asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he is prepared to name the "European Nations" referred to in the Despatch of the 6th of May, which concur in or may be expected to support the policy indicated therein, namely, that Russia shall restrict her operations to certain portions of the Ottoman Empire?

The passage in Lord Derby's despatch of May 6 to which the hon. Gentleman appears to refer is this—

"The mercantile and financial interests of European nations are also so largely involved in Egypt that an attack on that country, or its occupation, even temporarily, for the purposes of war, could scarcely be regarded with unconcern by the neutral Powers—certainly not by England.

Now, I do not think I should be justified in taking up the time of the House by enumerating all the European nations which have mercantile or financial interests in Egypt. It would have been shorter, perhaps, to mention those which have not—only, unfortunately, I have not been able to find any.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether with reference to the Committee of Inquiry into the designs of ships of war of Her Majesty's Navy, he will now consent to the appointment of the promised Committee without further postponement?

in reply, said, that the First Lord of the Admiralty, after a full consideration of the reasons alleged for the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the designs of ships of war of Her Majesty's Navy, had come to the conclusion that he could not consent to the appointment of such Committee.

wished to call attention to a point of Order. It seemed to him there was a mistake in the Votes sent round that morning. At No. 45 the Resolution was recorded, "That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee of Supply." This Resolution, however, did not preclude a long debate before going into Committee. It was moved, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," but an Amendment to this was agreed to; and thereafter it was again moved and resolved—as given at No. 47 in the Votes—"That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee of Supply." If it was against the practice of the House—as he contended it was—that the same Motion should be put twice, it was desirable that the Votes should be altered in ease this occurrence might be drawn into a precedent. The effect of allowing the Motion in question to be put over and over again would be to take from the House the Constitutional power of stopping Supply.

It is right I should state to the House that when a Motion is made that this House do immediately resolve itself into Committee of Supply the object of that Motion is to "set up" Committee of Supply, and for no other purpose. That Motion is followed in ordinary course, after Committee of Supply is "set up," by a Motion that I now leave the Chair. That course was taken last night, and the proceeding is entirely in accordance with the Rules of the House. I therefore see no ground for the alteration of the Votes, as proposed by the noble Lord. It appears to me the noble Lord scarcely attaches sufficient weight to the consideration that there are two Motions before the House. One is that Committee of Supply should be "set up," which is done by the first Motion "that this House do immediately resolve itself into Committee of Supply," and when that Motion has been carried it is followed by a second Motion "that I now leave the Chair." And there is no reason why, on the same night, the Motion that this House do resolve itself into Committee of Supply should not be made as often as the House thinks fit, thereby affording additional facilities for the discussion of grievances.

in rising to call the attention of the House to the appropriation by the Treasury of the estate of the late William Paterson, and to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, it is inexpedient for the Treasury to depart, without previous notice, from the immemorial custom of Scotland, and for the first time to appropriate the estate of an intestate bastard when there are blood relations who, if he had been legitimate, would have been his next of kin according to the Law of Scotland."

said, that in bringing this question before the House, he hoped he should not be accused of any feeling of hostility or disrespect towards the Government. Whatever other questions might be, this was no Party question, and he dared to say that the Government of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone) would have decided in this matter precisely as Her Majesty's Advisers had done. But there was a feeling abroad—he could not say how true it was—that these matters were not regulated by this or that Government, but by a body of mysterious and permanent officials, called the Treasury; and he asked the House to say that that permanent and irresponsible Body should not deviate without previous notice from the immemorial custom of Scotland in distributing the estates of intestate bastards. He acknowledged the courtesy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had put into his hands the case of the Government. Mr. Paterson, of Paterson, in the county of Ayr, died in January, 1874, intestate, leaving personal property to the amount of about £40,000. He was the illegitimate son of Mr. Paterson, of Jamaica, who adopted him and educated him as his son. The claimant, Mr. Paterson, of Montgomery, was the nephew, heir at law, and next of kin to the intestate bastard's father, and was consequently cousin-german to the intestate bastard. If the deceased had been legitimate, the claimant would have succeeded at once without question to the whole of the property, and he claimed to be placed in the same position as he would have occupied if the deceased had been legitimate. But he (Colonel Alexander) knew it might be said—and he believed it would be said, either by the Chancellor of the Exchequer or by the Secretary to the Treasury—that as the deceased bastard had the power of making a will, and failed to make a will, he consequently had no intention of benefiting his (Colonel Alexander's) constituent, Mr. Paterson, of Montgomery— that he preferred, in fact, that his property should escheat to the Crown. But, in the first place, it was very unlikely he should desire that his property should be placed in the same category as the pro- perty of felons and outlaws; and, in the next place, there was nothing whatever extraordinary in the circumstance that he failed to make a will. Many persons from deeply-rooted habits of procrastination failed to make a will. But whether he had, or had not an intention of benefiting his (Colonel Alexander's) constituent was totally beside the question. There were many owners of property between whom and their heirs at law no love was lost; but if those owners died intestate, the law said that their heirs at law should inherit the property. As the deceased bastard failed to make a will, he (Colonel Alexander; submitted the law assumed his intention was that his property should go to his heir at law. He (Colonel Alexander) contended that the heir at law of an intestate bastard should not be placed in a worse position than the heir at law of a person born in wedlock. He might be asked why, when Parliament gave to the bastard the power to make a will, it did not go further, and give the succession, as a matter of course, to the next of kin of an intestate bastard? His answer was, that it was often difficult to ascertain who were the next of kin; but he submitted that when once the claim of next of kin had been ascertained to be genuine, the Treasury had always proceeded on one fixed and settled and unchangeable principle in distributing these estates. As authority for this, he would quote the Secretary to the Treasury, who, early in this Session, replying to a Question by the hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. Grieve) said—

"The Treasury, in considering first of all the claim of any individual, inquired whether there was any evidence, either by an informal will or otherwise, of an intention to make provision for that individual. Then they considered further whether a strong claim existed on the part of individuals with regard to whom there was no such evidence. Then they proceeded to consider what would have been the disposal of the property supposing the deceased had been legitimate, and they followed the principles laid down by the law for the distribution of property in the case of legitimate persons who died intestate."—[3 Hansard, ccxxxii. 896.]

Although the deceased bastard had been dead upwards of three years, no instrument indicating his desire to leave his property in any particular manner had been discovered. The deceased had left several poor relatives on the mother's side who had made claims upon the property; but he believed that the Secretary to the Treasury had properly decided, that as those persons would have had no right to it had the deceased been legitimate, they could derive no right from the fact that he was illegitimate. In these circumstances, the hon. Gentleman could only follow the course indicated by himself—namely, to follow the principles laid down by the law of Scotland for the distribution of property in the case of illegitimate persons who died intestate. He submitted that that was the course which had been invariably followed by the hon. Member and his Predecessors in similar cases. In replying to a later Question by the hon. Member for Greenock, the Secretary to the Treasury said—

"I am not aware of any case in Scotland in which the Treasury appropriated and retained the estate of an intestate bastard when there existed either a written statement of his intentions regarding the disposal of his estate after his death, or persons who, had he been legitimate, would have been his blood relations."—[Ibid. 1257.]

He had been informed in the Lobby that the hon. Member had a complete answer to the case; but if so, he must have a complete answer to his own statements. He asked why this immemorial custom and practice was to be departed from in this particular instance? The property of deceased intestate bastards was administered in Scotland, in the first place, by the old Scotch Lords of the Treasury, then by the Barons of the Court of Exchequer, and now, since 1833, by the Lords of the Treasury. But although the administrators had changed, the principles upon which the administration had proceeded still remained in force. The hon. Member's statement of the practice was corroborated by Sir Samuel Shepherd, the Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland from 1819 to 1830, who was examined before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1832, and he said, as to the practice of that Court—

"Another branch of the Court of Exchequer was that of disposing for the Crown of property which came to the Crown as the ultimus hœres, or by escheat, as in the case of bastards. The practice of the Court was to give it to those persons who would have been entitled to it had not illegitimacy intervened, reserving also some portion for beneficial purposes."

Sir Samuel Shepherd went on to say that the portion which was reserved for beneficial purposes was about what the amount of duty would have been that the person succeeding, according to his affinity, would have had to pay to the Crown; so that the principles were so fixed, that there was a separate branch of the Court for such cases, and the reservation for beneficial purposes strengthened his position; for by that arrangement the heirs of intestate bastards were prevented from obtaining an exemption from succession duty not enjoyed by the heirs of persons born in wedlock. Could there be a better proof that the practice of the Court was settled, and not intermittent, occasional, and spasmodic? Sir Samuel Shepherd was next asked, if he would not ask whether the party was domiciled in Scotland, and he replied—

"Most certainly. In all these cases we adhere to the law of Scotland, except, in some cases in which we deviate a little from charitable motives; but, generally speaking, that is the law upon which we distribute all the property."

In a letter to The Echo by Mr. Preston, proprietor of Chambers' Index to Next of Kin, the evidence of Mr. Hart Dyke, late Queen's Proctor, was quoted. He would quote from the official Report. Mr. Hart Dyke said—

"I take out letters of administration, and get in all money for the Government in connection with the estates of intestate bastards. When bastards die there are always plenty of people only too ready to seize hold of their property. In ordinary cases I receive a letter stating that A. B. is dead, and that he had such and such property, that he was a bastard, or had none but illegitimate relatives. I find, out who the next of kin are, or the persons to whom the Crown should make grants, and I recommend accordingly."

English cases were, he understood, relied, on; but this evidence, he thought, showed that, after all, the practice in England was not very different from the immemorial practice of Scotland in such cases. But whether it was so, or not, was not the question. This was Scotch property, and they were not bound by English, but by Scotch law and custom. They had no more to do with the law of England in this case than with the law of France or Germany. Professor Bell, a recognized authority on this point, said it was a well-recognized principle in the law of all countries, that the succession in movables was regulated by the domicile at the time of death. But the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury might say that they were not dealing with law, but with custom. He would appeal to any hon. and learned Gentleman in that House, whether custom which had subsisted for a number of years had not the full force of law? Parliament had itself expressly sanctioned the principle which guided the Courts of Scotland in the distribution of the property of intestate bastards in the Savings Bank Act. That Act expressly provided that if any depositor in any such savings bank, being illegitimate, should die intestate, leaving any person or persons who, but for the illegitimacy of such depositor, would be entitled to the money due to such deceased depositor, it should be lawful for the trustees to pay the money due to such deceased depositor to any one or more of such persons as, in their opinion, would have been entitled to the same had the depositor been legitimate. The right hon. Gentleman might quote this section against him, and say that Parliament probably intended to grant the depositors in savings banks a special privilege. But, he asked, what was the distinction between the two descriptions of property? Why should Government grant one and withhold the other? The right hon. Gentleman was, he apprehended, afraid of the existing law. He might, however, re-assure him by stating that, although the intestate bastard died three and a-half years ago, and diligent search had been made amongst his papers for a will, no such document had been found. Moreover, Mr. Paterson, of Montgomery, was quite willing to give the most ample security for the re-imbursement of the money in the improbable event of a will turning up. He was even willing that the money should be placed in the hands of trustees to be named by the Government. He submitted that it was the duty of the Government, after a reasonable time had elapsed, to distribute this estate according to the immemorial custom of the country of the deceased person. There was one other point which the right hon. Gentleman would make, which was this— He would say that Mr. Paterson, of Jamaica, had directed that his property, failing issue of the body of the bastard, was to go to a cousin, the heir of entail, and that that proved that his daughter, the mother of his constituent, was sufficiently provided for. No doubt, that was so, as far as the entailed property was concerned; but surely the right hon. Gentleman did not mean to contend that the savings of the deceased bastard, over which Mr. Paterson, of Jamaica, could possibly have no control, could be bequeathed by the latter to anyone whatever. He submitted that what the House had to consider, was not what were the intentions of Mr. Paterson, of Jamaica, but of Mr. Paterson, the deceased bastard. He thanked the House for the patience with which it had listened to him. He earnestly asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to re-consider the decision at which he had arrived, so that it might not go forth to the country that the policy of a Conservative Government was a policy of spoliation and confiscation.

seconded the Motion, and said, he thought the hon. and gallant Member had laid before the House a case of great hardship, not only in the nature of the case itself, but enhanced by the departure of the Government from their usual action in cases of a similar nature. The state of the law with regard to natural offspring was very unsatisfactory. It was hard and unjust, punishing the innocent for the sins of the guilty—natural offspring were disinherited by our law on the ground of a legal fiction which said that they had no father, while it compelled the putative father to support his illegitimate child—such was the inconsistency of the law. He hoped that this case would be the means of bringing the Government to a sense of this great wrong, and that they might think it right to amend the law for the protection of innocent persons born out of wedlock. Such an alteration of the law might be made without injury to the sacred relations of married life.

said, that his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Alexander) had laid a very serious indictment against the Treasury, and he thought particularly against the Secretary to the Treasury, in relation to the matter which he had brought before the House. He confessed that he was undertaking an unpleasant duty, and one of serious responsibility. To a person in his position, it would be infinitely more pleasant in dealing with a large fund for which he was not responsible to Parliament, to distribute it among claimants whose view was that their claims were satisfactorily established, than to deal with it otherwise. But he stood in the position of a trustee, and was responsible for the due administration of the fund which the law placed in his hands. The law gave the estates of intestate bastards to the State. That property was constituted by the law as much the property of the State as were the funds voted by Parliament for the service of the Crown. Custom, however, had said that when an intestate bastard had expressed a strong feeling in favour of a particular individual to whom he was attached, or in favour of persons who had rendered great services to him, his wishes should be respected, and that the State should at its discretion make a grant or gift to those individuals. Now, what was their duty in the particular case under consideration? It was their duty to administer the property agreeably to the trust reposed in them. They were responsible to their own consciences, as well as to Parliament, and they had no right to distribute such funds with liberality and generosity as they might do if they were dealing with their own. They had simply to consider what was right, and to do justice, and it was their duty to examine, as far as they were able, into the circumstances of the deceased, into his intentions and wishes. With regard to the origin of the property in question, the Treasury found that a Mr. Paterson, of Jamaica, who had acquired a large fortune, had a sister and an illegitimate son. To his sister and her children he left half his property; to his illegitimate son he left the other half, placing it in trust for his benefit, but carefully providing that if the bastard should die without heirs, the property should not go to the sister nor to the heir at law, but to a distant cousin of his own. Rightly or wrongly, the Treasury took that to be, as they believed it was, the expression of the wish and will of the individual who was the founder of the family. Well, the illegitimate son came to Scotland and lived a se- eluded life; he saved money, but was, and remained, on terms very far from friendly with the relatives of his father. He sought to conceal the property he possessed. Only that morning a letter had been received from Messrs. Andrews, his agents, stating that for 20 years they had invested in their own names, without accounting to him, a large proportion of the fund which was now claimed. At the time of his death they said they had a sum of £28,194 standing in their names in the Bank, and that the object with which this arrangement was made was to conceal the fact that the property in question was his. With that view he only received £50 half-yearly, and that not because he wanted money, for he had £10,000 in the Bank of Scotland, and a considerable sum in hand, but because he had no friendship for the relations of his father, and, on the contrary, an antipathy to them. The strong presumption, his agent added, was therefore, that he did not desire that his property should go amongst them. In fact, if it were not for the honesty of his agents, it would have been impossible for persons who now claimed to have known that the sum they claimed was the accumulation of the savings of the deceased. But, again, they had received notice that it was very probable the deceased had made a will, though the will had not yet been discovered. ["Oh!"] Well, in another case a will had turned up, and the principal sum was claimed after 50 years, together with 4 per cent interest. His hon. and gallant Friend had laid stress on the answers he had given on this subject in Parliament; but what he had said was said from a sense of responsibility, and what he had done was done under the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown. If the Treasury had been made aware of any intention whatever on the part of the deceased to benefit any particular person, it would have been their wish to give full effect to that intention, but they had no such evidence. The Treasury found that the deceased had the reverse of any intention to benefit his relations on the father's side; and, as trustees for the State and guardians of the public purse, the Treasury did not consider it their duty to make free with large grants of the sum at their disposal. Stress had been laid on the fact that the custom of Scotland on the subject had been constant and unvarying; but that assertion was not borne out by the facts of the case. Every case had been dealt with according to its circumstances, and it was not possible to deal with these cases in any other way. Again, it had been said that the Treasury treated applicants harshly; but the Treasury had a duty imposed upon them, and whether it was right or wrong, morally—and he thought it morally right that for the benefit of the State things should be as they now were—they had to administer the law. It was not for them to decide whether the policy of the law was right or wrong; but if they exercised a large and generous discretion in giving away the funds of the State they would be accountable, not only to Parliament, but to their own conscience. There was no Department of the Government more responsible than that of the Treasury. They were called to account if they proposed Votes to Parliament which, after careful scrutiny, they deemed to be necessary; they were called to account if they failed to recognize the claims of individuals who complained that they were not treated with due liberality. If it became their duty to tell Parliament that Ways and Means could not be found, they were liable to be accused of want of economy and watchfulness. The duty of acting at the Treasury was in other respects far from being enviable and agreeable. It might be very easy to say "Yes "to the repeated applications that were made to the Treasury; but great pressure was brought to bear upon them by constituents, members of the Press, and the public; and they were urged to do their duty to the State, resisting claims and charges which ought not properly to be imposed upon them. In the present case various claims had been made. The solicitors —the Messrs. Andrews—believed that the deceased intended to give them the sum left in their custody — namely, £28,000—and if the deceased trusted them with this large sum for 20 years without exacting any accounts from them, any claim for consideration made from that quarter must, no doubt, be considered. There were 17 cousins, on whose behalf claims had been advanced, and there were four other classes of Petitioners who thought that the money should be given to public objects in Kilmarnock. The minister of the High Church at Kilmarnock confirmed the statement that the deceased entertained an antipathy against his relations, and he inferred that the deceased, probably, intended to leave him a legacy: it would clearly, therefore, he very difficult to get any evidence as to the wishes and intentions of the deceased. The law, however, gave this property to the State, leaving a discretion to the Treasury as to its distribution, which was a matter of prescription, and not of law. The relations, whose claims were the subject of the Motion now before the House, had already been provided for to the extent of one-half the original property, and there was no evidence that they were on amicable terms with the deceased, or that he intended to benefit them by his will, but the contrary. Was it the wish and intention of Parliament that the Secretary to the Treasury should be accessible to all the influences which were brought to bear in cases of the kind, and so to make a large distribution of the funds which the law gave to him to administer, not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the State? If so, then Parliament ought not to require the discussion of Votes of money at all, and Ministers should be allowed at their discretion to give away the money of the State as they might think fit in obedience to the strong pressure that might be brought to bear upon them in particular cases. Let Parliament alter the law if it pleased; but if the law gave this property to the State, it was not right that the Secretary to the Treasury should be squeezed and pressed to distribute this money in the manner most agreeable at the moment to the feelings of Members of that House.

while admitting the responsibility which Parliament imposed upon the Treasury, and that the Treasury were in duty bound to look after all sources of revenue, and admitting, at the same time, that this was a matter of prescription rather than of legal right, wished to point out at the same time that this prescription had, from long use and wont, all the force of law, and he thought it was not too much to ask the Government not to depart from the usage which in these cases had been immemorial. The Secretary to the Treasury had said that the law gave the property in question to assist the reve- nues of the State; but property so acquired would never assist the revenues of the State, and would never do any good to the State. It was property which, got in such a way, ought to, and would, carry a curse with it, for it was very little short of plunder to deal with it so. The only point in the speech of the Secretary to the Treasury which required a reply was that which arose on the letter of the Messrs. Andrews, where it was said that the bastard was on unfriendly terms with Paterson. He (Mr. Anderson) was authorized to contradict that assertion; on the contrary, he continued to visit Paterson as long as he visited any one. The Andrews family were themselves making a claim to the property, and it was to their interest to make out that the man was on unfriendly terms with his relatives; but the statement was absolutely without foundation, and the alleged antipathy did not exist. As for the part of the estate that was otherwise settled it was an entailed estate, and therefore its settlement did not touch the point at issue. It was important that the House should come to a vote upon this question. He trusted the Government would give way to the general feeling of the Scotch Members in the matter. It was a question on which Scotch Members intended to vote "solid"—both sides of the House would vote together.

implored hon. Members not to come to a hasty decision upon this question, which was one of very great importance, extending far beyond the case immediately before the House. It involved a question of law and of practice in dealing with property of this nature. He described a case which came under his notice, when he held office at the Treasury. A man of high birth and large property had a legitimate daughter, a legitimate son, and an illegitimate one, and the latter, having received a commercial education, became the partner of a wealthy tradesman, who bequeathed him his property. He willed it to his only friend, his mother, who died a few days before him, and there being no one to take the property, the legitimate son and the children of the legitimate daughter claimed it as being next of kin. The Treasury refused to accede to that claim. What would have been the effect of their conceding it? It would have been a reward to them because their father had begotten the bastard. [Laughter.] Hon. Members laughed; but that was really a case which came before him a few years ago. Surely there was a confusion of ideas when people spoke as they did of the moral claim of the nearest of kin of a bastard. The principle underlying the distribution of the property of an intestate to his nearest of kin was that the State looked upon them as having presumably been his best friends, his supporters and companions in life. But this was not a presumption which held good in the case of a bastard. He had been probably ignored and rejected as an outcast by those who would, in a case of legitimacy, be presumably entitled to his property. The Treasury acted upon the principle of looking first of all to see if there was any written declaration, however informal, of the wishes and intentions of the intestate bastard, and if there was they were always disposed liberally to give way to that. They also looked about to see if he had any relations on the mother's side, any particular friends who had assisted him, who were those who throughout life had been his neighbours in the scriptural sense of the term. If there were any cases of that kind the Treasury was always disposed to consider them. There was always the difficulty that the nearest of kin in blood could not be assumed to be the persons to whom the intestate person was most attached. In deciding this question the House must not only look at the particular case before it, but at the general principles. No one who knew the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury would accuse them of dealing hardly or unjustly with any case brought before them. He felt it his duty to support those who had charge of the administration of these estates, and he should unhesitatingly give his vote with the Government upon this question.

fully admitted that this was a broad question, and that it must not be decided by isolated cases; but he thought the House ought to know that there had been cases in which the relatives of the putative father had received allowances and the relatives on the mother's side had not been allowed at all.

said, this was a very difficult case, and one which most of them must wish to avoid giving judgment upon. Before he gave his vote or abstained from voting, he wished to ask one question. He understood by the terms of the Notice that this was the first time that the estate of an intestate bastard in Scotland had not been given to the next of kin. The Secretary of the Treasury in his reply had not met that particular point, and he should be glad to hear from the Solicitor General whether there was any precedent for not giving the estate of an intestate bastard to the next of kin. If there was not, he confessed he should feel strongly inclined to vote for the Motion.

observed that the way in which he should vote would be determined by the answer given to the question—was there any reciprocity in the matter? If the legitimate relations of a bastard had a right to claim the result of his savings there should, in his opinion, be the alternative that the bastard children should have the same rights as the legitimate in the distribution of property.

maintained that until this case arose it had been the universal practice of the Exchequer of Scotland to allow the property of the intestate bastard to go to those who would have been his next of kin had he been legitimate. He should like to know what the Government really meant to do with this money; did they mean to keep it altogether or distribute it among the relatives of the deceased, or were they going to wait until a will turned up? Their answer to these queries would decide the vote he should give.

said, he had listened to this debate with considerable pain and sorrow, because instead of this question having been argued in that House on grand and equitable principles, the meanest and most contemptible Nisi Prius views had been brought to bear upon it. He hoped the Leader of the British House of Commons would instruct his followers to look upon the matter in the light Pitt would have done, who would have been ashamed to pocket money derived from such a source. He defied anyone to produce an instance where the immemorial custom of Scotland had been departed from as it had been departed from now. He dissented from the view which had been put forward, that this was simply a question of law, for he agreed with those who held that prescription had overridden law, and the House ought on that occasion to pass a vote which would give prescription the force of law, and do an act of justice, rather than allow the Government to retain possession of money to which they were not entitled. He considered that the fact of the deceased not having made a will showed that he believed his property would go, according to custom, to his sister and her children. He did not believe there was any will in existence. He sincerely hoped from the essence of his heart—[Laughter]—he supposed it was allowed in Parliament to speak of the essence of one's heart—that the hon. and gallant Gentleman would succeed in carrying this Resolution.

as an English lawyer, would venture to put before the House some circumstances which he thought would justify them in rejecting the Motion before the House. He should have concurred in much of what had been stated on both sides if the statement of the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Alexander) could be substantiated by facts. If it had really been the immemorial custom in Scotland that property of this kind had always been treated in the way in which it was suggested that the property in this case should be treated, then he agreed that the course taken by the Treasury was an extreme one, and one not likely to find favour with the House. But that was exactly, he thought, where the hon. and gallant Gentleman had failed. That was not, and never had been, the custom in the history of Scotland. Escheats by bastardy, like every other escheat, belonged originally to the superior feudal lord. About the 16th century the Crown succeeded to those escheats. In 1707, in pursuance of the Articles of Union, an Exchequer Court was established in Scotland, in the two-fold character of a Court of Law, and also as a Board, administering Treasury funds very much as they were now administered by the Lords of the Treasury; and down to 1829, or even a later period, the Court of Exchequer in Scotland did exactly what the Treasury claimed to do now. In the cases of small estates, and when it could be done without injury to the revenue or the Crown, the property might be distributed rather in the way of charity, if it was not thought desirable to insist on the extreme rights of the Crown. A Committee sat in 1832 to consider the propriety of abolishing the Court of Exchequer in Scotland, and distributing its duties differently; and the result was that from 1882 to 1835 the distribution of these estates was given to the Woods and Forests, and after that time it was entrusted to the Lords of the Treasury. Chief Baron Abercrombie, who was examined before that Committee, described the principle on which the property of intestate bastards was distributed by the Court. He stated that the property was disposed of in the same way as property of that kind was distributed by the Treasury in England — that they always reserved a portion as a charitable fund, and generally distributed the remainder among those persons who appeared to have been most attentive to, and most in the confidence of, the deceased. He believed that to be the practice at this hour, and that the Treasury in England acted on that principle—the principle of an absolute discretion, remembering that they were trustees of the real heir, should one ever turn up. In the year 1730 a book on the subject was compiled, and was printed in 1820 under the superintendence of two Barons of the Exchequer, and it described the practice which had prevailed in the distribution of these estates as that which had been stated in the evidence of the Chief Baron. Sir Henry Jardine, who was examined before the same Committee, concurred in the evidence which had been given by the Chief Baron, and it appeared that a discretionary power had always been given to the Baron. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER inquired if that was an English or Scotch precedent?] It was purely a Scotch precedent, and it was clear that the practice which began in 1707 was carried down to the time at which the work to which he had referred was published. He thought the Motion now before the House was inconsistent with the principle that an immemorial practice existed that the estate should be administered according to the same, principle that it would have been if the deceased person had died intestate. This matter, however, involved far wider considerations than were involved merely in the discussion of the particular case before the House. The policy of the law was to encourage marriage, and to re- fuse to acknowledge illegitimacy; and it would be most injurious to lay down a general proposition to the effect that the property of a bastard intestate should be treated in the same way as if he had been properly married, and his issue bad been born in wedlock. As far as the particular case before the House was concerned, he could only say that the duty of the Law Officers was to give to the Crown the best advice in their power in view of the facts presented to them. With reference to the discretionary power which was in certain cases exercised by the Crown, the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Forster) had asked him whether he could point to any instance in which the Crown had taken to itself the whole property of an intestate bastard. He confessed that he was unable to adduce any such instance. On the other hand, he thought the right hon. Gentleman would feel the relevancy of this observation—that the instances in which any question of this sort had arisen during the time within which the discretionary power of the Commissioners had been exercised had been very rare indeed. But, no doubt, the discretionary power of the Crown had been exercised in such cases whenever they had occurred, as in cases of unclaimed dividends or treasure trove; and he could see no difference between these cases, except so far as the technical law of bastardy operated. For this reason, and also because he knew how beneficially the discretion of the Crown had been used, he could not wish to see it taken away.

said, it was clear that before this case there had not been a case of this sort in which such a large sum of money had not been divided amongst the friends of the deceased. He wished to point out that the feeling throughout Scotland was that the money ought to be given to those friends; and therefore the House ought to confirm the Resolution and not allow the Government to rob those friends of £40,000. A comparison of legal opinion must be in favour of Sir Samuel Shepherd, whose views were opposed to that of a late Speaker (Mr. Abercromby), and he could not believe that any Lord Advocate could think otherwise.

said, the absence of the Lord Advocate, to whom the hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. M'Laren) had referred, was due to indisposition, and that though the law on the subject had been sufficiently stated, the Government was somewhat at a disadvantage. However, the Lord Advocate would in all probability have corroborated the statement the House had just heard. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) could only say that this was one of those questions which caused a good deal of anxiety to the Treasury. This question had been considered by his hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury and himself. They had given it their best attention, and they had had before them the opinions of the Law Officers of the Crown. The equity of the case, as well as the law, had been well considered, and he believed that neither the House nor the Government could agree to the proposition which they had been asked to affirm—namely, that it had been the immemorial usage to appropriate the estate of an intestate bastard to those who would have been his natural heirs. He denied altogether that there had been any such immemorial usage. The immemorial usage had been the other way. There could be no doubt, in the first place, as to the law that, when the bastard died intestate, his estate escheated to the Crown. In olden times when it escheated to the feudal lord he took it as a part of his profits. When the Crown deprived the feudal lord of that privilege it took the estate as part of the Crown revenues; and when in a later day a milder system was introduced, that system was not founded on the rights of the case, but on the discretion and, so to speak, the charity of the Crown. A proof of it was that the Crown always mentioned that a portion of the estate was given in charity, which showed that there was no immemorial usage to give it to the next of kin. Then it must be borne in mind that in former times there was greater reason for exercising more charity in the case of a bastard in Scotland than in England, because a bastard in Scotland was subject to peculiar disadvantages not applicable in England. Even if he had children of his own, he was unable to make a will in their favour until 1836. Therefore, there was the more reason that the Crown, when it became possessed of the bastard's property, should in charity make over to his children that which had come to the State. The Legislature took the circumstances into con- sideration, and removed the difficulty by giving the bastard power to make provision for his family and friends by making a will. But the Legislature did not think it right to go beyond that; it left the case of the intestate bastard in the same position as before. From that it might be gathered that the Legislature left the estate of the intestate bastard to be disposed of at the discretion of the Crown. It was perfectly well known to Mr. Paterson that such was the law. He could at any moment make a will, and he must have known that if he did not his property would come into the hands of the State, and might be disposed of in any way at the pleasure of the State. There was no evidence that Mr. Paterson had any desire to leave his estate to any particular person. The Government were asked whether they knew of any case in which property to any considerable amount had been left undisposed of by a bastard. They knew of no ease in point; but did the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) know of any which would support his view? What was the argument drawn from immemorial usage? It was that some expectations had probably been entertained by the relatives of the bastard which had been disappointed. If that were the case with his own children or some one whom he had encouraged to hope, it would be hard to disappoint them. But there was not a scintilla of evidence that there were any such expectations. Under these circumstances, he could only appeal to the House to consider this case fairly and upon its merits. It was natural that everyone should desire to benefit an individual in such a case rather than the State. But let the House consider what the position of the State and the Treasury was. Let them bear in mind that the exercise of discretion in this matter was a duty which was imposed on the State and the Treasury, and which was exercised under a strong sense of responsibility to the public; and let the House rest assured that in the decision of this case they had been actuated by the most thoroughly public-spirited motives.

in rising to call attention to the traffic in livings; and to move—

"That in view of the prevalence of simoniacal evasions of the law and other scandals and abuses in connection with the exercise and disposal of private patronage in the Church of England, remedial measures of a more stringent character than any recently introduced into this House are urgently required,"

said:—Mr. Speaker, Perhaps, Sir, it may excite surprise that any one who is known to be opposed to the principle of an Established Church, should trouble himself about reforms, the introduction of which is often regarded as the better alternative of disestablishment; a very common notion, perhaps, being that we should prefer to see scandals and abuses as rife and rampant in the Church as possible, in order that public disapprobation may be the more vehemently excited against an institution in which such scandals exist. But I venture to think that those who judge our motives have scarcely done justice to them, and certainly they have not penetrated our policy. No doubt we desire to see disestablishment, but we desire to approach it, not solely or chiefly, through external agency, but by producing what we conceive to be a healthier condition and tone of feeling inside the Church. Now these great reforms are either possible, or they are not possible. Either event must, in my humble judgment, advance our views. If it be found that they are impossible—if, with every disposition to introduce them on the part of Parliament and of the Church, these abuses are found to be so built into the system that they cannot be removed without bringing down the whole fabric, what an argument such a discovery will leave in our hands. If, on the other hand, it be found possible to introduce them, just in proportion as you succeed in doing so, will you cause the Church to assimilate to the free Churches around her, and will you weaken and lower the barriers which still separate her from a state of entire freedom. Now, Sir, it cannot be said, that in bringing forward this Motion I have shown any of the impatience of a fanatic. I have waited until the reforming zeal of the whole Bench of Bishops has evaporated, and until it is evident to the comprehension of everybody that if these reforms are to be introduced at all, the initiative must be taken by those who, if not so jealous of the honour of the Church, are, at least, a little more hopeful as to the possibility of vindicating it. Nor, Sir, because this is the Motion of an outsider, is that any reason why those who sympathize with its object inside the Church should hesitate to support it, and, in fact, accept the challenge which I now make to them, and take it off my hands; especially as I shall content myself with laying bare the extent of the evil, and shall leave it to those who have the right to prescribe, to indicate the nature of the remedy. This is not because I have arrived at no conclusions of my own, but because the loud professions of the recognized physicians of the Church demand that the prescription should not come from one who belongs to quite another faculty. And I have other reasons. If I were to state what I think ought to be done with the proper attention to detail, I must make a much larger demand upon the indulgence of the House than I have any right at this hour to expect; indeed, it may fairly be doubted whether, when this question has once passed out of the present stage —which I take to be purely preliminary —it ought to remain for an hour in the hands of any private Member. It is the Government alone which can deal with it effectually, and one reason why I do not propose even to sketch what I think it would be well to do, is because I am am anxious not to seem by this Motion in any sense to tie the hands of Government. My desire is to draw from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary the declaration that he is prepared, when a fitting opportunity arises, to devote to this subject some of the attention and ability which he has devoted to it already, and at the same time to draw from the House an expression of opinion which may fortify him in the resolution to deal with it more effectually than it was proposed to be dealt with by the abortive Bill of 1875. And now, Sir, as to the extent of this traffic. Mr. Day, for seven years secretary to the Bishop of Rochester, laid before the Committee of the House of Lords a tabular statement, containing some particulars of the advowsons and next presentations which were offered for sale in the columns of The Ecclesi-astical Gazette, in the months of January, 1872, 1873, and 1874; the month of January being selected because it afforded a fair average for the rest of the year. I find from this statement that in January, 1872, 88 livings were thus offered; in January, 1873, 89; and in January, 1874, 108. But do not let the House imagine that this monthly exhibition of spiritual bargains gives any adequate notion of the number of livings actually in the hands of agents. A friend of mine, who is well known to several Members of this House, who has made a special study of this question, and, under the nom de plume "Promotion by Merit," contributed a series of extremely able letters to a prominent member of the provincial Press (The Manchester Examiner), calculated three or four years ago, from a careful comparison of the printed registers of Church preferment, that at that time nearly one-fifth of the whole saleable patronage of the Church was up in the market for sale or for exchange, and that if all the advertizing agents were as successful in the transaction of business as one of them, Mr. Emery Stark, was recently shown to have been, the whole Church might be turned over, in a commercial sense, in 13 years. Now I have had the opportunity of verifying this gentleman's statements. Through the kindness of friends I have made quite a collection of recent issues of these periodically-printed registers. I find that eight agents who advertize in The Ecclesiastical Gazette give particulars, either in the advertizements themselves, or in the registers which they advertize in the same journal, of 1,676 livings selected from their books, and that if we add to these the number of benefices which one of these agents informs us that he has upon his register at home, we arrive at the enormous number of 2,383 as that of the livings offered for sale or exchange through recognized agents. The agent to whom I have just referred states that—

"Advertisements are little resorted to; they are open to great objection, and it is an established rule of the office to abstain from them as much as possible."

So he prefaces a list of 193 benefices or next presentations for sale, by the intimation that he has upwards of 1,000 on his books. He also informs us that—

"It was held by a very eminent Prelate, lately deceased; that you might just as well call the buying and selling of a vacant living magic, as call it after the folly of Simon Magus."

Now, perhaps, it may be said that the eagerness to get rid of this kind of property is such that patrons often employ more than one agent; so that these lists contain duplicate advertizements. But I may observe that in the numbers which I have given I have not included —except in the case of one agent— what are termed "private instructions." These are only shown to purchasers who have their hands already in their pockets, or who wish to give to this species of profligacy all the piquancy of an assignation in the dark. One agent alone informs us that he has 60 of these private instructions on his books; and another, who only advertizes particulars of four livings, states that he has preferment on hand in almost every county in England. We may fairly, then, assume that at least 2,000 livings, or nearly one-fourth of the whole saleable patronage of the Church, is in the market for sale or exchange. Now, it has been asserted that some of these are bogus advertizements. My friend, to whom I have already alluded, has tapped these lists all over to test them, and he has not discovered a single bogus advertizement. The other day, for a moment, it seemed that he had done so. Having identified one of the livings, he wrote to The Manchester Examiner, stating, that the Rev. J. Ray, both patron and incumbent, was offering by private treaty his living of Ashton-upon-Mersey, with immediate possession. Immediately there was immense indignation among this gentleman's friends at Ashton. A correspondence ensued, as it seemed to me, little creditable to those who took part in it. Its object appeared to be to lead the public astray, for it turned out that the utmost the rev. gentleman could say, after a hasty visit to London, the object of which could only be surmised, was that "the living was not now on sale." Now, Sir, let us look at these advertizements to see whether there is anything in them to indicate the spirit in which this traffic is carried on. Is there anything, for example, to indicate that the responsibilities which are thus changing hands for money are some of the most solemn which any man can undertake? Or is the whole phrase- ology that of the merest and coarsest speculation? Sir, ever since I can remember, and long before, there has been more or less of controversy in the Church with regard to disputed points of dogma and ritual. What traces has that controversy left on these lists? Mr. Cox, of Belper, whose name is well known in connection with his candidature for Parliamentary honours, has collected and analyzed 400 of these advertizements. In 14 only did he find any mention of what are technically termed views. In four a High Church incumbent would be preferred; in 10 a Low Church incumbent. One patron has a soul above all such considerations. "High Church," he says, "but Evangelical, would do for this parish." In 107 out of the 400 there is mention of "good society;" in some it is described as "very choice," in others as "real county;" in one there can be no doubt about it, for we are told that "there are five gentlemen's residences in this parish," and that in one of them is to be found a live Baronet, and in another an actual Admiral. Another parish is eligible for a double reason, "good society and no squire." In 53 the scenery is extolled. The clergy would seem to be curious about stabling. In five there is stabling for five horses, in four for six, in one for seven, and in one for eight. Ample justice is done to the sporting propensities of our spiritual guides. Fishing has always been an apostolical pursuit. In 30 we have good "fishing," in nine "shooting," in six "hunting;" while in three the successor of the Apostle has to be content with such modest excitement as is to be found in the use of the pea rifle. They have only rookeries to offer. But the baits which are evidently the most to be relied upon are those which suggest a very limited sphere of usefulness, or very early possession. Thus, "population under 100, duty nominal;" "almost a sinecure, single service and no school;" "no cure of souls, incumbent 77 and non-resident;" "population 1,740, duty only on every alternate Sunday," but "stabling for five horses and income £800;" "incumbent about 80, in a very precarious state of health;" "annual value £1,800, incumbent" (the advertizer) "aged 58, but he is, it is believed, in a very bad state of health." A friend of mine received the other day an advertizement of a living for sale, accompanied by a memorandum which informed him that if he wished to buy he must reply by return, "as the incumbent was dying." He delayed doing so for a few days, and he was then informed that the incumbent was dead. "Immediate possession" is constantly advertized. I have a Monthly Register of Church Preferment for Sale, published by Mr. Bagster, for February last, which contains 94 advertizements, and in 57 of these immediate possession is guaranteed. Well, but, Sir, this great business is not always confined to retail. It sometimes assumes wholesale proportions, and livings are sold by the bunch. The cases of Stockport and Sandbach have been brought to my notice. Stockport was purchased by Mr. Symonds, a calico-printer at Manchester, 17 or 18 years ago, it having been offered by auction at the Warren Bulkeley Arms, along with 24 public-houses, two beer-houses, and a brewery. The incumbent was then 71 years old, but it was 17 years before this bargain fell in, although when it did, Mr. Symonds had no reason to complain, for it carried with it the patronage of six other parishes. But, not content with that, Mr. Symonds, the present incumbent, is endeavouring to upset the leases granted by his predecessor. Sandbach was purchased by a gentleman named Armistead, who put in his son in 1828. The son immediately instituted a suit for vicarial tithes against his parishioners, and so raised his annual income from £200 to £1,600, the living itself having cost £1,500. But that is not all. As mother church, it carries the patronage of five other livings, and in two of these are to be found gentlemen of the name of Armistead. I spoke a moment ago of auctions. Perhaps, the climax of indecency is reached when the cure of souls is knocked down to the highest bidder. Yet these auctions are of frequent occurrence. Perhaps, the incumbent is growing very old and infirm, and the living, which is in the hands of agents, does not go off. The incumbent grows older and more infirm. You throw the living on the market for what it will fetch. On the 12th of this month, the living of Broughton was offered at a public-house at Shrewsbury; on the 24th of last, St. Alkmond's, Derby, was offered at the Auction Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, together with the patronage of Little Eaton; of which the rector of St. Alkmond's, who offered it, is only the "official" patron. I am told that the whole emolument of Little Eaton, amounting to £300 per annum, is paid by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Well, Sir, so much for this trade. Perhaps some one will say, at all events, we know the worst; it is no longer on the increase. Is that so? Mr. Bridges, who from his associations may be termed an ecclesiastical solicitor, was asked this question by the Lords' Committee:—"Has the sale of advowsons increased very largely within your experience? "He replied—" Very largely indeed." And Mr. Lee, who is secretary to many Bishops, speaks in the same strain. Now, Sir, perhaps some hon. Gentleman may say—"There is, no doubt, something very unpleasant and unsatisfactory in all this; but, so far as you have gone, you have not shown that there is anything disreputable and dishonourable." I venture to think that there is a good deal which is discreditable in what I have shown already; but I will promise to convince the most sceptical and fastidious person of this before I sit down. For example, if this be an upright and honourable trade, it is remarkable that we find some of those who are the most actively engaged in it precisely the kind of persons which they appear to be. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne tells us that one of these agents was a few years ago a prosecutor for libel before the Bench at Worcester. He is the owner and publisher of the — Gazette.

"The defendant's counsel got out of this agent that his real name was—, and that he had good reason to change it. If you ask me, have I the slightest doubt in the world that he had been a convict, and that he had changed his name, I have no doubt of it, because the counsel put the question to him in open Court, and he admitted it."

Well, if the trade be pure, it flows through some singular channels, and through this particular channel it flows very freely indeed, because Lord Sydney Osborne laid before the Committee a copy of this gentleman's Gazette, dated the month before he gave his evidence —namely, April, 1874, which contained particulars of 182 advowsons, presentations, and exchanges. And now, Sir, I come to the most painful part of my task; I mean the evidence which identifies this traffic in great measure with simony, or with what is only not simony through fraud and evasion. Mr. Bridges, whom I have already mentioned as an ecclesiastical solicitor, was asked this question—

"Can you give me any notion as to the extent to which simoniacal transactions go?"

He replied—

"I have no doubt whatever that they cover a very large area."

He was asked again—

"Are you aware that any evil exists with reference to the exchange of benefices?"

He replied—

"It is very often made the means of simoniacal proceedings, I believe."

And Mr. Lee stated that "evasions of the law are almost universal." And no wonder, Sir, when we remember the unhappy confusion into which the clerical conscience appears to have fallen upon this point. Mr. Bridges was asked this question with regard to the late oath against simony—

"You think, it being a legal oath, persons not of a legal mind may not quite understand it?"

"Yes," he replied, "such persons may be very much embarrassed; or else they may come to the conclusion, which I have often seen arrived at by clergymen, that the whole thing is an absurdity, and that they may get through the matter in the best way they can. That I know to be a very common state of mind."

"Have you known instances of that kind?"

"Yes, there have been many instances in which I have been fortunate enough to stop proceedings of this kind, and there have been other cases in which I have not been so fortunate, but in which proceedings have gone on in spite of every remonstrance."

And with reference to a most rascally transaction, particulars of which are given in the Blue Book, he was asked—

"May I ask whether the clergyman who did this was generally regarded as a respectable man?"

He replied—

"He was a thorough gentleman by position; he was a man of good family, and there was nothing whatever against his character. He did not belong to any very earnest school in the Church."

But what says Mr. Few? Mr. Few is probably known to half the House. He has practised in ecclesiastical matters for half a century—

"Practically you have had considerable difficulty in getting clergymen to understand the stringent character of the late oath against simony, have you not?"

"Undoubtedly, even in the case of men of undoubted piety, and more particularly in the case of the oath, it is quite remarkable how dense they were in seeing what its tenor was; and I remember my father constantly dwelling upon this same point, that he had to read it over to them. These were men of undoubted piety, and yet they could not see that what they desired to do was against the oath."

In fact, Sir, there is too much reason to fear that not only transactions of a simoniacal character, but blank simony, going to the length of the sale and purchase of a vacant living, has taken place. For Mr. Dunning, who for 20 years has been secretary to various Bishops, was asked this question—

"You could not put your finger on a positive case, (i.e., of a vacant living having been sold,) and say that it had been done; but you believe that it has been done?"

He replied—

"I believe that it has been done."

And for my own part, I can draw no moral distinction between the purchase of a vacant living, and the purchase of a living with immediate possession, which is a matter of almost daily occurrence. Again, Sir, the House is no doubt aware that, by a statute of Queen Anne, clerks in Holy Orders are prohibited from purchasing next presentations. Yet even this is evaded, for we have the authority of Sir Robert Phillimore and Mr. Dunning for saying that clergymen purchase advowsons, "subject to a re-sale." But perhaps the most frequent and most flagrant evasion of the law is, when a living falls vacant, and, in order that it may bring a better price, the oldest and most infirm man who can be found is put in, and the living advertized with a glowing description of his age and infirmities. Lord Sydney Osborne gave three instances which came within his personal knowledge. First, there was that of Spettisbury, in the diocese of Salisbury, where the incumbent died unexpectedly, and the population being 1,000 with two churches, a clergyman of the name of Basket was put in, a man of 80 years of age, and holding previously a small living, but licensed as non-resident on account of age and infirmity. Then he gave the case of Rougham, in Norfolk, with a population of 1,000, and an in- come of £800, to which a man of between 80 and 90 was instituted. But the worst case was that of St. Ervan's, in Cornwall, to which a clergyman named Cox was presented, who was "barely able to sit up in a chair." When he was taken there for induction, he had to be supported up the aisle by two persons, jelly and wine, or wine and water, were given him at the reading-desk, he was unable to finish reading the Thirty-nine Articles in the morning, and he died before the sale could be legally carried out. Then I may name the notorious case of Falmouth, a living worth £1,700 a-year, which fell vacant a year or two ago, and to which a clergyman, aged about 77, was instituted, and the living immediately thrown upon the market. But I need not detain the House by citing instances of this kind, for there is no hon. Gentleman who cannot recall similar cases. Now, Sir, I suppose that it will be admitted upon all hands that a clergyman should be a man of good character? In every-day life we hear of physicians who devote their skill to some particular organ of the human frame. One man pounces upon your stomach, and another runs away with your lungs. Well, in clerical life we find something which is analogous. There are specialists there, too, and one of the most skilful of these is the man who applies himself to your diseased reputation, and who keeps the Bishop off your character. For example, the clerical convict, of whom I have spoken, having suffered in reputation himself, applies himself to the cure of those who are sufferers in the same line, and keeps a pocketful of livings for their relief. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne thus describes how he deals with one of these—

"Then a certain Mr.— was appointed; he was in many ways most objectionable. He at last got such a character that he resigned. Then he put in A. B. He and the clerical agent took the duty between them, the agent preaching; and the Bishop of Salisbury wrote to me that he had had more than 60 letters about A. B. At last his character became so obviously bad, that this agent moved him to the living of Q., where he prosecuted him for libel."

Finally, another clergyman named S., who had been subjected to an enquiry under a commission, was instituted to this useful living, coming from the diocese of Norwich. Now, all the Bishops in these cases were duly warned about what was taking place; but it seems that they were totally helpless to prevent the institution of these people, though they refused to countersign their testimonials, and we are expressly informed that this convenient living was not a donative. The Bishop of Peterborough, whose efforts in the cause of reform have been beyond all praise, delivered in 1875 a very powerful Charge, in which he thus referred to this point—

"Since I have been a Bishop, I have been called upon to institute four clergymen, of whom one was paralytic; another so aged and infirm that, on the ground of his age and infirmity, he asked me for leave of perpetual absence from the important parish to which I had just instituted him; a third was a reclaimed drunkard, who was presented to a benefice, situated only a few miles from the scene of his former intemperance; the fourth had resigned a public office—sooner than face a charge of the most horrible immorality, the truth of which he did not dare to deny to me. In each of these cases the facts were perfectly well known to the respective patrons. As regards every one of these, I was advised that I had no legal power to refuse institution."

Now, Sir, I cannot pretend to-night to describe to the House all the genera of simony or quasi-simony. It is enough for my present purpose to describe a few of the chief species. "The difficulty is," as one of the witnesses naïvely remarked, "that the persons interested want to anticipate the vacancy," and so they are driven into transactions which are illegal, or are only not illegal because the skill and experience of centuries are resorted to in order to maintain the letter of the law, while its spirit is violated in every direction. Now, let us put side by side this state of the clerical conscience and of the conscience of patrons with the flourishing character of the traffic—a traffic which defies the ordinary fluctuations of trade; let us put the fact that "evasions of the law are almost universal," and that "simoniacal transactions cover a very large area," side by side with the circumstance that prosecutions for simony are absolutely unknown, that no such case has come into Court for 40 years, and that the Bishops openly proclaim their utter helplessness in the present state of the law; let us group all these facts together, and then let me ask the House whether it is to say Aye or No to this Motion? I ask devoted Churchmen whether, bearing in mind the amount of opposition which the Church has often to encounter, and the kind of criticism to which it is everywhere subjected, this is a state of things which they can afford to leave unchanged? Two or three years ago an attempt was made to change it, and, in order to justify the terms of my Motion, I fear I must detain the House for a very few minutes while I sketch as briefly as possible the history of that attempt. Now, what was the Bill for the Reform of the Patronage Laws, which ultimately found its way into this House? Those who remember the incidents of its existence in "another place"—where it led the life of a pantomime—will agree that we may well ask. I have no doubt, Sir, that there is no Member of this House who, in his younger days, has not amused himself by watching the transformations of a nimble little animal, which begins life as a transparent globule, and ends by becoming an expert swimmer and a prodigious jumper. The measure to which I refer went through precisely similar transformations; only, by a law of natural selection which would have puzzled Dr. Darwin, just in proportion as it approached maturity, it developed backwards. It begin by jumping very high indeed, then its legs fell off and it became a tadpole; then its tail fell off and it became a mere globule of legislation, transparent and passive, and which you might pierce in any direction in search of the principle of vitality without finding it. And in that shape it passed into the hands of my right hon. Friend, the Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Walpole). It is no secret, Sir, that when the Bill was originally mooted it was intended to embrace the prohibition of the sale of next presentations. That was the intention of the right rev. Prelate who moved for the Committee. It was the opinion of the great majority of the witnesses examined. But when the critical moment arrived, and the right rev. Prelate who was in the Chair (the Bishop of Peterborough) had submitted his draft Report, all his Episcopal Brethren save one—the same Episcopal Brethren, bear in mind, who, as the Archbishop of Canterbury informed us at a subsequent stage; regarded the prohibition of the sale of next presentations "as vital to the Bill if it were to be of any real use"—I say all his Episcopal Brethren save one forsook him and fled, and the vital clause was struck out of the Report. But the Bill, as originally printed, still contained many important provisions which, before it arrived here, had entirely disappeared. What remained? The Bill abolished donatives. I wonder whether any hon. Member regards that as a great achievement? I wonder whether many hon. Members know exactly what a donative is? One of the witnesses called them "the cracked china of the Church," but I very much doubt whether they are the only infirm porcelain which that venerable edifice contains. A donative is a benefice to which you may present without troubling the Bishop, and which you may resign whenever you please. There are in all about 100 of them; and as regards the use which the clerical agents may make of them, let the House remember that in the worst case of manipulation by an agent which I have related to the House, we are expressly told that the benefice so manipulated was not a donative. Then the Bill abolished resignation bonds. That was simply to restore the law to the state in which it stood before the year 1827. It provided publicity. The Bishop was to keep a register of grants of advowsons. Is not the auctioneer's hammer publicity, and the 2,000 advertizements? Then the Bill declared the payment of interest upon the purchase money of an advowson illegal. As though any actuary could not calculate the value of the existing life, and deduct it from the principal! Finally, the Bishop was empowered to refuse institution for actual physical incapacity or when the presentee had passed the age of 75. And what, Sir, must be the state of the law when new legislation is required to empower the Bishop to refuse institution to a man who is so infirm that when he is once down upon his knees he cannot rise from them, or to withhold from raving lunatics the privilege of consoling us upon our death-beds? Let me say just one word upon the rights of congregations. As the Bill was originally drawn, it was proposed to give to Englishmen some shadow of the privileges which you have given to every congregation, upon the other side of the Tweed. The congregation was to have the right of challenging improper pre- sentations, and the Bishop was bound to attend to their remonstrance, and to try the case himself, or send it for trial before the Ecclesiastical Judge. But the clause was narrowed down to this, that if the congregation remonstrated, they were no longer to be liable to prosecution for libel, and that was all. If incredible doctrines, if intolerable practices, were about to be thrust upon us in the person of the new presentee, were we to have any right to remonstrate then? No, Sir, not so much as a whisper. I am told that there are societies, the whole scope of whose operations consists in the purchase of advowsons over the heads of congregations, and the imposition of men of extreme views, who may think it their duty to startle us by gymnastic services, or the exhibition of some Evangelical extravaganza. There was not a word in the Bill which could save us from the machinations of men who club together, less, as it seems to me, for the propagation of the faith than for the propagation of faction. There was not a word in it which could trouble the calculations of those whose spiritual earnestness finds vent—I quote the words of a right rev. Prelate—"less in discovering the right man for the living than in discovering the right living for the man." This whole system of sale and barter, of commission agents and advertizements and auctioneers — this whole system of fraud and evasion—a system which is so shocking that one of the Bishops tells us—"it cuts, as it were, into the very reason for the existence of a Church at all," was to receive no sensible discouragement from the cobweb legislation to which my right hon. Friend was willing to lend his name. Sir, I ask my right hon. Friend, and I ask the House, to take higher and firmer ground upon this question. It is a House filled with Churchmen, and with those who wish well to the Church. Believe me, it is in no spirit of narrow sectarian jealousy that I speak. I regard the legitimate influence of the Church as a great Christian and Christianizing community, as an object of higher national importance than the equality of creeds before the law; and I hold that it would have been better for the Church, better for religion, better for common morality, if you had left this traffic in the dark, rather than that you should have poured this flood of light upon it, and then refuse to grapple with the facts. Why, Sir, if this traffic were carried on with the ordinary purposes of commerce, there is no merchant or manufacturer in this House who would not scout a trade besmirched all over by fraudulent evasion of the law. If it were a mere municipal appointment which was bought, you would send the man who bought it to prison. If it were a mere civil or military appointment, what should we think of the nation which bought its honour to the hammer, and flung its fame and safety upon the market? But what ought to be our consternation, when we remember that the object of all this fraudulent barter is a responsibility the most solemn which can devolve upon any man; that these spectators are huckstering with the most awful names upon their lips, and that when the bargain is complete, with their hands stained and their consciences seared by fraud, they are commissioned with the full authority of the Realm to take charge of the spiritual interests of the nation? Sir, I well remember the speech which a right hon. gentleman, now a noble Lord, Lord Selborne, once delivered in this House in defence of the Established Church. I remember that he closed it by a quotation noble and eloquent as the speech itself. He spoke of "the spiritual fabric of the Church" as "by the hands of wisdom reared, in beauty of holiness." I remember the cheers which greeted those words; and it is because in great measure I sympathize with them, that I claim from those who raised them a corresponding sympathy with the object of this Motion. If it be true that your Church is "reared in holiness and beauty," then, for very shame, if for no higher motive, I ask you to condemn and to arrest the practices of those who, in the words of an older and greater poet,

"Do traffic in the sanctuary, whose walls

With miracles and martyrdoms were built."

The hon. Member concluded by moving his Resulution.

in seconding the Motion, said, he was sure that if the arguments urged in favour of it were fairly considered and attended to, they would be calculated to strengthen, rather than weaken the Church of England. The question had been dealt with on many occasions. Everyone seemed to be anxious to reform the present system of the sale of livings, but they had not been able to come to one opinion. A Commission which was appointed in 1865 to consider this subject recommended that for the then existing state of the law there should be substituted a declaration against simony, and added an expression of their opinion that the law on the subject of simony required revision. In 1870 the right hon. Gentleman the present Home Secretary brought in a Bill which had for its object the abolition of the sale of next presentations, and though the Bill came to an untimely death, his right hon. Friend had done good service by bringing the question before the House. In 1874 the Bishop of Peterborough brought forward this question in a most able and eloquent speech in the House of Lords, and the speech which he made and the Report of the Committee which he obtained were much stronger than the Bill which he afterwards introduced. He (Mr. Hibbert) believed that the Bishop had a real and honest desire to deal with this question, and that a great advance would have been made if his recommendations had been carried into effect. As a Churchman he (Mr. Hibbert) was not disposed to think that they could abolish the sale of livings altogether. He was not satisfied that the abolition of the sale of advowsons was one which was desirable, until he could find a better Body to whom things might be transferred. It had been suggested that they should be transferred to some popular Body; but from his experience in the North of England, where some livings were left in the hands of popular Bodies, he had no desire to see them transferred in that manner. The abuses which had taken place where such a system existed showed that it was a very disadvantageous one. He did not think that they were prepared at the present time to go so far as to say that advowsons should be abolished, purchased, and transferred to some other Body. But if they could not go to that extent, they could go a great length in doing away with the abuses of the present system. The greatest scandal and abuse arose from the sale of next presentations, and no serious inroad on property would take place if the sale of next presentations were abolished. The law ought to be defined with more strictness. Parliament might prohibit the public sale of this kind of property, and the congregation ought to be considered in the appointment of the minister. They knew that the congregation had a voice in Scotland, and though he should not think it would be advantageous that the congregation should have the entire selection, he thought that it was desirable that whenever a patron was appointed notice should be given to the congregation, and they should have time to make a representation to the Bishop if they objected to the man who was to be imposed upon them. The Home Secretary, when he introduced his Bill in 1870, said that the great majority of the clergy were in favour of the abolition of the sale of next presentations. The same might be said of the laity, and he (Mr. Hibbert) should like to know who was against it. He believed that there would be no difficulty in dealing with this question in a large and rational manner, and that the time had now come when it should be taken up by the Government. Though he seconded the Motion, he did not very much object to the Motion of the hon. Member for South-east Lancashire (Mr. Hardcastle).

rose to move as an Amendment—

"That it is desirable to adopt measures for preventing simoniacal evasion of the Law and chocking abuses in the sale of livings in private patronage."

He admitted that there was no very material difference between the Amendment and the Resolution of the hon. Member for Huddersfield. It appeared, however, to him that it was undesirable in an abstract Resolution to refer to attempted legislation in this House, and that the Amendment which he proposed practically raised the whole question. It was in the direction of the measure introduced by the present Home Secretary in 1870 that he (Mr. Hardcastle) advocated reform, and it was much to be regretted that that measure had not passed into law. The abuses to which the hon. Member had referred were abuses which were discreditable to the Church. No one could fail to admit the grievance and scandal of these sales; but he did not think that they presented any reason for disestablishing the Church. It was not very long since the power of appointing to seats in that House was matter of sale, and a Reform Bill for the Church of England would probably do as much good as the Reform Bill had done for the House of Commons.

said, he must claim the indulgence of the House for a few minutes; but he felt bound to say that in this case there was proof of abuse, and he hoped on whichever side of the House he might be sitting, he should never be found standing up for that which he believed to be an abuse. This was a matter with which he had endeavoured to deal by a Bill which he introduced as a private Member in 1870, and he did not desire to shrink from a single word he used on that occasion. In his mind, there was a considerable difference between the sale of advowsons and the sale of next presentations. He believed it would be to the great injury of the Church of England if private patronage were done away with. When a man had the right of presentation to a certain living—which, in his opinion, constituted one of the most important trusts which a man could exercise—that right was attached to certain property, and if he wanted to divest himself of that right, and to sell the advowson which gave it to him, he ought to be allowed to do so, but that he had no right to sell the next presentation which that right of advowson gave him. In his opinion, the taking of money for the sale of a next presentation was in the same category as the taking of money for giving a vote for a Member of that House. He could not see the distinction. If there was to be private patronage, somebody must hold the advowson. They could not say to a man that he should not sell the estate to which the advowson was attached, or that he should not sell the advowson separately from the estate. So far as the next presentatation went, however, it was an entirely different thing. It was a right of presentation, and it was a trust, and he had no more right—indeed, he had much less right—to sell that trust for money to put into his own pocket than to sell his right to vote for a Member of that House. A good deal had been said about the Bishop of Peterborough's Bill, and the Committee of the House of Lords which sat upon this subject, but no attention had been drawn to the Resolutions which were almost unanimously passed by that Committee. He should like, therefore, very briefly to call the attention of the House to the recommendations of the Committee as to the direction in which legislation should go. In the first place, the Committee stated that they were of opinion that—

"All legislation affecting patronage should proceed upon the principle that such patronage partakes of the nature of a trust to be exercised for the spiritual benefit of the parishioners, and that whatever rights of property attached to Church patronage must always be regarded in reference to the application of that principle."

That was the great principle they all desired, and it was a sound basis to go upon. In the second place, the Committee recommended that—

"The exercise of the rights of patronage without due regard to the interests of the parishioners should, as far as possible, be restrained by law, and that the law should aim at preventing, as far as possible, the appointment of unfit persons."

In furtherance of these objects the Committee stated that it was desirable that publicity should be secured to all appointments of Church patronage. The Committee further went on to say, in which he quite agreed with them, that private patronage was of great value to the Church, and to strongly deprecate any alteration in the law which should take it away. These were the principles laid down in that Report. They enforced the point that the right of presentation was a trust to be exercised for the benefit of the parishioners at large, and not for the advantage of the holder's pocket. That was the principle of his own Bill, and it was also the principle of a Bill on the subject introduced by the Marquess of Salisbury, when he sat in the House, and he hoped it was a principle which would be unanimously sanctioned by the House. He was quite aware of the practical difficulty of distinguishing between the sale of a next presentation and the sale of an advowson; but he did not think the difficulty was insuperable. In reference to the Motion before the House, he would appeal to them, if possible, to come to an unanimous vote; and he would suggest that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham) should accept the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for South-east Lancashire (Mr. Hardcastle), which practically led to the same conclusion as his own. If the hon. Gentleman was willing to do that, he (Mr. Cross) would support the Amendment, and he hoped the House would do the same.

said, after the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman and the admirable and important speech which they had just heard from him, he felt it would not be right to divide the House, and he would accept the Amendment of his hon. Friend.

was unwilling to hear this Motion adopted without entering his protest against the arguments of his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. He challenged the accuracy of the illustration of which his right hon. Friend had made use, in comparing the right of advowson to the right to vote for Members of that House. If that doctrine were applied to its full extent, it appeared to him that an owner would not have the right to lease the property which gave him the vote. The recommendations of the Committee of the other House, that the right of appointment should be considered as a trust, appeared to him to be begging the whole question. The point to be determined was not whether the right of presentation was a matter of trust, but a matter of property, a right, no doubt, to be governed and controlled in the interests of decency and propriety, but yet a right which was a matter of property.

said, he never for a moment stated that the right was not in the nature of private property; but that it was property clothed with a trust, and a most sacred trust, to be exercised not for the benefit of the individual, but the whole community.

also entered his protest against the doctrine of the right hon. Gentleman, and complained of the practice of clergymen of the Church of England. Many of those men were abominable and atrocious sepoys, who were receiving the pay of the Church for protecting what was called Protestantism, while they were teaching other doctrines than those of the Church. He thought it desirable to go to the root of the evil, and that Parliament ought to take such measures as would get rid of the Established Church altogether, or apply such remedy to the evil as would be effectual.

protested against the doctrines of the right hon. Gentleman and of the hon. Member for Chester (Mr. Raikes), and contended that the parishioners had a right to elect their own ministers.

thought there ought to be no misunderstanding upon this important question. They could not come to an unanimous decision except upon one point—namely, that they condemned in toto the sale of a spiritual charge, as if it were a horse or a picture; but they could not agree that there was any difference between the sale of advowsons and next presentations. What they objected to was that there should be such things as sales of next presentations, and that people should be subject to the scandal of such outrages. No Bill which allowed the sale of advowsons would meet with the general assent of the House, or would be regarded as a settlement of the question.

rose to call attention to the case of John Montagu Upcroft, an illegitimate, who died on 23rd of November, 1861, intestate; and to move for a Return of any allowances made out of the estate, and of any other application for allowance which have been made, and not acceded to by the Treasury. This responsibility did not rest with the present Government, but was commenced long before it came into office, and therefore he was not laying any blame upon the Treasury, who were only carrying out the decision of their Predecessors. Briefly, the facts of the case were as follows:—The Government had received a large sum of money, a small portion of which had been returned to certain relatives of the reputed father, while the claims on the part of the relatives of the mother had not been acceded to. John Montagu Upcroft and Mary Upcroft, the former being an illegitimate son of the latter, died within three days of each other. The mother died possessed of £30,000, and the son of £160,000, so that the sum there was to deal with was much larger than that involved in the discussion that occupied the earlier portion of the evening. The important part of the question depended upon the date of the deaths. Mary Upcroft died on March 20th, 1861, and her son died on March 23rd of the same year. John Upcroft was too ill to make a will; but on his death-bed, he expressed a great desire to make a will, leaving his property to his mother's relatives. If the son had died only two or three days before the mother, then the sum would have come entirely to the mother's relatives, and the statement made to him (Mr. Colman), was that out of the large sum of £ 190,000, £20,000 had been granted to the relatives of the father, while the claims on the mother's side from relatives who were in very great want had been disregarded altogether. In cases of this kind it was usual to say the mother was less to blame; and here was a case in which the mother's relatives had received no sum at all, and he put it to the House and Treasury whether this was not a case calling for due consideration at the hands of the Government. The Secretary to the Treasury might reply that this matter was closed long ago, and the House had heard of claimants arising after an interval of 40 years; but, in this case, all the claimants were known, the facts were indisputable, the relatives on the mother's side were not denied, and there was no fear of cousins or relatives arising to put in a claim. In this case a will was made in favour of the mother, and, but for an accident, the whole property would have gone to the mother or her relatives. He did not at that late hour wish to go into a long discussion; but he desired the House to believe that he had not drawn attention to the case hastily, and he had not alluded to the names in any way to give offence. The facts were very simple. The Treasury came into possession of nearly £200,000; and, while claimant's on the mother's side for a share of this were denied, claims on the other side with, he was bound to say, more influence, had been allowed.