§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
§ LORD CHARNWOODMy Lords, in my opinion the part of this Bill to which any large practical importance attaches is Clause 2. This clause proposes to remove the disqualification by which at present ministers of religion generally are debarred from serving on the councils of ordinary boroughs, though they are allowed to serve on the councils of county boroughs, metropolitan boroughs, and a number of other local government bodies. On that part of the Bill I am not without hope that your Lordships will unanimously agree with me.
But I have thought it right to include in Clause 1 of this Bill the removal of the disqualification which now debars persons in Holy Orders, whether in England or Ireland, and ministers of the Established Church of Scotland, from sitting in the House of Commons. That is a matter which would not be likely to affect a very large number of individuals; nevertheless, it raises a far more difficult point than that which arises with regard to the municipalities. Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to state what is the actual position of the law in this matter and its history, so far as I understand it. The original disqualification of clergymen from being members of the House of Commons did not rest, it is evident, upon any idea that that position was incompatible with their spiritual functions. That is evident, because Bishops are and always have been members of your Lordships' House; and not only that, but there are other members of this House who happen to be in Holy Orders and sit here.
The reason why the clergy were not allowed to sit in the House of Commons was simply that the House of Commons was not their taxing assembly. The 130 clergy taxed themselves through their own assembly of Convocation. At the time of the Restoration that arrangement lapsed—I am not precisely aware how, because there was no Statute on the subject—but from the time of the Restoration owards, Convocation has not taxed the clergy and Parliament has done so. It does not seem to have occurred to any one at the time that with that change the reason for disqualifying clergymen for seats in the House of Commons fell to the ground; and though I am told that in the course of the eighteenth century one or two clergymen did sit in the House of Commons without objection being made, yet it would be conceivable from the law that they were debarred from doing so.
Eventually in 1801 the matter was settled by Parliament when the Rev. John Horne Tooke, a learned but turbulent person, was returned for the celebrated borough of Old Sarum. Objections were raised to his taking his seat, and after several discussions an Act was passed declaring that it was the existing law that clerks in Holy Orders were disqualified, and providing means by which the law could be enforced. The discussions on that occasion were not very important. There was no consideration of whether it was a desirable thing in itself that clergymen should be excluded from the House of Commons. The ground was simply taken that the existing Constitution ought not at that time to be tampered with, and Mr. Horne Tooke did not take any very wide ground of principle in opposing this measure against himself. His case was that for practical purposes he had long ceased to be a clergyman. He had obeyed his father in taking Orders, and since then had obeyed nobody else. And, in his own phrase, he pleaded that thirty years of quarantine were a sufficient guard against the infection of his original character as a clergyman. He proceeded further in the debate to give various illustrations, as I take them to have been, of the efficacy of the way in which he had been disinfected of that taint, as I think he would have regarded it. And he concluded his last speech on the subject by drawing the attention of the House of Commons (with what relevancy I cannot conceive) to the interesting question of the celebrated swine of Gadara, entering at some length On a computation, derived from some divine, as to the probable number of devils which had entered into each individual swine, 131 the resulting number, I think, being between 1½ and 1¾ devils per pig. So the discussion on his part of the case against the Bill was one of mere frivolity and amusement.
I shall not say a word further about those discussions or the origin of the matter, because I do not think that the considerations which appealed to Parliament then would appeal to us very forcibly now. And were it simply a question of general principle I should rather expect your Lordships to agree with me that a clerk in Holy Orders or a minister of the Church of Scotland should not, as such, be debarred from entering the house of Commons if he could find a constituency, any more than any other class of British citizen. But there is, of course, this practical difficulty. A great number of clergymen have, of course, benefices with duties attached, but they are not in a position comparable to officers in the Army who on active service are debarred, I suppose, from sitting and voting here—at least some are—because their position is something like that of a freehold with duties annexed to it, and there is under the present system, I suppose, no ecclesiastical authority (I speak under correction) which can adequately compel a beneficed clergyman to attend to the duties of his cure. That is a practical difficulty in this matter. I will return to it in a moment.
I would first remind your Lordships that there are a good many clergymen who do not come under any such category, who, in fact, are not engaged in parochial work at all, whether as beneficed clergy or as curates. There are, to begin with, the clergy of the now disestablished Church of Ireland who remain under this disqualification. There are also a good many clergymen of distinction who, through ill-health or some other accidental cause, at some period of their lives have been led to relinquish their parochial duties for some years, with the result of not returning to them, who still desire—and why should they not?—to exercise the office of a clergyman in public worship and in preaching, and who, are debarred from entering Parliament should they wish to, unless they first take the, to my mind, most repugnant step of divesting themselves of Holy Orders. There are also men like secretaries, often in Holy Orders, of important religious and philanthropic societies; and, finally, there is that extremely large class of clergyman 132 whose ordinary professional duties are not parochial at all, but are those of schoolmasters or teachers of some sort. There are, in short, a great many clergymen to whom the objection to which I have referred does not apply.
I understand that a certain number of these gentlemen feel that it is an unfair inequality cast upon their profession that they should as such be debarred from being Members of Parliament; and in principle, without putting the importance of the matter too high, I must say my sympathies go very heartily with them. To my mind there is something repugnant in anything which in principle unnecessarily marks off the clergyman as a man apart. There is a sentence in a letter of Wordsworth's in which he protests that it is a very mistaken idea that, in order to spiritualise the clergy, you should in some way dehumanise them. I object very much, simply as a matter of principle and of sentiment, to anything which in any way might seem to mark the clergyman as being in some way less than a man. Therefore on grounds of general principle the proposal that Holy Orders should not in themselves be a bar to election appeals to me strongly, and I had no hesitation, at the request of a number of clergymen, in including the first Clause in this Bill.
Now briefly as to the position of the beneficed clergy. When I introduced the Bill in the form in which it stands I must say I was inclined to think that the question would not arise. I do not think that a man who forsook his parish duties to become a candidate for Parliament would stand the remotest chance of being elected by any British constituency whatsoever. I understand, however, that the most rev. Primate, who will follow me, takes a different view, and thinks the point is one of some practical importance, and I need hardly say that I bow altogether to his authority. At this time, when we are all anxious to do everything possible to remove hindrances to the work of the Church of England and to remove even apparent scandals, I think it would hardly be right to put on the Statute Book legislation by which there would be the possibility that a man drawing his stipend and neglecting the spiritual interests of his parishioners should obtain a further stipend of £400 a year by mismanaging their temporal interests. That would be a scandal, and 133 I should be willing to accept any Amendment which would shut out the actual holder of a benefice. At the same time I am not perfectly sure what the terms of such an Amendment would have to be. Therefore I would conclude this subject merely by saying that I hope your Lordships will allow this Bill to go into Committee, and I will undertake not to put it down till sufficiently late to allow the matter to be well considered by the most rev. Primate and other right rev. Prelates. I myself should hope that the Bill will emerge from the Committee retaining at any rate the principle that Holy Orders themselves should not be a bar to election.
By the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, not only Clerks in Holy Orders but the regular ministers of all dissenting congregations were debarred from serving as mayors or members of borough and city councils. I have not looked into the grounds for that legislation, nor do I think it matters; because, whatever the principle was, it has long since been abandoned. As I said, on ordinary county councils, on the London County Council, on county borough councils, on urban district councils, on rural district councils, on parish councils, on boards of guardians, and so forth, clergymen are free to serve, and are often very valuable members of those bodies. The right rev. prelate the Bishop of Birmingham, who had hoped to be here this afternoon but who I understand is delayed, was, as some of your Lordships remember, the mayor of a metropolitan borough; and instances occur to me of other distinguished clergymen who have served in that capacity in municipal work in London, or in county boroughs in the north, and who have now become deans, for example, of cathedral cities which are not county boroughs, and who consequently find themselves barred from putting their municipal experience at the service of their present local authorities.
These two or three cases may not sound a very great matter, but I want to remind your Lordships that there are in this country numbers of urban district councils which tend in the course of time to become, municipalities, and I think it is a matter of some importance that whenever those councils become incorporated any clergyman who happens to be on the municipality becomes excluded from it. Certainly in my part of the world there are 134 a number of little boroughs and urban district councils in which it is of really practical importance to sound local government that the clergy should be eligible. In a great many of the towns to which I allude the only persons with a wide knowledge of the world—with the sort of knowledge that your Lordships, for instance, would bring to bear on local government—the only educated and disinterested gentlemen in point of fact concerned with sound municipal government, very often are the parsons of the places. In a large number of cases it is a distinct handicap to local government that these gentlemen are excluded from borough councils. On that point I shall expect the sympathy of your Lordships. As to the other matter I myself have a very open mind as to what should be done in Committee, and I do not desire the Committee stage to be taken unduly soon. In these circumstances I ask your Lordships to give the Bill a Second Reading.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Charnwood.)
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYMy Lords, we are all grateful, I am sure, to the noble Lord for the extremely clear and lucid way in which he has stated what are the facts with reference to both of the branches of the proposal he makes—namely, his suggestion that the clergy should no longer be debarred from sitting in the House of Commons, and that where they are now debarred from sitting on local authorities the bar should be removed. The noble Lord feels—I admire, respect, and agree with all that he says upon the subject—that there are strong reasons why the knowledge which the clergy inevitably and happily possess on a great mass of public affairs in this country should be made available as widely as possible with regard to the work of the Legislature and of local bodies. In that I entirely agree with him, though I myself do not feel that the proposal that he makes is one which would best conduce to that end.
There is a remarkable passage in the Life of Cardinal Manning. Towards the end of his life he made memoranda, subsequently published, as to the contrast or likeness between the position of the clergy of the Church of England and the position of the clergy of the Church of Rome in this country, and he draws an interesting 135 distinction between them on this point. He says that the clergy of the Church of England are throughout their lives and from the nature of their work constantly abreast of public affairs and take an interest in them in a way which is not attempted or accomplished by the clergy of the Church of Rome. He adds, "It is to our disadvantage, and to the clear advantage and gain and credit of the clergy of the Church of England." That corresponds with what a totally different witness, Mr. Charles Booth, told us—namely, that there was no set of men from whom he obtained so much information, and who were able to give that information so readily and on so large a scale, as the clergy of the Church of England. Throughout my ecclesiastical public life I have endeavoured on every side to press on the clergy, and on the public too, the duty of the clergy to be thus abreast of what is happening in our public life, to bear their full share in it, and to keep themselves in every way in touch with the social and educational movements, and so on, going on in our parishes.
I mention this only lest it should be thought that when I criticise (as I do criticise) the proposal to remove the bar which keeps the clergy from the House of Commons, it is because I doubt whether their knowledge or their competence would be useful in many respects if they were actually in the House of Commons. I believe that no small part of the gain which the public gets from the knowledge that the clergy have of these affairs, no small part of the influence which the clergy can exercise in regard to social matters of this kind, is due to the fact that they are outside the ordinary rut of partisan controversy and political strife. If we once say that, with a view to entering the House of Commons, the parish priest is to become a candidate under this or that Party, to be a member of the organisation which is promoting this or that political partisanship, and, if elected, to find himself the victim of Party organisation, Party Whips, and the rest, he is finding himself also of necessity—supposing the duties of Parliament and of his Party to be physically compatible—placed in contradistinction with the side taken by some of his parishioners. I believe that the strength of the clergy lies in their interest in these matters being independent of the partisan organisation and arrangements which are essential for the due 136 discharge of membership of the House of Commons.
The noble Lord has referred to two of the occasions upon which this subject has been discussed in Parliament during the last 120 years. He mentioned the debates which took place on what is called the Home Tooke matter in 1801, when this gentleman's case was discussed fully in Parliament, and an Act passed which for the first time as a specific Statute debarred the clergy from sitting in the House of Commons. I think that my noble friend did rather less than justice to the importance and interest of those debates. They are reported at quite exceptional length. The debates of that period and the speeches delivered by Lord Thurlow and others are extremely interesting. They are not the least interesting because of the extraordinary view that is expressed as compared with what people think to-day about people being in Orders at all. It was gravely argued at one time that what was called being ordained put a man in a peculiar position; that ordination was a mere ceremony and the man ordained stood in no different position from that of the man not ordained, in any respect whatever. There was a bluntness and straightforwardness in this attitude which reads curiously, not only in the light of what we think, but in the light of the debates which took place long afterwards.
Seventy years passed, and in 1870 the Bill (to which the noble Lord has alluded) was passed, by which clergy who no longer desired to continue to discharge the duties of their office could withdraw from that office altogether, and retire from the ministry. I am not saying at all what bearing that Act has ecclesiastically or canonically, or how far it is necessary that I should touch now on the view that could be fairly taken in Church law and canon law as to the ineffectiveness of such a withdrawal from Orders on the part of individuals. But, as regards the law of the land, it is clear that a man can, if he choose, set himself free from any of the obligations or disqualifications which lie upon him in consequence of his having been ordained. Not a few of those who have taken advantage of the Act did so because they had ceased altogether to hold the opinions which they held when they were ordained, because they had come to regard themselves as in no way qualified 137 for the ministerial work which they desired to lay down—a work which some of them even treated with some scorn in the laying of it down. Men who have taken advantage, either on this ground or on others, of that Act have, of course, many times sat in the House of Commons. There has been, at any rate, one member of His Majesty's Government who was originally ordained. There are many other men, including Mr. Thorold Rogers, prominent in the House of Commons, who have been in Holy Orders to start with and who have taken advantage of the Act.
The debates which then took place are as different as possible from those of 1801, because then everybody admitted that to be in Holy Orders meant something quite different; that it was not a mere ceremony or outward form, but that it marked for the man ordained responsibilities and obligations which lay upon him in the most solemn sense and from which certainly he could not free himself without the very great care that the Act lays down. Ten years later an attempt was made to pass just such a Bill, as regards the House of Commons, as is now submitted by the noble Lord, and another debate took place in the House of Commons in 1881, in which Sir William Harcourt was prominent, and other speakers bore their part in it. To contrast the view then taken with that which had been taken eighty years before about the manner and character of ordination to the ministry is an instructive comment, and it is worth any one's while to look at it. This is not an appropriate place to dwell in detail on the subject.
I venture to think that the real answer to the proposal now made—and that proposal, of course, is that a man, while retaining the full obligations of the ministry to which he was ordained, shall be also able to sit in the House of Commons—is this. Let a man read the ordination service of the priests; let him see what is said there about the devotion of the man's life to the particular purpose for which he is set apart, the nature of the devotion, the way in which the thoughts of the whole man are to be given up to that man's work, what the work is to consist of, and how he is to carry it through; and then compare that with the position which lays upon him the ordinary obligation to sit day by day in the House of Commons, dealing with matters which I will not say are outside the very high moral responsibility, even the 138 religious responsibility, that lies upon any man there, but are wholly outside a number of the characteristics to which at his ordination he devoted his life.
I cannot myself be a party to a measure which should invite and encourage clergymen to regard it as compatible with the purpose for which they had been originally ordained—a purpose which, presumably, they desire still to carry on—to accept a position in the House of Commons with its emoluments and the obligations which are there laid upon one. That is the view I take. While, as I shall show in a moment, I am entirely in favour of the second part of the Bill, I would go so far as to suggest that the whole of the first clause should be left out. I do not say that there is anything terrible in the thought of such a thing being made law. If it had been the law already, I am not prepared to say that I should have striven to get it removed now, but for us to take the step to-day to remove the disability which now lies on a man who is ordained, would to my mind be only justified if you could show that it was in response to a strong, persistent, legitimate and widespread demand.
When this kind of subject comes up I am generally the recipient of a very large correspondence from one side or the other from all parts of the kingdom. On this subject I have received one postcard. That is the sole communication which has reached me with regard to this Bill, except from my noble friend himself, who, with his accustomed courtesy, has kept me informed of all he wants to do. Only one postcard have I received, and I confess I should require to have some indication of a wider interest than that in the subject before I felt justified in doing something which, while its result would, I believe, be very small, would have the effect and the appearance of a sort of demonstration of a specific kind which I should feel to be unfortunate and contrary to the principles that I hold.
It may be said, either in this House or outside, "If you think that the clergy should not sit in the House of Commons or be elected thereto, what about the Bishops in the House of Lords?" That is a very easy argument to use. The two positions do not seem to me to be in the least degree parallel. I have spoken of reasons why I should specially object to plunge the clergy of our parishes into the controversial disputations which precede, 139 accompany, and follow election to Parliament, or into positions in which they would find themselves if they were in Parliament. A Bishop does not submit himself to a constituency with an election address, taking one side or the other in the Parliamentary controversies of the day. Happily, he does not find himself tied to a party organisation of any kind, and, while it is an open question whether Bishops should sit in the House of Lords, it at all events does not really connect itself clearly—my noble friend did not in the least endeavour to connect it—with what he desires to bring about in the House of Commons. I am quite aware that it is an open question whether Bishops should sit here at all. If the question were ever discussed, I should have something to say about it, and I think I could show that there are some advantages in the Bishops having the seats which they have held even for a longer time than the predecessors of most of those who are temporal Peers in this House. But that is not in question to-day. All I am anxious to make clear is that I am not in the least blind to the possibility of raising that point, as a debating argument, outside the House rather than in it probably, about the proposal which the noble Lord has made, and that I am perfectly prepared to meet it by showing that the two things do not run on all fours in any degree at all.
On the whole, then, I am distinctly against the first clause of the Bill. I see no real demand for it. Looking at the matter historically I do not find that there has been any period when it has been really widely desired, and I believe that at this moment there is even less wish for it on the part of the clergy at large than there might have been a good many years ago. It is true to say that there are plenty of clergymen who have not their time fully occupied and that they might spend it much better in Parliament. That is an argument, however, for uniting our parishes (a policy I am in favour of) but it is not an argument for suggesting that they should join one Party or another in a candidature for the House of Commons and give up their time entirely to that duty. Presumably, if they were honest men, they would have to give up most of their time, to the detriment undoubtedly of their work in the smallest parishes— work to which they have been definitely and with great solemnity assigned.
140 If the Bill is read a second time with my consent it will be because I hope that Clause 1 may be afterwards wholly omitted. As to Clause 2, I do not desire to see that omitted. It is by a kind of accident that persons in Holy Orders or regular ministers of dissenting congregations are disqualified from some municipal bodies. If you will go back to the debates on this question you will find that it is hardly possible to say there was any deliberate intention that they should be permanently barred; only in a kind of haphazard wav were they barred. There are certain offices which they can hold. They can sit as mayors of boroughs, and the right rev. Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham was for some years mayor of one of the London boroughs. The Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea, is Mayor of Chelsea. But there are some offices they cannot hold, and it is often a real loss that men possessing peculiar qualifications cannot at this moment take part in some of our local work. It is a disqualification which I believe arose accidentally, and which I think ought certainly to be removed. The objections I have spoken of in regard to Parliament do not apply in the least. They would be engaged in the local life and work of the parish and borough; would not be obliged to give up any of their parish work or belong to any political organisation. The objections, therefore, which stand across an efficient discharge of his parochial duties if he were a member of the House of Commons do not apply when a clerk in Holy Orders is a member of a municipal corporation, district council, or the rest. The second clause of the Bill seems to me to be of real value, while the first clause would be rather insignificant in its consequences. Not many clergymen would be elected. I do not think the best men would desire to stand, and we should not find a great accession of gain to the House of Commons by the few men who might possibly be elected.
If the noble Lord goes to a Second Reading I should be prepared to support the Motion on the clear understanding that Clause I will be deleted in Committee. I desire to thank the noble Lord again for the clear and considerate way in which he has put the whole matter before the House, and the readiness that he expressed to accept large modifications after he has heard what your Lordships may have to say on the Bill.
§ THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (VISCOUNT PEEL)My Lords, the object of Clause 1 of this Bill is to enable persons who have been ordained to the office of priest or deacon or are ministers of the Church of Scotland to be eligible to sit in the House of Commons. It repeals the House of Commons (Clergy Disqualification) Act, 1801, which now disqualifies them for being so elected. The argument of the most rev. Primate applied only to the Church of England. We have not heard any views yet as to the ministers of the Church of Scotland; and if this first clause is entirely deleted, obviously both Churches would be affected. My noble friend has reminded us that by the Clerical Disability Act, 1870, the disqualification imposed by the Act of 1801 ceased to apply when a person had relinquished in due form his office of priest or deacon in the Church of England.
The second clause of the Bill seeks to remove the disqualification now attaching to clerks in Holy Orders, and for this purpose it repeals Section 12 (1) (b) of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882. That particular section provides that a person shall be disqualified for being elected to, or for being a councillor of, a municipal borough by reason of being in Holy Orders or a regular minister of a dissenting congregation. This applies also to aldermen. It is rather curious that there is no such similar disqualification for county councils, metropolitan borough councils, urban and rural district councils, boards of guardians, and parish councils. By subsection 2 of the Local Government Act, 1888, it is expressly provided that clerks in Holy Orders and other ministers of dissenting congregations shall not be disqualified for being elected as councillors. You really have three classes of persons—first, those who are deliberately disqualified from sitting on county councils; secondly, the other bodies as to which there is no disqualification; and, thirdly, there is the borough council disqualification which the noble Lord seeks, by this Bill, to remove.
The most rev. Primate has drawn a great distinction between the Party action which a man might have to take if he were in Parliament as against local councils. I suggest that he has taken rather too picturesque a view of the entire absence of Party feeling on many of the county and borough councils. If he will consider how keenly the last election in London has been 142 fought for the borough councils he will hardly contend that a man could get on these councils and not necessarily belong to a Party. I have had a good deal of experience on the London County Council, and I am speaking with full knowledge of the extent to which ministers of religion have been on that body and have taken sometimes extreme Party action. As regards the attitude of the Government on this Bill, they leave the matter entirely open to the House. I may add that, as far as I know, the Government have not received even a single postcard on the subject.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.