LEAVE. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 9 July 1857)

MR. ELLICE
(Coventry) thought that a Bill of this kind ought not to be introduced without explanation on the 10th of July, and when there was so much other business before the House. This was an old job, newly revived—an attempt in one guise or another to extract from the public funds the means of relieving the inhabitants of Edinburgh from a tax which they had paid from time immemorial for the stipends of certain clergymen within that city. A similar tax was levied in several parishes in London (which had been rebuilt after the great fire), in Coventry, and other 1208 parts of England; and if any exemption was given to the ratepayers of Scotland, the ratepayers of England would be entitled to the same consideration. No doubt the reason for bringing forward this measure was, because a Bill had been lately passed to relieve certain towns in Ireland from the payment of ministers' money. But it should be remembered that in Ireland the Established Church had a fund peculiarly applicable to the replacement of that impost. In Scotland, on the other hand, there was no such resource from which to provide a substitute for this tax, and they must therefore either come upon the public purse or upon some fund set apart by Parliament for another purpose. In the present state of public business the Bill ought at least to be postponed till another Session, when a general measure, dealing with all the analogous cases, might be introduced.

§ THE LORD ADVOCATE
hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not throw any obstacle in the way of the introduction of the Bill. No doubt it was an old grievance, but it was one which caused considerable heartburning to the inhabitants of Edinburgh, and which the noble Lord the Member for London, in 1851, the Earl of Derby, in 1852, and the Earl of Aberdeen, in 1853, had failed to settle. After the Bill for the abolition of ministers money in Ireland had passed, the city of Edinburgh had applied to the Government to see if they would not consent to a Bill for the abolition of this tax, and it was now attempted to frame a measure not liable to the objections entertained to the former measures on the subject. It was proposed that the town of Edinburgh should pay to the Government £170,000 by yearly instalments of £13,000, and that it should take, not the whole, but a portion of the funds of the deans of the Chapel Royal, after endowing the chair of the Professor of Biblical Criticism out of them, and also a part of the sum paid by the North British Railway Company for Trinity College Church. Both of these proposals were part of the former Bills on the subject, but instead of talking the whole of the funds of the deans of the Chapel Royal, it was now proposed to take only a part.

§ MR. BLACKBURN
said, that the money paid by the North British Railway Company to the Town Council of Edinburgh was to be appropriated to the rebuilding of Trinity College Church; but that church had never been rebuilt, and 1209 now it was proposed to apply the money to relieve the inhabitants of Edinburgh of the annuity tax.

§ MR. BLACK
agreed with the hon. Member that the money was intended for relieving the College Church, but the opinion of counsel was that all that the town council were required to do was to build a parish church or chapel. He was not of that opinion; but at the same time he did not think the money could be better applied than to relieving the inhabitants of the annuity tax, for no measure could be more advantageous to the Established Church.