the papers he will find that there was sent to Mr. Howard the whole narrative of what took place at Paris, so that he was not without instructions as to the propositions to which he might safely have assented. I say he had instructions because there was sent Earl Cowley's despatch, which stated how the whole matter had been agreed to in Paris by the Portuguese representatives. I have gone through these points, because of the noble Lord's criticisms; and now I have to state the conclusions at which I have arrived, and at which I think the House will also arrive. I agree, in the first place in all that has been said as to the objectionable nature of the traffic which was the foundation of these transactions. I must add, however, that the objection seems to me to come with rather a bad grace from Portugal when we remember that these papers show that the main ground of the Portuguese complaint is that slaves-branded slaves belonging to Portuguese subjects-were stolen away from their owners or were sold by them to be sent to a colony where, in theory at least, they would be free men. I agree that the French Government may perhaps regret the too summary manner in which they acted, and I regret, too, that the Portuguese Government did not agree to a mediation according to the Protocol of Paris. I maintain, however, that, as a matter of international law, the French Government were right when they insisted that the presence and recognition of a French delegate withdrew the vessel from the jurisdiction of the Portuguese Courts. I maintain that Portugal never must have been arrived at by the hon. Member for Bridgewater, who, on an imputation against Her Majesty's Ministers of non-adherence to national faith, contents himself by placing in your hands a Motion for papers. SIR RICHARD BETHELL said, he would move the adjournment of the debate. VISCOUNT PALMERSTON said, that he thought it was desirable that the debate should be adjourned as hon. Members who were anxious to address the House upon the subject were not very likely at that hour to receive a very patient hearing: THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER said, he thought they ought to understand what was the question before the House. He believed his hon. Friend the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs had stated that he was prepared to give any papers upon that subject which had an actual existence. But of course, if hon. Gentlemen opposite wished to continue the conversation, it was not for them to throw any impediment in their way. hon. Gentleman the Member for Bridgewater would probably in that case be able to find some day for going on with his Motion. The MR. KINGLAKE said, that the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs had refused to produce a portion of the correspondence. Debate adjourned till Thursday. MENT BILL. LEAVE. FIRST READING. MR. GREGORY asked for leave to bring in a Bill to amend the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act in relation to the religion which deserted children should be registered and educated. applied to us and never could have applied POOR RELIEF (IRELAND) ACT AMENDto us under the treaty of 1703. I maintain that we had secured for Portugal in Paris favourable terms, by which this dispute might have been settled; and, moreover, that Portugal refused at Lisbon terms which in substance were little short of what her representative had agreed to in Paris. I maintain that even if Portugal had object-in ed to assent to these modified terms, yet still she was bound to have stated her reasons, and not to have closed the door to further negotiation. Sir, I maintain further that Her Majesty's Government through out these discussions, availing themselves of the valuable services of Earl Cowley in Paris, did consistently from day to day exhibit their good offices in favour of Por tugal. I think that these results are the same as those at which the House will arrive; and I must add that they appear to me to be in substance the results which LORD NAAS said, he would not object to the introduction of the measure. MR. VANCE said, he must express his regret that the Government should have consented to the introduction of such a Bill. He took it for granted that its object must be to alter the existing law under which deserted children were brought up in the religion of the State. "Resolved-That the Chairman be directed to move the House, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Acts for the Relief of the Destitute Poor in Ireland, by removing doubts as House resumed. Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. FITZROY, Mr. GREGORY, and Lord JOHN BROWNE. Bill presented, and read 1°. troduced the measure (Mr. Walpole) deserved the thanks of the House for endeavouring to grapple with this question, and for the sincere desire which he had evinced to remedy the evils arising out of the existing law of church rates. He (Sir John Trelawny), however, thought that these attempted remedies were only-to use a phrase of Sir John Dodson's in the evidence before the Church-rate Como'clock.mittee-like "changes of posture upon an uneasy bed," and he believed that nothing short of the total abolition of church rates would meet the difficulties of the case. However ingenious the devices proposed for amending the law, none of them satisfied the nature of the complaint, and he believed that, unless Parliament should allow the voluntary principle free scope, they would never accomplish the end they HOUSE OF COMMONS, Wednesday, March 9, 1859. MINUTES.] NEW MEMBERS SWORN.-For Tewkesbury, Hon. Frederick Lygon; For Wilts (North ern Division), Right Hon. Thomas Henry Sutton Sotheron-Estcourt. PUBLIC BILLS-2° Juries (Ireland). 3o Manslaughter. JURIES (IRELAND) BILL. Order for Second Reading read. LORD NAAS said, he should like to come to some understanding with the hon. Gentleman who had charge of this Bill. It was not his intention to oppose the Bill at the present stage, but the Government intended to introduce one of their own; and he hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman would not press this Bill to a further stage till the Government Bill was introduced and placed in a position where the two Bills could be put side by side, and compared together. MR. J. D. FITZGERALD thought the Government proposition a reasonable one, and if the Bill was read a second time now he would not move the Committee for a fortnight. Bill read 2°. CHURCH RATES BILL. Order for Second Reading read. SIR JOHN TRELAWNY rose to move, as an Amendment, that it be read a second time that day six months. He admitted that the right hon. Gentleman who had in had in view. His course would be to contrast the two measures. As to his own measure, it did just what was necessary and no more, and was so simple that he who ran might read, while he thought that the measure of the right hon. Gentleman was full of difficulties and complications. The very first clause, for example, of the right hon. Gentleman's Bill, which defined the meaning of the word "owner," enabled a person who was a trustee for others, or who had only a life interest in an estate, to bind his successors in perpetuity to the payment of church rates. This, he contended, amounted to a little less than an act of confiscation. It would be far more just even to place the charge on the Consolidated Fund, which was, however, very properly objected to. Ought a Protestant trustee or owner of an interest for a brief period to tie the hands and bind the estates of Catholic or Nonconformist families? Again, he held that it was not desirable in these days to increase the number of endowments. They ought not to "crystallize" belief, as it was called; for no one could tell what in a hundred years' time the bebelief of this country might be; very likely it would be the same, but he would not prejudge the question by creating new endowments for the existing establishments. He contended, moreover, that the measure was in direct contravention of the principle of the Mortmain Act, and he foretold that it would be successfully opposed exactly in the same manner as ministers' money in Ireland-which had been abolished-and the annuity tax in Scotland. He objected, again, on the ground that it made the church rates a prior incumbrance, next to tithes, and he wanted to know on what ground the right hon. Gentleman was going to encroach on the rights of those who had already got a charge upon landed property by interposing this prior encumbrance. He objected again that the Bill constituted a corporation consisting of the churchwardens and the in cumbent. It appeared to him that the old institution of churchwardens was quite sufficient for the purpose; but the incumbent was now to be mixed up with the churchwardens, and the consequence would be to bring the clergy into more frequent collisions with their parishioners on these questions of church rates. He objected again to the Bill because it abolished or suppressed, in a great degree, the constitutional and useful control exercised by vestries. As it was, the laity had not sufficient action in the Church, and this Bill was intended still further to limit their power. It was said that the Dissenters who did not pay had no right to attend the vestry; but he thought it might often produce a happy feeling on the part of Dissenters on behalf of the Church if they were allowed to attend the vestries. But this Bill tended to check Dissenters from attending; for if they were once compelled to sign a certificate that they were Dissenters they would be prevented from afterwards drawing back from the position they were thus com pelled to take up. If this Bill passed into a law how many landowners, he should like to know, would be willing to put their hands into their pockets in order to relieve Dissenters from the impost of the rate? He apprehended very few. It would be felt by sincere supporters of church rates that a voluntary subscription in the way of a charge on land, in order to get rid of church rates and relieve Dissenters of what it was said they were bound to pay, would be like playing the Dissenters' game; finding, them, as it were, powder and shot." Practically, then, he considered the plan calculated to perpetuate church rates in parishes where they were now levied, and to revive an agitation in a number of parishes where they had long ceased to exist. In these last the Bill actually held out an incentive to young and zealous ministers to endeavour to get one rate; since, if Dissenters then exempted themselves by the declaration under the Bill, they might forfeit their votes, and thus future rates might be sanctioned by majorities. He believed also that disputes would arise between landlords and tenants, and that Dissenters were in as good a position at the present moment VOL. CLII. [THIRD SERIES.] 66 as they would be under the Bill, since the mode of successfully resisting rates was day by day coming to be better understood. He said the Bill proceeded on a supposition that was false in itself; that it proceeded on a supposition that the land was chargeable with church rate, though that was so obviously fallacious that he was certain no lawyer in the House would venture to maintain it. A noble Lord in "another place" once said that the title to church rates was as indefeasible as the title of any gentleman in the land. But how could that be, when the decision in the first Braintree case was, that the churchwardens could not make a rate of themselves; and in the second Braintree case. that the churchwardens and a minority of the vestry combined could not make a rate? By the existing law a rate must be approved by a majority of the vestry. Such was the decision of the House of Lords. Then, again, they were very different from tithes the right of recovering in respect of church rates being only theoretical instead of practical as in the case of tithes. In the case of tithe there was a remedy by distress, and even by seizing the land of defaulters. Not so in church rate. You might indict a county for non-repairs of a bridge, or a parish for non-repair of a road. But there was no common-law sanction in the case of a church rate, the remedy being in theory pro salute animæ. The occupier only was liable for church rate. the occupier abandoned his tenement, the owner was not liable. Owners were only liable in respect of what they occupy, and executors are not liable in respect of church rates due from deceased persons. Land, therefore, as such, was not liable, but land was merely a "test of the ability" to pay rates. The whole theory was, and is, that a man pays for what he gets, and this grew up at a time when all were of one religion, or pretended so to be, and when dissent was treated as a crime by numerous Acts, in the days of Elizabeth and others. What could be more easy than resistance to church rates under the present law? There were five principal grounds upon which church rates might be objected to: that the rate might be illegal; that it was illegally made; that a person was not fairly assessed; that he was assessed in respect of property for which he was not liable; and that a rate was unnecessary; and, according to Dr. Lushington, in any case which came before a magistrate, it was only necessary for the party summoned to use these words :-" I 3 E If quate to accomplish the object it had in view, that it was founded upon injustice, being a measure of confiscation, and that it was calculated to perpetuate litigation on the one hand, and create fresh litigation on the other, he could not recommend the House to adopt the Bill in its present form; and under those circumstances he conceiv ed it to be his duty to move, as an Amend. ment, that the Bill be read a second time that day six months. Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words upon this day six months." 66 Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question." dispute the validity of this rate," in order | ters reached very near that amount, being to take the whole question out of the ma- 4,894,648 sittings in 20,300 chapels. Begistrate's hands, and carry it into the Ec- lieving that the measure would be inadeclesiastial Courts. The case was then taken from the magistrate's court to the Ecclesiatical Courts; thence to the Common Law Courts the Court of Queen's Bench and the Court of Exchequer, and eventually to the House of Lords. Then it got back to the Consistory Court and the Court of Arches, and lastly to the Committee of Privy Council. The remedy in the case of resistance was a farce. The Church followed the recalcitrant through legal swamps and quagmires, and midst briars and thorns, scarifying herself and earning little credit, and found at last that she was hunting a will-o'the-wisp, for in the end Dissenters were sure to come off victoriously. The Bill offered exemptions on terms of registering disseut. Was that gracious or wise? Dissenters were, many of them, disposed to attend, under favourable circumstances, such as when a minister, of views approaching their own, happens to be the incumbent, or happens to preach. Once compel the Dissenter to register his dissent, and human nature would keep him estranged. Thus he would lose the benefit of the service of the Church, and his subscription would be lost, and perhaps his nonconformity fixed for ever. Why treat Dissenters as persons so peculiar as to require exceptional legislation? Either the voluntary principle might be trusted or not. But it was unwise to trust it by halves. "One volunteer was better than a pressed man." Dissenters should be encouraged to "come in" to the Church, not irritated and extruded by a brand of disconformity, which was unkind and unchristian, and, in a worldly sense, impolitic. With regard to what the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walpole) had said upon the subject of pew-rents, he "Sir John Trelawny) entirely agreed with him. He thought that an opportunity ought to be given to the working c'asses to attend any religious communion which they considered upon the whole to represent the feelings they entertained. The services of the Nonconformists, in this repect, were hardly estimated as they deserved. The right hon. Gentleman ought to have remembered that but for the Dissenting chapels the working classes would not have the means of publicly worshipping God at all; the number of sittings provided by the Established Church being only 5,317,515 sittings in 14,077 churches and chapels, whilst the number provided by the Dissen MR. HARDCASTLE seconded the Amendment. Of the many schemes of compromise which had been suggested with reference to church rates, so far as his judgment went, the Bill before the House was the worst that had come under their notice. It was, in fact, a combination of two schemes of compromise. It proposed, in the first place, to transform church rates into a new species of tithe, and in the second place to relieve none whatever from the payment of the rate except those who had conscientious objections to it. With regard to the first of these points, he believed although there might be many landlords who would be willing from year to year to set aside a part of their rentals for the purposes to which church rates are now applied, yet few would be willing to charge their estates in permanency for that object. The objections to this part of the measure were, first, that it would make a charge fixed and permanent which at present fluctuated with the necessity of the case, and which was voted year by year by a body of persons who were tolerably competent to decide on that necessity; and next, it would withdraw the fund so raised entirely from the control of the parish vestry, who had an immemorial right to take charge of it. With regard to the other part of the measure, there were four great classes of persons who were interested in the question, and had strong grounds for objecting to the present state of the law. The first of these were churchmen who lived in parishes where the parish church did not give sufficient accommodation, and in which there were no district churches. They said with truth that it was hard to call upon MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURT said, them to contribute to the repair of a called hypocrites. As soon, however, as church which they never had the opportu- this refusal was attended by a pecuniary nity of entering, and to the support of a advantage, honest and dishonest recusants service from which they could derive no alike would be liable to a charge of relibenefit. But this class was in no way re- gious hypocrisy. This he thought most lieved by the provisions of the Bill. The objectionable on grounds of public morality, second class consisted of Churchmen who for the first step towards making men hyhad to supply the means of keeping up pocrites themselves was to let them see divine service in their own district churches, instances of what they considered successand who said that it was unfair and unjust ful hypocrisy in others. On these grounds, to compel them to contribute also to the therefore-as thinking the Bill inadequate mother church. Amongst these would be in some of its provisions and injurious in found many of the strongest opponents of others, not likely to be carried out where the present law; but this Bill would not it would do but little harm, and certain give them any relief. The third class was to be taken advantage of where it would the great body of Dissenters, excluding demoralize and degrade-he should vote those few who based their opposition against the second reading of the Bill. to church rates entirely upon religious grounds. The great objection of Dissen- that whatever opinion any Gentleman ters was, that they contributed for the maintenance of their own services a sum equal to, if not exceeding, the sum which was said by churchmen to be necessary in the shape of church rates. They raised £300,000 a year for this purpose. Besides this, they paid their own ministers; and he believed that the sum annually applied to that purpose considerably exceeded a million sterling. They said, therefore, that it was contrary to the principle of common justice that they should also be called upon to contribute towards the support of the church; but they were in no way relieved by the provisions of this Bill. The fourth class consisted of those Dissenters who rested their objections to the payment of church rates solely upon religious grounds. This, he believed, was a very small class-and if the persons composing it analysed their convictions a little more closely, he thought it would become smaller still. And this was the only class in any way relieved by the Bill. In his opinion, also, the measure was not only inadequate, but more than that, it was subversive of public morality, inasmuch as it offered a direct premium upon hypocrisy of the worst sort-religious hypocrisy. It did not, however, treat all kinds of hypocrisy in the same way; for if a man was a Dissenter, and professed to be a Churchman, the Bill would fine him; while, on the other hand, if a Churchman pretended to be a Dissenter with conscientious scruples, he would be rewarded. So long as the conscientious refusal to pay church rates brought with it disagreeable consequences, those who refused might be accused of obstinacy or of hostility to the Church of England, but they could not be might entertain against the Bill of his right hon. Friend whether he might think it deserving of the bad character given it by the hon. Gentlemen who had moved and seconded the Amendmenthe thought it was an advantage in discussing this question that at last an alternative course bad been submitted to the House. This, he thought, an advantage, because every hon. Gentleman could now draw the comparison between the two Bills; and if they did so, he thought the majority of the House would arrive at a different conclusion from that to which those two hon. Gentlemen had come. The Bill contained two principles-voluntary commutation and individual exemption. On the other hand, the Bill of the hon. Baronet had one principle-abolition. The abolition of church rates had been more than once proposed, he must say with great temper, by the hon. Baronet the Member for Tavistock, but that was rather a rough and inartificial mode of dealing with the question. If there were inconveniences and hardships connected with a system, that was no reason for utterly abolishing it. Surely, the practical way of dealing with such inconveniences and hardships was to devise a remedy for putting an end to them. But the hon. Baronet advised the House to act very much in the same manner as the man who, because he had smoky chimneys in his house pulled it down, instead of simply remedying the defect in the chimneys. The House was not now dealing with any custom or law which originated within their memory. They were dealing with a custom which had prevailed universally in this kingdom for more than 1,400 years. some |