§ MR. CORRANCEsaid, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he will furnish to the House the sums respectively apportioned (out of the proposed sequestration of Church property—viz., £1,100,000) to Presbyterian purposes and the College of Maynooth; and, the specific uses and future purposes for which such sums are intended to provide?
MR. GLADSTONESir, with respect to the uses and purposes for which these sums to be apportioned to the Presbyterians and Maynooth are intended I can only refer the hon. Member to the expressions in the Bill; for Her Majesty's Government have embodied in those expressions all that they have, as at present advised, thought expedient, or desirable with respect to these purposes. As far as Maynooth is concerned the matter is perfectly simple. There is nothing to do except to take the sum granted annually out of the Consolidated Fund and multiply it by fourteen. It is also a perfectly simple matter to obtain the precise amount, which is a very small amount, of a debt now due on the part of the College of Maynooth to the Board of Works in Ireland, which mentioned in my opening statement on the Irish Church. But with regard to the main portions of this question, the only information that could be supplied to the hon. Member would be a Return of the sums voted last year or proposed to be 1088 voted this year for the Presbyterians, because the Government is not in possession of data that would enable them to present a precise computation of the amount. They depend, for example, on the ages of the Presbyterian clergy, and we are not in possession of the age of each Presbyterian clergyman, nor could we with propriety well call upon those gentlemen to return their ages. Therefore the hon. Gentleman will see that precise information cannot be given. Something over £700,000, or between that and £750,000, I have little doubt, is the sum that will go to the Presbyterians under this arrangement, and the annual amounts voted can be easily obtained if the hon. Member wishes for them.