Lords Sitting of 16 February 1888

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—
Pharmacy Acts Amendment * (13).
Second Reading—Cathedral Churches (2); Law of Distress Amendment (4).
PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL—First Reading—
Local Government (Ireland) (Bangor and Warrenpoint).*

QUEEN'S SPEECH—HER MAJESTY'S ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS.
THE LORD STEWARD OF THE HOUSEHOLD (The Earl of MOUNTEDGCUMBE)reported Her Majesty's answer to the Address as follows:—
My LORDS,
"I thank you for your Loyal and Dutiful Address.
"I receive with cordial satisfaction your assurances that you will take into careful consideration the measures which may be submitted to you, and I trust that, with your co-operation, they may be settled in such a manner as will effectually promote and increase the welfare and happiness of my faithful people."
[For Lords Address—see Appendix."]

QUEEN'S SPEECH—HER MAJESTY'S ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS.

  COMMITTEE OF SELECTION.
  The Lords following, viz:—

  E. Lathom. (L. Chamberlain.)

  L. Boyle. (E. Cork and Orrery.)

  E. Morley.

  L. Colville of Culross.

  with the Chairman of Committees, were appointed a Committee to select and propose to the House the names of the five Lords to form a Select Committee for the consideration of each opposed Private Bill.

  STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE.
  Appointed: The Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, were named of the Committee:—

  E. Cadogan. (L. Privy Seal.)

  E. Amherst.

  E. Camperdown.

  M. Bath.

  E. Ducie.

  E. Lathom. (L. Chamberlain.)

  E. Sydney.

  E. Wharncliffe.

  E. Devon.

  E. de Montalt.

  E. Winchelsea and Nottingham

  V. Gordon. (E. Aberdeen.)

  E. Lindsay.

  V. Hutchinson. (E. Donoughmore)

  E. Waldegrave.

  E. Bathurst.

  V. Hardinge.

  E. Carnarvon.

  V. Eversley.

  E. Milltown.

  V. Oxenbridge.

  E. Belmore.

  L. de Ros.

  E. Powis.

  L. Clinton.

  E Morley.

  L. Balfour of Burleigh.

  PRIVATE BILLS.
  All Petitions relating to Standing Orders which shall be presented during the present Session referred to the Standing Orders Committee unless otherwise ordered.
CATHEDRAL CHURCHES BILL.—(No. 2.)
(The Lord Bishop of Carlisle.)
CATHEDRAL CHURCHES BILL.—(No. 2.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  THE BISHOP OF CARLISLE, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that it agreed to a certain extent, but not entirely, with the Bill presented last Session. That Bill was not pressed to a second reading because a committee of the Lower House of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury was appointed to consider and report upon it. Their report was considered by a committee of the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury, who consulted him upon the subject; and the result of the consultation was that the report of the committee of the Lower House was substantially adopted as the basis of the Bill of which he moved the second reading. There were, consequently, considerable differences between the present Bill and that of last year. It was necessary to say something about the history of the subject. In 1879 he introduced into this House a Bill to enable cathedrals of what was called the "new foundation"—that was those that were founded by Henry VIII.—to revise their statutes. These cathedrals were governed by statutes which they had no power of altering in any substantial manner, and it seemed to him that this was a position in which no corporate body ought to be placed. Having suffered as the dean of a cathedral of the new foundation at Ely, he felt strongly on the point. By the Bill of 1879 he endeavoured to revive an Act of Parliament passed in the reign of Queen Anne which dealt with the subject. It was not much used during her reign, with which
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  it expired; and his wish had been to confer upon the Sovereign something like those powers which were given to Queen Anne, and which died with her. When he proposed the second reading of the Bill, Lord Beaconsfield, who was Prime Minister at that time, objected to it on the ground that it dealt only with cathedrals of the new foundation, and he stated that the difficulties which had come to his knowledge had related chiefly to cathedrals of the old foundation, referring, no doubt, to the case of York Minster. His Lordship then intimated the intention of the Government to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the advisability of legislation for cathedral foundations, both new and old. A commission was accordingly appointed; it was at first presided over by the late Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwards by himself. The Commission completed their labours, making, as they were directed by the Commission, a Report upon each cathedral, and also a Report embodying certain general recommendations. The Bill of last year was, in effect, the translation of the Commission's recommendations into the form of an Act of Parliament; the present differed from it in several respects. One difference, to which he would subsequently refer, was a very important one. The centre and backbone of the present Bill was that it should be competent for the dean and chapter of a cathedral, with the consent of their visitor, to lay a statute before the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, if they approved of the statute, should lay it before Her Majesty in Council, that it should be laid on the Table of the Houses of Parliament for three months, and that if it were not appealed against by any person affected by it, and if no Address to Her Majesty against should be presented by either House, it should be lawful to Her Majesty to approve it, and then it should have full effect as a lawful statute of the cathedral. The machinery was simple, and he believed it would be effective. He would now specify two or three points in the Bill which required notice. There was an omnibus clause which contained special provisions as to certain cathedrals. It was considered that an ordinary statute could not effect some of the objects to be attained by that clause; but any of its pro-

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  posals could, in Committee, be amended or omitted. There was, also, no reason why any cathedral body should make use of the clause unless it desired to do so. Clause 10 proposed an exchange of patronage in cathedrals between the Bishops and the Crown. It seemed to him that both these forms of patronage were exceedingly valuable. It was desirable that the Crown should retain patronage in cathedrals; but the objection to the existing condition of things was that in some cathedrals the Crown had all the patronage and in some it had none, while in others the Bishops had all the patronage and the Crown had none. At Carlisle, for example, he had the patronage of all the canonries, while at Norwich the Bishop had not a single stall in the cathedral at his disposal, and it was the same at Bristol and at Gloucester. The Bill proposed that a scheme should be prepared by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners which should adjust this inequality, and that in every case the Bishop should have at least one stall in his cathedral, and that the Crown should be compensated by having in exchange a stall in some other cathedral where now the Crown had none. The object of Clause 13 was to remedy a difficulty which was universally acknowledged as to the interpretation of the 3 and 4 Vic. c 113 s. 44, with regard to dean and chapter patronage. The difficulty was to put an intelligible meaning upon the clause; and there was no recognized or uniform interpretation of it. It was, therefore, proposed to repeal the clause entirely and to substitute for it one to which it was thought there could be no objection. The 12th clause saved the powers which any dean and chapter might lawfully possess of making statutes. The 13th clause provided that a statute under this Bill should not vary or supersede any provision of the Parish of Manchester Division Act, 1850. There had been a great deal of difficulty with regard to the Cathedral Church of Manchester. The dean and chapter were some time ago involved in a law suit, the result of which had been to settle that the number of persons employed in the cathedral as arranged by the original charter could not be altered. Therefore, the Cathedral of Manchester, with its large endowment, was now fixed with the most absurd and inadequate choir of four men and four
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  boys. There had been negotiations between the rectors of Manchester and the dean and chapter on this point, and he was in hopes it would have been possible to introduce a clause into this Bill which would hare produced harmony and peace. In fact, a clause was laid before him, but it was objected that it had not been agreed to by both sides, and when it was put before the parties he found they did not agree at all about the matter. Therefore there was no alternative but to omit the clause altogether, and to leave Manchester, so far as this Bill was concerned, in its present unsettled state. He did not see in his place a noble Lord who had taken great interest in the matter (Lord Egerton of Tatton), who might possibly be disposed to insert in the Bill a clause to deal with this difficult point. For himself he should only be too glad if it were possible to settle the Manchester difficulty by a clause in this Bill. The important difference between this Bill and that of last year, to which he had promised to refer, was that this was entirely a Permissive Bill. Last year it was proposed that if deans and chapters did not reform their statutes within a certain time it should be competent for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to frame statutes. His own opinion was that there would have been no hardship in that arrangement; but, as others thought it was better to leave the matter entirely optional, he was willing to concede the point, believing and hoping that public opinion would supply any coercive power that might be needed. If his Motion for the second reading of the Bill were agreed to, he did not propose to take the Committee stage for a month, so that all concerned might consider the various points raised by the Bill. The passage of the Bill through their Lordships' House would be an easy thing; the difficulty would arise when it reached "another place." He hoped, however, that when it left that House it would not be overlaid or strangled in the House of Commons.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a"—(The Lord Bishop of Carlisle).
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Viscount CRANBROOK)said, the Government did not desire to offer any objection to the Bill, and he thought that there could be no objection on the

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  part of their Lordships to read it a second time.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Friday the 16 th of March next.

LAW OF DISTRESS AMENDMENT BILL.
(The Lord Herschell.)
LAW OF DISTRESS AMENDMENT BILL.

  (NO. 4.) SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  LORD HERSCHELL, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said that it dealt with two matters, and two only, in connection with the levying of distraint, but these were of very considerable practical importance. In the first place, the Bill gave the same privilege of exemption from distress for rent to a tenant in respect of his bedding and tools as he had against an execution under Section 96 of the County Courts Act, 1846, by which an artizan's tools to the value of £5 were protected against distraint. His attention had been called by a County Court Judge, who had had great experience in administering justice in these matters in a large town, to the very great hardship and evil which resulted from the absence of such a provision as this. The power now in the hands of the landlord of distraining upon the tools of an artizan did not give any real satisfaction to the landlord for the debt, for they were generally sold for a very small sum, and when the tools were sold the skilled artizan was no longer able to work, and was deprived of the means of employing the skill which he possessed. So that the law as it now stood really did great mischief to the tenant, while it gave very little benefit to the landlord. Inasmuch as the law exempted these articles from execution for any other kind of debt, it was not unreasonable that they should be exempted from distress for rent by the landlord. The other provision in the Bill, which was of considerable importance, referred to the employment of certified bailiffs, as under the Agricultural Holdings Act, to levy distress. A landlord, with the exception of cases under that Act, could at the present time employ as bailiff any person he pleased. Under the Agricultural Holdings Act,
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  however, a landlord was restricted to bailiffs who had been appointed or approved by Judges of County Courts. That Act was passed in 1883, and he believed had been found to work well. He had been informed that in one single day a County Court Judge had before him four cases in which bailiffs appointed by landlords had entered the houses of the wrong persons. In one case a bailiff entered the house of a tenant and seized goods worth £1 or £5 for 14s. rent which the tenant did not owe. The bailiff took the goods away and sold them, and left the family to sleep upon the floor, the result being that all the members of the family suffered from illness and one of the children died. The tenant, a woman, brought an action against the bailiff and the landlord, and it was hold that the landlord, not having directed the bailiff to proceed against her, was not liable, and that the tenant's remedy was against the bailiff. That remedy was absolutely worthless, because this bailiff, having the proceeds of the sale of the goods in his possession, disappeared, so that the landlord suffered as well as the tenant. In neither of the other three cases had the bailiffs handed over the money obtained by the sale of the goods distrained upon to the landlord. He had had a number of other cases communicated to him by a County Court Judge, showing that the present system by which the choice of bailiffs was left to the landlord was most unsatisfactory. The Bill proposed that in future landlords should employ bailiffs approved by a County Court Judge. This had been the law so far as agricultural holdings were concerned for the past five years, and there was very strong ground for extending it to urban holdings as well. He hoped that their Lordships would think it worth while to read the Bill a second time. He moved that the Bill be read a second time.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a—(The Lord Herschell.)
  LORD BRAMWELLsaid, he did not intend to ask their Lordships not to read the Bill a second time, although there were two doubtful matters in it. In the first place, some provision should be made for the case where the tenant, whose tools and bedding would be ex-

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  empted, persisted in stopping, in defiance of his landlord, upon promises in respect of which his term was out and he did not pay rent, and in respect of which he had no distrainable goods. With regard to the employment of bailiffs, he should prefer a provision which would make such an act as that referred to by the noble and learned Lord an act of extortion or robbery on the part of the bailiff, punishable by fine and imprisonment rather than the clause in the Bill. Instead of making it necessary that a bailiff should get a licence from a County Court Judge, any such act of wrongdoing should be made an offence, and the man should be punished. Then the Bill said that the County Court Judge might from time to time appoint a sufficient number of fit and proper persons. In his opinion, the Judge ought to appoint any properly qualified person who applied. There should be no limit or restriction in the matter of numbers.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBUBY)said, that he was a little apprehensive as to the advisability of introducing the words about a "sufficient number" of bailiffs contained in the Bill, because in the case of a place like London, for instance, how was a County Court Judge to ascertain what would be a sufficient number to meet the necessities of the case? He, therefore, entertained some little doubt as to that point; but the matter was one which could easily be left to be dealt with at the Committee stage when they came to consider the Enacting Clause. Upon the whole, he must say he thought that the Bill would be a valuable addition to their legislation, and that it would remove some of the objections to the power of distress as it at present existed.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday next.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (BANGOR AND WARRENPOINT) BILL [H.L.]
A Bill to confirm certain Proviaional Orders of the Local Government Board for Ireland relating to Bangor and Warrenpoint—Was presented by The Lord Balfour of Burley; read 1a.

PHARMACY ACTS AMENDMENT BILL [H.L.]
A Bill to amend the Pharmacy Act, 1852, the Pharmacy Act, 1868, and the Pharmacy Act (1868) Amendment Act, 1869—Was presented by The Earl of Milltown; read 1a (No. 13.)
House adjourned at Five o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten o' clock.