Sitting of 25 May 1870

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Steam Boiler Explosions, Lord John Hay, Mr. Laird, Mr. Pim, and Mr. Hermon added.
Report—Houses of Parliament (New Refreshment Rooms). [No. 257.]
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—Local Government Supplemental*.
Ordered—First Reading—Joint Stock Companies' Arrangement* [143]; Telegraph Acts Extension* [142].
First Reading—Post Office* [144].
Second Reading—Clerical Disabilities [49]; Game Laws Abolition [Mr. Taylor] [73], debate adjourned; Admiralty District Registrars* [111].
Considered as amended—Benefices* [141].
Withdrawn—Adulteration of Food or Drink Act (1860) Amendment* [44].

CLERICAL DISABILITIES BILL.
(Mr. Hibbert, Mr. John Lewis, Mr. Biddulph.)
CLERICAL DISABILITIES BILL.

  (BILL 49.) SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. HIBBERT,in rising to move that the Bill he now read a second time, said that, as the grievances which it was proposed by the measure to remove were urgent in their character, a private Member might, perhaps, be excused in dealing with a subject the management of which it was impossible that the Government, with their press of work, could undertake. In 1862 his right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Bouverie) had, though not successfully, introduced a Bill, which was to allow a clergyman to relinquish his calling if he professed to dissent from the tenets of the Established Church. He (Mr. Hibbert) thought, however, that a man's actions, and not his motives, ought to be examined, and therefore the present measure permitted a clergyman to relinquish his calling without assigning any reason. Several gentlemen who felt themselves aggrieved by the present state of the law had, at the commencement of the Session, presented a Memorial to the First Minister of the Crown, in which they set forth the mischief that must accrue to the Church and to religion, in insisting upon retaining men in the ministry who, from conscientious or other motives, were no longer willing or able to perform the duties of their position. They urged that the result of the system was shown in the growing disinclination on the part of the younger members of the Universities to take upon themselves Orders which were held to be irrevocable. The 76th canon, passed in 1603, which still remained in force, provided—
  "That no man being admitted a deacon or priest shall from thenceforth voluntarily relinquish the same nor afterwards use himself in the course of his life as a layman upon pain of excommunication."
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  The result of that canon was to render a seceding clergyman liable to ecclesiastical penalties at the hands of his Bishop. That was so ruled by the late Lord Denman in the case of Mr. Shore, whose licence to preach was withdrawn by the late Bishop of Exeter, and who afterwards performed the services of the Church of England in a building not belonging to it. He (Mr. Hibbert) would not enter into the question of the indelibility of Holy Orders. The Bill did not deal with Holy Orders at all; but he might observe that, in the year 1603, when the 76th canon was framed, the Church of England did not hold the doctrine of the indelibility of Holy Orders. To the clause in the Bill permitting the return to the ministry, with the consent of the Archbishop or Bishop, of clergymen who had availed themselves of this Bill, he understood some objection might be urged. On that point he had personally no very strong feeling; but the clause was introduced to meet the wishes expressed by some members of the Church. A clergyman becoming a layman ought, in his opinion, to be placed in no worse position than any other layman, and he would be so placed if he could not again take orders as a layman could. This, too, was the opinion expressed in the Report of the Committee of Convocation, appointed to consider the provisions of the Bill formerly introduced by his right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock. The Committee reported—
  "No legislation should finally shut the door against a return to the exercise of the ministry. In moments of depression and disappointment clergymen may be tempted to forego their vows for some worldly considerations. In these cases, as in several others, the locus penitentiœ should still be left. The experience of the last two years fully justifies this recommendation; for two, at least, of those who had left the ministry, and who were petitioners for the Clergy Relief Bill, have since returned to their former position in the Church."
  The next disability to which he would refer was that imposed by the statute known as Horne Tooke's Act, which declared that no person who had been ordained to the office of priest or deacon in the Church of England should be capable of being elected to serve in Parliament. Considering the time at which that Act was passed—namely, the beginning of the present century, and considering that since that period most of

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  the religious grievances which then existed had been got rid of, he thought the House would come to the conclusion that it was no longer necessary to retain such an enactment with respect to clergymen who had no cure of souls, and who were not beneficed. It was a note-worthy circumstance that that Act did not pass without strong opposition from the Liberal party in the House of Commons. Horne Tooke very concisely stated the reason for the introduction of the measure when he said—
  "Deacons and priests have sat in Parliament for more than a century; but at last one got in who opposed the Ministers of the day, and Parliament determined there should be no more deacons or priests admitted among them."
  It was also condemned by men of great weight in the House of Lords. Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in opposing the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords, said—
  "It seemed very hard that a person once ordained, who from conscientious motives ceased to exercise any clerical function, should be told that he must not enter any other profession because his priestly character was indelible. But why should this indelible character disqualify a priest to sit in the one House more than in the other? The right reverend Bench opposite were very short-sighted if they supported the Bill, for it would speedily lead to the revival of the Act for their expulsion from Parliament."
  That prophecy had not been fulfilled. At all events, not yet. There were Bishops in the other House. But, what was a still stronger argument, if a clergyman became a Peer he took his seat in the House of Lords; and he (Mr. Hibbert) was unable to see any difference between the functions of the one House and the other which should justify the exclusion of clergymen in the position he had referred to from the House of Commons. Again, it was the right of every Englishman to choose the man whom he might think likely to be the best representative; and if the electors chose to elect a clergyman they must take whatever disadvantages might result from the choice. But he was ready to admit that, as long as there was a connection between Church and State, there would be a difficulty in beneficed clergymen taking their seats in that House. A gentleman, who was himself in Holy Orders, and who, if this Bill passed, would probably take advantage of its provisions—he meant Professor Rogers—in an article on Horne Took, said—
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  "The State in this country has carried, far beyond any assumption which the most despotic arrogance has ventured on, the annexation of an inalienable status to the members of a particular profession. It has affirmed, by this law, more than any Pope has ever asserted—the perpetual alienation of a civil right from a whole social order. The English law has deprived monastic vows of all validity, yet it has made an act of religion more absolute in its effects on the civil status of a man than any monastic obligation of the severest Roman rule."
  There was, besides the 41st of Geo. III., the Municipal Corporations Act also, which excluded clergymen from becoming aldermen or town councillors, though it did so in different words. By the 28th section of the 5th and 6th of Will. IV., cap. 76, persons in Holy Orders, or Dissenting ministers having charge of a congregation, were excluded from municipal offices; but a Dissenting minister who had no charge of a congregation was allowed to undertake municipal duties. But why should a person in that position have greater advantages than a clergyman of the Church of England who had no cure of souls? Then there was another grievance with respect to persons who had been clergymen, but were called to the Bar. Since the Bill of 1862, any clergyman on relinquishing his calling, and signing a paper that he would not in future take any office in the Church, was admitted by the Inns of Court to the Bar. That was a great advantage; but what had been the consequence? Owing to the Act of 1801 a clergyman who had been admitted to the Bar, no matter how able or successful in his profession, could not sit in that House. That, he held, was an additional reason why the House should pass this Bill. There was another point of view which he wished to bring before the notice of hon. Members. When they considered the early age at which gentlemen were admitted into the Church—that a young man could become a deacon at 23 and a priest at 24—and that there were no less than 20,000 clergymen in the country, it was to be expected that some, after a time, either finding themselves unfitted for the calling, or conscientiously dissenting from the formularies of the Church, or from change of circumstances—having, for instance, inherited family property—would desire to become, as it were, laymen. With respect to those who might have entered the Church at an early age, and then found themselves unfit,

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  would it not be better both, for the Church and the nation that they should be allowed to go? And in the case of a change of opinion, the argument was much stronger. There were two such cases to which he could refer—namely, those of Mr. Clark, of Trinity, who was so well known as Public Orator, and Mr. Sedley Taylor. Mr. Clark, in a letter to his Bishop, said—
  "Slowly and reluctantly, but with irresistible force, and, as I feel, irrevocably, have I been driven to conclusiens incompatible with the declarations which I made at my ordination. Under these circumstances, I beg to signify my desire to relinquish the position of a clergyman, and to resume that of a layman. Whatever law may prevent me from doing this, I protest against it as iniquitous and immoral."
  Mr. Sedley Taylor also, in 1869, wrote to his Bishop—
  "I was ordained deacon in 1862. A course of inquiry since undertaken has led me to form convictions very seriously at variance with the formularies which bind the consciences of the clergy. This being so, I relinquish, as far as in me lies, the ministry of the Church, though aware that I cannot free myself from certain disabilities attaching to the clerical office, notwithstanding the resignation of all its attendant advantages. I wish to draw attention to the anomalous and unjust state of the law affecting those who see fit to resign office in the Establishment."
  The Bill proposed that a clergyman who desired to relinquish his calling might, on giving notice to his Bishop and executing a deed in Chancery, be relieved after six months from his disabilities, and also lose the privileges to which, as a clergyman, he might be entitled; and become, in fact, a layman. The principle of the Bill had been in operation in America in the Episcopal Church for 55 years, and he had not heard of any serious objections having been pressed against it during that long period. Upon the grounds which he had stated, he now asked the House to read the Bill a second time, believing that the effect would be to do away with a great grievance and to strengthen the Church of England—that it would be a blessing not only to those who were allowed to go, but to those who remained. He begged to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
  MR. J. D. LEWIS,in seconding the Motion, said, he hoped that as his name appeared on the back of the Bill the House would allow him to say a few words in its support. His hon. Friend
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  (Mr. Hibbert) had so thoroughly explained the state of the law on this question and the object of the Bill, that he need add but little to what had already been said. He was aware that Bills of this description, which proposed to deal with the grievances of a limited class of persons, were always open to the suspicion that they were the result of special agitation; but he could assure the House that, so far as he was concerned, no such influence had been exercised in this instance. The only persons at present prevented by law from ever holding a seat in that House, were persons convicted of felony, Scotch Peers, and persons who had taken orders in the Anglican Church or the Church of Rome. He did not propose to say one word on behalf of felons, or in regard to Scotch Peers, though he considered the position of the latter a very anomalous one. But he wished to know on what principle a legal barrier should be raised against the admission to that House of clergymen whom the constituencies thought fit to elect. He acknowledged that it would be very objectionable to admit to the House clergymen who continued to hold their livings, and if hon. Members looked back to the debate on Horne Tooke's Act they would find the law in question supported upon that footing. For instance, Mr. Addington said that when one-third of the livings were in the hands of the Crown it would be a very dangerous thing to admit clergymen into that House. But that objection would not apply to the Bill of his hon. Friend, because it cut off altogether clergymen who held benefices from coming into the House of Commons. If hon. Gentlemen opposite should take up the ground that where a person had deliberately adopted the office of teacher of religion he thereby irrevocably set himself apart from the laity, it would follow that they ought to extend the doctrine to Nonconformist ministers, or else maintain that there was something in Episcopal ordination which distinguished those who received it from all others. That was High Church doctrine, but it was not likely to obtain much favour in the House. Were not Mr. Samuel Martin, Mr. Newman Hall, and Mr. Spurgeon held in as much respect as clergymen of the Established Church? But, at all events, they were not held in less esteem because they were eligible for election to the House of

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  Commons, and, therefore, it could not be supposed that the Bill, which did not interfere in any way with Anglican Orders, would have the effect of lessening the esteem in which the Anglican clergy were held. It might be said that the liberty given by the Bill would lead to unfit persons entering the Church; but it should be remembered that, on the other hand, there was a probability that many persons who would be useful to the Church were kept out of it by the present state of the law. As the measure went in a liberal direction, and tended to do away with a separate ecclesiastical caste, he wished to give it his support.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Hibbert.)
  MR. SPENCER WALPOLEsaid, that when the Bill was first introduced he had taken occasion to indicate not so much certain objections to the measure, as certain safeguards that ought to be thrown around it. He had also pointed out that a Bill which affected the national Church in some important particulars ought to have the serious attention of the Government directed to it, that they might, on their responsibility, see that the measure was properly adjusted to meet the requirements of the case, and not to go beyond them. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department would probably state the intentions of the Government with regard to the Bill, and it was with a view to suggest what points it might be necessary to consider in Committee that he (Mr. Walpole) had now risen. The two points which he wished more particularly to have considered were these—In the first place, with regard to the early part of the Bill, it was extremely undesirable that persons who took Holy Orders should do so lightly, unadvisedly, or as an experimental matter. Their minds ought to be well made up, and they should not undertake the office with the idea that they might easily get rid of it. Secondly—and this applied to the end of the Bill—when a person had once entered into Holy Orders, and had served the Church in that sacred character, there might be reasons which no doubt might induce him to take up some other calling; but, if he did so, he ought not to be chopping and changing
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  about. He did not wish to see the services of ministers of religion acquire more or less of a professional character, and that they should be allowed to change about from one occupation to another, according to the profits or advantages of the experiments they might make. The hon. Gentleman himself (Mr. Hibbert) did not intend to deal with the question of the indelibility of Holy Orders, and therefore there was no need to enter on that subject. There was, however, an important matter to be considered in connection with the first portion of the Bill. The reasons for the measure were contained in a Memorial which had been presented to the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government. Some of those reasons were strong; others not so strong as it was desired they should appear to be. The last of the reasons assigned by the memorialists was, that the present state of the law with regard to the clergy of the Established Church was one of the causes why there were fewer candidates for admission to Holy Orders. He would like, in passing, to correct that notion, which was gaining ground in the minds of several people. On comparing the Ordinations for the last three years with those of 1852, it would be found that this diminution was not going on. In 1852 the total number of persons admitted to Holy Orders was 541; in 1867 it was 590; in 1868, 599; and in 1869, 597. He had merely given these figures, from carefully prepared Returns, for the purpose of clearing the way. He would now advert to two other reasons. The first referred to the pamphlet of Mr. Clark, which went to show that it was unadvisable to retain in Holy Orders persons who had conscientiously changed their views. On that point he would say, that such persons ought to be dealt with in the most just, charitable, and liberal manner. Therefore, instead of holding them to the duties of their profession, he thought they had better be exempted from compulsion, or any attempt at compulsion. With regard to the reason that persons going into Holy Orders at an early age might not be able to grapple with all the difficulties which might afterwards occur to their minds, his answer was that they had better not enter the profession until they had given the matter a better examination. Any inducement offered to

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  persons to go into such a profession, with a knowledge that they could afterwards release themselves from it, ought to be altogether avoided. There was much truth in the observation made by Tertullian in the 2nd century, long before Councils were heard of—but which was as true now as it was then—that it was felt by Christians to be the greatest reproach to persons exercising the priestly office in other religions that they were one thing to-day and another thing tomorrow. He had no doubt that his hon. Friend's (Mr. Hibbert's) complaint was well founded—that disabilities had been imposed on the clergy contrary to that which was formerly the law of the Church and the law of the land. The return of Horne Tooke to that House had occasioned the passing of the statute 41st Geo. III., previous to which there was nothing whatever to prevent an unbeneficed clergyman from taking part in the business of the House of Commons, any more than clerical Peers from taking part in the business of the House of Lords. He did not object to remove that disability, but it was very unadvisable that a beneficed clergyman should come into that House—because he was bound to give all his time, and his whole life, to the duties of his profession. With regard to municipal disabilities, he could see no reason why an unbeneficed clergyman should not be a member of a civil corporation. He believed, however, that a simple repeal of the Act of Geo. III., guarded, at the same time, by certain limits and restrictions, would be a better course than the passing of a measure which might give clergymen encouragement to go into some other calling. These were the reasons which induced him to say that the Government ought to watch this Bill with considerable care.
  SIR LAWRENCE PALKsaid, he thought the Bill involved a principle which it was most undesirable should be tolerated in the legislation of this country. As things at present stood, there were too many facilities afforded to young men to enter the Church; and this Bill, by enabling clergymen to escape from the bonds of the Church, should they find them too onerous, would hold out a greater inducement than ever to young men to make the Church their profession. He could not believe that the House had any right to release from their vows those who had deliberately
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  and of their own accord taken the most solemn oaths, and bound themselves by the most solemn obligations, to devote themselves to the service of God. A more objectionable measure had never been introduced into the House of Commons. The 9th clause required particular attention.
  MR. BERESFORD HOPEadmitted that there was a case calling for legislation, and so he would not oppose this stage of the Bill; but he did not think it, as it stood, a complete, broad, and fair measure of relief. While the Bill paid infinite regard to the case of those clergymen who, from conscientious scruples, did not wish to continue to be clergymen, it overlooked the case of those who, from family circumstances, had, since they took Holy Orders, been placed in a social position, carrying with it duties and responsibilities of citizenship which they felt themselves to be under the most sacred moral obligations to fulfil. He referred to a class of men who were the heads of families, the stewards and dispensers of a large property, but who would feel a great and. natural repugnance to forego their position as clergymen capable of performing voluntary pastoral duties. While continuing to be clergymen they were fit to be leaders of men, legislators, and municipal officers. No doubt the Bill was intended, by its framers, to avoid the question of the indelibility of Orders; but if it did so, it was by a cumbrous process. Individually, he believed in that indelibility; but he spoke both for those who did and who did not, when he claimed that Parliament ought not to embarrass itself with the controversy. He preferred that, without attempting to deal with Holy Orders, they should simply give relief from civil disabilities, extending that relief freely and impartially to all clergymen charged with the cure of souls, either as incumbents or curates. For those that were, he should continue the existing disabilities. They would accordingly only affect "Ministrations," and leave "Orders" unaffected. The "squire-parsons" were a class of great weight and often of great usefulness in their neighbourhoods, and might combine with all the best characteristics of a country gentleman the best characteristics also of a priest, giving their help to their brother-clergymen freely and without price when such help was sorely needed. That was a worthy class of

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  men, and he wished to see them relieved. He need hardly say that he wished the relief to be impartially extended to priests of the Church of Rome, under similar conditions. If, however, it were extended to all, the ultimate effect of legislation might be to give them a Bench of Bishops in that House as well as in the other, and the constituencies of the sister country might be found returning the chief pastors of the respective dioceses. On one point he must differ from his right hon. Colleague. He did not object, under proper reservations, to the clause of the Bill which allowed clergymen to resume their sacred functions after having for a time discontinued to exercise them. If a clergyman in his youth, from a temporary pique, or from a fit of despondency, or from want of sufficient study, conceived that he could not discharge his duties as a minister, and if after years of patient thought his scruples were removed, his doubts cleared up, and, perhaps, his moral nature strengthened and his religious convictions deepened, it would be a most unfortunate thing that he should be condemned for life to an unnatural position of inutility, and left perpetually out in the cold. The cases of two distinguished clergymen had been brought under his notice, who had both left the ministry of the Church of England, one of them from doubts in the Romanizing, and the other from doubts in the contrary direction. Both these gentlemen, on more mature thought, had been satisfied, and were now again doing good work as clergymen of the Church of England; and yet both of them—supposing them to have taken advantage of this Act, had it existed—ought, according to his right hon. Colleague, to have found the portal of return barred against them. A provision of some kind which would enable such men to return to the ministry of the Church ought not, he thought, to be omitted from the Bill if it was to be passed; and he trusted his right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) would not press his opposition to that part of the measure.
  MR. BOUVERIEsaid, he agreed with his hon. Friend (Mr. Beresford Hope) that it was desirable to keep open a door by which clergymen who, from conscientious scruples or other reasons, had left the active ministry of the Church, might return to the discharge of their
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  sacred functions with advantage to themselves and to their flocks. One of the very gentlemen at whose instance he himself brought in a Bill on that subject eight years ago, and who had then severed his communion with the Church, had since returned to the ministry in a populous town, where his labours met with great acceptance and success. On another point, however, he entirely differed from the last speaker. A most valuable part of the patronage of the Church was in the gift of the Crown; and were they to have clergymen without cure of souls coming into that House, some of them being men of great weight and eloquence, aspiring to the highest position in the Church and to the favour of a Minister, and then accepting benefices, perhaps bishoprics, and going back into the Church because they had distinguished themselves in the arena of that House? The scheme of the hon. Gentleman who spoke last was, therefore, open to insuperable objections. He (Mr. Bouverie) was specially situated with respect to this question, because he believed that he was himself the only Member of Parliament in the present generation who had ever been opposed by a clerical candidate. At the last Election he had as a competitor a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, who, equally with the clergy of the Church of England, was excluded by law from a seat in that House. That gentleman possessed great powers of speech and indomitable industry; he showed a great deal of ability in the course of the contest; he made very large promises of what he would do for the benefit of the community and the world at large if elected; and he persuaded something like 1,000 of the constituency to vote for him. He (Mr. Bouverie) saw no reason why such a man, if able to satisfy a constituency that he was fit to represent them, and if willing to abandon his sacred profession, should not sit in that House. Practically, as was well known, they had now in that Assembly Gentlemen who were still or had been ministers of Nonconformist Churches. He did not understand why a minister of the Established Church of Scotland—a body, after all, including only about one-third of the Scottish people—should be excluded from that House, whereas a minister of the Free Church, of the United Presbyterians, or any of the

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  other Dissenting Churches, was unrestrained by law from entering it. There were two or three ministers of the Free Church, men of conspicuous eloquence, who, if they abandoned the clerical profession, would be no doubt also of considerable statesmanship, even in that House—for example, Dr. Candlish and Dr. Guthrie. Then, as to Roman Catholic priests, they were by name excluded from seats in that House; but if clergymen of the Church of England were relieved from those disabilities, and there was to be perfect religious equality between different sects, it would be very difficult to maintain the exclusion of Roman Catholic priests, however undesirable it might be thought that they should sit there. That was a question of the right of the constituencies to elect those men. In 1849 he attempted, at the instigation of Mr. Shore—then shut up in gaol by the late Bishop of Exeter, becaused he disobeyed the Bishop and ministered in a Dissenting chapel, contrary to the injunction of his Diocesan—to relieve clergymen from their disabilities; but his Bill failed. In 1862 he renewed the same attempt with the same result. His measure was differently constructed from the present one, which he was bound to say was superior to his. There were two classes of clergymen who wished to abandon their profession—namely, those who had changed their opinions, and those who had changed their mind. His own Bill simply related to the former class, whom he required to profess solemnly that they dissented from the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, and then they were to have been relieved from those civil disabilities. Undoubtedly that was open to the very strong objection, that those who had changed their mind but not their opinions had a great inducement held out to them to say they had changed their opinions, although they had not done so. It was a sort of temptation or bribe offered to a man to make him say he had become a Dissenter, in order to be released from the obligations of the ministry. His hon. Friend (Mr. Hibbert) had gone on a better line of legislation, by proposing to relieve not only those who had changed their opinions, but also thosewho had changed their mind and purpose. Who would say the opinions honestly professed on matters of any importance,
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  and still more on matters of the very highest importance, by a clergyman of 24 years of age would be precisely the same—if he thought at all on those things—when he reached 40 or 50? It was a cruel hardship to tell a young man aspiring to enter the sacred profession that he must subscribe a vast number of theological and dogmatic tenets, and teach them to all who came under his ministrations, and to insist that, even after years of experience and study, if he saw reason to believe that he had formed a hasty judgment and then changed his opinions, there should be no escape for him, no other occupation for him to pursue—that he should be a galley slave, chained to the bench, and liable to all the pangs of conscience that must assail an honest man who doubted the truth of the doctrines he had to teach. In conclusion, he thought his hon. Friend deserved the thanks of the House and the public for raising that question again, and affording those persons an opportunity of escaping from a service which they could no longer conscientiously perform; and he agreed that it would be greatly to the advantage of the Church that this change should be made, because the want of it tended to cast upon the body of the clergy the stigma of insincerity.
  MR. NEWDEGATEobserved that there was one point, which had been suggested during the debate, that touched the principle upon which the present law regulating the constitution of their House proceeded. Clergymen were supposed to be obedient to the orders of their superiors, and that what they had promised in this respect would regulate their consciences. He (Mr. Newdegate) did not attach any importance to the Roman Catholic interpretation to Holy Orders—he did not hold them to be a sacrament. Still, in the Church of England, entrance into the clerical profession was accompanied by oaths and vows, deliberately taken, and for which the candidates were prepared by education, binding them to obey their superiors. In the Roman Church Clerical Orders were held to be indelible, and the obligations entailed by these Orders were far more stringent; they were being vastly enlarged by the present action of the Papacy. He knew that hon. Gentlemen opposite thought that they could afford to disregard the action

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  of Rome in this matter; but they must know that it was a power which was increasing over the majority of the House. ["No, no!"] He put it to hon. Members, whether an approximation was not being made every day towards placing the Church of Rome upon a par with the Church of England? Now, how had this been brought about? At the very time when the Church of Rome was proclaiming intentions most adverse to Liberal views, when those intentions were protested against by every Roman Catholic Government, hon. Members opposite were, step by step, giving further means of influence to this body. If they admitted the clergy of the Church of England to the House, it would be asked that they should admit the clergy of the Church of Rome also, and were they prepared to do that? He contended that the limitation existing was necessary according to the constitution of the House. He (Mr. Newdegate) admitted that the constituencies should be free to elect whomsoever they chose to become Members of that House, with one limitation, which was essential to the freedom of the House itself, and that limitation consisted in the qualification that no one should sit as a Member of that House, who was not free to act according to the unfettered dictates of his own judgment and conscience in that House. Every Member who entered the House was bound to guide himself according to the best of his individual judgment; but if the judgment of a man were surrendered to another then he was not fit to be a Member of the House. Step by step the House was being persuaded to disregard the restrictions which, at the time of the Revolution of 1688 and subsequently, were found necessary to guard the freedom of the country against the despotism of Rome. This restriction against the admission of clergymen, either of the Church of England or of the Church of Rome to that House, was one of the measures adopted to prevent a recurrence of the attempt made by James II. to establish a despotic form of government in this country, to which attempt he, being a Roman Catholic, had been impelled by his clerical advisers, who belonged to the Church of Rome. Hon. Members treated history like an old almanack, and assumed that our ancestors were not persons of common sense.
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  If restrictions were necessary in the time of James II. why were they unnecessary now, when the Papacy was imposing on priests wider obligations, to such an extent that every Roman Catholic Government objected? He asked the House to condescend to consider the political opinions of the rest of the world. In France there had been a strong desire manifested for constitutional government, but it had been refused, because they were not fit for constitutional government. And why? Chiefly from the difficulty interposed by the action of the Roman Catholic priesthood. He was told that in France they were on the eve of a reformation in their Church; but at present constitutional government was prevented by the action of the Papacy through the clergy. In that objection was the foundation of the law that they were asked to abrogate. He entreated the House not to treat the circumstances that were occurring abroad, and the opinions of Europe, with the contempt that they had hitherto manifested; for they would afford counsel, guidance, and warning for them, when they proposed to change the fundamental organization which had been found necessary for the maintenance of free institutions.
  MR. BOUVERIEexplained that he had not meant to say that the Bill before the House would admit the Roman Catholic clergy to that House.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, that this Bill dealt with a very important subject, and, according to his humble judgment, in rather a strange way. He was one of those who had been accustomed to think that the ministers and officers of the Church to which he belonged had—under forms perhaps the most serious that man could go through—taken upon themselves sacred obligations from which they had no power to free themselves. Now, in what position did the Bill propose to place a clergyman of the Church of England? Assuming that a clergyman had no prosecution pending against him, at the end of six months he might free himself, according to this Bill, from the obligations which he had taken upon himself. At the end of another six months, if it so suited him, and it also suited any Bishop or Archbishop, he might resume his office. Would this be a decent state of things? Let him assume the case of a clergyman who

  1381
  wished to have six months' hunting. He would give six months' notice under this, and at the expiration of that period he would be at liberty to put on a red coat, and to do everything that people who wore red coats usually did. And when the hunting season was over he might revoke and secure a position for himself during the season in London by again changing his coat and becoming a popular preacher. This was the state of things that the hon. Member—the Junior Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) would agree to perpetrate, and why? Because he knew that a deeper matter lay beneath, and in this circuitous way he hoped to secure the indelibility of Orders. Could anything be worse for the position of the clergyman than that he should be allowed to put off his sacred office for one six months and resume it the following six months, and so on alternately? In what estimation were clergymen in such a position likely to be held by their congregations? This Bill would, perhaps, satisfy the wishes of a few persons who were anxious to be relieved of the disabilities under which they qt present laboured; but another matter of considerable weight was this—that if they admitted one set of men who had taken Orders to the House, they must admit all. The Bill would allow persons who had received Episcopal ordination to release themselves at their own pleasure from the bonds of the Church; and such persons might then set up an independent Church, and at the same time retain all the authority of their Orders. He could not think that a desirable state of things. Every man should have a right to withdraw from any community with which he could no longer conscientiously agree; but he should not have the right to carry with him the power and privileges which attended upon Episcopal ordination, and then to turn those advantages to account in attempting to overthrow the Church from which he derived them, and from which he had withdrawn. He thought the Bill bad in every respect, and if no one else went into the Lobby against it, he should do so.
  MR. BRUCEsaid that, with the exception of the right hon. Gentleman who had spoken last, and the hon. Baronet the Member for East Devon (Sir Law-
  1382
  rence Palk), there had been on the part of the House a general recognition of the justice of the principles upon which this Bill was founded. It had been felt by everybody, except those hon. Members, that to hold a clergyman of the Church of England bound by all the disabilities of a vocation after he had changed it, or to give him strong motives to remain in it after he desired to change it, was neither politic nor advantageous to the Church. The hon. Member for Cambridge University had suggested an alternative plan to that proposed in the Bill on the ground that vows solemnly taken should not be lightly changed, and that it was of the last importance that the duties of a clergyman should not be taken up at one time and abandoned and resumed at pleasure. It appeared to him, however, that the plan of the hon. Member would be far more productive of the evil to which he had referred than the plan proposed by the Bill now under discussion. What he understood the hon. Member to propose as an alternative plan was that the clergyman should be relieved from the disabilities which had been imposed upon him by the 76th canon, which prevented him from applying himself to any secular employment, and from those imposed upon him by Horne Tooke's Act and by the Metropolitan Corporations Act. If such a plan were adopted, what would prevent any clergyman from giving up his curacy and taking to secular employment for a time, and again returning to the cure of souls? So long as the clergyman retained his Orders, there could be no difficulty in the way of his resuming his cure. Under these circumstances, it appeared to him that the plan of the hon. Member facilitated the abandonment of the sacred calling for a time and its resumption at the will and pleasure of the individual. The great recommendation of the Bill was that under it this step could not be taken without a very solemn form being gone through, or without the lapse of considerable time. It was provided in the Bill that the clergy man should only be permitted to resume his sacred office by a solemn act, and even then not at his own will and pleasure, but after the question had been fully considered by his Archbishop, to whom the Bill gave a discretionary power to restore the clergyman if he

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  should think fit. As at present advised, therefore, he thought that the plan proposed by the Bill was better than that of the hon. Member opposite. It had also been suggested that the Bill was not wide enough—that it should be extended not only to clergymen, but also to those Bishops who had not seats in the House of Lords, and to Roman Catholic priests. He saw no objection to the Bill being extended so as to include Colonial Bishops. The question, however, with respect to Roman Catholic priests was a very different one. The principle of the Bill was that no clergyman who had entered Holy Orders could put aside his sacred office without making a solemn declaration. Assuming the plan of the hon. Member opposite adopted and applied to the priests of the Roman Catholic Church, he presumed that there would be nothing to prevent them from entering Parliament in the same manner as any clergyman of the Church of England might do under it. This Bill, however, was founded upon a different principle; and it appeared to him that great discretion had been shown on the part of those who had drawn the Bill by omitting from it all mention of the Roman Catholic priests, leaving the question to be considered separately by the Roman Catholics themselves. It seemed to him that Roman Catholic Members should consult with the heads of their Church as to whether they should propose a scheme by which their priests should be admitted to the House. On the whole, therefore, he was prepared, on the part of the Government, to give his support to the second reading of the Bill; but, at the same time, he must observe that there were many points connected with the subject which required careful consideration, and therefore he trusted that the hon. Member who had charge of the measure would give the House ample time for considering the Bill before any future stage was taken.
  SIR. HERBERT CROFTsaid, that in his county (Herefordshire) there were twelve clergymen holding large properties, and seven of them voted for him. He believed that none of those seven wished for any alteration in the law. He should vote against the Bill.
  MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he was anxious that the statement of the Secretary of State for the Home De-
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  partment that there was almost no opposition to the Bill in that House should not go forth to the country uncontradicted. For his own part, he was strongly opposed to the measure, and he knew that there were many hon. Members who equally objected to it. The majority of the clergy of the division of Lancashire that he had the honour to represent (South-west) also objected to the proposed change. It was quite clear that the Government themselves had not made up their minds with respect to the Bill, or else they would have given forth a more certain sound upon the subject than that which had been conveyed by the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department. He should vote against the second reading of the Bill; and if it were carried he should move, on a future occasion, that it be referred to a Select Committee.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 137; Noes 56: Majority 81.
  Bill read a second time, and committed for Tuesday 14th June.

GAME LAWS ABOLITION BILL
(Mr. Taylor, Mr. Jacob Bright, Mr. White.)
GAME LAWS ABOLITION BILL

  [BILL 73.] SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. P. A. TAYLOR,in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that when a law stood condemned by public opinion—whether because it was bad in itself, or because by change of times and circumstances it had lost all fitness and appropriateness, the truly Conservative policy with regard to it was to abolish it at once, and not to attempt to prop it up by feeble compromises. In that sense he claimed for his Bill that it was a Conservative measure. There was a sense, too, in which he believed it was a moderate measure. It would not only cut off excesses—battue shooting would die, and the occupation of the poacher would be gone—but it would establish all over the country just such a state of things as existed now in those parts where the cultivation of the land was highest, and where the relations between landlord and tenant were on a satisfactory and proper footing, and where game was not too extensively preserved.

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  It was said that this was not a subject to be taken up by a private Member, and that a subject of such importance should be dealt with by the Government. But, looking to the present position of public affairs, he ventured to differ from that doctrine. There were two ways of dealing with this question—an effective way and a useless way; and he had no right to suppose that the present Government, strong as it was, pressed upon by so many other measures would provoke the hostility of the landed proprietors on both sides of the House by bringing in a thorough measure. But, seeing that the Government was a Liberal Government, and derived a large part of their strength from the support of Scotch Members, who were returned in part on the question of the Game Laws, he had an equal right to expect that they would not bring in an useless or ineffective Bill. Look at the composition of the Government. They had among their numbers also his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, whose absence he deeply regretted, and who had made the abolition of the Game Laws his peculiar object; and they had also the present Lord Chancellor, who had declared that the Game Laws should be altogether got rid of. But the Government had taken a course which he did not think they would have done, and which he deeply regretted. He did not propose to criticize the Game Bill which had been introduced by the Lord Advocate; indeed, if he might say so without disrespect, it was below criticism. ["Oh, oh!] It might certainly be said to be beyond the reach of criticism when it had been contemptuously rejected from one end of Scotland to the other by everybody except the Commissioners of Supply. Any measure which gave no security for the diminution of the head of game, and which proposed to leave the settlement of the question to be arranged by contract between landlord and tenant, was a mockery; and anyone that congratulated the Scotch farmers on the prospect of their being put by this Bill on the same footing as to Game Laws, which in England had proved utterly ineffective, was guilty of an insult to the farmers of Scotland. This was not a party question in the ordinary sense of "Whigs" and "Tories"—it was the question of justice against injustice, and it might yet become the foundation of a
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  new division of parties—the party of the Landed Interest and the party of the Farmers' Friends. He had a letter from a Scotch farmer, who said that Sir William Maxwell told them the other day, at the dinner given in his honour at Perth, that Mr. Henley, one of their most trusted leaders, saw the coming necessity for household suffrage before anyone else, and that he (the farmer) trusted some other far-sighted statesman—Mr. Henley himself or Mr. Disraeli—would discern the coming necessity for the abolition of the Game Laws, and once again "dish the Whigs;" in which case the farmers of the country would support them. The system of the Game Laws was condemned equally by judicial, philosophical, and philanthropical authorities. Blackstone forgot his Toryism and his stately periods in the vehemence with which he denounced the Game Laws. Jeremy Bentham put the case in a few plain words when he said—
  "I sow corn; partridges eat it: if I offend against the partridges I am sent to gaol for fear that the great man who is above sowing corn should be in want of partridges."
  The Rev. Mr. Fraser, now Bishop of Manchester, was sent down to report upon the employment of women and children in country districts—he was no demagogue—he was not sent down to inveigh against the gentry, or to set class against class:—yet he was so struck with the evils of the Game Laws that he was compelled to interpolate, as it were, a condemnation of the Game Laws into his Report. The majority of the Committee that sat on Mr. Bright's Motion admitted the evil of the Game Laws, but they suggested no remedy; and the only result of their labours was that shameless law, passed a few years since, which authorized a policeman to stop a man on the highway without a warrant, and search him for game. That was contrary to the spirit of the Constitution—but what was the Constitution when put in comparison with the Game Laws! It was said that mercy was twice blessed; but the Game Laws were three times and four times the reverse of blessed. They were a curse to the tenantry and they were a curse to the landlords, who, but for the temptation of sport, would regret the hatred, malice, and obstruction that had taken the place of the former mutual affection and respect. William Howitt, a writer whose

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  sympathies were more with country than with town life, said no one who had not lived on a game-preserving estate could tell how strong was the spirit of the feudal ages there, where a man could scarcely venture to call his soul his own. Mr. Grey, of Dilston, himself an excellent practical farmer, said that to protect the game as was now done was a remnant of feudalism. Bad as the former system was, the modern practice of battue shooting had aggravated them ten-fold. William Howitt said it was butchery that had usurped the place of sport—that the fields were but another name for slaughter-houses and shambles, and that they would wear an air of insanity if the profits of the market were not visible in the rear. Two or three years ago the actors in this sport paraded their doings boastfully before the world; but of late a hint appeared to have been given that the sport, if enjoyed at all, had better be carried on more privately. But there was a statement in The Field, in December, 1868, to the effect that 11 gentlemen had met in Suffolk, and in five days had brought down 8,345 head of game, of which 4,077 were hares and rabbits. That was equal to about 11 tons of game, or one ton per head. In such a case sport was out of the question—it seemed to him that the best course of teaching for such sport would be an apprenticeship to a butcher in Leadenhall Market. Let the House but consider what a waste of food these battues must occasion when all the animals slain had been reared on the most precious food of the people. Another very serious consideration was the extent to which the Game Laws interfered with the administration of justice in the rural districts. It made the game preserver a judge in poaching cases, and there could not be a greater evil than when the same man had to act as prosecutor, judge, and executioner. A friend of his, a justice of the peace, wrote to him that next to a Jamaica court-martial, no mockery of justice could be conceived greater than that of game-preserving squires setting to convict a poacher on the evidence of a gamekeeper. It was said that gentlemen retired from the Bench when their own cases were to be heard. Could there be a greater mockery? Suppose four game preservers, A, B, C, and D—when a poacher was brought before the Bench for poaching on A's
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  preserves, A magnanimously retired, and his brother preservers proceeded to do justice on the delinquent—probably on the principle that we should do unto the poacher on another man's land what we would others should do unto poachers on our own land. He must not be supposed to condemn the gentlemen of England—he condemned Englishmen for having suffered such things to continue—he believed that there was no class of men who would have suffered so little deterioration under such a system of anomalies and inconsistencies as the English gentlemen. Then the Game Laws were unquestionably a curse to the tenant-farmers. It was unnecessary to prove it—it was so by universal admission. ["No, no!"] It was proved by the number of Bills introduced into Parliament on the subject. The tenant-farmer was placed in a most anomalous position. When he took a farm he was compelled by his contract to keep a number of wild animals, which he was to support and pay for, while the quantity and disposition was at the pleasure of his landlord. What the effects were depended on the quality of the land, the crops, the season, and the character of the landlord—so that there was a constant element of uncertainty—a certain amount of gambling was introduced into the cultivation of land. Another great evil of the Game Laws was its tendency to knock out the class of small freeholders; for there was nothing so obnoxious to the game preserver as a little freehold oasis in the middle of his vast estates. Now, the rural police had been converted into gamekeepers, the farmer had first of all to maintain the game, next to preserve it, then to pay the expense of prosecuting for it, then to pay the cost of imprisoning the offenders, and lastly to maintain their families while they were in gaol. As to the assertion that the farmers were compensated for the damage done by game, it was not worth entering into; compensation was seldom asked for, it was impossible to estimate the damage, and it was insufficient in amount. Mr. Grey, of Dilston, said, that when arbitration had been resorted to he never saw the farmer get one-half of what he was entitled to. But his great charge against the Game Laws was not that they were the curse of landowners and farmers, but that they were the curse of the English labourer.

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  Whatever diminished the profits of the farmer diminished the wages of the labourer; but most of all was the temptation to crime that they continually placed before him. Many a man who commenced by breaking the law of the land—for no man pretended that poaching was anything but a law-made crime—ended by breaking the law of morality. You punish him for a law-made crime, and the next thing he does is to commit a moral crime. You made your gamekeepers, too, an anomalous class—a sort of hybrid class, something between a spy and a gendarme. As to the convictions under these laws they were yearly increasing. In the year 1843 Mr. Bright based his indignant opposition to those laws upon the astounding fact that there had been in that year 4,529 convictions. Between that time and the present the number of convictions had more than doubled. In 1843 it was 4,529, in 1869 it was 10,345, whereof 806 wore convictions owing to the Bill of 1862. Then, as to the national loss arising from the Game Laws—the loss of food to the people and consequent rise of prices—this was very difficult to estimate, and in what he was about to state he did not pledge himself to accuracy. It was stated before the Committee of 1845, by Mr. Gayford, a Suffolk farmer, he found that in 6 weeks 12 rabbits consumed 68 stone, value 18 s. 2d., and 2 sheep 45 stone, value 13 s. 9d. Mr. Philippo, a Norfolk farmer, found that 4 rabbits consumed as much as 1 sheep, the sheep increasing in weight seven times as much as the 4 rabbits. Mr. Beck, of Congham, the principal land agent in Norfolk, was of opinion that one hare did more damage than would maintain one sheep. The other day a Mr. Clark, on making a speech in Aberdeenshire, said that the loss in that county in feeding rabbits, as compared with sheep, after deducting the weight of the rabbits' flesh as food, plus the value of their skins, was 2,033,910 lbs of meat. The loss by hares was taken by him at 1,356,056 lbs weight of meat; the loss by grouse at 190,000 lbs; and the loss by deer at 267,666 lbs; making together 3,847,632 lbs loss in meat, which he estimates at not less than £150,000. The loss for all Scotland was estimated on the same authority at 24,000,000 lbs weight of meat, and the money loss in Great Britain at £8,320,000. He (Mr. Taylor) had seen another statement, in
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  which the total amount of loss was estimated at £15,000,000. His object was to show that the loss was, at any rate, enormously great. He must now say a word to show the national disgrace that sprang from these laws. A game preserver sent out bands of myrmidons, armed with cutlasses, guns, and flails to, fight with the men who pursued wild animals; there was a species of warfare between the keepers and the poachers, in which strategy was not wanting. He read the other day that a party of game-keepers encountered a party of poachers in a wood, and showed such excellent tactics that they gradually drove them up a tree and then shot them down. [Laughter.] There were regular lists of killed and wounded. In 10 years 42 gamekeepers had been shot, and numbers of poachers killed and wounded—to say nothing of the 10,000 prisoners of war shut up in gaols. An even more shameful element was that poachers were hunted down with dogs, as were formerly the Maroons in Jamaica or the slaves in South Carolina. Here was a case which happened only last February—
  "On Sunday morning, a gamekeeper in the service of Lord Forester, at Trowbridge, meeting a little boy in the preserved grounds, set upon him a ferocious dog, which he led muzzled. The lad fell on his face and folded his arms round his neck to protect himself, but the dog, seizing him by the back of the head, bit him in a shocking manner. Lord Forester has sent £5 to the mother of the lad by way of compensation."
  These, then, being the evils of the Game Laws, what was the root of them? He believed it was clearly and unmistakably the over-cultivation of too great a head of game—of wild animals. And how was that to be stopped? By repealing the laws by which those wild animals were protected. It would probably be urged by those who took a philosophical view of the matter, that all wild animals had their uses in the economy of nature, and that if you were to repeal these laws, all wild animals would be swept off the face of the country. But he did not see why, if a modified protection were required, a modified protection might not be given. There was always a certain relation between the numbers of wild animals, and the supply of food for them, and there needed no artificial laws to interfere with them. Then as to the Game Laws of foreign countries. The noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho)

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  had said that there existed in every foreign country Game Laws similar to our own. This was a mistake. Laws for the protection of wild animals no doubt existed in foreign countries; but they were not always with the same object as our laws, and did not produce the same results. In France the old Game Laws perished in the Revolution of 1789, which they did so much to evoke; the Game Laws of France now existing were passed in 1844, and, by them, to shoot without permission on another's estate is an offence. In Germany the old Game Laws perished with the Revolutions of 1848, which found their support among the peasantry in great measure in consequence of those intolerable laws. In Prussia there were no Game Laws. In the United States, taking the State of Massachusetts, the laws for the protection of wild animals were almost Draconian—they applied even to sparrows. But these laws were not like ours, for the benefit of an aristocracy of landowners, but were democratic or scientific. Such as they were, however, the convictions under them were almost nil. Then, as to the remedies that had been proposed. One, which had been received with some degree of favour, was to make game private property. But that, in the first place, would not meet the case, because it did not provide for the protection or destruction of wild animals; and it made no difference to a man whether you imprisoned him as a felon or a poacher. In the next place, you would be creating a new and indefensible principle of law. It was agreed by all jurists that there could be no property in wild animals—the property in them arose from reclaiming and domesticating them. If they adopted this principle, the farmer would be the largest gainer, for he was the largest sufferer under the existing system. As to the loss of sport to the landlord, he (Mr. Taylor) was as fond of sport and pleasure as anyone; but he paid for it as he had it. But the landlords had not been content with the pleasure of sporting; they had made of late years large profits from the game. There was one in Suffolk who boasted of being able to let his preserves for £9,000 a year. ["Name!"] Lord Stradbroke. It had been stated in that House by an hon. Member that he knew of land which was let in 1824 for £160 a year, but which now brought
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  £3,000 a year. But it was not to the pleasure or the profit only that they must look. The landlord did not even pay the cost of his own game. Where game existed the rates had been levied not on what the land would have been worth had it been used for production instead of for game, but at a lower rate. Another proposal had been made in respect of ground game, by increasing the stringency of the trespass laws. But that would not diminish the real evils of the Game Laws, because it would only protect the animals in another form and by another system of legislation. If game was not to be killed, it did not matter whether the man was punished as a felon or a trespasser. But it was apt to raise a smile when you talked of the damage done to a farmer by a man getting over his hedge or his gate. Why, they knew very well that 50 or 100 men at a time rode over his fields after the foxhounds, and did more harm in five minutes than all the poachers could do during a tenancy. There was another matter to which he would allude in respect of ground game. It was said that in Scotland the farmer would be ruined by the ground game, if he was not permitted to kill them. Well, where permission had been given in England how had it operated? Why, on Lord Derby's estate "fur," says a sporting writer, "was so plentiful as to embarrass the dogs; 100 hares starting up at a time." Now, the very aim and object of his Bill was to compel the landlord and to permit the farmer to abandon the over-preservation of game. If they had not the wisdom to do so, they would only call into compensation the poacher—or, as he would rather call him, the slayer of wild animals. Punch had called him (Mr. Taylor) "the poacher's friend:" he believed, however, that the poacher did not see it in that light—he knew that if the game was reduced upon the land, his occupation was gone. Neither would a law extending to ground game only, be an effective measure. Pheasants, as they had abundant testimony, destroyed vast quantities of corn and turnips. "Partridges and pheasants," said the Bishop of Manchester, "corrupt and demoralize the virtue of the labourer." By process of exhaustion, therefore, said the hon. Member, I fall back upon my Bill, which I believe is the only possible, simple, moderate, and complete one.

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  And now, in conclusion, I venture to say that the Bill which I have the honour to ask the House to read a second time is in my earnest conviction a measure of simple justice, and it is also in my earnest conviction a measure of inevitable necessity—it is a question of time—of to-day or to-morrow. I venture to appeal to the House to deal with this question in a large and comprehensive spirit, and I venture to appeal to the landed Gentlemen themselves, and to ask them to do now what can be done with some grace as a satisfactory settlement, rather than attempt to prolong a struggle the continuance of which must be mixed up with much of hatred and distrust, and which will tend to increase the already sufficiently lamentable difference between the interests and sympathies of various classes of our people.
  MR. DICKINSONsaid, he had no great sympathy with either poachers or preservers, and he seconded the Motion in the interests of the community at large. In the first place, he complained of the injustice of permitting a landlord to enter upon land which was for the time being the property of the tenant, and of the further injustice of compelling a tenant to preserve, by making him not only liable for damages to his landlord, but liable also to be fined by the Queen for killing that which destroyed the fruits of his labour. He contended that the tenant should be allowed to kill an excess of game, and that the onus should be on the landlord to take action and prove that the preservation of game was not excessive. To the argument that the Game Laws were based upon the right of free contract, and that the Bill would be an interference with that right, he replied that the law already interfered with him as a landlord by preventing him from killing game at certain seasons of the year. Such interference was justified only on grounds of public necessity, and he doubted whether the law against killing game except when in season could be so justified. Parliamentary interference in the case of salmon was justified by the fact that the salmon stream was the property of a number of proprietors; but game did not, as a rule, migrate, nor could game be regarded as an important article of food; certainly it could not be said to be at any time unseasonable, for the pheasant very much resembled the barn-
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  door fowl, which was eaten all the year round. The Act for preserving sea birds had received the sanction of Parliament on grounds which he did not altogether approve; but the grounds advanced in its support were of a public character, while the Game Laws interfered with private rights without subserving any public advantage. They were essentially unjust, and being unsound in principle ought no longer to be maintained. Moreover, they had an immoral effect. They placed temptations in the way of men which were difficult to resist, and when a man once became a poacher he was easily led into other crimes. The only reason for continuing them was the selfish determination to preserve a fashionable amusement. Fox-hunting, which a Bill now before the House threatened to destroy, was unprotected by law, and it was entirely unselfish. The keeper of a pack of hounds was of necessity wealthy, and generally liberal; he invited all the county to the sport, and the farmer was as glad as he to take part in it, because the fox was a common enemy.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. P. A. Taylor.)
  MR. HARDCASTLEsaid, he rose to move the Previous Question. He agreed in some of the observations of the Mover of the Bill (Mr. P. A. Taylor), but he did not agree in them all. He would observe that, in the Bill he had himself introduced, he designed simply to make foxes, as well as other kinds of game, the personal property of the owner of the place where the fox might live, because he believed it would be easier with such a provision to preserve foxes than it was under present circumstances. The introducer of this Bill had made many attacks upon wild animals in the course of his speech; but his proceedings seemed chiefly directed against another animal who was only partially reclaimed—the country gentleman, for whom he appeared to have a great antipathy. But it was rather hard that the country gentleman should be attacked for doing his duty as a magistrate, when he would much prefer handing all game cases over to a stipendiary. The pictures the hon. Member had drawn would probably do very well for his constituents; but he might rest assured he

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  would not gain his point by making attacks almost personal in character. There were good servants and bad in all countries, but he believed there was no more maligned class than game-keepers. Stories about ferocious dogs setting upon children was no evidence against the Game Laws, for outrages were committed every day, and the repeal of the Game Laws to-morrow would not eradicate malevolent impulses from mankind. Even if this Bill were to pass it would be utterly impracticable to carry its provisions into effect. There would be a great feeling of irritation on the part of the influential classes who were interested in the maintenance of the Game Laws, and in the course of a year or two it would become necessary either to introduce a new Game Law, or to substitute for it a stringent law of trespass, which, in his opinion, was far more objectionable. While on this subject he might mention that in Germany any landlord might register his land in a public office, provided it were not less than 200 acres in extent, and he could then obtain a larger penalty against trespassers. Another ground of his objection to the Bill was that it was a step backward in legislation. At present the occupier of the property had only a qualified right in regard to game. Though he possessed the power of killing it he did not own it, and it could not be made the subject of larceny like the poultry and crops of the farm. He should like to see game made the actual property of the tenant, who would, of course, be able to make his own arrangement with the landlord as regarded the right of shooting. He could by no means concur in the opinion that the tenants were unable to fight their own battles. The last elections, particularly in Scotland, where half the Members were returned, by the tenant-farmers, showed that the latter could, by putting their shoulders to the wheel, obtain pretty much what they wanted. The relations between landlord and tenant had already received a rude shock, and we ought not to make any further experiments in that direction. It was stated in the Preamble of the Bill that in consequence of certain legislation wild animals had multiplied, but he believed that statement was incorrect. Our legislation on the subject had not varied much for the last 30 or 40 years, and yet it was during that very period that there
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  had been so large an increase in the quantity of game. Among the real causes of that increase were the greater luxury which prevailed, the additional means of locomotion, rendering communication with places formerly inaccessible much more easy, and the growing love of athletic sports. The practice of selling game also was a direct encouragement for persons to keep up preserves. He much doubted the truth of the assertion in the Preamble, that the produce of the land was diminished by the operation of the Game Laws; for though, in some cases, the game had undoubtedly injured farmers' crops, it should be remembered that a large quantity of animal food had been supplied to the country in consequence of the increased preservation of game. The hon. Member who introduced this Bill might, perhaps, be interested to know, that of the rabbits killed in Suffolk about five-sixths were not consumed in the district, but were sent to London, to Sheffield, or to the town which the hon. Gentleman himself represented. If the House should reject the present measure, they might adopt either the Bill of the Government or that which he (Mr. Hardcastle) had had the honour to bring forward; but with regard to the Government Bill he thought a more awkward attempt at legislation was never witnessed. It certainly appeared to him that if the present measure became law it would prove totally inoperative—a result which some hon. Members might, perhaps, think desirable. In reference to the clause of the Bill which provided that landlords should keep down the stock of game on their estates, he would remark that hares and rabbits could not be numbered like a flock of sheep; while the natural result of the provision enabling a tenant to bring an action against his landlord once a year would be the insertion of a clause in every future lease to the effect that if the tenant availed himself of this right he would be liable to pay an enhanced rent. He regretted that the Government had not touched the question with a stronger hand. This was a question that required the most anxious attention of Parliament. The number of convictions for poaching was about 1,200 in the year 1820; it had risen to 5,000 in 1860; and, according to the last Return, it was 10,300. There was feeling abroad that poaching was a crime only as it was

  1397
  made so by the law. It was most important that public opinion—the opinion of the lower classes of the people should be brought en rapport with the law, but so long as the law continued what it was this could not be accomplished. It appeared to him that the only remedy was to make game absolutely the property of the occupier of the land, and to let him deal with a person who took a hare or rabbit precisely as he would with any other thief. The parties liable to this kind of temptation would then be gradually brought to see that it was as dishonest to take one kind of property as it was another. He could hardly hope that any of these Bills could be passed this Session; but he hoped the attention of the Secretary of State for the Home Department would be seriously devoted to this important subject with a view of devising some plan for curing the existing evils. In conclusion he begged to move that that Question be now put.
  Previous Question proposed, "That that Question be now put."—(Mr. Hardcastle.)
  MR. STURTsaid, he found it difficult, if not impossible, to remain silent, after listening to the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Taylor). If this debate were to be continued, he hoped it would be discussed in that spirit which usually animated the deliberations of the House of Commons; but he was bound to express his opinion that the hon. Member for Leicester had trespassed somewhat beyond the boundary of fair political and personal criticism. The hon. Gentleman had introduced extraneous matter into the debate, and made grave charges and imputations against a large and influential portion of the community. The hon. Gentleman had ventured to insinuate that the justices of the peace in various counties and boroughs did not administer justice fairly and impartially to many of their fellow - countrymen who were brought under their jurisdiction. Now, he repelled that insinuation, and defied the hon. Gentleman to corroborate his statements by evidence; and, on the part of the justices of the peace, he would now tell the hon. Gentleman to his face that they regarded these charges and insinuations as a direct insult to their body, and as a cruel libel on their character. He wished to say a few words on the
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  subject under discussion; but he should not have ventured to do so, had he not had a kind of inkling in his mind that, while the House had a holy horror of hearing long and prosy discourses from Members who talked about measures they did not understand, it was always willing to listen to any Member who spoke on a subject with which he was conversant. Having been a game preserver more or less for upwards of twenty years, and having, during all that period, mixed in a friendly and familiar manner, convivially and in other relations, with many tenant-farmers, he felt quite equal to the occasion, ready to grapple with the facts adduced, by the Member for Leicester, to deny his statements, to refute his arguments, to annihilate his doctrines, and, in fine, to shut him up altogether. On what indictments did the game preservers stand arraigned before that House? The first had reference to the injury alleged to have been done to the tenant-farmers by the over-preservation of game, and the consequent ill-feeling which arose between landlord and tenant. The second was based on the great temptation held out to the labouring man to take "what isn't his'n," and the third was founded on the immense amount of food which was devoured by hares, pheasants, and rabbits, instead of going into the stomachs of men, women, and children. Now, this was entirely a question between landlord and tenant, and he should not proclaim his opinion so strongly, if he could not fortify it by conclusive evidence. They lived in a free country, and he was not aware that there was any law to force a man to take a farm unless he liked to do so. What said the great Sir Robert Peel, 25 years ago, on the subject? He only quoted from recollection, but he had a capital memory.—"What objection," said Sir Robert Peel, "can there possibly be to a tenant, before taking a farm, making strict conditions with respect to game? What possible obstruction can stand in the way of any tenant, whether he be a tenant-at-will or under a lease, from making an express stipulation with the landlord that he shall not let the game, but that the tenant shall have the exclusive control over it?" Sir Robert Peel hit the right nail on the head, when he said that the remedy was entirely in the hands of those who made their contracts

  1399
  before taking the farms. The hon. Member's statement about the ill-feeling existing between landlord and tenant showed that he either had no landed property, or, if he had, that he never went shooting on it; for, of all the 365 days in the year, the one to which the tenant-farmer looked forward with most pleasure was that on which his landlord and his friends came to take a day's recreation with him. He was referring to English landlords, and would say nothing of the landlords of Scotland, because he did not understand the language of that country. Then, was not the hon. Member well aware that, whether in the town of Leicester or in an agricultural village, it happened in 99 cases out of every 100, that the poacher was the bad character of the place? Did anyone suppose that the men who went out poaching, and who sometimes, without any provocation, committed murder, would hesitate to steal geese, chickens, turkeys, or even the watch which was now ticking close by the philanthropic heart of the hon. Member for Leicester? Let the House consider the extraordinary argument of the hon. Member who demanded the repeal of the Game Laws, because there were an enormous number of convictions under them. To repeal a statute because it was frequently infringed would be to pursue a policy fraught with danger. Then the hon. Gentleman had spoken of the immense quantities of food which game destroyed, and had made a learned discourse on the digestive capabilities of a wether sheep, after which he gave the House a microscopic insight into the internal arrangements of a buck rabbit. The hon. Gentleman seemed to forget, however, that hares, rabbits, and pheasants were food for the people as well as beef and mutton. He noticed that the hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir Henry Hoare) was in his place. Now, it happened that, in the course of the present year, he (Mr. Sturt) had to employ a considerable number of workmen at his residence in the country. The head man, who said he came from Chelsea, asked him if he and his companions could have some rabbits, and he replied—"Yes; you can have five couple a week, and the Standard newspaper shall be taken in for you also, but upon one condition—namely, that you vote against Sir Henry Hoare at the next election." This was a proof that he
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  always did what he could to promote the interests of the Conservative party. Having said this much against the Bill, he desired to give some friendly advice to his brother preservers of game, for he believed they would take advice from him in a better spirit than they would from the Member for Leicester. Now, he confessed he did not think that everything in regard to the Game Laws was in a satisfactory state. The long list of convictions for poaching made him very uneasy, and was a sort of disgrace to the civilized age in which we lived. He wished, however, to effect a change by social and moral means, and not by Act of Parliament. If the owners of large estates wished to diminish the number of convictions for poaching, they ought to see that every labourer on their property was comfortably housed and had a nice garden and a good allotment. He was not anxious to bring his own individual case before the public; but he might mention that he reared 4,000 pheasants the year before last, and that, during the last 23 years, there had not been on the average more than one case of poaching per annum on his estate. This was because every labourer on the estate voluntarily constituted himself a keeper of the game, as he was treated like a Christian, and, in fact, considered himself as one of the family. He wished every landlord would have all the rabbits on his estate killed, and see that his tenant-farmers were not eaten up with hares. If they took his advice, they would do what was still more important, and refuse to let their places for shooting in order to put a few dirty sovereigns into their pockets. If the landlords built cottages for and made friends of their tenants, and if they declined to make the game the subject of a money transaction, they would be able to withstand for many years the onslaughts of such men as the hon. Member for Leicester, and to keep up a noble sport and amusement, which brought about and cemented those feelings of friendship and cordiality which ought to exist between all classes, and more especially between the owners and the cultivators of the soil.
  MR. M'COMBIEsaid, that being identified with the interests of the tenant-farmers of Scotland, he wished to read certain letters which he had received from tenant-farmers, embodying

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  their views. The letters were from different parts of Scotland, and fairly represented the opinions of the tenant-farmers on that subject. The hon. Member then read the letters referred to. They generally denounced the Lord Advocate's Game Bill as "little less than an insult," as a "sham and a mockery, but not a delusion, for the tenant-farmers from John o'Groat's to Land's End see through it;" while, on the other hand, they as generally concurred in the Bill of the hon. Member for Leicester, as "the only Bill on the subject that is intelligible"—"the only one that will give satisfactory relief." Another said—"that unless such a Bill as Mr. Loch's becomes law, or there was a total abolition, it will be impossible for us to live." The hon. Member said that, so far as he knew the feelings and views of the farmers in the country, and the intelligent classes of towns, nothing would give satisfaction short of a Bill that would take ground game out of the Game Laws, or an entire abolition of these laws. ["Divide, divide!"] He would not trouble the House with any further extracts. He was sent there by the tenant-farmers and feuars of Scotland to speak for them, and he wished to explain what he considered was justice to them. They only wanted justice. They heard nothing there but of justice to Ireland. Well, they had helped the Government to do justice to Ireland, and now they wanted justice for the tenant-farmers of Scotland—justice in taxation, justice in not letting their crops be eaten up by the landlord's game, modification of the malt tax, and the abolition of the Law of Hypothec. ["Question!"] They wanted no more than justice, and they would not be content with less. He feared they could not look to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer for help. They had applied to him for the remission of the duty on shepherds' dogs, it being a small revenue, and its taking off would have been a great boon to the pastoral districts of Scotland; but, "Oh no," he said—"he had made his arrangements and could not alter them." He (Mr. M'Combie) hoped, however, that it was his intention to reconsider his decision on that point. Now, it was proposed to tax the guns the farmers were obliged to keep for the protection of their crops from crows and other ver-
  1402
  min. The right hon. Gentleman said that the tenant-farmers, with due precaution, would be allowed to steep their barley for feeding cattle; but he (Mr. M'Combie) regarded that as no boon at all. He was, he believed, the largest feeder of cattle in Scotland for the London market, and he should never think of steeping his barley for feeding them, and extracting from it its germinating powers. He quite exonerated the Lord Advocate from wishing to hurt tenant-farmers in drawing his Bill; but he thought it would be a pity to waste the valuable time of the House in the consideration of such a measure. The Government should remember what it was that turned some, if not most, elections in Scotland. Was it not the Game Laws? Assuredly, and no one could deny it. To whom did the Gentlemen on the Treasury Benches owe their seats, or, at least, their majority? Why, it was to the tenant-farmers and to the feuars of Scotland, and it was in their interest that he had now addressed the House.
  MAJOR GENERAL FORESTERsaid, he should not have felt it necessary to trouble the House with any remarks were it not for the allusion made by the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Taylor) to an occurrence which had happened on his (General Forester's) brother's estate. The facts were these—his brother, having suffered much annoyance from the mischievous cutting of shrubs and trees on a piece of dressed ground by a number of boys, gave orders to his keeper to look after those boys, with the view of preventing further damage being done. The keeper took his dog with him—which, however, was muzzled—and, finding the boys again trying to destroy his master's trees and shrubs, he rushed towards them. The boys took to flight; and, being unable to overtake them, the keeper very improperly let slip the dog after them. The dog knocked down one of the boys and scratched him on the back. He (General Forester) believed that there was little more damage done to the boy. Lord Forester, on hearing the facts, sent £5 to the boy's mother and discharged the keeper, feeling much annoyed with his conduct in bringing the dog out against the boys. This occurrence happened, not at night, but at broad daylight; and he supposed the keeper found that

  1403
  the boys gave him leg-bail, and that the only chance was to frighten them by letting the dog loose. The affair had been much exaggerated in the local papers. After the admirable speech of the ton. Member for Dorsetshire (Mr. Sturt), he should not think it necessary to contradict or refute any of the statements of the hon. Member for Leicester.
  MR. M'LAGANsaid, he heartily sympathized with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Dorsetshire (Mr. Sturt), at the commencement, and also at the conclusion of his speech. He thought that if all Gentlemen who were game preservers acted up to the advice which the hon. Member gave them, there would be very little heart-burning between landlords and tenants, nor would there be very much discussion with respect to the necessity of repealing the Game Laws. But unfortunately that was not the case. One thing had rejoiced him very much—that was, that the discussion upon the present occasion had not been confined entirely to Scotch Members. Hitherto discussions of this character had been chiefly confined to Scotch Members; probably because the evils of game preserving had reached a much greater height in Scotland than they had in England. But that Bill, applying as it did to England, interested English Members of Parliament, and he was glad that they had had the views of certain of those Members on the subject. He was, farther, glad that the discussion of the question had been taken out of the hands of Scotch Members merely, because it must be acknowledged that in the past discussion of the Game Laws some characteristics of the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum had been manifested by Scotch Members which were not very creditable to them, though they might be very amusing to the House. There could be no possible doubt of the importance of the question, and of the evils which had been caused by the Game Laws, and he would not detain the House by discussing them. He regretted to hear such wholesale denunciation of the Lord Advocate's Bill. If he might be permitted to say so on the present occasion, he should say that it was something more than a mere Bill for the amendment of the Game Laws; he believed that no measure would give more substantial benefit to the tenant-farmers than that measure. That pro-
  1404
  vision alone by which a farmer killing game on land in his occupation could not be taken up for a trespass, but could only be proceeded against by his landlord on a civil action, was an immense boon to tenants. As regarded another Bill before the House—that brought in by his hon. Friend the Member for Wick (Mr. Loch)—it took the power of free contract from both landlord and tenant, because it proposed to enact that any contract which was made between landlord and tenant, which had for its object the preservation of game, should be null and void in the law. Now, he (Mr. M'Lagan) had the strongest objection to a provision of that kind; and even if it were passed, which he did not think it would be, it would be no protection to game as property. He objected to that part of the Bill most strongly, because it would encourage litigation, promote dishonesty, and practically encourage commercial immorality—that was to say, an immorality which would be connected with all bargain-making, and all bargain-keeping. The hon. Member was proceeding amid continued cries of "Divide, Divide!" to address himself to the Bill now before the House—
  When, it being 10 minutes to Six of the Clock—
  Debate adjourned till To-morrow.

  JOINT STOCK COMPANIES ARRANGEMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. HENRY B. SHERIDAN, Bill to facilitate Compromises and Arrangements between Creditors and Shareholders of Joint Stock Companies in Liquidation, ordered to be brought in by Mr. HENRY B. SHERIDAN, Mr. Serjeant SIMON, and Mr. BROGDEN.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 143.]

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUPPLEMENTAL BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN, Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders under "The Local Government Act, 1858," relating to the districts of Blackpool, Bristol, Eton, Heckmondwike, Kidderminster, Lincoln, Nottingham, Plymouth, South Molton, Wallasey, and Ware, and for other purposes relative to certain districts under the said Act, ordered to be brought in by Mr. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN and Mr. Secretary BRUCE.

  TELEGRAPH ACTS EXTENSION BILL.
  On Motion of The Marquess of HARTINGTON, Bill to extend the Telegraph Acts of 1868, 1869, to the Channel Islands, ordered to be brought in by The Marquess of HARTINGTON, Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, and Mr. STANSFELD.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 142.]

  POST OFFICE BILL.
  Bill "for further regulation of Duties of Postage and for other purposes relating to the Post Office," presented, and read the first time. [Bill 144.]
  House adjourned at five minutes before Six o'clock.