COMMITTEE.

HC Deb 01 March 1869 vol 194 cc412-70

Acts 39 and 40 Geo. 3, c. 67, 3 and 4 Will. 4, c. 37, 1 and 2 Vic. c. 109, 35 Geo. 3, c. 21 (Ireland), 40 Geo. 3, c. 85 (Ireland), 8 and 9 Vic. c. 25, and Resolution [7th May 1868] relative to the Established Church (Ireland) read, and considered, in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

MR. GLADSTONE

The Motion, Sir, which, in concluding, I shall propose to the Committee is— That the Chairman be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring in a Bill to put an end to the Establishment of the Church in Ireland, and to make provision in respect of the Temporalities thereof, and in respect of the Royal College of Maynooth. I do not know, Sir, whether I should be accurate in describing the subject of this Resolution as the most grave and arduous work of legislation that ever has been laid before the House of Commons; but I am quite sure I should speak the truth if I confined myself to asserting that there has probably been no occasion when the disproportion was so great between the demands of the subject that is to be brought before you and the powers of the person whose duty it is to submit it. I will not, however, Sir, waste time in apologies that may be considered futile, and the more so because I am conscious that the field I have to traverse is a very wide one, and that nothing but the patient favour and kindness of the Committee can enable me in any degree to attain the end I have in view—namely, that of submitting with fulness and with clearness both the principles and the details of a measure which, as far as regards its principles, is singularly arduous, and, as far as regards its details, must necessarily embrace matter of a character highly complex and diverse. Now, I cannot but be aware that, under ordinary circumstances, any one who undertakes to introduce to the House of Commons a subject of grave constitutional change ought to commence by laying his ground strongly and broadly in historical and political reasons. On this occasion I shall feel myself in the main dispensed from entering upon them. Under ordinary circumstances, in discussing the subject of the Church of Ireland—I mean had nothing already occurred in this House or elsewhere in relation to it on which I might take my stand—I should endeavour to pass in review the numerous—I may say the numberless and powerful arguments which, in my opinion, may be adduced to prove that this Establishment cannot continue to exist with advantage to itself or without mischief to the country. I should be prepared to show how many benefices there are in Ireland where, although there is a Church population, it can hardly be said to be more than an official Church population, for the members of those benefices are too often restricted to those whom we may reasonably suppose to be supplied by the families of the clergyman, the clerk, and the sexton. I should show, Sir, how buttresses have been devised for the maintenance of this extraordinary system, in the shape of those grants from the Consolidated Fund in this country, on the one hand to the Presbyterians under the form of the Regium Donum, and on the other hand to the Roman Catholics under the form of the Maynooth Grant, without which it was felt that the maintenance of such an Establishment in Ireland would be intolerable and impossible. I should endeavour to show how Parliament had been so conscious of the difficulties attending the position which it has held, that it has actually been reduced upon more than one occasion to waste away, by positive provisions of legislation, the property of the Church, in order that its magnitude, compared with the duties, might not too much shock the public mind. I should endeavour to show how, in past times, and through all the evil years of the penal legislation that has affected Ireland, the authorities of this Established Church have, unfortunately, stood in the foremost rank with respect to the enactment of those laws on which we cannot look back without shame and sorrow.

Sir, of the Established Church in Ireland I will only say that, although I believe its spirit to have undergone an immense change since those evil times, yet, unfortunately, it still remains, if not the home and the refuge, yet the token and the symbol of ascendancy, and, so long as that Establishment lives, painful and bitter memories of ascendancy can never be effaced. But, Sir, instead of lengthened discussion upon this and kindred topics, I hope I shall be sufficiently justified in passing at once to the measure of the Government by a reference to recent occurrences. In form, without doubt, this is the first—the very first stage of a great political measure, liable and open at every point to controversy; but in substance we cannot dismiss from our view that we are virtually taking up, and are bound to prosecute, the unfinished labours of last year. I refer, Sir, to those debates which formed the main, almost the only, subject of party difference in the discussions of this House during the Session of 1868. I refer to the large majority which, in a House of Commons undoubtedly Conservative in its general spirit, affirmed, notwithstanding, the necessity of bringing the system of religious Establishment in Ireland to a close. I refer to the autumn spent in incessant discussions of this subject before every constituency in the country. I refer to the Elections in which the issue so clearly put was not less decisively answered. And lastly, but not least, I refer to that resignation of the late Administration on which I have not to pronounce one word of censure, but about which. I am sure I am justified in stating that it was an unusual course. I have not one word of censure to utter; but assuredly I am justified in saying that it forms the most emphatic testimony to the character of that judgment which has already been pronounced by the representatives and by the people of the Three Kingdoms. Nor shall I dwell in any detail upon the counter-arguments which have been ably, sincerely, and persistently used in defence of the Established Church. If I name them, it is to do little more than to say that we are responsible for this measure, and we, who on this side are pledged to its general principles, shall be ready upon every due occasion, with all respect to those who oppose us, to meet those counterarguments. It is said that the measure we are about to introduce will be adverse to religion. I believe it to be favourable to religion, and to be essential to the maintenance of those principles of right on which every religion must rest. We shall be told, more especially, that it is adverse to the interests of Protestantism; but we shall point to the condition of Ireland, and shall argue from the facts of that condition that the interests of Protestantism have not been promoted, but, on the contrary, have been injured by our perseverance in a system which reason does not justify. We shall be told, perhaps, that we are invading the rights of property. No possible confidence can be greater than that with which we shall meet that argument. On former occasions, indeed, things have been done by Parliament, under the extreme pressure of the case, which it may be difficult to reconcile with the extreme assertion of the rights of property. There are clauses—and important clauses—of the Church Temporalities Act of 1833 which greatly strain the abstract theory of the rights of property, and which I, for one, am totally unable to reconcile with its general rules. But so far as I know there is no imputation that can fairly be made against the measure we propose with respect to the rights of property by any other persons than those who hold what appears to me the untenable—I may even say the extravagant—doctrine that although Parliament has a perfect right to direct the course of the descent of property in the case of natural descent, lineage by blood, yet it has no right, when once the artificial existence of what we call a corporation has been created, to control the existence of that corporation or to extinguish it even under the gravest public exigency. Well, we shall be told also of the Act of Union; and I cannot, nor shall I attempt to, dissemble that on a point which has been described as essential we propose to alter that Act. The Act of Union has been altered on other occasions, though never for so grave a cause as this; but we shall confidently contend that while we are altering this particular provision of the Act of Union, we are confirming its general purport and substance, and labouring, to the best of our humble ability, to give it those roots which unfortunately it has never yet adequately struck in the heart and affections of the people. And lastly, Sir, this claim I, for one, confidently—boldly make on behalf of the measure that we are introducing—I say we are giving effect to the spirit of a former policy. The great Minister who proposed the Act of Union neither said nor believed that it would be possible, under a legislative Union, to maintain the system of religious inequality which he found subsisting in Ireland. On the contrary, he has left upon record his strong conviction that the countenance and support afforded from national sources to the Established Church must be extended to the other religions of the country. I admit that we pursue religious equality by means different from those proposed by Mr. Pitt—[Mr. NEWDEGATE: Hear, hear!]—but by means, as I believe, better suited to the purpose we have in view, and certainly more consonant to the spirit, to the opportunities, and to the possibilities of the times in which we live. Be that, however, as it may, and with all that allowance for difference of means, the end we have in view is the same, and for that end we are entitled to quote the great authority of Mr. Pitt, and the authority of many of those who have followed him in their public career.

Sir, having referred to what I venture to call—although not in any technical or formal sense—the previous stages of this measure, I will briefly remind the Committee of the character of the general declarations by which the late House of Commons was moved to action, and of those pledges—for I do not hesitate to recognize them as such to the country—which we are now called upon to do our best to redeem. I think, Sir, it was well understood to be the view of those who supported the Resolutions of last year that the system of Church Establishment in Ireland must be brought thoroughly and completely to a close—that although the word "disendowment" was never embodied in any Resolution of this House, nor, so far as I recollect, was ever accepted without qualification in the speeches of those who most prominently supported the proposed Resolutions, yet, as a general rule, and for every substantial purpose and effect, an end must likewise be put to the system of the public endowment of religion in Ireland. While the principles of the measure were laid thus broad and deep, it was likewise professed, and I think, to a great degree, accepted by the House, that in all the details, in all the modes of application, the rules not only of justice, but of equity, and not only of equity, but, within every reasonable limit, even of indulgence, should be followed. And while the measure was thus to be thorough and thus to be liberal, there were two other great characteristics which, in order fully to realize the desire we entertain, it ought to possess. The first of these, Sir, is, in my judgment, that the measure ought to be prompt in its operation; for it is not for the interest of those with whom we deal any more than it is for the interest of the country that—I will not say the Irish Church, but—the Irish Establishment should be subjected to the pain of a lingering death. That promptitude of operation cannot be absolute; it must necessarily be checked by considerations arising out of the vested interests with which we have to deal. But yet, subject to those rules of right and of prudence, it is an object which we ought to have in view in the prosecution of our work. And, lastly, Sir, there is another characteristic which, perhaps, has hardly yet been mentioned in debate, but which appears to me second to none in its importance as determining the value of the provisions of a measure such as this. It is, that the legislation which we now propose, so far as the Irish Church is concerned, so far as the subjects of religious controversy growing out of legislative establishment in the sister island are concerned, shall be final legislation; that it shall put away, out of sight, out of hearing, out of mind if it may be, this long-continued controversy—a controversy almost of generations; and that even should it necessarily happen, as commonly happens in the train of great statutes, that in this or that point of detail it may require to be either developed or amended, yet the Bill which we propose shall leave no question of principle unsolved, and shall permit every man who takes part in its discussion to hope that when it finally departs from within the walls of Parliament we shall have heard the very last and latest of the controversy on the Irish Church. Subject, then, to those great principles, it is our duty—and I am sure it will be recognized to be our duty—to seek every means of softening the transition that is about to be effected. We must not disguise from ourselves that we are calling upon persons, upon large classes, upon individuals entitled to great respect, to undergo a great change in their position under the direct action of law. And every motive that can appeal to the feelings of men of honour and of gentlemen must lead us, I think, to feel it a duty so to proceed that this measure shall carry with it no unnecessary penalty or pain.

Sir, I am bound to say that I think many of those who may be expected and considered to take a special interest in this measure have given us in this respect much encouragement. There are many eminent persons in Ireland connected with the Church who have shown a great disposition to meet us in the fair field of discussion, to recognize the judgment which has been pronounced at the tribunal of the nation, and to endeavour to arrive at a just and equitable settlement. Nay more, even upon that Episcopal Bench of England, from which oftentimes no sounds but those of persistent resistance have proceeded, there have been signs upon very recent occasions of a sense that it is their duty to look to the future interests of the Church as well as of the Establishment—of the religion as well as of the property with which it is endowed. And those counsels of moderation, which impose on us corresponding obligations, are likely to prevail, as we may hope, in those quarters during the coming discussions. In Ireland it has, indeed, been left only to one single Prelate—the Bishop of Down—among the Episcopal Order boldly to take his stand on behalf of the principle of settlement and accommodation; but yet I cannot but hope and believe that there are many, even among his episcopal brethren, who are by no means disposed to prolong this hopeless struggle or to make demands upon Parliament, as terms of surrender, which it would be impossible for Parliament to grant.

And now, Sir, I think I may say that I will not trouble the Committee further upon general considerations connected with this measure, but will at once proceed to use the best efforts in my power to convey its character and all its leading provisions to the minds of the Committee as nearly as I can in the same light and in the same form as they present themselves to the minds of the Government. And I think, Sir, searching for a key by which I may suggest to the Gentlemen who hear me the best and most likely method of clearly apprehending the nature of the provisions of the Bill which I now hold in my hand, I will venture to direct their attention to the points of time—not, indeed, to all the points of time, because some points of time have of necessity been chosen for secondary and minor purposes—but to the three which I may call essential points of time with reference to which I will endeavour to state the provisions and operation of the Bill so that the Committee may have, as far as depends upon me, a clear understanding of the manner in which we shall endeavour to give effect to the judgment of Parliament and of the country. The first of these points of time, Sir, is the passing or the Act, and I will first describe such of the effects of the Act as are to ensue either immediately upon its passing, or in the provisional and preparatory period which will immediately follow its passing. The second of these points of time is a day named in the Act. At present it stands the 1st of January, 1871, affording an interval between the passing of the Act—should it, as I trust it will, become law during the present Session—of about eighteen months or something less for the preparatory arrangements; but with regard to that day I will presume to say that, while we believe it is distinctly for the interest of the Church itself that this intermediate period should not be too long, and while it is the absolute limit of time which we have thought the best, yet it does not constitute a point of the measure to which, in case the limit is found to be too narrow, we should think ourselves irrevocably pledged. The 1st of January, 1871, therefore, constitutes the second point of time. The third point of time is one which we cannot define as a particular date, but I can describe it by stating the events which will bring it about. It is the point of time at which it shall be decided by the proper authorities that all the subsidiary arrangements connected with the winding up of the Establishment of the Irish Church have been completed, and that thenceforth nothing remains to be done except to apply the property of the Irish Church which will then have discharged every prior claim upon it, and will remain free for the purposes which Parliament may think fit to indicate.

Begging the Committee to bear in mind these three points of time, I will now proceed to describe that portion of the effects of the measure which will follow immediately upon the passing of the Bill. It is provided in almost the earliest clauses that the present Ecclesiastical Commission, which was appointed for the purpose of administering the Church Establishment and not for the purpose of bringing it to an end, shall be wound up. In lieu of it new Commissioners will be appointed, whose names we shall, at a proper time, propose and insert in the Bill. We think very highly of the responsibility of their functions, and are very desirous that the men who may be proposed to discharge those functions should be men to whom Parliament shall have already, for the purposes of the measure, given its general approval. We shall propose that this Commission shall endure for ten years, estimating, as far as present circumstances permit us to do, that this will be a term ample and sufficient for all the numerous and diversified purposes they will have to prosecute. In this Commission, upon the passing of the Bill, the entire property of the Church in Ireland will vest, subject to life interests. The Committee will at once see the importance of that enactment. As far as legal and technical disendowment is concerned, it will have occurred on the day when the measure has received the Royal Assent, because there will no longer remain in the Church of Ireland any title whatever to its property other than that of the Commissioners and other than those temporary titles which we propose that Parliament should recognize. And all the subsequent arrangements which may be found necessary connected with fabrics or with any other points of the question, will be technically in the nature of a re-endowment, and will be brought by me separately under your consideration. Then, Sir, next to the vesting of the property I have to mention the provision we proposes to make for the government and management of the Church during this intermediate period. Last year we proposed and passed through this House a Bill which suspended every appointment in Ireland from the day of its falling vacant, and we trusted entirely to collateral and subsidiary provisions of the law to make a supply for the time being of such assistance as might be necessary for the actual discharge of duties until Parliament should give its further judgment. Now, Sir, it appears to be plain on the one hand that those provisions which I think were very well adapted to the object we had in view last year of reserving the whole matter for the further judgment of Parliament are not so well adapted to the purpose we now have in view—that is, to apply definitive legislation to the determination of the whole question. On the other hand, it appears to us to be equally indisputable that there is one thing which we could not consistently or properly allow to be done during this intermediate period. We could not properly allow from the passing of the Act the creation of new vested interests for life. "We have therefore endeavoured to steer as fairly as we can between these difficulties; on the one side proposing not to be parties to the creation of new vested interests, which I think every one will see would from our point of view be highly inconsistent, and on the other side being equally anxious that the Irish Church, at a period when all its Ministers and members will be called upon to exert themselves to the utmost in preparing for the future, should not be subjected to the disadvantage of a crippled ecclesiastical organization. What we, therefore, propose is, that appointments may be made, generally speaking, to the spiritual offices without investing the person invested with a freehold; that he may receive during the interval the income, as nearly as it can be calculated, which he would have received if he had taken the freehold in the ordinary course, but that his title to it shall terminate when the provisional period is at an end, and when the links which connect the Establishment with the State are finally broken. With respect, in particular, to episcopal appointments, the provision we propose is as follows:—We think it very desirable after once the statute shall have passed for disestablishing the Church to separate the Crown from the exercise of its old Prerogative within the Church. We therefore propose that episcopal appointments may be made by the Crown, but only on the prayer of the Bishops themselves of the provinces of Ireland to consecrate a particular person to a vacancy. Such appointment, if made, will carry with it no vested interest, nor would it carry with it any right of peerage. The Irish Church being engaged in perfecting its organization for the future will probably not run the risk of having its sees and rectories vacant, but will have, so to speak, a staff fully adequate to deal with the coming contingency. With respect to the exercise of Crown patronage as to livings, our view is this, while we take it for granted that, at any rate as a general rule, these livings would be filled up in the interval, they would be filled up on the same footing as bishoprics. In regard to the temporalities, the disposition of the present Advisers of the Crown in making appointments wherever they have by law a right of patronage would be to be guided within the limits of reason by the advice and recommendation of the ecclesiastical authorities. I think that is all I need say as regards the intermediate system that we shall now propose in lieu of the suspensory clauses of the Bill of last year, I except that in one point they would correspond more strictly with the provisions of the Bill—namely, in this, that the Commissioners would be inhibited from laying out money for permanent purposes, such as the building of new churches during the interval, and would only be authorized to expend money for the purpose of substantial repairs, for the fulfilment of engagements actually entered into, and for the necessary charges for the performance of Divine worship in the same manner as heretofore. So much for the scheme in relation to suspensory clauses.

The next important enactment which will take effect immediately on the pass- ing of the Bill is this. It is well known to the Committee that certain disabilities affect the collective action of the clergy in Ireland, and although the Convocations of England sit and have just been sitting, yet it is not in their power to proceed to either to pass, or even to discuss with a view to passing, any canon or regulation in the nature of a canon without the assent of the Crown. In Ireland the case is different, and more adverse to the action of the Church, for there the Convocation has in point of fact never acted at all, excepting upon some very few occasions which may be specially pointed out, and the latest of those occasions, if I remember right, was a century and a half if not fully two centuries ago. But besides the total disuse of that ecclesiastical machinery and the difficulty in which the Crown is placed when it is called upon to revive or be a party to the revival of that which has never worked at all for 200 years, and with respect to the working rules of which there are, even among lawyers, very grave doubts, there are in Ireland special provisions of the law called the Convention Act, which, though passed for purely political purposes, has the effect of preventing the clergy and laity of the Church from meeting in any general assembly. It is understood, I believe, that the clergy and laity of a parish may meet, but that the Church at large is incapacitated from meeting.

Now, it will, I presume, be deemed on both sides of the House to be obviously just and necessary that all disabilities whatsoever, which in any manner fetter the action of the Church with reference to legislation for the future—and when I speak of legislation I mean private legislation with respect to making voluntary contracts and regulations—ought, in passing a Disestablishment Act, to be at once and entirely swept away. When I say that, let it not be supposed I intend to insinuate any opinion to the effect that such a measure either is likely to cause, or ought to be wished or desired to cause, a religious or spiritual separation between the Church of Ireland and the Church of England. The words of this measure have been carefully considered in reference to the Act of Union, so as to limit, as far as lies in our power, their repealing force to the Establishment of those Churches, and we have been very desirous to do nothing which could possibly be held to interfere with their ecclesiastical relationship. At a later period I shall have to state to the Committee what we have thought it our duty to propose, in order to prevent any kind of shock to their internal condition. But of this I am persuaded, that the best friends of religious union between the Disestablished Church in Ireland and the Established Church in England will be those who most completely assert the liberty of the former to take its own course. Were we to attempt to apply to them constraint even in the faintest and feeblest form for the purpose of seeking to secure their union, we should, I believe, engender re-action, even if such a proceeding were not open to the more palpable and obvious objection that, considering the general scope of our Bill, it would be a proceeding totally and radically unjust. These, I think, are the positive and most important provisions which we propose as provisions which must take effect simultaneously with the passing of the Bill. There is, however, another provision, for the operation of which we cannot precisely fix a time, because it does not depend altogether on us, but which this appears to me to be the proper place to mention. Inasmuch as there must necessarily grow out of the present position of the Church in Ireland, its property and arrangements, a number of measures that in winding up this great system will have to be considered and discussed between some authority on the part of the State and some authority on the part of the Church, the course which we propose to Parliament to take is this—We presume that during the interval which the Bill will create after the disabilities are removed the Bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of Ireland will proceed to constitute for themselves, in the same manner as other religious communions have done, something in the nature of a governing body. We therefore take by this measure power to Her Majesty in Council—not to create such a body, but to recognize it when created, and we seek to avoid making Her Majesty the judge, either directly or by implication, whether this body is or is not for all purposes created wisely and well. But in the enacting words of the Bill we should direct the attention of the Crown solely to one point—that it must be a representative body, representative alike of the Bishops, clergy, and laity. In point of fact, Her Majesty's Advisers would have to act simply as a jury, and to satisfy themselves that this body so constituted, according to the will and judgment of the Church, fulfilled in good faith the character of a representative body. Her Majesty would then recognize that body as such, and it would become incorporated under the provisions of the Act for the purposes which I shall have presently to describe.

Now, the Committee will see how far we have got. We have passed our provisions through the intermediate period, and we are coming to the day fixed in the Act for the principal and final provisions of the Bill to take effect. We have got in operation a Commission which is to be the organ of the State in giving effect to the whole of our arrangements, and we have given time and every facility which properly belongs to us, not for bringing into operation, but for permitting to come into operation, that organ which we presume the members of the Church of Ireland will appoint in order to transact their share of the complicated business which will re-main to be transacted.

I now come to the second and most important period of time which stands at present fixed in the Bill as the 1st of January, 1871. On that day, according to the provisions of the Bill, the union created by Act of Parliament between the Churches of England and Ireland would be dissolved, and "the said Church of Ireland hereafter referred to as 'the said Church'"—I am now quoting the Bill—would cease to be established by law. There would be at the same time a saving clause in the Bill to prevent its having any effect on the Act of Union other than that which is thus strictly limited and defined. On that day the Ecclesiastical Courts in Ireland would be abolished; the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Ireland would cease; the ecclesiastical laws in Ireland would no longer bind by any authority as law; the rights of peerage would lapse on the part of the Bishops, and all ecclesiastical corporations in that country would be dissolved. The Committee is well aware that the Church itself is not a corporation, but an aggregate of corporations. I am, I believe, strictly accurate in saying that with these provisions in operation on the 1st of January, 1871, the work of the disestablishment of the Irish Church would be legally completed. There is, at the same time, a point of great importance, which I think this is the place for me to mention. Though we feel it to be a necessary—and it will, I think, be admitted by the House generally to be a necessary—part of such a plan as this that it should at once put an end to the force and authority of ecclesiastical laws, as such, in Ireland, yet we also feel that it is our duty not unnecessarily to subject that religious communion now called the Irish Established Church to shocks and inconveniences with respect to the management of its internal affairs not required by the scope of our measure. In point of fact it is not our desire that this transition—this great political transition—should be attended with the maximum, but rather with the minimum of ecclesiastical change. Whatever ecclesiastical change is made, ought, in our opinion, to be the result of the free deliberate will of the members of the Established Church, and not of the shock inconsiderately imparted by crude legislation to its machinery. We therefore propose that although the ecclesiastical laws shall lose their force as laws, in which respect they have a certain relation to the whole community, yet they shall be understood to subsist as a form of voluntary contract, which shall continue to bind together the Bishops, clergy, and laity now constituting the Established Church until and unless they shall be altered by the voluntary agency of the governing body which the members of that communion may appoint. In this way it appears to us that this great launch—and great launch it undoubted is, so far as all the ecclesiastical arrangements, properly so called, are concerned—will be effected smoothly, and I am, indeed, very conscious that it is desirable, on every ground that it should be so, for there will be quite enough to tax the energy, the prudence, and the courage of the members of the Church of Ireland in making provision for the great change which we are going to bring about in its internal affairs. The Committee, having followed me thus far, will have perceived that we have complete technical disendowment on the passing of the Act, and complete and actual disestablishment on the day to be named in the Act, and now standing for the 1st of January, 1871.

Next comes a matter on which I fear it will be my duty to detain the Committee for some time—the task of carrying out all those special arrangements by means of which the interests of the parties affected by this great change will have to be settled and adjusted in detail. I am afraid I should, perhaps, alarm the Committee were I to state how numerous those arrangements are, but they embrace the vested interests of incumbents—and by the word "incumbent" I wish to be understood as meaning a Bishop or a dignitary of the Church, as well as a clergyman having parochial charge—the vested interests of curates, the case of lay and minor offices, the compensation for advowsons, the provisions to be adopted with respect to private endowments, the provisions with respect to churches, with respect to glebe houses, grave-yards, all of those, of course, being subject to the life interests recognized by the Bill. There are the arrangements connected with the winding-up of the Regium Donum, the arrangements connected with the winding-up of Maynooth, the arrangements for disposing of the tithe commutation rent-charge, the arrangements with respect to the large class of property affected by the property-purchase clauses, and the arrangements connected with the sale of the Church lands by the Commissioners. Let me say a word first with respect to that which is the largest of all these subjects—namely, the case of the vested interest of incumbents. Now, the vested interest of the incumbent is quite distinct, on the one hand, from his expectation of promotion. In all cases of the abolition of Establishments, be they civil or ecclesiastical, I am afraid that expectation is a matter into which, however legitimate it may be, it is impossible for us to enter. The vested interest of the incumbent, then, is this—it is a title to receive a certain net income from the property of the Church. I say from the property of the Church, because I set apart receipts from pew rents, receipts from fees, receipts from other casual sources with which it is no business of ours to deal. The vested interest with which we have to deal is the right of the incumbent to be secured in the receipt of a certain annual income from the property of the Church in consideration of the discharge of certain duties to which he is bound as the equivalent he gives for that income, and subject to the laws by which he is bound and the religious body to which he belongs. Therefore the Committee will see in what sense it it is true that, although the Church at large and the congregations at large have no vested interests, and it would be impossible to recognize anything of the kind, yet both the Church and the congregations are very largely concerned in the vested interest of the incumbent, because his title is not a simple, unconditional title to a certain payment of money, but it is a title to a payment of money in consideration of duty. In the performance of that duty the congregations and the Church are deeply concerned, and I think it will be the opinion of the Committee that it would be unjust to them to expose them to unnecessary disparagement by worsening the conditions under which they now stand in reference to the clergy. Such is the vested interest of the clergy; and I may here say that although, as a rule, it is for parents to set examples to children, yet, in the vicissitudes of human affairs, it sometimes happens that children may set a good example to parents. It has happened so in this instance, for the Legislature of Canada, having to deal with a case undoubtedly far more simple, far less difficult and complicated than ours, yet notwithstanding, in this one central and vital subject—the manner of dealing with the vested interests of the clergy upon whose incomes it was legislating, and the permanent source of whose incomes it was entirely cutting off—has undoubtedly proceeded upon principles which appear to balance, or rather to maintain very fairly the balance established between, the separate interests of the clergy and the general interests of the Church to which they belong, and the congregations to which they minister. Substantially, and after allowing for necessary differences of expression, we think the basis afforded by the Canadian measure supplies us with no unsuitable pattern after which to shape our own proceedings. Such being the case, I will briefly describe to the Committee how we propose to deal with the vested interest of the incumbent. The plan will be this—The amount of income to which each incumbent is entitled will be ascertained. It will be made subject to deduction for the curates he may have employed. That I will further explain when I come to the curate. It will be made payable, in the case of each, so long as he discharges the duty. And then there will be a provision that the annuity itself may be commuted upon the basis of capitalizing it as an annuity for life. Therefore, the commutation, taking the rate of interest at 3½ per cent, will represent his whole interest in the income he receives, presuming it to last for life. This commutation can only be made upon the application of the incumbent. He must be the prime mover in bringing it about. Upon his application the sum of money will be paid to that which I shall call, for shortness, the Church body, but it will be paid to the Church body subject to the legal trust of discharging the obligation or covenant which we had ourselves to discharge to the incumbent—namely, to give him the annuity in full so long as he discharged the duties. The effect of that plan of commutation will be that, by means of the Church body, and of the inducements that will be given to arrangements between the Church body and the incumbents, we, the State, should escape, as we hope and believe, at a very early period from that which it is undoubtedly not desirable to maintain longer than is absolutely necessary—namely, a direct relation of administrator and recipient between the organs of the State and the individual clergy of the Church. That is the nature of the interest which the State possesses in commutation; and, although, undoubtedly, commutation would be an arrangement so far favourable to the Church collectively—and the very same thing will apply totidem verbis to the Presbyterians of Ireland—as enabling the Church body and the individual to adjust their relations and to make a more economical application of their resources than would be possible by the maintenance of the original annuities, yet the interest of the State in bringing these transactions to a close will be felt amply to justify and strongly to recommend some arrangement of the kind. Well, that is the mode in which we should propose to proceed with respect to the great subject of life interests. These life interests are in truth by far the greatest—and, indeed, much greater than all the rest put together—of the demands upon the fund of the Church before it becomes free and available for other purposes. I wish, however, to explain what I have not yet stated—that the recognition of life interests, which would be conditional as regards the performance of the duties that are now the equivalent for the income, would be unconditional in other respects. We should not attempt to interfere, in the main, with the position of the clergyman either as proprietor or occupier of land. In many cases, indeed, as we know, the clergy of Ireland do farm their own glebes. In many cases they let land from year to year. In many cases the land is let upon short leases; and although it would be desirable if we could to bring the clergy to give up the position of landlord as soon as possible, we do not propose to effect this result by any forcible or compulsory enactment. Commutation, we think, will offer inducements which will be sufficient for the purpose; but, speaking generally, we do not propose by any compulsory provision in the Bill to interfere with the position of the clergyman in relation to any part of his freehold. There is, however, one exception which I must mention, because it is an exception which, perhaps, has a name and a bulk, though insignificant in every other respect. It is the tithe commutation rent-charge. We propose that the tithe commutation rent-charge shall at once and absolutely, and without any intervening life interest, vest in the Commission under the Act, and the reason is that the tithe commutation rent-charge, with the single exception of a certain amount of fluctuation, which, of course, is rather in the nature of an inconvenience than a convenience to the clergyman, is in every other respect a fixed interest; and inasmuch as it is very desirable immediately to put in action certain arrangements respecting it, we propose to take it at once into the hands of the Commissioners, the faith of Parliament, of course, being pledged to the payment of the whole proceeds which the clergyman could derive from it. Besides that, there is another very small exception which we have thought fit to make. I will speak by-and-by of the case of churches which are in use, but there sire in Ireland cases of churches wholly ruinous, many in graveyards, but many apart from graveyards. In some cases the freehold may be in the incumbent of the parish. We propose at once to dispossess him of that freehold. It may be desirable that these sites should be dis- posed of, either by throwing them into the burial-grounds, or in some other manner; but there can be no advantage in keeping up that barren freehold, which is totally unproductive of practical results to the clergyman, and is purely incidental to his position as clergyman of a Church established by law. There is another change which would be made immediately upon the disestablishment of the Church, and which it is my duty to bring specially to the notice of the Committee, although probably the view of the Committee will be not only in favour of the change, but is likely to be that under the circumstances of the case it is inevitable. The Committee is aware of the peculiar nature of the title of an Irish Bishop to sit in the House of Lords. He has a title to sit there for life, and yet it is an intermittent title. He is not a permanent Member of that Assembly; but he is placed in a certain legal rotation, which brings him there for a Session and then dismisses him, in the case of the Archbishop for one, and in the case of the Bishops for two or three Sessions. We have had to ask ourselves whether it is desirable that a right of Peerage so singular in its character and operation should continue after the disestablishment of the Church? I own that, especially as to my own feelings, it is not without some regret and pain that I propose a provision which should seem in the slightest degree to convey a slight or disparagement in point of dignity to individuals who, as such, I believe to be fully and amply worthy of the honours they enjoy in the House of Lords. But the anomaly is so great, and then, again, it is so obvious, that the Irish Bishops are maintained in the House of Lords for the very purpose of representing a national and an Established Church, that—although not without regret, as far as the individuals are concerned—I think we cannot hesitate to propose to the Committee that these Peerages should lapse with the disestablishment of the Church. It is because this proposal forms a qualification to the broad principle I have laid down, as to respecting life interests in their integrity that I have been so particular in calling attention to it.

Well, now, Sir, I come to the case of the curates, and I hope the Committee will not be shocked at my endeavouring to state clearly the nature of the provi- sions we propose with regard to this most meritorious class of men, because, wearisome as it must necessarily be to you to pass through such a wilderness of details, yet there are many hundreds of persons for whom this question may be, or at least is believed by them to be, a matter of life or death, and who wait with the keenest anxiety to know the view that has been taken of their case. In speaking of the case of curates, I do not speak simply of those clergymen who have entered into transitory and fluctuating engagements for a week, month, or other short period. I speak of those who are regularly enlisted in the service of the Church as curates, and, in point of fact, are bound to that office by a long life tenure, unless, as they hope may at some time happen, they should be presented to benefices. I speak of those who in a popular sense I may venture to call the permanent curates of the Irish Church. Now, there is a great deal of difficulty to be encountered in dealing with this class of persons; but the Committee will observe that I am not now asking them to invade the public or the national fund for the purpose of compensation. In the main I am only studying to secure the due application to the benefit of the curate of those deductions which we have already made from the income of the incumbent, when proceeding to calculate his annuity for the purpose of ascertaining his vested interest. We propose, then, to deal with the curates as follows:—The Commissioners are to determine who are the curates permanently employed. In some cases the form of the instrument under which they are employed will adequately determine this point; but in others it would not. We propose to leave the matter to the Commissioners, giving also to the incumbent the power of objecting that A. B., his curate, was not permanently employed. It is required, also, in order to enable the curate to take advantage of the provision on this point, that he should nave been employed on the 1st of January, 1869, and that he continue to be employed on the 1st of January, 1871; or that, if he has ceased to be employed, the discontinuance of his employment shall be due to some cause other than his own free choice or misconduct. That will be the test of the eligibilily of the curate. Being so eligible, he would, primâ facie, be entitled to have the interest in his curacy calculated for life, he would have a vested interest in it in the same way as the incumbent has in the income of his living or bishopric, and he would be entitled to have it commuted upon the same terms. He would also be subjected to the corresponding obligation to that which would be imposed on the incumbent—that is to say, he would be bound to continue the duties he now performs until he effects an arrangement for commutation; he would be bound to render the same services to the incumbent that he formerly did, or if he cease to render them, in order to maintain his qualification, that cessation must be due to some other cause than his own misconduct or free choice. With regard to the curates of a more transitory class, we have a provision in the Bill which appears to us a fair analogy to a similar provision in the Civil Service Superannuation Acts, according to which gratuities may be awarded in consequence of disadvantages they may have sustained. But that is a matter of minor importance and minute detail upon which I will not at present detain the Committee.

I come now to the arrangements I shall have to make with regard to private endowments—and here it would be as well to refer to a misunderstanding, by no means immaterial, that sprung up in the course of last Session; in consequence of an expression used by me. I said, in the course of discussion on the Irish Church, that not less than three-fifths, as far as I could reckon, of the whole money value of the property of the Church would be given back to the Church itself or to its members in any form of disestablishment that Parliament would probably agree to. It was not generally observed how important a part of that statement were the words "or its members," which I pronounced with some emphasis. What the Church will receive, under the plan of the Government, I will endeavour to separate from what its members will receive; no doubt its members will receive compensation, and the congregations of the Church have a very real interest, if not a vested interest, in those compensations. But with regard to the Church itself, the proposal of the Government would be to convey to it nothing in the shape of what I may call marketable property—I will by-and-by explain what I mean by that phrase—with the exception of private endowments which it may have received. I beg the Committee not to come prematurely to a conclusion as to the meaning of those words; but I think I shall be able to make them good, and to explain them in the course of what I am now going to say. With respect to these private endowments we do not propose that the enactments relating to them should embrace churches or glebe houses, because these are dealt with on grounds of their own, which take them out of this category. But there are private endowments in the Irish Church; and although they do not appear to be very large in amount, they are various in form—such as endowments in glebe lands, in tithes, and in money. And the definition of private endowments we think it fair to take is this—In the first place, it must be money which has been contributed from private sources. It may have been given in a public character, as for example in the cases of Primate Boulter and Primate Robinson; but though given by persons holding a public position, its having been given in a private capacity evidently constitutes it a private endowment. But we limit it by date, and the date we have chosen to propose to Parliament for limitation is the year 1660—the year of the Restoration. The reason that has recommended the date to us is the fact that the Restoration was really the period at which the Church of Ireland—the Reformed or Protestant Church of Ireland—assumed its present legislative shape and character. Before the wars of Charles I., in all the free Churches of the Three Kingdoms there were more or less the different elements that finally developed themselves into different forms of Protestantism, and these were in conflict together within the bosom of the National Church. In England we had Puritanism and Anglicanism struggling for ascendancy within the pale of the Church, as we are told in Scripture that Jacob and Esau struggled together within the womb of their mother. In Scotland there was the same struggle, with the exception that there Presbyterianism was really in the ascendancy. In Ireland, in the same way, Presbyterianism and Episcopacy were struggling powerfully together during the reigns of James I. and Charles I. It may not be known to all who hear me—though it ought to be known, and it tends strongly to justify us in not going beyond the Restoration—that the very confession, the doctrinal Confession of the Irish Church in the reign of James, I. and Charles I. was not the same as that in England. It was modelled by Archbishop Usher upon the highest Calvinistic frame, and it included nine Articles, which composed a document well known in England under the name of the Lambeth Articles drawn up in the latter end of the sixteenth century. I hope I shall not wound the feelings of any man when I say that it was undoubtedly one of the most formidable collections of theology which ever proceeded from the pen of a Divine in the whole history of Christendom. It was different in spirit to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and the constitution of the Irish Church was practically different. Presbyterianism, I know, was not formally or legally recognized then; but it had a real or practical recognition in Ulster, which was occupied by Scotch rather than English colonists, who were for the most part Presbyterians. I find no proof, that when a Presbyterian minister went over from Scotland to Ireland he was obliged to submit to re-ordination; and if a Bishop had to go into a place where ordination was going on he was never allowed, as far as I can learn, in the case of a man of strong Presbyterian opinions, to assert his episcopal character and his exclusive power of ordination, but had to beg for admission into the room where the ordination was going on. Even if we could trace the private endowments back to so remote a period, the first effect would be to raise a strong controversy between the friends of Presbytery and Episcopacy. When we come to the time of Charles II., at which period the ecclesiastical condition both of England and Ireland became perfectly distinct—we ask you, then, to distinguish between private and public endowments, because we know historically that a man, at any rate, knew what he was doing, and the fair presumption arises that if he gave his money to the Church it was for the support of that form of religion to which it is now applied. That will be the definition we propose to take with respect to private endowments. They are not numerous in the Church of Ireland, but they are of extraordinary interest. Take the case of the parish of Laracor, the parish of which Dean Swift was vicar before he was transferred to the Deanery of St. Patrick's. When he went into it Laracor had a glebe house and one acre. He left it with a glebe house and twenty acres. He improved and decorated it in many ways. It is sad and melancholy to learn—if only we look upon this place as one of the memorials of so extraordinary a man—that many of the embellishments, or what our Scotch friends would call "amenities," of the glebe which grew up under his fostering hand have since been effaced. He endowed the vicarage with certain tithes which he had purchased for the purpose; and I doubt whether it is generally very well known that a curious question arises on this bequest, because a portion of his property—by-the-by, consisting, I believe, of those very tithes—was left by him for what he calls—I never knew the term to be used elsewhere—"the Episcopal religion then established in Ireland." But that extraordinary man, even at the time when he wrote that the Irish Catholics were so down-trodden and insignificant that no possible change could ever bring them into a position of importance, appears to have foreseen the day when the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland would be brought under a strict scrutiny and reckoning; because, not satisfied with leaving the property to maintain the Episcopal religion he proceeds to provide for the day when that Episcopal religion might be disestablished and be no longer the national religion of the country. Apparently by some secret intimation, he foresaw the shortness of its existence as an Establishment, for he left the property subject to a condition that in such case it should be administered for the benefit of the poor. The value of the private endowments, as far as we have been able to ascertain, is not more than £500,000 between land tithes and money. It is very uncertain. I may say here that I think the Committee will recognize the fairness of a step which we propose to take. There may be a good deal of legal research and legal expenditure requisite in order to obtain evidence upon those titles. We propose therefore to authorize the Commissioners to allow the parties reasonable expenses in cases where they think those expenses have been fairly undertaken in ascertaining the title and establishing the fact of private endowments.

I now come to the churches. This is the way in which we propose to deal with churches—when I say churches, I mean principally—indeed, I may say exclusively—churches which are in use by the present Established Church. Now, it is quite evident that churches cost a great deal of money to erect, but that when erected they do not properly fall within the category of "marketable property." Buyers will not easily be found, and in Ireland, as far as I can understand, there is no great insufficiency of churches—in the Establishment there is a profusion—among the Presbyterians or the Roman Catholics. Be that as it may—whether founded on feeling or the inconvertibility of churches into marketable property—we have no doubt whatever that, subject always to the general though not legal obligation of applying them to religious purposes, we propose that the churches of Ireland should be handed over to the governing body of the Disestablished Church with as little difficulty, impediment, or embarrassment as possible. What we propose, therefore, is, that within the trust those churches may be taken on the simple declaration of that body that it is their intention to take and maintain them for the purposes of worship, or else to take them down, which they wish to do in certain cases, where it is expedient for the purpose of substituting for them new churches, which the governing body may desire to build, and which may be more convenient, especially having reference to the altered temporal circumstances of their community. Under these circumstances, I have he doubt a great number of these churches will be taken over by the governing body of the Disestablished Church; but, whether that be so or not, it is our duty to make provision for the accidental case of churches being refused. If churches be not taken over by the governing body, we are not led to think that it would be expedient for Parliament to contemplate their actual transfer, under operation of law, to any other religious community; nor are we led to believe that would be generally desired by any other party. We, therefore, take a general power to enable the Commissioners to dispose of the site, or of the building itself, or, more properly, its materials.

Now there is a case on which I should say a few words, because I think it is one in which equity requires or recommends that we should make a small allowance from the ecclesiastical fund to the Disestablished Church. Unhappily, in Ireland there are not copiously scattered, as in England, churches which are beautiful and wonderful specimens of art, and which form one of the richest portions of our national treasury; but here and there in Ireland there are churches of that class. I need only mention one which has been before the public in a peculiar manner of late years—the Church of St. Patrick in Dublin. We cannot but admit these two propositions—In the first place, that it is desirable that such churches should be maintained—that it would not be desirable for the credit or character of the country that they should fall into decay; and the second proposition is that the maintenance of such fabrics is more than we have a right to expect by means of casual voluntary contributions. If such a congregation, founded on voluntary basis, should think to erect for itself such a church as St. Patrick's or Westminster Abbey, it will be for them to be responsible for its maintenance; but, with respect to those fabrics which have been erected and have been held under the expectation of permanent maintenance, we propose—subject to very careful limitations, for we confine the number to twelve churches—that the Commissioners should be authorized, where it is desirable, that a church should be maintained as a national monument, and where it is found that the maintenance would be too heavy for a voluntary congregation, to allow a moderate sum for its maintenance to those to whom it is given up. This is not a very large provision, but it is one recommended by the distinct equity of the case. I will say one word with regard to churches which are not in use in Ireland. Some of these national monuments are of a curious and interesting character; but, at the same time, as in the case of the churches at Glendalough, they are not suited or adapted to public worship. Therefore, we propose that such churches should be handed over to the Board of Works, with an allocation of funds sufficient for their due and becoming preservation. In other cases where there are remains of churches and sites of churches they might form burial grounds, or be taken up and restored by one of the religious communities of the country. Though their value may be insignificant, we ask Parliament to give power to the Commissioners to dispose of them to those communities.

The next question, I am sorry to say, like that of the curates, is beset with complications. It is one which was before the public last year, and with respect to it my views are very much qualified, or, indeed, I may say, almost overturned by the state of facts that since then we have become more accurately acquainted with. It is the case of the glebe houses; and I wish when I speak of them to include the see houses, as I included the Bishops when I spoke of the incumbents, because, in all essential respects, they stand on the same footing. With respect to the glebe houses it is exceedingly difficult to analyze the sources from which the means of building them have proceeded. Parliamentary grants have had a share of it, and private endowments have had a share of it; but the greater part of those funds has hitherto been supplied by charges deducted from the incomes of the clergy under Acts of Parliament, enabling them to charge their successors as well as themselves. Now, a nice and knotty question arises, as to whether money so obtained is to be regarded as a public or a private endowment. I can imagine a whole night spent in the discussion of that point. The greatest difficulties have arisen upon this point, and I myself have inclined sometimes one way and sometimes another with reference to it. As, in the case of the churches, there are some men of a practical turn of mind, not perhaps open much on the side of their imagination, whose minds were materially influenced by the observation that churches were not a marketable property, so the same feeling obtains as a general rule with respect to glebe houses, the value of which, while immense to the body that may possess the churches, is very small indeed to any other persons. How correct I am in making this statement the Committee will be enabled to judge when I inform them that we can trace an expenditure upon glebe houses—not including sites—amounting to £1,200,000, and yet the whole of the present value of them in Ireland, including the ground upon which they are built, is estimated at only £18,600 per annum. [Murmurs from below the gangway on the Ministerial side.] I hear a good deal of murmuring from some quarters of the House, and I am not surprised at it, because when these facts first came to my knowledge I was astonished myself. [An Hon. MEMBER inquired whether the sum mentioned included the value of the glebes?] No, if I wanted to confuse the matter thoroughly, I should merely have to discuss the subjects of the glebe houses and the glebes together. I have alluded to this point because I desire to draw a distinction between the title of the Church to what may be looked upon as property, because it can be converted into a sensible amount of money, and its title to that which, however valuable to it as a body, has no marketable value. However, I, by no means, wish to be understood as saying that the glebe houses of Ireland are worth nothing. On the contrary, I will prove to the House that they are not worth nothing, and I will do so by showing that we shall not get hold of them without paying for them, as, unfortunately they are saddled with heavy building charges. It is a singular fact that upon these glebe houses, which are valued at the present moment at £18,600 per annum—perhaps you may be justified in adding 20 per cent to that amount in order to bring the value up to the rack rental—there should be, in addition to the enormous sums already laid out upon them, a building charge outstanding of about £250,000. That is the exact state of the case, and I cannot put it too pointedly to the Committee. £1,200,000 has been already laid out upon this property, of which the annual value according to the Tenements Valuation amounts to £18,600, and a further sum of £250,000 is still payable upon it on account of a building charge—a sum which must be paid in order to enable us to come into legal possession of it. Now, that is not certainly a very inviting prospect. I confess I was greatly astonished when I found that property which last year I proposed to treat as convertible property of very considerable value turned out to have this large charge upon it and to be of such comparatively small marketable value. However, such as it is, we of course propose to take it. If the statement I have made prove to be inaccurate and should it turn out that the glebe houses are of more value than I am now stating them to be, what I am now about to say will be subject, of course, to re-consideration. Assuming, however, that my information is correct with reference to the value of this property, then it appears to me, and it has also appeared to the Government, that the best course we can adopt under the circumstances is this—This building charge, which will have to be paid by us in the first instance, is not uniformly distributed over the whole of the glebe houses. It is probable that in some cases it will amount to almost their full marketable value, while in others no building charge at all will have to be paid. The necessity of paying the building charge where it exists is binding upon us, because in such a case the incumbent would have been entitled to recover it from his successor; and, consequently, when the incumbent dies or commutes under the provisions of this Bill, either he or his family will be entitled to recover it from us as standing in the place of his successor. We are, therefore, bound by law and by justice to discharge this obligation, and we are not called upon to exercise any discretion in the matter. We shall come into possession of the globe houses when the existing life interests are exhausted, because our interest will still be only in the nature of a reversionary interest in the property, and then we shall have to pay the amount of the building charge still outstanding at the time. Having come into possession of the property upon those terms, we shall assume that the glebe house, where fully charged, is no property at all, but we shall still regard the land upon which it stands as valuable property. We shall say to the Church body that, wherever you take the church, you may negotiate for the land on which the glebe house is built, which we will sell at a fair valuation; and, further, that they may negotiate for a small glebe, not exceeding ten acres in extent, of the adjacent glebe land, at a fair and reasonable valuation. And so we propose to deal with the land. Where you take the land you may take the house, but with the building charge, and subject to that limitation that it should not exceed ten years' tenant valuation put upon the house, together with the site, which is as much as can be fairly expected to be paid for glebe houses. These houses will be subjected to no distinct charge where the building charge does not exist; but where we have to pay a building charge, we shall endeavour to recover it before giving up the property of the governing body of the Disestablished Church. I have certainly had to make a very complex statement, and I do not know if you understand it. It is, however, a matter of great importance, and, after a great deal of consideration, Her Majesty's Government have arrived at the conclusion that it is the best mode of dealing with this part of the subject. The great value of these glebe houses is entirely visionary. It has been said that facilities ought to be given, although not in the way of grants of money, to the members of other communions, for the purpose of enabling them to erect glebe houses for themselves. Now, that is a principle which has been already adopted by Parliament in the case of the Act of William IV. under which public money was advanced—under somewhat onerous conditions it is true—to the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians of Ireland for the purpose of building glebe houses. Although we have not inserted any clause to carry out such a proposal in the present Bill we think it may be desirable that loans for this purpose may be granted upon easy terms contemporaneously with the winding-up arrangements to be conducted by the Ecclesiastical Commission. At the same time it will be necessary to limit the operation of that system within a certain period of time, because I think it is open to considerable doubt whether it would be desirable to keep a law of that kind permanently upon the Statute-book, seeing that it might possibly lead to some controversy in Ireland.

The question relating to the burial-grounds may be disposed of very shortly. I propose that the burial-grounds belonging to a church shall pass along with it to the Church body holding the latter, provision, however, being made in all cases for the preservation of existing interests in the burial-ground. It is known to the Committee that the law in Ireland, as recently adjusted with respect to burying-grounds, is very different from, and is much more favourable to the public, than that in force in England. We propose that all other burial-grounds shall be given over to the Guardians of the Poor, and we propose to give uni- formity and simplicity to the provisions of the law which, is now in partial action. I think I have now done with the winding-up arrangements of the Bill as far as the Established Church is concerned. There still remains a portion of them which, although not very extensive in amount, yet is of very great importance, and one which, I am bound to add, is by no means free in all its bearing from difficulty. It was at all times part of the views of those who proposed the Resolution s of last year that with the disestablishment of the Church must come the final cessation of all relations between the State and the Presbyterian clergy in Ireland and between the State and the College of Maynooth.

I have now to consider in what manner effect is to be given to that conviction, which was strongly entertained by the House, and which was, in fact, embodied in a fourth Resolution passed by the House during the Session of 1868, which was added to the other three Resolution s which had been previously agreed to. The sum which we have now to deal with is an annual sum of about £70,000. Of that amount £26,000 a year constitutes the Vote for Maynooth, and between £45,000 and £50,000 is the aggregate of the Votes given for the various communities of Presbyterians. And now, Sir, we are no longer dealing with a simple and single body of religionists, known to the law as the Established Church, but we are dealing with classes which, in point of religious opinion, fall under a three-fold division. The interest now before us is that of the Old or Scotch Presbyterians, as I may call them for distinction's sake; the next is that of the minor bodies of Presbyterians, who are separated in Ireland from the main body, not only by religious communion, but by grave differences in those matters which lie at the foundation of the Christian faith. There are three or four of these bodies, such as the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster, the Presbytery of Antrim, and one or two more, who fall under a different class of religionists; these, or some of them, entertaining Arian, or what are called Unitarian opinions. Then there are the Roman Catholics, sufficiently known to us to dispense with the necessity for any description as regards their religious opinions. If I refer to these distinctions of religious belief it is only for the purpose of stating in the broadest manner, that, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, I entirely decline, on the present occasion, to enter into such matters. I will not for one moment ask what are the political or the religious peculiarities of these bodies, professing the Christian name, with whom we are to deal; but I will endeavour to deal with them strictly, impartially, and equitably—on the principle of civil justice, which apply to them all alike, and which render it iniquitous and wrong to raise controversial questions in regard to them, or to matters of religious belief. The ground they stand on is that of citizenship—the claim they urge is that of general equity and good faith. We, the Government, have recognized that claim. I am confident that Parliament will recognize that claim in the case of the Established Church. Let us endeavour to proceed upon the same fair, and just, and liberal, though moderate and prudent recognition of it in the case of these bodies exterior to the Established Church. Now, as respects the larger part of this sum of £70,000 a year, there is no difficulty—when you come to look at it in the light of a purely civil interest. Most of it is given in the shape of a direct Vote of so much money passing immediately from the State to the individual through the Synod, but in all cases the nature of the vested interest and expectancy—call it what you like—is the same. All we have to do is to take precisely the same course as with respect to the clergy of the Established Church. Take the question of income—which here being a mere matter of money can be at once ascertained—that is not given to him for nothing, but on the condition of the performance of duty. Hence, with a slight modification, which I need not here mention, a similar claim will arise in the case of the Presbyterian minister to that which I have already explained in the case of the incumbent; and the Bill also will give to him a power of commutation in every substantial respect corresponding with that proposed to be made for the clergy of the Established Church.

So far with respect to the clergy and to life interests proper. Beside the ministers who perform spiritual offices in particular congregations there is another class that appears to us to have a claim; they are what are called assistants and successors. Now these gentlemen are in a condition, not indeed as to the abundance of the interest at which they are ultimately to arrive, but otherwise I take it legally in a condition not very far removed from that of an heir of entail; they are already appointed to the assistant pastorship of a particular congregation; they derive no benefit from the Regium Donum, but the office of assistant which they hold entitles them to succeed after the death or resignation of the incumbent, and consequently it is urged that they have a just claim to the expectancy created by that right of succession. This is not a very large matter, and will present no difficulty; it consists only of the difference in value between the life of the incumbent and the younger life of his successor; but to that extent we think it just that the claim should be provided for. Then there is another class—the teachers of Presbyterian educational institutions under the General Assembly of the Presbytery of Ulster. With regard to them, though they are not ministers, but professors only, we propose to deal with them precisely in the same manner as if they were pastors of churches, and to assure to them their salaries, together with a like power of commutation. But now comes a greater difficulty, with respect to those educational establishments to which I wish to call the attention of the Committee for a few moments. When we disestablish a Church, and when a particular congregation ceases to have a pastor found for it by public funds, it feels au immediate want, and a stimulus is applied to it to satisfy that want. But when you deal with an establishment for educational purposes, a rather different order of considerations comes into play. There are several points which ought to be taken into account, although I will not say precisely what amount of weight is to be given to them. When dealing with Presbyterian education, we are also dealing with the College of Maynooth, and the latter is a subject of difficulty of its own, and in this way we have no feelings with the professions and principles of Maynooth, but with the Presbyterian ministers and professors we have. We know nothing of the details of the arrangements made by the Professors of Maynooth with reference to the expenditure of the public Grants. We have chosen to constitute a trust by the authority of an Act of Parliament, and to that trust we have committed the disposal of the Grant which Parliament has thought fit to make. Well, now, what is the experience of England? The experience, in particular, of the training Colleges proves that there should be some consideration in dealing with establishments for education. I ought not, perhaps, to bring into the present discussion the case of Trinity College, Dublin, for Her Majesty's Government make no proposal upon that subject at the present time. But it is perfectly plain that if the House and the Legislature should adopt the measure that we now submit to it, Trinity College, Dublin, will have to be made the subject of legislation. It is also, I think, quite plain that it will be impossible to maintain the present exclusive application of the revenues of Trinity College to the purposes of a governing body and staff wholly connected with one religious persuasion. It is quite possible that Parliament may apply to Trinity College the same lenient method of dealing which it commonly adopts, and may think fit to leave some moderate provision applicable to the rearing, or to the teaching, at least, of the clergy, who will, as a clergy, become dependent entirely upon the resources of a voluntary communion. But undoubtedly when we come to deal with Trinity College we shall feel the force of this argument, that to put a sharp termination to the career of an educational establishment is a more trenchant operation than to do the same with, the machinery for providing a parochial ministry, because one is a much stronger stimulus to persons to provide themselves with clergymen than the other is to induce them to maintain schools in which these clergymen can be trained. These general considerations, at the same time, are considerations which I know must not be pushed beyond their proper limits. I hope the House will think, when I come to the end of this long and wearisome statement, that whatever the Government have done they have endeavoured to keep strict good faith. I believe that I have announced no proposal as yet to which that character will not be held to apply when it is compared with our former declarations; and I trust that my announcements will remain the same to the end of the chapter.

I have now to consider in the light and spirit of our general arrangements, and, subject always to the full maintenance, in letter and in spirit, of that which we have heretofore declared, what appears to us the most equitable method of dealing with the Regium Donum, the Grant to Maynooth, and all similar grants. The Presbyterians are interested in this matter in respect of the College which they have in Belfast, and like wise in respect of a similar institution which exists for the benefit of minor Presbyterian bodies; the Roman Catholics are interested in it, through the College of Maynooth; but there are also several other payments made by Parliament which, on the whole, fall under very much the same class of considerations. There is the payment made by Parliament to what is called the Presbyterian Widows' Fund. Now, that, of course, exists for the purpose of supplying wants that are coming into operation from year to year, and it would be very hard to withdraw that Widows' Fund without notice. In the same way it would be hard to withdraw, without notice, the Grants now made to Presbyterian educational establishments and to the College of Maynooth. There is another class of payments made by the Presbyterians to their Synodical officers. They hold an office regarding which it is very difficult to define the degree to which it should be considered a vested interest. But when we look at the whole of these matters, and read them in the light of the declaration and proceedings of last year, we have adopted—first, the principle that no permanent endowment can be given to them out of the public resources properly so called; and, secondly, the principle that no permanent endowment can be given to them out of the national ecclesiastical fund of Ireland. What we propose—and we think it a fair and equitable proposal—is—that in order to give time for the free consideration of the arrangements and the construction of scales for the satisfaction of life interests, and for avoiding violent shocks and disappointments to those whose plans for life may already have been made upon the supposition of the continuance of arrangements which have so long existed, and which were solemnly made, there should be a valuation of the interest of all these grants—a life interest at a moderate scale or at fourteen years' purchase of the capital amount now annually voted. [Sir STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: The annual amount?] Yes, the annual amount. It is a life interest, and it is to be commuted as a life interest is commuted, upon the age of the individual. That age varies. In the case of Presbyterian ministers, as there is a large number of years, that amount is high. In the case of Bishops and dignitaries it is somewhat lower. We take fourteen years as, on the whole, a fair amount of these different grants. We propose to treat them substantially as life interests, and the payment is to be analogous to that made on other life interests, and this is to wind up and close all the relations between those bodies and persons and the State.

Well, now, Sir, I am coming in sight of port, but I have not yet done. There are two or three points which will not take long, apart from the question of religion and matters of controversy, but which are of so much interest to gentlemen connected with Ireland and the land of Ireland, and which likewise have so innocent and beneficial a bearing on the land question of Ireland, that I must beg for a little more of the indulgence of the Committee. First of all, I would proceed to explain what I fear some of my hearers will think ought to be placed in the category of financial puzzles. If they do not entirely follow me I will ask them, without understanding me, to believe it, and I will undertake to make it good upon a future occasion. It relates to the important subject of the tithe rent-charge of Ireland. I have already said that I attach great importance to the merging of the tithe rent-charge, and for that reason the Commission will step into the possession of it immediately after the passing of the Act. Well, if there be here any hon. Gentlemen possessed of land in Ireland—and there are many—they will not be very grateful to me for what I am going first to state. It is that we shall give to them unconditionally the tithe rent-charge at twenty-two and a half years' purchase. That is, of course, twenty-two and a half years' purchase, not of the old gross £100, but of the £75 a year. We make that offer because we think there may be landlords in Ireland who will be disposed at once to wind-up the arrangement with us. But if Gentlemen will listen to me they will see that we have another alternative for those who may not be disposed to purchase the tithe rent-charge out-and-out in money down at twenty-two and a half years' purchase. It is this—We make to them a compulsory sale. I have not the least idea that any one wall object to that. We convey the tithe rent-charge to them under the following conditions:—We charge them in our books with £2,250 for every net £100 a year of tithe rent-charge. That is to say, we sell them a tithe rent-charge at a rate to yield them 4½ per cent. We then credit them on the other side with a loan of equal amount. We provide that they shall pay off that loan by annual instalments, with interest. But the rate of interest to be charged on the instalment is 3½ per cent. The consequence of that is that a fund of 1 per cent will remain as a sinking fund to absorb the principal. The purchaser of the tithe rent-charge in that form—except that he will get rid of the fluctuation, for we must give him a fixed amount—will not be called upon to make any addition whatever to his annual payment. He will be liable to that annual payment for a term of forty-five years, and at the close of that term he will, under this arrangement, have the rent-charge, whatever it may be, for the residue of the time for nothing. That will be the financial effect of the arrangement, which I think will not be bad for the Irish landlord. I perceive by the buzz around me that this portion of the subject, at any rate, is not without some interest to a great many hon. Members.

I may here say that, in dealing with this question, I have ventured to lament the necessity under which Parliament has found itself on a former occasion of wasting the property of the Irish Church, in order to prevent its being so great in its magnitude as too much to shock the public mind. We have not proceeded on that principle of wasting. We have not sought to work down the residue that will remain to be disposed of; but we have endeavoured to make the most economical arrangement for the interest of that fund of which the equity of the case admits. And the Committee will the more readily give me credit for what I have to say on this subject when I add that, while in this manner we shall give twenty-two and a half years' purchase for the tithe rent-charge of Ireland, the average rate at which that charge sells in the market is very little, if at all, more than sixteen or seventeen years' purchase. On the other hand, it is not a bad arrangement for the public, because it may be safely taken as a general rule that the public, in arrangements reaching over a long period of time, are perfectly safe in undertaking to lend at 3½ per cent. There is another point which need not detain us more than a moment. It relates to what will be in the recollection of Irish Gentlemen—but there are very few still here who were in the House at the period of the Irish Church Temporalities Act—as the Perpetuity Purchase Clauses. They were clauses of an arrangement somewhat doubtful for the interest of the national ecclesiastical property of Ireland. We feel that under this Bill equity requires that the persons who are now possessed of a title to purchase under these clauses should not be suddenly deprived of that title. But we also feel it to be impossible, in conjunction with a measure for disestablishment and disendowment such as this, to keep those clauses permanently in existence, in consequence of the highly anomalous and highly inconvenient confusion of interests which they create. We therefore propose that the power to purchase, now in the hands of the tenant, shall remain in existence for three years from the 1st of January, 1871, and if not made use of in that interval it shall then finally lapse and determine. Another question of great and universal interest arises in connection with this subject. The Commissioners to be appointed under this Bill, or some body which may succeed them, after the difficult and onerous part of the arrangement shall be disposed of, will, as I think, be the holders of a considerable amount of property. The question is, in what investment shall that be held. The perpetuity purchase rents now in existence appear to form, as far as they go, a very eligible description of investment, because they have the certainty of landed income without the incidents of fluctuation, or any of those difficult administrative questions which attach to the character of the landlord. The Committee will, however, agree with me that it is not desirable either that this Commission which we now propose to appoint, or any State authority in its place, should continue permanently to hold the Church land which will necessarily come into its possession. Such, a Commission is not, and cannot be permanently a good landlord, and it is far better that it should discharge itself, as soon as may be, of duties it cannot properly fulfil. What we propose, then, is that in selling the proprietary rights of these estates the power of pre-emption should be provided for the tenants, and, what is more—indeed, without this addition I do not think I could claim for this provision credit for anything more than good intentions—we further propose that in such sales three-fourths of the purchase-money may be left upon the security of the land, and that the charge so remaining shall be liquidated by instalments, upon the principle adopted in the Drainage Act, by which we make the whole re-payable in twenty-two years. Now, the nature of this proposal the Committee thoroughly comprehend, and I trust it will meet with their approval. It does not place the land in the market in an anomalous character; it does not make the State responsible for duties that it cannot fulfil, and the permanent retention of which is alien from its nature. And it will have the economical effect of materially improving the price that we shall get for the land; and by this means we shall try the experiment, on a limited scale, of breaking up properties in a manner which I believe to be perfectly safe, perfectly easy, and perfectly unexceptionable.

I will now, Sir, give to the Committee the financial result of these operations in a very few words. With respect to the income of the Irish Church I shall say very little, for I have great difficulty in making out what it really is. The Church Commission laboured assiduously between 1867 and the end of 1868, and they have reported, as the result of their inquiries, that the income of the Irish Church is £616,000 a year. I must say, with very great respect for their sixteen months of toil, that I humbly dissent from the conclusion at which the Commission arrived. It seems to me that they placed the revenue too low. I find that one of the Commissioners (Colonel Adair), who is known to have taken an active part in their labours, has within the last fortnight published a statement in which he puts the income of the Irish Church as high as £839,000 a year. I do not place it quite so high as Colonel Adair, nor quite so low as the Irish Church Commission. I believe it to be about £700,000 a year, which I think is no unfair statement. So much for the income of the Irish Church. But what we have more to do with is the capital. I have taken the tithe rent-charge at the rate of purchase I propose, and I find that the tithe rent-charge will yield £9,000,000. I have taken the land of all kinds, episcopal and chapter lands, those belonging to glebes, &c, and putting on them the fairest valuation that a very competent person by whom we are assisted in Dublin can make, I find that the whole undivided value of the lands and of the perpetuity rents, if sold, would be £6,250,000. Besides that, there is money of one kind or another in stocks and banks to the amount of £750,000. I have not attempted to value the fabrics of churches, nor the fabrics of the glebe houses, because after what I have stated how they stand in the Tenements Valuation, and the charge upon them, I consider it would be idle to include them in this statement as an item of any considerable amount. The result, without taking into account the glebe houses and churches, is that the whole value of the Church property in Ireland, reduced and cut down as it has been—first by the almost unbounded waste of life tenants, and second by the wisdom or un-wisdom of well-intending Parliaments—the remaining value is not less than £16,000,000—an amount more considerable than I had ventured to anticipate, when, with smaller means of information, I endeavoured to form an estimate of it last year.

I now come to a delicate part of the case, and here the figures must be considered as taken with rather a broad margin. Yet, on the whole, I think they will be found very near the mark, so far as the total is concerned. The life interests of incumbents of all kinds in the Church—Bishops, dignitaries, and parochial clergy—will amount, I think to, say £4,900,000; and if that appears to any one a large sum, he should recollect that when divided by the large number of persons—2,000, including curates—among whom the whole has to be apportioned, it represents a very slender acknowledgment for the labours, expectations, and costly education of those gentlemen, and for the anxieties and honest and good service by which their respective situations have been attended. The compensation of the curates, deducted almost entirely from that of the incumbents, will come to £800,000. The lay compensations are not inconsiderable. They will come to £900,000. Of that, something over £300,000, it is supposed, will be the value of the advowsons; but it is very difficult in Ireland to obtain fixed, clear, and definite rules for estimating their value. The transfer of them in Ireland is comparatively rare, and they are subject to a variety of contingencies which very much impair the means of judgment. It is not a large matter. We put it at about £300,000. The other lay compensations embrace a class of persons who do not much enter into the view, looking at this subject generally; but the largest part will be absorbed by the parish clerks and sextons in Ireland, of whom the bulk, I believe, like the incumbents, have freehold offices, and must be dealt with on the very same principle as the incumbents. Then there are the officers of cathedrals, of the Ecclesiastical Courts, and the functionaries connected with the present Ecclesiastical Commission. Those will bring up the amount of the lay compensations to about £900,000. The charge of private endowments on the fund is about £500,000, and in that, I may say, in passing, will not be included the result of a recent Act of Parliament passed by Sir Joseph Napier as to endowments of a particular class, which it is not necessary to bring into this Bill. The building charges we shall have to pay, in order to get possession of the buildings, is £250,000. The sum necessary to clear off our engagements upon the moderate footing we propose with respect to the Presbyterians and Maynooth will be £1,100,000; and of that sum I ought to say two-thirds will go to the Presbyterians, and no more than one-third to Maynooth. I must also supply two small claims I had omitted. The Presbyterians claim—and I think it is not an unreasonable claim—that, as we admit an educational establishment to require a little more time for maintaining it on the old system, we should give them some consideration in the shape of money in respect of the buildings they have raised in Belfast to meet the Parliamentary Grant, which we shall be prepared to concede, subject to the maximum of £15,000. The other is a claim, not made by the Roman Catholics, but it is our opinion it ought to be made spontaneously, and that, I think, will be the universal opinion of the House. When the Act of 1845 was passed it was known to be the intention that the buildings of Maynooth should be kept in repair at the public charge. The House, of Commons modified its views shortly after. The College had no means of meeting the necessary expense except by borrowing, and they have gone in debt to the Board of Works to the extent of £20,000. I think we should all feel that that debt incurred in past time on account of these repairs, and in consequence of a change of view on the part of Parliament, ought at once to be remitted. I estimate the expense of this Commission during the ten years of its continuance at £200,000, and that makes my total charge against the property of the Church amount to £8,650,000. So that the property will be divided—for I confess I have some faith in the moderation of my estimate—into two nearly equal parts; or, to be quite safe. I may call it £16,000,000, and as the charges upon it will come to between £8,000,000 and £9,000,000, the sum at the disposal of Parliament for other purposes will not be less than between £7,000,000 and £8,000,000.

I have now, Sir, done with my first and second date. We have arrived at a period, let us suppose, when the arrangements I have detailed are all completed—that is to say, as far completed as the provisions that have been made can possibly require. But there is one financial item which, through infirmity of memory, I have omitted, The Committee will naturally ask how we are to pay the heavy charge that may be compiled by the commutations, because if the commutations are made, and we have every desire they should be made immediately or as soon as possible after disestablishment, they will require, between Episcopalians and Presbyterians, from £6,000,000 to £7,000,000. My answer is that, fortunately, the banking resources of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer are such, with respect to the deposits of the public, as to cause no serious difficulty on that part of the case; and, as a matter of prudence, we have taken power in the Bill to fix the payment of commutation money in eight instalments extending over four years.

And now, supposing that all the ar- rangements which I have so imperfectly detailed, and which the Committee have listened to with so much patience—supposing that we have reached the moment when these arrangements are all completed—that is, so far completed that provision is made for all they can possibly require—I now come to the third date, to which I pointed at the commencement, and I ask a question which will re-awaken the flagging interest of the Committee—How are we to dispose of the residue? I will first state the conditions which appear to me necessary to be combined in a good plan for the disposal of such a fund. The first two are already fixed—written, I may say in letters of iron. It is written that the money is to be applied to Irish purposes; and it is written that it is to be applied to purposes not ecclesiastical—not for any Church, not for any clergy, not for any teaching of religion, and I hope the Committee will see that, in thus broadly stating what I conceive to be the obligations we have come under, I am showing a disposition not to shrink from the fulfilment of those obligations. But there are other requisites that it is most important to combine in any plan for the application of this residue. In the first place, I think there are feelings much to be respected in a large portion of the community—of those who say that the time has come when the application of this money must be dissociated from the teaching of religion, but who, at the same time, would desire that its future application should, if possible, bear upon it some of those legible marks of Christian character, which would be, as it were, a witness to its first origin and to its long continued use, being applied, as nearly as circumstances admit, in conformity with what is usually the cyprès doctrine of Courts of Equity. Another condition of a good plan is that it must not drag us from one controversy into another. We must not make this great controversy, as yet itself not perfectly solved [Opposition Cheers]—yes, but very near its perfect solution—the mere doorway to another set of conflicts and disputes, perhaps, equally embarrassing. One condition of a good plan is that, the question being Irish and wholly Irish, the plan must be equal in its application to all parties, and, as far as may be, to the whole community in Ireland. One condition more I will mention, to which I attach the highest value: the plan must embody the final application of the money. The money must be so disposed of, so attached and annexed to the satisfaction of the permanent wants always inherent in the community, that the day never can come when some Member, rising either upon these or upon those Benches can say "Here you have a fine fund undisposed of in Ireland," and may suggest some scheme of applying it which shall lead us back into all the embarrassments from which we are now at length vigorously struggling to free ourselves.

I will mention some of the modes suggested for the application of the money. The division of the fund among Churches only was out of the question, because such a measure would be in conflict with the sentiments of the people, the opinions of this House, and the pledges which we have given, and which must be redeemed. The application of it to education would not fall so directly under the ban as the direct application of it to religion; but to propose to apply these funds to education would, in the first place, raise a just suspicion on the part of our Irish friends that we were endeavouring to get quit of the annual Grants in the Estimates; and, in the second place, it would launch us into a multitude of religious difficulties, and would again complicate the controversy of the National Church with the controversy of the unsolved problems of education. It has been proposed by some that the fund should be applied to public works in Ireland. Those who have followed the history of the great attempt we made at public works in Ireland in reference to the Shannon drainage will admit that the prospect opened by such a proposal is not very inviting. In the first place, it is a project which would lead to jobbery, and in the next place it would set every part of Ireland at variance with every other part, in the scramble to obtain the largest possible portion of the money. In the third place, do what you could to promote equality, the application of the money must be unequal, it must be given to certain districts, and many other districts must in a great degree fail to share in it; and, lastly, if this is to be given in the way of a loan for public works, each public work having ended, and the money coming back, it becomes again available. There is no successor immediately entitled to claim it. We should be open to the charge of great imprudence and impolicy were we to propose to make this fund the means of any system of permanent lending, which would have the effect of opening the way always to new proposals, perhaps of the most objectionable character; nay, perhaps, tending directly to revive our present and past controversies about religion in Ireland. It has been proposed to apply it in some manner to the railways. There, again, it would be impossible for us to mix the question of Irish railways with the question of the National Establishment in Ireland. I know very well the interest that exists on the subject of railways, and of public aid to railways in Ireland, but I also I know that that is a question of great difficulty and complication, and that our duty now, in laying before you a measure for which we claim the credit of finality, is to make some proposal that is obvious and clear in its character, and that does not involve you in any of the prior solutions of any of those difficult inquiries before you can determine whether it can be adopted or not. It will be the duty of Her Majesty's Government to give the most careful consideration in their power to all the proposals made with respect to Irish railways; but it would not be their duty to involve themselves and you in new difficulties by mingling that subject with the subject before us. It has next been proposed that the money should be applied to the poor rates. Such an application, it appears to me, would he a great mistake. I am not the least shocked at the idea that the land of Ireland, and the landlords of Ireland, may derive very considerable benefit from any mode in which these funds can be judiciously applied for the welfare of Ireland. I am convinced that in the long run much of it must come to them; but I do not think that upon that account, when we have a system of legal obligation regularly constituted, that system of legal obligation being the satisfaction of a primary want, recognized in almost every country as incumbent upon the property of the country, a sum of this kind ought to be applied directly in relief of property; and I think if we did so apply it we should be guilty of a great breach of faith towards the people of Ireland. The people of Ireland are generally Roman Catholic. As Roman Catholics they have scarcely the smallest interest in the pro- posals I make on this subject. In fact I am almost ashamed to think in this great business of winding-up, when such large sums of money are being disposed of, how exceeding small a portion can fall to their share. But, I say at least, that this fact—that such is the conclusion towards which the equitable application of our principles, and the necessities of our situation lead us—is really a reason why we should recollect that at least the people of Ireland are entitled, if not in respect of their religion, in respect of their being the mass of the people of Ireland, to be made as far as possible, the principal recipients of the beneficial application of this fund.

I will now venture to read to the Committee the Preamble of the Bill that I hope will be in the hands of Members to-morrow night, and it is the latter part of the passage which defines the manner in which the application of this money is proposed— Whereas it is expedient that the union created by Act of Parliament between the Churches of England and Ireland, as by law established, should be dissolved, and that the Church of Ireland, as so separated, should cease to be established by law, and that after satisfying, so far as possible, upon principles of equality as between the several religious denominations in Ireland, all just and equitable claims, the property of the said Church of Ireland, or the proceeds thereof, should be held and applied for the advantage of the Irish people, but not for the maintenance of any Church or clergy or other ministry, nor for the teaching of religion; and it is further expedient that the said property, or the proceeds thereof, should be appropriated mainly to the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering, yet so as not to cancel or impair the obligations now attached to property under the Acts for the relief of the poor. It is the latter part of the passage which defines the application of the money. There is, Sir, in every country, as we are all aware, a region of want and suffering lying between the independent part of the community on the one hand, and the purely pauperized population on the other. For this region of want and suffering it is very hard to make adequate provision by the Poor Law, which is almost intended to be niggard in its operations, because, if it were made liberal and large, the risk would then be run of doing the greatest possible injury to the independent labourer struggling to maintain himself. The wants that I speak of in Ireland are at this moment partly unsupplied, and they are partly supplied in the rough, a medium which we think defective, and which might be greatly improved. The medium I speak of is the county cess, a heavy and increasing tax—a tax not divided like the Poor Law between the owner and the occupier, but paid wholly by the occupier, and a tax not limited like the Poor Law to occupations above £4 in value, but going down to the most miserable hut or cabin. The holders of these most wretched tenements are now required in Ireland, and required increasingly from year to year, to pay not that which is paid by the wealthier portion of the occupants, who contribute to the Poor Law, but to pay for that class of want and suffering which ought undoubtedly to be met, and which in every great community ought to be liberally met, but which can only be met by the expenditure of large and considerable funds in comparison with those which avail for the support of the pauperized population. Now, what are these? I take first the lunatic asylums. The care of lunatics is one of the great duties of the community, and in Ireland, though the provision for them has as yet by no means overtaken the whole country, the cost on this head is alrady from £120,000 to £140,000 a year, and will ultimately rise to £200,000. This expenditure is defrayed by the county cess, collected from the class of occupiers I have described.

The case of the deaf and dumb and of the blind is the next melancholy topic I will refer to, and they constitute the sorest places of the social system, and suffer from the most grievous and painful afflictions with which humanity is vexed, and for which no Poor Law can provide. The care of these is a very expensive matter. You will keep a pauper in a workhouse, and keep him decently, in Ireland, for some £7 or £8 a year; but you will not keep these classes—you will not give to the deaf and dumb and the blind the most precious boon you can give them—that is, training and instruction—under, perhaps, £30 or £40 per head per year. It is no common act to train these people and to convey to them through the beneficial channels that the Almighty has given us the blessings of knowledge and the faculty of applying their bodily powers to their own support. This description of want and suffering is, it appears to me, marked out by every feature that can recommned it for the application of any funds like these. There are those who say these funds should not be secularized. I respect the feelings of those who are against the secularization of such funds; but I say that if we go back to the history of ecclesiastical property in Europe the suggested application is not to be condemned and denounced as secularization.

The property of the Church was divisible into four parts. One of these was consecrated to the use of the poor; and, of all the poor, the afflicted classes I have named make the strongest appeal to human compassion. At the same time, when I know the condition of the Irish peasant, when I see that the charge, through the medium of the county cess, is to be laid mainly upon him, in the first instance, and wholly upon him by the present machinery of the law, I hail the occasion this gives us of at once effecting a great improvement in relieving the Irish occupier, and especially the poor occupier, from an important portion of his burden, and of providing a more ample, a more uniform, and a better regulated source of income for the relief of the very sorest of human wants and afflictions. The general framework of this plan will be developed when the third of the days I have described is arrived at. It will be the duty of the Commission to report to the Queen that provision is made for all the purposes contemplated in the Act, and it will be their duty also to report what is the amount of surplus revenue available for these ulterior purposes, the whole of which will be enumerated in the Bill. I will not trouble the Committee now by reading them. I will not say whether or not it might be necessary to resort to further legislation; but these sums would be administered, not under any system wholly new, but they would be administered upon principles and according to rules which are already in partial and imperfect operation in Ireland. We shall escape altogether that which is called the religious difficulty, because we only propose to continue to stand upon ground, the firmness and solidity of which we have already ascertained by experience, and to make these sums available for their destined application, probably in most cases through the medium, and in all cases under the ontrol—and that we provide in the Bill—of the Poor Law Commissioners for Ireland. I have mentioned lunatics first, because the provision to be made for lunatics is the largest of all. Next to these in order is the making a satisfactory provision for the training and instruction of the deaf and dumb and the blind. I beg the Committee to understand I am not now speaking of institutions in which the deaf, the dumb, and the blind are to be mewed up for life, but simply of schools in which they may receive that kind of instruction that they are capable of receiving for their own benefit; then to go out again into the world and play their part, so far as Providence permits, as useful members of society. We believe that a good system in aid of the Poor Law may be provided for that class of persons at an expense of about £30,000 a-year, and the ultimate expense of the provision for lunatics would be £185,000 a-year. The provision for other forms of mental weakness besides that I have named—that is, for idiots and others—might cost about £20,000 a-year. There is a provision urgently needed in Ireland, and that is a supply of properly trained nurses for the use of paupers and for the poor who are above the paupers. In Ireland, I apprehend I am correct in saying the Irish medical men are known for their skill; but they are scattered over the country much more thinly than in England. The unions are large, and the public medical officer cannot be in two places at once. I am sorry to be informed upon good authority that the injuries to health, and even to life, which result from the want of skilled nurses, especially for women in labour, are grievous. The Poor Law Guardians shrink from incurring the necessary expense, and make the requisite provision in very few cases; but for a sum of £15,000 a year nurses might be provided all over Ireland. Reformatories and industrial schools languish in Ireland; they receive Parliamentary Grants; but between Parliamentary Grants and private benevolence they are inadequately supported. We shall propose to the Committee that they also be included as recipients of £10,000 of these funds. There is another charge, and that is for county infirmaries, to which I must call the particular attention of Irish Members. The infirmary system of Ireland is at present principally charged upon the county cess, and is a burden on the poorest occupiers of the land. It is very imperfect in two particulars. In the first place, it often happens that the infirmary of the county, though in the capital of the county, is not central; and, although it is supported by taxes levied from the whole county, it is really a benefit only to a very small portion of it. In the second place, the government of these infirmaries is wholly antiquated and unsuitable, and needs to be reformed. The sum to be claimed by the county infirmaries, hospitals, &c, may be put down at £51,000 a year.

The general financial result is that I have pointed to a fund of between £7,000,000 and £8,000,000, and the charges which will be most likely to occur under these heads, and which may be assumed from time to time as we are provided with the means, amount to £311,000 a year. With the provision of all these requirements I think we should be able to combine very great reforms; we shall be able to apply strict principles of economy and good administration to all these departments; we shall be able to re-divide Ireland into districts around county infirmaries, well managed and governed, and so disposed as greatly to increase facility of access to them. Lastly, I have to mention that to which I confess I attach very great value and importance. It should be known that the state of things I have pointed out with regard to the county cess has attracted the attention of Irish Members, and the attention of a Committee of this House, which has recommended that the county cess be put upon the same footing as the poor rate, that the poorer occupiers be relieved, and that the payment be divided between the landlord and the tenant. We certainly shall be in a better condition for inviting the Irish landlord to accede to that change when we are able to offer, as we shall offer by this plan, a considerable diminution of the burden of the county cess. This is, in general terms, the mode in which we propose to apply the residue, and I feel quite satisfied that I am justified in inviting to it the serious attention of the Committee, and in expressing a confident expectation and belief that the more it is examined the more they will find—passing over objections that may be made to disestablishment and disendowment—it is in itself a good and solid plan, full of public advantage.

I believe I have now gone through the chief of the almost endless arrangements, and I have laid, as well as I am able, the plans of the Government before the Committee. I will not venture to anticipate the judgment of the Committee; but I trust the Committee will be of opinion it is a plan at any rate loyal to the expectations we held out on a former occasion, and loyal to the people of England who believed our promises. I hope also the Members of the Committee may think that the best pains we could give have been applied in order to develop and mature the measure, and I say that with great submission to the judgment of Gentlemen on this and on the other side of the House. It is a subject of legislation so exceedingly complex and varied that I have no doubt there must be errors, there must be omissions, and there may be many possible improvements; and we shall welcome from every side, quite irrespective of differences of opinion on the great outlines of the measure, suggestions which, when those outlines are decided upon, may tend to secure a more beneficial application of these funds to the welfare of the people of Ireland. I trust, Sir, that although its operation be stringent, and although we have not thought it either politic or allowable to attempt to diminish its stringency by making it incomplete, the spirit towards the Church of Ireland as a religious communion in which this measure has been considered and prepared by my Colleagues and myself has not been a spirit of unkindness. Perhaps at this moment I can hardly expect—it would be too much to expect—to obtain full credit for any declaration of that kind. We are undoubtedly asking an educated, highly respected, and generally pious and zealous body of clergymen to undergo a great transition; we are asking a powerful and intelligent minority of the laity in Ireland, in connection with the Established Church, to abate a great part of the exceptional privileges they have enjoyed; but I do not feel that in making this demand upon them we are seeking to inflict an injury. I do not believe they are exclusively or even mainly responsible for the errors of English policy towards Ireland; I am quite certain that in many vital respects they have suffered by it; I believe that the free air they will breathe under a system of equality and justice, giving scope for the development of their great energies, with all the powers of property and intelligence they will bring to bear, will make that Ireland which they love a country for them not less enviable and not less beloved in the future than it has been in the past. As respects the Church, I admit it is the case almost without exception. I do not know in what country so great a change, so great a transition has been proposed for the ministers of a religious communion who have enjoyed for many ages the preferred position of an Established Church. I can well understand that to many in the Irish Establishment such a change appears to be nothing less than ruin and destruction; from the height on which they now stand the future is to them an abyss, and their fears recall the words used in King Lear when Edgar endeavours to persuade Gloster that he has fallen over the cliffs of Dover, and says— Ten masts at each make not the altitude, Which thou hast perpendicularly fallen; Thy life's a miracle. And yet, but a little while after the old man is relieved from his delusion, and finds he has not fallen at all. So I trust that when, instead of the fictitious and adventitious aid on which we have too long taught the Irish Establishment to lean, it should come to place its trust in its own resources, in its own great mission, in all that it can draw from the energy of its ministers and its members, and the high hopes and promises of the Gospel that it teaches, it will find that it has entered upon a new era of existence—an era bright with hope and potent for good. At any rate, I think the day has certainly come when an end is finally to be put to that union, not between the Church and religious association, but between the Establishment and the State, which was commenced under circumstances little auspicious, and has endured to be a source of unhappiness to Ireland, and of discredit and scandal to England. There is more to say—This measure is in every sense a great measure—great in its principles, great in the multitude of its dry, technical, but interesting detail, and great as a testing measure; for it will show for one and all of us of what metal we are made. Upon us all it brings a great responsibility—great and foremost upon those who occupy this Bench. We are especially chargeable—nay, deeply guilty, if we have either dishonestly, as some think, or even prematurely or unwisely challenged so gigantic an issue. I know well the punishments that follow rashness in public affairs, and that ought to fall upon those men, those Phætons of politics, who, with hands unequal to the task, attempt to guide the shariot of the sun. But the responsibility, though heavy, does not exclusively press upon us—it presses upon every man who has to take part in the discussion and decision upon this Bill. Every man approaches the discussion under the most solemn obligations to raise the level of his vision and expand its scope in proportion with the greatness of the matter in hand. The working of our constitutional government itself is upon its trial, for I do not believe there ever was a time when the wheels of legislative machinery were set in motion under conditions of peace and order and constitutional regularity to deal with a question greater or more profound. And more especially, Sir, is the credit and fame of this great Assembly involved; this Assembly, which has inherited through many ages the accumulated honours of brilliant triumphs, of peaceful but courageous legislation, is now called upon to address itself to a task which would, indeed, have demanded all the best energies of the very best among your fathers and your ancestors. I believe it will prove to be worthy of the task. Should it fail, even the fame of the House of Commons will suffer disparagement; should it succeed, even that fame, I venture to say, will receive no small, no insensible addition. I must not ask Gentlemen opposite to concur in this view, emboldened as I am by the kindness they have shown me in listening with patience to a statement which could not have been other than tedious; but I pray them to bear with me for a moment while, for myself and my Colleagues, I say we are sanguine of the issue. We believe, and for my part I am deeply convinced, that when the final consummation shall arrive, and when the words are spoken that shall give the force of law to the work embodied in this measure—the work of peace and justice—those words will be echoed upon every shore where the name of Ireland or the name of Great Britain has been heard, and the answer to them will come back in the approving verdict of civilized mankind. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving for leave to bring in the Bill.

MR. DISRAELI

I wish to take the earliest opportunity of stating the course that I and those with whom I have the honour of acting propose to take under the present circumstances. We have not, in any degree, changed our opinions repecting the policy which the right hon. Gentleman has so fully, so adequately, and so eloquently placed before the House this evening. We still look upon disestablishment as a great political error; we still look upon disendowment of a Church, particularly when its property is to be applied to secular purposes, as mere and sheer confiscation. With these feelings, it would certainly be my duty, under ordinary circumstances, to resist the Motion made by the right hon. Gentleman; but I cannot conceal from myself that, in coming to a determination as to the course we ought to take, we must not limit ourselves to the consideration of the mere Motion before us. I would not pretend that this new House of Commons can be at all fettered by the decision at which the late House of Commons arrived; but that decision must be taken in conjunction with the circumstances which followed it; it must be taken in conjunction with the decision of the country at the General Election, and the course of the then existing Government in consequence of that decision of the country. Under those circumstances, I feel it is our duty to take a different course from that which otherwise we might have felt it our duty to pursue. I take the fair interpretation of the decision of the country at the General Election to be this, that it was the opinion of the country that the right hon. Gentleman should have the opportunity of dealing with the question of the Church in Ireland. I do not understand that the country pledged itself to support any particular measure. No particular measure was then before it; but it declared and decided, in a manner which could not be mistaken, that the right hon. Gentleman should have a fair and full opportunity of dealing with the question of the Church in Ireland. I cannot, therefore, take this occasion, which might otherwise have been a most legitimate one, of preventing the right hon. Gentleman from placing his policy before the country, and I shall advise none of those whose conduct I can influence to oppose the Motion the right hon. Gentleman has just made. The Motion is one which, if it were not for those wise forms of the House, that I shall always be the first to uphold, would be only equivalent to the right hon. Gentleman asking leave to introduce his Bill and have it read a first time. I think the right hon. Gentleman ought to have the opportunity of placing his policy before the country without any unnecessary delay, nor is it expedient that there should be unnecessary delay in Parliament coming to a decision upon the subject. That there should be a serious and even solemn consideration of the question—that there should be an adequate and even ample debate upon it, I hope no one on either side of the House will for a moment deny; but it does not appear to me that it is at all expedient any time should be lost in having the policy of the right hon. Gentleman fully announced for the consideration of Parliament. I trust the right hon. Gentleman will give ample time to the House and the country for the consideration of his measure before he asks for a decision. The right hon. Gentleman has not yet intimated when he proposes to take the second reading; but it appears to me that it would be possible to give adequate time for the consideration of the measure without incurring unnecessary delay. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will allow at least three weeks for the consideration of a Bill which we have not yet in our hands. That period is not too long for the consideration of a measure of so complex and various a character, irrespective of the importance of its leading principles. It appears to me that the right hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity then of moving the second reading before Easter, and probably of having a decision upon it; and if, as I have heard, and the rumour was to me by no means disagreeable, our Easter holidays are to be only of a nominal character, and are to be made up for at Whitsuntide, then, even if the vote were not taken, the delay would be only from Thursday to Monday. If the right hon. Gentleman gives us three weeks for consideration—["No, no!"] The hon. Gentleman says "No," but he has not read the Bill. The statement of the Prime Minister to which we have listened occupied more than three hours, and I willingly admit that not a phrase in it was wasted, but that very circumstance I think justifies the request I have made. I will only repeat that the course we propose to take on the present occasion is to offer no opposition to the Motion. If we wanted delay, we might have offered opposition and have involved the House in a preliminary debate of considerable length. That circumstance, I hope, will be taken into account by the right hon. Gentleman. I trust, therefore, as we are not opposing the Motion, the right hon. Gentleman will accede to my proposition, and allow the House and the country an opportunity for considering this important subject, which involves details all of which must be investigated; and if he pursues that course, he will find that he will have to encounter no unnecessary or vexatious delay.

MR. GLADSTONE

I at once admit that nothing can command my confidence more fully than the declaration of the right hon. Gentleman with respect to the view he takes as to the question of time. I will explain to him exactly, however, the way in which the case lies, and then he will be able to judge how far I can comply with the request made to me, and where it is necessary for me to take a stand. Our wish upon this subject is that this measure shall pass into a law—at any rate that it shall not fail in passing into law through want of time. Now, Sir, the House of Lords is entitled, upon a question of this kind, to a suitable period of time. It is not only entitled to time for discusssion on the main stages, but also on the details. I do not think we should be doing very full justice to the House of Lords on this subject if we were to send them this Bill in the month of July. I think it ought to go to them before. I am bound also to say I hold that this Bill ought to take some time in Committee in this House, and I think some considerable time will be required between the second reading and the Committee. It appears to me, if I may say so, that the debate upon the second reading is but very little more than a renewal of the debates of last year, and that it is in Committee the real manipulation of the details will be carried out. I am bound to say that I think it my duty to press the Committee and the House to take the second reading before Easter. If the Bill be in the hands of Members to-morrow, I think that Thursday fortnight is really the latest moment for which the second reading can be fixed.

MR. DISRAELI

intimated his assent.

Resolution agreed to.

House resumed.

MR. GLADSTONE

signified to the House, That Her Majesty has been pleased to place at the disposal of Parliament, for the purposes of the Bill, Her interest in the Archbishoprics, Bishoprics, and other Ecclesiastical dignities and benefices in Ireland.

MR. SPEAKER

then put the Question that leave be given to bring in the Bill.

SIR FREDERICK HEYGATE

asked for some explanation with respect to the funds said to be in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the purpose of carrying out some of the arrangements contemplated by the Prime Minister.

MR. HUNT

said, he did not understand, from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, whether the private endowments were to be put into the hands of what was called the Church body or were to be localized.

MR. GLADSTONE

With respect to the private endowments, the expression that I used was that they would pass into the hands of the Church body; but it will remain entirely open for consideration whether some arrangements should not be made which would pass them into the hands of some local authority. It is impossible for us at present to undertake to be acquainted with the terms of all these endowments; but, as the body is to be representative, I assume that all local interests will be sufficiently cared for. That is a matter which, I assume, will be settled among the members of the Disestablished Church in a way which will be most to their interest, and, of course, we should be very glad to enter into their views.

With respect to the question of the hon. Baronet (Sir Frederick Heygate), the sum of £1,100,000 which I described as going in satisfaction of the claims of the Presbyterians and Maynooth, I likewise enumerated among the charges on the Church Fund. As to the savings bank funds in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I introduced that topic only with reference to the facility that these funds would give us for making advances. Of course that has no bearing on the sources whence the funds would ultimately come. There was one point which I forgot to mention in my speech, and that is that there will be introduced into the Bill in Committee some one clause to enable the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt to lend, and the Temporalities Commissioners to borrow, for the purpose of arranging these transactions.

Resolved, That the Chairman be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring in a Bill to put an end to the Establishment of the Church in Ireland, and to make provision in respect of the Temporalities thereof, and in respect of the Royal College of Maynooth.

Resolution reported.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. DODSON, Mr. GLADSTONE, Mr. JOHN BRIGHT, Mr. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE, and Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL for IRELAND.

Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 27.]