94 The Soverane Herbe 



rendezvous. When this Bill came up for discussion 

 on July 25 of that year Mr. H. B. Sheridan, M.P. for 

 Dudley, moved a new clause enacting that ' All rail- 

 way companies shall, from and after this Act, in 

 every passenger train where there are more carriages 

 than one of each class, provide smoking compart- 

 ments for each class of passengers.' 



In the discussion of this clause the opinion was 

 expressed that the matter should be left to the 

 companies' own discretion, that smokers had not had 

 justice done to them, and that they always put out 

 their pipes at the wish of non-smokers. The 

 Attorney-General, Sir John Karslake, while oppos- 

 ing the amendment, declared that it would restrict 

 rather than increase facilities for smoking. In the 

 last speech which he made in the House of Commons 

 John Stuart Mill approved of the clause as giving 

 justice to smokers, and recommended that the last 

 carriage in the train should be appropriated to them. 

 On a division the amendment was incorporated in 

 the Act by thirty-eight votes to sixteen, a majority ot 

 twenty-two. On October i, 1868, the Act came into 

 force, though the companies were slow in providing 

 the necessary accommodation. Now the smoker has 

 no ground for complaining at the railway accommoda- 

 tion provided for him, unless it be that the strength 

 of the army of smokers justifies the setting apart of 

 compartments for non-smokers. So numerous are 

 smoking-carriages now that the smoker no longer 

 desires the carriage nearest the engine to be set apart 

 for him to avoid a long search for the compartment 

 sacred to the divine herb. This Act is noteworthy in 



