§ MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTsaid, he would beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the Government were aware that certain of the clergy of the Established Church in the diocese of Dublin had prohibited Presbyterian and Dissenting clergymen from holding any funeral service at the interment of their people in the consecrated burial-ground, thereby compelling them, in some instances, to hold the funeral service on the highway, or wherever they best could?
§ MR. HORSMANsaid, he was only aware of one case of the kind referred to by the hon. Gentleman. A few months ago Archdeacon Fitzgerald did refuse to a Dissenting clergyman the right of reading the funeral service in a churchyard in Munster. The clergyman memorialised the Lord Lieutenant to exercise the power vested in him by the Act of Parliament, the 5th Geo. IV. c. 25, to call upon the archbishop for his interference. The Lord Lieutenant did so, and the archbishop accordingly requested an explanation, and Archdeacon Fitzgerald furnished him with a report upon the subject, and that report was forwarded to the Lord Lieutenant. Having, therefore, called for and obtained an explanation, the Lord Lieutenant had exhausted the power vested in him by the Act, and he had no power to proceed further, and the matter therefore dropped.