THE BENEFICES BILL. T HE division on the motion to adjourn
over the Derby- day was more interesting than the debate. It exhibited some notable instances of consistency and inconsistency. Among the former were Mr. Morley, Sir Henry Fowler, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson. They are Liberals or Radicals, they have no special love for horse- racing, they believe that Parliament was meant for work and not for play, they think that the turf is, as a matter of fact, responsible for a great deal of gambling and the misery that comes from gambling ; and as the natural sequel of all this they voted against the adjournment. But then there are others of whom the same things may be said with equal truth who were found in the opposite lobby. The most conspicuous among these is Mr. Lloyd George. He too is a Radical, be can have no special love for the pastime of an aristocracy which at its worst is tyrannical and at its best effete. He is always willing to sit up all night, and we dare say prefers a Wednesday on the terrace to a Wednesday at Epsom ; possibly he even belongs to the Anti-Gambling League. But he voted, nevertheless, for the adjournment. His view, apparently, is that the promotion of public morals must be sub- ordinated to the greater good of damaging the Established Church. Among the Unionist supporters of the motion the only one that at all surprises us is Mr. Jesse Collings. The explanation, we imagine, is that he asso- ciates the Derby with agriculture, and wishes to show that, though chained to the Home Office, he is still at heart a gentleman rider. Among the reasons given for the various votes the prize for oddity must be assigned to Mr. Muntz. He rose, he said, as Churchman and patriot, to save " the dear old Church " from the disgrace of being done good to by stealth. He was all for the Benefices Bill—for that disciplinary reform of which the Church stands in such great need—but he wished to see it dealt with " in a bold and courageous manner, not smuggled through the House on such a day as the Derby- day." Well, we too like courage and publicity ; but when there is no opportunity for displaying them except at the sacrifice of a useful Bill, we prefer humbler tactics. This time the choice lay between taking the Benefices Bill on the Derby-day or leaving it over till next year. We recognise the ideal nobility of Mr. Muntz's theory, but we think Lord Cranborne's practice more befitting to this lower sphere. Indeed, the phrase " smuggled through" seems singularly inappropriate to a Bill which has been thoroughly threshed out by a Grand Committee in which all the objections that can possibly be taken to it have been stated and considered. If the House of Commons is to give precisely the same amount of time and attention to a Bill which has come back from a Grand Committee as to a Bill which has not been sent to one, this form of devolution may as well be given up. By a majority of 141 the motion for adjournment was rejected, and on Wednesday the House met as usual, re- gardless of the majestic ghosts of Lord Palmerston and Lord George Bentinck. There is some reason, however, to fear that for any good that this victory did to the Benefices Bill the House might as well have been at the Derby. Mr. H. S. Foster at once opened a fresh second reading debate by a motion that the Bill be considered this day six months. His objections to the measure were pretty evenly dis- tributed over its three parts. He dislikes Part L because it takes away the rights of patrons without compensation. He dislikes Part II. because it deals only with the clergy and not with the Bishops. He dislikes Part III. because it associates age with misconduct. The first of these criticisms was repeated in more detail later in the after- noon on an amendment to Clause 1, moved by the same gentleman. At this stage it received the support of Mr. Lecky, whose constitutional dread of democracy seems on this occasion to have blinded him to the issue really before the House. Mr. Lecky looks upon patronage simply as property. He objects to interference with the sale of next presentations by the owners of advowsons, just as he would object to interference with the right of granting leases by the owners of land. The power of selling this particular part of the right to present to a benefice is a valuable power ; therefore it ought not to be taken away without compensation to the owner, who is the poorer by its loss. But if we look at patronage as a mixed thing, partly property and partly a trust, the value of this argument disappears. When a man buys an advowson what is it that he buys ? The right to present a clergyman to a cure of souls. If Mr. Lecky's view of the trans- action is the true one, and the thing bought is simply property, the purchaser acquires, among other things, the right of selling the next presentation when it is most valuable. Anything which interferes with this right ought to be the subject of compensation. As a matter of fact, the law has never so regarded it. The sale of a next presentation during a vacancy has always been forbidden. That is to say, a most important right of property has been withheld from the owner of an advow- son, just when its exercise would bring him most money, because the exercise of it at that particular time would interfere with the discharge of the trust. In this way the law defines by implication the nature of the exceptions to which the property in an advowson is subject. The common element in them is that the property shall not be allowed to interfere with the trust. Sales of next presentations are an abuse which has grown up by degrees. until at last they have become much more frequent, probably, than sales of advowsous. But they have never lost their essential vice. All idea of a trust is afrent from them. The purchaser of a next presentation may accidentally exercise it in favour of an excellent person. But in the immense majority of cases it is the person, not the excellence of the person, that is in his mind. He buys the living fer that turn to give to him- self, or to his son, or to his son-in-law. Any one of these presentees may be a model of all saintly virtues, but the reason why he is presented is, not his sanctity, but his relationship. .Consequently, if the original purpose of the laws against simony is to be carried out, the sale of next presentations, which is simply the ordinary way of evading the law, must be forbidden. Nor are we the least impressed by the picture Mr. Gedge drew of the hard-up nobleman, anxious to sell the next presentation in order to relieve his embarrassments, but unwilling to deprive his successor of future opportunities of exercising the trust, and so unwilling to part with the advowson. In the abstract it may be desirable, as Mr. Gedge put it, that the owner ,of- the parish should be the owner of the advowson. But in the concrete we think that this ad- vantage is outweighed by the extreme probability that when a patron is hard-up he will sell the next presentation to the highest bidder, without much regard to the good of the parish. Mr. Foster, we dare say, is quite prepared to face this probability. To him the owner of an advowson is simply a shopkeeper, whose best customers are the clergy who want to buy a next presentation. If this is a view generally held, as not improbably it is, it is right that Parliament should do something to bring back the older conception that ecclesiastical patronage is primarily a trust, though a trust which has some of the character- istics of property.
Unfortunately, the debate got very little beyond the general principles urged by Mr. Foster and his supporters against these early clauses of the Bill. Though the minority in each division was small it was also per- sistent, and, provided that it could delay the progress of the Bill, it did not much care whether it was vindicating the rights of patrons or the liberties of the clergy. At one moment it was impressed with the excessive severity of the Bill, at another it proclaimed with equal strength of conviction that it could not be made too drastic. The result of this omnivorous criticism became very visible at half-past five. At that hour the first clause was still under discussion, and the debate was adjourned in the middle of a. speech directed to show that, whereas the Grand Committee had determined that a year was too long a period for a particular disability to remain operative, it was in fact too short and ought to be extended to five years. If every Bill returned from a Grand Committee were treated in this way, Grand Com- mittees might as well be abolished. There is possibly something to be said for such a return to old forms of procedure, but it is hardly fair fighting to ignore the work of a Grand Committee just because to do so in the par- ticular instance brings the withdrawal of the Bill within measurable instance.
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