The Press. — London, England, 1858-06-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JUNE 12, lB5B, 56S THE STAVE TRADE. The Bishop of OXFORD gave notice that he should on Thursday next present a petition from Jamaica, relative to Spanish slavery, and call attention to subject. Lord BROUGHAM implored the Government to urge on Spain the duty of extirpating the slave trade, which had been effected in Brazil by the firmness and good faith of the Government of Portugal. The Earl of CLARENDON inquired if the Govern ment could lay before the House any information on the alleged proceeding s of our cruisers on the coast of Cuba, of which th reports were exciting great uneasiness, from the preparations said to bo making by the Government of the United States to prevent what it regarded as equivalent to the exercise of the right of search. That right the United States had never conceded. There was no doubt the American flag had been employed to cover the slave trade. We should consider our flag tarnished if used to protect that nefarious traffic, and should feel rather obliged to any friendly power that detected the abuse. He thought the United States' Government would not be inclined to take a different view, and that some un derstanding on the question would be possible. The Earl of AILLMESBURY could not give any certain information on the subject. He had only heard the ex-parte statements that had been pub lished ; he believed they were greatly exaggerated ; but if the incidents were accurately described, the Government was not prepared to defend them. He Seared some acts had been committed not justified by international law, or by any treaty between this country and the United States. But the American flag had been constantly used to cover the slave trade; and some agreement between the two Go. vernments, as to the mode of preventing the practice, was required. From a conversation he had that day had with the American Minister, he believed there was no great difference in the views of both countries on this point ; and, from the orders sent out to the officers of the squadron in the American waters, no repetition of such acts as those described was likely to occur. Their lordships then adjourned. HOUSE OF COMMONS-TUESDAY. CHURCH RATES. At a morning sitting, the adjourned debate on the third reading of the Church-rates Abolition Bill was resumed by Sir J. TRELAWNY, who defended the course taken by the supporters of the bill. No compromise having been offered, they had urged forward this measure, he said, knowing the importance of the question, and believing that it would work without prejudice to the interests of the Church of England. Sir B. BRIDGES opposed the bill, end moved to defer the third reading for six months. He dwelt upon the injustice inflicted upon the poor by re lieving the rich from a charge for the sustentation of churches to which their property was subject when it came to them by inheritance or purchase. He did not expect, he said, that such a proposition would have come from one whose property it would exonerate. Mr. PACKS, in seconding this amendment, observed that compromises had been repeatedly offered, but invariably rejected by the advocates of total aboli tion. lie suggested some of the difficulties in which the measure would place the Church, of which its members, who supported the abolition of the rates, were, he said, not aware. _ _ _ Mr. AK:ROYD considered that the bill was defective in that, while it did an act of justice to Dissenters, it perpetrated an injustice to the Church. It, more over, enabled Dissenters to nominate churchwardens, —a right which should rest with the congregation. There was no necessity, he contended, for this whole sale confiscation, and for banding over 300,000/. a year to the landholders. Sir. J. GRAHAN said, as an attached friend of the Church of England, he was bound to consider this question with reference to the interests of that Church in connection with those of the people at large. As respected the interests of the Church, he would gladly receive a compromise ; but, all com promises having been rejected, he must regard the question as it stood, and he thought there would be a better chance of effecting a compromise hereafter if the bill were sent up to the House of Lords by a commanding majority. He had a most decided ob. jection to pew•rents, and he objected to exempting Dissenters as Dissenters,—a proposal which, by branding them, would tend to the perpetration of religious differences. He desired to see some rea sonable compromise ; but, havingheard none offered, he thought it 1111.4 for the benefit of the Church to get rid of an impost which kept up heartburnings and dissensions. A remedy had occurred to him. He thought it would be wise to relax the Statute of Mortmain, and enable the owners of land in fee and tenants for life to charge their estates for the main tenance of the parish church. Hitherto, the Church had had no reason to repent her reliance upon the voluntary principle; she had never yet called upon her members to contribute to her necessities and found them slow to respond. Relerring to declara tions recently made by dignitaries of the Church, the right hon. baronet observed : I am bound, however, to say that I should have hesitated to give this vote if it had not been for an important cir cumstance. A bill has come down to us from the House of Lords which has been quietly withdrawn, but which was introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and which received the support of the great body of the bishops. Now, what is the principle of that measure ? I am not one of those who think that it is imprudent on the part of the Church of England to rely upon the voluntary principle. On the contrary, I think there is too much distrust on the part of the Church of the voluntary principle. An hon. gentleman has referred to the origin of tithes, but I must remind him that a very large portion of the property of the Church was the voluntary offering of our pious forefathers. In more modern times has the Church any reason to regret the trust she has reposed in the voluntary principle? Upon what does the colonial episcopate rest at this moment? What are the resources of the Christian Knowledge Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society? The funds of those societies are enormous. The Christian Knowledge Society is a branch of the Church of England. The British and Foreign Bible Society may be said to be supported mainly by Dissenters. But the Church of England has never called on her members to contribute to her necessities and found the wealthy members of har community slow to answer the appeal. But the heads of the Church have sent us down a bill embodying a new principle. I hope it is a prin ciple of good in the cause of religion, but it contem• plates something like a revival in the heart of the Es tablishment. Every bishop was to have the power, by this bill, of licensing, in any town where the population exceeded 500, any building where any portion of the liturgy of the Church might be performed. But the matter does not rest there. What have we all seen? A mort amiable and excellent bishop has Leen enthroned in St. Paul's Cathedral, and has taken possession of the Palace of Fulham and of London-house, in St. James's-square. His first act was to attend a meeting at Islington in aid of building a new church, and he then declared that he had heard with satisfaction that meetings were hell on Sunday morning in the. yard of a hackney-man. He said that divine worship there performed was as acceptable to the Most High as any divine service that might be celebrated, with all the solemnity of cathedral worship, under the fretted vault of the most gorgeous temple. I do not deny the truth of this assertion. But if that be the case, and if the Church of England is about to become a missionary Church, and is about to descend into the arena with the Dissenting Churches, we cannot with justice continue to tax the Dissenters for church rates. Is that all ? We have bishops preaching in the cpen air. We have deans Spurgeonizing at Exeter-hall. We have dignitaries of the Church taking a prominent part on the stages of music halls, and we have priests evangelizing on the platform. An Evangelical Alliance has been held in Lambeth-palace, and Dr. Bunting has offered up prayers is the presence of the archbishop. I pray that this movement may be favour able to the interests of piety and religion ; bat this is, to say the least of it, a great departure from the principle of an Established Church. I hope it may be fcr good, and Ido not venture to predict what its effect may be. But it is certain that this is at war with all the doctrines that have hitherto been considered the recognized doctrines of the Church. lam against carrying on a war to the knife against the Dissenters. The time has arrived when the policy of the Established Church is not to fight this desperate battle to the last extremity, but to make these timely concessions in the hope of peace. It is said that the sum raised by this impost does not exceed 3:10,0001. a year, and I, for one, having hitherto always opposed the abolition of church rates, call upon the friends of the Church not to continue the contest farther. For these reasons my vote will be given in favour of the present motion. Mr. WiLPOLE accused Sir J. Graham of incon sistency in his arguments, and, adverting to the various compromises made at different times, he re minded Sir James that one, proposed when he was a member of a strong Government, and which would have settled the question, had not been carried out : After (continued the right hon. gentleman) that propo sition was mooted, but not attended to, a proposition was made, first by the hon. member for Finsbury, and after wards by Dr. Phillimore, to exempt the Dissenters, upon the ground that those who did not share the privileges of the church should not bear the hardens. But it required the counter proposition to make it just—that those who did not share the burdens of the church should not be entitled to claim, as a matter of right, the privileges of the church. (Hear, hear.) When he came to this part of the case the right hon. gentleman said, " It will not do to brand the Dissenters." He believed that no desire bad been felt or expressed to do anything in the shape of branding the Dissenters. ( Hear, hear ) He believed that it was an honest proposition, made to satisfy the Dissenters, whose consciences were aggrieved by the payment of these rates. But the inference which he drew from the refusal to accept that offer was, that the plea of conscience raised by the Dissenters was not the only plea which they had to urge, and that there were home other reasons why they would not accept even that kind of settlement. A settlement just in itself and equitable to the Dissenters was freely and frankly offered by the Church, and, therefore, when that proposition was so refused, the right hon. gentleman ought not to say that since no means of settling Cie question were offered on the part of her Majesty's Government they had arrived at a point when there was no remedy except to abolish that which had existed from tiwe immemorial. Sir James was not justified in saying that no prac tical compromise had been offered, and he asked him whether he was or was not prepared to acquiesce in the proposition to commute the tax for a charge upon the land : If that were the position of the question, he wishel to ask the right hon. baronet, who was desirous to send the bill into the other house by a commanding majority, whether in voting for the abolition of church rates he was or was not prepared to acquiesce in the proposition of the right hon. gentleman the member for itlorpeth, that there should be some means of commuting or redeeming those rates, by repealing the mortmain law so far as to enable the owners of land to charge their land to that extent. The reg•et which he should feel at his right hon. friend voting for the abolition of the rates would be much diminished if he could find that some such settlement as that could yet be effected. He believed, and appealed to recorded testi mony in support of that belief, that conscientious scruples were not the sole ground of objection to church rates,—that there was an ulterior object, to fight the question of an Establishment on the field of church rates ; and he was surprised and regretted that Sir J. Graham should have joined in an opposition the real object of which was to break up our ecclesiastical establishment. If church rates were given up without an equivalent, tithes would follow, and we should go on step by step until we arrived at the voluntary principle, which, although a valuable ally of an Establishment, never could be a substitute for it. The best course that could be taken, in his opinion, was not to get a commanding majority in favour of the bill, but such a division as would snow that, though prepared to settle the question upon reasonable tetras, they were not prepared, for the benefit of the owners of land, to abolish the means whereby the poor were brought to the aoors of the offices of religion. Mr. AYRTON supported the bill, insisting that there could be no compromise. Mr. GLADSTONE observed that differences of opinion were not confined to the opponents of this measure ; they existed among those who were prepared to vote for the abolition of church rates. He then went on to observe : His right hon. friend characterized it in his vivid lan guage when he said it was a proposal to brand the Dis senters—that was to say, to brand the Dissenters by describing them as Dissenters. He was bound to say that lie did not know how they could brand a man by describ ing him as that which he was. He did not understand that they brands') an Englishman by calling him an Eng lishman. He did not understand that they branded a soldier by putting on some part of his dress the number of the regiment to which he belonged. But still he granted that it was a question of feeling. He did not see why, if a man were a Dissenter, he should wish not to be desig nated as a Dissenter, but he admitted fully the reasons why it was nut desirable to widen the line of separation between Dissenters and members of the Church. An hon. gentleman some time ago proposed terms so liberal and so large that every Dissenter might have avoided the pay ment of church rates w.thout classing himself as a Dia winter. The only principle was that those who objected to the payment of church rates ought not to take part in the appropriation of church rates or the election of the officers who appropriated that money. But the hon. gen tlemen proposed by this bill to abolish church rates through the length and breadth of the country; and the arguments upon which they founded their case were not those derived from universal experience, but from the ex perience of parishes in which church rates had been abo lished. His right hon. friend had declared that for the sake of 320,0001. a year it was not fur the interest of the Church to prolong these heartburnings; but the state of things he had described was that church rates were abo lished in populous parishes, and were paid without hart burning in the great multitude of the rural parishes. There could be no sensible view of this question which declined to notice the state of the church-rate question in the rural parishes. The population in these parishes was fixed, and church rates were a small fixed charge on the real property of the parish. In return, the church pro vided space in which the entire population, including the poor, could attend Divine service, at the cost mainly of the landowners of the parish. Was the la..v of church rates bad ? He contended that it was founded upon a popular basis, because it intrusted to the majority of the pa. rishioners the business of satisfying their local wants. Was It a novel principle? On the contrary, it was banded on an ancient law, and it established a local supervision in a manner most agreeable to English feelings. In the rural parishes the law worked well, and was ge nerous and just, because it imposed an heredi tar y and traditiunal burden upon the owners of property, while the beneti a were reaped by the poorer classes. B ut then it was said, why not trust to the voluntary principle ? He had nothing to say in disparagement of the power and efficacy of that principle, but he was not prepared to make a wholesale imortation of tha principle to displace an old . and long estpablished system, t which worked well for an important purpose. If church rates were abolished for the voluntary prin ciple, tithes must be so too; nor would a better principle be got by relaxing the Statute of Mortmain ° Same would be unable to charge t heir estates, soul unwilling, and some would still plead conscientious scruples. He agreed with his right hon. friend that the time had arrived when the bill might well pro ceed to the other house. They would then see who ther the greatest landowners in England would re, lieve themselves and their poster it y irom sawn and hereditary taxatic-n. It was possible the House