§ Order of the day for the Second. Reading, read.
THE EARL OF MOUNT-EDGCUMBEThis is the same Bill which last Session passed through your Lordships' House without a word of opposition or objection from either side, and therefore I do not propose to say anything at this moment in moving that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved that the Bill be now read 2a.
§ * LORD GRIMTHORPEI was not able to be here when the Bill was passed last year, and it was evident that it would not get through the House of Commons then. At any rate, I wish your Lordships to understand more about the matter than has been stated either last year or now. Last year the promoters of this Bill tried a much larger one for taking away the last £3,000 a year of the Common Fund of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which is devoted by several Acts of Parliament to the improvement or endowment of poor livings and curacies, and giving it to the Chapter of Truro Cathedral. That was very slightly opposed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners on Second Reading, and more so by me; and consequently it was referred to a Select Committee, of which the Duke of Richmond was Chairman. It was unanimously rejected there, though no doubt my noble Friend the Lord Steward, and possibly one or two more noble Lords in the Committee, would have voted for it if they had not seen that it was hopeless. After that they carried by a majority of one an abstract vote in favour of robbing Exeter of another £1,000 a year, having already got a fifth canonry, which had been received in 1840, and was transferred to Truro in 1876, and which would otherwise have gone into the Common Fund, solely on the ground that Exeter had not been impoverished by the reduction of rents as most of the other cathedrals have which elected to take land instead of being content with a fixed endowment of then smaller value, which is an odd way of rewarding moderation. However, I need say 351 no more on that part of the scheme just now. This is undoubtedly a more moderate one, but it equally inserts the wedge and establishes the principle of endowing this one alone of all the six or seven new cathedrals by robbery. I know it will be defended on the ground that the great Cathedral Act of 1840 authorizes the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to found and endow new archdeaconries with £200 a year. But the simple reason is that this is a very old one. And if the Truro Chapter had been quiet they actually had an archdeacon with the better endowment of £333 a year, or a third of the transferred canonry, and I remember that by their own statutes, printed for the last Commission on Cathedrals, the archdeacon is treated as one of the cathedral dignitaries of Truro, although in many cathedrals they are not. Their next step was to get a clause into their second Act, which nobody else cared to meddle with, reducing the future archdeacons of Cornwall to £200 a year, whereby the Chapter Fund got £133 more; but still no Chapter was founded or authorized until £2,400 a year, altogether, should be provided for it by subscriptions. I should add that in both these Acts there was an express prohibition against taking anything from the Common Fund. In 1887 they got another Act through, also not professing to interfere with anybody, nor even reciting, and much less directly repealing those prohibitions, nor even directly founding a Chapter, but simply saying it shall be a body corporate, and ignoring the restrictions of 1878, and dispensing with a dean, by rolling him into the bishop, and, perhaps, wisely; if there is to be a Chapter at all. That Act having got through by its silence about endowments has now been followed by these four attempts to get one at somebody else's expense, and in the face of all the previous legislation. Another feature of it is that not the severance of archdeaconries from canonries, but their annexation, has been the principle both of legislation and episcopal practice since 1840. The Secretary of the Ecclesiastical Commission has given me a list of 19 absolutely annexed archdeaconries, and I have counted 10 more which are so held, besides a few which are annexed to livings, and, considering that the utili- 352 zation of canons has long been a problem referred with very little success to several Royal Commissions, I will add that the annexation of archdeaconries to them seems, at any rate, a better solution than splitting them off to give an archdeacon no more net income than a curate. Another feature in the case is that these successive attempts are made by almost the only new cathedral which started with any endowment at all, either from its neighbours or the Common Fund. A Durham canonry was also reserved for and given to Newcastle, where also one archdeaconry is endowed by annexation to a canonry, and the other to a living. South well had an original endowment of its own which was not augmented but reduced. St. Albans has not a farthing except its old poor rectory endowment; and its archdeaconry endowment was juggled away to Rochester, besides the future value of its Bishop's Palace, though he retains, and will retain, two out of the less than three counties for which that palace was provided. Liverpool and Wakefield have got no more than St. Albans, and in all cases there was an absolute prohibition against even buying a house or securing a site for one out of the Common Fund, however advantageously it might be got. At any rate, before marauding schemes of this kind are sanctioned for this one Cathedral, which has the good fortune to have a Lord Steward for its Lord Lieutenant, the whole subject of the new cathedrals and their genuine wants, but not their luxuries, ought to be investigated. It seems to me a most unlikely way of making the Church, or the Bishops, or the Government, popular, to begin robbing poor livings and curacies to help this new Chapter on to its legs, which was only established by the ingenious device of first aking for no endowment and afterwards coming now, for the fourth time, to try and get some more. Therefore, although I do not expect to succeed here, I move that the Bill be read this day six months.
Amendment moved, to leave out "now" and add at the end of the Motion "this day six months."—(The Lord Grimthorpe.)
THE BISHOP OF LONDONI cannot say that I have been very much impressed by the arguments of the noble 353 Lord. I was upon the Select Committee as well as the noble and learned Lord, and my recollection is that so far from its being a case where there was not a single hand held up for the Bill, on the contrary the division in that Committee was 8 upon one side and 7 upon the other.
§ LORD GRIMTHORPEIf the right rev. Prelate will look at the Report he will see that he is entirely wrong. It was upon another Motion that there was that division of 8 to 7. That was a Resolution not to proceed with the Bill.
* THE BISHOP OF LONDONThe Resolution not to proceed with the Bill was no doubt carried unanimously, because the question had been already settled, but the division which really settled the measure was 8 to 7. Really, the decision upon which the Bill depends was when it was proposed to reject the Bill, and have another Bill upon different lines.
§ LORD GRIMTHORPENo; that was after the rejection of the Bill, on another question.
THE BISHOP OF LONDONBut generally I am not contesting the statements of the noble and learned Lord, but I do very much contest the relevancy of his arguments. In the first place, it is quite true that at the time when these bishoprics were first proposed, Parliament very carefully guarded that the money should come from private sources and should not come from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but I submit that that is a good while ago, and that Parliament then had not the experience which it has now of the result of creating these new bishoprics. Everybody who has studied the matter will agree that the result of the creation of these new bishoprics has been most wonderful in increasing the power of the Church in those parts, and even on the monetary question alone more money has been obtained by the creation of these new bishoprics for the purpose of doing the general work of the Church and augmenting the livings than would have been obtained in any other way that could be named. To say that because the policy of Parliament then was to proceed with very great caution, we ought to be bound by such a policy to refrain from even giving the very small help that is asked for by the diocese of Truro now, I confess, does not 354 seem to me at all reasonable. We must consider what has happened since. We must consider what has been the effect which these new bishoprics have produced. We must consider the stimulating effect of the Cathedral of Truro upon the diocese of Truro, and upon the whole County of Cornwall, and I believe that if you ask the Cornish clergy which in their judgment would be best, whether this £200 a year should go to the augmentation of small benefices in Cornwall, or should go to the improvement of the services in the Cathedral, the enormous majority would support the proposal that it should go to the Cathedral. I, myself, joined in opposing the Bill which proposed to give £3,000 a year to Truro Chapel and Cathedral. I thought it a demand which went beyond all reason, and I did not think that when you weighed one thing against the other, it was really possible that Truro should make such a claim. But it is quite a different thing to give them the small endowment which is now asked for. Will your Lordships allow me to make one further observation? The fifth Canonry was reserved in 1840 or 1841, with a sort of understanding that possibly a Bishopric of Truro might be founded, and that that Canonry might then pass over to Cornwall. Certainly, I myself was rather surprised when the transfer took place to find that it was saddled with what had been put upon it afterwards—namely, the payment of the Archdeaconry. I always thought that the Cathedral of Truro had a claim to the full Canonry independently of the payment of the Archdeaconry, and I cannot look upon the present proposal as being anything more than the fulfilment of the old understanding according to which the Canonry was reserved for Cornwall.
* THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYMy Lords, I think the provision that it is proposed to make by this Bill is an entirely fair provision. The case stands thus: The Common Fund of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners has among its other duties the payment of £200 a year to any Archdeaconry which may be created, to which the Commissioners consider that £200 a year should be attached. Such Archdeaconries as have been mentioned as connected with the Cathedrals are in 355 reality the endowment of a stall. They take nothing away from the Cathedral, but make adequate provision for the duties of a Residentiary Canon as well as for the duties of the Archdeacon, up to an amount not exceeding £1,000 a year, but this particular Archdeaconry takes £200 a year from the one Canonry which belongs to the Cathedral, and it is to be observed that this £200 a year would actually be paid at the present day by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the endowment of an Archdeaconry, except for a special provision which was made long before any Cathedral, or new bishopric, or endowments of that kind were thought of by Parliament. Then, again, it is to be remembered that part of the sums which go to make up the Common Fund of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, is very largely drawn from Cornwall. There were old estates in Cornwall belonging to the Cathedral which have passed away to the Common Fund. Surely it is not unreasonable that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners should be allowed to pay the £200 a year to the Archdeaconry out of such moneys, in order that this Canonry may belong intact to Truro Cathedral. Truro Cathedral is one which the noble Lord calls luxurious. It is only luxurious in the numbers of its congregations. The endowment of some of the new Cathedrals is undoubtedly large or sufficient, but Truro possesses, from first to last, apart from this one Canonry, £100 a year subject to rates and taxes. That really cannot be considered as a luxurious establishment which strives to keep up, by the voluntary efforts of clergy and laity, what a Cathedral is expected to do. I do think it would be very ungenerous to press a provision made long ago, when there was no such institution in view, to the detriment of an institution, which, as the Bishop of London has said, is doing the best possible work in and for all the parishes of Cornwall.
THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AND GORDONI do not rise for the purpose of making any objection to the Bill now under discussion, but simply to correct my right rev. Friend in his account of the proceedings of the Committee. The Bill which was brought before the Committee was to take £3,500 a year out of the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. That Bill was unanimously re- 356 jected. I have the report here. The matter upon which the division was taken was not upon the merits of the Bill, because the first resolution is "That it is not expedient to proceed further with the Bill." Then the Resolution upon which the division was taken was, "That in the opinion of this Committee any money that may be granted."
On Question whether the word "now" shall stand part of the Motion, resolved in the affirmative.
Bill read 2a accordingly.
House adjourned at a quarter past Five o'clock, to Monday next, a quarter before Eleven o'clock.