asked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether any reply has been sent to the Despatch of the Acting Governor of Mauritius, (dated 2nd May 1872), submitting Petitions to Her Majesty from the representatives of the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Bishop against the Ecclesiastical scheme proposed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies; and, if not, whether the Secretary of State proposes to assent to the suggestions embodied in those Petitions; or, if no decision has yet been arrived at by him, he will direct that no changes in the Ecclesiastical arrangements of the Colony shall be pressed until the subject shall have been discussed in Parliament?

Sir, having considered the Memorials upon the subject received from the colony, Her Majesty's Government have determined not to proceed further with the measures they had proposed with a view to remove the inequalities between the different religious communions. It is right I should add, that we cannot consent that the total amount of money voted for ecclesiastical purposes in the colony should be increased. I wish also to take this opportunity of correcting an error into which I inadvertently fell in speaking upon a kindred subject on Tuesday last. I stated that in St. Lucia, with some 30,000 Roman Catholics and 2,000 Protestants of all denominations, the endowments of the former were £900, and the Church of England £800. I had mistaken the purport of a despatch that £400 was received by two Anglican clergymen. It is not £400 each, but the total endowment is £400;so that the inequality is less than I imagined, though still great.

inquired whether matters had remained in statu quo?

said, no further steps had been taken.

asked the right honourable the Member for Cambridge University, If he intends to proceed further with the Union of Benefices Bill this Session?

in reply, said, that it was not his intention to proceed further with this Bill during this Session, but that he should re-introduce it next year. He would take that opportunity of moving that the Order for the Adjourned Debate upon going into Committee on the Bill should be discharged.

asked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether he is aware that ten acres of land adjoining the Now Cross Road, Hatcham, has been bought by the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the purpose of erecting temporary hospitals in the event of small-pox or any epidemic fever again occurring in the Metropolis; and, whether he will take any steps to prevent a hospital of this description being placed in the midst of such a densely-populated neighbourhood?

in reply, said, about nine acres of land adjoining the New Cross Road, Hatcham, had been purchased by the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the purpose of erecting, in case it should be needed, a temporary small-pox hospital. The site was conveniently contiguous to the population who were likely to require such a hospital, and at the same time it was sufficiently isolated to prevent the spread of contagion. According to the information he had received, the site was admirably adapted for the purpose for which it had been acquired, and it had been favourably reported on by the Inspector of the Local Government Board.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, under legislative enactments, the Public Works Loan Commissioners, with the sanction of Her Majesty's Treasury, are enabled to grant loans bearing interest at 3½ per cent. per annum to local authorities in England to obtain water supplies for their respective districts; whether the Board of Public Works in Ireland, with the sanction of the Treasury, are enabled to grant similar loans at 4 per cent. per annum to local authorities in Ireland for like purposes; and, whether the Treasury has not this year fixed 5 per cent. as the rate to be charged on a loan recommended by the Irish Board to be made to the Municipal Corporation of Waterford for their water supply; and, if so, whether he will state the reasons or motives for charging loans for sanitary purposes in Ireland with a rate of interest nearly fifty per cent. in excess of similar loans in England?

Sir, I have to answer the first three Questions put by the hon. Gentleman in the affirmative. As to the fourth Question, I may state that we have not the power by law of charging for waterworks in Ireland the same rate of interest as is now allowed in England—namely, 3½ per cent. The general rule in such cases is to charge 5 per cent, with a rather long period for the repayment of the principal; but it is in the power of the Treasury to charge 4 per cent, with a shorter period for repayment. After taking the best advice, we thought this was not a case in which we ought to deviate from the ordinary rule that has hitherto been adopted in regard to the matter.

said, he wished to be informed whether the time for repayment was not 50 years in England, whereas in Ireland it was only 22 years?

said, he really did not know.

said, that in consequence of the answer of the right hon. Gentleman, he should on an early clay ask whether the Treasury were justified in charging 5 per cent for loans in Ireland, when they were allowed to lend money on loan at 4 per cent in England?

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether, having provided by the Supplementary Estimates for an increase of pay to the Men of the Royal Irish Constabulary, Her Majesty's Government were prepared to take any steps towards adopting the Recommendations of the Commissioners in favour of the Commissioned Officers of that force?

in reply, said, he did not quite understand the hon. Gentleman's Question. In the first place, the Report of the Commissioners had not yet been laid upon the Table, and, consequently, the hon. Gentleman could not be aware what the recommendations of the Commissioners were. The Report would probably be laid on the Table that day, and he trusted the hon. Gentleman would then perceive that the regulations respecting the commissioned officers had been entirely carried out.

asked the Secretary of State for War, When the two additional battalions of the Royal Engineers alluded to in Clause 85, Army Circular 1st July 1873, will be formed, and when the Officers will be gazetted?

Sir, the formation of the battalions has been proceeding gradually, as the additional officers have been obtained from Woolwich. Eighty officers have already been added to the corps; the captains were gazetted last year, and the majors are now about to be gazetted. The higher ranks will be gazetted as soon as the 16 officers still wanting to complete the number are supplied.

asked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether a certain number of Temporary Clerks were promoted in 1872, after passing examinations before the Civil Service Commissioners, to the Establishment as Third Class Clerks in the General Register and Record Office of Shipping and Seamen; whether the annual leave, to which the Third Class Established Clerks were entitled according to the printed regulations of the Board of Trade of 1866, was thirty-six days; whether, on the 30th May 1873, the following Order was issued:—

"The question of annual holidays will be reconsidered by the Board of Trade; pending the Lords' decision no more than four weeks (twenty-four days) will be allowed Third Class Clerks who were appointed to the Establishment subsequent to August last;"

and, whether, on the 16th June 1873, an Order was issued signed by the President of the Board of Trade, fixing the annual leave of these Clerks at twenty-four days; and, if so, whether he adheres to the statement that the annual leave of a certain number of established Clerks has not been diminished?

in reply, said, that with regard to the portion of the noble Lord's Question respecting the Order of the 30th May, that it was correct, and that such an Order had been issued. No temporary clerks had been "promoted" in the ordinary sense of that word in the year 1872, and there had been no curtailment in anybody's leave of absence. Thirty-six days of leave were allowed to the old third-class establishment clerks; but the three gentlemen who had been fortunate enough to interest the noble Lord in their cause reached the position of third-class clerks on the establishment under very peculiar circumstances. They were temporary clerks, or writers, in connection with the Office of the Board of Trade and the dependent department of the General Register and Record Office of Shipping and Seamen. They then had a week less of leave of absence than they now enjoyed, and they had no claim whatever either to an increase of leave or to be on the establishment; but when the new system under the Order in Council was introduced which limited the non-established officers to the lower class of writers and copyists, and which interfered unfavourably with the prospects of many of the non-established gentlemen who had been employed before, these temporary clerks were placed on the establishment as an act of grace, with the permission of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

said, that having regard to the recent discussion on the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for North -Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate), he did not intend to proceed with his Motion on Friday next, for the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the state of the law respecting Conventual and Monastic Institutions or Societies in Great Britain.

said, he understood it would not be in his power to bring forward as an independent Motion the Motion of which he had given Notice, respecting the Reports of the Select Committee of Public Accounts as to the conduct of the Post Office. He, therefore, wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government would put down Supply for an earlier clay than Monday, or else allow the Standing Order to be dispensed with, so that the subject might be discussed?

said, he wished to know whether the Real Estate (Intestacy) Bill, which was set clown for the morning sitting to-morrow, was intended by the Government to be discussed?

said, it was his intention to give his hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Locke King) a day for his Bill; but not without considering the prior claims of Government business. He hoped, on Thursday, to make arrangements for that purpose. It would not be in the power of the Government to give a day to the hon. Member (Mr. Assheton Cross) for his Motion on Telegraph Accounts before Monday. It would be necessary for the House to give its undivided attention and to use considerable exertion during this week in order to pass many important Bills through the remaining stages. The evidence taken before the Committee of Public Accounts was only printed that clay, and it had not yet been read by the Government. There would, however, be no difficulty in finding an opportunity for the Motion of the hon. Member. He was afraid it could not be done on going into Committee of Supply; but it would be necessary to bring in a Bill for a further allocation of money for the purpose of supplying the deficiency in the Telegraph Capital Accounts, and therefore the hon. Member would have a better opportunity to bring forward his Motion than if it were brought on on a Supply night.

stated that it was not the intention of the Government to proceed with the Registration of Births and Deaths Bill that Session.

said, he proposed to take the Elementary Education Act (1870) Amendment Bill to-morrow at 2 o'clock. He should also proceed with the Endowed Schools Commission Bill to-morrow, if he could not make progress with it that evening.

said, that since he had given Notice of a Motion respecting Government Orders of the Day having preference during the remaining Tuesdays of the Session, he had received from his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton (Mr. Fawcett) a protest against that Motion. It was his (Mr. Gladstone's) duty to inform him that, as far as the Government were concerned, they could under no circumstances assent to his proposal, which stood for Tuesday evening, to refer to a Royal Commission the question of electoral power. That was a matter entirely for the House to decide. He, therefore, thought it would be for the convenience of the House that Tuesday evenings for the remainder of the Session should be devoted to Government Business. He should, therefore, conclude by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.

said, he was sure that the House would be glad to assist the Government at that period of the Session, and to facilitate in every way the progress of Public Business; but, in granting that addition to the considerable concessions already made, the House had a right to expect that the confidence placed in the Government should be used with discretion and in a satisfactory manner. On Friday night, when it was generally expected that the Government influence would be exercised to prevent it, the House was unfortunately counted out; at a period of the Session, too, when time was precious. Next he must say that the remarks made by the right hon. Gentleman on the course of Public Business were not altogether satisfactory. He understood that the next morning sitting was to be appropriated to a private Member. [Mr. GLADSTONE: No.] Then it was for another morning sitting; but however that might be, he did not understand that it was absolutely appropriated to the Real Estate (Intestacy) Bill, although it was put down on the Paper for that day; and it might appear on the Paper for a subsequent day. He wished to call the attention of the House to the fact that the Bill of the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Locke King), which was favoured by the Government, was of a very speculative and controversial character, which under any circumstances could not be brought to a conclusion that year, and it appeared to him, therefore, that it was not expedient that the time of the House should be occupied in discussing it, and especially that the time of private Members, given up to the Government, should be applied to the purpose. It did seem very hard upon those hon. Gentlemen, who by the Motion would forfeit any chance of bringing on their Resolutions, that the first use the Government should make of their privilege should be to secure a favour for a private Member which was quite unnecessary. Then there was another question, and one of a most eminently practical character, in which the whole House took an interest—namely, that with reference to those strange proceedings that had taken place with respect to the telegraphs. He thought some arrangement should be made to facilitate and advance the discussion of that important subject, which had been brought forward by the hon. Member for South-west Lancashire. The right hon. Gentleman had said that a Bill on the subject would probably be introduced, and that the hon. Member might then raise the discussion on his Resolution, which appeared to be very moderately expressed, in the form of an Amendment. But the Bill to be brought in by Her Majesty's Government was a Bill which he (Mr. Disraeli), so far as he knew, should deem it his duty to support, and the hon. Member for Southwest Lancashire also; and it would be unprecedented to ask his hon. Friend to put himself in a hostile position towards a Bill which he believed to be advantageous to the public interest, in order that he might ask the opinion of the House on another subject. In agreeing to the Motion of the Prime Minister, therefore, he thought there should be an understanding that the privilege thus cheerfully accorded should be used for no other purpose than the advancement of Public Business.

said, that there never was any intention on the part of the Government to apply any of the time that had been asked from the House for the purpose of giving a preference to his hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey over his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton. The Order of the Day for the Second Reading of of his hon. Friend's Bill, no doubt, stood for to-morrow, but it was never promised that it should come on his hon. Friend had, perhaps, some reason to complain, and the Government, he was afraid, had drawn largely upon his patience, seeing that his hon. Friend's Bill had been on the Order Book during the entire Session. Still, he quite acceded to what the right hon. Gentleman had said as to the duty of the Government to apply the additional time for which they now asked to those subjects which were recognized by the House generally as most important with reference to the close of the Session. He would give the hon. Member for South- west Lancashire (Mr. Cross) an assurance that, come what might, he should have an opportunity of bringing forward his Motion independently of Supply. But he would not stop there. As he had stated, the evidence given before the Committee of Public Accounts had only been published that morning, and the hon. Gentleman would no doubt think it proper that it should have some days to circulate before it was brought on; but if he could find an occasion for bringing on his Resolution as an independent Motion, the Government would have every reason to forward his views. He did not think that the Government could give him an opportunity this week, unless the progress of legislative business should be very rapid; but the Government would give him every assistance in bringing on his Motion.

said, he had a Motion down on the Paper for tomorrow night, and as it in some degree involved the question of Privilege, he should like, before withdrawing it, to put a question to the Government with regard to it. About that time last year the Postmaster General, in reply to a Question, expressed himself favourable to his (Mr. Hughes's) proposal to give facilities to small investors for obtaining Government securities through the machinery of the Post Office. He, therefore, introduced a Bill to that effect in the present Session. When he came to place that Bill on the Paper for a Second Reading, he was informed that it was necessary first to obtain the consent of the Treasury. For that consent he applied to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. For some time, he received no answer, and ultimately the right hon. Gentleman refused him the consent he required. It so happened, too, that the copy of the Bill which he forwarded to the right hon. Gentleman was the only one he had, and when he came to inquire for it he found that it had been lost by the Treasury. What he desired to learn was, whether the Treasury possessed this power of prohibiting the Second Reading of a Bill proposed in the ordinary way. If such a power existed, he could not help feeling that it was a great infringement of the rights of private Members.

referring to the count-out on Friday evening last, complained of the unsatisfactory working of the present arrangement, and said it was calculated to have a damaging effect on the character of the House. Hon. Members after the morning sitting were exhausted, and did not get clown to the House in time for the evening meeting, the result being that there was constantly a count-out, and much business of importance was neglected. He would suggest that as a remedy for that state of things, the present plan should be reversed, and the Tuesday and Friday mornings be given to private Members, the evenings being appropriated to Government Business. In that case, the Government would be sure to take care to keep a House.

reminded the House that he at the commencement of the Session made a similar suggestion, without receiving any support. If he could anticipate any encouragement for it, he would with pleasure renew it at the commencement of next Session.

as one of the victims of last Fridays' count, had not noticed the presence of either of the two last right hon. Gentlemen on that occasion. He felt bound to testify to the fact that, while there were only three hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House, the Treasury bench was unusually full.

hoped the Government would allow all the Motions of private Members now on the Paper to be disposed of, before the Government took all the time of the House. He also trusted that under no arrangement would undue preference be given to one Member over another.

said, that he would reply to the Question of the hon. Member for Frome (Mr. T. Hughes) to-morrow.

said, he had, in common with other hon. Members, protested against the Two o'clock sittings when introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) as tending to the utter destruction of the rights of private Members. Under the arrangement that was made it was not merely a matter of courtesy for the Government to keep a House, but it was their duty—a duty, moreover, which could be performed by no one else. The fact, however, was, that the sittings were so late that hon. Members could not come down again after adjourning at 7 o'clock. He hoped that before long Parliament would abrogate the Standing Order, and restore the constitutional right of redressing grievances before voting Supplies.

thought the Government ought to fix a day for the Indian Budget, before they gave one for the Bill of the hon. Member for East Surrey.

moved, that the Bill be recommitted with reference to Clause 14, which related to the salaries of the future Judges. In his opinion, the arrangements which had been agreed to, were exceedingly objectionable in many respects. As the clause stood certain of the Judges of the Divisional Courts would be in receipt of higher salaries than those of the Judges whose duty it would be to revise their decisions on appeal. For instance, while Judges of Appeal would be receiving £5,000 per annum, the President of one Division would have £8,000, of two £7,000, and of the other £6,000 a-year. The natural consequence would be that these offices would be more sought after by men of distinction at the bar, and their decisions would be subject to the revision of men of inferior standing who had accepted the lower salary. It must be remembered also that this might be done by a decision of three Judges of the Court of Appeal with reference to the judgments of a President and two Judges of the Court below.

asked what would be done with the Queen's Counsel of the County Palatine after the passing of the Bill; and, what the Government proposed to do with the present Chamber clerks of the Judges?

said, that he had put an Amendment on the Paper to meet the case of the Queen's Counsel of the County Palatine. With reference to the Chamber clerks of the Judges, that question had already been fully discussed, and he would not enter into it again. He must also decline, with all respect to the hon. Member for East Sussex (Mr. Gregory), to renew again the discussion on the subject of the Judges' salaries.

moved in page 10, line 32, at end, to add the following words:—

"In all cases of appeals from any Ecclesiastical Court, where her Majesty shall be advised that the judgment of the Court below ought to be reversed or varied, and that any sentence of suspension or deprivation ought to be passed on any clerk, it shall be lawful for her Majesty to remit the cause to the Court to pass such sentence, and such Court shall pronounce such sentence accordingly."

The object of the Amendment was to continue the existing practice, by which the formal passing of the sentence was remitted to the inferior Court.

did not understand the object of the Amendment, and thought it could only be agreed to on the understanding that it would confer no new power on the Ecclesiastical Courts, but would continue to them the duty—acting ministerially—of communicating the sentence to the party to be affected by it. He thought, however, that they should have some further explanation with regard to its effect, and the necessity for introducing it. If its object was to give to the Ecclesiastical Courts the power of pronouncing sentence without that control or check to which they were now subject from the superior civil Courts, it would be a clangorous innovation. If, on the other hand, the function of the Court below was to be purely ministerial, and they had merely, as at present, formally to pronounce the sentence of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, then he did not see the object of introducing it. He thought it would be much better to leave to the Superior Court the duty of pronouncing and enforcing obedience to its own sentences. With regard to the general question of the transference of ecclesiastical cases from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to the new Court effected by the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. G. Hardy), his strong conviction was that the subject had not been treated by the House or by the Government in the manner in which it ought to have been treated. When the Bill was brought in, it was distinctly stated by Her Majesty's Government that the question involved many delicate and important considerations, that it ought, if dealt with at all, to be made the subject of a separate measure, and that it was not desirable to include it in a Bill for the reform of the civil judicature of the country. Well, 17 days ago, when the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman opposite was agreed to, there was not the slightest intimation given by Her Majesty's Government that they had in any way modified that opinion. The Amendment was made in the most precipitate manner, and practically without any Notice. There was technically a Notice put on the Paper for the omission of certain words between brackets, but the Notice did not itself clearly indicate what the effect would be. Independently of that, the Notice was given only on the night immediately preceding the Two o'clock sitting, at which the Amendment was moved. He believed there were very few hon. Members of the House who knew that the Motion would be made, and still fewer who thought it would be accepted by Her Majesty's Government. He came himself down to the House without the slightest idea that such an Amendment would be moved. It might be said—"You ought to have looked at the Notice Paper, and seen what Amendments were to be proposed." But the fact was, it was very difficult to read through the multitudinous Amendments on such a Bill. He was, therefore, greatly surprised when his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government, without having given any intimation that the Government had changed their mind on the subject, and without any communication with the heads of the Church, accepted the Amendment. He was not going to deny that the change might be a right one; but it was a change which required the most careful and deliberate consideration, whereas it had received no consideration whatever, and had been adopted in a very hasty and precipitate manner. He must say that the wisdom, the learning, and the strict impartiality which characterized the decisions of the Privy Council in ecclesiastical cases had conferred great benefit on the Church, and he was not himself prepared to take away its jurisdiction, without being fully satisfied as to the Court to be substituted for it. He agreed with what had been said by Her Majesty's Government, that that was a question which demanded and ought to receive separate consideration. [Mr. GLADSTONE: By whom?] By the Lord Chancellor in the other House. If, in the case of decisions by the Privy Council, there were to be found persons in the Church who were slow to accept them, he should be very much surprised if those persons would receive with deference and willing obedience the decisions of this new Court of Appeal. If that transfer of jurisdiction was made, they would apparently have a stronger reason for refusing obedience; because it would be said that the judgments which would be come to would be the judgments of laymen only. He would not ask the House now to reverse the decision at which it had arrived; but he hoped the matter would receive in "another place" more deliberate care and attention than it had received in that House.

said, no doubt the Notice he had given was a very short Notice; but it was given under peculiar circumstances. His right hen: Friend the Member for Morpeth (Sir George Grey) had referred to what had been said "elsewhere;" but he was not quite accurate in saying that the Government had made so broad a statement as that they would not deal with the ecclesiastical appeals in that Bill. As far as he (Mr. G. Hardy) understood the Government made a very modified statement on the subject. What they did say was, that there were certain difficult questions which should be the subject of future consideration, and that the Government did not take up the subject of ecclesiastical cases, because they were afraid they would not succeed in the House of Commons, even if the transfer of jurisdiction were agreed to in the House of Lords. He had not himself intended to propose any change in the Bill as introduced by the Government. But when the question of including Scotch and Irish appeals was agreed to he began to make inquiries among hon. Gentlemen with whom he usually acted, and also among some on the other side of the House, one of whom was the hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Mr. Harcourt), whether he should receive their support if he brought forward the Amendment, and he found that there was an almost general agreement in favour of it. He also spoke to the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government the day day before he moved it. The right hon. Gentleman finding that there was no difference of opinion on the subject, and that everyone took the same view, assented to the striking out of the words; but he was bound to say that the right hon. Gentleman told him the night before that he could not pledge himself to accept the Amendment, but would leave it open to the consideration of his Colleagues. His right hon. Friend stated that he was not aware that the Amendment was about to be proposed; but it stood first on the Notice Paper, and anybody who looked at the Paper could not but see it. His right hon. Friend further said he did not intend to take any steps to reverse the decision to which the Committee had come, but would leave the matter to be dealt with by the other House. Well, he (Mr. G. Hardy) was quite prepared that it should go to the other House to be considered there. He said, when bringing forward the Amendment, that if the Government were hostile to it he would not press it; but he was still of the same opinion as when he moved the Amendment, that the change was a proper one to be made, and that it was a much better course to send those ecclesiastical causes to the new tribunal.

said, he shared in the regret expressed by his right hon. Friend near him (Sir George Grey), and he likewise agreed with him in thinking that the adoption of the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. G. Hardy) was a very hasty and precipi- tate step. The principle involved was, in the minds of many men, even of more transcendent importance than the whole question of final appeal in other cases, and had excited the greatest interest throughout the country at various times, and in regard to it he (Mr. Bouverie) contended that, in the opinion of a great many persons, a lay tribunal ought not to be the only Court to determine questions of doctrine and discipline within the Church of England. No one could be more fully aware of that than the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, who well knew that from the time of the Reformation downwards every tribunal which had been constituted to decide upon the doctrines, practice, and discipline of the Church of England had been a mixed tribunal, lay learning being in the ascendant, but there being also an infusion of the ecclesiastical element. Indeed, a great complaint on the part of the Church was that it was not entirely ecclesiastical. His right hon. Friend at the head of the Government, more than 20 years ago, wrote an elaborate paper, which he published in his own name, to demonstrate that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was an absolutely unfit tribunal to try these cases, because it was composed of laymen. [Mr. GLADSTONE: No, no! Read the whole book.] He had read the whole book several times, and he could quote chapter and verse for it. He sometimes refreshed his memory by reading over what the right hon. Gentleman had written; and he could only attribute the denial of his right hon. Friend to the fact that he did not adhere to the opinion he had expressed 20 years ago. These were the right hon. Gentleman's words—

"No one pretends that the constitution of the Judicial Committee of Privy Council is adapted to the due and solemn decision of cases of doctrine. Before the decision in the Gorham case was delivered, and when no man had an interest in upholding unduly the credit of the Court, there was but one voice of reclamation throughout the country against the gross indecency of such a mode of provision for such causes."

Several Prelates sat as assessors with the other Judges in that case, but this did not satisfy the right hon. Gentleman, who went on to say—

"And even now, when the case is much altered in that respect, there is still a nearly universal acknowledgment that the law requires material alteration. It is enough for me to stand on this acknowledgment, and upon the further fact that so many persons of the greatest weight—from the Episcopal Bench downwards, will find themselves precluded from acquiescence, at any time or under any circumstances, in the law as it now is, because they are convinced that it is a state of law which has already led to the violation, and would ultimately lead to the destruction, of the faith and work of the Church."

In a subsequent part of his essay, the right hon. Gentleman said—

"The transference, then, of these functions to the Court of Privy Council is not progress, but retrogression and decay. The maxim overthrown and disregarded is not one antiquated and unfit for these times, but one deeply founded in the nature of things, and in right human and divine. It being such a maxim, justly may we say that the statute which thus tramples it in the mire is an unconstitutional statute. It is a statute as truly unconstitutional as would be our investing the Executive Committee with the right of taxation or with the dispensing power; as was one which, in the time of Henry VIII., gave to the Royal Proclamation the force of law, or one which, in the time of Charles I., perpetuated the Long Parliament."

Thus, in the right hon. Gentleman's judgment at that time, a mixed tribunal, containing laymen appointed by the Minister of the day, was totally unfit to decide these questions; yet he was now going to make bad worse by removing entirely the ecclesiastical element—a step which would never have been assented to by any Minister of prudence and moderation who had to consider the interests of the Church as well as of the State. He believed that many who favoured the proposal would hereafter advocate the doctrine which his right hon. Friend's pamphlet was written to advocate—that questions of doctrine and discipline should be decided by ecclesiastics only. The Bishop of London at that time proposed that the Court should merely decide questions of law, and that all questions of doctrine should be referred by it to the Bench of Bishops, and it was in support of that, that the essay was written. He feared that a large portion of the clergy and a not uninfluential portion of the laity, on finding cases decided by a purely lay tribunal, no longer modified by the good sense and moderation of some of the most distinguished Prelates in the Church, would set up a how] for the creation of a purely ecclesiastical tribunal. That would be an evil day for the Church of England. There was still a notion among a large body of the clergy, that they were a distinct nation within a nation, entitled to determine questions which, however, affected the laity as much as the clergy. The tendency of the Amendment would be to give a leverage by which that view would be urged, and he lamented, therefore, that any Minister charged with the responsibility of governing Church and State, and of enforcing wisdom and moderation on the contending factions which from time to time almost rent it in twain, should have assented to what would be the beginning of the letting out of water.

said, that when the question was last discussed, the majority of hon. Members who spoke seemed to be in favour of not introducing the episcopal element into the Court for the decision of ecclesiastical cases. Being an Irish Member, representing an Irish constituency, he did not then think it was for him to come forward with a proposition to the effect that, in the High Court of Justice, the Archbishops and the Bishop of London should be members of the Court when ecclesiastical cases came before it. It did not appear to him that the particular Amendment now being considered was open to such objections as had been made to it. Apart from the question of the effectiveness of the Privy Council as a legal tribunal to decide ecclesiastical cases, there was another question—namely, whether, when these cases were transferred to the High Court of Justice, assistance should not be called in before their decision? In the Privy Council the two Archbishops and the Bishop of London sat, and the same provision must be made with regard to the High Court of Justice when ecclesiastical cases were to be heard. It was a serious question whether there should not be an admixture of the ecclesiastical element in decisions upon cases that involved questions of doctrine, and its consideration must be governed by what was found to be the feeling generally in the Church of England. Unless the Amendment were introduced in that House, it could not be introduced in the House of Lords, and therefore it was better to insert it, and allow the Bishops and the House of Lords either to strike it out, or to agree to it as they thought fit.

said, the Amendment was inconsistent with the spirit of the main decision of the House, inasmuch as it endeavoured to clothe with some ecclesiastical sanction a decision which was essentially a lay decision. The main point was whether the House was right in determining that the judgment itself should be purely lay, and not a mixed ecclesiastical judgment. He had had no difficulty in concurring in that course. He had been a party to the abolition of juries de mediatate linguœ, in which a certain number of foreigners were mixed with a certain number of Englishmen for the purpose of giving what was supposed to be more complete justice. That Court of the Privy Council was a sort of jury de mediatate linguœ, where it was expected that one class of persons would administer one sort of law, and that another sort of persons would dash it with views of a different description. He had never approved of that course. He had always regarded the Church of England as essentially an Act of Parliament Church, and a Church standing exclusively on lay foundations. He could never forget that in the great statutes of the 1st of Elizabeth, which established the Prayer Book in this country, it was recorded, he believed, as a solitary exception—that those statutes on which the Reformed Church of England stood had been made by the Lords temporal and the Commons, to the exclusion of the Lords spiritual, who were named in almost every other statute. Why was that so? The Prayer Book of Queen Elizabeth was established by William Cecil. He settled the Book at a private conclave in his own house, upon doctrines not altogether consistent with those sometimes promulgated by the descendants of that eminent statesman, and he established it by Act of Parliament against the unanimous remonstrances of the whole of Convocation, and against the opinion of the whole of the English Bishops, except one. The course taken on that subject was to establish the supremacy of the Crown against the clergy and Bishops. That being the foundation of the Established Church, it had always seemed to him that the doctrine and discipline of the Church should be interpreted by a lay, and not an ecclesiastical tribunal. He therefore entirely concurred in the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford, and would vote against the Amendment proposed to be inserted, because it seemed to east a doubt on the purely lay character of the judgment by introducing some ecclesiastical element in order to give it execution.

said, that they had begun that evening by the adoption of a small Motion for the purpose of enlarging the little store of time at their command for getting through the necessary business; and immediately after having thus added to their resources in a slender degree, but still in a sensible degree, they were invited by the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down, to discuss the foundation of the Church of England in doctrine and discipline. He must decline to follow his hon. and learned Friend into such a discussion, but must also acknowledge that he was not the first who had endeavoured to draw them from the consideration of the Amendment, for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Morpeth (Sir George Grey) had preceded him, in adverting to a matter not connected with the provision before the House. Then came his right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Bouverie), who often recalled the House to its duties, who wound up the discussion by reviving the memory of a pamphlet he (Mr. Gladstone) wrote some 23 years ago; but although he (Mr. Gladstone) frequently found occasion to lament the failure of his own memory, yet he had found that day that his recollection of that pamphlet was better than the recollection of his right hon. Friend, although he appeared to have read it only that morning. His right hon. Friend said that the proposition in that pamphlet was that ecclesiastical causes should be tried by an exclusively ecclesiastical tribunal, and he said he would prove it by reference to the pamphlet itself. But every line which his right hon. Friend read had to be followed by several lines of his-own comments; yet he did not produce a single word to affect the cardinal proposition of that pamphlet. He still thought that pamphlet contained a great deal of important and valuable matter. [Mr. BOUVERIE: It is very difficult to understand.] The conduct of the Government had been animadverted upon in two points—first of all, it was said they had departed from the opinion they had expressed when they adopted the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford; and, secondly, his own conduct on that occasion had been animadverted upon. Now, there had been no change of opinion on the part of the Government. The Government had never put forth that, upon the merits of the case, it would not be wise to make that transfer from the Court of Privy Council to the purely lay Court of Appeal, and he did not find recorded a single word disapproving of that transfer on its merits. The only opinion expressed on the subject was in the other House, and was to the effect, that to introduce such a transfer into the present Bill would increase its burden, and might endanger its passing. And what happened when the Amendment was introduced? Why, the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hardy) said very considerately, he did not wish to force the Amendment against the opinion of the Government. No fewer than nine hon. Members had addressed the House, representing every view, and he was desirous that the expression of opinion should be as full as possible. When he (Mr. Gladstone) rose to speak, he was determined to ascertain whether there were two opinions on the subject. The words he used were as nearly as possible to this effect—that from the debate which had arisen, he was fully convinced there was not a single hon. Gentleman in that House who did not agree with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hardy), in the desire to bring ecclesiastical causes within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal; and he must say, when the change was adopted by the House, he thought it was supported by the high authority of his right hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth. If they had declined adopting that change, and a division had been called for, the Government, he believed, would have been left in a minority, and they did not wish to place themselves in that position. Under all the circumstances, he did not think it could be considered that any great haste had been shown in the adoption of the Amendment; and as it was quite impossible now to have any satisfactory discussion upon the merits of the question, he hoped they would be allowed to proceed. Beyond that, the matter had been, he thought, fully and freely discussed, and he objected to its being now again brought forward in an irregular and collateral manner.

wished to say in explanation that he had been mis- understood. He did not say that the Government had expressed any opinion adverse to the Amendment; he himself had not done so, provided it were adopted after due deliberation. He said, they had expressed an opinion it ought not to be included in this Bill, but ought to be reserved for separate consideration. On the occasion alluded to, he came to the House utterly unconscious that any such proposal was about to be made towards the close of the discussion; and, not knowing what had been already said, he did not feel qualified to take part in the debate.

thought the change had been made somewhat hastily, and he very much doubted whether it would lead to peace or quietness. For the last 30 years, one party had sought to diminish the weight of the judgment of the Court, on account of the preponderance of the lay element, and they would now have their hands strengthened in a way that must work most inconveniently. He regretted the change had been made without more deliberation. He did not mean to say anything had been informally done, because due Notice was given; but he did not think anybody in the House had the least notion of what was being done, and everyone now seemed to be taken by surprise.

asked whether anything was to be gained by the Amendment. Why should not the Court execute its own decree?

wished to enter his protest against the Government allowing a question of that magnitude to be mixed up with the main question before the House. That opinion was expressed by the Lord Chancellor, and he had reason to know that many hon. Members who concurred in the Amendment, still thought it would have been wiser to have left this matter over for more consideration. He thought that the result might be the placing in ecclesiastical hands the very power which they all wished to keep in the hands of both ecclesiastics and laymen.

observed that that could not be considered a new question, for when a Bill connected with the subject had been brought forward by Sir Robert Collier, then Attorney General, he (Mr. Collins) moved that the Bishops should not form part of the Privy Council. On that occasion, he was told that the subject ought to be dealt with in some such a general scheme as the one before the House. It was hardly fair to turn round now and say that this House was taken by surprise. There was no grievance whatever. It was ascertained that the feeling of the House was that these eases ought to be decided by laymen, and not by ecclesiastics. They might be called in as assessors or experts by order of the Court, just as they were in other cases. Bishops, from their position, must be partizans, and it was far better that laymen should decide dry questions of law, as to whether a man did or did not render the obedience required of him.

said, the Bill carefully provided that the Court of Appeal should take the place of either of the Privy Council in advising Her Majesty, so that their fellow-subjects in the colonies, and especially in India, should have the sentences in their appeals pronounced, as hitherto, by Her Majesty herself. By a change in the Act establishing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, careful provision was made for remitting its order to the Court below—say in India—to be enforced. When ecclesiastical jurisdiction was first given to the Judicial Committee, by the3rd and 4th of the present reign, no such provision was made. A discussion arose as to whether the practice of the Privy Council was to be followed in these cases; and it was held that under the particular statute the Judicial Committee had power to pronounce sentence. In order to avoid a similar dispute, the Attorney General, in response to the hon. Member for Lancashire (Mr. Assheton Cross), brought up on the Report, the Amendment to set at rest the question of practice, and to prevent there being any doubt as to the law in the future. In all these matters the ultimate Courts of Appeal had always remitted their sentence to the Court below; that was as much the practice of the House of Lords as of the Privy Council. The House of Lords did not carry out its own orders, so that the Amendment simply maintained the present practice and preserved consistency. It would be inconsistent if Her Majesty were to the Court below in every case except in ecclesiastical cases.

thought the House ought to take care that, in trans- ferring that appeal to a purely lay tribunal, they should do so in such manner as to interfere as little as possible with the consciences of the clergy of the Church of England. He thought the Amendment proposed by the hon. and learned Gentleman would give great satisfaction.

in moving an Amendment, to add at end of clause the words—

"If such divisional Court shall differ from the judgment of the Court below, such appeal shall be reheard before a full Court consisting of not less than five Judges on the application of either party,"

said, a feeling prevailed among suitors in the Courts of Law, that if the clause remained in its present form, and if there were to be no redress in the event of the Judges of the Appeal Court differing in opinion from the Court below, injustice would be done to them on very many occasions. In all Probability the Appeal Court would only consist of three Judges.

said, no good could arise form reviving the point which was discussed and decided while the Bill was in Committee. If the addition were adopted there might be repeated re-hearings of the particular case. He considered it most important that the judgment of the Court of Appeal should be final, and hoped that, as a rule, more that three Judges would sit in the Court of Appeal.

denied that the subject had been thoroughly debated in Committee, and expressed his opinion that when the Judges of the Appellate Court differed among themselves it would be a most desirable thing to have another re-hearing. Where they were unanimous, it should be final with re- spect to the judgment of the Court below.

said, that when he proposed this Amendment on a former occasion it was supported by a substantial minority of 144. As the question was then virtually decided, he should recommend his hon. Friend not to press it to another division, although if he did he should feel bound to divide with him.

said, he could not accept the Amendment. It proceeded on the fallacy that the Judges of the Court of Appeal would be weaker than the Judges of the Court below, and that question having been argued at great length on a former occasion he trusted that the House would not reverse the decision of the Committee.

said, that the Court of Appeal ought to be stronger than the Court appealed from, and if there were three Judges of the Court below it would be unsatisfactory to the suitor to have his case decided by less than five Judges of the Court of Appeal.

moved an Amendment in page 51, paragraph 18, line 36, to leave out the words "be as brief," and insert "set forth the requisite facts as briefly." He proposed the Amendment on the ground that the Bill was not sufficiently definite, in his opinion, upon the point.

said, that what the Bill did in that respect was intended merely as a kind of outline or indication of what would be more fully provided for by general rules under the Bill. It was not intended, however, that every plaintiff should file a Bill or draw a declaration.

said, he did not rise to oppose the third reading; but as it could not be denied that the Bill would impose considerable burdens upon real property, he wished to take that opportunity of asking the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, what course he intended to pursue after the Bill and the two other measures which would follow it next year became law, with regard to the relief of local burdens? This Bill, whatever else it would do, would not diminish the burdens on real property, and the Government were every day proposing measures which would increase those burdens. The other night they had given a second reading to a Bill for the extension of Denison's Act, which would also impose an additional burden, and had attempted surreptitiously to introduce a highway Bill into the Turnpike Continuance Act; and when the cuckoo cry was raised that if some portion of the money were paid out of the Consolidated Fund it would lead to extravagance, he denied it altogether, because nobody would increase his own burdens for the sake of dipping his hand into the pocket of the Government for so small a sum. They had been promised considerable things by the Government, and he wished before meeting his constituents to be able to say what it was that the Government intended to do.

expressed his great satisfaction at the willingness which the right hon. Gentleman who had charge of the Bill had shown in accepting the suggestions and Amendments of private Members. The conduct of the right hon. Gentleman in that respect had presented a marked contrast to that of the Government in other cases. Although it was not an entire settlement of the question, yet he had perfect confidence in his future dealing with the subject, and that when he came to consider the relief of local taxation out of Imperial funds, he would do so in the same direction as his predecessor, the present First Lord of the Admiralty.

entered his protest against the Bill, on the ground that it did not advance one step in the direction of making personal wealth contribute to the expenses of local taxation. It simply extended and continued the liability which fell on real property. The noble Marquess the Chief Secretary for Ireland was reported to have said at Nottingham the other day—

"There is the question of local taxation and local government. The Conservative party are very much interested in that; but in what way are they going to settle it?"

Well, it was rather too bad considering the present Government had been in office five years, and that during all that time the Conservative party had been urging them to deal with that subject, that such a question should have been asked by a Member of the Cabinet. Why, a Resolution had been passed by the House in the strongest language calling on the Government to take measures in relief of local taxation, and they had done nothing whatever to carry it out. If the Government really made up their minds to deal with that subject, the machinery of the income tax supplied them with the means of making personal wealth contribute to the expenses of local government.

denied that the Bill increased the burdens on real property. It merely re-distributed them; but at the same time enlarged the incidence of taxation, and went in the direction of the equalization of burdens. It might be said that the Bill did not go far enough; but what it did, little or much, was in the right direction, and he thought Her Majesty's Ministers were entitled to gratitude for removing the exemption that had existed in favour of Goverment property.

said, he must defend his hon. Friends the Members for West Sussex and North Wilts, who had taken exception to the Bill, which certainly was not distinguished for its logical accuracy. The professed object of the Bill was to abolish exemptions, but it stereotyped the huge exemption of four-fifths of the wealth of the country from local taxation. It did not even abolish the exemption of Government property, but merely stated that the Government would bring in a Bill for that purpose thereafter, which, perhaps, they might never have an opportunity of doing. The country knew exactly what the taxes were to be, but what would they say of a Chancellor of the Exchequer who brought in a series of income tax Bills of various amounts for various purposes? He did not grudge people the fortunes which they made, but at least if they did not pay rates themselves they ought to refrain from raising a cry that those who did pay rates did not pay enough. Gentlemen who realized enormous fortunes by the sale of quack medicines, which rendered hospitals a necessity; gentlemen who successfully pursued the calling of flat-catching; and a great many others, who made large fortunes, did not contribute a farthing to the rates, yet were constantly swelling the chorus against those who did pay. He could not express any satisfaction with the Bill, which only perpetuated exemptions which were entirely wrong in principle.

said, that the Bill did not increase the taxation of those who now paid it. In answer to the objections urged by hon. Members opposite, he would say that whatever this Bill was, it was not meant to increase local taxation. He thought that both with respect to Imperial and local taxation people ought to be taxed in proportion to their means; but the difficulty was to find a way by which personal property could be taxed. The right hon. Gentleman had tried to do so, and had not succeeded, and hon. Members who complained of that had not themselves suggested any practical measure for the purpose, and, in fact, it had been pronounced to be impossible by the concurrence of all parties in the Legislature. [Sir GEORGE JENKIXSON: I never proposed to rate personal property.] Then there was an attempt to make local taxes payable out of income tax. [Sir GEORGE JENICINSON: I have not done that either.] At present they had exempted only ragged and Sunday schools. For himself, he tendered his thanks to the right hon. Gentleman for the pains and care he had bestowed upon the measure, and for the courteous and conciliatory manner in which he had conducted it through its various stages.

said, the question of rating Government property was left in great obscurity under the Bill. He wished to know upon what principle of rateability the site now occupied by the British Museum would be assessed, and what was to be done with the large piece of waste ground on which the future Courts of Justice were to be erected? There had been a loss upon that ground for many years in the shape of interest upon capital amounting to £38,000 or £40,000 a-year. By the pulling down of the houses which formerly occupied the ground heavy burdens had been thrown upon the parishes of St. Clement Danes, St. Dunstan's in the West, and the Liberty of the Rolls. Another point which had always struck him was that whereas in Leeds, Hull, and other places, they had to pay rates for their museums, philosophical institutes, and even for their police courts, the metropolitan police courts were paid for out of the Consolidated Fund. He could not understand the reason why, and he had asked in vain for an explanation.

said, he had pleasure in gratefully acknowledging the tributes paid to his conduct of the Bill in Committee, and had to state that the rateability of the site of the Palace of Justice and of the British Museum would be governed partly by this Bill and partly by the existence or non-existence of any special statute affecting their rateability. The amounts to be contributed by the Palace of Justice to the local rates settled in the Act under which the site was purchased, were not and would not be disturbed by the Bill. So long as you did not increase the charges on the rates you could not be said to increase local burdens. The wider distribution of burdens must alleviate the pressure upon some of those who contributed. Where metallic mines came under rating for the first time, the occupiers of other property would experience a sensible relief, and the rating of Government property would afford distinct relief to the owners of adjoining property. As to the objection of the hon. and gallant Member for West Sussex (Colonel Barttelot), with regard to the second part of the Bill being of no value, he must point out that it not only directed the Treasury to endeavour to place a value on Government property, with a view to its contribution to rates, but it also empowered the Treasury to enter into negotiations with local authorities. The method which the Government had adopted could not be carried into effect without the preliminary of negotiation and arbitration. The hon. and gallant Member had asked for a renewal of the pledges which the Government had given to the House in reference to the subject of which the present Bill was only the beginning. For him, as the head of a Department of the Government, to undertake, on the third reading of that measure, to give pledges which were to be considered of greater weight than the explicit pledges which had been given by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister himself, would be to place a disproportionate value on his own declarations and those of his right hon. Friend who had in the broadest manner committed the Government to the responsibility of dealing at the earliest opportunity with the question of affording some substantial relief out of Imperial revenues to the local burdens of the country.

said, that although the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government did give the assurances just referred to, he would have preferred seeing the Valuation and the Rating Bills passed in the same Session. He urged hon. Gentlemen to endeavour to reduce local taxation in their own coun- ties, and reminded them that if they accepted relief from Imperial taxation they could not grudge the Government the right to interfere with the management of their local affairs. For his own part, he thought nothing could be more dangerous to this country than the system of centralization which so generally prevailed on the Continent, and he would rather at any time than be subject to it pay double. As for the Bill itself, he approved some of its provisions, but feared it would do a good deal of mischief, and induce much litigation. England and Wales would now, through the instrumentality of committees, have to make their assessments, which again would be settled by the Court of Queen's Bench; and ultimately the result would be most extravagant. He thought that woods should be rated; for although a growing profit would not be visible year by year, it would be apparent enough in 20 years. Game ought also clearly to be rated.

said, that no doubt before the next Session the House would have before it a considerable portion of the labours of the Royal Commission which had been appointed, and would then have trustworthy evidence upon which to legislate upon the larger question about which many hon. Members were so anxious. It was a source of annoyance to the commercial community that there should be so many Amendment Acts with regard to the merchant shipping law. At the present time there were no fewer than eight or ten statutes which had to be consulted before it could be ascertained what was the law with regard to merchant shipping, and the original Act of 1854 had been so amended that its authors could hardly recognize it. With regard to the Bill itself, he thought some of the clauses were improvements, whilst others, again, were unnecessary or objectionable. He alluded especially to Clauses 10 and 11, which provided that every vessel should be supplied with sufficient boats, rafts, or other appliances for saving life. There was no objection to that provision on the part of shipowners, if only some rule was laid down to define what was the amount of such accommodation that a ship must have but the clauses as they stood loft the matter in an indefinite position, and if the question was to be decided by Board of Trade surveyors, there would be the most varying decisions, for it was well known that no two surveyors of the Board of Trade agreed in their reports. If the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Department persisted with those clauses, he ought to lay down distinctly in a Schedule what amount of boat accommodation British ships must carry, and then the shipowners would have no objection to the clauses. The proposed new clause which related to the removal of wreck imposed such heavy responsibility upon shipowners that he thought no attempt to legislate in that direction should be made during the present Session. He submitted that it was not right for the legislature to impose a considerable amount of responsibility upon shipowners, and yet leave the requirements of the Act so indefinite as to render it impossible for them to know what was really intended. When shipowners knew what was really required of them, they would readily fulfil any duties the law might impose upon them, and he strongly urged the necessity for the consolidation of the law of merchant shipping to remove the confusion at present existing. He should not, however, offer any obstruction to the progress of the Bill.

concurred in the opinions expressed by his hon. Friend as to the vague and indefinite character of many of the provisions of the Bill, and suggested that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade should place upon the Notice Paper, before going into Committee, such Amendments as would explain the various provisions referred to. The shipping interest would then be disposed to thank him for his measure.

on behalf of the hon. and learned Member for Frome (Mr. T. Hughes), gave Notice of the intention of the latter to propose certain clauses in Committee on the Bill.

said, from the peculiarity of the subject, each of the provisions of the Bill must necessarily be treated upon its own particular merits, and he, therefore, was not surprised that it did not give rise to any extended debate upon the second reading, because its provisions could much more usefully be criticized in Committee. The new clauses of which he had given Notice were partly Amendments of the clauses of the Bill, and partly additions to it. In Committee he should be ready to consider all that could be said for or against them; but he believed that most of them were far from adverse to the shipping interest. With respect to proposed clauses bearing on the removal of wreck, he was advised that the clause was justified by the circumstances of the case, and that it would be of great use to the shipping interest. He agreed with his hon. Friends who had spoken that the 10th clause as it stood was too vague and indefinite; but he must add that he did not pretend in the present Bill to arrive at final settlements of that or any of the other matters. The Bill was not intended to anticipate the Report and advice of the Royal Commission which had been appointed, whose evidence and advice he hoped the House might have the benefit of in reference to this subject. What he should propose, in reference to Clause 10 as it stood, was this—He wished at once to make two changes in the law as it had existed with respect to boats. That law was in many cases absurd and useless, for it required the boat accommodation to be in proportion to the tonnage of the vessel, and not to the number of souls on board. He should propose to alter that, and so far to adhere to the clause as it stood in the Bill; but he should not get rid of the present scale. His object was to enable the Board of Trade to make exemptions in cases where the present scale did not apply, and to take power to substitute rafts in lieu of boats. That was the clause which he should propose to substitute for Clause 10. In the present state of our knowledge he thought that would be a reasonable change in the law, and improve the system under which it was now the duty of the Board of Trade to act.

in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that in the first instance he wished to remove some misapprehension which had gone abroad with respect to the scope of the measure. The Bill did not aim at altering the law, but at removing difficulties which had arisen with regard to its present effect. He would refer to the Notice of his hon. Friend the: Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson), which he hoped the hon. Gentleman would either not make, or press on the present occasion. His hon. Friend proposed to move, that it was inexpedient to extend the scope of the Act 25 & 26 Vict., c. 37, until the secrecy at present attaching exclusively to Crown testaments was abolished. What he would represent to his hon. Friend was either that that secrecy, which he imagined grew out of some particular right of the Crown with respect to the law of probate, was right or that it was wrong. If it were right, manifestly it ought not to be used as an obstacle to the Bill; neither ought it to be so used if it were wrong. The Bill was reasonable and just on its own grounds, and the question of secrecy growing out of some particular right of the Crown ought to be tried on its own grounds also. The introduction of the latter question would only tend to confuse any discussion on the second reading of the Bill, and moreover his hon. Friend might, if he so wished it, raise the question at a subsequent stage. There was another impression abroad about the Bill, which he was also desirous to remove; for to his surprise he had seen it stated that the object of the measure was to determine the right of the Crown to have certain moneys paid into the Privy Purse from other branches of the Civil List. The Bill had no connection whatever with any such question, and was merely intended to clear up a doubt as to the existing laws, as to which the Government had no doubt whatever, and to enable the Sovereign freely to bequeath any landed property which she might possess in her personal capacity to her next Heir. If the opinion of Lord Westbury, when he was Lord Chancellor, were correct on the effect of the Act of George III. and the Act of Victoria, the Sovereign might bequeath to the Heir of the Crown landed as well as other property. But there was a contrary opinion abroad; and it was not for him to say which of the two was right, although he thought the question ought to be set at rest. What was the present state of the Crown with regard to the power of gift and the power of bequest. Before the time of Queen Anne the Crown was free by law to alienate the estates of the Crown, and from those alienations very great abuses had arisen. The Act of Anne prevented those alienations, and subsequent Acts went to the same effect; but in the reign of George III.—about 1800—a distinction was introduced. That distinction was one between the estates held by the Crown as the Crown, and estates held by the Sovereign in his or her personal capacity; and it was enacted that two descriptions of estates should not fall within any of the restrictions of the Act of Anne. One of those descriptions related to estates which might be purchased by His Majesty or his successors out of any moneys issued or applied for the use of his Privy Purse, or with any other moneys not appropriated to any public service. All that class of estates so purchased or acquired were set completely free from the whole of those restrictions, and Lord Westbury's opinion was that when estates had been so set free they could not come back into the category of restraint, but remained absolutely free. The other class of estates set free from restraints of the Act of Anne were estates which might come to the Sovereign by gift from his or her ancestors, not being Kings or Queens. He wished to show that the restraint which the Bill proposed to remedy, if it were in existence, was a miserable shred of a system which either ought to exist in its full force or not at all. If it were necessary to restrain the power of the Queen to convey private property into the hands of the Heir Apparent it ought to be effectual; but he could show that, so far from its being effectual, it was limited, inconsistent, irregular; it could be circumvented; and, if observed, it would be mischievous to the public service. It was admitted that the Sovereign could give anything he or she pleased to anybody, provided it was not Crown property, but private property; therefore, if they thought it dangerous that the Sovereign should be able to convey real estate to the Heir Apparent, they would have to defend a state of the law in which there was nothing to prevent him or her converting real estate into money, and then handing it over to the Heir Apparent. Lastly, the Sovereign could bequeath any realty without any doubt at all to any person except to the next heir. Was that a reasonable restraint to maintain? He would take the case of a Sovereign who happened to have only one child, who was the next heir to the Crown, and who had no other near relation whatever, this present wondrous wise law would step in and say to that Sovereign—"You may bequeath your property as you like to any distant person, whom you do not care a rush about; but to your child you cannot and shall not bequeath it." What he affirmed was this—that they ought to have no interference with the play of natural and human affections between members of the Royal Family, except for some great, general, clear, and undeniable public object. It was a great blessing when they had a Royal Family guided, in its internal relations by human affection. It was a blessing which they had realized in this country to a great ex-1 tent, and for his own part he should be loth to do anything to interfere with it. With regard to the intention of the Act, a high legal authority had held that it could not have been meant to compel the Sovereign, if she would prevent the union of her private estates to the general body of the Crown estates, either in the first place to tie them up, or in the second place to give them away from the Heir to the Crown, with a view of their coming back circuitously to some other person; or, thirdly, to give them to the Heir Apparent in his own lifetime, in either of which ways they might consequently become the private estates of the succeeding Sovereign. He thought the House would see that a policy like that would place the Sovereign in a very peculiar position—that of being compelled to leave property away from his or her own child, or to allow it to lapse into the mass of the Crown estate. He knew that this was an attractive thing to some minds; but he did not think that there was any good reason why it should be; at all events, it was not an alternative attractive to the Government. With regard to Balmoral, there could be no doubt that the Queen was free to leave it to whom she chose; but take the case of Osborne. If Osborne were to fall into the mass of Crown estates, it would have to be taken under the charge of the Commissioner of Works, and that House would be asked for a large sum of money for its maintenance as a Royal residence. It appeared to him that these outlying properties were of secondary importance, of no territorial importance whatever, and that it was for the interest of the public, considered in a pounds, shillings, and pence view of the question, that they should not become part of the Crown estates. There was another question about which there was no doubt whatever, and that was, that the Sovereign could bequeath her estates to the son of the Prince of Wales, or to the Heir presumptive; and what, in the name of common sense, could be the meaning of a law such as that which at present existed? However, there were gentlemen—he did not know whether there were any in that House—who urged a so-called constitutional doctrine, which was always entitled to respectful treatment. They said it was not constitutional or safe that great masses of property should be permitted to accumulate in the hands of the Sovereign; that the Sovereign ought to depend on Parliament; and that, if a Sovereign were to become a very great proprietor, that circumstance would have a tendency to disturb the Constitution with respect to the relation of the Sovereign to Parliament. What he should say in answer to that was this—In the first place, there was not the smallest likelihood of that House ever undergoing any serious trouble in consequence of a great accumulation of private wealth in the hands of the Sovereign. A great deal of trouble had been experienced from exactly the opposite process, and it was only during the present reign that they had learnt to look with any feeling of kindness on the economy and good husbandry of the Civil List. Even during the reign of George III., who was a Sovereign of considerable merit, Ministers were continually coming down to the House to ask 'for large sums of money to pay off the debts of the Civil List. It was for the interest of the country in every sense that there should be thrift and good husbandry in the Civil List, and, so far as economy was to be made out of it, to enable the Sovereign to purchase private property here and there. The Sovereign should be most welcome to the fruits of such economies, and it would be the worst economy in the world on the part of Parliament to have it otherwise. He should entertain no fear as to the accumulation of a large amount of property in the hands of the Sovereign, even if the t, arrangement between the Crown and Parliament were permanent; in fact, he considered it a spectral delusion on the part of the persons holding the idea. Centuries must elapse without the possibility of any great masses of property-coming into the hands of the Sovereign to create either danger or inconvenience. The arrangement, however, between the Crown and Parliament was not permanent. Parliament had the power of considering the position of the Sovereign at the end of every reign, and the average duration of reigns did not extend to more than 20 or 30 years. The present reign was longer than the average, thank God, and long might it yet last; but by the ordinary law of human life, Parliament might three or four times in the course of a century have the opportunity of considering the position of the Sovereign with respect to private estates. When a demand was made on that House for the Civil List, that House had a right to take the whole subject into consideration, and would not scruple to avail itself of that right. If it were shown that the Sovereign was in possession of private wealth to the extent owned by some Dukes, Marquesses, Earls—ay, or even Commoners—if it were thought that the Sovereign had accumulated too much wealth for the safety of the Constitution, there would be no difficulty in making a settlement in the adjustment of the amount of the Civil List. That was the view of the Government—that there was no likelihood whatever of either danger or inconvenience arising in connection with the accumulation of private property in the hands of the Sovereign—a view which was strongly supported by the history of the present reign. The present reign had endured since 1837. It had completed its 36th year, and during those 36 years of the reign of Her Majesty, good management in the detail of expenditure had prevailed to a degree that was unexampled. As to the accumulation of property, everybody knew that the Royal estates were very moderate possessions indeed—of an extent which would not be of the slightest territorial consequence to almost any second-rate gentleman; while as regarded money, Her Majesty's fortune was moderate as compared with the sums possessed by hundreds and even thousands of our manufacturers, mine-owners, and merchants. If such was the result of a long-continued reign of unbroken providence and thrift, let us dismiss from our minds that bugbear as to either the danger or the inconvenience of the accumulation of large masses of property in the hands of the Sovereign. The House, he trusted, would see the desirability of giving effect to the measure, and remove that anomaly in the existing law which tended to check the natural action of family affection, and interfere with those conveniences which dictated arrangements between parent and family. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

in rising to move—

"That it is inexpedient to extend the scope of the Act 25 and 26 Vic. c. 37, until the secrecy at present attaching exclusively to Crown testaments is abolished,"

said, that the right hon. Gentleman had told the House that that was a very simple Bill to remove a small injustice remaining from past legislation. He did not tell them that it was the result of the Act of 1862, with regard to which he (Mr. Anderson) did not think it was of so justifiable a character that they ought to extend its provisions. In fact, if legislation was desirable on the subject, he thought it ought to be directed to a repeal or an amendment of that Act. The right hon. Gentleman also said that the Amendment he (Mr. Anderson) had put on the Paper was not an Amendment which ought to be considered as an obstacle to the Bill. Perhaps not. He admitted that it was not a very large affair; but he had only put it down to prevent the Bill passing without opposition at some inordinately late hour in the morning, and he hoped that by doing so he should induce some hon. Member learned in the law to raise the great constitutional question as to the right of the Sovereign to dispose by will of land acquired out of the saving of the Civil List, and notwithstanding that no hon. Member had done so, he was not without hopes that a debate would be raised upon constitutional grounds. He did not pretend to be able to argue those points with the learning and skill of a lawyer, but those who were laymen and not lawyers always understood that the policy of our Constitution was that the Monarch ought not to have private estates at all, and that the House of Commons at the commencement of every reign took over the private estates of the Crown, and provided for the Sovereign in the Civil List. That argument had been used over and over again by the right hon. Gentleman himself when he came down to the House to ask it to vote various sums of money to Princes and Princesses, and generally to make provision for the younger sons of the Sovereign. They were always told on such occasions that they were bound to make such provisions, because, according to the Constitution, the Royal Family was never allowed to accumulate private property. He would leave others to argue that point; but as to the matter of secrecy, he had had occasion to speak to a great many hon. Members, and when he first stated that such secrecy existed, it was generally supposed that he was under a wrong impression, until they found out that it really did exist under the Act of 1862. That was verified by the fact that a gentleman presented himself a few days ago at the proper Department, and after tendering the usual fee, asked to be allowed to look at all the Royal wills since the reign of Henry The official was dumb-founded, and as soon as he could recover his breath, which was taken away by the idea that a "fellow" could have the audacity to make such a request, finding that the "fellow" persisted, referred him to a higher authority, who told him that he believed the Royal wills were always kept in Lambeth Palace, under the care of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He then referred the matter to the Archbishop, and he was told that they were not there; and that in fact the Archbishop did not know anything about them—so that of the fact of the secrecy there could be no question whatever. Now that that was a very improper secrecy, he thought no one could deny, and when the right hon. Gentleman said that the Amendment ought not to be brought forward as a bar to the second reading, but as an Amendment in Committee, he would at once say that if he would accept it in Committee there was no occasion to move it that evening, and he requested the immediate attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the proposition. There was no reason whatever why the will of any hon. Gentleman should be exhibited at Doctors' Commons to anybody who paid 1s., and that of the Monarch should not be subject to the like scrutiny. Not only was it wrong, but it had a very prejudicial effect in exciting suspicion in the minds of the public. People naturally said — "Why this secrecy?" It was a very suspicious thing to have those Royal wills bottled up, so that no one could see them. There was probably nothing wrong in them, and no earthly reason why they should be concealed. To put them, then, on the same footing as those of other people would remove all suspicion. Some of the right hon. Gentleman's arguments were such as he could attach no weight whatever to; such as that about Osborne House. "Oh," said he, "if Osborne House were thrown upon the nation, there would be so much a-year asked of the House of Commons for the purpose of keeping it up as a royal residence." He (Mr. Anderson) did not see why any difficulty could not at once he put an end to, by selling it. Then the right hon. Gentleman had made a great deal about how economically the Privy Purse had been managed by the Queen. Her present most gracious Majesty was greatly to be honoured and commended for the way in which she had managed the Civil List allowances; but still it was to be remembered that the amount which was given was a very liberal one, and quite sufficient to keep up the dignity of the Crown. Then the question arose—had the dignity of the Crown been kept up properly? He would not himself say anything on the point, but certainly it had been said abroad and frequently out-of-doors at home that it had not been. The House of Commons did not give the Queen an ample Civil List, merely that she might economize the amount for the purpose of buying landed estates as the right hon. Gentleman suggested; and under that lay the whole theory of the Bill. It was impossible to forget that a year and a-half ago, when a Motion was made for the appropriation of the Civil List, Parliament, it was pointed out, had by the Act granting the Civil List put it under five heads, and they would not have done that, had it not intended to exercise some supervision over them. It was exceedingly doubtful whether Parliament would permit the surplus of one branch to be expended in aid of another. If so, the word in the Act would be that it should be applied to "increase" another. Whatever was the intention of Parliament as to how the surplus was appropriated, the House would remember that on that occasion, the information which was required was refused, and he could not help saying that, instead of that having something to do with the opposition to the Bill, it had something to do with the bringing in of the Bill. He thought he ought to take the opinion of the House on the subject, unless the right hon. Gentleman would give him the assurance that an Amendment would be introduced in Committee to the effect he had stated. Failing that, he should move the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

seconded the Amendment.

thought the House was bound in common honesty to pass the Bill, the object of which was merely to clear up a doubt which had arisen upon the Act of 1862. All it contemplated was, that property which went by the disposition of the Queen to her Heir should be held by him as private property, and should not be treated as Crown property, in the event of such Heir succeeding to the Throne. He thought that there was no ground to justify the proposal of the Amendment which had been placed upon the Paper, to render it compulsory that the will of the Sovereign should be published as those of ordinary persons were when they were proved. While allowing that the practice was necessary in order to enable people to ascertain and test any rights they might conceive themselves possessed of under a will, he saw no reason why the intentions of the testator should in any case be communicated to the idle and the curious on payment of 1s.; but such a practice would be especially inconvenient in the case of the Sovereign. The Bill only gave power to the Sovereign to deal with her private property in the same way as an individual, subject, of course, to that property being liable to all the ordinary burdens.

agreed with the Prime Minister in all he had said except upon one point. He thought there was a very general feeling in the country against secrecy being maintained with regard to Royal wills. He said with the utmost sincerity that he had not the slightest suspicion anything was wrong; but wherever there was concealment, there was always suspicion of something being behind. He could not himself conceive any reasonable ground why these wills should not be made public like other wills. He did not think the question of gratifying an idle curiosity at all entered into the matter.

said, the object of the Amendment was to have the wills of the Sovereigns treated in the same way as those of ordinary subjects. The reasons why those wills were not public did not arise, he believed, from any desire of secrecy, but from the technical fact that they were not on the register of the Court. No will was placed on the register until it passed the seal of the Court to authenticate it, but the King's will was not sealed, nor could it be attested by his own seal. That would be merely authenticating his own act in his own Court. When George II. ascended the Throne, the then Archbishop of Canterbury came down to the first meeting of the Privy Council with the will of George I. in his pocket. When the Archbishop exhibited it, George II. asked to see it, and the moment George received it, he put it into his pocket, and it had never been heard of since. There was a document, however, which it was desirable the Government should produce. He meant the opinion of the late Lord Westbury.

said, the opinion was a verbal one. As such, he was not in possession of the words, but had given what he considered was the substance of that opinion.

said, that if the opinion were correct, there was no need whatsoever for the Bill. What the Bill proposed to do, was to alter the principle of the succession of the private estates of the Sovereign, in order to prevent them from falling into the general property of the Crown when the person to whom they were bequeathed succeeded to the Sovereignty. The 2nd section of the Bill extended the operation of the Act of 1833 respecting the law of inheritances to the Crown. Of course, everybody knew that unless an Act of Parliament specially applied to the Crown, the Crown was not affected by it, and as the Act of 1833 did not specially apply to the inheritances of the Crown, they were excluded from its operation. Before the passing of that statute, if any person devised lands to his heir by will, on the death of the testator, the heir took the lands as heir and not as devisee. But by the statute of William IV. the heir would take as devisee and not by inheritance. The consequence was, that lands left to the Heir of the Crown by the Sovereign were taken still under the old Common Law by the successor not as devisee under the will, but as Heir to the Crown, and the lands thus fell into the hereditary estate of the Crown, and could not be alienated under the statute of Anne. The policy of Parliament for a considerable time had been that the management of the hereditary estates of the Crown should be undertaken by Parliament, who in return gave a certain fixed sum to the Sovereign with which to pay the expenses of the Household and certain other charges. Hon. Members were probably aware that during the reigns of Anne, George I., and George II., the present arrangement, as regarded the Civil List, did not exist, but a certain revenue was provided for the Crown by appropriating to the Sovereign for life certain hereditary estates and Customs and other dues. But when George III. succeeded, he handed over all the hereditary estates of the Crown to Parliament, and received in return a large fixed revenue, amounting in the whole, including certain revenues derived from the West Indies, Scotland, Ireland, and other sources, to upwards of £1,000,000 per annum, out of which he had to provide for the discharge of certain public duties. But, notwithstanding that, the Crown was in perpetual difficulties, and constantly coming to Parliament for grants in aid of the Civil List. The allegation was constantly made that the revenues of the Crown were largely employed for corrupt purposes, and that they found their way into the pockets of Members of either House of Parliament, and were used in carrying on the Parliamentary system of that day, which was more or less carried on by corruption. Accordingly, when William IV. came to the Throne he not only transferred the hereditary revenues of the Crown to Parliament, but all the other revenues to which he had referred with the exception of the Duchy of Lancaster, which still formed part of the Privy Purse of Her Majesty. When Her Majesty succeeded to the Throne, a Committee composed of the most eminent Members of that House considered the subject, and went into a minute investigation of the cost of maintaining the dignity of the Crown. They allocated certain sums in respect of certain classes of expenditure, as for the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, the Pension List, and so forth, and proposed to the House of Commons that the Civil List should be fixed at £385,000 a-year, the Crown no longer to pay the expenses of the Civil Service for Judges, &c., which were not immediately connected with the Civil List. The policy of Parliament had been, therefore, since the Revolution, that the Crown at each accession should have a definite fixed sum allocated for the purpose of maintaining the dignity and honour of the Crown, and that all the rest should be under the management and authority of Parliament. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman that with regard to money it was impossible to make any provisions; but the lands were visible, and he maintained that they ought to continue the policy hitherto pursued—namely, fix at the accession the proper sum to maintain the honour and dignity of the Crown munificently and generously, and take over the management of the Crown property. But the result of that Bill so far as it had any operation at all, would be that whatever private estate of the Crown might now under the former Acts be at the disposal of Her Majesty during her lifetime, if left to the successor to the Crown, would no longer form part of the hereditary revenues, as they would do under Common Law, but would be the private estate of the Crown of which it had to render no account. That he held to be a retrogressive policy. He did not mean to say that in the lifetime of the present generation the Crown was likely to accumulate great private estates like those to which he had alluded. But the principle contended for by his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government was ill-judged, and if adopted might be the cause of much future trouble. It was all very well for his right hon. Friend to pooh-pooh that line of argument; but what had been done once might be clone again, and it might at some future time be found very convenient by those who wielded the Prerogative of the Crown in that Rouse to have at their command large independent means, of which no account had to be rendered to Parliament. The principle which he was advocating had been contended for a century ago by such men as Burke and Chatham, and he was strongly of opinion that the House of Commons would be taking the right course in restricting the Crown as far as possible to the revenues voted by Parliament at every accession. Any other course, such as that proposed by the present measure, must tend to initiate a new and a wrong policy. One of its most prominent results would be to prevent any such periodical revision of the arrangements to be made between Parliament and the Crown, and he was therefore opposed to it. The question was one, he might acid, which was of as great importance to the Crown itself as to Parliament. It had hitherto been the practice that the Civil List was settled on the accession of the Sovereign, irrespective of the allowance to the children when they grew up, or were about to be married. When the occasion for such a provision arose, those who objected to it in that House had been always met—and successfully met by the answer that the arrangement with the Crown had been entered into without regard to any such expense. But how would the case stand if they were to proceed on the supposition that there were to be large private estates attached to the Crown which might go on accumulating indefinitely? Would not the House of Commons be then fully justified in saying—"We do not know the amount of these revenues. The Crown has very large estates throughout the country, and we do not, therefore, feel called upon to provide for the children of the Sovereign?" That appeared to him to be a position in which it would be disadvantageous to the Crown itself to be placed, and he must, therefore, despite the ingenuity of his right hon. Friend, characterize the policy for which he contended as one of retrogression. In what he had said, he had considered it right to point out what he believed to be fallacious in the ingenious speech of the right hon. Gentleman.

entirely concurred in the view expressed by the last speaker. The object of the Bill was to do away with the course of policy which had been deemed by our ancestors necessary to the welfare of the State. No doubt, the House would be very loth to interfere in any way with the private effects of the Sovereign; but that was a question dealing with landed property. Tinder the present arrangements the Crown could not leave landed property by will to the Heir to the Throne as private property; because such bequest might interfere with the settlement of the Civil List when the Heir succeeded to the Throne, and it would be very unwise to interfere with such an arrangement. The Civil List was granted to the Crown in return for the Crown property, and there was an understanding that that Rouse would be prepared to make proper settlements upon the children of the Sovereign when they came of age or were married; but if the Crown was permitted to hold private property, and could in a long series of successions accumulate a large amount of landed property, on what ground could that House be called upon to provide allowances for the children of the Sovereign?

said, the subject before the House was one of considerable difficulty, and he would endeavour to explain it as well as he could; but he was not at all sure it would be easy to follow his statement. The doubt which the Bill was intended to solve arose from the peculiar wording of the Act of George III. That Act enabled the Sovereign to dispose of two classes of estates. The first, class consisted of estates which the Sovereign purchased out of his own money, acquired by means of the savings of his Privy Purse, or which arose from personal estate given or left to him. The second class consisted of real estates which were left to him by will, or which had descended, or should descend to him from any person not being a King or Queen of these realms. The reason of the latter exception was quite obvious. The words were used in the past as well as in the future tense, and if Kings and Queens were not excepted, pretty well the whole of the Crown property would have fallen under the description of private property. The House would see that the reason of the exception had really nothing to do with the Sovereign to whom that property was given, devising to a future Sovereign; but had to do with the nature of the property which had come to him, and which was intended to be alienable as private property. The effect of the statute was this—Some lawyers were of opinion that under the first words of the statute, the property acquired by means of savings of the Privy Purse was for ever taken out of the statute of Anne. Some lawyers opined that that property remained alienable for ever; and if that view was correct, the Bill was not wanted. The other view was, that the second alternative of the section, showed the intention of the Legislature was that the first words should be read distributively and should only apply-to the King for the time being; and that was the meaning of the doubt which was referred to in the Preamble of the Bill. There was a great deal to be said on both sides; it was undoubtedly an extremely difficult point, and the object of the Bill was to get rid of the doubt. The old Act was supposed by some of the Members who had spoken to have presented a difficulty as to Her Majesty disposing of her private estate in favour of the Prince of Wales; but what difficulty was there in the way of Her Majesty giving estates to the Prince of Wales? None; the difficulty was, whether the Prince of Wales, if he should become King, could alienate the estates. There was no doubt entertained by any lawyer as to the power of Her Majesty to give these estates to the Prince of Wales; the doubt was, when he had got them, could he alienate them? Any conveyancer would tell the House that that difficulty could be got over with the greatest ease—for instance, by Her Majesty making a will in a peculiar form not to give the property to the Prince of Wales absolutely, but to direct it to be sold, with his consent; the income and proceeds to be given to him for his life, and after his decease to go to his eldest son absolutely. It was quite clear under that disposition, that they would not become Crown estates at all. The object of the Bill was to give the Prince the power of alienation; not to enrich the Crown, but to impoverish the Crown by getting rid of the estates. He wished to say a few words about the supposed secrecy or concealment of Crown wills. There could not be a greater mistake. The word concealment was entirely un-appropriate; concealment and non-disclosure were totally distinct things. [Laughter.] Yes, there was a difference. The charge of concealment implied an obligation to disclose, but there was no obligation on the Sovereign to disclose the contents of the will disposing of his or her real estate. He or she was, in fact, in the same position as regarded this point as any private individual. Wills of real estate—and this Bill only applied to real estate—did not require probate. Every owner of land could, if he thought fit, make a separate will of his real estate, and no one need know what his testamentary dispositions were. He (the Solicitor General) had seen very many such wills, which in former days were much more common than now. It was a mistake to suppose that the Crown was in a different position as regarded the testamentary disposition of landed property from any other individual. The real complaint of the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) was that Her Majesty's ancestors had simply done that which hundreds of private gentlemen had done—namely, by putting their wills of real estate upon separate pieces of paper, they had not allowed the world to know what their dispositions of real estate were. The Bill had nothing whatever to do with dispositions of personal estate; and as regarded those dispositions it was by mere accident that the public could ascertain the contents of the wills of private individuals which were in the Court of Probate. There was nothing to hinder the Court of Probate from stopping the practice to-morrow. The present practice of exposing the affairs of a private individual to satisfy the public curiosity almost as soon as the breath was out of his body had been very much abused, and. had caused great annoyance and even pecuniary loss. A word now about the Civil List. Hon. Members said that if on a future occasion the House should be about to settle the Civil List, and the Crown should be in possession of large landed estates, it might affect the settlement. Certainly it might; but before the House of Commons settled the Civil List it would ask for a statement of what this property consisted of. Had the House never heard of such inquiry being made into the revenues derived from the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster? The result would probably be that the next Sovereign would take care that all his accumulations assumed the shape of personalty, as to which no such suggestion could fairly be made; although the House could call for a return even of personalty, before granting the sum which they thought necessary to support the dignity and power of the Crown. The right hon. Gentleman reminded him that in the case of the Prince of Wales such an inquiry was made and answered before an allowance was given to him. The Bill was really intended to get rid of a difficult legal question; by no means to increase the property of the Crown, but so far rather to diminish it by enabling the Sovereign for the time being to dispose of private property with any conditions he or she might think proper; in point of fact, to dispose of it as they pleased.

Mr. Speaker—To some people it seems a hardship that we should deal with the Royal Family in a way different from that in which we deal with any other family in the country. There is a certain plausibility at first sight in the view that the King should be allowed to receive legacies or other gifts of money, or to make savings upon his income, and to invest them in any manner that he may please. I will not go into the right or wrong, or the policy or impolicy of the matter. All that I will contend is that we have broken through the old practice of the Constitution in this respect, and are following neither the one principle nor the other. In old times the King was not allowed to hold private property. Land he could not have at all, and such personalty as he might accumulate went of necessity, and in right of his Crown, to the succeeding Monarch. On the other hand, when the Kings informed Parliament that their children had grown up and were needing separate maintenance, and that by the law of the land no funds existed for that maintenance, they did so in the following terms:—"Whereas His Majesty is restrained by the Laws now in being from making provision for his younger children."—and Parliament used then to make a moderate provision—but not "to take effect till after His Majesty's demise." If the Royal Family are to be subject to no disabilities, are to be treated in every way like private individuals, then clearly it should follow that it is the duty of the Royal Family to provide for the maintenance of its younger branches. I repeat, that at the present time we are following neither the one course nor the other. We do impose disabilities on the Royal Family, especially those of the Royal Marriage Act, and we are allowing them by this and previous Bills to create a perpetual secret entail of private lands, as to which we have no information. We are allowing a wholly exceptional privacy to the Royal wills, and at the same time we are continuing to provide those dowries and annuities for the younger members of the family, in favour of which the ancient Constitutional argument that I have quoted cannot be used. That, Sir, is my ease against this Bill, which continues the policy of the Act of 1862, and which facilitates the creation of the secret entail of which I speak. The Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow covers only one portion of the ground. It strikes at the secrecy which attends the formation of a private estate for the Crown, and it strikes only at that secrecy on one side. It is aimed at the secrecy of the will. As to the fact of that secrecy there can, I apprehend, be no doubt. At the Wills Office inquirers are informed that the Royal wills are not there, but that they may possibly be found in the Archi-Episcopal Registry at Lambeth. At Lambeth, it turns out on application that nothing is known about them, and I repeat that there can be no doubt about the fact. On the other hand, I could almost wish that my hon. Friend, in his desire for a wholesome publicity, had asked that as a condition precedent to the passing of this Bill we should be promised a publication of accounts, and I would suggest to him that in Committee he should move a clause similar to that which in an Act of the present reign commands the publication of the receipts and disbursements of the Duchy of Lancaster. By the publication of accounts we should see whether the provisions of the Acts of Parliament relating to these estates are observed, and our successors at the beginning of the next reign would be in possession of information which would show them how far the Crown might have become independent of the Votes of Parliament. Let me return, Sir, for one moment to the main question—namely, the Constitutional practice on this point of the tenure of private lands by the occupant of the Throne. It is interesting to look at the care exercised in former times to prevent that accumulation of private property by the Crown which by this Bill, and by the Act of 1862, we positively facilitate. The preamble of the Act of 1862 recites an Act of Anne and an Act of George III., which wholly restrain the Sovereign for the time being from dealing permanently with land, and which take the King's revenue from lands for public purposes. It recites other Acts which show that when in later times the Crown began to be allowed to hold small estates privately, an exception was made of laud coming to a King from ancestors who were "Kings or Queens of this realm." The principle which I have called the ancient Constitutional principle, and in support of which I can produce an overwhelming weight of authority, was acted upon to a most striking extent in the case of the Duchy of Lancaster. It was the private property of an individual who happened to come to the Crown of Eng- land. Yet it is, and long has been, administered through a public Minister changing with the changes of the Government. Its accounts are presented to Parliament; its amount is considered in settling the income of a Sovereign at the beginning of a reign. I said that I could produce an overwhelming weight of authority in favour of the view that it is unwise to allow the Crown to hold private property in land. The hon. Member for Finsbury has pointed out in his book on India, that the reason why Pitt objected to undertake the conquest of Bengal in the name of the Crown, was lest the King should thus obtain a source of income independent of Parliament. Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox I quoted last year in support of the same view, as I did the remarkable words of Field Marshal Conway, who, in his speech in support of Mr. Burke's Bill, said—

"Even the propriety of interfering, not only in the selling of the private property of the Crown, but in the appropriation of the money arising from the sales of that property, is a principle admitted in this House and approved by Lord North."

That great authority of the Whigs, Mr. Allen, in his book on The Royal Prerogative, says that—

"It has become a maxim of English law that all lands and tenements possessed by the King belong to him in right of the Crown, and descend with it to his successors, though he had been seized of them in his private capacity before he was King or had inherited them from ancestors, who were never invested with the attributes of Royalty."

At the beginning of the present reign, in a great speech upon this subject, Mr. Daniel Whittle Harvey said—

"The Crown could have no possession either in money or in land, which was not properly under the control of Parliament, and though the House might now be induced to act a crouching and subservient part, both old and modern times could assert and authorize this doctrine. It was the doctrine of Burke; it was the doctrine of lox: and in more modern times it was the doctrine of the President of the Council, who, in the other House in 1816, repudiated the notion that the Crown could possess any property of its own."

The hon. Member for Liskeard was one of those who supported Mr. Harvey on that occasion. This was the opinion of Sir George Lewis, who on the 22nd of May, 1857, said—

"It has been deemed a matter of policy in this country wholly to strip and denude the Sovereign of all hereditary property, and to render him during his life entirely dependent upon the bounty of Parliament."—[3 Hansard, clxv. 724.]

These opinions laid down in Coke upon Littleton, by Pitt, by Burke, by Fox, by John Allen, and by Sir George Lewis, were acted upon by Parliament in the case of the Brighton Pavilion, and, I think I may add, have never as yet been denied by any Minister of the Crown. We shall probably be told that there is no danger of the Crown becoming independent of Parliament, and that the private landed estates are still small. They may be small in this country, and large in the colonies; but in any case this is a reason for our wishing to know the amount, and hence for the publication of the accounts. Even supposing that the estates are small now, they may become enormous at any moment without our knowing it, owing to the non-publication of the will and the non-publication of accounts. Persons desirous of notoriety may in the future, as they have in the past, leave enormous legacies to the King. Moreover, are these estates so small? The Privy Purse receives £32,000 a-year more from the Duchy of Lancaster than it did at the beginning of the reign. At the beginning of the reign the payment to the King from the Duchy of Lancaster was £8,000 a-year, and is now £40,000. The savings on the Civil List applied to the Privy Purse—in consequence of the refusal of my Motion of last year, and the suppression of the Returns since Lord Brougham's Motion in the Lords in 1851—are not known, but cannot for a great many years have been less than £20,000 a-year, and may have been double or treble that sum. I think, therefore, that it may be said that the King of England—looking to the fact that the Privy Purse is clear of almost all the charges which fall upon the Privy Purse in other countries—is by far the richest of monarchs. Last year the Prime Minister contended that the savings were not large, because £20,000 a-year in new pensions, chargeable on the Privy Purse, had been created during the present reign, but when Parliament has laid down, in Act after Act, the principles which guide the bestowal of pensions, it is highly unconstitutional that these pensions should be granted at all without our knowledge, and one of the greatest dangers arising from that accumulation of private property by the Crown which is now going on lies in the fact that such pensions may without any restriction as to amount and character be secretly created. I have no doubt that the Conservative from bench will support this Bill, because since our last debate upon these subjects we have had the pleasure of reading the memoirs of Baron Stockmar, the Royal Physician, in which he states that "all questions affecting the Crown are now treated confidentially with the heads of the opposition"—a proceeding the constitutional spirit of which I take leave to doubt.

must tell his hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea that he was entirely mistaken. He objected altogether to lawyers giving their opinions on legal questions, or debating them, simply as agents of political parties. The course which he took on this Bill was his own, and he looked at the Bill as he would look at any other. What was the Resolution now before the House?—

"That it is inexpedient to extend the scope of the Act 25 and 26 Vic. c. 37, until the secrecy at present attaching exclusively to Crown testaments is abolished."

He entirely agreed with the hon. and learned Solicitor General; indeed, it was seldom that lawyers disagreed about the law—that if the instrument disposed of nothing but realty, there was no obligation on any person to disclose the contents of the instrument. The tenure of landed property did not he in the probate, but in the original instrument. He did not, therefore, agree that there was as to realty an exclusive power of secrecy in the Crown. As regarded personalty, there was. But that was an extremely secondary matter. The real question appeared to him to be that raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Bouverie). The great learning and sound judgment his right hon. Friend brought to bear on every constitutional question made him most reluctant to differ from him; but he was utterly unable to see the wisdom of making a prohibition on the Sovereign's power of disposing of private property so as to give the Heir to the Crown an ownership in it. Sovereigns were not in that respect different from other people, and if the Sovereign was fettered in the gift—if they jealously interfered with the terms and conditions of the gift— the Sovereign would give in the direction where there was unlimited and absolute power. That was human nature. So far as policy, he thought it was in favour of encouraging to give to the Heir who would be Sovereign. The wealth of the Sovereign was part of the wealth of the country. The Sovereign was not a private individual, but, in a representative character, stood at the head of the nation. He was unable to follow the argument of the right hon. Gentleman with respect to the change introduced in the law of England in 1833–4. Prior to that, the Heir took by descent, not by purchase. The law was altered—why? Because the ablest Commission that ever sat on the law recommended the alteration; and the Heir now took by purchase, not by descent. And why should the Crown by any technicality he excluded from the benefit of that change of the law? The opinion of Lord Westbury had been referred to, and it was in favour of the Crown. He was prepared on that opinion to say that as regarded the Sovereign, it would not be just to withhold their support from the Bill. With respect to the opinion, he could not examine it critically, for such was the eminent legal learning and ability of that great lawyer who had now gone from among us, he would be inclined to exclaim "Mallem cum Platone errare gum cum aliis recta sentire."

must say, with great deference to his hon. Friends around him, that the objections they had raised to this Bill appeared to him to rest on insufficient grounds, and that they were to a great extent founded on a misapprehension of the probable effects of the measure. It was somewhat amusing to observe the alliance between the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles Dilke) and what was called the old Constitutional doctrine asserted by his right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Bouverie), to which he had attached himself with something like hereditary feelings. That doctrine —that the Crown could not deal with private property, however, was annihilated when once the Crown obtained the power, and that had created an entirely new state of things. In fact the speech of the right hon. Member against the Bill ought to have been made 74 years ago. When the popular party associated with the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea came to use the same language, that would give rise to a misapprehension out-of-doors that the Bill was an innovation, and that an attempt was being made to increase the power of the Crown. It was almost absurd, particularly when they had in public opinion a greater corrective than in any statute, and more especially while they had such a doughty exponent of public opinion in that House as the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea, to fear that the power of the Crown was going to be increased, because the Crown might leave landed property to one descendant as well as to another, a privilege to which he could see no Objection. The public had greater interest in property following the Crown and the State than in its being devised to strangers. Suppose the occupant of the Throne left property to a stranger, how would the public benefit? If it went to the successor to the Crown there would not need to be such a large Civil List as would otherwise be required. This Bill did not impose the secrecy objected to by the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson), who, if he would remove it, should move to repeal the original Act; but the secrecy was most shadowy, for large properties could not be left and enjoyed without the knowledge of the public. He could not see the least objection to the Bill.

said, as it appeared that hon. Members desired to take a division on the Main Question rather than on that raised by his Amendment, he would withdraw the Amendment.

in moving, as an Amendment, That the Bill be read a second time that day three months, said, that for very many years the endowed schools of the country, which were very numerous, had, in consequence of what he contended was a false construction of the law, been to a great extent monopolized by the Church of England. The Courts had decided that vague and general words, such as that trustees or managers of schools should be honest men, or that the children should be taught godly learning, meant that the trustees should be members of the Church of England, and that the children should receive their education in conformity with the doctrines of that Church. No doubt, many of them were expressly founded for the purpose of bringing up and educating the scholars in the doctrines of the Church, in addition to the classical and secular education given. He himself brought in a Bill the object of which was to endeavour to break down the objectionable state of the law relating to those endowed schools, for the reason that the system of management of those schools gave great offence to Dissenters and the country at large; and it was not only the intolerant course of conduct pursued by the Church of England trustees, but the way in which those schools were mismanaged by the party that was objectionable, and those two clauses led to an alteration of the Act, and to the passing of the Act of 1869. That Act had met with such general approval that had the present measure been a mere Continuance Bill it would have received his cordial support; but he objected to several of its provisions, especially the 5th clause. In placing the schools under the Commissioners the House had determined that they should be governed by a body responsible to Parliament and the country. Sectarian teaching and sectarian teachers therefore ought to be excluded, in accordance with the principle thus established; and, in fact, he did not see any reason why any good practical working man should not be on the trusts. He altogether objected to officials of the Church of England being trustees by virtue of their office. They might be altogether unfitted for such a position—indolent, quarrelsome, or litigious—and yet they could not be removed. Worse still, they might in the present exceptional position of the Church be opposed in doctrine and practice to a great body of their parishioners, and yet they must remain ex officio trustees. That provision was the more unjust when it was considered that members of other religious bodies were practically excluded from acting in the trusts; and if ever they did get upon them, might be easily removed, if incompetent. He did not thus speak of the objection reasonably urged by Dissenters where they were in a majority, as they were in Wales, but of that of Churchmen themselves. Very recently the Archbishops of the Church had stated that a very large section of the clergy of the Church of England was making innovations and using practices which they characterized as being highly dangerous to the interests of the Church, but under the Bill those men, by virtue of their position, would be and remain trustees of the schools. He also altogether objected to the exclusion, by the 6th clause, of some of the schools from the operation and, consequently, from the benefits of the Act, and could not see on what principles such a provision had been adopted. The recommendation of the Select Committee did not at all justify such an alteration in the law, and for his part, he would rather see the Bill lost than that such a provision should be sanctioned by the House. It would upset a principle which they had fought hard to establish, and he could not be a party to any retrograde movement on the subject, and for that reason he felt bound to move the rejection of the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, in rising, Sir, to second the Motion of my hon. Friend, I think it fortunate that he placed this Notice upon the Paper, because it would have been highly inconvenient if a measure of this importance had passed through the principal stage without debate. My hon. Friend has stated his objections to the Bill, and, at this hour, I do not propose to follow him over the same ground. But the Bill is objectionable not only on account of what it contains, but on account of what it does not contain. I object to it because it makes no provision whatever for the regulation of the constitution of the Governing Bodies. Now, when my right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Council was moving the second reading of the Endowed Schools Bill, in 1869, he made use of words which it is scarcely an exaggeration to say were calculated to raise the hopes of half the nation. He reminded us that new ideas have power to-day, as in the time when England was waking up to take the foremost place in the march of Christian civilization.

"This new central idea," he said, "bringing with it many others—that no special class is to guide the destinies of England." "That England, for the future, is to be self-governed; all her citizens taking their share, not 1,v class distinction, but by social worth."—[3 Hansard, cxciv. 1382.]

And, in taking his stand upon those principles, my right hon. Friend was simply enforcing the spirit of that document which he held in his hand—for every word of which he considered himself responsible, and upon which, by the terms of the Preamble, his Bill was based—the unanimous Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission. Let hon. Gentlemen turn to the Report, and see how from one end to the other, it is pervaded by those new and generous ideas to which my right hon. Friend appealed.

"No skill in organization," say the Commissioners, (p. 640) "no careful adaptation of the means in hand to the best ends, can do as much for education as the earnest co-operation of the people. The American schools appear to have no great excellence of method, nor a very well selected system of studies, nor any thorough inspection, nor any skilful gradation of the schools in relation to each other. But the schools are in the hands of the people, and from this fact they derive a force which seems to make up for all their deficiencies. The Scotch schools owe their success, in a great measure, to the same cause. And in Zurich the schools are absolutely in the hands of the people, and the complete success of the system must be largely ascribed to this cause. It is impossible to doubt that, in England also, superior management, if it were backed up by very hearty sympathy from the mass of the people, would often succeed better than much greater skill without such support."

And, as though they thought that they had not laid sufficient stress upon this principle in the course of their recommendations, they return to it, evidently with the view of giving to it the utmost emphasis at the close.

"But the real force," say they, "by which the work is to be done must come from the people, and every arrangement which fosters the interest of the people in the schools, which teaches the people to look on the schools as their own, which encourages them to take a share in the management, will do at least as much service as the wisest advice and the most skilful administration."

It was from a profound conviction of the truth of these principles that the Commission desired to liberalize to the utmost the constitution of the provincial Boards, to which they proposed to entrust the duty of preparing schemes for the management of all the schools in their districts; and it was in the same spirit of fairness to all, and with the same determination of securing the cooperation of all, that they proceeded to lay down the rules by which, in their opinion, the constitution of Boards of Governors should be determined.

"It seems to us," they say, "that in a good school trust three elements should, if possible, be combined—the representation of the interests of the parents, of the interests of education, and of the past management of the school. The parents are most concerned in the welfare of the school, and in the success of all the arrangements: and, besides this, their lively interest is of great value, and ought to be encouraged in every way. But whilst they are the most deeply interested, and it is best that they should be encouraged to feel that interest, they are not always the best informed, and there should be some trustees appointed on the ground of their larger knowledge to represent education generally. Lastly, it is not good that the management of a school should be liable to sudden and great changes. There should be a continuity in its life, and this should be secured by admitting the method of co-öptation, but only to a limited extent." And in the next paragraph they add, "No trustees should be appointed for a longer period than five years."

I am aware that when the Government came to deal with the whole question by legislation they abandoned the provincial Boards altogether, and conferred upon others the powers which the Schools Inquiry Commission recommended should have been vested in them, thus sacrificing the first great guarantee for liberality in the schemes themselves; but, surely, they did not mean to sacrifice the free principles upon which that proposal was founded, surely they did not mean to abandon the idea that the real force by which the work of education was to be done must come from the people. On the contrary, it was with the view of giving free scope to those principles, and teaching the people, in the words of the Commission, to look upon the schools as their own, that this Act was framed. For what was its great leading reforming clause? Was it not this—

"(Clause 17) that in every scheme relating to any educational endowment, the Commissioners shall provide that the religious opinions of any person, or his attendance or non-attendance at any particular form of religious worship shall not in any way affect his qualification for being one of the governing body of such endowment."

This clause is the keystone of the whole arch. It enunciates a principle which, until this Act was passed, the Law Courts refused to recognize. The decisions of the Court of Chancery were all the other way. They absolutely excluded the whole population which did not belong to one particular creed from the management of public schools. This Act reversed that policy. It declared that henceforth there should be absolutely fair play for all, and favour for none. And if it can be shown that Governing Bodies, under this Act, are so constructed that they must bear a distinctly party complexion, or if they are so constructed as to give to one denomination an overwhelming preponderance of representation; still more, if they are so constructed as to render that party complexion and that denominational preponderance perpetual, one great object of the Act is defeated—one great principle of the Act violated, and that new central idea of my right hon. Friend ignored, upon which, unless he meant his peroration to be a masterpiece of rhetorical flummery, his whole system of secondary education was to be based. No one knows better than my right hon. Friend the circumstances under which it was proposed to win back for these schools the confidence and co-operation of the entire community. Owing to a long train of events which the Founders could never have contemplated, a large portion of the population had become as completely estranged from these schools as if they spoke another language or belonged to another race. That was no fault of theirs. No one who believes in the principle of religious freedom, and who recalls the history of legislation in relation to Dissent, will dare to say so. "It is the pride and glory of these schools," says my right hon. Friend, "that they are public;" but the word is a misnomer, if it does not mean that the public, whatever may be their religious persuasion, are equally welcome and equally to be considered, and unless you can get over the jealousy and distrust with which Nonconformists have been too surely taught by the past to regard them as places of education for Nonconformist children. Let us see, then, how far the constitution of the new Governing, Bodies is such as to remove this jealousy and distrust, how far it is such as to inspire a public belief in the absolute impartiality of the management in matters relating to religion. Sir, one of the witnesses examined by the Committee (Mr. Schnadhorst) had taken infinite pains to procure an exact analysis of the co-optative element in every published scheme. Eliminating all schemes in which the Governing Body was not dealt with, or under Section 19, or in which the Governing Body was elected directly the old trustees, he was able to obtain particulars of 85. He laid the results of his investigation before the Committee in a tabular form, and with a minuteness of detail which challenged, in every case, the most complete verification upon the spot. He found that out of 433 co-optative Governors 137 belonged to the party which sits on this side of the House, and 296 to that which sits upon the other, and that of these 433 co-optatives, 392 were Churchmen and 41 Dissenters. He found, further, that 81 clergymen had been appointed against 5 Dissenting ministers, that in 50 out of the 85 schemes, not a single Nonconformist was ap- ointed a co-optative Governor, and that those 50 schemes embraced Wolverhampton, Halifax, Wigan, Walsall, Stafford, and Stourbridge, towns in which it is notorious to every one that Nonconformists of influence abound. Again, as regards the proportion which the co-optative element bears to the ex officio or representative elements in these schemes, this witness found that, according to the published official Return made by the Commissioners to the Committee (marked No. 1 in the Appendix), in 28 schemes the co-optatives are permanently a majority of the whole, and in 85 they permanently exceed one-third. But if we analyze the schemes as they stand at present, and will for several years to come, this proportion will be largely exceeded, and this, notwithstanding the warning recommendation of the Schools Inquiry Commission, that the co-optative principle should be adopted only to a limited extent. But, Sir, this is not all. The other two elements, the ex officio and the representative, have been so handled by the Commissioners as to reflect the complexion of the co-optative element. Take, for example, the attempt of the Commissioners to make ecclesiastics ex officio members of these Governing Bodies, in the very teeth of the statute under which they sat, and of the indignant remonstrances of Dissenters. Sir, we had hoped that that question had been authoritatively sot at rest, but, to our dismay, we find that my right hon. Friend has abandoned the position which he had taken up, and proposes, under this Bill, to make that lawful which the Act of 1869 disallowed. But even the representative element would seem to be insecure, for it was stated by one of the witnesses that—

"In very many instances every possible existing organized body has been used in order to vest the appointment of representative Governors in it, rather than let them be appointed strictly by the people. Many Governors are elected by Members of Parliament for the county, by Bishops, by the vicar and churchwardens, by deans and chapters, by Boards of Guardians, by-local Boards, and even by burial Boards."

Now, Sir, do not let it be said that in making these remarks I am taking sectarian ground. I am doing nothing of the kind; I ant taking public ground. For, Sir, I contend that it is a preposterous thing, when we are dealing with schools which are not denominational, but public in the widest sense of the term, that every denomination but one should be heavily handicapped in the legitimate competition for representation by the nomination of nine-tenths of the co-optative element from the Church, by the extension of the co-optative element so constituted to the utmost possible limit, by the introduction of clerical ex officio Governors, and by the substitution, wherever possible, of some more or less exclusive body for the popular constituency, even when you are pretending to represent the popular choice. Sir, I maintain that all that is at variance with the recommendations of the Schools Inquiry Commission, with the speech of my right hon. Friend, and with the spirit of the Act itself. What, then, is the defence of the Commissioners? In the Report presented to Parliament, they say—

"We have been told that in some of our schemes a preponderance has been given to one party, both in civil politics and in ecclesiastical politics. We do not know, and we do not propose to inquire."

"We do not know." Is this quite candid? Who are these co-optatives? With few exceptions, the old trustees. And who are the old trustees? With still fewer exceptions, members of the Church of England. Therefore, so far as the co-optative element went, the Commissioners did know, and there was no occasion for them to enquire—

"Our answer is," they proceed, "that each group of trustees has been chosen for the good of its own endowment, and with reference solely to the legal and educational considerations affecting that endowment, because they were in possession, because they previously had some patronage, because they were versed in scholastic affairs, because they are men of business, because their neighbours confide in them and wish to have their services."

But, Sir, in dealing with questions like public education, with reference to which every Churchman and every Dissenter is on the alert, you cannot afford to proceed upon the assumption that men are neither religionists nor politicians—you cannot afford to shut your eyes to the fact that English society, of every class, is penetrated through and through by antagonistic ideas in politics and religion, that the bias of that antagonism insensibly warps the judgment and impairs the impartiality of every one, that the belief in that bias and partiality is universal, and that your only safety, I might say, if we are to have justice—it is enough for my purpose to say if we are to have a public belief in justice—is in absolute fair play, and I have shown that there is no fair play here. But the Commissioners themselves betray an immediate misgiving that their position in ignoring the religious and political sides of this question is unsound. The words are hardly out of their mouths when, with the strangest inconsistency they add—

"We do not pretend that political considerations can be excluded any more than any other parts of men's characters can be wholly excluded."

Then, why, in the name of justice, have they excluded them? "What we do contend is, that such considerations are minor and secondary ones." Sir, we do not live in a time when it is possible to treat these considerations as minor and secondary. I wish we did. The time may come when we shall, but not so long as in every parish in the kingdom we see, side by side, two distinct religious castes, one only of which has been to fortunate as to secure the smiles of the State. And do not let my right hon. Friend take refuge in the idea that, because these schools are undenominational, therefore you can have no regard to a man's religious belief when you appoint him either as a Commissioner, as an Assistant Commissioner, or as a co-optative Governor. People take their religious beliefs with them wherever they go, and with the best and purest intentions these beliefs determine their course of' action, and the questions which come before the Governing Bodies of these schools are precisely those which excite to the utmost the irritability of people's beliefs—the whole religious teaching of the school, the appointment of masters, the election of scholars, the distribution of everything which the schools have to bestow. My right hon. Friend has brought into one focus everything which can excite religious jealousy to the utmost, and then, with a solemn face, he says—"I should be sorry to ask the religious belief of any man to whom I entrust the solution of questions like these." I cannot conceive a better illustration of the mischief which arises from this know-nothing policy titan what has actually occurred. Here are three gentlemen of the highest possible character, but all Churchmen, some of them distinguished members, vice-presidents of the Church Defence Association. This is accident No. 1. They are assisted by eight gentlemen, all of whom are members of the Church of England. This is accident No. 2. These Assistant Commissioners, the eyes and ears of the Commission, are instructed to place themselves in direct and intimate communication with the old trustees—that is, to derive their first impressions through the medium of their prejudices—and this at a moment when prejudice is most on the alert, when its privileges are threatened. The old trustees are almost all members of the Church of England. This is accident No. 3. And the natural and necessary consequence of this three-fold combination of Churchmen upon the back of Churchmen is accident No. 4—namely, that so far as the re-construction of our secondary schools has proceeded, that whole system has received a permanent Church twist, and almost every undenominational school a Church launch. But do not let me be misunderstood. I do not state that the Commissioners, the Assistant Commissioners, and the old trustees have wilfully conspired to defeat the intentions of the Legislature, and to bolster up a monopoly which this measure was intended to break through. What I do say is that, with the view of conciliating the old trustees, the Commissioners have made them virtually masters of the situation, and have left the party—in ecclesiastical and civil politics—to which they belong, as absolutely supreme over the teaching and control of these schools as ever it was, and this in districts which positively teem with Dissenters, where a Churchman is the exception, and where the children using the schools would naturally, in overwhelming majorities, be the children of Nonconformists. Have hon. Gentlemen taken the pains to run their eyes over the evidence from Wales, or the West Riding? Mr. Jones, Principal of the Independent College at Bala, a district in which he said that it would be a moderate statement to assert that Nonconformists were to Churchmen in the proportion of five to one, stated that in the Bala scheme there were to be 11 co-optatives at first, all holding office for life, nine of whom were Churchmen, against six representative Governors. Mr. Craven of Thornton, near Bradford, gave evidence that he was the only Nonconformist nominated by the Commis- sion, in a district in which Nonconformists numbered three-fourths of the population. Mr. Waddington, of Mir-field, also in the West Riding, said that the Mirfield Grammar School was a Nonconformist foundation, and that out of eight co-optatives only two are Nonconformists; but to show the feeling of the district, when a contest took place for the six representative seats, only one Churchman was returned as against five Nonconformists. And the evidence of this witness is peculiarly instructive, because he stated that if this injustice had not been done to the Nonconformists in placing so few of them upon the Governing Body by co-optation, this contest—which was of extreme severity—would probably not have arisen at all. The fact is, that by excluding a fair proportion of Nonconformists from the co-optative portion of the Governing Body in districts in which Nonconformists of influence abound, the Commissioners are raising, in the most objectionable form, and with every circumstance of acerbity, the very question which they profess to deprecate. And so at the very outset this blind, know-nothing policy of the Commissioners defeats itself, and the schools begin their new career in the midst of passion and discord, and with every element of failure implanted in their constitution. I call this policy a blind policy, for so it is; and it has been so blindly pursued that the Commissioners themselves are staggered when they are confronted with its results—for example, when Lord Lyttelton had stated that the co-optative element was always in a minority, and when, by a multitude of instances, I showed him that this was not so, he replied—"All I can say is, that I think any such case in my present view is a miscarriage (1466); I do not think that it is right." Yes, but the table of schemes is full of such miscarriages. And when I plied his Lordship with the Yorkshire schemes—districts which I need not remind the House are full of Dissenters—his reply always was—"Those are all Mr. Robinson's districts;" or, "That is in Yorkshire;" as though the fact of its being in Yorkshire, or under the eye of Canon Robinson, was enough to account for any enormity. But, Sir, perhaps I may be told that Nonconformists are themselves in some measure to blame for this state of things. Why did they meekly acquiesce? Why did they not memorialize the Commissioners? Why did they not memorialize the Committee of Council? Why did they not move this House to reject these schemes, one by one? What chance had we, at the fag end of the Session, with the Paper crowded with Business, of getting that calm and dispassionate consideration of details without which such a discussion would have been a farce? How can the House determine whether or not justice has been done, with nothing but ex parte evidence before it, with no power of cross-examination, and no local knowledge whatever? But why not memorialize the Committee of Council? Let the House consider what we must have asked the Committee of Council to have clone. Under the Endowed Schools Act the Department has no power to modify schemes. It must accept the scheme in a lump, or reject it in a lump. We must, therefore, have asked it to pull up the wheat with the tares; to postpone all reform, perhaps for years and years, in schools, many of which were a reproach and a scandal to everyone who had anything to do with them. But why not appeal to the Commissioners? I reply-that we did. [Mr. FORSTER said, that they did not.] My right hon. Friend says that we did not. Then, if we did not, it was because we knew that we had to deal with a body of men who, in all that relates to religion were in a hostile camp, and we declined to sue for common justice in the abject attitude of petitioning remonstrants. Sir, I will say no more. I thank the House for the patience with which, at this hour, they have listened to me. I had hoped that the deliberations of the Committee upstairs might have resulted in some attempt, if not to redress, at least to abate, a great and manifest injustice. With this view I prepared a paragraph, studiously so worded as to avoid anything which could be considered offensive, either to the Church or the Commissioners. The object of that paragraph, if it had been embodied in the Report of the Committee, was to caution the Commissioners against an excessive use of the co-optative principle. It was so fortunate as to obtain the assent of my right hon. Friend, and of every Liberal member of the Committee, except one, and that hon. Gentleman enjoys the distinction of being an Eccle- siastical Commissioner. By his casting vote, I may say, my paragraph was rejected. But, surely, when it received the almost unanimous support of his party, my right hon. Friend might have taken some notice of it in his Bill. He does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, all the changes which the Bill makes are in a direction which is the opposite of that in which we look; and yet, upon the recognition of the principles for which I contend, the success of your whole system of secondary education depends. For without it, that system can never take deep root in the confidence and support of the entire community. I have all along proceeded upon the assumption that these principles were intended to underlie the whole plan of the Government. If I am wrong, it is time that I should be undeceived. If, from the first, it was the intention of the Government to hand over the whole secondary education of the people in perpetuity to Church of England management, let them say so. Say at once that it was no part of your plan to give Nonconformists their fair place in the Governing Bodies of these schools. Say at once that you were never converts to the maxims and the central ideas of my right hon. Friend; but that, with the words of freedom and equality upon your lips, you were secretly resolved in this new and final re-construction to stereotype class distinction in its worst and most odious shape—the supremacy of a religious caste. But, if this was not the intention of my right hon. Friend, let him make such changes in this Bill as shall secure the practical adoption, not the virtual renunciation of the principles upon which the Act itself was based, so that if we vote with him to-night, we may have some assurance that we are indeed "making our past minister to our future"—our future strength, not our future strife. Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."—(Mr. Dillwyn.)

was sorry that the measure had come forward so late in the Session that it was impossible to do justice to it Looking at the history of these endowments, he held that injustice would have been done by ousting the Church of England from a principal share in their control and management, for he must remind the hon. Member for Swansea that nine-tenths of the endowed schools had been founded by its members, and the Act of 1869 was never intended to convey schools so founded away from the Church. The present Bill—small as was the modicum of justice which it gave to the Church—did, at all events, propose to remove some injustice, and therefore he could not support the Amendment which had been moved by the hon. Member. At the same time, unless some Amendments were introduced to make it more just to the Church, he should oppose it on the third reading.

regretted that the discussion of that measure had taken a sectarian turn, in face of the fact that their simple object ought to be a reform in the educational system of this country. As a Member of the Select Committee which sat upon this subject, he believed that the intention of the Act passed some years ago was not to transfer the endowments of certain schools which had belonged to the Church of England, to other denominations, but rather to throw them open to all—a fact which would, he hoped, be kept well in view when discussing the question. He could not imagine a harder case than that of excluding the trustees who were members of the Church of England, who had done so much for the cause of education, and had in many cases framed schemes of a most liberal character. In Wigan they prepared a scheme which was universally approved of; but while the scheme itself was sanctioned, would it have been a just act if the trustees who framed it had been turned out of the Governing Body? It would be an evil day for these schools if trustees were chosen, not because they knew anything about education, but because they entertained particular political or religious views. He considered that it was necessary for the welfare of these schools that the Governing Bodies should not be obtained entirely by popular election; but that there should continue upon these Bodies a certain number of gentlemen elected by representation and by co-optation. The cases which the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Leatham) had cited from America did not apply to the schools now under review, because they were not of the same class. The American schools which had been spoken of were elementary schools. In America the higher schools were in the hands of the people, and by no means in a good condition. There was an unfortunate downward tendency in America which he hoped would never be found in England. He had trusted that in England the best men would have been chosen, irrespective of religious opinions or political creeds. He doubted whether in any country, schools of a high class were under the control of a popular vote. The Commissioners had, no doubt, committed many mistakes; but he represented a district wherein, more than in any other, they had wherein, schemes which were in operation. In that district they had brought many schools from a state of decay and utter uselessness to entire prosperity. He hoped, however, the Commissioners would have a greater regard for the old traditions and past history of schools, and concur more with the Governing Bodies. He admitted that some reform of the grammar schools was necessary, and believed the wisest course for the House to adopt was to continue the Commission, though under more restricted conditions.

said, he was glad to hear what had fallen from the last speaker, for great dissatisfaction had been caused by the manner in which the Commissioners had removed Governing Bodies and replaced them by others selected at haphazard. There were schools that had been endowed by persons, who were anxious that they should operate to the public benefit, and those schools had been carried out according to the rules which had been laid down by the Pounders; and he thought that while the Commissioners endeavoured to improve them where the Governing Body had acted properly with regard to schools which had existed for centuries, there ought not to be a hard-and-fast line laid down under which they must be removed, but if alteration were made by the Commissioners, that was no reason why the scheme adopted by them should not he carried out by the Governors who had hitherto done their duty, and therefore should continue to be appointed and the schools continued under the existing manage- ment. He would like to know whether his right hon. Friend had introduced a clause into the Bill to remedy such conduct on the part of the Commissioners and to prevent the repetition of it in future. He should prefer that the Commissioners should never be heard of again; but, at all events, if the House was not prepared to do that, he hoped that a clause would be introduced into the Bill which would tie the hands of the Commissioners, so as to prevent them from doing any further mischief.

said, that a provision which would, to a certain extent, meet the objection of the last speaker was already contained in the Bill. The scheme of the Bill was not obtaining the attention it deserved in the present discussion, the object of which, on each side, was apparently to grasp at the controlling powers of the schools. The most opposite views had been expressed as to the merits or the demerits of the Commissioners. What he wanted chiefly to point out was, that the larger endowments had suffered greatly from delay, and he thought that the Governing Bodies ought to be able to propound schemes before the Commissioners could bring their plans into operation. At the same time, the intention of the Founders, particularly in recent cases ought to be properly respected. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to be doing all in his power for carrying out the objects proposed by the Act of 1869, but still something was needed to put an end to the delay and uncertainty which now existed, and which in the ease of Christ's Hospital, whose endowments were open to the whole kingdom, represented about a third of the whole educational endowments of the country. He now desired to intimate that, unless the scheme prepared by the Committee of the Governors, four years ago, could be brought into speedy operation, he should endeavour to have a clause inserted to enable the Government to go for a private Bill.

complained of the vagueness of the present Act. The Preamble of the Act stated that it was framed for the purpose of extending the benefit of the endowed schools to all classes of the community, and he thought it would only have been ordinary precaution on the part of the Vice President of the Council to have seen that the Commissioners were not all identified with one religious body. At least, one or other of them should have been a Dissenter. There had been a corresponding partiality in the nomination of the co-optative Governors, and the Act had been administered most unequally and unjustly. The scheme applied to the Bradford Grammar School was one of the most successful, because it was one of the most just—one of the few just schemes which the Commissioners had created. The Bill did nothing to mitigate the injustice complained of on the part of the Dissenters, and he preferred that the Commission should be suspended for a time, rather than it should be continued in its present mutilated form.

said, he should like to know from the hon. Member for Knaresborough what Dissenter he contemplated when he said that one of the three Commissioners should be a Dissenter. Did he contemplate a Roman Catholic?

admitted that Christ's Hospital was by far one of the largest and most important endowments with which that Bill dealt, and he was in hopes that by means of negotiations between the Commissioners and the Governors of Christ's Hospital, they would arrive within a year at a scheme which might be presented to Parliament with the assent of both parties. As regarded the Amendment, the Endowed Schools Commissioners had been appointed by the Government because they believed that they were the best men that could be selected, and that they were well acquainted with the work upon which they were going to enter. As to the Governing Bodies, the Commissioners had appointed the co-optative Governors simply and solely from a belief that they would be the most likely men to carry on the government of the trust with satisfaction to those around them. He thought that had been proved from the fact that no objection had been offered to them in the districts where they were appointed to act. He expressed his regret that the hon. Member for Knaresborough should have accused the Commissioners of gross partiality, and maintained that though they might have committed a few mistakes, they had discharged their duties with strict impartiality. With regard to the Motion before the House, he confidently hoped, having regard to the past labours in the cause of educational progress of his hon. Friend who brought it forward, that he would not now seek to check that progress by endeavouring to carry it. The measure which the Government desired to enact involved the slightest changes possible, and altered in a very small degree the powers of the Commissioners. He also believed that if the reform of these endowments were to continue, the proposed concession of ex officio Governors must be granted, as the House of Lords had taken a strong stand upon the point. Nor did he believe that the body of Nonconformists, and especially those who had had anything to do with the schemes brought into operation, would rejoice at the stoppage of the reform of these endowments on account of the concessions which the Government had found it necessary to make, and without which they should not have the slightest hope of continuing the reform.

said, he had to complain that a Bill of such importance should have been brought on for discussion at so late an hour. He should vote in favour of the Amendment, and would give Notice that he would oppose the Bill at its next stage.