Commons Sitting of 27 June 1851

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1° Burgesses and Freemen's Parliamentary Franchise; Marriages (India).

THE EXHIBITION OF INDUSTRY—THE BUILDING IN HYDE PARK.
MR. STAFFORDrose to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Commissioners of the Exhibition considered themselves bound to remove the edifice existing in Hyde Park; and, if so, whether Her Majesty's Ministers were prepared to take any steps to maintain it in its present position? And, in order that he might have the opportunity of making a few observations, he moved that the House at its rising adjourn to Monday next. He did not bring the subject forward in any spirit of hostility to the Government, or with any wish to imply that they ought previously to this to have taken the matter into consideration. It would have been premature to bring forward the question earlier, for the public were not supposed to have before sufficient grounds on which to form an opinion relative to it. The House would recollect that when the arrangement was made with the Commissioners for the removal of the then proposed building in Hyde Park, there was no idea entertained of the materials of which it would ultimately be composed—indeed, it was understood that the edifice would be constructed of the usual building materials. There were, however, many reasons why the present structure should be retained, and the question now rested on a different ground from what it did when the arrangement for the removal of the building was made with the Commissioners. The first question which he put to the noble Lord at the head of the Government was a matter of mere form, for the House was aware that, according to the present arrangement, no choice was left with the Commissioners, if the House did not interfere, but to destroy the structure; but, whether maintained in its present state, or removed, he felt convinced that the edifice was of a national and important character, and that it would not be satisfactory to the public at large if this question were not brought forward before an advanced period of the Session, when many Members would have left town, and when the few who remained might be called on to pronounce a decision which might not be received with, satisfaction by
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the country. He therefore asked the First Lord of the Treasury, first as one of the Commissioners, and next as the organ of the Government, the two questions with which he had prefaced his observations. He did not wish to pronounce any opinion of his own on the point; all he would say was, that they must take the subject into consideration, and the present was the time for doing so. All the arguments brought forward publicly had been in favour of retaining the edifice, though he was well aware there were strong arguments on the other side. What he wished now, in the full period of the Session, was to elicit from the Government a statement that they were about to take the subject into consideration; and to call the attention of the public to the fact that, unless they interfered, according to the present arrangements, the destruction of the edifice must take place in October.
LORD JOHN RUSSELLwould answer the questions put in his two characters, as one of the Commissioners of the Exhibition, and as one of Her Majesty's Ministers. Speaking in the first character, he observed that the House would recollect that great anxiety was expressed last year lest the temporary building intended for the Exhibition in Hyde Park would be converted into a permanent structure, thereby causing a great portion of Hyde Park, usually left open to the recreation of the public, to be devoted to the purpose of a building. In the progress of the proceedings, the Commissioners of the Exhibition made a formal agreement with the Commissioners of the Woods and Forests, by which the former agreed that the Exhibition should not be kept open longer than the 1st of November, and that within six months after that period the building should be entirely taken down and removed, and the ground restored to its former state. That was the agreement which the Commissioners made, and he conceived that they had no power to act otherwise than in accordance with that agreement, and that they had no intention to ask to be permitted to depart from the terms stipulated. Now, with respect to the question as it concerned the Government, his answer must be a very short one for the present; and it was, that this subject had not hitherto been a matter of deliberation with the Government at all. He must say, for his own part, that he had not received materials at present on which, in his opinion, the Government could form

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any decision. Of course, much would depend on the wishes and feelings of the public, who had been accustomed to enjoy Hyde Park in its former state. Supposing the public generally to be ready to make the necessary sacrifice, other questions would arise, and they were, whether the present building was of such a nature as would enable it to be permanently maintained—what was the purpose it could be applied to tending to the public recreation, enjoyment, and health; and, finally, what would be the expense of so maintaining it? Though on all these matters he had had conversation with persons concerned in the erection of the building, and had asked particulars respecting them, yet he was still without sufficiently detailed information, and therefore his present answer to the question of the hon. Member must be, that the Government had not yet made the subject matter of deliberation.

ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES ASSUMPTION BILL.
Order for the consideration of Bill, as amended, read.
MR. W. MILESmoved the following Clause, of which he had given notice:—
"And be it enacted, That if a penalty shall be recovered by judgment or verdict against any person for a second offence under this Act, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department, if in the circumstances of the case the same shall appear fit, by notice in writing signed by him, to require such person to depart out of the realm within a time to be limited in such notice; and if such person shall afterwards be found therein, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department by warrant under his hand, to give such person in charge of one of Her Majesty's Messengers, or of such other person or persons to whom he shall think fit to direct such warrant, in order to his being conducted out of the kingdom."
Brought up, and read 1°.
He conceived it to be the duty of every Member, now that the Bill was in the shape in which the Government intended to pass it, to consider whether or not its provisions were such as not only to stop the present encroachment, but to prevent such encroachments for the future, and whether it would adequately carry out the wishes which had been expressed at the great Protestant meetings which had been held throughout the country on the subject of the Papal aggression, and to propose, or at least to place on record, such Amendments as might be necessary not only to carry out the object of the present Bill,
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but to repress Papal aggression hereafter. The noble Lord at the head of the Government had promised, if this Bill should not prove adequate, that he would come down and ask for a more stringent measure; but when the interminable debates which had taken place were considered, it would, he thought, be admitted that the better course would he, to pass at once a measure sufficiently stringent, and thus obviate the necessity of further application to Parliament on the subject. Notwithstanding the feeling of indignation which the Pope's proceedings had excited in the country, no effort had been made by the Court of Rome to give any explanation on the subject of the Rescript. On the contrary, the organ of the Roman Catholic Church in this country, the Tablet newspaper, warned them that the present Bill would be inoperative, and that the offence for which it had been passed would be repeated. The Tablet, so late as the 7th of June, had an article to the following effect:—
"On Monday night, Mr. Walpole, in yielding some of his clauses 'to the better judgment of his hon. Friends,' hoped that if he yielded to their wishes, neither the Government nor the country would find another brief come into the country next autumn.
"Poor Mr. Walpole! Fond Mr. Walpole! Credulous Mr. Walpolo! 'Another brief,' and 'next autumn.' Why, before the summer is well over—before Parliament is up—we think we can answer for half a dozen at least.
"First, there is the bishopric of Killaloe. Dr. Vaughan is nominated bishop, and the Bulls have, it is announced, already arrived for his consecration. Dr. Vaughan will be consecrated; he will take a territorial title; four or five indictable offences will he committed, and all with the most frank, cheerful, and inveterate disregard of the contemptible enactment which they are pretending to pass at St. Stephen's. We think we can vouch for half a dozen, if not half a thousand, misdemeanors in and about Killaloe.
"Then come the English bishoprics. Letters have just arrived from Rome, saying that four of the new sees are already filled up—one of the four being Southwark. About the fifth there is some doubt. But taking the four; every one of the four will require a separate bull to be received; a bishop elect to receive it; a person to deliver it; three bishops to commit misdemeanors by consecrating the new bishop; sundry priests, acolytes, and attendants to take part in the ceremony. It is with beating hearts and wet cheeks that we set down 200 misdemeanants as the minimum for every one of the four bishoprics. Here alone have we actually on hand five bulls as the supply for the next two months alone; and these five bulls will carry in their tails at least a thousand indictable offences. All the while Parliament will he sitting and spending its time in notable attempts to vindicate the majesty of British law, or rather in notable pretences to appear to do the same. And all the while the Catholics

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of these islands, lay and clerical, are laughing at the Legislature, breaking the law, and making fools of the whole Imperial Parliament, with Speaker and Lord Chancellor to boot. What a repulse given to territorial aggression! What a salvo to the dignity of the British Lion! What a fool, by the way, and in conclusion, the said British Lion must be!"
Such were the sentiments of the Tablet. It appeared to him to be much better to pass no law at all, than to pass one which should be inoperative. It appeared to him that the aggressions of Rome were not likely to be diminished by this Bill, and that to check them recourse must again be had to Parliament for a more stringent measure. It was not only in this country that Rome was stretching out her spiritual arm. In certain correspondence which had been laid on the table, there was a letter from Lord Cowley to Lord Palmerston, informing him of the demands made by the Roman Catholic bishops in the different States of the Upper Rhine. These bishops had drawn up seventeen different articles relative to laws in which they wished alterations made, and they demanded that all the securities against Papal aggression should be set aside by the different States. In this country he believed the Rescript had violated the Act of 1829, the provisions of which, he was sorry to say, had been totally disregarded. If that Act had been insufficient to prevent aggression, how could this Bill, which merely re-enacted that Act, have that effect? The last clause of that Act, after stating the different Acts relating to the Queen's supremacy, stated they had been passed, and ought to be maintained, for the dignity of the Crown and for the good of the people. But these Acts had all been set at naught, and there was no power to bring the offenders to justice. He had endeavoured to draw up the clause in unison with the clauses of the Bill, and he hoped the House would agree to it; for unless something was done to strengthen the measure, the Protestants of England would be disgusted that Parliament should have been sitting so long, and little should have been done to vindicate the rights of the people and the prerogatives of Her Majesty.
MR. SPOONERseconded the clause.
SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, that a similar clause had formerly been proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Midhurst; only there was this important difference between the two, that the clause of the hon. and learned Member, if adopt-
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ed as he proposed it, would have effected something, whereas the present clause would be totally inoperative, unless it were followed up by imposing a severer penalty. Parties might be removed from the shores of England, and return within the next half-hour, and then they would have to commence proceedings de novo. The proposal could not be carried out, unless parties returning were subject to transportation; and, seeing this, the hon. and learned Member for Midhurst had withdrawn his Amendment. He was sure the hon. Member must be aware that the adoption of a clause, apparently stringent, but leading to no practical result, except merely to subject parties to annoyance, would be a most injudicious course, and he hoped that the House would not sanction it.
Motion made, and Question put, "That the said Clause be now read a Second Time."
The House divided:—Ayes 101; Noes 140: Majority 39.

List of the AYES.

Arbuthnott, hon. H.

Glyn, G. C.

Arkwright, G.

Gore, W. O.

Bagot, hon. W.

Greenall, G.

Baldock, E. H.

Grogan, E.

Bankes, G.

Gwyn, H.

Barrow, W. H.

Hallewell, E. G.

Bennet, P.

Halsey, T. P.

Bentinck, Lord H.

Hamilton, G. A.

Blakemore, R.

Hamilton, J. H.

Blandford, Marq. of

Hamilton, Lord C.

Booker, T. W.

Harris, hon. Capt.

Bowles, Adm.

Hastie, A.

Boyd, J.

Hill, Lord E.

Bremridge, R.

Hodgson, W. N.

Brisco, M.

Hope, Sir J.

Brooke, Lord

Hotham, Lord

Buck, L. W.

Jolliffe, Sir W.G.H.

Buller, Sir J. Y.

Jones, Capt.

Bunbury, W. M.

Lacy, H. C.

Burrell, Sir C. M.

Langton, W. H. P. G.

Buxton, Sir E. N.

Lennox, Lord A. G.

Compton, H. C.

Lindsay, bon. Col.

Cubitt, W.

Long, W.

Damer, hon. Col.

Lopes, Sir R.

Davies, D. A. S.

Lowther, hon. Col.

D'Eyncourt, rt. hn. C. T.

Lygon, hon. Gen.

Dod, J. W.

Macnaghten, Sir E.

Dodd, G.

Mandeville, Visct.

Duckworth, Sir J. T. B.

Manners, Lord C. S.

Duncombe, hon. A.

Maunsell, T. P.

Duncombe, hon. O.

Meux, Sir H.

Duncuft, J.

Miles, P. W.S.

East, Sir J. B.

Morris, D.

Edwards, H.

Mullings, J. R.

Egerton, W. T.

Napier, J.

Floyer, J.

Newdegate, C. N.

Forester, hon. G. C.W.

Noel, hon. G. J.

Fox, S. W. L.

Packe, C.W.

Fuller, A. E.

Pakington, Sir J.

Galway, Visct.

Palmer, R.

Gilpin, Col.

Pennant, hon. Col.

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Plumptre, J. P.

Taylor, T. E.

Powell, Col.

Thompson, Col.

Pugh, D.

Trevor, hon. G. R.

Reid, Col.

Tyler, Sir G.

Repton, G. W. J.

Verner, Sir W.

Richards, R.

Villiers, hon. F. W. C.

Smollett, A.

Vyse, R. H. R. H.

Somerset, Capt.

Wigram, L. T.

Staunton, Sir G. T.

TELLERS.

Stuart, J.

Miles, W.

Sutton, J. H. M.

Spooner, R.

List of the NOES.

Adair, R. A. S.

Hallyburton, Lord J. F.

Aglionby, H. A.

Harris, R.

Anstey, T. C.

Hastie, A.

Armstrong, Sir A.

Hatchell, rt. hon. J.

Baring, H. B.

Hayes, Sir E.

Baring, rt. hon. Sir F.T.

Heneage, G. H.W.

Bell, J.

Heneage, E.

Berkeley, Adm.

Henley, J. W.

Berkeley, C. L. G.

Higgins, G. G. O.

Bernal, R.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Birch, Sir T. B.

Howard, P. H.

Blake, M. J.

Hudson, G.

Boyle, hon. Col.

Humphery, Aid.

Brotherton, J.

Hutt, W.

Butler, P. S.

Jackson, W.

Carow, W. H. P.

Johnstone, J.

Cavendish, hon. G. H.

Keogh, W.

Chaplin, W. J.

Kershaw, J.

Clay, J.

Labouchere, rt. hon. H.

Clay, Sir W.

Lawless, hon. C.

Cockburn, Sir A. J. E.

Mackie, J.

Cocks, T. S.

Mackinnon, W. A.

Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

M'Cullagh, W. T.

Corbally, M. E.

M'Taggart, Sir J.

Cowper, hon. W, F.

Meagher, T.

Crawford, W. S.

Mahon, Visct.

Crawford, R. W.

Mangles, R. D.

Crowder, R. B.

Martin, C. W.

Davie, Sir H. R. F.

Matheson, A.

Dawes, E.

Matheson, Col.

Dawson, hon. T. V.

Moore, G. H.

Denison, J. E.

Mulgrave, Earl of

Devereux, J. T.

Murphy, F. S.

Douglas, Sir C. E.

Norreys, Lord

Drumlanrig, Visct.

O'Brien, Sir T.

Duncan, Visct.

O'Connell, M.

Duncan, G.

O'Connor, F.

Duncombe, T.

Ogle, S. C.H.

Dundas, Adm.

Ossulston, Lord

Dundas, rt. hon. Sir D.

Owen, Sir J.

Ellice, rt. hon. E.

Paget, Lord A.

Ellice, E.

Palmerston, Visct.

Estcourt, J. B. B.

Parker, J.

Evans, J.

Pechell, Sir G. B.

Evans, W.

Pilkington, J.

Ewart, W.

Ponsonby, hon. C.F.A.C.

Ferguson, Sir R. A.

Rawdon, Col.

Foley, J. H. H.

Reynolds, J.

Forster, M.

Ricardo, O.

Freestun, Col.

Roche, E. B.

Geach, C.

Rumbold, C. E.

Goold, W.

Russell, Lord J.

Grace, O. D. J.

Russell, F. C. H.

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Scully, F.

Granger, T. C.

Seymour, Lord

Grattan, H.

Shelburne, Earl of

Grenfell, C. W.

Somerville, rt. hn. Sir W.

Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.

Stansfield, W. R. C.

Grey, R. W.

Stanton, W. H.

Grosvenor, Lord R.

Talbot, J. H.

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Tennent, R. J.

Westhead, J P. B.

Thicknesse, R. A.

Willcox, B. M.

Thompson, Ald.

Williams, W.

Tollemache, hon. F. J.

Willoughby, Sir H.

Towneley, J.

Wilson, J.

Traill, G.

Wilson, M.

Trelawny, J. S.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Villiers, hon. C.

Wood, Sir W.P.

Vivian, J. H.

Wakley, T.

TELLERS.

Wall, C. B.

Hayter, W. G.

Walmsley, Sir J.

Hill, Lord M.

MR. KEOGHproposed a new Clause, saving the powers of the 7 and 8 Victoria, c. 97. It was to the following effect:—
"Be it Enacted, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to annul, repeal, or ïn any manner affect any provision contained in an Act passed in the eighth year of the reign of Her present Majesty, intituled 'An Act for the more effectual Application of Charitable Donations and Bequests in Ireland,' or to render illegal or void any Disposition of Property by will or otherwise already made, which but for the passing of this Act would have been legal and valid."
MR. REYNOLDSseconded the clause.
LORD JOHN RUSSELLsaid, that there was no intention of affecting the provisions of the Bequests Act by the present measure, and he would be quite willing to adopt the clause, provided it were restricted to the words down to the word "Ireland."
MR. NAPIERexpressed his concurrence in the clause down as far as the word "Ireland." And
Clause, as restricted, agreed to.
MR. KEOGHthen moved a Clause, saving the right of giving letters of ordination in evidence:—
"Be it Enacted, That nothing herein contained shall in any manner prevent the reception in evidence, in any Court of Law or Equity in this Kingdom, of any Letter of Ordination or other document conferring ecclesiastical powers upon any Clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church, which, but for the passing of this Act, would have been so received."
Brought up, and read 1°.
Heretofore these letters of ordination had been received in evidence in Courts of Law; and the speech of the right hon. Baronet (Sir G. Grey) on the second reading of the Bill contained a distinct admission that they would not be prohibited from being received in Courts of Law. He did not propose the introduction of any new law or practice, but that where heretofore these letters of ordination had been received, they should be so received in future. He did not see how, in fairness, the clause could be objected to.
MR. REYNOLDSseconded the clause.
The ATTORNEY GENERALthought the House ought not to adopt this clause. If, under the Act of 1829, such letters of ordination had been received, there was nothing to prevent their being received under this Act. But he thought the House ought not to adopt a clause which might give a sanction to the supposition that any act done under titles which might be assumed in contravention of the provisions of this Bill, could be, under any circumstances, received in evidence in Courts of Law. This clause was liable to that construction, and he should therefore ask the House to negative it.
Motion made, and Question put, "That the said Clause be now read a Second Time."
The House divided:—Ayes 45; Noes 220: Majority 175.

List of the AYES.

Anstey, T. C.

Meagher, T.

Armstrong, Sir A.

Monsell, W.

Arundel and Surrey, Earl of

Moore, G. H.

Murphy, F. S.

Barron, Sir H. W.

O'Brien, Sir T.

Blake, M. J.

O'Connor, F.

Butler, P. S.

O'Ferrall, rt. hon. R. M.

Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

O'Flaherty, A.

Corbally, M. E.

Reynolds, J.

Crawford, W. S.

Scully, F.

Devereux, J. T.

Sullivan, M.

Duncombe, T.

Talbot, J. H.

French, F.

Tennent, R. J.

Geach, C.

Tollemache, hon. F. J.

Gladstone, rt. hon. W. E.

Townley, J.

Goold, W.

Trelawny, J. S.

Grace, O. D. J.

Wall, C. B.

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Walmsley, Sir J.

Grattan, H.

Wegg-Prosser, F. R.

Higgins, G. G. O.

Williams, W.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Young, Sir J.

Howard, P. H.

TELLERS.

Jolliffe, Sir W. G. H.

Roche, E. B.

M'Cullagh, W. T.

Keogh, W.

MR. KEOGHthen moved the following additional Clause:—
"Be it Enacted, That no proceedings shall be taken under this Act save and except by Her Majesty's Attorney General for the time being in England and Ireland, and by the Lord Advocate in Scotland."
Brought up, and read 1°.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the said Clause be now read a Second Time."
He had communicated with the Attorney and the Solicitor General in reference to this clause. They had received him with courtesy, and had entered into the consideration of the clause with him; but of course they would not give him any intimation of their intention in regard to it with-
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out consulting with thier Colleagues. Within the last five minutes the Secretary of the Treasury had come to him, and requested him to be brief in his observations, for that the Government would support him, and keep their men in the House for that purpose. But now the noble Lord at the head of the Government had just informed him that he would not support the clause. What was the meaning of that? He (Mr. Keogh) owed it to himself, and to those who acted with him, to bring forward the clause; but the Secretary of the Treasury now told him that he need no longer be brief in his observations, for that the noble Lord at the head of the Government would not support him. There had been a great deal of shifting and changing in reference to this Bill; but the present proceeding was the most extraordinary instance he had ever met with of a rapid alteration in purpose: the Government when they were going into the lobby being in favour of his proposition, and against it when they were coming out. Under these circumstances, the noble Lord would hardly be able to prove to the country that he was very stable or firm in his intentions. He (Mr. Keogh) would propose the clause, though he supposed he should be defeated on it; but it was right that the country should be made acquainted with the circumstances of the case. In reference to the subject-matter of his Amendment, it was merely his wish to prevent the worst species of animosity which would he excited in Ireland if the Bill passed in its present state. Under the terms of the Bill as it now stood, it was at least doubtful whether an indictment might not be sustained under the first clause against a Roman Catholic Archbishop or bishop in Ireland, and if it passed without the addition he had proposed, Ireland would be in a state of sectarian warfare and animosity. Any person in the community might send up a bill of indictment against any of the Catholic archbishops or bishops; and although it might be ignored, yet there were persons in Ireland so bigoted, and so animated by sectarian feelings, that they would make the experiment of proceeding by indictment against the Catholic archbishops and bishops, and then they would have the hideous spectacle of these venerable Prelates being obliged to come forward in a court of law to defend themselves. Now, was it not better that the authority of the Act should be maintained by the first law officer

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of the Government, acting under the authority of Parliament?
LORD JOHN RUSSELLwould state, in a few words, the course he had taken, and the course he was disposed to take, in reference to this Amendment. It had been his intention to oppose all the clauses proposed by the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Keogh), with the exception of that clause which he had already supported, namely, one to prevent the Charitable Bequests Act being affected by any of the provisions of that Bill. Some of his friends around him thought that, as the clause at present under consideration would not do more than what the Government had already declared to be their intention, namely, that all prosecutions under the second clause should be taken by the Attorney General, the clause might be agreed to; but, as he said, it was not his intention to admit it, although he was at first disposed to lean to that view of the case, because he thought it was better not to agree to any clause the effects of which might give rise to inconveniences which had not been anticipated. With respect to the substance of the clause, the hon. and learned Gentleman could not deny that the penalty of 100 l. for the assumption of prohibited titles could only be enforced by proceedings instituted by the law officers of the Crown. That was a provision in the Act of 1829, and they had preserved it in the present Act. And with regard to the first clause, it had been repeatedly stated by the Attorney General and the Solicitor General, that no indictment would be under that clause, and therefore no prosecution could be brought. If that was the case, then, under the first clause there could not be any prosecution at all; and, under the second, there could be none except by the Attorney General; and he therefore submitted that the clause now proposed was unnecessary, and that it would be better to retain the Bill in its present shape. He did not know that the clause would produce any effect injurious to the other clauses of the Bill; but it was obviously unnecessary, and he therefore could not agree to it. The noble Lord concluded by stating that it was his intention to oppose the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon.
MR. REYNOLDSsaid, it appeared to him that the reasons assigned by the noble Lord against this clause were of no weight. He said the Attorney and Solicitor General were of opinion that no prosecutions
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could be instituted under the first clause; if so, what harm could be done by inserting this clause? He had understood that the noble Lord had never intended to place in the hands of common informers the power of prosecuting for penalties, and he believed the noble Lord never intended it; but he wanted to know why the noble Lord left such a question a matter of doubt? He had had experience of what it was to be left at the mercy of common informers. When he held the office of Lord Mayor of Dublin, his right to hold the office was impeached: If he had no right to hold the office, he was liable to a penalty of 50 l. for every exercise of his magisterial functions. An informer was found in the establishment of the Priests' Protection Society in Dublin—a society formed of ultra Protestants of the Established Church—and he was served with 110 latitats, as they were called, for the recovery of so many penalties of 50 l. against him; and those actions were still hanging over him. He wanted to know if it was intended to place the Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops at the mercy of the Priests' Protection Society?
MR. GRATTANasked, was the noble Lord aware of the spirit now raging in Ireland—that within the last two months Catholic altars had been violated, and that parties had rushed in and attacked the priests while in the discharge of their duties? Some years ago, in the north of Ireland, a Catholic priest was indicted, and there was a verdict against him, and he was sentenced by Protestant magistrates to be publicly flogged in the streets. The Attorney General for Ireland (Lord Plunkett) stopped the execution of the sentence; but if he had not, what would have been the consequence? What would they say if they saw the Bishop of Exeter flogged in the streets of London? Hon. Gentlemen laughed; but what was good for an Irishman was good for an Englishman; and if an Irish priest was flogged in Dublin, he did not see why a Protestant bishop should not be flogged in London. He warned them that if they went on as they were going on now, Ireland would not be worth possessing, because there was still some spirit and courage amongst her people, and they would not submit to insults which he was sure Englishmen would not submit to.
SIR JAMES GRAHAMsaid, it was not his intention to inflict upon the House any legal argument, because, on a former occasion, he had availed himself of the op-

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portunity of expressing his opinion with respect to the legal effects of the first clause, and this opinion he still entertained. He had expressed that opinion with diffidence when he understood that the law authorities of the Crown dissented from it; but he then said, and he repeated now, his opinion was that that clause would constitute, or would, at all events, facililate, that breach of the first clause, which would be an indictable offence. If the offence were one upon which there was any doubt before as to its being indictable, the first clause was not only declaratory, but enactive, that the Brief in question was illegal and void; and, as he contended, so understanding it, it removed every doubt as to an indictment for an offence in violation of that clause. But a far greater extension was given to the operation of that clause by the authorities of the Treasury Bench, more particularly by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland. He understood that right hon. Gentleman distinctly to say that any similar Briefs would fall under the operation of the declaration in the Bill. Now, similar Briefs were, he believed, the usual course of appointing archbishops and bishops in Ireland; but those Briefs would be declared to be illegal and void, and an indictment would lie. He still thought, if that were to be the operation of the clause, that any person in Ireland, whatever might be his feeling, sometimes perhaps vindictive towards Roman Catholics, and contrary possibly to the policy of the Government in Ireland at the time, would have it in his power to prefer a bill of indictment to the grand jury, and if a majority of the grand jury should find a true bill, then the archbishop or bishop who had received the appointment by any such Brief from the Pope would be put to the bar and tried for a misdemeanour, with power to the Government to make the jurors stand by; and that prelate might be convicted. He, therefore, again said he was strongly of opinion that such a check to that power as was now proposed by the hon. Member for Athlone, was indispensably necessary. And if the clause were rejected, and deliberately rejected, now it had been proposed, how much more serious would be the effect of the first clause, about which the greatest lawyers in Parliament entertained a difference of opinion?
MR. M. J. O'CONNELLsaid, surely the Government were not going to leave the speech of the right hon. Gentleman
1326
the Member for Ripon unanswered. Surely, the rights of the Roman Catholics of Ireland were not, to use the words of Mr. Burke, "to be strangled by mutes." After the irresistible manner in which the right hon. Gentleman had pointed out the danger and difficulty attending the adoption of the first clause without the proposed Amendment of the hon. Member for Athlone, something should be said before the House went to a division. If the Government did not answer the right hon. Gentleman, he hoped some of the supporters of the first clause on the other side of the House would.
MR. STUART WORTLEYhad no doubt the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Keogh) had no intention, in moving his clause, to do more than to prevent prosecutions by indictment from being taken; but the effect of his clause might be to prevent parties from bringing suits relating to private interests.
MR. KEOGHbegged to alter his clause to avoid the difficulty pointed out by the right hon. Recorder.
Question put, "That the said Clause be now read a Second Time."
The House divided:—Ayes 71; Noes 232; Majority 161.

List of the AYES.

Aglionby, H. A.

Lushington, C.

Armstrong, Sir A.

M'Cullagh, W. T.

Arundel and Surrey, Earl of

M'Taggart, Sir J.

Meagher, T.

Barron, Sir H. W.

Mahon, The O'Gorman

Bass, M. T.

Matheson, Col.

Blake, M. J.

Monsell, W.

Butler, P. S.

Moore, G. H.

Carew, W. H. P.

Murphy, F. S.

Cavendish, hon. G. H.

O'Brien, Sir T.

Clay, J.

O'Connell, J.

Cobden, R.

O'Connell, M. J.

Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

O'Connor, F.

Corbally, M. E.

O'Ferrall, rt. hon. R. M.

Crawford, W. S.

O'Flaherty, A.

Davie, Sir H. K. F.

Oswald, A.

Dawson, hon. T. V.

Pechell, Sir G. B.

Denison, J. E.

Pilkington, J.

Devereux, J. T.

Ponsonby, hon. C. F.

Evans, J.

Rawdon, Col.

Fortescue, C.

Roche, E. B.

Fox, W.J.

Scholefield, W.

Geach, C.

Scully, F.

Gibson, rt. hon. T. M.

Smith, rt. hon. R. V.

Gladstone, rt. hon. W. E.

Sullivan, M.

Goold, W.

Sutton, J. H. M.

Grace, O. D. J.

Talbot, J. H.

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Tennent, R. J.

Grattan, H.

Thicknesse, R. A.

Higgins, G. G. O.

Tollemache, hon. F. J.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Towneley, J.

Howard, P. H.

Trelawny, J. S.

Keating, R.

Vane, Lord H.

Lawless, hon. C.

Wall, C. B.

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Walmsley, Sir J.

Wyvill, M.

Williams, W.

Young, Sir J.

TELLERS.

Reynolds, J.

Keogh, W.

MR. REYNOLDSmoved the following Clause:—
"Be it Enacted, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to repeal or affect an Act passed in the tenth year of the reign of Her present Majesty, intituled, 'An Act for the maintenance of the Cemeteries at Golden Bridge and Prospect, in the county of Dublin, and to create a perpetual succession in the governing body or Committee for managing the same.'"
Brought up, and read 1°.
By this Act the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin had the power of appointing a clergyman to perform the burial service, and the Protestant archbishop also possessed the same right. The funerals were exceedingly numerous, and Christians of every denomination might be interred in these cemeteries. The institution was completely a charitable one, inasmuch as the surplus funds were appropriated to the education of poor children, without reference to religious distinctions. He only wished the House to guarantee the rights which the Act conferred.
The ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, that nothing could he further from his wish than in any way to interfere with the Act to which the clause referred; but it did not appear to him that the present Bill would do so, and he should wait with great curiosity to hear in what manner the hon. Gentleman thought it would. But it might he said that, as it was at all events merely surplusage, there could be no valid objection to the introduction of the clause. But the hon. Member would recollect, or at least the House would remember, that a vast deal of argument had been based upon this very Act of Parliament, which it had been said had rendered legal the appointment of these archbishops and bishops, against whom the Bill was directed. He objected, therefore, to the confirming by a Public Act what was at present only a clause in a Private Act.
MR. REYNOLDSbegged to express his surprise at hearing the Attorney General calling this a Local or Private Act, whereas its last clause expressly declared that it was a Public Act. The 27th and 28th sections gave to his Grace, Daniel Murray, archbishop, and to his successors exercising the same spiritual jurisdiction as he now exercises in the diocese of Dublin, the right to appoint a clergyman, and to remove him for any cause that might
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appear to them to be canonical. How, then, if this Bill passed, was the Most Rev. Daniel Murray to appoint a clergyman, or how could he remove him without violating the law? If the priest were refractory, the archbishop would be obliged to put in evidence his own appointment; and how would he escape an indictment if that appointment should be a bull or rescript within the meaning of the Act?
SIR FREDERIC THESIGERsaid, the Attorney General was quite right. In spite of the clause referred to, the Cemeteries Act was a Private Act. The recital of the titles referred to in an Act of Parliament did not create a new law, nor make Dr. Murray a legal Archbishop of Dublin. It was in fact a mere mistake, and they ought to give it their deliberate sanction, by repeating it in a Public Act. It being perfectly clear that this was so, the Attorney General was right in opposing the Clause.
SIR ROBERT H. INGLIScontended that the insertion of the title of archbishop in a Private Bill was not a recognition of it by the Legislature.
Motion made, and Question put, "That the Clause be now read a Second Time."
The House divided:—Ayes 32; Noes 160; Majority 128.
SIR FREDERIC THESIGER,in bringing forward the Amendment of which he had given notice, begged the attention of those hon. Members who regarded this Bill, not as an Act of vengeance for the past, but as a security for what might come, and who believed that the measure as it had come from the hands of the Government was not adequate to the occasion. He had been charged with inconsistency in the course he was now taking, as contrasted with his course in having been a party to the Act of 1846, for the relief of the Roman Catholics from penalties to which they had been made liable by ancient and obsolete statutes. He certainly had been a party to the Act of 1844, as well as to the prior Act of 1846; and if anything could have made him doubt the policy of those measures, it would have been the events which had since taken place, and which had awakened so much anxiety in the country. Could any one have supposed, when they were pursuing a course of kindness and conciliation, in relaxing the penal laws which had so long disfigured the Statute-book, that advantage would have been taken of the concessions then made to strike a blow at our national in-

1329
dependence, and to wound the dignity of the Crown? There were some far-seeing men who at that time declared their belief that by doing away with the existing securities against the Roman Catholics, we should be destroying the protection which the Legislature had guaranteed to the established faith; but the noble Lord at the head of the Government was not one of those who shared in that view. In 1846, the noble Lord said—
"Let us suppose, though it is almost extravagant to suppose it, that any attempt were made by the Pope to assert sovereign authority in these realms, or interfere with the Queen's Authority, my belief is, that no such Bull would be observed by any Roman Catholic, but that it would be a dead letter."—[3 Hansard, lxxxviii. 362.]
The event which the noble Lord had regarded as impossible had come to pass. He asked any hon. Member who had carefully reflected on this subject, whether he entertained the slightest doubt that if they had not broken down the securities they possessed, and taken the sting out of the penal laws, these encroachments would ever have taken place? When the event which had aroused the national indignation occurred, he would do the noble Lord the justice to say that his tone and language were such as befitted the occasion, and such as became the Prime Minister of this great country. He marshalled the nation in the course which it ought to take, and the nation was ready to follow the noble Lord in all needful measures of redress. He never should forget his language in introducing the measure. Adverting to the imperial and imperious tone of the pastoral put forth by the new Cardinal, and the assertion that every religious body was the best judge of its own forms, the noble Lord said he did not dispute their knowledge of their own forms, but he had heard of another form—and that was, "Victoria, by the grace of God, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland." These were words which were adequate to the occasion; and he could not express the feelings of disappointment with which, after the magnificent prelude of the opening night of the Session, he had witnessed the impotent conclusion arrived at, and the real nature of the Ministerial measure—indeed, if the subject were not too serious, he should say it was perfectly ridiculous, after the way in which the Protestant feeling had been stirred to its very foundations. He believed that if the noble Lord had been permitted, unchecked and uncontrol-
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led, to pursue the course his own feelings and wishes dictated, the measure presented to the House would have been one of a different character; but he had lost an opportunity of establishing his reputation so long as history endured, by yielding to the suggestions and solicitations of others, and by "letting I dare not wait upon I would." Still they were indebted to the noble Lord for a declaration he had repeatedly made, and, as far as he was himself concerned, repeatedly adhered to. The noble Lord had stated, that in introducing this Bill, his intention was to make the law throughout the United Kingdom uniform and consistent. So recently as the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. S. Crawford's) Motion, he had ridiculed the notion of allowing a Rescript that would be null and void in England, to be effective and valid in Ireland. If the Bill had made no possible distinction between the different parts of the United Kingdom, he should have hailed it with satisfaction, and accepted it with gratitude as a sufficient defence against the encroachments which had been made. He felt it necessary to call the attention of the House to the real state of the law. No doubt the statute of Richard II., which was the foundation of all the law on the subject of the introduction of Bulls into this country, was imported into Ireland by the general law called Poyning's Law; that it was effective in Ireland, and sufficiently protective against Papal encroachments, appeared sufficiently from the circumstances that, in the reign of James I., Lalor, a Romish priest, was indicted on that statute in preference to the more recent statute of Elizabeth. The Acts passed in Ireland with respect to Roman Catholics in the reigns of William and Anne, were much more stringent than the contemporary English statutes; Acts passed under William actually banished from Ireland the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, and these were continued from time to time, and were made perpetual by a statute of Anne. The operation of those Acts was never in the slightest degree interfered with until 1782, when an Act was passed which mitigated the penal provisions of previous statutes with respect to Roman Catholic priests, but which continued that remarkable clause in which an exception was made as to all persons who assumed any ecclesiastical rank or title whatsoever. That exception had never been repealed by any subsequent statute whatsoever; the Act of 1793, for the relief of Roman Ca-

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tholics in Ireland, left persons who assumed any ecclesiastical rank or title precisely in the same situation as that in which they stood under the Act 22 George III. With respect to the Act of 1795, for endowing the College of Maynooth, so careful was the Legislature of guarding against any recognition of the titles of any Roman Catholic priest, that the Roman Catholic clerical Commissioners named in that Act were described not by any ecclesiastical rank or title they might assume to possess, but only by their titles of doctors of divinity, and they were placed after the names of the lay Commissioners. So stood the law until the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1829, the 24th section of which imposed a penalty on persons assuming certain ecclesiastical titles, whence it had been argued that it legalised the assumption of every other title. This must appear a very absurd conclusion to every legal mind. No doubt it being contrary to law for any Roman Catholic to assume those titles, the clause in question was introduced for the purpose of providing a more easy and specific remedy, but it could not have the slightest operation in changing the previous law. But it was important to bear in mind, with respect to the 10th George IV., that it never was pretended that it would interfere in the slightest degree with the spiritual privileges of the Roman Catholic prelates. When the Act of 1829 passed, the statutes of Elizabeth existed in all their integrity, and the law against Roman Catholics was, therefore, more stringent than at the present moment; and not one of the Irish Roman Catholic prelates of that day—men certainly not inferior in piety, learning, or zeal to their successors at the present day—ever suggested that that state of the law interfered in the slightest degree with the spiritual rights of their communion; but they received the Act with expressions of unbounded gratitude. Petition after petition was presented, in which they said they utterly disregarded the titles, and that they only wished for an opportunity to exercise their spiritual functions over the poor of their communion. He wanted to know what reason existed in the state of the law for making any distinction whatever in this Bill between one part of the United Kingdom and another. The circumstances had not varied since the noble Lord, in discussing the hon. Member for Rochdale's Motion, said, that "having made the law with respect to England, he did not think they could, with any consistency, at the same
1332
time say that any person might receive a Rescript from the Pope, by virtue of which he might assume the title of Bishop of Galway, or any other town in Ireland." Had the circumstances of the case varied since then? His hon. Friend the Member for Somersetshire (Mr. W. Miles), had read to the House a most remarkable passage from one of the principal organs of the Roman Catholic body, and he could follow it up with one of even a more extraordinary description. The Tablet, the principal organ of the Roman Catholic body, alluding to the Bull received for the consecration of the Bishop of Killaloe, observed "The law is broken, thanks be to God." With respect to the colleges the writer proceeded, in terms more objectionable, and more repugnant to every feeling of our nature, to observe, "Another Rescript, another crime, another cause of thankfulness to Almighty God, and our thankfulness must be the greater because in this case the direct and main object of the Rescript, the great purpose for which it is issued is, to defeat and procure the ignominious annihilation of an Act of Parliament." Was the noble Lord right or wrong then in saying that it would be the most scandalous timidity, the basest abandonment of an undoubted right, if, under all the circumstances, the law, existing as it did, and after the repeated defiances which they had received, they were not to have an Act so framed as to guard every part of the United Kingdom against these encroachments? The noble Lord said, that he meant to include Ireland in any legislation which he offered to the House on this question; but how did he profess to carry out his intentions by this Bill? The commencement of the preamble was directed solely and exclusively to the Rescript which was issued in September, 1850, and which applied solely to England. Now, if he intended that this law should embrace the whole of the United Kingdom, would it not be the most fair, honest, and manly course to declare his intention positively upon the face of the Bill, and not to leave it to the darkness and uncertainty of inference. He (Sir F. Thesiger) proposed then by his Amendments to make the law in express terms such as the noble Lord had declared it to be his intention to make it; but which he appeared, for some reason or other, not to have courage to do for himself. Hon. Members would, therefore, find that the first Amendment which he proposed was in the preamble of the Bill, which recited

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that divers of Her Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects have assumed to themselves the titles of archbishops, bishops, and so on, under colour of the alleged authority of a certain Rescript, Brief, and Letter Apostolic. Instead of this, and following the advice of the noble Lord that a Rescript of this nature sent into Ireland should be equally illegal, he proposed to change the term "a certain Brief or Rescript," into "certain Briefs or Rescripts," which would include every case; but inasmuch as the occasion for legislation was introduced by the Brief dated September, 1850, he thought it right, in addition, to mark and distinguish that particular Brief as the occasion which called forth our legislation, and he would therefore add the words, "and in particular by a certain Brief, Rescript, or Letters Apostolic, purporting to have been given at Rome on the 25th of September, 1850." If the preamble was adopted in the terms which he proposed, it would of course be necessary to alter the words in the declaratory and enacting clauses from "the said Brief or Rescript," to "all such Briefs or Rescripts." He now called upon the noble Lord to say whether it was or was not his intention to include Ireland in his Bill. If he said he did mean to include Ireland in his Bill, then he asked how the noble Lord could conscientiously oppose the introduction of these words, particularly when he considered what had recently passed in Ireland, where our legislation upon this subject was converted into an occasion of defiance. Surely the noble Lord must feel that if he abandoned the position which he at first assumed—if he showed any shrinking or hesitation upon this subject, he would be giving the greatest encouragement to those who were ready, if they could, to make further encroachments upon us. Now, the preamble standing in the position in which he placed it, would appear to be perfectly impregnable. In order that the House might have a concentrative view of the different Amendments which he intended to propose, he would take the liberty, as introductory to the whole, to call their attention to another Amendment, following immediately upon that in the preamble, which was a natural and logical consequence of the first. All the arguments he had used in support of his first Amendment would equally well apply to that which he proposed in the first clause. Now, the clauses had not only a declaratory but an enacting force, and he would appeal to the noble
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Lord why, if Rescripts introduced into Ireland were—as he had admitted them to be—illegal and void, he did not state that upon the face of those enactments. His hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General was asked by his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gladstone) whether the Government were not inconsistent in confining their declaratory clause to a specific Brief or Rescript, when he (the Solicitor General) must have known that the Pope had recently issued a Rescript constituting a bishopric of Ross, which was equally within the terms of the law, and therefore equally illegal. His hon. and learned Friend said, that that declaratory clause would operate in Ireland, because the Judges would apply this declaration to that country. Now he (Sir F. Thesiger) conceded to his hon. and learned Friend that if any question arose with respect to the illegality of this Act, the Irish Judges would decide it according to the law which existed before the passing of this, and was applicable throughout the United Kingdom; but they would not decide it by reason of this declaratory clause, which applied only to a particular Brief issued in England. Indeed, so far from this clause having the operation suggested, he confessed that if it would have any operation at all, he thought it would be a detrimental, and not a beneficial operation, for it might be very fairly argued that when the Legislature had confined its declaration to a particular Brief which was introduced into England, that it was its intention to exclude every other; and although he was not of opinion that such an argument would avail, yet if urged with such ingenuity as was possessed by his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, it might embarrass the Judges in any decision to which they were called upon to arrive. Then he (Sir F. Thesiger) would say he ought to make his Bill so plain as to guard against any misapprehension. However, his hon. and learned Friend had made an important admission when he said that he meant the declaratory clause should apply to Ireland. Passing on to the next Amendment which he intended to propose, he would call the attention of the House to that which the noble Lord had himself originally considered sufficient to satisfy the earnest desires and to allay the apprehensions of the country with respect to this aggression. He could not characterise it better than in the language of the noble Lord himself, who said,

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in 1846, that "as to preventing persons assuming particular titles, nothing could be more absurd and puerile than to keep up such a distinction." The noble Lord had, therefore, brought forward, originally, a measure which he admitted to be absurd and puerile; and if that was the impression of the noble Lord, which he (Sir Frederic Thesiger) was sure was shared by a great number of the community, he thought it was desirable to add, if possible, a little spirit and force to that which the noble Lord had endeavoured to make the very minimum of legislation on this question. He (Sir F. Thesiger) proposed to provide against the introduction of similar Bulls, Rescripts, and Letters Apostolic, for the future. It was remarkable that the discussion had advanced thus far, and yet no one could say what was the real operative state of the law independently of this measure. Was the statute of Richard II. a binding law, available for the purposes for which it was introduced, or was it not? The noble Lord said, he thought it would be hard to rake up obsolete penal statutes, and use them against persons who might be ignorant of their existence; and he (Sir F. Thesiger) yielded to that argument, because he thought it would not be prudent to institute a prosecution with the chance of a failure on that or any other ground. But if the noble Lord meant that the statute of Richard II. should be available for our protection now, he w could he object to the introduction of the clause which he (Sir F. Thesiger) proposed, which would bring down the law to the present day, and give it a voice in the present time, so that no one could doubt its existence? Instead, too, of the parties being exposed to the penalties of a præmunire, which were the more formidable because they were so mysterious as not to be perfectly understood, he proposed by the clause which he suggested should be introduced, as an addition to that of the noble Lord, to make the introduction of these Bulls and Rescripts illegal for the future under the very penalty which the noble Lord himself had declared sufficient to meet the emergency. He believed that nothing short of this would give us any security against the encroachments and aggressions to which we had been so unjustly subjected. But all laws, unless carried into effect, were worse than useless; they cumbered the Statute-book, and, to use the powerful expression of Lord Bacon on this subject, "There is a further incon-
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venience in penal law, obsolete and out of use, for it brings a gangrene, neglect, and a habit of disobedience upon other wholesome laws, that are fit to be continued in practice and execution." The noble Lord proposed to leave the execution of his measure to the agency pointed out by the 10th Geo. IV., under which no prosecution for a penalty could be instituted, except by the law officers of the Crown in England, Ireland, and Scotland. What had been the effect of that Act? That laws which were admitted to have contained sufficient powers to have prevented the assumption of any titles contrary to that Act of Parliament had been allowed to sleep; they had not been brought into operation at all, but—
"Have been unrolled penalties,
Hung up, like unscourcd armour, on the walls,
Which now for nineteen zodiacs long have slept,
And never worn in use."
The greater part of the difficulties that had impeded their legislation on this subject arose from its being said that the Government had connived at the assumption of these titles to which they now proposed to apply penal laws. Would such an argument have arisen had the Attorney General done his duty? Was it likely, indeed, that any Government would embarrass itself with a prosecution of this description, if they could possibly avoid it? Well, then, if they found that a power which was intended to be used for the protection of the kingdom had been allowed to slumber in the hands in which it was reposed, was it not the duty of Parliament to take care that the law which they were about to pass should be rendered efficient by being placed in other hands, not left to be administered by bauds in which experirience showed it would be allowed to remain a dead letter? It could not be supposed that he (Sir F. Thesiger) desired to degrade the office of Attorney General in proposing that some stimulus and spur should be applied; there was nothing degrading to that functionary in placing the common informer in his stead. The object of his Amendment was to give to any person the power of prosecuting, with the consent of the Attorney General; and as it was a very different thing for the Attorney General to refuse to prosecute himself, and to say to a respectable person who offered himself as prosecutor, "You shall not prosecute," the effect of his Amendment would be to stimulate the Attorney General, by placing him in a position

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where his responsibility would be enhanced by the applications which would be made to him, and to which he would be compelled to accede if he refused to prosecute on proper occasions. These were the Amendments which he proposed. All of them, except the last, were in accordance with the expressed intentions of the noble Lord; and there was not one of them which would be found in the slightest degree opposed to anything which he had himself expressed at any period of these discussions; they were brought forward in no spirit of hostility, but with a desire to make the measure such as should be satisfactory to the public; and it would be strange if those who in language agreed with the propositions maintained, should in act offer opposition to the Motion. He did again and again entreat hon. Members to consider the crisis at which we were now arrived. It appeared to him that the present crisis was most important to our Protestant establishment, assailed from within and from without—its position truly described by that which was said of the infant Church, "Without are fightings, within are fears." Here was an assumption of temporal and spiritual sovereignty over the whole of this kingdom, and, according to the acknowledged and admitted principles of the Roman Church, it comprehended the right to govern all persons who might be within the limits of that territorial authority, all heretics, all apostates—within which category all Protestants were included—and all baptised souls. The hon. Member for Kerry (Mr. M. J. O'Connell) said, "Why anticipate the time? Why not wait till there has been an exercise of authority over the Protestants? Because that time would never arrive until it was too late to resist—because we were dealing with a wary foe, who knew when to advance his claims, and when to allow them to be dormant—who would remain crouching in his lair till the favourable moment came for a fatal spring, and then it would be in vain to struggle; the strength would have been acquired which would be irresistible. Prudence required of us not to disregard the warning we had received, but to prepare for our security before it should be too late. Now was the time to walk round our Protestant Zion, to "tell all the towers thereof, and mark well her bulwarks," that we might be able to tell those who came after us that we had not been regardless of their most sacred and precious interests.
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Let us not attempt to repair a breach in our walls which, not the enemy, but our own hands, had incautiously and unguardedly made, by the rubbish which had been offered, but prepare sound, solid, and durable materials which would afford a permanent security. We were now engaged in a contest in which the eyes of the world were upon us, and in which to fail would be scandalous and disgraceful. Let us bear in mind the warning given to us by a most able writer on this important question:—
"If after all our protests and brave words we permit power real and substantial to be conferred upon the Pope—if we evade the real contest by a mock battle about titles, and legislate against shadows while we turn aside from the substance—then, indeed, the honour of England is trampled in the dust, and in the victory of the insolence of Papal pretension, over the dignity of our ancient and time-honoured monarchy, and the enthusiasm of our noble-hearted people, the heaviest blow that the last three centuries have witnessed will be struck at the cause of human liberty and human progress."
The hon. and learned Member concluded, with moving his first Amendment, to leave out the words, "by a certain Brief, Rescript, in the Preamble, lines 5 and 6,"with a view to insert in their place "by certain Briefs, Rescripts."
In the Preamble, lines 5 and 6:—Amendment proposed to leave out the words, "by a certain Brief, Rescript," and to insert the words, "by certain Briefs, Rescripts."
LORD JOHN RUSSELL: The hon. and learned Gentleman has spoken with great ability, no doubt, in defence of the proposition he has brought forward; and he has told the House, after many vituperative and disparaging epithets, applied to the present Bill, that if his Amendments are accepted, they will make the Bill complete, comprehensive, and efficient; and the hon. and learned Gentleman, in terms of a similar kind, has ventured to promise that, while if the present Bill be adopted, we shall have no defence or guard, yet that, if his Amendments were adopted, you will have a complete and efficient defence against the aggression that has been made. Now, Sir, I really am surprised, considering those Amendments, and after all the hon. and learned Gentleman has said of them, that he should attribute such a mighty effect to the alterations he proposes, which go very much to points which are already in the Bill, and propose certain changes that I cannot think are either very valuable or effective for the object in

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view. What was it—for we must go back to that—what was it that constituted the offence in the first instance, and what were the courses that were proposed by persons of various opinions, in order to meet that offence? The offence, in the first place, was an assumption of the power, without the knowledge or consent of the Queen, in defiance of the laws of this country, to confer certain territorial titles by a foreign authority. There was, in the second place, an assumption of certain titles, pretended to he given by such authority. What we proposed, in the first place, was, to recite, in an Act of Parliament, that a certain Rescript had come from Rome, pretending to confer those titles; and we declared in the preamble of our Bill that the pretension to give such titles was altogether void and illegal. Such was the first step that we proposed; and I confess it seems to me that, even if it stood alone, strengthened, perhaps, by the introduction of the first clause, that was the best mode of meeting one part of the offence. Because, what we have to deal with, is that which, be it remembered, was open, arrogant, generally proclaimed, boasted of, and repeated, by the various organs of the press, and in the pulpits of the adherents of the Pope in this country. There were various opinions with regard to what seemed to be required; some said there should be declarations at meetings through the country; others said there should be Resolutions in Parliament; we thought there should be a Parliamentary declaration, in the shape of an Act assented to by both Houses of Parliament; but whether it was to be in the first shape, or in the second, or in the shape we adopted, what was required was a declaration aimed at the particular Act recited, and declaring it void and illegal; and thereby, if a foreign Power, on the one hand, had committed an act which pretended to sovereignty, to which as a foreign Power it had no claim, here was a declaration, on the other, solemnly made by the Parliament of England, that all such pretensions were illegal and void; and from that moment, at all events, if not before, it had ceased to have any legal effect in this country. But the hon. and learned Gentleman says you have not declared that any other rescripts, bulls, or letters-apostolic, which may he issued, shall be equally void. I own it appears to mc that, instead of strengthening your declaration by spreading it to all other rescripts, you will weaken the effect of what you are
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doing by using those words with regard to all other rescripts. Then the hon. and learned Gentleman comments very strongly on the terms of the first clause, and says it is wrong so far as it is confined to the first rescript. Why, certainly, we are so far responsible for that first clause that we have adopted it; but if his censure falls upon us, it falls more heavily on the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Midhurst, who proposed the clause in that very form. The hon. and learned Gentleman then goes on to an argument which, not being a lawyer, perhaps I should not venture to criticise; but it does appear to me so contrary to what usually takes place—so contrary to common reason—so contrary to all I have known to take place in courts of justice—and so contrary to the common sense of the world, that I cannot believe the hon. and learned Gentleman is well founded in his observations. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, being challenged by the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gladstone), and asked whether, in condemning this Rescript, we did not make legal other rescripts, said that, on the contrary, this part of the Act was declaratory, and that, therefore, we are not enacting that this particular act is illegal, but declaring that it is illegal; and, therefore, it is to be presumed that, according to the general law of the country, any similar act is likely also to be illegal. It appears to mc that a Judge, having such a case before him, would say, "I see by the Act of Richard II. and by the Act of Elizabeth, that assumptions of this kind are void and illegal, and here is an Act with respect to the particular use of this power that occurred in the year 1850, and I observe that the Parliament of that day declared that the use of the power was void and illegal;" and the Judge would say, "I should conceive that confirms my view of the case, and I come to the conclusion, that the particular act before me, coining within the compass of those Acts, and being similar to the act declared illegal in 1850, is itself illegal." But the hon. and learned Gentleman says that a Judge would act in a contrary way, and say, it appears to me that all acts of this kind are legal, because I find that in 1850 Parliament particularly declared one act of this kind to be illegal. I really don't think that any Judge of common sense would come to such a conclusion as the hon. and learned Gentleman supposes. The hon. and learned Gentle-

1341
man said, his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, argued, which he had argued, that this being a declaratory enactment would affect the proceedings of courts, and assist a Judge; and the hon. and learned Gentleman said he was of a different opinion—that it would entirely embarrass a Judge. The hon. and learned Gentleman provided in the preamble, as he supposed, that all Rescripts constituting bishoprics were void. All he (Lord John Russell) said was, that if they wished to give force and strength to their proceedings at the present time, they ought to make them apply to the particular act. Then, with regard to the case of Ireland, I always contended that any Bill that was introduced should affect the whole of the United Kingdom. At the same time I consider the acts of the Pope with respect to Ireland as being totally of a different nature. As the hon. and learned Gentleman compels me to argue the matter, I must put it before the House in that light. The present Pope found that from some forty years after the Reformation the Popes had successively appointed archbishops and bishops in Ireland, and had appointed them by the names of ancient sees. I find that about fifty years ago, when Dr. Troy was in Dublin, he was called by the Lord Lieutenant Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin; and I find that in succession the Popes have gone on as vacancies occurred, appointing archbishops and bishops in Ireland. It may be said, that in so doing they have acted against the law of this country; but still it is a totally different matter, as I conceive, from issuing letters-apostolical, appointing a new hierarchy, dividing this country of England into provinces and dioceses, and fixing that certain persons are to rule over those English counties and dioceses, by the titles of bishops and archbishops. It is evident that in the first instance, with respect to those Irish bishops, it is hardly to he expected that the Pope should act in a different manner from his predecessors, and decline to fill up vacancies as they occurred; but with respect to the second matter—this Rescript of September, 1850, that was an aggression from which he might easily have refrained. That was a subject on which he might have easily asked whether it would be offensive to the Government of this country, and whether it was not exceeding any limit he was bound to observe with respect to a foreign Power, to issue such letters-apostolic. There is,
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therefore, though not in strict law, in point of sense and reason, and the general opinion of the world, a very obvious distinction between that which has been done in Ireland and in this country. What is done in Ireland has been done from a short time after the Reformation down to the year 1850, and though not according to strict law, has been viewed by the people of this country without displeasure. To the succession of the Catholic bishops in Ireland, the people have been accustomed for centuries; but they saw with very great displeasure and indignation this Rescript of 1850, establishing a new hierarchy, and pretending to divide this country into dioceses. The hon. and learned Gentleman says, this measure of the Government is weak and inefficient, because it makes this Rescript illegal; and he proposes by his Amendments to make this Bill efficient, complete, and comprehensive by mixing up with it all other Rescripts; but I own that instead of making it complete, efficient, and comprehensive, the hon. and learned Gentleman certainly appears to me not to be a prosecutor, not to be intolerant, or deserving of any of the terms which Irish Members use on this subject, but only to weaken that which he pretends to strengthen. The hon. and learned Gentleman proposes to attach a penalty to the introduction of apostolic letters for the purpose of constituting a hierarchy; but it appears to me that we should confine the penalty to that which was specially forbidden by the Act of the 10th George IV. The hon. and learned Gentleman also proposes that any person may be at liberty, with the consent of the Attorney General, to institute a suit for the recovery of penalties; but this appears, according to the arguments of the hon. and learned Gentleman himself, and according to the arguments of every hon. Member who has spoken against the aggression, to me to be a matter so nearly and dearly affecting the State, that those who represent the State ought to be the persons to institute any prosecution on the subject. Now, let us consider what is the case with regard to Government prosecutions on matters that affect political conduct, and on matters in which the public interest is involved. The Government has had continually, or used to have, in regard to such questions a discretion in regard to prosecuting for such penalties. On all these questions there are four considerations for a Government to reflect upon before they institute a State

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prosecution on an important matter. One is—has the offence been committed? The second is—have they legal evidence of that offence? The third question is—suppose the offence has been committed, and they have sufficient legal evidence of the offence, are they likely to obtain a verdict by going before a jury? The fourth is—and it is a question that, in a State prosecution, is not to be forgotten—supposing an offence has been committed, supposing they have sufficient evidence, and supposing they are likely to obtain a verdict in a court of law, will any public end be answered by a prosecution? All those matters are matters for a Government to consider. With respect to the two first of them, there is not a week passes in which there are not libels published which are clearly offences against the law, and of which evidence could easily be procured; but with respect to most of those libels you would find that if Government brought them into a court of law, though the Judge might declare them to be libellous matters, the Jury would hold that this was a tyrannical prosecution for the purpose of screening a corrupt Government; there would be great declamation in favour of the liberty of the press, the Government would be defeated, and the defendant would come out of court with much more credit than he had before. But then comes the fourth consideration: after the law officers of the Crown have given their opinion that an offence has been committed, and they have sufficient evidence of it, and think that a verdict would be procured, it is still a serious matter for them to advise the Government, and for the Government to decide whether any public advantage would be derived from that prosecution. Wise men who have been high in the Government of the country have seen the wisdom of forbearance in cases where they clearly had the power of punishment in their own hands. There is a well-known story—not respecting a prosecution in a court of law, but with regard to a transaction in this House—that is told of Sir Robert Walpole and of Sir William Wyndham. Sir William Wyndham having uttered words that were disloyal, to show his Jacobite feeling, and his enmity to the Throne, Sir Robert Walpole said, "I see what the hon. Gentleman wants—he wants me to send him to the Tower, but I will do no such thing." He acted very wisely; the offence was committed; in five minutes the House would have decided that Sir William Wyndham should be sent to the
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Tower; but a great cry would be raised, he would have been represented as a martyr, and the Jacobite cause would have flourished by that imprisonment. If all those matters are to be considered before a prosecution is instituted, I say they are not matters for the consideration of every individual; they are not matters to be undertaken by a person heated by party feelings, who wishes to punish an individual or persecute an enemy, but they are serious questions that ought to be left to the decision of Government. The hon. and learned Gentleman says, that the Attorney General would have these matters brought before him. I think it would be the duty of the Attorney General in such a case to say, "If I think this is a case for a prosecution, I will prosecute it myself." If there is to be any prosecution, the Government will order it and conduct it; and if they decide there should not be a prosecution by themselves, I don't think they ought to allow any other individual to prosecute; and then what becomes of the hon. and learned Gentleman's proposition?—so that this would be, in fact, a useless clause. What was originally proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Midhurst, would have been most mischievous. It is obvious that, under the clause proposed by him, there would have been endless vexation—that the Roman Catholic bishops and priests would be subject to unceasing annoyance from prosecutions, arising out of the performance of their spiritual duties. That clause was withdrawn, and another clause is now brought in by the hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir F. Thesiger) by way of amendment of it; but in improving it in one respect, he makes it totally useless in another; and I am convinced that if any Attorney General does his duty, the clause would be a mere nullity. The hon. and learned Gentleman has given us to understand that Attorney Generals in Ireland in past times have allowed the open violation of the Act of 1829, and that they have slumbered while they were carrying on; but from that statement I entirely dissent. I believe that Chief Justice Blackburne and the present Master of the Rolls did their duty; they were honourable and independent men, and would have scorned to act in a manner that would encourage the violation of the law. At all events, if they did neglect their duty, how came it that the hon. and learned Gentleman, while he was a law officer of the Crown, did not say to the Home Secretary,

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I observe your law officers in Ireland are continually conniving at the violation of the law; and the dignity of the Crown and of the law is sacrificed by their culpable neglect of their duties. I think, certainly, that if the hon. and learned Gentleman saw such a case, he could scarcely have failed to make that observation, to the Home Secretary. He could not say that he, the Attorney General of England, was ignorant of what was doing in Ireland, or have said, "You have an Attorney General in Ireland, and I cannot take an account of what is passing in Ireland;" and I am sure the hon. and learned Gentleman would not shelter himself under such an excuse. I believe he really did not think that this violation of the law was ever practised, and he thought, as we and most persons thought, though there may be different opinions now, that the law was carried into effect according to its intent. If a letter appears in a newspaper signed "John of Cashel," or whatever it may be, is it to be supposed that that letter at once constitutes an offence under the Act of 1829, and that the Attorney General has nothing to do but to go into a court of law to prosecute for it? There were two things which it behoved the Government to do: first, to vindicate the majesty of the Throne and the freedom and independence of the country—that we propose to do by the preamble, with the addition of the first clause we have adopted; next, to attach a penalty to the assumption of titles in consequence of the Rescript from Rome—that we do by the second clause. But the hon. and learned Gentleman proposes to make an addition to this, and to add another offence, in addition to that which has already been declared an offence, namely, the assumption of titles; and my opinion is, that, instead of strengthening the Bill by those changes—I cannot call them amendments—he does but divide those who are opponents of this aggression, and thereby rather tends to weaken this Act. This is a question for the House to decide. The House could not but have remarked that which was done very significantly at the beginning of this evening's debate—I mean the retirement from this House of certain Roman Catholic Members, chiefly representing counties and boroughs in Ireland. In an ostentatious manner they showed they would take no part in the proceedings. Of course, they must be considered as consenting parties to whatever the majority of the House shall decide.
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If the hon. and learned Gentleman shall be successful, it is to the aid given by their absence he will owe that success; and I must consider them as responsible for the consequences. I certainly find nothing in the Amendments of the hon. and learned Gentleman (though I think they are objectionable, for the reasons I have stated) which would induce me to refrain, if they are adopted, from going on with this Bill, and carrying it to the other House of Parliament. I have stated my objections to the hon. and learned Gentleman's proposals, and it will be for the House to decide upon them. But I must say this of the proposals of the hon. and learned Gentleman—that they come within the general scope of the Bill—they don't go beyond the avowed and declared objects of the Bill—and I shall certainly, therefore, abide by the decision of the House.
MR. NAPIERremarked that the noble Lord had alluded to the Attorney General in Ireland at a former period. Chief Justice Blackburne, as Attorney General, was not afraid to attack Mr. O'Connell, the leading Roman Catholic in Ireland; and the Master of the Rolls, as Attorney General, had also prosecuted Mr. O'Connell. With such Attorneys General there had been no violation of the law. Before the accession of the noble Lord to office, the law had not been violated. In the month of October, 1847, there was an address presented to Lord Clarendon from the Roman Catholic Prelates, and that address was signed "John, Archbishop of Tuam, Chairman," and "J. Derry, Bishop of Clonfert," as Secretary. The able reply of Lord Clarendon to that address began "My Lords;" and there the law was clearly violated. Previous to that time there had been no violation of the law. What was wanted was a reasonable, a constitutional, and, above all, an honest vindication of the law. The object of the Amendment proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon was to vindicate the authority of the law in every part of the Queen's dominions where that law was violated. If the law was the same in Ireland as in England, then let them take care, reasonably and firmly, that its supremacy was asserted in both countries. That being the aim of his hon. and learned Friend, he should support his Amendment.
The ATTORNEY GENERALunderstood the Amendments of the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon to be of a threefold nature. He proposed to in-

1347
clude in the Preamble, and in the first clause, a, reference to any other Rescripts of a similar character to that already mentioned that might have issued. He proposed also to make the introductions of any Bull or Rescript of the description named in the Bill subject to the penalties provided for the unlawful assumption of titles; and, lastly, he proposed to give private informers the power of prosecuting, with consent of the Attorney General. Now, he saw no great objection to the first of these proposals, though he thought all that it in reality proposed was better gained by the words which had been introduced by the hon. and learned Member for Midhurst, because this legislation, being induced by the aggression of the Pope, it ought to be directed against the particular act by which that aggression had been made. The hon. and learned Member says, if you do this you will exclude Ireland, whither other Rescripts have been sent. He would take issue with the hon. and learned Member on this point; for he contended, notwithstanding all that had fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon, that if they declared the law with reference to the particular Rescript named in the Bill, they did so with reference to all other Rescripts, whether in England or Ireland, and for this reason, that the law in both countries was the same, the sovereignty of the Crown in both was the same, and they directed their legislation against the aggression of the Pope, because it was an invasion of the prerogative of the Crown, and a violation of the national privileges. By declaring the law in one country they declared it in both countries; and no Judge would have the slightest hesitation in saying that the Bill, when it became law, was applicable to any and every Rescript of the kind described that could be issued. But it was, of course, for the House to consider whether it would adopt the proposal now brought before them, or whether it did not consider that a declaration would have greater effect and force if directed against this particular Rescript, than by being made applicable to all other Rescripts. He did not, however, regard this Amendment as of very vital importance. His objection to the second Amendment, which proposed to make the introduction and use of any future Rescript subject to penalties, was, that in the greater majority of instances in which there was an assumption of titles, they would make the penalties cumulative; but,
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with that exception, he saw no great harm in the proposal. It was unquestionably against the law to introduce Bulls or Rescripts, or any such instruments, into this country; but if this proposed additional penalty was added, the penalties might be made cumulative. The third Amendment, which appeared to him to be far more objectionable, was the introduction of common informers into the legal proceedings that might be adopted under the Act. This was a matter of serious importance, and one that it behoved the House well to reflect upon before it acted. He maintained that this was no case in which a common informer should be allowed to interfere. It was no case of the infraction of any police regulations, or of those minor laws in which the morals of society or public order were involved, or such offences as, owing to the difficulty of detection, required the vigilance of the common informer. This was a matter affecting the State and the Sovereign. It was on that ground only they were legislating, and, therefore, every prosecution should be conducted by the Attorney General, acting under the sanction of the Government with which he was connected. The only ground on which they could defend the proposition was, that they could not rely on the public officers of the Crown discharging their duty; but that was a poor compliment to pay to a public officer charged with the enforcement of the law. It was said that in Ireland the law had not been enforced; but, with all the research of the hon. Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Napier), he could put his hand on but one solitary instance in which the law had been violated. In all other cases there were no facts on which a public prosecutor could proceed. But the case would be different now. Let it not be said the public prosecutor would not do his duty in the present state of public opinion, and with the eyes of the whole community upon him. If, in Ireland, the law had been suffered to sleep, if the law officers of the Crown did not institute prosecutions—though he denied that cases for prosecution had occurred—it might have been because public opinion in that country was opposed to the intervention of the law. But the case was different here. With the public mind in a state of excitement, with the feeling prevalent in that House, as manifested by the divisions that had taken place on this question, he was certain no law officer of the Crown would

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venture to sleep at his post, and that no Government would allow him to do so. By introducing the common informer, and allowing him to have part and share in the public prosecution, they would merely lower the character of the offence, lower the character of the prosecution, and detract from the effect of the penalty. It was true the hon. and learned Gentleman proposed to give the law officers a veto on the prosecution; but by allowing the private informer to intervene at all, they lessened the responsibility of the public prosecutor, which should be an undivided responsibility. Mr. Burke had long ago said that those laws were bad in principle that left prosecution to private informers, and he pointed to the distinctions that Government could make as compared with private informers. The Government, he said, could discriminate between times, and persons, and circumstances; but the mercenary informer knew no such distinction. That appeared to him (the Attorney General) to be a sufficient reason why the House should reject the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon.
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Preamble."
The House divided:—Ayes 100; Noes 135: Majority 35.

List of the AYES.

Adair, R. A. S.

Elliot, hon. J. E.

Aglionby, H. A.

Evans, W.

Alcock, T.

Fergus, J.

Anstey, T. C.

Ferguson, Col.

Armstrong, Sir A.

Foley, J. H. H.

Baines, rt. hon. M. T.

Forster, M.

Baring, rt. hn. Sir F.T.

Fortescue, C.

Bass, M. T.

French, F.

Bell, J.

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Berkeley, Adm.

Granger, T. C.

Bernal, R.

Hanmer, Sir J.

Bethell, R.

Harris, R.

Birch, Sir T. B.

Hastie, A.

Blewitt, R. J.

Hatchell, rt. hon. J.

Brocklehurst, J.

Hawes, B.

Brockman, E. D.

Headlam, T. E.

Brotherton, J.

Heneage, G. H. W.

Brown, W.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Chaplin, W. J.

Humphery, Ald.

Clay, J.

Hutt, W.

Clay, Sir W.

Jackson, W.

Cockburn, Sir A. J. E.

Kershaw, J.

Collins, W.

Labouchere, rt. hon. H.

Cowper, hon. W. F.

Lewis, G. C.

Craig, Sir W. G.

Lockhart, A. E.

Crowder, R. B.

Lushington, C.

Dashwood, Sir G. H.

M'Gregor, J.

Dawes, E.

M'Taggart, Sir J.

Duncan, G.

Mahon, The O'Gorman

Dundas, Adm.

Matheson, Col.

Dundas, rt. hon. Sir D.

Mulgrave, Earl of

Ellis, J.

Murphy, F. S.

1350

O'Connell, M. J.

Tancred, H. W.

Oswald, A.

Thicknesse, R. A.

Owen, Sir J.

Thompson, Col.

Paget, Lord C.

Verney, Sir H.

Parker, J.

Villiers, hon. C.

Perfect, R.

Wakley, T.

Pilkington, J.

Watkins, Col. L.

Portal, M.

Wawn, J. T.

Rawdon, Col.

Wegg-Prosser, F. R.

Rice, E. R.

Willcox, B. M.

Rich, H.

Williams, W.

Russell, Lord J.

Willyams, H.

Russell, F. C. H.

Wilson, J.

Scrope, G. P.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Seymour, Lord

Wood, Sir W. P.

Slaney, R. A.

Wyvill, M.

Smith, J. A.

Somerville, rt. hn. Sir W.

TELLERS.

Spearman, H. J.

Hayter, W. G.

Stanton, W. H.

Hill, Lord M.

List of the NOES.

Arbuthnott, hon. H.

Freshfield, J. W.

Archdall, Capt. M.

Galway, Visct.

Arkwright. G.

Gilpin, Col.

Baillie, H. J.

Gordon, Adm.

Baird, J.

Greenall, G.

Baldock, E. H.

Grogan, E.

Baldwin, C. B.

Gwyn, H.

Bankes, G.

Halford, Sir H.

Barrow, W. H.

Hallewell, E. G.

Bennet, P.

Halsey, T. P.

Bentinck, Lord H.

Hamilton, G. A.

Berkeley, C. L. G.

Hamilton, Lord C.

Blakemore, R.

Harris, hon. Capt.

Blandford, Marq. of

Heald, J.

Booker, T. W.

Henley, J. W.

Bowles, Adm.

Herries, rt. hon. J. C.

Boyd, J.

Hildyard, R. C.

Brisco, M.

Hildyard, T. B. P.

Broadley, H.

Hodgson, W. N.

Broadwood, H.

Hornby, J.

Brooke, Sir A. B.

Hotham, Lord

Bunbury, W. M.

Hughes, W. B.

Burghley, Lord

Inglis, Sir R. H.

Campbell, Sir A. I.

Jermyn, Earl

Child, S.

Jolliffe, Sir W. G. H.

Christopher, R. A.

Jones, Capt.

Clive, H. B.

Knightley, Sir C.

Cobbold, J. C.

Lacy, H. C.

Compton, H. C.

Legh, G. C.

Corry, rt. hon. H. L.

Lennox, Lord A. G.

Crawford, R. W.

Lennox, Lord H. G.

Cubitt, W.

Lindsay, hon. Col.

Davies, D. A. S.

Lockhart, W.

Disraeli, B.

Long, W.

Dod, J. W.

Lopes, Sir R.

Dodd, G.

Lowthcr, H.

Douro, Marq. of

Lygon, hon. Gen.

Drummond, H.

Mackie, J.

Duckworth, Sir J. T. B.

Macnaghten, Sir E.

Duncombe, hon. A.

Maunsell, T. P.

Duncombe, hon. O.

Maxwell, hon. J. P.

Duncuft, J.

Meux, Sir H.

Dundas, G.

Moody, C. A.

Du Pre, C. G.

Morgan, O.

Edwards, H.

Morris, D.

Evelyn, W. J.

Mullings, J. R.

Farrer, J.

Napier, J.

Fitzroy, hon. H.

Neeld, J.

Floyer, J.

Nowdegate, C. N.

Forbes, W.

Ossulston, Lord

Fox, S. W. L.

Packe, C. W.

1351

Pakington, Sir J.

Stuart, J.

Palmer, R.

Taylor, T. E.

Plumptre, J. P.

Thesiger, Sir F.

Prime, R.

Thornhill, G.

Pugh, D.

Tollemache, J.

Reid, Col.

Tyler, Sir G.

Richards, R.

Vivian, J. E.

Rushout, Capt.

Vyse, R. H. R. H.

Sandars, G.

Walpole, S. H.

Scott, hon. F.

Walsh, Sir J. B.

Seaham, Visct.

Whiteside, J.

Smyth, J. G.

Wigram, L. T.

Smollett, A.

Willoughby, Sir H.

Spooner, R.

Wodehouse, E.

Stafford, A.

Wynn, H. W. W.

Stanley, hon. E. H.

TELLERS.

Stephenson, R.

Beresford, W.

Stuart, H.

Mackenzie, W. F.

LORD JOHN RUSSELLsaid, that it would be useless to divide on the second Amendment of the hon. and learned Gentleman on the Preamble, as it was merely a formal sequence to the first, and the result would, of course, be the same.

AMENDMENTS MADE.
SIR FREDERIC THESIGERthen moved an Amendment—
"In Clause 1, line 21, to leave out the words 'the said Brief, Rescript,' for the purpose of inserting the words 'all such Briefs, Rescripts.'"
Clause 1, line 21, Amendment proposed, to leave out the words "the said Brief, Rescript."
The SOLICITOR GENERALsaid, it now remained to the House to deal with the enacting parts of the Bill, and they would do well to consider a little the course on which they had entered. He was not opposed to these Amendments because they effected any great alteration in the Bill, but rather for a contrary reason, for it might be doubted whether by the adoption of them they were not leading the public to suppose, that in these alterations the towers of our Church and the bulwarks of our Protestant Zion were to be found. ["Oh, oh!"] Those were the words of the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon. That hon. and learned Gentleman said, he would confine his Amendments to make the Bill complete and effective, and concluded a speech of great ability and eloquence, by stating that he thought they had arrived at a period of the history of the Church, when every step they took was of the utmost importance; that they were approaching to a crisis in their history when it behoved the Church to mark well for towers, and set up her bulwarks; and his hon. and learned Friend added, that he proposed to strengthen the Church
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by substituting his own effective masonry for the rubbish of their Bill. That was not his (the Solicitor General's) view of the measure. He did not consider that the Church of England was to rely upon such a Bill as this for her efficiency: his notion of the Bill had been throughout of a very contrary character. He believed the Bill to he important chiefly as a public declaration, on the part of the Parliament of England, of those great political principles which animated our ancestors, and prevented any foreign interference whatsoever with our domestic concerns; he believed it to be a measure which pointed to a species of aggression, which was no doubt thought by those who were its authors as simply bearing a spiritual aspect, but which it was deemed right should be resisted, not as a spiritual but as a political aggression. He should have been sorry to lead the people of England to expect that they were to look at this measure as a protection and a security for their religious faith. That stood on a far higher principle, and one which required no Act of Parliament to be its guarantee. It stood on a principle which found its way to the hearts of the people of this country, who were a sincerely religious people, and firmly attached to the Church. In taking the steps which the Legislature had done in this matter, he did not believe the object was such as the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon had expounded. But, since he had taken that view of the subject, it might be useful to see how far the master builder had completed the work in his sense of the expression. What was his first master-stroke? The Government, in their Bill, recited that there had been introduced into this country a certain Bull from the Pope of Rome, which had occasioned the greatest indignation throughout the length and breadth of the land, bearing, as it did, not only a religious but also a political aspect, and they denounced it by a legislative enactment. It was moreover declared, that this Bull was a violation of the law of the land, inasmuch as it attempted to revive a spiritual supremacy in this country which had been rejected three centuries ago, and which the people of England would never again suffer to exist. The Government had recited in their Preamble that the Rescript was null and void. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Midhurst, thought it right that there should be added to this recital a declaration that the Rescript was null and

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void; but the hon. and learned Gentleman, in the Amendment proposed by him, directed his attention solely to that Bull of the Pope. It was not that hon. and learned Gentleman's intention to add another bulwark to the Church, by stating in the Bill, that besides this great Rescript, besides this letter of the Pope, which had pulled down the Archbishop of Canterbury and set up a new see at Westminster, and which had deranged all our ancient systems, and had substituted a wholly new hierarchy in its stead, it was not his intention to set forth other bulls and other rescripts. But the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon (Sir F. Thesiger) was not content with this plan—he said, "I have discovered another Bull; I have found that the Pope has actually created a Bishop of Ross. While you have been giving your minds to this rubbish, and looking only to this little Rescript, I have found out that the Pope has positively created a Bishop of Ross, and that, some twenty or thirty years ago, he created the see of Galway." Now, if the House thought it would give completeness to the Bill to go beyond the Rescript, which had been the real cause of the offence, then they would do right in supporting the Amendment, and in saying that they ought to have some provision more perfect to meet all those minor bulls. But if they did, it could not be upon the principle which the hon. and learned Gentleman advocated. He did not understand him to go the length of saying, with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gladstone), that by directing their attention to a single rescript they would thereby give validity to other rescripts not specifically mentioned in the Bill; but his hon. and learned Friend said, that the measure would create embarrassment in the minds of the Judges in Ireland, for when by Act of Parliament one particular rescript was declared void, it was supposed the Judges would naturally enough conclude that all other rescripts were in a different position. The answer to this was, that when a Judge had to decide on the validity of a will, or any other instrument, he did not experience much embarrassment in coming to a decision on discovering that some other will or instrument of a like nature had been previously declared to be illegal and void. That would be precisely the effect of the declaration of this Bill with regard to any of those minor bulls and rescripts to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred.
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But what was the hon. and learned Gentleman's second bulwark? He proposed to introduce a clause which would impose the penalty of 100 l. on any person who should procure from the Sec of Rome, or publish or put in use any such Bull or Rescript. Now his hon. and learned Friend perfectly well knew that all that was illegal, as the law now stood; and that the Act of the 2nd of Elizabeth made the parties so acting guilty of a misdemeanour. His hon. and learned Friend also knew that so lately as the year 1846, the Legislature refused to repeal that Act. The Act of Elizabeth made it penal to "put in effect" the authority or jurisdiction of the Pope; and the publishing of a Bull was certainly putting such authority into effect. The House, therefore, would now have to consider what additional effect would be given to the law by imposing a penalty of 100 l. beyond the punishment of fine and imprisonment which the law already imposed. The last guarantee which his hon. and learned Friend proposed was, that whereas by the present Bill the Attorney General could alone prosecute, he would give a power to any other party to prosecute with the consent of the Attorney General. He (the Solicitor General) did not see any very enormous advantage in this proposition; but if there were any additional security to be derived from it, why, then, let it be adopted. Now why had he said all this? ["Hear, hear!"] He was very glad to hear that cheer, because it showed him that the Gentlemen on the Opposition side of the House did not understand exactly why he had made those observations on his hon. and learned Friend's Amendments. He deemed it to be a matter of serious consideration, if, by the adoption of these Amendments they were not attaining any great additional security, or were not setting up any now bulwark, that they should calmly and deliberately ask themselves what it was that they were really doing. In his opinion they were destroying the whole moral effect of the manner in which this Bill had hitherto been carried through the House. The real object of the Bill was to make an effective declaration by the British Legislature, which should go forth not only to this country but to foreign countries—aye, and which should reach even the Pope himself, of the sense entertained by this great country of one particular act of aggression. That was the first object of this measure. The second object was to make more clear

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and distinct the provisions of the Act of 1829, and to show that those provisions were not to be trifled with. The first object was attained in a most effective manner, when the House divided with somewhere about 430 or 440 Members in favour of the Bill, and some 50 or 60 Members against it. They were then an united body, making a united declaration; and the question they now had to consider was, whether such immense advantages would be gained by the adoption of these Amendment as to make it worth while to sacrifice that unanimity with which they had hitherto proceeded? Was it worth while telling the country, and telling Europe, that instead of being a united body in this one pursuit—that of affirming and maintaining the authority of the Crown—they were turning aside to points and subdivisions, and questions of so petty a nature, that scarcely any real and solid advantage could be obtained from them? He put it, therefore, again to the House, whether it was worth while for such purposes to adopt those partial Amendments, which could not in any way improve the spirit and effectiveness of the Bill, but which still were such as to create a division of opinion and to destroy that unanimity which had hitherto characterised their proceedings.
Question put, "That the word proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill."
The House divided:—Ayes 109; Noes 165: Majority 56.

List of the AYES.

Adair, R. A. S.

Dashwood, Sir G. H.

Aglionby, H. A.

Dawes, E.

Alcock, T.

Dawson, hon. T. V.

Anstey, T. C.

Duncan, Visct.

Armstrong, Sir A.

Duncan, G.

Baines, rt. hon. M. T.

Dundas, Adm.

Baring, rt. hon. Sir F.T.

Dundas, rt. hon. Sir D.

Bass, M. T.

Elliot, hon. J. E.

Bell, J.

Fergus, J.

Berkeley, Adm.

Ferguson, Col.

Bernal, R.

FitzPatrick, rt. hon. J.

Bethell, R.

Foley, J. H. H.

Birch, Sir T. B.

Forster, M.

Blewitt, R. J.

Fortescue, C.

Brocklehurst, J.

Freestun, Col.

Brockman, E. D.

French, F.

Brotherton, J.

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Brown, W.

Granger, T. C.

Chaplin, W. J.

Grenfell, C. P.

Clay, J.

Grey, R. W.

Clay, Sir W.

Hanmer, Sir J.

Cockburn, Sir A. J. E.

Hardcastle, J. A.

Collins, W.

Harris, R.

Cowper, hon. W. F.

Hastie, A.

Craig, Sir W. G.

Hatchell, rt. hon. J.

Crawford, R. W.

Hawes, B.

Crowder, R. B.

Headlam, T. E.

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Heneage, G. H. W.

Russell, F. C. H.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Scrope, G. P.

Hollond, R.

Seymour, Lord

Humphery, Ald.

Shafto, R. D.

Hutt, W.

Sheridan, R. B.

Jackson, W.

Slaney, R. A.

Kershaw, J.

Smith, rt. hon. R. V.

Labouchcre, rt. hon. H.

Smith, J. A.

Lewis, G. C.

Somerville, rt. hn. Sir W.

Mackinnon, W. A.

Spearman, H. J.

M'Gregor, J.

Stanton, W. H.

M'Taggart, Sir J.

Tancred, H. W.

Mahon, The O'Gorman

Thicknesse, R. A.

Matheson, Col.

Thompson, Col.

Mostyn, hon. E. M. L.

Verney, Sir H.

Mulgrave, Earl of

Villiers, hon. C.

Murphy, F. S.

Wakley, T.

O'Connell, M. J.

Watkins, Col. L.

Ord, W.

Wawn, J. T.

Owen, Sir J.

Wegg-Prosser, F. R.

Paget, Lord C.

Willcox, B. M.

Palmerston, Visct.

Williams, W.

Parker, J.

Wilson, J.

Pilkington, J.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Rawdon, Col.

Wood, Sir W. P.

Rice, E. R.

Wyvill, M.

Rich, H.

TELLERS.

Romilly, Sir J.

Hayter, W. G.

Russell, Lord J.

Hill, Lord M.

List of the NOES.

Arbuthnott, hon. H.

Dod, J.W.

Archdall, Capt. M.

Dodd, G.

Arkwright, G.

Douro, Marq. of

Ballie, H. J.

Drummond, H.

Baird, J.

Duckworth, Sir J. T. B.

Baldock, E. H.

Duncombe, hon. A.

Baldwin, C. B.

Duncombe, hon. O.

Bankes, G.

Duncuft, J.

Barrow, W. H.

Dundas, G.

Bateson, T.

Du Pre, C. G.

Bennet, P.

Edwards, H.

Bentinck, Lord H.

Egerton, W. T.

Bernard, Visct.

Evans, W.

Blakemore, R.

Evelyn, W. J.

Blandford, Marq. of

Farnham, E. B.

Boldero, H. G.

Farrer, J.

Booker, T. W.

Fitzroy, hon. H.

Bowles, Adm.

Floyer, J.

Boyd, J.

Forbes, W.

Brisco, M.

Fox, S. W. L.

Broadley, H.

Freshfield, J. W.

Broadwood, H.

Fuller, A. E.

Brooke, Lord

Galway, Visct.

Brooke, Sir A. B.

Gilpin, Col.

Bunbury, W. M.

Gooch, E. S.

Burghley, Lord

Gordon, Adm.

Buxton, Sir E. N.

Granby, Marq. of

Cabbell, B. B.

Greenall, G.

Campbell, Sir A. I.

Grogan, E.

Chichester, Lord J. L.

Gwyn, H.

Child, S.

Hale, R. B.

Christopher, R. A.

Halford, Sir H.

Christy, S.

Hall, Sir B.

Clive, H. B.

Hall, Col.

Cobbold, J.C.

Hallewell, E. G.

Codrington, Sir W.

Halsey, T. P.

Compton, H. C.

Hamilton, G. A.

Corry, rt. hon. H. L.

Hamilton, J. H.

Cotton, hon. W. H. S.

Hamilton, Lord C.

Cubitt, W.

Harcourt, G. G.

Davies, D. A. S.

Harris, hon. Capt

Disraeli, B.

Heald, J.

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Henley, J. W.

Palmer, R.

Herries, rt. hon. J. C.

Plumptre, J. P.

Hildyard, R. C.

Prime, R.

Hildyard, T. B. T.

Pugh, D.

Hodgson, W.N.

Reid, Col.

Hornby, J.

Repton, G. W. J.

Hotham, Lord

Richards, R.

Hudson, G.

Rushout, Capt.

Hughes, W. B.

Sandars, G.

Inglis, Sir R. H.

Scott, hon. F.

Jermyn, Earl

Seaham, Visct.

Jolliffe. Sir W. G. H.

Sibthorp, Col.

Jones, Capt.

Smyth, J. G.

Knightley, Sir C.

Smollett, A.

Knox, hon. W. S.

Spooner, R.

Lacy, H. C.

Stafford, A.

Legh, G. C.

Stanford, J. F.

Lennox, Lord A, G.

Stanley, hon. E.H.

Lennox, Lord H. G.

Stephenson, R.

Lindsay, hon. Col.

Stuart, H.

Lockhart, W.

Stuart, J.

Long, W.

Taylor, T. E.

Lopes, Sir R.

Thesiger, Sir F.

Lowther, H.

Thornhill, G.

Lygon, hon. Gen.

Tollemache, J.

Mackie, J.

Tyler, Sir G.

Macnaghten, Sir E.

Tyrell, Sir J. T.

Manners, Lord C. S.

Vivian, J. E.

March, Earl of

Vyse, R. H. R. H.

Maunsell, T. P.

Walpole, S. H.

Meux, Sir H.

Walsh, Sir J. B.

Moody, C. A.

Welby, G. E.

Morgan, O.

Whiteside, J.

Morris, D.

Wigram, L. T.

Mullings, J. R.

Willoughby, Sir H.

Napier, J.

Wodehouse, E.

Neeld, J.

Wynn, H. W. W.

Newdegate, C.N.

Wynn, Sir W. W.

Ossulston, Lord

Yorke, hon. E. T.

Packe, C. W.

TELLERS.

Paget, Lord G.

Beresford, W.

Pakington, Sir J.

Mackenzie, W. F.

Sir FREDERIC THESIGERthen proposed, in Clause 2, page 2, line 25, after the word "Act," to insert these words:—
"Any person shall obtain or cause to be procured from the Bishop or See of Rome, or shall publish or put in use within any part of the United Kingdom, any such Bull, Brief, Rescript, or Letters Apostolical, or any other instrument or writing, for the purpose of constituting such Archbishops or Bishops of such pretended Provinces, Sees, or Dioceses within the United Kingdom, or if."
And also another Amendment, in Clause 2, page 2, line 39, after the word 'thereof,' to add the words—
"Or by action of debt at the suit of any person in one of Her Majesty's superior courts of law, with the consent of Her Majesty's Attorney General in England and Ireland, or Her Majesty's Advocate in Scotland, as the case may be."
MR. M. J. O'CONNELLwished to know whether the noble Lord intended to ask the House to divide on this Amendment? He did not care much for the
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divisions that had taken place; but he thought great danger would result if this Amendment were allowed to be carried.
LORD JOHN RUSSELLsaid, he would not take a division now on this and the other Amendment; but on the third reading of the Bill he should take a division on them.
SIR JAMES GRAHAMsaid, that as he understood the noble Lord, the Government did not intend to offer any further opposition at present to the Amendments which had boon moved by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Abingdon. They now came to the conclusion of those Amendments, and the Bill had assumed the altered shape which those Amendments gave it. Under these circumstances, which were somewhat peculiar, he wished to call the attention of the House to the fact that the Bill now consisted of a preamble of more than usual length, and only there clauses. The preamble had, as the House was aware, been materially altered, and the two principal clauses had also been altered in a manner against which the Government had strongly protested, declaring that the changes had, in their opinion, materially deteriorated the quality of the measure. [Cries of "No!"] As he understood the Bill, it affected at least one-third of Her Majesty's subjects; and he thought that, considering the extensive changes that had been made in the Bill, against the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, who had yet avowed their intention to adhere to the measure, it was most desirable that the Bill, in its altered form, should be reprinted, and that the House should have a reasonable time before the third reading to consider the Bill in its altered form. He wished to ask the noble Lord, therefore, whether he had any objections to the Bill being reprinted, and on what day he meant to take the third reading?
LORD JOHN RUSSELLreplied, that he had no objection to the Bill being reprinted in its altered form, and that he proposed taking the third reading on Friday next, if that would suit his right hon. Friend.
SIR JAMES GRAHAMwould not object to Friday next, but he thought that sufficient time should be given to allow the Bill to be sent to Ireland in its altered form, that the people of that country might have an opportunity of seeing it.
Amendments made. Bill to be read 3° on Friday next, and to be printed.

COURT OF CHANCERY.
Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Motion [27th May],
"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that She will be graciously pleased to add to the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the practice and proceedings in the High Court of Chancery, two or more persons not of the profession of the Law, but such as to Her Majesty may seem qualified as men of business to assist in and make more effectual the labours of the Commissioners; and also praying that Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to cause Instructions to be given to the said Commissioners, to direct their immediate attention to the course of business before the Masters in Ordinary of the said Court, so as to report as speedily as may be their opinion as to the proper steps for regulating the business in those offices, in such manner as to diminish the delay and expense to the suitors."
Question again proposed: Debate resumed.
The SOLICITOR GENERALregretted he was not present when the hon. and learned Member for Newark brought forward the subject. The Motion, he thought, pointed to two distinct matters: one, that the Commission on which he had the honour to serve should be augmented by two Members not belonging to the profession; and the other, that the Commission should be directed to attend to the proceedings in the Masters' Offices, with a view to make an immediate report on the subject. He should shortly state why he conceived the Motion would frustrate, instead of promote, the object which his hon. and learned Friend had doubtless in view, viz., to endeavour as speedily and as effectively as possible to reform the Court of Chancery. A Commission, as the House was aware, had been appointed to inquire into various measures which might load to that reform. Upon that Commission there were now serving seven Commissioners who were all members of the Bar at the time of their appointment, but two of whom had since been promoted to the Bench, viz., the Master of the Rolls and Vice-Chancellor Turner. Now he was quite certain his hon. and learned Friend would not think that the Commission had in say way suffered by the promotion of those learned gentlemen to the offices they so ably filled, seeing that the Commission still retained their valuable services with the additional weight of their judicial capacity. With reference to the proposal to add two Commissioners to the present number, he begged to say, that all experience in matters of this description, whether as respected
1360
Committees or Commissions, showed that the present number of Commissioners was quite sufficient for the purpose of effectual working, and that a more numerous Commission would be less likely to come to a speedy result, because it would be found extremely difficult to get them to meet together and work continuously at the business before them. There was not one of the Members at present on the Commission, who was not earnestly and heartily desirous of Chancery Reform. With respect to the proposal to have two or more members not of the legal profession added to the Commission, he had no doubt that there were many non-professional men perfectly capable of giving the Commission valuable information; but that, after all, when that information came to be arranged and digested, that duty would require to be done by those members who did belong to the profession. He saw no advantage, therefore, that was to be gained from having these non-professional persons on the Commission, seeing that the information to be derived from them could easily be obtained without their being members of the Commission, viz., by their offering their views in evidence before the Commission. With regard to the second part of his hon. and learned Friend's Motion, viz., with reference to the course of business before the Masters, he begged to tell him that the last two meetings of the Commission had been wholly occupied in examining evidence upon that matter; that the Commission was at this moment engaged in considering the subject; and that though he could not promise him an immediate report, he could promise that before Parliament met again the Commission would report not only upon the business of the Master's Office, but upon the whole subject which had been referred to them.
MR. ELLICEsaid, that there had been various inquiries into the abuses of the Court of Chancery; but hitherto, at all events, the unlearned public had derived no advantage from them. He remembered perfectly well that when two Vice-Chancellors were appointed some years ago, it was said that those appointments would produce an efficient remedy to the grievances complained of; but to this it was answered that the appointment of two Vice-Chancellors could in no respect diminish the evils arising from the mass of business in the Master's office; and from that time to the present not one step had been taken to remedy that grievance.

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He wished now to address himself to the noble Lord at the head of the Government. He did not think that the noble Lord was aware of the extreme grievance of the case. He (Mr. Ellice) had acted with his noble Friend ever since the accesion of his party to office. He had fought under the noble Lord with some zeal in effecting various reforms for the good of the country; but certainly it was a lamentable fact that hitherto they had left the abuses of the Court of Chancery almost untouched. He did not mean to cast the slightest imputation or reflection cither upon the masters, than whom more learned and energetic men did not exist, nor the counsel or the solicitors employed in Chancery cases; but the fact was, the mass of business, the complication of accounts, and the system altogether, was of such a description, that no human labour or learning which the profession could apply to it would be of the least avail—the whole system was such an abomination, that neither the able masters, the learned counsel, nor the acute and intelligent solicitors, were able to give the least relief to the suitors engaged in the court. Some instances of an appalling character had been stated in former discussions of the misery and ruin which had fallen upon persons who had entered that den from which no traveller returned; and, among other things, he had heard it stated that no constested case of a partnership account had ever been known to go into the Master's Office, and come out settled with a report. ["No, no!"] Well, he believed that such cases were, at all events, exceedingly rare. He asked whether it was fit and decent that such a state of things should exist at this time of day in the greatest commercial country in the world? It was absolutely necessary, also, that some means should be found to dispose of the accumulated arrears of business in the Court of Chancery. The appointment of additional Judges would be of no avail if some means were not found to clear off the vast amount of business before the taxing masters. He was told that when judgment was delivered, the Registrar's office was in such a condition that months elapsed before the minutes of the judgment were given. The noble Lord would recollect that during the existence of the Grey Administration, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon (Sir J. Graham), and himself (Mr. Ellice) sat on a Committee of Inquiry into the state and condition of the Court of Exchequer; that
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they found the tally-sticks which wore in use in ancient times for keeping accounts still used for that purpose in the Court of Exchequer; that the Committee were the means of reforming the whole of that system, and at the same time effecting some economy for the benefit of the public. In like manner he conceived that some good might be done in the present case by the addition of some non-professional gentlemen. He did not believe that if they left this reform to the lawyers, they would ever see anything done. That was his conviction; and if next Session he found that he was wrong, he should rejoice in the discovery. They did not need the assistance of great lawyers in a reform in respect to the accounts. The matter was of a plain mechanical nature, and could be settled without the intervention of legal assistance. Lot his noble Friend (Lord John Russell) refer to what had been done in regard to public accounts in other directions. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon, to whom he (Mr. Ellice) always looked as an authority on these points, would remember the reform which was effected in the accounts of the Navy, chiefly by the instrumentality of the right hon. Gentleman himself. A similar reform had taken place in the accounts of the Army; and, in fact, in all departments of administration something had been done to get rid of the old vicious system. As yet, however, no daylight had been permitted to penetrate into this den of darkness—the Court of Chancery. He looked, not to the lawyers, but to his noble Friend, and to the noble and learned Lord who now held the Great Seal, to set themselves to this work, and to get rid of that which was really a disgrace to the ago in which we lived. He had heard it whispered out of doors that a great obstacle to these reforms was found in the Lord Chancellor; but he was satisfied that this was a libel on that distinguished lawyer. That noble and learned Lord felt that his character depended on his mastering his subject; and he (Mr. Ellice) fully relied on the noble Lord at the head of the Government, acting under the advice of the Lord Chancellor, not to permit the question to be any longer trifled with.
The MASTER OF THE ROLLSsaid, he had not been unwilling to do what he could towards carrying out such reforms as might be useful in the administration of justice in all its various departments. He admitted that the grievances and com-

1363
plaints which might be urged against the administration of justice in the Court of Chancery were not less strong than had been stated by the right hon. Gentleman. Having been his counsel in some heavy cases, he could state that no man had had greater experience of the evils and abuses which existed. One of those abuses was the mode and system of taking accounts—a system, however, which was not one that could be remedied by employing accountants or a barrister for the purpose. In an Act which passed last Session relative to the Court of Chancery in Ireland, there was a clause relative to accounts which might have the effect of remedying the evil complained of. That evil was, that if, in a partnership suit for example, partners contested a balance on the books, the person who thought that a balance was due from him to the other, asked the partner to whom the balance would be due to prove the first item in his books. These books extended, perhaps, over 1,000 items, and were spread over several years, and if every item were to be proved, and every voucher furnished, the life of man would not be competent to take such an account; and his right hon. Friend was perfectly accurate, notwithstanding that the hon. Member for Newark shook his head, when he said that a contested partnership account never, or very rarely, came out of the Master's Office. He (the Master of the Rolls) had introduced a clause into the Act of last Session, relative to the Irish Court of Chancery, which enacted, that whenever a partnership account was taken, the books of the partnership should be taken as true, and that the man who objected to an item should disprove the items to which he objected. He believed that this was a useful change with regard to consignee and partnership accounts. He was desirous to reform the Court of Chancery as much as possible. Very early in life he had a knowledge of that Court, but at that time the complaints were of the great amount of arrears in consequence of the difficulty of getting decisions. Now that abuse had been remedied, and at this moment, although there were arrears of appeals arising from unavoidable circumstances, of which the illness of the late Lord Cottenham was one, yet, with respect to original cases, there were no great arrears of business, although there was a great amount of it, and the business heard was not that which was many months in arrear. On this subject it was desirable
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to correct some mistakes which were prevalent relative to the business of the Court of Chancery. He had observed a remarkably able article in a very able newspaper relating to a cause that came before himself, in which it was observed that a Bill had been filed in 1815, and that a motion to pay money into Court upon it was made in 1851. Now, that case was nothing more than one in which the Court of Chancery was acting as trustee. A person died in 1815, leaving property to his widow for her life, and, after her death, to other parties. She lived till 1849, and upon her death a question arose which had not arisen before, and thereupon application was made to the Court of Chancery, as trustee, and as speedy a decision as could be was come to upon that question, which had arisen only two years before, although the bill, it was true, had been filed in 1815. There was a large class of cases in which the Court of Chancery acted as trustee, and where, from the nature of the trust, questions were from time to time arising, from the devolution of interests, which created fresh questions to be decided, while the public had a notion that this was only one cause, like the running down of a ship, the question whether a carriage was on the right side of the road, or a common action to recover money. The Court of Chancery did not require a fresh suit for every fresh question that arose in this suit. It was necessary for the House to understand this, in order that they might not be misled by the mere statement of dates in these matters. And he believed that it would be one of the most useful reforms in the Court of Chancery that would enable the Court, without the expense of a suit, to act as trustee for marriage settlements, in wills, and in the administration of estates, by a simple application to the Court, and without the necessity for a suit at all. This was one large class of suits. Another was the winding-up cases. He was addressing some hon. Members who were engaged commercially in business, and he would suppose that any one of them intended to put an end to his business, to wind it up, to get in his debts, and then to ascertain the surplus of which he was possessed. He would ask such an hon. Member to say within what time he reasonably believed he could wind up his business. Well, but take the case of that Gentleman dying before he had finished winding up his affairs, and that questions continued to arise

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thereupon. It was not in these cases that the evil of the delay was in the Court of Chancery—the delay was a necessary evil in the nature of things, which prevented the possibility of realising all the proceeds of the estate, and dividing the money with the same despatch as if it were a question whether a man were on the right side of the road, or the running down of a ship. The case which he was supposing was in fact not one suit, but a great number of suits, which were necessary to be heard before the Court could ascertain the amount of the estate, and how it ought to be divided. At the same time he wished it to be understood that nothing was further from his desire than to defend the real abuses of the Court of Chancery. He earnestly desired to remove them, and he was quite sure that all his friends who were joined with him in the Commission, felt the same desire. The number of the Commission was seven, and they had formed themselves into sub-committees of two, who took different departments, framing various suggestions for the purpose of considering various branches of the subject, and bringing these suggestions at length under the notice of the Commission at large. These various suggestions were afterwards considered and united together. It was not possible to take up the question at once and altogether; but the Commission were desirous to obtain such suggestions as they were able upon one branch, and to make a report on that, and afterwards to take another branch, and so on. The mode of taking evidence in the Court of Chancery, which he admitted was a great abuse, had occupied the attention of the Commissioners. They had drawn up suggestions of questions, which had been printed and sent to various practitioners, not only barristers, but officers, Registrars, Masters, and Judges, who were requested to give them information. The Commissioners had the advantage of the great experience of Sir E. Sugden, Sir J. Knight Bruce, Lord Cranworth, and others, who had shown the greatest possible desire to assist them. The Commissioners were now on the eve of making a report on the mode of taking evidence in the Court of Chancery. They wore also taking evidence on the mode of carrying on business in the Masters' Offices; and upon this subject they were proceeding in like manner, by means of suggestions and collecting information. His hon. and learned Friend (Mr. J. Stuart)
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suggested that two new members (Sir J. Graham and Mr. Henley) should be added to the Commission. Both those hon. Members were qualified to render valuable assistance in any ordinary case; but in these meetings of the sub-committees to take evidence, there were a great number of technicalities which the members of the Commission were intimately acquainted with, and which it was not possible for any lay member to be acquainted with, and it would necessarily take him a considerable time to understand the nature of the question, and the character of the reform that was necessary to be made in it. It was not possible for the Commissioners to attend the whole of the day, but they had endeavoured, as far as was possible, to meet on Tuesdays, Thursday, and Saturdays, from four to six o'clock. Now, would it be possible for lay Members of that House constantly to attend on all the occasions of those meetings? If it would, he should be glad to have their assistance; but he had considerable doubts whether, in the present state of the business, their presence would be of the same advantage to the Commission as his hon. and learned Friend supposed. When the Commission was moved for, he strongly pressed the hon. and learned Member for Newark (Mr. J. Stuart) to be a member of it, but the hon. and learned Gentleman declined. Since that time the Commissioners had made a report, which he believed to be valuable and useful, and stops had been taken for preparing a Bill to carry the suggestions to which he had adverted into effect, though he did not know that it could be brought into Parliament during the present Session. However, in respect to these peculiarly technical matters, which it was necessary to deal with in the Commission, his belief was that, notwithstanding the great intelligence of the hon. Gentlemen who had been alluded to, their presence would not be found beneficial to advance the business of the Commission, at least in the present stage; but when matters had further progressed, then he believed some further advantages might be produced by their being added to the Commission. The right hon. Member for Coventry (Mr. Ellice) had said that the evils of the Court of Chancery were so great, that when a person wanted a bill taxed, he was obliged to wait three or four months, and that six or seven weeks elapsed before he could get an order drawn up in the Registrar's office. He believed that to be true; but if the noble Lord

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at the head of the Government came down to the House and asked for the appointment of two new taxing masters, who, he (the Master of the Rolls) believed, to be fully wanted, then a complaint would be made of the creation of additional officers with additional salaries, and it would be said that nothing was being done but increasing patronage. In the Court of Chancery there was a constant struggle to get through the business, which was not adequately performed, in consequence of the terror that that House would be opposed to the grant of additional aid. He thought it desirable to make these statements, being convinced that it was of the greatest possible importance to take up this question seriously and earnestly. He believed that to be the intention of the Government, and the desire of the Commission; and though he was sure that the House would insist on having full information and inquiry on the subject, he thought that the best line which the House could pursue would be to wait a little time before interfering with the proceedings of the Commission, or adding new members to it, to see what course the Commission would adopt. He doubted whether it would be possible to make a report, to be acted on during the present Session; but he believed there would be ready, before the meeting of next Session, a body of information and digested suggestions, which would enable his noble Friend at the head of the Government to bring forward a measure, he would not say for a perfect reform of the Court of Chancery, but for the reform of a great number of the existing evils. A great number of the abuses had been removed; but no one got praise for that, and all that was heard was complaint from those who suffered from the evils which still existed.
MR. CHRISTOPHERthought, after the speech they had just heard from the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had addressed the House, there could be no more cogent reasons advanced for the proceeding recommended by his hon. and learned Friend near him. As to the delays of the Court of Chancery, there could be no doubt on the mind of any one. He had been dragged into that Court against his will on one occasion, and had been kept there six years without any result. After every effort to obtain a hearing at the end of that period, he had obtained one which lasted ten minutes, and he had been told by the Master of the Rolls that the parties had no business to take him into that
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Court. It was subsequently nine years before he succeeded in getting the suit terminated. He agreed with the right hon. Member for Coventry, that unless they got rid of the whole system from the beginning, there was no use in appointing new Judges, new Masters, or new officers, and that they should strike at the root of the evil, if they intended to accomplish any real practical good.
MR. BETHELLsaid, he must express his regret that so much time had been lost in this discussion, inasmuch as there stood in the Orders of the Day for discussion, a Bill which, he believed, would go far to remedy many of the evils which were now complained of. He sincerely concurred in that part of the appeal of the hon. Member for Coventry, in trusting that the noble Lord at the head of the Government would not allow the Session to pass without carrying into effect some of the recommendations of the Crown with respect to the reform of the Court of Chancery. The name of the noble Lord had been associated with many great reforms in the institutions of the country; and he hoped that it would have the additional honour of being connected with the reform of our judicial system. The House must not, however, give way to idle clamour or to unfounded complaints. They must not forget that the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery had arisen from the narrow and repudiating principles of the courts of common law—courts which had refused to meet the difficulties arising from an extended system of jurisprudence, and which refused to extend their rules so as to meet the enlarged relations and growing requirements of society. The jurisdiction by way of interdict now exercised by the Court of Chancery—namely, by injunction, had always been repudiated by the Courts of Common Law. All these important jurisdictions the Courts of Law had thrown upon the Courts of Chancery; yet while this was the case, the Court of Chancery had been stinted and starved, and four or five Judges were required to perform duties which it would require thirty more properly to perform. On one side of Westminster Hall there were these four or five Judges administering an enormous amount of property; and on the other side of Westminster Hall there were fifteen Judges, whose duties were, in comparison, light. He would therefore ask, was not Parliament responsible for a great portion of these evils, and for a continuance of those evils of which so much complaint had been

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made? Lately, indeed, they increased the number of Judges; but in a spirit of miserable economy they not only refused to increase, but actually diminished the number of the Masters. The railway mania, and the immense quantity of litigation consequent upon it, had very much tended to increase the business of the Court of Chancery. Bankruptcy and insolvency, to the extent of many millions, had ensued from over-speculation. None of the business arising out of it was disposed of by the Courts of Common Law; but all was referred to the Court of Chancery. If the Legislature wished to apply a remedy, and facilitate Chancery proceedings, let them put their shoulder to the wheel, and give additional assistance in those departments which required it. The appointment of the two additional Judges (the Vice-Chancellors) had very much increased the labour of the Masters. With regard to the Commission, it had been one of its most earnest objects to suggest some means of facilitating business in the Masters' Offices, and they had a Bill prepared, which he expected would shortly be laid upon the table of the House, which they believed would remedy the evil. The difficulties complained of in the Masters' Offices arose from the centralising system of taking the accounts, and these accounts were necessarily taken through the medium of agents, he would illustrate that proposition by a familiar case. If half a dozen partners in a mercantile house in Manchester or Nottingham quarrelled among themselves, the partnership was dissolved, and their accounts were transferred to the Court of Chancery. The services of the parties themselves and of their solicitors were dispensed with, and agents were appointed, whose interest it was to retard the proceedings as much as possible. Thus, in taking the accounts, an agent was in the habit of saying—" Oh, I am not instructed. I have not got such and such a paper or document—I must send down to the country for further information;" or some other excuse of the kind, with the view of creating delay. In his opinion, the best way to administer justice in this respect would be to appoint some one in the same town, before whom the books and accounts might be laid, and who could be empowered to arbitrate between the parties, and to settle the accounts without resorting to the office in London. But that was not the course which was followed: every thing must be done in London. The solicitors
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themselves in the cause were superseded, and they were obliged to employ agents who had loss anxiety and less concern to get through the business than the proper solicitors of the parties. The agents made endless excuses for delays, because they wished to delay. They habitually said to the Master they were not instructed, or it would be necessary to examine some person in the country. The Master was armed with no authority to compel the attendance of parties; and the excuses for delay were much augmented by the matter being removed from the place where all the parties themselves and all their solicitors were residing. The mode in which the Commissioners proposed to remedy the evil complained of in connexion with the Masters' Offices, was to substitute the District Commissioners in Bankruptcy, or the Judges of the County Courts, and to throw upon them a considerable portion of the duties now performed by the Masters. It would be very advantageous to have a third additional Judge appointed, who should sit from day to day in chambers, and dispose continuously of business which could not so expeditiously be despatched elsewhere. Contrast the duties of the Court of Equity with those of the Courts of Common Law, and you would at once see the necessity of making the former more equal to the business which came before them. With regard to the persons engaged in the Court of Chancery, he never met any one, be he Judge, Master, or Advocate, who was not active, zealous, willing and desirous to do all in his power to facilitate the proceedings of the court; and if instead of turning out the Commission for a little sport in that House, the hon. Member for Newark had lent the Commission his assistance, he would have done more to promote the object he professed to have in view. The Commissioners had received a great deal of valuable assistance from gentlemen of the Equity Bar, but none from the hon. and learned Member for Newark. With reference to the two Gentlemen whom it was proposed to place on the Commission, there could be not the slightest doubt of the extent of their information and of their great practical sense and judgment. But were they to join the Commission now, it would be some time before they could even learn the vocabulary in use by the professional persons to be constituted the Commission, and by which alone they could intercommunicate their views upon the technical subjects before them. He thought

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it better that the Commission should proceed as it was; but he trusted the House would hereafter join, on the occasion of considering the whole subject of the jurisdiction of the country.
MR. HENLEYsaid, that the speeches of the three hon. Gentlemen who were Members of the Commission under consideration rendered it perfectly clear that from them the country was to expect no practical reform of the Court of Chancery and its abominations. The speech of the Master of the Rolls—a most unexpected one, certainly, from him—was little more than an apology for the present system of that Court; while as to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Aylesbury, it was little short of a proposition that the Court of Chancery was a perfect thing; at any rate, he had not indicated in the slightest degree any opinion which could lead the House to suppose that he saw any evils or difficulties in the system of the Master's Offices, against which so much complaint was made; and though the Master of the Rolls had admitted that there was no chance of a disputed partership account ever coming out of the Master's Office, not a word indicated that the system of taking accounts in the Master's Office—a system which, in the eyes of all who knew anything about it, as victims or as observers, was an utter monstrosity, required, in the hon. and learned Gentleman's opinion, the smallest modification. Inquiry! Why, the flagrancy of the whole iniquity was as clear to the public as the sun at noonday. There had been plenty of inquiry. What the public wanted now, and what the public would have, was action—no tinkering up of the rotten system, but a thorough clearance of the rottenness. As to the accounts, little more was needed than that the practice respecting them should be assimilated to that of the Court of Bankruptcy. He called upon the Government to give their most serious and most unflinching consideration to this vital subject.
MR. J. EVANScould hardly believe that the observations he had just heard emanating from the Master of the Rolls were uttered by the same person who, as Attorney General, had so admirably conducted the reform of the Court of Chancery in Ireland. As to the hon. and learned Member for Aylesbury, he obviously considered the Court of Chancery to be quite a specimen of perfectibility all but attained; he had warned the House against
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being led away by extravagant clamour and unfounded complaints, and all the hon. and learned Gentleman had got to suggest on the subject was that there should be a further Equity Judge appointed, but not a word as to the Master's Office, except that perhaps it might be as well to make a slight modification of the arrangements in one or two minor particulars. "The railway business has done it all," cried the hon. and learned Member, in reply to the complaints of the ruinous delay of business in the Masters' Offices. Why, there was precisely the same complaint before a railway was over heard of. The same complaint would continue if the last scrip of railway business was removed from, the Masters' Offices. Rely upon it that until the Augean stable in Southampton-buildings was cleansed, no good could be done though you appointed half-a-dozen additional Vice-Chancellors. He sincerely hoped the noble Lord would adopt the suggestions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, and would himself superintend this great reform. He had been for upwards of thirty years in practice, but he had never seen the Courts of Common Law so devoid of business as they were at present. In fact, all the business had been transferred to the County Courts in consequence of the expense of the superior Courts. In his opinion, the whole system of the law ought to undergo a full investigation, and the reform should not be bit by bit, but by a comprehensive measure.
SIR JAMES GRAHAMwould tell the House frankly that he was weary of inquiry; he thought they had inquired too much, and done too little. For two Sessions he had devoted a large portion of his time, with his hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) to an inquiry before a Committee of the House, composed of some of the most distinguished lawyers. There were upon that Committee the right hon. the Master of the Rolls, Sir G. Turner, the hon. Member for Midhurst (Mr. Walpole), and the Solicitor General, and he believed that in their report they were unanimous. They exhausted inquiry upon a very important subject, namely, the payment by fees of the greater part of the officers attached to the Court of Chancery. Incidentally also they inquired into the duties were performed. They presented two reports

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—the evidence and the interrogatories were before the House. He had heard the speech of his right hon. Friend the Master of the Rolls with pleasure, as indicating his adherence still to his desire of reform of that Court in which he now filled so eminent and deserved a station; but his final judgment smacked too much of his Court, for he now said that as far as a Bill on the subject was concerned, it would be advisable not to press such a measure with too much precipitancy. The constant cry was, "Wait a little—more delay; let us pause a little longer." Those were ominous words. The Committee reported two Sessions ago, and yet nothing had been done. He really mourned over it. He could not conceive a more fatal omen with respect to any Bill on this subject. There was another matter, though of minor importance. The Lord Chancellor was appointed on the distinct understanding that he accepted the office subject to any regulation that might be imposed as to his staff. The Committee had reported against his seven Secretaries—one of them, the Secretary of Bankruptcy, was spoken of as holding a sinecure of 1,200 l. per annum. Twice had that office been reported against; but the Lord Chancellor had still seven Secretaries, and the Secretary of Bankrupts continued one of them. The Committee also reported against his two Gentlemen-at-large, who were paid by fees amounting to a sum of 750 l. a year for each; nevertheless the Lord Chancellor has still his two Gentlemen of his Chamber, There were also Chaffwax and Deputy Chaffwax: the Lord Chancellor had still those officers despite the denunciation of the Committee. Those things were indicative how fruitless reports and investigations were if there was not the spirit to act and to reform. There was, somehow or other, and in some quarter or other, such a passive resistance that it overcame the utmost energy to improve; and he would say that the noble Lord and his Administration could not, in public opinion, reap more golden favour than by any act of energy to give effect to the recommendations of authorities so eminent as those to whom he had referred, and before the close of the Session at least to give a sample not only of what was intended, but of what was to be done as to Chancery reform. He certainly was somewhat surprised to hear the hon. and learned Member for Aylesbury's statement.
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He said that already a great reform was contemplated by the Commission, by which, he said, that much of the business now transacted in the Masters' Offices might be transferred to the Judges of the County Courts. Now, the hon. Member for Haverfordwest (Mr. Evans) said that there was little to do in the superior Common Law Courts, the business having been transferred to the County Courts. From that he (Sir J. Graham) augured well. The gentlemen in Westminster Hall were beginning to perceive the necessity of setting their house in order; and from this necessity and the new interest which it created, real and substantial reforms might at last be anticipated. He did not wish to comment on the attendance of the Masters; but one abuse more clearly demonstrable than another, and upon which the Committee were unanimous, was the system of hour-warrants. It ought not to continue another day. Sir Edward Sugden, in Ireland, by his authority under the great seal of Ireland, terminated that abuse several years ago; and yet the people of England were still enduring that which the Lord Chancellor, by his own authority, could put an end to.
The SOLICITOR GENERALsaid, that system had been changed.
SIR JAMES GRAHAM: Changed, indeed! The form has been partially altered; but the evil itself remains unredressed. He could not say he was satisfied with the attendance of the Masters. They did not go to their offices so early as the Judges, and they left them much sooner. Then ail their business was not in the nature of a judicial proceeding; and he conceived that a great part of it might be done as satisfactorily by persons of much lower standing, and receiving much inferior pay. He was sure that if the Government set about reforming these things in earnest, they would, in a short time, to the gratification of the feelings of both Houses of Parliament, and to the immense satisfaction of the public, obtain a great, extensive, and most satisfactory amendment of this administration of justice. It had been asked, why the Bill recommended by the Committee had not been introduced. He believed the reason to he this: they had as Chairman of that Committee a most amiable and intelligent gentleman, who was now an Under Secretary of State; but, unfortunately, his health broke down during the recess. His health was now happily restored, and if he would now in-

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troduce the Bill—and no man was more competent, he believed—it would give great satisfaction; and there was no good ground for supposing that even during the present Session the measure might not he passed into a law. Some such proof was absolutely necessary to demonstrate to the public that Parliament was in earnest in the great task of accomplishing Chancery reform.
LORD JOHN RUSSELLwas ready to admit that there were many reforms that might be made in the Court of Chancery. At the same time, it was no great encouragement to make reforms when they found that the complaints remained exactly the same after the reforms had been carried out as they were before they were devised. The complaint as to length of time in respect of Chancery suits had been in a great degree remedied by the appointment of other Judges in the Court of Chancery; and on more than one occasion in the last six years, when he had asked what was the state of business in the Court of Chancery, he was told the causes sot down at the beginning of term were heard before the end of the term. His late noble Friend (Lord Cottenham) declared in the House of Lords, that it had more than once occurred that there was no appeal to be heard. That was a great change from the time they might recollect, when old and valued friends of his complained with great truth of the want of decisions, and of the great arrears of business. There is now, I believe, owing to accidental causes, a heavy arrear of appeals in the Court of Chancery; but I believe, even in this respect, the Court is in a much better position than it was in fifteen or twenty years ago. Another great complaint was the hour-warrants, and the right hon. Baronet the ber for Ripon said, it was too much that that system should go on, and that to that day nothing had been done. Now, if the right hon. Gentleman had inquired, he might have found that two eminent Judges, whose recent loss they must so much regret—Lord Cottenham and Lord Langdale—met frequently on this subject; that it employed much of their thought, and that, more than a year ago, orders were issued with their authority with respect to hour-warrants, making a great change, and he believed the hour-warrants were now set aside by another system, there being now a list of the causes to be gone through by the Masters. Some hon. Gentleman said, "Why not put an end to
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the whole system? "It was very easy to say that; but he believed there was no other country in which there was a more complicated system of property, or in which there were more complicated relations with regard to property, than existed in this country. Many persons held land under various and ancient titles, and were connected with commercial transactions of a complicated nature, those transactions being carried on in India, or North America, or in various parts of the world, and the questions brought before the Courts of Equity were, consequently, in many cases, of a very complicated and difficult nature: it is, therefore, absolutely necessary that we should inquire and consider before we make any sweeping changes, so that those changes may be in a right direction, and on a solid foundation. When he was asked, "Why do you not resolve all these questions by one single measure?"—he might reply that it would be as easy to explain the whole Newtonian theory, involving very complicated and intricate propositions, in a few words. The real cause was, that the subject-matter does not admit of so simple a course as some are disposed to recommend. The right hon. Member for Coventry, by way of showing how easily a change might be effected, said, "You have reformed your public accounts; you have taken the advice of able and eminent men, and, instead of a vicious and false system of accounts, you have a very good and efficient system of accounts. Why not put the accounts of the Court of Chancery upon the same footing, and test them by the same rule?" Now, he would ask the House to compare these two things. Gentlemen conversant with accounts laid down a system on which the accounts of the War Office, for instance, should be kept, or on which the general accounts of the nation should be kept. That system was followed. The persons who managed the accounts were required to keep them in a certain form; at the end of the year those accounts were in perfect state; and, if they were not kept in the form in which it had been ordered that they should be kept, the errors of the system were corrected; at the beginning of the next year the whole matter was set right, and the machine went on with certain accuracy. But the Court of Chancery had no such power. If that Court had said in the year 1820, to any number of partners, "You shall keep your accounts in a particular form; you must require vouchers for every

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item you pay; and every sale of property you effect, and every lease you take, must be entered according to a certain form which we prescribe;" it was possible that accounts so kept might be very easily an-ravelled. But the fact would be, that these partners had gone on from 1820 to 1850, keeping their accounts according to their own notions and methods, and then when the accounts had become exceedingly complicated, when the parties had got into great difficulties, and were unable to unravel their accounts, they came to the Court of Chancery and asked, "To how much is each partner entitled?" There could, indeed, be nothing more unlike than the case of a public department, where the accounts were kept according to a prescribed form, and the case of the Court of Chancery, which had to decide between parties who had kept their accounts according to their own systems. At the same time, there was no portion of the business of the Court of Chancery which seemed to him so much to require amendment, and which appeared also so obviously capable of amendment, as this matter of complicated accounts. It really was not a question that ought to be decided, as the Master of the Rolls had said it was decided, according to certain rules of evidence, but it was one of those questions that ought to be decided according to the usual method in which men of business managed their accounts. When the Masters in Chancery had decided upon questions of law and of title—matters upon which they could properly decide—he considered that they should then say with regard to matters of account, "Having now laid down the principles of law applicable to this case, appoint men of business to investigate the accounts, and they will treat the subject as men conversant with matters of this kind." He (Lord John Russell) considered that some alteration of the present system in this respect was very much required, and he saw no obstacle that stood in the way of its being adopted. He owned that he thought amendments with regard to other matters might not be so very easily effected. His right hon. Friend (Sir J. Graham) had referred to the question of fees, with respect to which a Bill had been already prepared. He (Lord John Russell) thought, however, it was but right that the Lord Chancellor should have an opportunity of looking into that subject. He had called the attention of the Lord
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Chancellor to this question of fees as soon as he received the seals, and he believed that noble and learned Lord was desirous of establishing such a system as would work well for the country. When it was said that no steps had been taken on this subject, he (Lord John Russell) must remind the House that the Lord Chancellor had already abolished fees to the extent of 20,000 l. a year. He believed, also, that the office which had been alluded to as that of "chaff wax" had been abolished; and those measures were proofs that the noble and learned Lord was not entirely standing still; and when the right hon. Gentleman spoke of the Lord Chancellor's seven secretaries, it must be remembered that the Lord Chancellor was at the head of an important department, and it was necessary that he—like the Secretaries of State—should have a considerable staff of clerks, in order to the due discharge of the business of each department; and it was also necessary that many of the officers of the Lord Chancellor, as, for instance, those connected with the department of lunacy, should be persons of considerable ability and knowledge. The hon. and learned Gentleman who had brought forward the Motion before the House, proposed that two persons not belonging to the profession of the law should be named by the Crown to be added to the Commission; and if the hon. Gentleman considered that such an arrangement would be of any utility, he (Lord John Russell) would have no objection to it. On the contrary, he thought some benefit might result to the public from an arrangement of that kind, though he did not envy the gentlemen who might be appointed their task. It was, perhaps, however, desirable, that some gentlemen not of the profession of the law should get an insight into the details of a system which, without very great attention, it was most difficult to understand. With regard to the Commission itself, when that Commission made a Report, even if it should be made during the recess, the House might be able to proceed upon a matter which two centuries ago had baffled the genius and the sturdy will of Cromwell.
MR. JOHN STUARTwas very glad the noble Lord had acceded to his Motion, and he was happy that, by pressing the matter upon his attention, he had in some way contributed to convince him of the propriety of his object.
Question put, and agreed to.

SEQUESTRATION OF BENEFICES BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
SIR G. GREYobserved that no reasons had been assigned for making what appeared to him to be a very unjust and partial alteration in the law, and he should therefore oppose the Motion, and move as an Amendment that the Bill he read a second time that day six months.
MR. FREWENsaid, that he had stated in a private note to the right hon. Baronet the reasons which had induced him to bring the Bill forward. He had pointed out to the Government the evils of the existing law, and had asked them to bring forward a measure themselves, which they had refused to do. He would not say what he thought of their conduct, but he gave notice that he would for the remainder of the Session divide the House against every Bill brought forward by the Government after twelve o'clock at night.
The House divided; Mr. Frewen was appointed one of the Tellers for the Yeas; but no Member appearing to he a second Teller for the Yeas, Mr. Speaker declared the Noes had it.
Words added; Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to:—Second Reading put off for three months.
The House adjourned at One o'clock till Monday next.