DIVISION IN THE COMMONS.

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

DIVISION IN THE COMMONS.

MAJORITY OF 132 AGAINST MR SMITH'S AMENDMENT.

In the House of Commons there was the same air of careful consideration of a difficult problem, although the absence from the discussion of any official representatives of the Church gave a sense of something being wanting. As layman after layman rose one got the impression of an amateur railway carriage sort of assertion of the views of the outsider.

Lord Cranborne, who spoke early, avowed that he had no sympathy v.ith the extreme practices which were complained of, but he regarded the High Church movement as the energetic religious movement of the period—the expression of the zealous religious principle of the people, as "Wesleyanism was at a former time, and he would do nothing to hinder it.

The liveliest speech of the evening was made by Mr Augustice Birren. He as a Nonconformist refused to support Mr Smith's amendment.

He was more in sympathy with much that had fallen from Lord Cranborne than with the statements of the learned churchwarden on the froot bench t'Air Mellor). There was no disguising the wave of Catholic feeling, which hart of late years swept over the country;, it was now comparatively rare to meet a clergyman of the Church of England under forty years of age who did not, almost as a matter of course, hold views of the priestly character, and of Church authority which would thirty or forty years ago have made him a marked man. But

THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL

was not the only movement of thought that had taken place within that period; th>3 educated laity, also, had had their thought movement, and many of them had long found it impossible to believe in the creed of the Church of England as it was set forth in the manuals of theology. The Church and the nation had alike outgro.wn the language of the Thirty-nine Articles, and it was not fair to pin down to those Articles even the clergy of the Church. He himself declined to' have anything to do with any legislative measure having for its object the harrying of. any school of. thought in the Church of England at the bidding of another. (Hear, hear.)

The only true and final solution of the difficulty was to be found in disestablish^ pient. (Oppqsition.-cheers.) --

Colonel Sauriderson (C.) would not vote for the amendment, because it had the character of a_ Vote of want of confidence in the Government. Mr Mac Arthur (U.)' said the lawlessness in the Church amounted almost to anarchy. Mr Carvell Williams (L.) said disestablishment was the only remedy. Mr Cripps (C.) agreed with Sir William Harcourt that furthei legislation was necessary-.

Ltord E. Fitzmaurice (L.) asked what measures the Government intended to take to maintain the Protestant character of the- Church. If no action were taken, the movement for complete religious freedom would revive, and Churchmen would unite with other Protestant communities against the false shepherds that at present led the Church.

Mr A. J. Balfour, speaking at eleven o'clock, denied that he had ever underrated the greatness of the forces with which they had to deal. He thought the mover of the mption had used the term 'Protestant' in such a narrow sense that Luther himself would have been excluded from it. (Laughter.) He could honestly say he.had never been able to entertain the fear that the Protestantism of England was in danger. They were a.ll agreed that disobedience to the. laws of the Church did exist, and

THAT DISOBEDIENCE

should be put an end to. But nothing in the world would induce him to be a. party to driving' out of- the Church a body of opinion which had a perfect right, historic cally and legally, to be there.

Let them rather preserve undimimshed that broad toleration which had been the characteristic' mark of the English Church from the time of the Reformation, and which was one of her most glorious inheritances. (Cheers.)

He believed that the bishops had the requisite power to put down lawlessness, and that they were determined to tise that power. To go in for legislation now would weaken the bishops' authority, widely deviate from thep aths of sound statesmanship, and be in the interest chiefly of those who wished to see the disestablishment of the Church.

If he asked the House to reject the amendment it was not only and not chiefly because such an amendment was a vote of censure on the Government, but because he believed that if the House prematurely and unnecessarily committed itself' to the policy of legislation, it would be dealing a blow not merely at the interests of the Established Church, but at the interests of Protestantism itself. -(Ministerial cheers.) . The House divided at 11.30 p.m., and there voted :-rFor Mr Smith's amendment.. S9 Against 221 Government majority ; "isa Colonel gandys, a Conservative, acted a.s one of the tellers for the minority. A number of Unionist members abstained from recording a vote. The Jrjsh National members, with nine or ten exceptions, abstained from voting. The Conservatives who voted against the Government were Sir John Willox, Mr Ascroft and Captain Chaloner.