DEBATES IN THE BRITISH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 76, 1 April 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

DEBATES IN THE BRITISH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

IMPORTANT PECLARATIONS BY

THE PRELATES

In both Houses of the British Parliament on February 9th the affairs of the Church of England were under discussion, and in both Houses the discussion was earnest, arid even anxious. But the debate in ths Upper Chamber had the advantage of the presence of the bishops Nineteen of them made a bank of lawn sleeves on the benches to the right of the Woolsack, and to hear them on their defence to the charge of having permitted heinous ritualistic malpractices an unusually large number of lay peers dotted the scarlet benches.

Very many members of the other House came to their gallery. Of the front bench men of both parties who were in attendance upon their duties most spent some time during the afternoon in the enclosure reserved for Privy Councillors. Mr Balfour, the Home Secretary, Mr Gerald Balfour, Mr Long, Mr Asquith, wete among them. Even so earnest a Nonconformist as Sir Henry Fowler came across to listen.

In the Plouse of Lords the Bishop of Winchester delivered a very able, thoughtful, and well considered defence of the bishops' position.

The right rev. prelate, who opened the debate, said he had invited Lord Kinnaird, who presided at the Albert Hall demonstration, to repeat in their lordships' House the speech he then made, alleging that the responsibility for "the present disorder of the Church of England' rested mainly with the bishops. The noble lord had not Been his way to adopt

that suggestion

A leading stateman of great ability and eminent public service, Sir William Harcourt, had held up the bishops to the opprobrium of the British public as faithless to their trusts and cowardly, mainly because of the use they had made of the Parliamentary right given them of

EXERCISING THE' VETO

in preventing prosecutions. The- House would, perhaps, be surprised to learn that with three exceptions no living bishop had exercised the veto at all, and the indictment which had been launched against them had been launched against an imaginary foe. He denied that there had- been any agreement among the bishops not to allow prosecutions. For many years past the office of the Dean of Arches had been practically a sinecure. That was oecause the general opinion of the Church thought a cessation of prosecutions was desirable.

The bishops, his lordship declare-), had always tried to repress excesses. His own opinion of the evils and perils which existed in the Church to-day was that they were great. He maintained that the particular outrageous actions of individuals to which attention had been called were few and far between, and were gradually disappearing. The main fault lay in the exaggeration of the truth, rather than in overt act of wrong, and the growth of mistaken ideas of a materialistic kind.

The bishops desired to support the Knglish laity in dealing with, those practices in a quiet and steady manner. They had, he acknowledged, a great and heavy responsibility, and from it, he declared, they did not shrink. They askad for the con fldence of the House of Lords,TprOftiiSiiig that their lordships

WOULD FIND IT NOT MISPLACED

Lord Kinnaird followed. He stood by his Albert Hall speech. The law, he maintained, ought to be put 'into force, but the bishops had declared that they would not allow litigation. The laymen of the Low Church party were wearying of having the courts shut against them.

The Bishop of London (Dr. Creighton) made a brisk attack upon Sir William Harcourt. ■ The latters which that great statesman had thought fit to put before the public were, he said, more amusing than interesting. The writer seemed to pose as a colossal new Elijah, not alone denouncing evils, but clamouring for the bishops to slay the priests of Baal for .him. (Laughter.) When that statesman was managing the affairs of the country he was driven to the presumably unwelcome conclusion that 'coercion was no remedy.' Apparently what one learned in civil matters was not learned in matters ecclesiastical..

The right rev. prelate went on to ■ defend the attitude of the bishops in discouraging prosecutions. They had simpiy followed public feeling; ttiey had acted as Englishmen living among Englishmen rather than as ecclesiastics trusting in antiquated powers. He had been asked what he had been doing in his own diO'< cese. It presented, he said, peculiar conditions; many London churches were congregational rather than parochial—people went to

LONDON CHURCHES

as they thought fit, and complaints about the character of the services in a particular church rarely came from any one who had a right to make them by virtue of his living in that particular parish, lie had called upon most of the churches in his diocese to submit to him forms of the services they used, and the clergy had recognised his right to edit them; and he told them that the only principle he could follow was that of strick accordance with the letter so far as possible, but certainly with the spirit, of the Book of Common Prayer. As to the mode in which the services of the Church should be conducted, he admitted that some of bis clergy were not prepared to agree with his decisions. His only course with them was to urge them to submit their case to a full hearing before the archbishop.

After Lord Harrowby had commended the spirit of the Bishop of Winchester's speech, Lord Halifax rose, and boldly took up the defence of the Church Union: He dJid his friends, he said, would continue to deny the competency of the Crown or the secular courts to settle the. ceremonial or the doctrine of the Church. He earnestly entreated the bishops not to curtail the splendour and glory of the services of the English Church.

The Earl of Portsmouth, .who replied, insisted that the question was not one .of individual views but that of

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH founded by law and under the authority of Parliament, and he urged the bishops to maintain the Protestant character of the Church, lest the laity should be fcrced to take matters into their'own hands in the House of Commons.

Lord Cranbrook protested against hard working conscientious clergy being characterised as 'perjured priests.' The Church was Protestant, but it was Catholic as wall.

The Bishop of Ripon (Dr. Boyd-Carpen-ter) said the bishops' were certainly averse to litigation. They believed they had a more powerful weapon in the use of paternal persuasion.

Lord Kimberley at this stage joined in the debate, pne point, he said, seemed to have been almost forgotten, i.e., that they were speaking of a Church, established by law, and it was essential that

the Church should be maintained as established by law. ' No clergyman was justified in receiving the emoluments of the Church who did not obey the law by which it was established, and he strongly hoped the bishops would not shut their eyes to the fact, and would discourage those clergy who had indulged in practices that had aroused the indignation of the laity.

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple), who closed the debate, appealed for more time to allow the bishops 10 deal with the matter, which could not be dealt with in-a month or two. He believed there would be very few of the clergy who would refuse ultimately to submit to the authority of the archbishop, after he had given a fair hearing to what they had to say.

With this appeal before their lordships the House adjourned at 7.30.

Meanwhile, and for many hours later, the discussion on the same subject v/as proceeding in the House of Commons.