The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-08 00:00:00

SATURDAY EVENING,

„tAtoa the eoneiderationt; shield iheillee the Government
to otet this soahe, and I will now say a few words in
tel'Merence to an objection which I see I may anticipate,
and which it is impossible not to anticipate—namely,
that the Bill, reduced as it will then bee, to the prohibition
contained in the f!rst Plane*, will not be worthy of the
occasion and hot justify the expectation of the country.
—cloud cries of ” Hear, hear.") To this extent it
ought to justify that expectation, that it will be a Par-
liamentary declaration that the titles assumed, as they
are ostentatiously under the authority of the Pope, are
not to be borne by persons claiming authority in this
country.—(Hear, hear.) It will be a national protest
against that a .3—a national declaration that the autho-
rity assumed is one whica Parliament will not allow
to be exercised.—(flear, hear.) When it is stated that
this is so inefficteut and limited an Act, I must say
that I do not concur in that statement, judging by
past experience ; and I am not one of these who say
that the clause in the Act of 1829 prohibiting
titles is a dead letter, or that it has not
answered to the full the object with which it was
framed and the expectation with which it was passed by
Parliament. I have said that it has been the practice for
the Boman Catholic bishops in Ireland to use those titles
in letters of ordination, and it is alleged that it is neces-
sary for them to do so, because in those documents the
authority must be shown under which the acts are per-
formed; but ostensibly, in their communications with the
Government, in approaching the Throne or the Legisla-
ture, there has been a respect and an obedience to the
law—(Hear, hear)—and that law has not been a dead
letter to this extent, that in all those documents and
upon all official occasions it has been observed, and the
bishops have abstained from using those titles.—(Hear.)
I believe the same result will take place in England if
this Bill be passed, because I believe the Roman Catholic
subjects of her Majesty will defer to this law.---(Hear.)
Only a few days since I had the honour of presenting to
her Majesty an address from the Roman Catholic Arch-
bishops and bishops in Ireland, in which, describing
themselves as such, they did not assume either iu the
body of the address or in their signatures any title prohi-
bited to them.---(Hear, hear.) Cesrteinly, if they had, I
should have felt it my duty to abstain from presenting
it to her Majesty.—(Hear, hear.) So also with regard
to the petition to this House the other night; that peti-
tion was signed by every Roman Catholic archbishop
and bishop in Ireland, using his Christian name and
surname, without assuming the title of his diocese.—
(Hear, hear.) I have now stated what clauses we propose
to omit—that we propose to avoid all interference with
long-established usage, and with rights conceded to, and
long exercised by our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects.
I avow my own opinion, that although it is necessary
that ,such a Bill as this should pass, and that no en-
couragement be given to sets of aggression like this,
and although I think such a prohibition, proceeding
from the Legislature, receiving the sanction of both
Houses of Parliament and of the Crown, will
have the effect of a national protest and de-
claration against that act of the Pope which has been so
much, and properly, objected against; yet it is not to
any Act of Parliament that I look for the maintenance
of the Protestant religion in these realms—(Hear)—but
to that deep feeling of attachment to the Protestant faith
which the members of every Protestant denomination
possess—(Cheers)—and to which they have given utter-
ance in language clear, unambiguous, and unmis-
takeable.—(Renewed cheers.) It is to their just appre-
ciation of the blessings connected with the maintenance
of the Protestant faith in this country, that I look for
the maintenance of that faith—(llster, hear)—cuupled,
as it no doubt will be, with the increased diligence and
activity of Protestant ministers in their respective
spheres—(hear, hear)—armed, as I believe, with the
armour of truth, to resist that spiritual aggression with
which they have been threatened.—(Cheers.) But, be-
fore I sit down, I will advert to a question put by the
Hon. Member for Ayrshire (Mr. Oswald), with regard
to the operation of this Bill upon the bishops in Scot-
land, whose petition has been presented to-night. Cer-
tainly their case was not at all in the contemplation of
the Government when they thought it their duty to
propose a Bill of this kind.—(Hear, hear.) There is
nothing in the conduct of those bishops, in the course
they have pursued, which would render it in the least
necessary or expedient that a Bill should be passed
placing them under any disability to which they are not
now subject.—(Hear, hear.) But I feel it right to state
that I believe those bishops, designated as they are in an
Act of Parliament—the first Act of Parliament recog-
nising them in their epiecopalcharacter, the Act in 1840
—"Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Communion of
Scotland," have no shadow of right whatever to assume
or use titles drawn from Scotch dioceses.—(Hear, hear.)
There are those who think it is against positive law—
the Act of Union embodying the Act of Settlement;
that may involve a nice question, but at all events they
are without law, I believe, in this. The usage has
grown up only within the last 20 years, and it is not
now universal among them; and in introducing words
exempting bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Commu-
nion in Scotland from any penalties to which they might
be subject under the Bill, I should feel it my duty to
provide that the exemption shall not be held to give
them any right to the use or assumption of titles to which
they are not already by law entitled.—(Hear, hear.)
There was an observation made by the Honourable and
Learned Member for Athlone (Mr. Keogh), who charged
me with presenting to her Mejesty an Redress from Pro-
testant bishops in Scotland, signing as bishops of dioceses
over which they presided. I contradicted him at the
time, but I had no opportunity then of giving an expla-
nation. The only address I have aeon which contains
any of their signatures, with the exception of
one from Edinburgh to which no objection
could be taken, was from the members of the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which was
brought to me signed by 3,000 or 4,000 of the members
of that society, in their individual capacity; it was au
address remarkable for its temper and moderation, ex-
pressing firmly an opinion with respect to the recent
act of the Pope and the establishment of a Roman Catho-
lic hirearchy in this country, but in language to which
no possible exception could be taken. After the secre-
tary had left the address with me, I observed among the
signatures those of four bishops of the Protestant Epis-
copal Communion in Scotland, who had signed their
names and added to their names a description of them
as bishops of certain places. If that address had been
from the bishops themselves exclusively, I should have
respectfully returned it to them, pointed out what I con-
ceived to be the impropriety of so addressing the Throne
and requested them to return the address signed as the
Act of Parliament appears to prescribe. But as the ad-
dress came from a very large number of members
of this society, and the signatures were not, I
was told, contrary to any rule of law, I felt it lay
duty to lay the address before her Majesty; but in sig-
nifying to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the President,
whose name stood first, I thought it necessary to write
an official letter to him, wishing it to be expressly un-
derstood that in laying that address before her Majesty
no sanction was given to the form of signature adopted
by these bishops in Scotland, and no recognition intended
of titles which by law they had no right to assume.—
(Hear, hear.) I thought, under the circumstances, that
was the best course I could adopt--(Hear, hear)—and I
hope the Hon. Member (slr. Keogh) will see that he
has not correctly represented the course I pursued.—
(Hear, hear.) I have now stated what the Government
propose to do. I have endeavoured to abstain from
matter which might feed to debate at present, because if
we are to postpone the second reading of this Bill for a
week, it is desirable that we should not now he involved
in is long and protracted discussion, which must again
take place ou the second reading.—(Hear, hear.) I
have onlyf therefore, to move that the order of the day
for the second reading of this Bill be postponed till Fri-
day next.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. STUART thought that the Bill which the Go-
vernment proposed to make out of that which
had been read a first time, was certainly not calcu-
lated to allay the apprehensions of those who
had so far supported then in the former measure. He
did not think that in this case of aggression and insult
to the Crown the Executive Government had shown
themselves at all active to repel that insult in the proper
manner. By the Constitution there were several modes
of repelling it, and one would have been by a proclama-
tion from the Privy Council; but in place of that they only
had a private letter from the Prime Minister to a pri-
vate individual, a course which he would say was en-
tirely unworthy of a Prime Minister and derogatory
to the dignity of the Crown. But the Execu-
tive had in truth never shown the slightest
intention to fallow any of the precedents which existed in
such cases, which if they had been followed would
have readily afforded a constitutional manner of dis-
posing of the difficulties. Bat if the Executive had
failed in their duty, the task of repelling
this insult had fallen on the Legislature, and he con-
ceived that the present measure, which was proposed for
the purpose, was very tar from being sufficient to uphold
how it
assaults n
of the dignity of the Crown. The Right Hon. Baronet
would
to
nby n passing a Bill to
would be possible to secure the country from
farther h
prohibit, under penalties, the assumption of titles by
r persons to whom, under those very titles, bequests
might legally be made for the purpose of maintaining
those titles. He threw out this suggestion for the con-
i tHouse
con-
sideration of Government before the Bill came again
under discussion.
Mr. MILNER GIBSON wished to set himself right
in regard to certain allusions which had been made to
him by the Right Hon. Gentleman the Secretary of
State for the Home Department, who had said that he
(Mr. M. Gibson) was desirous of referring the matter to
a Committee. Now, ho himself having no wish to legis-
late in the matter, therefore he could not have any
desire to intjuire. But this he would say, that if they
were to legislate, they had better legislate with infor-
mation than without it He was glad to see that
there was a near approximation to the proper stage of
doing nothing.
Sir R. IL INGLIS concurred with the Right Hon.
Gentleman that they were doing nothing. The Bill as it was
proposed to be altered would give satisfaction to no one,
and indeed how could it be otherwise? It was a repeti-
tion of the farce which represented Hada with the part
of Hamlet left out.—(Hear, and laughter.) The Noble
Lord wrote a splendid letter to his country, but he had
woefully failed in carrying out the spirit which it
breathed; and though he (Sir R. H. Inglis) had been
ready when the Bill was first introduced to accept
ninepence in the shilling, he was net now prepared to
take less than the whole shilling.—(Hear, hear, and
laughter.) The Bill was shamefully mutilated, so
shamefully that it was nothing loss than
an insult to the country, and he had no doubt whatever
that if Government persevered in it, they would be again
driven from office.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. BANKES was afraid that the Hon. Baronet
would not get even his 9d. in the pound out of the Bill.
He wanted to know in what respect the Bill was more
stringent or effective than the present state of the law?
The speech of the Right Hon. Baronet was directed in
favour of the two or three clauses which ho proposed to
2,battd4xt, sad he tvulci eieurs hica that. silts tho figte4.