so far from the system sanctioned by the English laws. He hoped the noble Earl would not press his Amendment. MR. VANCE was afraid the Amendment would lead parents to send their children out to beg, in the hope that they would be instructed by the Government. MR. MURPHY thought the magistrates ought to have a discretionary power of sending children direct to the reformatory without passing them through a prison; and did not see any objection to giving to magistrates the power which they possessed in the case of industrial schools. MR. VANCE believed the clause as it stood would give encouragement to parents to send out their children to beg. THE EARL OF MAYO said, he would withdraw his Amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. MR. BAGWELL moved, that at the end of the clause the following words should be added: "Or, in case of there being no industrial School in the district where the child is found, the workhouse may be duly certified by the authorities as fit to receive children to be trained as in In dustrial schools." THE O'CONOR DON had no objection to the addition to the clause. MR. CANDLISH thought the addition would interfere with the working of the Poor Law system. THE EARL OF MAYO said, anything that could improve the industrial training of workhouses would be most desirable; but he was afraid there was no machinery in the workhouses to carry on industrial training. MR. REARDEN: If that machinery were introduced into the workhouses it would effect a most charitable revolution. Amendment agreed to. Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clauses 12 to 25, inclusive, agreed to. Clause 26 (Penalty on Child escaping from School). MR. BAGWELL said, this was a most outrageous clause, as it provided that a child who escaped from school could, at the discretion of the magistrate, be sent to prison for a period of fourteen days with or without hard labour. He would divide the Committee on this clause. THE O'CONOR DON said, if this clause were not passed the Bill might as well be abandoned. Clause agreed to. Clauses 27 to 41, inclusive, agreed to. House resumed. Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next. TANCRED'S CHARITY BILL-[BILL 67.] (Mr. Beresford Hope, Mr. Walpole, Viscount Cranborne.) SECOND READING. Order for Second Reading read. MR. BERESFORD HOPE, in moving the second reading of this Bill, thought it right to offer a brief explanation of its provisions and some account of the charity itself. He observed, by the way, that he specially appeared on behalf of Christ's and Caius Colleges, Cambridge, peculiarly benefited as they were by the institution; and that the Bill which he had brought in was substantially the one of last year, originally introduced by his noble Friend the Vice President of the Committee of Council (Lord Robert Montagu), and then The amended by a Select Committee. founder of the institution was a certain Mr. Tancred, a Yorkshire squire of strong prejudices, one of which was an objection to heirs female. Early in the last century, this gentleman executed a trust deed, settling the largest portion of his property (of which the principal seat was at Wixley some dozen miles from York), on a trust which would, no doubt, had he had issue male, have made an entail for ever; but which, as the case was, created a charity, speaking roughly, divided into two parts -one an almshouse situated in the town of Wixley for twelve decayed bachelor gentlemen, and the other an establishment of twelve studentships-four for law, to be taken at Lincoln's Inn and the residue at two Colleges of renown at Cambridge, at either of which it was a privilege to enter; four for divinity at Christ's College; and four for medicine at Gonville and Caius executed a will, leaving his remaining proCollege. Several years later Mr. Tancred perty in augmentation of the settlement. Still a bachelor, he died a few years afterwards, and his will became the subject of a Chancery suit; for his sisters and their representatives naturally objected to it. The then Lord Keeper Henley pronounced a decree, in which he established the settlement with certain modifications; and in consequence of this judgment a Private Act, 3 Geo. III., incorporated the charity in conformity with Tancred's arrangements, appointing as its governors the Treasurer of Lincoln's Inn, the Master of the Charterhouse, the Governors of Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals, the President of the College of Physicians, and the Masters of Christ's and Caius Colleges, Cambridge. At the same time, Christopher Tancred's whimsical provisos of keeping up for ever a deer park at Wixley was abrogated; and the estate placed on so satisfactory a footing that instead of yielding something under £1,000 a year, it produces, at the present day, upwards of £4,000. He need hardly observe how the selection of these trustees was wisely designed to secure the proper fulfilment of the second object of the charity -the maintenance of the twelve studentships, four in law at Lincoln's Inn, four in medicine at Caius College, Cambridge, and four in divinity at Christ's College, Cambridge. He should observe that both with regard to these studentships, and the pensioners of the "Hospital at Wixley, the beneficiaries were strictly enjoined to be members of the Church of England. He was not now concerned with the question as it affected Wixley; but so long as the Colleges retained their connection with the Church he saw no hardship in the provision. The Church of England offered a most ample area, when the benefits to be conferred were so limited; and Christ's and Caius Colleges were foundations which it was an advantage, and not a detriment, to enter, particularly when £100 a year was the result of the transaction. As to the Wixley Hospital, he must confess that it had proved a failure. It would be easy to conceive the evils which would result from twelve bachelors of fifty, afflicted with an inability to get on in life or otherwise they would not have offered themselves as candidates for the Tancred benevolence living together on a common income barely sufficient to keep one gentleman in decent circumstances, in little rooms cut up out of a small country house, touching which the founder had the vanity to propose that the buildings should never be enlarged or altered. Having to dine together and live in community without any special occupation, religious vocation, or manly sports, soured in temper by the degradation of being regarded as recipients of charity, and with nothing to do but to kill time, these masculine old maids would naturally take to smoking, eavesdropping, and quarrelling, if not something worse. In 1865 the case of the Hospital became so flagrant that its governors submitted a scheme to VOL. CXCI. [THIRD SERIES.] the Charity Commissioners, proposing to reduce the number of the pensioners from twelve to six. Some other reforms were suggested; but the whole proposal was manifestly too timid and compromising to command success, particularly when it was remembered that the estate, which when Tancred died, was worth something less than £1,000, had now increased in value to more than £4,000. The Charity Commissioners were accordingly solicited from various quarters to take vigorous measures, and they did so with a vengeance. As a first step, they sent their assistant Commissioner, Mr. Martin, to report on the condition of the Hospital. He made a very minute examination of its internal arrangements, in which he was assisted by the fussy ingenuity of the inmates, men of, perhaps, a once large experience, who had withdrawn their powers of observation from the world to concentrate them within the narrow limits of their own circle. The Commissioners came to the generally approved conclusion that the Hospital as an almshouse should be done away with, and that the income should be dispensed in the shape of out-door pensions, supplementary to other sources of income, to educated gentlemen, so that no recipient should run a risk of collision with any brother in misfortune. The scheme also provided that when the number of inmates had been reduced to four, these should be withdrawn from the building and the establishment broken up. The charity would thus in time have assumed a shape similar in organization to the Royal Literary Fund and similar institutions. Embodied as this plan was in the original scheme, and consequently in the Bill as it first came before the House last year, it was also accepted by the Select Committee, and therefore was embodied in the Bill of the present Session, so he hoped it would be cordially approved by the House. Regarding the studentships, Tancred had laid down these three conditions:-First, that the beneficiaries should be natives of Great Britain, thereby shutting out Irishmen, colonists, and the whole world beside; secondly, that they should be members of the Church of England; and, thirdly, that they should, as students, be educated at the particular institutions, in relation to which the list of governors had been settled. The limitation to members of the Church of England was objected to; but surely, for an endowment limited in amount and in the number of possible recipients as this was, I House to amend it in Committee if they pleased. Mr. Tancred had devised the advowson of Wixley to the charity; but Lord Keeper Henley pronounced this devise illegal. Consequently the patronage of the living had since continued in alien hands, although a small provision had been made to the clergyman who was constituted warden of the Hospital. The scheme proposed a permanent addition to the living, consequent on its being purchased by the governors, and then the advowson being sold with the estate. The Committee retained the whole of the land, probably looking upon it as the best security on which the charity fund could be put; and yet owing, he hoped, to the misadventure of the provision for the increase of the living having come earlier in the scheme, rejected the proposal of augmentation, with the view, no doubt, of subsequently rejecting the complex transaction affecting the sale of the estate. He would be glad, if his Bill got into Committee, that this provision would be reinstated, without prejudice to the retention of the estate. It was absurd to argue that the purchase of the living was contrary to Tancred's intentions. In the first place, Tancred wished the living to belong to his trust; and, in the second place, regarding the pension portion of it as a provision for meritorious gentlemen outworn by work, he would ask, who could be so meritorious a recipient of its benefits as a clergyman broken down by devoted services in some overgrown town or unhealthy colony? In fact, the vicar of Wixley might and ought to be the first Tancred pensioner. The Committee also struck out the extension of the pensions to women. Tancred, no doubt, was a misogynist; but he thought this a poor reason, now that the Hospital was to be extinguished, to refuse this concession. Such was the Bill of which he moved the second reading. All agreed that the Hospital, as it stood at present, was a crying evil. The Bill proposed a remedy for this offence. Its other details might or might not be open to discussion; they could, however, be taken in hand in Committee. For the sake, however, of abating the Hospital, he contended that the House ought to give the second reading now. it opened a field of distribution sufficiently | mittee to introduce the Bill in the shape in wide to secure an unquestionable power which they had cast it, leaving it to the of selection among excellent competitors. What better schools of law, of medicine, or divinity existed than those which this testator had selected? Of Lincoln's Inn he need not make himself the advocate. As to Caius College, it had, from the days of its second founder, been a renowned school of medicine; while the fame of Christ's College as a seminary of divines was incontestible. Yet the Charity Commissioners, for some reason of their own, wished to make a clean sweep of all restrictions, leaving the governors of the charity to elect the students out of the wide world; and whether these would, in consequence, take their degrees in England, in France, in the United States, or in China, was to be a matter of the most complete indifference. The Bill introduced by his noble Friend the Vice President of the Council, as the mouthpiece of the Charity Commissioners, for giving effect to their scheme, appeared in a shape which might have become usual with regard to enactments brought before Parliament to give legislative sanction to such proposals, but against which he felt bound to protest. Instead of the scheme being cast, in proper legal language, into a Bill, which might in time become a statute, it was with all the amplifications and fine language incident to a report, and out-of-place, in a law, transferred just as it stood within the four corners of the Bill, with a few words of prefatory enactment, professing to give validity to the subsequent essay as the scheme of the Charity Commission. This Bill was referred to a Select Committee, which altered the scheme in various particulars; and yet, the Preamble having been, by the forms of the House, first adopted, it still professed to state what had become an untruth-that the scheme so propounded and proposed to be enacted was that of the Charity Commission. His Bill, which substantially embodied all the alterations of the Committee, did not follow this bad example, but adopted the ordinary form of other Bills. The Select Committee of 1867 restored the vested rights of Lincoln's Inn and of the two Colleges as recipients of the gift, together with the limitation to members of the Church of England of these studentships. In this he cordially concurred; but there were other points embodied in the amended scheme, with which he could not so thoroughly agree, although he felt it was most respectful to the Com If it refused to do so, it would render itself responsible for all the evils which were making Wixley a byword. Motion made, and Question proposed, | port, re-introduced the Bill in the same "That the Bill be now read a second reactionary form, instead of leaving the time."-(Mr. Beresford Hope.) MR. BENTINCK seconded the Motion. MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE said, the hon. Member had not stated precisely the nature of the scheme recommended by the Charity Commissioners, which, although of a comprehensive character, did not go as far as he himself wished. The Charity Commissioners proposed that the Hospital should be done away with; that the pensioners should be increased from twelve to twenty-four; that women as well as men should be admitted to the benefit of the charity; that this should be thrown open to all British subjects; and that restrictions upon the religion of the pensioners should be wholly done away with. They further proposed that the allowance of the students should be increased to £100 a year each; that these should not be obliged to belong to any particular College or Inn of Court; and, further, that the estate, consisting of 2,500 acres in Yorkshire, and possessing a considerable residential value, which non-residential trustees were incapable of fully developing, should be sold, and the proceeds invested in Consols. A Bill for carrying out the scheme of the Charity Commissioners had been brought in last Session by the noble Lord the Vice President of the Council; in doing so, however, he never told the House that he disapproved of the provisions of that scheme, but referred the Bill embodying it to a Select Committee composed of five Mem matter to be dealt with by a Government word "now," and at the end of the Ques- He He found bers chosen from his own side of the House, and but two taken from the Oppo- VISCOUNT CRANBORNE said, the hon. sition Benches. Bearing in mind that the Gentleman had attempted to give this Bill Liberal party had a decided majority in a thoroughly party aspect, and had started the House, the preponderating influence some theories on the subject of endowment, ought to have been exactly reversed. The which were almost as novel to Members of Committee at once proceeded to cut out his own party as they were to those who all the liberal parts of the Bill, and so sat upon the Ministerial Benches. completely altered its character that no- really failed to gather what were those body could any longer recognize it. On"liberal provisions" which the Committee its return to the House he had endeavoured had so wickedly struck out. to restore it to its original condition, and that widows and daughters had given way gave notice of Amendments for that pur- to decayed and necessitated gentlemen, pose. The noble Lord endeavoured to and that the restriction to British subjects force the Bill through the House; but, had been omitted. Was it part of the creed in order to prevent its being discussed in a of the Liberal party that the widows and thin House, he (Mr. Lefevre) had stayed up orphans of pensioners should share in the night after night till three in the morning, endowments? Had the Liberal party any and eventually the Bill was dropped. But objection to "decayed and necessitous now, in the present Session, his hon. gentlemen?" He was also puzzled by Friend the Member for Cambridge, fresh the statements which he had heard as to from the honours of an Election, in which the party composition of the Committee; he had received considerable Liberal sup- for, as it happened, the two Liberal Mem bers did not vote upon the same side. If hazardous proceeding, in a matter of this he were compelled to determine between nature, for private Members completely to the purity of water of the Liberalism of ignore the Commissioners, and take the disGentlemen opposite, he should say that the posal of the revenues into their own hands. Member for Scarborough (Mr. Dent) was, He hoped the Bill would pass, and that on the whole, more orthodox than the such Amendments, as to the wisdom of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Committee might seem fit, would be introCalne (Mr. Lowe). The principle now duced. Its broad features would, however, laid down by the hon. Member for Read- no doubt, remain as an embodiment of the ing (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre) could not be nar-will of a deceased benefactor, whose views rowed to a particular case. If the inten- they were bound to respect and give effect tions of a man who made his will with the to. He therefore should vote for the full knowledge that there were members Motion of the hon. Member for Reading, of the Church of England, Roman Catho- although unable to agree with him in all lics, and Dissenters, and who discriminated the views that he had expressed. between them, were to be deliberately set at nought, why, in fairness to testators at the present day, these principles of action ought to be declared. At one of those three o'clock sittings which the hon. Member had alluded to he startled the House by the declaration that it was ridiculous for anybody to suppose that the testator could care for the Church of his baptism. That might, of course, be the hon. Member's own view of the case. But there were, nevertheless, large numbers of individuals who did attach importance to their religious belief, and were prepared to help more earnestly those who agreed with them in religious belief than those who did not; and if that were the place to quote Scripture, passages might be adduced in support of that view. MR. SHAW LEFEVRE begged the noble Lord's pardon. He had never used the words attributed to him on any occasion at three o'clock in the morning. VISCOUNT CRANBORNE: Well, then, it was at half-past one. MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE said, he had never, at any time, made use of any such expression. VISCOUNT CRANBORNE certainly had understood the hon. Gentleman to say that he felt no individual preference for those who belonged to the same religious body as himself; but was glad to find that he had misconceived what was actually stated. The hon. Member, however, must admit that he had now advocated the conversion of this endowment to purposes of primary education-purposes which were wholly foreign to those which the testator had in view. MR. DENT had the authority of the Charity Commissioners for stating that they had never been consulted with regard to the Bill that was now before the House; and he certainly thought it a rash and MR. POWELL said, he did not think that the present was the time in the history of the country when a desire to increase the comforts of old and decayed persons could be legitimately regarded as out of date. In Bradford there were collections going on in favour of various asylums devoted to the purpose. The question involved in the opposition to this Bill was, whether, when there was an endowment in favour of a religious communion, the members of that religious communion should be allowed to enjoy the property devised for their benefit. The issue at stake in this case did not affect one religion alone, but the endowments and bequests of all bodies of Christians in this country. He must adhere to the broad principle that a man could spend his money as he liked, and so leave it after his death. The Report of the Middle-class Schools Commission was in favour of this Bill, which, he trusted, would be read a second time. Any alterations which it was desirable to make in the details of the Bill could be effected in Committee, while its broad principles were preserved. MR. THOMSON HANKEY thought the discussion showed the necessity there existed for some efficient representative of the Charity Commissioners in that House. There was at that moment no Member of the Government on the Benches opposite to say a word in favour of the Report of the Charity Commissioners, or to give any explanation with regard to the Bill. It would be more satisfactory if such measures as this were introduced by the Government, instead of being left to private Members. It could not, he thought, be said that the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre) factiously opposed the Bill. What the hon. Member asked was, that action should not be taken in the matter until the Charity Commissioners |