"That, in certain cases where appointments to Benefices are to be suspended under the Act, it shall be in the power of the Commissioners, to gether with the Bishops, to appoint to the parish a curate, and to assign to the curate such moderate remuneration-'moderate' is the epithet usedsuch moderate remuneration and allowance as shall seem becoming."

Now, I think that, in a case of this kind there is no reason at all why a person appointed to a provisional and temporary charge should be placed in the position of a mere curate as far as emolument is concerned. It may be very proper for the stipend to be small in cases where the parishioners are very few and the duties chiefly ceremonial. But in all parishes where there is real and extensive work to be done, I think the workman who comes to do it is entitled to fair remuneration, and the Bill I shall propose, if it be my duty to bring in such a Bill, will contain a provision allowing of an adequate remuneration, so that the Bishop and the Commissioners shall not deem themselves to be bound by the scale of pay generally given to curates. Under these circumstances I submit that the small amount of inconvenience which can arise under the plan which I have sketched out in principle in the Resolutions before the House is as nothing compared with the greater objects we have in view. I may be asked, perhaps, whether I have a precedent for this course of procedure. Well, Sir, I have a precedent for it as far as any circumstances in which Parliament has ever been placed could by possibility afford a precedent. Parliament has never been called upon before to deal prospectively, as it is now called upon to deal, with a great mass of absolute freehold interests; but it has been called upon to deal with interests which approximate in their character to freehold interests--namely, with the vested interests acquired by public officers in offices held during good behaviour. And when there has been a case in which legislation affecting such offices has been contemplated, and when at the same time for any reason it has been necessary to postpone either

"Should accept and take it subject to all the regulations and alterations affecting the same which might be afterwards made and provided by and under the authority of Parliament, and should not by his appointment acquire any vested interest in such office, or any title to compensation in respect thereof."

I think it is evident we could not allow the existing law to confirm freeholds, and afterwards deprive parties of them even upon conditions, or even with compensation; that is a proceeding I should be slow to recommend. I think the plain and simple course is that the law should step in and intercept the creation of any freehold interests from this time. Although I do not say the precedent I have quoted is upon all fours with the case before the Committee, I think it is one which in substance supports the recommendation I make. I said I would confine myself to points of a practical character. I think I have sufficiently stated the object of this Resolution, and the grounds on which I recommend it; and I hope that it will be accepted by the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution as follows:

"2. That, subject to the foregoing considerations, it is expedient to prevent the creation of new personal interests by the exercise of any public patronage, and to confine the operations of the of immediate necessity, or such as involve indiEcclesiastical Commissioners of Ireland to objects vidual rights, pending the final decision of Parliament.”—(Mr. Gladstone.)

MR. GATHORNE HARDY: I will follow the example of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire, both in the brevity of my remarks and in the freedom from any acerbity which he has displayed on the present occasion. But I wish to explain in a very few words the position of the Government with respect to the Resolution now before the Committee. The two sides of the House appear to me to have totally different objects in this matter. The right hon. Gen

tleman and his Friends desire to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church; and the Government and its supporters wish to deal with abuses which may exist in the Irish Church with a view to insuring its efficiency and its permanence. That being so, of course we cannot give our assent to this Resolution. We admit that, upon the first Resolution, we have suffered possibly as great a defeat as we could expect to suffer upon a question of this kind; and, although I think there are many objections which might be taken in detail to some parts of these Resolutions, I would rather say at once, with a view to bringing to an end the business of the Session, as we have professed our wish and intention to do, that it is not desirable we should protract the discussion upon them; but it must be distinctly understood that the Government give no assent to these Resolutions and do not assent to the Bill which is to be founded upon them. The course they may think proper to take upon it will not be declared until the Bill is before the House. It is not necessary until we see it to declare the manner in which we would deal with it. I will only remark that, in these Resolutions, it strikes me there is a reservation or rather a restriction put upon the Church in Ireland which is not put upon other persons or other bodies in that country. As I understand, if these Resolutions are carried into effect by legislation there is no intention to apply the same rule which is applied to the Established Church to other bodies also. I do not observe that there is anything in these Resolutions to restrict the appointment of any new professor at Maynooth, or to restrict any further gifts under the Regium Donum. This, however, is a matter on which I need not dwell now; I merely remark it in passing. I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire, that he has taken the correct course in asking for legislative sanction for the object he has in view. I quite agree also in the statement the right hon. Gentle man has made-I could not have stated it in stronger language myself-that it would be the duty of those who have the patronage-the public patronage-in their hands not to be guided by the Resolution of one House of Parliament, but only by an Act that had been passed by both Houses and had received the sanction of the Crown. That was the observation of the right hon. Gentleman, and it was a perfectly just one, and shows that he is not attempting in any

way to over-ride, by the action of one House, those who have reposed in them the duties as well as the rights of patronage. Therefore, on the part of the Government, I recommend that there should be no division taken upon these Resolutions, and that we should meet them with a simple negative, without putting the House to the trouble of dividing.

MR. NEWDEGATE said, he admitted that the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire was necessary in order to relieve him from the imputation of attempting to legislate by means of the House of Commons, without consulting the House of Lords. If the right hon. Gentleman succeeded in passing the Bill founded upon the Resolutions, the result would be to forestall the action of the next Parliament, by imposing upon it the duty of repealing a statute, passed by the present Parliament, nominally temporary in its character. The Bill which had been foreshadowed would involve the principle of rendering the tenure of those clergy who would do the duty of the incumbencies affected by the Bill temporary, and would establish a precedent in part of the United Church dangerous to the freehold tenures of the incumbents of the Church in England. This principle was that of a clergy salaried by the State, holding their functions and cures at the pleasure of the Government. Such is the position of the curés in France; and to that position the principle of the Bill would, if used as a precedent, reduce the position of the clergy of the Established Church. The present movement was owing to the action of Dr. Cullen and Dr. Manning, the latter of whom, in the introduction to the second edition of his work entitled Essays on Religion and Literature, published by Longman in 1847, wrote in the same sense in which, in 1859, previous to his elevation by the Pope, he preached that the task of the Papal Church in this country was " to subdue and to subjugate an Imperial (meaning the English) race." The passage was as follows:

"Now, I have made the remarks as a ground for the assertion with which I shall conclude. The return to faith, which we have traced from about a hundred years steadily ascending, doethe middle of the last century—that is, for now trine after doctrine, first within the Anglican Establishment, then reaching beyond it into the regions of antiquity and of Catholic truth, has now the Catholic Church, and the authority of the received its complement in the full re-entrance of Vicar of Jesus Christ. It is no longer a question of fragmentary doctrines or isolated truths; of a

little more or a little less of this devotion or that opinion, but of the whole Catholic faith upon the principle of Divine certainty and of Divine authority through the Church and in its head. And it is visibly providential that at this moment the supremacy of the Crown, which is the Reformation in concreto, has literally come to nought. The Providence of God has poured shaine and

confusion on the Tudor statutes. The Royal supremacy has perished by the law of mortality which consumes all earthly things. And, at this period of our history, the supremacy of the Vicar of Jesus Christ re-enters as full of life as when Henry VIII. resisted Clement VII., and Elizabeth withstood St. Pius V. The undying authority of the Holy See is once more an active power in England; the shadow of Peter has fallen again upon it."

He begged pardon of the House for thus detaining them; but he saw the Liberal party of England thus opposing themselves in feeling and action to the Liberals of the rest of the world, inasmuch as they were accepting a policy dictated from the Vatican; and he hoped that his hon. Friends whom he saw opposite would excuse him if he warned them that they were entering upon a dangerous course.

MR. WHALLEY wished to say, in answer to the appeal of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, that speaking for himself, and for, he believed, the Liberal party, his vote was given against the Church of Ireland because it had not done its duty on the subject-matters to which the hon. Gentleman referred; and he was prepared and anxious to record a like vote against the Church of England, believing that, while it was established and endowed to resist Popery, it had, in the words of the Prime Minister, been long in secret combination and was now in open confederacy with that power.

SIR FREDERICK HEYGATE said, he could not allow this Resolution to pass without recording his protest with regard to what the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) said about the Irish Bishops; he must say he thought it was rather unfair to quote the authority of one Irish Bishop and to take no notice of the opposite authority of all the other Bishops. Mr. Spurgeon, at a recent meeting, said that, if the Irish clergymen were turned into the streets to-morrow, it would only be an act of stern justice, avenging the past; and added that the object in view in this movement was the disestablishment of all Churches. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to assume that vacant parishes might easily be supplied by curates; but he must point out to the right hon. Gentleman that, for a number of years past, there

had been a great difficulty in obtaining curates; and, if the ordinary inducements to their profession were to be withdrawn from them, very few of those gentlemen would remain in the country; and he was afraid the result would be that many of the parishes would be left altogether desti

tute.

He had only to say further that he thought the Government had done wisely in declining those discussions, which were not upon the merits of the question, but were political discussions and intended for a political result. ["No, no!"] It was right in such a case not to go on dividing; but he hoped the day was not far distant when there would be a different result.

Question put, and agreed to.

2. Resolved, That, subject to the foregoing considerations, it is expedient to prevent the creation of new personal interests by the exercise of any public patronage, and to confine the operaland to objects of immediate necessity, or such as involve individual rights, pending the final decision of Parliament.-(Mr. Gladstone.)

tions of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Ire

MR. GLADSTONE: I am only anxious, in proposing the third Resolution, to explain what is a point of form, but, at the same time, a point of form by no means unimportant. I am aware, and many Members of the House must be aware, that, according to the rules of the House of Commons, it would be competent to a Member to introduce into the House, with leave from the House, a Bill which might affect the rights of the Crown without the previous Assent of the Crown having been obtained. Such things have been done on certain occasions by a Government when it has happened, from the smallness of the subject-matter or from inadvertence, that notice has not been taken of the fact previous to the introduction of the Bill; and, again, Bills of that nature have been introduced by individuals not belonging to the Government, even when they were Bills to which the Government did not assent, and have been passed through certain of their stages without the giving of that Assent on the part of the Crown-it always being understood, however, that neither this House nor the House of Lords would ever consent to pass the Bill, or to part with it, until, at one of its stages, that Assent had been received. But, Sir, in this instance, the case is different. The interest of the Crown is in this case not merely a proprietary interest, but one of wide and farreaching import; and also this is a Bill which, although it is not proposed by the Government, would be, I may say, proposed

bination of both sides to prevent Her Majesty from exercising an independent judgment on this eventful occasion?

MR. DISRAELI: It is unnecessary for me to make any statement to the Committee; but in consequence of the inquiry of my hon. Friend, who has just addressed us, I must say that I do not think there was any assumption on the part of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire as to the character of the answer he will receive, or whether he will receive any answer at all to that Address. What I understood the right hon. Gentleman to do was this-to propose certain Resolutions, one of which was an Address to the Crown. When these Resolutions have been properly passed they will be dealt with after due consideration by the Government, and Her Majesty will be properly advised with respect to them.

MR. GLADSTONE: The right hon. Gentleman has represented me with perfect truth. I adverted to the liberty which, as I said, the House frequently gives to its Members, but which I did not, I added, intend to claim; but I never made any assumption whatever as to the particular nature of the advice which the Government might think it proper to give to Her Majesty, or as to the answer which the Crown might give to the Address, and it would have been highly improper had 1

done so.

Question put, and agreed to.

3. Resolved, That an humble Address be presented to Iler Majesty, humbly to pray that, with a view to preventing, by legislation during the present Session, the creation of new personal interests through the exercise of any public patronage, Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to place at the disposal of Parliament, Her interest in the temporalities of the Archbishoprics, Bishoprics, and other Ecclesiastical Dignities and Benefices in Ireland, and in the custody thereof.(Mr. Gladstone.)

MR. LAING rose to move the following Resolution :

That this House is of opinion, that while the principle of disestablishing the Irish Church has been affirmed by this House, the question is too important to be settled without an appeal to the constituencies created by the new Reform Acts; and therefore that it will be the duty of the Government to arrange the course of Public Business so as to enable this appeal to be made at the carliest practicable opportunity."

The hon. Member said, he did not intend to trouble the Committee by dividing, because the course of events had brought about the exact state of things which it was the object of his Motion to produce.

He understood the position of affairs to be this-Her Majesty's Government proposed to wind up the Business of the Session as early as possible, with a view to bring about a dissolution under the new constituencies, and with regard to the Scotch and Irish Reform Bills, to leave the same liberty to the House which had been left to it in the case of the English Reform Bill of last year; but that, with the exception of those Bills, the ordinary business only of the Session would be brought forward. It was for the Leaders on both sides, under such an arrangement, to see that the business should be wound up so as to enable an appeal to be made to the new constituencies in October or November next at the latest. But, if it was the opinion of the Opposition that there was any constitutional objection to such a line of action, then it would be their duty to propose a Vote of Want of Confidence, which, if carried, would lead to an immediate dissolution. He had a very strong opinion, which was shared by many hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House, that the former course would be the most desirable. As far as he could form an opinion, the country was in favour of the decision come to by the House, and he believed that an appeal to the new constituencies would result in a large majority for disestablishment; but he should be sorry if an impression went forth that the question had been perverted to party objects, and that fair play had not been given to the Government in order to facilitate their recourse to that appeal. It was very desirable, moreover, that two General Elections should not occur within a very short period; and he believed that if the new constituencies decided unmistakably against the Irish Church, the more reasonable portion of the Conservative party would acquiesce in that decision. could adduce other reasons for the course he had suggested; but there were occasions when the objects in view were promoted rather by silence than by speech, and he should be sorry to say anything which might revive those angry feelings which had happily to a great extent subsided.

He

He wished, therefore, to withdraw his Resolution, trusting that calm reflection would lead to the adoption of the course it proposed.

MR. AYTOUN, in rising to move the Resolution of which he had given Notice, said, he had voted in favour of the Resolutions, and hoped they would tend to the