of Thetford, I have recommended Her | Acts have expired; and, if so, whether it Majesty to confer upon him the title of is their intention to include therein, or Baronet. I can assure my hon. Friend otherwise to submit for consideration, any there is not the slightest foundation for plan tending to the abolition of Turnpike that impression; whatever may be the am- Trusts; and at what period of the Sesbition of my right hon and learned Friend sion any such Bills may be expected to be the Lord Advocate, it has not yet assumed introduced? the form which he evidently imagines. If the position of the other hon. Member for Thetford (Mr. R. J. H. Harvey) were not of so acknowledged a kind, I might be tempted to imagine that he had asked the hon. Member for Devizes to make this inquiry. But, as it is, I feel bound at once to state that no application has been made to me, either directly or indirectly, by either of the Members for Thetford; and that, therefore, under these circumstances it has not occurred to me to consider whether it was my duty to recommend Her Majesty to confer on either of those Gentlemen the dignity of Baronet.

ARRESTS IN IRELAND.-QUESTION. MR. REARDEN said, he rose to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, The nature of the charge under which Mr. John Downy, a merchant tailor of Dawson Street, Dublin, has been arrested and imprisoned for the last two months; whether it be true that detectives called upon him for information respecting a person named "Lennon," and on his asserting his ignorance of anything respecting the said "Lennon," they threatened to arrest him, and subsequently returned and did take him to prison; and, whether it be true that Mr. Downy's wife and eight children are reduced to a state of starvation in consequence?

THE EARL OF MAYO stated, in reply, that John Downy had been arrested simply because he was suspected of having been engaged in treasonable practices, and that the circumstances related by the hon. Member, even if they had occurred, would not in any way have influenced the case. He was informed, however, that a conditional order of discharge in the case referred to had been made out the day before yesterday.

TURNPIKE TRUSTS.-QUESTION. MR. WHALLEY said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether it is the intention of the Government to introduce this Session any Bill for the further continuance of Turnpike Trusts, of which the original VOL. CXCI. [THIRD SERIES.]

MR. GATHORNE HARDY, in reply, said, a Bill on the subject was in course of preparation; buthe did not think it would be wise to submit it to the House without consulting with those who had given much attention to it, nor did he think it would be desirable to bring forward a question likely to give rise to so much discussion at a late period of the Session.

ARMY-ALLEGED FLOGGING OF MULE
DRIVERS IN ABYSSINIA.

QUESTION.

MR. BUXTON said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, Whether his attention has been called to a letter, dated Zulla, March 4, which has appeared in the newspapers, and which states that the Turkish and Egyptian Drivers had been left for days without food or water, were flogged daily by fifties, and were finally sent off, almost in a state of nakedness, though the weather was very cold; and, whether he will make inquiries into the truth of this story, and ascertain who was responsible for the management of these drivers?

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE said, in the absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, he had to state that his attention had been drawn to the subject a few days ago by the hon. Member for Derby, and he had in consequence written to Sir Robert Napier to inquire into the truth of the story. He could not but believe that the statement was greatly exaggerated.

THE PLAY OF "OLIVER TWIST."

QUESTION.

MR. BRADY said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home De

partment, If his attention has been directed to a paragraph which has appeared in several of the daily papers, to the effect that the Lord Chamberlain had refused to licence a play dramatised by Mr. Oxenford from Mr. Dickens's celebrated work of "Oliver Twist," and that all plays from the same Work were interdicted in London as being offensive to parish beadles; and, whether he approves of the 2 E

Lord Chamberlain's consideration for the (positions I have made applicable to the feelings of the parish authorities? subject-matter of this Question are these In the first place, that I consider all the principles of equity and consideration upon which I should propose and desire to deal with the Established Church must-I will not, however, say "must," because that is not a Parliamentary word-but ought, after we have determined how to deal with the Established Church, to be applied in their full breadth to those other bodies who have Ecclesiastical interests in connection with the State. That is the first proposition; and the second is, that, by arrangements of some kind introduced into such plan, provision should be made for relieving the Consolidated Fund from payment for the purposes of religion in Ireland.

ment, as it seems to me, the State has | work of good authority that in Sweden, at just as clear a right to deal as it has to the time of Gustavus Vasa, more than half deal with any other great institution of of the real property of the kingdom was the country. Not more right, not less, held for religious uses. Such a proportion but just the same. And wherever else would at once be a reductio ad absurdum this proposition may be disputed, and by of the argument for the sacredness of prowhomsoever else this statement may be perty so held; but I care not whether the questioned, it cannot, I think, be ques- amount was so great as one-half, because tioned by any English lawyer, or disputed no man of sense would deny that a far in an English Parliament,-and for this less proportion would justify and, indeed, reason. Those of us who have the misfor-compel, the interference of the State to tune to be familiar with the text of our redress the evils which such a condition statute book know that the statute book of things would, of necessity, engender. opens with Magna Charta; but the first Therefore, the consideration in this case real Parliaments, and the first real sta- will be whether the condition of things tutes, date from the early years of Henry is such as the State can approve. If III. In the very infancy of our Parlia- not, the State has a perfect right to inments-in 9 Henry III. and 7 Edward I., terfere. I apprehend that if this be the and in long succession afterwards proper consideration in such cases geneare to be found statutes of Mortmain. rally, it applies with particular force to the Read in their literal acceptation, those case of the Church of England, or to the Acts forbid, in terms, the creation of any case now under discussion, that of the religious endowment in the future. No Church of Ireland, because both those doubt there were political and feudal rea- great communities hold a large amount of sons for that interference with the rights of property on new terms imposed at the time private property; and no doubt, also, those of the Reformation. The right hon. Genstatutes were from time to time evaded, as tleman the Home Secretary was quite they were enacted and re-enacted again correct in saying that there were no staand again in even stronger, more elaborate, tutes which, in terms, transferred the ecclemore stringent terms. But I maintain, siastical property in Ireland from one and I defy it to be denied, that they were Church to the other; but in 1560, under from the earliest times notice to all man- the Lord Deputyship of Lord Sussex, kind that the State of England and the there were passed the Act of Uniformity Parliament of England claimed to have and the Act of Supremacy; and, at that this matter of endowments in their own time, the Prayer Book was set up instead hand; that they claimed to deal, and did of the Mass. Therefore, though, as the deal, with this kind of property more right hon. Gentleman said, there were no freely and more peremptorily than with statutes transferring the possession of the any other kind of property whatsoever. property in substance, it was transferred Any man, therefore, in England who gave by the statutes to which I have referred, property for religious uses, whether in his because those statutes changed the terms lifetime or after his decease, gave it with on which the property was to be held. full notice that the holding of his gift Further, the representatives of the great would be interfered with, if it should turn English families, whether in this House out that the holding of it by ecclesiastics or the other, can scarcely dispute the was prejudicial or inconvenient to the in- fairness of the proposition which I have terests of the State itself. I submit that laid down, because there is hardly one of this is the very least weight which ought them who does not hold from the State to be given in any fair argument on this grants of Church lands, not, perhaps, subject to the long succession of statutes among the oldest, but certainly among the of Mortmain. But to pass away from the best and most valuable, of his title deeds. statutes in the English statute book, the It is plain, then, that in dealing with these smallest consideration of general principles questions you must be guided by considewould lead one to the same conclusion. rations of degree, of circumstances, of pruPersons who deny the right of the State to dence, and of common sense. Arguments interfere with matters of this kind, do not drawn from these considerations must be attend sufficiently to the meaning of the used if the Church of England were before words they use, and forget the very objects us; and it is upon arguments such as of society and the reasons and purposes these that, in my opinion, she could be for which States exist. I have read in a irresistibly defended. But it is not the

case of the Church of England which is nutest step in the argument have you before us. It is the case of the Church gained-if it is to be argument of fact of Ireland; and on arguments such as and common sense-by the concession I those to which I have referred she is have made? Take, again, the arguments utterly and absolutely indefensible. But founded on the compact at the time of when we proceed to apply these principles the Union and the understanding at the to the case of the Church of Ireland, we time of Catholic Emancipation. I want are met by two objections, which, if they to know in what sense the right hon. Genare well-founded, go to the root of the tleman the Home Secretary, who-if I matter; which, therefore, with the leave may take the liberty of reminding him of of the House, I will endeavour to examine. it was not so long ago a good and sucIt is first said that the principle of Estab- cessful lawyer, put to the House that lishments is attacked, and that if you give there was a compact at the time of the up the Church of Ireland you must give Union? He does not mean to say that up the Church of England also. Next, anything could be done by one Act of Parit is said that there was a compact made liament which another Act of Parliament at the time of the Union, and that a could not undo. He cannot gravely mean sort of understanding was come to at to contend that there is anything in the the time of the passing of the Catholic Act of Union which makes it different Emancipation Act; and that what is now from any other Act, so as to put it beyond proposed to be done is in direct violation of the competence of the Imperial Parliament what was, at all events, a moral compact to repeal it. He quoted a passage from between the great parties of the State. Lord Ellenborough; but I should be very As to the principle of Establishments be- glad to know whether it was from a speech ing attacked, I deny it altogether; be- or from a judgment of Lord Ellenborough. cause I do not admit in the sense, in the I believe that, however sincere in his cononly sense, in which the words can be victions, Lord Ellenborough was a thoused so as to be any argument in a dis- roughly narrow-minded politician; and I cussion of this description, that there is have not the same respect for him as a any such thing as a principle of Establish- politician that I have for him as a lawyer ments at all. One can understand the prin- delivering a judgment in the Court of ciple of justice or the principle of love of King's Bench. It struck me that the pasyour neighbour; or, taking a lower ex- sage quoted by the right hon. Gentleman ample, the principle of Free Trade, or sounded much more like one from a speech the principle that taxation and representa- in the House of Lords than one from a tion ought to be correlative. These are judgment delivered in a Court of Law. things which are true in themselves-true At all events, I am quite sure that the in the abstract. They do not depend on great men who passed the Act of Union time, or place, or circumstance; they are principles which ought to be observed everywhere and always. But in respect of Establishments, time, place, and circumstances, are the very essence of the question. What is fit here may be unfit there; what is tolerable here may be intolerable there; what is fit in one age may be unfit in another; what may, perhaps, be particularly suited to the condition of things in England may be particularly unsuited to the condition of things in Ireland. If all this talk about principle means only this-that, supposing an exactly analogous state of things exists in England to that which exists in Ireland, if you give up the Irish Church you are bound to give up the English Church also-why, then in fairness and candour I grant it you at once. But while the condition and the circumstances of the two countries are wholly different, what mi

Mr. Pitt, Lord Castlereagh, and Lord Cornwallis-were the last men to put forward the argument that what they were doing was to tie the hands of Parliament in future. Taking the matter however, on lower ground, if it is said that touching the Establishment was no part of the measure of the Union, that is quite true. It is quite true, also, that those who passed the Union were firmly determined in this matter to keep things as they were. Again, as to what passed at the time of Catholic Emancipation, if all the authors of that measure, especially the great Lord Plunket, said, over and over again, that they believed the position of the Established Church in Ireland would be strengthened by Catholic Emancipation, I venture to think they said what was quite correct; because I believe that, but for the mitigating effect of the Act of 1829, the Irish Establishment would long before this have