levied upon lands and tenements above a certain fixed rent than upon lower rented lands and tenements, it shall be in the power of the Commissioners, in laying on the assessment under this Act, to continue the same relative rates of assessment, if they think proper." MR. BLACKBURN said, he thought that a graduated scale of rating was objectionable in principle. THE LORD ADVOCATE said, the graduated scale in Edinburgh was fixed by Act of Parliament. He would accept the Amendment. Clause agreed to; as were also Clauses 85 to 87. Clause 88 (Commissioners may grant relief from Police Assessment in case of Poverty.) MR. CRUM-EWING proposed, in page 31, line 22, after the word " may," to insert the words "if they think fit, exempt from the police assessment under this Act all premises which shall be let at a rent not exceeding £3, or such lower sum as they may fix for that purpose; and in respect to premises let at any higher rent, they may also-" THE LORD ADVOCATE said, that the matter had been fully considered at the private meeting of Scotch Members, who discussed the clauses of the Bill, and he believed they were almost unanimous in agreeing to the principle laid down in Clause 87, which gave the power to the commissioners to levy from the owners, and to allow them a reduction of one-fourth of the assessment. MR. CRAUFURD said, he should support the Amendment of his hon. Friend, on the ground that the clause, as it at present stood, took away from the commissioners the discretion which they now had of exempting certain property from taxation, for police purposes, which in their opinion ought not to be assessed. THE LORD ADVOCATE said, the effect of the Amendment would be to benefit the owner, not the occupier. The occupier might be exempted, but it was well known that in the long run such exemptions only caused the rents to be increased. MR. CAIRD would suggest that the exercise of the power of assessment in Clause 87 should be made imperative and not optional; and if that change were made, he thought it would be sufficient. MR. DUNLOP said, he should be satisfied if that change were made. THE LORD ADVOCATE said, he had no objection to make the alteration. MR. CRUM-EWING said, he should press his Amendment. Question put, "That those words be there inserted." The Committee divided: Noes 54: Majority 48. Clause agreed to. Ayes 6; Clauses 89 to 177 also agreed to. Clause 178 (Width of new Streets). SIR MICHAEL STEWART said, the clause appeared to him most objectionable. It provided that no house should be built higher than the width of the street. THE LORD ADVOCATE said, he would consent to have the clause struck out. Clause struck out. Clauses 179 to 181 agreed to. Clause 182 (Removal of Toll Bars within Burgh). THE LORD ADVOCATE proposed to leave out this clause. MR. DUNLOP said, rather than leave out the clause he wished that it should be amended by providing that no contract for the removal of a toll-bar should be valid unless agreed to at a general meeting of trustees, and confirmed at another meeting; and that when a toll-bar had been reerected, the same tolls should be levied as were levied before its removal. Clause, as amended, agreed to. Clauses 183 to 193 likewise agreed to. Clauses 195 to 229 agreed to. THE LORD ADVOCATE said, he would move that the clauses from 230 to 242, inclusive, be struck out. They gave power to the Commissioners to purchase and lease gasworks and manufacture and supply gas. SIR JOHN OGILVY opposed the omission. Clauses struck out. Remaining clauses agreed to. SIR JAMES FERGUSSON said, he proposed to add a clause after Clause 14, providing that where the Act shall be adopted within a portion only of the territory comprehended within the Parliamentary or municipal boundaries of any burgh, the commissioners of supply of the county may petition the sheriff for extension of boundaries, so as to make the place affected by the Act co-extensive with the Parliamentary or municipal boundaries of the said burgh. THE LORD ADVOCATE said, he could not consent to the clause, as it was generally objected to by the burghs. Clause brought up, and read 1o. Question put, "That the Clause be read a second time." The Committee divided: Noes 44: Majority 14. House resumed. Ayes 30; EXPENSE OF PRIVATE BILLS. QUESTION. MR. R. HODGSON said, he wished to ask the Chairman of the Committee on Standing Orders, Whether he intends to move for the appointment of a Committee for the purpose of ascertaining whether any alteration can be made in the conduct of Private Business, so as to diminish the expense now incurred by Promoters and Bill reported; as amended, to be con- Opponents of Private Bills? sidered on Monday next. COLONEL WILSON PATTEN: Sir, it is my intention to move for a Select Com THE GERMAN LEGION AT THE CAPE. mittee to revise the Standing Orders of QUESTION. GENERAL PEEL said, he wished to ask the Secretary of State for War, Under what circumstances the sum of £19,385 158. 3d. was paid to the German Military Settlers at the Cape of Good Hope during the financial year 1860-1, which sum was not provided for by Parliament, and which was stated at page 4 of the Detailed Account of the Receipt and Expenditure of Army and Militia Services of that year to be one of the causes of the excess of expenditure on Vote 3 ? SIR GEORGE LEWIS said, that the sum to which the right hon. and gallant Member referred was made up of excesses on Votes for the Land Forces in the year in question, which were transferred under the authority of the Treasury. GENERAL PEEL said, that his question referred, not to the authority, but to the circumstances under which the payment had been made. the House; and if the House accede to my proposition, I intend to propose certain Resolutions connected with the Standing Orders which will have the effect of reducing some of the expenses of private legislation in this House. There are other expenses incurred in private legislation before Parliament which have no reference to Standing Orders. I am not in a position to investigate that subject, inasmuch as certain Returns which I moved for at the early part of the Session have not yet been furnished. Perhaps I may take this opportunity of giving notice to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade that on to-morrow I shall ask him why the Returns having reference to the expenses incurred by Railways and other Companies in private legislation have not sooner been furnished to the House. MR. HADFIELD said, he would beg to ask whether the contemplated changes would include any diminution of fees to the Officers of the House? COLONEL WILSON PATTEN: Some of the fees are dependent on the Standing Orders of this House, which will be under the cognizance of the Committee I shall have the honour to move for. But there are other fees which can only be investigated by a Committee having the power of examining into the whole question. MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH asked whether the hon. Gentleman intended to move for the Committee this Session? COLONEL WILSON PATTEN: I shall give notice this evening of my intention to move on Thursday. FOREST LANDS.-QUESTION. MR. TORRENS said, he rose to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, What steps have been taken by Her Majesty's Government to preserve the rights of pasture, SIR GEORGE GREY said, he had explained at the time to the hon. Member that the request for delay was made in consequence of a communication from the Earl of Chichester, the Chairman of the Commission. cutting wood, recreation, and any other MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURT said, it rights long enjoyed by the poorer foresters was rather hard on his hon. Friend, who and the public in the various parcels of had given notice of his Motion a month land wherein the rights of the Crown are ago, to get such an unsatisfactory reply. reported to have been sold by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests within the Forests of Epping, Woodford, Waltham, and Wanstead, in the several Reports of 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, and 1861, more especially in the following five Lots, -namely, one Lot of 434 acres, sold on the 1st of August, 1856, to one individual, for £1,891; one Lot of 325 acres, sold on the 17th of April, 1857, to two individuals, for £1,353; one Lot of 695 acres, sold on November 25th, 1858, for £3,349 to one individual; one Lot of 168 acres, sold on the 14th of January, 1859, to one individual, for £900; and one Lot of 1,377 acres, sold June 22nd, 1860, to one individual, for £5,468? And if no steps have been taken for the preservation of the rights referred to, will the Government undertake to do so? MR. PEEL said, the rights which had been sold were altogether forestal rights connected with deer, and were transferred to the owners with the lands out of which they arose. Supposing the rights to have any existence, the Government had taken no steps to extinguish them; neither had they taken any measures to ascertain their existence. The Government had acted throughout under the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown. MR. TORRENS said, he wished to know whether they were now prepared to take any steps which might be necessary for the preservation of those rights. MR. PEEL said, he did not believe that any such steps were in contemplation. ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION. RETURN MOVED FOR. MR. HOPWOOD said, he rose to move for a Return of Grants, &c., by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the year 1861. He had put a similar notice on the paper a month ago, but abstained from pressing it then, in consequence of a representation made to him that it would occasion considerable inconvenience. SIR GEORGE GREY said, he hoped the Motion would not be pressed. A Committee was now sitting, within the scope of whose inquiry the information asked for clearly came; and until that Committee made its Report, it was undesirable to call for such voluminous Returns. MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURT said, that in his opinion the information asked for was very valuable, and that the House ought to insist upon any return which could throw light on the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission. He hoped some assurance would be given by the Government, that when the plea of inconvenience no longer held good, the Returns would be granted. MR. CARDWELL said, there was not the smallest desire to withhold any information. It was simply a question whether the trouble and expense of printing these Returns separately ought to be incurred, when they might be included in the proceedings of the Committee. MR. HOPWOOD said, that he scarcely felt inclined to withdraw his Motion. Some of the information asked for in the Returns, especially with regard to the order of necessity in the judgment of the Commissioners, would be very valuable. Many gentlemen would be glad to offer large benefactions if they knew what was likely to become of them. On those points the Report of the Commissioners was not at all satisfactory. MR. AUGUSTUS SMITH said, that he hoped the Government would not decline to grant the Returns. A great deal had been said about the expense of printing Returns; but when the matter was looked into last year, it was found to be comparatively a trifle. SIR GEORGE LEWIS said, the matter stood thus. The House having appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the whole question of the Ecclesiastical Commission, the question was, whether they would order the Returns before the Report of that Committee was presented. The Committee might probably be already in possession of the information required, or of such information as might render the Returns unnecessary. The usual course was, when a Committee was appointed, to abstain from inquiry until the Report was presented. MR. HADFIELD said, that he sup ported the Motion, and would support any MR. DEEDES said, that observations Motion calculated to enlighten the minds had frequently been made in that House of the Church party, and stimulate their as to the expense of the Commission. A zeal. great deal of outlay was incurred by the MR. KINNAIRD said, that he, as a preparation of returns, which, when furmember of the Committee, was under the nished, were never made use of, or found impression that the information asked for to be of the slightest value. It was for would be found in the evidence given before the House to determine whether they would the Committee, which would shortly be refuse returns of the kind, which required published. a great deal of time and attention to prepare, and which were attended with considerable expense. He hoped the House would not assent to the Motion of his hon. Friend. MAJOR EDWARDS said, that he hoped his hon. Friend would insist on the Motion There were large charities belonging to the borough he had the honour to represent, and an impression existed that they were not fairly distributed. The fact was they were under the management of one party. Return ordered, "of Grants, &c. for 1861, by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, as follows: CHURCH RATES.-RESOLUTION. MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURT said, that he rose for the purpose of submitting to the House certain propositions by which he thought the law relating to church rates might be beneficially settled. He had been under the impression that it would not be competent to him to move the Resolution of which he had given notice without going through the preliminary form of moving that the House resolve itself into a Committee; but, understanding from good authority that no such preliminary step was necessary, he believed it would be more convenient to the House that he should move his substantive Resolution while the Speaker was in the chair. He hoped the House would permit him to preface his Motion by a few observations, seeing that he was engaged in the dangerous task of endeavouring to make peace between contending parties. He was blamed on both sides. He was blamed by those who thought it was indiscreet on his part to move in this matter again during the pre On sent Session. Those persons said, "You good enough to sanction his proposal. As he understood it, the differences that existed on the subject of church rates was this:-The Nonconformist complained that he was expected and required voluntarily to give his vote for the levy of money in a case where he contended he had no interest in the outlay. The grievance of the Church was this:-That whereas, undeniably, there was a charge on the property of this coun. try to perform certain obligations, the machinery which the law allowed for giving effect to that obligation was often illusory, and in some cases incapable of being put in practice, and that, under all the circumstances, the duty was not performed in a satisfactory manner. What were the means which had been suggested for the removal of those grievances? There was, in the first place, a proposal-satisfactory in one sense-to substitute for church rates a fixed payment chargeable on property; but, judging from the little progress made with the Bill of the hon. Member for Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate), he did not think there was any inclination on the part of the House to adopt a scheme of that kind. His own wish was to make as little change as possible, and, for that reason, he would rather try whether they could not improve the existing machinery. Another plan was to provide resources for the maintenance of the fabrics by means of pew-rents. That was met by the objection that it was the glory of the English Church to give every one a right to enter the building in which its services were performed without being subjected to payment. He was as much averse as any one could be to charging a poor man for a seat in a church; but he could not disguise from himself the fact of its being found in practice that pew-rents were a great convenience in a large number of churches, and he was going to say in every subsidiary chapel in this country, as a means of maintaining the fabric of the church or chapel. The incumbent of a church in one of the large manufacturing towns, where no church rates were levied, wrote to him stating that there were in his neighbourhood four episcopal chapels maintained by pew-rents, while no one could tell how the mother church was maintained. The writer was unable to raise money by pew-rents, and, consequently, was placed at a great disadvantage. He further observed, that pew-rents being permitted in some rich parishes, poorer ones ought not to be spoken of in a disparaging tone when they asked for the enjoyment of a similar advantage; and he remarked that responsible seat-holders ought to be required either to pay for their seats or to relinquish them. Admitting the force of much that was said in favour of such a system, he was not himself in favour of pew-rents, and for this reason, because while in a large parish there was necessarily a great incquality in the position of the parishioners, pew-rents would impose an equal contribution. In a large parish all the occupants of the different pews were virtually on an equality, and to call on them to pay the same sum appeared perfectly fair; but in a country parish there would be the squire and half-a-dozen great farmers, and all the rest would be poor men. In such a parish the payment by pew-rents would obviously fall most unequally. Though he very much deprecated the introduction of the principle of pew-rents, yet he must say, on the other hand, that in town parishes, and in places where a system of pew-rents had been devised by the inhabitants for their own use, and where no objection was taken to this mode of raising the necessary funds year after year, he did not see any good reason for taking any step to hinder those parishes from managing their own concerns in the way most convenient to themselves. The vice of an Amendment which it was intended to move to his Resolutions was that it was not universally applicable, and he did not think that it would be acceptable to the House as a substitute for a universal charge equally applicable to all parties. A third means by which it was suggested necessary funds could be provided consisted in a voluntary rate. A great deal was to be said in favour of a voluntary rate; but the objection to it was, that it would substitute for an ancient charge, applicable in one sense or other to all property, a resource, which might be universal in its application, but with respect to which there could be no certainty that its application really would be universal. Such a voluntary rate was open to two objections. One was that with the best intentions and arrangements, when the voluntary rate came to be applied to the same population, such as was to be found in a country parish, the drawing of a line of distinction between Dissenters and Churchmen could not be avoided. Another objection was that in small parishes there would be a chance that no funds would be raised at all. them take the case of a parish where there were half-a-dozen farmers who looked care Let |