[BILL 27.] SECOND READING. (Hansard, 25 February 1873)

§ MR. SALT,
in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, it was similar to the one on the same subject that had been before the House last year. He stated that its object, as its title indicated, was to afford facilities for public worship, and that it consisted of three parts. The first proposed to provide services where the incumbent was willing that they should be held, and to protect the person so placed in the parish from arbitrary interference by any succeeding incumbent. The next part of the measure provided that where the incumbent objected to the plan it should be possible to introduce a minister on an application from a certain number of parishioners; and there were provisions to protect the minister from undue interference. The third part of the Bill contained provisions for giving facilities for public worship in chapels attached to private houses. He would leave these points to be discussed in Committee; but he might state that the objection raised last year by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope), that the measure would interfere with the parochial system, had not been strengthened by the information he had been able to gather in the interval. There were cases in which men having charge of large populations refused to have any external aid in their parishes, and in such cases he thought a remedy ought to be provided. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

§ MR. BERESFORD HOPE
said, that last year he took a division on the second reading of the Bill, but was willing now to let it be read a second time, and afterwards to move its being referred to a Select Committee. He took this course because he freely acknowledged that the Bill was an improvement upon that of last year, for it gave the incumbent the nomination of two out of the five Commissioners who were to judge each case—and it also contained a faint recognition of the principle for which he contended, that the incumbent would have the option of providing the additional facilities of 970 worship before he was subjected to the penal intrusion of another clergyman; still, he did not think it a safe measure as it stood. The main danger of the Bill was that which arose from divisions of opinion amongst parties in the Church. He did not think the Bill provided a sufficient safeguard against any set of men in the Church trying, not so much to take hold of the waste places in the land, where the worship of God was practically unknown, as to invade the territory of an active clergyman, whose forms of worship might be suited to the feelings of the parishioners, while these were not to the taste of the propagandist organization, in whose hands every parish might become the battle-field of polemic strifes. The true method, in his opinion, to avoid this danger would be to make the measure one which would deal with the quantity and not the quality of the worship to be supplied. For this purpose, the Bill ought to contain a provision by which a clergyman should have ample time to provide such special and additional means of grace as the parishioners might desire—supposing the demand to be judged reasonable—in his own way and on his own responsibility, before any stranger was intruded into his parish. Such a limitation would restrict the Bill to cases of proved incapacity or neglect, and tend to eliminate the competition of rival forms of worship. There was, however, one clause of the Bill which stood by itself, and to which he had a special objection—namely, the 5th—which allowed free-trade in private chapels in country houses. This would, he conceived, be making a very invidious distinction between the religion of the rich and that of the poor.

§ MR. MONK
stated, that he entertained the same strong objections to the Bill which he had expressed last year.

§ MR. BERESFORD HOPE
moved that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee.

§ MR. PERCY WYNDHAM
seconded the Motion.