The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-26 00:00:00

CHARITABLE TRUSTS BILL

In reply to Mr. MULLINGS,
Sir G. GREY stated that a Bill upon this subject was
now ready, and would shortly be introduced into the
other House.

ORDERS OF THE DAY AND NOTICES OF
MOTION.

Mr. GRANTLEY BERKELEY said that in conse-
quence of the vote come to last night, and to which he
was no party, both private and public business had been
placed in a peculiar position, for if notices of motion were
altogether to be set aside, in order to give way to orders
of the day, private Members would be altogether ex-
cluded at any time from bringing forward their mea-
sures. He wished to know whether he could now bring
on the motion of which he had given notice?

The SPEAKER said that the Hon. Member could
only bring forward his motion after the present order of
the day was disposed of. It was always customary in
the early part of the session for the Howe to fix the
days on which notices of motion should be specially en-
tertained, but it always reserved a right to itself of set-
ting them aside on particular occasions. Therefore it
was that the Hon. Member could not now bring on his
motion.

Mr. FIUME said that in that case private Members
were always in the hands of the llouse, and might never
bring on their motions at all.

The SPEAKER, stated that in former days the
notices of motion were frequently set aside without cere-
mony at auy time, but now they could only be super-
seded by the orders of the day on an express resolution
of the House.

SALARY OF THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS.
In reply to a question from Mr. WILLIAMS,
Lord JOHN RUSSELL stated that the new Master
of the Rolls would be appointed with the understanding
that the office would be subject to any alteration in the
salary which Parliament might deem necessary.
ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL.

Mr. Alderman SIDNEY presented 49 petitions from
Wesleyan bodies in the different counties of England
praying that a more stringent measure than the Govern-
ment Bill might be introduced with regard to the Papal
aggression.
Mr. NEWDEGATE presented several petitions from
Warwickshire against the Papal aggression.
ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL.
ADJOURNED DEBATE.

On the order of the day for resuming the adjourned
debate being read, _ _

Mr. HOI3HOUSE said he moved the adjournment of
the debate last evening, because he understood the Hon.
Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford, and
the Hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, were anxious to
deliver their opinions to the House, and not from any
personal vanity of his own.—(Hear, hear.) He must
say, that the more he had heard of the debate, the more
he had sifted the different arguments of Honourable
Gentlemen, and examined the question on its
merits, tha more he was fortified in the convic-
tion which ho had previously entertained, that
all legislation on the subject was unnecessary.—(Hear,
hear.) He would grapple at once with some of the
main arguments which had been offered, casting aside all
those wordy arguments with which the subject had been
invested for the purpose of deceiving the House and pre-
venting the people of England from discerning the real
truth.—(Laughter.) It he understood the arguments
offered to the House, they were principally these—that
an insult had been levelled at the Queen in her character
as first magistrate, and also as supreme bead of the
Church; that her authority and prerogative had
been invaded, and the independence of the country
interfered with by the act of the Pope in ap-
pointing Roman Catholic bishops. It appeared to
him that the word" bishop" had not been sufficiently
considered, that they bad not separated the essence from
the accident, the spiritual from the temporal authority,
and hence they were led into a great constitutional
error. (Cries of " Hear, hear.") In order to show
what the meaning of the word " bishop " was
it would be necessary to look back to the history of the
bishops, and see how they were appointed in earlier
times. Now, he thought no one would venture to dis-
pute that the original mode of appointing them
was by the laity and clergy per clericum et populum.
This was the simple history of the origin of the bishops,
and their functions were originally strictly spiritual.
The temporal power which they now exercised was
nothing more than an accident. The word bishop had
reference more to an office than a title, and hence he
objected to the Bill. It was simply directed
against names, and ho could not think that
it was worthy of the House to mix itself
with such a matter as this. This was not the first time
that confusion had arisen out of names in this country.
Similar disputes arose in Scotland about the sixteenth
century, when a good deal of excitement arose from the
fact of some of the Roman Catholic clergymen having
adopted titles, but then, as he hoped it would turn out
now, it was thought unadvisable to battle with trifles,
and the excitement ultimately died away. Now if the
House followed that example on this occasion, and no
longer frittered away its valuable time in wordy
debates about nothing, the Legislature would elevate
itself in the estimation of the country. Lofty
terms and largo expressions had been applied
to Rome to stigmatize her for insulting
the Sovereign of these realms; but those lofty terms and
large sounding expressions were just as much applicable
to the Freo Church of Scotland as to the Pope
of Rome, for they gave titles to their Church dig-
nitaries without consulting the Crown. Such, then,
were a few of the objections which he enter-
tained against this Bill. He had many others, indeed
their name was legion, but he should be falling into the
same fault that he was condemning if ho wasted the
time of the House by going over the whole of them.
He had stated enough, he thought, to show that the
measure was wholly uncalled for; and since he thought
it opposed to the spirit of the Reformation, as a staunch
and uncompromising Protestant he should assist his
Roman Catholic fellow-subjects in giving it his decided
and steady opposition. Ho maintained that it did not
belong to incorporated bodies of any kind to petition the
Crown on the subject of Church matters. As to the ar-
guments which had been used of the Pope's supremacy
over the consciences of his followers, ho asserted that
the Roman Catholics of this country entirely repudiated
any interference on the part of the Pope in their
temporal concerns. No such power ever was conceded
to him by his most ardent supporters in this country.
The Hon. Gentleman then proceeded to refer to the
three questions which had beau submitted to six of the
Catholic universities of Europe—Louvain, Paris, Douay,
Alcala, Valladolid, and Salamanca: whether the Pope
could have any temporal jurisdiction in this country,
whether he could absolve Roman Catholics from
their allegiance to tho sovereign, and whether
there was anything in the constitution of the
Roman Church which forbade its members to keep faith
with heretics. All these questions were answered in
the negative by each of the universities, and more than
one of them expressed its surprise that such opinions
should he entertained in a country so celebratedar.)
for its intelligence and freedom of thought.—
He thought, therefore, he had fully succeeded in
was
ndaes-
monstrating that bishop in its original signification
not a title at all, and that in this country we ought not
to be angry at the Pope interferingin spiritual
matters, when we knew that he had done so long ago.
They were gravely told that the Church was to be sub-
jected to the exercise and jurisdiction
Why, when he looked around and considered of this canon law.
onsidered that law,
he was quite surprised that the people or the House
should in any way have been alarmed at such a bugbear
as this. Let them look only into the nature of
would
this canon
law, and to its true position. If they
did so they
find that it was, in every.case, subject to the common liter
of England. All the great writers by whom this country
had been adorned averred that such was the case;
and Blackstone himself, than whom no greater au-
thority could be adduced, had stated that the
canon law was overridden by the common law
at all times during our history, as was remarkably evi-
dent by three great ensigns. It was in the first place
subject to the common law; it was in the second only ,
to be construed and explained by the statutes which