The Sun.
London, England, 1840-07-25 00:00:00

POOR-LAW.

On the motion of the Marquis of NORMANBY,
the Poor-law Commissioners Continuance Bill was read
a second time.

IRISH MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS BILL.
Lord DUNCANNON moved that the Order of
the Day for the third reading of the Irish Municipal
Reform Bill, which stood for Monday; should be dis-
charged, and the third reading fixed for Friday next.
The order was discharged accordingly.
Several Bills on the table were then advanced a
stage without discussion.

ECCLESIASTICAL- DUTIES AND REVE-

NUES BILL.

The Bishop of LONDON presented a petition from
the Minor Canons of St. Peter's, Westminster, in fa-
vour of the Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Bill.

The Bishop of ROCHESTER presented a petition
against the Bill from the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of
Essex.

The Bishop of WINCHESTER moved the Order
of the Day for hearing Counsel against the Ecclesiasti-
cal Duties and Revenues Bill.

Mr. JAMES HOPE then
,appeared at the bar, and
said, the speech of his Learned Friend on the previous
evening would preclude the necessity of his addres-
sing their Lordships at great length. He objected to
the constitution of the Commission on ecclesiastical
grounds. He hoped their Lordships, whose an-
cestors had so successfully protected the Church
against the attacks of a corrupt and ambitions hierarchy,
would also defend it from the like attacks from whatso-
ever quarters they might come. The Learned Coun-
sel then adverted to the doctrines of Blackstone, of a
great German canoeist, and other authorities, to prove
the great variety of opinions respecting Church pro-
perty. He begged their Lordships to put aside the
dogrnatisms of philosophers, politicians, and divines, and
to treat this question as one relating to rights which
the Constitution had never discarded, and according
to law. The Learned Gentleman then entered upon an
historical survey of instances in which the State had in-
terfered with Church property, and asserted that they
could not be taken as precedents. He adverted to the
abolition of the order of the Knights Templars and Hos.
pitallers, and to the abolition of the monasteries at the
Reformation—of colleges and chantries in the time of
Edward the Sixth, and to an Aat of Elizabeth for the
suppression of certain religious foundations ; all of which
he asserted took place on account of the malpractices
and abuse of trust committed by those corporations, and
were, therefore, not to be drawn into precedent on the
present occasion. There had been, however, one Act
similar to the present. introduced in the sixteenth cen-
tury, but it had been opposed by the Archbishop of
Canterbury of that day and many eminent statesmen,
and for many reasons (which the Learned Counsel ad-
duced) he contended that neither this nor any
subsequent Act should be drawn into precedent.
in support of this measure. The only ground for the
measure, then, must be the surrender of the bodies
themselves. Had these surrendered, he had not been
addressing their Lordships. They had not surrendered,
and they conceived that nothing could justify them in
doing so, or in not resisting this measure to the utter-
most. The whole current of legislation precedent
being against the Bill, by what was it supported ?
They must resort to the floating opinion of the day,
that it was justified on the ground of being corporate
or Church property. In the case of corporations he did
not deny the right of the State occasionally to interfere.
In soma eases it was their duty`to do so. The property
of the corporations of vicars choral and minor canons,
by some were called Church property. He denied that
fact, for much of that property was appropriations, and
did not. belong to the spiritualities of the corporations.
In seizing upon that property, the Ecclesiastical Com-
missioners had very far exceeded the powers vested in
them by the common law. The property never was
given or granted to the Church at large, they were grants
to the particular bodies, and they alone had the power
to alienate them. He knew that be would be told
that these were but technical difficulties, that all the
property had been applied to ecclesiastical purposes,
and therefore must give way to the general purposes of
the Church. But if their Lordships passed such a Bill,
they would affirm a principle of the most pernicious
tendency. He admitted the ecclesiastical power over
these corporations, they were visitors of such institu-
tions ; but did that give them any power to sanction
such a Bill as that before the House ? Upon the same
principle the Court of Chancery might seize upon and
divert all charities in the kingdom. Until their Lord-
ships were prepared to say that the guards and at-
tendants of the Sovereign were unnecessary, and that
in private life they would banish every superfluity and
ornament, and introduce a republican simplicity--then,
and not till then, would be the time to come into the
temple of God and say that there was more in it than
was sufficient for his service. But it would be said that,
after all, was this property to be devoted to general
ecclesiastical purposes. He knew no greater distinc-
tion than between general and particular purposes of
foundation. It was necessary to distinguish between
the right of the public in the endowment, and the private
right of the founder to model the object of his charity,
as he should think proper. It was said the founders
of these institutions were pious and wise men, who un-
derstood the policy of their own time, but that the
times were changed, that the usages of past times had
failed, and therefore it was the duty of the Legislature
to promote the objects of the founder, but effecting his
objects by other and more suitable means. The effect of
this argument would be to say that our
Cathedral institutions were utterly useless, or so
useless as amounted to a surrender of their original
trust. The Learned Gentleman then proceeded to en-
large on the utility of these establishments in promoting
divine worship, skill in religious controversy, and edu-
cation, and maintained, with reference to the latter,
that if the Bill was carried, it would so cripple the
Church as to render it impossible to carry the system
of training schools into effect, and that this was not a
time in which, consistently with public opinion or their
Lordships' principles, education could be neglected.
And lastly, he urged their utility as charita-
ble institutions, one of the objects of which was
the distribution of alms. The Learned Gentleman con-
cluded by saying he had now shown that there was no
precedent for this measure, and not only so, but no prin-
ciple of corporate property, which authorised the provi-
sions of the Bill, and that these bodies rested their
claims to these endowments on the same principles as all
the charitable and scientific institutions of the country.
He had shown what those principles were, and what vio-
lations of them bad taken place. He bad brought before
their Lordships the decision of a republican tribunal.
He had shown tat the pretence of the uses having failed
was altogether frivolous, and he submitted that he had
shown such a case against the Bill, that their Lordships
could not consistently and justly give it their sanction.
It was strange that he should have to quote at the bar
of the British House of Peers, and in opposition to
the recommendation of a Royal Commission, the dicta
of a Republican Judge ; but he had done so, sand
by that decision condemned their Lordships of a breach
of national faith, if they disturbed these foundations.
If that faith had been pledged to a Foreign Power, it
would have been kept, for it had its armies to enforce it.
flit had been pledged to the public creditor it would
have been kept, fsr there was the apprehension of in-
testine commotion to enforce it ; but these men bad
now gone to their rest, and could neither complain
nor threaten—from them there was nothing to hope or
to fear, and therefore with them it was said they need
not keep faith. It was not with reference to the
past only they were acting, but also to:
the future. They were setting precedents by this
's
Bill. They were telling the fieople of this country that
they might spend their property in luxury and extrava-
gance—they might tie it up, that their descendants
might make a like use of it—but if they dared to be
unselfish, if they proposed to offer anything to the
majesty of Almighty God, their intentions would be
scattered to the winds ; that their most defined pur-
poses would be so geaeralised, that they would not
themselves recognise them, and that those founda-
tions they had designed to be memorials of their
love to God and man should have no earlier origin than
the last Act of Parliament, which had been re-con-
structed on no history but the wants, the wishes, and

the prejudices of the Parliament that had concurred in
that re-construction. This precedent, moreover, would
not affect this country alone, but the whole of that vast
empire of which this island was but the nucleus. And
what did they demand ? A sum of about 130,000/.
a year. This was to be the bribe for which
national faith was to be forfeited. Their Lord-
ships knew the boldness with which we scanned
the acts of those who had preceded us, andwhat did
they think posterity would say of them when it
said that the most wealthy country, in one of its most
prosperous periods, acknowledged the existence of spi-
ritual destitution, and then turned to the endowments
of a more pious and poorer generation in order to supply
the want ? What would they say, but that we
were a strange mixture of professing religion
and real selfishness, and that we boasted of
making sacrifices which cost us nothing. If they said
so, he for one could not gainsay them, but he hoped
their Lordships would leave for posterity no other
matter of criticism but this—that such a measure as this
was devised in troubled times by very pious, zealous, and
charitable men, but that, when it was submitted to their
Lordships, they bad thought it unjust to sanction it.
Their Lordships, however, had stood by institutions
of the country in dangerous and troubled
times, and he trusted they would stand by
them still, and as they would not allow those venerable
institutions to be overthrown by open enemies, so ha
trusted they would guard them equally from the inju-
rious measures of their mistaken friends.

The Learned Gentleman having concluded his very
able and eloquent speech, the second reading of the Bill
was fixed (as we understood) for Monday, and their
Lordships adjourned until that day at Half-past Eight.