VISCOUNT DUNGANNONpresented a Petition, numerously signed, from Darlington, in the county of Durham, complaining of the large amount of revenues abstracted from the Diocese of Durham, while little or no regard has been paid to its spiritual wants arising from the vast increase of its population; and praying that measures may be taken to oblige the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to admit local claims on Church Property. These petitions related to a matter of very considerable importance, and he was glad that his noble Friend (Lord Ravensworth) was present, as he had taken a very great interest in the case, and had a thorough knowledge of the condition of the Diocese, beyond any he (Viscount Dungannon) could boast of possessing. The petitioners expressed themselves most grateful to the Committee of their Lordships' House which inquired last Session into the spiritual destitution of the country, for their recommendation that where any Church property had been considerably augmented in value by the population which dwelt upon it, the religious instruction of that population should be considered before the application and disposition of the surplus revenue to the general ecclesiastical purposes of the country. The revenues of the See of Durham had been far greater than those of any other diocese in the United Kingdom, but large sums were withdrawn from it by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, although many of its own parishes were very inadequately provided for. Places like North and South Shields, Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees, and various parishes of the City of Durham itself, were very poorly endowed; and to many of the incumbencies no parsonage-houses were attached. In consequence of the mining operations carried on in that diocese, and the harbours that had been erected on the coast, large populations had sprung up where a few years ago a single house was not to be seen. Although in many of those districts churches had been built, they were so miserably endowed, that it was scarcely 208 possible for the clergy appointed to them efficiently to discharge their duties. He had not heard that any living in the See of Durham requiring augmentation had really been augmented to any appreciable extent, nor, indeed, that the provision for the populous districts throughout the kingdom had received any substantial increase. The grant of an additional £10 a year to one poor Benefice, or of £20 a year to another, did little to meet the urgent necessities of the case. It was, therefore, high time that their Lordships should know what was done with the sums taken from this diocese by the Commissioners. It seemed very hard that because in some places within that see the income was great, and the labour small, no consideration was shown, out of the surplus thereby obtained, for other places in the very same diocese, where, on the contrary, the income was small, and the labour great. There must be very considerable sums of money derived from Durham, which might be employed most beneficially for the large parishes where the population was increasing enormously, and the want was extreme. He thought it had been fully established that hitherto justice had not been done to the diocese of Durham; and he should not have done his duty to those who had entrusted him with these petitions, if he had not entered into these particulars. He hoped, in conclusion, that some measure would be speedily adopted to remedy what was undoubtedly a most crying evil.
THE BISHOP OF CARLISLEthought it was quite right that the attention of their Lordships should be called to the spiritual necessities of so large and populous a diocese as Durham; but it was also right that their Lordships' attention should be directed to the Common Fund in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners; for if the plan advocated by the noble Viscount were carried out to the full extent of Diocesan local claims, it would strike at the root of all those hopes entertained on behalf of the poorer clergy in other parts of the kingdom, for whom he was afraid the noble Viscount had not the same sympathy as with the clergy of Durham. The noble Viscount had said that some consideration ought to be given to the large amount of money abstracted from the diocese of Durham; but he (the Bishop of Carlisle) thought that still greater consideration should be entertained for the actual condition of the diocese of Carlisle. The number of livings in the diocese of Durham 209 was 264, and in that of Carlisle 261. In Durham there were 28 livings under £100 a year; but their Lordships would be surprised to hear that in the diocese of Carlisle there were 11 livings under £50 a year, 9 under £60, 16 under £70, 15 under £80, 22 under £90, and combining the whole there were 120 under £100 per annum. He was quite aware that great claims could be urged with respect to the number of the population to whose spiritual wants the clergy ministered; but there was another important element to be considered, that was the extent of the acreage of the various parishes. In London, in many instances, a clergyman might go half over his parish in a few minutes; but in parishes so extensive as those in the diocese of Carlisle, the labour of visiting was very great. With respect to the sum abstracted from Durham, he found by a Return moved for in the other House of Parliament, that in 1857 the total income of the Dean and Chapter of Durham was £81,000, of which £22,000 was expended in defraying the expenses of the services in the cathedral and other outgoings connected with it; in point of fact, £53,000 was expended in respect to the cathedral alone, Their Lordships had already twice confirmed the plan of the Common Fund as now placed in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commission, and under those circumstances, he hardly thought it wise that they should pass a retrograde Motion founded upon a petition without entering into the fullest investigation. Their Lordships should consider how many had benefited and how many looked forward to benefit by the resources of this diocese. A clergyman must live whether there was a large population in his district or a small one; and when gentlemen came to him for ordination, and in reply to questions as to their future prospects, stated that their expectations of clerical preferment were almost nil, he was frequently induced to warn them that although they might find the air and the scenery of Cumberland delightful, yet he was afraid that it would only tend to increase their appetite, and that a curacy of £50 a year held out very little hope of a comfortable existence. Clergymen in such a position, when called upon to visit the poor and the sick, must feel deeply their inability to afford them any temporal relief. It was most desirable that means should be found to enable these excellent, but unfortunate, because poor, clergymen to live in a man- 210 ner becoming their position, and to contribute to the assistance of the sick, the sorrowing, and the dying. The funds of the diocese of Carlisle were absolutely exhausted; but that was not the case with that of Durham, nor did he think that sufficient grounds had been laid before their Lordships to induce them to make any change with respect to that diocese.
§ EARL GREYsaid, he had heard with considerable regret the speech of the right rev. Prelate who had just sat down. This was not the case of the comparative claims of the diocese of Durham as compared with that of Carlisle. The case brought before the House by the noble Viscount was this—that in Durham the property of the Church had been vastly increased in value by the working of mines. Large masses of people were brought together, by the labour of whose hands that property was made productive. An enormous income was derived from this source; and while private owners acknowledged the claims of their workpeople, and more or less provided for their spiritual wants, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners alone ignored those claims, and did nothing or next to nothing for the benefit of that large population from whose labours they derived so large an income. The principle for which the noble Viscount behind him contended had not only been affirmed by Select Committees of that House, but a Bill had been introduced on the subject, into which a clause, the object of which was to carry into effect that principle, had been introduced, and which failed to pass through the other House of Parliament simply because of the advanced period of the Session. The principle was, he maintained, one of undeniable justice, and he therefore trusted Her Majesty's Government would not lose sight of the question, but would, as soon as possible, endeavour to place it upon a more satisfactory footing.
§ LORD RAVENSWORTHsaid, that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to whose control was committed a large amount of Church property, were responsible for the religious instruction and education of the large masses of the population to whom the petition presented by the noble Viscount referred. He himself had, he might add, been intrusted with a large number of petitions, all praying their Lordships to take into consideration the necessities of the case. He had, for years past, but in vain, endeavoured to procure the recognition of the claims of the 211 diocese of Durham on the consideration of Parliament. The result of inattention to those claims had been that the Bishop of Durham, in pursuance of his duty, had convened a public meeting in the town of Newcastle to which were invited all the principal landowners and proprietors of the diocese in order that he might lay before them the lamentable condition in which the population in his diocese was placed. No difference of opinion had been displayed by the laity on that occasion as to the propriety of the appeal which had been made to them; but it had been justly contended that so long as a largo amount of ecclesiastical property continued to be vested in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and aid was refused by them towards the spiritual destitution which prevailed in the diocese, while its revenue was applied to other uses, it was unfair to appeal to the laity for assistance. He therefore demanded in the name of justice that a due proportion of that revenue should be devoted by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to the wants of the diocese of Durham, and trusted that Her Majesty's Government would take care to bring about that result.
§ THE EARL OF CHICHESTERsaid, he did not desire to prolong the discussion, but wished briefly to refer to one or two points which had been alluded to in the course of the discussion. The annual amount paid from the fund of the Ecclesiastical Commission for the augmentation of small livings was £90,000; that amount was paid for this object last year. To this Common Fund of the Commission the diocese of Durham contributed £28,000. Of the Common Fund a considerable portion was appropriated to the augmentation of poor livings in the diocese of Durham, which had its full share of the Fund. As their Lordships were aware, the Commissioners could not, under the Act of Parliament, make any special application of the sums they received to the purposes of the district from which those sums were drawn.
THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFFthought, where there was a large population, and where property had been greatly increased in value by their labour, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were bound to consider the claims which that population had upon them as proprietors. His right rev. Brother did not make any claim on the part of any particular parishes; he spoke of the diocese of Durham as a whole, compared with other dioceses; and in refer- 212 ence to this he alluded to some parishes of large area and small endowments. In the first fifty years of the present century, from 1801 to 1851, the population of the diocese of Durham had increased in a ratio of 160 per cent. But this was exceeded by his own diocese, which included the whole of Monmouthshire and a large part of Glamorganshire. It appeared from the Tables in Mr. Chester's abstract of the Censes that in 50 years, from 1801 to 1851, the population of Monmouthshire had increased by 244 per cent, and that of Glamorganshire 223 per cent.
THE BISHOP OF LONDONsaid, the diocese of London was much in the same position as the diocese of Durham; as they were, perhaps, on the eve of some legislation on the subject, he thought it should be known that London and Durham were united in feeling on it. He believed it would be impossible to raise any considerable funds to provide for the spiritual destitution of the Metropolis while the Ecclesiastical Commission received very largo sums from rents of houses in the poorest parishes; the first duty of the Commissioners should be to recognize the claims of those who resided in these houses. He did not find fault with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for not having done what the law did not enable them to do. But the object of the petition was to request their Lordships seriously to consider whether the law ought not to be altered. It was well that those who might be engaged in drawing up a Bill on the subject in either House should understand how strong the feeling of the country was upon the subject. Changes were about to take place, by which large funds would fall into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and it was prospectively that the petitioners were desirous that a change should take place. Persons would no longer be willing to subscribe a poor pittance for the clergyman when ample funds were drawn from their own neighbourhood. He therefore trusted that in any future legislation regard would be had to the last Report which had been made on this subject.
§ Petitions ordered to lie on the table.