by severe regulations. A series of Acts affecting them were passed between 1718 and 1748; and in 1748 the severity culminated in this remarkable circumstance, that whereas the great hostility to these men proceeded from the fact that they would not take the oaths to Government, an Act was passed which rendered it impossible for them to do so. It was enacted that no Episcopal clergyman should perform service in any congregatiou (except in his own house), unless he took the oaths and registered his letters of orders; but it was also provided that no letters of orders should be registered unless they had been conferred by a Bishop of England or Ireland. That went on until the extinction of the House of Stuart about 1788, when the last of them, I believe, died. By that time the loyalty of the Scottish Episcopal clergy and their flocks had been transferred to the reigning sovereign; and although up to that time they had been treated almost as criminals, there had not been the slightest attempt to question their spiritual character, or to interfere with the discharge of their spiritual functions anywhere except in Scotland. There was nothing to prevent them from officiating in England, or from being appointed to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, as Archbishop Tillotson had been before. It was not until the Act of 1792, which recites that they are no longer objects of suspicion, and that all the disabilities upon them ought to be removed, that they were for the first time subjected to other and new disabilities, being such as no one had ever proposed to impose upon them in the times of sharpest persecution. This marvellous inconsistency was no part of the Act as originally introduced, but was grafted upon it in a remarkable manner. The Government found the Episcopal clergy and their flocks loyal, and looked upon them with favour; the Scotch Presbyterian Church had no wish to oppress them; Dr. Robertson, the historian, and others, came forward in their favour; the Scotch Members in both Houses supported the Bill as it was first introduced; and the celebrated Bishop Horsley, on the part of the English Church, was its warm advocate. If it had passed as it was introduced, with this great concurrence of authority, the condition of the Scottish clergy would have become in 1792, what we wish to make it now. In the House of Lords, however, they had one great enemy, who was so powerful, that it was necessary to conciliate him in every way, and that was Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who put a clause into the Bill in Committee, having reference to the position of the Scottish clergy in England. He did it craftily, having drawn it so as to be harmless, and such as might have remained to the present day and hereafter, without complaint; being merely to the effect, that under the Act no greater powers should be given than already existed for the employment of the Scottish clergy in England. This would have left to them the freedom in that respect which they enjoyed before, and all that we now ask, and the promoters of the Bill of 1792 were accordingly thrown off their guard. On the third reading, however, a most important Amendment was introduced into this clause; silently, without attracting observation, and without even the usual description in the Journals of the House, by which it was put into its present stringent form, and has for more than seventy years excluded the Scottish clergy from their just rights. At the time, however, the repeal of the laws which were actually penal, was thought too important to be risked by a resistance in the House of Commons to a provision framed by so powerful a Member of the House of Lords and of the Government, who

would have insisted on maintaining what he had done, and perhaps have been able to defeat the Bill if he was not conciliated. So it remained till 1840, when these restrictions were so far relaxed as to abandon all semblance of a defencible principle on which to ground them; all pretence of absolute disqualification was thrown aside, and the Scottish clergy were admitted, under stringent limitations, to officiate in English churches. This concession admitted as much as what we now seek, the validity of their orders, and the completeness of their communion with us. But, although this concession gave up the principle, it was narrow in its extent, and, moreover, was clogged by a new restriction, then added for the first time, in respect of Ireland. Ireland had been always perfectly free to the Scottish clergy, notwithstanding the exclusion from England, which the legislation of 1792 had introduced. But in 1840, for the first time, Ireland was closed against them, except under the limitations within which the partial opening of England was conferred. Again, in 1840, for the first time, penalties in respect of the performance of spiritual duties beyond the prescribed limitations were imposed.

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This retrospect of previous legislation brings us down to the present time, and to the disabilities which now affect the Scottish clergy, and from which it is my duty to ask the House to relieve them. What are the facts of the case? Here there is a clergyman ordained by a Bishop, in communion with the English Church, from which was derived, at no distant date, his own consecration-a clergyman of a Church which adopts the English formularies; yet if he asks to be admitted to a curacy or benefice in England, to which he may be presented, it is not that the English Bishop may refuse him, but he must. Bishop may know that he is the best man in the world for the post, but, nevertheless, he must refuse him. He says, I can ordain you if you are a Dissenter, I can receive a Roman Catholic, I can receive a person belonging to the Greek Church-let them come and profess conformity by making the different subscriptions which are necessary, and I can receive them without difficulty.' It is sometimes said that this is because they go through a process of recantation-but it is no such thing. There is nothing like recantation, except this, that so far as any previous opinion is inconsistent with those which are embodied in our Articles and formularies, the clergyman who adopts those Articles and formularies must, by implication, abandon what is inconsistent with them. So far there is a recantation. There is only this difference between the Scotch clergy and others, that the Scotch clergy do it at the beginning of their ministry in their own country, and have never held anything inconsistent with our Church; whereas the others, whom you will receive without any questions, do not do it until you admit them, having been previously opposed to you. That is the state of things, and it is a state of things involving the almost incredible absurdity that the very conditions which would seem to make exclusion impossible are precisely those which, under the statutɔ, make the exclusion of a Scottish clergyman inevitable and irremediable. The first condition for his exclusion is, that his orders should be recognised by us as valid and complete, and therefore incapable of repetition. If he was a minister in some communion where he had received ordination other than Episcopal, he might receive ordination at the hands of an English Bishop, and such cases frequently occur. The second condition for his exclusion

It

is, that his Episcopal ordination, valid, indelible, and incapable of repetition, shall have taken place in a church with which our own is in communion. If he had received his ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, which actually excommunicates our Church, then, upon his testifying his conformity with us, an English Bishop could receive him without let or hindrance. And what is the remedy we propose? The remedy we propose is not the simple repeal of these disabilities, so as to place the Scottish clergy in precisely the situation of clergy in English orders. That, perhaps, would seem to be what mere justice would require. But we are willing to take precaution against abuses, possible, however improbable; and to give to the Bishops in England the power of refusing to receive a clergyman in Scottish orders absolutely and without cause assigned. We do not seek to compel the English Bishops to receive the clergy of Scottish ordination, but only to enable them to do so. We are to be met, it seems, by an Amendment, in which the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Kinnaird) will suggest fears lest the Union with Scotland should be damaged, by conferring what he calls "privileges" on the Episcopal clergy. The Union with Scotland! The hon. gentleman might as well refer to the Heptarchy, so far as any connection with this Bill is concerned. The earliest of these disabilities which we seek to repeal was not enacted till near a century after the Union, and the others were very much later. And as to "privileges," he cannot point to one line in this Bill which confers any privilege at all. only seeks to remove an oppression which weighs down the Scottish clergy, and not in any way to exalt them above the rest of their countrymen. And then the hon. Gentleman tries by his Amendment to hold out a bribe to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which shall induce them to concur in an ungenerous opposition to this relief. I venture to predict that they will not fall into his trap. The Presbyterians of Scotland took a more generous view of this subject in 1792, and again, at the present time, having considered this very Bill in a Committee of their General Assembly, they have come to the conclusion that it is not one which they ought to oppose. They know that it is a Bill which in no way touches the status of the Episcopal clergy in Scotland, or regulates their conduct there, but only in England; and that the penal enactments which had existed in Scotland were long ago removed by the very Act of 1792, which imposed the English restrictions which we now seek to remove. Nor is the Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland likely to forget that their Episcopalian fellow countrymen are owners of a large part of the lands of Scotland, and as such have cheerfully, and with the respect due to the law, borne the burden of maintaining not only the churches, but the schools and parsonage houses, of the establishment to which they do not belong, and have never raised the anti-Church rate cry with which we are so familiar in England. And the hon. Gentleman does little justice to the acuteness of his countrymen if he thinks that they will fail to discover that there is not even the very slightest analogy between the enactments of this Bill and his proposed dealing with the Act of Uniformity. The hon. Gentleman raises the question, whether the Act of Uniformity should be altered so that Presbyterian orders should be recognised here as well as Episcopalian orders? But the provision of the Act of Uniformity is only a recognition of an essential principle of the Anglican Church; what we want to get rid of is a statutory interference with that very

principle. What would the hon. Member for Perth say to this-if it is right that the Episcopal Church should be prohibited from employing in its service other episcopally-ordained clergy, fellow-subjects of the Queen, who come from the other side of the border, is it not equally right to prohibit the Presbyterian Church of Scotland from employing, if they think fit, ministers who have been ordained by Presbyteries in London or Belfast? But there are objections taken from an English point of view, on which I will say a few words. We are told-and that is a favourite topic-that if this Bill were passed, and these Scottish clergymen were employed in the Church of England, we should have an inferior race of clergy. Now, the Scottish Episcopal clergy, excepting in the Highland parishes, are educated at the old Scotch Universities; and, in addition, there is for many of them a special training at the College of Glenalmond, under an eminent scholar and divine from the University of Oxford. I doubt whether it is becoming in English Bishops, and especially those in the northern dioceses who look much to St. Bees and Birkenhead for their supply of clergy, to throw stones at Scottish education. There is another objection entirely destructive of the last, namely that the number of the Scottish clergy preferred in England will be so great as to interfere with the expectations of the English. This implies that private lay patrons (it cannot possibly apply to others) will think the superiority of the Scottish over the English clergy so great as to outweigh all the claims of family connection or personal intimacy. I really think that cbjection is not worth talking about. The whole number of Episcopal clergy in Scotland is only 160, and of these men more than one-half of them are of English ordination, and can return and be employed there whenever they please. There remains one more objection, resting as I think on no foundation of fact or reason, which however is, I suspect, the only one which really operates on the minds of those who oppose the Bill. The English Prayer Book, is the recognized Prayer Book of the Scottish Church, prescribed by its canons, and necessarily used at ordinations and other solemn occasions; but there is in that Church an alternative office for the Holy Communion, which may be used in such congregations as desire it, and which is, in fact, used in about one-fourth of the whole number of the congregations. This office is viewed with suspicion by some, on the allegation that it is of a Romanizing tendency. This allegation is unfounded in fact, and beside the question, if true. This is not the place to go into controversy on the shades of difference between theological terms; but the authority, on that point, of the present Bishop of St. David's (Dr. Thirlwall) will not be questioned; and he has given it as his opinion, in a charge delivered in 1857, that the Scotch office is in itself unobjectionable and more irreconcilable with the peculiarities of Roman belief than our own. In truth, I believe that a Roman Catholic Priest might use the English office though he would think it inadequate and falling short of the truth, but could not use the Scottish office without implying what he would consider to be deadly error. But if the fact were otherwise, and if this office did wear a Roman aspect, what would follow from it? If a clergyman is an actual Roman Catholic you do not exclude him. Is he to be excluded because he was ordained in a church in which there is an alternate office which you dislike, permitted, but not used by more than about one-fourth of the

clergy? But if this ground is shifted, and it is said that the objection is taken not to the permission to use but to the actual use, and to those clergy who do use it, then it will follow that the mere rejection of this Bill will not answer the purpose; but there must be an extension of the existing disabilities to English clergy also, if they ever accept a cure in Scotland. Of the favourers of the Scottish office in Scotland the larger number are of English orders; and they will be equally free, whether this Bill is passed or rejected, to return to England and accept preferment without any hindrance from any Bishop, except on cause shown, according to Ecclesiastical Law; while, on the other hand, if the Bill passes, the Bishop to whom a Scottish clergyman shall first present himself will have absolute power to reject him, even on suspicion, and without reason assigned. On the other hand, this absolute veto is not unnaturally distasteful to those who most fully recognize the identity of character which unite the English and Scottish clergyman, and who accordingly desire to put them on a footing of absolute equality. I am prepared to justify the veto: first, on the ground of principle and reason; second, on that of practical expediency.

The first ground is supplied by the analogy between the first admission to ministerial functions by ordination, and the first admission to the same of an applicant ab extra who is already ordained. A candidate for Holy Orders is subject to absolute rejection by the Bishop to whom he applies, without reason assigned; and it does not seem unreasonable that a stranger already ordained in another branch of the Church should satisfy the Bishop that he is such a one as that Bishop would have ordained; and as after ordination by one Bishop within the English Church no other can summarily reject from a benefice, so after one admission of a Scottish clergyman to a bene.ce, rejection, in case of presentment to another, must be on reason assigned, and not summary. Again, there is this power in the Bishop in the case of clergy ordained in the colonies, and also if I read the statute rightly, in the case of clergy of Roman or Greek orders who may conform.

The second ground is this. The Bill, as it now stands, is the result of deliberation in a Select Committee of the House of Lords and of compromise, to overturn which might be fatal to its success. The petitioners for it may be trusted to know their own case, and they are most anxious that it should pass in its present form. I trust the House will send back the Bill to the House of Lords with as few amendments as possible, and retain the restriction which is in favour of those who object to the Bill. I think I have now said all that is requi: ite in support of the Bill; and will only add, in conclusion, that this subject has sometimes come before us in the shape of Private Bills, in cases which were certainly cases of aggravated injustice which it was considered desirable for the Legislature to remove. The last time such a Private Bill was before the House it was not agreed to, the House being of opinion that such a subject ought to be dealt with by the Government; and Sir George Lewis said that he could not conceive any argument for maintaining the present condition of the law. I believe you will find the great weight of authority on that side of the question; and I hope that the House will not make an angry struggle, but that English Members will combine to do away with the injustice which is inflicted on Scotland by England, and that Scotch Members will combine to rescue their fellow-countrymen from the position in which they now stand with regard to this question.