land, and their average incomes were | tion of the vast funds which that Cor£270 a-year. The average income of poration possessed, they would accomplish the clergymen in the county of Durham both for their Church and country a was about £350 or £360 a-year. But much more useful and honourable work. these figures did not correctly describe It was useless to expect that the Church the incomes of the Clergy. Several of would ever have any hold on the affecthem had incomes amounting to £1,000, tions of the people while these gross £2,000, and £3,000 a-year, and others anomalies existed. It might wield a had much less than the average amount certain weight in special circles; but it named. A few years ago there were in could never touch either the hearts or England 297 clergymen receiving under sympathies of the nation while its re£50 a-year; 1,629 receiving under £100 sources were so unequally and so ina-year; 1,602 receiving under £150 a- equitably dispensed. The people asked year; and 4,882 receiving under £200 for more light, more mental liberty. a-year. This state of matters, which he They required a better appreciation of could not do otherwise than describe as their responsibilities as men and as disgraceful to the Church, had been citizens. They wanted a broader diffusomewhat improved of late by the action sion of the principles, and a more faithof the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. ful practice of the spirit and the teaching Things were not so bad now as they of the Founder of Christianity, and it formerly were-but still, even in 1873, was proposed to give them more Bishops, there were 1,163 ministers in the Church more sleek and oily parsons-more of a of England receiving only £100 a-year, superficial and artificial Ecclesiasticism. and there were 3,189 receiving between They should have an Institution-call it £150 and £200 a-year. The average a Church if they liked-not of priests, incomes of the curates was about £80 a- but of, and from, and for the people, year-very little better than an ordinary into which any man, however poor, and mechanic or miner in prosperous times. however ignorant he might be, could There were societies in existence for the enter and take a heart to be purified, an purpose of collecting funds for educating intellect to be enlightened, and a spirit. curates' children, and for supplying them to be elevated. They wanted a Church with increased incomes and clothes. in which there was absolute intellectual Every year he received circulars from freedom, and complete Christian equality, bodies of this description, asking for which would be a place of refuge for contributions for these purposes, and the weary, of shelter for the poor, of soliciting, also, cast-off wearing apparel solace for the sick, of help for the desofor the poor curates of the Church of late, and of tribuneship for the oppressed England. The Bishop of Manchester, speaking recently, declared that there were curates in the Established Church that got flesh meat for their dinners as seldom as the agricultural labourers of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire. He had seen statements in the clerical papers to "in the opinion of this House, it is undesirable, the effect that some of the poor ministers so long as the Episcopal Church continues to be were unable to provide firing in the cold established by law, to increase the number of wintry weather. This condition of things Bishops,"-(Mr. Joseph Cowen,) was derogatory to the Church of Eng--instead thereof. land. They might explain it, or apologize for it, or excuse it as they chose; but the broad fact still remained, that while one section of the Church received incomes superior to that of the Prime Minister of England, the men who did the work were subsisting on salaries totally inadequate to maintain them in ordinary decency. If, instead of proposing to increase the number of Bishops, the earnest members of the Church of England would set about a re-distribu not a ring of Parsons and Bishops. rolling in wealth, and "swaggering in the foretop of the State." Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question." MR. ASSHETON CROSS said, he would not enter into any discussion in detail with respect to the points raised by the hon. Member for Newcastle; because he had, only two years ago, fully expounded the question on the occasion when the Bill then introduced was passed. The case was a very simple one. The sole object of the Bill was to enable the Church of England to do her duty as long as she was by law established. He thought it was hardly generous or wise to prevent her doing so, as would happen if the Bill were defeated. The real fact of the matter was, there was more need of Bishops. The work of the various Dioceses had, in consequence of the increase of population in certain parts of the country, vastly grown; the Bishops were over-taxed in their energies, and it was necessary that other Bishoprics should be appointed. He had had letters from Bishops, pointing out the need of further machinery being provided for Church purposes, some of which were even of a painful nature. There was no more hard-working class of men than the Bishops. He asked in no sectarian spirit whether, for instance, the labours of the Bishop of Manchester had not conduced greatly to the benefit, moral, spiritual, and even material, of the Diocese over which he presided? He had received a letter from the Bishop of Durham, in which he said that the churches in the Diocese of Durham had increased since 1857 from 171 to 342, or 70 per cent; while the number of Clergy in the same time had risen from 222 to 531. He could not believe that the House would refuse the power which the members of the Church now asked. The case had been pressed on the Government two years ago, when the House passed the second reading of the Bill by a very large majority. The Bill was designed to accomplish Christian, and not sectarian work. He appealed not simply to the Christian feeling of the House, but to its candour and generosity, to deal fairly by the Church, and give its members the power of carrying on its work which was not refused to every other religious Body. MR. E. JENKINS said, no doubt, there were many reasons why some hon. Members might wish to avoid entering upon the details of this question. But the House had a certain duty to perform to its constituents outside, and they were bound not to allow such a measure as this to pass without fairly discussing it. Hon. Members opposite might feel pained because on this side of the House those who were not members of the Church of England entered upon the discussion of the measure. That state of things, however, was due to the ano malous position in which the Church was placed in relation to the House of Commons, and he could not sit in that House without vindicating its rights to interfere in any discussion. What, he asked, was the object of the Bill? It was enough to startle a man, and would startle any Christian. It would startle St. Paul, he was sure, could he walk into the House and open the Bill, for what did the Bill contain? It stated that Her Majesty, by Order in Council, might found new Bishoprics. He asserted that it was not in accordance with the consistency of the position of the House that they should be asked to give their sanction to such a proposal. That state of things could not exist in the Church of England for a very long period, and it was by no means honourable to Christianity that four Bishops should appear on the floor of the House and ask to be raised to Bishoprics? He objected to the Bill, among other reasons, because the Bishops already in existence were not doing their duty. Some of them, in fact, were openly defying the Privy Council; and whilst they received State pay, they taught doctrines utterly at variance with the requirements of the law. As an instance, he cited the case of the Bishop of Bombay, who, at a recent meeting held at Oxford, spoke in favour of the Churches of Christendom being re-united. In other words, he expressed himself in favour of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church being brought together. That alone was sufficient to cause him to resist the Bill. SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL admitted that additional Bishops were required in the Church of England, and said, he would have voted for the Bill if it merely enabled persons to contribute voluntarily towards their support; but he objected to taking the overpay of the existing Bishops for the establishment of new ones. He should, therefore, vote against the Bill. MR. SULLIVAN said, this was the third or fourth time since he occupied a seat in the House on which he had listened to discussions upon Ecclesiastical matters; but, as he was a Roman Catholic, hitherto he had abstained from any part in the debates. However, he could not now forgive himself for having been so long silent; for it was an anomalous and hardly a creditable circumstance that the truly domestic affairs of any reli- | that entertained by his hon. and learned gious community in this country should Friend. Prior to the year 1829, Cabe brought before that House, to be deter- tholics did not make it a part of mined by the votes of Catholics, Baptists, their creed that they were to endeaPresbyterians, and men of every shade of vour to destroy the Established Church religious belief. The time had arrived of this country. The establishment of when, in justice to the conscientious feel- a State Church was one of the strongest ings of the members of the Established doctrines of the Catholic religion. [“No, Church, these matters should be with- no!"] Hon. Members might say "No, drawn from the decision of that over- no;" but he thought it was an established worked and overtaxed Assembly. The fact nevertheless. In every country in position which he, as a Roman Catholic Europe where it was possible there was Member of the House of Commons, a Roman Catholic Church supported by was placed in was a rather peculiar one, the State. In this country there was a and it really was not easy to decide Protestant Church established by the what course he ought to take. How State. He quite agreed that his hon. could he abstain from voting upon this and learned Friend was quite enmatter without giving up his functions titled to object to Protestantism in this as a Member of Parliament; and how country; but he did not think he ought could he give a vote upon it unless he to interfere in Protestant matters. He was in a position to decide what was had always voted, and always should sound Protestantism and what was not vote, in favour of measures of this kind. sound Protestantism? He must re- They all knew perfectly well that in the spectfully tell members of the Church of regulations of the affairs of life it was England that, before they asked for such essential to have some superior authomeasures as these, they ought to eman-rity; and if they took the modern apcipate the Church of England from State control, and that their first step should be to obtain for the Church of England home rule and self-government by restoring Convocation, and making that body a reality. He spoke as a Catholic who wished to see the Protestants of this country enjoying in Church matters that full liberty of conduct which he claimed for his own communion. Would it not add to their dignity if they were to free themselves once for all from the meddling interference of that House? This was the first time that he had ever spoken upon this subject; but he thought it was only fair that he should state his views. MR. MITCHELL HENRY said, his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) had stated that this was the first time he had ever spoken upon this subject; and he could only say that he hoped his hon. and learned Friend would not favour the House again upon it with such a speech as he had just now made. For his own part, he must confess that this was one of the rare occasions that he found himself out of sympathy with the views of his hon. and learned Friend. He had had occasion to converse with Roman Catholics in Ireland frequently upon this subject, and he thought that an entirely different view was held in Ireland to pointments of Bishops in the Church of England, could anyone say that the recent creation of Bishops in the North of England, especially in the case of the See of Manchester, that the creation of those additional Bishoprics had not been productive of unmixed good? He did not think it was an honest line of argument on the part of hon. Members to pretend to point out blots in the government of the Church of England, and to profess a desire to see them removed, when the real object was to do away with the Established Church altogether. MR. RICHARD: I have no desire to interfere in the controversy between the hon. and learned Member for Louth and the hon. Member for Galway, as to the sentiments and obligations of Roman Catholics on this matter, though certainly I should have thought that the hon. and learned Member for Louth was the better authority of the two on such questions. I can assure hon. Gentlemen opposite that it is extremely distasteful to me to have to discuss questions of this nature in the House of Commons; for I feel that it is very difficult to do so without saying something that may be offensive to many whose character I greatly respect, and whose religious susceptibilities I would not willingly wound. But it is not our fault that matters of this kind are thrown down for discussion on the floor of this House. I think I can understand and sympathize with the repugnance which many members of the Church of England must feel on such occasions. For the members of any Church to have the most sacred matters pertaining to its doctrine, discipline, and internal economy and administration, dealt with and decided by persons of all kinds of religious opinions and of no religious opinions at all, is a thing totally at variance with my notions of what a Christian community should be; and I am astonished that the humiliation of it does not become intolerable to the serious members of the Church of England. In a former Session, when the first of these modern Episcopal creations were proposed to the House, I ventured to state my views in opposition to the Bill at considerable length. It is not necessary that I should repeat in full the arguments I then used. I retain all the objections I then expressed to this kind of legislation. I have no wish, by my consent, to take part in the creation of any more of these politico-ecclesiastical officials, whose existence, in my judgment, is not an advantage to either Church or State. As Nonconformists, we object that any class of men should be authorized by the State to perform ecclesiastical and spiritual functions. And we object, further, that these Bills proceed on the assumption that the whole population of this country are mombers of the Church of England. That is always taken for granted. We are told that in such and such a district there are so many hundreds of thousands of souls who, in effect, are without Episcopal supervision, totally ignoring the fact that there are millions of people in this country who have renounced their allegiance to the Church of England, who do not require, and will not accept, Episcopal supervision. It is not very easy to understand who wants more Bishops. There are a few rich people who are willing to subscribe their money for this purpose; because, perhaps, they consider that a Hierarchical religion is more aristocratic and respectable. But there is no evidence that there is any general desire among the members of the Church of England itself for a multiplication of these officials. Nay, indeed, there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. If we may take the papers and periodicals which represent the various shades of opinion in that Church as any test, we may confidently say that the prevailing feeling is, not a desire for more Bishops, but utter distrust and dislike of those who already exist. Some attempt has been made to galvanize public opinion on this subject. I do not know whether the House is aware of it, but there is a Society in existence for the propagation of Bishops. It is called a "Society for Promoting the Increase of the Episcopate." It is constituted under very high patronage. Among its Vice Presidents there are two Dukes, three Earls, ten Bishops, and two Lords. But it does not seem to inspire much enthusiasm, for, in the year 1874-that is the last Report I have seen, which I now hold in my hand-the total amount of its subscriptions was only £112 18. 6d., and of that £50 was subscribed by the Duke of Buccleuch. So that, measured by pecuniary contributions, the entire amount of interest felt by the members of the Church of England throughout the Kingdom in the increase of Bishops amounted to £62 18. 6d. plus £50 worth of interest felt by His Grace of Buccleuch. And how is this interest expressed by Petitions? I have looked at the list of Petitions presented this Session, and up to the 9th of July I find that they numbered 73, signed by 1,545 persons, most of them from clerical bodies; but not only are the persons very few who are in favour of an increase of the Episcopate, but those who do favour it do not wish to see it extended on the lines of this Bill. Society to which I have referred, three or four years ago, addressed a series of questions on this subject to all the rural deaneries in England and Wales. The first question was, whether more Bishops were necessary and desirable? the second, how they should be paid? and the third, whether the Bishops of the new Sees should have seats in Parliament ? I believe there are about 750 rural deaneries in England and Wales. Of these, 460 had replied in 1875. On the first question, there was considerable unanimity; on the second, there was much difference of opinion; on the third, whether the new Bishops should have seats in the House of Lords ?-the result was this. Out of 450 rural deaneries, 360 were opposed to the Bishops of the Sees that should be created having seats The in the House of Lords, by rotation or otherwise; 54 were in favour of a rotation clause; and only three returned an answer in favour of the new Bishops being in Parliament. But this Bill disregards the voice of the Clergy on the matter, and does provide that the new Bishops should have seats in the House of Lords in their turn. I believe there is also great dissatisfaction among the members of the Church of England as to the way in which these Bishops are created. The Church itself has no voice in the matter. That cannot be helped, of course, while the Church is connected with the State. But it is certain that many feel bitterly the anomaly that such a power should be virtually lodged in a House constituted as this is, and it cannot be constituted otherwise; for, so long as it is a Representative Assembly, it must represent all classes and creeds and opinions. For my part, I hope the Church of England will attain the liberty enjoyed by all other religious Bodies. I believe that the humblest Dissenting or Methodist Church in the Kingdom would resent any magisterial or political interference in the appointment of its ministers and the regulation of its affairs as an insult and an ignominy. Let the Church of England, then, have the same liberty and the same power as these possess. But she can have this only on one condition--that of renouncing her exclusive privilege as a Church protected and patronized by the State. SIR ANDREW LUSK said, he did not think it was a desirable thing for the Episcopal Church to ask that House to interfere with its affairs; but as long as the Church was connected with the State, it must submit to what the House of Commons did. It being a quarter of an hour before Six of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned till To-morrow. METROPOLITAN COMMONS BILL. On Motion of Mr. SHAW LEFEVRE, Bill to extend to Metropolitan Commons certain provisions of "The Commons Act, 1876," ordered to be brought in by Mr. SHAW LEFEVRE, Mr. COWPER-TEMPLE, and Mr. FAWCETT. Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 287.] House adjourned at five minutes before Six of the clock. PERSONAL EXPLANATIONS. THE EARL OF CARNARVON: My Lords, I am at all times reluctant to trouble your Lordships with any statement regarding myself, but I think it necessary to ask the attention of your Lordships to a few observations which I think it my duty to make in reference to some words which are reported to have fallen from the noble Earl the Prime Minister on Monday night last. I should have taken an earlier opportunity of making these observations, but that I have been absent from London. I may at once say that the passage in the noble Earl's speech to which I wish to draw attention refers both to my noble Friend Lord Derbywho is not now in his place-and to my |