MR. DANBY SEYMOURasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department Whether the Government intend to bring forward any measure for the relief of parishioners in cases where the incumbent of a living holds doctrines and adopts a ceremonial so closely approaching those of 157 the Church of Rome that they do not oblige him to leave the Church of England, yet have the effect of preventing the great majority of his parishioners, on conscientious motives, from attending his ministration of the Services and Sacrament?
SIR GEORGE LEWISThe question of the hon. Gentleman referred, he apprehended, to occurrences that have recently taken place in St. George's-in-the-East.
SIR GEORGE LEWISNo recent case had been brought under his notice except that, and he certainly understood that it was to that case the Question mainly referred. It would be unnecessary for him to state, therefore,—what he thought the hon. Gentleman desired to be informed of—namely, the steps that had been taken in regard to that case. Without, therefore, making particular allusion to that case, he would say he believed that in the great majority of such cases as had occurred—not recently only, but at previous times—the objection had not been so much to the doctrines taught as to the manner in which the rites and ceremonies of the Church had been performed; and cerainly in the case which he had particularly in view, so far as he was informed, the objection had been directed exclusively against the manner in which the Church service had been performed, and not to the doctrines preached from the pulpit. He was not aware that it would be possible to lay down by law any such definition as the hon. Gentleman pointed out in his Question, and the Government were not prepared to introduce any such measure as he had described. If, however, the hon. Gentleman himself should wish to propose a Bill upon the subject, he (Sir George Lewis) could only say that he should be extremely delighted to find that, in the exercise of his ingenuity, the hon. Gentleman was able to draw a line that would define what at present appeared to him to be very obscure. Until he saw clearly his way to that end he certainly should not ask the House to allow him to introduce such a Bill.
MR. DANBY SEYMOURHis Question certainly referred in part to St. George's-in-the-East; but that was one case only out of many.