MR. DISRAELI'S AMENDMENT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 344, 21 June 1869, Page 3

MR. DISRAELI'S AMENDMENT.

The result was apparent in a formidable series of amendments laid by Mr Disraeli the same evening on the table of the House of Commons. As published in the newspapers the next day they occupied quite a column ; nor was it possible to gather their full scope but by reconstructing clause by clause the whole bill. The swift hand of fate has already struck so many of them from the record that it is not necessary I should attempt a recapitulation. It is sufficient to indicate their purport, as probably forming the basis of much agitation. In the first plate, Mr Disraeli would strike out the clause which declares that the Church shall be disestablished, and its union with the Church of England severed. In this manner he would retain a nominal union, and secure an acknowledgement of the supremacy of the Queen. But he provides also for the independent action of the church, and the voluntary construction of a new constitution. The evil day of actual separation he would postpone, and he asks for another year, during which appointments might still be made. To carry out the process of disendowment, be proposes to add to the three paid commissioners three unpaid commissioners, whom he names— all ex-judges, two of them Conservatives and one a Liberal appointment — by which means, considering their great discretionary power, he compasses a prudent "packing" of the Executive body. Then he asks somewhat more liberal terms of compensation for both incumbents and curates. But the great point of difference, is iv the temporalities he would retain or create. He would secure to the Church all private endowments of whatever date — even though strictly legal ' evidence be wanting, if their history can he traced — and all public endowments made j subsequent to the second year of Queen Eli- ' zabeth. Then, under cover of the plea that "it is just some provision should be made for the interests of the laity who have hitherto bad provided for them the maintenance of religious worship, and an endowment for ecclesiastical incumbents," of which Mr Gladstone's bill would deprive them — he asks that four times the aggregate of the net annual incomes of all incumbents should be handed over to the Church body to be held as a capital sum, the interest of which should be applied as from a sustentation fund. Further, he demands that fourteen times the annual outlay in the externals of worship — repairing, lighting, heating, and the like — and in the salaries of clerk and sexton, shall be given in charge to the same body for the same purpose, and that £200,000 shall be set apart, in addition, to pay the expenses of this representative body. There areother proposals, all pointing in the same direction — the establishment of a richly endowed church, nominally associated with the state, but with a government entirely free —an institution more dangerous than has yet existed in Ireland. The clauses compensating for the Regium JDonum and tbe Maynooth Grant Mr Disraeli would omit, and in truth his funds must be exhausted ; but he is wisely reticent — possibly with deference to the ultra-Pro-testants of the Liberal party — aB to the sources whence he would meet these claims. Mr Gladstone quickly followed the Conservative leader in placing before the public certain amendments, modifying some of the details of his scheme, especially as it relates to the two last-mentioned points.