Lords Sitting of 27 May 1873

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Register for Parliamentary and Municipal Electors* (133); Local Government Board (Ireland) Provisional Order Confirmation (No. 2)* (134).
Second Reading—Referred to Select Committee—Colonial Church (118).
Committee—Metropolitan Tramways Provisional Orders (No. 2)* (114).
Committee—Report—(£12,000,000) Consolidated Fund*.
Report—Tramways Provisional Orders Confirmation* (92).
Third Reading—Local Government Board (Ireland) Provisional Order Confirmation* (115), and passed.

COLONIAL CHURCH BILL [H.L.]—(No. 118)
(The Lord Blachford.)

SECOND READING.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
LORD BLACHFORD,in moving that the Bill be now read a second time said, the colonial Church was suffering under two grievances—one might be called the Episcopal, the other the clerical grievance. With regard to the former, the Crown had by Letters Patent created colonial bishoprics, giving to the Bishops and their successors a corporate character and diocesan jurisdiction, and it had continued these corporations, as vacancies occurred, by similar Letters Patent. The Judicial Committee had decided in the Natal case that where independent Legislatures have existed the Crown had had no power of giving this jurisdiction, and the Crown had in consequence discontinued the issue of Letters

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Patent, not only in these but in all other cases. The consequence was, that the legal mode of continuing these corporations being no more, the corporations themselves would come to an end, and the endowments of the bishoprics would be left without any legal owners. The Bill enabled the Crown to remedy this injustice, by enabling the future elected Bishops to succeed to the endowments of the patented Bishops. This was to he done on application of the clergy and laity of the diocese, made through the Bishop, with sufficient notice to objectors—important objections to be referred to a committee of the Privy Council. The clerical grievance arose under an Act of 59 Geo. III., which declared that a clergyman ordained by a colonial Bishop, not having jurisdiction or not residing in his diocese, should not be thereby made capable—
"in any way or on any pretence whatever of holding preferment in her Majesty's dominions, or of officiating in any place or in any manner as minister of the Established Church of England and Ireland."
As re-ordination was out of the question, an ordination which qualified disqualified; and this clause inflicted a permanent incapacity on those whom it struck. It struck clergy ordained by Bishops declared by the Natal judgment to have no jurisdiction; and it further struck all clergy ordained by colonial Bishops hereafter appointed, who in the absence of Letters Patent would have no jurisdiction cognizable by law—except so far as that jurisdiction was accidentally supplied, if it ever was or could be supplied, by colonial legislation. It therefore incapacitated in this sweeping and stringent way a large, an increasing, and, what was almost worse, an unascertainable body of colonial clergymen. This grievance might be removed by little more than a prospective and retrospective repeal of the statute which inflicted it. But to do no more than this would merely be to add a patch to a piece of patchwork alike unjust and confused, which would bear no more mending [to show this the noble Lord read a short summary of the results of the existing law,] and which might be reduced to order by a single firm touch of common sense. Ordination was a ceremonial condition of ecclesiastical employment, which could not be better or worse like education, but was either absolutely
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good or absolutely bad. Why then should they inquire what Bishop ordained a clergyman more than what Vice-Chancellor conferred his doctor's degree. The reason was obvious. The English Church had practically no check on ecclesiastical appointments. Any man might buy a living, present a friend or himself to it, and force the Bishop to institute him, however notoriously unfit, unless that unfitness could be proved to the satisfaction of a Court of Law. But proof of this kind might, in the most scandalous cases, be wholly unattainable. How was it then that the appointments were so miraculously inoffensive as they were? Partly owing to the conscience of patrons, partly owing to the general poverty of the incumbencies, but mainly because the Bishops, though they had no substantial check on appointments, had an absolute discretion in giving or refusing ordination, and so a most effectual cheek on the obtaining a qualification for employment, and because the mode of appointing the English Bishops and their responsibility to each other and to the public opinion of the English Church were such as to ensure a wholesome vigilance in the exercise of that discretion. But these securities only exist in the case of ordination by English Diocesans. In all other cases what was wanted, and all that was wanted, was to enable the English Diocesan to exercise, on the occasion of appointment, that discretion which he bad not had the opportunity of exercising on occasion of ordination. And this would be effected by applying to all cases alike the principle already adopted by Parliament in the Scottish Episcopalian Church Act. This the Bill did with a modification which had been considered requisite by those competent to judge. It would be observed that the principle on which these restrictions were imposed applied directly to the now disestablished Church of Ireland. He (Lord Blachford) though convinced that this application was in point of reason unavoidable, would have hesitated to submit it to the House, but for the fact that the bulk of the Bishops, as far as he knew, considered it proper, and that those who thought otherwise considered that the question would be properly raised by submitting the Bill in its present shape. As the case stood, he proposed the repeal of a string of statutes enumerated

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in the Schedule; and with regard to the capacitating effect of colonial and other ordinations, the substitution of two clauses taken in the main from the Scottish Episcopalian Church Act.
Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Lord Blackford.)
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYsaid, the intricate nature of the subject was such that no other person but the noble Lord could have dealt with it and brought it under the attention of their Lordships. The noble Lord was the only man in England who understood the subject, and that was the reason why the Episcopal Bench had handed it over to him to deal with. And he thought the Bishops were fully warranted in imposing the task on the noble Lord, because he believed the noble Lord had had a hand in the establishment of a system which had given rise to the difficulties which the Bill was intended to remove. He (the Archbishop of Canterbury) held in his hand a document, which showed the great addition which had been made during the past quarter of a century or so to the Bishoprics and ecclesiastical property of our colonies. It appeared from this document that in 1841, when the Colonial Bishoprics Fund was first established, there were only 10 Colonial Bishoprics in existence, and that the total number of Colonial and Missionary Bishoprics now was 55; that 30 diocesan and four provincial Synods had been established; and that in seven dioceses the number of clergy had risen from 121 to 509. Their Lordships could therefore see that the question involved did not concern a few persons only, or a small amount of property. He did not think that the intricacies which had been the cause of such embarrassment could be attributed to ecclesiastical legislation. When the extension of the colonial episcopate was begun, it was little expected that Law Officers who had advised the issue of Letters Patent would, a few years afterwards, when they had risen to more elevated posts, decide that those Letters Patent were not worth the paper on which they were written; or that after one Court had, with great distinctness, pronounced them to be valueless, another would declare that they created corporations which could hold property. It seemed to him that there was only one course open to Parliament by which
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what was so justly complained of could be remedied—namely, that of making a clean sweep of the whole of the existing legislation on the subject. That was the course proposed in the Bill of the noble Lord, and although for a long time he (the Archbishop of Canterbury) held an adverse opinion to that, and many colonists were still of that opinion, it had been proved that whatever Government was in power the new system was maintained, and therefore he thought that the best course was to abandon the old policy that had been pursued, and that it should be left to the Churches in the colonies to accommodate themselves in the best way they could to the altered circumstances in which they might find themselves. He had known of clergymen ordained in the colonies officiating in the diocese of London who did so in violation of the law, and who had no idea that they were acting illegally. In the case of these clergymen marriages had at times been celebrated, respecting the legality of which doubts might be raised under the existing state of the law. It was nearly time that this state of things should be remedied. As to the application of the Bill to the Irish Church, while he thought those who were promoting the Bill could scarcely accept the Amendment which he understood was to be moved by a noble Lord, he believed he might say for his most rev. and right rev. Brothers that they would be most desirous to make an exception in favour of the Irish Church if it were possible to do so, because they sympathized with the Bishops and clergy of the Irish Church, and looked upon them as ministers of a sister Church, teaching the same doctrine as was taught by the Church of England, and animated by a similar spirit. With regard to the Protestant Episcopal Church of Scotland, he well understood that some astonishment would be created among the people of Scotland when they found themselves included in a Bill having reference to the colonies; and it might be that they would say they were treated as a portion of the colonial possessions of Great Britain, instead of as part of the United Kingdom. He was quite certain that no indignity was meant, and he hoped that no class of persons in Scotland would look upon it in that light. The fact, he believed, was that it was considered advisable that the Acts to

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which this point referred should be repealed. There was another matter to which the noble Lord did not refer, but regarding which Notice of Amendment had been given—namely, the interest of the representatives of persons who had left endowments to the colonial churches. We knew that very little attention had of late been paid to the wishes of pious Founders who were no longer alive, but he hoped these wishes would be attended to in the case of persons still living. On the whole, he could recommend the Bill to the favourable consideration of their Lordships.
THE DUKE OF RICHMONDconcurred in what had fallen from the most rev. Prelate with regard to the intricacy of the subject, and how much they were indebted to the noble Lord who had brought it forward for introducing this Bill. The measure was purely of a colonial character. Its title was colonial, and its objects ought to be purely colonial. It was because the noble Lord had gone beyond the real object of the Bill, and proposed to include in its scope Scotland and Ireland, that he felt bound to offer some objection to it. The Bill proposed to remove two great grievances—namely, an episcopal grievance, and a clerical grievance, and those grievances were felt only by the Colonial Bishops and clergy. He should have thought enough had been done with the Irish Church to leave the rest in peace without any Irish disturbance. He confessed he could not see what the grievances of the Colonial Church had to do with the Irish Church. And not satisfied with including the Irish Church, the noble Lord proposed to subject the Protestant Episcopalian Church of Scotland to its provisions also. As a Scottish Episcopalian he objected to being dealt with under such a Bill as this. The Bill would interfere with the status of the clergy of the Irish Church, because all of them, except those ordained before the 1st of January, 1871, would be placed on exactly the same footing as the colonial clergy. There would be a similar interference with the status of the clergy of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, because the Bill would repeal the 27 & 28 Vict c. 94. The Act now in existence with regard to Scotland was by no means complicated. It was, on the contrary, a very simple measure. It consisted of six clauses, and it gave satisfactory facilities
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to do all the Episcopalian Church of Scotland required. He had no objection to deal with the colonial grievances; but it was not necessary that the Church of Scotland should be dealt with in the inconvenient and injurious manner it was proposed to deal with it under this measure. He had no objection to the principle of the Bill as regarded the colonies; but he entirely objected to the Scottish Episcopal Church being introduced into it, and in Committee he would move that nothing therein contained should be taken as applying to the clergy of the Episcopal Church of Scotland.
THE EARL OF BELMORE,in referring to a section in the Irish Church Act of 1870, which provided that all enactments heretofore relating to the United Church of England and Ireland, should be distributive—subject to the provisions of that Act—to show that it reserved the rights of the clergy of that Church so far as related to their status, said, he did not object to so much of the Bill as came properly under its title; but he did object to the clause of the Bill which seemed to disqualify the clergy of the Church of Ireland, ordained since the passing of the Irish Church Act, from holding benefices and exercising their spiritual functions in England in the same manner as those ordained before the Act. This, the clause did, by professing to save the rights of the latter, which did not want saving, and so by inference it would put the newly ordained clergy in a worse position than, he contended, they were at present. To make a distinction now would be extremely invidious, and the future clergy of Ireland would stand in the same position as the existing ones so long as the general Synod of Ireland had the good sense not to alter the present form of ordination. If any alteration should be made in that service the position of the clergy might be altered. The Statute of Uniformity forbade any one to hold preferment or administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the Church of England who had not been ordained according to the English ordinal unless he had "formerly" received episcopal ordination, and this word "formerly" was held by some authorities to refer to ordination previous to the passing of the Act of Uniformity itself, and not to episcopal ordination received by the

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clergyman before he came to take the preferment. He much feared that if the Irish Church varied her form of ordination from the English one, her clergy thereafter ordained would find themselves shut out from preferment in England. He intended in Committee to move the exclusion of those provisions of the Bill which referred to the Church of Ireland.
THE EARL OF COURTOWNsaid, that a proposal was made in the late sittings of the Irish Synod to alter the Ordination Service, but it was rejected. The Archbishop of Dublin brought this Bill under the notice of the Synod, and a Petition to Parliament against the passing of that portion of the Bill which affected the Irish Church was adopted unanimously which he had presented to the House. The separation caused by disestablishment was a political act and was adopted for political reasons, it therefore caused pain to Irish churchmen to see it followed by a Bill which appeared to them one of spiritual pains and penalties. The Irish Church was at present in communion with the Church of England, and hoped to continue so. It was the opinion of eminent lawyers that the Irish Church Act did not affect the position of the Irish clergy in England, and that in fact it was the same as it was before the Irish Church Act was passed. It seemed ungenerous on the part of the promoters of this Bill and the English Church to deal with the Irish clergy in the way proposed, because formerly English clergymen were glad to cross the Channel to accept the Irish Bishoprics, and at one time nearly the whole of the bench of Bishops were Englishmen. He would repeat that the Irish Church was most anxious to remain in close commuion with the English Church.
LORD CAIRNSsaid, that the noble Lord who had charge of the Bill had made out very clearly two grievances; the one in reference to those Bishops in the Colonies who had suffered by reason of certain decisions in the Courts of this country, and the other in reference to clergymen ordained in the Colonies. The Bill was intituled a "Colonial Church Bill," and if it were confined to the Colonies he should not object to it; but he did object to the repeal of Acts which affected the Irish Church. Section 8 of the Bill gave power to the Archbishops
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of Canterbury and York to consecrate Bishops for the Colonies and foreign countries without the Royal licence; but the noble Lord could not mean that they would have power of scattering as many Bishops as they liked over Scotland and Ireland. He strongly recommended that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORKsaid, that, whatever it might mean, it was not intended by the 8th clause to dispense with the licence of the Crown. It was a matter of detail, and could be dealt with in Committee. He thought that the words "elsewhere than in England" were too wide, and might be struck out. He wished to disclaim in the strongest manner anything like hardness or want of sympathy with the Irish Church in her trouble and distress. This was a Bill not of exclusion, but of inclusion; it showed the terms upon which the clergy of all other Churches might come into the English Church. The wish was to put the Bishops in a position to approve of other than English clergymen coming into the English Church. This was a scheme not to repel any, but to welcome all on such conditions as might seem to be reasonable and just.
LORD CAIRNSpointed out that the Irish clergy were under no disability whatever, and that they wished to remain as they were at present.
THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYsaid, he thought they ought all to be indebted to the noble Lord (Lord Blachford) for his attempt to deal with a complicated and, he was almost going to say, an unintelligible subject. He should be glad—without, of course, pledging himself to details, which could only be properly discussed in Committee—to assist his noble Friend in arriving, if possible, at a satisfactory solution, a result which would probably be furthered if his noble Friend were to accept the advice of the noble and learned Lord opposite (Lord Cairns), and to refer the Bill to a Select Committee.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCHsaid, that Scotland had been taken by surprise on learning that the Scotch Episcopal Church had been included in the Bill. Such a measure ought to be confined to the Colonial Church, leaving Ireland and Scotland to be dealt with by a separate Bill. He trusted that the Bill would be referred to a Select Committee.
THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTERtrusted that the noble Lord (Lord Blachford) would adopt the suggestion that the Bill should be referred to a Committee upstairs. Of the two alternatives suggested, that the Bill should be pared down to a simple enactment of matters affecting the Colonial Church, or that the whole question should be thoroughly considered by a Select Committee, he much preferred the latter course.
THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, that the view which he took of the question as to the consecration of Bishops in England was that if all the Acts referred to in the Bill were out of the way there would still remain the Act of Uniformity, which included within it, in the Ordination service, the consecration of Bishops; and the Book of Common Prayer showed that it was necessary that the Royal mandate should be produced at a particular part of the service. It was, no doubt, a subject which required serious consideration, and therefore he agreed that it ought to be referred to a Select Committee.
LORD BLACHFORD,in reply, said, he would accept the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord.
Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and referred to a Select Committee.
And, on Thursday, June 12, the Lords following were named of the Committee:—

Abp. Canterbury.

E. Kimberley.

Abp. York.

V. Canterbury.

D. Richmond.

V. Eversley.

M. Salisbury.

Bp. Winchester.

M. Abercorn.

Bp. Lichfield.

E. Doncaster.

L. Brodrick.

E. Belmore.

L. Cairns.

E. Chichester.

L. Hatherley.

E. Grey.

L. Lisgar.

E. Harrowby.

L. Blachford.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (NO. 2) BILL [H.L.]
A Bill to confirm a Provisional Order made by the Local Government Board for Ireland concerning the Local Government of the borough of Belfast—Was presented by The Earl of BESSBROUGH; read 1a. (No. 134.)
House adjourned at a quarter before Seven o'clock, to Monday, the 9th of June next, Eleven o'clock.