§ SIR DE LACY EVANSsaid, that the question which he had to put was one of such importance, and recommended itself so strongly to the feelings, that he trusted he should be excused if he trespassed for a few moments upon the attention of the House. The chaplains with the army in the East had had a more arduous duty to perform than the chaplains in any other 879 war of the same duration; and, as he had had personal knowledge of the exemplary and admirable manner in which those rev. gentlemen had discharged their important functions, he thought that it was his duty to bring the subject of their meritorious, but ill-requited, services before the House. The army at present consisted of 200,000 men, while there were only eleven chaplains and one chaplain general upon the army list. As four of those chaplains, however, were in garrisons, there were, in point of fact, only seven chaplains with the entire army in the field. There were gentlemen, perhaps, who might think that religious provision for the army was not at all necessary. He hoped there were few such; but, at all events, as the Government had admitted the principle by appointing a certain number of chaplains, it was not necessary for him to dwell upon the point. There were only four garrisons in the United Kingdom to which chaplains were allowed—London, Dublin, Plymouth, and Chatham. He did not suppose that it would be requisite to have chaplains for every detachment of troops; but there were other garrisons besides those four which, in his opinion, certainly ought to have the benefit of the presence of a chaplain. He was aware that, for purposes of economy, it was the habit in some cases for the clergyman of the adjoining parish, in consideration of a guinea or so addition to his income, to perform the duties of chaplain; but it often happened that this clergyman had a large parish of his own to attend to, and that, possibly, he had no qualifications whatever for ministering to military forces and to the peculiar wants of soldiers. One very severe cause of complaint was the extremely small remuneration which army chaplains received. They might servo several years—ten, he believed, at least—without receiving a commission; and when they had received their commissions it was not till after a great length of service that they were entitled to a trifling and altogether inadequate retiring allowance. On the subject of the claims and merits of the army chaplains he might appeal with confidence to his right hon. Friend behind him, who had filled the office of Secretary at War when the war commenced, and who, though he could not have the personal knowledge which he (Sir De L. Evans) possessed upon the subject, had yet a sufficiently adequate knowledge of their merits. Not the smallest public recognition had been, made of the 880 services of those persons, and no despatches had acknowledged their great merits. Under these circumstances, he wished to ask the First Lord of the Treasury what recognition, if any, might be hoped for in respect to the services of the chaplains of the army during the war.
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONI have great pleasure in concurring with my hon. and gallant Friend in the tribute of just eulogium which he has passed upon those Gentlemen who have performed such eminent and distinguished services for the army in the East. The chaplains, whether of the Church of England, whether of the Presbyterian persuasion, or of the Roman Catholic, have vied with each other in the zealous performance of their duty, and the success which has attended their efforts has been attested by the invariable good conduct of the troops. Those Gentlemen spared no pains to carry on their good work, and shrank from no exposure to the dangers of the hospital or of the field, while, at the same time, they displayed to the world the highest example of Christian charity, being the best practical comment on the religion they professed. I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend that neither the Government at large nor my noble Friend Lord Panmure are insensible to the merits of those Gentlemen. Some of them have already received appointments since their services in the East have concluded, and the remainder will, no doubt, be kept in view by my noble Friend for appointments as vacancies may arise. Now, as regards home service, my hon. and gallant Friend has correctly stated that commissioned chaplains are only appointed at garrisons where large bodies of troops are stationed, but, at the same time, Divine service is not neglected where there are smaller detachments, but is performed by the clergymen of the neighbourhood; and I have never had any reason to believe that that system is insufficient to provide for proper spiritual aid to the troops. I can only assure my hon. and gallant Friend that the services of those meritorious gentlemen are not overlooked by the Government, and we shall be glad to take any opportunity that may arise of evincing our high sense of them.
§ MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, he wished to state his entire concurrence in all that had been said with respect to the admirable conduct of the chaplains employed with the army during the war. It would give the House some idea of the 881 dangers to which those gentlemen had been exposed, when he told them that no fewer than nine of them—five being clergymen of the Established Church, and four of the Church of Rome—lost their lives during the brief period of the war, by fatigue and exposure to fever and other epidemic diseases. He rose, however, to throw out a suggestion to Her Majesty's Government. There might be some difficulty in conferring honours in the shape of decorations upon clergymen, but in other services such honours were conferred on military chaplains in the same manner as we conferred decorations on officers employed in the Commissariat. Now, we had had during the war the services of many clergymen in the Crimea, and it could not be said that they had been induced to undertake those services in expectation of any great emolument, as they received only £200 a year with the military allowances which they required to enable them to keep with the army in the field. Now that the war was over, many of those gentlemen, on their return home, would have no resources to fall back on. He apprehended that their services entitled them to public gratitude. Now, the Lord Chancellor had the patronage of no fewer than 800 benefices, and he (Mr. Herbert) was bound to say that no person could more conscientiously inquire into the qualifications of those gentlemen on whom he bestowed benefices than did the distinguished nobleman who now occupied the woolsack; but, at the same time, those benefices were given away, not in reward of public services, but indirectly, as the reward of legal services; but here there was a direct claim on the score of public services, and he did hope that Her Majesty's Government would see that some portion of the Church patronage vested in the Lord Chancellor might be dispensed among those clergymen who had served in the East; and further, that as in the new distribution of the troops on their return from the war, their quarters would be more centralised, Government would find room for the appointment of a larger number of commissioned chaplains.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he wished to say a few words on the proposition for giving the chaplains some mark for their services in the army. He knew one clergyman, a friend, who went out to the army in the Crimea from no hope of advancement, but only from a sense of duty; he was now numbered with those who would 882 reap their reward elsewhere. If Her Majesty's Government gave a mark of recognition to chaplains the families of the dead ought to have the gratification of receiving from the country something in the way of acknowledgment of the services of those who died in the discharge of their duties. He trusted the subject would be pressed on the attention of Her Majesty's Government, and that when doing justice to the meritorious living they would not forget the dead.