I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether he is aware that the Ross-shire justices of the peace have again this year overruled the decision of the local licensing authorities who refused to license places for the sale of drink in Stornoway; whether he is also aware that the allegation that such licences were, required by the fishermen and fish curers who temporarily inhabit Stornoway has been repudiated by a meeting of these persons; and whether, under these circumstances, he can take any steps to give effect to the wishes of the local justices and the residents of Stornoway, both permanent and temporary?

The answer to the first paragraph of the Question is in the affirmative. The majority sustaining the appeal was 22 to 9. In reply to the second paragraph, I am informed by the presiding magistrate that he was not aware of any such allegation, nor was the decision influenced by such consideration. I am informed that the grounds of the decision were these: (1) It was proved that there was already insufficient accommodation for a large section of the population (permanent or temporary) which desired to make use of the bars; (2) under the present licensing laws a majority of the public, even if ascertained, has no power to prevent the proper demands of the minority from obtaining satisfaction; (3) the police certified that the Stornoway drinking bars were properly conducted; (4) the alternative proposed by the Stornoway justices, to limit the size of the bars (already too small for the demand), was open to obvious objections I can take no steps to interfere with the duly exercised discretion of the justices of the peace for Ross and Cromarty.

Arising out of the answer may I ask if it is not the law that the licensing authorities shall have absolute discretion, and that it does not depend on what is said or done by the public?

I believe, there is no difference between the law in Ross-shire and that in any other county, and probably nobody is better aware what that law is than the honourable Baronet himself.

I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether the contract for the supply of meat to the troops at Barry camp, in Forfarshire, has been given to a firm which has upheld, and continues to uphold, the butchers' boycott?

I am not sure that I am fully informed as to what, the "butchers' boycott" is, but subject to that the answer to the honourable and gallant Member is in the affirmative.

Will the honourable Gentleman make inquiry and satisfy himself what it is?

I am told it has something to do with a co-operative society.

But will the honourable Gentleman inquire further and satisfy himself?

I do not think it necessary to make further inquiry.

The "boycott"' movement has already been brought under the notice of the Board of Agriculture.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to a case at the Southwark police court, in which a child seven years old was prosecuted a few days ago for stone-throwing in the street; whether he is aware that in attempting to make the child realise his position the magistrate only elicited a fit of crying from the culprit; what was done to the child; and was a minister of religion present in court forbidden by the police to speak to the child while in the dock?

The answer to the first two paragraphs is in the affirmative. A fine of 6d., with 2s. costs, was imposed, which was not paid; but the boy was liberated at the rising of the court, about four o'clock. A minister of religion, who happened to be present in court, but had no connection with the case, attempted to speak to the boy during the hearing, and was requested to desist not by the police, but by the clerk of the court.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the regulations and appointments under the Workmen's Compensation Act, so far as relating to Scotland, are being made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department; and whether, having regard to the provisions of the Secretary for Scotland Acts, 1885 and 1887, such regulations and appointments ought to be made by the Secretary for Scotland?

I am unable to concur in the interpretation put by the honourable Member on the Secretary for Scotland Acts. If it was desired that the Secretary for Scotland, and not the Secretary of State, should make such regulations and appointments, then the Secretary for Scotland should, as is done in other Acts when required, have been substituted for the Secretary of State in the application clause of the Act to Scotland.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, what is the reason for refusing to pay Manchester postmen for overtime worked on Sunday, 2nd January; and is he aware that the usual time worked and paid for on Sundays in the city is three hours, but that on this day several men worked three hours and fifty minutes; that in the district four hours are usually worked and paid for, but that on the particular day (2nd January) many men worked for half-hours and one and a half hours longer, and were refused payment of the same; that in the south-west district six men, not on duty in the ordinary course, were sent for, and directed to assist with the heavier walks; and that, although they have claimed for the overtime worked—namely, from two to three hours—they have been unable, up to the present, to get any pay whatever for the extra, time worked?

Attendance by the Manchester postmen on Sundays is paid for, not according to the actual time occupied on any particular Sunday, but according to the average time occupied on Sundays. On Sunday, 26th December, however, being the day after Christmas Day, exceptional payment was made in consideration of the heavy Christmas work, but it did not appear right to extend this privilege to Sunday, the 2nd January, as the extra work on that day was largely due to the fact that by an arrangement which exists in Manchester no delivery was made after two p.m. on the preceding day (New Year's day), and the work had accumulated. As regards the six postmen in the south-western district of Manchester, it is found that, through an oversight, they were not paid for the special attendance on Sunday, the 2nd January. The omission has now been rectified.

On behalf of the honourable Member for South Mayo, I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will lay upon the Table of the House all such portions of the minutes of the proceedings of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland as have reference to the new rules on teachers' pensions dated 22nd November, 1897?

The minutes of the proceedings of the Commissioners are necessarily incomplete without a reference to the communications that passed between the Commissioners, the Irish Government, and the Treasury in reference to the new pension rules. The entire correspondence is regarded as confidential, and the Government do not propose to lay it on the Table of the House.

I beg to ask the Lord Advocate when the Bill will be introduced dealing with the new equivalent Grant for Scotland?

I hope the Bill may be introduced before the end of the month.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if he will state what was the strength of the 2nd Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers, and 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers on 1st March, 1898; what is their present strength; what is the present strength of the new 3rd battalions of the three regiments named; and to what extent those new battalions are composed of men transferred from the other battalions, men from the Reserve, and recruits?

The arrangement made was that two companies should be transferred from the home battalion of each of the three regiments to form the nucleus of the 3rd battalion which would be completed by Reservists who returned to the colours and by recruits. The strength of the 2nd Battalions of the Warwickshire Regiment and the Roval Fusiliers and the 1st Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers was respectively on the 1st March last 712, 593 and 600, excluding commissioned officers. On the 1st of the present month their strength stood at 529, 409, and 449. At the latter date the 3rd battalions of the same regiments had respectively 732, 626, and 629 non-commissioned officers and men. Of these 166, 163, and 162 had been transferred from the other home battalions; 278, 224, and 281 consisted of men returned from the Reserve; while 288, 239, and 186 had been recruited. My honourable and gallant Friend will recollect that although only 10 weeks have elapsed since we were authorised to raise these battalions, the six battalions already average about 560 men each.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the sentence of one month's imprisonment passed an a man named Isaac Doughty at the Bilston Town Hall last Friday, who was charged with vagrancy, his particular offence being that of sleeping on the steps of the Town Hall; and whether he will inquire into all the circumstances of the case, with a view to the remission or reduction of the sentence?

I have made inquiry into the circumstances of this case. The man bad been 30 times previously convicted of various offences, being drunk and disorderly, assaulting the police, and the like; and five times during the present year. It does not seem to me to be a case in which intervention is desirable.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will lay the map of Ireland showing the proposed new boundaries of unions, district councils, and county boroughs upon the Table of the House?

I am inquiring whether a map can be prepared, of convenient size, giving the information indicated.

When shall I repeat the question?

Next Monday.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, on what grounds rural postmen, employed at offices where a recent increase has been made to the maximum wages, who were in receipt of a compensation allowance in lieu of their right to carry private parcels, have not been allowed to benefit by the increase; does the Postmaster General intend that these, men shall be no longer entitled to this compensation; and will he quote the date and particulars of the Treasury's authority to discontinue the payment of these compensation allowances?

In giving effect to the recommendations of Lord Tweed-mouth's Committee, it was at first arranged that the compensation allowances made to rural postmen for the loss of earnings in carrying private parcels should be added to and incorporated with their ordinary wages, but after considering representations which have been made by the postmen on the subject the Postmaster General recently obtained the sanction of the Lords of the Treasury for continuing the allowances as separate payments distinct from the ordinary wages, as was formerly the case, and instructions have already been issued for giving effect to this arrangement as from April 1st, 1897.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the Agreement between the Mother Country and the Australasian Colonies respecting the maintenance of the squadron in Australasian waters for the protection of Australasian trade has been renewed; and if so, when was the Agreement completed and signed, and for what period is it to continue?

The following is the article in the Agreement of 1887 with reference to the duration of the Agreement—

"The Agreement shall be for a period of ten years, and only terminate if and provided notice has been given two years previously—viz., at the end of the eighth year, or at the end of any subsequent year, and then two years after such date."

No notice to terminate the Agreement has been given on either side.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty if he can state whether the wages paid for unskilled labour at the Deptford Victualling Yard are lower than the wages paid in any other Government Department employing unskilled labour within the area of the county of London?

I believe the facts are as stated in the Question, but the conditions are not in all cases the same, and the Admiralty have further to bear in mind the terms of employment of their labourers all over the country, and the discontent which might be caused by the further preferential treatment of their metropolitan labourers, who already have the advantage of 1s. a week over all the rest.

Does not the right honourable Gentleman think some higher allowance should be made to the London men?

It is an open question whether rents are higher in London than in some parts of the provinces, like Plymouth and Devonport. This matter was investigated by a committee some time ago—in the time of my predecessor—and the conclusion arrived at was that the grant of 1s. a week to London labourers over that made to provincial men would cover the difference in rents.

Is the right honourable Gentleman aware of the fact that, with the exception of the two places he has mentioned, rents in Deptford are as high as in any district?

Order, order!

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether, in the case of Private Heppingstall, who died after completing his full term of service in the Leicestershire Regiment, an application was made to the War Office by his next of kin for his deferred pay, amounting to £20, and other effects, and will he explain why, though five months have now elapsed since such application was made, nothing has been done by the authorities; and whether he will state for how long a period deferred pay and personal effects are retained by the War Office after the death of a soldier, and on what grounds these delays are made?

Private Heppingstall died in South Africa on the 27th December last. When soldiers die abroad, some time is necessarily required for obtaining the particulars to enable an issue of the effects to be made. These should have been received early in April. Some further delay, however, has arisen from the fact that the soldier was not at the time of his death serving with his regiment, but was attached to another corps. A special report was called for in April, and every effort will be made to settle this case as early as possible.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that in match factories provisions for the health of the workers largely turn upon questions involving structural alterations which by the regulations are ultra vires for the women inspectors; whether, when visiting a match factory, a woman inspector has no direct power under Special Rules, Nos. 2 and 3, to require the separation of the dangerous from the non-dangerous departments by the erection of a door, or an addition to washing appliances by the erection of a basin and tap; and whether such matters must be referred by her to the district inspector?

Structural questions are undoubtedly very important. Any such questions other than questions of sanitary accommodation for females which appear to the lady inspector to require attention are referred by her to the district inspector. It then becomes his duty to take immediate steps to secure the enforcement of the law, or of the special rules, to inform the lady inspector of the result, and to forward to headquarters her communication, with a statement of the steps he has taken upon it. This practice applies to all factories, whether special rules are in force or not, and the matters mentioned in the Question would, in the ordinary course, be dealt with in this way.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in the monthly statistics of lead poisoning published in the Labour Gazette, he can classify the cases according to the trade in which the sufferer was employed?

The monthly statements of lead-poisoning in the Labour Gazette are always classified according to the main groups of trades. I shall be glad to consider any suggestions from the honourable Member for the amendment of the classification, but the available space in the Labour Gazette is strictly limited.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the expenses involved, he will consider if it is possible to grant to field officers of Volunteer corps who may attend the Army manœuvres for instruction in staff duties the pay of their rank during their attendance at the manœuvres?

Provision has been made for allowing field officers of Volunteer corps desirous of attending the manœuvres to be attached to a Line battalion for instruction in staff duties. The number will be limited to 50, and officers must attend at their own expense, although tentage and carriage for baggage will be provided for them.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the workmen thrown out of employment by the South Wales coal dispute accepted his suggestion of April last, and when that suggestion had been declined by the employers they further conferred plenary powers upon their representatives; is he aware that at their meeting in Cardiff on Saturday last the emergency committee of the employers and the provisional committee of the workmen came to a deadlock, and that there is no immediate prospect of a settlement of the dispute, which has now lasted since March, and has led to the enforced idleness of 100,000 persons previously employed at the collieries of the Associated Coalowners, and also that of a large number of workmen at Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, and elsewhere; and.whether, in view of the disastrous effect the stoppage has had upon the trade of the district and the enormous public loss and suffering it entails, he will consider the urgent necessity of putting the provisions of the Conciliation Act, 1896, into force, or promptly taking other steps to bring the dispute to a speedy close?

I am aware of the matters referred to by the honourable Member, and I regret that the negotiations between the employers and the workmen's committee have not pursued a favourable course. I am deeply sensible of the disastrous effects of this prolonged strike, but I do not think that any intervention on my part at present would be favourably received, in view of the fact that no application under the Conciliation Act has been made to mo by either party.

I beg to ask the right honourable Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department a Question, of which I have given him private notice—namely, is it the fact that Mr. I. Williams, the stipendiary magistrate for the Pontypridd petty sessional division, has received a letter from the justices of that division commanding him to instruct military detachments quartered in Glamorganshire, if necessary, to charge the crowds and use their bayonets, and also fire ball cartridge; also, are the officers in command of the troops bound to obey instructions from the civil authorities?

The honourable Gentleman's notice only reached me just now, and I have no information as to the fact he mentions. As to the second part of his Question, it is obvious I ought to have notice, in order to be able to give an accurate answer.

I will repeat the Question to-morrow.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is yet in a position to make any statement as to the decision of the Treasury on the Reports of the Committee on the Acceleration of the Irish Day Mail Services?

I hope at once to make arrangements by which the mail service and sea passage between London and Dublin will be accelerated by 45 minutes each way. The mail trains will also start at more convenient hours in the morning, 1¼ hour later from Euston and 45 minutes later from Dublin. This must be contingent, however, on the Dublin Steam Packet Company entering into a formal contract to expedite its service by 15 minutes and the Great Northern Railway accelerating the journey between Dublin and Belfast by at least 15 minutes, so as to allow of tin mail leaving Dublin at least 15 minutes later than at present. In both instance I understand that this will be done.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if Members of Parliament can be allowed to obtain copies of the evidence given before the Indian Currency Committee, when printed, for the use of the members of the Committee, in the same way as the evidence given before the Liquor Licensing Laws Commission can be obtained?

In my letter of the 29th April to the Chairman of the Indian Currency Committee, which has been published, I said that—

"In accordance with the precedent of 1892–93, its proceedings, so long as it is in Session, will for obvious reasons not be open to the public, though they will be published when its labours are over, with the evidence and information it has collected."

I do not think that it would be desirable to alter this decision.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can give any confirmation of the statements that the Russo-Chinese Bank—that is, practically, the Russian Government—is endeavouring to obtain by means of a railway loan the control of the sole railway from the north of China to Pekin; whether Russia has obtained from the Chinese the right to continue the Ching-ting Tai- yuen-fu Railway, south-west of Pekin, to the Yellow River, near to Singan-fu, thus giving Russia practical control of the whole north of China; whether under Russo-French influence the Pekin-Hankow Railway is to be completed by Belgian contractors under Franco-Russian control; whether, when these railways are finished on the terms agreed, Russia will have control of all the railways along which it will be possible to move troops for the defence of Pekin; and what steps Her Majesty's Government, in view of these menacing facts, propose to take to prevent northern China from falling under the power of Russia?

The latest information received by Her Majesty's Government, so far from corroborating the success of the endeavours of the Russo-Chinese Bank mentioned in the first paragraph of the Question, is to the effect that a preliminary agreement, for the extension of the northern line of railway between Pekin and Newchwang was signed yesterday between the representatives of a British syndicate and the Chinese Director-General of Railways. As regards the railways mentioned in the second paragraph, an agreement has been arrived at between the Anglo-Italian. Chinese Syndicate, who own large mining concessions in Shansi, and the Russo-Chinese Bank for the construction by the latter of the Ching-ting Tai-yuen-fu Railway. But we have not heard of any prolongation to Singan-fu. As regards the Pekin-Hankow Railway, the latest information we have received from Sir Claude MacDonald on the subject was communicated by me to the House in reply to a Question on June 9th. In these circumstances, the occasion for answering the fourth Question does not appear to arise.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether Her Majesty's Government have information confirming the report that serious disturbances have occurred in Swaziland; that large numbers of armed Boer Volunteers are entering the country; that the king and his principal chiefs have been obliged to retire to the mountains; and what steps Her Majesty's Government intend to take to protect the Swazi people, and to secure the Swazis their rights under the Convention of 1894?

I have no information beyond what I stated in my answer to the same Question from the honourable Member on the 13th instant; but I am in telegraphic communication with the High Commissioner on the subject.

I will repeat the Question.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has official information that the Congress of the United States has now duly and unanimously appropriated the money necessary to pay the damages due to sealers, thus completing the award of the Behring Sea Paris Arbitration?

Her Majesty's Ambassador at Washington has reported by telegraph that the amount awarded by the Behring Sea Claims Commission was voted on the 13th instant by a special Bill in the House of Representatives.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can state if the British sphere of influence in the Yang-tsze region has yet been defined; and, if so, what are the geographical limits agreed upon, and whether they have been notified to the Russian and French Governments; and if the British sphere of interest in the Yang-tsze region has not been defined, whether he can state what steps are in contemplation to define, establish, and maintain it?

If the honourable Member will refer to what I said in a Debate in this House on April 5th, or to No. 85, on page 39, of the China Papers, he will see that the assurance of the Chinese Government with regard to the Yang-tsze valley related specifically to the territory of the provinces adjoining the Yang-tsze river, the limits of which are well-known. It was not necessary to communicate to foreign Governments an assurance given by the Chinese Government as to its intention not to alienate its own territory.

I beg to ask the Attorney General whether he is aware that Mr. Justice Grantham recently took some special jury trials in his private room because there was no court available at the Courts of Justice; and also that recently a divisional court, did not sit in consequence of there being no court free; and whether the Government have in contemplation any scheme for increasing the accommodation required for the due and decorous administration of justice?

It is the fact that on a few occasions which have occurred at very long intervals, when an unusually large number of judges of the Queen's Bench Division have been in town, the 10, or, if necessary, 11 courts permanently provided for their accommodation have not been found sufficient, but I have said it is very rarely that any difficulty arises. No scheme for permanently increasing the accommodation has as yet been under the consideration of the Government.

I beg to ask the Attorney General whether, in view of the protracted residence in Toronto of the late Spanish Minister to Washington, and the activity of other Spanish agents sojourning in the Dominion, he can state what powers, if any, are possessed by Colonial Governments to prevent the hospitality of their soil being exploited in the interests of a particular belligerent; and whether a Colonial Government that expels such persons is liable to be sued for damages?

I must decline to enter into the matters raised by the Question of the honourable Member, beyond stating that under ordinary circumstances the power of dealing with the matters referred to depends upon the prerogative of the Crown, and that the Colonial Government would not be liable to be sued for damages in such a case.

I beg to ask the Attorney General whether he is aware that a number of workmen locked out in the dispute now pending in the South Wales coal trade have, by accepting employment in stone breaking under the.boards of guardians, become liable to have their names removed from the registers of voters at Parliamentary elections; whether this liability attaches to workmen similarly employed by the urban district authorities in the same localities;.and whether, having regard to the special circumstances of the case, he will advise the Government to bring in a Bill to remove any doubts there may be upon the point, and to enable such workmen, if otherwise qualified, to retain the franchise?

I am not aware of the facts stated in the honourable Member's Question. It must not be assumed that employment of the kind suggested in the first and second paragraphs of necessity involves liability to have the names of the men employed removed from the register of voters. There is not, in my opinion, any necessity for legislation upon the matter.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that two populous districts called Tycroes and Capel Hendre, in the county of Carmarthen, have as their postal address Pontardulais, which is nearly six miles distant from both of these districts, whilst the sub-post office of Pantyfynnon is about one mile only from Tycroes and Capel Hendria; whether, inasmuch as Pantyfynnon is the present telegraphic address and the railway parcel office for these districts, he will mate that place the post office for letters also, there being a direct railway service from Pontardulais to Pantyfynnon by which the mail to the latter place is carried; whether he is aware that the letters for Tycroes and Capel Hendre are carried by a rural postman on foot from Pontardulais past Pantyfynnon, which causes these two places to lose the North Mail, so that letters from the North take three instead of two days in transit, and makes the delivery of all letters two hours later in the morning and their dispatch two hours earlier in the afternoon than would otherwise be necessary; whether he is aware that this has caused great inconvenience in the districts referred to, both by reason of the delay and the mistakes inevitably arising from the position of the places; and whether he can arrange that the Tycroes and Capel Hendre sub-post office shall, in the future, be at Pantyfynnon instead of at Pontardulais?

Tycroes and Capel Hendre receive their letters from Pontardulais, which is nearly six miles distant from both places, while the sub-post office of Pantyfynnon is little more than a mile from Tycroes and within three from Capel Hendre. A memorial for a service from Pantyfynnon is now in the surveyor's hands for inquiry, and the Postmaster General hopes it may be possible to effect the improvement which the memoralists desire. The North mail letters are already delivered at Tycroes and Capel Hendre on the second morning after posting. If a service from Pantyfynnon should take the place of the service from Pontardulais, it will still be the second morning after posting before letters from the North can be delivered, because the North mail does not reach either Pantyfynnon or Pontardulais before dispatch of the postman. The inhabitants of Tycroes and Capel Hendre will, however, have a shorter distance to send for their North letters should Pantyfynnon instead of Pontardulais become the office from which they are served.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether a standard of dietary equal to that which exists in British prisons is in force in the prisons in the West Indies; whether a reduced dietary has been adopted recently in the St. Kitts and Antigua prisons; and whether there has been any increase in the death rate in the latter prison?

(1) The dietaries in force in the West India prisons have been adopted on the best advice obtainable, and are believed to be generally suitable. It is not easy to compare them and the dietaries in British prisons owing to the difference in climate, race and circumstances. (2) The adoption of a reduced dietary in St. Kitts has recently been brought to my notice, and I am in correspondence with the governor of the Leeward Islands on the subject. (3) I have no information at present to show whether there has been any increase in the death rate in the Antigua prison in 1897. There was one death in 1896, and one in 1895.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if in the new commercial Treaty with Belgium, Her Majesty's Government have been able to safeguard the interests of British shipowners, especially with regard to the heavy subsidies paid by the Belgian Government to their steamers plying between Ostend and the Thames?

As negotiations are still proceeding I am unable to make any statement as to their scope and character. But the points raised by my honourable and gallant Friend have not been lost sight of by Her Majesty's Government, who are anxious to protect the interests of British shipowners by every means in their power.

On behalf of the honourable Member for East Mayo, I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been drawn to the case of James Ball, corporal in the 63rd regiment, discharged 19th February, 1856, who was granted a pension of 8d. a day for a wound received in battle, which pension was paid until July, 1865, when it was stopped owing to Ball's residing in the United States; whether he is aware that, in November, 1875, Ball was permitted to draw his pension through Her Majesty's Consul at Chicago, and received two years' arrears in respect of the 10 years due to him; and that the pension was commuted in the year 1892 for a sum of £119 8s. 3d., no allowance being made for the eight years unpaid; and whether he can undertake to have the arrears of eight years now paid to James Ball?

The case of James Ball has been repeatedly considered by the War Office. He was duly warned, on going to the United States in 1865, that he would not receive his pension while in that country. He returned in 1875, and, in consideration of his having been wounded in the Crimea, he was replaced on the pension list and granted arrears for two years as a special indulgence. As he was no longer eligible for further service, he was then permitted to reside in the United States. He commuted his future pension in 1892, and has no claim to the forfeited arrears.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether any, and, if so, what modification has been made in the Order issued in November, 1896, regarding the compulsory retirement of all Civil servants at the age of 60, without distinction of class or wages; and are postmen and inspectors of postmen compelled to retire either on attaining 60 years of age or completing 40 years' service?

The Order to which I understand the honourable Member to refer was to the effect that—

"All pensionable officers of whatever grade whose conduct, capacity, or efficiency falls below a fair standard shall be called upon to retire at 60; but that all officers of 60 years of age whose conduct is good and who are certified by their superior officers as thoroughly efficient, shall be allowed to remain until they have completed 40 years of service, and in special cases, with the approval of the Postmaster General, till they have attained the age of 65 years. Retirement at 65 will be compulsory, irrespective of the service for pension which an officer may have completed, except in the rare instances provided for by the Order in Council now in force. Officers not entitled to pension will not be called upon to retire so long as they are able efficiently to discharge their duties."

There has been no modification of the Order issued in November, 1896. Postmen and inspectors of postmen fall under the provisions of the Order, and are compelled to retire, either at 60 years of age or on completing 40 years' service, unless for special reasons the Postmaster General sees fit to retain them in the service, in accordance with the rules laid down in the Circular.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury a Question of which I have given private notice'—viz., whether the statement made in Debate on June 10th was accurate, that the right, honourable Gentleman's suggestion, made in a speech at Manchester in January, 1896, that; the Russian Government should occupy an ice-free port in the Yellow Sea, was due to a desire on the part of Her Majesty's Government to obtain the support of Russia in their policy towards Turkey?

If my honourable Friend, by the words "suggestion made to Russia," refers to any speech, of mine, the only speech I have made on the subject, so far as I am aware, was not made at Manchester, and was not made in February, but was made at Bristol, and was made in January. With regard to the statement to which the honourable Gentleman alludes, I am not aware of any such statement being made, and I am not responsible for it. In any case there is no foundation for it.

I may say that the statement was made in this House in public Debate by the honourable Member for Northampton.

Order, order! If the honourable Member had stated that in putting his Question he would have put it out of order.

Will the First Lord of the Treasury take the Local Government Board Estimates next Friday?

My honourable Friend knows that to-morrow we take the Education Vote. If the honourable Member will put the Question later, I shall be able, perhaps, to answer; but, as I have before said, I do not care to allocate the Supply a week beforehand.

I will direct the attention of the House to the object of the Amendment to this Bill which is now before the House. The sum of £10,000,000 is to be raised in this country for military purposes, and for any other purpose the Government of India desire or wish. The memorandum in this case is perfectly misleading. I will ask the noble Lord to give me his attention. In both his statements he said this sum of money was to be applied for specific purposes. He repeated that in the official memorandum in this Bill. Looking at the object of the Bill itself, we find that while the noble Lord gets the power to raise this £10,000,000 of money the Indian Government can apply it in any way it pleases. There is nothing to limit the appropriation of the sum; no words have been adopted showing how the money is to be applied. There are, however, some general indications as to how the Government intend to apply it—such as for the purposes of war, famine, railways, and other purposes. The noble Lord says that in all probability £3,500,000 of that £10,000,000 will be applied to present debts, and £2,500,000 is to be applied in the development of railways. On that point I will say a few words later on. There is a balance of £3,500,000, which is to be given to the noble Lord to do anything he likes with. Now, the noble Lord is well versed in public affairs, and I would appeal to him whether, if any Minister came to this House and asked far £3,500,000 in the way of the confidence trick, he would not be relieved of his office, and also of the trouble of carrying his head on his shoulders. This £10,000,000 is to be a primary charge on the unfortunate people of India. Having described the object and scope of this Bill, which he does not attempt in the slightest way to justify—I say that in both the speeches of the noble Lord—one of which extended over three and a half columns and the other over two and a half columns—I could not catch any inference which showed that he had any idea of the circumstances of the people, or that he had any sympathy with them. I have never had any quarrel with the noble Lord: he has always fought me and I fight him fairly; but I am in a state of nervous trepidation at the present time, because if anyone attempts to speak about India all the vials of all the Hamiltons are poured upon him. Yet I promise to give him as good as he gives me. The noble Lord has made an attack on my honourable Friend who has done more than any Member of this House, who has stuck up for the Indian people through thick and thin—the Indian people at large. I am not optimistically inclined in regard to this Bill. The noble Lord, in a cursory manner, got up and made a statement affecting enormous sums of money; and yet I saw that an ex-Secretary of State for India got up and congratulated the noble Lord upon his statement. The thought struck me, what is the meaning of "India paying its way"? The noble Lord has stated that India pays its way. Let him tell me what would happen in this country if the inhabitants had an average of 1½d. a day, and there were in addition the horrors of war, pestilence, and famine. These men are taxed up to 250 per cent. of their value. I should like to sea the Chancellor of the Exchequer get up and congratulate this House, under the same circumstances, upon England paying its way. Here he has to deal with representatives of the people, whereas in India it is different; the people have no voice whatever in the matter. I will ask some Minister to give us a distinct and definite answer. According to the noble Lord, the sum of £2,500,000 out of this £10,000,000 is to be a prospective charge for the advancement of railways. Now, I have got the figures before me. I learn that there is a net loss on the revenue of those railways of no less than £58,500,000 in 40 years. And now the sum of £2,500,000 is to be expended on the railways. There has been an enormous railway development already. If there is to be this railway enterprise. why is it not a matter of private company promotion? It is because no private company will promote it. The noble Lord has stated that the railways are not a commercial development, but a strategic development. Why is there to be a fresh sum of £2,500,000 expended on railways? I say that that sum is to be expended in the interests of English capitalists who will invest their money and bring over their plant to the railways; it is in the interest of the iron-and steel trade and not in the interest of the people of India that the expenditure is incurred. While I see this enormous expenditure on railways I see the greatest stinginess in regard to all sums for irrigation purposes. Every farthing that goes to that purpose is grudged. It looks too horrible to be true, but really the people find out that nothing is too horrible, and no proposal is too monstrous to be made by the Government. I will now refer to the noble Lord's statement about India paying her way. The noble Lord is a master of finance, but his first speech is the work of several hands; it is a mosaic speech, and there will be no difficulty to any man acquainted with literary style in segregating the various portions of it. There is one statement of enormous importance to which I hope will be given as extensive a publication as possible both here and in India. It really should be the charter of Indian finance. It is the passage in which the noble Lord draws a comparison between English and Indian finance. He says in tones of great triumph that notwithstanding the famine and the plague and the pestilence and the war, Indian finance is recuperating. That is the most astounding confession that could be made. Those who take an interest in the difference between our fiscal system and the fiscal system prevailing in India will know that a much larger proportion of taxation in this country is raised by indirect means than in India, and that here, owing to the greater wealth of the community, we consume a much larger proportion of those taxable articles included under the head of luxuries. In India the very means of life are taxed. I challenge the noble Lord to deny my statement that one pennyworth of salt is taxed to the extent of 1s. 8d. Salt there is an absolute necessity of life, considering that they are a rice- eating population. When you want to get a pennyworth of salt there you have to pay 1s. 9d. for it; and it is proposed now,, and after the famine, to raise the enormous sum of £10,000,000, every farthing of which must be paid out of the resources of the people, and must come from their emaciated means of living and their starved resources. I wish the people of England could only realise these things. If the right honourable Gentleman wants money to make India pay its way, I will tell him how he can do it: he has got an excellent chance, and this would be a perfect way. The home charges of India amount to £16,800,000. Nearly £17,000,000 goes out of India for what are called home charges, but it is paid away for the support of half-pay officers and people of that description. [Interruption.] Well, we shall say £8,000,000 of this enormous sum goes to the residents in the county clubs and half-pay society. The other half is absorbed in the investment on railways for which the people pay. If we had only irrigation works instead they would be cheaper and more useful to the revenue. If you would only give the people of India some power of managing the affairs of their own country, India would be managed for the country's good, and not for the good of another people. Of course, it is useless to speak of those things. The European is always preferred to the Indian; you don't like even the young men of India to enter the Indian Civil Service, unless they come over to England to pass an examination. I thank the House for the attention with which they have heard me. I confess I have always had a very strong feeling in this matter. I have always felt that we ought to take more care in reference to the people of India than with other subjects; and I will tell you why. They are a trust reposed in us. They cannot affect a single one of our votes, but they can affect us in our own conscience, and then we know that we are bound in season and out of season to protest against the wrong and injustice that are being done. It is a horrible thing to think that the humblest member of the community who has a vote here is more to us in the legislation of the Empire than the 300,000,000 of people of India, and it is a terrible thing that every person who espouses their cause- must be again and again subjected to the hostile and unfriendly and discourteous criticism of the noble Lord. I will ask the noble Lord to think that we are doing our best to promote the real and true interests of the people of India, which we think should be governed for its own advantage. Many a time, by his speeches, the noble Lord has revived a recollection of the time when, as John Bright said, the foundations of our Indian Empire were laid in blood, and has also recalled the fact that India is governed, not for the benefit of its own people, but for the benefit of a class in England. It is to me an astonishing study in psychology how the noble Lord can get up and make optimistic speeches such as he has made. No less than three and a half columns of the Times are covered by the reports of those two speeches, crying out the prosperity of India. There is no prosperity in India except the prosperity of those who wring money out of the starving people.

The honourable Gentleman who has sat down has spoken as if he considered that the Government of India, actuated by an unnatural malignancy, were grinding the faces of the poor of India for their own amusement and satisfaction. I have on different occasions taken exception to the financial proposals of the Indian Government, but I cannot associate myself for a moment with the attack that has been made upon them, and I say so with all respect for the earnestness and sincerity of the honourable Member who has just spoken. It would serve his own case better if he gave credit for the same earnestness and sincerity to the men who are governing India. He complained that the predecessor in office of the noble Lord was no better. What kind of Government does he hope for if he is anxious to benefit the people of India? I should have been most glad to associate myself with this Amendment if it had been moved and supported in the way in which it was seconded by the honourable Member for Dumfriesshire. With all he said I find myself in perfect agreement. He criticised—as I criticised, and venture again to criticise—the financial proposals the noble Lord has put forward. He pointed out as a matter of the greatest concern the enormous difference in the silver value of the rupee in India and the value to which it has been forced up by artificial means by the Indian Government An honourable Member on this side of the House said, "What about our English shilling?" But there is no analogy between the rupee and the shilling, except that they are both made of silver. The rupee is an integral part of the wealth of India, and on the rupee its credit is based, and its credit depends. The English shilling is a mere token, only passing in this country and only allowed to be used for the payment of small debts, and it does not matter for the credit of the country whether the silver in the shilling is worth fourpence or whether it is worth its nominal amount—namely, that portion of a sovereign of which it is a token. But an honourable Member has said that India is under a token currency. If so, of what is the rupee a token, and what does it represent? It only represents the antiquated method which has been adopted by the Indian Government in this, matter, working the country by means of a forced currency. It is a token that the schemes of South American republics are again being attempted—schemes long ago abandoned by all civilised men and countries, and which can only lead a country to disaster—which can only have one effect in India, as everybody can see if they have studied the latest phases of Indian finance. The equivalent in England to what has been done in India would be this: if our Government were to sweat or clip our sovereigns, and force them into circulation at their full face value, that would be a fair analogy. Now, having dealt with that matter, let us pass to the observation of the noble Lord the Secretary of State. The noble Lord said, speaking upon this subject, that we must not speak of him as being optimistic. No one can deny the oratorical ability of the noble Lord and the pleasantly insidious way he has of conveying to our minds a most attractive picture; but what does he say? He says the main cause of this satisfactory state of things is the steady rise in the exchange value of the rupee during the last three years. Let us see what that is, and how it has been brought about. If it had been brought about by natural causes it would, of course, have indicated prosperity for the country, and have been a feature which the noble Lord might have been entitled to dwell upon with enthusiasm. But how has it been arrived at? By restricting the trade of the country, of which evidence has been pressed upon the noble Lord from all quarters, and by people of the largest experience. It has been done at the expense of the people of India. But when rebuking honourable Members for their language I must remember that I spoke myself of the Indian Government as having acted unfairly in this matter, and I was severely rebuked by both Front Benches for so doing. It is distressing, but there is the fact. In that speech what I ought to have said was that they acted in a manner, no doubt entirely against their own intentions and wishes, which resulted in injustice being done—and I say the grossest injustice—to the poor of India. Then the noble Lord pointed out the numerous advantages which this artificial rise in the exchange value of the rupee had given to Indian finance. He did not point out the great disadvantages that the people of India had suffered from this rate of exchange. I should like to remind the House of the enormous figure of Rx. 17,000,000 which the noble Lord alleged would have been the additional loss entailed on the Indian Government had they kept their minds open to silver if a hypothetical figure of the value of the rupee 10 years ago was taken and another hypothetical point had been taken quite at the bottom value—

At the point it was three years ago.

Yes, but why? Because the Indian Government had closed the mints and depreciated the rupee by 7d. Its exchange value—

No; by 2d.

Very true, by 2d. or over in each rupee, but the value of silver was depreciated by 7d. an oz. If I remember rightly these points were not touched upon by the noble Lord. He did not apparently realise that there was another side to the shield; that, although this had enabled the Government to balance the Budget, it was done at the expense of the commerce and by injuring and crippling the resources of the country. And no one who has traded with Ceylon and met people who have been engaged in trade with these countries and have great experience in this matter can dispute what I say. What I say is that the noble Lord asked us to look at one side of the shield only. He did not refer to the fact that the rise in the exchange was putting India to the enormous disadvantage and danger of Mexico and other countries, which are still on a silver basis. Not a word. What he did say was that if the Indian Government had stood still and had done nothing they would have gradually drifted into a position in which they would not be able to meet their obligations. He said that, but he did not take into consideration that if the exchange had remained low an enormous stimulus would have been given to production. So strangely did the noble Lord distinguish the Government of India from the people that he said that the exports did not belong to the Government, and that they could not pay their debts with the exports. But, after all, no Government can pay its debts in any other way than by the excess of exports over imports.

Not the individual debtors.

I am afraid I cannot take the point as to individual debtors. I say the Government cannot pay its gold debt except by excess of exports over imports, and if the noble Lord's policy had the effect of reducing the exports that ought to be taken into consideration. The noble Lord told me he deprecated strong language in me. I hope I have taken the lesson to heart and have not said anything for which he may have to reprove me to-day. It would ill become me to reproach him with using strong language; but men of the greatest experience in this matter pointed out the great advantage of opening the Indian mint, and the noble Lord said it would be an act of lunacy to do so. In a question of this kind the House might say this is a matter between the noble Lord and a mere private Member who happens to have some knowledge of the subject, and that the noble Lord must be right and that I must be wrong. Therefore I must bring evidence to bear me out, evidence which is not immaterial, as I think. The House will admit that the whole matter turns upon whether the surplus of exports over imports was increasing. Up to the time when the mints were closed in 1893 the Indian exports were increasing over the imports, but in 1893 there was another country in a somewhat similar position to India, to which I would invite the noble Lord's attention—the country of Mexico. That is a country on a silver basis; it has a large gold debt in England, and it is similar to India in this respect, that it has borrowed large sums of money for railways, and it is similar in many other respects. It has external debts which must be paid in gold, and the amount of those debts was so large as to create alarm in the Mexican Government. Mexico is not in the position of India in this respect: it has not a large and wealthy country at its back which enables it to borrow cheaply. It borrows dearly. Now, they were very anxious about this matter: they saw silver being depreciated by the Government of India, and they saw a terrific blow was being aimed at silver. They became very anxious, and considered whether it would be advisable to have their country made what the noble Lord has called "a dumping ground for silver," and, having considered the matter, they decided that it would be an act of lunacy to close their mints. They came to the conclusion that it would be an advantage to have silver dumped down in their country if it took away their produce, which they did not want, and gave them metal, which they required. They took exactly the contrary course to that which was adopted in India in 1893. Now, remember what I have said—that up to 1893, while the exchange was low, the Indian exports had been rising. Now, since 1893—I will take the Indian figures first, and I will show what the ratio of exports and imports in India has been since 1893. Coming to 1894–95, the balance of exports over imports was 37,000,000. The figure which I wish to point to is the 37. In 1895–96 it was 36. Therefore you see it had dropped slightly. In 1896–97 it was 23, and in 1897–98, the last year which we have got, it was 14. Therefore I fail to see the advantage which has been derived by this unfortunate policy, seeing that the excess of exports over imports shows a fall of 60 per cent. Since the time upon which the Indian Government entered upon this policy the ratio between exports and imports has continuously and heavily fallen. Now, let us contrast the Mexico figures. I will only read the balances; the excess of exports over imports for the corresponding period to which I have referred are: 1893–94, 49; 1894–95, 56; 1895–96, 63; and 1896–97, 66. There was thus a steady, remarkable, and startling increase in the prosperity of the country. While India was declining 60 per cent. Mexico was advancing 40 per cent. I think the House will recognise that the above figures establish my contention that the action of the Indian Government in closing their mints to silver has brought evils to their country which have more than counterbalanced the immediate relief afforded to the Government. In conclusion, I would say that, having regard to the fact that the Committee which the noble Lord has appointed to consider the Indian currency question has not met with the satisfaction of the great commercial communities of the country, I should have unhesitatingly supported the Motion for a Committee had it been proposed that the inquiry should be confined to financial matters. That, I think, is evidence that the House will consider, and will believe that there is something to be said on the other side. I thank the House very much for the kind way in which it has listened to the very dry figures I have put before it.

The honourable Gentleman has spoken with considerable authority from the point of view of trade relations. I have taken a profound interest in the condition of this teeming population, and, as a Member of this House, I feel that I have a great responsibility in following the honourable Gentleman who has just resumed his seat. I shall regard the matter from a different standpoint. Honourable Members who, during the last 20 years, have watched the transactions of the Indian Government, will, by this time, be only too familiar with the methods which are adopted on these occasions. Sometimes the method adopted is to raise a temporary loan in one year and renew it in the next year, perhaps to renew it the year after, and then, when nearly everybody has forgotten the circumstances in which the transaction originated, quietly to convert the temporary loan into a permanent debt. That is the mischief on the present occasion. The second method, when the Indian Government comes to Parliament to authorise a loan, is to put in the forefront of the powers alleged for the Bill the paying-off of an existing debt, bearing, perhaps, generally a higher rate of interest than that at which the Government can now borrow money. Well, if the matter stopped there, the Indian Government would be acting in a perfectly legitimate and meritorious manner; but, unfortunately, it has invariably happened that the amount required to pay for existing debts only forms a very small part of the total loan powers which are asked for. On the present occasion the loan required to pay off the debt is under £3,500,000 sterling, whereas the borrowing powers extend to £10,000,000, and the residue is to be devoted to the construction of railways, and to enable the Government, as the noble Lord said the other night, to tide over prospective difficulties. Now, Sir, with regard to those prospective difficulties, what I desire to point out is, that the root of the difficulty to which the noble Lord alluded the other night consists in the excessive amount of the home charges. Some time ago a committee was appointed to inquire into these home charges, and to ascertain whether or not they could be reduced. Therefore I am quite prepared to concur with my honourable Friend the Member for Banffshire who has put forward this Amendment. The time for the introduction of this Bill is singularly inappropriate. You have appointed a committee to inquire whether those home charges cannot be reduced, and before that committee has reported you are putting it in the power—I will not place it much higher than that —of the Indian Government to increase the amount of the home charges. We have heard a great deal about the optimistic views with regard to the present state of things in India. I concur with the view taken by my honourable Friend below, the Member for Wolverhampton. It cannot be denied that daring the last few years the aggregate debt of India has very considerably increased, and it is not too much to say that during the last 10 years India has had to give the entire value of the excess of her exports over her imports in order to cover the home obligations of the Government. We have been told that we must not call this a drain upon India. Sir John Lubbock has told us that we ought to consider the case of other countries, and that this is not really a drain upon India; that the advantage is mutual, and that these young, growing countries have the advantage of cheap capital. It is very misleading to compare India with young countries like Canada and Australia. India is not a young country. India, on the contrary, is a very old country. India was already far advanced in the arts and industries, and was exchanging her highly-wrought fabrics with the merchants of Palmyra, when England was still primeval forest, and the site of London was a swamp. It is very misleading, and I strongly protest against the contrast of India with young countries which are able to bear a strain which is absolutely fatal in the case of older countries. The right honourable Gentleman distinguished between productive and non-productive expenditure. I wish he had pursued his analysis a little further, and had also distinguished between productive works which pay and so-called productive works which do not pay. The noble Lord, in the last speech he addressed to the House, produced some figures with the object of showing that the net burden in the revenue for indebtedness in respect of capital expenditure on railways had diminished. But, in order to effect this, he compared one single year—1861—with another single year. Surely that is a very unscientific method of comparison. The noble Lord should have compared the annual average over a series of years at different periods. I demur to taking as your starting point a year so near the assumption by the Crown of the direct government of India as 1861, when there had been no time for the financial advantage inseparable from that great change to come into operation. The broad fact remains that, whatever may be the indirect benefits to India from your railway policy, it has involved the Government of India in an enormous loss. We have the Return contained in Mr. Gracy's Administration Report, issued about 12 months ago. We have the broad facts relating to the total loss. The total loss to the State up to 1895–96—the commencement of the famine period—was 530 millions of rupees; and we must remember that there has been a very considerable addition to the losses since that time. In connection with this part of the case, I should like to refer to the statement made in the Debate in the Viceroy's Council last year by Mr. Trevor, the head of the Public Works Department of the Indian Government. He said—

"It is no doubt very discouraging that the first year of renewed activity in regard to railway development should have coincided with a year of plague, pestilence, and famine, and that we should have no better result to show than that the net loss on the railway revenue account should have been increased this year to a total of some 2¾ crores, with a prospect of a similar loss next year, and an extremely tight money market to work on."

That is the condition of the Indian money market now, only in a still more aggravated degree. Now, Mr. Trevor has, I think, said that it is not fair to take the famine year, and therefore I will compare two periods of five years, according to the figures given by Mr. Trevor himself in the same speech. For the five years ending 1877 the average annual loss was something under 1¾ crores, whereas for the five years ending 1897 the average annual loss was something over 2 crores. It is obvious, therefore, that you have not been improving your revenue account during the last 20 years, although you have been spending these very large capital sums in the development of railways. But, Sir, it is said that, whatever direct loss the railways may have occasioned to the Government of India, the indirect benefit has been very great, and especially in regard to the difficulty which the Government has to encounter in time of famine. But what I should like to ask is this: what does it avail if in your professed policy of developing the country you have produced the impoverishment of the people? Of what avail is it to have spread—as you have spread, I admit—a network of railways all over the country, and to have been able—as I admit you have been able—to carry food into every part of the suffering districts, as you were not able to do in the previous famine—I ask, of what avail is all this if by the very same policy the ryots have been reduced to such extremities that they have absolutely less means than they had to buy food? And this, the last, famine has, I believe, taken a larger grasp upon the people of India than any within historic memory. And then, Sir, I think the existence of the plague is not without throwing some light upon the extreme poverty of the Indian people. Sir William Wedderburn has pointed out that in all parts of Asia, as well as in all parts of Europe, there has always been a close connection between the appearance of the black plague and insufficient food; and it is a very significant fact that the European community in India have enjoyed almost absolute immunity from the plague. This terrible disturbance, I submit, is in itself very largely the outcome and the result of poverty. There are some who may regard it as a visitation of Providence, and this loss as one of those extraordinary items of expenditure over which the Government has no control; but I venture to regard it as the natural outcome of your former policy, and the impoverishment of the people which follows that policy as the shadow. Now, Sir, may I just for a moment return to the question of railways? The plea in favour of railway extension as a means of preventing famine is now no longer available. That is a claim which you yourselves make, and it is a claim upon which you have considerable right to congratulate yourselves, that you have spread such a network of railways over India, that you are now able, in case of famine, to go through every part of the district which, may be affected. Therefore I say that the plea which has been so often urged in advance of expending money largely upon railways as a defence against famine is no longer available; and if railways cannot be constructed now without the Government loan contracted in this country they ought not to be constructed at all. This is not a time for what the Minister of Public Works in India calls a "forward policy" in regard to railways, and yet it is proposed to spend next year 11 crores in railway extension. Now, Sir, instead of pursuing still further the present policy, I think the time has come when the Government ought to look to more practical methods for bettering the condition of the people; for instance, to irrigation work, to stimulating improved methods of agriculture, to establishing agricultural grants in India, and also to such methods of moderate land assessment as shall relieve the cultivators of the present strain, and also encourage enterprise. With regard to irrigation works—

The honourable Member is not in order in discussing that question at the present stage.

Very good, Sir. I do not propose to press alternative methods. I ask that the activity of the Government should be exerted; but, of course, I bow to your ruling, and will not further press that part of the case. But, at all events, I think, Mr. Speaker, that this Bill does raise, to some extent, the question of the condition of the Indian people and of their capacity to pay off increased taxation in the matter of the home charges. The noble Lord himself has dwelt at some length upon the ability of the Indian Government to bear the proposal which he has made in his Bill; but, Sir, I must say that we are justified in scrutinising somewhat carefully the representations which the Indian Government have placed in his hands, and which he has conveyed to the House. My honourable Friend the Member for Banffshire the other night gave us some striking examples of the ignorance, on the part of the Indian Government, of what is really happening in India—ex- amples which were so telling that the noble Lord sought to divert attention from them by making a personal attack of a most ungenerous character, as I think, upon the honourable Baronet. But Sir Griffith Evans has made a statement similar to those which have been made by the right honourable Baronet.

"How is it," he says, "that the Government apparently never has any intimation of what is going to happen? Whether it is a mutiny, an outbreak, or a frontier raid, the Government's first intimation of it appears to be the accomplished fact."

Well, then, Sir, with regard to the capacity of the Indian people to bear the burdens imposed upon them, I should like to refer to the land revenue. Now, I find that the net, land revenue for 1894–95 was 26.7; for 1895–96, 27.5; for 1896–97, 25.4; for 1897–98, 27.4; and for the current year, 29. Thus we have had a loss of two crores in the first famine year; we have an average year in the second famine year; and for the third year we have a record collection of land revenue. So much, Mr. Speaker, for the claim of the Government that it has been tender to the taxpayer in his years of trouble. With regard to the current year, Sir James Westland says—

"The estimates are high in all provinces, but the local governments all expect to realise the amounts entered."

Now, Sir, I say it is neither wise nor humane thus greedily to clutch at arrears of rent accrued through a calamity so terrible as the recent famine. But, Sir, we have something more. How is it that the Government is able to secure a record collection of land revenue in the current year? Why, it is simply through the medium of the Famine Relief Fund, as I have shown. We have the official account as to the mode of application of a large part of the Famine Relief Fund. This is the official account.—

"Over two-thirds of the fund (i.e., one million sterling) have been spent in giving a fresh start in life to those who had lost all in the struggle, principally the peasant farmers, whose bullocks had died from want of fodder, and who had neither plough, cattle, nor seed, nor credit on which to procure them."

Now, Sir, I say it was not the intention of the contributors to this fund to enable the Government of India to secure the record collection of land revenue in the year immediately following the famine. It was to save human life in the first place, and, secondarily, for the purpose of setting the Indian peasant on his legs again; and for the Indian Government on the one hand to refuse the financial help which the House would most cordially and heartily have given, and on the other hand to pounce upon the Indian peasant, and to take from him, in the form of land revenue, what generous donors throughout the world had put into his hands in order to enable him, it may be, to renew, in this terrible famine, his hard struggle for subsistence, is, I say, a mean policy which I cannot think the people of this country will adopt. Now, Sir, in conclusion, a high authority in India once said, "The true remedy against famine and scarcity is the frugality of the people." The noble Lord himself, in his speech the other day, bore witness to the same characteristic of the Indian people. He said—

"In India there is a great population, frugal and industrious and orderly, a prolific soil, and a large amount of mineral wealth at present untouched."

I am the more anxious not to increase the financial burdens upon these people so ably described by the highest authority, because the Government has recently enacted a new Press law, and assailed the principle of local self-government. I am sorry that one of almost the last acts with which the present Viceroy of India will be associated is this Bill to increase the burdens of the Indian people by 10 millions. Both sides of the House, Sir, have joined in pæans of congratulation to the Viceroy of India. The noble Lord opposite quoted the historic inscription in the Council Chamber. I must say that to apply to Lord Elgin language which would only be appropriate in the case of a Warren Hastings or a Clive is not really to do any service to that noble and, no doubt, able man. It has been the misfortune of Lord Elgin that he has been Viceroy of India in difficult and troubled times, and one can only regret that he has to a great extent allowed himself to be misled by military Jingoes on the one hand and by the Press martinets on the other.

I had not intended to take any part in this Debate or to take up the controversial matters raised by my honourable Friend behind me. Some misstatements—or, perhaps, misunderstandings of facts—have been set before the House, and I think that I should not be doing my duty to the House if I did not attempt to correct them, more especially as under the Rules of the House the Secretary of State is prevented from again interposing in this Debate. Now, I am going to confine myself exclusively to facts. I have expressed my opinion again and again in this House of the admirable manner in which India is governed, and of the admirable character which the great Indian Civil Service bears, and which it has pre-eminently sustained during the past 12 months; and I feel sure that those gentlemen who have been betrayed into expressions of censure upon that Department of the public service will find that they are not to any degree or extent expressing the feelings of honourable Members of this House or of the country outside. I was rather amused just now at my honourable Friend behind me, who, though he was full of admiration for the great Governors of bygone times, such as Warren Hastings and Lord Clive, intimated that the present Viceroy should not have the same meed of honour awarded to him as has been awarded to them so far as the well-known motto, mens œqua in arduis, behind the chair of the Governor General is concerned. But, Mr. Speaker, I venture to say that if Lord Clive and Warren Hastings had had their proceedings discussed in this House, and Committees of this House appointed to investigate what they were doing, and how the money was being raised—I am not going to defend the latter part of it at all—I am afraid that we should have had no Indian Empire at all now. There are four points upon which I want to address the House, on which honourable Members who have spoken have completely misunderstood the facts of the case. I will first deal with the statement of the honourable Member for Donegal, who always deals in superlatives, and we are obliged, when he addresses us about India or Ireland or England, to have discount tables with us for immediate use. He stated that £16,000,000 was wrung from the taxpayers of India for the purpose of paying charges which he describes practically as being appropriated by half-pay officers and other gentlemen who had retired from the Indian Service. Now, I did venture to correct him to the extent of half that sum, and he said he did not dispute my facts, and he took that difference between £16,000,000 and £8,000,000 as if I had corrected him by a few sovereigns. Now, I am sure he would not misrepresent any facts wilfully, but just let me tell the House what the figures are for the present year. I am not going to take advantage of bygone times, but this very year we are now in. Now the amount which will have to be remitted to London from India this year is £16,286,500 sterling.

It is an enormous sum.

Yes, it is an enormous sum, but out of that £16,000,000 there has to be £8,815,000 sent over to pay interest upon the capital advanced by persons in this country for the purpose of constructing railways, canals, irrigation works, and the great public works of India. That £8,000,000 does not represent the entire revenue of the railways of India. I am now speaking from memory, and the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong. My present impression is that the gross receipts of the Indian railways last year were between £20,000,000 and £30,000,000. Now one-half of that goes in working expenses paid in wages to the people of India, and is spent in stores consumed in India. I am speaking from memory only, but my point is this, that one-half of the gross revenue of the Indian railways is expended in India amongst the population of India in wages. Now let me come to the £8,000,000. Well, Sir, I am quite willing to make my Friend a present of the home charges in connection with the Indian Army, which is a matter of between £5,000,000 and £6,000,000. These charges, as my honourable Friend is aware, have now Royal Commissions sitting upon them. Now this is a question which has been a matter of dispute between Secretaries of State, Viceroys, and the English Treasury for a large number of years. My honourable Friend behind me is a member of one of these Commissions; and that Commission will not report, although we want its Report. I remember that I was very much censured when I was in the India Office for having proposed arbitration in a dispute about the Navy charges. There was a dispute between the Indian Government and the English Admiralty as to what India should pay, and we could not agree, and so we referred it to the arbitration of the Prime Minister, and he settled it in a very few weeks, and that award made by him was accepted by the Indian Government and the Treasury. I will not now discuss whether those charges are too much or too little, but that disposes of this fearful figure of £16,000,000. One-half of it comes from railway fares and railway rates paid by the inhabitants of India for services rendered and for value received, and those gross receipts are now increasing by leaps and bounds. The ultimate result, as I ventured to tell the House the other night, of all our railway expenditure, including the famine railways, which are purely military railways f which are not producing revenues, putting the whole railway expenditure together—commercial, military, and famine—the net return in India on the capital cost of these lines in 1895 and 1896, when the returns were seriously affected by famine and plague, the returns fell to what? Why, only 5.3 per cent. That is the result of this terrible drain. Then it is said that you are consulting the interest of the capitalists in sending the money out there. Well, the Secretary of State is doing just the contrary, for he is going to pay off the capitalists, who are receiving, some of them 4 per cent. and some 3¾per cent. He is going to get rid of these "blood-suckers" during the present year, in which he proposes to borrow at 3 per cent or less. That, Sir, is giving India the benefit of the credit of England. Now with reference to the statement of my honourable Friend behind me, I have always contended that the true commercial policy for India was to extend its railway system as much as possible; and, Sir, when I propounded that policy, when I had not such sparse benches as we now have, my honourable Friends behind me encouraged me in that policy. The commercial men representing the commerce of the country, and who knew what this policy meant, got up and said that that was the true policy, and they gave figures showing the enormous discrepancies between India and other countries with reference to the total mileage of her railways. Then I was not challenged, and the House sanctioned my scheme, and I venture to congratulate the noble Lord upon having carried on that expenditure under very great difficulties. It was not initiated, I assure him, without considerable trouble and debate, but the result was satisfactory. If we are to do any good to Indian commerce I believe we shall have to adopt these facilities for the transit of goods, and the transit of her products, in order to develop fully the great natural resources of India. If India, as I admit it is, is a poor country, on the other hand it has enormous natural resources, and in that respect it is a rich country. Now, the one link which is wanted between production and consumption in India is the link of rapid communication. Now, my honourable Friend made a still more serious charge with reference to the salt tax, and I should again like to correct him. Now, what is the real position of this salt tax which he has described as 1s. 8d. in the £. I have never been an advocate of the salt tax in this House, and there is nothing which I deplore more than this military expenditure, preventing the present Secretary of State from making a reduction in the salt tax. But let us look at the actual facts. In 1888 the tax on salt was fixed at 2½rupees on 82 pounds. Honourable Members will be able to calculate what that is in their own minds. Now, there has been a great increase in the consumption of salt during the last 10 years, an in- crease far exceeding the proportionate increase of the population. I worked it out with the assistance of the statisticians in the India Office, and I find that the average consumption per head in India is 10¾ pounds per annum. Taking the average of an Indian family, at five members, the taxation would fall at the rate of one and a half rupees per annum per family, or five annas, equivalent to fivepence, per head. Now, that is the taxation, and I do not say it is not a heavy taxation. My honourable Friend was very indignant about irrigation, and asked why more money was not spent on it. He stated that he preferred irrigation to railways, and my honourable Friend who has just sat down shares that view. Let us take the facts about irrigation. The Indian Government has not neglected irrigation. Since 1877, the year of the last great famine, what has been done? The canals and great works have received an extension of 14,000 miles, and there has been an increase of 3¼ million acres in land irrigated, while the Indian Government has spent on great works 130 millions of rupees, and on small works 30 millions. That does not look as if the work had been neglected. But you cannot irrigate all the land in India: it is not a process like making a railway. First, you have to deal with the great sources of irrigation, which are the wells, and scarcely less remarkable has been the enormous development of well irrigation. Wherever wells could be dug they have been dug. But it must be remembered that only one-eleventh of the whole area of India is available for irrigation, and that reduces the figures very materially. My honourable Friend says, "Why do you not tap the rivers?" Certainly; but they must be tapped at a point where there is sufficient water, and the water must not be taken at a point where it would create a swamp, or else there would be malaria—a still worse evil. These irrigation works have been a satisfactory investment for the Indian Government. Irrigation pays them, because they charge for the water supply. The work is now carried out so perfectly that at the present time the irrigated area of India is capable of feeding 120 millions of population. To say, therefore, that the Indian Government have neglected irrigation, and that they do not spend money on it, is not fair criticism. One word more about the land tax, which is rent, and not taxation at all. How has that been affected? My honourable Friend behind me drew a picture of the Indian Government "clutching"—that was the word he used—at the sum given by the charity of Great Britain in order to repay themselves the land tax which had not been discharged owing to the famine. Now, let us look at the figures. The entire cost for the two years 1896–98 of the remission of the land revenue and the temporary suspension of the land revenue was Rx.3,000,000. What is Sir James Westland's estimate for next year? He has estimated that out of this temporary suspension—not remission—amounting to Rx.2,000,000 of land revenue temporarily suspended to people not being in a position to pay Rx.700,000 will be repaid. He may have taken a too sanguine view of the position. I will not dispute that, but, at all events, it is not that terrible oppression which appears to be indicated by my honourable and learned Friend's speech. Now, with reference to one other matter—the burden of taxation—India has been described as a terribly overtaxed country, and we are told we ought to commiserate, as we are bound to commiserate, the poverty of the people, and bound to do everything we can to encourage agriculture, and to help by every possible means the people of India, which I think we do, with the aid of English capital and English credit, to a large extent, and I should be glad to see more of it. The hope of the Committee over which I have the honour to preside is that it may be able to increase the flow of available capital into India on safe terms. But what is the taxation of India? The official statement of the noble Lord which has been placed on the Table of the House, and for which he is responsible, and which is strictly accurate, says that, without making any deduction on account of the Excise and Customs which fall on the natives in the native States, the burden of taxation per head for 1898–9 is one rupee four annas and nine pie, which at the exchange value of 16 pence per rupee is 1s. 9d. per head.

Does that include the land tax?

There is no land tax in India. What he calls land tax is rent. My honourable Friend might as well include the rent of his house in Liverpool. When the average land revenue is added it amounts to two rupees seven annas, or, at the present exchange value, 3s. 4d. I cannot sit still and hear the Government of India unfairly criticised. With reference to the Bill being discussed, it is about as ordinary a Bill as can well be submitted to the consideration of Parliament. The noble Lord proposes, as he has told us—and a British Minister, when he makes a statement in the House of Commons, rigidly adheres to it—to raise £6,000,000 in the course of the present year. He is going to pay off a portion of the debt, and the noble Lord tells us that the net increase in the debt is £2,625,000. That exhausts the £6,000,000. At the same time, he takes borrowing powers. Lord Kimberley took borrowing powers ten years ago, but they are exhausted. You could not have a Secretary of State with the prospect of an emergency without power to borrow money. It seems to me to be a fair and a reasonable proposal, and I can only say I am rather surprised at its moderation. I feared it would have been a great deal more, and I am not sure it will not have to be a great deal more; but, so far, it is as ordinary a financial operation as can be submitted. I therefore venture to express the hope that my honourable Friend, having regard to all these explanations, and being himself a member of the Commission which has not yet reported on the very question he has raised in this Amendment, will withdraw it, and let us go on with the other business.

The right honourable Gentleman has made a very clear statement on many matters connected with India with which some of us are not so familiar as he is. I have no intention of prolonging the Debate, and certainly I have no intention of supporting the Amendment moved from the other side of the House. I do not join in the criticisms made very freely on the other side of the House on the general administration of Indian affairs by the Indian Government. I should like to say that I cordially agree with the right honourable Gentleman in the expression of opinion he gave with regard to railways in India, which seem to have been denounced so much by Members on the other side. I should have thought that at this time of day it was well understood that in India and elsewhere you could not do anything better to develop a country, to benefit its inhabitants, and to increase its produce than to construct railways. At the same time I do feel bound, with reference to the views of the noble Lord the Secretary of State on the future commercial prosperity of India, to say that those views are not shared in the slightest degree by those who I think are competent to give an opinion on the commercial and financial position—I mean those engaged in commerce and industry in India, and those engaged in this country in commerce with India. They are agreed that under present conditions there is every prospect indeed of the commerce and industry of India being very seriously jeopardised. The fact is, that under present conditions, as my honourable Friend the Member for Herefordshire has already shown the House by figures, the margin of exports over imports is very seriously diminishing; and although I am quite aware that the noble Lord's defence or explanation is the plague and famine from which India has suffered, and to which we must give a certain amount of weight, they do not explain, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge, the whole of the decrease in the margin of exports over imports. I am bound to say, further, that, at the present moment, those engaged in industry in India and engaged in commerce with India have little—I am almost inclined to say no confidence whatever in the financial policy of the Indian Government. I am only alluding at the present moment to the financial policy, not the general administration of affairs by the Indian Government. The fact is that some of us hold, amongst commercial men, that the Indian Government take too narrow a view of the situation, and that they fix their minds, naturally perhaps, simply upon the ex-exchange question, so far as it affects the indebtedness of the country. They have disregarded altogether the other effects which are produced on its general welfare, development, and commerce. The fact is that they do not seem to realise that the fabric of the Indian Empire does not depend on questions of exchange; it depends upon the development of the country and the increase of commerce between India and the rest of the world, and any policy which affects that commerce will react on the Government and on the Government finances. I feel certain that if they could take a wider view of the whole circumstances of the case they would come to the conclusion on this question of exchange, that this would be found to be a small question as compared with the policy which would develop the resources of the country, and so increase the revenue. As a matter of fact, the policy pursued at present of closing the mints has had the effect of strangling the resources of the country and depressing the trade of India. I am convinced that a very great part of the diminution of our exports has resulted from the money stringency in that country. I must say I think there is some good ground for a considerable amount of distrust of the Indian Government in the matter of finance. I should like to bring before the House an extraordinary statement in one of the dispatches of the Indian Government to the noble Lord. I do not wish to say anything against the Committee over which the noble Lord presided. He said he will do all he possibly can, with the information at his disposal, to find a solution of the difficulty. But how did the Indian Government treat this Committee? When they got wind that it was to be appointed they absolutely insisted that if the Committee were appointed it must be told that the question of principle was no longer in issue, and that opinion was only invited on the practical methods of introducing and effectively establishing a gold standard. Now, this, I understand, is not the position of the Committee, but it was the demand of the Indian Government, binding the Secretary of State, if they possibly could, and I think that is a reason for some distrust. I hope the noble Lord will be strong enough to resist this mandate of the Indian Government. He is in a position to do so; but there is a very great feeling of uneasiness at the present moment with regard to the way in which this matter is going to be considered; and I am also bound to say that the amount of secrecy which is being observed in regard to this Commission is doing a very great deal of harm indeed, because it is making many people feel that it is a foregone conclusion, and that there will not be full play given to public opinion, and especially to those who know something about the subject, and who are in a position to give information to the Commission. There is one other point I wish to refer to. It has been pointed out that there will be a reserve balance under this loan which will be in the hands of the Indian Government to be dealt with as they think best. I have no objection that there should be a balance in the hands of the Indian Government, but I do trust that it will be perfectly understood that no portion of this balance is to be devoted to the establishment of a gold standard in India. I think the noble Lord gave an assurance that there would not be, but I think it necessary to emphasise the point, and to get a full assurance that under no circumstances whatever will the Indian Government set up a gold standard. The artificial nature of the exchange is doing a great deal of harm to the trade and industries of India, and I hope that at any rate the noble Lord and the Indian Government will proceed no further in the direction of maintaining a 1s. 4d. rupee, except under the gravest emergency. I have no intention of opposing the Bill before the House,

I wish, to say that with regard to the statement as to the nature of the debt of India to this country we are considerably agreed. There is no doubt that that debt is in the nature of interest on reproductive expenditure. I will mention to the House that I made a calculation this week of the average yield per acre of land in India compared with land in England and France, and I found that the land yields only £1 sterling per acre, against £4 16s. per acre in England and £4 12s. per acre in France —little more than one-fifth of what the land in these countries yields. Therefore I do not agree with the honourable Member for Wolverhampton, that the burden of taxation in India is light. He said that the whole amount of taxation in India amounts to only two and a half rupees per head. Well, the whole income of the people is only twenty-seven rupees per head. That is nine per cent., and I find that in this country the people are taxed to the extent only of six per cent.

moved—

"That the Bill be considered this day six months."

He said: In rising to move the Motion that stands in my name, I ought, perhaps, in the first instance, to submit to the House the reasons why I have taken this course, which, though in order, is somewhat unusual. I will remind the House that this Bill is a Government Measure, to which I believe the Government attach some importance; yet up to the present moment it has not occupied more than a couple of hours of the time of the House on the Second Reading; on the First Reading there was no discussion, and its consideration in Committee was confined to about five per cent. of the Members of this House. Therefore there is some excuse in my asking the House, before considering the Bill in detail, to consider more carefully than they have hitherto done the principle on which the Bill is founded. The Bill, in the first instance, proposes—and it is remarkable, as coming from the present Government—to confiscate private rights—I do not hesitate to use that word—without compensation; and the House is aware that neither in the Committee stage nor in the Report stage is it competent for any private Member to move that compensation be inserted. I am told that that would involve a grant of public money, and that it can only be done by a Money Bill. Therefore it will not be open to move, if private rights are injuriously affected or destroyed, that compensation, be given. That is another reason why the House should carefully consider the Bill now. The third point is that by this Bill the civil rights of a great many of Her Majesty's subjects are largely interfered with. I do not think I am overstating the case, because the right of the clergy to appeal to the Crown in certain cases is to be withheld in this Bill, notwithstanding the fact that at least one Royal Commission—I believe two Royal Commissions —referred to the right of appeal to the Crown as an indefeasible right. In the fourth place, the Bill is no less remarkable for what it omit to do than for what it does. To begin with, the Bill does not propose to deal with the rights of any dignitary of the Church: episcopal rights of patronage and the rights of patronage of the Crown are left untouched. I shall endeavour to show the House that what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. The Bill is brought forward on the attractive plea that it will remove alleged abuses connected with the cure of souls. Legislation on that, subject has been passed at a not very remote date, and that legislation is working with satisfaction and good results to the Church. Only six years ago an Act was passed, at the instance of the late Archbishop—the Clergy Discipline Act—which has undoubtedly purged the Church of many unfit clergy. That Act gave power to parishioners to bring a suit against an immoral clergyman in the Consistory Court, and the bishop had power, on conviction, to deprive the delinquent of his living, and unfrock him. At present, therefore, large powers exist for dealing with immoral clergy. By the 1885 Act—curiously misnamed the Pluralities Act Amendment Act, for it had nothing to do with pluralities—large powers were given to the bishop to suspend an incumbent neglectful of his duties. Still, it may be said these Acts have not prevented unfit men from appointment to livings, and criticism has been in vain directed to obtain specific statement of grounds of unfitness other than those covered by the existing law. I ventured, on the Second Reading of this Bill, to draw the attention of the House to the very ill-defined grounds of unfitness which it is proposed to insert in the Bill, and, in reply, the First Lord of the Treasury said—

"I am quite ready, if discussion should show it to be necessary and desirable, to make it as clear as possible, on the face of the Bill, what are the kind of offences, what are the kind of shortcomings, for which the bishop is to be justified in refusing presentation."

That was an exceedingly fair offer on the part of the right honourable Gentleman; but the pressure of business due to his work at the Foreign Office in the absence of Lord Salisbury deprived us of his presence at the Grand Committee, or I feel sure we should have had his help in the fulfilment of that promise, Now, Sir, I say that there are very recent Parliamentary enactments for the purpose of preventing unfit men from either being instituted, or remaining in office if negligent in the performance of their duties. With the object of preventing unfit persons being instituted into livings every Member of this House will sympathise; but how does the Government propose to do it? I venture to think that they have proceeded under a confusion of ideas for which they are not originally responsible. This is the first, time the Government, as a Government, have attempted to deal with this matter, but there have, as the House knows, been various proposals, Session after Session, in the hands of private Members. These proposals have proceeded on a confusion of ideas as to the way in which unfit men should be prevented from being instituted, and the Government have apparently taken these private Bills as a model, and have, therefore, fallen into the same confusion of ideas. They have adopted two roads for approaching the subject, while one would have been sufficient. They proceed, first of all, by putting restrictions upon the exercise of the rights of patrons, and they increase the power of the bishop to deal with unfit persons presented, while they also propose to increase the number of offences for which a bishop may find a person unfit and remove him. Here arises the confusion of ideas. The Church of England has never measured the fitness of the presentee by the standard of the patron nominating. The right of the patron, as the House well knows, is not the right of institution; the bishop is the sole judge of fitness. The Church has never depended on the character of the patron; patronage is a form of transferable property which might be bought and sold, and pass by demise or, on bankruptcy, in a trustee. The patron may be an absentee; he may be an atheist. To attempt to argue that the character of the presentee depends upon the character of the patron is to condemn wholesale that system of private patronage which has existed for centuries in this country. The safeguard the Church has always looked to for the fitness of the presentee is the bishop. The bishop holds the key of ordination and of institution. The right of private patronage was not created by Parliament. It arose in the nature of an arrangement between the Church and private donors, by which private donors, in consideration of giving the money for the building of the church and for endowing the church, received the right of nominating to the bishop and the ordinary a clerk in holy orders for the purpose of ministering to the cure of souls. The patron cannot admit the individual to the spiritualities of the office. He has only the right of nomination, and the bishop is the only person who can admit or reject. That being so, how is it logically suggested that you are going to get a better class of presentee by imposing restrictions upon the exercise of the right of nomination if the power be with the bishop? I can understand the argument that the bishop has not sufficient power in a matter of this kind, and I can understand the proposal to give the bishop more power, and that there are certain grounds upon which the bishop cannot at present exercise this power, and so long as the offences are clearly defined, and so long as a clear opportunity is given to the presentee of repudiating the accusations made against him, I for one will heartily support any such proposals. But I submit that to restrict the right of private patronage for the purpose of securing more fit men to administer the cure of souls in the Church will not secure any such result; proposals to interfere with the right of private patronage, apart from their injustice, are altogether unnecessary. They are an encumbrance to the Bill, and they will not attain any of the objects which it is alleged they have in view. And, then, Sir, we have had no definite statement, except a general one, that there are abuses, and I would ask the Government to state in detail what are the abuses which they seek to cure by the proposals in this Bill. It will not do to simply state to the House that there are abuses, and that there are scandals; and I think that the Government should condescend to detail and tell us precisely what are the abuses and evils which they have in their mind which they desire by this Bill to remedy. Of course, I know that every member of the Committee, who has spent laborious days upstairs examining this Bill, knows that again and again the statement was made that it had been proved that there was something corrupt, and something wrong, in the idea of a man purchasing an advowson with a view to an early presentation. For the life of me I cannot see what there is in it. Take, for example, the case of Church Patronage Trustees. Why, almost every time they get a chance of acquiring a living they desire to do it because they want to put into that living men representing their own particular views, and the sooner the vacancy occurs the sooner they can exercise the right of patronage, and the sooner they can exercise that right, the better pleased they are. Under this Bill now introduced it is provided that the owner of the right of patronage, if a vacancy arises within 12 months after he has acquired that right, has, forsooth, to go before my lord bishop and assure him that he had not the faintest notion that there was going to be a vacancy, and, unless he can assure the bishop of that to the bishop's own satisfaction, mark the extraordinary result. Why, the presentee, however good a man he may be, is to be rejected by the bishop because the patron of the living acquired the right when he had a notion that there was going to be a vacancy. Now, how is that going to assure a better man being put into the living? The Government will, no doubt, tell us by whom that right of patronage is going to be exercised, for that does not appear in the Bill as it stands. A. B. may acquire nine months or three months ago a right of patronage. A vacancy arising, A. B. thereupon exercises the right of patronage, and presents a fit and proper person to the bishop. The question of selection is not to be brought into account by the bishop at all, but the patron is to satisfy his lordship that at the time he bought the advowson he had not any notion that there was going to be a vacancy. If he does not satisfy the bishop what is going to happen in the nine months?

Your contention is wrong.

I have no desire in any way to mislead the House, but they have the Bill before them, and since I am challenged upon it I will refer honourable Members to the exact words in the clause of the Bill, and then I think the House will say that I am in no way misrepresenting the case. Clause 2 provides that—

"A bishop may refuse to institute or admit a presentee to a benefice (a) if at the date of his presentation not more than one year has elapsed since a transfer, as defined by the first section of this Act, of the right of patronage of the benefice, unless it be proved that the transfer was not effected in view of the probability of a vacancy within such year."

Now I say, Sir, having read that, those words fully justify the statement I made, and the Bill bears out my contention that if a man acquires a right to a presentation, and three months after he has acquired it a vacancy arises, and he seeks to present a fit and proper person, the bishop may refuse his presentee unless the patron can satisfy the bishop by practically proving a negative and showing that at the time he acquired the advowson three months ago he had not any idea that there was going to be a vacancy; otherwise, the bishop can refuse to appoint. I ask again, who is going to exercise the right in the remaining nine months? Is the parish to be left without an incumbent, or is the right to revert back again to the transferor Upon what principle is it that you are going to elect a better man and choose a more fit person than the man presented by the patron who acquired it three months ago? Is the right to lapse to the bishop? If so, you are going first of all to have a great increase of episcopal patronage at the expense of private patronage, and that is a matter which the First Lord of the Treasury has already expressed himself against. If you do that you are going to put a strong temptation into the hands of the bishop not to be satisfied, because the patronage is going to fall to himself if he refuses a nominee of the patron. That is one of the extraordinary proposals which I venture to describe, and which I think I describe rightly, as an invasion of the right of private patronage. A curious and somewhat euphonious argument has been used in defence of this right. It is said by people who have always stood up for full compensation, if private rights are injured, if there is any detriment of private property, that in this case we are not taking away the right, but we are only introducing regulations and restrictions for governing the exercise of that right. That is a very euphonious argument, and Dick Turpin might have used a similar argument when he presented a pistol to the heads of those persons whom he unfortunately waylaid, and he might have said that he was only regulating and restricting the enjoyment of their property. It seems to me that the argument is just about as just and honest in the one case as it is in the other. Sir, I find in the discussions in this House for many years past—for centuries past —the principle of according just treatment to those who have been deprived of their rights of property by Act of Parliament, has always been defended, and generally with success. I find that Mr. Gladstone, in the first speech he ever delivered in this House on the 3rd of June, 1832, when he was advocating the just treatment of a class which is regarded with abhorrence to-day—that is, the owners of slaves—claimed just treatment for them for the loss of their property—a treatment from which we should almost shrink, in connection with flesh and blood, to-day. He defended the slaveowners, and contended that they had honestly and legally acquired property, and he pointed out that the Legislature had created property in slaves. Sir, this House has created property in advowsons, and this House, by enactment, has recognised the existence of that property, and has passed more than one Act with that object. The Act of Lord West bury was passed for the purpose of directly encouraging the sale of Crown livings. Under that Act I am informed that no less than half a, million sterling has been realised by the sale of Crown livings. It may be that many persons in this House, on both sides, desire to see the trafficking in livings abolished. That may be desirable, but let no one vote for this Bill under the impression that it is going to do anything of the kind. It is a false cry, and if it is used in any sense by the supporters of the Bill it is to get the votes of those who are in favour of the abolition of that right of sale, which is not provided for in this Bill at all. The First Lord of the Treasury some time ago pointed out the extreme difficulty of a proposal of that kind, and whatever it may be thought desirable to do to-day, in the way of abolishing the right of sale, at present enjoyed under the direct sanction of Parliament, this Bill will not do it. I submit, however unfashionable the doctrine may be to-day, that this House has no business to associate itself with any proposal for cutting down and abridging private rights of property without honest compensation. If I may venture to prophesy, I would, say that that Party which associates itself with doctrines which do not protect these rights, will be sowing the wind to-day and reaping the whirlwind tomorrow. It is said in defence of the abridgment of these rights that they are only being restricted and regulated, and the argument put forward is that this is not the ordinary kind of property, but is a trust, and that Parliament has power to interfere in the exercise of that trust. Now, Sir, what is the trust? It is quite true that there is a trust involved, but the terms of that trust have been laid down by Act of Parliament, and it is that a patron is bound to present to the bishop a clerk in Holy Orders for institution, and if the patron neglects within six months, if he fails to discharge that trust, and it is the only legal trust imposed upon him, it is safeguarded by a power given to the bishop. If the patron fails to discharge his trust in six months, Parliament says that in that case the right of patronage shall be vested in the bishop, and the bishop then has the right, by lapse of filling up the incumbency, because the patron has neglected the duty and the trust imposed upon him by Parliament. The appointment of a presentee is not a trust which the Church or Par- liament has bestowed on the patron, though happily we have a large number of patrons who exercised such care in the choice of the man whom they present that he is invariably accepted. But, although that undoubtedly is the case, the duty and responsibility is on the bishop and not on the patron. In illustration of my argument I may mention that, in accordance with a proposition moved by the honourable Member for Gloucester, a Return was presented to this House on February 17th last giving not only the form of institution to benefices, but also the form of testimonials required in Canterbury, York, and London prior to admission to benefices; and the House will remember that in the diocese of York, for instance, the practice is that, by whomsoever a man may be presented, the archbishop, before instituting him, requires the testimony of three beneficed clergymen in regard to his fitness if he lives within the diocese; while, if he be not resident within the diocese of York, the archbishop requires the endorsement of the bishop of the diocese from which he comes. I think that sufficiently shows that the bishops do not depend, and have never depended, on the patrons with regard to the fitness of the men who have been presented. Under this Bill, in order to secure the greater fitness of presentees, the Government propose to exercise a certain restraint upon private patronage, and these forms of restraint are somewhat singular. I have called the attention of the House to one of them, but there are two other restrictions to which I would also draw attention. A patron must not in future sell, the right of next presentation; that is to say, that if he sells at all he must sell his full interest. I would ask again upon what ground that is sought for. A general statement is made, but without detail. "Oh," it is said, "the greater part of these scandals are in connection with the sale of next presentations"; but I very respectfully ask whoever is going to speak for the Government to tell the House what are the precise scandals in the sale of next presentations which it is desired by this Bill to stop. The only object to be kept in view is the fitness of the person presented. It is said, "Oh, a man will buy the next presentation with a view to presenting some particular person." Again, I ask the House, in the name or common sense, why that should not be done if the person designated be a fit person. The exercise of private patronage has again and again been described in this House by one honourable Member as the salt of the Church of England, and by another as preserving that catholicity and broadness which are among her glories. Under the Clergy Discipline Act of 1892, in the diocese of York, there have been three cases of immoral clergymen who have been deprived of their livings, and of those three clergymen two were episcopal nominees, while the third was a nominee of the Lord Chancellor. Thus, if you take the cases of these unfit men, you find that the Crown and the bishops make at least as many mistakes as private patrons, and therefore I ask why you should deal under this Bill with the rights of a particular class of persons who have exercised their patronage well, while you do nothing to interfere with episcopal rights or those of the Crown. Before I pass from that subject I should say that on the Second Reading I was under the impression that the rights of private patrons would not be injuriously affected so far as this restriction goes, but I am now convinced that that is not the case, and that by taking away the right of next presentation, and by providing that unless a man registers his transfer within two months, or such time as the bishop may permit under special circumstances, the transfer is absolutely invalid, you do destroy part of the value of advowsons. These restrictions are most injuriously affecting the right of patronage, and I may, perhaps, be permitted to put before the House a few remarks on this subject from the pen of Mr. Chancellor Dibden, who was the reputed draughtsman of the Bill of 1896, and who is also the editor of the Record newspaper. Writing in the Contemporary Review in February, 1893, he speaks as follows with regard to the effect of such Measures on private rights and private interests—

"How far it is permissible to apply new checks which in their operation will depreciate advowson property without giving compensation is a question of degree. I am bound to admit that not only this but every fresh obstacle put in the way of the sale must detract from the market value of advowsons. Even the public discussion of the subject, and still more the introduction of Patronage Bills into Parliament, has this effect."

That is a notable admission coming from one who was the author of a private patronage Bill. He admits what must be obvious to any fair-minded man—that if these checks are sanctioned by Parliament they must cause detriment to private rights; and I believe the House will agree with me that if Parliament takes away private rights it is the duty of Parliament to give compensation for the injury. The second line upon which the Government proceed is to enlarge the grounds upon which the bishop may refuse presentees, and for that purpose a number of grounds are enumerated. But these grounds are so vague and ill-defined that I think Parliament may be relied on not to accept them, since it is difficult to say what some of them really mean. Practically they remain as on the First Reading, with one exception. That exception is with regard to neglect of duty. We strove in vain some time ago to get a definition of that, but by pressing the Government to accept the definition which had been previously rejected—that of the Act of 1885—I am glad to say that the Government did accept that definition; the other ill-defined phrases still remain. We still have "physical or mental incapacity," "pecuniary embarrassment," and "grave misconduct," as to which I may say that on the Committee stage we asked the Solicitor General what the meaning of "grave misconduct" was, and the honourable and learned Gentleman replied that it was more than he could say. The object of putting in these words was to enlarge the power of the bishop; but what is the bishop going to declare to be grave misconduct if no standard is laid down for it? I venture to any that the House will be most unwise, and will be passing legislation based on very unwise principles, if it sets out in the manner suggested something which no man can define, and leaves it to someone else to say what shall or shall not constitute "grave misconduct." The argument is that the net shall be wide enough to catch the offender, and that is quite true, but it should not be wide enough to catch the innocent as well. With regard to the tribunal which this Bill proposes to set up, it is provided that the bishop shall be the tribunal in the first instance, and there is no judicial hearing before him. The First Lord said very fairly that if you have a right to appeal you must put the bishop out of the position of being the judge in the first instance and at the same time a party in the Court of Appeal, and that is perfectly true. There is already a very efficient tribunal under the Clergy Discipline Act of 1892. It is rather unkind to cast these unpleasant duties upon the bishops, and I suggest that you should relieve them of those duties, and adopt the course taken by Parliament in 1892 and use the Consistory Court set up by the Bill of that year. Observe what, under the present arrangement, the Government are doing. Having given the bishop such large powers in the first instance, they are obliged to make him responsible for what he is doing, although he is only acting in a judicial capacity. First you embark the bishop upon an inquiry on the question of misconduct or pecuniary embarrassment or evil life. You give him the sole responsibility of deciding upon that point, and then, if he decides wrongly, you are obliged to make him a party to the suit which may follow, and he may be cast in costs. Is that course going to secure fitter men for the Church of England, or to secure the better exercise by the bishops of the powers entrusted to them? I believe that if the First Lord had been present in Committee when the Bill was being discussed that part of it would have been amended, for, speaking on the Second Reading, he said—

"There is a considerable weight of authority against the view which the Government have taken."

He proceeded to point out the inconvenience of making the bishops sit as judges in the first instance, and then making them parties to a possible rehearing of the case, and added—

"This is not an essential point of the Bill, and in any case it is not vital."

In view of that statement I hope very strongly that the Measure may be amended in this particular point. One other matter on which I would say a few words is with regard to the omissions from the Bill. I have pointed out that it does not propose to restrict in any way the right of episcopal or Crown presentations, although if any restriction is to be imposed at all it is as necessary that it should be imposed in the case of episcopal nominees or Crown nominees as in the case of private presentations. Everyone in this House sees from time to time pressure exercised to bring about the return of Crown nominees, and I am bound to say I do not think those men bear favourable comparison with those presented by private patrons. The Bill expressly excludes questions of doctrine and ritual, though I suppose that if we are to deal in this House with the reform of abuses in the Church of England we ought to deal with them by this Measure. It is not pretended that the evils with which the Bill does seek to deal are in any way prevalent in the Church. The danger to the Church is not in the existence of immoral men, for they are known to all. The Bishop of London, in his last charge to his clergy, pointed out that the danger they had to face was not that arising from men of evil life, whose influence was discounted. In my judgment the real danger is from men who are not keeping their ordination vows—men who by their conduct are alienating some of the best and truest sons of the Church of England. The Bill does nothing in this matter, and I cannot help reminding the House of a statement by one whose words will be received with respect on all sides. Lord Beaconsfield once said—

"The battle of the Reformation will have to be fought over again in England."

There never was a truer statement. These are the real abuses which require remedying in the Church of England. A solemn charge was delivered a few weeks ago by the Bishop of Sodor and Man to the Manx Church congregation, and I believe, with that right reverend prelate, that these petty reforms sink into insignificance beside what is the real danger. I thank the House most sincerely for the indulgence it has granted me. It has been an unpleasant task for me and many who sit on this side of the House to pass these criticisms on this proposal—it is unpleasant to any supporter of the Government to take the position I do in connection with such a Measure. It has never been suggested in this House, but it has not been thought unfair in some quarters outside to suggest that some of us are influenced by personal motives. Perhaps the House will allow me to say that I have no interest, direct or indirect, in the question of private patronage, and that I have only been actuated by a sense of public duty in the course I took with the Bill two years ago and the course I take with it to-day. It is because I feel that an unjust slur is cast by the Bill upon the clergy of the Church of England, and because I feel that while the Measure will do very little good it will do infinite harm, I take the course of moving that it be read this day six months.

I beg to second the Amendment, though I do it on different grounds from those on which it has been moved by my honourable Friend. He spoke mainly in the interest of patrons; I am more interested in the parishioners, though I fully agreed with his last remarks to the effect that the abuses with which the Bill deals are insignificant as compared with those which it does not touch. I appeal to the Government to take into consideration these heavier abuses with which the country is ringing at the present time, and to find some place in the Bill to deal with them. It is not a pleasant duty which I have to perform to-night, but it is a duty—I have to refer to the rapid and alarming spread of Roman Catholicism in the Church of England. I have received from all parts of the country numbers of letters urging me to go on; and I believe there is throughout the country, seething under the surface, a mass of discontent of which the Government has but little knowledge. We may pass several years without getting another opportunity of giving expression to this deep feeling of discontent, and I hope I may be allowed to lay before the House my reasons for objecting to this Bill, and asking the Government to consider whether it cannot introduce one of larger scope. I am not one of those naturally inclined to ask Parliament to interfere in the affairs of the Church. I am a Free Churchman. I believe it is much better for a spiritual body to govern its own affairs. I do not do this from choice—I do it from compulsion; because we have "the Protestant Reformed Religion, established by law," in which every minister gives a solemn pledge of fidelity to its doctrines and formularies. It being an established Church, there is no court except Parliament to come to, and surely it is a fit topic for consideration whether the time has not come to create machinery which, in some way or another, will preserve the Protestant character of the Church. I say the country is stirred, at the present time, to its very depths with regard to the revelations which have been made on the subject of the most daring, the most open, and the most flagrant violation of the Articles and the Prayer Book of the Church. The fact is that a large section of the clergy seem to lay themselves out to show their contempt for their ordination vows. They treat with defiance the mast solemn obligation which a man can enter into. Will you allow me, Mr. Speaker, just to read this solemn declaration which every clergyman has to subscribe at his ordination—

"I,—, clerk, do solemnly make the following declaration:—I assent to the Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer. I believe the doctrine of the Church of England as therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word of God, and in prayer and administration of the sacraments I will use the form in the said Book prescribed and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by legal authority."

I ask the House, how many clergymen are keeping that vow, and how many are breaking it? I say there are thousands who are breaking that vow, and treating it as a thing of no importance. The action of Mr. Kensit was a very small thing in itself, but small things are often the beginning of great revolutions, and I believe this is the beginning of a great revolution. The action of Mr. Kensit has called the attention of the House to the kind of service going on in many of the London churches at this day. I do not know whether the House will allow me to read just a few lines from a letter which I have received from him. That may bring before, the House what is now going on, not only in one church, but in scores of churches. Here is what happened on Good Friday at St. Cuthbert's. Mr. Kensit Writes to me—

Order, order! This is a Bill relating to the transfer of benefices only. The honourable Member may argue that defects in doctrine or ritual should be included among the cases which justify a bishop in refusing to institute an incumbent; but if the honourable Member is going to argue that the whole question of doctrine and ritual ought to be included in this Bill, and to urge the necessity of some machinery for dealing with this question generally in the Church, that, I think, would be outside the scope of the Bill.

May I not be allowed, at least in a general way, to point to existing abuses which require the agency of a Bill like this to deal with them? Without going into minute details, may I not be allowed to describe them, in a general way at least, because, unless I do that, it is quite impossible to present to the House an argument in favour of that enlargement of the Bill which, in common with many Members of this House, I think desirable. I will be very careful—

I think the honourable Member has misunderstood me. He is entitled to go into the question of doctrine as bearing upon institution, but not to argue as if this Bill was not merely a Benefices Bill but also a Bill for the regulation and discipline of the clergy.

Well, Mr. Speaker, the argument which I will lay before the House is this: I think these clergymen and these curates who carry on such services as the veneration of the cross, which the Articles and Homilies of the Church of England pronounce to be idolatry, should be incapable of institution. This Bill, Mr. Speaker, includes among the cases where clergymen shall not be instituted those guilty of gross misconduct. Now, I hold that the veneration of the cross, which the Church of England describes as idolatry should be considered gross misconduct under this Bill. The bishops

I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The honour- able Member has given notice of an Amendment to this Bill to extend its scope to illegal practices in the Church. Is it in order for him to second a Motion for the rejection of the Bill altogether—to put off its Second Reading for six months—on the ground he has now stated, he having that Amendment on the Paper?

The honourable Member is not out of order.

Well, Mr. Speaker, bowing to your previous ruling, I just wish to state, generally, that no doubt many Members of this House have, in the last few months, read the accounts which appeared week by week in the Daily Chronicle of the Romish services going on in many of the London churches. I would simply say this: that in many cases the Mass is celebrated precisely the same as in any Roman Catholic church. The Roman Missal is used, Adoration of the Host, and the reservation of the Sacrament for worship take place exactly the same as in any Roman Catholic church. And those clergy have, one and all of them, signed the Article of the Church which declares that these Masses are blasphemous fables. I wish to address this argument to the House, that the clergy who break their solemn ordination vows in so shameful a manner should not be capable of institution to benefices. These clergy who perform Masses have all subscribed to the Thirty-first Article, which states—

"Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the form which it was commonly said, that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain and guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits."— Art. 31.

And yet these very men are teaching precisely the doctrines which they themselves have repudiated at the most solemn moment of their lives. Now, I wish to ask this House, or any assembly of Englishmen, what do they think of the honesty of men like those? What would they think of an officer of the Army or Navy who swore allegiance to Her Majesty and then joined the enemy? What do they say of a clergyman who swears allegiance to the Articles of the Established Church of England, and then practically gives allegiance to the Church of Rome? Only one name can be given, and ought to be given, to such conduct, and I will not utter it. I say that the law of truth is equally binding on all men, and that this anarchy in the Church of England is demoralising. It is teaching men to tamper with truth, and is lowering the whole standard of morals. These men who ought to be setting an example to the nation are, in the most shameless way, disregarding their duty, and I say this state of things is doing unspeakable harm to the country. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am well aware that when anyone takes this line he is accused at once of trying to initiate persecution. The cry of persecution is at once raised if you try in any way to restrain these men who dare to disregard their vows. Is it right to call it persecution? These men have voluntarily entered into these vows. They have received a valuable consideration for them. Is there anything wrong in calling upon them to fulfil them? Is it called persecution when the law enforces upon a poor clerk fulfilment of his contract, or when obligations are enforced upon any person in a humble station of life? Why should it be called persecution when the law requires a minister of religion to perform duties which he has solemnly promised to do? The English people are poor judges of a great number of these technical questions which are constantly thrown in our faces. These men are masters of the art of saying a thing so as to confuse the sense. You may read through elaborate accounts of what is going or in these Romish churches, but I defy any man, unless he has had a special training in ecclesiastical language, to under stand what it means. It is all expressed in language foreign to the public, and for a long time I believe the public hardly knew what was going on. They were given long lists of strange vestments, and a number of attitudes and genuflexions, expressed in, a strange jargon, and they scarce knew what it meant, and thought the whole thing was tomfcolery, and not worthy of attention. But they are gradually be ginning to understand that it means a revolution: it means a revolution in those vital doctrines which lie at the foundation of all religion. They are beginning to find out that these albs and birettas and chasubles, and all the rest of it, which I call man-millinery, mean something more important, mean a revolution in the doctrine of the Church of England—in fact, the introduction of the Mass, transubstantiation, and all the Romish dogmas which we thought the Reformation had swept away, and to which certainly the Thirty-nine Articles afford no quarter. We are beginning to find out it is not a mere question of millinery; it is a question of fundamental doctrine. I say further, there is nothing which the English people detest more than the Confessional, and my belief is the rapid progress of Confession in the Church of England is one of the things which will sooner or later rouse the people of this country and cause a religious revolution. And I think there ought to be provision in this Bill to save boys and girls when at confirmation from being required to go to Confession, because distressing cases have come before me in the past few months. Parents have come to me and told me how their little girl went to confirmation, and was told that she could not be confirmed unless she went to the priest for Confession and Absolution. Parents have told me with the deepest emotion that they were grieved and offended at the demands made upon their children. This is a question which goes to the very root of family life in this country. And let me tell the House it has been my lot to read some of the catechisms prepared for these children by clergymen of late years, and I have been astounded at the things little children are required to learn, which sap the foundations of independence—I would almost say, of moral character. Here is one of them. Perhaps the House will let me read it, because I have met the substance of this time after time in other catechisms. I quote from a book prepared by clergy for children of from six and a-half to seven years of age; and here is what a child is taught—

"It is to the priest, and to the priest only, that a child must acknowledge his sins, if he desires that God should forgive him. Do you know why? It is because God, when on earth, gave to His priests, and to them alone, the divine power of forgiving men their sins."

"Go to the priest, who is the doctor of your soul, and who cures it in the name of God."

"I have known poor children who concealed their sins in Confession for years. They were very unhappy, were tormented with remorse, and if they had died in that state, they would certainly have gone to the everlasting fires of hell."

Now, I say these awful doctrines are being taught to-day to tens of thousands of young children, often unknown to their parents, and I say that clergy who do this ought not to be capable of institution to benefices. I say those Confessional books which are circulated about the country are a disgrace to any church. I believe that the notorious book, "The Priest in Absolution," is still in use, though it was denounced strongly by all the bishops in Convocation and in the House of Lords. That book is still in use, poisoning the minds of children in this country.

Will the honourable Member say who the book is by?

By a Committee of the Clergy of the Holy Cross Society. Now, I am going to ask the House to listen to the opinion of the present Prime Minister, which I hope will be of some use to the House in guiding honourable Members as to the action which they will take upon the Bill. The Prime Minister used these words—

"Among the English people generally, among thinking men, there is no difference of opinion upon this question of habitual confession. We have seen it tried in other countries. It was tried in olden time in our own. We know that besides its being unfavourable to that which we believe to be Christian truth, in its result it has been injurious to the independence and virility of nations to an extent to which probably it has been given to no other institution to affect the character of mankind. I believe that if there are men in this country who think they will ever persuade the English people to adopt the practice of habitual confession, they are proposing the most chimerical and the wildest scheme that ever entered into the heads of any men. No doubt our Church does not encourage habitual confession, and that practice is opposed to the religious convictions of the English people. But it is not only a religious question. It so happens that this practice is deeply opposed to the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies which have been developed among the English people ever since they became a free people. The English people are specially jealous of putting unrestricted power into the hands of a single man. More than any other system the practice of habitual confession does put unrestricted and irresponsible power into the hands of a single man. An Englishman values and cherishes the private independence of his family life; he looks with abhorrence upon any system that introduces another power into that family life, that introduces a third person between father and daughter and husband and wife. I believe that these reasons, apart from religious doctrine, have such powerful influence upon the English, people that it would require the very strongest conviction of a positive revelation to induce them to conform to a practice which is so utterly opposed to their habits and feelings."

That was the opinion of Lord Salisbury in 1873, and I have no reason to doubt that it is the opinion of the Government of the day, of which he is head. If that is so, why do not the Government enlarge this Bill, or bring in another Bill to deal with this state of things. No one can tell how many persons have been demoralised by this practice. The people of this country are very practical in character; they are but little interested in metaphysical doctrines, but their common sense and moral instincts revolt at the practice of auricular confession; and if any one thing will cause the downfall of the National Church it will be the habitual use of confession. The English people do not want this country to become a second Spain. How has she become what she is? It is through 300 years of the rule of the Holy Inquisition and the confessional. It is through 300 years of the domination of priests, through 300 years of the stamping out of the freedom of the people. A large section of our clergy, if they had the power, would make this country a second Spain; they recommend nearly all the doctrines which have made Spain what she is. I am not surprised at the disinclination of some of the bishops to repress these illegal practices when they themselves are among the chief conspirators. They control most of the theological colleges where candidates ministry are indoctrinated with Romish and sacerable period of their lives. There is a small minority of the bishops who do their duty, but, I am afraid, only a small minority. These evils have arisen from the fact that the guidance of reforms in the Church of England is left in the hands of the bishops, who are in many cases the men who are conspiring to Romanise the Church. They have stood in the way of all reform. The Public Worship Act of 1874 provided a drastic method of dealing with evils of this kind. Why was it not put into force? Because a veto on all proceedings under it was given to the bishops. The very first thing which has to be done if the House wishes to deal with this question thoroughly is to take away this power of veto from the bishops, and so allow reform to proceed from the laity themselves. I say it is a shame that there should be such abuses tolerated at this time of day. There are a number of secret societies in the Church of England pledged by solemn vows to restore Catholic and Roman doctrine. I must say that I was not fully aware of this until recent years. I did not think such a state of things was possible. The necessity for prompt action was never so great as now. The country has become alive to the existence of a widespread conspiracy to Romanise the Church of England. That remarkable book, "The Secret History of the Oxford Movement," has laid bare the conspiracy. It shows from authentic documents how many secret societies exist in the Church, the common object of which is to undermine the Thirty-nine Articles, to destroy the Protestant character of the Church, and to prepare for its reunion with the Church of Rome. This is the avowed object of the "Order of Corporate Reunion." It has bishops secretly consecrated, who are prepared to give reordination to such of the clergy as will submit to it. Dr. F. G. Lee, Vicar of All Saints, Lambeth, is believed to be one of these bishops who possess orders which Roman priests have acknowledged to be valid, and he is believed to have secretly reordained several hundred Anglican clergy. He has never denied this charge. He has publicly stated—

"As I am personally challenged on this point, I hold, and have always held (mere rough contradictions have no effect upon me), that the Pope is the Archbishop's (of Canterbury) direct spiritual superior both in rank and authority."

To show how this movement is regarded by the Vatican, I quote from a letter from the English correspondent in 1878 of the Civilita Cattolica, the organ of the Jesuits at Rome—

"The Order of Corporate Reunion actively pursues its labours, and its officers have sent forth a pastoral letter, containing an exposition of its views and ends. It is known that several Anglican ministers in connection with tins society have induced a Greek bishop— whose name, however, it has not as yet been possible to ascertain—to ordain them under certain conditions, in order that the doubt to which Anglican Orders are subject may not be alleged as a reason for taking exception to the validity of their operations. The three leading officers of the Order have received episcopal consecration from the same quarter—a quarter which, according to what is said, is of such a character as to completely exclude any question as to the validity of the Orders so conferred, when once the time shall come for submitting the matter for examination to the Holy See. So soon as a sufficient number of the Anglican clergy shall have in this way removed the difficulty which arise from their ordination, the Order hopes to be able to present its petition for Corporate Reunion with the Catholic Church, signed by a number of members so imposing as to render it impossible for the Holy See not to recognise the gravity and importance of the movement. "

I only make one more quotation from the Roman Catholic Standard and Ransomer in 1894, edited by a priest who was formerly an advanced Ritualistic clergyman—

"We have heard just lately that there are now 800 clergymen of the Church of England who have been validly ordained by Dr. Lee and his co-bishops of the Order of Corporate Reunion. If so, Dr. Lee's dream of providing a body with which the Pope could deal seems likely to be realised."

Surely it is not too much to ask the House to affirm that the members of this Papal society should be ineligible to hold a benefice in the Church of England. Now, is it not extraordinary that this House cannot devise some means of driving these things out of the Church of England? Is it not extraordinary that while it concerns itself with a great many minor details of a trumpery character, which nobody in the country cares any thing about, it should allow this flagrant and abominable dereliction of duty to go on and provide no means whatever to remedy it? Nero fiddling, when Rome was burning, is nothing to it. I trust I have said sufficient to show how deep and widespread is the conspiracy to Romanise the Church of England. A large body of the clergy belong to the societies that aim at a reunion with Rome. About 4,000 clergy belong to the English Church Union, including several Colonial bishops. One object of the Union, of which Lord Halifax is the head, is to get Anglican Orders recognised by the Pope. Lord Halifax has said—

"Is there a single instructed Christian who would not prefer Leo XIII. to the Privy Council?…Do not let us be afraid to speak plainly of the possibility, of the desirability of a union with Rome; let us say boldly we desire peace with Rome with all our hearts."

There can be little doubt that some of the bishops sympathise with this movement, hence their extraordinary feebleness and apathy; and nothing will be done by the bishops unless forced on by public opinion. For a long time past nearly all the principal offices have been conferred on High Churchmen. To be a Protestant is to be boycotted. To be faithful to his ordination vows excludes a clergyman from any chance of preferment. Meanwhile there is the deepest indignation among a large body of the laity. I have received a great many letters, from all parts of the country, urging me to go on with this matter. These letters are from Churchmen, who complain that they are driven out of their parish churches by unblushing Romanism. In some cases the whole congregation have been driven out. I know of such cases myself. I am sure that the Government is quite unaware what a storm is brewing. England is fast working up into a condition like that which preceded the Long Parliament. If I am not mistaken we are approaching troublous times. The vast bulk of the population of this country is still Protestant and utterly opposed to Rome; it will find some way of enforcing its convictions. It is true this Bill is not well adapted for restraining Romish practices, though I have put down an Amendment which will tend strongly in that direction. But the machinery of the Bill can only be put in force by a bishop; there lies the fatal defect. The Public Worship Regulation Act was practically neutralised by the veto of the bishop; if this veto were removed, and the penalty of deprivation were enforced, that Act could be made effective. We need to give the laity the rights that justly belong to them, as has been done in the Irish Episcopal Church; and if the Government cannot graft such provisions on this Bill let them promise to bring in one that will effect this end. If this is not done, this agitation will grow to a tempest which will sweep away some, things which we should be sorry to see disappear from the life of the nation.

said he thought the House was nearly of one mind, and prepared to proceed to the immediate consideration of this Bill. The Member for Suffolk, who moved postponement, stated at the same time that the object merited our sympathies; that the Bill had been very carefully considered in Committee; that the only fault he found was that the First Lord of the Treasury had been absent from many meetings of the Committee. The First Lord of the Treasury, who was present to-night, could give them the benefit of his criticism and his guidance to make the Bill perfect. But the honourable Member for Flintshire had invited the House to consider a series of questions which were most appalling. What was this Bill? A Bill whose short title was the Benefices Act, a Bill scarcely objected to by any Member, limited in its scope, sent upstairs to a Grand Committee with general assent, and now only waiting its final stages. The objects of the Member for Flintshire, as disclosed not only in his long and desultory speech, but still more in his notice of Motion, which appeared on the Orders of the Day, were to restrain the Roman Catholic doctrines and practices so prevalent among the clergy, and to provide for the upholding of the Protestant constitution of the Church of England as defined by its Articles and Formularies and by the Coronation Oath: so that this little Benefices Bill, which expressly exempted doctrine and ritual, would have to be described as a Bill for putting down ritualism, for upholding the Protestant constitution of the Church of England, for defining and strengthening its Articles, which the honourable Member had told the House were really very well drawn, and for maintaining the Coronation Oath. The honourable Member began by suggesting that he could put these far-reaching provisions in this little Bill. Why, the additional provisions of the honourable Member would swallow up this little Bill. He [Sir John Mowbray] knew his right honourable Friend opposite, the Member for West Monmouth [Sir W. Harcourt] would recollect as well as he did the storm and tempest which raged in the House of Commons in 1874 when they were engaged in passing the Public Worship Act. He [Sir John Mowbray] hardly thought such legislation necessary at the present moment; he believed that latterly a more hopeful view prevailed, and that means would be found to put a stop, without further legislation, to some of these practices, the introduction of which he [Sir John Mowbray] so much deprecated. There had been two remarkable documents put forth in May this year. One was passed by a conference between the two wings of the advanced school in the Church, of which that venerable and holy man, Canon Carter, was the chairman. They recognised the authority of bishops to prohibit any service not contained in the Book of Common Prayer, and to prohibit any omission from, or addition to, services contained in that book. The other was a memorandum put forth by nearly 40 representative men, including such well-known men as the Dean of St. Paul's; Mr. Scott Holland, Canon of St. Paul's; and Mr. Charles Gore, Canon of Westminster; and they pledged themselves to the use of the rites and ceremonies prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer as the positive and sufficient rule and order of the administration of the Church; and those two documents have been followed up by important utterances by archbishops and bishops in the Convocations both of Canterbury and York. He maintained, therefore, that the period of apathy, if there had been such, and the period of inaction on the part of the episcopate had passed away. The churches where these unauthorised services and ceremonies had been introduced were comparatively few, and were likely to become fewer. There was a fixed determination to uphold the Book of Common Prayer. That book was the proud inheritance of the English Church, coming down to us from remote antiquity, and providing such a manual for public worship as scarcely any other church possessed. He would tell the honourable Member for Flintshire how he approached these questions; he had found nothing so admirable as the expression of his old friend Lord Cranbrook, well known in this House; he described himself as a Protestant-Catholic-Anglican-Churchman. He [Sir John Mowbray] was Protestant as protesting against the errors of the Church of Rome, Catholic in upholding all that came down to us from the Apostolic time, and a member of the National Church, not of the Roman, Gallican, or Greek Churches, but of the Church of England. Such, he believed, was the spirit that animated the mass of English Churchmen, and, so long as that prevailed, he believed there was no real foundation for the apprehensions which filled the mind of the honourable Member for Flintshire.

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid I cannot agree with my right honourable Friend [Sir J. Mowbray] that my honourable Friend behind me [Mr. S. Smith] has introduced matter which is not germane to this discussion. On the contrary, I think it lies at the very root of the whole matter. What is this Bill? It is a Bill which professes to define the grounds upon which a bishop is authorised, and upon which it becomes his duty, to refuse institution to benefices in the Church.

It does nothing of the kind.

That interruption is not very courteous in its form, nor is it, I believe, accurate in its substance. What is the meaning of the allusion to doctrine and ritual? Can it be said that considerations of that, character are not to be included in the grounds upon which institution is to be refused? What is the allegation made by my honourable Friend—an allegation which I believe to be thoroughly well founded? His allegation is that there is at the present moment in the Church of England a conspiracy to overthrow the principles of the English Reformation; a conspiracy widely spread and deeply rooted. To become aware that that conspiracy exists you have only to read the statements made in Convocation the other day. I think one of the bishops used the expression that he was aware that there were secret societies in the Church of England for the purpose of overthrowing the principles of the English Reformation. Now that you are going to deal with the question of institution to benefices, is there, I ask, any ground upon which institution to a benefice in the Church of England ought to be refused stronger than that of perjury on the part of the clergyman? What is to be thought of a perjured priest who has taken an oath, which he is violating, publicly or secretly, that he would pursue the practices authorised by the Church of England, and none other? Is it true that the clergy as a body do observe that declaration? We have the statements of the bishops themselves that they know that that is not the case. "Oh," it is said, "but there is now a disposition to restrain these law-breakers." Well, Sir, I hope there is, but I must say that that disposition has not been conspicuous of recent years. I have seen no disposition to discourage the appointment and promotion of clergymen by whom those objectionable practices are usually carried on. But, even if there is such a disposition, is the House of Commons not to be allowed to take part in discussing a Bill which raises these important issues? We have the evidence before us of the certificate which the honourable Member who made this Motion read to the House from the Archbishop of York, that there should be a certificate, given by three beneficed clergymen or by the bishop of the diocese from which the nominee came, that he was a man who had observed his ordination oath, and that he had not departed in his practice or his conduct from that which was implied in his declaration. Why, Sir, that ought to be, in my opinion, one of the very first declarations, and quite as binding on the nominee as any declaration with reference to his private character or his moral conduct. There is one reason, above all, why, in my opinion, this matter ought to be dealt with. Who are these men? They are the men who in every parish in England are practically the conductors of the voluntary schools. These are the men into whose schools you force the children—the children of people who have not abjured the principles of the English Reformation—who are to be taught by these men to follow these practices; and is the House of Commons, which has compelled and is compelling the children of Protestant Churchmen and Protestant Nonconformists to go into these schools, to have no protection against the authors of practices of this character? This is not a question of religious opinion. If these men do not conscientiously hold the opinions of the Church of England, let them leave her and join the Church with which their opinions are in sympathy. But for these men to remain in the Church of England and in secret societies, of which I have heard a great deal, and have the control of the education of the children in the parishes of England, is a state of things which, in my opinion, Parliament ought not to tolerate. When I was in office and the bishops came to me expressing a wish for certain legislation, I gave them what I thought was very sound advice. I said: "I think the less the bishops and the Church come to the House of Commons the better for them"; but if they do come here for more powers the House of Commons ought to put upon them conditions which are consistent and necessary, and there should be some security against the principles on which the Established Church of this country is founded being deliberately violated in this secret and—I agree with my honourable Friend—in this dishonourable manner, and against a conspiracy to subvert the true principles of the Church of England. I, for one at all events, will not give a vote in favour of this Bill. I shall vote against the Bill as absolutely inadequate unless we have some understanding on the part of the Government that this Measure, in addition to what it professes to do, shall give to the bishops the power, and shall impose on them the duty, of not instituting to benefices clergy who are deliberately violating the conditions upon which they hold those benefices.

returned at five minutes to Nine.

Sir, I regret very much that the speech I am about to make will be listened to by so few Members, whilst that of the right honourable Member for West Monmouthshire, to which I desire to reply, was heard by a considerable number of Members, and—

I beg to call your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that there are not 40 Members present. A count was ordered, and the requisite number of Members attended.

Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to follow the honourable Member for Flintshire in the statements which he made regarding the state of the Church of England, with regard to the number of clergymen in her ranks who are taking part in what the late Archbishop Tait called "a conspiracy to restore the Church of England to the Church of Rome." I associate myself generally with the statements of the honourable Member, but I think that here and there he was guilty of some exaggeration in what he stated. I do not mean particular isolated facts, but as regards the number of clergymen who are taking part in that conspiracy the House must not suppose that they are the rule rather than the exception. Of course, I know there are men in the Church of England who deserve everything that has been said of them as to their tendency towards Rome. It was only last week that I was assured by a dean that a clergyman began his sermon by invoking the blessing of the Virgin Marr on what he was going to say, on the express ground that without it his words would do no good. Now, it is clear that such a man has no place in the Church of England, but it does not follow that the Government are to blame because they have not included in this Bill a clause providing that a man holding such views and preaching such doctrines should be removed from the Church of England. There are several reasons why they should not hare done so. In the first place, the bishops can now deprive a man of his living for heresy, and one reason why they have been so slow to exercise that power is the expensive character of the proceedings. One bishop spent almost the whole of his income in depriving a clergyman of his living for heresy. Bishops have to live, like other men. Each bishop has to subscribe to new churches, and other things throughout the diocese, and I know that, as a rule, bishops are decidedly poor men; and therefore, as the law at present stands, it imposes heavy penalties upon them, and you cannot wonder that they are slow to take advantage of that law. There are other things besides heresy for which a clergyman may be deprived of his living. The Bill deals mainly with institution. Everything which is a ground for deprivation is a lawful cause for refusing to institute a clergyman, and this Bill enlarges the grounds on which the bishop may refuse to institute. These are simple matters of fact with which the court provided by the Bill will be fully competent to deal, and every care has been taken that full justice will be rendered to the presentee who appeals to it. Then there is a clause dealing with grave misconduct or neglect of duty in an ecclesiastical office, and although "grave misconduct" is not defined, "neglect of duty" is very carefully defined. Another ground for deprivation will be that the clergyman, by his conduct, has caused "grave scandal." As I pointed out, under the existing law, the process is a most expensive one. I think it must be patent to everyone that the charges which are introduced into this clause, and which may be dealt with under this Bill, are matters of comparative simplicity. You can very soon discover whether a man is unfit for the discharge of his duties by reason of physical or mental incapacity; whether he is in pecuniary embarrassment of such a nature that he cannot adequately discharge his duties; whether there has been grave misconduct or neglect of duty in an ecclesiastical office; whether his life has been evil; whether he has by his conduct caused great scandal concerning his moral character; all of these are things which any of the judges is qualified to determine. The course which the Bill takes is this: the bishop has heard that the presentee whom he is asked to institute to a living has been guilty of some of these offences which are by this Bill made disqualifications. He will tell the presentee that grave charges have been made against him; he will tell him the nature of the charges which have been made, and the result will be that the presentee will say, if conscious of his guilt: "My Lord, I will not trouble you further; I refuse this presentation." But suppose there is room for doubt as to the truth of these charges—suppose that the clergyman considers that he has been maligned, and that the bishop has too readily lent an ear to a calumnious statement, then, if the bishop determines to institute him, there is no appeal; but in the event of his being convinced by insufficient reasons—by giving too great credit to gossip—then a court, consisting of the archbishop of the province and a lay judge, is created by this Bill to which the clergyman may appeal. All questions of fact and law are to be decided by the judge, and the archbishop has to act upon his decision. But, even if the lay judge thinks that technically the clergyman has brought himself within the law, and that the bishop would be justified in refusing to institute him, the archbishop is not bound to refuse him institution, and will not do so if he is of opinion that, though technically the clergyman has brought himself within the operation of the law, yet, nevertheless, the circumstances are of such a nature that he may very fairly condone the offence. Every care is taken that the court shall do full justice to the clergyman who is being presented for institution; but I put it to the sense of the House that this court is not one to which you can properly refer the questions which the right honourable Gentleman wishes to be referred to it. Is this a court to which you could refer, for instance, the intricate question of heresy? Surely questions of heresy cannot be tried in this simple way by such a court. It is for that reason that those matters are not touched in this Bill at all. The next clause says—

"Where a bishop on any ground, except a doctrine of ritual, refuses to institute or admit a presentee to a benefice."

The right honourable Gentleman fell very foul indeed of that, and thought that grounds of doctrine and ritual ought to be included. I contend it would not be at all proper to include those grounds in a Bill of this description. By this Bill you are erecting a tribunal of a totally different character—a tribunal which is well qualified to deal with the particular offences which are made reasons for which the bishop may refuse to institute. There can be no doubt as to physical or mental infirmity, incapacity, pecuniary embarrassment, grave misconduct, neglect of duty in a previous ecclesiastical office, evil life, grave scandal, or offences of that kind. But, when you come to questions of heresy you come to questions upon which there exists the greatest variety of opinion. The Church of England is wide and catholic, but there are certain limits beyond which it is not safe or proper to go, and there is a considerable number of clergy in the Church of England who go far beyond those limits; but the tribunal created by this Bill is not a tribunal which could decide questions of doctrine and ritual involving long and learned references to bishops and other high ecclesiastical authorities, and to their writings dating right back to the Reformation. This tribunal would not be competent to decide such questions. That being so, the question comes to this: it being agreed, I think, on all sides, that the tribunal set up by this Bill is not a fit tribunal for the decision of such questions, is that any reason why the tribunal should not be allowed to try other questions? Should it not deal with that with which it is competent to deal, and leave matters which are of necessity outside and altogether beyond its scope? There is a very old proverb which says, "The best is the enemy of the good"; and I do not know any artifice which is more familiar to most Members of this House than this, that when Members dislike a Bill they oppose it, not because it does something, but because it does not do something else. It is admitted, I think, that this Bill will cure certain evils which we know to exist, and it is opposed because it does not at the same time attempt to cure some other evils. I do not say for one moment that it would not be possible to create some tribunal which would be competent to try offences of heresy at much less expense and without the same delay and trouble which exist under the present law, but I do maintain that the fact that this Bill does not attempt to do anything of the kind is no reason why we should not pass it into law, that the great good may be done which I thoroughly believe this Bill will do. Is there any honourable Member who intends to vote with the honourable Member for Suffolk, who has thought what his vote will mean if this Bill is not passed into law this Session? It will mean that for another year men who are suffering from physical and mental infirmity, incapacity, pecuniary embarrassment, who have been guilty of grave misconduct and neglect of duty in an ecclesiastical office, men of evil life, men who have by their conduct caused grave scandal concerning their moral character, may be forced upon parishes. Do honourable Members wish that for another year, or even for another day, such men should be allowed to be presented to livings, and be instituted by the bishop, either because the law does not at present permit him to refuse institution, or else because to do so would take so long a time and cause so much expense as almost to ruin the parish by the delay, and ruin the bishop by reason of the cost? Let us do the good that lies within our reach, rather than throw out this Bill, which admittedly will do good work, because it does not do some other work that may very well be done at some other time. A number of Bills have been introduced into this House during the last two or three years founded upon reports of Committees and Commissions which have been considering this subject, and they have all decided that there are a number of reasons quite outside matters of ritual and doctrine which would justify a bishop in refusing to institute, and they all desired that the law should be so altered that the bishop should have this power. And I do implore honour- able Gentlemen, especially my honourable Friend opposite, with whose views I sympathise—at least, I sympathise with nine-tenths of them, excluding, of course, anything connected with the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England—not to take a course which will imperil the possibility of this great and necessary reform being accomplished during the present Session. I know that the danger of disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England arises, not so much from her external foes, as from those who are traitors within the camp. I appeal to my honourable Friend, whom I know to be a God-fearing man, and I am not afraid to appeal to other honourable Members for the same reason, not to attempt to postpone the consideration and the passing of this useful Measure because it does not go the full length to which they would like it to go, and because it does not deal with a number of offences which are of a totally different character from, and of a distinctly separate nature from, the offences which are included in this Bill. I will detain the House no longer beyond expressing the very earnest hope that the few words I have said may be successful in doing something to stop opposition to a Bill the necessity for which is admitted on all hands.

I think there is considerable force in many of the observations of a general character which have been urged upon the House by the honourable Gentleman who has just sat down. But I confess when I think of the action which he took in the Standing Committee, and of the general mode of agreement which existed between him and some other Members of the Committee in regard to the amendment of the Bill, and when I hear him say to-night that at his stage of the Session we ought to proceed to the immediate consideration if the Report of the Committee, I do not think that the honourable Gentleman has quite appreciated the force of the arguments which have been urged by my honourable Friend the Member for Flintshire. In general terms I desire to associate myself with the line of argument urged by the honourable Member for Flintshire, and the way in which that line of argument becomes relevant to the discussions which took place in Committee, and the way in which it becomes relevant to the question now before the House is this: is it or is it not expedient to give, as this Bill proposes to give, further powers to the bishops of the Church of England? That is the real, the practical point, and it is a point which I ventured to urge upon the consideration of the House when I moved the rejection of the Bill on the Second Reading. It was the point which was my first principle—my first postulate—in regard to the Amendments which I moved in Committee, and also in regard to some of those which I have set down for the Report stage. This Bill was not introduced this Session alone, because a Bill, not quite the same Bill, but a similar Bill, was introduced in a former Session, and there was another Bill introduced this Session—a somewhat modest Bill—which was intended to put down certain admitted abuses in regard to the rights of patronage existing in the Church of England. This Bill is for the same purpose, but I have noticed that if anyone says anything against it on this side of the House, we have been met with the expression of opinion, or rather with the suggestion, that we are actuated by some feeling of enmity to the Church of England, and that our real object is to attain some coign of vantage with reference to disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England. I have said before, and I repeat it now, that in the action I have taken I am not actuated by any spirit of the kind whatsoever. The Leader of the House characterised it as a modest Bill intended to put down simony and simoniacal practices, and it is only by a minute consideration of the Bill, by a close consideration of it, clause by clause and line by line, a close consideration which it receives in Committee, that the true character and effects of the Bill can be appreciated. It is not a modest little Bill, it is not a Bill designed simply to put down simony and simoniacal practices. It is a Bill which enlarges to an extraordinary degree the power of the bishops of the Church of England. It is a Bill that alters the law of the land. It is a Bill that affects property rights, and is designed to confer upon men who are undoubtedly adopting as their fundamental principles opinions alien to the Reformation settlement larger and more extensive powers than they already possess. I do not want to trespass upon the time of the House by going minutely into these very large considerations, but I will point out what are, in my opinion, grave and far-reaching objections to the Measure—objections of a kind which I think ought to lead the Government to consider whether they will not postpone the consideration of the Bill till next Session. The opinion of my honourable Friend is that the consideration of the Committee Report should be deferred till this day six months—that, of course, means next Session. My honourable Friend has referred to the case of the ordinary lay patron, and in that connection it would be well for us to reflect what an inequality, and therefore injustice, the Bill would create. The lay patron, when he represents some person whom he thinks fit to be appointed to a benefice with a living, has to submit to the jurisdiction of the bishop. But how about the position of the bishop himself? Under this Bill the bishop retains the right which he now has, according to the ecclesiastical law, and I believe according to the common law, in connection with presentations. I commend that consideration to my honourable Friend the Member for Stroud, whom I now see in his place. This Bill preserves to the bishop whatever rights as patron he now possesses. If the bishop appoints anybody he likes to a benefice, there is no authority which can in any way control that appointment, excepting, of course, the general power and jurisdiction of the Crown exercised by honourable Gentlemen and right honourable Gentlemen sitting on the Government Benches. Is it not a gross inequality? Surely, if you are going to introduce great changes in the law relating to the Church, ought you not to consider the whole question? This is no question in the air. We have got this very question in regard to dioceses in Wales. We find the bishop making appointments to livings of which he is the patron of persons who are not in accordance with the general sentiment of the Church people in the diocese; men who—I am not going to mention particular instances to the House—cannot even speak the Welsh language. I will not mention particular cases because we shall have an opportunity of going into that when we come to the detailed consideration of this Bill on the Report stage. I merely mention that as a general consideration which the Solicitor-General, and, I think, the Government as a whole, ought to consider in regard to the question as to whether this Bill should be pressed forward now. Take another example—take the case of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. If this Bill passes, these colleges in which exists the right of patronage, which belongs to them as corporate bodies, will have to submit their nominations for the approval, or otherwise, of the bishop; but I must confess I would myself as soon accept the opinion of any college of Oxford or Cambridge taken collectively, as to the fitness or unfitness for institution of any person, as I would the opinion of the bishop. I do not mean to say that colleges have not made mistakes; neither do I mean to say that bishops are always wrong, but, speaking practically, I should say that a college of Oxford or Cambridge is, in its corporate capacity, quite as good a judge of the sort of person who ought to be appointed to a benefice as a bishop. Yet, under this Bill, as I understand it, if one of the colleges of Oxford or Cambridge presents a man for institution, the bishop may refuse institution, and these colleges are in exactly the same position as the lay-patron. Again, take the case of the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor has large patronage—he has many benefices at his disposal; and yet, if I understand the Bill aright, the Lord Chancellor, who is a man of light and leading, is, in this respect, to be subject to the jurisdiction of the bishop, or subject to the opinion of the bishop, call it what you will. Supposing the bishop refuses to institute, then, is it seriously meant by the Government that the appeal in that matter is to be to a court constituted first of the archbishop, and secondly of a judge appointed by the Lord Chancellor? Take the case of the First Lord of the Treasury, who also exercises, patronage. I am not at all sure that I would not as willingly accept the opinion of the present First Lord of the Treasury as to the fitness of a person for a benefice as I would the opinion of a bishop. Now, I invite the attention of the Government and of honourable Gentlemen opposite, to what is really being done by this Bill. Do they want this grave inequality to exist? Is it really intended that you should, by the operation of this so-called modest Bill, really enormously increase the powers of the ecclesiastical bench? I do not think that that is at all the wish of either that side of the House or this side. I do not think that our principal objections have been fully met. We did our best in Committee, and I am sure that the Solicitor General will agree with me that we were fertile in suggestion and fertile in argument. Suggestions made on our side were met very cleverly and very adroitly by the right honourable Gentleman, but, notwithstanding that his replies were clever and adroit, I cannot say that they were always satisfactory. There is no provision whatever in this Bill for allowing the parishioners or the congregation to be fairly heard before the Court of Appeal which is constituted by this Bill. You are going to reform the Church; you are going to put down abuses. Is it not one of the greatest abuses that you can conceive in connection with the Church—and I am speaking with distinct reference to a particular church—that after a man has raised in a church a great congregation, after he has been promoted to high, honourable, and important office, should he happen to die, somebody outside, knowing nothing about the views, and perhaps caring nothing about the views, of the congregation, presents the living to somebody who is totally out of sympathy with the general views of the congregation, and that somebody is ultimately instituted? I know of such cases. If you want to reform abuses, if you want to put down simoniacal practices, I should have thought there might have been some provision in the Bill for allowing parishioners, as such, or, at any rate, if not parishioners, those members of the parish who are also members of the Church of England—and if not that, then merely the congregation—to be heard at some stage or another in regard to tine questions which, so directly concern them. But under this Bill they cannot. Then there is another omission in this Bill. There is no opportunity for a person who is excluded from institution under clause 2 being heard before the bishop. I am not going to read that clause, which is, I think, the most material clause in this Bill. It is drawn up in very general language—general language of which we complain—and it gives the grounds upon which the bishop may pronounce a man to be unfit for institution. According to the machinery of the Bill, if a patron presents to a benefice, the bishop, on certain grounds, can refuse institution and admission; while the person aggrieved, according to law, is, of course, the patron who is exercising the right, and I think I am correct in saying that, as the law now stands, the presentee has no right to go to the High Court of Justice. His only remedy is in a spiritual court. But the patron has the right to go to a High Court of Justice, and have the whole matter threshed out in his own interests, and in the interests of the person who has been alleged by the bishop to be unfit. In substance, under the present law, if the presentee is objected to, the patron can get the whole matter threshed out before a judge and jury, and, according to the practice of the courts, the bishop is bound to give reasons for his refusal—he is bound to give particulars of the acts of either commission or omission which are charged against the presentee as being sufficiently good and reasonable grounds for refusal to institution. If you are going to alter the law, surely an elementary sense of justice would have entitled the presentee to go to the High Court upon a matter upon which his whole career rests, and by which his whole future may be wrecked. Take the law as it stands. Supposing a bishop—say the Bishop of St. Asaph—refuses institution, the presentee can go before a judge and jury and get the matter threshed out fairly and squarely, but under this Bill he cannot, because the jurisdiction of the High Court is ousted. The next objection that we take to this Bill is the grounds of refusal to institute are so vague as practically to transfer the patronage from the patron to the bishop. I will not go over the whole of the clause now, because I have not the slightest doubt that the House will have to consider these grounds of unfitness word by word. In my view, and I believe in the view of many others, the clause is wrongly worded, and the vague and general language in which it is framed ought to have been eliminated, so that the clause could be put into a form which virtually would comply with the established regulations issued in these cases by the High Court of Justice. Certain specified acts of neglect and omission ought to be put in, and there should not be words like "pecuniary embarrassment, grave misconduct, or neglect of duty in an ecclesiastical office, evil life, having by his conduct caused grave scandal concerning his moral character." These words are far too general, and the whole Bill ought to be recast if the Government are really serious in impressing this matter upon Parliament. This Bill sets up an extraordinary court. It ousts the jurisdiction of the High Court of Justice, and in place of that it sets up a court—not the court suggested by my honourable Friend the Member for Suffolk, but a new court, the like of which has never been known to our law—a court in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, or else some bishop in substitution for him, is the presiding officer, and a court in which a judge of the High Court of Justice is actually subordinate to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

No.

My honourable Friend the Member for Walsall says "No," but I say that is so. Who delivers the judgment? Is not the presiding judge the judge that delivers the judgment? If that is so, and if honourable Members will look at clause 3 of the Bill, they will find these words—

"If the judge finds that no such fact sufficient in law exists, direct institution, or admission, or if the judge finds that any such fact sufficient in law exists, decide, if necessary, whether by reason thereof the presentee is unfit for the discharge of the duties of the benefice, and determine whether institution or admission ought, under the circumstances, to be refused, and in either case the archbishop shall give judgment accordingly, and that judgment shall be final."

The archbishop is the judge. I am not quibbling about words, but I say that you are putting a judge of the High Court in the position of a mere assessor, and you are taking away from every lay patron—like the Lord Chancellor—from the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, the right to bring an action in the High Court against the bishop who, in their judgment, may have behaved improperly. These are main and broad points which strike me as being worthy of consideration, because I do not think that the Government have really considered all these matters, and it is for that reason that I ask the House to accept the Motion of my honourable Friend the Member for Suffolk, and postpone the consideration of this Bill until such time as public opinion shall have ripened upon this question. If the Government are really desirous of remedying the abuses which now exist, they will wait till they can do so in a comprehensive form and bring in a Bill which, without doing the detriment that this Measure would do to the Church of England and the country, would remedy the particular abuses which I understood this Bill was brought in to remedy.

I claim the indulgence of the House to intervene in this Debate, because, as a member of what was the United Church of England and Ireland, and occupying a position in the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, I venture to take an interest in the sister Church—one which we claim to be associated with spiritually and actually. I think that the Protestants of this great kingdom will be, and ought to be, greatly indebted to the honourable Member for Flintshire, for the ground which he has taken to-night, and for the statements which he so clearly proved on the floor of this House. When he made statements, and when interruptions were offered to him, the honourable Gentleman was prepared with his authority, and I think that the country to morrow will be thoroughly in accord with the manner in which he has dealt with this subject. I am one of the few Members at present in this House who recollect the attitude and the line of argument taken by the right honourable Gentleman the Member for Monmouthshire in 1874, when the Public Worship Regulation Bill was before the country; and I think that the right honourable Gentleman, whose speech in this House to-night will, I am sure, awaken sympathy throughout the country to-morrow, is to be again congratulated upon the line he has taken up, and I offer the right honourable Gentleman my congratulations upon his attitude to-night, if so humble an individual as myself may be permitted to offer my congratulations. Sir, the line taken by the right honourable Gentleman was not a new line. It was the line that he took in 1874, and I appeal to his recollection if he then did not give sanction to the sentiment that he was pleased to see that the country was sound in support of the Protestant Reformation, and that there might yet be a new combination of parties having for its object the maintenance of the Protestant cause. Speaking from this side of the House, I feel that the majority of Gentlemen who occupy seats on this side are thoroughly at one with me in their attachment to the Protestant cause. I feel that they desire to see the great Church of England as by law established, maintaining the principles of the Reformation upon which it was established, and they do not desire to see any insidious changes made in its doctrines or tenets which would undo and destroy the principles of the great Reformation. I am sure, Sir, that the great majority of gentlemen who sit upon this side of the House are not ashamed of the word Protestant; but there are a great many people in the Church of England at the present time in high ecclesiastical positions who seem to think that the use of the word Protestant should be tabooed. The Bishop of Liverpool, however, I am glad to say, is sound on this point, for in his pamphlet, "What do we owe to the Reformation?" he uses these words—

"I cannot agree with those who now tell us that the Reformation was a blunder—that the Reformers are overpraised—that Protestantism has done this country no good—and that it would matter little if England placed her neck once more under the foot of the Pope of Rome. Against these new-fangled opinions I enter my solemn protest. I want no departure from the old Protestant paths which were cast up by Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer three hundred years ago. In short, about the value of the English Reformation I want no new views. I unhesitatingly maintain that 'the old are better.'"

Holding these views, it was no wonder that at the Convocation of York the right reverend prelate moved the following resolution:—

"That in the opinion of this House the increase of lawlessness on the part of many of the clergy in the conduct of Divine worship in their churches, in the introduction of unauthorised services and practices, especially in the celebration of the Holy Communion, and the growing dissatisfaction of the laity in consequence of such lawlessness, demands the special attention of the bishops; and therefore this House considers it necessary at the present juncture that the clergy of our respective dioceses should be called upon to remember the solemn declarations, subscriptions and oaths made and taken by them at their ordination, licensing, or institution, and in particular their legal and moral obligations to use the form prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority."

And after a speech the Bishop of Wake-field moved an amendment, which was in no way in opposition to the general spirit of the singularly unanimous debate, or to the main principles which underlay the resolution. He moved, in effect—

"That in the opinion of this House there is a serious danger from wide divergence of Liturgical practice and the use of unauthorised services alien to the principles of the Church of England, as also by the omission of or addition to the regular services, and that those practices need wise restraint and guidance, with due regard to modern needs and reasonable liberty."

That amendment was put, and the voting was as follows:—For: the President, the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of Chester, and the Bishop of Wake-field. Against: the Bishop of Liverpool, the Bishop of Manchester, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man. The House will be gratified to see that the bishops have at last awakened, but how much of the Protestant movement is due to one whose name probably is well known to this House—I mean Mr. John Kensit—it is impossible to say. I do not mean that in all respects I sympathise with Mr. John Kensit's action, but I cannot help noticing that with his objects even the Bishop of London has shown sympathy, and the Archbishop of Canterbury has himself presented Mr. Kensit's petition to Convocation. Having referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury, may I quote to the House some words of his uttered in Convocation on the 11th of May? He said that

"He thought the time had come when they ought to be prepared to deal with that matter, and to deal with it, not in the way of prosecution—he thought that was a long way off—but in the way of personal command. Every clergyman had made a distinct promise to use the forms prescribed in the Prayer Book: they should remind men of that very solemn promise, and call upon them to observe it."

I have other extracts, but the case has been so thoroughly proved that to contend any further would be a work of supererogation; but I should like for a moment to quote to this House the words of a famous Tory periodical, a publication which has done much for the maintenance of Tory views in this country year after year—I refer to Blackwood's Magazine. In that magazine for June, page 869, are the following words—

"The Primate had in view the kind of clergymen who, if the Bishop of London be right, oppose themselves to the principles they should maintain; who, if the Bishop of Winchester be right, act as aliens and foreigners in the Church, performing the kind of services which brought about the Reformation—who, according to the Bishop of Southwell, seem to belong, some of them, to secret societies for undermining the teaching of the Church.…Their offences are so far from being merely formal, though illegal, like wearing the biretta or the chasuble, that they include the suggestion of the most pronounced Roman Catholic doctrine, and the practice of its most distinctive ritual. Transubstantiation is brought in for acceptance; pictures of the Virgin Mary are hung where the congregation may dip the knee; Masses are said in tones that the people may not hear; Latin is in use at the altar; there are Adorations of the Cross, the Roman office of the Asperges, and the like."

Those are the utterances of the most Tory of Tory magazines, and I commend them to the careful consideration of Her Majesty's Government. A great opportunity lies before the right honourable Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, who has attained an almost unexampled position of popularity in the country, and I ask him to place himself at the head of the Protestant Party. I know that the right honourable Gentleman thoroughly sympathises with Protestantism when its case is presented by a less eccentric individual than myself, but I implore him to consider the position of the Church in this country—to remember that Her Most Gracious Majesty took an oath to maintain the Protestant Reformed Religion, as established by law, and I ask the right honourable Gentleman to assist Her Most Gracious Majesty in maintaining the Protestantism of this Church of England which is still by law established. The right honourable Gentleman leads a magnificent majority, but that majority was not returned to Parliament to destroy the Protestantism of the Church, and the moment that the maintenance of the Protestantism of the Church of England ceases to be one of the principal objects of Her Majesty's Government, that moment would that magnificent majority be scattered to the winds of Heaven, because it had failed in doing that which it had been sent to Parliament to do—namely, to maintain a Protestant Constitution and a united Empire.

I am glad to find that the gentleman who wrote what appeared to be an inspired paragraph in the Standard newspaper to the effect that if the honourable Member for Flintshire stopped the progress of this Bill by a speech on Protestantism, an attempt would be made to curtail his remarks, has proved to be a false prophet; and I hope that the gentleman who, a few days ago, sent a paragraph to the political columns of the Times newspaper, to the effect that whatever the Government intended to do—whether they intended to abandon the Municipality of London Bill, whether they abandoned all idea of doing anything with an Old Age Pension Bill, whether they shunted the Secondary Education Bill—whatever they did or did not do, at all events they were determined that the Benefices Bill should be placed on the Statute Book—will turn out an equally false prophet. To me, knowing as I do a little about the House, as I have sat in it for some years, it appeared to me that the speech of the honourable Member for Flintshire, excellent as it was, was not by any means germane to this inquiry, and that if on any other subject a Member of this House had made such a speech he would have been very properly called to order; but I think, with all due respect to the opinion of the House, it is quite clear that on this occasion the House wanted to hear something on the subject. The House wanted to listen to the honourable Member for Flintshire, and when the House wants to listen to an honourable Member it generally signifies its intention in a very marked manner. My honourable Friend the Member for Oxford University commended his Bill to us and suggested that we should stop this discussion in order to carry the Bill, because he said the bishops were beginning to restrain the vagaries of the extreme Ritualistic party in the Church. When did the bishops begin to restrain the vagaries of the Ritualists? Why, after the gentleman named by my honourable Friend the Member for Belfast had, metaphorically speaking, broken a window. It was not until Mr. Kensit had taken action, not until he had acted with the determination which I myself should not have had the boldness to imitate, that the Ritualistic party began to cave in, and the bishops took the matter to a slight extent into their own hands. I hope that the Leader of the House has perceived, from the spirit in which the House has received the remarks on Protestantism, that all the evils that we have to fear from the Church itself and the reforms which we ought to institute in the Church are not those which are dealt with by this Bill, and that the reason why the House is not particularly interested in this Benefices Bill is that honourable Members, generally speaking, have no particular desire that this Bill should be placed on the Statute Book this Session. That is because this Bill does not deal with the real matters at issue. Although I do not suppose for a moment that the right honourable Gentleman will adopt the suggestion of the Member for Flintshire, and bring in a Bill dealing with ritualism this Session, I agree with him in thinking that the Government will be extremely foolish to push forward this Bill, thereby leaving people to suppose that they are reforming abuses upon which the people want reform, whereas they are really reforming abuses which, to a great extent, do not exist at all. Sir, some honourable Members seem to think that the evils dealt with in this Bill are of great moment to the Church. It is the people called Churchmen who lay such great stress upon these evils. If one listens to the speeches made by Churchmen on recent public occasions at diocesan conferences and the like one would suppose that the Church was in a very flourishing condition and did not contain all these black sheep. Looking over a bundle of these speeches, I noticed that it was said that there was an enormous quickening of Church life—an immense development of spiritual and ecclesiastical fervour, and that there was a very decided increase of public interest in Church work. Why should all these immoral people, whose misconduct we desire to put an end to, be so numerous in the Church? One would hardly suppose, if so, that the good works of the Church would be so spoken of as they have been spoken of by Churchmen. During the reign of the Queen we have seen the rise of the Oxford movement. I know that the Oxford movement is in great favour with some people, but my own view of the result of that movement has been this, that it has taught the English parson how to lie. We have been told by Lord Halifax that the Church has, during the reign of the Queen, been transformed and was daily enlarging her borders. How can a Church daily enlarge her borders if there are such an immense number of immoral clergymen with whom we are bound to deal? My honourable Friend the Member for Walsall dealt very forcibly with the subject. He asked, "How can we allow these scandals to continue so long in the Church?" We are not in favour of them, so long as they do exist, but we dislike the form in which this Bill endeavours to put an end to them. We say that the real result of this Bill is to give additional powers to the bishops, and although there are bishops—the bishop of my own diocese in particular, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man—who are sound as regards the Protestant religion, we believe that, the vast majority of the bishops of the Church of England are not so sound, and that if they are not actually in league with those who are Romanising the Church of England, they are afraid to put a stop to their practices; and we think that people of that character—of that way of thinking—are not fit people to put as judges over the Queen's subjects. After all, the case is this. Here you have, under the existing law, a bishop who can refuse to institute a clergyman for want of learning, for age—I suppose for want of age, though I do not know whether that is the case—and for misbehaviour. If he so refuses to institute, and the presentee thinks that he has made a mistake, and the patron agrees with the presentee, the patron can bring an action, as has already been said by the honourable Member for Swansea, before a jury of his own countrymen, and the man who has been given the living, but whom the bishop has refused to institute, and, by so doing, has not only cast a slur upon his character, but whose life has been practically ruined by that refusal, can appeal, like any other subject of the Queen, to a jury of his fellow-countrymen, and, if he is innocent, it can be so stated by that jury and his character can be redeemed. Now you propose to change all that. By this Bill you propose to give the bishop additional powers in this respect of refusal to institute. That is to say, that the right of the patron acting for the presentee to go to a jury is taken away, although the offences mentioned in clause 2 of this Bill are all of a kindred nature to those which now entitle the bishop to refuse to institute a presentee. They are substantially of the same character, and therefore at present, when a bishop refuses, the question can be placed before a jury, and, as it is a question of fact, it is a question which a jury is perfectly competent to decide. As my honourable Friend the Member for Swansea says, this Bill deprives the patron of his right. The reason why a great many actions are not brought by patrons is because, as my honourable Friend the Member for Stroud might say, these actions are obsolete, and perhaps because parties do not like to undergo the costs connected with them. What is proposed now? The action by the jury is not absolutely done away with, but it is provided by this Bill that if steps are taken under this Bill—if the bishop refuses to institute—then the patron is deprived of his right to have his case tried by a jury. If steps are taken under this Bill, his right is at an end. The position of a clergyman whom a bishop refuses to institute is something of this nature—it is something of the same nature as that of a man who is in the employment of a commercial firm. Somebody says that the employee has been guilty of misconduct. The first step is for the principal of the firm, or some leading member of the firm, to inquire into the matter. He does so, just as the bishop inquires into the character of the presentee, and if he believes that the misconduct is proved—that he is not fit, to be a servant of the firm, he dismisses him. What happens? If the man thinks he has been wrongfully dismissed, he has a conversation with his employers of what I may term a domestic character. The inquiries before the bishop are of a domestic character. But after that, when the servant who is dismissed feels that his character is at stake, the whole thing becomes at once a matter of public interest, because subjects of the Queen should not have their characters taken away wrongfully—should not have their means of living and their rights to live taken away by anybody. The man dismissed from service brings an action for libel, or for wrongful dismissal. But does the master sit in judgment on that tribunal? Certainly not. He is tried in an ordinary manner in a court of law, and before a jury of his own countrymen; and what is the difference between the master who wrongfully dismisses his servant and the bishop who wrongfully refuses to institute? Does the spiritual character of the clergyman alter the matter at all? No. The position of the clergyman who is refused institution by the bishop is just the same as that of the man who is dismissed from commercial employment. He loses his place—the place he expected to get. He will not get another place—he is ruined in his profession. He says: I aim ruined in my character; I am a subject of the Queen; I have rights, and I will go before a court of law, and I will clear myself. But that is exactly what he will not be able to do if this Bill becomes law. For this reason, and for many other reasons which it would be quits out of place for me to state now, but which, will probably have to be mentioned if this Bill reaches a further stage, I shall vote with the honourable Member for Lowestoft. I hope also that, although I am only a mere mediocrity in this House, the observations which I have made will induce the Government to refrain from pressing this matter forward against the wishes of a great many of their supporters. I hope that the observations I have ventured to give expression to will not be entirely thrown away upon the First Lord of the Treasury, and that he will not endeavour to rush this Bill through the Report stage by using any of those drastic measures which his enormous majority would enable him to adopt.

I feel a very great diffidence in addressing the House upon this question, especially after the speeches which have been delivered by the honourable Member for Flintshire, with a great deal of which I entirely agree, and the speeches of several other Members. But I cannot say that I agree with the speech of the honourable Member for Hereford. I consider myself in every way as good a Protestant as he is, and yet I consider that in the Bill now before the House there are a great many provisions which would be of benefit if passed into law. I must also say that I do not agree with everything that he has said about the bishops, and let me say that I am speaking from a far more back bench than the bench from which the honourable Member spoke. I would venture to say that I do most sincerely hope that, possibly, in this Bill or in some future Bill, something may be done to, at all events, restrain the ritualistic practices which now take place in so very many churches connected with the established religion of this country. I can only say that if the Government would bring forward a Bill in this spirit I for one would support them, and I believe that many of my honourable Friends would support them in every way they possibly could. Sir, the fact of ritualism is nothing in itself. People are at liberty to hold what opinions they like, and nobody cares what they do as long as they do not express their views in public. But as long as the Church of England is the established religion of this country, so long must the Church of England conform to the doctrines and ceremonies laid down in the Prayer Book. I am not speaking myself from any great personal knowledge of these High Church ceremonies, for whenever I am a witness of them I come away with a feeling of the utmost irritation, and under those circumstances I feel it is far better not to attend places of worship of that sort. But in the newspapers I see that all sorts of services unknown—utterly unknown—to the Prayer Book take place, such as the Tenebræ, the Veneration or Adoration, that is the crawling to and kissing of the Cross; the Feast of Corpus Christi; processions with movable images, and crucifixes marched about with these processions. Then there is another strange ceremony, called by a name which is spelt in the same way as the French for asparagus, that is the Asperges, the pronunciation of which I do not know whether it is two syllables, asp-erges, or three syllables, asp-er-ges, which is a sprinkling with salt-and-water by water brushes. I speak with very great diffidence, and to a certain extent with a great deal of discomfort, of these things, because I believe there are Members of this House who are as loyal Churchmen as myself who are perhaps supporters of services such as I have mentioned; but what I do feel most strongly is that services which are not in the Prayer Book ought not to be allowed in the public worship of this country. We have heard a great deal said about Mr. Kensit. People have found very great fault with him for what they call brawling in churches. Like my honourable Friend the Member for Hereford, brawling in churches would be about the last thing I should like to do myself, but for years past these ceremonies and services have been going on, and the bishops of this country as a rule have taken no steps whatever to prevent them. In saying this I should like very much to except the bishop of the diocese in which I live—the Bishop of Worcester. He has had very hard usage from people who disagreed with him, and he has done everything he can to uphold the Protestant character of the Church of England. What struck me was that when these services and ceremonies were brought before the knowledge of the public, owing to the action of Mr. Kensit, on May 2nd of this year, a number of clergymen banded themselves together, and made a resolution that they would conform to the dictum of the bishops in this respect. What I read was this, that they considered that the ceremonies and rites laid down in the Prayer Book wanted a certain amount of alteration. Those ceremonies and rites might have been good enough two or three centuries ago when the Prayer Book was first introduced in its present state, but in their opinion those rites and ceremonies would not do for the present time—in point of fact that the Prayer Book was not equal to the exigencies of the present time. I was very much struck with a letter which I saw in the Times on May 17th. It was written by a Roman Catholic, who signed himself "B." We all of us can understand the Roman Catholic religion, and though we may not sympathise with it, we respect the opinions held by the Roman Catholic body; but Roman Catholicism is one thing and the Protestant religion is another, and these High Church ritualistic practices are neither one nor the other—they are neither bird, nor beast, nor fish, nor feathered fowl. It used to call itself the Protestant religion, but now I believe it is not called by that name, and it has introduced into it all sorts of Roman Catholic rites and ceremonies, which have been engrafted on it. I do not propose to read the whole of that letter to the House.

Hear, hear!

The honourable Gentleman says "Hear, hear," but I may as well tell him that, although I do not propose to read the whole letter, I shall read extracts from it. We do not want to unduly lengthen this discussion, but there are certain points which require elucidation. If the honourable Member who cheered will allow me, I should like to read certain extracts out of this letter, and I shall be very much surprised if, after he hears these extracts, his cheer is renewed. This Roman Catholic layman visited, in company with a genuine Church of England man, the church of St. Cuthbert, Earl's Court. On entering he found a holy-water stoup in exactly the same position as where he should look for one in his own churches, and he began to think that he had made a mistake. The decorations, he said, were of a thoroughly devotional, and not merely ornamental, character; and, but for the absence of "Confessionals," and of a "Tabernacle" over the high altar, he would have been, puzzled to note any distinction between that and the interior of a Roman Catholic church. There were two altars—the high altar, and one in a side chapel, with all the appurtenances essential to the saying of Mass. On each altar was placed a, crucifix, just in the game position as it is with the Roman Catholics, the box below it, or the stand, doing duty—in appearance, at all events—for what would have been with the Catholics the tabernacle for the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament. At St. Cuthbert's there were no lights burning before the high altar, but at the church of St. Mathias, which he also visited, there was as goodly a show of red lamps burning as proportionately there as at St. Gudule, in Brussels, before the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. At St. Mathias, also, there is a high altar and two side altars, with a crucifix on each. At St. Cuthbert's there was a confessional chair fitted with a grille as on Roman Catholic confessionals, through which the penitent addresses the priest. The "station; of the Cross" are painted on the walls decoratively whereas, in Roman Catholic churches they are generally pictures in frames, sometimes sculptured. At St. Mathias there was a notice up requesting persons to communicate only at the early celebrations, and to come fasting if possible. These are all the extracts which I shall read. Although I do not agree with everything that my honourable Friend the Member for Hertford has said about the bishops, I do consider that the bishops should stop such ceremonies as these from going on in the Church. Perhaps my honourable Friend will not mind if I quote another letter from the Times which appeared on May the 28th. On that day a letter appeared from Mr. Miller, in which he states that the Bishop of London was publicy censed in St. Augustine's, Kilburn, some time after the pronunciamento which the High Church clergy made that they intended to support the authority of the bishops. I give these extracts because I feel that as long as these practices go on in the Church of England, so long will the Church of England be undermined. There are a number of men who are loyal churchmen—people like myself—who have fought this battle on public platforms in two General Elections, who have been willing to spend our money in supporting the Church of our forefathers, who are utterly and entirely opposed to these practices which I have alleged exist; and I say again, in all sincerity and all humility, that I get up now in this House of Commons and say these few words because I believe that if these practices—these extreme ritualistic practices—are allowed to go on in the Church of England the power of the Church will be undermined, and the time will come when people like myself, who at present are loyal to the Church, and loyal to the traditions of the Church, and who recognise the great work which the Church is doing, if these things are not altered, will have to vote with honourable Members opposite when they bring forward some motion censuring the Church in these matters. As long as I sit here I should strongly object to taking any course of that sort, and I only hope that, Members who, like myself, have the true interests of the Church at heart will do all they possibly can to restrain these ultra-ritualistic practices in the Church of England.

May I suggest to the House that we are not an assembly of Protestants, we are representatives of the religious views of the people of the three, kingdoms. It must be somewhat unpleasant, and indeed must grate on the ears of Catholics and members of other religions, to have their personal views discussed in terms of reprobation. We, Sir, are in the difficulty of being compelled, some of us especially against our will, to discuss matters belonging to one church in this country, but we are not in a position here, representing as we do different theological schools, holding different theological opinions, and some holding no theological opinions at all, to discuss questions so delicate, yet of so much interest to those from whom we dissent. I object altogether to make sport of the opinions of those from whom I differ, opinions which are equally dear to them as mine are to me, opinions to which they attach an importance which I cannot accept. The difficulty lies in our endeavouring in Parliament to fix upon the English Church that yoke of uniformity, and compelling us to debate a ritual and a dogma imposed upon that Church some two hundred years ago. May I also remind those gentlemen who protest strongly against change of ritual that exception might equally be taken to many of the doctrines now taught in the direction of Liberal thought which are not in accordance with the Calvinistic Articles of the Church of England. We have fixed a burden on the Anglican Church which she has to bear as well as she can. It is practically impossible for her to obtain relief and to come to this House for the discussion of innumerable details. The only remedy is to give the Church of England her proper freedom. Until that event takes place, and Disestablishment, I am sure, is within a measurable distance of time, I feel a responsibility—a responsibility shared, I believe, by some other Members on this side of the House—in refusing to that Church some assistance in curing acknowledged evils. If there are open and serious scandals calling for a remedy I will be no party to the principle of bidding the Church continue to poison herself in order that she may the sooner be disestablished. My vote will go in the direction of any reasonable reform.

I think that everybody who has heard the statement of the honourable Gentleman who has just sat down will feel that it is one which does him credit. We cannot expect that every Member of this House shall be either a member of the Church of England or especially interested in that great ecclesiastical body, but what we do ask is, and what we can ask honourable Gentleman with confidence is, that in every effort to reform any acknowledged and recognised abuse in that Church, we shall have the support of every man, be his theological opinions what they may, in carrying out the intentions which we have in view. I wish I could think that honourable Gentlemen who have spoken to-night felt that the considerations which have weighed with the honourable Member for Scarborough have weighed with themselves. I have listened to almost every speech, but I must confess that I have heard with regret that some honourable Gentlemen are prepared to sacrifice—for it amounts to that—certain reforms which this Bill contains in the hope, not that we shall have this Session, but that we shall have at some future time a Measure carrying out other objects which, however desirable in themselves, must be distinctly separated from the object which this Bill seeks to carry out. I have heard to-night two entirely different sets of arguments against the consideration of the Report stage. Sir, after all this is a belated Second Reading debate, and I cannot help feeling—I will not say that the Committee of the House have been abused—that a somewhat excessive advantage has been taken of the forms of the House to bring before it considerations which would be perfectly relevant to a Second Reading debate, but which are somewhat belated after the Second Reading has been passed by an overwhelming majority, and after the Measure itself has stood the fierce investigation and critical discussion in the Grand Committee to which it has been referred. The first set of arguments is strictly relevant to the subject-matter of the Bill. The criticisms advanced by my honourable Friends the Members for Lowestoft and Hereford were directed to the Bill and what it contained. They objected to the Bill; they desired to reject it at this stage, and their ambition would be entirely satisfied if the Government were to declare the Bill now withdrawn. The other set of arguments was of an entirely different character. They were advanced by gentlemen who have on previous occasions indicated their friendship to the Bill, and who are now apparently prepared to sacrifice it and the reforms it embodies in order to raise other and more burning controversies the importance of which I am the last to deny, but whose strict relevancy to the question before us I confess I individually cannot see. As regards the criticisms directed against the Bill by my honourable Friend the Member for Lowestoft, I do not think that I need detain the House very long. My honourable Friend's doctrine goes the length of stating, unless I misunderstood him, that no amount of traffic in the sale of next presentations was a matter with which this Legislature need concern itself. Indeed, he went almost the length of saying that the patron of the living was not responsible for the character, ability, or capacity of the person he appointed, but that the whole responsibility of seeing that fit persons were appointed to livings under our existing system of patronage lay, not with the patron, but with the bishop. I thought that a very extravagant and a very unsustainable doctrine; but it became more extravagant and more unsustainable when my honourable Friend went on, in the second part of his speech, to say that the responsibilities thrown upon the bishop by the existing law, as I understood him—certainly by the law as it would be if this Bill pass—were already too severe, that the bishop's powers were too great, and the responsibility which he had to support was too weighty. Sir, I cannot reconcile those two arguments. The whole responsibility of appointing fit persons in the Church of England rests, not with the patrons, but with the bishops. Surely, the corollary of that thesis is that the power of the bishops cannot be too much increased, and that the instruments given them by law for dealing with the responsibilities thrown upon them by law cannot be made too effective. My honourable Friend went on to say that the Bill was injurious to the clergy and a slur on the Church of England. All I can say is that if the Bill is injurious to the clergy, the clergy have taken a very strange way of expressing their injury; and if the Bill is a slur on the Church of England the Church of England has shown itself singularly insensitive to the insult. There is not a body representing the clergy or the men interested in the welfare of the Church of England which has not in the course of the last few months passed a resolution strongly in favour of the Bill. I think, perhaps, I need not labour this point more elaborately, because in this respect, at all events, I think the great majority of the House are in agreement with the sentiments I have expressed. I am sure my honourable Friend who moved the rejection of the Bill, and my honourable Friend the Member for Hereford, expressed their own views with great ability, but I do not think they are entertained by any considerable body of opinion on either side of the House. I therefore pass on to the second, more important and by far the most striking and impressive, but also the more irrelevant, discussion which was initiated in the speech of the honourable Member for Flintshire. The honourable Member has taken the occasion which the forms of the House afford him to raise burning controversies associated with recent discussions connected with ritual in certain churches in London—I think almost, if not entirely, confined to London.

Oh, no! All over the country.

Not all over the country; but my present point is that the honourable Gentleman has taken the opportunity, as undoubtedly the forms of the House allowed him, of raising a question not touched on in the Bill, but in which he takes a deep interest, and in which he rightly thinks the public of this country at the present moment take a deep interest. I do not blame the honourable Gentleman for taking the opportunity, but I do blame him for making the opportunity of a discussion upon certain questions of ritual a ground for rejecting a Bill which is intended to deal with an entirely different class of grievances. I make criticisms upon him on that score, but while I certainly agree with a great deal that fell from him, I think he was not altogether free from the defect which is apt to attach to all who rush into these burning controversies, namely, the error of exaggerating the number of facts which make for his case. He not only told us what I am afraid is perfectly true, that there are a certain number of churches in this country where services are conducted quite differently from the services contemplated by the English Church service, and where doctrines are adumbrated which have little connection with the doctrines of the Church of England—he was not content with that statement but went on to make a general attack on the bishops, and to give us certain statements which I confess I cannot help thinking were legends, with regard to occult, dark schemes of general conversion to the Church of Rome—of Orders regarded as valid in the Church of Rome being given by clergymen of the Church of England, and other matters of that kind. I confess that with regard to these latter stories I have not had the opportunity of seeing the evidence the honourable Gentleman might be able to bring forward, but in the light of such knowledge as is open to all or us, not of the views of the Church of England, but of the theological doctrines of the Church of Rome, I cannot believe that ever, if there were a clergyman of the Church of England so perverted as to desire to be given episcopal Orders in the Church of Rome in order to ordain clergymen in the Church of England, if there were a man who had such wishes or desires—I cannot believe he would find in the Church of Rome anyone who would favour his aspirations. But as regards the Church of England, the honourable Gentleman told the House that, no less than 13 bishops belonged to the English Church Union.

I said 30, but I did not confine myself to 30.

I have not had time since the honourable Gentleman spoke to make critical inquiry into this matter, but I am informed that not a single diocesan bishop in England or Wales belongs to the English Church Union. If that is a specimen of the accuracy with which the honourable Gentleman has got up his facts, I think the House will feel that, however sound his arguments may be against the ritualistic practices of certain clergymen, his general indictment of the authorities of the Church is one that deserves very little confidence. But the honourable Gentleman found a powerful supporter—I do, not know whether he was an unexpected supporter—in the Leader of the Opposition. The honourable Member for Flintshire is justly open to the accusation, that he somewhat rashly stated facts, and was guilty of a certain amount of unintentional exaggeration. It is, indeed, not necessary that I should state to the House, who are acquainted with the right honourable Gentleman's methods, that he far surpassed the honourable Member in both these peculiarities. The right honourable Member has never been able to restrain himself, on this topic. One of my very earliest, recollections, indeed I may say my earliest recollection, in this House, now going back 24 years, is that of the controversy between the right honourable Gentleman and Mr. Gladstone upon the Public Worship Regulation Bill, which, was almost the first Measure introduced after I became a Member of this House; and I shall never forget the admirable speech in which Mr. Gladstone attacked, and, as I think, demolished the right honourable Gentleman on that occasion, and, if I have not forgotten, I am sure the victim of the speech will still less have forgotten it. I was so interested in the right honourable Gentleman's speech that I sent, in order to revive my recollection, for the volume of "Hansard" which contains the accounts of this great duel. I observe that Mr. Gladstone then said—

"The fact is that my right honourable and learned Friend is still in his Parliamentary youth, and has not yet sown his Parliamentary wild oats."

He went on to say—

"If it is desired to maintain that establishment of religion—the English Church—then I say that moderation in act and temper and mildness in language are absolutely necessary for those who undertake to guide the House in that difficult and perilous question."

I think it will be admitted by all those who had the advantage of hearing the speech of the right honourable Gentleman to-night that that advice so given by Mr. Gladstone 24 years ago has, as far as those topics are concerned, not vet been followed by the right honourable Gentleman, and that, as far as matters ecclesiastical are concerned, he is still in his Parliamentary youth, and has not yet sown his Parliamentary wild oats. What did the right honourable Gentleman tell us? He told us that in every parish of this country—I think that was his phrase—we drove the children of Nonconformist and Churchman alike, the Protestant children into the schools and compelled them to hear the doctrines enunciated in certain catechisms to which the honourable Member for Flintshire made reference. What relation has that statement to the facts of the case? In how many of the 14,000 parishes of this country does the clergyman of the parish teach doctrines which, even in the view of the honourable Member for Flintshire, are inconsistent with the Protestant religion, the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer Book?

A great many.

I entirely dissent from the right honourable Gentleman. If I should say that the statement is erroneous to the amount of 99 per cent. I should have done more than justice to the right honourable Gentleman; and I think you might go through the parochial schools of this country, go to the parish services of this country, one by one, and you would find that the number of parish services which are open to the criticism of the honourable Member for Flintshire, and still more of the Leader of the Opposition, is almost infinitesimal. I do not deny that the great majority of the House share the views of those who have expressed their regret at the practices in ritual of which we have heard enough, and more than enough, to-night. It matters very little what an individual Member's opinion may be, but my own opinion agrees with the view that has been expressed. I hold an opinion, shared I believe not by one party in the Church of England but by every party in the Church of England—every party without exception in the Church of England—and I share the feelings of regret that those practices have gone on, productive as they are of much scandal, and open as they are to objection of the most serious kind from every point of view. But, Sir, that is not the question before the House. The question before the House is: Are we to turn a Bill intended to deal with a certain class of evil into another and different Bill intended to deal with a different class of evil? It is vain for any man to pretend that he is in favour of this Bill if, at the present stage, after it has passed through Committee, he proposes to revolutionise its character. The thing cannot be done; it cannot even be done on the honourable Member's own principle. What was his principle? His principle was—the whole view underlying his speech was—that you cannot trust the bishops of the Church of England in matters of doctrine and ritual.

Hear, hear!

Well, this Measure, which does not deal with matters of doctrine and ritual, does trust the bishops; and it would be absolutely impossible so to modify this Bill as to meet the views of those who wish it to be, not a Bill dealing with certain abuses connected with patronage, but a Bill dealing with doctrine and ritual. The necessity of any Bill dealing with such matters, though such necessity may arise, is a necessity which I should regard as of tragic import to all the best interests of the Church. I remember the discussions on the Bill to which I have already referred—the Public Worship Regulation Bill of 1874—and I cannot believe that any repetition of those discussions would be otherwise than a misfortune—a misfortune which might indeed be the less of two evils, but which would be in itself one of the greatest evils which could befall the community. But, Sir, I do not think we need discuss that question now. The question before the House is the question whether you will destroy a measure of reform, not for the purpose of bringing in another measure of reform, but for the purpose—I really do not quite know what—of emphasising those beliefs in the Protestantism of the country which I do not think are in question at the present time. The honourable Member will hardly maintain that the safety of the Protestant religion consists in permitting the sale of next presentations. I cannot believe that he, who is, I believe, genuinely interested in the health and welfare of every religious organisation in this country, is seriously desirous to prevent us from carrying out the reforms which he admits to be desirable, simply because we did not draft at the last hour a new Bill—a Bill which it would be quite impossible, if it could be drafted, to deal with in the course of the present Session, and of the necessity for which I do not think the House is as yet convinced. I do not know whether the honourable Member intends to proceed to a Division. If he does proceed to a Division with any hope of carrying the Amendment, I cannot imagine how he reconciles such a course with his conscience.

Why not?

Why not? I will tell the right honourable Gentleman. The right honourable Gentleman has never in his life desired a reform except so far as he could turn it into political capital. ["Oh, oh!" Cheers, and cries, of "Shame!" and "Withdraw!" followed by prolonged interruption..]

The right honourable Gentleman has not exceeded the rules of order. If he had I should have called him to order.

I have not exceeded the bounds of order; I may have exceeded the bounds of courtesy. Let me modify my observation, and say that the right honourable Gentleman has never desired a reform which did not happen to fit in with the popular clamour. I will modify my expression again—with the popular feeling of the moment. I think now I have at once made my meaning clear and saved the feelings of the right honourable Gentleman. Now, Sir, the right honourable Gentleman is extremely anxious not to pass a reform which does not cause great popular excitement, but he is anxious to have a discussion which will create great popular excitement—hence the difference of opinion between us. I confess that I am anxious to pass a reform which is admitted to be a reform by almost everybody in this House, although it has not those elements of popular excitement so dear to the heart of the right honourable Gentleman. I trust that the House will not consent to allow a useful reform to be killed merely for the purpose of enabling the right, honourable Gentleman to repeat in 1898 the speeches he made in 1874, because the amount of gain would not be worth the sacrifice. The gain would be great, no doubt, but it would not be worth the sacrifice. I think that, put in that way, it does not hurt the feelings of the right honourable Gentleman. Well, Sir, I do not believe that the honourable Member for Flintshire takes the same view as the right honourable Gentleman. I think he will recognise that the rejection of this Bill would not help his cause in the least. He must have seen by the reception accorded to his speech that the cause he has at heart is one which has an immense body of public sympathy behind it. We all recognise that. The cause will not, however, be aided by the rejection of this Bill. On the other hand, its rejection this Session would put off a reform which has long been desired by all who are interested in the Church, of England, which has been recommended by Commission after Commission, which was approved at the stage of Second Reading without a Division, and which the honourable Member for Flintshire, I believe, himself desires in his heart. Let him not disguise from himself that, by taking the course he has taken, he is not helping the cause of Church reform, but is deferring for an indefinite period a change which he desires as much as I do. If we are to mix this subject up with those other burning controversies which have already caused such difficulties and divisions in the community generally, and in this House, an injury will be done to a Church of which the honourable Member is not a member but of which he desires to promote the welfare and utility. I trust, therefore, that all who share the views of the honourable Member upon the question of Church reform will abstain from following him into the Lobby, and will obey his principles, rather than endeavour to carry out the Amendment he has placed on the Paper. Sir, I do not know that I need add anything to what I have said except this: the House has not only travelled beyond a Second Reading debate at this stage, but has travelled into one of the most thorny and difficult controversies in which it could be involved. If this controversy is to be seriously taken up by the House, it cannot be in connection with a Bill which has passed through three-fourths of its course. It cannot be dealt with at the end of a Session, when the whole time of the House is already allotted. Let the House, therefore, not be misled by the great mass of truth which is contained in the statement of the honourable Gentleman, however exaggerated that statement may have been in particulars or erroneous in details. Let it rather set itself to work at the task which is appointed for it, and endeavour, by passing this Bill, to carry out once for all a long-needed and much-needed reform in the Church of England.

I should not have interposed in this Debate but for the fact that my position is a somewhat peculiar one, and that I wish to explain why I cannot follow the advice of the right honourable Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, which advice I have heard with very great regret. Mr. Speaker, if the House will allow me to say so, I am bound to remark that the impression on my mind is that there has been great extravagance on both sides in matters arising on the Debate upon this Bill. In the first place I think the promoters of this Bill very much exaggerate the evils existing in the Church of England. On the whole, there is no body of men more free from suspicion and from impurity than the clergymen of the Church of England. I do therefore protest against the idea that this Bill is being brought in because the Church is in such a bad condition and requires these steps to improve it. I also regret the introduction of the Bill on the ground that it will in the public mind give a false impression as to the state of the Church of England. On the other hand, I must say that there has been distinct exaggeration in the remarks of the honourable Member for Flintshire. The evils to which he alludes, and of which the House is almost unanimous in disapproving, do not exist to anything like the extent that the honourable Gentleman thinks. Travel from London to Manchester, for example, and probably in the whole journey of 200 miles you would not pass within sight of one single church where those evils exist. Because nobody hears anything about those cases, because they do not get into the newspapers, you do not allow for them, and the few cases that do get into the newspapers often exaggerate and misrepresent the actual state of affairs. My own impression is that the tide of Romanism is receding, and that the evils are nothing like so great as the honourable Member for Flintshire would lead the House to imagine. But I must come to the Bill itself. The Bill is opposed by two sets of people, if I may say so, in this House—those who say that the Bill does too much, and those who say that the Bill does not do enough. Some honourable Members think that the Bill does too much—that it interferes with the rights of property and the right of patronage. With those objections I have not myself the slightest sympathy, and I do not think this (the Opposition) side of the House at any rate will sympathise with any such antiquated and worn-out notions. But there is one reason, which is a sufficient reason in my mind, for passing this Bill, and that is that it will teach the public and the Church a lesson that livings are no longer to be regarded as property to be trafficked in. If for no other reason than this I should be inclined to support the Bill. We are told it does not do enough. That is the objection raised by the honourable Member for Flint, and accentuated by the right honourable Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. But, Mr. Speaker, are we to throw out Bills in this House be cause they do not do enough? What Bill would pass if such a principle were to be adopted? I myself desire certain reforms in regard to this Bill. Should I therefore oppose it because it does not include the reforms I desire? No; that would be a distinctly illogical position. My honourable Friend the Member for Flint has no right to oppose this Bill because it does not include the reforms he desires. But does it include any reforms at all? I think it does. It does something, however little, and I take that something in the expectation of getting more. I say it would be a violation of logic—it would be a violation of fairness and of common sense—to refuse to pass a Bill because it does not do all that you desire. There has been a tendency to-night to meddle with other matters in connection with this question. The advice which I would venture to give in regard to the Bill is that which once fell from the lips of Lord Melbourne—"Leave it alone." To drag in at the tail of the Bill big controversial questions would be the height of absurdity, and it could only tend to wreck the Measure. In that sense I protest against it. I have only one other word to say in conclusion. May I appeal to honourable Members to support this Bill, first, as a public, and, secondly, as a Christian, duty? We must remember that it is not the Church that has put herself under Parliament, but Parliament that has put itself over the Church. As long as you maintain that position you have duties following from that position, and the first is that you should behave with fairness and honour to the Church for which you have assumed the responsibility. But there should be a higher motive still, Mr. Speaker, that I would touch, if only for a moment. We all recognise—I know my honourable Friend the Member for Flint does—whether we agree with the Church of England or not, that she is doing a great religious work in this country. Other churches are doing a great work, but no one can deny that the Church of England is doing a great work. Shall we, therefore, not feel, as Christian men, if called upon to do all we can to help that work, apart from Party politics, that we are bound to remove from this Church everything which hinders it in its great religious work? Therefore we are bound to support this Bill, which does something to make that work more pure and effective.

Mr. Speaker, I desire to dis- claim, as I have disclaimed before, any intention whatever of retaining the evils in the Church of England with the view of carrying out that which I have at heart, namely, disestablishment and disendowment. I oppose this Bill because I consider it a thoroughly insincere Bill. It professes to remedy certain apparently small abuses, but its real aim is the placing the whole clergy, and consequently the whole of the laity, of the Church more under the power of the bishop than they are at the present time. Some friends of ours who belong to free churches take the line of argument that has been adopted by my honourable Friend who has just sat down, and ask why it is this House should not do everything in its power to aid the Church to reform itself. But the House ought to be, and must be, the judge of what is right or wrong in ecclesiastical matters? We have, as Members of this House, a grave responsibility to the laity and to the clergy of the Church, and it is right that we should protect the clergy against evils many of them feel so acutely. The First Lord of the Treasury said that he believed the Bill would be welcomed by all parties and sections of the Church. That may be so as far as regards the manifestations which get into the newspapers, but I can assure him that if the letters which we receive from the clergy could only be brought before the House they would tell a very different tale. I think I may be forgiven for reading a few sentences from one of those letters. Some of them are from men who are known personally to me, and others by reputation, as earnest and devoted clergy, and I therefore think they are the least likely to fall under ecclesiastical censure. These are a few lines from one of the letters—

"I beg to thank you sincerely for your efforts to safeguard the clergy in the Benefices Bill. The Bill is intended as a panacea for Welsh Church troubles, but nowhere is it so much dreaded and resisted as in Wales."

Now, I do not propose to give the House the name of the writer, but if honourable Members desire to see the letter I shall be glad to show it under the same seal of confidence as it has been sent under to me. The letter is only typical of many letters which I have received, and Wales is a special case of the evils attendant on the power of the bishops. Everybody knows that in past times—I am happy to say there are very few of them now—there were great clerical scandals in Wales, jet in no part of the country is there less lay or more episcopal patronage. Many of the parochial clergy feel themselves to be under the iron government and caprice of a single man, and are convinced that any addition to the power of the bishops would work injury to the Church. The Bill professes to deal with one class of evils, but it does so by setting up another class, and though we have unquestionably done a great deal to modify it in Committee, still, it seems to me as so utterly unsuitable for the purpose for which it is to be carried that I most cordially support the Motion for reading it again this day six months. The Bill is uncalled for and unnecessary. What is wanted is, as has been said, some method of dealing with those who have violated their ordination vows by Romanising practices. The First Lord of the Trea-