On Tuesday night the Duke of Buckingham moved the second
reading of a Bill for relieving the Consolidated Fund of a payment of 20,3001. for purposes connected with the Church of the West Indies. Lord Carnarvon seized the occasion to justify the state- ments made in his recent speech on the Irish Church,—which he did most amply,—against the rude attack of Lord Cairns. Lord Carnarvon showed that the sum which it was now proposed to withdraw was granted in 1824, granted expressly to maintain bishoprics, and that bishoprics were created immediately after the grant, to benefit by the grant. This withdrawal of the grant is, therefore, a disendowment in the strictest sense of the word, and the Suspensory 11111 which Lord Carnarvon himself introduced a year ago to suspend filling up vacancies in ecclesiastical appointments (bishoprics and others) in the West Indies till the position of the Church there bad been
fully reviewed, was a Sippensory Bill precisely analogous to that proposed with regard to the Irish Church. Lord Car- narvon completely refuted Lord Cairns' unscrupulous assertion that "nothing whatever has been done, and nothing is proposed to be done, altering in any manner that establishment of bishops, archdeacons, and clergy, in the way in which it has subsisted ever since it has had any existence,"—nothing at all, except that all the revenue on which these bishopria were created is withdrawn without any engagement whatever on the part of the West India Colonies to find any revenue in place thereof ! Aud not only is there no such engagement, but it is very unlikely that there will be any. Lord Cairns was utterly confuted, but declined, of course, to withdraw any part of his statement, except his blundering date.
Previous page
