Sitting of 21 April 1856

MINUTES.
NEW MEMBER SWORN.—For Athlone,
Hon. Captain Henry Handcock.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1° Dublin Metropolitan Police; Grand Jury Assessments (Ireland); National Gallery; Spirit Trade (Ireland).
3° Bankruptcy (Scotland).

THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT— EXPLANATION.
SIR BENJAMIN HALLsaid, he wished to correct a statement he had made the other evening, in reply to a question respecting the erection of a monument to the late Duke of Wellington. He then stated that his predecessor at the Board of Works had considered two plans, one of which has been sent in by Mr. Baily and the other by Mr. Foley, but that, after careful consideration, neither of those plans was approved of. He (Sir B. Hall) also stated that, soon after he came into office, he saw the models which he had reason to believe, from the statements made to him, had been prepared by Mr. Baily and Mr. Foley. He had, however, received a communication from Mr. Foley, informing him that the plans to which he had referred were those of Mr. Baily alone. He (Sir B. Hall) might observe that it was his intention to invite those gentlemen to send in plans again.

THE SEBASTOPOL CLASP—QUESTION.
MR. H. BAILLIEsaid, that in reference to a statement made by the Under Secretary for War on Friday evening, that none but combatant officers were to receive the Sebastopol clasp, he would beg to inquire whether the War Office had decided that surgeons attending the wounded under fire or Commissariat officers bringing up supplies during action were non-combatants? He asked the question because he understood that those medical and Commissariat officers who were still at Sebastopol had received the clasp, while those who had returned since the city was taken had been refused it.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he could only repeat the answer which he gave on Friday, that, as a general rule, none but combatant officers were to receive clasps commemorative of actions, but added, that it had been decided to make an exception in favour of medical officers, on the ground that they were obliged, in the performance of their duty, to go under fire with their regiments.
SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he would remind the hon. Gentleman that he had not answered that portion of the question which referred to the distinction made between the medical and Commissariat officers remaining in the Crimea and those who had returned home.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he must beg to explain that before the general rule which he had described came into
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operation a number of Commissariat officers received the Sebastopol clasp, which they had not since been requested to return, although the same distinction had not been conferred upon the remaining officers in the same department.

ORDNANCE—DEFECTIVE MORTARS— MESSRS. GRISSELL.
MR. MALINSsaid he rose, pursuant to notice, to call the attention of the House to the charges which were made by the Clerk of the Ordnance against Messrs. Grissell of having inserted pieces of iron in the mortars which were made by them, in order that the flaws in the materials which they had used might escape observation. That charge related to men of great respectability, and he was himself satisfied, and he hoped also to be able to satisfy the House, that it was entirely destitute of foundation. During the summer of last year the Government were greatly in need of mortars for carrying on the war, and, not being able to obtain the requisite supply from the houses with which they usually dealt, they applied to no less than fifty-four manufacturing firms of high reputation to ascertain whether they could furnish the mortars which were required. Among other persons, Messrs. Grissell, who held extensive Government contracts for machinery, and who carried on a very large business, were asked if they would undertake to supply a certain number of mortars. They stated that as the manufacture of mortars was not within their line of business they were reluctant to undertake a contract, but that as the Government were pressed they would afford any assistance in their power. They accepted a contract for furnishing eight mortars of five tons each, the price being limited to £24 a ton. Now, he was assured by those gentlemen, that having entered upon the contract, and deeming it important that the best materials for the mortars should be secured, they had instituted all the necessary inquiries upon the subject, and had come to the conclusion that Staffordshire cold blast-iron, with a mixture of Cumberland and old iron, would be found to be the best materials for their purpose. Acting upon that opinion one member of the firm had taken a journey through England, and having acquired all the information he could collect, had provided the necessary materials, and proceeded to carry out the manufacture of the mortars in question. Now, six out of the eight mortars which had been contracted for had subsequently

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been delivered, and of those six mortars no complaint whatever had been made. Upon the 29th of October, however, a mortar described in the papers as No. 4, was delivered, and with respect to that mortar the foreman, having been anxious to render it as perfect as possible, had adopted a new system of pouring in the metal, both at the bottom and the top, the consequence of which was that, when the currents of metal met a blistering was caused and some small holes appeared. Messrs. Grissell were perfectly satisfied that, notwithstanding these blemishes on the face of the metal, they had not cast a sounder mortar or one of greater strength. They therefore filled up the holes on the surface with iron of a different quality, and on the 29th of October the mortar was delivered. On the 20th of December that mortar was inspected for the first time by Colonel Wilmot, by whom it was rejected. The Messrs. Grissell considered that no good reason whatever existed for that rejection; and requested that the mortar might be tried. That request had, however, been refused and the mortar was thrown into what was called the "rejected ground." He might inform the House that the Messrs. Grissell, having found the contract more difficult of performance even than they had anticipated, had actually been obliged to expend upon the erection of new machinery a sum of £1,000, that being the whole amount for which they had originally undertaken to carry the contract into execution. On the 19th of November, Messrs. Grissell received a communication from Colonel Wilmot, asking whether they would enter into a contract to furnish the Government with fifteen more mortars. They stated that the price at which they had undertaken the first contract was too low; they sent in new specifications, and on the 23rd of November they were instructed to proceed with the manufacture of fifteen additional mortars, the price of which was to be £28 per ton. The terms of the contract provided that these mortars should be delivered by the last day of February, and at the end of January, when it became apparent that peace was about to be concluded and that the additional mortars might not be wanted, Messrs. Grissell were informed that none of those mortars would be received by the Government after the 29th of February. The firm were therefore obliged to work night and day in order to complete the contract, and on or before the last day of February all the mortars were delivered.
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It must be remembered that the manufacturers of guns and mortars had no means of testing them, but they were tested by the Government themselves. One of the mortars delivered by Messrs. Grissell burst, but mortars sent in by all other manufacturers had also burst, and on the 7th of March, Messrs. Grissell received a letter, signed "T. H. Monk," informing them that one of their 13-inch mortars had burst, on the firing of the tenth round, at Shoeburyness, when a plug was discovered screwed into the breech. The letter further stated that, in consequence of this discovery, the mortars at Woolwich, supplied by Messrs. Grissell, had been minutely inspected, and that a plug had been discovered in mortar No. 4, which was delivered on the 29th of October. Before they had time to answer that letter the Clerk of the Ordnance had come down to that House, upon the night of the 7th March, and in Committee of Supply had made, without the slightest investigation into the merits of the case, a charge against the Messrs. Grissell, for which, if true, no punishment could be too severe. The right hon. Gentleman told the House, on the 7th of March, that the Government had obtained a considerable number of mortars from private firms, but that the result had been most unsatisfactory; that several failures had taken place in respect to those mortars, and he was sorry to say that one firm, which he would not name, was found to have made attempts at deception in the manufacture of five of them by inserting pieces of iron in order that flaws in the material they had used might escape observation. That statement of the right hon. Gentleman had naturally awakened a feeling of profound indignation in the House against the men who had been guilty of a fraud so infamous. The hon. and gallant Member for Chippenham (Colonel Boldero), in giving expression to that indignation, had said that the firm which had supplied those mortars ought to be prosecuted for felony; and the hon. Member for the Cardigan Burghs (Mr. L. Davies) said that the name of the man guilty of the conduct described by the right hon. Gentleman ought to be published, so that every honourable person might treat him as a felon, and that he might be consigned to the infamy he deserved. But no name had been given in connection with the charge until the evening of the 11th of March, when the noble Lord the Secretary for War stated in another place, in reply to a question put by

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the Earl of Derby, that the firm to which the right hon. Gentleman had referred was that of the Messrs. Grissell; and when the Earl of Derby urged on the Government the propriety of considering whether the head of that firm ought not to be prosecuted, the noble Lord the Secretary for War said that the Government had, in the first place, erased the firm from the list of Government contractors, and had submitted to the law officers of the Crown whether Messrs. Grissell ought not to be prosecuted. Up to that moment the Messrs. Grissell had not received the slightest intimation from any quarter that they were the parties against whom the charge of the right hon. Gentleman was directed; but of course, after the declaration of the noble Lord the Secretary for War, they could no longer remain silent. What was the foundation of the charge against those gentlemen—a charge which was virtually one of felony? Why, it was simply this, that preparatory to turning the mass of iron a hole had to be bored in the breech for inserting the centre of the lathe, and when the mortar was finished a plug of iron was driven into this hole, simply to fill up an unsightly cavity. The plug had not, therefore, been inserted for the purpose of concealing any defect in the material, but simply for the purpose of filling up a hole which it was necessary to make in completing the manufacture. It was not a little remarkable that on the 10th of March, the day before the noble Lord the Secretary for War had made his statement in the House of Lords upon that subject, Colonel Wilmot had written to the right hon. Gentleman the Clerk of the Ordnance a letter, in which he stated that there was reason to believe the hole at the breech had been made in the process of manufacture, and not with a view to conceal any flaw in the material; and yet, notwithstanding that statement of Colonel Wilmot on the 10th of March, the noble Lord the Secretary for War on the following day repeated in the House of Lords the charge of fraud, which had first been put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Clerk of the Ordnance in the House of Commons. That fact revealed at least a very infelicitous mode of conducting Government business. A correspondence ensued between the War Office and Messrs. Grissell, and those gentlemen, in a lengthened interview which they had had with the noble Lord the Secretary for War, on the 14th of March, had convinced the noble Lord, as appeared from the papers laid before
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the House, that the charge of having put in the plugs for the purpose of concealing a flaw in the materials was unfounded. It further appeared, that two engineers of the highest reputation—namely, Mr. Brunel and Mr. Fowler, had, after due inquiry, made a report, in which they expressed their belief that "the description of iron used by the Messrs. Grissell, and the mode of proceeding which they had adopted, indicated a desire to perform work to which they were not accustomed in a creditable manner, and that it was clear no fraud had been attempted in the case." A letter had been written by the Messrs. Grissell, on the 14th of March, in which they entered into the fullest explanations upon the subject; and that letter was answered in a communication which, for some reason or another he (Mr. Malins) could not understand, was not inserted in the papers that had been presented to Parliament. In that communication the authorities at the War Office acquitted those gentlemen on the charge of fraud, but persisted in stating that they believed the plug had been inserted for the purpose of concealment. But the Messrs. Grissell very properly considered that a charge of concealment involved a charge of fraud, and did not allow the matter to rest there. The point in dispute was referred to Colonel Wilmot, and he drew up a Report, in which he made a statement to the effect, that on the whole he thought the opinion given by Mr. Brunel and Mr. Fowler, in favour of the honesty of the contractors, ought to be considered conclusive; and then he went on to declare that, in his belief, iron compounded of Blenavon and Pontypool would have been better than the iron compounded of Staffordshire coldblast, Cumberland hematite, and old iron, used by the Messrs. Grissell. That latter opinion, however, had been then stated for the first time by Colonel Wilmot—he had never before expressed a wish that the compound he recommended should be employed by the Messrs. Grissell—and he (Mr. Malins) could not help thinking that that new question had been introduced for the purpose of diverting attention from the real point at issue. Colonel Wilmot further stated in his Report that he had satisfied himself that the Messrs. Grissell had spent a sum of £1,000 in machinery, for the purpose of properly fulfilling their contract. He (Mr. Malins) had been induced to take up the case solely from a desire to obtain for a firm which had hitherto borne an unblemished character the reparation

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of what they regarded as a gross injustice; and on the 2nd of the present month he had asked the right hon. Gentleman the Clerk of the Ordnance, whether the Government had yet satisfied themselves of the groundlessness of their charge against the Messrs. Grissell. The right hon. Gentleman had stated, in reply, that the correspondence upon the subject was still going on, and that he could not answer the question. But he (Mr. Malins) hoped that at present, at all events, that answer would not be repeated, and that the right hon. Gentleman would at length be prepared to do justice to those gentlemen. Among the papers presented to Parliament was a memorandum written by Colonel Wilmot, on the 11th of April, in which he stated that on the 7th of March, in the course of a conversation with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Monsell), he had used the words "flaws in the material," when he ought to have said "defects in the manufacture." It thus appeared that after a loose conversation with Colonel Wilmot, perhaps in the lobby of the House, the right hon. Gentleman felt himself justified on the evening of the same day in making a ruinous charge against a highly respectable firm. There was no duty more incumbent upon Members of the Government, whose statements in that House, however hurtful, could not be questioned in a court of law, than to be particularly abstemious in bringing charges against individuals. But what did he find in a letter written from the War Department on the 14th of April? Lord Panmure there stated, that the material had been proved not to be of such a quality as to secure the fitness of the mortars for the service; but, on the other hand, he willingly admitted that the plugs inserted in the mortars, with the exception of those on the face, were not placed there for the purpose of concealing flaws, but for filling up holes made in the process of manufacture. Surely the Clerk of the Ordnance must now regret having made his rash and unfounded charges on the 7th of March. Messrs. Grissell were charged with having inserted plugs into three mortars, but of that charge they had been subsequently acquitted. This observation, however, did not apply to No. 4, but the pieces inserted in that mortar were as plain when sent to Woolwich as the spectacles on a man's face. The Government endeavoured to get out of the scrape of not detecting this, by alleging that the mortar had been painted; but that was disproved. The
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grounds of the charge against the Messrs. Grissell were at present completely removed, as he (Mr. Malins) believed, and were evidently in the opinion of the Government itself at least greatly altered. There was no longer any question even as to the character of the iron which those gentlemen had employed; for a Commission, in which Colonel Wilmot himself had served, had reported that their compound was the best they could have adopted. He had been informed by persons most competent to give a decision in such a case, that the piece of iron inserted in the hole of the mortars had not in the slightest degree diminished their strength. That was the opinion of Mr. Brunel and Mr. Fowler; and he believed it was also the opinion of the hon. Member for Whitby (Mr. Stephenson), than whom there could be no higher authority upon such a subject. Under all the circumstances of the case, he thought the right hon. Gentleman had violated the rules of fairness in bringing forward a grave charge in the hasty manner he had done against gentlemen who, he must have known, had long maintained an unsullied character in the performance of the duties of an honourable business; and he trusted that the right hon. Gentleman, now that the whole of the facts were before him, would frankly admit that those gentlemen had honestly endeavoured to fulfil their contract. He felt assured that the House would concur with him in the belief that the charge was one which ought never to have been made, and that having once been made the right hon. Gentleman could not take too early an opportunity of retracting it. The right hon. Gentleman made a complaint that some of the mortars had burst. He did not, however, select those of Messrs. Grissell as having failed more than any others, but alleged general insufficiency; and if, out of the twenty-three mortars manufactured by that firm, one had burst, it was not from defective manufacture or material. Having gone out of their usual course of business in manufacturing those mortars they had determined to perform the duty in the best way they could. By doing so they had subjected themselves to a charge in that House which they had no means of removing but by an appeal to the generosity of the Members. If the right hon. Gentleman gave the assurance that he was now perfectly satisfied that whatever error might have been made by the contractors in the perforance of their contract the error was unintentional, there would be an

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end of the matter; but if he persisted in the charge which he had made, he (Mr. Malins) should consider whether it would not be his duty to move for a Select Committee to investigate the question.
MR. MONSELLsaid, he could assure the hon. and learned Gentleman and the House, that he should be glad if he could conscientiously arrive at the same conclusion with the hon. and learned Gentleman in reference to the subject before them. He should, in a few words, dispose of the charges which had been brought against himself and his noble Friend (Lord Panmure) in reference to the course which they had thought it their duty to pursue, and he should then explain to the House the real position in which the affair stood. With regard to himself, he thought the House would agree with him in thinking, that he was justified in making the statement to which the hon. and learned Gentleman had referred, when it was nothing more than what had been reported to him by the competent authority—the officer whose duty it was to examine and test the quality of the mortars supplied. Referring to that report, the only mistake which he could discover, after the explanation of the hon. and learned Member, was, that it was there stated that the plugs were to conceal defects in the material, instead of saying that they were to conceal defects in the workmanship. As to the fact that the mortars were plugged, there was now no denial; but the hon. and learned Gentleman stated that that was a matter of no importance, and that he was supported in that opinion by the hon. Member for Whitby (Mr. Stephenson). Now, on the other hand, officers well acquainted with such subjects—Colonel Eardley Wilmot, the chief officer of Woolwich Arsenal, Captain Carrick, of the royal navy, and Sir Thomas Maitland, the head of the experimental department of the royal navy, had also given an opinion on the same subject, and it was one directly opposite to that of the hon. Member for Whitby. Their opinion was, that the flaws were defects of a most serious character, and weakened the mortars most materially. As to the question raised with respect to the holes being necessary for the process of turning, he could only refer to the unanimous resolution of the board of officers to refuse all mortars in any way flawed, and if the House would refer to the rule laid down by other nations in the selection of their mortars, they would find that their provisions were most distinct on that point. He (Mr. Monsell)
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could not agree with the conclusions to which the hon. and learned Gentleman had arrived, that the insertion of the plugs was no defect, for, on the contrary, he considered it a grievous and serious defect. He wished now to call the attention of the House to the mode in which the present question arose. On the 20th of December, it was discovered that there were certain plugs in mortar No. 4, when Mr. Grissell stated, that the flaws which they concealed were of a very insignificant character; but Colonel Wilmot refused to receive it. Colonel Wilmot, in his report, stated that Mr. Grissell waited on him, on hearing of the discovery, and expressed his regret that such a thing should have happened, but that it was an ordinary thing for such flaws to appear in castings, but that the mortar was nothing the worse for it, after which he earnestly besought him not to reject it, but that he (Colonel Wilmot) replied, that he would not enter into the question, as to whether the mortar was weakened by the plugs, but that, had he at first known it was plugged, he should not have even looked at it. Now, every one could see, that a plug in the breech of a mortar was a much more serious thing than one in the face of it, and he wished to ask the House this question—Did Mr. Grissell act as a man of that high character, which he was represented to bear, ought to have acted in not saying to Colonel Wilmot, when he knew that three other mortars supplied by his firm were also plugged? "Since you object to this mortar on the ground of its being plugged, although I, myself, think it is nothing the worse for being so, I think it right to inform you that there are also plugs in the other three." The House, then, would agree with him in thinking that it was impossible to acquit Mr. Grissell of misconduct in the matter. Again, in his letter, Mr. Grissell stated, that the plugs were used merely to stop up air holes which were of little importance, and that they were not more than from one-eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch in diameter; but when it became Colonel Wilmot's duty to extract those plugs, he found them to be 1½ inch on the head, and from five-tenths to seven-tenths of an inch in the screw, and that the interior of the mortars were honey-combed. With regard to the question as to the badness of the materials, that was a matter on which the Government had no grounds of complaint. The three mortars tested had burst respectively at the 9th, 10th, and

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116th round, and, in fact, he (Mr. Monsell) thought that all he had advanced against the contractors was borne out by the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite, that it was impossible for young hands to manufacture mortars. It was painful to him to make that statement, and he could assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that he entertained no personal feeling against the Messrs. Grissell, but it was his duty, from the position which he had the honour of occupying, to lay those facts before the House.
MR. G. DUNDASbegged to say a few words on this matter, with the details of which he had endeavoured to become familiar by careful inquiry, by a perusal of all the papers laid on the table, and by personal inspection of the mortars as they lay on the wharf at Woolwich, and of the heads of the mortars which were now lying at Messrs. Grissell's manufactory on the Regent's Canal. He must confess that when he first heard the statement of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Monsell) he received it with surprise and incredulity. He would not believe that persons in the position of Messrs. Grissell would so hazard their reputation, as to attempt to palm upon the Government bad material and workmanship, knowing it to be so, and, from these inquiries, he was convinced that the charge was unfounded. The charges divided themselves into three heads. First, that Messrs. Grissell had inserted plugs into the base of the mortar for the purpose of covering defects in the metal. That statement was made by a noble Lord in another place long after he had had the opportunity of informing himself of the facts by communication with Messrs. Grissell, and on which very day, namely, the 10th of March, as appears by the correspondence now on the table of the House, the right hon. Gentleman the Clerk of the Ordnance received the following communication from the Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factory:—
"It is probable that the holes in the breach were made in the process of manufacture, and were not flaws in the metal."
The second charge was, that they had inserted pieces of iron into the face of a mortar in order to hide defects in that face. The third charge was, that they used a material for the construction of the mortars which was altogether unsuited for them. With regard to the plugs which had been inserted in the breach of the mortars, it was to be observed that mortars are generally cast with a heavy head of iron over that
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part which afterwards becomes the mortar. This is to give density and solidity to the piece of ordnance. These heads are about fifty inches high, and weigh perhaps six tons. The finished thirteen-inch mortar weighs about five tons. Any one may judge of the density imparted by these heads by inspecting one which is cut up into sections at the Messrs. Grissell's works. Near the mortar it is dense, hard, and heavy as adamant, while at the upper part the metal is loose and spongy. To separate this head from the mortar the mass must be placed between the centres of a lathe, and a parting tool being applied in the slide rest, the two masses are divided; but centre holes, small conical indentations, require to be made for the lathe centres to work in—one in the top of the head, the other in the base of the mortar. These need not be above an inch and a half deep, and the upper centre holes might be seen in the heads now. The lower, or that in the base, was, on Messrs. Grissell's afterwards observing that the Government mortars were finished off straight on the base, filled up by a small hole being tapped in the base, and a screw inserted, for the sake of neatness and uniformity, but without the most remote idea that by so doing the mortar was weakened. The first four mortars made by Messrs. Grissell were thus treated, but in subsequent ones a boss was cast in which the lathe centre worked, and this boss was subsequently chipped off. It was difficult to suppose that great importance could have been attached to the minute aperture thus made in the breaches of these mortars, as there was now lying on the wharf at Woolwich a burst mortar, the vent of which had been bored to the size of nearly an inch in diameter, from the exterior of the piece to the chamber, in order to receive a bouche of wrought iron. This mortar was split into two halves through the vent, in the manner that mortars generally burst, the fracture passing also in a line with the centres, and, in the case of Messrs. Grissell's mortars, disclosing the small plugs which gave rise to those grave and unfounded accusations that have been brought against them. With regard to inserting plugs into the face of the mortar, he thought it a great pity that the charge had been revived, because, after the mortar was rejected on that ground, the Government entered into a second contract with Messrs. Grissell, thus evincing the slight importance attached to the charge. The fact of the plugs appearing on the face of the mortar

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was known by the end of December. The second agreement with Messrs. Grissell was signed on the 23rd of January. If the Government had had any very strong grounds for supposing that fraud had been intended by Messrs. Grissell, it was not too late to have broken that agreement. He had not seen the air-holes before they were filled up, but he had seen the doubles of them in the head of the mortar. They appeared to him to be very insignificant, and they had appeared equally so to Messrs. Grissell and their foreman. A mortar made just before this particular one, having presented the same appearance, had been sliced into small pieces by the planing machine, and upon examination disclosed nothing like flaws. Messrs. Grissell had every reason to believe that the mortar was perfectly sound and solid, and that the small defects which they filled were superficial and of very little consequence. The mortar stood the proof at the butt with twenty-one pounds of powder, and it was only upon the application of the water test that the holes became more apparent, in consequence of the water trickling down the face and lodging in the interstices, between the plugs and the solid metal. Messrs. Grissell were so satisfied, no imperfection whatever having been discovered when the bore was turned out, that they were ready to stake their reputation upon that mortar. With regard to the third charge of using materials unsuited for the purpose, Messrs. Grissell had taken every means in their power to secure proper materials. The iron they used was Messrs. Grazebrook's cold blast, which was a very high-priced iron, and believed by Messrs. Grissell to be the best for the purpose intended. As to the mortar that burst under proof, though cast of the same high-class and expensive metal as the others, it appeared to have got chilled in the casting from the mould becoming damp, thus seriously affecting the texture and strength of the iron. It must be remembered that Messrs. Grissell were new to the trade, and had to contend with difficulties which the right hon. Gentleman the Clerk of the Ordnance would know something more about when the Government established their own iron foundry, as it was in contemplation to do. He was certainly of opinion that the Government ought to be the manufacturers of their own implements of war, and though, at first, many similar errors to these now denounced
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would be committed, and probably a good deal of money spent, yet valuable experience would be gained, and it must in the end prove beneficial. What he had said was a plain and simple statement of the case, and he regretted that the appeal which had been made to the right hon. Gentleman the Clerk of the Ordnance had not been attended with such results as might have been anticipated. He had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would have acknowledged that he had, at the least, spoken rather hastily, and have made to Messrs. Grissell that amende which bare justice required, for the expressions used by the right hon. Gentleman a few weeks since, echoed and indorsed as they were by a noble Lord in another place, and giving rise to still darker insinuations of a traitorous sympathy with the foe, were well nigh sufficient to blast the reputation and irretrievably injure the character of a firm, whoso fair fame, however, rested upon years of acknowledged integrity, and who, he (Mr. Dundas) believed, were second to none in England for honesty and uprightness, for patriotism, and for loyalty.
LORD LOVAINEsaid, it appeared to him that the debate had taken a very strange turn, for the Government seemed to be put on its trial for their condemnation of the material and workmanship of articles supplied to it under a contract. That was a contract, too, in which if there were any fraud, it was calculated to inflict immense damage and risk of loss of life. The Government, therefore, were justified in instituting the most searching examination into the quality of the articles, and it was hard, indeed, that they should be called in question for rejecting what they considered improper articles; and the moment that they hinted that there was an intention to defraud them, up jumped a dozen hon. Gentlemen to defend the contractors. It was the bounden duty of the officer rigidly to inspect those mortars, and he seemed to have done nothing more than his duty, He (Lord Lovaine) thought that it was impossible, after perusing the papers which had been laid before the House, and after hearing the statements which had been made, to deny that the Government were perfectly justified in the course they had taken; and in his opinion, when the mortar in which the plug was first discovered was rejected, the contractors ought, in common honesty, to have pointed out that the same defects existed in the others. It was a matter of immense

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importance to the country at large, and hon. Gentlemen had no right to treat it as a private concern, or to impute motives to the Government which they did not deserve to have imputed to them.
COLONEL BOLDEROsaid, that after reading the whole of the correspondence on the subject, he thought it quite clear that of the charge of fraud the Messrs. Grissell must be acquitted; but he certainly could not acquit them of negligence, for the results of the defects in their mortars might have been very serious in the military operations the country was then carrying on. There could be no doubt that the firm had some difficulties to contend with; they were new to their work, and should have been extremely cautious. If Messrs. Grissell and Co. could not devote their time to the superintendence of casting and forging of the guns, their foreman, who was doubtless a person of great experience, should have reported to them that certain defects existed in a given number of mortars. They would, undoubtedly, at all events, be acquainted with the fact, and it appeared to him (Colonel Boldero) that they were to blame, inasmuch as they had not represented to Her Majesty's Government, when sending in the guns, that they had done their utmost, but that in four of the mortars those defects did exist. He would like to be informed, however, of the reason why the Messrs. Grissell had been singled out from amongst the thirty odd iron founders who had accepted Government contracts some time back. Nothing had been said of the number of guns which had been rejected, or which had burst that were manufactured by other firms. He would also inquire why the test charge used had been one of 21 lbs.? It was an insufficient one, insomuch as the service charge which produced the greatest range was one of 25 lbs. The contract altogether was an improper one. The Messrs. Grissell had supplied twenty-three pieces of ordnance, but of which one had burst, which was a matter of no great blame to them. The present charge against the Government contractors affected the whole contractors of the kingdom. The debates in that House were translated into foreign newspapers, and would be calculated to affect, injuriously, British manufacturers, by encouraging the idea that one eminent house had imposed upon the Government of the country, and that therefore they were not to be relied upon. The merchants
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of England, however, need not fear, particularly that class which had undertaken ordnance contracts; the manufacture of 13-inch mortars required a great deal of experience to attain perfection, and the guns and mortars used at the siege of Sebastopol would sufficiently speak for the ability of the old firms which had manufactured them. From a Return which he held in his hands, it appeared that the total number of guns which burst, out of 476, in active service during the whole siege, was only eleven, although 269 were rendered unserviceable from other causes. That number was, however, susceptible of still greater diminution, for three out of the eleven were Lancasters; and although he (Colonel Boldero) believed that the invention of Mr. Lancaster would ultimately prove to be the most effective portion of the artillery, it had not been sufficiently used as yet to insure the degree of perfection which it would doubtlessly attain. One 68-pounder burst through being struck in the mouth by a shell from the enemy, and another piece of a like calibre met with a similar fate owing to its having been elevated for a very unusual range. Considering that during the siege 1,239 tons of gunpowder had been used by our artillery, and 9,056 tons of shot and shell projected from those pieces, he did not think that eleven casualties by bursting was a large proportion upon nearly 500 pieces of ordnance The present discussion he thought would be attended with good results in the event of the country finding itself engaged in another war. It would, at all events, insure its entering upon it with efficient artillery, and in a better position as regarded the condition of the soldier; and, in a word, more to the satisfaction of the country.
MR. EVELYNsaid, he must express his regret at the accusation which had been made against Messrs. Grissell, and at the same time to declare his belief that there was no ground whatever for imputing fraud to those gentlemen. He had read the documents bearing upon the case, and he entirely acquitted Messrs. Grissell of any fraudulent or dishonest intention.
MR. CUBITTsaid, he had known Messrs. Grissell for many years, and had read with astonishment the charge which had been made against them, for he knew it was morally impossible that such men could have meditated or committed fraud. He had read the documents, and he was

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satisfied that Messrs. Grissell had not been actuated by any fraudulent intention, but that they had undertaken the contract with the desire of carrying it out in such a manner as to sustain their reputation. Numerous errors had been committed in the course of the war by the Government themselves, who, he thought, ought to be somewhat more indulgent when, from want of experience, gentlemen who had endeavoured to carry out their objects had been betrayed into mistakes.
SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he did not rise for the purpose of imputing any blame to the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Monsell) or to Her Majesty's Government for being strict in their investigation. He quite agreed with the noble Lord the Member for North Northumberland (Lord Lovaine) in thinking it the first duty of the Government to do their utmost in protecting the public from anything like imposition. He thought that the Government would, on the other hand, however, admit that a house of great eminence and respectability, like that of the Messrs. Grissell, was entitled to the fullest consideration. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Monsell) must have been aware that the firm had complained, amongst other things, that the diagrams furnished by the Government for the construction of those mortars were not correct. No answer had been returned to that complaint. The main question at issue, however, was not whether the Messrs. Grissell were led into any error in the construction of those mortars, but whether that error was committed with fraudulent intentions. The noble Lord the Secretary for War (Lord Panmure), if he (Sir J. Pakington) had read the papers rightly, had already acquitted the Messrs. Grissell of that imputation. He had no hesitation in saying that he could not, for a moment, believe that the Messrs Grissell would, for so insignificant an object, be guilty of an intention to defraud.
MR. TITEsaid, that Messrs. Grissell had executed very extensive works for him in the most satisfactory manner, although they could scarcely be gainers by the contracts. With regard to the general question, he might state that, at the last meeting of the British Association, it was asserted in one of the sections that the guns cast for the present war were not equal in quality to those cast before the last peace; and that, at the request of the Duke of Argyll, a Committee was appointed
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to consider the subject. He mentioned that to show that to scientific men themselves the casting of guns and mortars was a matter of considerable doubt and difficulty.
The Motion for the adjournment of the House till Thursday was then agreed to.
On Mr. SPEAKER putting the Question that the House should go into Committee of Supply,

HEREDITARY PENSIONS.
SIR FRANCIS BARINGsaid, he wished to draw attention to the fact that certain sums had been expended without the sanction of Parliament. It had been settled that the charges of collecting the revenue should be under the control of Parliament. Yet it appeared that certain charges had been paid out of growing revenues without having been voted. There was a sum of £213,000 which had been expended without the authority of Parliament, and but for the voluntary declaration of the hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury (in answer to a question from himself), would never have been disclosed to the House. How far from perfect was our system of public accounts appeared from this circumstance. The expenditure of this large sum need not have been disclosed at all, for anything in the accounts. There was nothing at all in our system of accounts to entail a disclosure of it. It appeared neither upon the accounts nor the Votes. The amount was very large to have been expended without cognisance of Parliament. The Secretary of the Treasury might have entirely suppressed it. The hon. Gentleman disclosing it had displayed the inefficiency of our system of public accounts, and to this it was he desired to call the attention of the House more particularly. This sum of £213,000 had never been issued from the Exchequer at all, for the sum never got into the Exchequer; yet it figured in an account commencing with a balance in the Exchequer. Now what had this sum to do with Exchequer accounts which never went into the Exchequer? It had nothing to do with Exchequer accounts at all. How was the "balance" made out? It was properly to be made out from moneys which had come into the Exchequer. And, therefore, the sum of £213,000 properly should not have been brought into the account at all. The Treasury had brought into the account of net income sums paid into the Exchequer and sums which had

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been stopped on their way to the Exchequer. It was extremely difficult to understand such a system of accounts. At all events, it was clear that our system of accounts was very imperfect, and required inquiry and improvement.
MR. WILSONsaid, his right hon. Friend was in error in treating the account in which this item appeared as an Exchequer account; it was only a revenue account, including sums that never went into the Exchequer. The object of the Bill of 1854 was to remove certain charges named in the schedules from the gross revenue, part to the Consolidated Fund and part to the annual Votes; but, as stated by the right hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Cardwell), a few items, consisting of some pensions granted to different families, were omitted from the schedules. It was thought better to leave these unchanged, as some had been redeemed, and negotiations were in progress for the redemption of the rest. In 1853, two pensions of Lord Cowper's charged on the Post Office and Land Revenue, were redeemed and appeared in the financial accounts for that year. If the pensions to the Duke of Grafton and to the heirs of the Duke of Schomberg had not been redeemed this year, they would have been paid out of the gross revenue, and have appeared, next year, in the usual accounts.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, if the Government had laid the gross amount of revenue before the House instead of the net amount, it would have been more satisfactory, although it might not have removed the objection of compounding these pensions without the authority of Parliament. With regard to the holders of those pensions, he could not help thinking that there was an example which they would do themselves great credit if they were to follow. The late Marquess of Camden was entitled to a pension of £10,000 a year, and he on conscientious grounds renounced that pension for the benefit of the country. Others, he thought, might be induced to follow that example; and these facilities of compromising pensions without the sanction of Parliament ought to be strenuously opposed.

TENANT RIGHT—QUESTION.
MR. STAFFORDsaid, he wished to recall the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland to the question which had been asked by the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. G. H. Moore).
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The hon. Member had only put off the question, in order to afford opportunities to ascertain the feeling of the people of Ireland upon the subject; and it was to be deeply regretted, considering the great importance of it, that the inquiry of the hon. Member had elicited no answer from the Government. Without agreeing in the opinions of the hon. Member, he felt that the subject was one of the greatest importance, and that the request of the hon. Member for a day on which he might bring it forward ought at all events to have elicited some kind of answer from the Government.
MR. HORSMANsaid, the Government had no notice of the hon. Member's question.
MR. G. H. MOOREsaid, he had given the Secretary of the Treasury notice of it, and the hon. Gentleman had said that he might ask for a day, but was not very likely to get it.
MR. HORSMANsaid, he could assure the House that neither he nor the noble Lord at the head of the Government had been informed of the notice, nor was the noble Lord in the House at the time when the question had been asked.
Motion agreed to.

SUPPLY—MISCELLANEOUS ESTIMATES —BRITISH MUSEUM.
House in Committee of Supply; Mr. FITZROY in the Chair.
(1.) £60,000, British Museum.
LORD JOHN RUSSELL,in moving the Vote for the salaries and expenses of the British Museum establishment, said, that the sum proposed this year was somewhat larger than that taken last year. After rendering distinguished services to the Museum for fifty-six years, as Chief Librarian, Sir Henry Ellis had retired on the allowance of £1,200 a year, that sum being the full amount of his salary, to which his services had so justly entitled him. There had been a determination arrived at by the Trustees, at the suggestion of Government, to appoint a superintendent of natural history; and it was probable that the person nominated, whose name was well known in this country, would fill his office in a manner which would redound to the benefit of the Museum itself and the public generally. For some years past it had been matter of observation that the departments of natural history and science had not received the attention which ought to have been paid to them; and he felt assured that the gentleman to whom he

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had alluded would endeavour so to arrange those departments as that they should be of great use, not only to the natives of this country, but to foreigners. It was likewise thought necessary that there should be a Keeper of Minerals. A gentleman had therefore been appointed, who had paid particular attention to the subject of mineralogy, and to that gentleman a salary of £500 a year had been allotted. There was also an increase of £270 for the purchase of printed books, and there likewise was to be an increase of £500 for the purchase of manuscripts. There had been some Arabic manuscripts of great interest collected, of which he had the particulars, but which he would not trouble the Committee with. There was also a sum of £175 for bookbinding; £100 for reparations in the natural history department; and £500 for fixing, &c. the Assyrian antiquities which had lately arrived in this country. Public attention had lately been drawn to these antiquities, and it was desirable that access should be had to them. He believed that his hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. M. Milnes) intended to call the attention of the Committee to the subject of patronage in connection with the Museum, and also to the Report of the Commission which had sat some years ago. Without wishing to anticipate his hon. Friend, he might state that it had been thought that a large body was not the fittest governing body; and the Commission (at the head of whom had been the present Duke of Somerset) proposed that a small number of persons should form the governing body of the institution. It was proposed also that the office of principal librarian should be abolished; but the Government in the first instance declined to act until the Trustees had considered the proposition. The Trustees took this recommendation into consideration, and the late Sir Robert Peel advised that they should not recommend the Government to adopt the Report of the Commission; but that a body much less numerous should be selected, to be called the "Standing Committee," and that to that Committee should be entrusted the general direction of the Museum. The then existing offices were to be maintained precisely as they were; but practical changes were to be introduced. That plan was adopted, and on the retirement of Sir Henry Ellis it was stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it was not intended that any alteration should be made.
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The Trustees, therefore, concluded that the Act of Parliament was not to be altered, and the consequence was that the principal Trustees named a successor to Sir Henry Ellis. Those principal Trustees were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of Commons. The arrangement of Sir Robert Peel was considered satisfactory. The officers of the Museum acted with great zeal, and there had been no reason to complain of the general management of the Museum. With regard to the number of persons who had frequented the Museum during the past year, there certainly had been a falling off, but that falling off might be ascribed to accidental circumstances, and it was likely that next next year the attendance might be more numerous. With respect to readers, about 1,100 volumes a day had been consulted by those visiting the libraries, and it was undoubted that the library of the Museum had proved of very great use to students generally. There were other general questions affecting the Museum, into which he did not propose now to enter. All that the Trustees could do was to carry on their management according to the mode at present adopted, and at the same time act upon any improvements which could be suggested. Last year an order was given that after a certain hour on the afternoon of Saturday, the public should be admitted for three or four hours. About 3,000 or 4,000 persons had attended; but Saturday was not a day on which the working classes were likely to attend, and he did not know that any great benefit had accrued from the alteration. But the Trustees intended to persevere in that order during the present year; and on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the Museum would be open as usual.
MR. MONCKTON MILNESsaid, that the reason which principally induced him to call the attention of the Committee to this subject was the fact that the Report of the Commission of 1850 had remained almost unnoticed. Now that Commission was a continuation of the Committee of 1835, which had separated without making a Report. It appeared to him that the management of the Museum had been by no means satisfactory. If the Trustees were all connected with literature, science, or the arts, it might be inferred that a certain number would devote their attention to that part of the institution with which their sympathies were in accordance. The

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number of Trustees rendered them unfit to be the governing body of a great establishment, and therefore, as early, he believed, as 1755, a Standing Committee was appointed. But the main object of the Standing Committee was neutralised by the practice of giving votes to all other Trustees who chose to attend, and the Commission found that the government of the Museum really depended on the casual attendance of Trustees when matters were considered in which they happened to take an interest. The Commissioners, although differing in points of detail, were agreed as to the remedy. They thought it, above all things, expedient to substitute for the fluctuating and casual body of attending Trustees a standing Executive Council, composed of men really responsible for the management of the Museum. The Commissioners, therefore, reported—
"The Executive Council, as we have now proposed it, carries with it, in the opinion of all of us, this great and leading advantage, without attaining which all other reforms in the constitution of the Museum are, in the view of your Commissioners, comparatively of little consequence—that it commits the ordinary and daily recurring business of the Museum to an Executive Council consisting of a number such as must leave upon each and all of them individual responsibility, insure knowledge and careful consideration of the business of the Museum in its whole course, and prevent that change of views and uncertainty of decision which cannot but be the consequence of a fluctuating Board."
There was some difference of opinion as to the composition of that Executive Council. A considerable majority of the Commissioners were in favour of recommending that the Museum should be divided into two great departments—one for taking into consideration all matters connected with literature—the other for taking into consideration all matters connected with science; that at the head of each department a person distinguished for attainments in literature or in science, according to the department over which he would have to preside, should be nominated by the Crown, and liberally remunerated for his services; that above them should be appointed a Chairman, of great consideration and weight in the country, to whom reference might be made in difficult cases with regard to the management of the Museum; and that, with these two paid and one unpaid officers, should be combined four Trustees, to be elected annually. The minority of the Commissioners were of opinion that it was advisible not to divide the Museum in that distinct manner, but to retain the
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departments much as they were. That division of opinion was very unimportant, as the Commissioners were all agreed that the governing body should be constituted of only a few persons, to whom the public and the House might look as the body responsible for the management of the Museum. When the Commission had reported the Trustees met, and a real Standing Committee was formed, consisting of the three principal Trustees—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, and fifteen other Gentlemen. It was then clearly understood that they were to form the governing body of the Museum, and that they alone were to vote upon matters connected with the management of the Museum for the year for which they were elected. But he could not say that the Standing Committee realised all the objects of the Executive Committee recommended by the Commissioners. The Standing Committee was composed of Gentlemen filling high political positions, who were engaged in other and important occupations. The noble Lord who moved the Vote, not happening to be engaged at present in public affairs, was the last addition, but it was not to be supposed that the noble Lord would devote himself wholly to the objects of the Museum; and he would rather have a Committee composed of persons giving their continuous attention to the affairs of the Museum than accept the services even of the noble Lord. The Report of the Commission had certainly not received the attention it deserved either from succeeding Governments or from that House. The noble Lord who issued the Commission was bound, in his opinion, to have brought in a Bill to carry out its objects, unless he was satisfied that they were sufficiently attained by the appointment of the Standing Committee. The Trustees, however, appeared to have treated that Report with more respect, for they had gradually absorbed into their body the more prominent Members of the Commission, and he could not help thinking that that fact had something to do with the indisposition of those Gentlemen to press for the alterations which they themselves, in their Report, had declared to be necessary. The present government of the Museum was anything but satisfactory, and Her Majesty's Government would do well to consider the necessity, or at least the advisability, of establishing the government the Museum

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on a larger and more permanent basis. The Commission had recommended that there should be on the Executive Council two gentlemen to represent the two departments of science and literature; but the Standing Committee had allowed that recommendation to remain entirely unheeded. On the question of patronage, the Commission had recommended that the Executive Committee should make all the appointments; but that, as an additional security for the satisfactory execution of that trust, they should be subjected to the approval of the Secretary of State. That recommendation had not been carried out, and the whole patronage of the establishment, from the principal librarian to the lowest housemaid, was vested in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of Commons. Those distinguished personages, he contended, could not be regarded as the best depositaries of this power. Their time was so fully taken up, their public duties were so numerous and so important, that they could not possibly have any opportunity of exercising their own discretion with regard to those appointments. They could have no means of obtaining any primary knowledge of the persons whom they appointed, and they must, therefore, necessarily trust to the recommendation of others. There ought, therefore, to be some alteration in these respects. By the present constitution the whole internal management of the Museum was conducted by one officer, who was called the principal librarian, and who was at the head of the establishment under the Trustees. The library was managed by an officer called the Keeper of the printed Books. Formerly there was an officer called the Secretary to the Museum, but that officer had been much criticised by the Commission, and the office had since been abolished. Sir Henry Ellis had until lately held the office of principal librarian, and Mr. Panizzi had managed the affairs of the library for a long period with great ability, and with universal approbation. On the resignation of Sir Henry Ellis Mr. Panizzi was appointed principal librarian. His (Mr. M. Milnes's) experience of that House had taught him that no one ever suffered from having his name mentioned there. There was always a generous feeling displayed in personal questions which entirely prevented any prejudice to the individuals interested. Nothing but a strong sense of public duty would have led him
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to mention the name of any person, last of all a foreigner; for he had ever advocated the principle, that honest and able men, who, from the political circumstances of their own countries, had been compelled to take refuge here, should not merely enjoy the bare right of an asylum, but should possess opportunities of exercising their talents and abilities. He was always desirous that men in such a position should be received in this country as those Protestants who took refuge here after the revocation of the edict of Nantes were received, and that they should have the opportunity of rendering their names as honoured as were those of Lefevre and Labouchere. He must say, however, that the recent exercise of patronage on the part of the Trustees of the British Museum had been regarded by the literary men of this country with a feeling which he could not characterise otherwise than as a feeling of indignation. There were in this Empire so few positions of public trust to which literary men of ability and distinction could aspire, that he did not think there was anything ungenerous in the feeling which existed among that class—that when the chief position in the great library and museum of the country became vacant the appointment should have been bestowed upon a member of their own body, and not upon a gentleman who was a foreigner. The other day he heard the Due de Broglie refer, at the French Academy, to those happy times in France when a free trade existed between politics and literature, but in this country they were in the habit of dividing into two separate classes men of thought and men of action, and it was not easy for any literary man to found for himself such a position of public usefulness and honour as would be fairly afforded in the situation of chief librarian of the British Museum. If he were told that the Trustees knew of no other person so well qualified as Mr. Panizzi for the position to which he had been appointed, he would say that that fact was in itself the strongest condemnation of the system upon which the Museum was now governed, for it showed that the Trustees were not intimate with the literary men of this country, that they knew nothing of their struggles, difficulties, and resources, and that thus living apart from literary men they were not the fittest persons to be entrusted with the management of such an institution. If it was said that the appointment of Mr. Panizzi was a

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proper one, because that gentleman had been mainly instrumental in improving and arranging the library of the Museum, he would ask why Mr. Panizzi should have been removed from a position in which his services had been so useful and placed at the head of the whole establishment? He must say, that he thought those who placed Mr. Panizzi in a position the duties of which could only be adequately discharged by a person possessing the entire confidence of the literary and scientific men of this country had not rendered the best service either to Mr. Panizzi himself or to the Museum. It could not be expected that literary men would repose the same confidence in a foreigner which they would place in a distinguished countryman of their own, and he doubted whether Mr. Panizzi would be able to conduct the affairs of the Museum with the efficiency which would have been ensured by the appointment of a literary man who was a native of this country. He would suggest whether, when the Government set about reforming the Museum, some arrangement might not be made which would leave Mr. Panizzi at the head of the literary department, which would give Professor Owen the superintendence of the scientific department, and which would place over those gentlemen, as the President of the institution, a man whose character and attainments fitted him for such a position? He (Mr. M. Milnes) thought the Returns which had been laid before the Committee showed that the Museum was not in a satisfactory state. He found that the number of visits made to the reading-room was, in 1850, 78,533; in 1851, 78,211; in 1852, 1853, and 1854, there was a progressive diminution; and in 1855, the number had fallen to 53,567. The number of visits made by artists and students to the galleries of sculpture was, in 1852, 6,983; in 1854, 3,652; and, in 1855, 3,594. The number of visits made to the print-room was, in 1851, 3,867; and, in 1855, 2,868. There was also a striking diminution in the number of the general public who visited the Museum. In 1850 the number was 1,098,863; in 1851, 2,527,216; in 1852, 507,973; in 1853, 661,113; in 1854, 459,262; and, in 1855, 334,089. If the establishment had been conducted with greater energy, as it would have been under such an Executive Council as he now proposed, such a diminution would, in his opinion, not have taken place. He begged to apologise to
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the Committee for detaining them so long upon this subject; but, in his opinion, no encouragement ought to be given to the notion propagated by some of the Trustees, that it was impossible to find in this country a literary man fitted to be at the head of such an establishment, and therefore he had taken the liberty to address these observations to the Committee. It was the wish of all that the Museum should assume even larger proportions than those to which it had already attained, and in that prospect it was of the highest importance that a distinction should be made between the literary and scientific departments. He hoped the time would come when all the resources of the establishment would be devoted to the purposes of a great national library—when the works of art would be combined with a National Gallery worthy of the name, and when the objects of natural history would be handed over to the Zoological Gardens. Hence a division of the literary and scientific departments seemed to him advisable, both for the present good administration of the Museum and for its future management; and he was sure that if the Government turned its attention to the subject, and, having appointed a head of the scientific department in the person of Professor Owen, should perform the same good office for the literary department, it would put the country in possession of an establishment superior to every other of the kind in Europe.
MR. SPEAKER: Sir, I am unwilling to trespass upon the attention of the Committee even for a few moments, but I trust that, after the allusions which have been so pointedly made to the conduct of my colleagues and myself, with respect to the appointment of Mr. Panizzi, the Committee will permit me to make one or two remarks in reply. I am not going to discuss with the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down what shall be the future management of the British Museum. He has very fairly stated the principal recommendations of the Commissioners, of whom he was himself one, who sat in 1850, to inquire into the management of the Museum; and the noble Lord the Member for the City of London has also fairly stated the steps which have been taken by the Trustees of the British Museum to carry out those recommendations in some very essential particulars. But it is my duty to explain by what considerations the principal trustees were actuated in the selection of Mr. Panizzi

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for the office of principal librarian in the British Museum. The Committee will recollect that the Act of Parliament requires that when a vacancy occurs in that office the principal trustees shall select two names to be forwarded to the Secretary of State, and that those two names shall be submitted to the Crown with the view of one being chosen for the office. For my own part, I am quite prepared—and so, I am sure, are all my colleagues—to accept the responsibility of selecting Mr. Panizzi, because I do not believe a better choice could have been made. The hon. Gentleman has alluded to the fact of Mr. Panizzi being a foreigner; but that has been no unusual case in the British Museum. Since its formation in 1776 there have been five persons appointed principal librarians prior to Mr. Panizzi. Of those five, two were foreigners; one, Mr. Maty, a native of Holland, and the other, Mr. Planta, a native of Switzerland. The trustees, therefore, were quite justified by precedent in selecting a foreigner; at all events, no objection can be made to their appointment on that score. Again, we found that the invariable rule in the appointment of the principal librarian had been to select some officer of the establishment for that post; and the Committee will at once see how essential it is for the good conduct of an institution like the British Museum that deserving officers should be rewarded with promotion. The Committee may well suppose that I have not had it in my power to devote that time and attention which I ought to the interests of the Museum; but, from what I have myself seen of Mr. Panizzi during my connection with that institution, I must say that I think he is possessed of great talents, of great honesty of purpose, and of remarkable administrative ability—all qualities which are essential to a person who is to be the chief officer of such an establishment. I should be sorry, however, to ask the Committee to rely upon my testimony alone, and, with their permission, I will read extracts from three letters which I received, in common with my colleagues, with regard to Mr. Panizzi, before we made the selection. The first is from a gentleman well known to many Members of this House, now one of the canons of Westminster, whose testimony is peculiarly valuable, not only because he is a man of high character and attainments, but also because he was upon the establishment of
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the British Museum for thirteen years. The Rev. W. Cureton says:—
"You must naturally be most anxious that the vacant office of principal librarian should be filled by the most efficient person, who is best qualified to discharge its duties for the advantage of the public. You are doubtless fully aware of the long and valuable services of Mr. Panizzi, of his great talents, his extensive knowledge, his ardent zeal and untiring energies, which have been most faithfully exerted during a quarter of a century for the benefit of the British Museum. There is, however, one point respecting which you may not have had the means of being so fully informed, but which the constant observation of nearly twenty years has made me well acquainted with—I mean Mr. Panizzi's great administrative powers and capacity of governing a large body of subordinate persons. I have never known any one in authority so strict and precise in maintaining order and discipline, so rigid and exact in requiring the full amount of duties to be performed, who at the same time had the singular happiness of gaining the respect and esteem, and securing the warm attachment and affection of all those placed under his authority. From my own experience of thirteen years' service in the British Museum, I am sure that no qualification is more essential to insure a due performance of public service in such an establishment, than this of which I have last spoken."
The next letter, with which I shall trouble the Committee, is from a gentleman who has for many years devoted much time and attention to the British Museum, who filled for many years an important office under the Crown, and who is well known to many Members of this House. I refer to Mr. William R. Hamilton, one of those trustees who are spoken of in the Report of the Commissioners, as having evinced the deepest interest in the advancement and success of the establishment; and I may add that Mr. Hamilton by his constant attendance to the business of the Museum, fully deserves the commendations bestowed upon him. Mr. Hamilton says:—
"You will, of course, have heard that there is likely to be very soon an important change in the staff of the British Museum; Sir Henry Ellis, the principal librarian, having, after a very long service, given in his resignation: and the choice of one of two persons named by the principal trustees will fall to the Crown. I know that it is hardly necessary to trouble you on this subject, but I cannot refrain from stating it as my earnest conviction, that the name of Mr. Panizzi, now Keeper of the Printed Books' Department, ought on every account to be one of the two submitted to the Queen, and I fervently hope that he may be so selected. There can be no doubt whatever—and I believe that this is the universal opinion among my co-trustees—that, of all the officers now engaged in the service of the Museum, Mr. Panizzi is by far the most capable on every imaginable

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ground to fulfil efficiently the duties of this situation. To a perfect acquaintance with the general duties of all the different departments, great experience in the details of the management of the establishment, he adds in a peculiar degree great knowledge of mankind, a most happy mode of extracting from all under him the greatest amount of efficient service, and of exacting the strictest regularity of attendance, great impartiality, a deep sense of moral justice, and an honest devotion of his whole time to the public service. He has also been mainly instrumental in introducing very many of the improvements, by which the service of the Museum has been greatly benefited. He is also most liberal in his views of extending its benefits to the largest number of the public, on the most liberal and safe terms. He must, therefore, be thought fully entitled to the promotion contemplated."
The only other letter with which I will trouble the Committee is from a nobleman, who was formerly a Member of this House, whose great talents and eloquence must still live in their recollection, and who enjoys the respect and esteem of all who have the honour of his acquaintance. I refer to the Earl of Ellesmere, whose testimony is entitled to the greatest confidence, because he was the Chairman of the Commission, that inquired into the conduct and management of the Museum. His Lordship says—
"I understand that the subject of the selection of a successor to Sir Henry Ellis at the British Museum is now under your consideration. I am entirely ignorant of what claims may be before you for that important succession, and should not think myself warranted by the experience acquired in the chair of the Commission of Inquiry to obtrude an opinion on their relative merits. That experience, however, I think may justly be expressed in saying this much, that should your choice fall on Mr. Panizzi I should be prepared to speak of that decision as one, in my opinion, than which no better could be made for the interests of the public service and for those of the subordinate officers of the Museum. The latter are, in my opinion, an interesting class of men, and I have reason to believe that Mr. Panizzi, in his dealings with those hitherto under his authority, has combined consideration and benevolence with great energy in the exaction of duty."
I will not trouble the Committee with any more letters on this subject; but I will venture to refer to a passage which appears in the Report of the Commissioners, with respect to the state of the library. In speaking of that department, the Commissioners say, that among the most magnificent establishments in Europe, there is no great national library which affords so large a measure of accommodation to all classes of readers as the library of the British Museum under the existing management; and in support of that statement
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they quote the testimony of two American gentlemen who visited Europe for literary purposes, and one of them with the special view of inquiring into the management of libraries. We have, therefore, the testimony of the Commissioners themselves, as to the management of the department over which Mr. Panizzi presided; and I have read the testimony of three persons abundantly qualified to judge, all concurring in expressing a high appreciation of Mr. Panizzi. Under these circumstances, we did not feel the slightest hesitation in selecting that gentleman, as one of those to be submitted to the nomination of the Crown for the office of chief librarian. With regard to the patronage of the Museum, I can assure my hon. Friend, both for my colleagues and myself, that we should not have the slightest objection to be relieved from the trouble and inconvenience necessarily attending its distribution. But so long as we retain it, I hope that we shall exert ourselves, as we have hitherto done, to the best of our power, to promote the public interests, and by such appointments, as that of Mr. Panizzi, to secure the future good government of the establishment.
MR. LAYARDsaid, he thought that upon the whole the Committee was indebted to his hon. Friend (Mr. Milnes) for the observations he had made. He also thought that there could be scarcely any hesitation on the part of any hon. Gentleman in admitting that there had been something radically wrong in the government of the British Museum. He was himself inclined to agree with the Report of the Commissioners, for it was impossible that a government constituted like the present governing body of the Museum, consisting of some trustees appointed ex officio, others as representatives of certain families, and others forming a Standing Committee, could properly administer its affairs. In his opinion it was most essential that the heads of departments should have the means of continually communicating with the trustess; and that at present they had not got. Before the appointment of Mr. Panizzi to the post of chief librarian, he had been opposed to that appointment, but it appeared that the Government had no choice in the matter, but were called upon to appoint a librarian. Now, the office of chief librarian and secretary to the trustees was an office which required very great and at the same time very peculiar qualifications,

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and it was no reflection upon the literary men of this country to say that perhaps no man was so well fitted to fill that office as Mr. Panizzi. He was, therefore, very much astonished to hear his hon. Friend object to Mr. Panizzi on the ground of his being a foreigner, because that was an objection which ought not to come from that, the Liberal, side of the House. Did the hon. Gentleman not remember what had happened on the Continent? Why, in France the Department of Public Instruction had been confided to an eminent Italian, and, as he understood, the office of librarian at the Vatican had been offered to Cardinal Wiseman. [Mr. MILNES: No, no!] The hon. Gentleman appeared to think that an English literary man could not expect from Mr. Panizzi due respect; but he could tell the Committee an incident which had occurred, and which might lead them to think differently, and that was, that on one occasion, during the absence of that gentleman, the persons employed in his department subscribed for the purpose of having a bust of him. Mr. Pannizzi was in one respect placed in a very awkward position. He was looked upon as the responsible person, and was, in fact, responsible for acts which he did not perform. As to the management of the British Museum, there was no doubt that the greatest errors had been committed. First, as regarded the building itself, if one person had been responsible, such a building would never have been erected. Why, half the space was positively thrown away for want of light, and the edifice had been constructed on such a plan that it could not be enlarged, and the result had been, that in order to procure room for the printed books it had been necessary to build upon the courtyard and thus shut out both light and air, so necessary to an establishment of that description. Then, again, as to the manner in which collections were made. The Commissioners advised a collection of British antiquities, and two or three years ago the collection of Mr. Fawcett might have been procured for the Museum; but, no, the trustees were mostly men possessing great information connected with the classics, and could not appreciate a collection of "Saxon rubbish." They had expended on the building upwards of £70,000, while only £340,000 had been expended on the collections, and were now called upon to expend a still greater sum for building purposes, though he was sure that for a
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larger collection half the money, properly expended, would have been sufficient. Some reforms, however, were necessary in the management of the British Museum, and if his hon. Friend (Mr. M. Milnes) would bring forward a Motion on the subject next year, he (Mr. Layard) should be prepared to support him. There was no place to be compared with the British Museum in its resources, but there was no place worse managed. Everything was higgledy-piggledy—there was no series. There wanted more room to expand the specimens over a period of thousands of years. What was the consequence to those whom they wished to instruct? They took the specimen of a good age, and then that of a bad one. Centuries were mingled. This the learned could understand and appreciate, but the populace could not. If they saw a good and a bad object in juxtaposition, they conceived them to be both alike. He, therefore, hoped that some change would take place in the arrangement of the Museum. He quite agreed with his hon. Friend that it was impossible they could go on with the present building. Every year fresh objects of art and antiquities were coming in, and unless some different system were adopted it would be impossible to accomplish the object for which the Museum was maintained. He held in his hand a pamphlet written by Mr. Fergusson, showing how the library and works of art might be arranged, and making other suggestions worthy of consideration. He regarded the present subject as an important part connected with the question of national education, and he trusted the Government would give it their earliest and most serious attention. With regard to the numbers attending the British Museum he believed they were gradually falling off. There was no system to guide them; the people knew not for what purpose they went there; and thus they were without any motive for going again. But, if they had a British Museum well arranged, they would have a most useful institution of a national character.
LORD ELCHOsaid, it had always appeared to him that the British Museum was too much crammed; and he thought that, once for all, they should take a large view of the subject, and consider whether it would not be advisable to separate the collections—the mineral, the artistic, and the archaiological collections, by sending some of them to a new National Gallery. In the Committee of 1853 that particular

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subject was brought under consideration, and a Resolution which was moved by himself was passed with respect to it. Sooner or later the House would have to consider what they would have to do with the National Gallery; and when the library increased at the rate of 16,000 volumes a year, he thought the only conclusion they could arrive at would be to have it separate from all other objects of the Museum.
MR. TITEsaid, that the library was one of the most extraordinary and valuable in the world. But he must complain of the great difficulty of obtaining the use of its treasure because of the defective arrangements as to the catalogue. At present it was necessary to consult five catalogues before a person could find out whether a book was or was not on the shelves at all. He thought it most desirable that a complete catalogue should be formed, and that it should also be printed; that if printed it would be a guide book for all other libraries in England, and save the enormous work of the time of the student now occupied in hunting for a book in a series of catalogues, without classification and with but little system. In France considerable progress had been made with a classed catalogue under the active administration of M. Taschereau, who had published the first volume in quarto of the Catalogue of the Bibliothèque Impériale, in December, 1854, and two more in the year 1855: by his system he had increased the number of titles of books written out from fifty in each day to 750. This library contained probably 700,000 volumes, the British Museum about 600,000, but though numerically less, it was of far greater value. George the Third's collection consisted of 63,000 volumes, but cost £130,000, and the Grenville Collection, placed at the disposal of the Trustees in 1846, cost its owner £60,000; two cases of the MSS. alone were estimated as worth £250,000, but in an historical and literary point of view the collection was beyond all price. He thought, too, that steps should be taken to increase the number of days on which the Museum should be open. During the best part of three days in every week the Museum was closed to the public. The excuse was, that it was necessary for the attendance of students. But he did not think that since the establishment of schools of design, it was any longer so. From a Return he had procured, with respect to the week before last, it appeared that the number of visitors, on the closed
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days, did not exceed twenty; and, on Saturday, when they might have attended, there were none present. He should be glad to be informed when the new catalogue and the new reading-room were likely to be completed.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, the principal recommendation of the Commissiom of 1850 was, that the offices of librarian and secretary should be remodelled, and that recommendation was shortly afterwards carried into effect by the abolition of the office of secretary and the consolidation of the duties with that of principal librarian. Sir Henry Ellis performed the duties of principal librarian and secretary for many years, and it was to that combined office that Mr. Panizzi had, as he believed with excellent judgment, been recently appointed. The Commissioners further proceeded to recommend the appointment of a responsible Executive Council, but they did not agree as to the manner in which that Council should be constituted; and, therefore, that part of the Report merely suggested an improvement, without pointing out the means by which it was to be carried into effect. But soon after the Report of the Commissioners was presented, Sir Robert Peel, one of the trustees, took the matter into consideration, and framed a series of regulations, which he submitted to his colleagues, by which he proposed to constitute a Standing Committee selected from the general body of the Trustees. The objection of the Commissioners being to the large number of Trustees and the irregularity of attendance, that scheme was supposed to carry into effect substantially those recommendations. He believed that in practice it had been found most successful, that the government of the Museum now worked well, and that there was no ground for bringing in a Bill to alter the constitution of the Museum as established by the Act of George II. There was another recommendation made by the Commissioners with respect to the superintendence of the department of natural history. They thought that some more general superintendence of the department of natural history, under different heads, might be introduced. That recommendation had received the attention of Her Majesty's present Government. When a change took place, in consequence of the recent retirement of Sir Henry Ellis, the expediency of appointing a person to superintend the joint department of natural history

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and science was brought under the attention of the Trustees. The Trustees thought such an arrangement would introduce an improvement into the management of the Museum, and they applied to the Treasury to sanction the salary of a superintendent of that department. The Government had sanctioned a salary to the extent of £800 a year, and it was the belief of the Government that the selection of the Trustees would fall on Professor Owen, whose name was a sufficient guarantee that the department would be ably superintended. There did not appear to him to be sufficient reason at present for adopting the advice of his hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. M. Milnes), and laying before the House a Bill to alter the constitution of the British Museum. The hon. Member for Aylesbury had proposed that a separate building should be provided for each of the three departments—namely, manuscripts and printed books, natural history, and objects of art, into which the Museum is divided. The British Museum was of great magnitude, having cost between £700,000 and £800,000, and large additions had, from time to time, been made to it. One of those additions was at this moment in progress. In consequence of the great augmentation of the library a central hall was in course of erection, which would add materially to the accommodation for printed books, and also for reading these books. If the suggestion of the hon. Member for Aylesbury, of dividing the British Museum into three departments—for books, natural history, and works of art—were adopted, it would be necessary to expend large sums of money in the erection of new buildings. The plan offered some recommendations, but could only be carried into effect at an enormous sacrifice of money, which the present state of the Museum did not justify; for it was calculated that the library, with the new building, was sufficiently large to hold the annual additions for another century. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Tite) had asked when the new reading-room would be ready. He would beg to inform the hon. Member that it was expected to be completed in about ten months from the present time. The hon. Member for Bath also asked what progress had been made with the catalogue. He understood that when the Commission sat, a promise was made that the catalogue should be completed in 1860. Progress was regularly made with it, and he knew no reason to doubt that it
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would be completed at the time promised. With respect to the question of printing the catalogue, the conclusion which the Commissioners arrived at was, that upon the whole the advantages of printing the catalogue would scarely be commensurate with the expense it would entail.
MR. DISRAELIsaid, there was no doubt that the constitution of the British Museum was open to many objections which occasioned considerable inconvenience, but those objections, and that inconvenience, might be found in the origin of the institution. Our celebrated Museum had been originally the Museum of a virtuoso; Sir Hans Sloane collected manuscripts, dry insects, stuffed birds, old armour. Notwithstanding the efforts made and the resources at our command, the necessary consequence of the original idea was to be traced in our national collection at the present day. To that cause was to be attributed the disadvantages which had been pointed out. For a long time he had been of opinion that no satisfactory solution of the difficulties, which he thought every year increased, would be found except in the legitimate division of the great subjects which were collected in that building. Literature, Science, Art, all deserved a separate palace, and he was convinced that, sooner or later, the force of circumstances would render that division necessary. With regard to literature the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Tite) had indulged in one of those eulogiums which were scarcely to be supported. Our collection of printed books and manuscripts was no doubt important and valuable, but in second-rate German capitals were to be found public libraries, not only more valuable with regard to the character of the works, but even more considerable with respect to their number. No one wished to depreciate the importance of our national library, but it should not for a moment be supposed we were in possession of a library which could not be improved in value, or increased in amount. If we did not possess such a library, at least we might aspire to it. Therefore, if this division ever took place, he very much doubted whether the present buildings would be too considerable for the printed books and manuscripts, with the medals and archaiological collections which he thought ought to accompany the books and manuscripts. By the recent purchase of land by the Royal Commission of 1851 an opportunity was now offered of erecting a temple for our collections of pictures and

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statues which would not be unworthy of this country. The appointment of Professor Owen to the scientific department of the Museum, was one which would be hailed with general approbation. The progress of scientific discoveries and the growing taste for scientific pursuits would render it absolutely necessary that all our scientific collections should be assembled together under one head. He should not, perhaps, have risen to address the Committee upon the present occasion, if he had not felt it his duty to express his great regret that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract (Mr. M. Milnes) should have found it convenient, in commenting on the constitution of the Museum, to indulge in an attack on Mr. Panizzi, more especially as it turned out that the sum and substance of the charge which he had to make against that gentleman was, that he was a foreigner. Strange to say, the hon. Gentleman immediately followed up that grave accusation by a very elaborate argument to prove that he himself did not disapprove of foreigners being employed in Her Majesty's service, though not in all positions. A foreigner, according to the hon. Gentleman, might be second in command, but not Commander in Chief. No one denied, least of all the hon. Gentleman himself, who was a Member of the Commission which had so conclusively established the character of Mr. Panizzi as keeper of the printed books, that, for the space of some twenty or twenty-five years, that Gentleman had admirably discharged the duties of his office. But, said the hon. Gentleman, he ought not to have been made principal librarian, for that was an office which ought to be conferred on some literary Gentleman who was an Englishman. He could have understood the hon. Gentleman had he argued that only a literary man of native growth should be appointed to the office of keeper of the printed books. That was an office which required great literary knowledge. It required an acquaintance with the literature of all nations, and accomplishments which literary men only possessed. But the hon. Member himself admitted Mr. Panizzi's perfect fitness for that office, and that he had discharged its duties in such a way as to entitle him to universal approbation. It so happened that the office which he now held was one to which his mere literary character could not urge such claims as it could have urged upon the office which he had just relinquished. The office of
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principal librarian was not one which required literary qualifications only. It was an administrative office, requiring knowledge of character, energy, and firmness, and the possession of those qualities could only be ascertained by observation and by experience of the individual. Were they, then, to lay down a rule that a foreigner might be permitted to hold the office of keeper of printed books, but that, although he might be possessed of the requisite qualities in the opinion of those with whom the appointment lay, yet he should not hold the office of principal librarian because he did not happen to possess the single qualification of being an English literary man? So far from sharing the opinion of the hon. Gentleman, he had no hesitation in saying that, if the Trustees had not appointed Mr. Panizzi to the vacancy when it occurred, as the reward of his long and meritorious services, and of the intelligent qualities which he had displayed, they would have acted with injustice, they would have inflicted a discouragement on the public service, and they would have been no longer entitled to the commendation and confidence of that House.
MR. W. J. FOXsaid, he hoped that some arrangement would be made to open the reading-room in the evening. He made this request, not on behalf of miscellaneous readers merely, but on behalf of a large class of meritorious young men who were students in the true sense of the word, who were pursuing knowledge in silence under circumstances of great difficulty, and who were ready to make any sacrifices to obtain the benefits which the library of the British Museum would afford them. Considering how many self-taught men had distinguished themselves in science and art in this country, it was of the highest importance to afford that privilege to the class whose claim he was advocating. He was convinced that all the difficulties which were raised against the proposition might be done away with by a little management. It was also very desirable that some inquiry should be made as to the reason of the great falling off which appeared to have recently taken place in the number of visitors to the Museum.
MR. BELLsaid, that Mr. Panizzi had some years ago proposed a plan for the purpose of opening the Museum in the evening, which was not then adopted; but the Trustees would, he doubted not, now take the subject into serious consideration.
MR. PELLATTsaid, he hoped that the Museum would be in future opened for five days in the week, a plan which had been carried out elsewhere with advantage.
MR. GRANVILLE VERNONsaid, he would suggest that it would be a wise economy to raise some building worthy of the nation, instead of adding to the present buildings bit by bit, especially as large accessions were expected to the Assyrian antiquities. He hoped the Museum would be considered not an "old curiosity shop," but an institution of real instruction, where everything was arranged in proper sequence and order.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he wished to call attention to the absence of all detail in the particulars of the Vote, especially as to salaries. He would also beg to add his request that greater facilities might be given to the public in the use of the Museum.
LORD JOHN RUSSELLsaid, he thought the suggestion of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. W. J. Fox), that the reading-room of the Museum should be opened in the evening, deserved very serious consideration. He did not know what objections might exist to such an arrangement, but if the hon. Gentleman's suggestion could be carried out without material inconvenience it should receive his (Lord J. Russell's) support. He fully agreed with the hon. Member, that there were many persons in nearly every class of life who might devote some portion of the evening to visiting such an institution. With regard to the allusions that had been made to the government of the Museum, he might observe that there was generally a very full attendance of Trustees, who not merely consulted with the principal librarian, but, if questions arose with reference to particular departments, called upon the heads of those departments for explanations or information. He did not think it would be possible to have men of higher literary distinction than Mr. Macaulay, or of greater aptitude for business than the Duke of Somerset, to aid the trustees in the discharge of their duties. It had been said that the Museum embraced too many subjects, and he agreed that it might be desirable to provide accommodation elsewhere for some departments at present connected with the institution. The Museum partook both of a literary and scientific character, and included a collection of natural history, which Professor Owen had declared was equal to any collection of a similar description
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in the world. There was a collection of ancient art, and also of what was called in the Act of Parliament "modern antiquity," which came down to a certain time, but did not extend to modern works. He entertained some doubt whether the building as it now existed, or even with any alterations which could be effected, was the most convenient place that could be provided for the exhibition of ancient works of art; but that was an important question which well deserved the consideration of the Government. He did not know whether any intention existed of building a new and spacious national gallery, but if that idea were entertained he thought it was a matter for consideration whether the specimens of ancient art now contained in the British Museum might not be exhibited to greater advantage in such an institution. With respect to the criticisms that had been made upon the architecture of the Museum, the Trustees could not be fairly blamed for any defects it might exhibit. He might remind the Committee that, although many public edifices had been erected in this country by various architects, none of them, he believed, could be regarded as distinguished examples of architectural taste and skill; and he heard that it was intended to convert the National Gallery—which had been built upon a remarkably fine site and at great expense—into a hotel. He had no doubt that great improvements might be effected with regard to the management of the Museum, and he was sure the suggestions which had been made would be carefully considered by the Trustees. He had no doubt that the falling-off in the number of visitors to which the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. M. Milnes) had referred was attributable, to some extent, to the number of other institutions which had been established for the exhibition of specimens of natural history and works of art, and which diverted the attention of the public from the National Museum. He regretted that the hon. Gentleman had deemed it his duty to object to the appointment of Mr. Panizzi on the ground that he was a foreigner. He really thought that we had become more liberal than that. The hon. Gentleman seemed to think that the office of principal librarian ought to be a retirement for some literary man. There was a time when Prior and Congreve, Addison and Steele, were employed under the Administration. Some of these men had qualifications for business; others had

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offices in the Excise and Customs, because they were eminent in literature; but now we should not be satisfied if a Gentleman were appointed a Commissioner of Excise because he was an excellent poet. Such things used to be done in former times, but they were not done now. He thought that the appointment of Mr. Panizzi had been fully vindicated by Mr. Speaker, and he trusted that there would be no further opposition to the Vote.
MR. MONCKTON MILNESsaid, he flattered himself that the discussion he had raised had not been without some benefit, although, if the principle advocated in some quarters were carried out, no objection could be taken to the highest posts in the Administration being held by gentlemen who had distinguished themselves in the cause of representative government in other countries. He had brought forward the case of Mr. Panizzi solely upon public grounds, and he could not say that his opinion had been in any degree changed by what had taken place in the course of the present discussion. He willingly admitted the high qualifications of Mr. Panizzi, but he still maintained that, in the rarity of offices which public opinion allowed to be filled by literary men of practical ability, it was not right that the post of chief librarian in the British Museum should be given to a foreigner. At the same time, he should be glad to hear that the appointment was confirmed by public opinion and justified by the conduct of Mr. Panizzi himself.
Vote agreed to.
(1.) Motion made, and Question proposed—
"That a sum, not exceeding £18,626, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of the General Board of Health, to the 31st day of March, 1857."
MR. MICHELLsaid, he could not allow this Vote to pass without protesting against it. He objected to it on the ground that the Board did far more harm than good. It had introduced disease into Croydon, Sandgate, Lewisham, and every other place with which it had meddled, and he believed was kept up merely for the sake of the fat salaries connected with it. The Board of Health, which was first established as a temporary Board, was now rendered permanent; and the expenses, which in 1852 were only £1,355, had been increased to the enormous sum of £18,000 a year—which, with £1,300 granted as pensions since the establishment
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of the Board, amounted to £19,300. He should like very much to know what those pensions were for. But independent of the expense, the Board was of the most mischievous character to the country at large. He objected more particularly to the large salaries given under the Act. The medical officer received £1,500 a year. The Estimates of the civil service were increasing in an almost incredible degree; and considering that the Board of Health had become a greater nuisance than the nuisances it was intended to remedy—that it had introduced dissatisfaction into every town into which it had been introduced, of which he could name numerous instances, he should move that the Vote be reduced by the sum of £6,266, the amount which had already been expended.
Motion made, and Question proposed—
"That a sum, not exceeding £6,266, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of the General Board of Health, to the 31st day of March, 1857."
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he also thought that the salary of the medical officer was too high. When the person who held the office was the medical officer of the City of London, his salary was something like £500. The salaries of the medical officer of the principal metropolitan parishes, who had most extensive duties to perform, ranged from £400 to £500.
MR. MILESsaid, he thought that the appointment of such an officer was a necessary one, but he certainly considered that £1,200 a year, which would be the amount the medical gentleman in question appeared to be receiving before he was appointed, was sufficient.
SIR BENJAMIN HALLsaid, that, in the unavoidable absence of the President of the Board of Health, he would beg to state that when Mr. Simon was the medical officer of the City of London, his salary was £800, in addition to which he was able to obtain £400 from private practice; he therefore considered £1,500 was not too much for a person of such ability and eminence.
MR. MAGUIREsaid, he thought that some explanation ought to be given as to what were the duties of the medical officer.
MR. MOWBRAYsaid, that if they compared the salary of the medical officer of the Board of Health with that of County Court Judges, Charity and Ecclesiastical

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Commissioners, it would appear enormously high.
MR. BLACKBURNsaid, he wished to call attention to the great number of subordinates in the department, including four superior officers and five clerks, at an expense in the aggregate of £5,000 a year. He thought the whole subject of these salaries ought to be investigated.
MR. BARROWsaid, he thought that the Board of Health was altogether unnecessary: he wished to know what the duties of the two travelling inspectors were?
SIR BENJAMIN HALLsaid, that it was quite a mistake to suppose that the medical officer of the Board of Health had nothing to do. There were constant applications from all parts of the kingdom, which he had to consider, besides a great variety of other duties. The advantage of having a medical officer to refer to was strongly felt on the occasion of the outbreak of cholera in St. Martin's parish.
MR. BELLEWsaid, he would suggest that the Motion should be postponed until the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Health (Mr. Cowper) was able to attend the House. At present the information given upon the point was very unsatisfactory.
SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYsaid, he would beg to inquire whether on this Board, an institution of modern date, there were any superannuations. He thought that the salary paid to Mr. Simon was too large: in St. George's parish they had selected a most eminent medical man, out of thirty candidates, at a salary of £250 a year. He must also contend that the President of the Board of Health was paid too much, the secretary too much, the medical officer too much, the only persons who were not paid enough being the clerks, who really did the work.
MR. WILSONsaid, he wished to explain that Mr. Simon, at the time of his appointment, was in the receipt of £800 a year from the city of London, and his private practice was then worth £400 a year, and was gradually increasing; so that he did not think that £1,500 a year was too high a salary to give to that gentleman. The advice of the medical officer was necessary to the Board of Health in such questions as those relating to quarantine, vaccination, the closing of cemeteries, and a variety of questions of that nature.
MR. BOWYERsaid, he could bear testimony to the zeal with which Mr. Simon
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had discharged his public duties. Many of his friends thought he acted very foolishly in retaining his appointment in the City, and advised him to throw himself upon his private practice, in which he must have rapidly risen to eminence. On acount of his eminent ability he was offered a Government appointment with a fair salary, and he accepted it.
SIR FRANCIS BARINGsaid, he wanted to know how it happened that the expense for the year 1854–5 which amounted to about £5,000, had not been investigated in a former year? He understood that the money was not paid till April, 1855. If so, out of what moneys were the expenses paid? Was it out of the money voted for 1855–6? If so, that showed that a check upon those payments was not sufficiently accurate. There was another point to which he wished to advert. Here was a Vote of £6,000 required in advance on account of Civil Contingencies. He had no objection to these advances in a small way; but when they voted £100,000 for Civil Contingencies, and it was found that they had got, besides, this Vote of £6,000, it was quite clear that a larger sum for Civil Contingencies was really voted than appeared in the Estimates. Their own Chairman had stated in his Report that there was not a sufficient check upon these Civil Service Votes. Here was a case in point, which showed that the Committee ought not to rest where they were, but that they ought to look into the state of their accounts.
MR. WILSONsaid, the difficulty which his right hon. Friend had started was easily explained. The Vote of £100,000 for Civil Contingencies was for the purpose of providing for unforeseen charges. Here was an unforeseen charge. A great epidemic broke out, which made it necessary for Government to call in the aid of medical men. Parliament was not sitting. The Civil Contingencies were the only fund to be applied to in a case of that sort. The money thus advanced was repaid by a Vote of Parliament, but the sums issued were never presented in the Estimates of the Civil Contingencies of the following year. It was a final payment.
SIR FRANCIS BARINGsaid, the case against this mode of keeping the accounts was this:—the House of Commons Voted £100,000 for Civil Contingencies. There was a balance at the Exchequer of £10,000; therefore, according to the

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notion of Parliament, there was £110,000 for Civil Contingencies. But that was not quite all; because here was £6,000 voted to repay Civil Contingencies, and in several instances money was voted to repay Civil Contingencies. This was not a small sum; it was a considerable amount, which for two years had been owing to Civil Contingencies.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he thought the explanation of his hon. Friend (Mr. Wilson) was perfectly intelligible; if the same sum appeared both in the Civil Contingencies and in the Estimate, it would be charged twice to the nation. It was necessary the items should appear under their different heads, and, therefore, sums paid out of Civil Contingencies were charged to repay Civil Contingencies under the heads to which they belonged.
MR. HENLEYsaid, the Committee ought to feel greatly obliged to the right hon. Member for Portsmouth for bringing this matter forward. Why there should be this circuitous course no one had explained. It seemed that out of the Civil Contingency Fund contingencies were not paid, but merely advanced, and repaid by Votes. Why should not such unexpected expenses as might properly be considered "Contingencies," be paid at once, out and out, from the Civil Contingency Fund? That surely would be the most simple course; and then the expenses in question would appear properly on the Civil Contingency Fund account. The expenses of medical inspection on occasion or epidemics were strictly contingent, and might properly be paid at once out of the Civil Contingency Fund. There had been no explanation why these expenses had not been brought before the House last year. Delay prevented their being fully understood; and the items of the present Vote were by no means properly stated in the Estimate.
LORD LOVAINEsaid, he was anxious to know whether Mr. Bazalgette, whose scheme had been reported against by the Medical Board of Health, had been appointed chief engineer of the Board of Works, and whether the inspectors were likely to come into collision with Mr. Bazalgette.
MR. WILSONsaid, in replying to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) he would beg to state, that Civil Contingencies were in the nature of a banker's account for the purpose of supporting a balance from which all
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advances were made, which were not provided by Parliament at the time required. If all the sums paid out of Civil Contingent cies appeared under that head, it would be impossible ever to contrast the expenditure in any department, because part of the charges of that department might be found under Civil Contingencies. For the convenience of comparing the expenditure in every department, each sum was brought under the different, heads and voted to repay the Civil Contingencies. This establishment was appointed in the autumn of 1854; they were not paid until April, 1855. After the Estimates were printed they were paid out of Civil Contingencies, and the amount would now be repaid to Civil Contingencies. Of course, if the Government could have brought the sum under Vote at an earlier period, it would have been their duty to do so. If the sums paid out of Civil Contingencies remained definitely under that head, they would want £250,000 instead of £100,000 for the purpose. All these repayments went to supply the fund and lessened the amount demanded for Civil Contingencies. In reply to the question of the noble Lord (Lord Lovaine), he must inform him that the Government had nothing to do with the appointment to which he had referred.
SIR FRANCIS BARINGsaid, he thought the hon. Secretary for the Treasury had given a rather lax construction of these Civil Contingencies, when he likened them to a banking account. The heads of departments, if they understood that the Civil Contingencies were a bank from which they could draw whatever they spent over the Estimate which Parliament had voted for them, would, of course, have no hesitation in coming to it, but if they found a difficulty in getting money he apprehended that they would look twice before they exceeded their Estimate.
SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYsaid, he wished to know if there had been any superannuations under the new Act?
SIR BENJAMIN HALLsaid, that when the new Board of Health was formed a retiring pension of £1,000 a year was given to Mr. Chadwick, and subsequently Dr. Southwood Smith had an allowance of £300 a year granted to him.
MR. SEYMOUR FITZGERALDsaid, he wished the Committee to contrast the treatment of Dr. Southwood Smith with that experienced by Dr. Barlow, who, after serving the public thirty-two years in connection with the Board of Health in Ireland,

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was obliged to retire without any superannuation, on the ground that he had not contributed by deductions to the superannuation fund.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he could not see what duties the medical officer of the Board could have to perform, as every parish in the metropolis had its own medical officer.
SIR JOHN SHELLEYsaid, the duties of that officer lay not in the metropolis, but all over the country.
MR. BARROWsaid, that he would take the earliest opportunity of moving for a return of the number of journeys made by the medical officer of the Board of Health during the last twelve months.
MR. MICHELLsaid, he thought the money paid to this officer was entirely thrown away, and, for his own part, he would like to see the Board abolished altogether.
MR. W. MILESsaid, that as the medical visitors in lunacy received only £500 a year each, he thought £1,500 a year was an exorbitant salary for the medical officer of the Board of Health.
MR. BLACKBURNsaid, he would beg to ask whether any hon. Gentleman could say that this medical officer had visited country districts? for, as it was admitted that his services were not needed in the metropolis, unless he had benefited the country he (Mr. Blackburn) could not understand how the Government could persist in pressing the Vote.
MR. WILSONsaid, the medical officer of the Board of Health had, as he had previously stated, many important duties to discharge. He was consulted upon a great number of subjects, and especially, on the application of local boards, with reference to epidemics which broke out in particular districts. Suppose an epidemic were to break out again in London, if no provision of this kind were made the Board of Health would be blamed for their negligence; but the fact was, that when such visitations had passed away their danger was forgotten, and no precautions were thought necessary to prevent their recurrence. His right hon. Friend (Sir B. Hall) had deservedly received great credit for the duties which he had formerly performed in connection with the Board of Health, and that right hon. Gentleman had stated to the Treasury last August that the services of a medical officer of the highest character could not be obtained for lower remuneration than was proposed
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by this Vote. Considering the important duties which devolved upon that officer, he (Mr. Wilson) thought the amount of his salary was a matter of secondary consideration.
CAPTAIN DUNCOMBEsaid, that in the district in which he resided one-fourth of the population was last year suffering from small-pox. An application was made to the Board of Health for assistance, but the answer was, that they could give none, and that the local authorities must do the best they could.
Question put, and negatived.
Original Question again proposed.
MR. MILESsaid, he should move the reduction of the Vote by £300.
Motion made, and Question put—
"That a sum, not exceeding £18,326, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of the General Board of Health, to the 31st day of March, 1857."
The Committee divided:—Ayes 63; Noes 154: Majority 91.
Original Question put, and agreed to.

FIRE INSURANCES BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER,in moving the second reading of this Bill, said, it was intended to supply a defect in the existing law. By the existing law the duty of 3s. per cent per annum on fire insurances was only chargeable where the insurance was effected by a head office established in this country. Now, it was obvious, that companies established in England could not compete with foreign houses having agencies over here, unless both were placed upon the same footing, and made liable to the same duty. The purpose of the Bill, therefore, was to effect that object.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
MR. WILKINSONsaid, he believed that the Bill would have the effect of driving a very lucrative business from the country, and that it would be impossible to prevent foreign companies having agencies in England; he must therefore oppose the further progress of the measure. The only mode of meeting the difficulty was, for the right hon. Gentleman to reduce the duty upon fire insurances, so as to place all companies, foreign and domestic, upon the same footing. He should move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.
MR. HANKEYseconded the Amendment.
Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."
Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
MR. EVELYN DENISONsaid, he greatly feared that the result of the measure would be that described by the hon. Gentleman who now proposed its rejection. We invited France to freedom of trade and free communication with this country, and yet the moment anything arose that offered an advantage to France the Government interfered with a Bill of this kind. He believed the Bill would be entirely inoperative. They might object to having accredited agents in this country, but they could not prevent communication by letter, and therefore they would only drive away the insurance business from this country. The duty had for a long time been liable to strong objections, and, in his opinion, the Bill would be inoperative.
MR. BAXTERsaid, he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not, at that late hour—a quarter past twelve—proceed with a measure which was regarded with very strong feelings of disapproval by hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House, as being a step in a wrong direction. In his opinion, the question which that House ought to consider was, the propriety of reducing the duty upon all insurances, a step which would, he believed, ultimately tend to increase and not reduce the revenue.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he must deny having introduced the Bill without full consideration. Some time ago a deputation of gentlemen connected with insurances offices had waited upon him, and had represented to him that they were exposed to great danger from an agency which had been opened in London for a foreign office, and they begged him to lose no time in bringing in a Bill for their protection. He had upon that occasion stated that he would not introduce a measure until he was satisfied that the danger which they apprehended was real, and not imaginary. The result of his inquiries had been, that the danger apprehended was not an imaginary one, and he had consequently introduced the present Bill, although certainly not without incurring the reproach of supineness
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for not having brought it in at an earlier period, and he believed that the Bill would have the effect of protecting English companies. There had never been any law against persons insuring in foreign offices, but it had been found, hitherto, that notwithstanding the facility of communication and the ease with which insurances might be effected in Paris, in Amsterdam, or in Hamburgh, from the fear of encountering foreign litigation, and from a dislike to transacting business through foreign agents and foreign lawyers, and in a foreign language, few insurances had been effected in foreign offices, although a higher rate of premium was charged upon insurances in this country. As to reducing the duty, he could only repeat what he had said on a former occasion, that all taxes were liable to objection, and a plausible objection might, with little ingenuity, be raised against every tax. Looking upon the question as a matter of revenue, the tax in the year 1855 had produced in England alone £1,282,000, and at present the country was not in a condition to be able to part with so large a source of revenue. When this duty was first imposed in the year 1782, it was fixed at the rate of 1s. 6d. per cent, and in the year 1792 it produced £138,000. It was then raised to 2s., and the amount of the tax had still gradually increased, and after being raised to 2s. 6d. it was ultimately fixed at 3s. Now, during the whole period the amount of the tax had gone on increasing until, in England alone, in the year 1855, it amounted to £1,282,000. It was now proposed to lower the duty to 1s. per cent. which would be 6d. less than the original duty. Now, in 1833, in consequence of the number of incendiary fires, farming stock was exempted. He would assume that exemption removed, and the utmost revenue that could be reckoned upon would be about one-half, or £600,000. The whole general property now insured was £870,876,000, and farming stock, not paying duty, £64,812,000. The speculation about the increase of insurances was so very uncertain that no cautious person would build upon it at such a time as the present. The arguments which seemed to prevail with the hon. Gentleman who last addressed them might be very sound when they had an opportunity of considering the appropriation of a surplus revenue. He confessed that he had not himself looked at the subject in that point of view. It involved a revenue of nearly

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£1,300,000, to which, hitherto, no serious objection had been made. Under the circumstances, he therefore hoped the House would consent to let the Bill be read a second time, and the question of a reduction of duty might be deferred to another occasion.
MR. HENLEYsaid, no doubt the loss of that amount of revenue was a serious consideration. The right hon. Gentleman would not, he supposed, deal with the agency of any company established in London unless it were doing a good business. The Bill appeared to him to be so much waste paper; he could not conceive anything more inoperative. An agent might be appointed whom the Bill could not touch. They might carry on their business under the provisions of the Bill, and the Bill would only serve to lose to the right hon. Gentleman his revenue, and to give endless worry to the public. The information as to the way in which these insurances were to be done would spread, and the only way to meet the difficulty would be to lower the duty. People were not fond of going abroad, and until they lost a great deal—something like double the amount, which was the case at present—they would rather effect their insurances at home.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that the Bill seemed to him calculated to do all that the Legislature could do on the subject. It effectually operated on insurance offices connected with foreign establishments in this country; but as to putting down insurance offices abroad, that was impossible. He had fully considered all the questions connected with the subject, and he still thought that the Bill would effect the object desired.
MR. KINNAIRDsaid, he thought the subject was one which required further consideration. The prudence against which that tax was directed ought to be encouraged rather than discouraged. He was sure that if a great reduction were effected in the duty on insurances the full amount of the tax would be received in the space of not very many years. In conclusion, he should move that the debate be adjourned.
MR. MILNER GIBSONsaid, he believed that discussion would serve to make known to many people in this country a fact which they did not know before, namely, that they could effect their insurances at a great saving in France. The
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Bill could not, he believed, settle the question which it involved. He confessed he entertained a strong expectation that, now that peace had returned, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would imitate the bold policy of his immediate predecessor (Mr. Gladstone) and of the late Sir Robert Peel, and would remit many obnoxious taxes, however difficult it might be for him to find substitutes for them. He (Mr. M. Gibson) considered that it was not the business of independent Members of the House to point out those substitutes to the right hon. Gentleman. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would agree to the Motion for the adjournment of the debate, as the subject manifestly required more consideration than they could bestow upon it at that moment.
MR. BENTINCKsaid, he was quite prepared to support the Bill. He had felt much pleasure in hearing the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer that evening advocate the principle that it was the duty of the Government of this country to protect British capital against foreign competition. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would persevere in the course on which he had entered, and that in his approaching Budget his recantation of his former doctrines would be frankly carried out.
MR. TITEsaid, he was in possession of a few facts bearing upon the question, which he was anxious to state to the House. He found that the French company lately established in London charged 2s. for insurances in this country, while in France they charged only half a franc, or rather less than 5d., for insurances of the same amount. The diminished charge which they imposed in their own country was owing to the fact that there what was called the "average clause" was universally adopted. Under that clause a person effecting an insurance policy only got, in case of an accident, a sum proportioned to the value which his insurance bore to the whole of the property; so that if a man insured for £3,000 a property worth £9,000, and if that property was damaged to the extent of £1,000, he did not receive the whole of that sum, but merely one-third of the amount. The insurances were thus much more cheaply effected in France than in this country, and the practice of insuring was in consequence much more extensively adopted. The value of the whole of the property insured in England amounted to little more than

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£900,000,000; the value of the property insured in France, a much less wealthy country, amounted to £1,500,000,000. He should be glad to get rid of the tax altogether; but he doubted whether the money raised under it could, for the present, be spared. He believed that if the "average clause" were introduced into England, and if the duty were reduced to 1s., we should be able to derive as large a revenue from that source as that which we at present received.
SIR SAMUEL BIGNOLDsaid, it was the opinion of the principal insurance offices in this country that this measure would operate both as a protection to the revenue and to the interests of the British companies. The remission of the tax in regard to agricultural produce had led to a very large increase in the amount of property of that description insured; and if the present tax were reduced to 1s. it would require £2,700,000,000 of property, instead of £900,000,000, to be insured to sustain the revenue at its present point.
MR. WILSONsaid, he did not think the question of free trade was in any way involved in the proposed measure. If a malt tax were imposed in this country there would surely be no violation of the principle of free trade or of any principle of common sense in declaring that, although people might obtain malt duty free in France, Frenchmen should not therefore be allowed to sell malt duty free in England. But that was a case precisely analogous to the present. It was true that Englishmen might go abroad for the purpose of effecting insurances, but they rarely availed themselves of that power, because they felt that there were special advantages in their insuring at home. They had here greater facilities for legally recovering claims, and they had a greater certainty that the companies with which they transacted their business were perfectly solvent. But it did not follow that because we could not impose a tax on foreign insurance companies when they remained abroad, we should not, therefore, impose a tax upon them when they came to transact business in this country. If the Bill was thrown out, they would not effect the point in issue. They only permitted a French office to come to this country, and establish an office in Regent Street, in Cornhill, in Manchester, or in Birmingham, to compete unfairly with English offices.
MR. E. BALLsaid, the hon. Member (Mr. Wilson) had propounded such a sound doctrine that he should give him his support.
MR. VANCEsaid, he must deny that the case of malt made in France was a parallel case. Insurances could be effected by letter. Sea insurances abroad did not prevail to any great extent, because the English duty had been reduced.
SIR WILLIAM JOLLIFFEsaid, he did not approve of the adjournment of the debate. He did not think that the Bill would, as asserted, serve as an advertisement to show the advantages of French insurance over English insurance. But if this were the case, the danger might be obviated by making such a reduction in the property tax with respect to property insured as would meet the exigencies of the case.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he would not take the credit or blame, as it might be, of having proposed this Bill in ignorance. The question had been fully considered, and his impression was, that the Bill would be as operative as could be expected. He believed it would be as effective for its purposes as other measures of a similar nature usually were. The object was to remedy a defect in the law, as he had already stated. The question had no reference to the amount of the duty. If the duty were reduced to a shilling, his proposition still would be to pass this Bill. There was at present an unjust differential duty against English insurance companies, and this the proposed Bill sought to remedy. If, however, the House thought they were not in a position to come to a satisfactory decision he had no objection to adjourn the debate; but in so doing he must say he had heard nothing to shake his confidence in the Bill, which he believed to be a proper measure and adequate for its purpose.
Debate adjourned till Friday.
The House adjourned at a quarter before Two o'clock till Thursday.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—3a Public Works: Public Works (Ireland).

INDIAN CURRENCY.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE presented a petition from the merchants and inhabitants of Singapore, complaining of the introduction by the Government of India of a novel and inconvenient currency instead of a long-established, convenient, and satisfactory one, thereby throwing confusion into the commerce of that and the associated British settlements in the Straits of Malacca. The noble Earl said that the

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colony from which this petition emanated was industrious and enterprising, and well entitled to the consideration of any Government, but more particularly of one which affected free-trade principles. Thirty-seven years ago Singapore was a wretched collection of huts, inhabited by some hundreds of pirates and fishermen, and a scene of robbery and violence. Now, its imports and exports amounted to £7,000,000 sterling, and with those of the sister settlements to £10,000,000. Contrast this with the continent of India. For ten years the imports to that continent had showed no increase; indeed, they would but for this settlement of Singapore, the account of which appeared in the Parliamentary return of the revenue of Bengal, have shown a considerable decrease. In Singapore there was no land tax, no moturpha, and, consequently, no torture, no import or export duties, no anchorage dues, nor any charge upon ships or cargoes; yet that settlement managed to meet its expenditure, and in its case a surplus of revenue was as much the rule as in that of Hindustan it was the exception. The currency of Singapore was a decimal one, and perhaps the most perfect that could be devised. It was based upon the Spanish dollar, which was divided into cents, half cents, and quarter cents. That was the coin which was best suited to the people, inasmuch as it had been the coin used in these settlements ever since the Spaniards established a Mint at Mexico three centuries ago. The Act which was to inflict upon Singapore the injury of abolishing this coin was called the 17th of the Indian Government. It was, indeed, said that Her Majesty's Government had signified their intention that if it inflicted injury upon commerce it should be repealed. But why should this flourishing colony be made the corpus vile on which every currency quack should try his hand? for this experiment had been tried before. When the colony was established in the year 1819 the dollar was displaced, and rupees were introduced in the proportion of 25 to 100 dollars. The same result followed as obtained in Java upon the introduction by the Dutch Government of the guilder and florin. The Spanish dollar was depreciated. The sicca rupee, which was now declared to be the currency of Singapore, was the most barbarous and inconvenient coin that could be conceived; it was divided into twelve parts, and each part was resolved into a number of small shells which might be picked up on the sea-shore, and were
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about the value of a periwinkle, or not so valuable, for they had not the fish in them. In 1827 an attempt was made to inflict the rupee currency on Singapore; but Lord William Bentinck yielded to the remonstrances of the merchants, and the attempt was abandoned. Since then the inhabitants of Singapore had been continually protesting against the introduction of the rupee. Unfortunately, the blundering Indian Act of 1853 established a Legislative Council which, he understood, gave satisfaction neither in Leadenhall Street nor in Cannon Row, and to which, like new Frankensteins, the Government were about to put an end. This Council had, by a majority of one, with a Mr. John Peter Grant, the originator of this precious scheme, at its head, determined to inflict the rupee upon the merchants of Singapore. It was, however, impossible to reconcile the barbarous rupee currency with the previous dollar currency and its simple divisions. The result of this step would be that they would mulct their servants at Singapore of from 10 to 12 per cent of their salaries by paying them in a foreign coin which must necessarily be at a discount; and they would ultimately be compelled to do what the Dutch Government had been compelled to do—namely, to repurchase Spanish dollars in large quantities to replace the rupee currency. Although he could understand the adoption of such a measure by the Legislative Council of India, the majority of whose measures were in violation of legislative science, he was surprised that Her Majesty's Ministers, who were professed freetraders, should impose such a restriction on the trade and commerce of Singapore and the associated settlements as this barbarous currency. He held in his hand a tabular statement, published by the Government, being an attempt to adapt the fractional parts of a rupee to the fractional parts of a dollar. In this he found the word "pie," with which as applied to finance he was previously unacquainted, but which was, he supposed, used in the sense in which it was employed in a printing office—to describe the confusion of the whole matter. A single line of this table showed that 10½ pie were equal to 7 halfpice, 3½ pice, 1¾ dollar pice and 2½ cents. An integer with fractions converted into an integer with fractions! This showed that for small sums in the dollar currency there could be found no equivalent in the rupee currency. Three times he (the Earl of

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Albemarle) had pleaded the cause of those whom he now represented against the East Indian Government, and twice ho had been successful. He hoped that on this, the third occasion, Her Majesty's Government would see the necessity of repealing the absurd 17th Act of the Indian Government, and would, by its abrogation, restore prosperity to Singapore.
EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he should not occupy their Lordships' time by following his noble Friend, but he would only say that the question was not quite so simple a one as his noble Friend seemed to think. No doubt the Spanish dollar had long been the currency of the Straits, but it had never been authoritatively settled as the circulating medium of Singapore, the Government having always adopted the fractional part of the rupee in the payment of the salaries of officials and the pay of the military. In 1854 orders were issued by the Indian Government that rupees only should be issued; and when that was reported to the Home Government, they in their reply expressed some doubt as to the expediency of the measure, and directed that its working should be watched, and a report of its effect made to them, so that an alteration might be made if it was found necessary.
Petition to lie on the table.

CHURCH DISCIPLINE BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLORrose to move the second reading of the Church Discipline Bill, and said that the object of the measure was to introduce an improved system of Church discipline, and, generally, an amendment in the administration of the Ecclesiastical Courts. Their Lordships were well aware that from remote ages these courts had exercised jurisdiction in many matters, some of which were of a purely temporal character, some of a mixed character, and others of a purely spiritual character. These courts had exercised jurisdiction in respect to wills and the payment of legacies, which he considered to be matters of a purely temporal character. It was unnecessary to inquire how these courts first obtained this jurisdiction—it was sufficient to say that it was obtained through their connection wish the Church:—at any rate, they had enjoyed for ages the right of granting probates, and of deciding what was or what was not the will of a deceased per
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son. These courts also exercised jurisdiction in matters concerning the law of marriage, and had the power of granting divorces, not so as to enable persons to marry again, but a mensa et thoro, by which parties were enabled to live separate and to have independent rights to a certain extent. These matters he looked upon to be of a mixed character; for though the Roman Catholic Church considered that marriage was one of the sacraments, and it was at one time considered a sacrament in this country, yet for some long time past it was held to be, although accompanied with religious sanction, only a matter of a temporal nature. Then those courts had jurisdiction over a number of matters purely ecclesiastical, such as the spiritual correction of clerks in cases of misconduct, and also in a vast number of other matters connected with the discipline of the Church. Two years ago he had the honour of introducing a Bill, which passed this House, to transfer from these courts their jurisdiction in matters testamentary; and he had also brought in a Bill for constituting a new court for the decision of subjects relating to marriage and divorce; but these Bills did not pass through Parliament. An observation was, however, made by several noble Lords that it was not the proper way to legislate in the matter to introduce Bills such as the above, without pointing out what provision Government were prepared to make in respect to those matters which were still left under the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts. He did not feel the whole force of the remark; but as it was repeated, and some weight appeared to be attached to it, the Government thought it their duty to make known what course they recommended their Lordships to sanction in respect to what they considered the purely ecclesiastical part of the jurisdiction of these courts; and it was with that view he now asked their Lordships to sanction the second reading of the present Bill. The present Bill which he had presented to their Lordships related solely to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the courts. It was called the Church Discipline Bill; that was considered by some to be an improper title, and not an accurate description of the Bill; but there was nothing in the preamble or title which limited the Bill to Church discipline. There was no attempt, either in preamble or title, to disguise or conceal what was the real

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nature and scope of the measure. Their Lordships were probably aware that the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was exercised in a number of courts, termed Courts Provincial, Courts Diocesan, and a number of smaller courts, which might be considered excrescences from the Diocesan Courts, and from some of which the appeal was to the Diocesan Courts, and from others to the Archiepiscopal Courts. The Report of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1832 gave the number of these smaller courts as 300, and termed them Courts of Peculiars. In ancient times the appeal from the Archiepiscopal Courts was to the See of Rome; but that was done away with in the reign of Henry VIII., and an appeal was constituted to delegates, sometimes called an appeal to the King in Chancery. The party appealing appealed to the King in the Court of Chancery, and the Lord Chancellor in each particular case created a certain number of Commissioners called delegates, to form a court of appeal pro hac vice. The practice was to name one or two temporal Judges, one or two advocates of Doctors' Commons, and, in some cases, high ecclesiastical personages were nominated. The court so constituted was the Ecclesiastical Court which was to inquire into the matter of appeal. This was the last court of appeal known in ecclesiastical matters; but the King being supreme in all ecclesiastical as well as civil cases was not finally bound by its decision, but might grant what was called a Commission of Review. This was only done in very strong cases, and the power to grant the commission was in the Lord Chancellor. Such was the state of the Ecclesiastical Courts until quite modern times; and, with some modifications, was their state now. Their Lordships wore aware at the close of the last year of the reign of George IV., when the noble and learned Lord opposite held the Great Seal, a commission was issued, directing certain persons skilled in common law and ecclesiastical law to inquire into the whole state of those courts. Fifteen Commissioners were named, amongst whom were numbered several distinguished prelates and several ornaments of the legal profession. His most rev. Friend the late Archbishop of Canterbury was one; the present right rev. the Bishop of London was another; and Lords Tenterden and Wynford, Chief Justice Tindal, Dr. Lushington, Sir W. Alexander, and a number more of the highest names were selected. These Commissioners
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reported in the year 1832. In their Report they pointed out as being in an extremely unsatisfactory state the jurisdiction of the courts in a great number of matters, and, amongst others, what they called the purely ecclesiastical jurisdiction. They referred to the exercise of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters, as distinguished from temporal matters, as very unsatisfactory. The course of proceeding in such matters was pointed out as being cumbrous, dilatory, and expensive. For instance, if a clergyman were charged with misconduct, the course pursued was to exhibit articles against him in the courts, charging him with specified offences; to that he was required to put in a cumbrous answer termed a responsive allegation, and to that another allegation might be put in on the other side; witnesses were then examined upon written interrogatories in support of the respective allegations to a most inconvenient extent. The Commissioners proceeded to detail the further steps, which they described as unnecessarily cumbrous and expensive, pointing out that the expenses frequently ran to £1,500, and that the average duration of a suit was two years. The Commissioners recommended an improvement on this system, but did not distinctly point out what it was they wanted. The matter then slept until 1840, when the Act of 2 & 3 Vict. c. 86, was passed. He would state shortly what were the provisions of that Act, as it might be necessary for their Lordships to see how far they would be inclined to alter or agree to them. By the Act of 1840 a Bishop, in the case of a complaint against a clergyman, was authorised to issue a commission of inquiry to five persons, one of whom was to be either his vicar-general, or chancellor, or archdeacon, but with that exception, the five persons were to be selected by the Bishop. They were to inquire, upon oath, as to the validity of the charges against any clerk against whom a complaint of misconduct was made. The clerk against whom the complaint was made was to be cited before the commission; they were to examine witnesses, and then make a report to the Bishop as to whether a primâ facie case had been established whereon to take further proceedings. If their report was in the negative, then the matter dropped; if in the affirmative, articles of charge were to be exhibited against the person charged, and the case was to be determined by the Bishop, assisted by three

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assessors, one of whom was to be an advocate or barrister; one of the others was to be either a deacon or chancellor, or some functionary in his cathedral; and the three to be at the selection of the Bishop. An appeal was given from the Bishop to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and any Archbishop or Bishop who was a member of the Privy Council was authorised to act as a member of the Judicial Committee for the purpose of hearing such appeal. This machinery was found to be so unmanageable and inconvenient, that instead of being better it was almost worse than the old system. It was remarked that it was inefficient, and that while the preliminary inquiry had not the safeguards of a real trial, it was too cumbrous for a mere preliminary inquiry. He remembered one case in particular which illustrated that—the case of "Parnell v. Craig," in which the proceedings commenced in March, 1845. The Commissioners, who sat for nine days, no doubt at an enormous expense, agreed upon a report. Mr. Craig was not satisfied with it, and brought the case into the Court of Arches in November, 1845, where it remained "hung up," and pending at an enormous cost, until 1847. There was then an appeal to the Judicial Committee, and in March, 1849, four years from the commencement, the Judicial Committee decided that there was no ground for the action, and the defendant was set free, subject only to the enormous costs of the suit. He believed that the Court over which his noble and learned Friend the Lord Chief Justice presided had decided that when proceedings had once been instituted the Archbishop could not refuse to exercise his jurisdiction. [Lord CAMPBELL: Not after the Commissioners have reported that there is a primâ facie case for further proceedings.] The state of the law was felt to be so unsatisfactory that, in 1847, the Bishop of London introduced into that House a Bill having for its object to reduce those anomalies to a very considerable extent. The principal provisions of the Bill were these. The preliminary inquiry was got rid of altogether, although there might be a private inquiry by the Bishop, with the consent of the party accused; when articles had been exhibited against any party, and had been duly served upon him, the Bishop was to require him to appear before him. If the party neglected to appear, or appearing denied the truth of the allegation against him,
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the Bishop was to proceed to hear the cause personally with his vicar-general as assessor, or by his vicar-general or commissary, assisted by four members of a Diocesan Council provided by the Bill. All questions of fact were to be decided by the opinion of the greater number of those constituting the court; and all questions of law and the apportionment of the punishment in case of conviction by the Bishop, or his vicar-general or commissary, whichever presided in the court. The evidence was to be taken vivâ voce in open court, and upon oath. An appeal was given by this Bill to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; every Bishop being of the Privy Council, except in the case of the Bishop of the diocess before whom the complaint originated, was to be a member of the Judicial Committee for the purposes of that appeal. These provisions, however, applied only to the case of a clerk accused of certain ecclesiastical offences. In the case of the clergyman being accused of heresy or false doctrine, the course to be pursued was that directed by law before the Act of 1832, namely, before the Court of Delegates. The Bill was referred to a Select Committee, by which very extensive charges were proposed, especially as regards the constitution of the court of appeal. An entirely new court was proposed for the decision of appeals in the case of heresy and false doctrine. In the case of England and Wales, it was to consist of the two Archbishops, the Lord Chancellor, three Bishops, the Master of the Rolls, the senior Vice-Chancellor, the three senior Puisne Judges, the Dean of Arches, the Chancellor of London, and the Regius and Margaret Professors of Divinity of Oxford and Cambridge. So that this tribunal would be composed of no less than seventeen persons, of whom nine were ecclesiastics and eight laymen. As of course it would be impossible to get a full court together, it was directed that the quorum should consist of nine of these, five ecclesiastics, three laymen, and one of the two lay Judges of the Ecclesiastical Courts—namely, three Bishops, one Equity Judge, two Puisne Judges, the Dean of the Arches Court or the Chancellor of London, and two of the Divinity Professors. To this court, also, appeals from the Consistory Courts in Ireland were to be addressed. In the case of offences by clerks against the ecclesiastical laws, the Select Committee proposed that the cognisance of the offence should belong to

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the Bishop of the diocess, or to the Archbishop of the province, in the case of the offender holding benefices in two diocesses, or to the Archbishop of Canterbury where the benefices lay in several provinces, or the offence was charged to have been committed out of England and Ireland. It was proposed to be provided that every archdeacon should summon all the incumbents in the archdeaconry to elect twelve of their number, the aggregate of whom should form a jury list for the diocess, out of whom four should be chosen by lot to act as assessors to the Bishop at every trial under the Act. The jury so constituted was to try all questions of fact, and give their decision on the evidence as to the proof of the allegations; and all questions of law and evidence and the award of punishment were to be decided by the Bishop, or his vicar-general or commissary. From the decision of this court an appeal was given; in the case of England to the court of appeal to be constituted by the Act, and in Ireland to the High Court of Delegates, as before the Act. Such was the measure introduced by the Bishop of London; and, had it been possible to make it workable, every pains had been taken to make it so; for the Bill was certainly a specimen of mature deliberation as to the best way of dealing with the subject. The Bill never went further than a Select Committee in 1847. It was reintroduced in 1848, again in 1849, and he believed again in 1850, but nothing was done. The change, therefore, that was admitted to be necessary in 1832, and obvious in 1840, was still to be accomplished by a mode calculated to give real satisfaction. Their Lordships were aware that for the last two years a great deal more discussion had taken place in the meetings of Convocation than had been usual in later times. In the year 1853 a Report was made from a Committee of the Upper House of Convocation, and to that Report he would call their Lordships' attention. The Committee came to the following Resolutions—
"That they are unanimously of opinion that the present state of the law touching the discipline of the clergy is unsatisfactory, and that it needs amendment. That the great expenses and delays attending such proceedings, which amount frequently to a denial of justice, have not been removed by the recent Acts upon this subject. That the provisions of the last Act, which governs the present administration of the law, are inadequate for their purpose. That the preliminary inquiry
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under that Act savours too much of an actual trial, without its safeguards or conclusion; while it has been doubted whether those provisions, which were intended to govern the actual trial, could safely be used for its conduct. That the present provision for hearing and deciding final appeals is not such as to give general satisfaction. That it is highly important that these evils should be corrected. That, in the judgment of the Committee, it is desirable that all causes against clerks, involving questions of heresy or false doctrine, blasphemy or schism, should be heard as they might have been before the passing of the Act 2 & 3 Will. IV. chap. 92, saving as regards the composition of the court of final appeal. They would suggest the expediency of considering whether the best solution of this question would not be to restore this jurisdiction to the Queen in Chancery, and to enable Her Majesty, when any appeals shall be presented from the court of the province in matters ecclesiastical, in which any clerk in holy orders shall be a party, except in causes matrimonial or testamentary, to remit the cause for re-hearing in the court of the Archbishop, providing that they should sit under the authority of the Great Seal, with the Judge of that court, and other ecclesiastical and common law Judges to hear and decide finally in the cause."
Such were the rcommendations made by the Upper House of Convocation. Nothing, however, was done; and when, in 1854, the Government were told they were guilty of shortcoming in their Testamentary Jurisdiction Bill, in not showing how they intended to provide for the other branches of the ecclesiastical system, it appeared to him to be necessary that the Government should make up their minds with regard to a measure regarding church discipline. The present Bill was a slight modification of the Bill framed last year, which he had submitted to the right rev. Prelate the Archbishop of Canterbury, in order that he might consult his right rev. Brethren and ascertain how far it would be satisfactory to them; for he had no desire to do anything that would meet with their decided opposition. He felt bound to say that he had received very little encouragement from the right rev. Prelates. On the 11th of June last year he received a letter from his most rev. Friend to the effect that, in accordance with the desire expressed by him (the Lord Chancellor) such of the Bishops as he had been able to consult had taken into serious consideration the Church Discipline Bill, and he regretted to say that the general opinion was unfavourable; that they considered it as tending to transfer the appeal from the Bishop to the Archbishop, and from the Archbishop to the Crown; the court of appeal provided by the Bill, the

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Bishops regarded as a more desirable body than that which existed under the present law, but less so than the court recommended by the Committee of Convocation; and that, therefore, they could not promise to give his recommendation their support. He must say he had read with respectful attention this letter, without being able to see that its objections were well founded, or that the Bill tended to transfer the jurisdiction as asserted. However, he thought it to he his duty to make some slight alterations in order to remove all doubts upon the two points in question; and having done so, he thought it his duty to submit the Bill to their Lordships, although it had not the sanction of the right rev. Prelates. Under all the circumstances he thought he should have been guilty of a dereliction of duty had he not stepped in to supply a deficiency which was admitted to exist. Accordingly the day before the Easter recess he laid the present Bill on the table of the House; and concurrently with his doing so another circumstance occurred to which he thought it right to call the attention of their Lordships. He had adverted to the Report of the Upper House of Convocation in the year 1853; and on the very day before he laid the Bill on the table the Lower House of Convocation made a Report to the Upper House, a copy of which he held in his hand on this very subject. That Report, without expressing any very definite opinions, suggested two modes by either of which a satisfactory court of final appeal might be constituted. One of these was the Judicial Committee of Privy Council, with the addition of fifteen ecclesiastics, consisting of the four Archbishops from England and Ireland, the Bishop of London, four other Bishops to be chosen in a manner to be agreed upon, the two divinity Professors of Oxford, the two divinity Professors of Cambridge, one divinity Professor of Durham, and one divinity Professor of Dublin—in all fifteen ecclesiastics to be added pro hac vice to the Judicial Committee. The other plan they suggested was that the final appeal should be to Her Majesty, who should refer the case by warrant under her sign manual to a special court, consisting of a certain number of Archbishops and Bishops, with a certain number of ecclesiastical Judges and divinity Professors. After he had laid his Bill upon the table a right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Exeter) moved for the production
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of a copy of the Bill of 1847, he presumed for the purpose of contrasting it with the measure he (the Lord Chancellor) had brought in; and subseqently the right rev. Prelate himself introduced that Bill ipsissimis verbis as it passed the Committee in 1847. The question now lay, therefore, between these two different courses—would their Lordships stand still and do nothing, or would they adopt the second reading of his (the Lord Chancellor's) Bill or the Bill of the right rev. Prelate? The Bill of the right rev. Prelate proposed that articles should be filed and served on the party charged, who would then answer, and be tried either by the Bishop of the diocess, who would have for his assessor his vicar-general, or his chancellor, or some special commissary; and that the facts be tried by a jury of four beneficed clergymen. If the matter related to heresy or false doctrine, there was to be a final appeal to the seventeen persons whom he had mentioned. If it did not relate to such matters—that was, in England—then to the Judicial Committee of Privy Council. In Ireland there was to be an appeal to the Court of Delegates. Now, he meant to say that that plan was open to almost every conceivable objection. Who was to be the Judge on the trial? The Bishop could relieve himself, if he chose it, from responsibility by delegating his power to his assessor, to whom, if a competent person, there could be no objection; but that assessor, whether he sat with the Bishop as assessor, or presided without him, he must call Judge. And who was to be the assessor? The Bishop's chancellor, if qualified, and if not qualified, then an assessor who was to be an advocate of seven years' standing, or a barrister-at-law of ten years' standing. "If qualified." That phrase suggested what was at the root of all this—that in nine cases out of ten, as the right rev. Prelate who introduced the Bill must be aware, the chancellor or vicar-general was not a properly qualified person. Why, in the twenty-seven diocesses of England, there were twenty-eight chancellors (there being two for the see of Gloucester and Bristol), and of these not less than fourteen were clergymen. He did not mean to say that there might not be clergymen eminently qualified for such an office; but they were not likely to impress the public with the notion that they were so qualified, and he did not know that it was very desirable they should be

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so qualified—it might very materially interfere with their ordinary duties. Certainly, he knew one chancellor who was a clergyman—the chancellor of the right rev. Prelate—whose friendship he had had the honour to possess for nearly half a century, and he did not hesitate to say that a more; able man than Mr. Chancellor Martin did not exist. But he must speak out upon this question plainly, and he must express his belief that these gentlemen, as a body, would fail to impress the public with a belief in their competency to exercise such functions. Moreover, a new chancellor was not appointed every time that a vacancy in a see was filled up, but the chancellor of one Bishop remained to his successor. Further, of the twenty-six vicars-general or chancellors in Ireland, not less than seventeen were ecclesiastics, whilst only nine were lawyers. He contended, therefore, that such a tribunal as that was eminently unfitted for the trial of any question to which judicial habits were necessary. In framing this Bill and in constituting what they supposed to be proper courts, the right rev. Prelates who promoted and supported the Bill had fallen into a very great mistake. What was the question in charges of heresy and false doctrine, which had to be decided by a human tribunal? Not the question whether, looking at the matter spiritually, one party or the other was right. That was not the question those tribunals would have to decide; but whether, according to the construction of the Act of Uniformity, the Canons, the Articles, or other ecclesiastical enactments, the maintaining of such and such a doctrine was doing that which was prohibited by law: and to decide that, he took leave to say, not only that ecclesiastical functionaries were not the best, but that they were the very worst, judges. The better ecclesiastics they were, the more difficult would it be for them to separate the question of whether an accused party was maintaining doctrine not warranted by Scripture from the question, whether the party was maintaining doctrine not warranted by the Articles and the Liturgy. He ventured to think, therefore, that the original constitution of the tribunal was eminently defective; for the question was to be tried by a Bishop assisted by his chancellor, who might be an unqualified person, and as a substitute for whom the Bishop was pro hac vice to appoint a special commissary, who was to be considered by him as competent. Then,
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as to disputed facts. Immorality or indecency might sometimes form the charges against clergymen as well as laymen. And how were these to be tried? By a jury consisting of four beneficed clergymen. But how were beneficed clergymen better qualified to decide on such facts than a common jury? They might, perhaps, be as well qualified, but why better? He disliked this provision of the Bill of the right rev. Prelate—it gave the jury too much of an ecclesiastical character, and made it appear to be something that it really was not. He did not object to disputed facts being tried by a small jury of four; but why not select the jury as juries generally were selected? He did not think it would do good to the cause of religion, or the Church, or the character of the clergy themselves, for ecclesiastics to be summoned to decide as a jury on these facts. Moreover, in trying cases which did not, primâ facie, appear to refer to heresy and false doctrine, questions might arise of a mixed description in which these matters would be involved; and in the event of any such questions incidentally arising on the trial, the Bill of the right rev. Prelate provided that the court might submit a case to the other tribunal provided by the Act; that was to say, they might summon the two Archbishops, the Lord Chancellor, three, English Bishops, the Master of the Rolls, the Vice Chancellor, three Puisne Judges, the Dean of Arches, the Chancellor of London, and four divinity Professors—a quorum to contain a preponderance of the ecclesiastical bench—and lay the point before them for their decision. But the idea of getting such a tribunal together was, in his opinion, preposterous. Instead of a year or two—as it was complained was the case at present—half a century would elapse before the decision of such a tribunal could be obtained. This led him back to the tribunal of appeal proposed by the right rev. Prelate's Bill; and here his objection rested on the same ground as did his objection to the constitution of the original court. There were to be five ecclesiastics, four divinity Professors of Oxford and Cambridge, and eight laymen, and a quorum was to contain not less than five ecclesiastics. To this he objected on the short ground, that it was a tribunal which from its very nature must necessarily be ecclesiastical, and which would not comprehend that its duty was to decide according to law, and not according to what it might consider to be the true interpretation

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of any question deducible from holy writ. Well, that plan was in competition with others which had been suggested by the two Houses of Convocation. The Upper House suggested as the best court of final appeal, in truth, a return to the old system of Delegates, but without the possibility of reviewing their proceedings. On the other hand, the Lower House of Convocation, on the 13th of March, suggested the Judicial Committee, with the addition of not less than fifteen ecclesiastics. He would now state to their Lordships how it was that he had endeavoured to grapple with this, he confessed, most difficult subject. He proposed, then, in the first place that every Archbishop in his province, and every Bishop in his diocess shall preside in all proceedings in his court, but never without the presence of a chancellor as assessor; but that in every proceeding other than on a question involving points of doctrine, the chancellor should, by the written direction of the Bishop, act as sole judge. His Bill consequently proposed to constitute four ecclesiastical judges or chancellors, who should supersede what he would venture to call the generally inefficient vicars-general throughout the kingdom. When he said that, however, he wished it to be understood, that he was perfectly aware that there were exceptions, and that some of those gentlemen were eminently qualified to discharge the duty of their office. It was thought that the proper persons to appoint those chancellors would be, not the Crown, but the right rev. Prelates themselves: they were not, however, to elect them as a body;—that duty would be committed to the two English and two Irish Archbishops and the Bishop of London, or any three of them. The salaries of the chancellors would be a maximum of £3,000 or a minimum of £2,000, payable out of what he had called "The Common Fund.'' In all suits or proceedings involving questions concerning the doctrine or the rights and ceremonies of the Church, the Bishop, though he must have the presence of a chancellor as assessor, must preside personally—for while he thought that the ecclesiastical element was not the best for deciding, he had at the same time thought it not wise to leave the decision of such questions to the lay element. In any such suit, however, involving the doctrines and rites of the Church, the clerk may address a petition to the Archbishop to take, hear, and determine the cause in his own court, and the Archbishop may, if
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he think fit, thereupon remove it into his Provincial Court, in those cases in which by law he may now do so. The Bill provided, that all disputed allegations of fact should be tried by a jury, but instead of a jury of four beneficed clergymen, as proposed in the Bill of the right rev. Prelate, it was to be a jury of five laymen, members of the Established Church and qualified as special jurors. The witnesses were to give their evidence vivâ voce,—and the jury were to give their verdict as in the trial of issues at Nisi Prius. If cither party were dissatisfied with the Diocesan Court, he might appeal to the Provincial Court of the Archbishop. With respect to the ultimate court of appeal, he proposed that it should be as it was now, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; but on the application of both parties to a cause in the Diocesan Court, the Archbishop may transmit an appeal per saltum to the Judicial Committee. Inasmuch as this court of appeal would be a court of appeal from Ireland as well as England, he proposed that the two English and the two Irish Archbishops with the Bishop of London, should be ex-officio members of the Judicial Committee for the purpose of these appeals, and that any Bishop, whether of England or Ireland, might be appointed by the Crown to be a member of the Judicial Committee to the same purpose. He further proposed to combine the several diocesan registries into one general metropolitan registry, over which the chancellors would exercise a general superintendence, and the expenses of which would be more than met by the amount now paid in the shape of registration fees in the diocesan registries. All fees and money arising under this Bill were to be paid into the Bank of England to the credit of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commissioners, and the account was to be designated "The Common Fund," and out of it were to be defrayed all the expenses to be incurred in carrying this Bill into effect. All fees payable in respect of any suit or proceeding, and in respect of the business transacted in the registries, were, as far as possible, to be collected by stamps. He had been anxious to give the Bishops efficient legal advice, and he found upon estimating the fees on licences and other matters which would come into the Common Fund, that they would be sufficient to pay the salaries of the chancellors and other salaries, to keep up the registry with a proper staff, and to yield

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a surplus which would provide each Bishop with a secretary; he had therefore authorised the Archbishop and the Bishop of London, or any four of them, to apply an adequate portion of the Common Fund to providing and paying a secretary for each Archbishop and Bishop to transact the business of the several sees—the salary he should propose to be £200 or £300 a year, or more if necessary, and the funds were equal to meet it; but the sum he had mentioned was as much as a Bishop's chancellor now ordinarily received in the shape of salary. Such was the measure he proposed to remedy the admitted defects. of the existing law. The subject was beset with difficulties, as all would admit, but he thought the present Bill would remedy many of the anomalies now so much complained of. He had endeavoured to frame a measure which should unite the advantages of rendering the proceedings cheap and expeditious. He had provided each Bishop with competent legal advice in the shape of a secretary with a sufficient salary. He had provided a proper assessor for the Bishop when he was deciding upon those cases which were proper for him to decide in person, and a proper substitute in those which might advantageously be confided to a delegate. He had provided a proper tribunal for deciding upon disputed facts; and he had provided, he thought, a better tribunal of ultimate appeal than any that had yet been suggested—either by the Bill of the right rev. Prelate, or by the Houses of Convocation. The Bill, he could assure their Lordships, had been conceived in no hostile spirit, either to the Prelates, or to the Established Church, and he trusted they would not hesitate to give it a second reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYsaid, that he rose with unfeigned reluctance to oppose the Bill which had been proposed to their Lordships by the noble and learned Lord. He was sensible of the responsibility which he incurred by objecting to a measure, introduced by such high authority, on a subject part of which at least was generally acknowledged to require the interference of the Legislature, Still, he confessed that much of the embarrassment which he might otherwise feel on this occasion was relieved by the strong; conviction which he entertained that the Bill in question had received little other benefit from the patronage of the noble and learned Lord than its introduction
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under the sanction of his name, and the powerful advocacy with which he had now explained its nature to their Lordships, He felt satisfied that if his noble and learned Friend had designed to be the author of a measure affecting the administration of the affairs of the Church in the degree in which they were affected by this Bill, he would not have allowed those who were most interested in those affairs to hear of his intention, for the first time, when a Bill of nearly 200 clauses was laid upon the table; he would have followed the course which a long and honourable legal career had made familiar to him; he would have examined into the facts of the case; he would have sought out witnesses to prove the facts; he would have consulted those who were conversant with the matters treated of; he would have required evidence of the things requiring remedy, and would have provided what the occasion needed, and no more. He would not have proposed to overthrow the whole system on which the affairs of the Church had been hitherto administered, without proof of its necessity. He would not have introduced a machinery altogether new and complicated, without securing a prospect of its working well and easily, to the satisfaction of the parties concerned. He (the Archbishop of Canterbury) had alluded to one source of embarrassment arising out of his opposition to this Bill. It was not the only one. He had another cause of uneasiness in the fact that the Bill had received the sanction of his brethren on the Irish Bench, and, in particular, was supported by the most rev. Primate, whose authority must deservedly have great weight with their Lordships, who knew how long he had presided over the Irish branch of our Church, with so much advantage to the interests of religion. If the unity of the Church of England and Ireland, to which the noble and learned Lord had alluded, depended on the passing or the rejection of the Bill, or was at all affected by it, he, for one, would not oppose it. That unity must not be disturbed. Happily, there was no such danger. That which was essential to the unity of the two branches of the same Church was uniformity of doctrine, and to maintain that identity he allowed it to he necessary that there should be for both countries the same court of final appeal. This must be provided for by some alteration of the present appellate jurisdiction. But it was not necessary that their mode

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of administering the ordinary affairs of the Church should be in all respects the same. It was very possible that the changes which had taken place in the Irish branch of the Church during the last twenty years—the suppression and consolidation of sees—might require a fresh organisation of their registries, and, for aught he knew, have rendered a central registry desirable. Such was not the case in England, where our diocesan registries were correctly kept, and easily accessible. He trusted, therefore, that his right rev. Colleagues would perceive that no disrespect was shown them, if the English Bishops declined to adopt a change of system which was totally uncalled for, and would be simply inconvenient in the diocesses in England. It was not his intention to follow the noble and learned Lord through the details of the Bill, and to show its objectionable character both in principle and practice. This office would devolve upon those who were to follow him. Their Lordships must have already seen how little it corresponded with its title, as a Bill "for better enforcing Church discipline, and the laws ecclesiastical." A great part of it might more justly be described as a Bill for putting the ecclesiastical authority in commission; and this fur no imaginable purpose, except to provide a remuneration for certain officers under the name of chancellors, whose only business it would be to sign and seal documents which they had, or ought to have, no concern in framing, and to sit as assessors to a Bishop when a charge of delinquency was brought against any of his clergy. He was happy to say that such charges were not so frequent as to require such expensive provision. The amendments which the Act on Church discipline confessedly required might be made without a total change of the existing ecclesiastical system. This, he trusted, would be proved in the course of the evening to their Lordships' entire satisfaction, He only regretted that the usages of the House did not permit him to shape the Motion with which he should conclude in terms which sounded more courteous than that the further consideration of this Bill be postponed until that day six months.
Amendment moved, to leave out "now," and insert "this day six months."
THE BISHOP or DERRY THE BISHOP or DERRY rose to support the Bill, and said, in the unavoidable absence of his Grace the Archbishop of
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Armagh, he had to state, for the information of their Lordships, that when this subject was under discussion last year, the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland held a meeting, at which they adopted the following Resolutions:—
"The Irish Archbishops and Bishops are unanimous in their desire that there may be one court of final appeal for the United Church of England and Ireland, and that in the constitution of that court the Queen's supremacy should be maintained intact. They, therefore, approve of the Court of Appeal in the proposed Church Discipline and Registry Bill, and they cannot give their sanction to the recommendation of the Committee of the Convocation of Canterbury, which would make the decision of the Queen in Chancery or Court of Delegates final, thereby withdrawing from the Queen in Council the power of reviewing all such decisions—a power which now belongs, and for ages past has belonged, to the Sovereign in Council.
"The Irish Archbishops and Bishops are convinced that the Church would derive great advantage from combining the several diocesan registries into a well-organised central registry. And they are ready to forego their private patronage in this respect, feeling that they ought not to allow a regard for their personal or family interests to stand in the way of a reform demanded by the voice of the country.
"The Irish Archbishops and Bishops deem it to be of great importance to the Colonial Church that a final court of appeal in ecclesiastical matters should speedily be established, in order to secure uniformity in doctrine and discipline throughout the colonial diocesses.
"For these reasons the Irish Archbishops and Bishops are unanimous in wishing that the Bill prepared by direction of the Solicitor General should be brought into Parliament, reserving to themselves the right of suggesting amendments in the details of the Bill when it is passing through the House of Lords."
And on the 29th of November last the following statement, addressed to Viscount Palmerston, was drawn up by the Prelates whose names were attached to it:—

TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD VISCOUNT PALMERSTON.
"The Archbishops and Bishops of the provinces of Armagh and Dublin beg leave to submit to the Viscount Palmerston the following statement, with reference to the draft of a proposed Bill, entitled 'The Church Discipline and Registry Act, 1855,' which was prepared, under the direction of the Solicitor General for England, by Mr. Stephens, and which was communicated to the Irish Prelates in the course of the last summer.
"A letter on the subject of this Bill was addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, on the 11th of June, stating certain objections against the measure on the part of his Grace and twelve of the English Bishops assembled at Lambeth. Their objections were as follow:—1. The tendency of the measure 'to transfer the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops, to the Archbishops;' 2. 'And that of the Archbishop to the Crown.' 3. That

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'the Court of Appeal which it proposes, though an improvement upon the present law, is less desirable than one which was suggested last year by a Committee of Convocation, the Report of which was laid upon the table of the House.'
"An opportunity having been afforded for the consideration of the proposed Bill at a meeting of English and Irish Prelates, held at the Bounty Office on the 19th of June, the first and second of the foregoing objections were fully discussed; and in a letter, dated the 22nd of June, addressed to the Solicitor General, the Irish Prelates then in London expressed their opinion that the proposed measure should be altered so as to obviate those two objections. But with respect to the third objection, the Irish Prelates were of opinion that the court of final appeal suggested by the Committee of Convocation was inconsistent with the legal supremacy of the Crown, and that the appellate tribunal proposed in the Bill should be adopted.
"The counsel who drew the Bill having been recently requested to state if it could be amended so as to meet the views of the English Prelates without violating its principles, the Irish Prelates have had laid before them an amended draft of a Bill, with a letter explanatory of the Amendments, which appear to them not only to remove the first two objections mentioned in the letter to the Lord Chancellor, but also to improve the Bill in other respects in a manner calculated to be satisfactory to the English Prelates. And as the Court of Appeal which would be constituted by the Bill is admitted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the part of himself and twelve of the English Bishops, to be an improvement upon the present law, the Irish Prelates earnestly hope that the amended Bill may prove acceptable to their Lordships.
"Without pledging themselves to details, the Irish Prelates desire to express their unanimous conviction of the urgent necessity which exists for this measure of ecclesiastical reform. And especially if the testamentary jurisdiction be removed from the Church Courts (which in that case must hereafter be supported by ecclesiastical business exclusively), they think it essential that the Church Courts and the ecclesiastical registries should be dealt with together so as to make them self-supporting.
"They are also of opinion that the plan of reducing the number of chancellors would be for the advantage of the Church, as giving encouragement to persons of eminence to devote themselves to the study of ecclesiastical law. And they apprehend that, unless this plan be adopted, when the testamentary jurisdiction is withdrawn from the Church Courts, there would not be sufficient funds to afford adequate remuneration to qualified chancellors for each of the diocesses. The provision made in the amended Bill for the payment of the secretaries of the Prelates is, they conceive, a satisfactory solution of any difficulties which might arise from the concentration of the registries.
"They have also to submit that as the 5th Article of the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland provides 'that the Churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called the United Church of England and Ireland; and that the doctrine, worship, discipline, ant government of the said United Church shall be,
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and shall remain, in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England; it is essential, in order to prevent conflicting decisions in the United Church, that there should be but one court of final appeal for the Church in England, Ireland, India, and the Colonies.
"The Irish Prelates submit this statement to the Viscount Palmerston in order that Her Majesty's Government may be in possession of their sentiments, in case it should be in contemplation to bring forward any measures in the next Session of Parliament for the regulation of the Ecclesiastical Courts of the United Kingdom.
"It having been reported that the Church Discipline and Registry Act originated with the Prelates of the Church in Ireland, they think it right to state that such report was unfounded, in as much as they were not aware of its provisions, or even of its existence, until after it had been drawn by Mr. Stephens, under the direction of the Solicitor General for England.

"Dublin, Nov. 29, 1855.

"JOHN G. ARMAGH.

RICHARD DUBLIN.

J. H. MEATH.

LUDLOW KILLALOE.

PLUNKET TUAM, &c.

J. T. OSSORY AND FERNS.

ROBERT CASHEL.

J. CORK.

ROBERT DOWN AND CONNOR.

WM. DERRY AND RAPHOE.

HENRY LIMERICK.

M. G. KILMORE."

After the clear—he might say convincing—statement of the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, it might seem needless that he (the Bishop of Derry) should for one moment trespass on the time and attention of their Lordships; but, agreeing as he did with the most rev. Prelate the Archbishop of Armagh, and with his Brethren of the Irish Episcopal Bench, in the opinion that the Bill now before the House was substantially a good one, he felt it to be a duty which he owed to himself not to content himself with merely giving a silent vote in its favour. He and his right rev. Brethren were deeply interested in the passing of a comprehensive measure which would in a bonâ fide manner carry out what was useful and necessary in the discipline and doctrine of the United Church of the two countries, in confirmation, if he might so express himself, of what took place, when the Legislatures of both countries were happily, and he trusted for ever, united. By one of the Articles of the Legislative Union it was enacted that the Churches of England and Ireland, as by law established, should be united in one connected Church, to be called "the United Church of England and Ireland;" and it was declared that the doctrine, discipline, and

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government of the Church, should remain in full force for ever, as they were then by law established. On that he would take his stand; and whatever Bill was introduced for the regulation of Church affairs in England, to be satisfactory to the Irish branch of the Church, must maintain and support the perfect identity of the two Churches. He knew that it had been urged that the Irish canons were not identical with the English canons; but it should be remembered that canons were not an essential element of a Church, for they were different at different times and in different places. The canons of Canterbury were different from the canons of York, and, therefore, any argument based upon the differences of canons was perfectly untenable. As to the Bill itself, he thought its principles were such as ought to satisfy the Prelates of the Irish and English benches, and he had no apprehension that under its provisions the jurisdiction of the Bishops would be taken from them. The Prelates of Ireland were as much interested in sustaining episcopal authority as were those of England. He begged respectfully to state that the Bill had his most humble approbation, and it was with deep regret he found himself differing from the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of Canterbury), whom he so highly esteemed and respected, and from those other English Prelates whom he venerated. However, he felt that he would not be discharging his duty towards their Lordships or to the country at large, if he did not express, in the strongest terms, his approbation of the Bill. He did not mean to say that the Bill might not be improved in detail and made more acceptable to the English Prelates; but a Bill which maintained one appellate tribunal, with a due admixture of English and Irish Prelates, and civil with ecclesiastical authority, for both countries, was to his mind a satisfactory one. And he trusted he might he allowed to express his hope that, whatever differences of opinion might arise between the English and Irish Prelates on subjects like the one now under discussion, it would always be their constant endeavour, as it would be their constant prayer, to keep "the unity of spirit in the bond of peace." The Established Church might labour under certain deficiencies; but she had hitherto been, and he believed she would remain, the decus et tutamen of the country. He would conclude by expressing his thanks to Her Majesty's
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Government for the introduction of this Bill.
THE BISHOP OF EXETER:* My Lords, I request permission to occupy the attention of your Lordships for a short time, while I offer a few observations upon the Bill now under your consideration, and state the reasons by which I am compelled to vote against its receiving a second reading. Let me, however, first, have the satisfaction of saying, that in one important particular I fully agree with the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Derry) who has just addressed your Lordships in favour of the Bill, and I confidently believe there is not any difference of opinion whatever between the Prelates of the Church in this country and those of Ireland in respect to it—I mean the importance and the necessity of establishing one court of final appeal for the Church in both countries, in all causes involving questions of doctrine, perhaps in all causes whatever. But having said this, I must add, that I see much, very much, in the Bill, which the Irish Prelates are willing, nay, eager to accept, open, in my judgment, to the gravest objections. Those objections I shall endeavour, with your Lordships' permission and kind indulgence, to state as calmly, and as dispassionately, and as briefly as I can.
My Lords, the right rev. Prelate near me has stated, and I need not say that I fully assent to his statement, that in order that a real unity should exist between the Church in Ireland and in England, there ought to be an unity not merely of legal establishment, and of security for the enjoyment of temporal possessions and temporal privileges, but that, in order that that unity should be real and substantial and binding, it should be a unity in all things essential to a Church, above all, unity in doctrine, and in whatever is fundamental in the constitution of the Christian Church. My Lords, till this night I had hoped that such unity did exist in the Church in the two countries, and it is, therefore, with feelings of very great re-great, of very deep pain, that I avow before your Lordships that my confidence in that hope has been very much shaken this evening by the statement which has been made by the right rev. Prelate. My Lords, by that statement, a statement deliberately made—a statement which has, it seems, been repeatedly put forth, and in the highest quarters—it appears, that both the most rev. and right rev. Prelates who represented in this House last year, and

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those who now represent in this House, the whole episcopate of Ireland, do not think it necessary to preserve entire the authority of a diocesan Bishop over the clergy of his diocess. I had, my Lords, when I was first informed that those right rev. Prelates were, and are, decided in giving their support to the Bill before us—I had hoped that some one of them, at least, would have stated the reasons which had satisfied them, and by which they would undertake to satisfy others, that the diocesan authority of Bishops was not impaired—was not, at any rate, rendered absolutely and merely precarious, by the Bill which they were so anxious to recommend to the adoption of your Lordships. My Lords, I have been disappointed. The statement which has just been read to you as the statement of the Primate and all his brethren—the statement, in express terms, of "the Irish Archbishops and Bishops,"—informs us, that they are unanimous in their adhesion to the principles embodied in the Bill now under the consideration of your Lordships. And yet, my Lords, to one of the main provisions of this Bill, I rejoice to know, not one of the Bishops of the Church in England will ever give his assent; that they will all unanimously reject the Bill in which it is contained. And I must say, painful to me as is the declaration, that if the Prelates of the Church in Ireland show by their votes this night their deliberate judgment—for their judgment will be unhappily most deliberate—and in despite of the most earnest and repeated remonstrances—that the particular provision of this Bill to which I have thus referred, is tolerable, and not only tolerable, but is eagerly to be adopted in their branch of the Christian Church, I know not how any faithful Catholic can hold communion with them. I say, my Lords, and I must not be afraid of saying, that if the Irish Bishops approve and accept the principle of dealing with diocesan episcopacy as a matter of no essential moment, they not only separate to themselves from the Church of England, but they go further—they separate themselves from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I say this most seriously, most distinctly, most painfully—yet that such is the intention of the Irish Bishops I think I clearly understand from the language of the right rev. Prelate near me. For that right rev. Prelate has said, that the Irish Bishops approve of all the principal provisions of the Bill. I may be
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wrong in my apprehension of the meaning of the language used by the right rev. Prelate, and if I am, I trust he or one of his brethren will correct me.
My Lords, one of those principal provisions, that which I regard as the principal, is contained in the 15th clause of this Bill, and was contained in the Bill submitted to the consideration of the Bishops of the United Church some time in June of last year. It was then repudiated at once by all the English Bishops and, although at first accepted by their Irish brethren, was on consideration repudiated also by them, as tending "to transfer the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops to the Archbishop."
My Lords, the framer of this Bill undertook to remove that objection; and in order to do so, he has given to us the 15th clause of the present Bill, containing, with very little alteration—none which affects the principle of the clause—the very same principle which was declared last year to be contrary to the very essence of diocesan episcopacy by the Bishops in both branches of the United Church. In short, my Lords, the Bill, in its 15th clause, would deprive the Bishops of the authority they have hitherto exercised over the clergy from the very foundation of the Church of Christ, or at least would make that authority to be, for the future, exercised only according to the will and pleasure of the Archbishop.
My Lords, so great is the importance of this part of the Bill before us, that I must beg leave to call your attention to the very terms of the 15th clause—a clause which, I repeat, and cannot repeat too often, is one of the most fearful character. That clause distinctly withdraws all authority from the diocesan Bishops, and vests it in the Archbishop, to be exercised only at his pleasure and under his permission; for it provides that any clerk against whom "any suit or other proceeding is instituted, involving any question of doctrine or the due administration of the sacraments, may lodge in the registry a petition addressed to the Archbishop of the province, to take, hear, and determine the cause in his own Court; and it shall be lawful for the Archbishop, if he think fit, thereupon to take, hear, and determine the cause in his Provincial Court."
Now, let me ask, is not that depriving the diocesan Bishop of the authority he now possesses and has possessed from the days of the Apostles, and vesting it in the

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Archbishop? And yet the right rev. Prelate says he considers this a sound and wholesome provision. I have, then, too much reason for asserting, that if the Irish Bishops, by their votes this night, shall thus deny the sacred origin, the Divine right, of the Bishop's authority over his clergy, they thereby separate themselves from the Church of England; and I must repeat that they separate themselves from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I hope, then, that some other right rev. Prelate of the Church in Ireland will rise and disclaim the doctrine asserted by the right rev. Prelate near me. I say that this clause openly assails the diocesan episcopacy, and the authority of the Bishop over his clergy—an authority which is of Divine right, claimed to be such by the Church of all age from the time of the Apostles, and most faithfully retained as such by our own Church. My Lords, the vow made by every Bishop at his consecration is, that he "will correct and punish the criminous by the authority which he has by God's Word." That vow is part of the Book of Consecration of Bishops, and Ordering of Priests and Deacons. As such it has the express authority of the Thirty-nine Articles; it is, moreover, a part of the Book of Common Prayer; and to it every Minister of our Church, openly before the people, declares his unfeigned assent and consent before he is admitted to any benefice. That declaration, therefore, has been repeatedly made by every one of the right rev. Prelates of Ireland who have this night avowed their determination to contradict it by their vote for the present Bill.
But neither, my Lords, is it the Church alone which affirms this sacred principle. My Lords, the law of the land gives to it its express sanction—a sanction which I rejoice to claim, in justice to that law, as the law of a Christian State. My Lords, this sanction is given not only by the statute of King Edward VI., which established the Book of Consecration—by the 13th of Queen Elizabeth, which established the Book of Articles—but by three Acts of Uniformity, especially by the Act 13 & 14 Charles II., which is declared by the Treaty of Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland to be, and is to be deemed for ever, an essential and fundamental article of that Union.
But, my Lords, while we acknowledge,
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thankfully, exultingly acknowledge, this faithfulness of the State to the Divine right of the Bishop's authority over his clergy, our main rejoicing must be, that it was the Church which impressed this sacred principle on the State—the Church, at the very time when, by God's blessing, it rescued itself from its long thraldom to the corruptions of the Church of Rome. My Lords, whatever else it found necessary to reform, this great, this paramount principle, our Church adhered to with holy tenacity—a principle by which it is linked to the Church of the Apostles, by which it maintains unity with the whole Catholic Church Militant here on earth, and will, we humbly hope, indissolubly maintain it until that Church become the Church triumphant in Heaven.
My Lords, if have dwelt long, perhaps too long, on what concerns this great line of demarcation (I grieve that it exists) between the English Bishops and those of Ireland, I rest my claim to pardon on the great interest at stake.
My Lords, I turn to the declaration of the noble and learned Lord who has moved the second reading of this Bill. He has said that it is the same as that which was laid before the Bishops last year. [The LORD CHANCELLOR: I said it was the same as that Bill, with certain alterations.] Then why were not those alterations communicated to the English Bishops, as they had been to the Irish? What have we done to disentitle us to the same courtesy as was thought due to our right rev. Brethren? Why were not we consulted on a measure which affects alike the interests and well-being of both branches of this United Church? But I must tell the noble and learned Lord that he is mistaken when he says that it is the same Bill. All the clauses relating to the appointment of chancellors, and the powers of those chancellors,—a very main portion of the Bill before the House—were struck out of the Bill of last year, when it was shown to the English Bishops, as the Bill which would be brought before Parliament. [The LORD CHANCELLOR shook his head.] I beg leave to say that several of the Bishops near me received copies of the Kill with the clauses struck out. But I what I complain of is, that while the alterations proposed to be made in the Bill were, as I understand, communicated to the Irish Bishops, no such communication was made to us; and I must express my great surprise at the treatment the

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English Bishops have received in this matter. I must also again say that this Bill differs very much, and in many important particulars, from the measure of last year; for instance, I repeat that the Lord Chancellor had struck out the clauses respecting the chancellors which are in the present Bill, when he asked the opinion of the English Bishops as to the remainder. [The LORD CHANCELLOR: No, no.] The noble and learned Lord denies this statement. Here, then, is a question of veracity. Now, I declare, on the authority of a right rev. Prelate who is present, that when the Bill of last year had been shown to the English Bishops, they at once declared their strong objection to the appointment of the six, now four chancellors, and the powers proposed to be given to them; that, on hearing of this, the noble and learned Lord immediately declared that his objection to the clauses respecting chancellors was as strong as theirs; he then took the Bill, struck out of it with his own pen the clauses which concerned chancellors, and said, "If there are any on this matter which I have not struck out, pray strike them out yourselves, and tell me what you think of the Bill as it will then stand."
THR LORD CHANCELLOR: I wish to be permitted to explain this matter here at once, to prevent any misunderstanding, I beg to say, that when I submitted the Bill to the Archbishop of Canterbury, I received from him an intimation that the right rev. Prelates generally objected to what were called the "Chancellor clauses" in the Bill. I then asked if the right rev. Prelates assented to the rest of the Bill? I should like to know in what position the Bill would stand, if I struck out those clauses? and what would then be the opinion of the right rev. Prelates of the Bill? When the "Chancellor clauses" were objected to, I drew my pen through them.
THE BISHOP OF EXETER: Well, so far as the explanation of the noble and learned Lord goes, I thank him for the confirmation he has given to the statement I have made. My Lords, I turn to some other considerations connected with other portions of the Bill. The Bishops, in 1855, as I have already said, had objected to the Bill then laid before them, for two reasons most especially; first, that it transferred the jurisdiction of the Bishop to the Archbishop; and, secondly, that it gave the
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jurisdiction of the Archbishop to the Crown.
My Lords, in the present Bill this second objection is removed. The jurisdiction of the Archbishop is most properly restored by the 73rd clause, which provides, that if any party is dissatisfied with any judgment pronounced in the Bishop's court, he may appeal to the Archbishop. But why was it that one only of the two great objections to the Bill of 1855 was removed, and the other, the transferring of the authority of the Bishop to the Archbishop, left in the main unaltered, and, in the particulars in which it was altered, altered for the worse? The 13th clause of the Bill of 1855, answering to the 15th of the present Bill, compelled the Archbishop, at the petition of the criminous clerk, to take the cause out of the jurisdiction of the Bishop, and to hear and determine it in his own court, as if the cause had arisen in his own diocess. The 15th clause of the present Bill does not compel the Archbishop thus to take the original jurisdiction out of the hands of the Bishop; it only permits him to do this, if he shall think fit. Its words are—
"That, in any proceeding against a clerk in volving any question of doctrine, or the due administration of the sacraments, the clerk may lodge in the registry a petition to the Archbishop to take, hear, and determine the cause, and it shall be lawful to the Archbishop, if he think fit, to take, hear, and determine the cause in, his Provincial Court."
Why, this, my Lords, is downright Popery, and therefore I said it is worse than the clause of last year. It gives to every Archbishop in his province precisely the power and authority which the Pope claims throughout the Church of Rome. But there is this difference in the cases—a difference which, in practice, would make the Archbishop to be more absolute—more a pope than the Pope himself; for, though the Pope claims the right of jurisdiction in every diocess of the Roman Church as the supreme pastor of all—although, therefore, he may exercise original jurisdiction, and may hear and determine every cause if he think fit, yet, in fact, he never exercises, and I believe never has exercised, that power. If a clergyman be proceeded against by his Bishop for maintaining false doctrine, and if thereupon he applies to the Pope to hear the cause, the Pope invariably asks if the Bishop has heard the cause; and if the answer be in the negative, the applicant

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is told to submit to the Bishop as his judge in the first instance; if the Bishop did not do justice in the matter, then to have recourse to the Pope, who would hear and decide it. Now, such is precisely the position in which this Bill sought to place the Archbishops of the Church of England in respect to power; but there is this difference to be noticed, namely, that, while the Pope never, in fact, interferes in the first instance, here the Archbishops are invited by this Bill to take upon themselves the exercise of the authority which now belongs to the Bishops, and to take out of their jurisdiction altogether the decision of cases which now properly belongs to them, and has belonged to them from the very beginning of the Christian era. It may be said that the Archbishops would not take advantage of the powers proposed to be conferred upon them by this clause; but that I think must appear an absurdity upon the face of it—for why insert such a, clause in the Bill if it was not intended that advantage should be taken of it? Again, a feeling of delicacy, it may be said, would induce the Archbishops not to avail themselves of this clause; but let me ask, is it not much more probable that, when an Archbishop found himself endowed with this power, he would think it his plain duty to exercise it?—that no feeling of delicacy ought to operate with him—that if a cause involving an important question of doctrine was brought before him, he would deem himself bound to decide upon it?—that he would, therefore, exercise the power and authority with which this Bill proposed to invest him? Well, then, if such should be the operation of this Bill, if passed into law, let me ask, would it be a means of preserving concord and good feeling between the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England? Is it the course which ought to be pursued if there be any desire to keep the Church of England a Church united in itself? It is absurd to suppose for a moment that such a state of things could exist under a law conferring such a power as the Bill would confer. It would be the surest way of leading to enduring ill-will and bitterness of feeling, and mutual jealousies of every kind. It must be plain to every man of common understanding that the transference of this authority from the Bishops to the Archbishop, to be exercised or not at his will, would lead to constant disputes and party feeling between the clergy and the Bishops, and between the Bishops and
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Archbishops. My Lords, it would have been much better to have let this part of the Bill remain in the form in which it stood last year, than now to propose to place the Bishops under the arbitrary will and control of the Archbishops, which, I contend, would render the Bill in its operation perfectly intolerable.
And here permit me to remind your Lordships, not what is the authority of an Archbishop, but what was its origin. Was the authority of an Archbishop given in the same manner as that of a Bishop, namely, by the Word of God? Certainly not. This is not, cannot be, pretended. No man in this House would, I feel confident, venture to say that the authority of an Archbishop over a Bishop, as it is exercised in this country, was given by the Word of God. It is well known that the authority of an Archbishop is ecclesiastical, that it was the Church that gave it origin, and therefore I say that, unless this House is prepared to affirm the proposition that the authority of the Church is to supersede the authority of the Word of God, it will not place the authority of an Archbishop upon the same divine platform as that of the diocesan Bishop. An Archbishop is not created by any special form of consecration, and there is no recognition whatever of his having his authority by the Word of God. My Lords, if an Archbishop be made per saltum—that is, as it has often happened, if a mere Presbyter were promoted, at one step, from his position as a mere Presbyter to that of Archbishop of Canterbury, his consecration would be precisely in the form used for the consecration of a Bishop—a fact which clearly proves, that the Church regards the authority of an Archbishop in a light perfectly distinct from the authority of a Bishop. While I make these observations. I wish it to be distinctly understood that I regard the appointment of Archbishops as a most wise and blessed institution—one admirably fitted to restrain Bishops from abusing the authority of their high office: all that I contend for is, that the Legislature should be slow in entertaining any measure which would transfer to the Archbishops the authority, the divinely-given authority, of the Bishops.
My Lords, perhaps many of your Lordships are not aware of the anomalous position in which an Archbishop is placed in this Church and country. An Archbishop, as such, is absolutely and wholly irresponsible;—he may commit any ecclesiastical

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offence whatsoever without being amenable to any law—there is no authority which can punish him. I do not mean to say that Archbishops cannot be made amenable to justice if they should commit any offence against the temporal law—I only say that they may violate every law of the Church with entire impunity. An Archbishop may be a heretic or an atheist; he may encourage heresy and atheism; he may seek to make proselytes to heresy or atheism; and yet there is no authority whatever to check or restrain him.
My Lords, I am not speaking merely of things which may happen—I speak of what we have in some measure experienced within my own recollection. There was an Archbishop who, though I will not go the length of saying he absolutely, or directly, or intentionally, propagated Unitarianism, yet went so far as to put forth a version of the New Testament, which was adopted by the Unitarians as the basis of the work which they designate "an improved version of the New Testament." My Lords, I speak of the last predecessor but one of the present Archbishop of Armagh—I speak of Archbishop New-come. Then there was, about forty years before, the case of an Irish Bishop, whose name was Clayton, one who was absolutely so heretical, his avowed and published works were such, that legal proceedings were announced to him by his Archbishop, surrounded by the other Bishops of his province: he took the highest legal opinions, and was told that it was most probable that his conviction must follow his trial, and that the result would be his being deprived of his bishopric. My Lords, he took this communication so much to heart that he died before the proceedings against him had made much progress.
But it may be said that this was the case of a Bishop, and only showed that an heretical Bishop can be punished. True, my Lords: but this Bishop had very nearly been an Archbishop, and then he could not have been punished. He had been actually recommended to the Government at home for the Archbishopric of Tuam, by the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and he lost his intended appointment by an incident which was somewhat remarkable. It appeared that one of his own clergy, a young man of some talents, having discovered his Bishop's heretical tendencies, showed to him a work of his, entitled Essay on Spirit. The Bishop
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was so much pleased with it that he recommended its publication. The author, however, declaring himself afraid to publish it, the Bishop took charge of the work, published it, and was generally believed to be the author. Its character, however, having happened to reach the ears of the Government in England, the Lord Lieutenant's recommendation of Bishop Clayton to the Archbishopric of Tuam, contrary to wont in such cases, was without effect. I say, therefore, my Lords, that I am not indulging in a mere idle fancy, when I state that it is not only possible, but within the range of actual experience, for an Archbishop to be guilty of very grievous offences against ecclesiastical law, nay to contradict the very vital doctrines of the Gospel. My Lords, this consideration ought, and will, make you pause, before you confide to Archbishops the power which is proposed to be given them by this Bill.
THE EARL OF HARROWBYsaid, there were words in the clause which the right rev. Prelate had not noticed, which fully met his objection.
THE BISHOP OF EXETER: My Lords, the noble Earl reminds me that there are words in the 15th clause, which I have not noticed. I thank the noble Earl for the suggestion—I had intended to notice those words, but had forgotten them, and I am now reminded that the clause says—
"That it shall be lawful for the Archbishop, in any proceeding against a clerk for maintaining false doctrine, to take, and hear, and determine the cause, as he might have done by any statute or law before the passing of this Act."
Why, my Lords, there is no statute or law at present existing, which enables the Archbishop to take a cause of heresy out of the cognisance of the Bishop (unless in some case of exception), and to determine it himself in the first instance. If there be such a statute or law, let the noble Earl—or let the noble and learned Lord whose name is on the back of this Bill—produce it. But, my Lords, I again confidently say, there is no such statute or law, and the introduction of those words into the clause makes it mere nonsense, and can have proceeded only from gross ignorance in the person, whoever he be, certainly not the noble and learned Lord, who drew the clause.
My Lords, through the kindness of the Primate of Ireland, I last year received an authoritative exposition of the Bill then

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intended to be introduced into this House, which exposition was contained in a letter addressed to the Primate himself. In that Bill was a clause, which, like the 15th of the present Bill, deprived the Bishop of his original jurisdiction, and transferred it to the Archbishop. My Lords, I have already said, that the power, thus proposed to be taken from the Bishop, is of the very essence of the catholicity of the Church—that it is a sacred principle—always regarded as such by the Church, and always hitherto so recognised by the law of England. But, my Lords, I have another authority for this statement, to which I can refer your Lordships—that of the learned Gentleman who drew the present Bill, and was the writer of the authoritative exposition of its provisions, together with the grounds on which he rested their justification. My Lords, at page 7 of that exposition, the letter to the Archbishop of Armagh, the learned gentleman says—
"The authority which our Lord gave to his Apostles, and through them to the Church, contained no external coercive power; it was a power over the consciences of men—not over their bodies. …. During the first three centuries discipline was exercised over the clergy by virtue of the authority derived from the Apostles:—'Against an elder receive not an accusation, but under two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke sharply, that others may fear.'—1 Tim. v. 19, 20. 'A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition reject.'—Titus iii. 19. This is a part of the authority which Bishops possess by the Word of God—not from the ordinance of the realm (the form of consecrating a Bishop). This power was exercised by Bishops during the first three centuries without any assistance from the civil power, and therefore without any 'jurisdiction,' in the proper sense of the term. The authority of Bishops was enforced by spiritual punishments only, except where the stipends of the clergy afforded a means of punishment.
"These punishments were—(a) Suspension from office for a time brief or long. (b) Deprivation or degradation from orders, either to a lower order or to the state of laymen, (c) For the greatest crimes, excommunication was sometimes added. (d) The loss of stipend of course attended all such sentences.
"The offences which were thus punished were generally the same as those now accounted clerical offences, with some variations arising from the then state of society. Heterodoxy, crimes, immorality, contempt or disobedience of canons, negligence in duty, violations of the Liturgy, engaging in secular employments," &c.—(page 8.)
"The proposed Bill has therefore been drawn so as not to touch the authority which Bishops have by the Word of God."—(page 12.)
My Lords, in a subsequent part of the same work, the exposition of the Bill of 1855, Mr. Stephens says, page 55—
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"A Bishop is bound by his office to take notice of misconduct in clergymen, and to correct it, although there be no other accuser. A Bishop at his consecration is required to promise, 'Such as be unquiet, disobedient, and criminous, within his province, to correct and punish, according to such authority, as he has by God's Word.'
"It is not proposed to interfere with such vows or duties, but only to provide an efficient means of fulfilling them."
My Lords, incredible as it may seem, the writer of this work, after making such ample admissions, immediately, in the very same breath, proceeds to take away the whole authority of the Bishops, which he declares them to have by God's Word, and to transfer it to the Archbishops. Now, when I was told that Mr. Stephens was the author of this Bill, I really did consider it impossible that that learned gentleman could willingly have drawn such a clause, because he had over and over again stated to me in communications sought by himself that, in drawing the Bill, he would take care that all the power and authority which the Bishops now possess should be preserved to them.
My Lords, I stated these matters in a letter to the Archbishop of Armagh, and, having stated them, I added that his Grace was at liberty to show my letter to Mr. Stephens, and that it was my wish that it should be shown to him. Accordingly it was shown to him; and he wrote me a letter a few days after, in which he did not deny a single word of what I had said about his promise of preserving the authority of the Bishops—a promise which was directly violated by the provisions of this Bill; he said that the clause was introduced after I had left London, and that his instructions to introduce it were imperative. In a subsequent letter to me of the same day he volunteered a promise that, "if the Bill were introduced the clause to which I had objected should be expunged;" adding, that the moment anything was decided I should be informed of it: from that time to this I have never heard a single syllable upon the subject from this gentleman.
My Lords, I must say that I do not think that a Bill of this kind can be satisfactorily conducted, when there is such utter violation of engagements made to those who are most interested in it.
My Lords, I know not that I should have thus largely dealt with Mr. Stephens's statement, had it not been for the imperative order which he received to insert

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the clause. I ask the noble and learned Lord, the professed author of the measure, whether it was he who gave this order? [The LORD CHANCELLOR: I say no, I did not give the order; but I do not see any harm in it.] What the noble and learned Lord may see or think is quite another matter; my question referred only to the fact. However, the noble and learned Lord denies having given the order. Therefore, the fact stands thus:—a Bill bearing on the back of it the name of the Lord Chancellor, and introduced by him into this House, with the concurrence of his colleagues, has had a clause introduced into it, which the gentleman who drew the Bill had a peremptory order to insert; and yet the noble and learned Lord denies having given any such order! I shall not press the question further, for the noble and learned Lord appears not to like to be asked questions; but I hope the noble and learned Lord will, in the course of his reply, take that opportunity of answering the question, who gave that order?
I am aware that the noble and learned Lord objects to having this Bill designated a "Government measure," as I, in my simplicity, had designated it; he wishes rather to have the Bill described in his own words, as a "Bill to be laid on the table by the Lord Chancellor with the concurrence of his colleagues." My Lords, I could not at first devise any reason why the noble and learned Lord should object to calling the Bill, as in ordinary parlance, a "Government measure." But I think I now discern the reason. If it were a "Government measure," strictly so called, the Bill would have been, if not drawn, yet superintended by the Government officers, especially by the chief law adviser of the Crown in ecclesiastical matters; but it appears that this law adviser of the Crown was in no way intrusted with the Bill—nay, it is confidently said, in Doctors' Commons, that he never heard a word about it. I now ask the noble and learned Lord, was the Queen's Advocate consulted upon a measure of so much importance to the Church and to the State as in connection with the Church? I ask, whether that chief law officer of the Crown was consulted upon it? He is a gentleman eminent in professional learning—of great abilities—of very high character. Why was such a man not trusted with the discharge of his own duties, for the discharge of which he is undeniably most highly qualified?
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My Lords, this mention of the Queen's Advocate is not foreign to the matter which I wish next to bring under the notice of your Lordships—the 16th clause—which never would have been part of any Bill which he had any share in preparing. It proposes to give a power to the Church which the Church never possessed, which the Church never ought to possess, which the Church never sought to possess, and which the Church will refuse to possess, unless it be absolutely forced upon it—I mean the power to fine and imprison for contempt. My Lords, the insertion of that clause is of itself sufficient to prove that the Bill never could have proceeded from a mind instructed in the knowledge of ecclesiastical law, much less imbued with its principles. The very constitution of the Church rests upon a power contrary to that clause. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal; the Church claims no other power than the power of the keys; it leaves to the State the power of the sword. Bracton, who was the great expounder of our common law in the thirteenth century, has laid it down that there were certain causes which could not be tried by secular courts, and certain other cases which could not be tried by Ecclesiastical Courts; and the reason was this, that the secular court possessed not the coercion necessary to give execution of a decree in an ecclesiastical matter—it has only the potestas gladii, while the Ecclesiastical Court possessed not the coercion necessary to give execution of a decree in a temporal matter—it has only potestas clavium. Now, I do not mean to say that the insertion of such a clause in a Bill, whose general principle may be good, would be a sufficient reason for refusing to the Bill a second reading, for it could, no doubt, be easily rectified in Committee; but I must think that your Lordships cannot have much confidence in one who had committed such a mistake in drawing the Bill, nor deem him qualified to deal with such matters.
But this, my Lords, is not the only clause which is inconsistent with the very principles of eccesiastical law. I will venture to call the attention of your Loadships to the 44th and 45th clauses. They relate to the case of an Archbishop or Bishop unduly refusing or delaying to institute a clerk to a benefice, and the matter being brought by appeal to the Judicial Committee. My Lords, the 45th clause empowers the Judicial Committee in such a case, if it

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decides for the appellant, to report to Her Majesty that she should call upon another Archbishop or Bishop, and if Her Majesty, acting on such report, shall order any such clerk to be instituted, the Judicial Committee shall signify such order to any one of the Archbishops or Bishops of England or Ireland to institute, and such Archbishop or Bishop shall immediately proceed to institute accordingly. My Lords, has ever anything so preposterous, so monstrous, before been heard of? Why is a Bishop, who has nothing to do with the case, to be compelled to violate his conscience by giving cure of souls, in another diocess, to one whom he may deem a heretic? Why is a Bishop of Carlisle to be required to institute to a benefice in Middlesex or Kent, because the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Bishop of London, may have refused to do so on grounds which the Judicial Committee holds to be insufficient? The Bishop of Carlisle may have the same conscientious scruples as have prevented the other prelates from giving institution in the same case? Why is his conscience to be coerced?
My Lords, the framer of this Bill, and all concerned in framing it, seem to have been utterly ignorant that the conferring of the cure of souls is a merely spiritual act, which cannot, consistently with the law of the Church, nor of the State, in England, be extorted from an unwilling party. My Lords, if a Bishop wrongfully refuses to institute, the only result is, that he loses his jurisdiction pro hac vice, which jurisdiction passes to his superior ordinary, the Archbishop. But if the Archbishop has done wrong, as he has no superior to whom his jurisdiction can pass, all that the Judicial Committee ever says, ever can say, is, "Go and do justice," The Archbishop, in such a case, is bound to reconsider the matter; but if on serious reconsideration he is still of the same mind as before, still deems the clerk unfit for the cure of souls, he can only make this return: "I have done justice to the best of my power; I have reviewed the case as you ordered; and I am brought to the same conclusion as before." My Lords, the Judicial Committee can do no more—they have done their duty, and the Archbishop has done his.
I will not dwell longer on this part of the Bill; nor should I revert to the unhappy 15th clause, had not the noble and learned Lord satisfied me, by what he had said upon it, that he has never seriously
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read the Bill—at least, has not given, what he asks your Lordships this night to give to it, a second reading.
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, in recommending the Bill this night to your Lordships, gravely stated as one ground of his recommendation of it, that "the Bishop is to decide questions of doctrine." I noted the words as they were spoken, and have therefore no doubt, either that they were spoken, or that the noble and learned Lord believes that they spoke the truth. My Lords, I confidently say, what I have before again and again said, and I refer to the words of the Bill itself for my warrant in saying it, that by this Bill "the Bishop is not to decide questions of doctrine"'—that whether he shall hear them or not, depends altogether on the will of the criminous clerk and of the Archbishop.
My Lords, if such a Bill pass into a law, it will give rise to confusion and troubles, such as I cannot contemplate without dismay. The English Bishops will not, dare not, consent to it; for it is inconsistent with the Word of God. The Irish Bishops say that they will consent to it; and by so saying, they put themselves, and, as far as is within their power, they put their Church, in direct antagonism with the Church in England. My Lords, this has a very ugly aspect. I earnestly hope that those right rev. Prelates will reconsider the matter—will come to another, and I must say a better, mind. I must also say, that I am bound in charity to their Church to hope, that although they represent in this House the episcopate of that Church, they do not represent the feelings, the principles of their Church itself. For if the Church in Ireland should in any general synod, or in any other way, commit itself to the adoption of the principle which its Prelates this night have declared their intention to adopt, the Church of Ireland from that hour would cease to be united with the Church of England—would cease to be united with the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: for the authority of the Bishop by God's Word is the very bond of Catholic and Apostolic unity.
My Lords, there is one consideration connected with this most vicious part of the Bill which must not pass unnoticed. There was not the smallest reason whatever for introducing it, in order to accomplish the object which the mover of the Bill professes to seek. His end would equally be attained,—the improvement of the Consistorial

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Court would equally be brought to pass—without assailing the Divine authority of episcopacy. My Lords, this absolutely gratuitous character of the measure stamps it with a mark of very special evil. That the noble and learned Lord has no design to destroy or corrupt the Church, I must entirely believe. But, my Lords, what has been stated without contradiction this night has shown, that the noble and learned Lord does not even know the true nature of the Bill which he has introduced—that he is not, and has not been, the master of it—that there is, in short, something behind the woolsack greater than the woolsack itself.
My Lords, the very refusal to satisfy the conscientious objectors by sacrificing the obnoxious clause, or even modifying it to meet their views, is itself a most alarming fact. The Divine right of episcopacy is known to be the great principle which distinguishes the Church of England from the Protestants of Germany. These have a sort of episcopacy so called, but they renounce with absolute aversion all approximation to, and all sympathy with, ours. This attack on our episcopacy, therefore, has not an English aspect—it is German, simply, unmistakeably German. It is from the mint of Bunsen—his stamp is upon it. My Lords, I do not say that that learned, able, and, I would add, honest statesman has had anything to do with the concoction of the Bill, or is in any way cognisant of it; but I believe that some one imbued with his principles—some one who anxiously awaits the advent of "the Church of the future," has had a powerful influence in pressing this measure. My Lords, hatred of the episcopacy of the primitive Church, faithfully cherished, and valued, and represented, as it is, by our own Church, was the leading characteristic of M. Bunsen's theory. The very name of that theory, "the Church of the Future," proclaimed it to renounce all connection, as with the present, so with the past: it gloried in being neither Catholic nor Apostolic. Permit me, my Lords, to read to you one single sentence of the book, in proof of what I have said. His correspondent, a distinguished lay member of our Church, had written thus:—
"It is in the Episcopate, as the basis of truly apostolical institutions and discipline, that I see the one vivid and powerful hope of our recovery. To efface, therefore, or to weaken, the defining lines of that basis, and of the little discipline now connected with it, would be, as I feel, ruin to us."
So writes the English Churchman.
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"If an angel from heaven should manifest to me that by introducing, or advocating, or merely favouring the introduction of such an episcopacy into any part of Germany, I should not only make the German nation glorious and powerful above all the nations of the world, but should successfully combat the unbelief, pantheism, and atheism of the day, I would not do it. So help me God. Amen."—Bunsen.
So writes the Prussian.
Such is the judgment of M. Bunsen on English episcopacy. My Lords, I do not say—I do not imagine—that all who are willing to support this Bill, will go the whole length of M. Bunsen's declaration. They will say, perhaps, that they approve of Bishops as a very useful and venerable institution, but their powers require to be altered and diminished; that, at any rate, no consideration of them ought to impede the progress of a great measure of public policy. Now, my Lords, I contend, openly, plainly contend, that such an interference with the functions and duties of a Bishop is contrary to the very principle of the Church, and therefore that this alone is a sufficient reason for which your Lordships ought not to suffer this Bill to go into Committee. There are many other reasons why the Bill should not go to a second reading, but this is the most conclusive, the most imperative: and with having stated it, I would willingly conclude.
But I should not do justice to the cause which I have undertaken to bring before your Lordships, if I did not say something of the other leading principle of the Bill before us. For, my Lords, the Bill has two objects, and might well have been divided into two. Its first object is to alter the manner of proceeding in the Ecclesiastical Courts—a very general and very indistinct description; the second is more precisely, indeed most precisely, most plainly, set forth: "It is expedient to make provision for the establishment of central ecclesiastical registries."
My Lords, of the principle of centralisation in general, I must not be ashamed to say that I partake of the dislike which is so strongly felt by the people at large. We of the provinces are not satisfied that our business may not be as effectually, as usefully performed by ourselves, as by the wisdom of the metropolis. At any rate, we will not consent to that business being dragged to London, with all the charge and vexation of such removal, unless there be a proved case, if not of necessity, at least of convenience of the most decided kind.

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Now, my Lords, in the present instance, what necessity, what convenience, what shadow of convenience, can be pretended? Of the twenty or thirty sorts of instruments enumerated in Clause 84, how many are other than strictly local? Ay, my Lords, such as must be executed in the districts where the occasion for them arises? Are not marriages local? Are not ordinations local? Are not institutions to benefices local? Which of them, in short, is not local? But it has been said that the present registries are imperfect, and in a bad condition. Such may be, and, I believe, is the fact as regards Ireland; but in England, I believe that those registries have been in general very carefully and very effectually preserved. I know that they are so in the diocess of Exeter.
My Lords, the ecclesiastical instruments in the registry of my diocess date so far back as the year 1257. Why are we to be robbed of what we regard as a venerable collection of ancient precedents connected with the local and general history of our Church? Why are those things to be removed from us who value them, and to be lodged in some general depository in London, where they would be regarded as mere rubbish?
But, my Lords, there are other considerations to which I must entreat your Lordships to give your attention; and, first, to a very homely but by no means unimportant particular—the several items of expenditure to be incurred by this Bill, if it should pass into law. It is proposed by the 10th clause that advances of money for the purposes of the Act shall be made by the Treasury, upon the certificates of the Archbishop of Canterbury, York, Armagh, and Dublin, and the Bishop of London, with the sanction of the Lord Chancellor. Supposing, then, that this provision for a central office for the custody of registries were to be carried into effect, what amount of expenditure of money do your Lordships suppose would be required? I have taken the trouble to make some inquiries upon this subject, so far as concerns the instruments in my own registry. My Lords, I am informed by my registrar, a gentleman entitled to all credit, that a building suitable to the accommodation of the registries of the diocess of Exeter alone should contain 900 feet square, and be of considerable height! Suitable accommodation must be made for twenty-eight registries for the twenty-eight
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diocesses of England and the Isle of Man, with suitable chambers for the four chancellors, for their clerks, and for all the officers and servants employed. These several registries must be effectually separate, must be not only air-tight and watertight, but fire-proof, and otherwise well fitted for the preservation of very perishable documents. The building which is to contain them must be built in a convenient part of the metropolis, purchasing the site and the various houses or warehouses by which it is at present occupied; and it must be, I will not say sumptuous, I will not say highly ornamental, but decent, handsome—such, in short, as the people of England would think that a public building in England ought to be. Now, my Lords, I ask your Lordships, who are much better judges than I can be, whether such a building can be provided at a cost of less than £100,000? But this is not all. There is another registry to be erected in Dublin, sufficient for the separate registries of the twelve diocesses in Ireland. This cannot be estimated at less than £20,000, and I am only afraid that the right rev. Prelates of that country will think me very niggardly in my allowance to them. But I take the whole amount on this very moderate calculation of £120,000.
Now, my Lords, I can have no doubt that the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, having obtained the concurrence of his colleagues when he laid this Bill on your table, had specially called their attention to the question of expense. This is a matter which must have had the best consideration of the First Lord of the Treasury and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and yet, my Lords, I much question whether, when the matter shall come to the pinch, they will be found to carry their concurrence with the noble and learned Lord so far as he would wish, so far even as the promise of concurrence might seem to imply.
For, let us look to the matter a little more particularly. The 10th clause orders "The Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury to advance from time to time such sums of money as four Archbishops and the Bishop of London may require for carrying into effect the purposes of this Act." This is a clause which the wholesome jealousy of the House of Commons will not suffer to appear in any Bill which your Lordships may send down to them. But this difficulty, we shall be

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told, is easily got over. The clause will be struck out in Committee, and will be replaced on the Motion of one of the noble and learned Lord's concurring colleagues, when the Bill shall be considered in the other House. Will it, indeed? My Lords, I am not so sure of this—and I will fairly tell you why. I have not the smallest doubt of the faithfulness of the noble and learned Lord's noble and right hon. Colleagues in the House of Commons, to the promises they have made to him—and I have as little doubt of their courage in acting on those promises. But then that faithfulness, and that courage, must be under the implied restrictions and limitations imposed by common sense. Now, my Lords, I can picture to myself the noble and learned Lord calling on the noble Leader of the House of Commons to reintroduce the 10th clause in Committee in that House, That noble person is known to be a man of courage, and, I need not say, of rigid honour. The noble and learned Lord would appeal to those feelings—would urge his concurrence in the Bill before us—would, in short, press him on the matter, as Lady Macbeth pressed her lord—and I have no doubt whatever that the noble Premier would answer, as Macbeth answered—
"Prithee, peace;
I dare do all that may become a Minister,
Who dares do more"—will soon be none.
My Lord, that answer would seem to me a very constitutional, as well as discreet, answer.
Next comes the noble and learned Lord's Budget—his Estimates and Ways and Means for carrying the measure into effect. The noble and learned Lord was here very uncommunicative. He gave us no statement of his own; he referred us to the information which he had received. That information is contained in the official exposition of the Bill by the framer of it (Mr. Stephens); to a few particulars of which I now invite your Lordships' attention.
Mr. Stephens enumerates various items of charge, but to only one of them does he annex an estimate—that one is the salary of forty secretaries for forty Bishops—and he estimates it at £6,200 per annum, or £155 per annum for each. The noble and learned Lord is less illiberal, and, permit me to add, less unreasonable. He is willing to allow—I am afraid there was a condition annexed, if the funds will permit it—£200, or even £300, for each.
My Lords, if the qualifications and
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duties of a Bishop's secretary be considered, I cannot think that even the extended allowance of the noble and learned Lord's £300 per annum would give us the aid of such a legal adviser and assistant as we ought to have, and as we now have. My Lords, a Bishop's secretary and registrar—for the offices commonly go together—is a solicitor, one of the leading members of that profession in the cathedral city. I cannot see why the services of such a man are to be remunerated with a smaller salary than those to be paid to the clerks of chancellors under this Bill; in other words, £600 per annum to each. I will, however, take the salary at somewhat less; let us say £500 a year for every one of the English secretaries, £300 a year for the Irish—I hope the right rev. Prelates from that country will pardon the difference—and £200 for Sodor and Man. The sum total would be £17,300, that is, about £11,000, or, on the noble and learned Lord's showing, £5,700 more than the estimate of Mr. Stephens. It is proposed that the Treasury shall make the required advance upon the security of marriage licences and other fees; so that the interest and sinking fund, taken at 6 per cent on the £120,000 to be advanced for building, would be another item of charge altogether omitted by Mr. Stephens, amounting to £7,200 per annum.
My Lords, the other items of charge enumerated by Mr. Stephens, but without an estimate, and various necessary items not enumerated by him, have been estimated by me, and I cannot deem it possible that they can amount to less than £l 0,000 per annum. There must be two registrars, advocates or solicitors, who must give up their profession and devote themselves to their registries. They must have clerks, messengers, and other officers, an establishment to take proper care of the costly buildings—there must be insurance, gas rates, water rates, rates of every kind—last and not least, the annual repairs of such structures as I have described. I am sure that no one who takes the trouble of estimating these matters will think £10,000 per annum sufficient: in short, there must be an annual cost to the country of £48,900 a year.
Now, let us see in what way Mr. Stephens proposes that this sum is to be raised; what are his ways and means? He calculates that there will be 20,000 marriages annually, which, at 25 s. for each

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licence, will yield, he says, £29,500, but which the more vulgar arithmetician, Cocker, says is only £25,000—in other words, abstracting from Mr. Stephens's "supply" £4,500 per annum.
Next, Mr. Stephens takes credit for £19,715 per annum, being fees arising from licences, or other instruments, paid by the clergy, who are, in England, Mr. Stephens says (and I do not dispute his accuracy on this point), about 18,000. My Lords, my diocess has a more numerous clergy than almost any other—they exceed 900—so that a twentieth part of the clergy of all England are in my diocess. Mr. Stephens calculates that the fees paid by all (as I have said) will amount to £19,715, the twentieth part of which, or £985, would be paid by my clergy. But, my Lords, I have ascertained that the actual amount of those fees would not exceed £527, which sum, multiplied by 20, would make the fees, calculated by Mr. Stephens at £19,715, to be only £10,540, which, added to the £25,000 for marriage licences, would give a gross total of £35,540 as the ways and means wherewith to meet an annual expenditure of £48,900! Well, I can only say that if Mr. Archibald John Stephens can make £35,000 a year do the work of £48,000, he ought not to be left to the humble duties of "Chancellor of the Church of England and Ireland." Make him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Talk as you will of your Gladstones, your Disraelis, your Cornewall Lewises; give me Mr. Archibald John Stephens. He can make £35,540 a year do the work of £48,900.
My Lords, I have done with the financial part of the measure, and turn to some other of its provisions. The Act provides, that every ecclesiastical instrument is to be prepared in the chambers of the four chancellors, and is to be authenticated by the signature of one of the four; that is to say, no Bishop is to do any one single episcopal act without a stamp, and the written exequatur of one of the chancellors. In the very words of the Bill, this board of four chancellors is "to superintend and control" every official act of the Bishops. We are to be placed under the absolute dominion of those four men. No letters of orders, no institution to a benefice, no licence to a curate, are in future to be issued by the Bishops until they have first received the stamp and authoritative approbation of one of these four chancellors! My Lords, will Parliament, will the country,
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endure this shameless attempt to degrade the episcopacy of England and Ireland? To make the Church a mere bureau? Why is it proposed to do this? What existing and known evil is to be remedied? Has such an Act been rendered necessary by the notorious, or suggested, or even surmised, abuse of the power or authority of the Bishops in those matters? I have never heard of a complaint on the subject. I have been a Bishop for more than a quarter of a century, and never once have I heard it so much as whispered that those instruments and forms which have been preserved unchanged for centuries, had become, from any cause whatever, in the least degree liable to the objections suggested, or rather supposed, by the noble and learned Lord. My Lords, there is no need of mincing the matter; in plain English, this Bill is a patent, undeniable, downright job. Is it not apparent on the very face of the Bill? Why is it proposed to submit every episcopal act to those chancellors? It is, that they may have the semblance of having something to do: there must be some work assigned to them in order to justify the salary of £3,000 a year to each of them? Oh, but we are told that those chancellors are to assist the Bishops in "hearing causes." Well, what is the number of those "causes"? My Lords, it appears from regular returns, that the average number in England and Ireland does not exceed six in any one year, so that upon that calculation each of these four chancellors would receive £3,000 a year for doing what? For trying—assisting the Bishops in trying, in every year, a cause and a half each! Well, my Lords, if in deference to the wish, or authority—I cannot call it reasoning—of the noble and learned Lord, your Lordships shall be induced to pass such a Bill, we Bishops must be content to look for justice at the hands of the House of Commons. It does not require any great stretch of foresight to pronounce beforehand the certain fate of the Bill in that House. But if there were any danger of its becoming the law of the land, there would still be one consolation left to us—it would be absolutely, morally, nay, physically impossible, to work it out. And here, my Lords, I am reminded of a passage at arms, an intellectual digladiation, which was presented to us a few nights ago by the right rev. Prelate at the table (the Bishop of Bangor) and the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack.

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My Lords, my venerable and very acute Friend was pleased to apply a good many epithets to the Bill, some of them rather strong—stronger certainly, I will not say than the Bill deserves, but than I am inclined to use. I content myself with the two epithets which the noble and learned Lord selected, and on which issue was joined. The right rev. Prelate called the Bill visionary and impracticable—the noble and learned Lord undertook to prove the contrary.
Now, my Lords, I cannot but say that I think the right rev. Prelate was right, that the Bill is visionary and impracticable, and that on the noble and learned Lord's own showing. I do not mean that the noble and learned Lord's speech showed this, but I must contend that the Bill itself shows it.
My Lords, if your Lordships will look at the 48th clause you will see that, "from the time when this Act shall come into operation, the chancellors shall sit at chambers in London or Westminster, and Dublin, to superintend and control" the acts of the Bishops.
Well, my Lords, but these chambers cannot exist till long after "the time when the Bill shall come into operation." By the 27th clause, the four Archbishops and the Bishop of London are to "build, purchase, or otherwise provide lands and buildings for the ecclesiastical registries, and provide chambers for the chancellors under this Act." These five prelates are to "take and purchase, and hold lands, tenements, and hereditaments for these purposes, as a body corporate, which they are constituted to be by this Act."
In short, my Lords, the Act must be in operation before the buildings can be erected; and yet, as soon as the Act comes into operation, these buildings must be actually in use. My Lords, extraordinary as all this may seem, it is not without precedent. Before the Union, a Bill passed through the Irish Parliament for the highly useful purpose of providing a thoroughly good county gaol; and so cautious were the framers of the Bill to unite economy with security, that they provided that the old gaol should continue to be used till the new gaol was built, and at the same time that the materials of the old gaol should be employed in building the new. My Lords, I have here furnished the noble and learned Lord with what is always highly prized in the court over which, he so ably presides—a
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precedent. But, valuable as it is in Chancery, it is not always equally so in legislation. The precedent which I have adduced will not take the Bill out of the category of "visionary and impracticable" in which my right rev. Friend placed it, and out of which the noble and learned Lord does not appear to me to have succeeded in his attempt to rescue it.
I say, then, that the Bill is, as the right rev. Prelate characterised it, visionary and impracticable—that it presents a case not for legislating, but for conjuring. The noble and learned Lord must enact the part of Merlin. The buildings necessary for the operation of the Bill cannot be erected unless by magic. Unless they rise into existence at the waving of the wand or of the mace of the mighty magician, the wizard of the woolsack, the Bill, even if it pass into an Act, must be a mere blank, a few sheets of waste paper.
My Lords, I have trespassed much longer on your Lordships' time and patience than I originally intended; but I have felt, as I went on, that the very great importance of the measure warranted me in doing so; and I am not ignorant that my right rev. Friends and myself are struggling against fearful odds. I am aware that we have to contend against the whole weight of Government, which has adopted this Bill as its own. I am aware, too, that we have not the support which Bishops, in defending the highest, the most sacred interests of the Church, might not unreasonably, perhaps, have expected, from what is commonly called the Conservative side of the House. The noble Lords who sit on that side will forgive my asking, what object is worthy of being conserved, if the Church is not? If the maintenance of the episcopacy of England is left to be an open question, what is the principle of their party?
And yet, my Lords, amidst all these discouragements, we are not absolutely without hope; though cast down, we are not in despair. We have still allies, in whom we have unshaken confidence—we have reason, and we have a humbler, but still a stubborn, band—we have the whole array of facts and figures on our side. Trusting to these—still more to the high and generous feelings of British Peers, on whatever side of the House they may be ranged—above all, trusting in Him for whose own cause (we humbly believe) we are, with whatever mixture of human frailty and human error, faithfully contending—we

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shall go to the vote this night without dismay.
THE BISHOP OF BANGOR: *My Lords, after the powerful and unanswerable speech of my right rev. Friend (the Bishop of Exeter), exhausted as I am, at my age, with sitting so many hours waiting for an opportunity of addressing your Lordships, labouring under an attack of cold and hoarseness, and knowing how eager the noble Earl behind me is to come to the rescue of the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, nothing but a strong and overpowering sense of duty, not to myself only and your Lordships, but to my Sovereign and the country at large, could have constrained me to obtrude myself on your Lordships at this hour, and under these unfavourable circumstances.
I am sorry to say, that I am compelled to begin with complaining of an attack and insult, not only on my rights as a Member of this House, but upon your Lordships' privileges and honour, by the wilful suppression in the Minutes of the Motion that I made, after putting my question to the noble and learned Lord (or, as I was instructed by him to word it, the Government). That Motion was—
"That the Report made to His late Majesty by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the practice and jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts of England and Wales should be laid on your table."
Upon my making this Motion, the noble and learned Lord said, "The Report is on your table," by which he meant, that because it was laid on your table in 1832, therefore it was still lying there. This ingenious fancy, however, was at once scouted and repudiated. I again made my Motion, and, after I had stated to your Lordships the reasons which had induced me to come forward on this occasion, and my object in doing so, the Motion was put and carried in the affirmative, and I then expressed a wish that as many copies as could be found in the stores of the House might be laid on your table, in order that every noble Lord who thought fit might have an opportunity of reading it. Upon this, my right rev. Friend (the Bishop of Exeter) moved that the Report should be printed, and it was, I believe, arranged that, in case a sufficient number of copies were not forthcoming, it should be again printed. To my great surprise, I found that all notice of the Motion that I had made was suppressed in the Minutes of the
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day, though the Bishop of Exeter's Motion was printed as usual. I made my complaint to the House, when the noble and learned Lord told me, with singular coolness and nonchalance, that it was no business of his. This seemed extraordinary, as it appeared to me that the noble and learned Lord, both as a Member of Her Majesty's Government and as Speaker of your Lordships' House, was bound to inquire into and expose such unheard-of proceedings. My noble and learned Friend, the Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench wished to persuade me that, as I had gained my end by the Bishop of Exeter's Motion, it would be better to drop all further notice of the matter. But I entirely differed from my noble and learned Friend. My object was to learn how this audacious fraud had been committed, in violation of your Lordships' rules and privileges. But no inquiry has been made, no explanation has been attempted; not even an order was given to insert my Motion in the Minutes of the following day.
I returned home somewhat surprised at the scene I had witnessed, and wondering that my noble and learned Friend, the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, and my noble Friend the Chairman of the Committees, Still seemed to cling with fondness to the strange chimera before mentioned. I felt confident that there must be some very easy and simple means of solving this mystery. It then occurred to me, that when a dissolution of Parliament took place, your Lordships were no longer Peers of Parliament, your legislative and judicial functions ceased and determined; that there was no longer a House of Lords, nor, consequently, a table; and that when Parliament was summoned to meet, and your Lordships, after passing through the usual forms and ceremonies, constituted a House of Lords, your table was as bare as it was when it was sent from the cabinet-maker's workshop.
It then occurred to me that the notice which I had given of the question that I proposed putting to the noble and learned Lord, had not been printed in the Minutes. I had placed that notice in the hands of the Clerk of Parliament, having been instructed by the noble and learned Lord to substitute for the old form—to ask the Government. This seemed to me to be the latest and most approved method of shifting off personal responsibility, and

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throwing the burden on this mysterious and invisible personage. The question, however, which I put was,—"Is it the intention of the Government to persist in calling on the House to give a second reading on the 21st of April to a visionary and unintelligible, an impracticable and costly measure, called in the printed Bills, 'A Clergy Discipline Act?'" Such language, doubtless, was highly offensive to the delicate nerves and sensitive feelings of that mysterious personage; but with me these words were the courtly, silken, and oily phrases which I was constrained to employ in compliance with Parliamentary usage and decorum. The dark and secret agent, however, was at work. The notice which I had given was suppressed; and in lieu of it, in an obscure part of the Minutes, where no notices except about appeal causes are, I believe, inserted, appeared in small type the following notice:—
"The Bishop of Bangor to put a question to the Government respecting the Clergy Discipline Bill."
It is evident that those suppressions have been made and these falsifications of your Minutes carried on under the direction of some crafty and reckless agent, whoso commands could not be resisted. But as this is not so much mine as your Lordships' affair, I leave it in your hands.
I had hoped that after the statement which I made to your House of the reasons which had induced me to come forward on this occasion, and my object in coming forward; after the Motion that I made, which was carried in the affirmative, and after my notice had been published in the Minutes of the House, your Lordships would have been sufficiently acquainted with these matters. But as great pains have been taken to conceal from your Lordships all that I have said and done since I presented myself to your notice, I am compelled to offer a few words in explanation.
It happens, since my right rev. Friend (the Bishop of London) is prevented from taking part in the business of the House, that I am virtually the only survivor in the House of the Commissioners appointed for this object by George IV. and William IV.
About twenty years have passed away since I last read this admirable Report. But the impression remained firmly fixed in my mind, that if the recommendations contained in it were carried into effect,
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the existing Diocesan Courts can carry on the testamentary and matrimonial business of the country in a way satisfactory to all suitors.
It is no agreeable task for one of my years, who had never been accustomed to put himself forward, but had left the management of those matters regarding the Church, in which he felt a common interest, to the talents and eloquence and judgment of his distinguished brethren, who could command your Lordships' attention; for one who had recently recovered from a long and serious illness, and who feels great abatement of bodily power and activity, to find himself constrained to come forward and to bespeak your Lordships' patience and attention. But when I am called to discharge a solemn and sacred duty, to paint in its true colour the most odious, the most oppressive, and the most cruel scourge that any Government ever attempted to inflict on a suffering country, I have no choice left; I must follow up the course that is prescribed to me without fear or hesitation; and I trust I shall be able to prove that these Diocesan Courts, which it is proposed to sweep away from the face of the earth, are, if the recommendations of the Commissioners should be adopted, fully equal to the discharge of their important functions.
It has been the more necessary to state these facts, because I am convinced that owing to this systematic suppression and falsification of your Minutes, few noble Lords had any notion when they entered the House of the real nature of the Bill to which they were invited to give a second reading.
But before I proceed to call your Lordships' attention to the main object, it will be necessary to give your Lordships an outline of the history of this Report—of the cruel, unjust, and shameless caste job which was smuggled into it in the eleventh hour, when my right rev. Brethren and myself had long before returned to our diocesses, under a full conviction that every thing had been finally settled and arranged, and that the learned members of Doctors' Commons had remained at their post to superintend the drawing up of the Report, and to prepare it for being signed and presented to His Majesty early in the following year. At this time we, the four diocesan Bishops, received a private and confidential letter from Dr. Lushington,

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stating that as the business in Doctors' Commons was not sufficient to give employment to an efficient bar, it was desirable that the jurisdiction of the Diocesan Courts should be abolished, and the whole business transferred to the Provincial Court. Deeply did I lament that a gentleman, with whom I had been some time acquainted, with whom I had sat for two seasons on this Commission, and whom I had always considered us a man of independent mind and perfect integrity, should have ventured to offer such a suggestion. However, I as well as my brethren, thought the proposal too shameless to be entertained for a moment by the other distinguished members of the Commission, and consequently took no notice of it. But, alas! we little knew what strange fascination a caste job has over the minds of the most honourable members of that caste. When I came to London, not long before the Report was signed and presented to His late Majesty, I found that this audacious infraction of truth and justice and good faith had been smuggled into the Report by the learned Commissioners; that the recommendations which had been agreed to for very different purposes, had been twisted by a very clumsy legerdemain to accommodate them to this new device; and that, since its real object could not be avowed, the reasons alleged for it were altogether deceitful and false.
My right rev. Brethren, however, and myself, agreed that we would not withhold our signature from a Report containing so many valuable recommendations and suggestions, and such stores of ecclesiastical knowledge, but would take an early opportunity of exposing and getting rid of the job. That opportunity, however, never occurred. The Report was signed on the 15th of February, 1832, and received by the Lord Chancellor on the 16th.
Your Lordships are aware that this was the time of the first fervour of the Reform measure. It was known that certain Members of His Majesty's Government were employed in preparing the first edition of that celebrated Bill; and on the 1st of March following, the noble Lord who had the charge of it made his first Motion for leave to bring in the Bill. For some years after this the country was in such a turbulent and distracted and dangerous state, that no man had a thought to bestow on Ecclesiastical Courts and
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jurisdiction. The Report was laid aside and forgotten.
At length, however, in the year 1836, the late Lord Cottenham, who then held the Great Seal, brought in a Bill including the Doctors' Commons caste job, which received a first reading, and was referred to a Select Committee. Bishop Van Mildert had died early in that year, but I agreed with my brethren of Lincoln and St. Asaph, that that was not the place for bringing forward our complaint. We reserved it, therefore, for a future stage of the Bill. But here the noble and learned Lord stopped short—the Report was never brought up, and no further mention was made of the Bill.
The noble Lord was then projecting another caste job. A Commission was issued to certain lawyers of the Chancery and Common Law Bars, to inquire into the same facts which had been already thoroughly inquired into and investigated. I am not aware that those learned gentlemen threw any new light upon the subject; but they of course came to one conclusion, that Ecclesiastical Courts were a nuisance which ought to be abated, and the whole testamentary business transferred into the more efficient hands of Chancery and common lawyers.
This, however, like other Reports, was soon laid aside and forgotten. Hon. Members of the other House were often loud in their outcries against peculiar jurisdictions, but it does not seem to have occurred to them to ask why these jurisdictions had not been abolished—for if the business of the country had been conducted in a business-like manner, they would have been long since superseded.
Since the noble and learned Lord has held the Great Seal, he has, I believe, favoured your Lordships with two or three varieties of caste jobs, which have passed rapidly through their several stages in the thin Houses of the early part of the Session; have been passed and sent to the Commons, where it was well understood that they would make no further progress.
I now come to the consideration of the object I have in view; to prove to your Lordships that, if the recommendations of the Commissioners should be carried into effect, the Diocesan Courts are fully equal to carry on the testamentary and matrimonial business of the country in a simple, inexpensive, and satisfactory way. But here I must entreat your Lordships not to

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confound the Report itself, as it was agreed to by the whole body of the Commissioners, with the shameless caste job which was smuggled into it by the gentlemen of Doctors' Commons. The first object of the Commissioners was the putting an end to the jurisdiction of a number, amounting to nearly three hundred, of the courts called Peculiar. It appears that in 1812, Sir W. Scott, then Dean of the Arches, introduced and carried through the House of Commons a Bill for the regulation of Ecclesiastical Courts, one principal clause of which provided that the power of hearing and determining causes of ecclesiastical cognisance should be exercised only by Ecclesiastical Courts sitting under the immediate commission and authority of Archbishops and Bishops, and not by inferior or other Ecclesiastical Courts. This Bill was unfortunately dropped in your Lordships' House.
So the matter has stood till the present time.
When considering the question of regulating and limiting the jurisdiction in testamentary and matrimonial matters, the first difficulty that met the Commissioners was this law of Bona Notabilia. The provisions of this law were so little known, that it often happened that after the executors had taken out probate, and gone through the necessary forms, it was discovered that the testator possessed property in another county, and the executor was compelled to go through the same process a second time, at a great expense, in the Provincial Court.
It appears to me, however, that such a vast accession has been made to the testamentary business of the Prerogative Court since the year 1832, through the numerous policies of life assurance now effected in London, shares of joint-stock companies of various kinds, and in the great arterial railways which terminate in the metropolis (and probably there are many other sources unknown to me), that the law of Bona Notabilia ought to be repealed without delay.
The state of the greater number of the Diocesan Courts was such in 1832, that though it was confessed that in many of the larger diocesses no fault could be found with the decisions of the Courts, still it was thought fit to recommend that the contentious business of the Diocesan Courts should be removed to the Court of Arches. But the case is now greatly altered. The chancellors of the greater
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number of the diocesses are fully competent to discharge their duties, and it would be unjust to deprive the inhabitants of so many diocesses of the benefits of a domestic tribunal, because there are still a few cases of incompetent Judges. Some provision may easily be made for supplying this defect. Should the parties be dissatisfied, they may remove their suit into the Court of Arches by letters of request.
It was for these reasons (I cannot recollect the precise words of the recommendation, but this is the substance of it) that the Commissioners recommended the suppression of the jurisdiction of the inferior courts, and that the whole of the business, testamentary and matrimonial, should be confined to the Diocesan and Provincial Courts.
Of the satisfactory manner in which the testamentary and matrimonial business of a diocess is carried on where no obstructions are occasioned by peculiar jurisdictions, I can speak with confidence. In my diocess, where there are no peculiars, the Diocesan Court has been able to carry on this business without any obstruction. The diocess is long and straggling, containing large masses of mountains, in the glens of which, owing to the opening of mines and quarries, new populations are constantly springing up, sometimes not within ten miles of a church.
In the diocess there are twenty-one surrogates, whose names and places of abode are well known to their neighbours. Marriage licences, probates, and letters of administration, may be obtained through a surrogate, or at the registrar's office. The parties need not necessarily attend at the office. Indeed, probates and administrations may be obtained without attendance either upon a surrogate or at the registrar's office, if the parties choose to go to the expense of a commission, the cost of which is about one guinea.
The next part of the inquiry to which I must draw your Lordships' attention is the alteration of the testamentary law suggested by the Commissioners. The value of these suggestions is proved by this fact, that an important part of them have been adopted in the Act relative to wills, known as Lord John Russell's Act.
They recommended that all wills, whether of real or personal property, should be signed by the same number of witnesses, and proved in the same courts. That vivâ voce evidence should be admitted and trial by jury. That in certain cases the Judge

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should allow evidence to be taken by commission.
The whole question regarding these proposed alterations in testamentary matters, is argued at great length by the learned Commissioners. Admitting that cases may have occurred in which the admission of unsigned and unfinished and imperfect papers may have been of some advantage to the claimants, they have shown clearly the vast superiority of the suggested alterations to the former practice.
Were it possible to conceive that the three-headed monstrous jobs, which the noble and learned Lord has told us form one measure, could have become part of the law of the land, no person possessed of small property would have bequeathed it by will. If a will had been made before the measure came into action, no executor would have proved it, no one in cases of intestacy would have taken out letters of administration. The family would have divided the property in the best manner they could.
The same would have been the case had the Doctors' Commons caste job become the law of the land. It was well known that such a measure had been smuggled into the Report, and this occasioned much alarm and distress in my diocess. But I took care that my neighbours should be informed that such a cruel and unjust job could never be sanctioned by either House of Parliament.
There are few, probably, of your Lordships who have not succeeded to that kind of property which made it necessary for you to prove the wills of those whom you represented in the Superior Court; few who would not prefer carrying out your business as executors in the metropolis. Your Lordships, therefore, are probably little acquainted with the feelings of that very numerous body of your fellow-subjects who have small properties to bequeath, and of those who have to prove the wills of near kinsmen or friends, or to take out letters of administration.
But the case is very different with a country population. Even with the humblest of those who do not receive parish relief, and possess any little property, to make a will is a main object of their wishes and ambition. Few, comparatively speaking, of those so circumstanced, die intestate. The same wish and the same desire of having within reach the means of accomplishing their wish, without needless delay or expense, extends to those
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whose concerns are more important, and their property larger. So likewise the executors of wills in every diocess of England and Wales, know where to apply for probate and obtain it, without much trouble or expense. With equal facility letters of administration, in the case of intestates, may be taken out by the next of kin. But the effect of the odious caste jobs which I have mentioned, would have been to deprive thousands and ten thousands of our fellow-subjects of these their just rights and privileges.
Whilst justice has been, so to speak, brought home to every man's door by the establishment of County Courts, the object of all these jobs has been to introduce a frightful system of centralisation, without a show of benefit to any except those who hoped to partake of the spoil.
I have stated that, in my opinion, the Diocesan Courts are competent to carry on the contentious business of the diocesses. There is, however, one exception. It is necessary, I think, that in all causes relating to adultery, divorce, and other similar matters, the inquiry should be removed at once into the Superior Court, and that no sentence of divorce a mensâ et thoro should be pronounced in the Diocesan Courts. It would be sad, indeed, if our Diocesan Courts, and those who frequent them, should be exposed to the pollution which such causes always engender. Such inquiries should always be attended with as little publicity as is consistent with the ends of justice and the execution of the law.
We earnestly deprecate the establishment of what have been called Divorce Courts, and giving any increased facility to divorces. Marriage has been already desecrated by recent Acts of Parliament. Marriages may now be celebrated before one of the district registrars, without any reference to its religious character and obligation. The Act which was carefully framed to prevent clandestine marriages, has been nullified by allowing banns of marriage to be published before the guardians of the poor law unions. The Act which required that all marriages should be celebrated in facie Ecclesiœ between the hours of eight A.M. and noon, is easily eluded. That publicity which has always been considered an important element in Christian marriages is no longer necessarily given them.
There are many recommendations in this Report relative to the working of the

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Superior Courts, remedying the delay and expense often complained of, and carrying on the business with greater dispatch, which well deserve attention, and which, no doubt, the members of that learned body will be ready to adopt. But these form no part of the object I have had in view.
This object I have now completed. I have shown, I trust, that the Diocesan Courts are fully equal to the discharge of their duties, not only without any organic change, but without material change or interruption; that the surrogates and registrars know their duties, and that there is no need, as under all those caste jobs, of compensation to superseded officers.
This, indeed, is a sufficient reason for rejecting the Bill to which your Lordships are now invited to give a second reading; this monstrous abortion of audacity and ignorance, miscalled a Clergy Discipline Bill. Its only object seems to be to provide large salaries with little business for the sons, and nephews, and grandsons of some future Lord Chancellor. To this the principles of truth, and justice, and good faith, and the happiness and interests of thousands and ten thousands of our fellow-subjects are to be sacrificed, as matters of no weight or moment.
I now conclude, under a strong conviction that your Lordships will give your firm and decided support to the Amendment moved by the most rev. Prelate, "That this Bill be read a second time this day six months."
THE EARL OF HARROWBYsaid, that the speech of the right rev. Prelate who spoke fourth in this debate (the Bishop of Exeter) was calculated to excite in their Lordships the liveliest apprehensions. When he heard him use words of such portentous import, that their Lordships might apprehend they were all to be excommunicated in turn if they assisted in passing this Bill, he was rather curious to discover the occasion of such a portentous menace. Their Lordships would hardly believe that this most fearful apprehension arose entirely out of a small passage in a single clause—the 15th. And all that the offensive clause was intended to do was to enable any party to transfer his cause, if he thought fit, from the court of the Bishop to that of the Archbishop. Perhaps the clause was not well worded; perhaps it did not effect the purpose contemplated; but it certainly did appear to imply an intention not to do away with any jurisdiction which was
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already vested in the Bishops. The words relative to the Archbishop were, that he might take jurisdiction of any causes removed from the court of the Bishop, "as he might have done by virtue of any statute or law before the passing of this Act." Be the effect of that provision what it might, it at all events showed that the intention of the Bill was to give the Archbishop no other power than he had at the present time. That, then, was the head and front of their offending. Yet the right rev. Prelate said that these simple words, which were intended to convey no new power, destroyed the whole of the catholicity of the Established Church; and, in fact, would subject the whole of their Lordships to the ban of excommunication. The only other point in which he could see anything at all bearing upon this question, was something about the Archbishop; or rather, he thought—for it was difficult to remember so long a speech—it was an allegation of the attempt to transfer the jurisdiction of the Archbishop to the Crown. Yet, as he (Lord Harrowby) understood him, the right rev. Prelate, at the same time that he raised the objection, admitted that it had been removed. The letter of the most rev. Primate stated, on the part of the English bench, three objections to the Bill of last year, all of which had been duly considered in framing the Bill now before the House. The objection which he had already noticed on the 15th clause, Her Majesty's Government had attempted to remove by the introduction of the words into the clause to which he had already drawn attention. The second objection, which charged a tendency in the Bill of last year to transfer the jurisdiction of the Archbishop to the Crown, was admitted by the right rev. Prelate to be entirely removed by a clause in the present Bill. The only other objection which he raised to the Bill of last year applied also to the Bill before the House, and rested on the preference of the right rev. Prelate for another mode of dealing with the court of appeal than that proposed by this Bill. To the mode which the right rev. Prelate himself suggested there was this radical objection, that it gave the go-by to the supremacy of the Crown; and to a measure having such a tendency he was sure their Lordships would never agree. The whole of the objections, then, of the English bench of Bishops were reduced to these three, of which the first was founded

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on a mistake of the intention of the Bill, the second had been removed, and the third such as he hoped their Lordships would not approve. The right rev. Prelate seemed to think that the Government had introduced this Bill wantonly, and without the existence of any necessity for action; and that, in fact, it was a piece of amateur legislation. But he begged to remind their Lordships that the Royal Commission, which reported in the year 1832, pointed most distinctly to the necessity of such a measure, and that, ever since, Parliament had been endeavouring to meet the acknowledged evils of the present system. The right rev. Prelate had referred to the registries; but it appeared by the Appendix to the Commissioners' Report that some of these registries were not fire-proof, and that others were located in private dwelling-houses, and were exposed to the risk of destruction. The main purport of the Bill was to reform the mode of procedure in reference to the matters with which the Bill dealt, and surely it was most desirable, when reforms were being carried out in testamentary jurisdiction and other matters, that these important subjects should not be overlooked; moreover, the people were not so well satisfied with the existing state of things as to render it even possible to leave these existing jurisdictions all over the country. Let not, then, the right rev. Prelate treat the Bill as an uncalled-for piece of legislation, having no other object than to destroy the catholicity of the Church. There were no objections urged against the Bill which might not be dealt with in Committee upstairs; and, as he believed the measure would effect a great deal of good, he hoped their Lordships would give it a second reading.
THE EARL OF DERBYsaid, the right rev. Prelate who had with such power of reasoning opposed the second reading of the Bill (the Bishop of Exeter) might or might not have been mistaken, when he said that Government had made great efforts to surround themselves with friends; but judging from what now appeared, the right rev. Prelate must have been mistaken, or else the Government possessed a smaller number of friends than he gave them credit for. The right rev. Prelate was correct in his statement with regard to the absence of ordinary support from his (the Earl of Derby's) side of the House. He frankly declared that he looked upon this question least of all others as a party
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matter, or as one that ought to be treated with any kind of party feeling. He had come down to the House with the earnest desire to hear the arguments for and against the Bill, with a mind perfectly un-pledged to any course, or rather with a leaning towards a desire to support, if possible, the second reading of the present Bill. He freely admitted to the noble Lord who had just sat down (the Earl of Harrowby) that the present state of Church discipline was by no means such as to give satisfaction to the friends of the Church. The procedure for the correction of clergymen who misconducted themselves was most complicated, dilatory, and expensive in its character; and the Bishops of the Church laboured under the disadvantage of having worse than an Egyptian taskmaster placed over them, for they were held responsible for the conduct of the clergy under their charge, and yet the jealousy of Parliament studiously abstained from granting the powers necessary for the carrying into effect an authority, which, nevertheless, the Parliament required to be exercised. Therefore it was a matter of importance that, if possible, some measure on this subject should be passed; but at the same time, any measure which the Government might introduce ought at least to be effective for its purpose. He had come to the consideration of the Bill, with an earnest desire that he might find in it nothing in principle so objectionable as to compel him to dissent from it, however there might be matters which might require modification in Committee; but he must confess, that after listening to the speech of the noble and learned Lord by whom it was introduced, and the answer given to it by the right rev. Prelate, he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that its intrinsic and inherent faults—arising, perhaps, from the nature of the question—were such as to give little or no hope that any alterations which might be made in Committee could make it satisfactory either to the Church or the public. Another inducement in his mind to desire the success of the Bill was, that it went to establish a uniformity of discipline between the Churches of England and Ireland, which, though not absolutely essential, was a great matter for the security of the two branches. That important principle was recognised by the Bill; and he thought it was a great matter towards accomplishing such uniformity that there should not only be a unity in doctrine and discipline, but that an ultimate

1313
court of appeal should be provided for both. If his objections to the Bill were confined only to the now celebrated 15th clause, he should not have thought them a sufficient reason for refusing to go into Committee, although he agreed with the right rev. Prelate that that clause did interfere with the authority of the Bishops by giving the Archbishops an original instead of only an appellate jurisdiction. He also objected to the 44th clause, which provided that when the Archbishop had confirmed the decision of the Bishop, and when the Privy Council had decided against the opinions both of the Bishop and of the Archbishop, reference was not to be made back to the Archbishop's Court, but the Privy Council was to take upon itself to order and direct an inferior Bishop to institute a clerk in the province of his own metropolitan. Although greater attention was paid at the present time than formerly to the selection of persons to fill the offices of chancellors in the Diocesan Courts, yet he believed that in a number of those courts the chancellors were necessarily persons quite incapable of discharging the functions imposed upon the chancellors to be appointed by this Bill. He looked with great apprehension on the power of appointing chancellors vested in the four Archbishops and the Bishop of London, although he might not have objected to the appointment of properly-qualified assessors to act with the Bishops on the trial of clerks and matters of that kind. But the case was much altered when he found, in connection with the appointment of these chancellors, that large funds must be provided, and other provisions made, which would not have been necessary but for the difficulty of providing adequate funds. The right rev. Prelate estimated that there would be a deficiency of about £24,000 a year, but he had omitted one considerable item—that of compensation. He believed that the ordinary expense of a marriage licence was half a guinea; but if, as had been calculated, it would be raised to £2, the effect of the Bill would be to levy a fourfold tax on marriages by licence. But they had been compelled to introduce machinery which would not otherwise have been introduced, and to get rid of many officers who were now performing their duties satisfactorily, and to deprive the Bishops of much of their local power and authority which it was desirable to retain, in order to furnish the necessary funds. His noble Friend (the Earl of Harrowby)
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had admitted generally the objections which applied to the principle of centralisation; but not only did the Bill involve the principle of centralisation and the removal of the diocesan registries at an enormous expense to a central position—which was a matter open to serious objection,—it went further, and for the purpose of employing these chancellors, practically transferred to them a great portion of the effective jurisdiction of the Bishops themselves. The preamble of the Bill stated, that one of its main objects was, first, to alter the manner of proceeding in criminous causes, offences, and matters in the Ecclesiastical Courts; and, secondly, to make provision for the establishment of central ecclesiastical registries. This principle of centralisation might, in fact, be regarded as the main principle of the Bill; and the machinery of the measure was so contrived, that unless they established a central registry, and transferred to it the authority and jurisdiction now exercised through the diocesan registries, the Bill would be what the right rev. Prelate near him (the Bishop of Bangor) had described it—a visionary and impracticable one. He was satisfied, then, after listening to the debate, that however laudable the object might be—and he was not one of those who imputed to the Government a desire to wantonly and hastily deal with this question—that the objections so forcibly urged by the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Exeter) were of too large and extensive a character to admit of the Bill being amended in a Select Committee. Believing, then, that the principle of a central registry was not only the central principle of the Bill, but was absolutely necessary for its practical working, and seeing also the almost unanimous opposition of the right rev. Prelates opposite to the measure, he must say that he despaired of any practical measure being produced out of it, even by reference to a Select Committee. He said this not without hesitation, because they must all wish to effect the object which the Government had in view; but he must give his vote, however reluctantly, against the second reading of this Bill.
THE BISHOP OF CASHELsaid, it was perfectly true that the Bishops of the United Church of England and Ireland, residing in Ireland, had unanimously resolved to support this Bill; and they had come to that resolution because they felt there was an urgent necessity for something to be done, and that the defects of the

1315
existing system urgently demanded a remedy. They regretted much differences from their English brethren, and particularly from the most rev. Prelate, for whom he had personally a great regard, and for whose official situation he felt thankful. The Irish Prelates, therefore—the Government having brought forward a measure with this view—felt themselves bound to support the second reading of the Bill, but without pledging themselves to all its details.
There were three great defects in the Ecclesiastical Courts which required amendment. These were—first, the character and the number of the Judges in these courts; secondly, the character and the number of final courts of appeal; and, thirdly, the nature of the registries in which the records of the courts were kept. As to the first, there were about fifty or sixty Judges in ecclesiastical causes in England and Ireland, all of them unconnected with one another, and with no unity of opinion in the judgments they pronounced. This obviously was itself a great evil. Again, out of twenty-six vicars-general in Ireland not less than seventeen were clergymen—all of them, no doubt, very respectable men, but, he must say, not the best qualified to be Judges, and most likely to carry with them the feeling of the public in their decisions. In his own diocess, when he first went there, he found two clergymen vicars-general; both of them were very excellent men, but certainly he could not have thought of asking either to give him an opinion with regard to any legal difficulty that might have presented itself. Not long ago, in his diocess, a very important divorce case was brought before the vicar-general, which would have required an experienced lawyer as the Judge; and, within a recent period, in the diocess of Waterford, a will case was tried before a clergyman, who was the Judge, and in which the principal point on which the will was opposed was the alleged improper influence exercised by a Roman Catholic clergyman. Surely cases like these ought to have been heard before some other Judge than a clergyman of the Established Church. He felt thankful to the Government, therefore, for the present Bill, because it would provide the Bishops with properly qualified persons to assist them in the administration of the jurisdiction which they were called upon to discharge. One reason, and a most powerful one, why the House should consent
1316
to read the Bill and go into Committee was, that all the Members of that House who had spoken admitted the principle of the Bill. Not one of them would stand up and say that the Judges in the Ecclesiastical Courts were what they ought to be, or that they should remain as they were. They might differ as to the manner in which the evil was to be remedied, but they all admitted the existence of the evil; and he held that, so admitting it, they ought to go into Committee upon a measure which was brought in with a view to provide a remedy. The chancellors, which the Bill provided should be appointed by the Archbishops and Bishops, and approved by the Crown, would be men whose decisions would have weight, and an uniformity in their decisions might be expected. The next principle of the Bill to which he would refer was that of the final court of appeal. He was thankful that they had not heard a single word in the course of this debate against the principle of having one final court of appeal for the whole United Church of England and Ireland. But the main question was, what should be that final Court of Appeal? He could not forget that the Bill of the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Exeter) actually contemplated two different courts of appeal, one for England, and another for Ireland. Many persons were, no doubt, ignorant that, under the late Church discipline law, there were four courts of appeal for the United Churches of England and Ireland. There was the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; there was what was in Ireland called the Queen in Chancery, instead of the Queen in Council; there was the Court of Delegates in England and Ireland; and there was the House of Lords. Now, one main feature in the present Bill which met his decided approval was, that it affirmed what had never been so distinctly affirmed before—namely, the Union of the Churches of England and Ireland by establishing one united court of appeal. Another portion of this Bill which met with his hearty approbation was that of providing for the registries, which were not now in the state in which they should be, especially in Ireland. He would say nothing of the state of the registries in England, but in Ireland they were in a very unsatisfactory state—in most diocesses without any fixed place in which they were to be kept. In his own diocess the registry had been in four different lodgings in his time. It was now in the hands of an excellent officer;

1317
he had it in his own house, and it was kept with great care; but if anything happened to him, the records would have to seek another lodging. There seemed to be a general feeling in favour of the principle of the Bill; and this being so, he saw no reason why it should not receive a second reading. The statement dated the 11th of June, 1855, drawn up by the Archbishop of Canterbury and those right rev. Prelates who agreed with him, had been already referred to. That statement took exception to the Bill of 1855, not to that of 1856. Now, what was the objection put forward in that statement? Not one word was said against the main principle of the Bill; not a word was said against the establishment of one good court of appeal. But the objection to it was, that it had a tendency to transfer the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops to the Archbishops, and from the Archbishops to the Crown. The words of the clause which had that tendency said, "the Archbishop shall take, hear, and decide, upon such cases," &c. Now, that clause was liable to the objection taken to it. The Irish as well as the English Bishops had objected to it, and said that it was wrong in principle. But this objection, it must be remarked, applied to the Bill of 1855, and not to the Bill now before the House. What was the language of the 15th clause of the present Bill? Why, this—"It shall be lawful for the Archbishop, if he think fit, thereupon to take, hear, and determine such cases in his Provincial Court, as he might have done by force of any statute or law before the passing of this Act." This clause did not confer any new powers on the Archbishop, for it would be found that by the law, as it at present existed, there was a power by which a suitor could remove his case from the Bishop's to the Archbishop's Court in certain cases; so that the 15th section, in its present shape, would confer no new jurisdiction on the Archbishop, but left the relative powers of the Bishop and Archbishop exactly on their present footing. The objection, therefore, to the Bill on that account was groundless. The Bishops, therefore, had every reason to be satisfied with the general principles of the Bill, which were, undoubtedly, sound and salutary; and, as to the details, he believed there was nothing which might not be rectified in Committee. He considered that it was a measure with which personal or party
1318
feeling had nothing whatever to do, and in this spirit the Prelates of Ireland had approached its consideration. They were quite ready to confess that there were evils in the present system, and to express their willingness to assist in rectifying those evils. That was the spirit in which the Irish Prelates had considered its provisions—determined, as they were, that no party or personal considerations should prevent them from joining in doing that which they considered to be for the benefit of the Church and the good of the country.
THE BISHOP OF OXFORDsaid he could assure the right rev. Prelate who had just addressed the House that the English Bishops had no personal or party feeling in their opposition to the Bill then under discussion, and, could private advantage have anything to do in the matter, they would willingly sacrifice it for the attainment of objects beneficial to religion and to the country generally. He did not impute, nor did any of his right rev. Brethren impute, to the framers of the Bill any intention to inflict any injury on the Church, but the province of that House was not to decide upon the objects or intentions of those who submitted measures to their consideration, but to criticise the measures themselves—to take them on their own merits—and to see whether they were calculated to work good or evil. The present state of the law, with respect to Church discipline was, no doubt, exceedingly defective, but that was no reason why they should exempt from criticism a measure presented as a remedy, or pass it wholesale in the hope of rendering it less objectionable in Committee. The proposition of the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Cashel) was, that the Bill should be sent into Committee, where it might be made somewhat useful; but if the Bill had in reality, however unintentionally on the part of the framers, a special clause, the principle of which was subversive of the Established Church; and if they saw that, however unintentionally, the principle of that clause ran, more or less, through the whole framework of the Bill, he thought that such a Bill was not one which they should send to Committee in the hope of amending some of its details—he thought it was one which they should by their vote on the second reading decline to send to Committee, in consequence of the vicious principle it contained. The right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Cashel) had laid much

1319
stress upon the difference between the 15th clause of the present Bill, and the objectionable clause contained in the Bill of last year; but he (the Bishop of Oxford) thought that that distinction was merely one between the words "shall" and "may." Those who opposed the Bill took up their position on this ground, that it was a fundamental principle of the Church of Christ that the Bishop was supreme over his clerk in his own diocess, and that the clerk had no right to claim the benefit of the Archbishop's jurisdiction except by way of appeal against a wrong suffered at the hands of the Bishop; in which case the clerk undoubtedly had a right to have his wrong redressed, and then the Archbishop could interfere. In this way the jurisdiction of the Archbishop operated over his suffragan, his jurisdiction coming in to rectify wrong or negligence on the part of the suffragan. There was no law of the Church that permitted a clerk to go primarily to the metropolitan; the original jurisdiction was vested in the Bishop alone, and the clerk's right of appeal might be compared to that of a child against the father. The child could not complain to the civil magistrate against his father in the first instance. If the father did wrong, the civil magistrate stepped in; but the parental jurisdiction should be had recourse to in the first instance. In the thirteenth century, when St. Louis was endeavouring to defend the French Church against the usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, he had to combat with the principle of superseding the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishops. The Government ought to approach the subject with the greatest care, lest, unawares, a fundamentally erroneous change should be introduced into the framework with which they were dealing. The dangerous provision of the first bill had been reproduced in the second, and its reproduction showed such a want of care or of intelligence as ought to lead their Lordships to treat the measure with the greatest caution. His noble Friend (the Earl of Harrowby) had called their attention to the words which provided that the Archbishop should only exercise such power as he could exert at present. If his noble Friend meant that it was intended to give to the Archbishop no more power than he at present possessed, what was the use of introducing the clause? But it could not be pretended that, under the existing law, there was any provision by which a clergyman could say
1320
that he would be tried by the Archbishop, and not by his Bishop. [The Lord CHANCELLOR was understood to say that such a power existed.] He would be glad if the noble and learned Lord would point out this provision. The real object of these words, however, was to meet an objection which had been urged by the Bishops against the Bill of the last year. That objection was, that the measure, as then introduced, confounded the diocesan and provincial jurisdiction of the Archbishop, and would enable him to deal with appeals from his suffragans in his Diocesan Court, and the object of the words which had been introduced into the 15th clause was to meet that objection, and to provide that the Archbishop should try all these appeals fron his suffragans in his Provincial Court. But the evil of which he (the Bishop of Oxford) complained was not confined to a single clause—it ran through the whole of the Bill. That evil was, that the measure was opposed to the constitution of the English Church, by which it was intended that every Bishop should have his own means of administering his diocess in his own court, and that any wrong which had been done by him should be remedied upon an appeal to the Archbishop. The intention of this Bill, on the contrary, was, that wrong should be remedied by the Archbishop, not on appeal, but immediately. That was a fault in the principle of the Bill which could not be removed by the alteration of a single clause. To remedy it, it would be necessary to recast the whole Bill. The only argument in favour of the Bill—for the speech of the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack was rather against others than in support of this—was that of his right rev. Friend behind him (the Bishop of Cashel). That part of his case which he had founded upon the miserable condition of the registry of his diocess, his right rev. Friend had completely made out, and he (the Bishop of Oxford) recommended to his great energy to amend its condition as speedily as possible; but he would suggest to his right rev. Friend that the abandonment of a principle of the Catholic Church might be too high a price to pay for a safe, dry, and even fireproof registry. Another reason given by his right rev. Friend for his approval of this Bill was, that no one found fault with the supreme court of appeal. That we ought to have one supreme court of appeal for the Church in England, Ireland, and the

1321
Colonies, no one could feel more strongly than himself (the Bishop of Oxford); but of the machinery by which tinder this Bill it was proposed that such a court should work he entirely disapproved. He believed that the only mode by which the great difficulties arising from the supremacy and the mixed spiritual authority and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was that which was proposed by his noble and learned friend Lord Brougham, and was, with one alteration, approved by the noble Earl opposite (Earl of Derby). He would leave the entire settlement of every case of doctrine, as far as it concerned an individual, to the Privy Council. It would be better not to mix the Archbishops and Bishops with laymen as judges; but it would be only analogous with the course of proceedings in other cases if, in matters involving a question of doctrine, the Privy Council should send a case to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, with as many of the Bishops of the United Church as chose to attend, should hear the arguments, and should return an answer, deciding—not whether A. B. was guilty or not guilty—but whether certain doctrine was or was not in accordance with the formularies of the Church of England. It should be permitted to the minority to send their answer that it might have the moral weight which was due to it, and the answer should not be made binding on the Privy Council, but should be required to be set forth in the judgment. This course of proceeding would accomplish all for which he was anxious. It would preserve the Crown as the supreme arbiter, and would keep the doctrines of the Church from being tampered with by judgments given in individual cases; while in the provision of a single supreme court of appeal it would be quite as effectual as this Bill. He trusted that their Lordships would ponder well before deciding to give any countenance to the principles of the Bill. It was certainly a new thing in ecclesiastical legislation that a measure so sweeping as to alter the administration of every diocess in England, to touch every Ecclesiastical Court, to remodel the position of every ecclesiastical officer, and to tax the poorer clergy in a great measure, by means of stamps, should have been introduced without consulting with the Archbishops or Bishops of the English Church, all of whom were now to be found united in condemning the principle of the Bill as being subversive of the Church they were
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bound to protect. Were their Lordships prepared in this way to overthrow the whole authority of the episcopal bench in this country? If there were any one subject on which the Prelates of the English, Church might expect to be consulted, was it not that which dealt with their own officers and courts? and was it reasonable that the House should now be asked, on the idlest arguments, to admit the principle of a Bill so introduced, and to send it to a Select Committee? Let them endeavour to have an amended state of the law in the best way possible; but, having stated what was the united judgment of the members of the English episcopal bench, he thought he did not ask too much when he requested their Lordships to send back the measure to the Government for better consideration before they assented to its being referred to a Select Committee of that House.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR,in reply, said that though the Bill had not been prepared under his immediate direction, he had fully sanctioned what was done, and was prepared to take all the responsibility of its introduction. With reference to the allegation that the measure had been introduced without previous consultation with the right rev. Prelates, he had to state that in the month of June, last year, the present Bill, or rather one on which the present was founded with modifications, was sent to the most rev. Primate with a request that he would consult his right rev. Brethren with respect to it. The most rev. Primate a few days afterwards mentioned that the other Bishops did not like the provisions respecting chancellors, and then he (the Lord Chancellor) wished to know what would be the opinion of the right rev. Bench if that provision was given up. That was all that took place about giving up that provision. Now, although he would confess that at that time he had not made himself fully master of the details of the measure of which the present was a modification, he would say that he had given considerable attention to the details of the present Bill. The main objection to the Bill he collected to be, in the first place, that there was no provision giving jurisdiction in the first instance to the Bishop; but that objection was founded in error, for the very first clause in the second part of the Bill declared that every Bishop in his diocess, within England and Ireland and the Isle of Man, should preside as judge in all suits and other proceedings

1323
in his court. The Church Discipline Act now enabled the Archbishops to exercise the jurisdiction of the Bishops in the way proposed by the present measure, whenever the Bishop was the patron of any preferment held by the party accused. It was admitted that it would be desirable to have chancellors who would be efficient judges, but it was said that the local registries were to be sacrificed in order to raise funds for paying them. Now he (the Lord Chancellor) could not see how local registries could be maintained after the removal from them of their testamentary business. No one had denied that the establishment of a central registry in Ireland would be an advantage, and he believed it would be equally advantageous in England. He had no sympathy with centralisation by itself; but it was known that many of the local registries were not safe places of deposit, and when testamentary documents were removed from them he should like to know how funds would be obtained for their maintenance? With regard to compensation, persons entitled to compensation would be put on the testamentary fund, and were not, therefore, dealt with by this Bill. The right rev. Prelate had made a singular misstatement about stamps. He said the Bill proposed to charge poor clerks and clergymen with stamps. All that the Bill provided was, that fees now paid should in future be paid by means of stamps, since it was found that it was better to collect revenue by means of stamps than by the payment of fees. [The Bishop of Ox-FORD: No document or instrument is to be received or filed unless it has a stamp.] But no instrument would require a stamp then which did not require a stamp now. The right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Exeter) had made a most amusing speech against the Bill, three-fourths of which appeared to him to be for the purpose of showing that the right rev. Prelate wished to break a lance against a professional gentleman, his friend Mr. Stephens. Many of the observations of the right rev. Prelate appeared to him uncalled for, and he regretted them because they attributed a want of skill to a professional gentleman which might injure him in his profession. He did not know Mr. Stephens till he became acquainted with him in the course of the preparation of the document referred to, but be would not be doing justice to that gentleman if he did not state that he appeared to be eminently
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skilled in ecclesiastical law—a subject which very few lawyers were generally conversant with. He would now conclude by entreating their Lordships to pass this Bill.
On Question, that "now" stand part of the Motion, their Lordships divided:— Content 33; Not content 41: Majority8.
Resolved in the Negative; and Bill to be read 2a on this day six months.

List of the CONTENT.

Lord Chancellor

BISHOPS.

DUKES.

Cashel

Argyll

Derry

Wellington

Limerick

MARQUESSES.

Breadalbane

BARONS.

Clanricarde

Camoys

EARLS.

Clonbrock

Abingdon

De Mauley

Airlie

Foley

Courtoun

Hatherton

Ducie

Kinnaird

Harrowby

Leigh

Kingston

Lifford

Mayo

Milford

St. Germans

Monteagle

Somers

Panmure

Spencer

Plunkett

VISCOUNT.

Saye and Sele

Sydney

Wodehouse

List of the NOT CONTENT.

ARCHBISHOP.

Chichester

Canterbury

Hereford

DUKE.

Llandaff

Newcastle

Lichfield

MARQUESSES.

Lincoln

Bath

Manchester

Cholmondeley

Oxford

Salisbury

Rochester

EARLS.

St. Asaph

Aberdeen

Salisbury

Bradford

St. Davids

Carnarvon

Winchester

Delawarr

Worcester

Derby

BARONS.

Egmont

Abinger

Harewood

Bateman

Nelson

Berners

Powis

Colchester

Romney

Delamere

VISCOUNT.

Lyttelton

Dungannon

Rayleigh

BISHOPS.

Ravensworth

Bangor

Redesdale

Bath and Wells

Wynford

House adjourned till To-morrow.