BENEFICES BILL.—LEAVE. (Hansard, 22 February 1870)

§ MR. ASSHETON CROSS,

in moving for leave to bring in a Bill to render void the sale of the next indentation to a Benefice, said, it was not his intention at the present stage to raise any discussion, because that would be better taken at a future time. He would only explain that nothing could be further from his intention than to interfere with the exercise of lay patronage or the power of laymen to hold advowsons and next presentations to benefices. He did not propose to examine how advowsons came to pass into the hands of laymen, because the House was aware of the circumstances; but to his mind it was of the greatest possible advantage, not only to the Church but to the country, that laymen should hold advowsons as well as corporate bodies, and so long as that was the case advowsons must be the subject of sale like other property. With that state of things it was not his intention to interfere. There was, however, a great difference between the sale of an advowson and that of the next presentation—that was, between the sale of the right to present, and the sale of the exercise of that right. The right to present to a living was practically a public trust of the most serious character, and threw upon the patron of the living a responsibility which he certainly ought not to allowed, in consideration of a money payment, to put off his shoulders. The law gives a man a right to purchase property to which the right of voting 695 was attached, and he could soil that property, together with the right to vote; but, so long as he hold the property, he could not sell the exorcise of his right to vote in respect to that property without being guilty of bribery. Just in the same way with the right of presentation to a living. If the patron desired to part with it, he should only be allowed to do so by the sale of the advowson; but so long as he held the advowson, so long was he bound to exercise the right of presentation as a public trust, nor could he morally dispose of it for a money value. The legislation he proposed was by no means new. It was but another step further in the direction in which the Legislature had often gone, to the great advantage of the Church and the country. In fact, the sale of the right of presentation was a usurped right, although it had at present the force of law. Anyone who would refer to the canons of Archbishop Richards and the Legatine Constitution of Othobon, in the reigns of Henry II. and III., would see that the sale was a usurped right. So again the Bishop has in many cases the power to refuse, and so of rendering the presentation void. So again, for instance, when a patron does not present a clergyman within a certain time the right of presentation lapses. All that shows that the trust was a public one, and to be exercised for the public benefit. So again the statute of Elizabeth prevented the sale of the presentation during the avoidance of the living. What could be stronger, again, than the statute of Anne, which, for public reasons, forbade the purchase of presentations by those who were most likely to make the purchase, when the living was not void. That Act prevented clergymen from buying livings for themselves, whether the livings were vacant or not. He therefore asked the House to consider the present state of the law, bearing in mind the difference between the sale of the right to present, and the sale of the next presentation; and also remembering what had been already done in this direction. Was the present state of the law satisfactory either to the Church or the country? At present, if the patron sold the next presentation, concealed under the form of selling the advowson, at the very moment before the vicar or incumbent died, the sale was good. In the last 696 case in which that point was decided—namely, that of the rectory of Winslow, the rector was known by the patron to be at the very point of death. At three o'clock in the afternoon the patron found a clergyman, who knew nothing of the state of the incumbent, and he sold the living to him for the sum of £6,000. The rector died at eleven o'clock the same night. The Court of King's Bench held that the sale was one of the grossest evasions of the statute of Elizabeth, and set it aside. The House of Lords, however, on appeal, was obliged to find that the sale was good, having been effected in the lifetime of the rector; and that unsatisfactory state of the law still continued. That was, no doubt, a strong case, and one which would not very often occur; but was it not a scandal to religion, and an insult to the parishioners to see the advertisements which now appeared, week after week, in the newspapers, holding forth the great advantages of the next presentation to be sold, and stating in bold figures and large letters the age and infirmities; of the present holders of the living, in order to induce persons to give a larger sum of money for it? He should like to read the observations made by one or two of the most learned Judges who ever sat upon the Bench upon this subject. Chief Justice De Grey, in delivering judgment in the case to which he referred, used these remarks— An advowson was a temporal right, not indeed jus habendi, but jus disponendi. The right itself is a valuable right, and properly the object of sale, but the exercise of this right is a public trust, and therefore ought to be void of any pecuniary consideration either in the patron or in the presentee. Chief Justice Best used still stronger language, and said that much simony was indirectly committed by the sale of the next presentation. If, he added, it were proper to prevent the giving of the next presentation, it was equally proper to prevent the sale of the immediate right to present. Having these high authorities in his favour, he asked the House to go one step further in the direction in which they had already gone, and prevent that which had been held to be a scandal to the Church. Would it be tolerated for one moment that the next presentation to livings in the hands of the Crown, the Lord Chancellor, the Universities, the Colleges, the Bishops, or the great Corporations, 697 should be put up to sale? And if all these were excluded, some by statute and some by public opinion, why was lay patronage in the hands of individuals to be placed on a higher footing, and why was that to be allowed in one case which was not in the other? He was glad to learn that no opposition would be offered by the Government to the Motion which he now made for leave to introduce his Bill.