CLAUSE 9.

HL Deb 22 July 1898 vol 62 cc778-96

Amendment proposed— Page 6, line 14, before 'any,' insert 'performing.'"—(The Earl of Selborne.)

*THE EARL OF SELBORNE

This, my Lords, is merely a verbal Amendment.

Question put.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment proposed— Page 6, line 18, after 'Act,' insert 'with respect to procedure.'"—(The Earl of Selborne.)

*THE EARL OF SELBORNE

My Lords, I may say that this Amendment has actually been carried, but was omitted from the print of the Bill by accident.

Question put.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment proposed— Page 6, line 2, at end of clause, insert as a new sub-section— (5) An incumbent so inhibited shall not be liable to any penalty or forfeiture for non-residence, but section ninety-three of the Pluralities Act, 1838, shall apply as if the incumbent were non-resident, and thereupon section ninety-four of the same Act shall apply, as in the case where the curate's stipend is not less than the whole value of the benefice. The incumbent shall remain liable for repairs, but shall be entitled to retain out of the curate's stipend such amount in respect of repairs during the curate's occupation, and shall be entitled to such facilities for executing repairs as the bishop may, in case of difference, decide to be reasonable."—(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, one of the difficulties in working the Pluralities Acts Amendment Act of 1885 consists in the fact that in several instances the incumbent has considered himself justified in thwarting the curate that has been put in in every possible way. The result is that the curate is unable to do the work which he is put there to do. A distinction is made in this Bill between inadequate performance of duties for which the incumbent cannot be blamed, and inadequate performance of duty which arises out of the incumbent's negligence, and if it is difficult to work the Act of 1885, it is obvious that it must be still more difficult to work this Bill if the old difficulty remains; and it is important, therefore, that, as the bishop has the power of inhibiting the incumbent from continuing to discharge the duties, the curate should be put into the incumbent's place in as full a sense as if, for the time being, he were the incumbent. He has to discharge the incumbent's duties, and has to do exactly what he would have to do if he were the incumbent. It is important that he should occupy the same position in the eyes of the parishioners, and it is important also that the incumbent should go away from the parish. It is not proposed, in the Amendment that I submit to your Lordships, that any compulsion should be used to make him go. The Amendment in the name of the Archbishop of York, which we find in the same page with my own, proposes that the incumbent should not be allowed to reside within 20 miles from the parish church. That has been proposed before, but the more it is considered, the less it seems to be a workable clause. It would be difficult indeed to give good grounds for interfering so seriously with the liberty of the subject. You might almost as well require him not to come into England. It would be, no doubt, better if he would go abroad, and remove all possibility of his troubling us by his interference. At any rate, he ought to vacate the parsonage house and the residence which is intended for the person who discharges the duty, and for that reason this sub-section is submitted to you. The words— An incumbent so inhibited shall not be liable to any penalty or forfeiture for non-residence"— give permission for him to go away, and it is hoped he will go away. If he went away without any words of this kind in the Act, the result would be that he would be liable to penalties of various kinds for non-residence. It is proposed to take away that liability, and let him go away if he will. But more than that is wanting. It is very often difficult to find a house in the parish in which the curate can live, if the parish consists mainly of people who are altogether in the lower ranks of life. In those cases it is very often very difficult indeed to find even lodgings. It is necessary that the curate who is put in should absolutely reside in the parish, and therefore it is proposed that, whilst the incumbent is allowed to quit the residence and become a non-resident incumbent, the section of the Pluralities Act of 1838 shall be applied, which applies to non-resident incumbents. There it is laid down that if an incumbent be non-resident, the bishop shall have the power to assign to the curate the residence of the incumbent, that he may reside therein, and he has it without payment of rent. The bishop may assign to him, also, four acres of glebe, but there he is required to pay rent for it if it is so assigned to him. This is the wording of section 93, and, further, in the same case, section 94 of the same Act is made applicable. Section 94 puts on the curate, if he resides in the parsonage house, the payment of rates and taxes. It is reasonable that the curate should pay the rates and taxes which would otherwise have to be paid by the incumbent who is not allowed to occupy the house. Further, it is not reasonable that the incumbent, whilst incumbent, should be liable for repairs during the time he is excluded from the house, and, therefore, in accordance with section 92 of the same Act, the incumbent shall have the power of deducting from the curate's stipend a sufficient amount to cover the repairs all through the time of the curate's occupation of the house. I assure you, my Lords, it is really of importance that we should be able to assign the residence to the curate, because, in the first place, it is very often very difficult otherwise to provide that the curate shall reside in the parish; and, in the second place, because, if the incumbent remains in the parish, it is constantly found, where he has been convicted of negligence, that it is highly probable he will continue to interfere largely with the discharge of the duties which the curate is put there to fulfil. I am confident, if you want this Bill to work satisfactorily, the power which I propose ought to be given to the bishops and the responsibility of applying the law should be left with them. I hope your Lordships will be willing to accept the Amendment.

*THE EARL OF SELBORNE

My Lords, the Pluralities Act of 1838 provided that, in the case of continuous or recurrent absence from his benefice, an incumbent might have a curate appointed to do his duty, and his own louse of residence—the house of residence of the benefice—assigned to that curate for his residence; and careful provisions are included in the sections of that Act for distributing the burden of rates, taxes, repairs, and dilapidations. No doubt the case against a non-resident incumbent as set forth in the Act of 1838 is one of very serious neglect indeed; he must have been guilty of wilful and persistent negligence. Those words were not used in the Act, but I think I shall be carrying your Lordships with me in saying that the incumbent whose case is considered in the present Bill must have been guilty of wilful and persistent negligence. Therefore, my Lords, it does not seem to Her Majesty's Government that the Act of negligence which is being considered in this Bill is of a less serious kind than that set forth under the Act of 1838, but rather the contrary. As the provisions of that Act have apparently been very carefully considered in the Amendment of the most reverend Prelate, and as the section as to the payment of rates and taxes has been applied to the cases foreseen by this Bill, and provision has been made for repairs, Her Majesty's Government are not prepared to refuse their assent to this clause. I may say that it would scarcely have been possible to accept a clause like this if it had not been for the constitution of the court under this Bill. It is a very serious thing, after inhibiting an incumbent, however wilful he may have been in his neglect, to assign his residence to the curate who is put in to do his duty, and such a provision would, I think, have been very carefully scrutinised, both in your Lordships' House and in the House of Commons, if there were not ample security that the negligence of the incumbent must have been certified, if necessary, by a judge of the High Court. It stands to reason that a judge of the High Court, in considering a case brought before him, will naturally bear in mind the penalties which attach to negligence. I am, therefore, prepared to assent to this clause.

Question put.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment proposed— After clause 9, insert the following new clause— Where, after the commencement of this Act, on the bankruptcy of an incumbent, or in aid of any writ of execution against his property, the benefice of that incumbent is sequestrated within twelve months after his institution, or where such sequestration, if issued after that period, continues for the space of one whole year, or where the incumbent incurs two such sequestrations in the space of two years, the benefice shall, unless the bishop otherwise direct, become void, and section fifty-eight of the Pluralities Act, 1838, shall apply in like manner as if the benefice had become void under that section."—(The Lord Bishop of Winchester.)

*THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER

My Lords, I rise to move the insertion of this new clause after clause 9. The proposal is one of some importance, and it was not by any wish of mine that it was not made in Committee. It was postponed until now at the request of the noble Earl in charge of the Bill. This clause, I believe, will prove to be one of the most practical, and one of the most useful, clauses that the Bill contains. It is based upon the principle which underlies this attempted legislation throughout—the principle, namely, that those who are entitled to primary consideration are the parishioners, rather than the patron or presentee. Whatever the rights of property that exist, either for the patron or for the incumbent, they are really subordinate to the deeper and larger interests of the parishioners as a whole. We have heard in the course of this Debate of scandals arising from, sometimes the immorality, sometimes the physical inability, or physical disqualification of the incumbent or would-be incumbent, and attention has been rightly drawn to the public harm that does occasionally arise in such cases. I believe that if we could look into it we should find that, taking the Church of England as a whole, more mischief has arisen from insolvent incumbents than from the very rare instances of moral scandal which have occurred. It is to meet this difficulty, if we possibly can, that I ask your Lordships to accept this additional clause. As the law now stands insolvency is followed by sequestration of the incumbent's benefice, and the alienation to other purposes of funds originally devoted to the maintenance of spiritual work in the parish. That is a condition of things which I wish, if we can achieve it, to render practically impossible. There are two ways in which it is possible for sequestration to come into force. There are sequestrations issued by the bishop on his own authority, and on his own motion, in which the intention is simply to benefit the parishioners and to use the money for the spiritual good of the parish; as, for example, when a vacancy occurs, or when an incumbent has been inhibited, and so forth. In those cases no private end is served, and all the money is used for the purposes for which it was given. But there is a second class of cases in which the bishop acts simply in an official capacity at the bidding of a court of law, and in such cases the money is not used for the good of the parishioners, but for the payment of the creditors of the incumbent. There are various modern Acts of Parliament under which provision has been made that in such cases there must be enough money reserved to pay a bare stipend to the curate appointed to minister in the parish during sequestration. It may be the incumbent himself who is appointed as curate-in-charge, but the living is in any case sequestrated in order that there may be a balance over the curate's stipend, and that that balance may go to the liquidation of the private debts of the incumbent. Those who are unfamiliar with the facts would be surprised to learn what experiences any bishop could furnish as to how long this unhappy state of things may continue, and how great a calamity may happen to a parish in consequence. I will give your Lordships two instances. I select them, not because they are by any means the most flagrant, but because they are cases with which I have personally had to do. The first instance is one in which a large parish of 8,000 poor people has been under sequestration for some 13 years. About 13 years ago the incumbent was found to be bankrupt, his liabilities amounting to a very large sum indeed, and arising, I am told, simply from reckless speculation on the Stock Exchange, or elsewhere. A large number of sequestrations were issued against him, and for 13 years that has been going on, and thousands of pounds have already been paid to the creditors, while 8,000 poor people in the parish have been obliged to put up with the ministry of successive curates, who receive the mere pittance which is allowed to be provided for them out of the sequestration money. So far as I know, that state of things is likely to go on, if the incumbent lives, for another 13 years. This is not an unusual case, and our desire is to make such cases impossible in the future. The other instance, to which I will call your Lordships' attention, is that of a country parish of only 500 people, which was sequestrated 20 years ago. The incumbent has long been absent. He lives, I believe, in Africa, and a considerable sum of money is annually paid over out of the living to the incumbent's personal creditors. For 20 years that has been going on, and the results may be better imagined than described. It would not be difficult to multiply instances in town and country of cases such as the two I have mentioned. It appears to me that the principle which renders such a condition of things possible is radically wrong, and the practice is little less than monstrous. It is absolutely contrary to the intention of Parliament. Long ago, in 1571, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent incumbents from charging their benefices for the good of their creditors outside. These are the words of the Act of Queen Elizabeth— That the livings appointed for ecclesiastical ministers may not by corrupt and indirect dealings be transferred to other uses, be it enacted … that all chargings of such benefices with any pension or with any profit out of the same … shall be utterly void. That provision has been practically evaded during many generations past by the practice of sequestrating a benefice, and enabling an incumbent thus to discharge what we may call alien debts to the infinite detriment of the parishioners, and, I think, to the misfortune, in most cases, of the man himself. Happily, during the last 30 years at least, public opinion has been steadily rising to the view that the whole system of sequestration—long-continued sequestration, at all events—for the payment of the debts of an individual incumbent is an iniquity that ought no longer to be borne. It is for that reason that I ask your Lordships to accept the clause, which runs as follows— Where, after the commencement of this Act, on the bankruptcy of an incumbent, or in aid of any writ of execution against his property, the benefice of that incumbent is sequestrated within twelve months after his institution, or where such sequestration, if issued after that period, continues for the space of one whole year, or where the incumbent incurs two such sequestrations in the space of two years, the benefice shall, unless the Bishop otherwise direct, become void, and Section 58 of the Pluralities Act, 1838, shall apply in like manner as if the benefice had become void under that section. The wording of that clause is not new; it is based upon a clause in the Act of 1838, which dealt with non-resident incumbents. In its original intention it is happily now not much required, nor is it often put into practice, because the scandal of persistent non-residence, which was terribly common in the year 1838, is now virtually come to an end. But, besides that, I am not responsible for the wording of the clause as it stands. It is a clause which was carefully drawn up and inserted in the Bill which was introduced into the House of Commons in the year 1896. In that year, as your Lordships will remember, the Bill passed a Second Reading in the House of Commons, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Law. In that Committee it was discussed clause by clause, and this clause received long and careful consideration. The Bill passed through the Standing Committee on Law, and went back to the House of Commons, though from pressure of business, in the long run, it failed to pass. I commend that fact to your Lordships, as showing what consideration this clause has received at the hands of those best qualified to judge, and I earnestly hope that it may be incorporated in the present Bill. The only objections that I have heard to it are these: some people have said that it will be hard upon the creditors, and others that it will be hard upon the incumbents. How can it be hard upon the creditors? If the clause were to be made retrospective, then I admit that it might be hard upon the creditors. Is it hard upon the creditors of an officer of the Army, or of a civil servant, that he is unable to sequestrate the annual sum due to him, in order that certain debts, quite apart from his public work, may be relieved? If the clause were retrospective—if you intended to take away the security upon which creditors have given money, or allowed credit—I quite admit that it would be hard upon the creditors. But it is not so. After this, all that will be necessary for the creditor to do will be to take care lest he give undue credit either by lending money or by allowing Bills to remain unpaid to incumbents over whose benefices he will hold no power—whose livings will not be able to be sequestrated if this clause passes. Then we are told that it is hard upon the incumbents themselves, and on that point I should like to say a few words. In the first place, I believe it will be a genuine benefit to incumbents in straitened circumstances that they should not have the somewhat vague and unlimited credit which the possible power of sequestration seems to give. A man who is not very careful, who is somewhat impecunious, who has large obligations, may be even benefited by the fact that his living cannot be sequestrated to obtain credit, and that it is therefore absolutely out of his power to obtain that credit. It is said there are occasional instances where a man, from no fault of his own—perhaps from having been a trustee—has found himself insolvent; and, that as he is not blameworthy, it would be exceedingly hard that the power of sequestrating his benefice should be taken away. In an argument of this description the story of the Glasgow Bank case does very great service; it has been used over and over again as an instance of the kind of way in which an incumbent might find himself liable, through merely having been trustee, to pay large sums of money. It is true that any such case as that would be very hard upon the incumbent. But is it better that the responsibility of paying those debts should fall upon the parishioners rather than upon the incumbent? If it is hard upon the incumbent to be thus placed in a position of difficulty, it is certainly even harder upon the parishioners, who, at all events, neither directly nor indirectly, either by carelessness or negligence, or anything else, can be regarded as being responsible for the debts thus incurred. That is the first answer I should like to give to those who say that this clause would be hard upon the incumbent. If it is hard upon him—and it is no harder upon him than it is upon other men—that he should be unable to anticipate his income by means of sequestration, surely it is equally hard upon the parishioners, who in the long run are the people called upon to suffer. But, besides that, this clause says— The benefice shall, unless the bishop otherwise direct, become void. Therefore, it will always be possible for the bishop, in an exceptional case of hardship, where it is felt that there was no fault, and that real gain would result from allowing sequestration to continue and the incumbent to remain in possession, to make such arrangements as are necessary for the protection of an innocent man. This seems to me to be quite a sufficient answer to the complaint that this clause would act harshly upon an incumbent, if it were to become law. But I can appeal on this particular point to an unimpeachable authority. If there is one body in England which is competent and certain to safeguard the interests of the incumbents in England it is the Lower House of Convocation. Whatever may be its shortcomings in other respects, no one will impute to it that it is careless of the interests of the incumbents who vote for its members, and who largely constitute the body. Now, my Lords, this actual clause was introduced by me into the Upper House of Convocation, and was sent down to the Lower House. It was there considered, and without one dissentient voice, the Lower House asked that it might become law. That is a most important point to consider when we hear the allegation that the clause will be hard upon incumbents. The incumbents have spoken by the voice of the Lower House of Convocation, which is their authorised means of speaking, and that House has spoken with public spirit and with wisdom in asking that this clause should become law. I have therefore neither scruple nor hesitation in asking your Lordships to add this clause to the Bill.

*THE EARL OF SELBORNE

There is no doubt that a case such as the right reverend prelate has so eloquently described is a glaring scandal. I know of a case in point which will verify the experience of the right reverend prelate; a teeming population with a large church and a rich living—the incumbent wandering over the globe—the whole living in the hands of creditors, and a small sum rescued from the annual instalment paid to the creditors in order to pay the curate struggling to provide ministration to the spiritual needs of that teeming population. That is only one case of many which could be quoted by the right reverend prelates who sit on that bench, and who have only too extensive an experience of cases of this kind. If that was the only class of case that we had to consider under the head of sequestration, I should be able with the greatest possible satisfaction to accept the right reverend prelate's clause exactly as it stands now. Indeed, I do not see, even apart from the reservation that I shall presently have to make, on what logical basis this law of sequestration stands. Here is a provision being made for the cure of souls in a certain benefice. It certainly never was in the mind of any pious founder that he should enable some future incumbent of that benefice to indulge in such extravagances that the living had to be sequestrated for 10 or 20 years in order to satisfy that incumbent's creditors. It is an entirely indefensible system, but I am afraid that the four corners of this Bill would not suffice for complete revision or abolition of the law of sequestration. It is a very complicated matter. There are, I believe, no less than seven different kinds of sequestrations, one of which, at least, is a necessary and thoroughly right one—I mean the sequestration which follows vacancy. But, my Lords, the case is not absolutely simple. Besides these extravagant incumbents on whose behalf I do not imagine one of your Lordships would raise a word, it is to be remembered that in this time of agricultural depression and general deterioration of the value of livings there are cases of sequestration, and I am afraid a good many of them, which cannot be attributed to any simple fault on the part of the incumbent. He may have been unwise, but he has not been guilty of any speculation or of any extravagant tastes. There are cases, my Lords, where a man has run into debt, and where his living has been sequestrated owing to the fact that the value of the living has been continually declining, and he has been really striving unwisely, from the best of principles, beyond his means to support the spiritual needs of the parish; or he has contributed largely to the payment of curates and to other matters of church work, church schools, and so on, without sufficiently realising the dangerous position into which he was getting. There are other cases where a man has really been made a bankrupt, and his living has been sequestrated owing to the sum he has had to pay in respect of dilapidations on entering into his benefice. This is the class of case which is quite of a different character to the case of extravagance or of speculation, and Her Majesty's Government think that such cases must be considered, and that, as this Amendment stands, men who are getting into that position at the present moment, and who, rightly or wrongly, have relied on the income of their benefice to extract them out of the temporary dilemma into which they have arrived, ought to have their cases considered. Further, that it would not be defensible that such men, who are striving to do their utmost to rise above the financial wave, should be liable to complete deprivation. That, I would remind the right reverend prelate, is what his Amendment amounts to, but I say that such men should not be liable to lose their benefices altogether—to lose any chance of recovering their position—and I think should not be liable to see themselves turned out without any benefice, and to see their wives and families ejected from the residence of the living. Therefore, my Lords, what Her Majesty's Government are prepared to do, if the right reverend prelate will alter the form of his Amendment, is to accept this clause if it is made applicable to the case of incumbents presented or collated after the commencement of this Act. That, no doubt, unfortunately, would leave the evil of which we complain in the case of extravagant and speculative incumbents untouched for some time to come, but it will avoid the very great injustice of the possibility of men who have got themselves into this position through neither extravagance nor speculation, being turned out of their benefices, and it will act as a great warning to them in the future. It will deprive them of this artifical credit, which, they should remember, was not theirs to use, and it will prove a support and a strength to them in the future. It will, I believe, minimise the possibility of their getting credit which is beyond their means to pay, and will act not as a hardship, but as a safeguard against their getting, in the future, into such a position as I have described. There is one further Amendment that the Government would wish to see. At present the discretion of the bishop is negative—unless he intervenes this clause is to take effect. Her Majesty's Government would like to see the position reversed, and that the clause will not take effect unless the bishop should direct that it should; thus there would be a direct responsibility on the bishop of distinguishing between cases where the incumbent is wholly to blame, and in cases where there may be extenuating circumstances which the bishop could take into account, and which will accordingly go in mitigation of the severity of the sentence he might otherwise think it his duty to pass. If the right reverend Prelate will accept these alterations, Her Majesty's Government are prepared to accept the right reverend Prelate's clause as a very valuable addition to what I believe will be a Bill that will operate very largely to the discipline and efficiency of the Church. The clause would run thus— In the case of incumbents presented or collated after the commencement of this Act, if on bankruptcy, or in aid of any writ of execution against property, the benefice of any such incumbent is sequestrated within twelve months after his institution, or if such sequestration, if issued after that period, continues for the space of one whole year, or if any such incumbent incurs two such sequestrations in the space of two years, the benefice shall, unless the bishop otherwise direct, become void, and section fifty-eight of the Pluralities Act, 1838, shall apply in like manner as if the benefice had become void under that section.

THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY

Certainly, as far as my opinion goes, I think that the clause which the noble Earl has signified his willingness to accept, is better than no clause at all; but I am afraid that I do not agree with the basis on which he has founded his argument. He seems to me to consider that this Amendment of the law had in view the punishment, as it were, of the clergy; my view is, that the idea of it is to safeguard the interests of the parishioners. No doubt it is right that where you have to pass a law which has for its object the safeguarding of the parishioners, you should consider fairly and reasonably the position in which the incumbent may be placed; but I regard the wish to put an end, or, at any rate, to modify the law of sequestration, as being based entirely upon this: that it is wrong in principle and in practice that money which exists for the purpose of providing for the spiritual needs of the parish, should go to satisfy debts which the clergyman has incurred. I thought that the right reverend Prelate was wise in leaving a discretion to the bishop, because there may be cases undoubtedly where a certain amount of indulgence might be properly allowed, and I do not think you ought to frame the law so that it is necessary for the bishop to take notice of these "hard cases." I feel great sympathy for the clergy who may have found that their incomes are not as large as they anticipated, and therefore they have fallen into difficulties. But, although I feel that sympathy, yet I think that that does not meet the case. They may have expended the money in lavish charities or in adornment of their churches, which are unnecessary. Pray do not misunderstand me. I am speaking from any point of view of ritual. They may have done any of those things, or they may have done other things which they would wisely have abstained from; but because they have done these things I see no reason why they should be exempt entirely from the necessity which, I believe, is felt by all, that the interests of the parish should be first considered. What I feel is that the noble Earl's Amendment will be extremely little followed; because, if you consider what a very long time it would be before any very large number of the clergy would come under the effect of it, I think such a postponement as he recommends would be most unfortunate. I regret that the noble Earl is not able to accept the Amendment which the right reverend Prelate has told us was actually approved of by the Lower House of Convocation, which undoubtedly represents the feelings of the incumbents of livings. I think it right to make that observation, but at the same time, I think that a little is better than nothing at all, and that the introduction of the principle into the Bill will be valuable, even though, in practice, it will have very small effect.

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN

I should like to ask the noble Earl to reconsider the change which he proposes to make in the latter part of the Amendment of the right reverend Prelate. As the original Amendment stands, the clause is to come into operation unless the bishop otherwise directs. The benefice shall, unless the bishop otherwise direct, become void. That, of course, leaves with the bishop a discretion; but, unless he sees reason to interfere, the Act is to come into force. Now, my Lords, the noble Earl in charge of the Bill proposes to make the operation act in the very opposite way, and he proposes that the clause shall not come into force unless the bishop says that it is to come into force. Well, that may be right, but I only ask the noble Earl to consider what a very serious duty he is imposing upon the bishop. Think of the amount of appeals that will be made to the bishop! Think how hard it will be for him in one case to say, "Well, yes, I am sorry to say so, but I think in this case I must insist on the law," and in another, "Yes, I think in that case I shall be able to abstain from interfering." It seems to me that the proposed change of the noble Earl throws upon the bishop a very unnecessary hardship, and throws upon him a duty which I think he should not be called upon to undertake. I would just ask him—and I thought that the noble Earl who spoke before me was going to raise that point—whether this is not a point which he should seriously consider before he asks your Lordships to adopt the Amendment in its changed form.

THE MARQUIS OF LOTHIAN

I do not wish to repeat the arguments which have been already made use of, but I feel very strongly that it will be a great mistake if the Amendment, as altered by the noble Earl, is to be given effect to. I very much prefer the Amendment of the right reverend Prelate. I cannot help think- ing that there are a great many Members on this side of the House who are willing to accept the noble Earl's first proposed Amendment, but not the second one. I only rise, my Lords, to say that because I think it would be a great mistake if the second Amendment of the noble Earl to the Amendment of the right reverend Prelate was given effect to.

THE PREMIER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY)

I do not think that the noble Earl opposite who last spoke has sufficiently considered what the operation of this clause will be if turned into cast-iron machinery from which there is no power of escape.

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN

That is not what I proposed. I proposed to leave the latter half of the right reverend Prelate's Amendment as he proposed it, whereby the clause would come into force unless the bishop otherwise directed.

THE PREMIER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Then I do not think it is worth talking much about, the difference between the two is extremely small. It is merely a question of considering the finer feelings of the bishop, and I do not think it matters much whether the bishop says it is to have effect, or whether it is to take effect unless the bishop says no. I do not think the results are worth the consideration of the House. I should very much demur to anything which would not give a direction in one form or another to the bishop, because you must remember that in cases which happen not unfrequently, where a clergyman goes into a living weighted already with debts incurred at the university, and goes through life weighted with those debts—unhappily a case which is by no means unknown—he becomes the absolute slave of the money-lender, into whose hands he has fallen. If the money-lender is able at his will to bring this machinery of sequestration into effect, that machinery would pretty well destroy the chances of future existence for the clergyman. If the bishop cannot save him, if he thinks right to do so, from the severe operation of the law, the result will be that the clergyman must do whatever the money-lender pleases. The money-lender is his master, and it is a slavery from which he cannot escape. I remember a case where a man came into a rich living, heavily burdened with debt. I think he held that rich living, heavily burdened with debt as it was, for more than a quarter of a century, but there was no sequestration from, beginning to end; there was the threat of sequestration hanging over him from first to last, and the whole value of the living came into the moneylenders' hands and the condition of that parish was exceedingly deplorable. I do not see my way out of a difficulty of that kind, excepting by some such Measure as is proposed by the right reverend Prelate, and by leaving to the bishop a kind of paternal power of either enforcing or diminishing the weight and sanction of the law. In that way I hope that this clause may do a great deal of good. I think you will have complaint of hard cases—that due notice has not been given—that you are interfering with the rights of property which are really vested, and which, as the law stands, were rightly vested; but on the whole, I think that the clause, as proposed by the Government, is the safest clause to take, and that it will be a very considerable advance on the state of things that exists at present.

*THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

The noble Marquess said in the course of his remarks that he does not think it a matter of grave importance whether it should be left to the bishop to take the enforcement of the clause or whether the clause is left to operate unless the bishop otherwise directs. I think, however, if the noble Marquess were a bishop and had to enforce the clause, he would feel that there was a very considerable difference, and, if the noble Marquess thinks it is a matter of no importance, then surely there can be no reason for altering the clause as it stands. If it is of no great importance, then leave it as it has been proposed. Certainly the bishop would very much rather have it in that form than in any other, and further, there is this to be said: it leaves the incumbent in a state of suspense—in a state of suspended animation. The bishop may delay his decision, he goes on, and the sequestration goes on, and this sort of thing may go on for no one knows how long, and the incumbent never knows when the bishop may come down and say, "Now the law must be enforced." If the Government do not think it is a matter of great importance, I hope they will be willing to leave that part of the clause alone. I am not objecting to that part of the clause which postpones the operation of the clause by applying it only to those who are instituted after this Bill has been passed into an Act, although there is a good deal to be said for it, I am sorry for it; but so far as the other alteration is concerned, I really think it would be very much better to leave it alone.

THE PREMIER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Under the new regulation I had better ask the leave of the Lord Chancellor before I speak again. I wish that the right reverend bench would let us know whether the Amendment of the right reverend Prelate represents their views, because if that is the feeling of the Bench I do not think the Government ought to refuse.

THE BISHOP OF LONDON

I think that the Bench is entirely unanimous, so far as I know, in this respect, and very much prefer that they should not have to inaugurate the law, but rather that it should be allowed to take its ordinary course. The noble Marquess has spoken about the "finer feelings" of the bishops. I think your Lordships would wish the bishops still to retain those finer feelings. They are one of the few classes of society which possesses them, and anything which would prevent those finer feelings from being seriously outraged would, I think, be a public benefit.

Question put— That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Motion agreed to.