HC Deb 26 April 1899 vol 70 cc605-61

Order for the Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed—

"That the Bill be now read a second time."

Mr. GORDON (Elgin and Nairn),

in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, said his remarks would be strictly limited to the subject matter of the Bill, which was purely a rating question, and it was his intention to avoid altogether referring to Scottish ecclesiastical questions, however tempting such matters might be to all Scottish politicians. His first reason for so doing was, that weeks ago he learned there was a Welsh question on the Paper as second Order, and he was in hopes that the Scottish Ecclesiastical Assessments Bill might be disposed of this afternoon in time to allow their Welsh friends to have an opportunity. His second reason was, that this was purely a question of rating, and he might possibly be transgressing the Orders of the House in discussing the more interesting questions which agitated rival parties in Scotland. This was no new question in the purview of Parliament. Last year he had the honour to introduce a Bill which did not get further than its preliminary stage, but the records of Parliament were very distinct on the subject. In 1868, he thought, the representative of the Government of the day tried to deal with the question of the assessments of manses and churches in Scotland. In 1876, again, the Government brought in a Bill to deal with the matter. He might, therefore, argue that after two Governments had approached this question with a view to settlement, he was, as a private Member, not transgressing Parliamentary etiquette or introducing a new subject. He was glad, further, to say that this was no Party question. All who remembered Scottish politics 30 years ago must recollect that there was no more stalwart and persistent Radical than Mr. Duncan M`Laren, Member for Edinburgh, and he introduced a Bill in that House in 1876 with the title, "A Bill to Abolish Church Rates in Scotland." The Bill which he (Mr. Gordon) had the honour to introduce to-day was practically a Bill to abolish the smaller olass of church rates throughout Scotland. In 1884 the right honourable Member for the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen, in conjunction with the right honourable Baronet the Member for Ipswich, introduced a Bill on the same subject, and in 1886 the present Solicitor-General, along with Mr. Peter Maclagan, the well-known Liberal Member for Linlithgowshire, introduced a Bill on the same subject. In 1887 another similar Bill was introduced by his honourable Friend the Member for the Stewartry, in conjunction with the right honourable Member for the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen. Therefore it seemed to him that the question was ripe for settlement. This grievance, which they all acknowledged, and which they heard of more particularly at election times, was by no means an old grievance as the life of nations went, nor was it inherent in the financial constitution of the Church of Scotland. It had arisen since Scotland became a wealthier country than it used to be. The old law, which put a charge on the land values of Scotland for the building of new churches and manses, went on almost unbroken in its policy from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until unfortunately the courts interfered in 1802. The House of Lords in a well-known case connected with the burgh of Peterhead he believed, introduced the view that not only was land liable in such charges, but that the increased value of houses, cottages, or factories built on the land became chargeable for such purposes. The grievance, however, was not, a burning one until Parliament passed the Valuation Bill in 1854, when the valuation rolls were drawn up in such a way as to catch the small feuar, and make him for the first time chargeable for the payments towards churches and houses. The Party to which he belonged had a very clean record in regard to this grievance, for no sooner had the grievance reached a head than in 1868, as he had mentioned, and subsequently, it made persistent efforts to deal with it. There was no complaint by the owners of land that they were wrongly chargeable for this purpose. Modern churches were protected as to their accumulated funds by our more modern and kindly legislation, which affected churches and trusts of all characters. But a Church which came down from the Reformation period naturally had enemies, and the Governments of the day, and he might say the democratic spirit of Scotland also, found it necessary to protect for the Church any of its property which was left in the hands of landowners, who in some cases possibly had not been over-scrupulous in the methods by which they acquired it. The value of land was then practically the entire value of all property in Scotland, but now the value was less than one-sixth of the entire value of property, and the heritors in Scotland who owned large or moderate estates had never raised any agitation against what was, of course, their legal obligation. They had inherited or purchased their property subject to this contribution to National Church purposes, but the law courts in 1802 interfered with what was called the valued rent or fixed statute for eclesiastical purposes, and introduced the modern phrase, "real rent." It was this real rent, or at least a portion of it, that he attacked to-day. He believed if the Church were there to speak for itself it would say that it agreed with him. The Church had no wish to raise a penny of revenue, even though the Valuation Act of 1854 might legally entitle them to do so, from persons upon whom morally they had no claim. The people of Scotland, whether the present system was continued, or whether reconstruction was carried out, would always, he hoped, use well the ecclesiastical inheritance of the past. It was against the new misuse of assessment that this Bill was levelled. He hoped the House would assent to it, and accept the subtraction of £20 from every man's valuation, whether large or small, and thus, of course, absolve the small sum from any future exactions. But personally he would like to see this Bill considered one step to a larger policy, which he was sure the Church would assent to, by which all assessments as against the real modern value, or, as he believed, false value, would be cancelled, and by which the claim for Church purposes would lie only against the old valued rent of our forefathers. The churches which were kept up in this way were not all the churches belonging to the Established Church of Scotland, but merely the heritors' churches, the older parish churches numbering somewhere about 900. There were some hundreds of other churches which modern conditions and voluntary gifts had raised throughout the country to meet the increasing demands of an enlarged population, but these old churches were still the cause of irritation to all ratepayers, whether Unionist or Radical. Those ratepayers had expressed themselves to him through the President of the Convention of Royal. Burghs, and he yesterday had the honour to present to the House a petition signed by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh on behalf of that Convention in favour of the Bill. He failed to see who was against such a proposal. Radicals like Mr. Duncan M.Laren and all local Radicals were against these assessments. The small heritor who had assumed the liability of the landlord, and who was perhaps once in 20 years served with a notice to pay is. 6d. or 2s. 6d., or in some of tile larger parishes AS little as 3d., was naturally irritated by the want of system. No notice was at present required, but under the Bill notice would in future have to be given. The Bill provided that where the older heritors under the old valued system met, it should no longer be in the power of any one cantankerous man, or corporation, or company to throw this burden, with its irritating consequences, on the smaller feuars, the majority who in most cases would be responsible. Heritors on a considerable scale, who were prepared to meet the whole of the burden, would be able to silence this one man and prevent these assessments from reaching the small feuar. Difficulty often arose from the fact that these irritating exactions might be levelled against other churches, schools, and manses. This Bill would cancel that, and in future the £20 exemption would refer to the rich as well as to the poor man, and would come into operation as soon as the Kirk session had certified to the proper authority that they had put themselves into this fund. Any man who knew Scottish life, and how the people there valued their church privileges, would say that there would never be the remotest difficulty in making up the deficiency, and so saving the small feuar. Honourable Gentlemen opposite, he saw by indications in the Press, were inclined to adopt the argument, not that this was too large a Measure, but the alternate criticism with which they were all so familiar in the House, that it did not go far enough. His own feeling was that vaulting ambition in Party tactics and in legislation very often landed them on the wrong side. In this dull world they bad to take a more modest view, and walk step by step. He was confident this was a step in the right direction which might be carried later on even further. He commended this Bill to the House on behalf of the ratepayers of Scotland, on behalf of those who, for many years past, since the grievance arose in public life, had been calling upon them on both sides of the House to vote for Measures and not for men.

Amendment proposed— To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to acid the words upon this day six months.'"— (Sir Charles Cameron.)

*SIR C. CAMERON (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

said he had listened with great interest to the plausible manner in which the honourable Gentleman had presented this Bill to the House. He said it was no Party question, and that Mr. Duncan M'Laren brought in a Bill for the abolition of these Church rates long ago. Mr. Duncan M'Laren did so, but he brought in a real Bill to abolish compulsory Church rates in Scotland, and the Conservative Party opposed the Measure year after year. The Bill of the honourable Member for Glasgow University was a limited one, but it too was a real Bill. But his honourable Friend opposite brought in a Bill by which an assessment was to be levied and then taken off certain people, if in the meantime the Kirk session could raise voluntarily a sum necesary to pay the deficit. It was a mere farce and a sham. There never had been the smallest disguise that the object of the Bill was to do away with the friction and ill-will created by sales which had occurred in connection with the levying of these assessments. In bringing forward his Bill the right honourable Gentleman the Member for Glasgow University illustrated this by reference to the Meldrum case. There the assessment was levied on 156 feuars. Fourteen who refused to pay had their homes sold up, and among the articles was a hearse, a fact which showed that even an undertaker could have conscientious objections to maintaining an Established Church. The honourable Member for Elgin and Nairn, in moving his Bill, said some churches had been allowed to fall into disrepair in order to avoid such scenes, but surely the proper course was that those who used the churches should keep them in repair, as was the case in every other religious community. The honourable Member had said that the Church had no desire to receive one penny from unwilling persons, however strong her legal claim might be. That was very inconsistent with the action taken in a recent case which had attracted considerable attention in Stirlingshire—the Dennyloan case. He would give a few incidents in that case to show what the present system really was, and how little the Bill before the House would do to amend it. In July of 1892 Mr. Falconer, the parish minister, died, and the Rev. Alexander M'Gregor, who was appointed his successor, at once made application for repairs at his manse. The architect of the heritors said that £500 was necessary. The heritors grumbled because a manse that was big enough for the old minister should not be deemed good enough for his young successor, but an assessment was levied of 5d. in the pound. An indignation meeting was held, and resolutions against the assessment were passed. Notices were sent out. Many paid, and some did not. One of the latter was a certain G. M. Blain, a member of the United Presbyterian Church, whose assessment came to 5s. 10d. and the expenses to 19s. 6d. A sewing machine was seized and sold by auction at the market cross for 16s. What would have been the case of that person under the Bill? The same assessment would be served and the same thing would have happened unless —200 or £300 had been voluntarily raised so as to admit of the £20 deduction. That showed the Bill would in this case have effected nothing that could not equally well have been effected without it. The next ease was that of the farmer's widow, Mrs. Mary Russell. At the time the summons was served at her house for 27s. 6d. assessment and £2 expenses she was lying in Glasgow Infirmary suffering from a broken leg. No one sent her the summons, and decree was given against her in her absence by the sheriff of Stirling. To satisfy her debt a sofa and three stuff-bottomed chairs were, sold by public auction for £2 Os. 11½d., and there would have been a further sale but for the fact that a kind-hearted person in Edinburgh had paid the balance of the money. Had this Bill been the law the widow's assessment would have been £46 instead of £66, but the proceedings and the scandal would have. just been the same. Another individual refused to pay. Mr. Kerr, minister of the Dennyloanhead United Presbyterian Church, was assessed and had a notice served upon him, but when he replied that he had no objection to be served with a summons no further action was taken against him—probably because he was the United Presbyterian minister. It was true that under this Bill he would be exempt, but as he had not paid when called upon he would really gain no benefit. He might mention another case at Greenock, where he himself was a pretty big heritor. Repairs were demanded, and there was a talk of levying an assessment. After an indignation meeting had been held nothing more was heard of the assessment. He of course, benefited, because he had to pay nothing; but if the Bill passed, and sufficient money were raised to cut down the assessment on the first £20, he would fare a great deal worse than he then did. The Bill proposed to exempt the churches, burial grounds, schools, etc., belonging to the dissenting churches front any assessment. Probably the assessments on these were so small that their abolition would make no perceptible difference, consequently the bribe was not worth having. But the exemption was proposed, not because of justice or expediency, but because it was feared to expose the Established Church to support the manifest injustice of assessing the poor United Presbyterian and Free Church ministers to provide, comparatively speaking, palatial mansions for their Established Church brethren. The Member for West Renfrew had in his constituency a man who had built a village in which he was training the waifs and strays of Scotland to be honest men and useful citizens. His buildings were assessed at £2,000 a year, and under this Bill he would be "rouped" for non-payment of his rates, because he would certainly be a conscientious objector. The facts he had given proved that the Measure before the House was an absolute sham. Mr. Campbell's Bill contained a clause that before proceeding to assessment security must be given to make good any deficiency, but that clause did not appear in the present Measure, and it was that clause which made the other Bill a reality. Turning to the metaphysical aspect of the question—for no Scotch Debate would be complete without such a consideraticn—he objected to the Bill on the grouad that it was a gross infraction of the Treaty of Union by modifying the rights of the people in connection whit the Established Church of Scotland, which that treaty guaranteed should stand for ever and ever. Equal with the right of turbary, or with the right of way or of light, was the right known in Scottish phraseology as the right of bottom-room, the right of every heritor paying rates to a seat in the parish church. In every country a favourite method of impressing technical facts on the brains of those concerned was to turn them into rhyme. For instance, there were the Board of Trade lines— Green to green and red to red, Perfect safety—go ahead. And it might lighten the labours of the Speaker and help Members through the intricacies of Parliamentary procedure if their rules were also made to rhyme. He had jotted down, as an example, the following— Objection taken after twelve The best 'backed' Bill will serve to shelve; Addresses and Reports, Supply, This first-class rule can still defy. One legal poet in Scotland had written on "The Battle of the Bottom Rooms." He was not quite sure whether it was the present Lord Advocate—

*THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. GRAHAM MURRAY, Buteshire)

I have not heard any expressions yet of which I would be anxious to be the author.

*Sat C. CAMERON

said that on reflection he believed the author of the poem to which he had referred was the honourable Gentleman's immediate predecessor in the office of Solicitor-General. The poem dealt with the case of Stiven versus the Heritors of Kirriemuir, heard in the First Division on 13th November 1878. In consequence of alterations in the church it was found that there was not a sufficient number of seats for the heritors— They couldna a' get in, 'twas clear, But what tho' some maun bide awa', They had the richt the Word to hear, And Scotsmen lo'e their richts' bune a'. Among the heritors one objected to the change, and the poem proceeded— The allocation syne began, According to an auld decree. But up and cries this angry man, Na, faith I'll gie the lairds a plea. 'I'd rather gang nae mair to kirk, And risk auld Nick's eternal fumes, Than yield to this unlawful wark O' conjunct richts in bottom rooms.' The Lords replied—'What's that to us? Ye seem, indeed, a cankered chiel. The auld kirk stands, and while it does The auld decree maim stand as weel. 'Mak' the best of that, my friend; And when ye find a sitting toom, Think mair upon yer latter end, And less upon yer bottom room.' No man was more popular in Scotland than the honourable Member for Ross-shire, who, over a dispute with regard to a sitting in the Hampstead Presbyterian Church, had either excommunicated the church or the church had excommunicated him, and who had consequently earned for himself the hononured title of the Hampstead Martyr. The former Bill proposed to exclude the large towns, but this Measure included them. In the Barony Parish of Glasgow there were over 5,000 feuars. The deduction of £20 from every assessment meant over £400 for every 1d. in the pound, so that with a rate of 2½d. —1,000 would have to be voluntarily subscribed before the small people would have the benefit of the Bill. Surely that showed what an absolute farce it was. Yet if the Bill passed, and the small people were relieved from payment, they would lose their constitutional right to a seat in the church. In fact, they were asked to sell their birthright for 2d. or 6d. or 2s. 6d., and they might on a subsequent assessment find they would have to pay even that and be minus their seats. As a practical Measure, the Bill was absurd. It was self-contradictory, and as an effort in constitutionalism it went contrary to every doctrine held by the great constitutional Party.

MR. PIRIE (Aberdeen, N.)

said he based his opposition to the Bill on two main principles. The first was, that it was contrary to the principle of the Amendment carried in the House in 1884, and supported by the late Lord Advocate of Scotland. The Amendment declared that no Measure would be satisfactory for Scotland which proposed to continue any system of compulsory assessment. Again, he submitted that if the Bill passed it would, so far from ending the strife and dissension which unhappily prevailed, increase the acerbity of the existing controversy. He believed, rightly or wrongly, in the maintenance of the principle of the religious equality, Over two-thirds of the population of Scotland were in favour of that principle, and therefore they offered the most strenuous objection to the Bill. The object of the Bill was clearly to strengthen the Establishment, and that was why they were in duty bound to oppose it. As long as Establishment lasted there would be no cessation of attempts on the part of honourable Members opposite to strengthen it. Well, they on the other side of the House would, with equal activity, bring pressure to hear to oppose such attempts. They held very strongly that all ecclesiastical assessments were an injustice, and that that injustice was emphasised since 1868 from the fact that Church rates in England were no longer compulsory, but voluntary. He was aware that an attempt might be made to prove that Church rates in England and Church assessments in Scotland were in no way connected; but he held that they were practically identical in principle, and if, owing to popular feeling and dissatisfaction, the injustice of Church rates was removed in England, so the agitation would continue in Scotland until the injustice of Church assessments was removed there. Moreover, the Bill was absolutely illogical even to a layman's mind. It did not even accomplish its professed object. It was given out that the small feuars would be relieved from their rates. If all small feuars were relieved from their rates they might take another view of the question; but the fact was very far indeed from that. There was no certainty at all that those whom the Bill professed to relieve would get relief. In two different clauses the relief was contingent on various eventualities. How could honourable Members opposite pretend that it was logical to grant relief to a certain class and not to another class? What was right for one should be right for all, and what was wrong for one was wrong for all. Under clause 3 a certain class of feuars were exempt, but the exemption was only contingent on the vote of a majority in value of the proprietors liable to contribute according to valued rent. There was another contingency. By clause 5, section 2, the exemption of the small heritors and feuars was contingent oil the vote of the Kirk Session, which was to take upon itself the burden of making up the deficiency. That very fact would not induce the members of the Kirk Session to give a vote which would increase the burdens on their own selves. Both these cases illustrated the usual character of the Bills which emanated from the other side of the House—a taking away with one hand what they give with the other; and it was as much for that as for any other reason that they opposed the Measure. There was one very important admission to which attention ought to be drawn, because it might come in useful in future legislation which he hoped would be brought in from his own side of the House. That admission was that the Established Church proposed to exempt, on certain conditions, from assessment all feuars at and under —20. That was an admission of the right of Parliament to relieve owners of property from liability to ecclesiastical assessments on lands and tenements. That being the case, if ever afterwards a proposal was made on that side of the House in the interests of justice, to emancipate all heritors and feuars from this Church assessment, by disestablishment and otherwise, he failed to see how it would be possible in consistency for honourable Members, after having brought in this Bill, to oppose, such a proposition from this side of the House. He would ask the House to remember that on a future occasion, in the sincere hope that before long a Bill dealing with the question of disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of Scotland would be introduced. Let it never be said again that the character of the burden now imposed on lands and heritages for behoof of the Established Church could ever be called inalienable either logically or consistently. His next objection to the Bill was that the results which would be carried out and the wording of the Bill were at variance. Under clause 6, it was provided that nothing in the Act should have the effect of increasing or altering the liabilities of the heritors and ratepayers. The honourable Baronet the Member for Bridge- ton had already pointed out how the liabilities of certain classes would be increased, and therefore the professed object of the Bill and the wording of the Bill were diametrically opposed. If the feuars were exempted under clause 3 there would be a great deficiency to be made up, and that deficiency would fall with increased proportion on the remaining heritors. Then, in the case where the heritors themselves were not exempt, but where churches, manses, and glebes were exempt, the deficiency had to he made up again, and there must be increased burdens on the heritors. A further injustice would therefore be done to the small feuars and heritors. These had at present a right to sit and vote at the heritors' meetings in virtue of being assessed on their real rent; but the Bill deprived them of that right even before their exemption from assessment had been decided upon. Another objection he had was that the practical means for carrying out the professed objects of the Bill were absolutely inadequate and unfair. In regard to summoning the meetings which were to decide who were to be exempted and who were not, the provision in clause 4 did not meet the necessities of the case. The small heritors were the class less likely to see newspaper advertisements, especially in the rural districts, and it was important that each of them should receive a circular summoning the meeting whether their number was 40 or 100. In spite of the objections which he had stated, he held that the mere introduction of the Bill would serve a useful purpose, because it committed honourable Members opposite to the principle that the burden on the heritors and feuars in Scotland was unjust, and ought to be alleviated. Power was given by the Bill to heritors who were liable to assessment on valued reat to exempt heritors who would be liable to assessment on real rent, and therefore the whole principle on which the Established Church founded its claim to ecclesiastical assessments was given away; and, therefore, now it was only a question of expediency how far Parliament could go in carrying that out to its logical conclusion. It would be idle in future for honourable Members opposite to bring forward any argument against disestablishment if they really supported such a Measure as this Further, if they wished to be consistent, it would be absolutely impossible for them to hold that churches, manses, and glebes should be relieved of assessment on the ground that these belonged to those who were not in the Established Church, when a large body of the feuars and heritors, who also were not members of the Church of Scotland, were not relieved from assessments. Surely, in logic, what applied to the one must apply to the other. If this Bill came into law it would, in his opinion, mark a distinctly retrogressive step in the history of religious controversy. He did not believe that the opinion of Scotland was in any May in favour of it. On the contrary, the opinion in Scotland was growing rapidly against ecclesiastical assessments. The instances which the honourable Baronet the Member for Bridgeton had given to the House showed very clearly the absurdity, the illegality, and the injustice of the present system. He had some cuttings giving other instances which almost passed belief of the iniquitous and cruel way in which these assessments were made for all sorts and manner of purposes. At Crieff, for instance, an assessment was made to meet the expenses of a dinner given on the ordination of the minister of the parish in September last. One of the heritors objected to that assessment, and offered to pay one pound out of his own pocket in order to meet the expense of the dinner.

MR. SPEAKER

This seems very remote from the question of the assessment for the repair of churches or manses.

MR. PIRIE

said that, so far as he could understand, that was one of the purposes for which these assessments could be raised. Take another case no less extraordinary, where an assessment was imposed for raising money for a Gaelic church for men who did not understand a word of Gaelic. In that case a gentleman was threatened with cessio benorum if he did not pay the rate for the Gaelic church. In other words, unless he paid that Church tax he was to be made a bankrupt. It would surely be unjust, supposing the assessments were to be levied for the erection of a Roman Catholic chapel, and why should it be more just if the assessments were levied for a Gaelic church connected with the Established Church? It was high time that these abuses should cease. Opinion in Scotland against them was largely growing. A public meeting was lately held in Largs, presided over by a gentleman who was three times Provost of the town, and who had suffered severely on account of his conscientious objections to these Church assessments. At that meeting a resolution was passed to the effect that the law in regard to Church assessments was unsatisfactory and unjust, that it was a violation of the principle of religious equality, and that as the payment of Church rates had been abolished in England, it was unreasonable that Church and manse rates should continue to be levied in Scotland. He did not speak there as a Free Churchman or a United Presbyterian, but—being an Episcopalian—simply as a Dissenter in Scotland. His desire was that religious strife should cease, and this Bill would not bring that about. The question could be only settled in one way, and that was by the direct voice of the people of Scot land. The Scottish people could not consent to legislation on which the large majority of their representatives were not agreed. Until this question of religious establishment could be settled by the direct vote of the Scottish people alone, it would never reach finality. It was impossible to obtain such a vote in that House. In the meantime he held that aggressive legislation ought to cease, and this Bill was distinctly aggressive. Disestablishers were content to maintain their own views, and to remain in passive resistance, hoping that the time would come in which he believed a growing feeling and desire for union would extend. He deplored some of the statements which had been made by men of very high position as to the proposed union of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches.

MR. SPEAKER

Order, order! The honourable Member seems to be going beyond the scope of the Bill. The fact that all the inhabitants of Scotland did not belong to the Established Church of Scotland may be a material question in dealing with the Bill, but the honourable Member cannot argue the case of disestablishment.

Mr. PIRIE

said he was not arguing in favour of disestablishment. What he was going to show was that the proposed union of the Free and the United Presbyterian Churches would have a very lasting striking effect on the relations of all the churches in Scotland.

Mr. SPEAKER

Order, order! The honourable Member is doing exactly what I just now ruled out of order.

PIRIE

said he bowed to Mr. Speaker's ruling. He looked forward to the time when these discussions would cease in Scotland, and he hoped that that would be more rapidly brought about by the Bill being thrown out. He had, therefore, much pleasure in seconding the rejection of the Bill.

*MR. ANSTRUTHER (St. Andrew's Burghs)

said that the hon. and gallant Member, with a candour which he admired, in seconding the Motion for the rejection of the Bill, had frankly told the House that he did so because he himself was an advocate of disestablishment, and he supposed of disendowment also, and was not prepared to assent to any legislation which would have the effect of strengthening the position of the Established Church of Scotland. He intended to be equally frank to the House. He did not hesitate to say that it was because he was, and had been for many years, keenly interested in the fortunes of the Church of Scotland, and numbered many warm friends among both its ministers and members, that he supported the Second Reading of the Bill, in the hope that it might do something to alleviate a grievance which all admitted. He thought the House was indebted to his honourable Friend for the extremely lucid manner in which he had stated his case in favour of the Second Reading of the Bill. The honourable Baronet, in moving its rejection, intending to pay his honourable Friend a compliment, said that his statements were plausible. He should not have taken that as a compliment himself, but it appeared to him that his honourable friend's statements were concise, accurate, and eminently to the point. If he supported the Second Reading of the Bill, it was because he believed that his honourable Friend, and those associated with him in this matter, had found a remedy which would go far to alleviate an established grievance. The honourable Baronet who moved the rejection of the Bill had occupied a large part of his speech by bringing forward what he considered grotesque instances in which ecclesiastical assessments fell hardly. But he omitted to tell the House—and in this he was somewhat plausible—that there were thousands of feuars coming under the £20 valuation who would be capable of being relieved by the Bill, and who, in all probability, so far as those who watched the interests of the Church on this matter were able to judge, would be relieved, if the powers were given to the kirk Session suggested under clause 5. The honourable Baronet referred to a clause in a former Bill introduced by the right honourable Member for the Glasgow University, and made it a ground of complaint that that clause was not in the present Bill. If the honourable Baronet was so enamoured of that clause, let hum give his assent to the Second Reading of this Bill, and on Committee stage move the insertion of that clause, and he believed his honourable Friend in charge of the Bill would not look unfavourably upon it. The honourable and gallant Member who seconded the rejection of the Bill objected to clause 6 as imposing an additional assessment. No doubt the proposed exemption of churches, manses, buildings, and pertinents of dissenting churches would impose, but only in an infinitesimal ratio, an additional burden on the remaining heritors. But if the honourable and gallant Gentleman did not like clause 6, or if he said that it was inconsistent with the previous provisions of the Bill, let him in Committee move the deletion of clause 6, and his honourable Friend will give the Amendment his favourable consideration. On the question of increased assessment he had made a calculation, and found that in the case of a simple rural parish the additional assessment to be imposed by the exemption named only amounted to the difference between guineas and sovereigns. It had been made a matter of great complaint at election times that the manses and churches of other religious bodies were assessed for these purposes, while the churches and manses of the Established Church were exempt. He admitted up to a certain point the contention of the opponents of this Measure, although they were also the opponents of ecclesiastical assessments, that the feuar dissenter had not the same interest in the Church of Scotland as the members of the Church of Scotland themselves, but he did not entirely admit that the feuar dissenters had no interest in the Church of Scotland at all. As a citizen the dissenter had, or ought to have, an interest in the Church, because there were rites of the Church which were sacred in their essence but civil in their effect, which were open to members of any or of no denomination throughout the length and breadth of Scotland, and adherence to these rites ought to be a matter of interest to every good citizen in the community. There was a provision in the Bill which was a very valuable one, of which sufficient notice had not been taken, and which the honourable Member for Aberdeen did not seem clearly to understand. In the third clause it was provided that a majority of the heritors in a parish should have power to determine whether assessment for the feuar should continue on the valued rent. That was a very wise provision, because there was always the possibility of one single heritor in the parish throwing down this apple of discord amongst the community of the parish and raising up that very strife which they were most anxious to avoid. Under clause 13 there was to a certain extent a recognition of the voluntary principle. He supposed that on the other side of the House there must be some members of the United Presbyterian and Free Churches of Scotland, and they knew as a matter of history that for a number of years these two Churches had been endeavouring to unite on a voluntary basis, although for reasons best known to themselves, and which they did not always publicly state, they had hitherto been unable to arrive at an agreement. Those who looked upon the Disruption fathers as their predecessors in Church matters would no doubt bear in mind that they went out protesting that they adhered to Establishment principles. It was a vitiated Establishment, as they thought, but they asserted their willingness to return to an Establishment purified from what they regarded as the taint of patronage. Unfortunately a considerable majority of their successors had entirely abandoned that position, and now frankly founded themselves on the basis of disestablishment and disendowment and the voluntary principle. In the third clause there was a suggestion of voluntary concurrence amongst the heritors in any parish to continue to assess on the valued rent. There was also the suggestion of voluntary contribution through or by means of the Kirk Session, which would give effect to the relief under the £20 valuation. If they in a modified degree endeavoured to follow in their footsteps, surely it ought not to be made a, matter of condemnation, but rather a matter of commendation. He thought he could put the issue between them almost in three sentences. The Party opposite asserted that there was a grievance in this matter of assessment for ecclesiastical purposes. The Unionist party admitted that grievance and declared their readiness to alleviate it. They on their side claimed that they had found a remedy which would go a long way to remedy that grievance. They did not pretend that it was universal, or that it was entirely logical, but it would be far-reaching, and it certainly was practical. They came to that House, many of them associated very closely with the Church of Scotland, and asked that House and Parliament to assent to a proposal which they believed would remove a grievance which was admitted by both sides of the House, and here they found themselves at issue with honourable Members opposite. Members opposite, apparently, were not prepared that they should reform that which they believed to be worthy of reform, because they looked upon any Measure of this kind as an outwork against disestablishment and disendowment which the Party opposite desired, but which the Unionist Party resisted. He did not desire to disturb the slumber of sleeping dogs, and least of all that of the dog in the manger. The simile had been so often dragged into the Debate that he thought it might now be left alone. It had been used with varying degrees of comparison according to the animus of the disputants. He made no such insinuations against honourable Members opposite, but he did say, as one keenly interested in this question, and who had followed closely the affairs of the Church of Scotland for a number of years, it was his firm conviction that in acting as they were doing that afternoon, in opposing the Second Reading of this Bill, they were not acting in a manner which would conduce either to their popularity or to their influence in Scotland.

MR. HALDANE (Haddington)

said he rose, in the first place, to disclaim altogether the point of view suggested by the speech of the honourable Member for the St. Andrews Burghs. If the honourable Member, or anybody else, would point to any difficulty in which the Established Church of Scotland was placed, and which required any amendment of the law which did not go to the transformation of the constitution of the Church, he would not allow his disestablishment principles to stand in the way of doing an act of justice. The fallacy which underlay the honourable Member's argument was in regarding this question as a much narrower one than it really was. The honourable Member who introduced the Bill spoke of it as interesting to lawyers and ecclesiastics. He was himself a little interested in law, and a great deal in theology. But there was another interest which both of the honourable Members who had defended the Bill had altogether left out of account, as the champion of which ho rose from that side of the Houso—he meant the interests of the public. His honourable Friend the Member for Bridgeton showed conclusively that if this Bill passed, one effect of it would be to put a substantial sum into his own pocket. He did not come there to support Bills which would put money into the pocket of his honourable Friend or anybody else. What was the real proposition of this Bill? He did not profess to be able to penetrate into the mysteries of the Scottish law, but to the layman the question was a tolerably simple one. It appeared that by the old law of Scotland the parishioners were liable to keep up and repair the manses. By the parishioners were meant the owners of land in the parish; they had to contribute according to the amount of land they held. Then came a valuation which was made before the Restoration, and according to that valuation the landowners in the parishes throughout Scotland had a certain valuation put upon their land, and they were assessed in proportion to that valuation. It did not matter whether they were valued high or low, for the important thing was the proportion. Then came what was known as the Peterhead case, in which it turned out that there were a number of feuars to whom this valuation did not apply at all, and the Court of Session decided that it was legal to make a scheme under which one class of landowners should pay one rate and the other class of landowners and feuars should pay a different rate. The feuars were landewners in the parish just as much as anybody else, and so thought Lord Eldon. That had been the law of Scotland since 1802, and why they should be asked to disturb it now he could not conceive. What was proposed was to take a portion of the liability Which fell on some of these landowners and extinguish it—it was a new liability, but a liability subject to which they purchased the land, and which was incumbent upon them to meet. That was a very remarkable proposition. He complained very much that a. Bill of this kind was brought Lefore the House of Commons without any information by which they could know whether they were dealing with large or small owners. In his own experience he knew of a very substantial claim being made for alterations and repairs on a manse that might fall very heavily on the feuars in the parish, and it was quite right that it should so fail. This was a burden to which they were liable to contribute, and he wished to know upon what basis they were asking the House to make a present to these landowners of the liability subject to which they bought the land, and from which they ought not to escape? If they were going to make this proposition, surely it was only right that the House should have some return and information from the Government as to the working out of a scheme of this character. There was no information available, and he should await with some curiosity to hear what the Lord Advocate had to say as to what would be the practical effect of this Measure should it ever become an Act. The real motive of bringing the Bill was to get rid of what was thought to be a grievance. The grievance was not that feuars contributed to public necessities, but that what was recognised as public and parish money should be taken and given to the Established Church of Scotland. The Established Church was well able to provide for its own necessities. When they analysed this Bill, they would see that it was a grievance not of the feuars or of the class of landowners who contributed, but that their contributions were applied to this purpose. The Bill constituted from that point of view a remarkable argument in favour of Disestablishment. No doubt it would be on record that many of the supporters of the Established Church, and the supporters of the Unionist Party, thought this Measure a very important one, and they desired to place it on the Statute Book, in order to get rid of what they felt was a real inequality. They had now got a definition of religious inequality in this Bill, although they were invited to put an end to it. If the Bill did only that, he should have no objection to it. But it was obvious, if this question was dealt with at all, it must be dealt with on the footing not of releasing a large class of landowners of a responsibility imposed upon them, but taking that liability and applying it to purposes for which it was wanted instead of applying it to purposes for which it was not wanted. If honourable Members opposite would bring forward a Bill in that form he would give it his most favourable consideration; but in the meantime, in the interests of the great Scottish public, he for one protested against this attempt to buy off a grievance by giving public money to people who were not entitled to it.

Sir J. M. STEWART

pointed out that this Bill did not appear to him to be of that comprehensive nature which honourable Members tried to make out. It was one of a simple character, and would do away with a great injustice. The effect of the Bill had been to make those feuars more satisfied than they had been in the past, and it really lay with the heritors whether the Bill was put into force or not. It was practically a permissive Bill, and was founded on the principle of trusting the people. If it was not wanted, and if the feuars objected to it, the Bill would not come into force. The decision in the Peterhead case made considerable alterations. His honourable Friend who had just sat down repudiated any idea of a dog-in-the-manger policy. Whenever this controversy had been broached at contested elections, he found that there was the greatest unanimity of feeling on the part of the Free Church and United Presbyterian Church that something of this sort should be done, and to assert now that the object of this Bill was merely to strengthen the Established Church of Scotland was absolute nonsense. He had been asked time after time why this Bill had not been passed into law. The answer was that the Liberal Party in the House of Commons had invariably been opposed to it. He did not think that was a very high-minded principle on the part of the Opposition. They had been taunted that all aggressive legislation should cease. Was this aggressive legislation? It was perfectly monstrous to say so, for it was legislaton to remedy a grievance. If there were a general election to-morrow, he firmly believed that thousands of persons who did not agree with the Establishment principle would say that this Bill was a fair attempt to remedy an admitted grievance. The honourable and learned Member for Haddington complained that no statistics on the subject had been produced. Statistics had never been moved for, and if they were called for he would not object. The last return was made by the House of Lords in 1879, when the amount spent upon the churches and manses was £420,000. He maintained that the people of Scotland wanted this reform. The ratepayers and the feuars wanted it. It was a grievance which was not of yesterday or to-day. It had existed in his recollection for the last 20 years. The real object of the Bill was not to strengthen the Church, as honourable Members opposite alleged, but to get rid of a grievance. There should be no objection to a notice being given by advertisement in cases where there were more than 40 feuars. It was ridiculous in the extreme to suggest that the manses of Scotland wore the palatial residences depicted by the imagination of the honourable Member for Glasgow. It was hard on a ministry composed of men who were doing a noble work perseveringly, courageously, unobtrusively, and on small stipends, to single out isolated instances in support of the argument that the Bill was an attempt to bolster up a system which gave palatial residences to the ministers of the country. There was no foundation, in fact, for such a suggestion, and he hoped the House would give a Second Reading to the Bill and that before long it would be passed into law.

On the return of Mr. SPEAKER, after the usual interval—

*Ma. J. B. BALFOUR (Clackmannan and Kinross)

said he would vote against the Bill, because it seemed to him that it was indefensible in principle; that, if carried into law, it would work injustice in practice; and, further, that it would not carry out the objects which his honourable Friend who introduced it proposed to effect. His honourable Friend said it was to remedy a particular grievance, and that grievance was that the small owners of land, commonly called feuars, were liable to be assessed under the present law for the building and repair of parish churches and manses. If his honourable Friend's view was well founded, there must be some ground why this particular rate should be imposed, not on the heritors or the land generally, but only upon owners of land of some particular extent. He was not aware of any rate imposed upon land which possessed that quality. If the rate was a proper rate to be levied upon land at all, then in the allocation of it they should disregard the question whether a man owned much land or little. He would assume that this was the kind of rate which was rightly imposed on land, and on that assumption the aim in the allocation of every rate on land with which he was acquainted was to make the burden of the rate proportionate to the extent or value of the land held by the person assessed. The large owner should pay proportionately to his amount, and the small owner to his. It was not a rate upon some personal quality of the owner, but upon the land. His honourable Friend did not in so many words dispute that proposition, but he rather implied that through some misadventure, in time shape of a judgment of the House of Lords, there had been a misapplication of that principle. It was commonly known as the Peterhead case, but his honourable Friend was entirely mistaken in regard to its character and effect. The obligation of maintaining ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland was by certain old statutes imposed on the persons described as parishioners. That had been interpreted to mean heritors, which again simply meant holders of land. That was the whole of the law on the subject. His honourable Friend, however, seemed to think that only a particular class of owners of land, the large owners, should bear this burden, and he spoke of its having been the practice to pay it according to the old valued rent. But the old valued rent was the valuation of the land of Scotland at the time it was made. There was not then, as now, a simple and ready method provided under the Act of 1854 of bringing up the valuation of land to its true amount year by year, and, accordingly, because there was no other valuation, that old valuation described as the valued rent by his honourable Friend, continued to be used for rating purposes long after it had absolutely ceased to represent the true value of the land of the country. That was not a merit, but a defect; it was not statute law, but merely to save trouble, a mode of administering statutes which laid the burden upon the parishioners or heritors. The decision of the House of Lords could not be impugned or even questioned by any lawyer, or by any layman who understood the matter. There was no mystery or sanctity about the old valued rent. This was a burden upon the value of the land, and wherever that old valued rent had ceased to represent the true value of the land, the real and actual rent should be the basis of assessment. His honourable Friend could not have been aware of that fact when he said that the court most unfortunately interfered in 1802. They simply interfered when the matter was put before them, in a way which no man acquainted with the question could doubt was correct. If there was any mistake, it was in not sooner taking the real rent, or, in other words, the true annual value of the land as the basis of assessment. His honourable Friend spoke of the House of Lords introducing the real rent, as if they had in their judicial capacity undertaken to legislate. They did nothing of the kind. So far from the Peterhead case settling anything new, it merely embodied a truism in a judicial decision. His honourable Friend spoke as if it created a new grievance, but the decision was pronounced about 97 years ago. Land had changed hands during that time, and fens had been granted in the light of that decision, and in the knowledge that the unassailable principle which it affirmed would govern the liability to assessment of owners of land, whether held in large or in small lots. His honourable Friend went as far as to say that that was a new misuse of assessment. Again, he used the expression, "the real value, but not the true value." The fact was, however, that there was no true value but the real value. It was the valued rent which was not the true value. He positively called the small heritors false heritors. Why false? They owned land like other people, they were, the real owners of the land, and accordingly, if his honourable Friend bad been well advised of the true state of the facts with which he was dealing, he never would have brought in this Bill, or at all events he never could have sustained it by the kind of arguments which he used. Those arguments were based upon this extraordinary error into which he had fallen—the moment this error was corrected the whole fabric of his argument fell to the ground, and everything he said came to be an argument in the opposite direction. He rather apologised for the smallness of his Bill. He said it was only a step, but a step in the right direction. His honourable Friend of the St. Andrews Burghs (Mr. Anstruther) also apologised for the Bill, because he said the remedy was not universal or altogether logical. He heartily agreed with both honourable Members. It was not a universal remedy and it was most certainly nut a logical remedy. If a man was to be relieved from rates when he owned a small piece of land, the logical thing would be to relieve the man who owned the larger part too, unless they could show that the larger owner was getting some benefit from the rate which the small owner was not getting. The Church, however, was meant for all the indwellers in the parish, quite irrespective of Whether they owned land or not, and whether they were large landowners or not. Therefore, the Bill was not defended as being in any sense a scheme for the payment by results for religious ordinances. He submitted, therefore, that the whole argument of his honourable Friend failed unless he could show some reason for not laying an assessment of this kind upon land if it happened to be cut up into small bits. He knew of no rateable land which was liable to be dealt with in that way. But let them see what the extraordinary proposals of this Bill were. It was urged that it was a Bill to remedy the grievance of small owners of land being called upon to pay. The Bill did not do this expressly or avowedly, but, as he read the Bill, there were two modes in which his honourable Friend proposed to bring this about. He did not say in so many words that small owners were to be relieved, because that would have compelled him to address himself to the difficult task of saying how many acres was to involve the right of exemption, and when the land was to begin to be assessed. Instead, he did two things which would bring about the result—one was to propose that the majority of the persons described as valued rent heritors should have the power of adhering to the valued rent as the basis of assessment, and as most of the small owners of land would not be on valued rent roll, his honourable Friend meant, he took it, that they would escape. The other method was that there was to be a deduction of £20 from the actual rental of each heritor, so that if some volunteer would make good the effect of this deduction, it would wipe out the indebtedness of the small owner of £20 or less nominal value, and relieve the larger owner to a corresponding extent. A scheme of legislation so extraordinary and anomalous was never before devised. He perfectly understood the reason the Bill assumed that form, because if his honourable Friend came out into the open and said what he wanted —that he wanted to exempt all pieces of property below a particular extent, or of less than a particular annual value—no one would have listened to his Bill. That was what it came to, although it was wrapped up in these somewhat obscure clauses with an appearance of archœology that was perfectly admirable. The first clause was to give the majority of the valued rent heritors the right to insist on the valued rent being the basis of assessment. His honourable Friend contended that it was very wrong that one valued rent heritor should be allowed to disturb a peaceful scheme of placing the whole burden upon the valued rent. He could only say that any state of the law which would prevent an owner of land insisting on the adoption of the true and actual basis for the time being would deserve the description given to the present law. He could not conceive anything more unjust in the allocation of a tax upon land—always assuming that it was one which ought to be upon land—than to give power to persons to say: "This shall be based on the valued rent, which is a historical thing two or three hundred years old, and not on the value as it is to-day." That would in some cases have the effect of letting off nine-tenths, or at least a very large proportion, of the rateable property in the parish. It was the right of every man to see that a just basis of valuation and rating was adopted. The proposal in the Bill would really be to bind a man to subscribe to relieve all the other real rent heritors in the parish, who might be far richer men than himself. There were many parishes in Scotland which at the time when the valuation was made on which the valued rent is based were practically rural parishes, with hardly any buildings or industries in them. Many of these had now come to be filled up with industries and property of enormous value, bringing a teeming population to the place, who would be counted upon in determining the size of a new church, because in Scotland the heritors were bound to provide a church to accommodate what was called two-thirds of the examinable persons in the parish. The result of his honourable Friend's contention would be, that although these new industries brought a great population to the locality, they were not to contribute a penny towards the cost of the new church, and the obligation to pay would fall on the persons whose land was assessed on the historical basis of two or three hundred years ago, the valued rent heritors, to whom these industries might do no good, whose property they might ruin, and who, nevertheless, might have to provide for the supply of religious ordinances to the owners of these properties, and the persons in the employment of their owners. Such a proposal would not stand examination. Under such a system, an entirely artificial basis of assessment would be taken, which would allow for the larger part of the property tat the parish to escape contribution. Ho knew cases in which the buildings erected in connection with certain industries had a larger rateable value than all the rest of the parish put together. For instance, the works which conveyed the water of Loch Katrine to Glasgow passed through a number of parishes, and there was certainly one of those parishes—perhaps more—in which the valuation of these great water-works was larger than the valuation of property of any member of such all the rest of the parish taken together, yet not one penny of contribution would be made by those waterworks under this Bill, because his honourable Friend took as his basis of assessment the valuation of a period when Glasgow was a small town, and the Loch Katrine Waterworks were not thought of. That was the kind of injustice to which his honourable Friend proposed that a majority of the valued rent heritors should be able to compel one of their number to submit. The proposition would not stand argument for one moment. If this rate on land was a just one it should apply to the value of the land for the time being. The proposals contained in the fourth and fifth clauses were also very singular. There never had bean and never could be any difficulty in allocating this or any other assessment, and no provision was needed for such a purpose. With a modesty that was perfectly admirable, the small owner was kept in the background, but to find out what the Bill really meant they must bring him into the light. The fifth clause said that no assessment should be levied upon the church or dwelling-house of any religious body or minister in Scotland. He agreed that these buildings should not be assessed for such a purpose, but the ground of their exemption would apply to many other things. In 1884 the House of Commons passed by a majority of 57 an Amendment declaring against a system of compulsory assessment for ecclesiastical purposes, and everything that has happened since then had strengthened that declaration. If it was inequitable, as the Bill admitted, to assess a place of worship or a manse belonging to another denomination, what made it equitable to any member of that denomination assessed for the erection or repair of ecclesiastical buildings of a Church to which he did not belong? The provision to which he referred was an apologetic confession that there was something wrong in the system of assessment, and the confession would carry the confessor a great deal further than he intended. The provision was put in because the assessment of a church or of a dwelling-house occupied by the minister of any other denomination shocked the conscience. But the principle was the same with regard to the private property of any member of such other denomination. The proposal that everybody should get a deduction of £20 from his rental was most extraordinary. Like the rain, it was to fall on the just and unjust, the rich and the poor alike. But there was nothing certain about the deduction: it was only effective "when the amount of the deficiency which would thereby be created in the total amount of assessment has been paid to the collector of the assessment by the Kirk Session." It was very ingenious to suggest that by such a deduction the small owner would be freed, but when that individual came to think of it, he would see it was a highly improbable and very contingent benefit, for whore would the Kirk Session get the money to make good the deficiency? Was it from the church-door collections? If not, then from what source? He was not aware that it was common for Kirk Sessions to be capitalists or to be in possession of large sums, with which they could do anything they liked. He was afraid it would be a long time before this method would bring relief to either the rich or poor, unless some pious donor presented the money to the Kirk Session, and he did not know where such a donor was to come from, with the knowledge that his gift would benefit not only the small but the large owners. The Bill of 1884 boldly proposed to let off everybody under £4, but the proposal had not been renewed, because it would disclose the untenable position that owners of small pieces of land should be relieved at the expense of owners of larger pieces of land. When the small owner found that the millionaire next door got the same nominal deduction, and that, in fact, there would be no deduction, as Kirk Sessions, instead of being flush of money, were generally in need of it, he would not care for the Bill. The, next part of the Bill went on to propose something quite inconsistent with all their ideas of what a Scottish parish church should be. One of the rights of a parishioner in Scotland was that of accommodation in the parish church; but if by reason of the Bill any heritor was exempt from assessment, he was not to be accommodated in his parish church, but in the event of an allocation of seats the sittings which would have been assigned to the exempted heritors were to be "allocated to the Kirk Session in behoof of the congregation." Therefore, the penalty which the Bill provided should be suffered by any man who did not pay a voluntary assessment was that he should not be allowed to worship in his parish church. He asked if the Kirk Session were meant to treat these sittings as derelict or forfeited property, and turn them into a source of profit by letting them to strangers, while the parishioner who did not pay a voluntary assessment was not allowed to enter his parish church? Did not his honourable Friend see that such a proposal was the first step to disestablishment of a most unequivocal kind? It had been said by an honourable Member opposite that they on the Opposition side were very fond of talking about, "trusting the people." But this Bill gave no power to anybody, except a. power to bare majority of the valued rent heritors to coerce the minority.

SIR J. M. STEWART

For the benefit of the minority.

*MR. J. B. BALFOUR

For what the majority think the benefit of the minority, who, if they do not pay a. voluntary contribution, are not to be allowed to worship in their parish church. The wish to see rates diminished, or not to pay any, was inherent in all human nature, and was not confined to Scotland; but he greatly doubted whether anybody in Scotland would want this Bill if it was thoroughly understood. Some light might be thrown upon the wishes of Scotland by the Division on the Bill. He could not understand why the sympathy of the honourable Baronet (Sir M. Stuart) should go out to the small owners and not extend to the widow who had been referred to during the Debate. In conclusion, he hoped that the Member for Durham would speak during the Debate and adhere to the view he expressed 15 years ago, that the true remedy was to snake church rates in Scotland, as in England, voluntary, and not compulsory.

*Mu. GRAHAM MURRAY,

in stating the view of the Government on the Bill, said he did not think the House was anxious to have a discussion between lawyers on the Peterhead case. He would, therefore, only say that while the House of Lords laid down no new principle in 1802, they must remember that the Peterhead ease referred to the building of a new church, and that in Scotland the building of a new church was a somewhat rare thing. The right honourable Gentleman (Mr. J. B. Balfour) knew that up to the moment, in all purely agricultural parishes, the assessment was not the real rent but the valued rent, and that although it was quite true that the valued rent represented a valuation made some two hundred or three hundred years ago, it consequently did not now represent the true proportion in value of the various lands embraced under it. The right honourable Gentleman also knew that it was made a matter of special legislation in comparatively recent times. He was referring to the Ecclesiastical Assessment Act, which provided that where the area of the church had been allocated according to the valued rent assessment should also be on valued rent (and that principle applied to the. very large majority of the churches in Scotland). The assessment for church purposes must be put upon the values, and not upon the real rent. He thought he had shown that, although the right honourable Gentleman's law was perfectly right, yet, as a. Matter of fact, there was not that uniformity of procedure which always put the burden upon land according to its exact value as it now was. The honourable Baronet who moved its rejection divided his speech into the practical and the metaphysical. The practical consisted of what was a frank recital of one of his last election speeches—and he was particularly oratorical upon the case of the poor lady who was in Glasgow Infirmary, and whose goods in her absence came under the hammer in consequence of her assess- ment not having been paid. There was no difficulty in feeling sympathy with the lady. But the same thing would have happened if, instead of the ecclesiastical assessment, she had not paid her water rate or gas rate, and it was scarcely a grievance against the Church of Scotland. Nor could he congratulate the honourable Baronet on the metaphysical part of his speech. He the honourable Baronet surrounded by philosophers, and he left it to them to determine whether his exposition of the word metaphysical was in accordance with what was understood by that word in Scotland or England. He should not have thought it a metaphysical argument to say that the Bill was an infringement of the Treaty of Union, still less to quote a. poem whose, authorship the honourable Baronet wished to attribute to him. He was not among the poets, and he would hope, with regard to the argument about the Treaty of Union, that the hourable Baronet would remember it when he made his next Disestablishment speech.

*SIR C. CAMERON

explained that he used that argument in consequence of the invectives hurled at his own head when he brought forward Disestablishment.

*MR. GRAHAM MUBRAY

said he was charmed to hear that the honourable Member was converted. The honourable Baronet was followed by the honourable and gallant Member for Aberdeen, who put his opposition to the Bill on a perfectly different platform. He discoursed much on what he called the injustice of ecclesiastical assessments at all, and he was rather prone to start, if he had Dot been interrupted by the ruling of Mr. Speaker, on the thorny subject of disestablishment. He was not going to follow the honourable Member there, and he was really relieved from saying much on the question of the injustice of ecclesiastical assessment by the next speech made on his side of the House, by the honourable and learned Member for Haddington. That honourable and learned Member said what one would quite expect him to say, that what ever his views were on establishment or disestablishment he would never make him hold his hand from remedying what he thought was an injustice in the constitution of the Church. And, so far from calling the ecclesiastical assessments an injustice, the honourable and learned Gentleman said they were nothing of the kind. They were a mere burden on the lands. Everybody had bought and sold their lands in the knowledge that that burden would be exacted, and, therefore, he could not see any injustice in the matter. The honourable and learned Gentleman went on to say that what he could not bring himself to agree to in the Bill was the plan of giving public money to people not entitled to it. He could not help thinking that the honourable and learned Member, and nearly every other honourable Member who had spoken, had taken, according to his humble judgment, quite a wrong view of the purpose of the Bill. A good deal of wrongness of view turned, he thought, on a misunderstanding of the word which was used by his honourable Friend who moved the Bill—the word "grievance." He did not think his honourable Friend meant in using the word "grievance" that there was any right in law to object to, or any injustice in an assessment, the exaction of which distressed some people. His idea of a grievance was that there were many situations where even the fulfilment of a perfectly legal burden was very harassing and irritating; and where the amount or irritation was not at all commensurate with the benefit received. He believed that this Bill was simply an honest attempt to do away with such occasions of irritation and to stop, no doubt, one or two election speeches like those recited by the honourable Baronet who moved the rejection of the Bill. Then came the critical examination of the Bill by the right honourable and learned Gentleman the Member for Clackmannan. In the first place he seemed to think that it was a very curious thing that he knew of no instance where a burden imposed on land should not necessarily be put on all land estates, great and small. He (the Lord Advocate) noted in passing, that houses were lands for the purposes of rating, and his right honourable Friend would find it ready to his hand in the case of the Inhabited House Duty.

*MR. J. B BALFOUR

That is an Imperial tax not a local rate.

*MR. GRAHAM MURRAY

What was the difference so far as principle was con- corned between the Land Tax and the inhabited House Duty? But, really, that was not his answer. His answer to his honourable Friend and to the honourable and learned Member for Haddington was that so far as liability was concerned this Bill left matters precisely as it found them; and, therefore, whether they looked upon it as a question of liability to taxation, or from the point of view of disendowment, they would find that the liability of landowners was precisely the same after this Bill was passed as before. The first proposal in the Bill was limited only to cases in which the assessment had been in use to be imposed on the valued rent. It had been discussed on the one side as if this was universal, but that was not so. In that case, it allowed a majority of the valued rent heritors to resolve whether the assessment should continue. He would remind the House that in many parishes in Scotland—in fact over the whole of Scotland—where the heritors were friendly to the Church, they had very often, sooner than put the real rent heritors to the annoyance of assessment, voluntarily dealt with that assessment as on valued rent, and did not insist 'that the assessment should be altered to real rent. When they came to the details of the Bill in Committee he thought it would be for the consideration of his Friend in charge of the Bill whether it would not be better to put in some such Amendment as would provide for practical unanimity of the heritors to determine that the assessment should be levied on valued rent instead of by a bare majority. He thought that the illustration of his right honourable and learned Friend took as to waterworks, and the "examinable" population was a very inapposite one, because, although waterworks were a very valuable subject, they did not contribute to any amount to the "examinable" population. It seemed to him that the particular illustration made use of by his right honourable and learned Friend was also inappropriate as to when the assessment should be Changed; for the Peterhead case came in on the rebuilding of a church that was to accommodate two-thirds of the parishoners. The right honourable and learned Gentleman then passed to the second part of the Bill, and he seemed to argue that the subsection to clause 5, which allowed the exemption in favour of the churches and dwelling houses of ministers of other religious bodies than the Church of Scotland, was really the concession of an injustice. It was nothing of the kind. The right honourable and learned Gentleman entirely forgot that in Imperial statutes they were perfectly familiar with clauses of exemption in favour of buildings for religious purposes, and in favour of schools, as well as of other public institutions. The right honourable and learned Gentleman believed that it was logically wrong to include the manses, but surely that was a small matter on which to base objection to the whole Bill. The last matter referred to by the right honourable and learned Gentleman was to the exemption of small owners. But the liability of the owners remained where it was before. The Bill only allowed the Church to come forward to exempt certain owners, in order to avoid the irritation caused to these small owners by being assessed. He thought his honourable Friend in charge of the Bill should consider whether instead of allowing each heritor or feuar to have a deduction of £20 made from his real rent before his quota of assessment was levied, he should limit the exemption to those whose rental was below £20. This obviously was a matter of detail. He did not think there was very much in the criticism of his right honourable and learned Friend about the Kirk session not having the purse. He did not think that much mattered. They all knew where the money was to come from.

AN HONOURABLE MEMBER

Where?

*MR. GRAHAM MURRAY

Well, of course, from voluntary subscriptions.

AN HONOURABLE MEMBER

Voluntaryism.

*MR. GRAHAM MURRAY

Certainly by voluntary subscriptions. He did not understand either the cheers or the jeers of his honourable Friends opposite. He had often heard from these Benches perfectly pious prayers in favour of voluntary subscriptions, and that these would be diminished in regard to Voluntary schools. A point which had been entirely missed was that this Bill did not alter the rating at all. It merely allowed, in cases where irritation had been caused before, those friendly to the Church to come forward through the recognised organ of the Church, the Kirk Session, and pay the money which was given in lieu of those small and irritating assessments, for the benefit o' the Church. It was because the Bill did that that it seemed to him to be calculated to remove what had on occasion caused strife and dispeace, while at the same time it did not alter the law of the land, and left all questions of disestablishment and assessments where they were. I support the Second Heading of the Bill.

MR. CALDWELL (Lanark, Mid.)

thought the friends of the Church had been very ill-advised in raising this question. The discussion was bound to demonstrate the fact that the Established Church of Scotland was a national institution, and as it was there for the benefit of the whole people, and that churchmen as swell had no special advantage in the parish church. The claim which was set forth that the Church of Scotland bad certain rights of its own was incompatible with the theory that the parish church was the church of the whole parishoners, and that the whole parishoners, whether dissenters or churchmen, had an equal right to worship in it, and that, therefore, the parish church was the property of all the parishioners. It might be shown that a good many ancient endowments were given to the church by pious persons, and to that extent it might be said that the Church had a property of its own. But there was no room for saying that the Church had any right of property of its own in these assessments. They were purely assessments on the land in the parish—upon every proprietor in the parish, whether he attended the parish church or not, or whether he was a dissenter, and paid for his own religious worship. The accommodation in the parish church had reference to the population of the parish, and the law required that it should accommodate two-thirds of the "examinable" persons, which meant two-thirds of the inhabitants above 12 years of age. That had been repeatedly laid down in the Supreme Law Courts in Scotland. In one particular case, that of the island of Barra, the majority of the population were Roman Catholic, and in that case the court allowed less than two-thirds. In the case of Both-well parish also the legal accommodation in the parish church would have been 1,600, but the Presbytery agreed that 1,200 was sufficient, and the court decided that, in the special circumstances of the case, no more was necessary. Therefore they had this fact established, that the Parish church existed for the benefit of the whole parishioners. In like manner the right to sitting accommodation in the parish church belonged to the whole parishioners. In the first place, every heritor had seats allocated to him, according to the teinds paid, not according to whether he was a churchman or a dissenter. And after the heritors, who had the prior right, every parishioner was entitled to enter the parish church and worship there. But the heritors, it was held, had no right of property in their seats, and they could not let them to other people. So also with regard to the church door collections, which, it had been decided by law over and over again, must be for the benefit of the poor of the parish as a whole, without reference to their religious belief. The Kirk Session were bound to distribute the church-door collections to the deserving poor, no matter whether they were dissenters or members of the church. The minister was also the minister of the whole parish, and was bound to marry everyone who was legally entitled to be married; bound to visit the poor and sick; and bound to attend funerals, whether they were those of churchmen or dissenters. So that any possible claim on the part of the Church of Scotland that the Church existed for itself was antagonistic to the fact. It existed for the parish as a whole. The Bill proposed to do away with what were supposed to be certain grievances of dissenters. The real grievance was that here was property which was held in behoof of the parish as a whole, but the use of which was being applied now by a mere section of the community—namely, those who belonged to the Church of Scotland as a religious denomination. They objected, therefore, that one particular class of the community should have the exclusive use of what was really the property of, and entitled to be used for, the benefit of the parishioners as a whole. The contention of the dissenters was that if the members of the Church of Scotland, whose clergymen were paid out of the teinds, which was national property, were going to use these parish churches, they ought surely to pay for the up-keep of the churches where they worshipped. That was the reason why measures had been brought forward to take away the assessment on all property in the parish, whether it belonged to churchmen or dissenters, for the upkeep of the buildings, and to make the expense fall only on those who practically use the buildings. Now, the Free Church of Scotland contributed something like £600,000 for religious purposes, and the United Presbyterian Church contributed £400,000. He believed the Establishe½d Church contributed £500,000 a year. It had often been said that the Church of Scotland was the most numerous in Scotland, and the most wealthy, and it would not seem to be a great tax upon the majority of the people of Scotland, with their greater proportion of wealth, who moreover, got their clergy paid for nothing, that they should keep up the buildings where they worshipped at their own expense. The Bill only tinkered with the question, in a manner which carried injustice on the face of it. Assuming, for the sake of argument, Estabished Church principles, he held that as long as the parish church was regarded as the Church of the people, for the benefit of the people as a whole, and so long as the connection between Church and State continued, there was no grievance whatever in the present mode of imposing the burdens. The statute which imposed the burden did not specify the particular method to be adopted in making the assessment. As had been pointed out, the assessment was imposed originally on valued rent, and latterly they came to an assessment on real rent. Why was the assessment on real rent a just assessment? For this reason. The size of the parish church and the expense of keeping it up had reference to the population of the parish. If the population enormously increased, the burden of the parish church enormously increased. To what section of the community was the cause, practically, of the increase of population due? It was to those who came from the outside and began to feu ground and build houses, and it was for these that the increased accommodation in the parish church became necessary. What, therefore, could be more reasonable and equitable than that they should pay their assessment according to their real rent—the real interest they had in the parish? He was surprised that the mover of the Bill did not give the House a little more light on valued rent and on the question between one valued heritor and another. In many parishes in Scotland the valued rent was valued 200 or 300 years ago, but there were lands which were not valued until more recent times and some lands which were practically not valued at all. The consequence was that in these parishes small proprietors had to pay more of the stipend of the ministers and for the repairs of the church than the largest proprietors, owing to the former having had their valuations adjusted quite recently. What was proposed to be done by the Bill was that, while these discrepancies between valued rental existed, the majority of the heritors in value should have it in their power to compel the minority to have the assessment levied on valued rent where certain heritors were suffering from a gross injustice. The Lord Advocate said that the valued rent was in operation in certain parishes, but by clause 3 it was provided that a majority of the heritors might compel the minority to pay on valued rent, although the heritor had a right to insist on a real rent valuation. Then clause 5 was meant to relieve dissenting chapels and manses from payment of assessment. If dissenters did not choose to go to the parish church they, of course, could build churches and manses of their own; but when they took land for that purpose they took it with the ordinary burdens on the land, and one of these burdens was the charge for the up-keep of the parish church and manse. They had been told over and over again that they must give effect to the provisions of the law in regard to the burdens on the land, and yet it was proposed in this Bill to relieve this burden on the land of which the parties knew when they bought the land. It had been said that there was a certain amount of grievance because the parish church manses were exempt from the payment of rates. The curious thing was that the other side of the House should complain of the injustice of dissenting places of worship and dissenting ministers' houses being compelled to pay this assessment. The answer was that in the case of the parish church and manse they were dealing with public property for public use, and therefore it had been always exempted. If they were raising a tax for the poor of the parish they would not tax the poor person who was to get the charity, and in like manner they did not raise an assessment for the upkeep of the parish church from those who were using it. In the case of dissenting churches they were dealing with private property which was bought on the usual terms and with which the owners could do whatever they pleased. There was no analogy between the case of the right to exemption of dissenting places of worship and the parish church being exempt. Now, it might be said, why should they relieve dissenters? The question of religion, and whether a. person did or did not support religious services of his own, had nothing whatever to do with the question whether landowners should pay the burdens on their property. The very same arguments applied to this. Honourable Gentlemen on the other side start principles which are only the thin edge of the wedge, and they put us to greater expense than they imagine. They were supporting a principle here which, instead of relieving a grievance, would make it all the more necessary to apply the same principle to the ministers' stipends. They were going to allow certain ratepayers to get an exemption from taxation to make up the deficiency. This was an extraordinary position, and instead of removing grievances, this Bill will create them. The proper way to deal with it was to abolish the church rate altogether, and leave the Church to pay for the up-keep of the buildings in Scotland. Dissenting Churches paid for their own churches, and surely it was not too much to say to the Established Church, which represented more than half the wealth of Scotland, that it should raise the money required itself.

MR. ELLIOT (Durham)

said that his honourable Friends had frankly and honestly stated that they brought forward this Bill with the desire to redress a grievance, and they admitted there was a thorough justification for trying to redress it. In his opinion, the right and proper way to deal with this difficulty was to make the rate for the maintenance of churches and manses in Scotland a voluntary rate. In 1884 he carried a Resolution to that effect in the House of Commons, and he asked them not to retreat from that position. Had they over heard in other Churches of rates being imposed, irrespective of the denomination to which the people belonged, for the up-keep of the fabrics and manses? He did not think the Bill before the House was a wise or statesmanlike Measure, but it did go some way in the right direction. His honourable Friend the Member for the St. Andrews Burghs had made in some respects the most instructive speech that had been delivered in the course of the Debate. He said it was a step in a certain direction to relieve certain persons from the obligation to pay these rates. That was the most hopeful aspect in which the Bill could be regarded. The late Lord Advocate had pointed out that the object of the Bill was to relieve the small owners, but it left the assessment on the big owners. If they could not go the full length of relieving everybody from the rate, there was something to be said for relieving the small owners, who had cried out most of all against the rate. He had hoped that legislation on the lines he advocated in 1884 must have been carried out by this time. If the House threw out this Bill it would mean that they would do nothing in the matter, and he could hardly bring himself to go into the Lobby against the Measure, although he thought very little of it. If they threw out the Bill, what chance was there of the House acting on the principles he advocated in 1884. What they had now to choose was between rejecting this Bill, and relieving in a very curious fashion certain classes of ratepayers—namely, the small owners—from these ecclesiastical assessents. He was not prepared to say that that relief was wrong, because he could not induce the House to go a great deal further, and carry the exemptions the whole length. He did not want to vote against this Bill and ruin one or two other good provisions in it. The late Lord Advocate had analysed the Measure of the Bill, and had gone a very long way towards tearing the provisions of the Bill to pieces. He hoped the House would not let counsels of perfection stand in the way of their agreeing to this very small and modest proposal. The late Lord Advocate had made no practical proposal on the subject. Was he prepared now to say that he would keep the tax on the United Presbyterian and Free Church ministers in order to support the churches and manses of the Establishment? This Bill did remove a grievance from the small owners and the dissenting ministers. It was a grievance which was keenly felt, therefore he could not bring himself to vote for the rejection of the Bill. He should endeavour in Committee to make the exemption as wide as possible, because he thought the most businesslike course would be to deal with the subject upon the general principles which were laid down in 1885. He hoped that he had made the reason why ho could not sup port the rejection of this Bill quite clear.

MR. BIRRELL (Fife, W.)

said his honourable Friend who had just sat down had made one thing perfectly plain, and that was what a sad thing it was to become a Liberal Unionist. A few years ago his honourable Friend was full of faith, hope, and high principles, when a much better Bill than this, a much more effective and workmanlike Measure, was before the House. His honourable Friend would have none of it because it did not carry out those principles to which he was then closely attached. Since then 15 years had passed over his honourable Friend's head, and he had now lost sight of the necessity for arguing the case from the point of view of principle, and was satisfied to read a second time a Measure of which he had spoken in terms which he, having regard to the feelings of the Honourable Members opposite, should be very sorry to repeat. He regarded this Bill as one of a series of electioneering Measures, having for their object to whittle away great principles of the Church Establishment in Scotland, and to deprive the Church of Scotland of all its principles one after the other, but to leave it in possession of its share of national property. When honourable Members opposite said there was a grievance which they ought to reform, he agreed with them. He agreed with his honourable and learned Friend the Member for Had-dington when he said— Show me a real grievance in the work of the Church viewed as a spiritual body, and I will gladly participate in any reform that may be required to remove that grievance. For he would deem it a contemptible thing to do anything to interfere with its spiritual utility. But it was monstrous to speak of there being any particular grievance in this matter. The only grievance was that in Scotland there was an Established Church. It was not quite accurate to transfer all their history and views that had gathered round the Church Establishment in England to the Church Establishment in Scotland. The Church of Scotland had run to the land. At the time of the Reformation Church property in every sense of the word was taken over by persons who called themselves heritors, subject to three great trusts. One was to maintain the fabrics and manses, to see that public worship was carried on within these buildings, and the other was education and the maintenance of the poor. They had slipped off two of these obligations, but the third great obligation remained. That was the whole history of the Church Establishment in Scotland. It was a burden cast on the land to maintain the fabrics of the churches and manses of the Establishment, and there was no more grievance in calling on the small landowner to pay his quota or share— the obligation which law and morals cast upon him, having largely enriched himself on this property—than there was in requiring the big landowners to pay. It was harassing and irritating, but it was always harassing and irritating to pay anything. It was just as harassing to pay their debts and to keep down the interest on motgages; therefore he could not agree that there was in this matter anything that could be called a grievance at all, unless they chose to say it was a grievance to have an Established Church. The difficulty of collecting the rates in Scotland, no doubt, gave rise to a good deal of opposition and ill-feeling. The Church rates in England were on a different footing owing to the entirely different history of the two Establishments. In the case of the Church of Scotland, there was the clearest obligation on the part of the heritors, who, to do them justice had never repudiated it, to maintain the fabrics and manses of the Establishment, The collection of the rate gave rise to a good deal of trouble, therefore it was thought a good thing to buy off the opposition of a number of persons to the Established Church, and give them a bribe, a dale, or a bonus to leave off talking. That was the object of this Bill. It was exactly as if he Church Association in England were to give a £5 note to every Agnostic in Manchester or Liverpool in order that these Agnostics should not go about preaching the doctrine of Disestablishment. The real object of the Bill was to get rid of arguments against the existence of an Established Church, and he was entitled as a supporter of Disestablishment to object to the principle being whittled away in this manner, so that eventually, when they were face to face with the great question of the Establishment, there would be practically no Establishment at all. It would be there in possesson of the property, but it would not be there as representing the duty and obligation of the country to maintain a particular form of religion, which was the only ground on which an Establishment could be maintained. The Bill would not relieve poor tenants. He thought it had been shown that the Bill was a sham, for it would enable them to do that which they were perfectly at liberty to do without it, and ho hoped that the Amendment to read the Bill this day six months would be pressed to a Division.

Ma. THORBURN (Peebles and Selkirk)

said he was not in a position to discuss the legal aspect of the question, but would try to deal with it from a practical point of view. He believed that so long as a church was in good repair the heritors were not compelled to enlarge it, though they might do so voluntarily. Stress had been laid on the fact that feuars were owners, but he did not think that when feuing was started in Scotland the feuars ever expected that they would have to pay a portion of an assessment which was then paid solely by the landowner. But by the decision of the House of Lords in 1802, the owner had been relieved of part of his burden, and that was the injustice which this Bill sought to correct. It wished to secure that those feuars who were now treated as owners should be exempt at least up to the limit £20, but the clause dealing with that was not very explicit. His own name was on the back of the Bill, and therefore he possibly ought to have taken more care in the matter to see that it was made right; but like many other Members, he had put his name to the Bill without very closely scrutinising its wording, but approving entirely of its principle. But he had made inquiries, and was told that under the clause feuars under £20 would be exempted. Still, that should be made absolutely clear at a later stage. He believed that the decision of the House of Lords which created this difficulty was given in opposition to that of the Scottish Courts. In Scotland, as they were all aware, the churches and manses were kept up by the heritors, while in England the incumbents kept up the leetories. So that in Scotland they were a little more liberal to their incumbents than in England. But the object of this Bill was to remove what he hold to be an injustice to the feuars, and relieve them from contributions where churches or manses had to be rebuilt or repaired. In most parishes they had voluntary contributions from the feuars and others for the purpose, and he believed that the majority of the inheritors throughout Scotland were perfectly willing to take upon themselves any responsibility in the shape of increased contributions which might accrue on the passing of this Bill. In the parish to which he belonged, where the church cost between £12,000 and £14,000, they did not assess a. single feuar. Something had been said about the allocation of seats to the feuars in the parish churches; but it was expressly declared that every inhabitant of Scotland—man, woman, or child—could claim a sitting in the Established Church.

*MR. J. B. BALFOUR

said that the sittings were left in the hands of the Kirk Session, and what he suggested was that, if this Bill passed, the existing seats of the feuars would be in the hands of the Kirk Session to let them to others.

MR. THORBURN

pointed out that the right honourable Gentleman was under a misapprehension regarding this matter. All the sittings which the Kirk Session could let were those which were in supplement of the number in the church which had been rebuilt, and all the sittings which were in the church prior to its restoration were free at the present moment. The Member for Mid Lanark had said that the Church of Scotland was the church of the heritors.

MR. CALDWELL

That was not so. What ho said was that the churches in Scotland belonged to the people as a whole, and not to a particular denomination.

MR. THORBURN

contended that the Church of Scotland was more the Church of the people than any other Church in the Kingdom, and more people belonged to it relative to the population than in England belonged to the Church of England. He would not detain the Committee any longer, but he was convinced in his own mind that the opposition to this Bill would not give satisfaction to a very large proportion of the people of Scotland. He believed there Was a very strong desire for the Bill, and there would have been a feeling of great die-satisfaction if the Government had not given their moral support to this Bill, and not only that, but given every facility for its passage through the House of Commons.

*MR. T. SHAW (Hawick Burghs)

said there was one thing he had hardly expected to hear in this Debate, and that was their old familiar catchword about the Church of Scotland being the Church of the people. He would grant for the moment that it was so in a very wide and comprehensive sense, and he would ask in what respect that Church was distinguished from any other Church of the people of the north of the Tweed. It was distinguished by the singular circumstances that it did not pay for the upkeep of its churches and ministers' houses. One of the most remarkable speeches of the Debate was the speech of his honourable Friend the Member for Durham. His honourable Friend, upon points of principle, was as rigid as ever, and his opinions were just the same. He had not altered, but circumstances had altered the situation in which he found himself. Accordingly, whereas formerly he was met with a Bill better than this, and still that Bill was not good enough for him, and whereas, above all things, he was in favour of the complete abolition of compulsory church rates in Scotland, now, by some strange mental dexterity, he was still of the same opinion, but in practice—for he was a practical man—he was going to vote in the other direction. That was one of the curious facts which did occur in these cases of political association. His honourable Friend called this a curious Bill, in some respects an absurd Bill, an illogical Bill, and a Bill which would never satisfy him; and yet he was going to support it.

>MR. ELLIOT

It is a step.

*MR. T. SHAW

It was a step 15 years ago, but it was not sufficient for his honourable Friend then. Political associations tended to make one thankful for small mercies. He was in a state of thankfulness, and he was going practically to change his attitude. The Lord Advocate made a very remarkable admission in regard to the Bill. He said that it contained provisions manifestly pointing to this—that where a Kirk Session chose by voluntary effort to subscribe certain portions of the church rates, then those rates were, with regard to the most clamorous section of the feuars, to be remitted. In short, here was a Bill which for the first time recognised that there might be a legitimate sphere for voluntary effort in the Church of Scotland, and in consequence, and at the will of that Church in its voluntary efforts, the land taxation of this country was to be imposed, adjusted, or remitted. He never heard in any Parliamentary Bill a proposal so grotesque as that. Ho entirely denied that the object of the Bill was, as the Lord Advocate said, to remove a grievance, and he would support his contention thus. There could be no grievance in any parish in Scotland, except at the will of the church in that parish. None of these rates could be imposed if the church chose to pay its own way. And, therefore, the grievance could be removed ipso facto by the exercise of ordinary liberality on the part of those who called themselves the Church of the people. In 1868, compulsory church rates in England were abolished, and the reason why Scotland had all these years been debarred from similar relief was that in this House England could be governed by English ideas and Scotland could not be governed by Scottish ideas. His honourable Friend the Member for Peebles was so far quite right in saying that underneath this Bill there was the principle that it was right to continue to tax the land of the country for the support of religious ordinances in Scotland. The time had gone by for continuing a principle of that kind or reaffirming it in the Statute Book. It was said that the Bill would abolish the odium of this rate; but he would abolish the odium in the way his honourable Friend the Member for Durham proposed to do it—by abolishing the injustice along with it. It was altogether novel, and it would be wrong, to introduce by that Bill the principle of exceptions to taxation for local purposes, for the result would simply be that a great social dividing line would be drawn between the small and large taxpayer, and the Established Church would more and more become the preserve of large landed proprietors, because by the exemption the small feuar would be debarred from his parishioner's right to free access to and accommodation in the church of his parish. As to the mode of assessment, no statutory provision would be satisfactory unless it abolished the anachronism known as valued rent. For all taxation purposes it was fiction instead of fact; and he altogether objected to give the valued rent landowners the power to declare what should be the incidence of taxation. It would involve great confusion with regard to the burdens upon heritable property in Scotland, be-cause no one would ever know whether there was to be a regular burden or a burden according to the will of the neighbouring landowners in particular parishes. Then the sub-section about the exemption of the churches, etc., of religious bodies had been framed in absolute ignorance apparently of the Act passed in 1874, by which no assessment or rate under any general or local Act of Parliament for any county, burgh, parochial, or other local purpose whatsoever could be levied upon any church or chapel in Scotland. Turning to the finance of the matter, he said that £42,000 per annum was raised in Scotland by way of church and manses rates. At the present moment there were 640,000 members of the Established Church, and they had at any rate as much wealth and social advantage as any other Presbyterian denomination in Scotland. They raised £385,000 a year. He asked that they should add to that sum the needed £42,000, and put an end to this grievance for ever. Would that addition be a. great burden? The United Presbyterian Church raised 37s. per head for the support of religious ordinances at home and abroad. Why should not the Church of Scotland do the same? If they did, the 640,000 members would raise not £485,000 but £1,189,000 per annum.

SIR J. M. STEWART

What figures is the honourable and learned Member quoting from?

*MR. T. SHAW

said that was a most legitimate question. He was quoting from the Year Book ssued by the Church of Scotland.

SIR J. M. STEWART

A great many figures are not included in it.

*MR. T. SHAW

said the compiler was an official who might be presumed to know the figures. The members of that Church were, he agreed, loyal to it and loved it, and many of them would do a great deal rather than it should suffer. As a witty friend of his said, it was remarkable how many people would die for their Church and bleed for their Church, and would not pay for their Church. He suggested that the Church of Scotland should, of her own initiative, abandon this compulsory church rate, and trust to the loyalty and affection of her own members. The Bill was conceived in a spirit of exclusive privilege, which he did not like to see. It was founded more upon arrogance than upon anything else.—arrogance without a single spark of real independence, and so far as its machinery went, it contained the maximum of dexterity, with the minimum of fair play.

THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir R. FINLAY, Inverness Burghs)

thought if any feature characterised the Bill more than another it was not arrogance, but modesty. Had the honourable Member who had just spoken, and who had said that the Bill proposed to recognise for the first time in connection with the Church of Scotland the principle of voluntary contributions, never heard of the legislation which, with regard to the formation of new parishes, proceeded on the basis of voluntary contributions? If, as honourable Members opposite had said, this was really a Disestablishment Bill, he shrewdly suspected that it would have received the support of a great many Members who were going to vote against it. He frankly recognised the perfect fairness of the attitude taken by the honourable Member for Durham, in saying that he would Vote for the Bill as a step in the right direction, but he was unable to agree with his severe criticism of the Measure. Perhaps he (Sir R. Finlay) was a little prejudiced, having taken an interest in the subject for a very long time, and having introduced as far back as 1886 a Bill which bore a considerable family resemblance to the present. He would be very glad if they were now on the eve of solving a problem which had occupied attention for so many years. Strong observations had been made upon the clause which proposed to take away from the heritors, who would be exempt from contribution, the right of sittings in the parish church, and with these he agreed. He hoped that that clause, which must have been inserted by inadvertence, would be struck out in Committee. It was also a matter for consideration whether it was necessary to apply the relief of £20 deduction in favour of the larger heritors, who did not want it, and in whose case there was no substantial reason for giving it. The Bill might be altered so as to apply to the smaller heritors who did not exceed £20 or any other figure in money that might be considered most suitable. After all, these were points for Committee; but as to the merits of the Bill as regarded the Second Reading, he thought the House had heard extraordinarily little which was revelant to the Debate on such an occasion. The honourable and learned Gentleman the Member for the Border Purghs said that one portion of the Bill was not wanted at all. He said that under existing legislation in Scotland the churches of other denominations and manses belonging to clergymen of other denominations were already exempt from all rates. He did not wish to eater into a controversy with the honourable and learned Gentleman, but he thought there was a strong reason for thinking he must be mistaken. He was in conflict with the Scottish authority on ecclesiastical matters, and that was the honourable Baronet the Member for Bridgeton. The honourable Baronet entertained the House with a most graphic and circumstanitial account of the intrepid demeanour of a clergyman of the Church when a demand for ecclesiastical assessment was served upon him.

*SIR C. CAMERON

said that the right honourable Gentleman would allow him to explain. He made no assertion of the law at all. The threat of a summons was sent. Whether that was another illegality in connection with the levying of the rate he did not know.

SIR R. FINLAY

said that it was not for him to determine abstruse matters. He doubted whether his learned Friend was right in his view of the section and the way it applied to ecclesiastical assessment. There could be no harm, however, in making it clear. Many speakers on the other side protested against the removal of such a profitable grievance as assessing the churches and manses of other denominations for this purpose, but they did not go so far as the honourable and learned Gentleman in defence of the Church, expressing their readiness to live, and, if necessary, die for it. But they did make it clear that the grievance was a very clear one. They were told that the Bill would not affect its purpose. The principle of the Bill was that in regard to certain small properties the trouble of collection and the initiation was out of all proportion to the results achieved. Surely it was a right and statesmanlike thing, under these circumstances, to say that they preferred to make provisions for relieving these small owners. That was the object of the Bill. A question might arise as to the precise majority of the heritors who should be entitled to bring about the change, but that, again, was a matter for adjustment in Committee. The truth was, the shrewdly suspected that many honourable Members who had denounced the Bill as being a sham and utterly inefficient would not be nearly so keen as they were against it if they thought it was a sham and insufficient. It was because it would, to a very considerable extent, obviate the grievance which had been so sensibly felt in very many parts of Scotland that the opposition to the Bill was so keen. He was sure that the House must recollect how the honourable Baronet the Member for Bridgeton lingered lovingly over the details of a grievance which formed the subject of a speech of his at an election. Not one of the ghastly details did he spare the House. If one could hear it upon a platform, one could realise his wrath at the idea of so effective a weapon against the Church of Scotland being taken out of his grasp. He was really very sorry for the honourable Baronet. He always recognised him as a good fighting man, and he was sure that his capacity for warfare against any Established Church was such that he would be able to get on to the satisfaction of himself and his supporters even if this cherished weapon was taken away from him. What was the alternative? They were told by many speakers, particularly by his learned Friend the Member for Clackmannan, they ought to abolish assessments altogether. That would be a proposal to present to the landowners of Scotland a very large annual sum, and if such a proposal was put forward he thought that a good many Gentlemen on the other side would get up and tell them it was simply monstrous that land should be relieved from that burden—a burden which it had borne for a very long time, for hundreds of years, and subject to which every landowner had acquired his property. The honourable Member for North Aberdeen said that the Bill was a most aggressive Measure, but the honourable Member's ideas of warfare seem to be somewhat peculiar. He described himself as a member of the Disestablishment Party, and he said their view was entirely passive; but he went on to say they were quiescent until they could see an opportunity of attacking the Church with advantage. The honourable and gallant Member, acting upon his own ideas of military strategy, as applied to political and ecclesiastical matters, turned round and said— What a monstrous thing it was on the Part of friends of the Church of Scotland to come forward and assume the aggressive for moving an admitted grievance. He very respectfully submitted to the House that that remark made by the honourable and learned Member was about the strongest argument that could be used in reference to this Bill.

MR. COLVILLE (Lanark, N.E.)

felt that the Bill was a deliberate attempt to bolster up the Church of Scotland, notwithstanding that in the Queen's Speeches promises had been given of legislation dealing with the whole question. Any attempt to pass such a Measure simply meant a disregard of the vote expressed by the people at the election, by sending a majority of representatives to the House of Commons who desired to have a free Church in a free State. He must, therefore, oppose the Bill.

MR. GORDON

rose in his place, and claimed to move— That the Question be now put.

But MR. SPEAKER

withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question, because it appeared to him that the House was prepared shortly to come to a decision without that Motion.

MR. MCLEOD (Sutherland)

expressed the opinion that if the Bill passed it would be the means of depriving small feuars of considerable rights and Privileges which they had.

Question put— That the word 'now' stand part of the Question.

The House divided:—Ayes 177; Noes 122.—(Division List No. 102.)

AYES.
Acland-Hood, Capt.Sir A.F. Flannery, Sir Fortescue Morton, A. H. A. (Deptford)
Allsopp, Hon. George Fletcher, Sir Henry Murray, Rt. Hn. A. G. (Bute)
Anstruther, H. T. Flower, Ernest Murray, C. J. (Coventry)
Arnold, Alfred Folkestone, Viscount Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)
Arrol, Sir William Forster, Henry William Myers, William Henry
Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John Fry, Lewis Nicholson, Willim Graham
Bagot, Capt. J. FitzRoy Garfit, William Nicol, Donald Ninian
Baird, J. George Alexander Gibbons, J. Lloyd Northcote, Hn. Sir H. Stafford
Baldwin, Alfred Giles, Charles Tyrrell Orr-Ewing, Charles Lindsay
Balfour,Rt.Hn.A.J.(Manch'r Gilliat, J. Saunders Parkes, Ebenezer
Balfour.Rt.Hn.G. W. (Leeds) Godson, Sir Augustus Fredk. Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Banbury, Fredk. George Goldsworthy, Major-General Priestley, Sir W. O. (Edin.)
Barnes, Frederic Gorell Graham, Henry Robert Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward
Bartley, George C. T. Gray, Ernest (West Ham) Purvis, Robert
Barton, Dunbar Plunket Green, W. D. (Wednesbury) Pym, C. Guy
Bathurst, Hon. A. Benjamin Gretton, John Quilter, Sir Cuthbert
Beach, Rt.Hn.SirM.H. (Bristol) Gull, Sir Cameron Rankin, Sir James
Begg, Ferdinand Faithfull Gunter, Colonel Renshaw, Charles Bine
Bemrose, Sir Henry Howe Hare, Thomas Leigh Rentoul, James Alexander
Beresford, Lord Charles Heath, James Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. T.
Bill, Charles Hoare, E. Brodie (Hampstead) Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)
Blundell, Colonel Henry Hoare, Samuel (Norwich) Rothschild, Hon. Lionel W.
Boscawen, A. Griffith- Hobhouse, Henry Russell, Gen. F. S. (Cheltenham)
Boulnois, Edmund Howard, Joseph Russell, T. W. (Tyrone)
Bowles, T. G. (King's Lynn) Howell, William Tudor Seely, Charles Hilton
Brodriek, Rt. Hn. St. John Hozier, Hn. Jas. H. Cecil Sharpe, Wm. Edw. T.
Brymer, William Ernest Hubbard, Hon. Evelyn Sidebotham, J. W. (Cheshire)
Butcher, John George Hutton, John (Yorks. N.R.) Simeon, Sir Barrington
Campbell, J. H. M. (Dublin) Jebb, Richard Claverhouse Smith, A. H. (Christchurch)
Cavendish, R. F. (N. Lancs.) Jeffreys, A. Fredk. Smith, Hn. W. F. D. (Strand)
Cayzer, Sir C. William Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex) Spencer, Ernest
Cecil, Lord H. (Greenwich) Kenyon, James Stanley, H. M. (Lambeth)
Charrington, Spencer Kenyon-Slaney, Col. Wm. Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.
Chelsea, Viscount Keswick, William Sutherland, Sir Thomas
Clare, Octavius Leigh Kimber, Henry Talbot,Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ
Cochrane, Hon. T. H. A. E. King, Sir H. Seymour Thorburn, Walter
Coddington, Sir William Knowles, Lees Tolmache, Henry James
Colston, C. E. H. Athole Lawrence, Sir E.Durning-(Corn Tomlinson, W. E. Murray
Compton, Lord Alwyne Lawrence, W. F. (Liverpool) Tritton, Charles Ernest
Cook, F. Lucas (Lambeth) Lawson, John Grant (Yorks.) Valentia, Viscount
Cooke, C. W. R. (Hereford) Leighton, Stanley Vincent, Col. Sir. C. E. H.
Cotton-Jodrell, Col. E. T. D. Llewellyn, E. H. (Somerset) Walrond, Rt. Hon. Sir W. H
Cripps, Charles Alfred Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R. Warr, Augustus Frederick
Cruddas, Wm. Donaldson Long, Rt. Hn. W. (Liverpool) Welby, Lieut.-Col. A. C. E.
Cubitt, Hon. Henry Long, Col. Chas. W. (Evesham) Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloy
Curran, T. B. (Donegal) Lopes, H. Yarde Buller Whiteley, Geo. (Stockport)
Dalbiac, Col. Philip Hugh Lubbock, Rt. Hn. Sir John Williams, Col. R. (Dorset)
Dalrymple, Sir Charles Macaleese, Daniel Willox, Sir J. Archibald
Davenport, W. Bromley- Macdona, John Cumming Wilson, John (Falkirk)
Denny, Colonel Maclure, Sir J. William Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E.R. (Bath)
Dixon-Hartland, Sir F. Dixon McIver, Sir, H. Seymour Worthley Rt. Hn. C.B. Stuart-
Donkin, Richard Sim McKillop, James
Doughty, George Mortin, Richard Biddulph Wylie, Alexander
Doxford, Wm. Theodore Messey-Mainwaring, Hn. W.F Wyndham-Quin,Major W.H.
Drage, Geoffrey Maxwell, Rt. Hon. Sir H.E. Yerburgh,Robert Armstrong
Duncombe, Hon. Hubert V. Mellor, Col. (Lancashire) Younger,William
Fardell, Sir, T. George Middlemore, J. Throgmorton
Fergusson, Rt. Hn. SirJ. (Manc'r Milward, Colonel Victor TELLERS FOR THE AYES—
Field, Admiral (Eastbourne) Monn, Edw. R. Pacy Mr. Gordon and Sir Mark
Finalay, Sir Rbt. Bannatyne More, Robt. J. (Shropshire) Stewart.
Fisher, William Hayes Morgan, Hn. F. (Monm'thsh.)
NOES.
Abraham, Wm. (Rhondda) Balfour.Rt.Hn. J.B. (Clackm.) Buchanan, Thos. Ryburn
Allen,W. (Newc.-under-Lyme) Barlow, John Emmott Burns, John
Asher, Alexander Bayley, Thos. (Derbyshire) Burt, Thomas
Ashton, Thomas Gair Billson, Alfred Buxton, Sydney Charles
Asquith, Rt. Hn. H. Henry Birrell Augustine Caldwell, James
Austin, Sir J. (Yorkshire) Brcadhurst, Henry Cameron, Sir Chas. (Glasgow)
Baker, Sir John Bryce, Rt. Hon. James Campbell-Bannerman,Sir H.
Carmichael, Sir T.D.Gibson- Kearley, Hudson E. Provand, Andrew Dryburgh
Causton, Richard Knight Kinloch, Sir J. G. Smyth Rickett, J. Compton
Cawley, Frederick Kitson, Sir James Roberts, John B. (Eifion)
Clough, Walter Owen Lambert, George Roberts, J. H. (Denbighs.)
Colville, John Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'land) Robertson, E. (Dundee)
Crombie, John William Leese, Sir J. F. (Accrington) Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)
Daly, James Leng, Sir John Sehwann, Charles E.
Dalziel, James Henry Leuty, Thomas Richmond Shaw, T. (Hawick Burghs)
Davies, M.Vaughan-(Cardigan) Lewis, John Herbert Sinclair, Capt. J. (Forfarshire
Dillon, John Lloyd-George, David Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Donelan, Captain A. Logan, John William Stanhope, Hon. Philip J.
Duckworth, James Lough, Thomas Steadman, Wm. Charles
Dunn, Sir William Lvell, Sir Leonard Stevenson, Francis S.
Evans, S. T. (Glamorgan) McLeod, John Stuart, James (Shoreditch)
Fenwick, Charles Maddison, Fred. Sullivan, D. (Westmeath)
Ferguson, R, C. Munro (Leith Maden, John Henry Tennant, Harold John
Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond Mappin, Sir Fredk, Thorpe Thomas, A. (Glamorgan, E.)
Foster, Sir W. (Derby Co.) Mellor, Rt. Hn. J. W. (Yorks Thomas, D. A. (Merthyr)
Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir H. Monk, Charles James Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Goddard, Daniel Ford Morgan, J. L. (Carmarthen) Ure, Alexander
Gold, Charles Morgan, W. P. (Merthvr) Wallace, Robert (Perth)
Gourley, Sir E. Temperley Mortey, C. (Breconshire) Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)
Griffith, Ellis J. Morton, E. J. C. (Devonport) Wedderburn, Sir Wm.
Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton Norton, Capt. Cecil Wm. Weir, James Galloway
Haldane, Richard Burdon Nussey, Thos. Willans Whittaker, Thomas Palmer
Harwood, George O'Brien, J. F. X. (Cork) Williams, J. Carvell (Notts.)
Hayne, Rt. Hn. C. Seale- O'Connor, J. (Wicklow, W.) Wilson, H. J. (York, W.R.)
Hedderwick, Thos. C. H. O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool) Wilson, John (Govan)
Holden, Sir Angus Oldroyd, Mark Woodall, William
Horniman, Frederick J. Palmer, Geo. W. (Reading) Woodhouse,SirJT (Hud'rsfield
Jacoby, James Alfred Perks Robert Wm. Woods, Samuel
Johnson-Ferguson, J. E. Philipps, John Wynford
Joicey, Sir James Power, Patrick Joseph TELLERS FOK THE NOES—
Jones, D. Brynmor (Swansea) Price, Robert John Mr. Herbert Gladstone and
Jones, Wm, (Carnarvonshire) Priestley, Briggs (Yorks.) Mr. MeArthur.

Bill read a third time, and passed.