Sitting of 28 May 1875

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Report—Corrupt Practices Prevention and Election Petitions Acts [No. 225.]
PUBLIC BILLS—Second Reading—Increase of the Episcopate [110], debate adjourned.
Considered as amended—Public Health (Scotland) Provisional Order Confirmation (No. 3) *[167].
Third Reading—Intestates Widows and Children Act Extension* [132], and passed.
Withdrawn—Experiments on Animals * [163].

POST OFFICE—IRISH MAILS—DELAY AT LIMERICK JUNCTION.

  QUESTION.
  MR. MOOREasked the Postmaster General, Whether he is aware that the mails for Tipperary, Clonmel, and Water-ford, which leave Dublin at 9 a.m., and which include the English mails, are delayed at Limerick Junction for the space of half an hour; whether he will inquire if there is any sufficient reason for such delay; and, whether some such acceleration might not be adopted in favour of these towns, as was recently adopted in the case of Limerick?
  MR. W. H. SMITH: Sir, the Post-master General has placed himself in communication with the railway company with the view of ascertaining whether the delay at Limerick Junction to which the hon. Member refers can be got rid of without inconvenience to the passenger traffic. The Post Office has, I am told, no power to alter the hours without the consent of the Company.

THE TICHBORNE TRIAL.

  QUESTION.
  MR. WHALLEYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to the Petition addressed to Her Majesty and referred to him, as also affidavits and other documents and correspondence relating to the Tichborne Trial which he has considered it expedient should not be printed, Whether he will afford facilities for the inspection of the same by Members of this House who may be desirous of becoming further informed as to such Petition, documents, and correspondence?
  MR. ASSHETON CROSS: Sir, in answer I have only to say that, putting out of the question, of course, the hon.

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  Member himself, who knows all about it, and probably a great deal more, I have not heard even a rumour that there are any Members of this House who are desirous of becoming further informed as to the "Petition, documents, and correspondence" relating to the Tichborne Case, and therefore it is not my intention to swerve from the rule which I have hitherto observed, not to make the smallest difference in this case from any other which comes before me.
  MR. WHALLEYasked for an explanation of the words that he "knew all about it and a great deal more." ["Order, order!"]

PARLIAMENT—ARRANGEMENT OF PUBLIC BUSINESS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. NEWDEGATEasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he will consent to put down amongst the Orders of the Day, that of Ways and Means, so as to enable him (Mr. New-degate) to proceed with his Bill?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, in reply, said, that he saw no present necessity for taking that course; and he was not then prepared to say when it was likely he should do so.
  In reply to Mr. FAWCETT and Mr. WHITWELL,
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, with regard to Orders on the Paper for that evening, that he proposed to postpone the Customs and Inland Revenue Bill, which had to be considered, as amended, till Monday, when it would be proceeded with, together with the Friendly Societies Bill if possible; and to take the Committees on the Savings Banks Bill, National Debt (Sinking Fund) Bill, and Local Authorities Loans Bill on Thursday next, although at present he could not be quite sure whether it would be possible to proceed with them on that day.

SUPPLY.
Order for Committee read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

UNREFORMED BOROUGH CORPORATIONS.—MOTION FOR PAPERS.
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, in rising to call attention to certain unreformed
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Borough Corporations of England, and to move an Address for—
"A List of Municipal Corporations (England and Wales) which are not incorporated under the Act 5 and 6 Will. IV., c. 76, showing with respect to each, in a tabular form, the amount of revenue at the date of the inquiry held in 1835; for Copies of the Petition of the inhabitants of Woodstock to Her Majesty in Council in 1867; of any Correspondence between the chief constable of Oxfordshire and inhabitants of Woodstock relating to charges made in 1874 or 1875 against the landlord of the 'King's Arms' at Woodstock for breaches of the Licensing Act, which charges resulted in the conviction of the said landlord, then and now Mayor of Woodstoock, on January 18,1875, for the said offence; and, of the Petition of the inhabitants of New Romney to Her Majesty in Council in 1869."
said, that it was of course well known to everyone that, before the passing of the Municipal Corporation Act, there existed in England a vast number of close borough Corporations possessed of property, but many were under the impression that all of them were swept away at that time, and that the abuses which existed in connection with them had ceased for ever. That was not the fact. There still existed a great number of such Corporations, with all the anomalies which were presented by any that existed before the days of reform, although they were almost entirely confined to small places, and although also a majority of them did not possess very large funds, and consequently were not worth the inquiry. He knew himself of 96 such corporate boroughs. In Cornwall alone there were 10, which included the fatal names of Grampound, East Looe, West Looe, Lostwithiel, and Marazion. The incomes of most of these boroughs were only a few hundreds, but that of Queenborough in the Isle of Sheppey was £15,000 a-year in 1835. The three worst with which he was acquainted, and which were good representative cases, from the absolute concealment which existed with regard to them of all accounts of monies received or expended—involving thus the possibility of plunder by self-elected persons, were Queenborough and New Romney in Kent, and Woodstock in Oxfordshire. He would state the cases of those three towns, as showing what singular abuses still continued in a portion of our institutions which they had imagined to have been thoroughly reformed. The case of Queenborough was an interesting one. It

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was called Queenborough, because Queen Philippa, passing through it in the time of Edward III., procured its enfranchisement. She visited it once more a little later, and seeing "the Mayor, a thatcher, roofing a house (for in those days there were no loyal addresses), with his breeches rent at the seat," she ordered 10 s. a-year for ever to be paid to the town to find the Mayor in breeches. This payment is still enjoyed by the town. The whole of the borough, about 600 acres, was formerly the property of the Corporation, but owing to their wasteful mismanagement of their oyster fisheries they became bankrupt in 1845, and the property was sold under an Act of Parliament to pay debts which were, for the most part, to the present day unpaid. Large fortunes were shortly after this time realized by one or two members of the lately insolvent Corporation, who, for paltry considerations, and by most shameful jobbery, managed to inclose Queenborough Common. That Corporation, careless about its unsettled liabilities, was avariciously diligent in levying harbour dues: 2s. for lifting an anchor; 2s. for discharging any vessel; 2s. for loading a barge; 6d. was charged on every load of hay or straw entering the town, through which the only main road lay, and 4d. for every wagon carrying produce. Yet there was no gate or turnpike trust, and the cattle depôt which was about to be established close by, in the rich pasture of the Isle of Sheppey, made the continuance of that class of duties a question of great importance to the London cattle dealers. It was calculated that £1 9s. was the fee chargeable on a barge-load of straw discharging at Queen-borough. The town sergeant kept no accounts. When a ship came in, he boarded her and pocketed the 2s. himself. The borough Court also imposed fines and penalties, and altogether it was reckoned that from fines, fees, dues, &c, the Corporation got about £200 a-year. To that sum must be added nearly £200 a-year which the Corporation collected with the county rate by their own officers from the inhabitants; the guardians of Sheppey Union—who stood in whole-some dread of the Local Government Auditor—altogether declining to recognize those peculiar charges, and therefore confining themselves to the collection of the poor's rate alone. Out of the amount thus levied on the inhabitants
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£25 a-year was granted to the Mayor as table-money. The borough charities possessed £1,700 worth of property, of which the interest was paid thus; to every boy in Sheppey Workhouse 6d. a-year; to the widows of freemen 36 s. each. All the officers were self-elected. Land could not be obtained for any public purpose. The jurisdiction was complete over misdemeanours, and no one could be arrested without the counter-signature of the Mayor. A burgess of Queenborough has the serious privilege of—
"Being quit in the whole kingdom of toll, pontage, pannage, murage, kayage, piccage, groundage, lastage, stallage, hidage, rivage, and wreck of the sea."
Which last he brought to the notice of the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll). The freemen of Queenborough possessed inalienable rights of common of fishery in the waters of Queenborough Corporation. That was settled after a famous trial known as "Skey's Case," in the early part of this century. He did not think the ablest lawyer in that House could say with any confidence whether those freemen's rights of fishery still existed, or whether they were done away by the Act of 1845, which authorized the sale of those fisheries. Those fisheries were never really sold; they were offered at auction, but no one would bid. But this was what happened—and he went into these particulars because he thought it was one of the worst cases he ever heard of—five members of the incorporated septemvirate formed themselves into a body of fishery trustees, raised a fresh sum of money on a new set of bonds, under a trust deed which was to have been enrolled in Chancery, but which never has been so enrolled, and then bought back the fisheries which they held in trust for the benefit of Queenborough—for whatever, that was, they might choose to consider "the benefit." They were supposed since to have paid off their second set of bonds, and the oyster fisheries were becoming valuable; but the former creditors had but a poor chance as long as the trust deed was un enrolled, and the accounts were secret. Phineas Webb, the oldest freeman in Queenborough, lately tried to put his rights of common of fishery to the test by going and exercising them. He was fined by the Mayor and Corporation, who refused his request to be sent for trial to Maidstone, and, declining

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to pay the fine, he was sent to Canterbury gaol. Yet Phineas Webb, as he had said, was most probably in the right. He was, nevertheless, prosecuted, tried, and punished, and refused a chance of a fair hearing, for a supposed offence against a firm of fishermen, by the partners in that firm! So much for Queenborough. New Romney was a town in Kent, the capital indeed of Romney Marsh, the latter being the well-known fifth quarter of the globe, according to the inhabitants of Kent, who habitually spoke of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Romney Marsh. New Romney was one of the Cinque Ports; indeed, from some points of view, it might be called the capital of the Cinque Ports. It was governed under a charter, which was similar to the charter of the neighbouring town of Winchelsea. The port had been destroyed by the great storm of 1287, and it now stood two miles from the sea; but, although it had become a crazy village, it had kept the organization of a flourishing mediæval town. Untouched by municipal reform, it was governed by a self-elected Corporation, dealing with large town properties and with very considerable funds, the proceeds of them; and letting, as he would show, the Corporation lands solely to members of the Corporation. The proceedings of this Corporation were brought before the Home Secretary by a memorial of the inhabitants on one occasion. The facts stated in that memorial were extraordinarily strange. Those facts had never been denied. The memorial prayed for the creation of an ordinary Corporation, and Major Donnelly was sent down to see whether the population was sufficient, which he found was not the case, although the ordinary limit was very nearly reached. If instead of praying for the creation of a new Corporation, the inhabitants had prayed only for an inquiry into the legality of the existence of the Corporation, and the manner in which it had exercised its powers, he did not see how that inquiry could have been refused. On Ladyday of every year, the election of the Corporation by the commonalty took place, and he would describe the election without a particle of exaggeration. On the eve of the day, at 10 o'clock at night, horns were blown through the town, and proclamation was made in these term—
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"Every man of twelve years or more, go to the church; there our commonalty hath need. Haste, haste!"
In the morning the horns were again blown by the sergeants of the Corporation, and the same form was repeated. A procession then took place to the church—the sergeants carrying the two silver maces of the Corporation; the mayor carrying his staff of office; two jurats carrying keys, the keys of the town chest: and the remainder of the jurats and the freemen. They entered the church, and, by their reading of the law the "commonalty" being only the freemen, and the Corporation being entitled to refuse the freemanship to any except their own nominees, they proceeded to lock the doors of the church in the face of the assembled population, and "publicly and openly the election of the Corporation for the year is then made" by a number of gentlemen which generally was six, but which counting non-residents who ought not to be counted—could not exceed eight, sitting round an old tomb! A Mr. Stubbins, who lived two hundred years ago, and who lent an air of respectability to his name by writing it as Stuppenye, had left that tomb to the Corporation to serve as a table at their annual meeting. The Mayor took his seat at the head of the tomb; he then addressed the commonalty, who that year consisted of one person, in a speech in which he desired them—that was, him—to proceed to a new election. The town clerk then rose in his place, and read a tremendous document directed against corruption. Now, the ancient documents under which the election was conducted, or should be conducted, continued their description of the forms to be observed as followed—but here he must notice a divergency between the practice and the principle:—" The commonalty desire the mayor to withdraw, and name three other respectable men to be in election with him," &c.; but the documents he quoted assumed two things—they assumed that the person to be chosen Mayor was a resident, and they assumed that there were 12 jurats; or, as they expressed it, a jury of justices. Now, last year, they had a non-resident Mayor, which he believed to be illegal, and instead of twelve jurats they had only four; whilst, so nearly did the election of those four exhaust their whole numbers, that there was only one gentleman

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left to represent the commonalty of the town. Now, Mr. Jeakes, the learned historian of the Cinque Ports, said that it was incumbent that there should be 12 jurats; and he also said that the non-resident freemen were prevented from voting, and the records of the Cinque Ports themselves declared—
"If a man be made free, he must within a year after have lands, goods, or chattels of the value of 40 s., or else his franchise is forfeited, and the jurats may not grant the freedom to anyone that is not resident within the franchise."
Now, no doubt, the late Mayor was resident when he was made a freeman; but it appeared as contrary to the spirit of the law that he should continue to be Mayor when not resident, as it was contrary to the words of Mr. Jeakes. But, at all events, if it should be shown that no illegality strictly speaking and technically existed on that point, he maintained that there was an illegality on a most serious point, inasmuch as it was declared in Stephen's Commentaries that a Corporation was dissolved "by the loss of such au integral part or portion of its members as the charter requires for corporate election." If that was good law—and he believed it was so—he maintained that the Corporation of New Romney, at the present moment, was non-existent, and that certain unauthorized persons were illegally holding its valuable lands, and that was the ground upon which he mainly rested the case for an inquiry. In the Petition which had been presented to the late Home Secretary, it was stated that there were 570 acres of valuable Corporation land, of which the whole was rented from the Corporation by members of the Corporation, no balance-sheet being shown. The Mayor, Mr. Walker, held 318 acres of it. The Mayor's brother held 44 acres. Mr. Cobb, one of the jurats, held 26 acres. His son, Mr. Cobb, held 49 acres. Mr. Coates, a member of the Corporation, held 95 acres. Mr. Humphery, the Chamberlain of the Corporation—who was now the only representative of the commonalty of New Romney—that was the only freeman who attended and who was not a jurat, and who, he presumed, was "commonalty" chiefly because his name did not happen to be either Walker, Cobb, or Coates—held 23 acres; the remainder being held by the family of the town
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clerk. He believed that the same thing was true now—namely, that the whole of the land was let to members of the Corporation, no balance-sheet of any kind ever being shown. Now, he found by the records of Cinque Ports that—
"It was ordered at the Court of Brotherhood and Guestling held July 22nd, 1634, and by that assembly fully decreed, that the lands of the Corporation of New Romney shall be let to any of the inhabitants of that town who shall give the most for them, namely, to the best advantage. They may be let for the term of seven years only if he shall so long live in the said town. If any shall assign the term of seven years, only if he shall live in the said town, not to anybody but an inhabitant of Romney as aforesaid, and the said town of Romney are enjoined forthwith to establish a decree and duly observe the same decree in every respect, upon pain of £500 to be levied more solito."
He claimed that the Corporation, therefore, had subjected themselves to that fine of £500 by the manner in which they had let their lands. The question which had been raised by all these proceedings was not so small a one as might at first sight appear. On the one hand, the revenues of the town of New Romney from their lands were so considerable, or ought to be, as to make the town the richest publicly of any with which he was acquainted. Again, the powers of the jurats, at that moment four in number instead of 12, were very considerable indeed, but the whole existence of the Corporation being probably illegal, it was doubtful whether a rich man could be punished for any ordinary offence that he might commit within New Romney. A poor man would of course be punished, because he could not afford to appeal and contest the jurisdiction of the jurats. The property of the town was estimated at £1,200 a-year for a population of 1,000. That property was at the present moment considerably under-let, but he named a figure which had been actually offered for it four years ago by a substantial local man, whose offer was renewed by two others in a subsequent year. The whole of the property being let as he had stated by the Cobbs and the Walkers; who were members of the Corporation, to the Walkers and the Cobbs, they showed no balance sheet. He did not accuse them of dishonesty, and although the lands were much under-let, such as the revenues were it might turn out on inquiry that they spent them for the public good. But no one could know that that

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was the case. Their public did not believe it. They had not him, but their public to convince, and it showed the most singular stupidity on their part to imagine that they could escape grave local suspicion so long as they refused to show a balance sheet. He was bound to say that they were not much afraid of public opinion. The local papers in their part of Kent called them week by week, "a rotten relic of antiquity," "a reproach to civilization," and "a libel on the age." He did not wish to use strong language, but if they were to be left alone without inquiry, he should propose, at all events, that the hon. Baronet the Member for Maidstone (Sir John Lubbock) should next year include them in the Schedule of his Ancient Monuments Bill. In 1871 the New Romney Corporation brought an action for libel against a local paper which had spoken of them in these terms, and on this action they, of course, spent without let or hindrance the money of the town. Mr. Justice Hannen, in his charge to the Grand Jury, said—
"It was the first instance in his experience in which a libel on a Corporation had been made the subject of an investigation of this kind. The Corporation of New Romney, however, seemed to be extremely sensitive … No doubt it was strong language to say that the money of the Corporation was parcelled out among the members and their friends."
The Grand Jury threw out the Bill, and the Corporation did not clear their corporate character. It was set forth in the great Municipal Corporation Report that New Romney "absolutely refused all information to Your Majesty's Commissioners." "John Walker, Esq.," Mayor, in the chair, the "mayor, jurats, and commonalty" of New Romney, on 8th February, 1834, passed a resolution declaring the Municipal Corporation Commission wholly illegal!—and the sky did not fall. Talk of "before 1832!" Why, before 1832 New Romney was an open Corporation compared with New Romney now. The total number of its freemen at the time of the Reform Bill was 21, so that if they had elected a Mayor and 12 jurats they would have had the respectable number of eight freemen over to represent the commonalty. The total number of freemen now, including the Mayor and four jurats, was eight, of whom three, at least, were nonresident, and legally disqualified from voting, though they did vote. Those
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five freemen, or eight freemen, or whatever it might be, had not only, properly speaking, to elect a Mayor and 12 jurats from among themselves, but also 26 councillors. He came next to another, and perhaps to a still more serious side of the affair. If those gentlemen were responsible to no one but themselves, as they claimed, and if they were never to show a balance sheet, what was to prevent any successors of theirs who might be dishonest, and who at the present rate of decrease would in about 10 years' time be only four in number, from selling the whole property of the town and dividing the proceeds amongst themselves? It was an undoubted fact that parcels of land—including, for instance, the old bed of the river—had been sold by the Corporation without the previous knowledge of the inhabitants, and without any proof or even pretence that the proceeds had been reinvested in land. One piece of Corporation land had been sold quite lately. He did not wish to charge the members of the Corporation with individual dishonesty; but he thought that as honest men, they ought to wish to be placed above suspicion. Now, the question which their public asked itself was, what did they do with the money? The property was grossly underlet, but even grossly underlet as it was it produced £800 a-year—that was £7 or £8 a-head to each ratepayer. When Major Donnelly went down, Mr. Stringer, the town clerk, was asked a few questions outside the strict scope of the inquiry. He was asked, What was done with the money? He said that £30 was paid as salary to the Mayor, £25 a-year to the schools, £60 for gas, £20 salary for the chamber-lain who was a member of the Corporation; and in all he accounted for less than £200 a-year. Mr. Buss, the village Hampden, very naturally asked—"What do you do with the rest?" "I shan't tell you," was the answer by Mr. Stringer, and Major Donnelly had no power to ask more. It was not only ordered in former days that the Corporation should let their lands to those of the inhabitants who would give the most; but it was further ordered that the lands should be let at a public meeting; but the amazing contention of the six or eight graziers who at present constituted the Corporation, was not only that they and they alone were the inhabitants, but

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that they, assembled in the church around the tomb with the church doors locked, were a public meeting. As for their claims that they—half of them not living in New Romney, at all—and they only were the inhabitants, it would appear that though you might have been born in New Romney, and have lived in New Romney all your life, and your fathers before you, nevertheless you might not be an "inhabitant." A case had been submitted to the late Attorney General (Sir John Coleridge) upon that point, and he had held that the word "commonalty" meant more than the freemen, and did include other inhabitants, but he had not gone on to decide what was an inhabitant. The charter of Queen Elizabeth, which was the charter under which the present proceedings of the Corporation were conducted, used the phrase "for the benefit of the freemen and commons for ever," from which it would appear that the freemen and commons were distinct. As to what he said just now about the residence of some of those "inhabitants;" Mr. W. D. Walker, the last year's Mayor was not only non-resident, which he believed to be illegal, but he also held the office of bailiff of Romney Marsh, and the effect of that combination of offices was that he had to audit his own accounts as manager of the Southland Charity, and to supervise himself. He thought that the attention of the Charity Commissioners and of the Endowed Schools Commissioners, for it concerned both, ought to be called to the Southland Charity, which had a large income entirely independent of that of the Corporation. The governor of the charity enjoyed a house and salary under the founder's will. By the founder's will he must be a "scholar" of Oxford or Cambridge, and he must teach two boys English. Now, he was informed that the present governor was, when chosen, not a graduate of either Oxford or Cambridge, and that instead of instructing the boys himself, he paid two-pence a-week for them at the national school. If so, he followed, he believed, the example of his predecessor, for he had taken the trouble to go to the office of the Charity Commissioners and to examine the return made by his predecessor to the first great inquiry into charities. He found that he reported, with great modesty, that the boys were
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taught elsewhere, where they would probably be better taught than by himself. To return to the Corporation, he thought that inquiry was necessary, not only in the public interest—not only in the interest of the inhabitants of New Romney—but also in the interest of the members of the Corporation themselves. The gravest possible charges were made against them in the town they governed. Scurrilous bills were circulated from hand to hand. There was one which was to be found in every house in Romney Marsh, which was Bumpkin's Kattechism. In it Mr. Walker, the Mayor, was elegantly alluded to as "Hookey," and in "Billy" they recognized Mr. Stringer, the town clerk, inasmuch as Mr. Stringer's celebrated answer before Major Donnelly appears in Billy's mouth—
"Q 'What are the benefits of members?'—A. 'Shan't tell you,' says Billy."
Another question ran as followed:—
"Q. 'What is considered indispensible for admission to the Copperation? '—A. 'Relationship; a complete surrender of private judgment, and a promise to obey implicitly Hookey and Brother Bill.' "
The doctrine of trusteeship as understood in New Romney was thus indicated in Bumpkin's Kattechism:—
"Q. 'For what was the Copperation instituted?'—A. 'For the benefit of Hookey and his friends.' "
But seriously! Other Cinque Ports had been in nearly as corrupt a condition as New Romney, and had been thrown open. Hastings was thrown open before the Reform Bill. Winchelsea had been thrown open to all payers of scot and lot. New Romney was the worst of all. The total number of its freemen at the time of the passing of the Reform Act was 21. The total number at the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act was 18. The total number now was eight! New Romney was the only town in the whole world in which six people locked up in a church formed a public meeting of the inhabitants; it was the only town in England in which six gentlemen elected themselves to every office, appointed themselves magistrates, let the whole of the valuable town properties exclusively to themselves, audited their own accounts, and never showed a balance sheet. It was into that monstrously corrupt Corporation that he prayed that

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inquiry might be made. He came next to the case of "Woodstock. The Corporation of Woodstock consisted of five aldermen who took turns to be Mayor, and of 16 common councilmen, who were self-elected and held office for life. The councilmen chose the aldermen, who acted ex officio as borough magistrates. The Corporation possessed property which the inhabitants who were in correspondence with him stated to be worth between £300 and £400 a-year. The Mayor, when examined before Major Donnelly, who was also sent to Wood-stock, admitted that the account given by the Corporation of their property in answer to the Petition was incorrect. They showed no accounts or balance-sheet, and they denied the right of the inhabitants to inquire into what became of it. They paid £45 a-year for the lighting of the streets; but, as he was informed, devoted no other sum whatever towards the benefit of the town, although the charter stated that the funds were given them to repair the roadways and the bridges of the borough, neither of which was done by them. They administered several charities, and the property of the grammar school, and they elected the master. In the case of the grammar school, they had lately over-ridden the unanimous resolution of a meeting of the townspeople which they themselves had called together to consider the question. They had also appointed a committee of townspeople to assist them in managing the grammar schools, but they ended by never calling the committee together. The late Endowed Schools Commission had prepared a scheme widening the trust; but the Corporation, by refusing to agree to it, managed to delay it until the change in the Commission last year, and the scheme appeared to have been dropped. They had appointed a clerical master taking clerical duties, contrary to the express wish of the unanimous town's meeting summoned by themselves, of which he had already spoken. Here was a small extract from the examination of the Mayor before Major Donnelly—
The Mayor:—" There was not a single Dissenter in the Corporation; there never had been. There were two brothers and two sets of brothers-in-law on the Council. The glove trade was not represented at all; it was the only manufacture in the town, and the amount paid in wages was vastly more than in any other trade."
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The Counsel for the Petitioners:—" And yet it is stated in the Corporation Petition that the election of a glover would introduce dissension and discord into the body corporate."
The Mayor:—" I thought that the introduction of municipal elections in a small town like Woodstock would create ill-feeling and prove injurious."
He did not mention the fact that political elections in a small town like Woodstock—where they did occur—might create ill-feeling or prove injurious. Here was a bit from the examination of the town clerk—
"Some years ago there were 80 freemen; but they have now dwindled down to 21. Only 3 have taken up their freedom since 1832. When the freemen become extinct there will be no one left to elect a mayor."
The town clerk admitted that their proceedings on the only occasion on which they had ever opposed the Duke of Marlborough had at once had their legality questioned by mandamus. The Corporation were beaten and the costs came out of the corporate funds. He also admitted that there were three Dissenting chapels in the town, and that many of the leading tradesmen and glove manufacturers were Dissenters; but that they were absolutely excluded in practice from the Corporation. He also admitted that the water company of the town of Woodstock was the Duke of Marlborough, who supplied it from his reservoir and had the ordinary power to take up streets and lay down pipes. The Petition was signed by a clear majority of the inhabitant householders, by all the glove manufacturers, and by all the shopkeepers not themselves members of the Corporation. One of the leading aldermen of the town last year was a publican, and his public-house, kept by an ex officio magistrate, was used by other ex officio magistrates or aldermen until remarkable hours of the night. Although two other publicans of Wood-stock had been summoned or fined for less than an hour's evasion of the law, and although the King's Arms—which was the house of which he spoke as having been kept by the ex officio magistrate—had been several times reported by the police—the alderman told the police—"Don't you know I am one of the chief magistrates of the town?" Inspector Bowen of the police, stated in Court that he had more trouble with the King's Arms than with any other house in the town. In the present

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year, the landlord of the King's Arms was himself Mayor. Not only was the King's Arms' landlord Mayor, but the King's Arms itself belonged to the Corporation. The house was assessed at £35 a-year, but it was let at £1 13 s. a-year, or, making allowance for the fine, it was so let as to produce rather less than £5 a-year. On the 7th of December a great number of people were in the King's Arms late at night-time for drinking purposes, and with closed doors. The police broke in, and the superintendent applied for a summons. The summons was not granted. A number of inhabitants then wrote to the chief constable for the county, and on the 11th of January 10 persons were summoned for drinking at the Mayor's house after hours. Eight were convicted. The Mayor made a long statement in Court on the occasion. The chief constable was again written to, and he having interfered, on the 18th of January the Mayor himself was summoned. The case was fully proved against him; he was convicted, and fined. The Mayor then said in Court—"I have always had a great respect for the police, but I never shall again." As this case was an undoubted fact, he hoped no one would accuse him of having found a mayor's nest. They had then in the case of Woodstock, as they had in the case of New Romney, a large property—although less large—withheld from public purposes and spent, nobody knew how, without the production of accounts or balance-sheet, by a self-elected body. They had also, as a special ground for inquiry in the case of Woodstock, a wilful breach of a well-known statute by the Mayor himself, without the possibility of his being deposed from his official rank as an alderman and a magistrate by the inhabitants of the town, inasmuch as they had taken no part in his election. In the case of New Romney, he had been offered a Petition from a majority of the inhabitants praying for inquiry, and he had no doubt from what he had learned locally, that at least as many of the inhabitants would sign a Petition now as had signed one in 1867; but as he found that one official had been dismissed, and that several persons had been deprived of charitable aid because they had signed that Petition, he had not thought it desirable to provide himself with one on that occasion. In the case of Woodstock,
1024
he was acting at the desire of a large number of the inhabitants of that town. The majority of the inhabitants signed the Petition in 1866. For Liberals it would be a sufficient reason for inquiry into those cases—to use the words which had been frequently heard in Parliament—" When corporate bodies do not apply land under their control to proper uses, it should be taken pos-session of by the State." He was, however, aware that that was not an altogether accepted doctrine of the Conservative Party, and therefore he would give more special grounds for inquiry into those cases. It was, he thought, a grievance demanding redress that self-elected bodies should possess ex officio jurisdiction of any kind over other persons, as they did in both those cases. There was also a special reason for inquiry into the mismanagement alleged by the inhabitants of the Southland Charity, in New Romney, and of the grammar school and several charities at Woodstock. There was also at New Romney, and he believed at Woodstock, a taxation grievance. Mr. Tunbridge, of New Romney—a member of the assessment committee of the Board of Guardians, and himself a man assessed at nearly £600 a-year, the leading inhabitant not a member of the Corporation, and bitterly opposed to its existence—had stated, and he believed it could not be denied, that not having been offered to competition, the Corporation lands were not only ridiculously under-rented, but also ridiculously under-rated, and that in consequence every person else who had to pay rates in the district was over taxed. The hon. Baronet concluded by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.
Amendment proposed,
To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "an humble Address he presented to Her Majesty, that She will he graciously pleased to give directions that there he laid before this House, a List of Municipal Corporations (England and Wales) which are not incorporated under the Act 5 and 6 Will. 4, c. 76, showing with respect to each, in a tabular form, the amount of the revenue at the date of inquiry held in 1835:
"Copies of the Petition of the inhabitants of Woodstock to Her Majesty in Council in 1867:
"Of any Correspondence between the chief constable of Oxfordshire and inhabitants of Woodstock relating to charges made in 1874 or 1875 against the landlord of the 'King's Arms'

1025
at Woodstock for breaches of the Licensing Act, which charges resulted in the conviction of the said landlord, then and now Mayor of Wood-stock, on January 18,1875, for the said offence:
"And, of the Petition of the inhabitants of New Romney to Her Majesty in Council in 1869,"—(Sir Charles W. Dilke,)
—instead thereof.
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILLsaid, it was with considerable amusement, although at the same time with great relief, that he had listened to the speech of the hon. Baronet. His manner had been so mysterious and alarming that he had led the House to suppose that he had some terrible tale of vice, immorality, and crime to divulge against the Corporation of Woodstock and the other unhappy boroughs against whom the Motion was directed. Now, however, that the thunderstorm which had been gathering over their heads had burst, it had not done very much damage. The affairs of most of the Corporations the hon. Baronet had alluded to were of very little moment to him (Lord Randolph Churchill), and, as he should not follow the example of the hon. Baronet in meddling with matters which did not concern him, he should confine his remarks to the borough of Woodstock. The only general remark he would make in connection with the subject was, that if the information given by the hon. Baronet with reference to the other Corporations was not more correct than that he had afforded with reference to Wood-stock, the House would act very wisely in not paying too much attention to it. He would explain to the House the real facts with respect to the case of the Mayor. A meeting of the Foresters' Friendly Society was held at the King's Arms, at which it appeared that the business to be transacted was of such an unusually heavy and complicated nature that the hours during which the public-house might remain open were not sufficient for its completion. The police of Woodstock—a highly-intelligent and active body of men—reported the case to the magistrates' clerk, who was himself a member of the Corporation, and a summons would have been immediately taken out by the Chief Constable of the county had it not been for the occurrence
1026
of the terrible Shipton accident, which had occupied his time for fully a month. As soon as that was arranged, the Foresters and the Mayor were both summoned, the former having to pay 2s. 6d. each and the latter £1 and costs. The hon. Baronet had alluded to some expressions of dissatisfaction which he alleged the Mayor had made use of on the occasion. What he had really said, however, was—" I have always thought very highly of the police of Woodstock; but from this time forward I shall think more highly of them than ever." He could easily understand that in the heat of the moment—for, of course, the summoning of a Mayor was not an everyday occurrence—the Mayor might have been misunderstood, or misreported, or, indeed, he might not have said what he intended to say. On the whole, the affair was creditable to Woodstock, and to the Corporation. In that respect, indeed, he might paraphrase the expression of Henry IV. on the occasion of the affair between the Prince of Wales and the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, and say—" Happy is the town which has such a corporation, and happy is the corporation that has such a mayor." He should certainly oppose the Motion of the hon. Baronet, and he hoped he might be able to persuade the House and the Government to take a similar course. The hon. Baronet was a terrible customer for Returns; but he had noticed this peculiarity about them—that they were really not very interesting to anybody except to the hon. Baronet himself fie recollected that when the Vote for Printing and Stationary was discussed in that House, great complaint was made by many hon. Members that that Vote was annually increasing, and there was a general agreement that useless and unnecessary Returns should not be granted. He could not help thinking that the present was a very proper moment for the House to commence a course of economy. He had another objection to the Return, and it was, that he had often noticed that when hon. Members below the Gangway opposite made Motions for Returns to inquire into property, they were in the habit of following that up with Motions for acquiring the property itself. Now, this Woodstock property was in no sense public property. The value amounted to £300 a-year, of which about one-third

1027
was held in charitable trusts that were managed by the Corporation under the control of the Charity Commissioners of England and Wales, and the accounts were published every year. He might here explain that a clergyman had been appointed master of the grammar school, in order that he might perform service in the Woodstock Union on Sunday afternoons. That part of the property which was not held on charitable trusts had been acquired partly by charter, partly by devise, and partly by prudent purchase. The income of that portion of the property was expended in public works in Woodstock, in lighting and paving the town, and in keeping the pavements and the roads in repair, except those roads which were under the control of the highway surveyor, and only £20 was absorbed by salaries. Moreover, the Corporation gave liberal subscriptions to the national schools, the county infirmary, and other local charities. The hon. Baronet had complained of the Corporation being a self-elected body. If by that, he meant that there was any exclusiveness about it, he was greatly mistaken, for he could tell him that with the exception of the persons from whom he supposed the hon. Baronet obtained his information, there were few of the eligible inhabitants of the town who had not been either elected or had had an offer of election on the Corporation. Did the hon. Baronet mean it was close politically? If so, he was mistaken. He (Lord Randolph Churchill) did not know of any Dissenters being on the Corporation; but he could tell the hon. Baronet that there were three men belonging to that body who entertained Liberal opinions—the town clerk, the coroner, and a Scotchman, who, he need hardly say, held the most advanced opinions. It had always been a commendable custom with the Corporation for ages past to recruit its members from the most wealthy and respectable portion of the inhabitants, and as in boroughs other than Woodstock, wealth and respectability were often found coincident with Conservative opinions, it was not surprising that the Conservative members of the Corporation should form the majority. Did the hon. Baronet mean that the Corporation was close, in the sense that it was not elected by the ratepayers? On that point he submitted that it could not be better constituted if it were
1028
elected by the ratepayers; and its property could not be better managed; and if the House made this alteration they would have to annihilate Royal Charters and abolish ancient privileges without any good reason being shown for such high-handed proceedings. The hon. Baronet was greatly mistaken if he thought that he was doing the slightest service to the inhabitants of Woodstock by bringing this matter before the House; and if it had been shown that his statements with respect to Woodstock were erroneous, the House would easily infer what weight was to be attached to them with regard to the other places to which reference had been made. The inhabitants of Woodstock were an excessively independent body of men, and if they were dissatisfied with their Corporation, they would take the earliest opportunity of disembarrassing themselves of that body. But he could assure the hon. Baronet and the House that the inhabitants of Woodstock prized and valued their corporate and municipal privileges as highly as they did their political ones. The tenure of property by the Corporation was viewed without jealousy, and the administration of it without suspicion. The Corporation since the date of their Charter, granted by Henry VI., and confirmed by subsequent Monarchs, had discharged their civil and magisterial functions with dignity and with impartiality, and they had enjoyed, and still continued to enjoy, the esteem of all, and the affection of many of the inhabitants. Those, he humbly submitted, were not the kind of people whom that House would wish to annoy by a useless, inquisitive, prying, and needless investigation. The matter was not worthy of the attention of the House, and hardly worthy even of the attention of the hon. Baronet. The hon. Baronet's constituents had a right to expect better things from him than the cruel vivisection of an unfortunate Mayor and persecution of a few poor Aldermen. In conclusion, he wondered that his hon. Friend did not desist from these trifling little attacks, these petty onslaughts on Corporations and institutions which were as harmless as they were ancient, as unobtrusive as they were respectable, and respected. He wondered that his hon. Friend did not devote his great and acknowledged talent to the attainment

1029
of some higher object, and to the pursuit of some worthier game.
THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, that after the two amusing speeches which the House had just heard, what he had to say would seem very dull indeed. He could not attempt to answer what the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had said with regard to the particular cases he had referred to, as he (the Attorney General) had no other information on subject than what the hon. Baronet had just stated. No doubt, the question as to how the various unreformed corporations should be dealt with was a matter worthy of consideration; and as far as regarded that portion of the hon. Baronet's Motion which asked for a list of those corporations which were not incorporated under the Act of William IV., and the amount of their revenues, there could be no objection to it. The hon. Baronet had illustrated the general observations he had made by referring to the cases of Queenborough, New Romney, and Woodstock, and he (the Attorney General) must confess that, until he heard the speech of his noble Friend behind him (Lord Randolph Churchill), he thought that the attacks of the hon. Baronet upon these Corporations could not be answered without further inquiry. He was sorry, however, that the hon. Baronet, after giving the House the benefit of his antiquarian researches, had thought it right to make charges of this kind at a time when it was extremely possible that the persons concerned or interested in them were not in a position to answer them.
SIR CHARLES W. DILKEexplained that he had informed the noble Lord of the character of the statements he intended to make as to Woodstock.
THE ATTORNEY GENERALremarked that that no doubt was the case as regarded Woodstock, for the noble Lord was evidently well prepared to defend that Corporation, and had most efficiently done so; and if those interested in the other boroughs mentioned had been equally forewarned, they would probably have been able to make as good an answer as that of the noble Lord. Possibly the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who had been referred to by the hon. Baronet, would have been able to say something with reference to Queen-borough or New Romney, though he
1030
Attorney General was not aware that those Corporations were within the right hon. Gentleman's constituency.
MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSENsaid, he had nothing whatever to do with either Corporation.
SIR CHARLES W. DILKEstated that he had informed the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kent of the nature of the statements he intended to make as to those boroughs; but the right hon. Gentleman was not disposed to enter into the matter.
THE ATTORNEY GENERALreplied that his general argument was not affected by these particular circumstances, and went on to say that he was unable to imagine for what purpose the speech of the hon. Baronet, amusing as it was, had been made, because it hardly agreed with the terms of his Notice of Motion. There would be no objection to the furnishing of copies of the Petition of the inhabitants of Woodstock to Her Majesty in Council in 1867, and of that of the inhabitants of New Romney in 1869, but he must object to the remaining portion of the hon. Baronet's Motion. The hon. Baronet asked for a copy of the Correspondence between the Chief Constable of Oxfordshire and the inhabitants of Woodstock relating to charges made in 1874 and 1875 against the landlord of the King's Arms at Woodstock for breaches of the Licensing Act. His right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was not in a position to produce that Correspondence. If the noble Lord would withdraw the objection he had taken to the Motion, so far as it concerned Wood-stock, the Government would assent to the production of the Papers asked for by the hon. Baronet, with the exception of the Correspondence to which he had just referred.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he felt sure the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea would accept the offer of the hon. and learned Attorney General to grant the substantial part of the Motion; and he (Sir William Harourt) hoped that if the allegations made against these Corporations were well founded, they would have the assistance of the Attorney General in taking further action, for the hon. and learned Gentleman ought to be specially interested in matters of this kind. He therefore trusted that the hon. Baronet would be satisfied. By doing so he

1031
would by no means lessen the force of his argument, which went to show that there were in existence certain close Corporations, consisting of self-elected members, who held large public funds of which, as trustees for the public, they ought to render a public account. The hon. Baronet had made an extremely interesting and amusing speech, which had called forth an entertaining reply of equal ability, for the noble Lord opposite (Lord Randolph Churchill) had made a gallant defence of the borough he represented. It was impossible that the defence could have been better, and it filled one with all the astonishment and admiration which had been excited by the French cook who made 24 excellent dishes out of an old boot. The skill of the dressing concealed the miserable quality of the materials with which the artist had to deal. The great beauty of the speech was that the noble Lord, having admitted all the most damaging facts against himself, persuaded the House that they were of no importance whatever. No doubt, the noble Lord would be glad that these Returns should make known to all the world the merits of that admirable Corporation in which he himself had so much confidence, and which redounded so much to their credit.
SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, he would not press for the Correspondence which the Attorney General objected to give.
MR. ASSHETON CROSSsuggested that it would be more convenient if the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea would withdraw his Motion altogether, when it could be renewed in the form of a Motion for an unopposed Return.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

THE PROPERTY OF THE LATE CHURCH OF IRELAND.

  ADDRESS FOR A ROYAL COMMISSION.
  MR. EDWARD JENKINS, in rising to move—
  "That an humble Address he presented to Her Majesty, for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the circumstances of the distribution and application of the property of the late Church of Ireland, particularly as regarded commutations and compositions, whether under proceedings of the Church Temporalities Commissioners, or of the representative body of the Irish Church."
  1032
  said, he did so, because he maintained that it was contrary to the intention of the people of the United Kingdom in passing the Irish Church Act, that the Disendowed and Disestablished Church of Ireland should be practically re-endowed. It had been stated by a great authority in that House that out of the £16,000,000 of which the late Church of Ireland was possessed, £8,500,000 would be sufficient to cover all the liabilities arising under the Act; whereas, in fact, those who had to administer the funds had already expended £11,500,000 of the property, and it was said that £2,000,000 more would be required before the whole of the liabilities were cleared off. It was time to draw attention to the subject, when monies placed in the hands of a Christian Church, as a solemn trust to be used for the purposes of the Christian religion, were put into the pockets of the clergy, many of whom left their duties and carried the money to other Churches and other lands. He felt obliged to bring forward this matter both as a Christian and as a Liberal who had approved of the disestablishment of the Irish Church as a measure based upon justice and equality. There were three grounds upon which he based his claim for this inquiry. His first ground was, that by the Preamble of the Act, it was declared that the surplus property of the Irish Church was to be appropriated in such manner as Parliament should thereafter direct. It was therefore perfectly plain that the disendowment of the Irish Church was to be carried out on principles of equality as between the several religious denominations in Ireland. Now, how had that great, that paramount, object been accomplished? Let him call the attention of the House to a few facts. The accounts of the Commissioners recently presented to Parliament showed that, out of £16,740,000 of property received by them, they had paid the Presbyterian Churches about £750,000; to the Roman Catholic Church, for Maynooth, £372,300; to the Episcopal Church-first, in lieu of private endowments—and they knew how excessive that estimate was—£500,000; second, in commutations, annuities and gratuities, &c, £8,310,000; making a total of £8,810,000 paid to the Episcopal Church. Out of that, it appeared, by the last Report of the Representative body, that the Church

  1033
  had already managed to secure in composition balances £1,137,234; constituting a permanent endowment, which would be largely increased, and that £2,028,630 had been handed over, in compositions and advances, to the clergy, without any reservation of their services, or regard for their parishioners. In addition to that, the Church received the fabrics of the churches and the ground free, and the glebes and glebe lands at something over half their value. He might explain that this last estimate he based on a passage in the last Report of the Irish Representative Church Body, from which it appeared that they had sold glebes for £16,630 1s. 3d, for which they paid the Commissioners only £7,524 11 s. 9d.; leaving, after deducting £688 10 s. for expenses, £8,416 19 s. 6d. Thus, it would appear that the result of that Act of Disendowment had been to re-endow the Church of the minority with a sum of money in cash probably exceeding £2,000,000, with edifices in a state of repair, with glebes and glebe-lands at half their value, and that the principles of religious equality emblazoned on the forefront of the Act turned out, in effect, to have been a delusion. That consummation raised several very serious questions. Was that the intention of Parliament? Was that the intention of the people of Great Britain? Was it due to deficiencies of legislation, or to faults of administration? And lastly, and most important in all its aspects, was the question, Would the majority of the Irish people be content to accept this as a final settlement? Such a result was inconsistent with the principles of the Act, and it threw considerable responsibility upon Parliament. As to the financial administration of the Act, it appeared that it unfortunately compromised seriously the official character of the Commissioners. First of all, he would direct attention to their method of business. Hon. Members had probably read the two Reports which had recently been presented to Parliament, and which disclosed such a state of things between the Commissioners and the Controller and Auditor General as was a disgrace to the public service. It would naturally be supposed that if the Controller and Auditor General asked for a Report, it would be given to him, and that if he wished to examine a taxed bill of costs he would be allowed
  1034
  to do so. Instead of this, however, it would be found that underlings of the Commissioners sent impertinent letters to the Controller and Auditor General, and the Commissioners even hinted that he was actuated by personal motives in the course he was pursuing. The Controller and Auditor General asked for an increase of salary, which was refused by the Treasury; but it was almost a mean thing for the Commissioners to print the Correspondence on the subject, as if that were to be the explanation of the manner in which the Controller and Auditor General was endeavouring to perform the important functions entrusted to him. In the Reports presented to Parliament there was a curious, and he hoped with regard to the public service, a unique discussion with reference to the position and salary of Mr. Ball, the Commissioners' solicitor. The Lords of the Treasury agreed to increase his salary from £800 to £1,500 a-year on the condition of his undertaking the preparation of the merging orders. It was subsequently stated that now the Commissioners had relieved him of the duty of preparing the merging orders, because he had so much other work to do, and in one of his letters Mr. Ball spoke of the large amount of private business he had to transact; but it seemed very curious if he had time to attend to his private business, that he should not be obliged to do the duty for which he had received an increase of salary. In addition to this, however, he was allowed to receive taxed costs in all actions which the Commissioners might win, although they had to pay the taxed costs themselves in actions which they lost. Moreover, when purchases were made from the Commissioners, Mr. Ball was allowed to act as solicitor for both the purchaser and the vendors. It certainly seemed highly desirable that there should be an investigation into the relations subsisting between this gentleman and the Commissioners. He knew an instance in which a friend of his had purchased some valuable land in the centre of Belfast, and according to the terms of the Act he had taken a mortgage upon it for three-fourths of its value. His friend was entitled to a mortgage which would place no restrictions on his treatment of the land; but the solicitor to the Commissioners had introduced a proviso, that the purchaser should not sublet without

  1035
  the consent of the Commissioners. The sub-leases might be very numerous, and in every ease the papers would have to be sent up to Dublin to Mr. Ball, who would get fees upon them. Another point of disagreement, which it was impossible to justify, arose from Mr. Ball's habit of paying the funds received by him in the course of his duty into his private fund, where they were allowed to lay at intervals varying from 10 to 90 days. Objectionable as it was the Commissioners fought it out for a period of over four years with the Comptroller and Auditor General, and appeared only just now to have given way on the eve of the presentation of their second Report. He would now say a few words on the manner in which the Commissioners had executed the trust assigned to them by the Church Act. The financial results, as well as the method by which they arrived at them, would somewhat astonish the House. On the 8th of March, 1869, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich, in introducing his measure, referred to the inequality that then existed, and deplored the wanton waste which had so often taken place. What had been the actual result of the administration of the fund by the Commissioners? The right hon. Gentleman said that it was estimated the proceeds of the Church property would be £16,000,000. As a matter of fact, they amounted to £16,740,000. He stated, moreover, that the value of the life interests of the incumbents, including the dignitaries and parochial clergy, would be £4,900,000; but, in fact, they had received£6,257,500—a difference of £1,357,500. He estimated that the value of the life interests of the curates would be £800,000, and the number of curates was repeatedly stated in this House to be about 500. In fact, 900 curates had commuted as permanent, for the sum of £1,820,247; besides which, an unknown number of curates had received gratuities as temporary curates; creating a difference on the estimate for curates alone of over £1,000,000, an excess, he might add, exhibiting payments enormously above the average for the old curates. But let him contrast the results in relation to the other Churches. The estimate for Presbyterians and Maynooth was £1,000,000—the actual cost was only £1,122,000. The total estimate of the right hon. Gentleman of the cost of
  1036
  disendowment was £8,500,000; of the surplus, £7,500,000. The actual result had been, that the proceeds were £16,740,000; the liabilities and payments already amounted to £11,560,000, leaving the probable surplus of £5,180,000, which, however, would probably fall some £2,000,000 short of it. Now, from whatever cause arising, those facts were sufficient to justify the demand for an inquiry. They were entitled to ask to what were these enormous discrepancies due? To the legislators, or to the administrators? The right hon. Gentleman was, as he submitted, deeply concerned in the inquiry. He was one of the greatest masters of finance in this House. He had the advantage of means of information which were unexceptionable, and if those facts were not explained—those discrepancies to the extent of about £3,000,000—the right hon. Gentleman would be placed in this dilemma—that he must either have erred egregiously in his estimates, or have been a party to a political juggle which had deceived the whole country. In the Irish Church Act there were two sections by which the Commissioners were empowered to take up the obligations which had been undertaken by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, obligations for buildings, for repairs, and for other church purposes. Until 1871 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were empowered to expend such sums of money as they might deem desirable to preserve buildings in a proper state of repair for the performance of Divine service. The total average annual expenditure of the late Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1863 to 1868 was £28,280. The largest amount ever paid in one year was £44,170, whereas the Irish Church Commissioners, during the 18 months which ensued from the passing of the Act to the 1st of January, 1871, under that restrictive clause—the 48th—decreed a payment of £92,334. The average annual expenditure for the five years from 1863 to 1868, for building, enlarging, and repairs was £54,300, to which, however, there was an average annual voluntary contribution of £ 11,844, leaving the average annual expenditure out of Church funds, which was all they had to deal with, £42,456. The utmost gross expenditure for those three items, including voluntary contributions, in any single year, was £72,000. Yet the Commissioners

  1037
  paid in 18 months £162,630! Then, again, as to Church requisites, the sum paid by the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners was £37,250, making for 18 months an estimate of £55,890; whereas the sum paid by the Irish Church Commissioners was £64,450—a difference of over £9,000. Under Section 49 the Commissioners were empowered to ascertain what sums were necessary for the repairs of churches. In many cases the documents had not been produced, and grants were frequently made to the clergyman on the presentation of a certificate that the work had been done. The consequence had been that instead of a sum of £90,000, the sum handed over by the Commissioners had been £257,500. There were yet graver facts to which it was necessary to call the attention of the House. It was in connection with the commutations that the greatest discrepancy between the estimates of the right hon. Gentleman and the results of the operations of the Commissioners existed. A mere glance at a Return issued last year upon his (Mr. Jenkins's) Motion, showing the number of ecclesiastical persons who had commuted, would convince one that there were grounds for some inquiry. It showed that instead of about 500, as estimated, the number of curates who had commuted was no less than 900. At the time of the passing of the Act, it was stated that there were 467 curates and 82 curate-rectors; constituting a little under 500 actual curacies in Ireland. Were they not entitled to ask from whence the Commissioners fished up the 400 additional permanent curates, not to mention 494 temporary curates, to whom it would appear that orders had been issued for gratuities, under the 15th section of the Act, making altogether 1,394 curacies to be accounted for? But, leaving out the temporary curates, he would ask—On what principle were 900 curates admitted to be permanent under the 14th and 15th Sections? And there was a very extraordinary circumstance connected with that valuation of the curacies. The average estimate of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich for the commutation per head to Irish curates was only £1,600; whereas the average actual payment to curates had been £1,923 10 s. per head. When they saw such tremendous
  1038
  discrepancies between estimates and results, there would appear to be good ground for inquiry. But perhaps a glance at the Return which he held in his hand might help the House to form some idea of the manner in which those results were arrived at. After looking down the list one would be led to believe that in so poor a country as Ireland the large majority of the curates received salaries amounting to £100, £200, and in some cases as much as £230, or £250 per annum. Surely, there must have been some monstrous juggle; some means must have been used to deceive the Commissioners, or else they must have been most willingly deceived. And it seemed to him that it was a very serious matter for the Commissioners. Could they really have believed that in so short a time 400 bonâ fide permanent curates had been created?—that curates' salaries below £100 were the exception, and above £100 the rule? Though the Commissioners were empowered to act as Judges, they were also responsible as administrators. There was no legal or technical appeal from the decisions of the Commissioners; but when they gave decisions which were contrary to law and common sense, there ought to be an appeal to this House. After the passing of the Act, curates' salaries went up at a bound from £50 to £100 per cent; but the demand for them increased threefold, for the Bishops could not ordain fast enough. The consequence was, a number of incumbents had a sudden call to act as curates, in addition to the labours of their incumbencies. Bishops hurriedly laid hands on men in order to qualify them, apparently, not so much for the labours of religion, as for the purpose of increasing the amount of plunder to be derived from the State. In The Belfast News Letter, of September 28th, 1870, an advertizement appeared—
  "Curates Wanted.—Wanted immediately two or three curates in full, or deacon's orders. Annuities almost certain. Apply, by letter, Wednesday, 28th December, 1870, or Thursday, 29th December, 1870, to R. H., Box 259, Post Office, Belfast; or by telegraph to George Hughes, Donegall Place, Belfast;"
  and it was in that indecent haste that men who professed to be the servants of Christ made an effort to plunder the Church funds of their country. He would refer

  1039
  to what had taken place in the diocese of Down and Connor. In 1869 there were 51 curates, but those who received commutations were 139, and taking the Return for the Diocese of Connor alone, he found that in 1868 the total net income of incumbents was £13,504 6s. 7d., or deducting vacant charges, £12,387 1s. 10 d. The actual commutation annuities paid to beneficed clergymen by the Commissioners was £17,601 15 s. 1d. In 1868 the curates in the Diocese of Connor numbered 31, with an income of £2,547 10 s. In 1857 they numbered 57, with an income of £7,055 per annum. Thus, the increase in that single diocese was 26 curates, and £4,507 10 s. per annum—an increase also in the rate of salary of about 100 per cent! Before the Act the total income of the clergy in Connor was £15,034 11 s. 10 d. after disestablishment it rose to £22,109 5s. 1d. In Belfast and its neighbourhood there was, also, on the passing of the Act, a sudden outbreak of sacerdotal zeal. Every church had two clergymen at least, and in some cases three. In 1868 the total State endowments were £851 per annum. In 1870 the Commissioners' endowments were £6,623, an increase of nearly 800 per cent—that was, the commutation capital lost by disestablishment was £19,500; the commutation capital gained was £99,500. These figures needed no comment. But further, the Commissioners appeared to have made grants of annuities which were positively illegal. Under the 15th section they were to make grants to permanent curates, and gratuities to curates only temporary. Now, what were permanent curates? It was the intention of the Legislature that in deciding who were permanent and who were temporary curates, the permanency of a curacy should be determined with reference to the length of the term of service, the duties discharged, the non-residence, age, infirmity, or other incapacity of the incumbent, and his habit of employing a curate. But the Commissioners appeared to have granted to persons commutations upon pew-rents, which they would continue to receive after the annuity; upon voluntary subscriptions, upon chaplaincy fees, and in eases where there had previously been no salaries at all. It would be no answer to tell the House that the Commissioners had acted in open Court, and
  1040
  that there was nothing more to be said, for he ventured to submit that they had acted contrary to the law and common sense, and that there must be some power in that House to correct what had been done. There was a third reason why there should be some inquiry, and that was the notorious dissatisfaction which was felt in the. Church of Ireland against their Representative Body. It appeared that many clergymen had deserted their charges and churches, and had taken themselves and the commutation money away from Ireland, and it was alleged that over £2,000,000 had thus been squandered on ecclesiastical conspiracy and immoral greed. It never could have been conceived by the right hon. Gentleman who had charge of the Bill in that House that a number of the clergy of the Church of Ireland would be able to absorb two-thirds of the money which was to be used for ecclesiastical purposes, and go away with it, and the Church cease to have the use of it. The last Report of the Representative Body of the Irish Church contained one of the saddest pages which it was ever his lot to read. At Page 13 there was a total of the compositions effected in each diocese, and after stating that £1,169,650 had been paid to compounders, in addition to which there had been advances bringing the sum up to £2,028,630, there was a small note to one of the items in these words—
  "To this sum may be added £28,278 9s. 2d. duo to eases in which certain clergymen devoted their compositions to parochial endowments."
  £28,000 only, out of £2,028,000, handed back, by the clergy to whom it was paid over, to be devoted to the purposes for which it was intended! But let the House also look at the circumstances of the manufacture of curates. In 1868, 500; in 1870, 900 [or apparently 1,394!] And yet, a little later, the Organizing Committtee, containing representatives of all the dioceses, recommended the Representative Body to offer—
  "Fair and liberal terms of compounding with a view to a reduction in the number of the clergy!"
  Did any body, either politic or ecclesiastical, ever so stultify itself in the face of mankind? Bishops hurriedly laying hands upon men in order to create new claims upon the property of the State;

  1041
  young men trooping from schools and from Wesleyan and Independent chapels to be transformed into Episcopal clergymen. The transaction was one which it was difficult properly to characterize. Now, without offence to any hon. Member on either side of the House who might be a Churchman, he would ask him to allow him to pray the House to consider, candidly and solemnly, those facts. What did they mean? Contrast them with the noble action of the Free Church when it departed, without endowments or prospect of aid, from the Mother Church on a point of principle. Had the Church of Christ degenerated? Had Christianity in that case been enervated by State endowments? It was impossible to help contrasting such a state of affairs as that with the sublime scene which took place at the Lake of Galilee when Christ gave the charge to feed his sheep, and the only motive he used was love to him. It had been left to a Christian Church in the 19th century to come back to that morality which the rugged heathen poet satirized—
  "Peccat et hæe peccat: vitio tamen utitur: at vos
  Dicite pontifices in sancto quid facit aurum!"
  He had submitted his case to the House. It might have been strengthened; but he had adduced facts which appeared to justify an inquiry. All those circumstances required to be cleared up, otherwise they might have to face that momentous question—Whether or not the majority of the Irish people would be content to acknowledge this as a final settlement? He had to thank the House for its forbearance, and its kind attention, throughout the long time which he had occupied; and he would only say, in conclusion, that he hoped, whatever course the House might adopt with respect to it, no hon. Member would feel that he, at all events, had imported into the discussion any of the elements of bitterness of feeling or of bigotry. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Address.
  MR. W. SHAW, in seconding the Motion, said, he did not belong to the Irish Church. He thought nine-tenths of the discrepancy which existed between the Estimates of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich and the figures which had
  1042
  just been laid before the House were attributable to the Act of Parliament itself, which placed £16,000,000 to be administered by the hands of three Commissioners; and that, when one of them died, the remaining two were left to deal with that immense interest without any appeal from their decisions, and without any direct responsibility. Indeed, he only wondered that, under the circumstances of the case, there was so little to complain of, knowing what they did of human nature, especially Church human nature, and seeing that the proceedings in question had been carried on for years all in the dark. It was but to be expected that many of the clergy who were poor should try to get as much of the money as they could, and he was surprised that even so much of it was left to be applied to national purposes in Ireland. He thought, however, it would be hardly fair that the House should suppose that the clergy had put the entire amount mentioned by his hon. Friend into their pockets, although he was afraid the interests of the Church had not been taken into account by them as they ought to have been, for it appeared that over 700 of them, having received their composition, left the country and came over to England. It would be for the interest of the Church itself that some light should be thrown upon what had been done, for a considerable sum of money must, of course, have been kept by the Church Body, and when the subject came to be investigated, he believed the case would be found not to be near so bad as the speech of his hon. Friend would lead the House to imagine. He did not think that the Commissioners—one an eminent Judge, and the other a noble Lord of good business habits—had acted outside the law. He hoped that the Government would grant a Commission, for he looked with great interest at the surplus from this property; but he now feared it would be very small, and that there would not be enough to lighten taxation. If, however, there should be a surplus, he would suggest, by way of addition to the Motion, that the Commission, if appointed, should be directed to inquire into the possibility of providing glebes with the money for the Roman Catholic parish priests and Presbyterian ministers in Ireland, who had great difficulty, especially in the poorer districts, in obtaining suitable

  1043
  residences. That was an object to which the surplus funds might, in his opinion, be most legitimately devoted. Some of it might also be usefully applied in providing a University for Ireland; for they were both, in his opinion, great and important questions which required settling. In a country like Ireland, where there was so much poverty, no application of the money would be more suitable or acceptable. He hoped the suggestion would be acted upon.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "an humble Address he presented to Her Majesty, for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the circumstances of the distribution and application of the property of the late Church of Ireland, particularly as regards commutations and compositions, whether under proceedings of the Church Temporalities Commissioners, or of the representative body of the Irish Church,"—(Mr. Edward Jenkins,)
  —instead thereof.
  MR. MULHOLLANDsaid, he felt the responsibility of taking so early a part in this debate, but as a member of the Representative Body of the Irish Church who had taken part in all their financial operations, he hoped the House would extend to him their indulgence while he made some answer to the speech of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Jenkins). At the same time, he must say he would not so willingly have undertaken the task had he been aware of the line he was about to take; for the greater part of his speech should certainly have been answered by hon. or right hon. Gentlemen sitting on the front Opposition Bench. The first part of the speech consisted chiefly of an attack on the Irish Church Act; but it was followed up by an attack on the Commissioners who were appointed to carry it out, and on the Representative Body. He was not in a position to speak for the Commissioners. He would only say this, that the characters of Lord Monck and Mr. Justice Lawson stood too high to allow anyone to suppose that they had erred designedly, and their abilities were too well known to permit anyone to believe that they erred through incapacity. As a member of the Representative Body, he might say he had on certain occasions taken part in deputations to the Commissioners, when he might have found them rather difficult to persuade;
  1044
  but certainly, in all cases, very strict and vigilant guardians of the interests they were appointed to protect. With respect to the charges against the Representative Body, he should have no difficulty in showing that they had no foundation whatever. He was, however, of opinion that the Church of Ireland had great reasons to be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing these charges before the House in a definite shape, inasmuch as the present discussion would have the effect of removing an impression which doubtless prevailed in England to some extent that the clergy of the Disestablished Church had not in all cases acted as they ought to have done, and that they had done things, aided and abetted by the Representative Body of the Church, which would not stand the test of inquiry. To a great extent that state of feeling was owing to letters which had appeared in leading newspapers, some of them written by a gentleman who had been already mentioned by name in this debate, and to which unusual prominence had been given; but the replies were either not inserted or did not receive the same prominence, and thus many saw the charges who did not see the replies. He was rather surprised that the hon. Gentleman had committed himself to charges which would be clearly shown to be unfounded, and which had been made in total ignorance of the nature of the transactions. The hon. Member who seconded the Motion (Mr. W. Shaw) had anticipated a good deal of what he (Mr. Mulholland) had intended to say with reference to the nature of commutation, and had, in fact, answered a great part of the speech of the hon. Mover. Commutation had been much misunderstood. There were even clergymen of the English Church who, to that hour, imagined that there was something discreditable in the act of commutation; whereas commutation was a direct advantage to the Church. In what position did the Representative Body find themselves when they entered on the duties of their office? They found themselves confronted by the heavy task to reorganize the Irish Church—to re-construct it as an organized body. They found the only way in which the Church could be preserved from falling into a sort of chaos was to take the average

  1045
  value of the lives of annuitant clergymen, and that an average contribution should be paid by all the parishes in the country. They would have preferred one central fund to which all contributions would be given, and from which all stipends would be paid, but it became clear that it would be impossible to provide a fund in that way which would be sufficient to meet the requirements. The consequence was, that the country was divided into its different dioceses, and each diocese was allowed to form a financial plan of its own, based on the principle of life insurance, taking into account the wants and necessities of the diocese. In the accomplishment of this object commutation was a great assistance. The consent of the clergy was, of course, required for commutation, and they were asked to exchange, as it were, Government annuities for annuities of what might be called a financial association dealing with £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 of capital. They knew if errors were made, total ruin to themselves would be the result. One inducement offered to the annuitants was, that they should have the right to receive a portion of the capital sum in lieu of the annuity. The clergy laid considerable stress on that. It gave them a large amount of freedom, and enabled them, if they preferred it, to leave the Church. On the other hand, the Representative Body believed the result of composition would not be injurious to the Church. Was it not right in dealing with a subject of so much magnitude to proceed upon a general rule? Retirement, pensions in the Army and the Civil Service, all proceeded on general rules. The amount received as commutation up to the present time was £7,557,000, which was charged with life annuities amounting to £590,000. The hon. Member had spoken of that as a re-endowment of the Church; but the members of the Church of Ireland could not too early and too earnestly protest against any such phrase being applied to it. The fact was that Parliament did not give one single 6d. to the re-endowment of the Church. It gave precisely the life interest of the clergy, except that as the value of clerical life was supposed to be greater than had been calculated in those life tables, for that and expenses of management 12 per cent was
  1046
  added to the original amount, and if it had not been added the Representative Body would most decidedly not have undertaken their task. The amount of composition paid up to the present time was £1,169,000, which had extinguished annuities to the extent of £172,000. The hon. Gentleman had spoken of this money as if it had been squandered—a most absurd word when it was considered that annuities had been bought up to a more than equivalent extent. The hon. Gentleman had also spoken of the dissatisfaction which existed in Ireland with the Representative Body. But that body was elected by the Church every two or three years; several vacancies had already occurred, and in almost every instance the retiring members had been re-elected. And at the last general Synod last month, a resolution was passed unanimously expressing complete satisfaction with the proceedings of the Representative Body, and entire confidence in the general affairs of the Church. And that Synod was composed of members freely chosen from every part of Ireland. The figures which the hon. Member had quoted with respect to the newly-appointed clergymen were singularly inaccurate. The interregnum between the passing of the Church Act and the 1st of January, 1871, was understood to be a probationary period, during which the clergy and curates might acquire annuities. The number appointed was 201, which was, no doubt, above the average; but it was understood during the passing of the Act that some consideration would be shown to young men who were preparing to enter the Church. He wished to point out a fallacy in the speech of the hon. Member, when he spoke of the life service of the clergy being a gain to the Church. The composition of annuities during the lives of the clergy was not necessarily a gain to the Church as an organized body, though it might be a gain if, in the meantime, individuals came forward with contributions and accumulated them for endowment. The Representative Body found, for many reasons, that it was desirable that a general system of contributions should be established throughout Ireland, and the arrangement with respect to compositions had materially assisted them. Diocesan contributions had come in to a greater amount than could have been expected, and there was now

  1047
  £1,400,000 in the hands of the Representative Body, the accumulated contributions of the last four years. That was a large capital sum, but it represented only £56,000 a-year. A more important point was that under the system of diocesan contributions for the purpose of providing stipends for the clergy, the Representative Body got last year £137,000, notwithstanding the fact that the acquisition of glebes put an unusual strain upon the Church. That £137,000, being allowed to accumulate during the lives of the existing clergy, would produce the very substantial nucleus of a fund which would probably amount to £3,000,000. Now, how would those £3,000,000 be acquired? Not by a re-endowment of the Church by Parliament; but the contributions of which he had spoken, being allowed to accumulate at compound interest, would at a certain period reach that amount. As to the charges made against the clergy, if the rules framed by the Representative Body were for the benefit of the Church, the clergy were not to be blamed for accepting them. The hon. Gentleman had alluded to the special terms which had been granted in certain cases. The reason was this—A legal doubt arose whether curates whose rectors had died, or who had been dismissed by their rectors, could be compelled to take other duty, and additional terms were offered to those in the tables with a view to overcome this difficulty. He hoped he had now succeeded in vindicating the conduct of the clergy and the Commissioners from the imputations cast upon them by the hon. Gentleman. In conclusion, he felt sure that every fair and generous mind would sympathize with them in the crushing blow that had fallen upon the Church, and would rejoice if he had been able to show that the clergy and laity had not given way to despair, had not neglected their duty, but were heartily combining in an honest and single-minded endeavour to rebuild her walls.
  MR. MACARTNEYsaid, that after the full and able defence which had just been made, little need be added in rebutting the charges of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Jenkins). It had been stated that the annuities granted were much greater than they were expected to be, but that arose from the fact, that the Irish clergy derived a large portion of their incomes from glebe lands; for these
  1048
  lands had probably been valued originally upon the Ordnance valuation, and in calculating the annuities, however, they were valued at much above the Ordnance valuation, and the Church had to buy them back at 21 years' purchase. This was the explanation of the great difference between the annuities as calculated and the annuities as given. It was reckoned a manly English trait not to kick a man when he was down, but the hon. Member had certainly not acted upon that maxim.
  MR. GIBSONsaid, that although the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Jenkins) in making the Motion before the House was pleased to say that he was simply fulfilling the duty of a Christian man, and was regarding this as involving a pure question of finance, yet the hon. Gentleman had used, in the course of his speech, a bouquet of epithets such as the following:—that the Commissioners had been guilty of prodigality, if not corruption, and had squandered £2,000,000 in ecclesiastical conspiracy and immoral greed. These were words used by a Christian man in the British House of Commons. For his own part he could not think language like that was dictated by Christian charity. No case had been made out by the hon. Gentleman for a Commission of Inquiry. The hon. Gentleman had brought forward many charges, but had proved none; and even if he had succeeded in making out his case, and a Commission were to report, no action could be taken upon their Report. The hon. Gentleman had not suggested any action that he would take in such an event. No charges graver than those preferred by the hon. Gentleman against Gentlemen filling responsible positions had been brought forward in that House within his experience—charges, too, of which no Notice had been given, for the terms of the Motion simply were that the hon. Gentleman would call attention to commutation and compounding, and not even a vivid Irish imagination could discover between the lines such charges as corruption, ecclesiastical conspiracy, and immoral greed. If the hon. Gentleman pressed his Motion, he thought the division would give a substantial answer to those charges. Who were the Church Temporality Commissioners? The ablest and best men that could have been found to discharge the delicate and important

  1049
  duties connected with the winding-up of the great Church of Ireland. They were Viscount Monck, a Nobleman who had administered the affairs of England with great honour to the country in Canada. Mr. Justice Lawson, formerly an Attorney General and now a trusted, able, and impartial Judge, and the late Mr. George Alexander Hamilton, than whom a more honoured Member had never sat in that House. Against these Gentlemen a charge was now brought of corruption.
  MR. EDWARD JENKINSsaid, he had not brought a charge of corruption, but said there had been mismanagement, if not corruption. ["Oh!"]
  MR. GIBSONsaid, he failed to see the difference. What was the meaning of importing the word "corruption" into the debate, if the hon. Gentleman meant nothing by it? The hon. Gentleman must either have meant something or nothing. Surely, he would not desire the House to have such a poor opinion of his intellect as to wish them to believe he meant nothing. Let the House remember that every single circumstance which the hon. Gentleman had called into question had occurred while the late Mr. Hamilton was living and taking an active part in the work of the Commission. Although the Commissioners were empowered to deal absolutely with all questions of law and fact that might be brought before them, the hon. Gentleman now sought to constitute the House of Commons a Court of Appeal on such points as did not meet with his approval. The Commissioners awarded 6,251 annuities after the most careful and minute inquiry, heard 417 appeals—a fact which proved that they did not err on the side of extravagance—and refused no less than 1,127 claims, many of which at first sight seemed to be founded on the most grievous hardship, and which were represented before them by counsel; and yet they were to be brought before the House of Commons and accused of something which the hon. Gentleman would not call corruption. It was also to be remembered that, in calculating the amounts to be paid in cases of commutation, they adopted the tables of the National Debt Commissioners, the work of the eminent actuary, Mr. Finlaison, and had made their calculations from them, and so unsatisfactory did the Irish clergy consider them at first that it was at one time
  1050
  thought that very few would commute at all and that the scheme would in consequence be a complete failure. Notwithstanding, the Commissioners were now charged with neglecting their duty, and with prodigality. They had proceeded, not according to some fancy standard of their own, set up by sentiment, but upon the tables most in repute in England, and arranged by a gentleman supposed to have more experience than anybody else. So much for the extravagance of the Commissioners in that respect. But the hon. Gentleman went beyond the terms of his Motion, and, without giving the House the slightest Notice of his intention, charged the Commissioners with having given too large a sum for Church requisites and repairs. No opportunity had been afforded to hon. Members for replying to his charges under that head, but as regarded Church requisites there were plain facts which could be stated at once. The Irish Church Act was passed in July, 1869. In the October following, one entire year fell due, and thus by the 1st of January, 1870, when the Church became disestablished, two years and three months charges had to be paid in a lump. Was the hon. Gentleman's accusation, then, a reasonable one? To the second head of this miserable and unworthy charge an answer was to be found in the Act of Parliament itself. The hon. Gentleman said sums had been voted by the Church Temporalities Commissioners in excess of those usually spent by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. But the Act imposed upon the former the duty of ascertaining and finding out what were the accumulated promises of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and instead of spreading the performance of those promises over a great length of time, they fulfilled them within a period of two years. The undertaking cast upon the Commissioners was a great and arduous one, requiring broad intelligence, great acute-ness, and rigid conscientiousness, and he ventured to think that they were fairly entitled to expect a little more generosity of treatment and a little more Christian consideration than they had received. The duty of the Irish Church Temporalities Commissioners being in the first place, to ascertain the compensation and then to assess the commutation, all the Representative Body had to

  1051
  do was to receive the amount which the Commissioners fixed, and to dispose of it as they could for the advantage of the Church whose Representatives they were. It was suggested by the hon. Gentleman that this Body had done something with the Church property that was not right and proper; but Parliament was not in the habit of inquiring into what people did with their private property. If there was any injustice in the matter, the Courts of Law and Equity were open to any complaint, and the very fact of the hon. Gentleman opposite bringing this subject before the House was in itself an admission that nothing illegal had been done, and that there was no complaint which any Court of Equity would listen to. What was the hon. Gentleman's justification for bringing this question before the House? There had not been presented a single Petition from any member of the Irish Church, nor any suggestion of any grievance or injustice whatsoever. An hon. Member representing a Scotch constituency, and not even representing the Church himself, came forward with no other justification than that his duty as a Christian man compelled him to do so, in order to show that a whole lot of his brother Christians had behaved in a most improper way—that they had been guilty, not of corruption, but of an ecclesiastical conspiracy, and—noble Christian words to add!—immoral greed. The Irish Church Representative Body was composed of persons of the highest character and consideration in the country, who had without fee or reward given their time, experience, and money to the performance of the duties they had taken upon themselves, but it was these gentlemen whom the hon. Member for Dundee charged with having acted in the manner referred to. The Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Bodies received compensation under the provisions of the Irish Church Act; but what would be said, if Parliament was called upon to inquire as to the mode in which they had dealt with the funds awarded to them? To have such inquiries proposed Session after Session would not say much for the freedom secured to the Church by disestablishment. With regard to commutation, that was justifiable on several grounds. Without it there would have been in Ireland a series of congregations and no central power for
  1052
  the distribution of the fund; and it was a desirable thing for other reasons, as would be seen from the pamphlets which had been written upon the subject. Then it was suggested that, commutation having taken place, there was something wrong in compounding. But commutation merely made the Representative Church Body into a kind of great annuity society, and to diminish the risks with which it was attended compounding was introduced. Moreover, everything that had been done in relation to compounding was done in express pursuance of the 23rd section of the Irish Church Act. Surely, then it was unreasonable to say that the Irish clergy in following the express terms of that permission had done something which exposed them to the greatest possible censure. Compounding enabled a reduction of the clergy to be made from 2,000 to 1,460; it rendered possible a re-arrangement and re-distribution of parishes and an adjustment of boundaries. Anyone would imagine from the speech of the hon. Member that the clergy were better off than before, but the fact was, that the average income of incumbents was between £200 and £300. The best paid rectors had an income of about £300. Commutation and compounding had worked admirably. For 26 per cent of capital the Representative Church Body had got rid of 41 per cent of annuities. That fact spoke volumes for the admirable results of those processes for the Church taken as a whole. The greatest care was taken with reference to every application to commute or compound. Special terms were demanded in a not considerable number of cases by the exigency of the case, and for the welfare of the Church. The hon. Gentleman made some allusion to the poor fishermen who commenced the ministration of Christianity. Did he mean that the clergy should beg from door to door because they were entrusted with a sacred mission? It would be very poor charity to ask men to preach a mission about our everlasting salvation without making any provision by which these men should be properly housed, and properly clothed, and for the decent sustenance of themselves and their families. It was said that there had been a "wholesale migration of Irish clergy to England." That was not true. 736 Irish clergymen compounded; 405

  1053
  of them were still working in the Irish Church; 154 were dead or had retired, and 136 only had gone to England or the Colonies. Had a single case come under the notice of anyone in London of misconduct in the slightest degree on the part of any of the Irish clergymen who officiated in London? It was admitted that they were men of piety and learning, and were devoted to their sacred calling. It was said that between the announcement of Disestablishment and the carrying out of the Disestablishment Act, the Irish Bishops ordained 700 curates, and the hon. Member talked about the Bishops not having used sufficient care in laying their hands upon the heads of those whom they were ordaining to the sacred office. [Mr. EDWARD JENKINS: I said "hurriedly."] It did not matter what was said, for it came to exactly the same thing, if the hon. Gentleman meant that the Bishops did not take sufficient care that they laid their hands on the right head. He denied that there was any ground for saying that ordinations had been conducted without due consideration. It appeared that the actual number ordained was 201, and in no case was a man improperly passed. If any persons had been hurriedly or unbecomingly ordained during the last four years, there must remain some trace of the circumstance; but he ventured to assert that such a case had never been even suggested in any diocese in Ireland. All the gentlemen, he believed, who were admitted into the ranks of the clergy during that period had shown by their subsequent lives that they were properly ordained. The hon. Member for Dundee made a suggestion that some incomes which were £500 before disestablishment suddenly jumped up to £900. On this he would remark that it was the duty of the Church Temporalities Commissioners, if they found a man was entitled to, say, £150 for a benefice and £50 for a curacy, to make two awards to him. This would account for the increase in some cases. As the diocese of Down and Connor had: been specially referred to, he might mention that included the large city of Belfast where there were numerous chapels of ease, the clergy of which were compensated by the Commissioners, who determined that they possessed the status of permanent curates; and surely this was most
  1054
  reasonable, inasmuch as each chapel of ease fulfilled the functions of a church in the parish wherein it was situated. It would be preposterous to suppose the decision of the Commissioners could be overruled on account of what Lord Carlingford said when he sat in the House of Commons. The hon. Gentleman had referred to a sum of £28,000, which was mentioned at the end of one report. Well, it only meant that certain clergyman gave up to that extent to the Church everything which had been awarded to them. The hon. Gentleman asked for a Commission, but what would he do with it? He had not shadowed out a single thing that was to be done. If it were to inquire into the conduct of public servants who were clothed with judicial functions, that would be tantamount to a censure. On the other hand, was a Royal Commission ever appointed to inquire into the doings of a private company in respect to private property? He thought that the more the question was looked at, the more it would be found that the hon. Gentleman was asking something which ought not to be granted. The hon. Gentleman had no clients within the ranks of the Irish Church, and only last week the General Synod assembled at Dublin, in which the laity outnumbered the clergy two to one, passed a unanimous vote of confidence in the Body which managed their affairs. That was the opinion of the accredited organ of thought within the ranks of the Church, both clerical and lay, and could it be fairly said that the hon. Gentleman knew what was good for the Church and what should be done for it, better than those whose business it was to look after the Church and its affairs? He was glad that the Motion had at last been brought forward, and he trusted that the House, after fairly considering the question, would arrive at the conclusion that no case had been made out for the appointment of a Royal Commission, but that they would say that those to whom the responsibility of discharging those duties had been entrusted had done so with wisdom, integrity, and forethought, and that the clergy of the Irish Church had conducted themselves in this most trying and important crisis in a manner not unworthy of their sacred calling and not unbecoming their solemn duties.
  MR. LAWsaid, that, with regard to the question of commutation on the part of the curates, it was only fair to remember that a number of young men were qualifying themselves to serve as curates at the time when the Irish Church Act suddenly passed, and a short period was allowed to enable them to become ordained and so be entitled to compensation. Under such circumstances, 201 could not by any means be considered a large number for the year and a half that intervened before the 1st January, 1871. The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Jenkins) asked for a Royal Commission to inquire into the commutations that had occurred. The number had been considerable, because commutations had been designedly encouraged by Parliament giving a bonus for the purpose, the object being to wind up the business within a limited time. The hon. Member impeached the management of the funds by the Commissioners, and accused them of prodigality and carelessness, if not of corruption. It had been said that their proceedings were of a hole-and-corner description, and that nobody knew what had been done. If anybody was in the dark it was, however, his own fault. By the 37th section of the Act, the Commissioners were bound either annually or at shorter intervals to forward to the Auditor General accounts of every penny of their receipt and expenditure, with the vouchers, and these accounts had been annually laid before Parliament, and printed for the use of hon. Members. Had any one heard before of a case in which, when a Commission had been constituted by Parliament, another Commission had been afterwards appointed to see whether the first Commissioners were doing their duty? If that were done, why should there not be a third Commission to look after the second, and so on indefinitely? He had some curiosity to know in whose interest the hon. Member had moved in this matter. It was certainly not in the interest of the Irish Church or its members. Was it in the interest of the general public? Was it for the purpose of impeaching the propriety or integrity of the Commissioners? The hon. Member disavowed that, but he distinctly asserted that they had been guilty of carelessness. He (Mr. Law), however, thought that when the nature of the work which the Commissioners
  1056
  had had to do was taken into account they could not be accused of inattention to the interests of the public. They had to ascertain the exact equivalent of every clergyman's rent-charges and other interests; and this it would be found they had accomplished with great success and in a very short time. It must be recollected that there was a long contest in that House on the compensation of curates under the 15th section, the result of which was that they secured much better terms than it was originally intended to give them. It was the same with the glebes and glebe houses, with the Capitular Bodies, and also with reference to the sum appropriated in lieu of private endowments. Was it fair to base a charge of culpable negligence against the Commissioners upon the fact that the Prime Minister, in March, 1869, when introducing the Irish Church Bill, gave an estimate of liabilities that was eventually found to fall short of the amount needed by between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000? Did the hon. Gentleman forget the various concessions that had been made in order to ensure the passing of the Bill through Parliament? In a question involving so large a sum as £16,000,000 or £17,000,000, it was impossible that a very exact estimate could be made beforehand, and it could not be denied that an excess of expenditure over estimate had been caused by the changes made in the Bill as the price of its passing through this and the other House. As to the charge that had been made against Mr. Ball, the hon. Member, who had read through these Reports and the accounts of the Commissioners, must have known, and it was desirable the House should know, that Mr. Ball was for many years solicitor to the late Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the new Church Commissioners thought it desirable to let him continue to be employed as solicitor for the tenants also; cutting down his scale of fees, however, so as to tempt people to buy without the necessity of employing a solicitor of their own. That was done, and done, too, with the sanction of the Treasury as well as of the Commissioners; and, in fact, when Mr. Ball was employed by a tenant the only charge made was for the actual expense and labour of the transaction; the solicitor's work was done for next to nothing. So far, indeed,

  1057
  from there being anything wrong in the action of the Commissioners in this respect, their object had been to render the property more easily disposable. With regard to the individual case mentioned, it appeared there was some prohibition of sub-letting, but was it for the House to inquire into a matter of that kind? What was the object of the proposed Commission? Did the hon. Member think that upon the accounts of the Commissioners he could found any charge against those Gentlemen? If so, there were the accounts on the Table of the House, and let him proceed to specify his charges. The accounts of the Commissioners had already been scrutinized with considerable sharpness by the Auditor General, between whom and them there had been some unpleasantness. His scrutiny had shown that nothing had been passed over that could possibly be objected to. There was, for example, an error of 7d. in some Order, and they were called upon to recover the capitalized value of this sum, which would probably have caused an expense of £20. Not that the Auditor General had exceeded his duty; but his duty had certainly been most effectually done, and with no possible leaning towards the Commissioners. No doubt, as he had said, the ultimate liability of the Commissioners exceeded by £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 the estimate made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich when he first introduced his Bill, before opposition was bought off by concessions, everyone of which meant the addition of a large sum to the estimate of liabilities. Besides, in comparing the compensation paid to the clergy with the tables set forth in the Report of 1869, it should be borne in mind that it was the interest of the clergy in 1867–8 to make their incomes as low as possible, and thus when the claims came to be paid off, it was found that there were more than had been calculated. There was he (Mr. Law) submitted no ground for issuing another Commission, with the object of founding some charge against the Commissioners, who had performed their very onerous and trouble-some duties with most entire uprightness and integrity, and with very great ability.
  CAPTAIN NOLAN, in supporting the Motion, said, he thought the hon. and
  1058
  learned Gentleman who had just sat down had discharged his task with great ability; but he could not help thinking it rather extraordinary that none of the right hon. Gentlemen who spoke last night so strongly from the front Opposition bench against the fractional deficit in Savings Bank interest which then occupied the attention of the House, had come forward to-night, when the deficit was even larger than the £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 admitted by the hon. and learned Gentleman. There appeared to be an actual deficiency of £4,300,000, as compared with the estimate of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich. He (Captain Nolan), however, would rather deal with the speech of the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson). He asked what right had the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Jenkins) to deal with this question; and he (Captain Nolan) had been asked the same question. His answer was, that he had to pay tithes towards this fund. He believed that if the Commission were granted, this matter would turn out to be a great financial scandal. The Irish Church had been disestablished, but it had been only nominally disendowed. £400,000 had been given to Maynooth; but £12,000,000 had been given to the Irish Church for the life interests, and so on, so that for every shilling given to Maynooth there were 30 s. given to the Irish Church; whilst of Catholics was a population of 3,500,000, and of Protestants only some 800,000. In reality, it amounted to this—that a Royal Commission would discover to what extent it was still endowed; and whatever it still retained of endowment was not private property, but was State property, about which it was perfectly right that inquiry should be made. If there had been but partial disendowment, the Roman Catholic Church might fairly come forward and ask for endowment. His stand-point was, that there was a large public fund, of the help of which Ireland stood very much in need. She wanted endowment for education—for her Universities and for intermediate education—and, then, if there were anything to spare, for the relief of the local rates. The people thought they were being defrauded if their funds were being given away to a disendowed Church, or in over-compensation to private individuals. It was said that a

  1059
  large number of curates were ordained in order to increase the claims for compensation, and a great many stories were told about clergymen being encouraged to set up claims they had previously no idea of, and about land being sold at an unfair price to Protestant landlords, for the sake of putting additional Protestants in the parish. The impression produced was, that the Commission had realized as little as possible, and dealt as liberally as possible with what they had realized. By refusing the inquiry they would be practically filching £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 from the people of Ireland. It had been asked why should the acts of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners be dragged into the light of day by a Royal Commission, when they were really dealing only with the property of the Church, and not of the public. That was the very point at issue, and believing that the appointment of a Royal Commission would have 'a most beneficial effect, he would vote for the Motion of the hon. Member for Dundee.
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLUTKET)said, that the hon. Member who introduced the Motion might congratulate himself on having elicited a very full discussion, but could not congratulate himself on much more, seeing that his speech, in spite of its undoubted ability, was received with indifference if not dissatisfaction throughout the House. He could not understand why the hon. Gentleman should make himself the champion of this attack on the Disestablished Church of Ireland. He was aware that in this country a strong feeling existed in the minds of some against Established Churches; but he did not think until tonight that such a feeling would be found to follow an Established Church to the grave. He rejoiced, however, that with the exception of the hon. Member who seconded the Motion, and the hon. and gallant Member who spoke last (Captain Nolan), not a single Member who had taken part in the debate had spoken in any spirit of antagonism to the Disestablished Church of Ireland. It was not his duty to defend the Act of Parliament which disestablished the Church, or the machinery by which that Disestablishment was effected. But as an official of the present Government, it was his duty to defend, in the execution
  1060
  of their office, those who were entrusted by Government with difficult and responsible duties, and it was because he believed there was not any foundation whatever for the wild language used by the Proposer of the Resolution in attacking the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in Ireland, that he asked the House not to consent to the issuing of a Royal Commission to inquire into their conduct. It was not his intention to follow the speech of the hon. Member in detail. The House had already heard the answer given by his hon. Friend the Member for Downpatrick (Mr. Mulholland) in his clear, calm, and luminous statement, and also the reply of his hon. and learned Colleague (Mr. Gibson), as well as that of the Law Officer of the Crown of the last Irish Government (Mr. Law), who was thoroughly acquainted with the policy and intention of the Act and the manner in which it was to be carried into effect, and who had assured the House that there was no ground for the charges made by the hon. Member for Dundee, who must be admitted to have distinguished himself as an officious volunteer. It was not for him. (Mr. Plunket) to add anything to the praise bestowed upon the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. One of them, now no more, had been his friend, and there was no man in Ireland whose character for probity and for business capacity stood higher. Another was a noble Lord who had held high office at home and abroad, and the third was a learned Judge who occupied an eminent position on the Irish Bench and was respected by all parties. This learned Judge and this noble Lord were accused of lavishing the funds of the Irish Church on objects to which they ought not to be applied; and the object of a Royal Commission, if granted, would be to inquire into some mismanagement or misapplication of the funds. He did not gather from the hon. Member whether the charge was legal misinterpretation, or merely financial carelessness, or excessive liberality in the distribution of the money. But if the accusation was that the law had been wrongly administered, he could only say that the greatest care had been taken by those who had drawn the Act that no such thing might happen. Not only did they name a most able lawyer as one of the Commissioners, but they gave an appeal from their decision. No

  1061
  doubt the decisions of the Commissioners had been sometimes reversed on appeal; but, more frequently, in the way of increasing their award than in the opposite direction. As his hon. and learned Friend had said, they could not go on appointing one Royal Commission after another to inquire into those questions, and it would be perfectly antagonistic to the whole spirit of the Act to subject the legal decision of the Commissioners to review by a Royal Commission. Besides, it was the duty of the Auditor General to inquire into these accounts; and the Report of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, with the criticizms of the Auditor General, was year by year laid before this House and subjected to the scrutiny of the Committee on Public Accounts. In fact, their periodical Report was now under the scrutiny of that Committee, and the House was therefore asked to appoint a Commission to deal with a matter which was already under the consideration of the House. Another part of the attack of the hon. Member was directed against what he might call the domestic administration of the funds which had come into the hands of the Disestablished Church. But what the Church was doing at present was paying out of her own funds and out of the subscriptions of her members life incomes to the clergy to whom compensation was given under the Irish Church Act. He was sorry that his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Galway (Captain Nolan) should have spoken as if the Church was thus appropriating what did not belong to her but to the public.
  CAPTAIN NOLANexplained that what he said was, that any sum given to the clergy above the value of their life interest was public property, but that the value of the life interest was private property.
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IERLAND (Mr. PLUNKET)said, it had been arranged by the greatest financiers of the day and upon the most accurate calculations, that the value of the life interest only should be given to the clergy, together with that 12 per cent which had been added by the unanimous consent of all parties to save the country from the expense of carrying out the arrangements. Nothing could be further from the truth than to suggest that
  1062
  money now being gathered from private resources by the Disestablished Church partook in any degree of the character of a public endowment. There was abroad in England a wide-spread notion that the Irish laity were dissatisfied with the conduct of the Irish clergy. Now, Mr. Bence Jones stood absolutely alone as an Irish Churchman in the opinion that there was any feeling of resentment or distrust between the laity and clergy of the Disestablished Church in Ireland. He (Mr. Plunket) had had ample opportunities of testing opinion among both clergy and laity, and though differences of opinion existed upon religious subjects, as must always happen in every healthy, vigorous Church, it was a mere delusion to suppose that any difference of interest was felt to exist or that there was any discontent whatever on the part of the laity towards the clergy. Speaking as a member of the Disestablished Church, there was nothing in the transactions referred to by the hon. Member for Dundee of which they need be in the least degree ashamed. All their affairs were discussed in open Synod, and were reported in the public papers. They concealed nothing, and had no desire to conceal anything; but he should resist the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into their domestic affairs. Many of the points mentioned by the hon. Member had been embraced in the Reports of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and would be thoroughly investigated and sifted by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. But no foundation had been laid by any of these charges for issuing of a Royal Commission, and no ground whatever existed for such an inquiry.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 148; Noes 34: Majority 114.

ARMY—THE DUBLIN MILITIA DEPOTS.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. MELDONrose to call attention to the Correspondence which passed in 1873 and 1874 between a Special Committee of the Benchers of the Honourable Society of Kings Inns in Dublin and the late Lord Lieutenant and Lords Justices of Ireland on the subject of the

  1063
  removal from Henrietta Street, Dublin, of two Militia Depôts quartered there for recruiting purposes, and also to a Return ordered by this House to be printed on the 23rd day of March 1875, exhibiting the amount of Stamp Duty paid during each of the past seven years by Law Students in Ireland, and the amount of Stamp Duty for the same period paid on foot of the Indentures of Attorneys' Apprentices in Ireland; and to move—
  "That the maintenance of the Militia Barracks as used and occupied in Henrietta Street, Dublin, in immediate contiguity with the Law Library, King's Inns, and other buildings in possession of the Honourable Society of King's Inns, the Law Chambers provided for the accommodation of members of the legal profession and law students, is injurious and prejudicial to the interests of private property, the peaceful enjoyment by the members of the legal profession of their law library and chambers, to the property of the Honourable Society of King's Inns, used for public purposes of the utmost consequence, the study of the law and the administration of justice, and should be discontinued."
  The law library and other buildings for purposes of legal education were erected at a time when Henrietta Street was most suitable for that object, and they had expended about £82,000 on them; but it was idle to suppose that legal education could be carried on there if these Militia barracks were to be continued. Under existing conditions, the street in question, through which the members of the legal profession had to pass on their way to their chambers and their library was frequently thronged with recruits and their followers, it was made a perpetual play-ground not only by the children of the Militia but by numbers attracted from the district to participate with the Militia children in their uncontrolled games and sports, to the great obstruction of the street. The old Marshalsea, which was now empty, might easily be utilized for the purpose of Militia barracks. Under those circumstances, he hoped the Government would re-consider the matter.
  MR. LAWsupported the proposition. It was a very serious matter to the Benchers of King's Inns, whose property had become depreciated year by year, and who were put to great inconvenience in consequence of the existence of these depôts. He hoped, therefore, the Government would re-consider the matter, and take steps to have the depôts transferred.
  MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, that he found that his Predecessor in office had considered this question on the invitation of Lord O'Hagan, and yet, in spite of the pressure put upon him, Lord Cardwell did not think he was in a position to, and, indeed, distinctly declined to, interfere because he found these houses convenient for the Militia, and because he could not find sufficient space available elsewhere. The Benchers of King's Inns should, when they purchased the adjacent property, have secured themselves against any nuisance by buying these houses. That they did not do, and yet it was worthy of remark that this so-called nuisance had existed for 12 years before any complaint was made about it. The question was one which could hardly be advantageously discussed in Parliament. However, some documents had been sent over by the Lord Lieutenant to the War Office, and he would take care that the matter should be carefully inquired into.
  SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAexpressed his satisfaction at receiving this assurance. From personal knowledge he assured the House that the barracks in Henrietta Street were complained of as great nuisances to the neighbourhood.
  SIR PATRICK O'BRIENalso hoped that the Government would consider the propriety of removing the barracks from Henrietta Street at an early date.

POLICE (METROPOLIS)—SICK OR DRUNKEN PERSONS.—OBSERVATION'S.
SIR WILLIAM FRASER, who had a Notice on the Paper to move for an Address for—
"Copies of the evidence taken before Mr. Coroner Bedford, on the 27th of April last, of the inquest held on the body of Charles Farmar, found in the streets; and who, being suspected of drunkenness by the police, died on the same day of typhus fever; of the evidence taken before Mr. Hardwicke, also on the 27th of April last, on the body of a woman, supposed to be Harriet Alice Hardy, found by the police when dying in the street, and charged by them with drunkenness, who expired on the same day from apoplexy; of the expressed opinion of the coroners and juries in both cases; and, of the verdicts,"
said, that a division having been taken on a previous Motion in connection with Supply, he should merely call attention to these cases. The first case to which he referred was that of Charles Farmar,

1065
who was found by a man named Mason, a builder, in Grosvenor Gardens, Pimlico, and by him taken to the police station in Rochester Row. From the police station Farmar was removed to the workhouse, where he was found to be suffering from typhus fever. Tea and brandy were administered to him, and he died on the same day from typhus fever, as shown by the post-mortem examination. It appeared also, from the evidence, that the deceased had got away from his lodgings while suffering from the delirium of fever. Inspector East-wood, when the man was brought to the station, said if the police had refused to bring him it seemed strange a "civilian" should interfere, a most objectionable epithet for a policeman to employ; and, at the inquest, he stated that at first he thought Farmar was drunk, but subsequently, believing he was ill, ordered his removal to the workhouse. He also stated that he thought the man not ill enough to prevent his walking to the workhouse, though, as the result showed, the deceased died two hours afterwards of typhus fever. It was stated by Dr. Bond to be the duty of the police to call in the divisional surgeon in all doubtful cases, as well as in cases of serious illness or of accident; and this brought him to the point to which he wished more particularly to direct attention. It seemed a most reprehensible practice for police-men or inspectors to take it upon themselves to settle whether a man was drunk or suffering from illness. The police were very imperfectly educated, and inspectors themselves only came from the ranks. Even a man of education could not be trusted to decide such cases unless he had medical knowledge, and it was a serious matter that the police should do so, seeing that to lock a man in a police cell while suffering from illness was the surest way to kill him. The second case that occurred was that of a woman named Hardy, who was found in a state of semi-insensibility; she was taken to the police station, was charged with drunkenness, thrust into a cell, and, on the same day, died, though not in the cell, of serous apoplexy, frequently the result of starvation. Both these inquests were held on the same day, and the most careless reader of the newspapers could not but be struck with the off-hand manner in which persons were treated who dropped down in the street. If the
1066
police, paid servants of the ratepayers, found a man rather obscure in his intellect, or incoherent in his language, they thrust him into a cell, far worse in its condition than any that might be found in Venice. Such a proceeding was most unjustifiable; and he could not believe that the people of this country would tolerate such conduct on the part of the police as the reports of the inquests disclosed.
SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, he had obtained from the police their version of the story, which differed in some respects from that which the House had just heard. It appeared that the man Farmar was treated with every consideration. He was not put into a cell. After being brought to the station he walked up and down a room, and when the inspector found he was ill and proposed to send him to the workhouse, he asked permission to walk home. This was granted, and a constable accompanied him; but Farmar could not find his home, and he was then taken to the workhouse, where he died. At the inquest, the verdict was "Death from natural causes." The woman Hardy was found lying on the pavement, apparently drunk, and was taken to the station. There she was seen by one of the most careful inspectors in the police force. As she smelt of drink, and stated herself that she had been drinking, she was confined till next morning, when she was brought before Sir Thomas Henry and discharged. A police constable was accompanying her home, when she said she had no home, and the officer then took her to the work-house. The verdict of the jury was that she had died from the effects of drink and want of food. The superintendent of the division stated that the case, unfortunately, was not a solitary one. Even medical men, sergeants and inspectors of police, found it as difficult as constables to determine whether a man was drunk or suffering from illness; and he believed that from the number of cases coming under their notice, constables might be as well able as medical men to decide the fact. The police authorities themselves were more than anxious that these cases should be carefully watched, and if anything more could be done to bring medical knowledge to bear upon them the Home Secretary would gladly give the necessary consent and instructions.

THE TICHBORNE TRIAL—CONDUCT OF THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. WHALLEYrose to call attention to recent speeches of the Lord Chief Justice at public banquets and elsewhere, imputing to those who take part in efforts for inquiry as to the Tichborne Trial that they are seeking for their own purposes to undermine public confidence in the administration of justice; and to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether in refusing to comply with the Petitions for such inquiry, and especially as to Contempt of Court, he is acting with the approval or assent of the Lord Chief Justice? [An hon. MEMBER: Speak up!] It has often been my misfortune to offend against that unwritten law of Parliament. ["Oh, oh!"] For many years I have submitted to such unseemly interruptions. I am accustomed to the difficulty. I would suggest, however, that there is something in the position of a Member of this House—one of 25 years' standing—which should suggest to hon. Members that he ought not to be snubbed or treated with indignity by persons clothed "with a little brief authority." I think every Member of this House is entitled to respect, and those who do not concede that to others tacitly admit that they themselves are not entitled to it—not to say deserving of it. I assure the House that I shall not detain them by any elaborate argument to convert them to my opinion with respect to the Tichborne Case, nor of the conduct of the Lord Chief Justice in his conduct of that case. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give an answer to my Question consistent with the courtesy due to Members of this House and his high authority. ["Question!"] [The hon. Member accordingly read the Notice, amid great confusion.] Well, to proceed, I am not about to dwell upon the speeches of the Lord Chief Justice in various parts of the country. As to whether they were good or bad, the House will form its own judgment and take its own course. In my opinion, the Lord Chief Justice has violated all precedent in the administration of the law, and done much to bring the law into contempt. ["No, no!"] The hon. Gentleman who has interrupted me will remember what the Secretary of State
  1068
  for the Home Department said when questioned upon the matter. He said he did not wish to be informed. Innumerable Petitions on the matter had been forwarded to the right hon. Gentleman, but he did not wish to be informed. There was not a single Member of the House but myself who desired information on the subject. [Laughter, and "No!"] Then, why did not the hon. Member who says "No" vote for the inquiry? I do hope the hon. Member will take notice of the conduct of the Lord Chief Justice with respect to what is called "Contempt of Court." I challenge any hon. Member of the legal profession to say that the law in that respect, as administered by the Lord Chief Justice, was not a direct violation of the law, of precedent, and the Constitution. It was unprecedented in the legal history of this country. ["No, no!"] Let any hon. Gentleman of any weight in this House rise and say that the Lord Chief Justice should inflict fines and imprisonment under the circumstances which he did at the Tichborne Trial. The Chief Justice was not satisfied with inflicting fine and imprisonment on myself and others; no, he thought fit to go about the country to denounce us in language which almost equalled in virulence and intensity that which has been used by the hon. Member for Stoke. He said that all who were opposed to him were uneducated, infatuated vipers, and the scum of society. At the Needlemakers' dinner, because I and those who act with me, supported, as we are, by 500,000 of the people of this country, from an absolute and certain knowledge, believe in this Claimant's innocence, we are to be attacked in this manner. The right hon. Gentleman himself knows that he is innocent. ["Order, order!"]
  MR. ASSHETON CROSS: I put it to you, Sir, and the House, if that is a proper expression to be used.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman is clearly out of Order, and I hope he will be more careful in his language.
  MR. WHALLEY: I most unqualifiedly withdraw it; but let the right hon. Gentleman explain the real circumstances to the House why he refuses the information. The right hon. Gentleman had affidavits and correspondence in his possession to convince him that the man now in Dartmoor Prison is not guilty. I trust the House in its impatience

  1069
  will not sacrifice the rights and privileges of private Members. The Lord Chief Justice said at the dinner to which I have alluded that we have been exciting and getting up this agitation of the question in order to undermine the confidence of the public in the administration of justice. But he goes further than that, for he says that we have been doing it for our own purposes. Now, I ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the inquiry asked for by 200,000 or 300,000 people would not disprove that statement. When the Lord Chief Justice makes this statement imputing to me and others the greatest offence that can be committed, I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he communicated to him that he had documents in his possession which would prove his statement to be groundless, or whether he had consulted the other Judges by whom the case was tried? We have had correspondence from Australia and all parts of the world to show this man's innocence, and is the right hon. Gentleman justified in refusing an inquiry and insulting an hon. Member? ["Order, order, order!"]
  MR. ASSHETON CROSSagain rose to Order.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman is entirely out of Order. I must call upon him to be more guarded in his language.
  MR. WHALLEY: I will withdraw the words. The right hon. Gentleman said, on a former occasion, that I and those who acted with me in this matter knew all about the papers and correspondence sent to him, and more than that. Did the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that I have been seeking to undermine the foundation of the administration of public justice? I do feel that he is called on to justify his statements. When the trial of this unfortunate man first commenced, I said I would go through the country and beg from door to door to enable him to defend himself. Well, I have done so; and my conduct has met with the approval of my constituents. The result of the course I have pursued is that I have been imprisoned, and that this unhappy man has not had a fair trial, inasmuch as from want of funds he has been unable to bring up 200 witnesses who would have given evidence on his behalf. ["Question!"] It is the Question, because you can only
  1070
  get the information from me, and how can you get it, unless you listen to what I have to say? I acted with the best of my ability, and as I may again have to defend myself before my constituents, and possibly throughout the country wherever my unhappy name is known, it is right I should give an explanation. I will go among them again, and indignantly deny that I have endeavoured to undermine the administration of justice for my own purposes. I wish to know whether the Lord Chief Justice had any personal claims on the confidence and respect of the House and the country to justify him in assailing me or any honest and honourable man who has signed those Petitions to the number of 500,000? I have no desire whatever to do an injustice to the Lord Chief Justice, whose talents and ability I fully acknowledge; but I want to know whether or not he is a consenting or approving party to the refusal to inquire into the exercise of the power to arrest and imprison for contempt of Court. That is the object of my Notice. It has been my object to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice, and to vindicate it from the errors, or whatever they may call it, that have crept into it. ["Divide, divide!"] I am not disposed to sit down under that imputation. And in the event—["Divide, divide!"]—in the event—["Divide, divide!"]—in the event—["Divide, divide!"] Well, I do not know that it matters much, and, perhaps, I have said enough; but I was going to say that in the event of my having to address my constituents or some other body—and since the trial I have not attended any public meeting—I shall have to consider that charge of the Lord Chief Justice; and I wish to know whether I can excuse him publicly from what I shall consider a serious aggravation of his exercise of power, he having been an assenting or approving party to refuse inquiry into it.
  MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he was not going to enter into any discussion upon this question. He regretted that the hon. Gentleman had thought it his duty to bring this matter before the House again. He had, he believed, in the course of the present Session and the last answered more Questions of the hon. Gentleman than those of any other Member of the House whatever, and he put it to the House whether from the first day he held the office he had the honour to hold

  1071
  he had ever treated any hon. Member with discourtesy. That afternoon he did state what he believed to be true—namely, that, with the exception of the hon. Gentleman himself, there was no Member of the House who desired to obtain further information about this case. He gave the hon. Gentleman credit for knowing a great deal more about this case, because he had attended to it for so long a time, than was contained in any documents at the Home Office. As far as he (Mr. Cross) was personally concerned, he had acted on his own responsibility, and from beginning to end he had treated this case precisely as he had treated every other criminal case that had been submitted to him as Secretary for the Home Department. He had paid particular attention to it, as he had to other cases. He had read every document that had been presented to him on the subject, and without giving the names of those whom he might have consulted in this or any other case, he could say distinctly that it was solely on his own responsibility that he advised Her Majesty how to deal with it. He did not think he should be justified in occupying the time of the House any further.
  Main Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Committee deferred till Monday next.

INCREASE OF THE EPISCOPATE BILL.
[Lords.] (Mr. Beresford Hope.)
INCREASE OF THE EPISCOPATE BILL.

  [BILL 110.] SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. BERESFORD HOPE, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said: Mr. Speaker, I feel that I may save the House a good deal of trouble by assuring it that this Bill is, in fact, supplementary to one which it passed a short time ago by a majority of more than 200. It carries out the principle which was so emphatically affirmed not only in the votes, but also in the speeches made upon the St. Albans Bishopric Bill; and among the hon. Members on whom I shall call to support the principle of the Bill—if he has any consistency in him—is my hon. and learned Friend opposite the Member for the City of Oxford (Sir William Harcourt). Now, the principle which the House has affirmed in the St. Albans
  1072
  Bishopric Bill is that, where the increase of the population manifestly shows that the governing power of the Church is weak, and that there is not sufficient Episcopal superintendence consistently with area and numbers, and where proper means are forthcoming from any dependable quarter, then the State, acting in concert with the Church, may divide an existing diocese and found a new Bishopric; and, further, although a complete organization of the diocese, with a Dean and Chapter, and other arrangements are very desirable, yet that the first step which should be taken is the appointment, pure and simple, of a Bishop. That is the principle which is laid down in the St. Albans Bishopric Bill, and that is the principle carried out in this Bill, which—as all know—was passed by the House of Lords without a single division, with the support of both parties, of persons of highest position in the State, and of the heads of the Church, This Bill of mine, which I now hold in my hand, carries out that principle; but it is only an enabling measure, and it only contemplates Sees being founded where everything is ready, and, in particular, where the Government and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are satisfied that they are wanted, and that the means are forthcoming to set them up on a proper footing. Let me repeat—the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are the operative body in the introductory stage; and who are those Commissioners? The leading personages in Church and State; men of the highest rank and position in both; members of the Peerage, members of the Episcopate and other exalted Churchmen. This body was the creation of Parliament; it was deliberately accepted by the people and the Church; and during the lifetime of many in this House they have been the body to whom we have had to look for administrative functions in regard to the great constitution over which they watch. I cannot, therefore, conceive a stronger or better safeguard than the approbation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. By the 3rd clause of this Bill, it is provided that the Commissioners may—
  "Prepare schemes for the erection of new bishoprics in England and Wales, by the division of any diocese then existing, such division or union to take effect upon the consent of the Bishop or Bishops of the diocese or dioceses affected by the scheme being given, or otherwise upon the avoidance of the diocese or dioceses

  1073
  affected by all such Bishops as do not consent to such scheme."
  By that it is clear that the Commissioners must be satisfied that the scheme is a feasible one. Then the 5th clause relates to schemes for the creation of capitular bodies, and the 10th enacts—
  "That nothing in this Act shall authorize the Commissioners to apply any portion of their common fund towards the endowment or maintenance of any Bishop, dean and chapter, chapter, or other office erected or created under the provisions of this Act."
  We know that in former debates on the Increase of the Episcopate, and notably in the debates which preceded the foundation of the Bishopric of Manchester, the question very materially turned on whether the Episcopal fund in the hands of the Commissioners was or was not applicable to the development of the Episcopate. I did not, then, and cannot now, see any great objection to that; but other persons did, and do see an objection, and in the Bill which I hold in my hand the utmost regard is paid to that opinion, and it is specially enacted that that fund shall not be drawn upon for the purpose. The 12th clause is one of the most important clauses of all. It relates to the material guarantees which are to be provided as the necessary conditions antecedent to the approbation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Its short title is this—
  "No scheme to be submitted for confirmation until sufficient moneys transferred to the Commissioners for securing Bishop's income, nor take effect till laid before Parliament."
  This clause, as I need hardly point out, assumes the approbation of Her Majesty in Council, or, in other words, of the Ministry, which is in itself a most sufficient safeguard. Then, the happy expedient of laying the scheme upon the Table of this House and of the other House of Parliament for six weeks—during which my hon. and learned Friend opposite would have ample opportunity of bestowing his acute criticisms upon it—following as it does upon the regulation which makes compulsory the provision of sufficient money and means, creates a moral impossibility that any scheme for founding a new Bishopric could, as I have heard it insinuated, be of a Quixotic or ambiguous character. Of course, Her Majesty's consent comes in as the final constitutional conclusion of the procedure. The 15th clause carries out the provision contained in the Manchester Act, and in the St.
  1074
  Albans Bill, which is also embodied, that the number of Bishops having seats in Parliament is not to be increased. At present, as we all know, there is one junior Bishop out of Parliament, and in a few weeks there will be a second junior also out of Parliament; and when the Bill, of which I am now moving the second reading, becomes law, the number of junior Bishops out of Parliament will be increased by the number of Bishops created under this measure. That is a principle which, I think, has been very emphatically affirmed by the House. It was so affirmed in the case of the Manchester Act in 1847; and again, this Session, when my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Salford (Mr. Charley) called attention to the subject, and with great gallantry advocated the admission of all the Bishops to seats in the House of Lords, but I think he will agree with me he very conspicuously failed to carry the opinion of this House with him. The only objection which it seems to me can be made to this Bill is, that it simply represents an idea, and that it will not be operative. Let us see how much this is worth. In a country like this, which has produced such splendid specimens of munificence; whether as amongst Church people, we recall such names as Akroyd or Burdett Coutts, associated with the foundation of several Bishoprics in the Colonies; or among Dissenters, such as a Josiah Mason, or a Titus Salt, I say that any such sordid idea ought not to be harboured, no, not for an instant; for the heart will be open when the law has opened a way for the heart to carry out its good intentions; and I believe if the work is a great and a good work, that we shall have good and great men coming forward to bring it on to a successful issue. In the autumn of last year, did we not see the great town of Liverpool, the second town in England, meeting together and determining that it would have its own Bishop; and do you not think that, having the will, Liverpool will find the way to give practical effect to this Bill when once it has become law? Have we not also heard that this very day a numerous and influential deputation from the great counties of Devon and Cornwall has made an application to a high authority, and asked that Her Majesty's Government would give their support to this measure in its passage through this House, so that the immense diocese of Exeter may

  1075
  be divided and the people of Cornwall have a Bishop of their own? And I understand that several sums have already been offered and given for the purpose of helping on the work in the event of the Bill passing into law. It may be said that the small number of Petitions presented to the House in favour of the Bill indicates that the Church is apathetic in the matter. But that I deny, and refer the objector to the Petition which I just now presented to the House, and which is signed by sixteen Deans—Hereford, Rochester, Chichester, Norwich, Lincoln, Canterbury, Winchester, St. Paul's, York, St. Asaph, Manchester, Exeter, Salisbury, Ely, Lichfield, Llandaff—two-thirds of the whole of the Deans of England, men whose names represent all parties in the Church, distinguished High Churchmen, distinguished Low Churchmen, distinguished Broad Churchmen; as representative a body as you could possibly produce of the most eminent, learned and devoted clergy in the Church. I do not refer to my swarm of Archdeacons. I suppose that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for the City of Oxford will oppose this Bill, as I see he has put a Notice down upon the Paper for its rejection. Why he has done so I do not know. He said something the other day about its not being an Erastian Bill; while he gave his support to the St. Albans Bishopric Bill because it was Erastian. My unfortunate Bill is not Erastian in his eyes, and therefore it has fallen under his displeasure. In meeting this objection I am conscious that I stand at a great disadvantage to my hon. and learned Friend; he is so awfully constitutional, so profoundly historical, and so terribly international; and besides, I have never yet learned to ambuscade behind some big swelling word of which I can give one interpretation one day, and if necessary another on another day; while always ready to repudiate anybody else's interpretation, when he tries to nail the man to any definite meaning for that big word. I suppose the idea which was hazily floating before his mind when he broke out with Erastian was, that it meant something or other that preserved the connection between Church and State; but if that is what he meant, his words were ill-selected, though the thing that he meant is a thing which I feel quite
  1076
  as strongly as he can profess to do. I am as little desirous as he of weakening the connection between Church and State; only I think that that connection is better kept up and maintained by easing the collar where it galls, by giving a little more elasticity, and by meeting laudable tastes and earnest feelings, than by getting up and shaking the old rusty fetters of Tudor despotism before people's eyes. Now, as to this word "Erastian;" what is it that my hon. and learned Friend wants? Is not the Ecclesiastical Commission Erastian enough for him? Whom could he have better to sit in judgment on these schemes for the erection of new Bishoprics than the Ecclesiastical Commissioners? Again, the Queen's leave is to be obtained. Then every scheme has to lie six weeks on the Table of each House of Parliament, and surely the most rigid Erastian would be hard to please if six weeks here and in the House of Lords would not be sufficient time to secure the purification of any scheme from sacerdotal taint. This objection, therefore, I do not think will hold good for one moment. The Bill is an important one. It is looked to with great interest by many people in the country whose feelings and views are entitled to our highest respect, and in justice to them I could not get up tonight and perfunctorily move the second reading. We all of us know, and feel pride and satisfaction in the fact, that the National and Established Church of England has rooted itself in the confidence and affections of the people of our generation, as it had never done in former times. We feel and acknowledge that this National Church is, under Divine Providence, an engine of infinite good to the people of the country in which it is established; and the people of England feel that, in order to develop and confirm that good, the governing and regulating power of the Church of England should be strengthened and increased. They also feel that there are certain spiritual ministrations which, according to the principles and doctrines of that Church, can only be performed by the highest order of the clergy. Looking, then, at the administrative and spiritual functions of the Episcopacy, we find that, whilst the population of England has doubled in a few years, only one Bishop has been added to the number, while a Bill has just passed this House adding

  1077
  a second recruit to the Episcopate, the increase of which ought, undoubtedly, to bear a little more relation to the increase of the population than it has yet done. The Church of England has come before Parliament on this occasion with only an enabling Bill, with nothing to lean on but the spontaneous good will of its devout and more munificent members. That Bill has passed through the other House without a single division, and I ask the House of Commons now to read it a second time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Beresford Hope.)
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he could assure his hon. Friend that he had no desire to enter into any personal controversy with him. Although they arrived at it by different paths, they had a common object—to maintain and enlarge the efficiency of the Church of England; and, though the word Erastian grated on the ears of his hon. Friend, still in seeking to attain their object his hon. Friend ought not to refuse the support even of an humble Erastain. His hon. Friend had referred to the Tudors, but did he remember that it was the House of Tudor that established the Reformed Church of England, that the Stuarts almost destroyed it, and that the House of Hanover had happily succeeded in re-establishing that Church upon principles which were rooted in the affections of the nation? His hon. Friend would, therefore, allow him to prefer the principles of the Tudors and Hanoverians to those of the Caroline divines, of which he was so great an admirer. He would proceed to give some reasons why he did not think that this was a wise and prudent Bill in the interests of the Church. The Bill was founded upon the supposed spiritual destitution of the country in regard to Bishops; but his hon. Friend had not shown that the supply of Bishops was smaller than the demand. In London this deficiency of Bishops was not so observable, because if you went by the Athenæum Club, every other Gentleman you met were a shovel hat and an apron. If hon. Members, however, resided in their dioceses they might be more struck by the absence of Bishops. Assuming, however, that more Bishops were wanted, they should provide a certain
  1078
  and effectual remedy for that spiritual deficiency. But the Bill provided no definite scheme for increasing the Bishops. The Church had large funds, and why could not the new Bishoprics be supplied by the agency of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as in 1847? If the Bill passed, those who wanted more Bishops would be as far as ever from having them, because, although they would have got a Bill, they would have got no funds. It was as if Parliament were asked to pass a Railway Bill which proposed to sanction a line from anywhere to anywhere, and where there was no capital, no subscribers, and no directors. It was, in fact, a kind of Episcopal Provisional Order Bill, by which an unlimited number of Bishops were to be created, no one knew where, and supported no one knew how. That was a sort of ecclesiastical kiteflying which ought not to be encouraged by the House. His hon. Friend had referred to various splendid instances of munificence displayed by members of the Church, but there was one other name he might have mentioned, and that was his own, for the Church had no more munificent benefactor than the hon. Member for Cambridge University, and others like him might be found to give their money for this object. But when they had done so, and could come before the House with a measure to create a definite Bishop for definite objects there would be no difficulty in passing the necessary measure. But to issue a Bill in order to raise money upon it was a sort of "accommodation Bill" which Churchmen ought not to attempt to negotiate. Moreover, he was one of those who thought that the creation of a Bishop was an act of State which ought to originate with the Crown and be exercised on the initiative of the Prime Minister of the Crown. He ought to be produced by the direct action of Parliament like the St. Albans Bishop, and not be a private-adventure Bishop such as was proposed to be created by this Bill. The new Bishopric to be created by this Bill, on the other hand, was not to come before Parliament at all. His hon. Friend proposed, he might add, to give the Ecclesiastical Commissioners the power of dealing with the whole of the transactions under the Bill, which was practically to hand them over to a solicitor

  1079
  residing in Whitehall Place. The Commissioners were to be at liberty to cut up the whole of the dioceses in England at their pleasure. Now, a diocese was rather an important division of the country, and he thought that to delegate to them so extraordinary an authority would be a very injudicious course to pursue. But when they had cut up a diocese, what were they to do? They were to declare the amount of the endowments of the new Bishops, and to recommend the apportionment of patronage among them. Such a recommendation was, in his opinion, a very delicate affair. Did his hon. Friend mean that the new Bishops were to have the same endowments as the old? If he did, whoever made them, even supposing it to be his hon. Friend himself, must be prepared to invest £150,000 in Consols. It was, however, perhaps intended that they should be what Sydney Smith called "gig" Bishops; and if so, it was, in his opinion, very unwise of his hon. Friend to introduce a Bill which would set up a class of poor, living side by side with a class of rich, Bishops. If that course were adopted, it must lead to a considerable re-distribution of the incomes of Bishops, and he thought his hon. Friend would find that some of his ecclesiastical supporters in the other House would be rather cool in their approval of a measure upon which they were already reproached with having thrown cold water. His hon. Friend laid stress on the Petitions which had been presented from Deans in favour of the Bill; but he was not at all surprised that they should desire to multiply Bishops, seeing that the relations between them were so close. In the 5th clause the Bill proposed that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners should also manufacture Deans and Chapters at their discretion. He spoke of Deans and Chapters with all respect; they belonged to the superfluities and luxuries of the Church, and were justifiable because they existed. The next proceeding under the Bill was to enable the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, by a Provisional Order, to erect an unlimited number of Ecclesiastical Courts, of which he should have thought there was already a superabundant supply. How was the money to be found for the purposes of this Bill? The 10th clause declared that if the Church of England wanted new Bishops,
  1080
  the funds of the Church were not to contribute. Why? That was directly contrary to the principle of the St. Albans Bill. The 12th clause declared that the new Bishops which the Church required should be founded by voluntary effort. That was an attempt to graft the principle of a free Church on the Church of England, and a more dangerous and mischievous principle on the part of those who wished to support the Establishment it was impossible to conceive. The money was to be subscribed; the hat was to go round; the Provisional Order was to be made by the gentleman in Whitehall Place; but—and he must congratulate his hon. Friend on the prudence of his Bill in this respect—the 13th was a kind of winding-up clause for an insolvent speculation; if the money subscribed was not sufficient and the bubble burst, the subscribers were to get back their money with interest thereon. Then, as to the question of seats in the House of Lords, was Parliament going to refer to gentlemen in Whitehall the manufacture of an unlimited number of Bishops, with a paulo post futurum right to sit in the House of Lords? It was a matter which deserved consideration whether Parliament was to put the creation of Peers in commission in that way. He opposed this Bill because it was both unwise and unnecessary. It was unnecessary, because if his hon. Friend who desired to create these new Bishops would only provide the necessary funds, he would have no more difficulty about the matter than there was about the Bishopric of St. Albans. But, if people went begging about the country, many would ask why it was necessary for Bishops to have large country and town houses, kept up at an enormous expense. He believed that the policy adopted in 1836 gave the Church a new lease. Under that Act, power was given to constitute new Bishoprics under certain conditions, and the incomes of the Archbishops and Bishops were reduced to effect that object. If a Bill for the creation of new Bishops was needed, it must be a Bill for the reform of the Bishoprics of the Church of England. Let the Government, then, say that there was not a sufficient number of Bishops, and that the Church must not be dependent on voluntary subscriptions when the resources of the Church were sufficient to

  1081
  meet the pressing want. He believed the Church was firmly established; but he did not know how long it would remain so, if they began to tamper and tinker with her constitution. The Bill was neither more nor less than an attempt to combine the privileges of a Free Church with the privileges of an Established Church. These two things were incompatible, and the attempt to realize such an idea would simply end in failure. He thought such a Bill should have been introduced on the direct responsibility of the Government. The hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by moving the rejection of the Bill.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."—(Sir William Harcourt.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, the question raised by the measure was not one involving the connection between Church and State. The hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt) had said that the Bill was one which tampered with the constitution of the Church of England, because it proposed that instead of the funds required for the new Bishoprics being provided out of those of the Church of England, they were to be obtained by means of voluntary contributions. The hon. and learned Member further maintained that such an attempt to unite a Free with a State Church must necessarily be a failure, inasmuch as they were incompatible with each other. But the Church of England had obtained her funds originally not from the State, but by means of voluntary endowments, and therefore he saw nothing incompatible with her present position in the new Bishoprics being endowed by voluntary contributions. It had been found necessary of late years to divide the old ecclesiastical parishes, and the result was that instead of our having 10,000 parishes, as was the case 40 years ago, we had now somewhere about 20,000 with their separate endowments, and all this had been done by voluntary efforts. The proposition, therefore, that voluntary efforts were incompatible with the existence of a State Church could not be maintained. Any one who had listened
  1082
  to the hon. and learned Gentleman would have supposed that the whole working of this Bill was intended to rest upon the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who would have power under it to create new dioceses and to appoint new Bishops. Such, however, was not the case, inasmuch as all schemes, after being prepared by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, must receive the sanction, first, of the Bishop whose diocese was to be divided, then that of the Government, then they must lie six weeks before both Houses of Parliament, and, finally, they must receive the Royal Assent before they could be carried into effect. All that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners would have power to do would be to negotiate with the benefactors who wished to endow the new diocese, and to draw up a scheme. If, for example, the town of Liverpool wished to endow a Bishopric, this would be done through the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, subject to the approval of the First Minister of the Crown. He did not think the number of Bishops would be largely increased under the operation of the Bill, neither did he think any wholesale increase in their number was desirable; but it was much better that Bishops should be specially appointed for the government of a diocese rather than Suffragan Bishops should be appointed, as was the case at present. The fact was established that there was great need of Bishops in some parts of the country; while, on the other hand, there were many persons who if they saw a prospect of a new diocese being created would willingly contribute towards its endowment. Under these circumstances, he should support the Bill of his hon. Friend.
  MR. STORERsaid, the great blot of the Bill was the 10th clause, which prohibited the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from using any part of their revenues for the endowment of new Bishops.
  MR. DILLWYNopposed the Bill, expressing the opinion that what the Church needed was not an increase in the number of its higher officers, but rather in the number of the curates.
  MR. WADDYmoved the Adjournment of the Debate on account of the lateness of the hour.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Waddy.)
  The House divided:—Ayes 42; Noes 101: Majority 59.
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. DILLWYNsaid, he rose to move the Adjournment of the House.
  MR. SPEAKERruled that, having addressed the House on the question before the House the hon. Member was not at liberty to make such a Motion.
  MR. H. A. HERBERTthen moved the Adjournment of the House.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Mr. Herbert.)
  COLONEL BARTTELOTthought such a Bill as this ought not to be in the hands of a private Member, and hoped that hon. Members on his own side of the House would consent to an Adjournment, in order that they might have a fair discussion of the measure.
  MR. BERESFORD HOPEdeprecated these constant Motions for Adjournment, after the House had so unequivocally pronounced its opinion upon the principle of the measure, and trusted that they would not be persevered in.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONwould have preferred to see such a measure in the hands of the Government, and hoped that a fair opportunity of debating it would be afforded the House. He trusted that the debate would be adjourned, but would not recommend another division.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERwas unable to hold out any prospect of an early opportunity being found for such a discussion as the noble Lord wished for, and complained of the unreasonableness of hon. Gentlemen opposite in requiring the cream of the evening for everything. In old times this would not have been considered too late to consider a Bill of this kind, and he feared they were becoming effeminate in regard to dealing with Bills at, an advanced hour of the evening. It would be only gracious if Members were to allow the Bill to proceed.
  MR. HUBBARDhoped the discussion on the Bill would be allowed to be continued.
  MR. ERNEST NOELsaid, he had voted in the majority, because he believed the adjournment of the debate
  1084
  simply meant that the Bill should not be read a second time that year.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 37; Noes 92: Majority 55.
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  SIR CHARLES FORSTERmoved the Adjournment of the Debate.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned." (Sir Charles Forster.)
  MR. MOWBRAYtrusted the hon. Baronet would not persevere in the Motion, seeing that ample opportunity of discussing the Bill would be afforded at future stages.
  MR. BERESFORD HOPEreminded the hon. Baronet that they would have an opportunity of raising a discussion on the Motion that the Speaker do leave the Chair, and he must therefore insist on the Bill being then read a second time.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 36; Noes 86: Majority 50.
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. WATKIN WILLIAMSsaid, the Bill was a most important one, and should not have been brought on for a second reading at 2 o'clock in the morning. He should therefore move that the House do now adjourn.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Mr. Waikin Williams.)
  MR. BERESFORD HOPEassented to the adjournment of the debate, trusting that he might not meet with any obstructive opposition on a future occasion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  Debate adjourned till Monday next.
  House adjourned at Two o'clock, till Monday next.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Metalliferous Mines* (106); Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation (No. 3) * (107); Endowed Schools Act (1868) Continuance* (109); Bishopric of Saint Albans (108); Sale of Food and Drugs* (112); Public Stores* (110); Railway Companies* (111); Matrimonial Causes and Marriage Law (Ireland) * (117); Justices (Dublin) * (118); Military Manœuvres* (115); Post Office* (116); Glebe Loan (Ireland) * (114).
Second Reading—General School of Law (90); Inns of Court * (89); Falsification of Accounts (93).
Committee—Report—Seal Fishery (Greenland) * (80).
Royal Assent—Regimental Exchanges [38 Vict. c. 16]; Sea Fisheries [38 Vict. c. 15]; Peace Preservation (Ireland) [38 Vict. c. 14].

VIVISECTION.

  A ROYAL COMMISSION.
  In reply to Lord HENNIKER,
  THE DUKE OF RICHMONDstated that, as had been already announced in "another place" by his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, the Government proposed to issue a small Royal Commission, with a view of obtaining information with reference to the subject of vivisection. Without such information as the Commission was calculated to obtain, he thought legislation would be premature.
  LORD HENNIKERsaid, that as it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to appoint a Commission on the subject, he thought it would be for the convenience of the House and the Government if he stated the course he proposed to pursue with respect to his Bill. He regretted Her Majesty's Government should have thought it necessary to appoint a Commission, for he thought they had ample information already; but, as the Government deemed it to be necessary, and in the face of the circumstances that the Prime Minister had, as it were, pledged himself to the appointment of a Commission, that this proposal had met with unanimous approval in "another place," and that the subject was, in some respects, a new one, he did not think it would be possible for him to do less than to postpone action in the matter. He would therefore put off the second reading of his Bill for a month, with a hope that it might then be possible to know to some extent the result of the inquiry; and, if not, their Lordships might be sure he should do his best to consider the convenience of the House when the proper time arrived.

SLIGO, LEITRIM, AND NORTHERN COUNTIES RAILWAY BILL—PREFERENCE STOCK.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
LORD REDESDALEsaid, that this Bill had come before the House as a Private Bill; but he had thought it his duty to remove this Bill from the usual place occupied by Private Bills on their Lordships' Notice Paper. There were
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exceptional circumstances in connection with it, as introduced, involving a principle of great importance in railway legislation, which rendered it desirable that it should be considered by a Committee of the Whole House, as if it were a Public Bill. The question involved was, in a word, whether the promoters of a Railway were to be allowed to issue preference stock in their first or original Bill. That was what the promoters of the Bill now before their Lordships asked to be allowed to do, and which had never hitherto been granted. On the one hand he did not like, as Chairman of Committees, to give his sanction to a Bill containing such a provision; but, on the other hand, he did not like to take upon himself to reject a Bill to which there was no opposition, and which was represented to be one of some importance to the North of Ireland. The promoters asked for borrowing powers to the extent of one-half of their subscribed capital, which would be the first charge on the line. The landowners of the districts through whose land the line would pass had guaranteed a sum of £39,300 towards its construction, and £33,500, had been guaranteed by the baronies through which the line was to pass. The spirit and liberality of the landowners and of the baronies was very creditable; but he could not overlook the very serious objection to the proposal of the promoters to raise £50,000 by the issue of "preference stock" to come next after the borrowed capital, and before the two other capitals referred to. This was a complete departure from the rule usually observed of not giving power in an original Bill for the issue of preference stock. He believed that if the provision were sanctioned the result would be that none of the ordinary stock of the Company would be taken up, and that the promoters would have to come to Parliament for pre-preference stock or further borrowing powers, such securities necessarily taking precedence over the stock to be issued as preference under this Bill, and which the holders would consequently have been induced to subscribe under a deceptive title. He thought the principle involved in the provision was a vicious one, and likely to form a dangerous precedent.
THE EARL OF MORLEYbegged their Lordships to remember that the Bill

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came before them as an unopposed one, and that consequently, instead of having been sent to a Select Committee, it had been only subjected to the ordeal of the Committee of the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees. Their Lordships would see that the only persons who could be injured by the provision to which the noble Lord had drawn attention, were the landowners and baronies who had guaranteed£72,800 of the whole capital. As one of the landowners who had subscribed to the guarantee money spoken of by the noble Lord, and as the representative of those landowners, he thought he might assure their Lordships that the evil anticipated by the noble Lord would not arise; they were, however, quite willing that the provision in question should be introduced into the Bill. They were, therefore, fully aware of their obligations. Without such powers as were given in the Bill it would be impossible to make the railway; for such was the difficulty of raising capital for the construction of railways in Ireland, that without some kind of collateral guarantees, the capital could not be raised at all. There could be no danger of introducing this as a precedent for English railways, for the system of personal guarantees was neither known nor required; whereas, in Ireland, unless it were authorized, railway enterprize would come to a stop.
THE EARL OF LEITRIMgave his decided opposition to the Bill. There was no principle in it; it was got up in a most objectionable manner, and was a gross job.
THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, this was an opportunity for doing an act of national importance in Ireland. The object of the Bill was not to authorize the construction of a speculative railway, but one that was required by the necessities of the district, its purpose being to form a connecting line between two systems of railways; but, from its nature, it was one which could not be done in the ordinary way. To meet the difficulty a course had been taken highly creditable to the neighbourhood through which the line would pass,—but to which we were not used in England—namely, to guarantee a certain amount of the capital required. There would be a preference capital of £50,000 at 5 per cent, and then a £70,000 guaranteed capital by the landowners of the
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district. If anybody was to be prejudiced by the first preferential charge it would be the landowners of the country: they were satisfied with the arrangement, and they asked Parliament to sanction it. He knew that his noble Friend the Chairman of Committees looked with horror on a proposal to issue preference stock in pursuance of powers given in a first Bill; but what reason or principle was involved in that doctrine, he (the Lord Chancellor) had never been able to see. If persons with their eyes open chose to enter into such arrangements, he saw ground why they should be prevented from doing so.
THE EARL OF ENNISKILLENbelieved this railway would be a benefit to Ireland, and in that belief he had guaranteed a certain sum of money.
THE EARL OF BANDONapproved of the principle of guarantees, and mentioned instances of its useful application in the South of Ireland. He should support the Bill.
LORD WINMARLEIGHsaid, that he objected to the principle of guaranteed capital; but from the peculiar circumstances of Ireland, he was afraid that English capital would not flow into Ireland for the construction of railways without it. Seeing therefore that the proposals of the Bill were necessary in Ireland, he should not oppose it.
LORD REDESDALEreplied that his objection remained still unanswered—namely, how, in the face of such a provision as that to which he called their Lordships' attention, the Company could raise the remaining £72,200 of ordinary capital. He was convinced if this Bill passed, the promoters would have to come to Parliament in a year or two for pre-preference stock or extended borrowing powers, and that the holders of the preference stock and the guaranteeing landowners and baronies would all find themselves deceived as to the position in which they would have been led to consider themselves placed by this Bill.
THE DUKE OF MANCHESTERsaid, he thought that it would be unnecessary to do; so he believed the line would be constructed with the preference and guaranteed capital.
LORD REDESDALE: Then why ask for more?
LORD WAVENEYobjected to the Bill as involving exceptional legislation, but intimated that under the circumstances

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in which it came before Parliament, he should offer no opposition to it.
House in Committee accordingly.
Amendment made; the Report thereof to be received on Monday next.

GENERAL SCHOOL OF LAW BILL.
(The Lord Selborne.)
GENERAL SCHOOL OF LAW BILL.

  (NO. 90.) SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, that as both that Bill and the Inns of Court Bill had been before the country for some weeks, he had been much surprised to find that neither to himself individually, nor, so far as appeared to any Member of their Lordships' House, had any communication been made of the views of the four Inns of Court with regard to the proposed legislation. As the two Bills had an intimate relation to each other, and both stood on the Paper for the second reading that evening, he would refer to both measures. As to the Inns of Court Bill, he had no reason whatever to object to it. Last year, when his noble and learned Friend (Lord Selborne) introduced a Bill of a somewhat similar description, he stated the objections he had to that measure. He told his noble and learned Friend that he would have preferred a Bill which dealt with the Inns of Court somewhat after the manner in which the Colleges and the Universities had been dealt with—namely, that the Inns of Court should be required and empowered to make statutes for their own regulation as places of learning and discipline; and that, if they failed to prepare such statutes as should be approved of by the Queen in Council, Commissioners should be empowered to frame statutes for that purpose, which should be binding on them. Now, that was the course proposed in the Inns of Court Bill which his noble and learned Friend had now before their Lordships' House; and he was bound to say that, whether, speaking in his official character, or as a Member of their Lordships' House, or a Bencher of one of the Inns of Court, he thought the Bill was a desirable one, and that it ought to receive the assent of Parliament. He said that, reserving to himself at the same time the right to make some objections as to certain points
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  of detail, as to which he thought alteration necessary. But as regarded the other Bill—the General School of Law Bill—he could not go so far. He held, and he must repeat, that it was not the business of Parliament, or of the State, to create or constitute a school for the teaching of Law. Probably his noble and learned Friend would say that if their Lordships would look at the Bill, they would find that he proposed only that there should be an Examining Body in the first instance, and that there was to be a teaching body only in certain events—that was to say, when sufficient funds could be obtained for the purpose. But when he found that the Bill was entitled one to establish a School of Law in London, he (the Lord Chancellor) must say he did not know the meaning of words, unless it meant an institution in which Law was to be taught. He thought the State should do in the case of the legal profession what it did in that of the profession of Medicine—establish an examining tribunal, through which it took security that there should be a standard which must be reached by all candidates before their admission to the profession. At present, we had the four Inns of Court for those who proposed to go to the Bar, and we had the Incorporated Law Society for those who intended to become attorneys and solicitors. In his opinion, those bodies required to be supplemented by an Examining Body, which should provide a standard of examination, such as should give security that the teaching in the subsidiary institutions should be of a kind adequate for those who were to be admitted into these professions. If they established a new body as a teaching body, they would put a cheek upon the rivalry which existed with the existing bodies where Law was taught, and which might have the effect of condemning the existing education. The Bill pointed to a teaching institution of some kind, but its provisions did not point out with sufficient clearness how it should be done. He had no desire to oppose the second reading of a Bill that was intended for so excellent a purpose as was in his noble and learned Friend's mind; but he thought it would be better to confine it to a much more moderate proposition—that of establishing an Examining Body, such as existed with regard to Medicine and Surgery. Whether such

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  a body should be called an Examining Council or a Legal University was a matter of no importance—but, he thought, that the Bill proposing, as it did, to institute a General School of Law, contained a much too ambitious project. He would not, however, oppose the second reading.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Lord Sellorne.)
  LORD HATHERLEYthought that the necessity for a separate School of Law would depend very much on how the Inns of Court Bill was worked; but he was also of opinion that it would not be amiss to have by the side of the Inns of Court a body established by Act of Parliament which could take a part in the promotion of any scheme for the promotion of legal education. He was happy to say there was a growing feeling in favour of means being afforded to young men who did not intend to practise at the Bar, whereby they might obtain a good practical knowledge of the laws of the country. It was highly desirable that there should be an adequate knowledge of the Law among those classes who might be called upon to perform the duties of country magistrates, or of municipal officers; and it was a significant fact that several officers of the Army had got called to the Bar with the view of fitting themselves for the discharge of their duties on courts-martial. Examination had not had the effect of deterring gentlemen from presenting themselves for call who did not intend to practise. For those who did intend to practise he should wish to see the application of a uniform and complete system of legal instruction and examination.
  LORD SELBORNEsaid, he was gratified at the manner in which his two Bills had been discussed by his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack. As to the General School of Law Bill, he was happy to find that his noble and learned Friend, though not assenting to all its proposals, would not oppose the second reading:—and as to the other Bill, the Inns of Court Bill, it was still more satisfactory to him to find, that his noble and learned Friend quite approved the course proposed to be taken. Under these circumstances, he had good hopes that these measures would, either in their present, or in some modified form, at no
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  distant period become law. He need hardly say that nothing could be further from his mind than the wish to take any course which would be hostile or in any way unfriendly to the Inns of Court. Like his noble and learned Friend, he had the honour of belonging to the Governing Body of one of those institutions. Although he had a strong opinion that those great societies were not all that they might be, and ought to be, for effectuating the objects for which they existed, yet he was disposed to hold them in honour—he desired that every good should happen to them, and to that end he sought to enable them to do all that was required of them in the best possible manner. He thought that those were the best friends of institutions who wished to see their public utility enlarged. This was his object with respect to the Inns of Court. As to the next stage of both his Bills, he would fix an earlier day for the Committee on the Inns of Court Bill than that for the Committee on the Bill now before their Lordships' House. He was glad that he found himself, so far as he did, in in agreement with his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack; and he regretted when he found that their views differed as to one important part of this Bill. He could not acquiesce in what his noble and learned Friend had said against the teaching clause of the Bill, and against the title of a General School of Law, if it was not to be a Teaching Body. The Inns of Court had been likened to Colleges; but it should be remembered that they were not at present bound together by any common connection—they were not members of any general organization in the nature of a University. The Incorporated Law Society, which represented another and most important branch of the legal profession, was also a separate institution. The Committee of the House of Commons which a good many years ago inquired into the entire subject, more especially as regarded the Inns of Court, recommended that they should be united into a Legal University; and the Royal Commission which afterwards sat made a similar recommendation; and his noble and learned Friend (the Lord Chancellor) had himself expressed concurrence in that view. But the larger institution—that which was to be in the nature of an University—was an institution which must be

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  created, for it did not now exist; and if it were created he hoped it would extend to, and embrace, the Incorporated Law Society—and the mode in which, as it appeared to him, that could best be done, he had attempted to embody in the General School of Law Bill. His noble and learned Friend, however, thought it would be better to confine such an institution—though he would still call it a University—to the duty of examination, and not extend its powers to the office of teaching. He did not agree with his noble and learned Friend on that point; but if such should be their Lordships' view also, there really was nothing in the provisions of the Bill or in its title which need stand in the way of giving effect in Committee to the suggestion of his noble and learned Friend. The title, it was said, implied teaching. On the contrary, he ventured to say that the title "General School" no more implied teaching than did the title "University." The University of London, for example, was an examining body and did not teach. The phrase "General School" or Schola Generalis was merely the ancient name for what we now called a University: the original meaning of the word "University" being identical with that of the modern word "Corporation." But why should there not be teaching in the General School, as well as in the Inns of Court? The argument against it seemed to him to rest on misconceptions. It was no part of his proposal that the State should teach Law. If the School were founded, professors and lecturers would only be appointed when funds and endowments came in—the Crown would have a voice in the nomination of some members of the Senate, but would have no further power. The Bill, too, did not propose, for the purpose of calls to the Bar or any other purpose, to compel students to attend a single lecture in connection with the School of Law. All that was sought by it was to provide means by which, when funds were forthcoming, a system of Academical teaching of Law might be established. The Inns of Court and the Incorporated Law Society had, no doubt, each a system of teaching; but, with respect to the teaching at the Inns of Court, he could not speak of it as efficient. The attendance of students at public lectures and private classes had fallen off
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  in an extraordinary manner, and he thought their Lordships would agree with him that at least no harm could be done by rendering it possible by some general organization to make the system of teaching Law larger, more liberal, and less exclusive than it was at present. He believed that all persons who had recorded their opinions on the subject, and who had studied it in a manner which entitled them to speak with authority had said, that Law might be, and ought to be, taught upon scientific principles and in a more liberal manner than had been the custom—at least in modern times—in this country. He wished to see that done, and had made the proposals contained in the Bill with that view. At the same time, if their Lord-ships concurred with his noble and learned Friend that the establishment of a mere Examining Council was preferable, he confessed he would rather see that opinion given effect to, than that things should be allowed to remain as they were at present; although he should regret the loss of that which he considered by no means the least important part of his own proposal.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday the 8th June next.
  Then—
  INNS OF COURT BILL read 2a (according to Order), and committed to a Committee of the "Whole House on Tuesday the 8th June next.

SEAL FISHERY (GREENLAND) BILL.
(The Earl of Dunmore.)
SEAL FISHERY (GREENLAND) BILL.

  (NO. 80.) COMMITTEE.
  Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
  THE EARL OF DUNMOERsaid, that, owing to the lateness of the hour when the Bill came on for a second reading, he had postponed the few remarks he proposed to make until to-day. The object of the Bill was to establish a close time in the seal fishery in the seas adjacent to the Eastern Coast of Greenland, without which it was the general opinion that those animals would altogether cease to exist. The origin of the Bill, which had come up from the House of Commons, was this—The attention of the Board of Trade had been repeatedly

  1003
  called to the murderous manner in which the seal fishing was conducted in Greenland and the adjacent seas. From the accounts given in the public journals, and from reliable evidence which had been taken on the subject from ship-owners and captains of vessels employed in the trade, it appeared that there were about 60 ships engaged in the fishery, hailing from England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Holland. The practice had been to commence fishing about the month of March, when the breeding seals were killed in great numbers. The newly-born seals were then left motherless, and consequently died of starvation, and unless some steps like those proposed in the Bill were taken in the matter to obtain a close time for seals, there was every reason to anticipate an ultimate extinction of the species and the consequent annihilation of a most profitable branch of industry. The matter had been brought before Her Majesty's Government by the Swedish Government, and the accounts which had appeared in this country were fully corroborated by a despatch from Her Majesty's Minister at Stockholm, and also by the almost unanimous opinions of persons engaged in the trade. He would read a short extract, dated Christiania, August 19, 1874, enclosed by Her Majesty's Minister at Stockholm, in his despatch. He said—
  "Ever since the month of May, when our seal fishers began to return, negotiations have been going on, though hitherto without result, between our different shipowners, with a view to some understanding being come to as to postponing the opening of the seal fishery for one month later than is now the practice. The captains give heartrending descriptions of the manner in which the fishing was conducted this year, owing to its having commenced too soon—namely, at the close of March. There was this year a good prospect of all the vessels being able to return full. Thousands of pregnant female seals were to he seen swimming about preparatory to giving birth to their young on the ice over the shoals frequented by the shrimps, on which the seals principally subsist. But the vessels were lying in wait, and such a destruction commenced that after the lapse of three days the fishing was utterly destroyed, and thousands of young seals were heard crying piteously after their slaughtered mothers. The young seal is worthless until it is three or four weeks old. If the fishing is conducted in this manner for a very few years more the seals will be utterly exterminated."
  The steps which the Board of Trade had taken in the matter were described, and the Correspondence which had passed
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  was given in a Parliamentary Paper in the hands of their Lordships. The Board had expressed their opinion that the best recommendation they could give was that the object in view—namely, the protection of the seal fishery—might be obtained by the introduction of a Bill framed on the principle of several recent Acts, giving Her Majesty power by an Order in Council to prohibit the killing of seals within certain geographical limits before a certain date in each year; such powers to be only exercised if Her Majesty was satisfied that other nations fishing in the same waters had made, and would enforce, similar arrangements with respect to their own fishermen. The Bill in its present shape had been approved by the Foreign Office, and had passed through the other House of Parliament without Amendments. He therefore hoped their Lordships would see fit to give it an equally free passage through that House.
  House in Committee accordingly; Bill reported without Amendment; and to be read 3a on Monday next.

FALSIFICATION OF ACCOUNTS BILL.
(The Marquess of Lansdowne.)
FALSIFICATION OF ACCOUNTS BILL.

  (NO. 93.) SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said that its object was to amend the law so as to punish the falsification by clerks, officers, servants, and others, of their employers' accounts and documents; and for that purpose it declared that any such person who wilfully and with intent to defraud should destroy, alter, or mutilate any such books, writings, or documents, or should make false entries, or otherwise falsify them, should be guilty of a misdemeanour, and be liable to penal servitude for seven years, or to two years' imprisonment, with or without hard labour. As an example of the necessity for such legislation, he might instance a recent case, where the manager of a large banking firm, being in difficulties, transferred the money of a client to his own account. A prosecution was instituted, and the case was clear, but a conviction was impossible. Similar cases had occurred before, and the present Bill, which had obtained the

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  assent of the Law Officers of the Crown, and had passed the other House without amendment, would, it was hoped, prevent these offences.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of of the Whole House, on Monday next.

GEOGRAPHICAL EXHIBITION AT PARIS.—QUESTION.
LORD HOUGHTON, in rising to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to send a Commission to the Geographical Exhibition at Paris? explained that he was informed that it was proposed in August next that there should be an important Exhibition in Paris of all objects connected with Geography—including maps, representations of forests and mountains in various parts of the world, and everything connected with the science and practice of Geography. Although the project did not emanate from the French Government, it had a certain public character, and they had allotted a spacious building, part of the Palais de l'Industrie, for the exhibition of the various articles proposed to be sent. It was hoped that the Congress would be attended by all the eminent geographers and travellers from the different counties of Europe, and that considerable good would result from the meeting together of men who had gone through different adventures, and were able to communicate to each other the result of their travels. It was hoped that a number of men of science would also be present, who would be able to communicate on all those matters which occupied the border-land between Science and Geography. The French Government intimated a desire that the Governments of other nations should appoint certain Commissioners whose duty should be to represent officially the different countries, and who should also superintend with care the different objects which those countries might exhibit. The matter had of course come under the attention of the Royal Geographical Society, of which he had the honour to be a member, and the merits of which were fully recognized by the Government and people of this country. That society would probably send over some one as their
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delegate and representative; but it would be difficult for any such person delegated by a private Society to take upon himself an official character which would give him the authority and right to represent this country at the Exhibition. The Royal Geographical Society had thought it right to devote a sufficient portion of their funds to that purpose; but still it would hardly be consistent in a delegate of the Royal Geographical Society to accept a quasi-official position. He wished, therefore, to ask, Whether Her Majesty's Government had any intention of sending over to Paris any person who should represent the English Government as Commissioner at the Exhibition, and who should receive such remuneration as might enable him to perform those functions without involving any pecuniary expense on his part? It would not be necessary to allow any large sum for this purpose, beyond travelling expenses and such moderate outlay as was required by the duties he would have to perform. He believed that every other important country of Europe had come to the determination to send a Commissioner to represent it; and that the proposition had been accepted by the French Government was evident from the fact that all official communications relating to the Congress were to come through some official person. He hoped that Her Majesty's Government would think that some small outlay for this object was justifiable, seeing that the Congress was not only of great scientific interest, but also because of its bearing upon the interests of commerce.
THE EARL OF DERBY: In answer to the Question of the noble Lord, I ought, perhaps, to explain that the project of this Geographical Congress and the Exhibition connected with it originated in the first instance, not with the French Government, but with the French Geographical Society, The French Government have supported the scheme, but they have never given it an official character; and in the first instance the French Government did not take any active part in support of it. What happened was this—The President of the French Geographical Society in August last applied to Her Majesty's Government for the appointment of a Special Commissioner to attend the Congress. That application was considered

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by the various Departments concerned, and it was not thought advisable to comply with the request; partly because it did not proceed from the Government of that country, but from an unofficial association—although, no doubt, very important and useful one—and partly because international exhibitions of this kind have greatly multiplied of late years, and it was thought that a growing disinclination had been shown in "another place," when questions of finance are considered, to vote the money for these frequently recurring Exhibitions. Further communications passed, and a few days since it was intimated by Her Majesty's Government to the Royal Geographical Society, that they would be prepared to name any person whom the Society might recommend, but on the understanding that no expense should be incurred by the public for the purposes of the Exhibition. The Royal Geographical Society considered that proposal, and informed the Government that they were not in a position to accept it. They have, however, determined to send a delegate to the Congress on their own part—and having been for many years a member of that Society and very much interested in its proceedings, I am bound to say that a better representative of the Royal Geographical Society could not have been selected.
LORD HOUGHTONsaid, that the Geographical Society could not take charge of the maps and valuable articles which would be sent for exhibition by a large number of persons, and he was afraid if the noble Earl persisted in his intention not to give any assistance, there would be no person to take charge of the English department at the Exhibition, and that would amount to a practical exclusion of England from the objects of the Exhibition.
THE EARL OF DERBYsaid, he did not think he was quite the person who was in a position to give an answer to such an appeal. If pecuniary assistance was required, the noble Lord might make a representation of the fact to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by whom it would receive fair consideration. He had stated the decision of the Government upon all the questions which up to that time had come before them.
House adjourned at a quarter before Seven o'clock, to Monday next, Eleven o'clock.