Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/150

 142] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [toy

served for the wealthy country clergy who happened to have most political influence. Mr. Balfour pointed out that some 11,000 clergy would receive relief under the bill, and of these 8,000 had less than 160Z. a year. Not more than 255 of the clergy to be relieved had a gross income exceeding 500Z. a year. As to the town clergy, he fully recognised the inadequacy of the means with which many of them were carrying on their great work. But, he continued, " Much as the clergy in the towns demand our sympathy and our assistance, it is to the members of the Church of England and not to the House of Commons, or the taxpayer, or the ratepayer, that they must appeal, and I doubt not the Church will respond to that appeal. If we come to the House of Commons it is not to relieve the poverty of the clergy of the Church ; it is not to give them increased means of subsistence, however desirable those increased means of subsistence may be ; we come to the House of Commons, and we come to Parliament because they, and they alone, are the people who have it in their power to remedy a great injustice which they have consciously or unconsciously done."

A division was then taken, and the third reading was agreed to by 182 to 117 votes, a very noteworthy falling-off in the numbers of the Ministerial majority.

In the House of Lords the bill, although subjected to con- siderable criticism, ultimately passed without any amendments. In the only debate to which it was subjected, the Earl of Selborne, on moving the second reading (July 24), said that the grievance which the bill was intended to meet might be illustrated by a very simple and a very common case — that of a vicar who, after all legal deductions had been made, was assessed on a tithe rent charge of 3001. a year, which constituted his whole income, and also on his house, say, at the value of 301. a year. He would pay more rates than a man living in the same parish in a house assessed at 3002. a year, and whose income, in all probability, was not less than 3,000Z. a year. Lord Bibbles- dale moved the rejection of the bill, as introducing a novel and far-reaching method of exemption equivalent to re-endowment, and further confusing the relations of local and imperial taxation, already perplexed and perplexing enough. The question of the incidence of rates on tithe should be dealt with, he argued, side by side with the whole question of local taxation now sub judice. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple) noted the con- tention that the bill was unjust as only relieving clerical and not lay titheowners, but the cases were widely different, for the lay owner was under no obligation of service in respect of the tithe he received. On the other hand, it had been sought to draw a distinction between a clergyman's income from tithe and an ordinary professional income on the ground that the latter varied and depended on a man's health. "But it is urged there is no injustice," the Primate continued, "because a clergyman's income is not the whole tithe rent charge, but the

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