§ Further Proceeding on Consideration, as amended, resumed.
MR. GLADSTONEsaid, that having begun his speech at an unseasonable time, he was compelled to sit down before completing it. He had, however, nearly concluded all he had to say, and would only trouble the House with a few re-marks indicating the exact character of the Amendment which he proposed. He had ventured to lay down these propositions—that the Amendment hastily introduced into the Bill did not give the right of appeal at all; in the second place, that the eminent person who was to be called on to review and reverse the judgment of the Bishop was a person who must necessarily approach the case with a far inferior knowledge and means of information, because although it was the duty of the Bishop to know all the parishes in his diocese, it was impossible for the Archbishop to know every parish within his province. Thirdly, he ventured to point out that the giving the Archbishop original jurisdiction was totally contrary to the principles of the Episcopal Church. In the fourth place, he said that it was a great hardship upon the clergy to be subjected to double instead of single ordeal, preparatory to trial; and lastly, he urged that even if all these things were fit to be done, they were unfit to be done on the 28th of July, and unfit to be maintained on the 31st of July, for he solemnly believed that at the very moment when he was making that last appeal to the equity of the House of Commons, that more than one half the clergy of the Church of England who would be personally affected by the Amendment were not aware of that which the House was voting. In doing so, he had, he hoped, redeemed the pledge he had given, and 1081 thought he had neither reproached nor censured any one. It was all very well to talk of the information disseminated by the Press, but its filtration into country parsonages was not always so extensive as some hon. Gentlemen seemed to suppose. For his own part, he had never thought that the basis of the Bill was wise, because, in his opinion, it inclined too much towards the undesirable object of abstract uniformity, which, if it were to be the ideal of the Legislature, might well recall the imago of Harley Street or Eaton Place. He, however, was of opinion that the Bill did not go far enough to protect congregations against legal innovations. Although admitting there was a case for legislation, and perceiving the feeling of the House on the subject, he had not deemed it desirable to press his views upon its attention. He saw no advantage to the Church or to the country in the prolongation of an angry debate. Such a result, he did not care who won, it could have only one tendency—the unsettlement of existing fundamental relations. That was his fixed conviction, acting on which he was willing to allow much to go forward of which he did not approve; for he believed that the excitement of conflict would be a greater evil than than that which would follow legislation, if it were only founded upon some regard to what was equitable. He felt satisfied, however, that his main propositions could not be overthrown, and that if the proposal in the Bill were persevered in the renewal of difficulties in respect to it in "another place" might be anticipated. He looked for-ward to the most formidable and lasting consequences from a proposal which had been so hastily introduced, and which he believed to be so full of in-justice. He most earnestly, therefore, wished to impress on the House his deep sense of the importance of the course which he invited it to adopt, especially to some of the clergy, in whose case, perhaps, he had no individual reasons for gratitude or regard. For that, how-ever, he did not care one rush. All he aimed at was justice—the only true and noble object which a man could hold up to his view, and in that name he placed his Amendment before them. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Amendment of which he had given Notice.
§ Amendment proposed, in page 5, line 26, to leave out from the words "Provided also," to the word "representation, in line 43, inclusive."—(Mr. Gladstone.)
§ MR. HOLTsaid, that as he was the author of the particular clause in the Bill to which the right hon. Gentleman had taken exception, it was right he should briefly state why he advocated the clause. As to the clause not being equitable, because the parties could not be heard before the Archbishop, he would call attention to the fact that parties could not be heard before the Bishop. The only question which a Bishop would have to decide was whether he would allow the charge to be brought, and the Archbishop had simply to express an opinion as to whether the reasons given by the Bishop were sound or unsound. He also contended that the Archbishop would have before him to and him in coming to a right decision all the information which a Bishop could command. It required, in his opinion, no very intimate knowledge of a diocese to be able to ascertain whether the law had or had not been broken, and what was required was that the Archbishop should have a power of review. There was nothing unconstitutional in that. In our judicial procedure grand juries had the power of reviewing the decision of the Justices. He ventured to think that a case in point, forbore the question was decided, without the accused being present. He would not go into questions of ecclesiastical law; but they all knew that an Archbishop had a certain control over the Bishops of his Province, that there was an appeal from the Bishop's Court to the Court of the Archbishop, and that, as the right hon. Gentleman had acknowledged, the Archbishop had a certain power of restraint over the action of the Bishops. It was admitted that he had such a power in regard to curates, in order that justice might better be done to the curates. Well, it was now intended by that clause that this power should be intrusted to the Archbishop, in order that justice might better be done to parishioners. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) had just told the House that "in the event of the Suffragan refusing or neglecting to do his duty the Metropolitan was not only allowed but required, by 1083 ecclesiastical law, to interfere." In the present instance when a Bishop did not allow a complaint from the parishioners to go before the Judge, there would be an appeal to the Archbishop, that he might examine into the case and express his opinion whether or not there had been any neglect or misconduct on the part of the Suffragan in refusing to let the complaint be tried. With every respect for those who had given their minds to the study of the Canon Law, he hoped the day was far distant when the judgment of that House would be swayed by a reference to Canon Law. The object of that Bill was to secure uniformity of practice and obedience to the law in all the dioceses of England, but according to the doctrine of the right hon. Gentleman, the clergy were to do pretty much what they liked. That was no doubt in accordance with the policy shadowed out in the celebrated Six Resolutions of the right hon. Gentleman. They made no mistake when they said the right hon. Gentleman was in favour of privileged Non-conformity. As to that being an unfit clause to pass late in July, if it was a proper thing to discuss that Bill, at all, late in July, it was equally proper to introduce Amendments which were essential to the well working of the measure. In reference to the clergy being unaware of what was being done, he might observe that they had a most excellent Press, through which all their proceedings were communicated to the country far and wide. The clergy, as a matter of fact, were not ignorant of the proceedings in Parliament, for he had himself received a letter from a clergyman of some eminence thanking him warmly for proposing the Amendment under discussion. The question really was, whether the Bishop ought or ought not to have an absolute veto on the commencement of proceedings; and the strongest argument in support of the clause was supplied by the right hon. Gentleman in a former debate, when he told them there were indiscreet Bishops. He did not wish to give an in-discreet Bishop an unfettered licence. He only wished, in the event of the Bishop deciding against the feelings of the parishioners complaining, that his opinion should be submitted to the re-view of the Archbishop, with a view both to secure general uniformity, and also 1084 to protect the parishioners against individual caprice. That provision was adopted in Committee by a majority of something like three to one, and he trusted that the House would now support its own decision.
MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, he thought the speech to which they had just listened showed how extremes met. The hon. Member argued that there was an indiscretion in Bishops which required to be controlled, and that there was none in Archbishops, who, there-fore, did not require control. The hon. Gentleman told them there might be an indiscreet Bishop, and that it was requisite to have some one over him; and there was to be no one over the Archbishop, because it was to be presumed that the Archbishop was infallible. No doubt, out of the whole body of Bishops appointed, there might be some who were indiscreet; but, with the highest respect for Archbishops, he ventured to say they were not always absolutely discreet or infallible; and when the hon. Member proposed that the decision of a Bishop should be reviewed by a person who they had no right to suppose would be more discreet than the Bishop, he was both setting up the infallibility of two Popes instead of one, and at the same time laying down a law hitherto entirely unrecognized in the Church of England. He was attempting to make the two Archbishops odious by converting them into the public prosecutors of the Kingdom. ["No, no!"] What were they to be then? That was not an appeal, but a case in which the discretion of one man was to be overruled by the discretion of another, not in the sense of relieving harshness or injustice, but for the institution of a prosecution. If it were a question of law, he could under-stand their referring it to another tribunal; but it was a question of simple discretion, not of law. Where the Bishop said a prosecution ought not to be instituted, his opinion was to be re-viewed by his Archbishop, a person, in all probability, no more discreet than his Suffragan; and if the Archbishop said there was to be a prosecution, the unfortunate Suffragan was to be compelled to take all the steps in the prosecution which he had himself refused to sanction. That was a perfectly novel proceeding in the whole history of the country. He regretted that he was not 1085 present when that question was previously discussed. He came in at the division, and he thought that provision one of the harshest over introduced into any Bill. The hon. Gentleman wanted to obtain perfect uniformity throughout the Kingdom; but the fact of the law being set in motion by the Archbishop would not produce uniformity in all their different dioceses. Uniformity would not be secured by the action of the Archbishops, but through the decisions of the Judge. He wished to know whether the hon. Member had consulted the Archbishops as to the power which he sought to confer upon them, or the Bishops as to whether they would consent to such power being exercised over them? The Bishops were bound to their Metropolitan under certain terms and conditions. Did they ever suppose that in matters left to their discretion, they were to be overruled simply by the discretion of the Archbishop, and not by the opinion of a Court that they were wrong in point of law? They had first refused to make the Bishops subject to the Bill, like the rest of the clergy, and now they turned round on them and said that if they exercised the discretion vested in them in accordance with the feelings of the parishioners, and not in accordance with their own consciences and their sense of duty, they would not interfere with them. But was it supposed that they would always have two Archbishops who would not be guided by their own sense of duty or their own discretion, but by popular feelings? [Murmurs] That was what the hon. Member (Mr. Holt) said. ["No, no!"] At all events, the effect of what the hon. Gentleman said was, that they could not leave it to the discretion of the Bishop to overrule the wish of the parishioners, but they would refer the matter to the Archbishop, in order that he might set up the will of the parishioners. In conclusion, he called upon those who supported the clause to say whether they had any authority from the Archbishops to ask for a jurisdiction which had never been given to them before.
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had told them that on that question extremes met—an observation which he thought exceedingly well founded, for on that subject extremes did meet, and the Motion of the right hon. Member for 1086 Greenwich was supported by the Secretary of State for War and the Member for the University of Oxford. They were informed the other day at the Mansion House, that that Bill was one for which Her Majesty's Government were morally responsible, and up to that point the Government, under the lead of the Prime Minister, had given an unmistakable support to the principles of the Bill brought forward by the right hon. and learned Recorder on grounds which were perfectly intelligible—namely, that they intended to rally the English people on the broad platform of the Reformation. The aspect of the Bill had changed that evening. The Prime Minister was absent, and the conduct of the Bill was left in charge of the Secretary of State for War, who was no friend of the measure, but had, on the contrary, declared against it from the first. That right hon. Gentleman was the close ally on the present occasion of his right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich, who had moved a critical Amendment in the Bill. Those right hon. Gentlemen agreed in their conclusions, and in the principles from which those conclusions were drawn. What were the reasons alleged against a conclusion solemnly arrived at in Committee upon the Bill and for which, if he recollected right, the Prime Minister voted? Over and over again, in the progress of the Bill, he had seen the Prime Minister walk into one Lobby, and the Secretary for War into the other. And, now, his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, representing the Government, came for-ward in support of an Amendment which would, if carried, destroy the whole spirit of the Bill. Did the House sup-pose that his right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich had come back that day for any other object than, if possible, at the last moment, to wreck the Bill? or, that the Secretary for War, who said nothing upon the Bill in Committee, had derived courage from any other circumstance than that his Predecessor in the Representation of the University of Oxford had come forward to propose his Amendment? What were the grounds on which they were invited to overthrow the Resolution of the Committee? They were told that the Resolution could not be accepted because it was contrary to the opinion of 1087 the Canonists of Christendom. But the canonists of Christendom were not the authorities by which for the last 300 years the House of Commons had been governed in its legislation. The principles of the Reformation and the Constitution of this country had been founded upon a repudiation of the doctrines of the Canonists, which had been solemnly read at the Table of the House that evening. The head-quarters of the Canon Law were not at Westminster. The Canon Law of Christendom was fulminated from the Vatican. It was the law of Ultramontanism, and was adverse to the principle of a National Church in every country of Europe. It was the law which, in order to found the Reformation, it was necessary to repudiate. Five minutes ago he took from the Table of the House the statute upon which the Reformation and the Constitution of this country was founded. It was the statute of the submission of the clergy; and the condition of the sub-mission was—
That they, the said clergy, nor any of them from henceforth shall presume to attempt to allege claims or put in force any constitution or ordinances, provincial or synodal, or any other canon; nor shall they enact, promulge, or execute any such canons, constitutions, or ordinances provincial.He would venture to say that from 1533 the Constitution of the Church and State of this country had depended upon the repudiation of the Canon Law, as controlling either the authority of Parliament or the principles of the Canon Law. The laity of England had repudiated the Canon Law from a much earlier time. It was the repudiation of this law which gave rise to the celebrated declaration of those who represented the country gentlemen of England in those days—Nolumus leges Angliœ mutari. Therefore, when he heard alleged in the House of Commons the doctrine of a Canonist; with whose name he was happy to say he was entirely unacquainted. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] His right hon. Friend might say "Hear, hear;" but he should be utterly ashamed of the profession of the Common Law, if he did not make the declaration. To hear a Canonist quoted as an authority against the legislation of Parliament was enough to make the bones of Lord Coke turn in his grave. And, when he was told that the relations between the Bishops and the Archbishops 1088 were to be governed by the opinion of Van Espen or of any other Canonist, he said, he would not recognize the authority of any such opinion. The relations of the Bishops and Archbishops were to be governed upon due and proper consideration of the law of the Queen, Lords, and Commons of England. Unless the House of Commons had very much changed, it would not be swayed by the opinion, whether expressed in Latin or any other language, of the Canonists of Christendom, but it would consider what was to the advantage of the Church and the State, and those were subjects which they were perfectly competent to discuss in the vulgar tongue. He would therefore ask, what it was expedient to do with reference to this matter?—a very practical question. They had passed almost to its latest stage, a Bill which provided that the statute law of England should be put in force in relation to the Church, and the machinery provided was, that certain persons should be en-titled to complain if the law was not observed, such persons to complain to the Bishops, who, in the first place, were to put the law in operation. But in discussing these ecclesiastical questions considerations were admitted which would not be admitted in discussing any other subjects. For instance, soon after the meeting of the last Parliament the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge having introduced arguments drawn from the Canon Law and similar sources, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, in that fine masculine Saxon of which he was so perfect a master, swept away the cobwebs, and said—"Let us have done with this ecclesiastical rubbish." He (Sir William Harcourt) thought that on the present occasion they might sweep away the Canon Law in the same way. The Bill provided that the Bishops were to be the persons to decide what was to be done upon complaints presented to them; and primâ facie, it would be sup-posed the person to whom complaint was made would say—" Let us remit the matter to the consideration of a Judge." But the House had introduced the question of the discretion of the Bishops, and this he held to be a very dangerous principle; but he was willing that it should be tried as an experiment. The hon. Member for West Kent the other evening said that what he wanted was 1089 fair play, and that that would be attained by having High Church and Low Church Bishops whose decisions could be put one against the other. He did not think that was the view of the majority of the House, who would probably above all things desire to prevent the state of things so much admired by the hon. Member. The House did not desire that the Bishops of the last five years should pronounce decisions exactly opposite to those pronounced by their predecessors of five or ten years before. They thought that it would be for the advantage of the nation and of the Church that there should be some single, at all events, some authority which would give unity to the practice of the Judge. Well, he had referred, when they were in Committee, to the fact that a Bishop had presented a Petition to Convocation, in which the petitioners stated that they did not consider the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council binding. What would such a Bishop be likely to do, if he were asked to sanction proceedings under this Bill? Would he not say that he considered the Bill was not a good Bill, and that he must, there-fore, decline, so far as he was concerned, to allow it to be put in operation? Such a thing was possible, he even thought it was probable, and be preferred to have two chances rather than one for the enforcement of the law. But then it was said that this was a one-sided affair. He could not concur in that view. If the Bishop determined that the law should be enforced, he entirely agreed that his decision should not be appealed against; but if a Bishop said he would not allow the law to be enforced, then the case would be entirely different, and in that case a double opinion would be extremely valuable. The presumption should be in favour of the law, and the question now under discussion should be decided not upon the opinion of Canonists, but by the judgment and common sense of that House. They should remember that it was not the Archbishop who was to determine the case; the only thing the Archbishop was to be asked was—should the particular case, the subject of the appeal, go to the Judge? He thought the House would virtually say by its decision that it was not desirable that of 27 dioceses in England 25 should say—"Let the law be enforced," and that two should say—" The law is a bad 1090 law, and shall not be enforced." The question was a practical one, and he hoped the House would determine it upon its own authority, and without reference to the Ecclesiastical Law of Christendom, or any more limited portion of that large denomination, as the Committee had already by a large majority decided.
MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, the speech of his hon. and learned Friend might be divided into three portions. In the first part he had good-humouredly referred to the differences which existed on this question between the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War, and speaking of the absence of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, had said that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War had assumed the leadership of the House and had gone against the Bill. It was quite clear, however, that the first part of his hon. and learned Friend's speech was answered by the second, which was, and was intended to be, a manifesto against the course taken in reference to the Bill by the late Prime Minister, and a direct challenge to the opinions which that right hon. Gentleman had put forth. If there was any reproach, therefore, arising from the differences of opinion which prevailed, that reproach applied to the bench opposite as well as to the Treasury Bench. In the second part of his hon. and learned Friend's speech, the vast majority of the House concurred, and he confessed that he was among the majority, The clergy of the Church of England had accepted their benefices upon the express condition that they should conform to the law of that Church as accepted by the nation and by the Parliament of England. He quite concurred with his hon. and learned Friend that the obligation they were under to perform these services according to law was binding and supreme, and further that they were not only not to break the law themselves, but that they were bound to set an example to others of obedience to the law. With respect to the third part of the speech, they might dismiss altogether the hostility and animosity of his hon. and learned Friend to the policy of the late Prime Minister. It was a practical question, and one which had nothing to do with Canon Law. The 1091 question was—Was the law to be en-forced? On that subject they were, he hoped, all agreed. How then—and this was the point for consideration and decision—was it to be enforced? For his part he was bound to say he thought the House would exercise a wise discretion in leaving the matter, in the first place, in the hands of the Bishop. He never heard of an appeal being given, except in very rare cases, from one Court to another on questions of more discretion; but if any such appeal were to be given at all, it should be given whichever way the decision of the Bishop went. The proposal was to give an appeal from the discretion of one man to another. He doubted if there was much difference in social position between an Archbishop and a Bishop, although it might be said that the men who filled the office of Archbishop, being more carefully selected than those who filled the office of Bishop, were better qualified to give an opinion on a matter of discretion than their Suffragans. But the fact was, that while there were only two Archbishops there were 27 or 28 Bishops; and there was less chance of permanent injury being done by the larger number of men, who would check and control each other's opinions, than by the decision of one or two men whose opinion was uncontrolled in any way, and who might be High Church, Low Church, or Broad Church, as chance might determine. He had supported this Bill throughout, believing it to be a wise and beneficial measure; and he did not think that this question was of the importance which the hon. and learned Member for Oxford had attached to it. The question had been asked on the other side of the House, whether the Archbishops had been consulted on this matter, and he thought that that question ought to be answered. He had had the opportunity of ascertaining the opinion of both the Archbishops on this question, and he was authorized by them to state that their deliberate opinion was decidedly against the Amendment made in Committee.
§ MR. E. J. REEDsaid, that the question before them was a very simple one, and one that they might come to a vote upon without further discussion. It was, whether the Bishop, being authorized to put the law into motion, they should allow him to refuse to put the law in 1092 motion. He was of opinion that there ought to be an appeal from the decision of the Bishop to the Archbishop.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Dr. BALL)said, he was in favour of striking out the Amendment which had been introduced into the Bill in Committee. Under that Amendment an appeal was to be given in favour of the prosecution, while it was to be withheld from the defendant if the decision were adverse to him. That was a principle totally the reverse of that which existed in the analogous cases of an Information by the Attorney General, the proceedings in a prosecution, or the office of the Judge promoted in ecclesiastical matters. He also opposed the Amendment inserted in the Committee, because it was unwise to place any Judge in such a position as that proposed by the Amendment. It would be a most dangerous principle to lay down that if the Bishop decided one way he would be safe from appeal; but that if he decided the reverse he would be exposed to reproof, and his decision might be reversed by a superior authority. Under the present law, if a Bishop refused to promote the office, &c, there was no appeal to the Archbishop. It was doubtful whether in such a case the Queen's Bench had power to issue a mandamus, but if it had, why change the law in this instance? If one Bishop was of opinion that the point raised was one in which no prosecution should take place, it was undesirable on a question of absolute and pure discretion to subject him to direct collision with another Bishop, although he might have the word "Arch" before his name. If there was to be an appeal it should be given on both sides, and not confined to one. He had heard an Appellate Judge say that he could not take upon himself to reverse the judgment of a single Judge in a matter of pure discretion, although had the ease come before him in the first instance, he would probably have decided differently. Why, then, was the collision invited which the present clause was calculated to produce? As the Bill originally stood, an appeal was not given to the Archbishop, and he, for one, thought the peace of the Church would be best promoted by leaving it as it had come down from the House of Lords, where there was not the slightest whisper that 1093 the appeal was a cardinal point of the measure. It was by embarking on propositions which were new to the law of England that the Bill would, in his opinion, be endangered, for then public opinion would come to the conclusion that the question had not been dealt with in a judicial spirit. He should there-fore vote against the clause, as he had done before.
§ MR. RUSSELL GURNEY, having observed that he had on a former occasion stated that there had been some delay in the business of the Arches Court in consequence of the Dean of Arches occupying another office, said, he had received a communication from the Judge of the Court of Admiralty to the effect that, although he had had a great amount of work to get through in that Court, he did not allow it to cause any delay in the proceedings in the Court of Arches. As to the clause under discussion, he must confess that he did not attach to it so much importance as appeared to be given either on one side or the other. It was not in the original Bill; but yet, there could be no doubt that it had been supported by a very large majority. As he had before said, he had perfect confidence in the discretion of the Bishop; but he could not at the same time see that any evil was likely to arise if an Appeal were given to the Archbishop. It was contended, he might add, that such an appeal was unprecedented, but under the 1st and 2nd Vic. there were a number of cases—such, for instance, as that of non-residence—in which a Bishop exercised his discretion, and in which an appeal lay from him to the Archbishop.
§ MR. MONKsaid, he rose simply to call the attention of the House to the Rubric with respect to the exercise of the discretion of the Bishop, in which it was set forth that in cases of doubt the parties doubting should resort to the Bishop of the diocese, who, in his discretion, should take steps for quieting and removing the same, and that if the Bishop should be in doubt, then he might appeal to the Archbishop.
§ MR. GRANTHAMsaid, that although he had on a former occasion voted for the clause, he should feel it to be his duty after listening to the debate that evening to vote against it, inasmuch as he was of opinion that where the question involved not a matter of law, as he 1094 had thought, but merely of discretion, there ought to be no appeal.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, that inasmuch as these proceedings would rest on facts and not on law, it would be most dangerous to allow a Bishop to establish in his own diocese a rule ad-verso to the operation of this measure, which he could do by aggregating a number of cases which he would not allow to be tried. It had been said that the Bishop did not pronounce judgment; but he did so, in fact, when he refused access to the Court. But he (Mr. Newdegate) could not conceive a power that ought to be more emphatically subjected to an appeal than that put into the hands of the Bishop by the Bill; and that appeal ought to he with the Arch-bishop. It was of the very essence of the Bill that there should be a facility of procedure, and if the House entrusted to anyone the power of defeating that principle, it ought to be only to the highest authority in the Church. There was great diversity of opinion among the Bishops, and was it the object of the House to allow one practice to be established in one diocese and another in another? They all knew that the right hon. Member for Greenwich de-sired all kinds of diversities in the Church, and was entirely opposed to the principle of the Bill. But the House desired to enforce all reasonable uniformity. The right hon. Gentleman was endeavouring to defeat the Bill in every way; but he would appeal to every consistent supporter of the principle of the Bill to vote in favour of giving this power to the Archbishop.
§ SIR HENRY DRUMMOND WOLFFsaid, he would like to ask his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oxford, if the clause were to be carried out, what would be the case in the dioceses of Canterbury and York, where the Archbishops and the Bishops were the same persons?
§
Question put,
That the words Provided also, That if such bishop shall be of opinion that proceedings should not he taken on any representation, it shall be lawful for the person making such representation to cause notice to be served on such bishop (which notice may he served by depositing the same in the registry of the diocese), and also on the person complained of, that it is his intention to appeal against the decision of such bishop to the archbishop of the province within which such diocese is situate;
1095
and thereupon such bishop shall cause,' stand part of the Bill.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 118; Noes 95: Majority 23.
§ Clause 13 (Inhibition of incumbent).
§ MR. RAIKESproposed, as an Amendment, in page 8, line 9, to leave out the words "gratuitously, with the exception of stamp duties," in order to insert the words, "if unopposed, on payment of such a fee not exceeding two guineas as shall be prescribed by the Rules and Orders."
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTthought the Amendment a very good one.
§ MR. RUSSELL GURNEYsaid, he would not oppose the Amendment, although he thought the maximum fixed was somewhat high.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Other Amendments made.
§ Bill to be read the third time upon Monday next.