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ENABLING BILL PASSED. NO DIVISION ON THIRD BEADING. (By Our Parliamentary Correspondent.) THE Church Enabling Bill, officially called the National Assembly of the Church of England (Powers) Bill, was given a third reading by the House of Commons on Friday, and passes on to the Statute Book with a number of other important measures at the end of a busy session. Viscount Wolmer, who has been in charge of the measure in the Lower House and has piloted it with splendid tact, resource and ability, fittingly said the last words on the Bill in the Com- mons. They were very brief. I hope," he said, we have now inaugurated" a new era of Christian co-operation in this country." The third reading was given without a division. There had been one division on the report stage, which had been taken earlier in the afternoon. This was on an amendment by Sir Hyland Adkins, who wished to add a clause pro- viding that no existing right of any person who is not a member of the Church of England, or who is a member of some religious body other than the Church of England, shall be prejudicially affected by any such measure." That is, by any measure introduced under the scheme. Nonconformists' Rights. Sir Ryland really advanced no solid argument in support of his amendment. He seemed to fear that the rights of Nonconformists would be injured by the abbreviated form of procedure under the Bill. How it was likely to be done he gave no idea. Nor did Sir Howell Davis, who seconded him. "I am afraid," said the latter, that there is a danger that rights that now exist may not exist after the passing of the Act." The only clue he gave of what was pass- ing in the minds of the promoters of the amendment was when he said, We all desire the Church of England to be a National Church and not simply a re- ligious denomination, and I am afraid that by excluding citizens from par- ticipating in its work it will oease. to have a claim to be a National Church." The amendment was defeated by 154 votes to 27 after a long debate, in which Lord Wolmer intervened more than once. He argued that the Parliamentary safe- guards were adequate, and asked the House to consider what the actual effect of these words would be on the sort of legislation which everybody agrees would' be proper legislation for the Church Assembly to submit to Parliament. The Sale of Livings. Take the case of what Lord Wolmer called the appalling scandal of the sale of livings—" one of the scandals which men of all Christian denominations dis- approve of and repudiate in the strong- est possible way." It is a matter of common knowledge that livings can be bought and owned by people whether or not they are members of the Church of England, in fact, whether or not they are Christians, so long as they are not Roman Catholics. It is possible that a member of the Jewish faith should own an advowson and that that advowson could be sold to somebody else who was not a member of the Church of England. If these words were inserted in the Bill, no measure could be submitted by the Church Assembly to put an end to the sale of livings so long as that sale was conducted by somebody who is not, a member of the Church of England. It is the same in other matters. Matters of ecclesiastical administration," said Lord Wolmer, are so much intertwined with our national life that hard and fast lines cannot be drawn in a sentence in an Act of Parliament." Lord Hugh's Brotest* A powerful contribution to the debate came from Lord Hugh Cecil, who has distinguished himself at earlier stages of the Bill. Such an amendment, he said, would be unworkable. You are going to say," said Lord Hugh, that no measure shall be passed which shall be prejudicial to anyone who is not a member of the Church of England. Who is going to decide whether a particular measure is or is not prejudicial to the in- terests of a person who is not a member of the Church of England? Obviously all measures which directly or indirectly affect the general rights of property of the community might come within the scope of this amendment. Supposing we deal, as I hope we are going to deal, with the City churches. We shall have to deal with ancient rights when we destroy a church and sell the site. That affects the rights of property of everybody all round, and some of those affected may not be members of the Church of Eng- land. They might very easily say, 'A settlement which seemed reasonable for the Houses of Parliament and those who framed this measure does not seem rea- sonable to us Who is to decide? If you once introduce. the word pre- judicial you propound a conundrum which only a Court of law would be able to decide. This would invert the whole procedure of the Bill. We want this to be a short way to obtaining an Act of Parliament. We do not want to have a scrutiny of each measure before the Courts of law so that you may be troubled with this technical point or that technical point. If that happens, so far as I can see, the whole measure will be in danger. Appointing the Committee. An interesting debate took place on the establishment of the Ecclesiastical Committee of both Houses. As the Bill left the Standing Committee, after amendment, the clause provided that the Ecclesiastical Committee shall consist of fifteen Members of the House of Lords, nominated by the Lord Chief Justice, and fifteen Members of the House of Commons, nominated by the Speaker of the House of Commons, to be appointed at the commencement of each Parlia- ment and to serve for the duration of that Parliament. The powers and duties of the Ecclesiastical Committee may be exercised and discharged by any twelve members thereof, and the Committee shall be entitled to sit and to transact business whether Parliament be sitting or not. Lord Wolmer now proposed to give the Lord Chancellor instead of the Lord Chief Justice the nominating power in the House of Lords, though in Committee he had made the suggestion that the Lord Chief Justice would be better. In Committee, Clause 2-one of the most important clauses in the Bill —had been quite revolutionised. The Bill originally proposed that a Com- mittee of the Privy Council should ex- amine all measures submitted to Parlia- ment by the Church Assembly, and re- port to his Majesty upon those measures, and that the report should then be laid before Parliament. On the motion of Sir R. Adkins the Committee upstairs agreed to change that, and to substitute what now appears in the-Bill, that is to say, a Joint Parliamentary Committee. But the promoters of the Bill were ex- tremely anxious that this Joint Parlia- mentary Committee should not be exactly upon the model of the ordinary Joint Parliamentary Committee. The func- tions of this Committee will not be the same as an ordinary Joint Parliamentary Committee, and it is extremely desirable that its appointment should be made in the most impartial and most judicial manner. Lord Wolmer, afraid that the attitude he took up might be regarded as an aspersion on the present Lord Chancellor, now wished to reverse the de- cision, and the House agreed. Scope of the Bill. One of the most important discussions was on the scope of the measures to be introduced and passed under the new procedure. Sir Ryland Adkins proposed a form of words to make it clear that the aim of the new procedure is to facilitate the religious work of the Church and not to make difficult the full rights of dis- cussion and debate on subjects which, as the mover thought, only in a secondary sense, concerns the Church. He wanted the Bill kept to the sphere of ecclesi- astical legislation. Lord Wolmer directed the attention of hon. Members to the words of the Bill itself. In the first place, in Sub-section (6) of Clause 3 it is provided that A measure passed in accordance with this Act may relate to any matter concerning the Church of England." Therefore in this very clause the scope of these measures are limited to matters concerning the Church of England. Then a question arises who is to be the judge as to whether a matter does concern the Church of. England or whether it does not? Parliament and Parliament alone can be the judge, and to assist Parliament in arriving at that decision the Ecclesiastical Committee is brought in under Clause 2. The amend- ment was defeated. Dividing a Bill. On the motion of Lord Wolmer an amendment, in slightly different form from that passed in Committee, was passed to deal with the procedure in the House. The amendment provided that on a measure being laid before Parlia- ment the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords and the Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Com- mons acting in consultation, shall be of opinion that the measure deals with two or more different subjects which might be more properly divided, they may, by joint agreement, divide the measure into two or more separate measures accord- ingly, and thereupon this section shall have effect as if each of the measures re- sulting from such division had been laid before Parliament as a separate mea- sure." The amendment was intended to meet the wishes of the Nonconformists to whom the fact that the House of Com- mons or the House of Lords was only to be asked to say Yes or No in re- gard to any particular measure caused anxiety in case the. Church Assembly might lump together several different subjects in one omnibus measure: They felt that while both Houses of Parlia- ment might be willing to agree to four out of five possible subjects in a measure, they might very nruch dislike the manner in which the fifth subject was treated, and yet be unwilling to reject the whole Bill for fear of jeopardising the other subjects.

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