§ THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURYmoved an Address for Returns from every Archbishop and Bishop holding a see in England, and from every ecclesiastical registry in England and Wales, of the officers engaged, the amount and nature of the business transacted, and the amount of fees received in their respective offices; likewise of the fee charged for marriage licences, and the number of licences issued in 1867, 1868, and 1869. He believed that no less than £60,000 a year was derived from those fees; and he therefore thought it was desirable that the fullest information should be afforded as to the sources from which they came, the persons to whom they were paid, and the duties which were performed in return for them.
THE BISHOP OF LONDONsaid, he would offer no objection to the Motion of the noble Earl, which, however, seemed rather inconsistent with the haste with which he had sought to press the second reading of his Ecclesiastical Courts Bill; for if their Lordships would take the trouble to look at that measure, they would see that the fees in question formed the very backbone of the system the noble Earl wished to establish—that portion of it, in fact, that had most recommended it to his own mind. In that measure the noble Earl proposed to pay out of those fees all the existing officers, or to give them compensation; to provide salaries for the Judges in future; to find salaries for the Judges of the Bishops' Courts, registrars, and secretaries; and to pay the costs of promoting suits. Nay, he looked forward to a time when those fees would provide better registries, and when there would even be a surplus applicable to the augmentation of small livings. All these were most important objects; but it now appeared that the calculations upon which the Bill was based had yet to be made, 717 for the noble Earl had come down to the House to ask for Returns showing the amount of the assets on which he was depending to defray the large expenditure that would be created by his Bill. He (the Bishop of London) had no objection whatever to make to the Returns; and he only hoped that they would show that the amount was anything like as large as the noble Earl contemplated—anything like sufficient to carry out a reform which he should be glad to see effected. It had, however, always struck him that the weak point of the noble Earl's scheme was that it was founded upon a calculation of receipts which he feared would be found completely inadequate for the purpose.
§ Motion agreed to.