the rectory of Brampton Bryan, even though he should exercise his right in a manner that might not be agreeable to many. But it was not the right of Lord Oxford and Mr. Scott alone, but the right of Mr. Graham, the present incumbent also, that was to be considered in this case. What appeared to be hardship in the exercise of discretionary right, would often appear to be no hardship, if it were necessary or convenient to give the grounds of the exercise of discretionary and absolute right. The Lords, by passing this bill, acknowledged their share of the error in passing the suspension act, and called upon this house for a like recantation. He should vote for the repeal.

The bill was read a second time, and on the 11th a third time, and past.

II. STIPENDIARY CURATES' BILL.

[Before we proceed to give a report of the debates in the two houses of parliament, on the Stipendiary Curates' Bill, we think proper to direct the reader's attention to Mr. Percival's letter to the Rev. Dr. Mansell, in which the principles of that bill are clearly laid down, and its merits duly appreciated.]

Letter from the Right Hon. SPENCER PERCIVAL, Chancellor of the Exchequer, &c. to the Rev. Dr. MANSEL, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the Subject of The Curates' Bill.

My dear Sir,---I enclose, for your perusal, a copy of the bill which I have recently introduced into the House of Commons, for improving the condition of the stipendiary curates. I know that on former occasions you have felt considerable doubt, to say the least of it, on the policy and justice of the measure which this bill is to enforce; and, as I cannot but ascribe a great part of the opposition which it has heretofore met with, and may again experience, to a misconception of its objects and principle, and as I am anxious that it should not have to encounter the weight of your opposition, unless it

really deserves it, I have determined to trouble you with a summary statement of all the various arguments, as well as I can collect them, which have been urged either in opposition to it, or in its support.

The object of the measure (to state it shortly) is this TO OBTAIN LARGER SALARIES FOR STIPENDIARY CURATES RESIDENT ON BENEFICES WHERE THE INCUMBENTS DO NOT RESIDE THEMSELVES, AND WHERE THE INCOMES OF THE BENEFICES FURNISH FUNDS ADEQUATE TO AFFORD SUCH SALARIES.

If there were no other recommendation of this measure, than that it promised relief and assistance to a very meritorious and industrious class of the community, it would deserve, as I conceive, a favourable consideration; but its effect, with a view to the public interest, is its great recommendation. For no man who feels the important advantages of religion, as it regards merely the temporal happiness of individuals and the security and interests of the state, can hesitate to acknowledge the great benefits to be derived to the community from any measure, which shall improve the condition of the poorer orders of the resident parochial ministers, whether rectors or curates. I hardly know any thing which would confer a greater blessing on society than to secure generally, in every parish throughout the country, a resident officiating minister of the established church, with such provision for their maintenance as might rescue them from that contempt to which, under a state of indigence, they are most inevitably exposed. Indeed, I must do the opposers of this measure the justice to say, that they have uniformly adadmitted the value and the importance of the object which the measure, as thus explained, professes to pursue. Their objections are all directed against the method which the bill adopts for accomplishing its purpose.

THE METHOD IT ADOPTS IS, BY GIVING POWER TO THE BISHOP TO ASSIGN TO SUCH RESIDENT CURATES, WHERE THE INCUMBENTS DO NOT RESIDE, ONE-FIFTH OF THE VALUE OF THE BENEFICE. The operation however of this bill is confined to those benefices only where the annual value exceeds four hundred pounds, with a provision, that in no

case the curate's salary should exceed two hundred and fifty pounds per annum. The bill is so confined, because the 36 Geo. III. cap. 83, as you know, does already enable bishops to assign salaries to the amount of seventy-five pounds per annum, with the use of the parsonage-house, or an allowance instead of it; and therefore, no alteration is called for in the law, upon the principle on which this bill proceeds, so far as respects livings of such inferior value.

THE OBJECTIONS which have been stated to this measure. are, that it is an improper subject for parliamentary interference: that it is a violation of ecclesiastical property, which should be held by the legislature as sacred and inviolate as any other; that it is an innovation upon the established church,. and an act of plunder upon its property; that the idea of increasing the salary of curates upon a scale graduated by reference to their rectors' incomes, and not by reference to the quantum of the curates' duty, as well as that of interfering to regulate and prescribe the terms of the contract between the rector and the curate (two parties competent to take care of their own interests) is inconsistent as well with the principles of justice as of policy; and lastly, the whole has been represented as proceeding from some dark and mysterious design of hostility to the established church, which, disguised under the hypocritical appearance of meaning well to the church and religion, aims a deadly and fatal blow at the interests of both, and pursues its object by means of new, unprecedented and discretionary powers given to the bishop, which, destroying the independence and dignity of the ecclesiastical character, will drive from the profession every person of a liberal and independent mind.

As to those objections which consist in the supposed impropriety of parliamentary interference, in the alleged violation of ecclesiastical property, the innovation upon the established church, and the plunder of its property, I cannot introduce my answer to them more properly than by first pointing out the circumstances which originally attracted my notice to the subject.

You are well acquainted, no doubt, with the act which was brought into parliament by Sir William Scott, respecting the

esidence of the clergy. It appeared to me, and to others who interested themselves in the discussion which it underwent in its progress through parliament, that it should have been accompanied by such provisions as my bill is intended to supply; and, indeed, it was contended, that such provisions should have been embodied in that act. That act was indisputably intended, by its most respectable author, to enforce the residence of the clergy, and it certainly does contain some very beneficial provisions for that purpose, by giving to the bishops a more summary and effectual power of enforcing such residence; but it cannot be denied, that it contains also not only a prodigious number of excuses for non-residence, which myself and others ineffectually endeavoured to diminish, but also, what we with equal ill success endeavoured to oppose, a great extension of the time which was recognized before as the legal limit within which non-residence was exempted from penalty. It extends, for instance, the one month allowed under the statute of Henry VIII, to three; that is, it extends it at once from a twelfth part of a year to a fourth part; consequently, whatever powers of a summary nature it may give, (and it does give, as I have before stated, most useful powers of that description to bishops for compelling residence in those cases in which it still continues to authorise a legislative and penal compulsion to reside), it unquestionably frees the clergy from the penalties which attached to non-residence in a great variety of cases, in which, but for that act, they would have remained liable. It was contended at that time, and I contend still, that when parliament relaxed to the beneficed clergy their obligation to residence, it ought to have done so upon terms; it ought to have annexed to that extended liberty of non-residence the condition (and an indispensable condition too it should have made it) of furnishing their respective parishes, during their absence, with a resident curate; and of furnishing that curate also with a maintenance by which he might support the character, and represent the dignity, of the officiating minister in his parish, in a manner which should bear some degree at least, of proportion, to that in which, if the rector remained to do his own duties, he would have been enabled from the income of his rectory, to have supported it VOL. I. C

himself; and of which, consequently, he deprives the parish of the benefit, by withdrawing himself from the discharge of his duties. Such a provision, I say, ought to have con stituted a part of that act. It was contended in the House of Commons, and in the House of Lords too, that there ought to have been such provision. It was admitted by those who supported that act, that such a provision was most reasonable; but it was contended, that such a provision, with all the modification and qualification with which it must have been accoinpanied, would have very much incumbered that bill, and that therefore it had better be made the subject of another. The act was therefore permitted to pass on the express undertaking of those who favoured it, that a bill, on the principle on which mine proceeds, should immediately be brought in. In pursuance of such promise, such a bill was brought in. Unfortunately, however, a money provision was annexed to it in favour of those curates who, it was imagined, might be deprived of their curacies by the effect which Sir William Scott's act would have upon compelling the residence of the rectors: and the lords rejected it, upon the objection, that it was inconsistent with their privileges, to pass it under such circumstances. The bill for the same purpose was again brought in and passed through the House of Commons in the next session: it passed also through the House of Lords; but in its passage through that house, it was amended in some of its money clauses, and the House of Commons then, consistently with the uniform practice of that house, could not do otherwise than refuse their consent to a bill, in the money provisions of which the lords had made any amendment. When this bill, so amended, came back from the lords, the session was too far advanced for a new bill, and therefore the renewal of it was necessarily deferred to the following session. In the following session it was renewed, but then Mr. Pitt, who had uniformly given it his steady support, was no more; and, Mr. Fox flinging his weight against it, into the scale of the opponents, it was lost on the second reading. Why the change of government should have made such a change in the opinions of the House of Commons on such a measure as this it is by no means to my present purpose to enquire; but, as