BILL PRESENTED. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 22 February 1861)

§ THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH

rose to call the attention of the House to the law relating to church rates, and to offer to their Lordships a Bill on that subject; 782 and said, he was anxious, even at this early period of the Session, to bring the subject under the notice of their Lordships, because he thought no time should be lost in submitting to their consideration the Report of the Committee appointed last Session, and because the subject was one which was likely to engage a great deal of attention during the present Session, especially in the other House. He was anxious also to lay before their Lordships without delay a proposition which he hoped would receive their sanction, and assist in bringing to a close this long vexed question. When the question of church rates came before their Lordships last year in the shape of a Bill for the total abolition of these rates, it was said that, as the Peer who had moved the appointment of the Committee of 1859, he ought to have brought forward a scheme of his own instead of simply opposing one proposed by others. His own opinion was, that last Session was not an appropriate or opportune period for bringing forward a measure on the subject. The Report of the Committee was completed only after the meeting of Parliament, and sufficient time had not been given for its consideration by the public. Short, however, as the time was since the Report had been published, it had not failed to call forth a large amount of public feeling on the subject, and there could be little doubt but that it had affected the division in the other House. The Report, no doubt, founded on the statements of the witnesses embodied facts and circumstances which, although they might have been surmised before, had never been placed before the country in a tangible form. He alluded more especially to the evidence showing the ulterior objects of the advocates of total abolition—evidence which raised the question at issue out of the category of mere money questions, and placed it among those affecting the stability of our institutions and the prosperity of the country. The manner in which he now wished to bring the subject before the House was by laying on the table a Bill which he hoped would be found to embody a more or less satisfactory settlement of the question. He would draw their Lordships' attention as briefly as possible to those points which were most prominently brought out by the evidence taken before the Committee. If stress were laid upon one thing more than another in the Evidence given before the Committee it was upon the injury which would be dune 783 to the Church by the abolition of church rates. The evidence went to show that voluntary subscriptions, however much they could be depended upon in cases of emergency, must not be looked to as a permanent source from which funds could be derived for the support of the fabrics— that the edifices of the Established Church were of such a nature, both in magnitude and ornamental structure, that the required sum for their maintenance could not be defrayed from voluntary sources, and, moreover, that if those sources were constantly drawn upon for the purpose of maintaining the churches, other charitable objects which they now supported must materially suffer. When a Bill for the total abolition of church rates was before the House, their Lordships most unequivocally showed their determination not to consent to such a proposition. He (the Duke of Marlborough), therefore, abandoned altogether the idea that their Lordships would ever sanction a measure for the entire abolition of church rates. At the same time it was not to be denied that it was a subject to which the serious attention of Parliament ought to be directed with the view to apply some remedial measures. The results of their Lordships' Committee were to this effect, that the great difficulties lay in the collection of the rate, which arose from these causes, as detailed in the Report of the Committee—First, the abuse of the rate in its assessment for, and its application to, improper objects; the assessment of new parishes and districts having churches of their own to the rate of the mother church; the unwillingness of churchwardens to propose a rate, the collection of which might be rendered difficult or impossible from the uncertainty and inefficiency of the law; local causes of irritation unconnected with the rate; and the opinions entertained against church rates by certain classes of Dissenters on political or religious grounds. These were no doubt important subjects for the attention of Parliament, and with which any measure to be effectual must certainly deal. At the same time it must be borne in mind that many of the causes of irritation on account of church rates had their origin in the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts. That source of evil was noticed by Dr. Lushington. Dr. Lushington, in his evidence, in answer to the question, "I think in your evidence you expressed the opinion that an improvement in the law 784 might be made by adopting a simple and ready means of collecting the rate when once made, instead of taking it into the Ecclesiastical Courts;" replied, "Yes, clearly the Ecclesiastical Court is not the proper tribunal, it being too onerous, too expensive, and too dilatory." Then, if their Lordships looked to the evidence given before the Committee of the other House of Parliament in 1850, they would find that almost all the grievances that were alleged by the opponents of church rates were those connected with the Ecclesiastical Courts. All proposals to exempt Dissenters had met with their steadfast opposition. They did not, in very many cases, object to pay rates for the maintenance of the fabrics; but they regarded with terror and apprehension the possibility of being involved in proceedings so expensive and dilatory as those of the Ecclesiastical Courts. Nothing came before their Lordships' Committee more strongly than the impolicy of leaving the jurisdiction in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Courts. The Committee, therefore, recommended that the jurisdiction of those Courts should cease, and that there should be the same powers for the recovery of church rates as existed for the recovery of poor rates, and that if the validity of the rate were questioned there should be an appeal to the General Quarter Sessions. That was one of the proposals in the Bill which he was about to lay upon the table—the Bill provided that the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts should cease in all matters relating to church rates. The next point to which he would call attention was the common law right of every parish to levy a rate for the repair of the church. That was clearly shown in the evidence of Mr. Toulmin Smith. That gentleman, who had prosecuted laborious researches into this subject, and had given very minute and valuable evidence as to the common law in England in relation to it, stated that church rates originated in this way. Formerly, endowments given by pious individuals throughout the country were intended for the maintenance of the minister and the repairs of the church; but, he stated, in process of time alienations and malversations of church property took place, which rendered the parishioners unable to avail themselves of these means for the repair of the church, and, consequently, they had recourse to the expedient of making a bye-law by which they taxed themselves for that purpose. 785 He illustrated this by an extract from a remarkable petition presented to the King in council in the reign of Edward I., in the year 1306, in which the petitioners stated That the estates belonging to the Church were misappropriated, and that the emoluments were enjoyed by persons who had not the spiritual cure, and that the churches were tailing into decay. Then to show that the cognizance of these things was formerly in the temporal and not in the Ecclesiastical Courts, there was a case from the "Year Book of 1370," in which a suit was brought against a person, touching goods taken by way of distress for a rate, and the defendant avowed the taking for that there had been a meeting of the parishioners of the church of E to repair defects in tin ir church; and, because there was a defect in the roof, they made a tax upon themselves of the sum of £10 to repair the defect. The record went on to say— Thereupon, the parishioners appointed two collectors, of whom the defendant is one; and they assented that if the persons who were taxed would not pay, the collectors might distrain; and, because the plaintiff would not pay what he was taxed, we levied a distress; and avow the taking, and say, that such has been the custom from time immemorial. It appeared from this case that each parish had a right for its own purposes—a right at common law—to make a rate, and to enforce it by distress, and the remedy lay to the Courts of common law. Mr. Toulmin Smith stated, that in the reign of Elizabeth the Ecclesiastical Courts assumed a jurisdiction they did not possess before, and having commenced to interfere in the matter of church rates, the temporal Courts refused to interpose. But, what he wished to show was to the effect that every parish had the power by the common law of England to tax itself for its own purposes, and that this power was inherent in the Constitution. In the Bill which he proposed to lay before their Lordships this power was retained in its full integrity. The state of the law had been established by their Lordships' House, because in the Braintree Case, in 1854, it was decided that the parishioners had a right to exercise their own discretion as to whether they would make or refuse a rate. The Committee recommended that a certain degree of relief should be given to persons who dissented from the Established Church. He did not think it would be possible to settle this question without giving 786 relief to such persons. He knew that arguments had been held that all persons enjoying the benefits of the parish church ought to pay, and' that the Constitution of the country required that a church rate should be levied in all cases for the repair of the parish church. It had been contended by some that this was as a universal tax on the land. He thought that the evidence tended to show that it was a tax of a personal nature, and being a tax of a personal nature it fell within the category of those taxes which a parish might impose or not. Therefore, he could not think that a settlement of this question could be arrived at without some degree of relief being given to persons who dissented from the Church. The Committee recommended that for the future persons desirous of being exempt from contributing to the rate might be so exempted by giving yearly notice to the churchwardens prior to the meeting of the vestry for the purpose of making a church rate; in consequence of which notice such persons would not be entitled to attend the vestry, or to vote in respect of church rates, or to act as Churchwardens, nor be entitled to retain any seat appropriated to them in the church during the time that they were thus exempted. The Bill that he proposed to lay before their Lordships carried out these recommendations to a certain extent. In bringing forward this Bill, however, he must state that he was acting entirely on his own responsibility, and he did not represent the views of any other Member of the Committee. In stating the mode in which he proposed to carry out these exemptions, he must refer to the mode in which former measures had proposed to deal with the question. Those measures appeared to have failed mainly for this reason, that they dealt with all the parishes of England and Wales as a whole. All the measures that had been proposed during the last ten years had dealt with the question in a uniform point of view, and those measures were objected to, because in many cases the alteration of the law went beyond the necessity. Persons who were in favour of the rate had a strong feeling against any measure which affected places where there was no opposition to church rates; and, on the other hand, those measures did not provide for those cases where there bad been no church rates levied for a length of time. It seemed to him that those measures had failed because they dealt with the subject in 787 that way, and did not apply a remedy more suitable to each particular case. He, therefore, proposed by this Bill to treat the subject in two parts, and he first took the case of those parishes where the rates were levied without opposition and without difficulty. In these cases he proposed to leave the law unaltered. The Bill maintained the local power of every parish to tax itself for its own purposes if the majority of the vestry chose to impose the tax; and more efficient power was given to collect the rate when so made. He now came to the other class of cases in which the church rate was refused. The Bill provided that where no church rate had been voted for the last two years, upon the refusal of the vestry to make a rate, the Churchwarden should send a notice to every parishioner liable to be rated to the church rate, putting to him the following question:—"Whether you are desirous that your name shall not be entered upon the register of persons entitled to vote in church vestry meetings, for the purpose of making church rates, and of electing Churchwardens for the parish?" He proposed that the Churchwardens should keep a register, to be called The Church Register Book, of persons entitled to vote in church vestry, and any person who desired that his name should not be on the register should simply sign a declaration asking the Churchwarden to omit his name without stating any reason; and then, his name being omitted in the register, he would take no part in the vestry meetings relating to church matters, and at the same time be exempt from any liability to be taxed for the repair of the church. Their Lordships would perceive that by this mode he maintained the power of every parish to make a rate or to refuse a rate; and that in cases where the parish had refused a rate for two years, then only those persons could vote for or against the rate who were on the register—those only would be entitled to vote a rate which they alone would have to pay. He trusted that the provisions of this law would reconcile various conflicting views on this question, and he was sure that their Lordships would give the Bill an impartial consideration. He, for one, at all events, should feel that he had made an humble endeavour to remove a state of things which was a great grievance to the Church, a great source of danger, and which, as long as it continued would be a constant source of irritation and hostility. The noble Duke then presented