(NOS. 64–147.) COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 4 July 1876)

THE BISHOP OF EXETER,
in moving that the House do now go into Committee on the Bill, reminded their Lordships that it had been referred to a Select Committee, by whom it had been returned with important alterations which he thought would make it more acceptable—especially in respect of the increased representation of the parishioners on the commission. There was also a new clause in lieu of Clause 19 (Site of any Church to be sold to be first offered to Town Council), which applied the machinery of Provisional Orders by the Secretary of State, to be confirmed by Act of Parliament, to the sale of the site of any church pulled down. He hoped their Lordships would pass the Bill, as amended, through Committee.

THE EARL OF LIMERICK
appealed to the most rev. Prelate whether, at that advanced period of the Session, he could hope to carry through both Houses of Parliament this year a Bill of considerable importance in a form very different from that which it bore on the second reading.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY,
in answer to a noble Lord who objected to the clause on the ground that it involved the desecration of consecrated places, said, he had some slight responsibility in that matter. He entirely agreed with the noble Lord in his dislike to the sale 939 of those sites, on the ground that it was a blow to that reverence for the dead which still existed among us, and which it was desirable to preserve. In the Select Committee he had therefore made a Motion the effect of which would have been to prevent the sale of sites; but when they came to a division upon it the Committee was equally divided, and therefore by the technical rule the decision was against him. But in that division he found against him two noble Lords on his own side of the House who were both earnest and distinguished Churchmen. In the circumstances, knowing how the Committee was composed, it was evident to him that in some form or other the dominant feeling of their Lordships' House would be in favour of permitting, under whatever safeguards and restrictions, the sale of sites. As the law now stood, any one could introduce a Private Bill into Parliament to authorize the sale of the site of a church which had been pulled down. The Bill, as altered by the Select Committee, substituted the Provisional Order for the Private Bill; and as the clause provided that under the new system all such sales were subject to all the checks and safeguards formerly required—such as the consent of the Bishop and of the Home Secretary, he conceived that if such sales were to be permitted at all it would be impossible to surround them with greater precautions.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
explained that the Bill would extend the union of benefices from boroughs to counties, or to benefices one of which was situated within the borough, the other in the county. The Bishop must consent to a scheme for a union of county benefices, and there would be a commission, as in the case of a borough. On 940 that commission would sit two laymen selected by the vestries of the two benefices which were proposed to be united, and a third layman would be appointed by the chairman of the quarter sessions of the county. The majority on the commission would consist of laymen appointed by those who were interested in the matter. The evil which this Bill proposed to remedy was one very familiar to many of their Lordships. It was the case of a rich living outside a town, from which probably under the action of the old system of Poor Laws all cottages had been got rid of, and of a poor living inside the town with a large and poor population. The Bill proposed that in such a case the rich benefice should be combined with the contiguous benefice. He was of opinion that the guards proposed by the Bill against abuses were quite sufficient.