HI
Printed exclusively for the use of the Cabinet,Į
CONFIDENTIAL.
N°22
March 27, 1868.
Memorandum on the “Church Rates Abolition Bill."
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THE "Church Rates Abolition Bill," as amended, enables Church or Chapel Wardens to receive and expend monies, raised by voluntary rate or otherwise given to them, subject to the like responsibility and control as they are now subject to in respect of application of rates.
It does not enable them to hold in trust, as a Corporation, funds which may be given to constitute repair funds for Churches.
It is probable large donations may in the course of a few years be made for such a purpose.
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It is suggested, therefore, that the Incumbent and Churchwardens any parish should be constituted a Corporation so as to enable them to hold in trust any funds given for the repair and maintenance of the fabric of the Church or Chapel; and that land-owners should be enabled to charge lands with a rent charge in favour of such a Corporation for the purpose of repairing the fabric.
All Churches will be left by the Bill to depend on voluntary contributions, not merely for expenses of service, but for their actual Inaintenance.
In a large number of cases, doubtless, ample voluntary funds will be forthcoming, but in many small rural parishes, and probably also in the poorer districts of towns, those funds will not and cannot be provided in the place, or from their congregations, consisting almost solely of the poor.
Again, in many large parishes it will be found that watering- places, manufactories, or other circumstances have caused new villages or towns to spring up, with new Churches to accommodate them, while the old Church remains for the reception of the poor agricultural population in its neighbourhood, and deprived, very generally, by the separation of the newer and wealthier population into a district, not only of all the support which it might have received from the additional wealth of the parish, but also of that which it would otherwise have derived from the population of the entire parish.
The maintenance of the old churches seems to me of great [192]
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
1, 1, 1. ls k1⁄2
Reference -
mihi C.O. 885
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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