BILL PRESENTED. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 27 May 1880)

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I rise in fulfilment of the promise made in Her Majesty's gracious Speech from the Throne to submit to your Lordships a measure to put an end to the controversies which have arisen with respect to burials in churchyards and cemeteries. My Lords, it is a difficult subject; and I cannot anticipate anything like universal agreement upon it; but there are two points on which, unless I greatly deceive myself, it is not likely that there will be any difference of opinion. One is that it is desirable that this controversy, always of a painful character, should be terminated, and that some settlement should be arrived at; and the other is this—that the present state of the law relating to burials is anomalous and unsatisfactory, and one which cannot safely—I had almost said cannot possibly—be allowed to exist any longer. My Lords, what is that state of the law? It is this, and I venture to call it an anachronism, a contradiction of the times in which we live. There is a civil right of universal necessity and of great importance, a right of burial; and that 492 is fettered by conditions which are ecclesiastical, and which affect large numbers of Her Majesty's subjects in a manner inconsistent with the principles and practice of religious liberty. When the case is so stated there can be no difference of opinion, at least upon this point—that such a state of the law ought no longer to be allowed to exist. I have said—and it is, no doubt, the foundation upon which I proceed—that there is a civil right of burial belonging to all Her Majesty's subjects in this country. I know that there are persons who have sometimes taken upon themselves to controvert that statement of the law, acting under a belief which is based upon a misunderstanding of some scattered phrases which are to be found in a few of the books upon this subject. I do not, however, anticipate that anyone really acquainted with legal doctrines and principles will dispute my statement that the right, to which I have referred does exist, and that it is a civil and a temporal right, given by the custom of the Realm, and by the Common Law to all Her Majesty's subjects. If it would not detain your Lordships too long, I could quote from many ancient and undoubted authorities—from Bishop Gibson, from decisions of the Common Law Courts, and from decisions of that great Ecclesiastical Judge, Lord Stowell; but all that learning may be found digested in a well-known book, Burn's Ecclesiastical Law. Sir William Scott, in 1820, referred to these authorities, and asserted that the absolute right extended as far as, but probably extended no further than, mere interment of the corpse in the churchyard—that is to say, in consecrated ground. This law is not only established by the custom of the Realm, and by the Common Law, but it rests upon natural necessity and legal obligation. In one of the cases decided early in the last century, the law was enforced against a clergyman by the Court of King's Bench, by whom it was said that if that right did not exist there would be no place where a man who was not a landowner could be buried; and it was laid down by that Court, on more than one occasion, that a clergyman who refused burial to any parishioner was liable not only to ecclesiastical censure but to civil penalties, and might be proceeded against by indictment or information. Every householder is by law re- 493 sponsible for the burial of any person dying within his house, under penalties, and for taking the body to the churchyard when there is no other lawful place, and every clergyman obstructing the burial in the churchyard is also liable to penalties. It is sometimes said that the churchyard is the clergyman's freehold; but the clergyman only represents the property in the land in his corporate and official character in trust for others; and a learned civilian of the last century, whose opinion is quoted as an authority in Dr. Phillimore's edition of Burn's Ecclesiastical Lam, stated that the surface of the churchyard alone belonged to the clergyman, and that the interior part of the ground belonged to the parishioners for the purpose of burial. That view of the law has been enforced over and over again by statute. In 1808 a statute was passed with reference to the burial of the bodies of persons who had lost their lives through ships being wrecked at sea and which had been cast on shore, by which it was enacted that, without any inquiry as to religion or to nationality, they should be buried in the churchyard of the parish within which they were cast on shore. By another enactment in 1844, for the burial of poor persons in the receipt of parochial relief, it is provided that, without inquiry into their creed or whether they were or were not capable by ecclesiastical law of having the Service of the Church of England read over them, they shall all be buried in the churchyard of the parish in which they were chargeable, or in which they may die. There are by ecclesiastical law three classes of cases in which the Burial Service of the Church of England cannot be performed over the bodies of persons who are buried. In the first place, there is the class of excommunicated persons, to which I need not now more particularly refer, as the punishment of excommunication has fallen into disuse. Then there is the class of unbaptized persons; and, thirdly, there is the class of those unhappy persons who die by their own hands. With regard to the class of unbaptized persons, it includes not only those who by the negligence of their parents or otherwise die in infancy without being baptized, but also the numerous and important denomination of professing Christians in this country who call themselves Baptists, who do not administer the rite of baptism to children 494 before they come to years of discretion, and among whom many remain unbaptized after they have grown up, and are sometimes admitted, though unbaptized, to full Communion. The Society of Friends also does not regard baptism as necessary. By the ecclesiastical law of the country the whole of this numerous and important class of persons who may die unbaptized are incapable of having the Burial Service of the Church of England performed over their bodies, although they have a settled legal title to be buried in the churchyard—a legal title which was definitely settled a century and a half ago by the Court of King's Bench, in the case of the Vicar of Daventry, who had refused to allow the body of a woman of the Baptist persuasion to be buried in the churchyard on the ground that she was unbaptized. The principle on which he proceeded was, indeed, the denial of the validity of lay baptism—a question since ruled against his view by the Ecclesiastical Courts. But the Court of King's Bench, while compelling him to allow the interment—which he did, without any service—treated the point as to baptism, and the question whether she was entitled to the ministrations of the Church, as merely spiritual matters, of which a temporal Court could not take cognizance. With regard to the case of those unhappy persons who die by their own hands, your Lordships know that until lately there was a barbarous custom, by which a person against whom a Coroner's Jury had returned a verdict of felo-de-se was to be buried in the public highway, with indignities which I cannot bring myself more particularly to mention. This indecent state of things was altered in 1823, when Parliament enacted that the bodies of those unhappy persons should be buried by order of the Coroner in the churchyard after the hour of sunset, of course without the Service of the Church. My Lords, it appears to me that nothing could be more emphatic than the manner in which the Legislature has, by these several enactments, placed its stamp upon the doctrine that there is an absolute and indefeasible right of burial in the churchyard which belongs to every citizen of this country, without distinction of Church or Creed. That being so, I now come to the question of the conditions under which that admitted 495 civil right of every citizen of this country is granted by law; and when I state those conditions, I think that it will be apparent to everybody that there is now no alternative but either to take away the right altogether or to alter the conditions under which it is granted. One of these conditions is that the right of burial in the churchyard must be coupled with the performance over the body of the Burial Service of the Church of England in every case in which the ecclesiastical law permits that service to be used. Another is that, unless the ecclesiastical law permits that Service to be used, the interment must take place without any religious solemnity. As long as a deceased person was living, his civil rights and privileges were free from all ecclesiastical control; he was not compelled to accept any of the Services of the Church; but the moment he died—not he, indeed, for he had passed to a region where, happily, such questions are unknown, but his surviving relatives who shared his principles and feelings on religious matters, and have the same civil rights, are told—"Here your religious liberty stops; you must bury your deceased relative in the churchyard if you can find no other place"—which is not always possible, owing to distance and other reasons—"and if he is buried in the churchyard you must do so either in silence in the one case, or with the Service of the Church in the other." I am satisfied that there is an essential inconsistency in that state of the law, that it is not capable of argumentative defence, and must be altered in one direction or the other. And I do not believe that there will be found, if they speak their real minds, many Members of your Lordships' House, or many educated persons or thinking men in any class of society, who do not feel this to be a true and real grievance. When my noble Friend (Earl Granville) brought this question forward in 1876 he quoted the words of a Prelate whom, when he lived, we all admired, and many of us loved, and who was generally admitted to be one of the chief pillars of the Church—I mean Bishop Wilberforce, then of Winchester. I may be excused for reading again the words which were then read, and which, probably, may not be in the memories of many of your Lordships. Speaking on the 20th of June, 1871, the right rev. Prelate said— 496 It was a great hardship to those who dissented from the Church of England, and who objected to the Services used by the Church over the dead, that they should he in any way compelled, as the condition of a parishioner's right to be buried in the churchyard, to have that Service read at the burial…If he were a conscientious Dissenter, and disapproved of the Burial Service of the Church of England, he should feel it a hard thing to be obliged, on bearing the body of his child to its last resting-place, to have a Service read of which he disapproved, and which was repugnant to his feelings. The Dissenters had a real grievance, which it was the duty of Parliament to redress."—[3 Hansard, ccvii. 293.] I myself, on the same occasion, read words to exactly the same effect, which had been published in a leading journal by Mr. Ridley, who was at that time acting as Secretary to a Society which had been formed for the purpose of resisting the Bill introduced in the House of Commons by Mr. Osborne Morgan. Mr. Ridley said he thought there was a real grievance; though his mode of dealing with it would have been different from that suggested by Mr. Morgan. Not long since, a near relative of a noble Friend whom I see before me (the Marquess of Salisbury) introduced a Bill in the other House on this subject—I allude to Mr. Balfour, the Member for Hertford, a man of great ability and promise of distinction, who is likely to take a leading position on the Conservative side of the House of Commons. Mr. Balfour, in his speech, distinctly admitted the existence of a serious grievance, and I believe there are very few people who are not conscious of it in their hearts. I need not go further, except to say that some persons have endeavoured, not to deny the existence of a grievance, but to extenuate its importance and gravity by saying that it is small, diminishing, and so on. I, on the other hand, think that the Parliamentary history of the question shows that this grievance is far from being either small or diminishing; and, further, I do not think that any grievance, whatever its nature may be, which depends upon principle, can ever merit such a description. It certainly is not so regarded by those affected by it; and in this particular case the persons affected are a very numerous, important, and powerful class of Her Majesty's subjects. It is a great mistake to suppose that a grievance may not be felt by great numbers of 497 persons who, nevertheless, submit to the law as it stands, and accept the conditions which the law imposes upon them, rather than, at a time of mourning and distress, when the best feelings of our nature are stirred to their foundations, enter into the region of religious or theological strife. I should like to know what any of your Lordships would feel in similar circumstances if the case were reversed, and the power of prescribing particular rites of burial, or otherwise denying all liberty of devotion in your churchyards, were vested in the Roman Catholics, or in any body of Protestant Dissenters from whose views you conscientiously dissented. What I think likely is, that you would submit and endure rather than raise a question and stir up strife over the dead body of your wife, sister, brother, parent, or child. But would you feel the sense of wrong and grievance which such a state of things imposed upon you to be the less because you submitted to it? Instances have from time to time come to our knowledge of persons who have endeavoured, sometimes at the risk of very indecent and miserable scenes, to escape from this state of the law. Sir Morton Peto mentioned, some years ago, a case of certain Primitive Methodists in Norfolk who had been prosecuted by a clergyman because, having said prayers up to the entrance to the churchyard, but not beyond it, and having committed their dead to the ground, at the close of the Church Service they sang over the grave a hymn which was, in itself, perfectly unobjectionable. He, at the same time, mentioned instances in which a great and trying inconvenience had been submitted to by members of the Baptist body rather than endure the existing state of the law; that of having to carry their dead to long distances for the purpose of interment. Few of your Lordships can have forgotten the unhappy scene which took place, not long ago, at the funeral of one who had served Her Majesty in one of the highest capacities on the Bench of Justice. In the debates which took place in this House in 1877, a right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Lincoln) mentioned the occurrence at Upchurch of unauthorized hymn-singing at a funeral in the churchyard by members of a sect calling itself the Peculiar People; and I have read accounts of other pro- 498 ceedings, not permitted by law, having taken place at funerals in several parts of the country, particularly Lancashire. Your Lordships may depend upon it that this is not a case in which you can put the question aside, or decline to accept the responsibility of dealing with it, on the ground either that it is no grievance at all, or that it is an unimportant and a diminishing grievance. I will now put very briefly before your Lordships the state of the question as far as its Parliamentary history is concerned. In 1824, when the Church of Ireland stood in a position similar to that in which the English Church now stands, Mr. Plunket, afterwards Lord Plunket, then Attorney General for Ireland, passed through the House of Commons, with the approval and support of Lord Liverpool and the Tory Government of the day, a Bill involving the principle for which I now contend, which provided—conditionally, no doubt—for the burial of Roman Catholics and Protestant Nonconformists in the parish churchyards according to their own rites and with their own services. That Act was, in the first instance, permissive, and depended upon the consent of the clergy; but in the year 1868 a second Act was passed through Parliament, without any serious opposition from the Conservative Party, converting into an absolute right that which had previously been a conditional privilege. Prom those two Irish Acts I pass to what has taken place with regard to the Burial Laws in England. In 1861 Sir Morton Peto brought in a Bill in principle identical with that of Mr. Osborne Morgan; and from that time to this, with the exception of four or five years, in which, from one cause or another, no measure was introduced, that and other Bills, or Resolutions to the same effect, have been continually before Parliament. In four successive years the House of Commons, and in three of them by a majority of from 60 to 70, affirmed the second reading of Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill. It is true that in the last Parliament, in which we know that a Conservative Government had a large majority, which I suppose would not be overstated if I called it 50—Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill or Resolutions to the same effect were three times rejected; but by what majorities? On the first occasion, in 1875, by a majority of 14; in the next year, 499 1876, by an increased majority of 31; and the third time, in 1878, by a majority of only 16—in a Conservative House with all the power and influence of the Government opposed to the Bill. One cannot be surprised to know, as one does know from declarations publicly made by men who voted reluctantly in, I think, one or more of those majorities, that they did so under a pressure which they resented, and of which they felt the impolicy and unreasonableness. I now come, my Lords, to what occurred in this House in two consecutive years—1876 and 1877. In the first of those years my noble Friend now Foreign Secretary moved a Resolution on the subject. I will not now refer to the terms of it, except to say that they were the same to which your Lordships afterwards agreed on Lord Harrowby's Motion; but I will remind your Lordships that it was rejected by a considerable majority—a majority of 56. In the next year the Government—who perhaps had contributed to that majority by intimating that they were likely to take up the question and endeavour to arrive at such a settlement of it as they could recommend—introduced a Bill dealing with the general subject of interments and the laws relating to burial in their relation to the public health. In that Bill was embodied a clause providing for a universal dispensation from the use of the Service of the Church, in favour of all persons who might object to it, and permitting, in all such cases, silent burial. My noble Friend thought that that was not a settlement of the question, and never could be; and accordingly he renewed, I think by a Motion on the second reading, the proposition he had made in the previous year. Again he was defeated, by the less considerable majority of 39. But, my Lords, when the Bill passed into Committee, a noble Earl—I do not know whether he is in the House, but one respected by all your Lordships, the Earl of Harrowby, as good a Christian and as sincere a Churchman as anyone who sits here—moved an Amendment to the Bill. Lord Harrowby was not defeated, for exactly the same number voted for and against his pro-position, and it only failed to pass in that stage by reason of the rule of this House in favour of the negative, when votes are equal. It was, in these circumstances, natural that the Motion should be re- 500 newed at a later stage. On the Report Lord Harrowby again brought it forward, and then, notwithstanding the opposition of the Government—an opposition so serious, so deliberate, that they abandoned the Bill in consequence of the vote which was taken—the proposition was carried by a majority of 16 in a House of 238. Those persons must have been blind, indeed, who could not see that in that state of things a settlement of the question was near. I may now tell your Lordships that the Bill which I am about to ask your Lordships to read a first time follows upon the main point, as to the remedy which it proposes to apply to the admitted grievance of our Nonconformist brethren, and by which it seeks to settle this painful and long-pending question, the principles, and, with only formal changes, the terms of the Amendment carried in this House on Lord Harrowby's Motion. I should not forget to mention, in passing, that some of the greatest ecclesiastical authorities in this House concurred with the majority on that occasion in thinking that mode of settlement to be just and prudent. What were, what are now, the alternatives? No one, my Lords, supposes it to be possible to take away the civil right. That, directly, has never been proposed. Something, no doubt, which has been imagined to be capable of producing the same effect substantially has been very often proposed and urged on grounds which I think I shall show your Lordships are fallacious. It has been thought that you might settle the question by providing separate unconsecrated burial-grounds everywhere for all Nonconformists. There are a great many objections to that proposal. The first is, that it is impracticable. How is it to be done? Do you think that, for the sake of avoiding the settlement of the question to which public opinion points, and to which all persons point who are aggrieved by the present law, Parliament will ever impose, upon all those parishes in the country which do not for any other reason endeavour to obtain them, the necessity of providing at their own or the public expense additional unconsecrated burial-grounds? I venture to say that the idea is entirely preposterous. It has, indeed, been proposed in several of the Bills which have been brought forward; for when I spoke of the earliest—those of 501 Sir Morton Peto and Mr. Osborne Morgan—and of the discussion in this House on the Motion of Lord Harrowby, I did not mention other Bills which have been brought in, one by my noble Friend the late Lord Steward, in 1871, which was supported by Bishop Wilber-force, and others, and afterwards by Mr. Talbot and Mr. Wilbraham Egerton, to provide separate and additional burial-grounds. But it has never yet been proposed to do this universally, or except by means so far optional, that, where the will is wanting, they must necessarily fail; and only one Bill of that kind—Mr. Marten's, to which I will presently refer—has ever become law. Besides these, there were Bills introduced by Mr. Balfour and Mr. Ritchie, following, one of them unconditionally, and the other conditionally, upon the consent of incumbents, the principle of Lord Harrowby's clauses. With respect to the Bills for establishing separate and distinct burial-grounds, I not only say that the remedy is impossible; but I take issue upon the question whether that remedy is desirable. I say it is not. I adopt the words in which Mr. Plunket, in 1824, rejected a similar proposal as bad in principle. He said— The allotment of separate burial-places would not only, like the giving separate places of education, tend to strengthen the line of demarcation already existing…hut it would go to outrage the very commonest and yet most sacred feelings of humanity. It would have the effect, in many cases, of separating families as to their places of burial. A husband could not be buried with his wife, a brother near his brother, a father by the side of his son."—[2 Hansard, x. 1461.] I cannot, my Lords, forget a painful case that was brought before the Court of Criminal Appeal some years ago, when Sir Frederick Pollock was Chief Baron. It was the case of a son who was a Churchman, whose mother, being a Dissenter, was buried in a Dissenting burial-ground with, I think, two children and a second wife of the father. On the death of the father the son, as a Churchman, determined to bury him in the churchyard, and not enduring the notion of separating in death his father's and his mother's remains, he gained access to the Nonconformist burial-ground, disturbed the ground and the remains which were buried there, and unlawfully took away, after the lapse of several years, the corpse of the mother, 502 in order that it might be placed in the churchyard with that of his father at the time of the father's burial. Although the action was justly condemned by law, and is not likely to find imitators, yet I think it is a good illustration of the strength and depth of those feelings which make us desire to lie in death near to those whom we have loved in life. This is, in fact, one of the reasons why, so far from the notion of separate burial-grounds being likely to settle this question, the attempt to establish them only enlarges the area of the difficulty; and the Government, in endeavouring to deal with the whole question, have been obliged to include within the scope of their proposals consecrated ground in cemeteries as well as churchyards, because they find that, from the changes which occur in families, the consequence of maintaining that separation, even in cemeteries, is to prevent the members of families from being laid together, to outrage natural feeling, and also to violate rights of property which the law has permitted to be acquired in such cemeteries and burial-grounds. The different Burial Acts enable burial boards and cemetery authorities to sell rights of burial and to appropriate them to members of families, so that a particular family is entitled to a particular right for many years, or until it is exhausted. When they go to exercise that right of property, they are placed exactly in the position they would have been in the churchyard; and, in truth, these public burial-grounds and cemeteries, being provided as parochial grounds in lieu of others which have been closed, it naturally follows that you must deal with them on the same principles. Well, my Lords, I should have thought I had said enough on this branch of the case but for a peculiar event in legislation which took place last year. A Bill, which is now known as Mr. Marten's Act, introduced by the then Member for Cambridge, passed through the House of Commons without much, if any, discussion, and, as some persons thought, rather by good management than because the House understood and approved its principle. When it came here, some of us took the liberty to suggest that it was not likely to be successful as an attempt to settle this question. It was put forward as a sanitary measure; but most persons thought that the objects really 503 aimed at by its promoters were not chiefly sanitary. The result is, as was anticipated, that it has practically turned out to be a dead letter. Those who look at its provisions are not likely to be surprised at this result. It incorporates other Acts, and when you put them together you find that it cannot be put into operation without a gift of money or ground, or without resources provided out of rates. It is true that the Local Government Board might require it to be put into operation in rural places. But the Local Government Board would be unwilling to make such an order on any locality unless the ratepayers were tolerably unanimous. If any burial-ground is obtained under the Act, it must be fenced round with walls or iron rails eight feet high, and that is a burdensome expense. If any part of it is consecrated there must be a chaplain with a salary, though no provision is made for the salary, and there must also be a chapel. The Local Government Board lost no time in sending out a Circular calling the attention of all parishes in the country to this important Act, and suggesting how advantageous it might be to the public health and otherwise if its provisions were acted upon. It has been in operation nearly a year, and I have a Return showing what its operation has been. I am also indebted to a learned gentleman who lost no time in producing an edition of the Act, with a suitable introduction and notes, for a copy of his work. The author, Mr. Baker, considers, and I believe quite correctly, that it will never be used for the purpose of providing any ground which is meant to be consecrated. Its provisions, as to such ground, are too burdensome; those of the Burial Acts are much better and more convenient. Of the real object of Mr. Marten's Act, or what he supposes to be such, he gives this description— There are many thousand parishes, sparsely populated, for which the machinery of a separate Board, for burial purposes would he at once burdensome and unnecessary. Nevertheless, the parochial churchyard is not in itself sufficient, by reason of a considerable proportion of the inhabitants being Nonconformists, who either object to the Church Burial Service, or over whom the last offices cannot legally or conscientiously be performed by the clergy. It is apprehended that for these sparse populations the Interments Act, 1879, will be found highly useful. There is a charming simplicity in that. You would think that all these parishes 504 would have come forward, in anxious haste, to avail themselves of this remedy. But the Local Government Board has sanctioned loans for cemeteries in four cases only, and only one of them for a rural district. In six other cases the sanitary authorities propose to provide cemeteries under the Act. In all, then, there are 10 cases of its adoption, or proposed adoption, out of those many thousand parishes, and of these, six are urban and not rural cases. It is really preposterous to suppose that parishes possessing churchyards in which there is still room for the population—and I am told that in Wales that is the rule rather than the exception—will tax themselves and their neighbours, and go to all the other expenses of that Act, for the sake of doing what nobody wishes for, who is at all interested. I may, therefore, lay it aside and say no more on the scheme for separate burial-grounds. I pass now to another suggested remedy; the permission of silent burial in the churchyard, whenever the Service of the Church of England is objected to. This was part of the plan of my noble Friend the late Lord Steward, in 1871; and it was also the plan of the late Government in 1877. It is very odd, my Lords, that a settlement of this grievance—which consists of two parts, the one compelling the use of the Church Service in certain cases, and the other compelling burial without any Christian service in other cases—should have been thought possible, by taking away one part of the grievance, and making the other universal. To those who have learnt, as most Christian bodies in England have learnt, from the example and practice of the Church of England, to regard with repugnance the neglect or omission of religious solemnities in the burial of their dead, there is a want which compulsory silent burial can never satisfy. Are you, in the name of the Church of England, to say that Christians who wish to bury their dead with a religious service shall use no religious form if they will not use yours? It is not only as a citizen, it is much more as a Churchman, that I protest against such a doctrine as that. If you cannot justify the imposition in the one case of the use of the Church Service by compulsion on the people, on what conceivable motion should you refuse to your fellow-Christians the power to use their own service, and deny them 505 the liberty of being as religious as they wish to be on these solemn occasions? Some, who feel this, have suggested that you should allow the use of services differing from those of the Church of England; but should prescribe or define by law what services they are to use. This was, in effect, the course taken in Mr. Plunket's and Mr. Monsell's Irish Acts, which said that the priests or ministers of churches or denominations, differing from the Established Church, might use in a churchyard the accustomed funeral services of their own churches or denominations. But a condition of this kind makes the liberty which you grant dependent upon an inquiry into the official character of every Nonconformist priest or minister, and into the customs of each particular Dissenting church or congregation. To any other mode of prescribing particular services there is the insuperable objection, that, instead of removing the grievance, it would only be varying its form, to those who object to having particular religious services imposed upon them by law. One more alternative still remains, which I should not have alluded to if it had not been advocated in 1877 by a right rev. Prelate, an ornament of this House, and one of the most eloquent Members of the Episcopal Bench. He desired to remove the grievance by allowing the parochial clergy, if they pleased, to give permission to Nonconformist ministers or others to use other services than that of the Church. That plan, my Lords, was tried in Ireland and failed; and in England, I cannot help thinking, it would produce greater irritation than anything else; because those clergy who refused permission and those who conceded it would be in the bitterest opposition to each other, while nothing could be more grievous to Nonconformists than that they should be met with concession in one parish and with refusal in the next. I do not think the right rev. Bench would be disposed to accept that alternative. I have now, my Lords, said all that is necessary to show that these alternatives do not hold water; and I would now say a few words as to some of the positive recommendations of the plan which the Government proposes. One of those positive recommendations is this—that while it gives direct relief to Nonconformists, while it consults their 506 scruples and gives them a full liberty as to the mode of burial coincident with their civil rights, on the other hand it tends indirectly to relieve the clergy from their present obligations in certain cases in which those obligations might be burdensome. The true ecclesiastical relation of Nonconformists to the Church is one which amply justifies the principle that the Church should bury them, if their friends desire that they should receive ecclesiastical burial. They have been baptized, and as such are recognized as members of the Church of Christ. They have never been excommunicated; for that can only take place by the sentence of a competent Court. And inasmuch as there are very many of them who, in truth, are not altogether alienated from the Church, it is well that the Church should, in death, acknowledge them to be entitled to her ministrations, if their surviving friends are willing that they should be so acknowledged. But there are cases in which the separation from the Church has been more absolute, and founded upon a more settled principle; cases of men who in their lives have assumed a persistent attitude of strong opposition to the Church, and who professed tenets very hostile and repugnant to those of the Church. The very same motive which in such cases would lead Nonconformists to desire not to have the Church Service forced on them, might also render it difficult for a conscientious clergyman to perform that Service. Every clergyman must feel it a profanation when that sacred and solemn Service is forced by law upon unwilling persons; and it is for the good of the Church, as well as the nation, that no such profanation should take place. What is relief, in such a case, to the Nonconformist, is also relief to the clergyman. I cannot help thinking that, but for some objections and fears, to which I will now advert, this would be generally understood by the clergy. One of those objections is associated with the sense of reverence justly and naturally felt by the clergy with respect to consecrated ground, and their fear is lest that ground should be desecrated. Now, there is no mystery in consecration, although the act is solemn and commendable. The ancient Romans thought that ground was consecrated by merely depositing in it the remains of the 507 dead. That is an idea with, which I confess I have some sympathy; but a more formal manner of dedication has been for many centuries practised in the Christian Church. In foreign countries there are two modes of consecration. One is to consecrate the ground entire, which is done by the Bishop, and this is the mode adopted in England; and the other is to consecrate each separate grave at each interment, which is done by the officiating minister. Some right rev. Prelates are reported to have lately expressed an opinion that it might be desirable to introduce that mode into England. But I beg your Lordships to remember that the consecration of a churchyard as practised in England is this and only this—the Bishop signs a deed; of which two forms, one used by Archbishop Whitgift, under Queen Elizabeth, and the other by Archbishop Tenison, under Queen Anne, may be found in Bishop Gibson's work. Whitgift's form is this— We decree that all and every the persons who henceforth shall depart this life within the parish of—shall be buried and interred in this place; that it shall be for ever hereafter a cemetery and place of burial for the said parishioners and inhabitants, and shall have all the privileges belonging to a religious place set apart for public and Christian burial; and by these presents we so constitute and ordain. Archbishop Tenison's form is in these words— We decree the separation of this place from its former and from all other profane and common uses; and assign, dedicate, and consecrate it as a cemetery or holy place for the burial of the faithful dying within the said parish, and of all others entitled to be there buried; and we openly and publicly pronounce, decree, and declare that it shall for all future time remain so separated, assigned, dedicated, and consecrated. To the deed or act of consecration, of which these are two examples, nothing is added, except a short prayer, not prescribed by authority. That which is now generally in use was, I believe, settled by Convocation in 1712; it recites the practice of holy men in all ages "to assign peculiar places, where the bodies of the saints may rest in peace and be preserved from all indignities," and it is a simple prayer to Almighty God to "accept this charitable work of ours in separating this portion of ground for that good purpose." I can understand that such a dedication, and the feelings 508 associated with it, constitute good reasons why nothing profane should be suffered in such a place. But in England it has not been deemed a profanation to lay in the churchyard, the consecrated ground, the remains of unbaptized persons, of those who have laid violent hands on themselves, and of strangers and foreigners, as to whom no one can tell whether they be baptized or not. If that involves no profanation, no desecration, how can it be profanation or desecration that any Christian Service used by any body of Christians according to their light should take the place of silent burial when the Church Service cannot be used? No one admires more than I do the Burial Service of the Church of England; no one is more attached than I am to the Church of England; but that any part of the Church Service has such special sanctity that the use of any other words in consecrated burial-grounds, without the ministrations of an ordained clergyman, would be profanation, is an idea of which no trace can be found in any authoritative formulary of the Church, and which I am sure the right rev. Bench will not uphold. With respect to things really inconsistent with the respect due to a place dedicated to a sacred use, sufficient safeguards will, I trust, be found in the Bill which I am about to lay upon your Lordships' Table. I must not pass over without notice two other objections. It is said that because Nonconformists do not contribute to the maintenance of churchyards, you are either to do nothing or make them contribute. To that there appears to me to be an obvious answer. No one is now bound by law to contribute to the maintenance of churchyards. I believe there are many Nonconformists who, if consideration were shown to their feelings, would be very likely to contribute not only to the churchyards, but to some other church objects. But, unless you are going to restore church rates in respect of churchyards, not only as to Nonconformists, but generally, such a condition cannot have place in a measure of this kind. I do not myself think it would be in the interest of the Church to restore church rates in any shape for any purpose whatever. The other objection, which I desire to notice, is that recent donations ought to be excepted from the Bill. I cannot agree with 509 that, although a recent donor myself. All donors of property given to be added to churchyards knew quite well that they were devoting that property to that public use; and, as long as the churchyard is used for the burial of the parishioners, under one law equally and indifferently applicable to every part of it, there is no reason whatever why that part should be taken back again, separated from the rest, and put under a different law. If the donors had been so minded, they might have created private trusts; and during the last 20 years, at all events, no one could have been ignorant that there was a great probability of this question being dealt with in the manner which is now proposed. Now, I will shortly state to your Lordships what we propose by the Bill. We propose that notice may be given by the relatives having the charge of any funeral, in the case of churchyards to the incumbent, and in the case of consecrated ground in public cemeteries to the chaplain, if there be one, and to the clerk of the burial board, that it is the desire of those persons that the body shall be buried without the Service of the Church. The minister is then excused from attending. The relatives of paupers who are to be buried by the Guardians may exercise the same right of giving notice. If the time proposed for the burial clashes with any Church Service, the minister is at liberty to alter it within reasonable limits. All existing regulations as to the position and making of the grave are to remain in force. That was one of the points included in Lord Harrowby's Amendment in 1877. All fees payable by law will still be payable by the same persons. The Act is only to apply to churchyards or cemeteries in which the deceased had a right of burial. Registration is provided for. Then there is a clause which says— At any burial under this Act all persons shall have free access to the churchyard or graveyard in which the same shall take place. The burial may take place, at the option of the person having the charge of or being responsible for the same, either without any religious service, or with such Christian and orderly religious service at the grave—[those were the words of Lord Harrowby's Amendment]—as such person shall think fit; and any person or persons who shall be thereunto invited, or be authorized by the person having the charge of or being responsible for such burial, may con-duet such service or take part in any religious act thereat. 510 There is a clause against any disorder or indecency in the manner of conducting such burials; also treating as a misdemeanour any wilful obstruction of such burial or permitted service. It says— Every person guilty of riotous, violent, or indecent behaviour at any such burial, or of wilfully obstructing the same, or who shall deliver any address, not being part of or incidental to a religious service permitted by this Act, and not otherwise permitted by any lawful authority, or who shall, under colour of any religious service or otherwise, in any such churchyard or graveyard, wilfully endeavour to bring into contempt or obloquy the Christian religion, or the belief, or worship of any church or denomination of Christians, or the members or any minister of any such church or denomination, or any other person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour. This, in substance and in form, with no more than a very slight verbal alteration, was agreed to by your Lordships in 1877. I am not one of those who think there is any probability of such disorders. I do not think they occurred under Lord Plunket's Act in Ireland. I have not heard of their occurrence in any of our public cemeteries; nor do I think them likely to occur in churchyards. But I do not, on that account, think that it would be right or prudent to omit to make provision against them; and the substance of the provision which I have read was included in Lord Harrowby's Amendment, and agreed to by your Lordships in 1877. There must, of course, be a possibility that, if no such provision were made, things not otherwise probable might happen, under the influence of those feelings of excitement and irritation which a long-protracted controversy is apt to engender, and which may not at once cease upon its settlement bylaw. I am sorry to say that feelings of that kind are by no means confined to one side in this controversy. I have myself received letters from highly respectable clergymen which might, perhaps, justify some uneasiness on my part, if I were to trust only to every man's good sense and discretion while under the operation of such feelings. The clause which I have read will sufficiently distinguish between what the law does and what it does not authorize, and will take reasonable security against obstruction on the one hand, and against profanation on the other. The Bill also deals with two other matters, which, although they do not affect the 511 Nonconformists, have appeared to the Government to be worthy of consideration from a different point of view. We have thought it right to relieve from legal penalties any clergyman officiating in unconsecrated ground with the Service of the Church, when such Service might otherwise be used. I find the present state of the law is that this may, in certain cases, be permitted by warrant from the Secretary of State. The Lord President of the Council has more than once alluded to a particular cemetery at Northampton which from some cause or other has remained unconsecrated, and yet it and other unconsecrated cemeteries are the only burial places for considerable numbers of people. We deem it right that all penalties should be taken away in the case of clergymen officiating in such places. The other point is this—It may be in the recollection of your Lordships that Archbishop Longley, some years ago, stated very strongly his view as to the impossibility in certain cases of the Burial Service of the Church of England being used by a clergyman. Tour Lordships may also remember that Lord Ebury more than once brought the same subject under your Lordships' notice. During the debates in 1877 two Amendments were moved, the one successfully by the most rev. Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, to enable and authorize a different Service from the Burial Service of the Church to be used at the discretion of the clergyman in the case of unbaptized children and others over whom the Church Service cannot be read. The Archbishop of York also moved an Amendment, which would have the effect of excusing the clergy from reading the Burial Service in certain cases of grievous scandal. That Amendment was not adopted by your Lordships; and there can be no doubt that the matter was full of difficulty, on account of the impossibility of defining, or ascertaining by any mode of inquiry, the cases to which such a relaxation of the clergyman's legal obligation could safely be applied without opening a door to greater evils. One reasonable suggestion thrown out in the course of those debates was, that the right rev. Bench should consider whether any modification in the form of the Church Service might be possible, by which the difficulty felt by the clergy in such cases might to some 512 extent be met. It so happened that the two Convocations were then, and had been for some years, sitting with Letters of Business from the Crown, and with authority to revise the Rubrics of the Church, and, among others, the Rubrics of the Office for the Burial of the Dead. Both Convocations have since made Reports to the Crown. They have made recommendations upon a variety of subjects, of which I need not now speak; and they have arrived at conclusions as to what it is really practicable and desirable to do on this particular subject. These conclusions, as expressed by the Convocation of Canterbury, will be found in one of the Schedules to the Bill which I now present. They have appeared to Her Majesty's Government to be reasonable and moderate; and I think they will be considered by your Lordships to be wisely conceived, and to avoid the difficulties with which the proposition formerly made was felt to be surrounded. The recommendations, in the material parts of which both Convocations were agreed—omitting some which are merely verbal or formal, when the full Church Service is to be used—are, first, the addition to the Rubric which specifies the cases in which the regular Office of the Church is not to be used, of the category of persons dying in the commission of any grievous crime; and in the express exception from that Rubric of persons dying by their own hands who are found to be of unsound mind, an exception which, I have no doubt, the law would already imply. Another important recommendation is, that the minister, at the request or with the consent of the kindred or friends of any deceased person—not otherwise—maybe at liberty to use an abridgment—that is to say, certain parts, and not the whole, of the ordinary Service. To these recommendations the Convocation of Canterbury alone has added one more, which is also of some importance, and which is substantially the same with the Amendment proposed by the most rev. Primate in 1877, and agreed to by your Lordships. According to that recommendation any clergyman will be at liberty, in cases in which the ordinary Burial Service of the Church cannot by law be used, to say or read over the grave, at the request of the kindred or friends of the deceased, other prayers taken from, the Book of 513 Common Prayer, and portions of the Holy Scripture approved by the Ordinary, under certain restrictions. It appeared to the Government that they might properly meet the reasonable wishes of the clergy upon this subject, by enabling them to act according to all or any of those recommendations of the two Convocations, without being subject to any penalties, ecclesiastical or civil; and the Bill contains a clause to that effect. We were anxious, as far as we could, to look at all parts of the question. My Lords, I will only add, in conclusion, that I decline, on this occasion, to go into the question of danger to the Church of England. I know that the Church of England has its dangers, and I believe the continuance of this as an unsettled question to be one of the most serious of them. I feel sure that no new danger will be added by this measure, and I hope and believe that by it a danger will be removed. I commend it to your Lordships as a measure founded, in intention certainly, and as I believe in fact, upon principles of justice and charity, upon a sound view of the true interest of the Church, and containing nothing inconsistent with her real principles. I commend it to your Lordships as a measure calculated, as far as it goes—certainly much more calculated than the present state of things—to promote the object for which we daily pray before commencing our deliberations, when we ask God to unite and knit together the hearts of all Her Majesty's subjects in true Christian love and charity one towards another.