The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-07-18 00:00:00

CAMBRIDGE, JULY 8

At the congregation on Thursday, July 6th, the follow-
ing gentlemen were admitted to the degree of
MASTERS OF ARTS.—Henry Meers, Clare Hall; Jas.
Yorke, Sidney College; P. W. Copeman, Queen's Col-
lege.
At the same congregation the following grace passed
the Senate :

" That the thanks of the University be given to Mr.
W. E. Malcolm, for an additional fragment of the Cretan
Sarcophagus, presented by his father Sir Pulteney Mal-
colm."

SCHEME OF CHURCH ENDOWMENT,

FRIDAY.—The following memorandum was on Friday
laid on the table of the House of Lords, to accompany
the bill " To make better provision for the cure of souls
in populous parishes :"
" In order to supply an immediate fund 'to make
better provision for the spiritual care of populous pa-
rishes,' this bill enacts, that the governors of Queen
Anne's Bounty may forthwith transfer the sum of
£600,000 of their Parliamentary Grants Fund, to the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England, and that this
capital stock may be used by the commissioners as in-
come, under the schemes and o.ders in Council ; the in-
tention being thus to create immediate permanent endow-
ments or augmentations to the extent of £30,000 sterling

per annum

" To meet the clergy payments, now annually made by
the Bounty Board by means of the dividends of this stock,
the commissioners are to pay them the amount of those di-
vidends half-yearly, being relieved (so long as the divi-
dends are paid) from replacing the principal stock, unless
required to do so after 30 years.
" Power is given to the Bounty Board to lend, if they
see fit, and to the commissioners to borrow, further sums,
of the same stock, upon the same terms.
"As the security for the due payment of the dividends,
and for a return of the principal, upon a requisition after
30 years, or at any previous time if the dividends are not
regularly paid, the bill creates a mortgage upon the whole
of the property vested and to be vested in the commis-
sioners, with a simple mode of legal remedy and to ren-
der this security incapable of being materially reduced in
value, it guards the commissioners' powers of leasing and
alienation, by enacting that all fines and all purchase mo-
nies reeeived by them shall, unless applied in replacing
the stock, be treated as capital, and be, as soon as conve-
nient, re-invested in land.

" In order to justify the proposed arrangement, it has
been shown by careful and elaborate calculations made by
Mr. Morgan, that the revenues of the commissioners will
be sufficient, not only to redeem all the pledges already
given by their own published resolutions, and moreover
to provide for the due payment of the dividends upon the
borrowed stock, but also to take upon themselves, when
that stock shall be exhausted, the whole newly-created
perpetual annuity of £30,000.

"It has been estimated that in 1860 the probable value
of the estates already vested in the commissioners will
be above £900,000; which will purchase assuming £9O as
the medium price of three per cent. stock) the required
perpetual annuity of £30,000.

_
" The pledges already given by the commissioners may
be stated as within £30,000, but say £32,000 per annum ;
and if to this be added the £lB,OOO dividends upon the
stock borrowed, the total additional amount of charge,
accruing by uncertain increments as to the £32,000, and
by increments of £lOOO per annum as to the £lB,OOO,
will be £50,000.

" Now, a calculation has also been made of the probable
rate at which the revenues arising to the commissioners
from corporate chapter property by reason of the suspen-
sion of cannonries will increase ; and the result is, that
an income may be safely expected from this source,
amounting in 1860, to £42,000 per annum, and reaching
that point by considerable, though, of course, uncertain
increments.

" It only therefore remains to provide at that date
£BOOO per annum more from other sources, and to show
that the increments by which the whole £50,000 per
annum will accrue, will meet the intermediate demand.
" The estates now vested in the commissioners are
about one-third part in the number of the whole; and
this proportion has fallen in eight years—viz, since the
passing of the first suspension act, in 1835.
" All the appointments to prebends, &c., by the vacancy
of which these estates fall in, having, of course, been
made prior to that date, it may not unreasonably he ex-
pected that at least, another third part, probably a much
larger proportion, will fall during the interval between
this time and 1860.

" To this it may be added, that although about one-
third part in number, the estates fallen do not amount to
that proportion in value ; and moreover, that besides those
upon lease, which alone form the subject of Mr. Morgan's
calculation, there are some estates actually in hand, and
already producing £3400 per annum.
" And again, the proceeds of sinecure rectories, already
amounting to £2400 per annum, and ultimately estimated
at above £14,000, should be taken into account.
" It may be urged, with reference to the computed
value of the estates at a given date, being an estimate of
their value in reversion, it does not necessarily prove the
then, amount of available income.

" It might be deemed a sufficient answer to this possible
objection to say, that it is enough for the present purpose
to show such a value of the property at the given date,
designating as it does the market price of the reversion,
as would enable the commissioners, if their actual avail-
able income from general sources should not then amount
to the required sum, to raise, by mortgage, whatever may
be wanted within the extent of the computed value; but
is it not necessary to rest solely on this answer, if the
following further observations be well founded.
" It is hoped that the commissioners, in dealing with
all the property vested in them, will feel the advantage of
leaving the questions of tenure and management entirely
open and unfettered by any strict rules. There will be
under such a course of proceeding various modes by which,
especially by their combined use, the reversionary value
may in reasonable time be converted into an available
income, without any improvident alienation or waste of
church property, and without forcibly disturbing the
present system of the tenures, or violating the just claims
of the lessees.
" It may sometimes be for the convenience of a lessee
to purchase the reversion ; and if a sufficient offer be
made it might be deemed right to accept it, under the re-
striction of treating the purchase money as capital; its
re-investment in land at rack-rent, and in stock AD
INTERIM, will thus at once produce income proportionate
to the full amount of the value of the reversionary interest
sold. Or a similar result might be arrived at by the lessee
joining with the commissioners in a sale to some third
party desirous of possessing the property as contiguous to
his own, or for some other reason ; the purchase money
being apportioned, and the share of the commissioners
being in like manner invested as capital.
" Again, a lessee may be willing to part with his interest
at a fair price ; and in such a case the money received fur
the reversionary interest of estate A (subject to a lease
terminable at a remote and uncertain period), might be
paid for the leasehold interest in estate B (perhaps simi-
larly situated), which would thus be brought into posses-
sion, and might be let at rack rent.
" Virtually the same result, namely, converting the re-
versionary interest into annual income, would be obtained
by renewing the lease, and investing the fine.
Although, therefore, the estimate has been founded
upon the calculated value of the reversion at a given date,
it is obvious that, assuming a free but well-regulated and
judicious system of management, that value does repre-
sent what at the same date would be, or may have been
made, the produce of the property in proportionate annual
income.
" There will be some diminution of the computed value,
in 1860, of the estates which have formed the subject of
Mr. Morgan's calculation, by the use of their proceeds,
whether in rents of lands, or dividends upon stock, in
the meantime ; and, if these estates were the only secu-
rity for the loan, it might be necessary to compel the re-
investment of those proceeds, or to limit their use to the
purposes of this particular bill. Some allowance, also,
must be made for certain local claims upon property, re-
cognised by the cathedral acts. The great disproportion,
however, of the whole property of the commissioners, to
the amount of the loan, amply provides for both these dis-
turbing causes.
" The general expediency of the arrangement seems to
be unquestionable. By the convertible use of two kinds
of property, viz., the stock in the hands of the Bounty
Board and the estates in the hands of the commissioners.
and by resorting to the capital in money as present in-
come, substituting for it the capital in land, which will
produce future income, the great object of meeting pre-
sent urgent wants is answered ; the strict pecuniary re-
sult to the church being precisely the same, because, to
whatever extent her annual income may hereafter be re-
duced, she will have profited to the same extent, in the
intermediate use of money, to meet a crying exigency ;
and, so far as the clergy are concerned, whose augmenta-
tions are charged by the Bounty Board upon the borrowed
stock, their security will be improving every year, as it
gradually becomes converted from stock into land.
" June 26."