient Monuments Bill, but having this act also in view, "Nature" styles him "a member whose reputation as an archaeologist, though great throughout the country, is exceeded by his popularity as the author of the most successful measure of private legislation in modern times—the Bank Holiday Act," Sir John's political career, as a whole, has been that of a consistent Liberal.

As a magistrate and country gentleman, Sir John Lubbock also takes an active part in most of the varied duties incumbent on an