HL Deb 21 April 1856 vol 141 cc1268-324

"The Archbishops and Bishops of the provinces of Armagh and Dublin beg leave to submit to the Viscount Palmerston the following statement, with reference to the draft of a proposed Bill, entitled 'The Church Discipline and Registry Act, 1855,' which was prepared, under the direction of the Solicitor General for England, by Mr. Stephens, and which was communicated to the Irish Prelates in the course of the last summer.

"A letter on the subject of this Bill was addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, on the 11th of June, stating certain objections against the measure on the part of his Grace and twelve of the English Bishops assembled at Lambeth. Their objections were as follow:—1. The tendency of the measure 'to transfer the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops, to the Archbishops;' 2. 'And that of the Archbishop to the Crown.' 3. That 'the Court of Appeal which it proposes, though an improvement upon the present law, is less desirable than one which was suggested last year by a Committee of Convocation, the Report of which was laid upon the table of the House.'

"An opportunity having been afforded for the consideration of the proposed Bill at a meeting of English and Irish Prelates, held at the Bounty Office on the 19th of June, the first and second of the foregoing objections were fully discussed; and in a letter, dated the 22nd of June, addressed to the Solicitor General, the Irish Prelates then in London expressed their opinion that the proposed measure should be altered so as to obviate those two objections. But with respect to the third objection, the Irish Prelates were of opinion that the court of final appeal suggested by the Committee of Convocation was inconsistent with the legal supremacy of the Crown, and that the appellate tribunal proposed in the Bill should be adopted.

"The counsel who drew the Bill having been recently requested to state if it could be amended so as to meet the views of the English Prelates without violating its principles, the Irish Prelates have had laid before them an amended draft of a Bill, with a letter explanatory of the Amendments, which appear to them not only to remove the first two objections mentioned in the letter to the Lord Chancellor, but also to improve the Bill in other respects in a manner calculated to be satisfactory to the English Prelates. And as the Court of Appeal which would be constituted by the Bill is admitted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the part of himself and twelve of the English Bishops, to be an improvement upon the present law, the Irish Prelates earnestly hope that the amended Bill may prove acceptable to their Lordships.

"Without pledging themselves to details, the Irish Prelates desire to express their unanimous conviction of the urgent necessity which exists for this measure of ecclesiastical reform. And especially if the testamentary jurisdiction be removed from the Church Courts (which in that case must hereafter be supported by ecclesiastical business exclusively), they think it essential that the Church Courts and the ecclesiastical registries should be dealt with together so as to make them self-supporting.

"They are also of opinion that the plan of reducing the number of chancellors would be for the advantage of the Church, as giving encouragement to persons of eminence to devote themselves to the study of ecclesiastical law. And they apprehend that, unless this plan be adopted, when the testamentary jurisdiction is withdrawn from the Church Courts, there would not be sufficient funds to afford adequate remuneration to qualified chancellors for each of the diocesses. The provision made in the amended Bill for the payment of the secretaries of the Prelates is, they conceive, a satisfactory solution of any difficulties which might arise from the concentration of the registries.

"They have also to submit that as the 5th Article of the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland provides 'that the Churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called the United Church of England and Ireland; and that the doctrine, worship, discipline, ant government of the said United Church shall be, and shall remain, in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England; it is essential, in order to prevent conflicting decisions in the United Church, that there should be but one court of final appeal for the Church in England, Ireland, India, and the Colonies.

"The Irish Prelates submit this statement to the Viscount Palmerston in order that Her Majesty's Government may be in possession of their sentiments, in case it should be in contemplation to bring forward any measures in the next Session of Parliament for the regulation of the Ecclesiastical Courts of the United Kingdom.

"It having been reported that the Church Discipline and Registry Act originated with the Prelates of the Church in Ireland, they think it right to state that such report was unfounded, in as much as they were not aware of its provisions, or even of its existence, until after it had been drawn by Mr. Stephens, under the direction of the Solicitor General for England.

"Dublin, Nov. 29, 1855.
"JOHN G. ARMAGH.
RICHARD DUBLIN.
J. H. MEATH.
LUDLOW KILLALOE.
PLUNKET TUAM, &c.
J. T. OSSORY AND FERNS.
ROBERT CASHEL.
J. CORK.
ROBERT DOWN AND CONNOR.
WM. DERRY AND RAPHOE.
HENRY LIMERICK.
M. G. KILMORE."

After the clear—he might say convincing—statement of the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, it might seem needless that he (the Bishop of Derry) should for one moment trespass on the time and attention of their Lordships; but, agreeing as he did with the most rev. Prelate the Archbishop of Armagh, and with his Brethren of the Irish Episcopal Bench, in the opinion that the Bill now before the House was substantially a good one, he felt it to be a duty which he owed to himself not to content himself with merely giving a silent vote in its favour. He and his right rev. Brethren were deeply interested in the passing of a comprehensive measure which would in a bonâ fide manner carry out what was useful and necessary in the discipline and doctrine of the United Church of the two countries, in confirmation, if he might so express himself, of what took place, when the Legislatures of both countries were happily, and he trusted for ever, united. By one of the Articles of the Legislative Union it was enacted that the Churches of England and Ireland, as by law established, should be united in one connected Church, to be called "the United Church of England and Ireland;" and it was declared that the doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church, should remain in full force for ever, as they were then by law established. On that he would take his stand; and whatever Bill was introduced for the regulation of Church affairs in England, to be satisfactory to the Irish branch of the Church, must maintain and support the perfect identity of the two Churches. He knew that it had been urged that the Irish canons were not identical with the English canons; but it should be remembered that canons were not an essential element of a Church, for they were different at different times and in different places. The canons of Canterbury were different from the canons of York, and, therefore, any argument based upon the differences of canons was perfectly untenable. As to the Bill itself, he thought its principles were such as ought to satisfy the Prelates of the Irish and English benches, and he had no apprehension that under its provisions the jurisdiction of the Bishops would be taken from them. The Prelates of Ireland were as much interested in sustaining episcopal authority as were those of England. He begged respectfully to state that the Bill had his most humble approbation, and it was with deep regret he found himself differing from the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of Canterbury), whom he so highly esteemed and respected, and from those other English Prelates whom he venerated. However, he felt that he would not be discharging his duty towards their Lordships or to the country at large, if he did not express, in the strongest terms, his approbation of the Bill. He did not mean to say that the Bill might not be improved in detail and made more acceptable to the English Prelates; but a Bill which maintained one appellate tribunal, with a due admixture of English and Irish Prelates, and civil with ecclesiastical authority, for both countries, was to his mind a satisfactory one. And he trusted he might he allowed to express his hope that, whatever differences of opinion might arise between the English and Irish Prelates on subjects like the one now under discussion, it would always be their constant endeavour, as it would be their constant prayer, to keep "the unity of spirit in the bond of peace." The Established Church might labour under certain deficiencies; but she had hitherto been, and he believed she would remain, the decus et tutamen of the country. He would conclude by expressing his thanks to Her Majesty's Government for the introduction of this Bill.

THE BISHOP OF EXETER

* My Lords, I request permission to occupy the attention of your Lordships for a short time, while I offer a few observations upon the Bill now under your consideration, and state the reasons by which I am compelled to vote against its receiving a second reading. Let me, however, first, have the satisfaction of saying, that in one important particular I fully agree with the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Derry) who has just addressed your Lordships in favour of the Bill, and I confidently believe there is not any difference of opinion whatever between the Prelates of the Church in this country and those of Ireland in respect to it—I mean the importance and the necessity of establishing one court of final appeal for the Church in both countries, in all causes involving questions of doctrine, perhaps in all causes whatever. But having said this, I must add, that I see much, very much, in the Bill, which the Irish Prelates are willing, nay, eager to accept, open, in my judgment, to the gravest objections. Those objections I shall endeavour, with your Lordships' permission and kind indulgence, to state as calmly, and as dispassionately, and as briefly as I can.

My Lords, the right rev. Prelate near me has stated, and I need not say that I fully assent to his statement, that in order that a real unity should exist between the Church in Ireland and in England, there ought to be an unity not merely of legal establishment, and of security for the enjoyment of temporal possessions and temporal privileges, but that, in order that that unity should be real and substantial and binding, it should be a unity in all things essential to a Church, above all, unity in doctrine, and in whatever is fundamental in the constitution of the Christian Church. My Lords, till this night I had hoped that such unity did exist in the Church in the two countries, and it is, therefore, with feelings of very great re-great, of very deep pain, that I avow before your Lordships that my confidence in that hope has been very much shaken this evening by the statement which has been made by the right rev. Prelate. My Lords, by that statement, a statement deliberately made—a statement which has, it seems, been repeatedly put forth, and in the highest quarters—it appears, that both the most rev. and right rev. Prelates who represented in this House last year, and those who now represent in this House, the whole episcopate of Ireland, do not think it necessary to preserve entire the authority of a diocesan Bishop over the clergy of his diocess. I had, my Lords, when I was first informed that those right rev. Prelates were, and are, decided in giving their support to the Bill before us—I had hoped that some one of them, at least, would have stated the reasons which had satisfied them, and by which they would undertake to satisfy others, that the diocesan authority of Bishops was not impaired—was not, at any rate, rendered absolutely and merely precarious, by the Bill which they were so anxious to recommend to the adoption of your Lordships. My Lords, I have been disappointed. The statement which has just been read to you as the statement of the Primate and all his brethren—the statement, in express terms, of "the Irish Archbishops and Bishops,"—informs us, that they are unanimous in their adhesion to the principles embodied in the Bill now under the consideration of your Lordships. And yet, my Lords, to one of the main provisions of this Bill, I rejoice to know, not one of the Bishops of the Church in England will ever give his assent; that they will all unanimously reject the Bill in which it is contained. And I must say, painful to me as is the declaration, that if the Prelates of the Church in Ireland show by their votes this night their deliberate judgment—for their judgment will be unhappily most deliberate—and in despite of the most earnest and repeated remonstrances—that the particular provision of this Bill to which I have thus referred, is tolerable, and not only tolerable, but is eagerly to be adopted in their branch of the Christian Church, I know not how any faithful Catholic can hold communion with them. I say, my Lords, and I must not be afraid of saying, that if the Irish Bishops approve and accept the principle of dealing with diocesan episcopacy as a matter of no essential moment, they not only separate to themselves from the Church of England, but they go further—they separate themselves from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I say this most seriously, most distinctly, most painfully—yet that such is the intention of the Irish Bishops I think I clearly understand from the language of the right rev. Prelate near me. For that right rev. Prelate has said, that the Irish Bishops approve of all the principal provisions of the Bill. I may be wrong in my apprehension of the meaning of the language used by the right rev. Prelate, and if I am, I trust he or one of his brethren will correct me.

My Lords, one of those principal provisions, that which I regard as the principal, is contained in the 15th clause of this Bill, and was contained in the Bill submitted to the consideration of the Bishops of the United Church some time in June of last year. It was then repudiated at once by all the English Bishops and, although at first accepted by their Irish brethren, was on consideration repudiated also by them, as tending "to transfer the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops to the Archbishop."

My Lords, the framer of this Bill undertook to remove that objection; and in order to do so, he has given to us the 15th clause of the present Bill, containing, with very little alteration—none which affects the principle of the clause—the very same principle which was declared last year to be contrary to the very essence of diocesan episcopacy by the Bishops in both branches of the United Church. In short, my Lords, the Bill, in its 15th clause, would deprive the Bishops of the authority they have hitherto exercised over the clergy from the very foundation of the Church of Christ, or at least would make that authority to be, for the future, exercised only according to the will and pleasure of the Archbishop.

My Lords, so great is the importance of this part of the Bill before us, that I must beg leave to call your attention to the very terms of the 15th clause—a clause which, I repeat, and cannot repeat too often, is one of the most fearful character. That clause distinctly withdraws all authority from the diocesan Bishops, and vests it in the Archbishop, to be exercised only at his pleasure and under his permission; for it provides that any clerk against whom "any suit or other proceeding is instituted, involving any question of doctrine or the due administration of the sacraments, may lodge in the registry a petition addressed to the Archbishop of the province, to take, hear, and determine the cause in his own Court; and it shall be lawful for the Archbishop, if he think fit, thereupon to take, hear, and determine the cause in his Provincial Court."

Now, let me ask, is not that depriving the diocesan Bishop of the authority he now possesses and has possessed from the days of the Apostles, and vesting it in the Archbishop? And yet the right rev. Prelate says he considers this a sound and wholesome provision. I have, then, too much reason for asserting, that if the Irish Bishops, by their votes this night, shall thus deny the sacred origin, the Divine right, of the Bishop's authority over his clergy, they thereby separate themselves from the Church of England; and I must repeat that they separate themselves from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I hope, then, that some other right rev. Prelate of the Church in Ireland will rise and disclaim the doctrine asserted by the right rev. Prelate near me. I say that this clause openly assails the diocesan episcopacy, and the authority of the Bishop over his clergy—an authority which is of Divine right, claimed to be such by the Church of all age from the time of the Apostles, and most faithfully retained as such by our own Church. My Lords, the vow made by every Bishop at his consecration is, that he "will correct and punish the criminous by the authority which he has by God's Word." That vow is part of the Book of Consecration of Bishops, and Ordering of Priests and Deacons. As such it has the express authority of the Thirty-nine Articles; it is, moreover, a part of the Book of Common Prayer; and to it every Minister of our Church, openly before the people, declares his unfeigned assent and consent before he is admitted to any benefice. That declaration, therefore, has been repeatedly made by every one of the right rev. Prelates of Ireland who have this night avowed their determination to contradict it by their vote for the present Bill.

But neither, my Lords, is it the Church alone which affirms this sacred principle. My Lords, the law of the land gives to it its express sanction—a sanction which I rejoice to claim, in justice to that law, as the law of a Christian State. My Lords, this sanction is given not only by the statute of King Edward VI., which established the Book of Consecration—by the 13th of Queen Elizabeth, which established the Book of Articles—but by three Acts of Uniformity, especially by the Act 13 & 14 Charles II., which is declared by the Treaty of Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland to be, and is to be deemed for ever, an essential and fundamental article of that Union.

But, my Lords, while we acknowledge, thankfully, exultingly acknowledge, this faithfulness of the State to the Divine right of the Bishop's authority over his clergy, our main rejoicing must be, that it was the Church which impressed this sacred principle on the State—the Church, at the very time when, by God's blessing, it rescued itself from its long thraldom to the corruptions of the Church of Rome. My Lords, whatever else it found necessary to reform, this great, this paramount principle, our Church adhered to with holy tenacity—a principle by which it is linked to the Church of the Apostles, by which it maintains unity with the whole Catholic Church Militant here on earth, and will, we humbly hope, indissolubly maintain it until that Church become the Church triumphant in Heaven.

My Lords, if have dwelt long, perhaps too long, on what concerns this great line of demarcation (I grieve that it exists) between the English Bishops and those of Ireland, I rest my claim to pardon on the great interest at stake.

My Lords, I turn to the declaration of the noble and learned Lord who has moved the second reading of this Bill. He has said that it is the same as that which was laid before the Bishops last year. [The LORD CHANCELLOR: I said it was the same as that Bill, with certain alterations.] Then why were not those alterations communicated to the English Bishops, as they had been to the Irish? What have we done to disentitle us to the same courtesy as was thought due to our right rev. Brethren? Why were not we consulted on a measure which affects alike the interests and well-being of both branches of this United Church? But I must tell the noble and learned Lord that he is mistaken when he says that it is the same Bill. All the clauses relating to the appointment of chancellors, and the powers of those chancellors,—a very main portion of the Bill before the House—were struck out of the Bill of last year, when it was shown to the English Bishops, as the Bill which would be brought before Parliament. [The LORD CHANCELLOR shook his head.] I beg leave to say that several of the Bishops near me received copies of the Kill with the clauses struck out. But I what I complain of is, that while the alterations proposed to be made in the Bill were, as I understand, communicated to the Irish Bishops, no such communication was made to us; and I must express my great surprise at the treatment the English Bishops have received in this matter. I must also again say that this Bill differs very much, and in many important particulars, from the measure of last year; for instance, I repeat that the Lord Chancellor had struck out the clauses respecting the chancellors which are in the present Bill, when he asked the opinion of the English Bishops as to the remainder. [The LORD CHANCELLOR: No, no.] The noble and learned Lord denies this statement. Here, then, is a question of veracity. Now, I declare, on the authority of a right rev. Prelate who is present, that when the Bill of last year had been shown to the English Bishops, they at once declared their strong objection to the appointment of the six, now four chancellors, and the powers proposed to be given to them; that, on hearing of this, the noble and learned Lord immediately declared that his objection to the clauses respecting chancellors was as strong as theirs; he then took the Bill, struck out of it with his own pen the clauses which concerned chancellors, and said, "If there are any on this matter which I have not struck out, pray strike them out yourselves, and tell me what you think of the Bill as it will then stand."

THR LORD CHANCELLOR

I wish to be permitted to explain this matter here at once, to prevent any misunderstanding, I beg to say, that when I submitted the Bill to the Archbishop of Canterbury, I received from him an intimation that the right rev. Prelates generally objected to what were called the "Chancellor clauses" in the Bill. I then asked if the right rev. Prelates assented to the rest of the Bill? I should like to know in what position the Bill would stand, if I struck out those clauses? and what would then be the opinion of the right rev. Prelates of the Bill? When the "Chancellor clauses" were objected to, I drew my pen through them.

THE BISHOP OF EXETER

Well, so far as the explanation of the noble and learned Lord goes, I thank him for the confirmation he has given to the statement I have made. My Lords, I turn to some other considerations connected with other portions of the Bill. The Bishops, in 1855, as I have already said, had objected to the Bill then laid before them, for two reasons most especially; first, that it transferred the jurisdiction of the Bishop to the Archbishop; and, secondly, that it gave the jurisdiction of the Archbishop to the Crown.

My Lords, in the present Bill this second objection is removed. The jurisdiction of the Archbishop is most properly restored by the 73rd clause, which provides, that if any party is dissatisfied with any judgment pronounced in the Bishop's court, he may appeal to the Archbishop. But why was it that one only of the two great objections to the Bill of 1855 was removed, and the other, the transferring of the authority of the Bishop to the Archbishop, left in the main unaltered, and, in the particulars in which it was altered, altered for the worse? The 13th clause of the Bill of 1855, answering to the 15th of the present Bill, compelled the Archbishop, at the petition of the criminous clerk, to take the cause out of the jurisdiction of the Bishop, and to hear and determine it in his own court, as if the cause had arisen in his own diocess. The 15th clause of the present Bill does not compel the Archbishop thus to take the original jurisdiction out of the hands of the Bishop; it only permits him to do this, if he shall think fit. Its words are— That, in any proceeding against a clerk in volving any question of doctrine, or the due administration of the sacraments, the clerk may lodge in the registry a petition to the Archbishop to take, hear, and determine the cause, and it shall be lawful to the Archbishop, if he think fit, to take, hear, and determine the cause in, his Provincial Court. Why, this, my Lords, is downright Popery, and therefore I said it is worse than the clause of last year. It gives to every Archbishop in his province precisely the power and authority which the Pope claims throughout the Church of Rome. But there is this difference in the cases—a difference which, in practice, would make the Archbishop to be more absolute—more a pope than the Pope himself; for, though the Pope claims the right of jurisdiction in every diocess of the Roman Church as the supreme pastor of all—although, therefore, he may exercise original jurisdiction, and may hear and determine every cause if he think fit, yet, in fact, he never exercises, and I believe never has exercised, that power. If a clergyman be proceeded against by his Bishop for maintaining false doctrine, and if thereupon he applies to the Pope to hear the cause, the Pope invariably asks if the Bishop has heard the cause; and if the answer be in the negative, the applicant is told to submit to the Bishop as his judge in the first instance; if the Bishop did not do justice in the matter, then to have recourse to the Pope, who would hear and decide it. Now, such is precisely the position in which this Bill sought to place the Archbishops of the Church of England in respect to power; but there is this difference to be noticed, namely, that, while the Pope never, in fact, interferes in the first instance, here the Archbishops are invited by this Bill to take upon themselves the exercise of the authority which now belongs to the Bishops, and to take out of their jurisdiction altogether the decision of cases which now properly belongs to them, and has belonged to them from the very beginning of the Christian era. It may be said that the Archbishops would not take advantage of the powers proposed to be conferred upon them by this clause; but that I think must appear an absurdity upon the face of it—for why insert such a, clause in the Bill if it was not intended that advantage should be taken of it? Again, a feeling of delicacy, it may be said, would induce the Archbishops not to avail themselves of this clause; but let me ask, is it not much more probable that, when an Archbishop found himself endowed with this power, he would think it his plain duty to exercise it?—that no feeling of delicacy ought to operate with him—that if a cause involving an important question of doctrine was brought before him, he would deem himself bound to decide upon it?—that he would, therefore, exercise the power and authority with which this Bill proposed to invest him? Well, then, if such should be the operation of this Bill, if passed into law, let me ask, would it be a means of preserving concord and good feeling between the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England? Is it the course which ought to be pursued if there be any desire to keep the Church of England a Church united in itself? It is absurd to suppose for a moment that such a state of things could exist under a law conferring such a power as the Bill would confer. It would be the surest way of leading to enduring ill-will and bitterness of feeling, and mutual jealousies of every kind. It must be plain to every man of common understanding that the transference of this authority from the Bishops to the Archbishop, to be exercised or not at his will, would lead to constant disputes and party feeling between the clergy and the Bishops, and between the Bishops and Archbishops. My Lords, it would have been much better to have let this part of the Bill remain in the form in which it stood last year, than now to propose to place the Bishops under the arbitrary will and control of the Archbishops, which, I contend, would render the Bill in its operation perfectly intolerable.

And here permit me to remind your Lordships, not what is the authority of an Archbishop, but what was its origin. Was the authority of an Archbishop given in the same manner as that of a Bishop, namely, by the Word of God? Certainly not. This is not, cannot be, pretended. No man in this House would, I feel confident, venture to say that the authority of an Archbishop over a Bishop, as it is exercised in this country, was given by the Word of God. It is well known that the authority of an Archbishop is ecclesiastical, that it was the Church that gave it origin, and therefore I say that, unless this House is prepared to affirm the proposition that the authority of the Church is to supersede the authority of the Word of God, it will not place the authority of an Archbishop upon the same divine platform as that of the diocesan Bishop. An Archbishop is not created by any special form of consecration, and there is no recognition whatever of his having his authority by the Word of God. My Lords, if an Archbishop be made per saltum—that is, as it has often happened, if a mere Presbyter were promoted, at one step, from his position as a mere Presbyter to that of Archbishop of Canterbury, his consecration would be precisely in the form used for the consecration of a Bishop—a fact which clearly proves, that the Church regards the authority of an Archbishop in a light perfectly distinct from the authority of a Bishop. While I make these observations. I wish it to be distinctly understood that I regard the appointment of Archbishops as a most wise and blessed institution—one admirably fitted to restrain Bishops from abusing the authority of their high office: all that I contend for is, that the Legislature should be slow in entertaining any measure which would transfer to the Archbishops the authority, the divinely-given authority, of the Bishops.

My Lords, perhaps many of your Lordships are not aware of the anomalous position in which an Archbishop is placed in this Church and country. An Archbishop, as such, is absolutely and wholly irresponsible;—he may commit any ecclesiastical offence whatsoever without being amenable to any law—there is no authority which can punish him. I do not mean to say that Archbishops cannot be made amenable to justice if they should commit any offence against the temporal law—I only say that they may violate every law of the Church with entire impunity. An Archbishop may be a heretic or an atheist; he may encourage heresy and atheism; he may seek to make proselytes to heresy or atheism; and yet there is no authority whatever to check or restrain him.

My Lords, I am not speaking merely of things which may happen—I speak of what we have in some measure experienced within my own recollection. There was an Archbishop who, though I will not go the length of saying he absolutely, or directly, or intentionally, propagated Unitarianism, yet went so far as to put forth a version of the New Testament, which was adopted by the Unitarians as the basis of the work which they designate "an improved version of the New Testament." My Lords, I speak of the last predecessor but one of the present Archbishop of Armagh—I speak of Archbishop New-come. Then there was, about forty years before, the case of an Irish Bishop, whose name was Clayton, one who was absolutely so heretical, his avowed and published works were such, that legal proceedings were announced to him by his Archbishop, surrounded by the other Bishops of his province: he took the highest legal opinions, and was told that it was most probable that his conviction must follow his trial, and that the result would be his being deprived of his bishopric. My Lords, he took this communication so much to heart that he died before the proceedings against him had made much progress.

But it may be said that this was the case of a Bishop, and only showed that an heretical Bishop can be punished. True, my Lords: but this Bishop had very nearly been an Archbishop, and then he could not have been punished. He had been actually recommended to the Government at home for the Archbishopric of Tuam, by the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and he lost his intended appointment by an incident which was somewhat remarkable. It appeared that one of his own clergy, a young man of some talents, having discovered his Bishop's heretical tendencies, showed to him a work of his, entitled Essay on Spirit. The Bishop was so much pleased with it that he recommended its publication. The author, however, declaring himself afraid to publish it, the Bishop took charge of the work, published it, and was generally believed to be the author. Its character, however, having happened to reach the ears of the Government in England, the Lord Lieutenant's recommendation of Bishop Clayton to the Archbishopric of Tuam, contrary to wont in such cases, was without effect. I say, therefore, my Lords, that I am not indulging in a mere idle fancy, when I state that it is not only possible, but within the range of actual experience, for an Archbishop to be guilty of very grievous offences against ecclesiastical law, nay to contradict the very vital doctrines of the Gospel. My Lords, this consideration ought, and will, make you pause, before you confide to Archbishops the power which is proposed to be given them by this Bill.

THE EARL OF HARROWBY

said, there were words in the clause which the right rev. Prelate had not noticed, which fully met his objection.

THE BISHOP OF EXETER

My Lords, the noble Earl reminds me that there are words in the 15th clause, which I have not noticed. I thank the noble Earl for the suggestion—I had intended to notice those words, but had forgotten them, and I am now reminded that the clause says— That it shall be lawful for the Archbishop, in any proceeding against a clerk for maintaining false doctrine, to take, and hear, and determine the cause, as he might have done by any statute or law before the passing of this Act. Why, my Lords, there is no statute or law at present existing, which enables the Archbishop to take a cause of heresy out of the cognisance of the Bishop (unless in some case of exception), and to determine it himself in the first instance. If there be such a statute or law, let the noble Earl—or let the noble and learned Lord whose name is on the back of this Bill—produce it. But, my Lords, I again confidently say, there is no such statute or law, and the introduction of those words into the clause makes it mere nonsense, and can have proceeded only from gross ignorance in the person, whoever he be, certainly not the noble and learned Lord, who drew the clause.

My Lords, through the kindness of the Primate of Ireland, I last year received an authoritative exposition of the Bill then intended to be introduced into this House, which exposition was contained in a letter addressed to the Primate himself. In that Bill was a clause, which, like the 15th of the present Bill, deprived the Bishop of his original jurisdiction, and transferred it to the Archbishop. My Lords, I have already said, that the power, thus proposed to be taken from the Bishop, is of the very essence of the catholicity of the Church—that it is a sacred principle—always regarded as such by the Church, and always hitherto so recognised by the law of England. But, my Lords, I have another authority for this statement, to which I can refer your Lordships—that of the learned Gentleman who drew the present Bill, and was the writer of the authoritative exposition of its provisions, together with the grounds on which he rested their justification. My Lords, at page 7 of that exposition, the letter to the Archbishop of Armagh, the learned gentleman says— The authority which our Lord gave to his Apostles, and through them to the Church, contained no external coercive power; it was a power over the consciences of men—not over their bodies. …. During the first three centuries discipline was exercised over the clergy by virtue of the authority derived from the Apostles:—'Against an elder receive not an accusation, but under two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke sharply, that others may fear.'—1 Tim. v. 19, 20. 'A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition reject.'—Titus iii. 19. This is a part of the authority which Bishops possess by the Word of God—not from the ordinance of the realm (the form of consecrating a Bishop). This power was exercised by Bishops during the first three centuries without any assistance from the civil power, and therefore without any 'jurisdiction,' in the proper sense of the term. The authority of Bishops was enforced by spiritual punishments only, except where the stipends of the clergy afforded a means of punishment. These punishments were—(a) Suspension from office for a time brief or long. (b) Deprivation or degradation from orders, either to a lower order or to the state of laymen, (c) For the greatest crimes, excommunication was sometimes added. (d) The loss of stipend of course attended all such sentences. The offences which were thus punished were generally the same as those now accounted clerical offences, with some variations arising from the then state of society. Heterodoxy, crimes, immorality, contempt or disobedience of canons, negligence in duty, violations of the Liturgy, engaging in secular employments," &c.—(page 8.) The proposed Bill has therefore been drawn so as not to touch the authority which Bishops have by the Word of God."—(page 12.) My Lords, in a subsequent part of the same work, the exposition of the Bill of 1855, Mr. Stephens says, page 55— A Bishop is bound by his office to take notice of misconduct in clergymen, and to correct it, although there be no other accuser. A Bishop at his consecration is required to promise, 'Such as be unquiet, disobedient, and criminous, within his province, to correct and punish, according to such authority, as he has by God's Word.' It is not proposed to interfere with such vows or duties, but only to provide an efficient means of fulfilling them. My Lords, incredible as it may seem, the writer of this work, after making such ample admissions, immediately, in the very same breath, proceeds to take away the whole authority of the Bishops, which he declares them to have by God's Word, and to transfer it to the Archbishops. Now, when I was told that Mr. Stephens was the author of this Bill, I really did consider it impossible that that learned gentleman could willingly have drawn such a clause, because he had over and over again stated to me in communications sought by himself that, in drawing the Bill, he would take care that all the power and authority which the Bishops now possess should be preserved to them.

My Lords, I stated these matters in a letter to the Archbishop of Armagh, and, having stated them, I added that his Grace was at liberty to show my letter to Mr. Stephens, and that it was my wish that it should be shown to him. Accordingly it was shown to him; and he wrote me a letter a few days after, in which he did not deny a single word of what I had said about his promise of preserving the authority of the Bishops—a promise which was directly violated by the provisions of this Bill; he said that the clause was introduced after I had left London, and that his instructions to introduce it were imperative. In a subsequent letter to me of the same day he volunteered a promise that, "if the Bill were introduced the clause to which I had objected should be expunged;" adding, that the moment anything was decided I should be informed of it: from that time to this I have never heard a single syllable upon the subject from this gentleman.

My Lords, I must say that I do not think that a Bill of this kind can be satisfactorily conducted, when there is such utter violation of engagements made to those who are most interested in it.

My Lords, I know not that I should have thus largely dealt with Mr. Stephens's statement, had it not been for the imperative order which he received to insert the clause. I ask the noble and learned Lord, the professed author of the measure, whether it was he who gave this order? [The LORD CHANCELLOR: I say no, I did not give the order; but I do not see any harm in it.] What the noble and learned Lord may see or think is quite another matter; my question referred only to the fact. However, the noble and learned Lord denies having given the order. Therefore, the fact stands thus:—a Bill bearing on the back of it the name of the Lord Chancellor, and introduced by him into this House, with the concurrence of his colleagues, has had a clause introduced into it, which the gentleman who drew the Bill had a peremptory order to insert; and yet the noble and learned Lord denies having given any such order! I shall not press the question further, for the noble and learned Lord appears not to like to be asked questions; but I hope the noble and learned Lord will, in the course of his reply, take that opportunity of answering the question, who gave that order?

I am aware that the noble and learned Lord objects to having this Bill designated a "Government measure," as I, in my simplicity, had designated it; he wishes rather to have the Bill described in his own words, as a "Bill to be laid on the table by the Lord Chancellor with the concurrence of his colleagues." My Lords, I could not at first devise any reason why the noble and learned Lord should object to calling the Bill, as in ordinary parlance, a "Government measure." But I think I now discern the reason. If it were a "Government measure," strictly so called, the Bill would have been, if not drawn, yet superintended by the Government officers, especially by the chief law adviser of the Crown in ecclesiastical matters; but it appears that this law adviser of the Crown was in no way intrusted with the Bill—nay, it is confidently said, in Doctors' Commons, that he never heard a word about it. I now ask the noble and learned Lord, was the Queen's Advocate consulted upon a measure of so much importance to the Church and to the State as in connection with the Church? I ask, whether that chief law officer of the Crown was consulted upon it? He is a gentleman eminent in professional learning—of great abilities—of very high character. Why was such a man not trusted with the discharge of his own duties, for the discharge of which he is undeniably most highly qualified?

My Lords, this mention of the Queen's Advocate is not foreign to the matter which I wish next to bring under the notice of your Lordships—the 16th clause—which never would have been part of any Bill which he had any share in preparing. It proposes to give a power to the Church which the Church never possessed, which the Church never ought to possess, which the Church never sought to possess, and which the Church will refuse to possess, unless it be absolutely forced upon it—I mean the power to fine and imprison for contempt. My Lords, the insertion of that clause is of itself sufficient to prove that the Bill never could have proceeded from a mind instructed in the knowledge of ecclesiastical law, much less imbued with its principles. The very constitution of the Church rests upon a power contrary to that clause. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal; the Church claims no other power than the power of the keys; it leaves to the State the power of the sword. Bracton, who was the great expounder of our common law in the thirteenth century, has laid it down that there were certain causes which could not be tried by secular courts, and certain other cases which could not be tried by Ecclesiastical Courts; and the reason was this, that the secular court possessed not the coercion necessary to give execution of a decree in an ecclesiastical matter—it has only the potestas gladii, while the Ecclesiastical Court possessed not the coercion necessary to give execution of a decree in a temporal matter—it has only potestas clavium. Now, I do not mean to say that the insertion of such a clause in a Bill, whose general principle may be good, would be a sufficient reason for refusing to the Bill a second reading, for it could, no doubt, be easily rectified in Committee; but I must think that your Lordships cannot have much confidence in one who had committed such a mistake in drawing the Bill, nor deem him qualified to deal with such matters.

But this, my Lords, is not the only clause which is inconsistent with the very principles of eccesiastical law. I will venture to call the attention of your Loadships to the 44th and 45th clauses. They relate to the case of an Archbishop or Bishop unduly refusing or delaying to institute a clerk to a benefice, and the matter being brought by appeal to the Judicial Committee. My Lords, the 45th clause empowers the Judicial Committee in such a case, if it decides for the appellant, to report to Her Majesty that she should call upon another Archbishop or Bishop, and if Her Majesty, acting on such report, shall order any such clerk to be instituted, the Judicial Committee shall signify such order to any one of the Archbishops or Bishops of England or Ireland to institute, and such Archbishop or Bishop shall immediately proceed to institute accordingly. My Lords, has ever anything so preposterous, so monstrous, before been heard of? Why is a Bishop, who has nothing to do with the case, to be compelled to violate his conscience by giving cure of souls, in another diocess, to one whom he may deem a heretic? Why is a Bishop of Carlisle to be required to institute to a benefice in Middlesex or Kent, because the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Bishop of London, may have refused to do so on grounds which the Judicial Committee holds to be insufficient? The Bishop of Carlisle may have the same conscientious scruples as have prevented the other prelates from giving institution in the same case? Why is his conscience to be coerced?

My Lords, the framer of this Bill, and all concerned in framing it, seem to have been utterly ignorant that the conferring of the cure of souls is a merely spiritual act, which cannot, consistently with the law of the Church, nor of the State, in England, be extorted from an unwilling party. My Lords, if a Bishop wrongfully refuses to institute, the only result is, that he loses his jurisdiction pro hac vice, which jurisdiction passes to his superior ordinary, the Archbishop. But if the Archbishop has done wrong, as he has no superior to whom his jurisdiction can pass, all that the Judicial Committee ever says, ever can say, is, "Go and do justice," The Archbishop, in such a case, is bound to reconsider the matter; but if on serious reconsideration he is still of the same mind as before, still deems the clerk unfit for the cure of souls, he can only make this return: "I have done justice to the best of my power; I have reviewed the case as you ordered; and I am brought to the same conclusion as before." My Lords, the Judicial Committee can do no more—they have done their duty, and the Archbishop has done his.

I will not dwell longer on this part of the Bill; nor should I revert to the unhappy 15th clause, had not the noble and learned Lord satisfied me, by what he had said upon it, that he has never seriously read the Bill—at least, has not given, what he asks your Lordships this night to give to it, a second reading.

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, in recommending the Bill this night to your Lordships, gravely stated as one ground of his recommendation of it, that "the Bishop is to decide questions of doctrine." I noted the words as they were spoken, and have therefore no doubt, either that they were spoken, or that the noble and learned Lord believes that they spoke the truth. My Lords, I confidently say, what I have before again and again said, and I refer to the words of the Bill itself for my warrant in saying it, that by this Bill "the Bishop is not to decide questions of doctrine"'—that whether he shall hear them or not, depends altogether on the will of the criminous clerk and of the Archbishop.

My Lords, if such a Bill pass into a law, it will give rise to confusion and troubles, such as I cannot contemplate without dismay. The English Bishops will not, dare not, consent to it; for it is inconsistent with the Word of God. The Irish Bishops say that they will consent to it; and by so saying, they put themselves, and, as far as is within their power, they put their Church, in direct antagonism with the Church in England. My Lords, this has a very ugly aspect. I earnestly hope that those right rev. Prelates will reconsider the matter—will come to another, and I must say a better, mind. I must also say, that I am bound in charity to their Church to hope, that although they represent in this House the episcopate of that Church, they do not represent the feelings, the principles of their Church itself. For if the Church in Ireland should in any general synod, or in any other way, commit itself to the adoption of the principle which its Prelates this night have declared their intention to adopt, the Church of Ireland from that hour would cease to be united with the Church of England—would cease to be united with the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: for the authority of the Bishop by God's Word is the very bond of Catholic and Apostolic unity.

My Lords, there is one consideration connected with this most vicious part of the Bill which must not pass unnoticed. There was not the smallest reason whatever for introducing it, in order to accomplish the object which the mover of the Bill professes to seek. His end would equally be attained,—the improvement of the Consistorial Court would equally be brought to pass—without assailing the Divine authority of episcopacy. My Lords, this absolutely gratuitous character of the measure stamps it with a mark of very special evil. That the noble and learned Lord has no design to destroy or corrupt the Church, I must entirely believe. But, my Lords, what has been stated without contradiction this night has shown, that the noble and learned Lord does not even know the true nature of the Bill which he has introduced—that he is not, and has not been, the master of it—that there is, in short, something behind the woolsack greater than the woolsack itself.

My Lords, the very refusal to satisfy the conscientious objectors by sacrificing the obnoxious clause, or even modifying it to meet their views, is itself a most alarming fact. The Divine right of episcopacy is known to be the great principle which distinguishes the Church of England from the Protestants of Germany. These have a sort of episcopacy so called, but they renounce with absolute aversion all approximation to, and all sympathy with, ours. This attack on our episcopacy, therefore, has not an English aspect—it is German, simply, unmistakeably German. It is from the mint of Bunsen—his stamp is upon it. My Lords, I do not say that that learned, able, and, I would add, honest statesman has had anything to do with the concoction of the Bill, or is in any way cognisant of it; but I believe that some one imbued with his principles—some one who anxiously awaits the advent of "the Church of the future," has had a powerful influence in pressing this measure. My Lords, hatred of the episcopacy of the primitive Church, faithfully cherished, and valued, and represented, as it is, by our own Church, was the leading characteristic of M. Bunsen's theory. The very name of that theory, "the Church of the Future," proclaimed it to renounce all connection, as with the present, so with the past: it gloried in being neither Catholic nor Apostolic. Permit me, my Lords, to read to you one single sentence of the book, in proof of what I have said. His correspondent, a distinguished lay member of our Church, had written thus:— It is in the Episcopate, as the basis of truly apostolical institutions and discipline, that I see the one vivid and powerful hope of our recovery. To efface, therefore, or to weaken, the defining lines of that basis, and of the little discipline now connected with it, would be, as I feel, ruin to us. So writes the English Churchman. If an angel from heaven should manifest to me that by introducing, or advocating, or merely favouring the introduction of such an episcopacy into any part of Germany, I should not only make the German nation glorious and powerful above all the nations of the world, but should successfully combat the unbelief, pantheism, and atheism of the day, I would not do it. So help me God. Amen."—Bunsen. So writes the Prussian.

Such is the judgment of M. Bunsen on English episcopacy. My Lords, I do not say—I do not imagine—that all who are willing to support this Bill, will go the whole length of M. Bunsen's declaration. They will say, perhaps, that they approve of Bishops as a very useful and venerable institution, but their powers require to be altered and diminished; that, at any rate, no consideration of them ought to impede the progress of a great measure of public policy. Now, my Lords, I contend, openly, plainly contend, that such an interference with the functions and duties of a Bishop is contrary to the very principle of the Church, and therefore that this alone is a sufficient reason for which your Lordships ought not to suffer this Bill to go into Committee. There are many other reasons why the Bill should not go to a second reading, but this is the most conclusive, the most imperative: and with having stated it, I would willingly conclude.

But I should not do justice to the cause which I have undertaken to bring before your Lordships, if I did not say something of the other leading principle of the Bill before us. For, my Lords, the Bill has two objects, and might well have been divided into two. Its first object is to alter the manner of proceeding in the Ecclesiastical Courts—a very general and very indistinct description; the second is more precisely, indeed most precisely, most plainly, set forth: "It is expedient to make provision for the establishment of central ecclesiastical registries."

My Lords, of the principle of centralisation in general, I must not be ashamed to say that I partake of the dislike which is so strongly felt by the people at large. We of the provinces are not satisfied that our business may not be as effectually, as usefully performed by ourselves, as by the wisdom of the metropolis. At any rate, we will not consent to that business being dragged to London, with all the charge and vexation of such removal, unless there be a proved case, if not of necessity, at least of convenience of the most decided kind.

Now, my Lords, in the present instance, what necessity, what convenience, what shadow of convenience, can be pretended? Of the twenty or thirty sorts of instruments enumerated in Clause 84, how many are other than strictly local? Ay, my Lords, such as must be executed in the districts where the occasion for them arises? Are not marriages local? Are not ordinations local? Are not institutions to benefices local? Which of them, in short, is not local? But it has been said that the present registries are imperfect, and in a bad condition. Such may be, and, I believe, is the fact as regards Ireland; but in England, I believe that those registries have been in general very carefully and very effectually preserved. I know that they are so in the diocess of Exeter.

My Lords, the ecclesiastical instruments in the registry of my diocess date so far back as the year 1257. Why are we to be robbed of what we regard as a venerable collection of ancient precedents connected with the local and general history of our Church? Why are those things to be removed from us who value them, and to be lodged in some general depository in London, where they would be regarded as mere rubbish?

But, my Lords, there are other considerations to which I must entreat your Lordships to give your attention; and, first, to a very homely but by no means unimportant particular—the several items of expenditure to be incurred by this Bill, if it should pass into law. It is proposed by the 10th clause that advances of money for the purposes of the Act shall be made by the Treasury, upon the certificates of the Archbishop of Canterbury, York, Armagh, and Dublin, and the Bishop of London, with the sanction of the Lord Chancellor. Supposing, then, that this provision for a central office for the custody of registries were to be carried into effect, what amount of expenditure of money do your Lordships suppose would be required? I have taken the trouble to make some inquiries upon this subject, so far as concerns the instruments in my own registry. My Lords, I am informed by my registrar, a gentleman entitled to all credit, that a building suitable to the accommodation of the registries of the diocess of Exeter alone should contain 900 feet square, and be of considerable height! Suitable accommodation must be made for twenty-eight registries for the twenty-eight diocesses of England and the Isle of Man, with suitable chambers for the four chancellors, for their clerks, and for all the officers and servants employed. These several registries must be effectually separate, must be not only air-tight and watertight, but fire-proof, and otherwise well fitted for the preservation of very perishable documents. The building which is to contain them must be built in a convenient part of the metropolis, purchasing the site and the various houses or warehouses by which it is at present occupied; and it must be, I will not say sumptuous, I will not say highly ornamental, but decent, handsome—such, in short, as the people of England would think that a public building in England ought to be. Now, my Lords, I ask your Lordships, who are much better judges than I can be, whether such a building can be provided at a cost of less than £100,000? But this is not all. There is another registry to be erected in Dublin, sufficient for the separate registries of the twelve diocesses in Ireland. This cannot be estimated at less than £20,000, and I am only afraid that the right rev. Prelates of that country will think me very niggardly in my allowance to them. But I take the whole amount on this very moderate calculation of £120,000.

Now, my Lords, I can have no doubt that the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, having obtained the concurrence of his colleagues when he laid this Bill on your table, had specially called their attention to the question of expense. This is a matter which must have had the best consideration of the First Lord of the Treasury and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and yet, my Lords, I much question whether, when the matter shall come to the pinch, they will be found to carry their concurrence with the noble and learned Lord so far as he would wish, so far even as the promise of concurrence might seem to imply.

For, let us look to the matter a little more particularly. The 10th clause orders "The Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury to advance from time to time such sums of money as four Archbishops and the Bishop of London may require for carrying into effect the purposes of this Act." This is a clause which the wholesome jealousy of the House of Commons will not suffer to appear in any Bill which your Lordships may send down to them. But this difficulty, we shall be told, is easily got over. The clause will be struck out in Committee, and will be replaced on the Motion of one of the noble and learned Lord's concurring colleagues, when the Bill shall be considered in the other House. Will it, indeed? My Lords, I am not so sure of this—and I will fairly tell you why. I have not the smallest doubt of the faithfulness of the noble and learned Lord's noble and right hon. Colleagues in the House of Commons, to the promises they have made to him—and I have as little doubt of their courage in acting on those promises. But then that faithfulness, and that courage, must be under the implied restrictions and limitations imposed by common sense. Now, my Lords, I can picture to myself the noble and learned Lord calling on the noble Leader of the House of Commons to reintroduce the 10th clause in Committee in that House, That noble person is known to be a man of courage, and, I need not say, of rigid honour. The noble and learned Lord would appeal to those feelings—would urge his concurrence in the Bill before us—would, in short, press him on the matter, as Lady Macbeth pressed her lord—and I have no doubt whatever that the noble Premier would answer, as Macbeth answered— Prithee, peace; I dare do all that may become a Minister, Who dares do more"—will soon be none. My Lord, that answer would seem to me a very constitutional, as well as discreet, answer.

Next comes the noble and learned Lord's Budget—his Estimates and Ways and Means for carrying the measure into effect. The noble and learned Lord was here very uncommunicative. He gave us no statement of his own; he referred us to the information which he had received. That information is contained in the official exposition of the Bill by the framer of it (Mr. Stephens); to a few particulars of which I now invite your Lordships' attention.

Mr. Stephens enumerates various items of charge, but to only one of them does he annex an estimate—that one is the salary of forty secretaries for forty Bishops—and he estimates it at £6,200 per annum, or £155 per annum for each. The noble and learned Lord is less illiberal, and, permit me to add, less unreasonable. He is willing to allow—I am afraid there was a condition annexed, if the funds will permit it—£200, or even £300, for each.

My Lords, if the qualifications and duties of a Bishop's secretary be considered, I cannot think that even the extended allowance of the noble and learned Lord's £300 per annum would give us the aid of such a legal adviser and assistant as we ought to have, and as we now have. My Lords, a Bishop's secretary and registrar—for the offices commonly go together—is a solicitor, one of the leading members of that profession in the cathedral city. I cannot see why the services of such a man are to be remunerated with a smaller salary than those to be paid to the clerks of chancellors under this Bill; in other words, £600 per annum to each. I will, however, take the salary at somewhat less; let us say £500 a year for every one of the English secretaries, £300 a year for the Irish—I hope the right rev. Prelates from that country will pardon the difference—and £200 for Sodor and Man. The sum total would be £17,300, that is, about £11,000, or, on the noble and learned Lord's showing, £5,700 more than the estimate of Mr. Stephens. It is proposed that the Treasury shall make the required advance upon the security of marriage licences and other fees; so that the interest and sinking fund, taken at 6 per cent on the £120,000 to be advanced for building, would be another item of charge altogether omitted by Mr. Stephens, amounting to £7,200 per annum.

My Lords, the other items of charge enumerated by Mr. Stephens, but without an estimate, and various necessary items not enumerated by him, have been estimated by me, and I cannot deem it possible that they can amount to less than £l 0,000 per annum. There must be two registrars, advocates or solicitors, who must give up their profession and devote themselves to their registries. They must have clerks, messengers, and other officers, an establishment to take proper care of the costly buildings—there must be insurance, gas rates, water rates, rates of every kind—last and not least, the annual repairs of such structures as I have described. I am sure that no one who takes the trouble of estimating these matters will think £10,000 per annum sufficient: in short, there must be an annual cost to the country of £48,900 a year.

Now, let us see in what way Mr. Stephens proposes that this sum is to be raised; what are his ways and means? He calculates that there will be 20,000 marriages annually, which, at 25s. for each licence, will yield, he says, £29,500, but which the more vulgar arithmetician, Cocker, says is only £25,000—in other words, abstracting from Mr. Stephens's "supply" £4,500 per annum.

Next, Mr. Stephens takes credit for £19,715 per annum, being fees arising from licences, or other instruments, paid by the clergy, who are, in England, Mr. Stephens says (and I do not dispute his accuracy on this point), about 18,000. My Lords, my diocess has a more numerous clergy than almost any other—they exceed 900—so that a twentieth part of the clergy of all England are in my diocess. Mr. Stephens calculates that the fees paid by all (as I have said) will amount to £19,715, the twentieth part of which, or £985, would be paid by my clergy. But, my Lords, I have ascertained that the actual amount of those fees would not exceed £527, which sum, multiplied by 20, would make the fees, calculated by Mr. Stephens at £19,715, to be only £10,540, which, added to the £25,000 for marriage licences, would give a gross total of £35,540 as the ways and means wherewith to meet an annual expenditure of £48,900! Well, I can only say that if Mr. Archibald John Stephens can make £35,000 a year do the work of £48,000, he ought not to be left to the humble duties of "Chancellor of the Church of England and Ireland." Make him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Talk as you will of your Gladstones, your Disraelis, your Cornewall Lewises; give me Mr. Archibald John Stephens. He can make £35,540 a year do the work of £48,900.

My Lords, I have done with the financial part of the measure, and turn to some other of its provisions. The Act provides, that every ecclesiastical instrument is to be prepared in the chambers of the four chancellors, and is to be authenticated by the signature of one of the four; that is to say, no Bishop is to do any one single episcopal act without a stamp, and the written exequatur of one of the chancellors. In the very words of the Bill, this board of four chancellors is "to superintend and control" every official act of the Bishops. We are to be placed under the absolute dominion of those four men. No letters of orders, no institution to a benefice, no licence to a curate, are in future to be issued by the Bishops until they have first received the stamp and authoritative approbation of one of these four chancellors! My Lords, will Parliament, will the country, endure this shameless attempt to degrade the episcopacy of England and Ireland? To make the Church a mere bureau? Why is it proposed to do this? What existing and known evil is to be remedied? Has such an Act been rendered necessary by the notorious, or suggested, or even surmised, abuse of the power or authority of the Bishops in those matters? I have never heard of a complaint on the subject. I have been a Bishop for more than a quarter of a century, and never once have I heard it so much as whispered that those instruments and forms which have been preserved unchanged for centuries, had become, from any cause whatever, in the least degree liable to the objections suggested, or rather supposed, by the noble and learned Lord. My Lords, there is no need of mincing the matter; in plain English, this Bill is a patent, undeniable, downright job. Is it not apparent on the very face of the Bill? Why is it proposed to submit every episcopal act to those chancellors? It is, that they may have the semblance of having something to do: there must be some work assigned to them in order to justify the salary of £3,000 a year to each of them? Oh, but we are told that those chancellors are to assist the Bishops in "hearing causes." Well, what is the number of those "causes"? My Lords, it appears from regular returns, that the average number in England and Ireland does not exceed six in any one year, so that upon that calculation each of these four chancellors would receive £3,000 a year for doing what? For trying—assisting the Bishops in trying, in every year, a cause and a half each! Well, my Lords, if in deference to the wish, or authority—I cannot call it reasoning—of the noble and learned Lord, your Lordships shall be induced to pass such a Bill, we Bishops must be content to look for justice at the hands of the House of Commons. It does not require any great stretch of foresight to pronounce beforehand the certain fate of the Bill in that House. But if there were any danger of its becoming the law of the land, there would still be one consolation left to us—it would be absolutely, morally, nay, physically impossible, to work it out. And here, my Lords, I am reminded of a passage at arms, an intellectual digladiation, which was presented to us a few nights ago by the right rev. Prelate at the table (the Bishop of Bangor) and the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack.

My Lords, my venerable and very acute Friend was pleased to apply a good many epithets to the Bill, some of them rather strong—stronger certainly, I will not say than the Bill deserves, but than I am inclined to use. I content myself with the two epithets which the noble and learned Lord selected, and on which issue was joined. The right rev. Prelate called the Bill visionary and impracticable—the noble and learned Lord undertook to prove the contrary.

Now, my Lords, I cannot but say that I think the right rev. Prelate was right, that the Bill is visionary and impracticable, and that on the noble and learned Lord's own showing. I do not mean that the noble and learned Lord's speech showed this, but I must contend that the Bill itself shows it.

My Lords, if your Lordships will look at the 48th clause you will see that, "from the time when this Act shall come into operation, the chancellors shall sit at chambers in London or Westminster, and Dublin, to superintend and control" the acts of the Bishops.

Well, my Lords, but these chambers cannot exist till long after "the time when the Bill shall come into operation." By the 27th clause, the four Archbishops and the Bishop of London are to "build, purchase, or otherwise provide lands and buildings for the ecclesiastical registries, and provide chambers for the chancellors under this Act." These five prelates are to "take and purchase, and hold lands, tenements, and hereditaments for these purposes, as a body corporate, which they are constituted to be by this Act."

In short, my Lords, the Act must be in operation before the buildings can be erected; and yet, as soon as the Act comes into operation, these buildings must be actually in use. My Lords, extraordinary as all this may seem, it is not without precedent. Before the Union, a Bill passed through the Irish Parliament for the highly useful purpose of providing a thoroughly good county gaol; and so cautious were the framers of the Bill to unite economy with security, that they provided that the old gaol should continue to be used till the new gaol was built, and at the same time that the materials of the old gaol should be employed in building the new. My Lords, I have here furnished the noble and learned Lord with what is always highly prized in the court over which, he so ably presides—a precedent. But, valuable as it is in Chancery, it is not always equally so in legislation. The precedent which I have adduced will not take the Bill out of the category of "visionary and impracticable" in which my right rev. Friend placed it, and out of which the noble and learned Lord does not appear to me to have succeeded in his attempt to rescue it.

I say, then, that the Bill is, as the right rev. Prelate characterised it, visionary and impracticable—that it presents a case not for legislating, but for conjuring. The noble and learned Lord must enact the part of Merlin. The buildings necessary for the operation of the Bill cannot be erected unless by magic. Unless they rise into existence at the waving of the wand or of the mace of the mighty magician, the wizard of the woolsack, the Bill, even if it pass into an Act, must be a mere blank, a few sheets of waste paper.

My Lords, I have trespassed much longer on your Lordships' time and patience than I originally intended; but I have felt, as I went on, that the very great importance of the measure warranted me in doing so; and I am not ignorant that my right rev. Friends and myself are struggling against fearful odds. I am aware that we have to contend against the whole weight of Government, which has adopted this Bill as its own. I am aware, too, that we have not the support which Bishops, in defending the highest, the most sacred interests of the Church, might not unreasonably, perhaps, have expected, from what is commonly called the Conservative side of the House. The noble Lords who sit on that side will forgive my asking, what object is worthy of being conserved, if the Church is not? If the maintenance of the episcopacy of England is left to be an open question, what is the principle of their party?

And yet, my Lords, amidst all these discouragements, we are not absolutely without hope; though cast down, we are not in despair. We have still allies, in whom we have unshaken confidence—we have reason, and we have a humbler, but still a stubborn, band—we have the whole array of facts and figures on our side. Trusting to these—still more to the high and generous feelings of British Peers, on whatever side of the House they may be ranged—above all, trusting in Him for whose own cause (we humbly believe) we are, with whatever mixture of human frailty and human error, faithfully contending—we shall go to the vote this night without dismay.

THE BISHOP OF BANGOR

*My Lords, after the powerful and unanswerable speech of my right rev. Friend (the Bishop of Exeter), exhausted as I am, at my age, with sitting so many hours waiting for an opportunity of addressing your Lordships, labouring under an attack of cold and hoarseness, and knowing how eager the noble Earl behind me is to come to the rescue of the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, nothing but a strong and overpowering sense of duty, not to myself only and your Lordships, but to my Sovereign and the country at large, could have constrained me to obtrude myself on your Lordships at this hour, and under these unfavourable circumstances.

I am sorry to say, that I am compelled to begin with complaining of an attack and insult, not only on my rights as a Member of this House, but upon your Lordships' privileges and honour, by the wilful suppression in the Minutes of the Motion that I made, after putting my question to the noble and learned Lord (or, as I was instructed by him to word it, the Government). That Motion was— That the Report made to His late Majesty by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the practice and jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts of England and Wales should be laid on your table. Upon my making this Motion, the noble and learned Lord said, "The Report is on your table," by which he meant, that because it was laid on your table in 1832, therefore it was still lying there. This ingenious fancy, however, was at once scouted and repudiated. I again made my Motion, and, after I had stated to your Lordships the reasons which had induced me to come forward on this occasion, and my object in doing so, the Motion was put and carried in the affirmative, and I then expressed a wish that as many copies as could be found in the stores of the House might be laid on your table, in order that every noble Lord who thought fit might have an opportunity of reading it. Upon this, my right rev. Friend (the Bishop of Exeter) moved that the Report should be printed, and it was, I believe, arranged that, in case a sufficient number of copies were not forthcoming, it should be again printed. To my great surprise, I found that all notice of the Motion that I had made was suppressed in the Minutes of the day, though the Bishop of Exeter's Motion was printed as usual. I made my complaint to the House, when the noble and learned Lord told me, with singular coolness and nonchalance, that it was no business of his. This seemed extraordinary, as it appeared to me that the noble and learned Lord, both as a Member of Her Majesty's Government and as Speaker of your Lordships' House, was bound to inquire into and expose such unheard-of proceedings. My noble and learned Friend, the Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench wished to persuade me that, as I had gained my end by the Bishop of Exeter's Motion, it would be better to drop all further notice of the matter. But I entirely differed from my noble and learned Friend. My object was to learn how this audacious fraud had been committed, in violation of your Lordships' rules and privileges. But no inquiry has been made, no explanation has been attempted; not even an order was given to insert my Motion in the Minutes of the following day.

I returned home somewhat surprised at the scene I had witnessed, and wondering that my noble and learned Friend, the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, and my noble Friend the Chairman of the Committees, Still seemed to cling with fondness to the strange chimera before mentioned. I felt confident that there must be some very easy and simple means of solving this mystery. It then occurred to me, that when a dissolution of Parliament took place, your Lordships were no longer Peers of Parliament, your legislative and judicial functions ceased and determined; that there was no longer a House of Lords, nor, consequently, a table; and that when Parliament was summoned to meet, and your Lordships, after passing through the usual forms and ceremonies, constituted a House of Lords, your table was as bare as it was when it was sent from the cabinet-maker's workshop.

It then occurred to me that the notice which I had given of the question that I proposed putting to the noble and learned Lord, had not been printed in the Minutes. I had placed that notice in the hands of the Clerk of Parliament, having been instructed by the noble and learned Lord to substitute for the old form—to ask the Government. This seemed to me to be the latest and most approved method of shifting off personal responsibility, and throwing the burden on this mysterious and invisible personage. The question, however, which I put was,—"Is it the intention of the Government to persist in calling on the House to give a second reading on the 21st of April to a visionary and unintelligible, an impracticable and costly measure, called in the printed Bills, 'A Clergy Discipline Act?'" Such language, doubtless, was highly offensive to the delicate nerves and sensitive feelings of that mysterious personage; but with me these words were the courtly, silken, and oily phrases which I was constrained to employ in compliance with Parliamentary usage and decorum. The dark and secret agent, however, was at work. The notice which I had given was suppressed; and in lieu of it, in an obscure part of the Minutes, where no notices except about appeal causes are, I believe, inserted, appeared in small type the following notice:— The Bishop of Bangor to put a question to the Government respecting the Clergy Discipline Bill. It is evident that those suppressions have been made and these falsifications of your Minutes carried on under the direction of some crafty and reckless agent, whoso commands could not be resisted. But as this is not so much mine as your Lordships' affair, I leave it in your hands.

I had hoped that after the statement which I made to your House of the reasons which had induced me to come forward on this occasion, and my object in coming forward; after the Motion that I made, which was carried in the affirmative, and after my notice had been published in the Minutes of the House, your Lordships would have been sufficiently acquainted with these matters. But as great pains have been taken to conceal from your Lordships all that I have said and done since I presented myself to your notice, I am compelled to offer a few words in explanation.

It happens, since my right rev. Friend (the Bishop of London) is prevented from taking part in the business of the House, that I am virtually the only survivor in the House of the Commissioners appointed for this object by George IV. and William IV.

About twenty years have passed away since I last read this admirable Report. But the impression remained firmly fixed in my mind, that if the recommendations contained in it were carried into effect, the existing Diocesan Courts can carry on the testamentary and matrimonial business of the country in a way satisfactory to all suitors.

It is no agreeable task for one of my years, who had never been accustomed to put himself forward, but had left the management of those matters regarding the Church, in which he felt a common interest, to the talents and eloquence and judgment of his distinguished brethren, who could command your Lordships' attention; for one who had recently recovered from a long and serious illness, and who feels great abatement of bodily power and activity, to find himself constrained to come forward and to bespeak your Lordships' patience and attention. But when I am called to discharge a solemn and sacred duty, to paint in its true colour the most odious, the most oppressive, and the most cruel scourge that any Government ever attempted to inflict on a suffering country, I have no choice left; I must follow up the course that is prescribed to me without fear or hesitation; and I trust I shall be able to prove that these Diocesan Courts, which it is proposed to sweep away from the face of the earth, are, if the recommendations of the Commissioners should be adopted, fully equal to the discharge of their important functions.

It has been the more necessary to state these facts, because I am convinced that owing to this systematic suppression and falsification of your Minutes, few noble Lords had any notion when they entered the House of the real nature of the Bill to which they were invited to give a second reading.

But before I proceed to call your Lordships' attention to the main object, it will be necessary to give your Lordships an outline of the history of this Report—of the cruel, unjust, and shameless caste job which was smuggled into it in the eleventh hour, when my right rev. Brethren and myself had long before returned to our diocesses, under a full conviction that every thing had been finally settled and arranged, and that the learned members of Doctors' Commons had remained at their post to superintend the drawing up of the Report, and to prepare it for being signed and presented to His Majesty early in the following year. At this time we, the four diocesan Bishops, received a private and confidential letter from Dr. Lushington, stating that as the business in Doctors' Commons was not sufficient to give employment to an efficient bar, it was desirable that the jurisdiction of the Diocesan Courts should be abolished, and the whole business transferred to the Provincial Court. Deeply did I lament that a gentleman, with whom I had been some time acquainted, with whom I had sat for two seasons on this Commission, and whom I had always considered us a man of independent mind and perfect integrity, should have ventured to offer such a suggestion. However, I as well as my brethren, thought the proposal too shameless to be entertained for a moment by the other distinguished members of the Commission, and consequently took no notice of it. But, alas! we little knew what strange fascination a caste job has over the minds of the most honourable members of that caste. When I came to London, not long before the Report was signed and presented to His late Majesty, I found that this audacious infraction of truth and justice and good faith had been smuggled into the Report by the learned Commissioners; that the recommendations which had been agreed to for very different purposes, had been twisted by a very clumsy legerdemain to accommodate them to this new device; and that, since its real object could not be avowed, the reasons alleged for it were altogether deceitful and false.

My right rev. Brethren, however, and myself, agreed that we would not withhold our signature from a Report containing so many valuable recommendations and suggestions, and such stores of ecclesiastical knowledge, but would take an early opportunity of exposing and getting rid of the job. That opportunity, however, never occurred. The Report was signed on the 15th of February, 1832, and received by the Lord Chancellor on the 16th.

Your Lordships are aware that this was the time of the first fervour of the Reform measure. It was known that certain Members of His Majesty's Government were employed in preparing the first edition of that celebrated Bill; and on the 1st of March following, the noble Lord who had the charge of it made his first Motion for leave to bring in the Bill. For some years after this the country was in such a turbulent and distracted and dangerous state, that no man had a thought to bestow on Ecclesiastical Courts and jurisdiction. The Report was laid aside and forgotten.

At length, however, in the year 1836, the late Lord Cottenham, who then held the Great Seal, brought in a Bill including the Doctors' Commons caste job, which received a first reading, and was referred to a Select Committee. Bishop Van Mildert had died early in that year, but I agreed with my brethren of Lincoln and St. Asaph, that that was not the place for bringing forward our complaint. We reserved it, therefore, for a future stage of the Bill. But here the noble and learned Lord stopped short—the Report was never brought up, and no further mention was made of the Bill.

The noble Lord was then projecting another caste job. A Commission was issued to certain lawyers of the Chancery and Common Law Bars, to inquire into the same facts which had been already thoroughly inquired into and investigated. I am not aware that those learned gentlemen threw any new light upon the subject; but they of course came to one conclusion, that Ecclesiastical Courts were a nuisance which ought to be abated, and the whole testamentary business transferred into the more efficient hands of Chancery and common lawyers.

This, however, like other Reports, was soon laid aside and forgotten. Hon. Members of the other House were often loud in their outcries against peculiar jurisdictions, but it does not seem to have occurred to them to ask why these jurisdictions had not been abolished—for if the business of the country had been conducted in a business-like manner, they would have been long since superseded.

Since the noble and learned Lord has held the Great Seal, he has, I believe, favoured your Lordships with two or three varieties of caste jobs, which have passed rapidly through their several stages in the thin Houses of the early part of the Session; have been passed and sent to the Commons, where it was well understood that they would make no further progress.

I now come to the consideration of the object I have in view; to prove to your Lordships that, if the recommendations of the Commissioners should be carried into effect, the Diocesan Courts are fully equal to carry on the testamentary and matrimonial business of the country in a simple, inexpensive, and satisfactory way. But here I must entreat your Lordships not to confound the Report itself, as it was agreed to by the whole body of the Commissioners, with the shameless caste job which was smuggled into it by the gentlemen of Doctors' Commons. The first object of the Commissioners was the putting an end to the jurisdiction of a number, amounting to nearly three hundred, of the courts called Peculiar. It appears that in 1812, Sir W. Scott, then Dean of the Arches, introduced and carried through the House of Commons a Bill for the regulation of Ecclesiastical Courts, one principal clause of which provided that the power of hearing and determining causes of ecclesiastical cognisance should be exercised only by Ecclesiastical Courts sitting under the immediate commission and authority of Archbishops and Bishops, and not by inferior or other Ecclesiastical Courts. This Bill was unfortunately dropped in your Lordships' House.

So the matter has stood till the present time.

When considering the question of regulating and limiting the jurisdiction in testamentary and matrimonial matters, the first difficulty that met the Commissioners was this law of Bona Notabilia. The provisions of this law were so little known, that it often happened that after the executors had taken out probate, and gone through the necessary forms, it was discovered that the testator possessed property in another county, and the executor was compelled to go through the same process a second time, at a great expense, in the Provincial Court.

It appears to me, however, that such a vast accession has been made to the testamentary business of the Prerogative Court since the year 1832, through the numerous policies of life assurance now effected in London, shares of joint-stock companies of various kinds, and in the great arterial railways which terminate in the metropolis (and probably there are many other sources unknown to me), that the law of Bona Notabilia ought to be repealed without delay.

The state of the greater number of the Diocesan Courts was such in 1832, that though it was confessed that in many of the larger diocesses no fault could be found with the decisions of the Courts, still it was thought fit to recommend that the contentious business of the Diocesan Courts should be removed to the Court of Arches. But the case is now greatly altered. The chancellors of the greater number of the diocesses are fully competent to discharge their duties, and it would be unjust to deprive the inhabitants of so many diocesses of the benefits of a domestic tribunal, because there are still a few cases of incompetent Judges. Some provision may easily be made for supplying this defect. Should the parties be dissatisfied, they may remove their suit into the Court of Arches by letters of request.

It was for these reasons (I cannot recollect the precise words of the recommendation, but this is the substance of it) that the Commissioners recommended the suppression of the jurisdiction of the inferior courts, and that the whole of the business, testamentary and matrimonial, should be confined to the Diocesan and Provincial Courts.

Of the satisfactory manner in which the testamentary and matrimonial business of a diocess is carried on where no obstructions are occasioned by peculiar jurisdictions, I can speak with confidence. In my diocess, where there are no peculiars, the Diocesan Court has been able to carry on this business without any obstruction. The diocess is long and straggling, containing large masses of mountains, in the glens of which, owing to the opening of mines and quarries, new populations are constantly springing up, sometimes not within ten miles of a church.

In the diocess there are twenty-one surrogates, whose names and places of abode are well known to their neighbours. Marriage licences, probates, and letters of administration, may be obtained through a surrogate, or at the registrar's office. The parties need not necessarily attend at the office. Indeed, probates and administrations may be obtained without attendance either upon a surrogate or at the registrar's office, if the parties choose to go to the expense of a commission, the cost of which is about one guinea.

The next part of the inquiry to which I must draw your Lordships' attention is the alteration of the testamentary law suggested by the Commissioners. The value of these suggestions is proved by this fact, that an important part of them have been adopted in the Act relative to wills, known as Lord John Russell's Act.

They recommended that all wills, whether of real or personal property, should be signed by the same number of witnesses, and proved in the same courts. That vivâ voce evidence should be admitted and trial by jury. That in certain cases the Judge should allow evidence to be taken by commission.

The whole question regarding these proposed alterations in testamentary matters, is argued at great length by the learned Commissioners. Admitting that cases may have occurred in which the admission of unsigned and unfinished and imperfect papers may have been of some advantage to the claimants, they have shown clearly the vast superiority of the suggested alterations to the former practice.

Were it possible to conceive that the three-headed monstrous jobs, which the noble and learned Lord has told us form one measure, could have become part of the law of the land, no person possessed of small property would have bequeathed it by will. If a will had been made before the measure came into action, no executor would have proved it, no one in cases of intestacy would have taken out letters of administration. The family would have divided the property in the best manner they could.

The same would have been the case had the Doctors' Commons caste job become the law of the land. It was well known that such a measure had been smuggled into the Report, and this occasioned much alarm and distress in my diocess. But I took care that my neighbours should be informed that such a cruel and unjust job could never be sanctioned by either House of Parliament.

There are few, probably, of your Lordships who have not succeeded to that kind of property which made it necessary for you to prove the wills of those whom you represented in the Superior Court; few who would not prefer carrying out your business as executors in the metropolis. Your Lordships, therefore, are probably little acquainted with the feelings of that very numerous body of your fellow-subjects who have small properties to bequeath, and of those who have to prove the wills of near kinsmen or friends, or to take out letters of administration.

But the case is very different with a country population. Even with the humblest of those who do not receive parish relief, and possess any little property, to make a will is a main object of their wishes and ambition. Few, comparatively speaking, of those so circumstanced, die intestate. The same wish and the same desire of having within reach the means of accomplishing their wish, without needless delay or expense, extends to those whose concerns are more important, and their property larger. So likewise the executors of wills in every diocess of England and Wales, know where to apply for probate and obtain it, without much trouble or expense. With equal facility letters of administration, in the case of intestates, may be taken out by the next of kin. But the effect of the odious caste jobs which I have mentioned, would have been to deprive thousands and ten thousands of our fellow-subjects of these their just rights and privileges.

Whilst justice has been, so to speak, brought home to every man's door by the establishment of County Courts, the object of all these jobs has been to introduce a frightful system of centralisation, without a show of benefit to any except those who hoped to partake of the spoil.

I have stated that, in my opinion, the Diocesan Courts are competent to carry on the contentious business of the diocesses. There is, however, one exception. It is necessary, I think, that in all causes relating to adultery, divorce, and other similar matters, the inquiry should be removed at once into the Superior Court, and that no sentence of divorce a mensâ et thoro should be pronounced in the Diocesan Courts. It would be sad, indeed, if our Diocesan Courts, and those who frequent them, should be exposed to the pollution which such causes always engender. Such inquiries should always be attended with as little publicity as is consistent with the ends of justice and the execution of the law.

We earnestly deprecate the establishment of what have been called Divorce Courts, and giving any increased facility to divorces. Marriage has been already desecrated by recent Acts of Parliament. Marriages may now be celebrated before one of the district registrars, without any reference to its religious character and obligation. The Act which was carefully framed to prevent clandestine marriages, has been nullified by allowing banns of marriage to be published before the guardians of the poor law unions. The Act which required that all marriages should be celebrated in facie Ecclesiœ between the hours of eight A.M. and noon, is easily eluded. That publicity which has always been considered an important element in Christian marriages is no longer necessarily given them.

There are many recommendations in this Report relative to the working of the Superior Courts, remedying the delay and expense often complained of, and carrying on the business with greater dispatch, which well deserve attention, and which, no doubt, the members of that learned body will be ready to adopt. But these form no part of the object I have had in view.

This object I have now completed. I have shown, I trust, that the Diocesan Courts are fully equal to the discharge of their duties, not only without any organic change, but without material change or interruption; that the surrogates and registrars know their duties, and that there is no need, as under all those caste jobs, of compensation to superseded officers.

This, indeed, is a sufficient reason for rejecting the Bill to which your Lordships are now invited to give a second reading; this monstrous abortion of audacity and ignorance, miscalled a Clergy Discipline Bill. Its only object seems to be to provide large salaries with little business for the sons, and nephews, and grandsons of some future Lord Chancellor. To this the principles of truth, and justice, and good faith, and the happiness and interests of thousands and ten thousands of our fellow-subjects are to be sacrificed, as matters of no weight or moment.

I now conclude, under a strong conviction that your Lordships will give your firm and decided support to the Amendment moved by the most rev. Prelate, "That this Bill be read a second time this day six months."

THE EARL OF HARROWBY

said, that the speech of the right rev. Prelate who spoke fourth in this debate (the Bishop of Exeter) was calculated to excite in their Lordships the liveliest apprehensions. When he heard him use words of such portentous import, that their Lordships might apprehend they were all to be excommunicated in turn if they assisted in passing this Bill, he was rather curious to discover the occasion of such a portentous menace. Their Lordships would hardly believe that this most fearful apprehension arose entirely out of a small passage in a single clause—the 15th. And all that the offensive clause was intended to do was to enable any party to transfer his cause, if he thought fit, from the court of the Bishop to that of the Archbishop. Perhaps the clause was not well worded; perhaps it did not effect the purpose contemplated; but it certainly did appear to imply an intention not to do away with any jurisdiction which was already vested in the Bishops. The words relative to the Archbishop were, that he might take jurisdiction of any causes removed from the court of the Bishop, "as he might have done by virtue of any statute or law before the passing of this Act." Be the effect of that provision what it might, it at all events showed that the intention of the Bill was to give the Archbishop no other power than he had at the present time. That, then, was the head and front of their offending. Yet the right rev. Prelate said that these simple words, which were intended to convey no new power, destroyed the whole of the catholicity of the Established Church; and, in fact, would subject the whole of their Lordships to the ban of excommunication. The only other point in which he could see anything at all bearing upon this question, was something about the Archbishop; or rather, he thought—for it was difficult to remember so long a speech—it was an allegation of the attempt to transfer the jurisdiction of the Archbishop to the Crown. Yet, as he (Lord Harrowby) understood him, the right rev. Prelate, at the same time that he raised the objection, admitted that it had been removed. The letter of the most rev. Primate stated, on the part of the English bench, three objections to the Bill of last year, all of which had been duly considered in framing the Bill now before the House. The objection which he had already noticed on the 15th clause, Her Majesty's Government had attempted to remove by the introduction of the words into the clause to which he had already drawn attention. The second objection, which charged a tendency in the Bill of last year to transfer the jurisdiction of the Archbishop to the Crown, was admitted by the right rev. Prelate to be entirely removed by a clause in the present Bill. The only other objection which he raised to the Bill of last year applied also to the Bill before the House, and rested on the preference of the right rev. Prelate for another mode of dealing with the court of appeal than that proposed by this Bill. To the mode which the right rev. Prelate himself suggested there was this radical objection, that it gave the go-by to the supremacy of the Crown; and to a measure having such a tendency he was sure their Lordships would never agree. The whole of the objections, then, of the English bench of Bishops were reduced to these three, of which the first was founded on a mistake of the intention of the Bill, the second had been removed, and the third such as he hoped their Lordships would not approve. The right rev. Prelate seemed to think that the Government had introduced this Bill wantonly, and without the existence of any necessity for action; and that, in fact, it was a piece of amateur legislation. But he begged to remind their Lordships that the Royal Commission, which reported in the year 1832, pointed most distinctly to the necessity of such a measure, and that, ever since, Parliament had been endeavouring to meet the acknowledged evils of the present system. The right rev. Prelate had referred to the registries; but it appeared by the Appendix to the Commissioners' Report that some of these registries were not fire-proof, and that others were located in private dwelling-houses, and were exposed to the risk of destruction. The main purport of the Bill was to reform the mode of procedure in reference to the matters with which the Bill dealt, and surely it was most desirable, when reforms were being carried out in testamentary jurisdiction and other matters, that these important subjects should not be overlooked; moreover, the people were not so well satisfied with the existing state of things as to render it even possible to leave these existing jurisdictions all over the country. Let not, then, the right rev. Prelate treat the Bill as an uncalled-for piece of legislation, having no other object than to destroy the catholicity of the Church. There were no objections urged against the Bill which might not be dealt with in Committee upstairs; and, as he believed the measure would effect a great deal of good, he hoped their Lordships would give it a second reading.

THE EARL OF DERBY

said, the right rev. Prelate who had with such power of reasoning opposed the second reading of the Bill (the Bishop of Exeter) might or might not have been mistaken, when he said that Government had made great efforts to surround themselves with friends; but judging from what now appeared, the right rev. Prelate must have been mistaken, or else the Government possessed a smaller number of friends than he gave them credit for. The right rev. Prelate was correct in his statement with regard to the absence of ordinary support from his (the Earl of Derby's) side of the House. He frankly declared that he looked upon this question least of all others as a party matter, or as one that ought to be treated with any kind of party feeling. He had come down to the House with the earnest desire to hear the arguments for and against the Bill, with a mind perfectly un-pledged to any course, or rather with a leaning towards a desire to support, if possible, the second reading of the present Bill. He freely admitted to the noble Lord who had just sat down (the Earl of Harrowby) that the present state of Church discipline was by no means such as to give satisfaction to the friends of the Church. The procedure for the correction of clergymen who misconducted themselves was most complicated, dilatory, and expensive in its character; and the Bishops of the Church laboured under the disadvantage of having worse than an Egyptian taskmaster placed over them, for they were held responsible for the conduct of the clergy under their charge, and yet the jealousy of Parliament studiously abstained from granting the powers necessary for the carrying into effect an authority, which, nevertheless, the Parliament required to be exercised. Therefore it was a matter of importance that, if possible, some measure on this subject should be passed; but at the same time, any measure which the Government might introduce ought at least to be effective for its purpose. He had come to the consideration of the Bill, with an earnest desire that he might find in it nothing in principle so objectionable as to compel him to dissent from it, however there might be matters which might require modification in Committee; but he must confess, that after listening to the speech of the noble and learned Lord by whom it was introduced, and the answer given to it by the right rev. Prelate, he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that its intrinsic and inherent faults—arising, perhaps, from the nature of the question—were such as to give little or no hope that any alterations which might be made in Committee could make it satisfactory either to the Church or the public. Another inducement in his mind to desire the success of the Bill was, that it went to establish a uniformity of discipline between the Churches of England and Ireland, which, though not absolutely essential, was a great matter for the security of the two branches. That important principle was recognised by the Bill; and he thought it was a great matter towards accomplishing such uniformity that there should not only be a unity in doctrine and discipline, but that an ultimate court of appeal should be provided for both. If his objections to the Bill were confined only to the now celebrated 15th clause, he should not have thought them a sufficient reason for refusing to go into Committee, although he agreed with the right rev. Prelate that that clause did interfere with the authority of the Bishops by giving the Archbishops an original instead of only an appellate jurisdiction. He also objected to the 44th clause, which provided that when the Archbishop had confirmed the decision of the Bishop, and when the Privy Council had decided against the opinions both of the Bishop and of the Archbishop, reference was not to be made back to the Archbishop's Court, but the Privy Council was to take upon itself to order and direct an inferior Bishop to institute a clerk in the province of his own metropolitan. Although greater attention was paid at the present time than formerly to the selection of persons to fill the offices of chancellors in the Diocesan Courts, yet he believed that in a number of those courts the chancellors were necessarily persons quite incapable of discharging the functions imposed upon the chancellors to be appointed by this Bill. He looked with great apprehension on the power of appointing chancellors vested in the four Archbishops and the Bishop of London, although he might not have objected to the appointment of properly-qualified assessors to act with the Bishops on the trial of clerks and matters of that kind. But the case was much altered when he found, in connection with the appointment of these chancellors, that large funds must be provided, and other provisions made, which would not have been necessary but for the difficulty of providing adequate funds. The right rev. Prelate estimated that there would be a deficiency of about £24,000 a year, but he had omitted one considerable item—that of compensation. He believed that the ordinary expense of a marriage licence was half a guinea; but if, as had been calculated, it would be raised to £2, the effect of the Bill would be to levy a fourfold tax on marriages by licence. But they had been compelled to introduce machinery which would not otherwise have been introduced, and to get rid of many officers who were now performing their duties satisfactorily, and to deprive the Bishops of much of their local power and authority which it was desirable to retain, in order to furnish the necessary funds. His noble Friend (the Earl of Harrowby) had admitted generally the objections which applied to the principle of centralisation; but not only did the Bill involve the principle of centralisation and the removal of the diocesan registries at an enormous expense to a central position—which was a matter open to serious objection,—it went further, and for the purpose of employing these chancellors, practically transferred to them a great portion of the effective jurisdiction of the Bishops themselves. The preamble of the Bill stated, that one of its main objects was, first, to alter the manner of proceeding in criminous causes, offences, and matters in the Ecclesiastical Courts; and, secondly, to make provision for the establishment of central ecclesiastical registries. This principle of centralisation might, in fact, be regarded as the main principle of the Bill; and the machinery of the measure was so contrived, that unless they established a central registry, and transferred to it the authority and jurisdiction now exercised through the diocesan registries, the Bill would be what the right rev. Prelate near him (the Bishop of Bangor) had described it—a visionary and impracticable one. He was satisfied, then, after listening to the debate, that however laudable the object might be—and he was not one of those who imputed to the Government a desire to wantonly and hastily deal with this question—that the objections so forcibly urged by the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Exeter) were of too large and extensive a character to admit of the Bill being amended in a Select Committee. Believing, then, that the principle of a central registry was not only the central principle of the Bill, but was absolutely necessary for its practical working, and seeing also the almost unanimous opposition of the right rev. Prelates opposite to the measure, he must say that he despaired of any practical measure being produced out of it, even by reference to a Select Committee. He said this not without hesitation, because they must all wish to effect the object which the Government had in view; but he must give his vote, however reluctantly, against the second reading of this Bill.

THE BISHOP OF CASHEL

said, it was perfectly true that the Bishops of the United Church of England and Ireland, residing in Ireland, had unanimously resolved to support this Bill; and they had come to that resolution because they felt there was an urgent necessity for something to be done, and that the defects of the existing system urgently demanded a remedy. They regretted much differences from their English brethren, and particularly from the most rev. Prelate, for whom he had personally a great regard, and for whose official situation he felt thankful. The Irish Prelates, therefore—the Government having brought forward a measure with this view—felt themselves bound to support the second reading of the Bill, but without pledging themselves to all its details.

There were three great defects in the Ecclesiastical Courts which required amendment. These were—first, the character and the number of the Judges in these courts; secondly, the character and the number of final courts of appeal; and, thirdly, the nature of the registries in which the records of the courts were kept. As to the first, there were about fifty or sixty Judges in ecclesiastical causes in England and Ireland, all of them unconnected with one another, and with no unity of opinion in the judgments they pronounced. This obviously was itself a great evil. Again, out of twenty-six vicars-general in Ireland not less than seventeen were clergymen—all of them, no doubt, very respectable men, but, he must say, not the best qualified to be Judges, and most likely to carry with them the feeling of the public in their decisions. In his own diocess, when he first went there, he found two clergymen vicars-general; both of them were very excellent men, but certainly he could not have thought of asking either to give him an opinion with regard to any legal difficulty that might have presented itself. Not long ago, in his diocess, a very important divorce case was brought before the vicar-general, which would have required an experienced lawyer as the Judge; and, within a recent period, in the diocess of Waterford, a will case was tried before a clergyman, who was the Judge, and in which the principal point on which the will was opposed was the alleged improper influence exercised by a Roman Catholic clergyman. Surely cases like these ought to have been heard before some other Judge than a clergyman of the Established Church. He felt thankful to the Government, therefore, for the present Bill, because it would provide the Bishops with properly qualified persons to assist them in the administration of the jurisdiction which they were called upon to discharge. One reason, and a most powerful one, why the House should consent to read the Bill and go into Committee was, that all the Members of that House who had spoken admitted the principle of the Bill. Not one of them would stand up and say that the Judges in the Ecclesiastical Courts were what they ought to be, or that they should remain as they were. They might differ as to the manner in which the evil was to be remedied, but they all admitted the existence of the evil; and he held that, so admitting it, they ought to go into Committee upon a measure which was brought in with a view to provide a remedy. The chancellors, which the Bill provided should be appointed by the Archbishops and Bishops, and approved by the Crown, would be men whose decisions would have weight, and an uniformity in their decisions might be expected. The next principle of the Bill to which he would refer was that of the final court of appeal. He was thankful that they had not heard a single word in the course of this debate against the principle of having one final court of appeal for the whole United Church of England and Ireland. But the main question was, what should be that final Court of Appeal? He could not forget that the Bill of the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Exeter) actually contemplated two different courts of appeal, one for England, and another for Ireland. Many persons were, no doubt, ignorant that, under the late Church discipline law, there were four courts of appeal for the United Churches of England and Ireland. There was the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; there was what was in Ireland called the Queen in Chancery, instead of the Queen in Council; there was the Court of Delegates in England and Ireland; and there was the House of Lords. Now, one main feature in the present Bill which met his decided approval was, that it affirmed what had never been so distinctly affirmed before—namely, the Union of the Churches of England and Ireland by establishing one united court of appeal. Another portion of this Bill which met with his hearty approbation was that of providing for the registries, which were not now in the state in which they should be, especially in Ireland. He would say nothing of the state of the registries in England, but in Ireland they were in a very unsatisfactory state—in most diocesses without any fixed place in which they were to be kept. In his own diocess the registry had been in four different lodgings in his time. It was now in the hands of an excellent officer; he had it in his own house, and it was kept with great care; but if anything happened to him, the records would have to seek another lodging. There seemed to be a general feeling in favour of the principle of the Bill; and this being so, he saw no reason why it should not receive a second reading. The statement dated the 11th of June, 1855, drawn up by the Archbishop of Canterbury and those right rev. Prelates who agreed with him, had been already referred to. That statement took exception to the Bill of 1855, not to that of 1856. Now, what was the objection put forward in that statement? Not one word was said against the main principle of the Bill; not a word was said against the establishment of one good court of appeal. But the objection to it was, that it had a tendency to transfer the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops to the Archbishops, and from the Archbishops to the Crown. The words of the clause which had that tendency said, "the Archbishop shall take, hear, and decide, upon such cases," &c. Now, that clause was liable to the objection taken to it. The Irish as well as the English Bishops had objected to it, and said that it was wrong in principle. But this objection, it must be remarked, applied to the Bill of 1855, and not to the Bill now before the House. What was the language of the 15th clause of the present Bill? Why, this—"It shall be lawful for the Archbishop, if he think fit, thereupon to take, hear, and determine such cases in his Provincial Court, as he might have done by force of any statute or law before the passing of this Act." This clause did not confer any new powers on the Archbishop, for it would be found that by the law, as it at present existed, there was a power by which a suitor could remove his case from the Bishop's to the Archbishop's Court in certain cases; so that the 15th section, in its present shape, would confer no new jurisdiction on the Archbishop, but left the relative powers of the Bishop and Archbishop exactly on their present footing. The objection, therefore, to the Bill on that account was groundless. The Bishops, therefore, had every reason to be satisfied with the general principles of the Bill, which were, undoubtedly, sound and salutary; and, as to the details, he believed there was nothing which might not be rectified in Committee. He considered that it was a measure with which personal or party feeling had nothing whatever to do, and in this spirit the Prelates of Ireland had approached its consideration. They were quite ready to confess that there were evils in the present system, and to express their willingness to assist in rectifying those evils. That was the spirit in which the Irish Prelates had considered its provisions—determined, as they were, that no party or personal considerations should prevent them from joining in doing that which they considered to be for the benefit of the Church and the good of the country.

THE BISHOP OF OXFORD

said he could assure the right rev. Prelate who had just addressed the House that the English Bishops had no personal or party feeling in their opposition to the Bill then under discussion, and, could private advantage have anything to do in the matter, they would willingly sacrifice it for the attainment of objects beneficial to religion and to the country generally. He did not impute, nor did any of his right rev. Brethren impute, to the framers of the Bill any intention to inflict any injury on the Church, but the province of that House was not to decide upon the objects or intentions of those who submitted measures to their consideration, but to criticise the measures themselves—to take them on their own merits—and to see whether they were calculated to work good or evil. The present state of the law, with respect to Church discipline was, no doubt, exceedingly defective, but that was no reason why they should exempt from criticism a measure presented as a remedy, or pass it wholesale in the hope of rendering it less objectionable in Committee. The proposition of the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Cashel) was, that the Bill should be sent into Committee, where it might be made somewhat useful; but if the Bill had in reality, however unintentionally on the part of the framers, a special clause, the principle of which was subversive of the Established Church; and if they saw that, however unintentionally, the principle of that clause ran, more or less, through the whole framework of the Bill, he thought that such a Bill was not one which they should send to Committee in the hope of amending some of its details—he thought it was one which they should by their vote on the second reading decline to send to Committee, in consequence of the vicious principle it contained. The right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Cashel) had laid much stress upon the difference between the 15th clause of the present Bill, and the objectionable clause contained in the Bill of last year; but he (the Bishop of Oxford) thought that that distinction was merely one between the words "shall" and "may." Those who opposed the Bill took up their position on this ground, that it was a fundamental principle of the Church of Christ that the Bishop was supreme over his clerk in his own diocess, and that the clerk had no right to claim the benefit of the Archbishop's jurisdiction except by way of appeal against a wrong suffered at the hands of the Bishop; in which case the clerk undoubtedly had a right to have his wrong redressed, and then the Archbishop could interfere. In this way the jurisdiction of the Archbishop operated over his suffragan, his jurisdiction coming in to rectify wrong or negligence on the part of the suffragan. There was no law of the Church that permitted a clerk to go primarily to the metropolitan; the original jurisdiction was vested in the Bishop alone, and the clerk's right of appeal might be compared to that of a child against the father. The child could not complain to the civil magistrate against his father in the first instance. If the father did wrong, the civil magistrate stepped in; but the parental jurisdiction should be had recourse to in the first instance. In the thirteenth century, when St. Louis was endeavouring to defend the French Church against the usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, he had to combat with the principle of superseding the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops. The Government ought to approach the subject with the greatest care, lest, unawares, a fundamentally erroneous change should be introduced into the framework with which they were dealing. The dangerous provision of the first bill had been reproduced in the second, and its reproduction showed such a want of care or of intelligence as ought to lead their Lordships to treat the measure with the greatest caution. His noble Friend (the Earl of Harrowby) had called their attention to the words which provided that the Archbishop should only exercise such power as he could exert at present. If his noble Friend meant that it was intended to give to the Archbishop no more power than he at present possessed, what was the use of introducing the clause? But it could not be pretended that, under the existing law, there was any provision by which a clergyman could say that he would be tried by the Archbishop, and not by his Bishop. [The Lord CHANCELLOR was understood to say that such a power existed.] He would be glad if the noble and learned Lord would point out this provision. The real object of these words, however, was to meet an objection which had been urged by the Bishops against the Bill of the last year. That objection was, that the measure, as then introduced, confounded the diocesan and provincial jurisdiction of the Archbishop, and would enable him to deal with appeals from his suffragans in his Diocesan Court, and the object of the words which had been introduced into the 15th clause was to meet that objection, and to provide that the Archbishop should try all these appeals fron his suffragans in his Provincial Court. But the evil of which he (the Bishop of Oxford) complained was not confined to a single clause—it ran through the whole of the Bill. That evil was, that the measure was opposed to the constitution of the English Church, by which it was intended that every Bishop should have his own means of administering his diocess in his own court, and that any wrong which had been done by him should be remedied upon an appeal to the Archbishop. The intention of this Bill, on the contrary, was, that wrong should be remedied by the Archbishop, not on appeal, but immediately. That was a fault in the principle of the Bill which could not be removed by the alteration of a single clause. To remedy it, it would be necessary to recast the whole Bill. The only argument in favour of the Bill—for the speech of the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack was rather against others than in support of this—was that of his right rev. Friend behind him (the Bishop of Cashel). That part of his case which he had founded upon the miserable condition of the registry of his diocess, his right rev. Friend had completely made out, and he (the Bishop of Oxford) recommended to his great energy to amend its condition as speedily as possible; but he would suggest to his right rev. Friend that the abandonment of a principle of the Catholic Church might be too high a price to pay for a safe, dry, and even fireproof registry. Another reason given by his right rev. Friend for his approval of this Bill was, that no one found fault with the supreme court of appeal. That we ought to have one supreme court of appeal for the Church in England, Ireland, and the Colonies, no one could feel more strongly than himself (the Bishop of Oxford); but of the machinery by which tinder this Bill it was proposed that such a court should work he entirely disapproved. He believed that the only mode by which the great difficulties arising from the supremacy and the mixed spiritual authority and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was that which was proposed by his noble and learned friend Lord Brougham, and was, with one alteration, approved by the noble Earl opposite (Earl of Derby). He would leave the entire settlement of every case of doctrine, as far as it concerned an individual, to the Privy Council. It would be better not to mix the Archbishops and Bishops with laymen as judges; but it would be only analogous with the course of proceedings in other cases if, in matters involving a question of doctrine, the Privy Council should send a case to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, with as many of the Bishops of the United Church as chose to attend, should hear the arguments, and should return an answer, deciding—not whether A. B. was guilty or not guilty—but whether certain doctrine was or was not in accordance with the formularies of the Church of England. It should be permitted to the minority to send their answer that it might have the moral weight which was due to it, and the answer should not be made binding on the Privy Council, but should be required to be set forth in the judgment. This course of proceeding would accomplish all for which he was anxious. It would preserve the Crown as the supreme arbiter, and would keep the doctrines of the Church from being tampered with by judgments given in individual cases; while in the provision of a single supreme court of appeal it would be quite as effectual as this Bill. He trusted that their Lordships would ponder well before deciding to give any countenance to the principles of the Bill. It was certainly a new thing in ecclesiastical legislation that a measure so sweeping as to alter the administration of every diocess in England, to touch every Ecclesiastical Court, to remodel the position of every ecclesiastical officer, and to tax the poorer clergy in a great measure, by means of stamps, should have been introduced without consulting with the Archbishops or Bishops of the English Church, all of whom were now to be found united in condemning the principle of the Bill as being subversive of the Church they were bound to protect. Were their Lordships prepared in this way to overthrow the whole authority of the episcopal bench in this country? If there were any one subject on which the Prelates of the English, Church might expect to be consulted, was it not that which dealt with their own officers and courts? and was it reasonable that the House should now be asked, on the idlest arguments, to admit the principle of a Bill so introduced, and to send it to a Select Committee? Let them endeavour to have an amended state of the law in the best way possible; but, having stated what was the united judgment of the members of the English episcopal bench, he thought he did not ask too much when he requested their Lordships to send back the measure to the Government for better consideration before they assented to its being referred to a Select Committee of that House.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR,

in reply, said that though the Bill had not been prepared under his immediate direction, he had fully sanctioned what was done, and was prepared to take all the responsibility of its introduction. With reference to the allegation that the measure had been introduced without previous consultation with the right rev. Prelates, he had to state that in the month of June, last year, the present Bill, or rather one on which the present was founded with modifications, was sent to the most rev. Primate with a request that he would consult his right rev. Brethren with respect to it. The most rev. Primate a few days afterwards mentioned that the other Bishops did not like the provisions respecting chancellors, and then he (the Lord Chancellor) wished to know what would be the opinion of the right rev. Bench if that provision was given up. That was all that took place about giving up that provision. Now, although he would confess that at that time he had not made himself fully master of the details of the measure of which the present was a modification, he would say that he had given considerable attention to the details of the present Bill. The main objection to the Bill he collected to be, in the first place, that there was no provision giving jurisdiction in the first instance to the Bishop; but that objection was founded in error, for the very first clause in the second part of the Bill declared that every Bishop in his diocess, within England and Ireland and the Isle of Man, should preside as judge in all suits and other proceedings in his court. The Church Discipline Act now enabled the Archbishops to exercise the jurisdiction of the Bishops in the way proposed by the present measure, whenever the Bishop was the patron of any preferment held by the party accused. It was admitted that it would be desirable to have chancellors who would be efficient judges, but it was said that the local registries were to be sacrificed in order to raise funds for paying them. Now he (the Lord Chancellor) could not see how local registries could be maintained after the removal from them of their testamentary business. No one had denied that the establishment of a central registry in Ireland would be an advantage, and he believed it would be equally advantageous in England. He had no sympathy with centralisation by itself; but it was known that many of the local registries were not safe places of deposit, and when testamentary documents were removed from them he should like to know how funds would be obtained for their maintenance? With regard to compensation, persons entitled to compensation would be put on the testamentary fund, and were not, therefore, dealt with by this Bill. The right rev. Prelate had made a singular misstatement about stamps. He said the Bill proposed to charge poor clerks and clergymen with stamps. All that the Bill provided was, that fees now paid should in future be paid by means of stamps, since it was found that it was better to collect revenue by means of stamps than by the payment of fees. [The Bishop of Ox-FORD: No document or instrument is to be received or filed unless it has a stamp.] But no instrument would require a stamp then which did not require a stamp now. The right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Exeter) had made a most amusing speech against the Bill, three-fourths of which appeared to him to be for the purpose of showing that the right rev. Prelate wished to break a lance against a professional gentleman, his friend Mr. Stephens. Many of the observations of the right rev. Prelate appeared to him uncalled for, and he regretted them because they attributed a want of skill to a professional gentleman which might injure him in his profession. He did not know Mr. Stephens till he became acquainted with him in the course of the preparation of the document referred to, but be would not be doing justice to that gentleman if he did not state that he appeared to be eminently skilled in ecclesiastical law—a subject which very few lawyers were generally conversant with. He would now conclude by entreating their Lordships to pass this Bill.

On Question, that "now" stand part of the Motion, their Lordships divided:— Content 33; Not content 41: Majority8.

Resolved in the Negative; and Bill to be read 2a on this day six months.

List of the CONTENT.
Lord Chancellor BISHOPS.
DUKES. Cashel
Argyll Derry
Wellington Limerick
MARQUESSES.
Breadalbane BARONS.
Clanricarde Camoys
EARLS. Clonbrock
Abingdon De Mauley
Airlie Foley
Courtoun Hatherton
Ducie Kinnaird
Harrowby Leigh
Kingston Lifford
Mayo Milford
St. Germans Monteagle
Somers Panmure
Spencer Plunkett
VISCOUNT. Saye and Sele
Sydney Wodehouse
List of the NOT CONTENT.
ARCHBISHOP. Chichester
Canterbury Hereford
DUKE. Llandaff
Newcastle Lichfield
MARQUESSES. Lincoln
Bath Manchester
Cholmondeley Oxford
Salisbury Rochester
EARLS. St. Asaph
Aberdeen Salisbury
Bradford St. Davids
Carnarvon Winchester
Delawarr Worcester
Derby BARONS.
Egmont Abinger
Harewood Bateman
Nelson Berners
Powis Colchester
Romney Delamere
VISCOUNT. Lyttelton
Dungannon Rayleigh
BISHOPS. Ravensworth
Bangor Redesdale
Bath and Wells Wynford

House adjourned till To-morrow.