The Express.
London, England, 1866-06-13 00:00:00

-4- -
impFRIAI. PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORDB.—TunDAY, Jinni
Their lordships met at 5 o'clock.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.
As Barbecue Railway Bill, Greot Swann& (Additional
P011.1.1*. Bridget/odb, Wolverhampton, sad Stafford-
shirr Railway Bill, and the Aldrington, Hoe, and
Brighton Gas ISM, were read a third tune and prnasecL
PROSECUTION EXPILVSES BILL
This bill paned through committee.
LLBOURING CLASSESBILL ' DWELLINGS (IRELAND)AND)

This bill was read a second time.
FISHERY PIERS AND HARBOURS (IRELAND)
BILL
This bill was also read a second time.
BELFAST CONSTABULARY BILL.
This bill was read a second time.
INDIAN PRIZE MONEY BILL
This bill wag reed a second time.
DRAINAGE MAINTENANCE (IRELAND) BILL
The report of amendments to this bill warn brought op
and agreed to.
CHARITABLE TRUSTS DEEDS ENROLMENT BILL
This bill panned through committee.
LUNACY ACTS (SCOTLAND) AMENDMENT BILL
This bill passed through committee.
POPISH CEREMONIES IN THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND.
*mamma artalWlMTWriremoniais presented petitions
e°lll.
and.
Jae. said '3250 prititiowns had bee:presented against these
ritualistic practises, and he should have thought these
petitions wculd have called up some of the right rev.
Una% to have expressed sympathy with the petitioners.
These practice. had been going on for twenty years, and
were undoubtedly illegal, although the illegality did not
seem to have been taken notice of till within the last few
days. They were intended for nothing more nor less than
to restore the Popish mess.
Lord RAVENSWORTH expressed his regret that when
a subject of this nature, which bad caused so much scandal
to the church, was brought forward the right reverend
bench was so thinly and unsatisfactorily attended. The
noble marquis had referred to what he called gross abuses
in the church, in no less than ten different dioceses ; and,
though he (Lord Ravensworth) did not now inquire into
the merits or demerits, or sinfulness of such practices, he
thought the right reverend prelates, connected with those
dioceses, might have been in their places on that Mil-
ice. Some thirty years ago, when he had the honour of
being a member of the House of Commons, a motion was
brought forward and annually debated by the hon. mem-
ber for Gateshead, declaring that it was no longer expedient
that right rev. prelates should hold their seat in the
House of Lords. Being by no means of that opinion, it
frequently became his duty to undertake their defence.
He argued that inasmuch as her Majesty was the bead of
the church, and whereas the church was not directly re-
prented in the House of Commons, the representatives of
Ile church should hold their honoured places in the Meese
at Lords. They were now more than threatened with a
mew reform in parliament, and if a newly reformed parlia-
ment should give a member to Gateshead who would'an-
Dually submit a motion in favour of unseating the bench of
bishops, he confessed that after the appearance of that
beach on the present occasion he should feel some diffi-
culty in referring to the same arguments he bad used on
former °erosions.
The Bishop of CASHEL said the noble marquis could
bring no charge against him, because in his diocese there
was not a single church where the practices were carried
on to which the noble marquis alluded. It was not in pro-
testant churches but in Roman catholic chapels where
they had what were called the corporeal presence, altars,
and oblations. He was 11104 happy that there were no such
exhibitions in protestant churches, and he hoped that in
this country where they had been declared on good autho-
Aq to be illegal, that the good sense and good feeling of
pious but mistaken men would induce them to give up
each practices.
The Earl of LONGFORD thought the bishops had
exercised a wise discretion in staying away on the present
occasion, and he heartily wished he had been with +ham.
They had been compelled to listen to a long statement in-
troductory to the motion, which he believed would prove
of no advantage either to the church or to their lordships.
(Hear, hear.)
The Bishop of CARLISLE said he would offer no opi-
Mon, rot feeling called upon to do so, as to the absence
of his right reverend brethren on that oocrioe. It was
impossible, however, for him to deny that the question
was ono of the very greatest importance, or that, unfor-
tunately, there were clergymen who sought to import the
church of Rome into the church of England. The great
difficulty the bishops had to contend with was, that these
gentlemen refused to listen to the friendly admonition of
their diocesan.
The Earl of CLANCARTY considered that a great
responsibility rested upon the episcopal bench when
they admitted men to the ministry who were not
qualified by their education and habits. He lamented to
y that many came from Oxford who entered the church
h a Puseyite reputation and left it confirmed Ro.
maniste.
The Earl of BEAUCHAMP thought the bishops had
shown a very proper sense of what was due on this occasion
by not being present. The right reverend prelates to whom
the noble marquis bed referred might at some future time
be called upon to express their opinions with regard to the
practices of which he complained, and it would have
placed them in a difficult position if they were to answer
questions put to them in that house, and thereby find
themselves oommittod to a particular view by • hastily
formed opinion, which, upon mature deliberation, and
after receiving the highest legal opinions, they could not
carry out. Ho might remind their lordships of a speech
delivered last year by oils of the right reverend
prelates, in which his lordship expressed his want
of sympathy with those who followed such practices,
and yet said they were the most self-denying and most
given to charity in his diocese. It was assumed that those
gentlemen were doing what wee illegal, but one story was
good until another was told, and it was one of the first
principles of English law that no man was guilty until he
was proved to be so. It would be a bad precedent for any
of the bishops to offer an opinion on a matter which had
not been fully argued. (Hear.)
The Earl of lIARROWBY said he believed the right
reverend bench had taken the opinion of eminent lawyers,
for the purpose of testing the law. It was letter, therefore,
that they should he absent on the present occasion.
Ho should rejoice if the law were so altered that no
alteration could be introduced into the service of any
church without the fullest notice alike to the ordinary and
to the congregation. (Hear, hear.)
The Earl of CARNA RVON said it was perfectly true
that, in a certain sense, no one could object to the questions
in dispute being put in issue before a legal tribunal. The
church of England was a church established by law, and to
the lrw, therefore, there must always be an appeal. At
the same time it was well to remember that those who ap-
pealed io the Lew must themselves be prep.:red to have the
law put in force against themselves. (Cheers.) There were
in this matter two parties, two distinct stiles, neitherof
which could perhaps justify itself by the strict letter of the
rubric. If, on the one side, censers, lights, and vest-
ments were really Hiegel, it was not less illegal to close
churches from Sunday to Sunday in the face of the Rubric
which prescribed daily service ; to introduce before or
after sermons hymns or prayers which had no sanction
from the Prayer-book ; to omit the Offi.rtory and the
prayer for the Church Militant ; to perform public baptism
after the service instead of after the second lesson ; to
administer the other holy sacraments to the people col-
lectively, instead of separately to each communicant ; or
to mutilate the marriage service till it could hardly be
Sden:ified. (Hear, hear.) If one party was wrong, so
apparently was the other, and those who appealed to the
law must expect to have it enforced against themselves.
While he admitted that strict law was the standard which
ought to be recognised, he could not shut his eyes
to the fact that a wise, liberal, and statesmanlike com-
prehension was • great element of safety to the church.
Lord WESTMEATH said he had omitted formally to
ask from the Lord Chancellor an answer to the question of
which he had given notice—namely, the legality of appro-
priating the offertories to be collected in some twenty
churches at the approaching anniversary to the purposes of
the English Church Union, the rulers of which appeared
to him in the light of thieves.
The LORD CHANCELLOR—What is your question?
Lori WESTMEATH said it was whether the devotion
of the offertory to the Defence Fund of what was called
the English Church Union—that was, a fund for defending
clergymen if cited before the courts of law on account of
adopting practices considered by the ecclesiastical autho-
rities to be illegal—whether such an application of the
offerings contributed according to the rubric before the
communion service as " alms for the poor and other devo-
tions of the people," and which the rubric at the close of
the communion service prescribed to be for " pious and
charitable uses," would not be a misappropriation of
church funds and a fraud on the poor in the several
parishes where the offertories were to he made.
The LARD CHANCELLOR said it was most inconve-
nient to a person filling the situation which he had the
honour to hold to have questions put to him on which '
be might have to pronounce a judicial opinion. It did not,
however, require much acuteness or deep lore to say thus
much. If the funds collected in the communion service
were for pious and charitable uses at the discretion of the
minister and churchwardens, the appropriation of those
funds not to what were usually considered pious and chi"-
:treble purposes. but to enable persons charged with
cameos to defend themselves without reference to whether
they were guilty or innocent, could hardly come within
such a discretion. But he could not undertake to say even
so much as that unless the question came before him
judicially.
Their lordships rase at • quarter before 8.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.—TVZSDAT, Jtrint 12.
The house met at 4 o'clock.
The early part of the sitting was occupied with a dis-
mission on the order for the consideration of the report
on the Gee Light and Coke Company Rill, the object of
which is the construction of extensive new gas works on
She western bank of the River Lea, in the immediate
neighbourhood of Victoria-park. The measure was ener-
ptscally opposed, chiefly upon sanitary grounds, by Mr.