The Bishop of Exeterpresented several Petitions against the Dissenters Chapels Bill; one from some of the Baptists of Banbury, "praying their Lordships to postpone for six months, the consideration of the Commons Amendment." Now, he should certainly rejoice if the prayer of this Petition were acceded to. But if not, and if the question came to be whether the Bill as originally passed by their Lordships or the Bill as now altered by the Commons were preferable, he should decidedly vote in favour of the latter. He freely admitted that the Bill as thus altered came up strangely inconsistent with itself—grossly absurd—and utterly stultifying the decisions of their Lordships—greater and grosser stultifications of their Lordships' decisions never had occurred. Upon that point, however, he had not a strong feeling, for their Lordships' decisions were not always regarded in quarters where they might most reasonably be expected to find respect. His sensitiveness on that score then was small indeed. But the Bill as it had been altered greatly mitigated, inconsistent and absurd as it was, the iniquity of the measure as originally agreed to by their Lordships. When the Bill came before the Commons (he was aware he was not in order in alluding to what had passed there, but somehow or other their Lordships did become aware of it, and what had passed in their Lordships' House on the subject had been referred to in the other House), it had been a great argument in favour of the Bill that it should have received the approval of all the law Lords. Now as to the concurrence of the law Lords, if what he had gathered from the usual channels of information were correct (and really the country gained most of its information now-a-days from those sources), without wishing at all to undervalue the authority of those learned Lords—they did not concentrate in themselves all the learning of the law; and he could state that several of the most eminent Judges were adverse to the Bill. It might be said, indeed, that Judges were good authorities for what the law was, but not for 534 what it ought to be. ["Hear."] And he heard the observation cheered, nor did he wonder at it, but what then became of the authority, on the other side, of these law Lords, who, though not now judges, derived their authority from the fact of their having been so?—so that really the subject should be treated on its own merits. Now, if the reports published were correct as to what had passed in another place, the Bill as agreed to by their Lordships had been advocated by one of the most learned the ablest, and the clearest reasoners this country ever saw—the same learned Gentleman (the Attorney-General) whom their Lordships were so delighted to hear on the preceding night (in the arguments on the Writ of Error), and that learned, Gentleman recommended the measure on the ground upon which it had passed their Lordships' House—that where there were no express declarations of trust, then certain usage should be received as evidence of the objects of the trust. And it might have been expected, surely, that those who supported the measure would have done so on the same grounds as those thus taken by the Attorney General. Not so, however; for it appeared that a right hon. Gentleman, whom nobody knew in private without loving him—and nobody knew in public without respecting him—threw overboard those reasons for adherence to the measure, and said he supported it with no intention of having any specific doctrines to be taught, but on the principle of the "freedom of opinion," and upon this argument arose the Amendment, which essentially distinguished the Bill in its present from its previous form."
§ Lord Kinnaird rose to order. He appealed to the House, whether the right rev. Prelate was justified in going at length into the discussion when the measure was not before the House, and he was only presenting a Petition.
The Bishop of Exetersaid, the Petition prayed their Lordships to postpone for six months the consideration of the Commons' Amendments; and he apprehended that, before moving that the Petition do lie on the Table, he had a right to show his reasons for that Motion.
The Earl of Shaftesburysaid, that there was no question before the House, and it would be extremely inconvenient if, on the mere presentation of a Petition, the whole subject was to be gone into, more particularly at the present moment.