While 'Runnymede's' abuse was still wet from the printing-press, and Lord John was still weak from the effects of his recent illness, the session of 1836 began. A speech from the throne had rarely announced the preparation of more important measures of Reform. Parliament was invited to

direct its early attention to the ecclesiastical establishment, with the intention of rendering it more efficient;' to relieve the tithe system from the fluctuations and objections to which it has hitherto been subject; to remedy 'any grievances which affect those who dissent from the doctrines or discipline of the Established Church;' to effect a just settlement of tithes in Ireland; to deal with municipal corporations in that country 'upon the same principles as those of the Acts which have already been passed for England and Scotland;' to approach the question of poor relief in Ireland 'with the caution due to its importance and difficulty,' but 'with the experience of the salutary effect produced by the English poor law; and to consider whether better provisions may not be made for the administration of justice, 'more especially in the Court of Chancery.'

The Government could not have expected to carry so many measures in a single year; and the session of 1836 is undoubtedly remembered for its failures as well as for its successes. Yet, though the Lords displayed an unceasing determination to thwart the projects of the Administration, much useful work was accomplished. And the measures which were carried were precisely those which were specially entrusted to Lord John Russell's management, and which had been framed under his superintendence.

At the close of the session of 1835 the Cabinet appointed. committees to 'consider the whole case of the Dissenters,' and the English tithe system. Lord John served on both committees, and was the guiding spirit of each of them, Tithes and their unfairness were no new subject to him. His old constituents in Devonshire felt strongly on the matter, and in 1834 presented a petition to the House of Commons praying that tithes should be commuted for a

money payment equal to one-tenth of the rent. In speaking on this petition, which was presented by Lord Ebrington, Lord John had the courage to point out that he differed from the petitioners. Tithe, he explained, was not one-tenth of the rent, but one-tenth of the produce; and, on the assumption that the produce was equivalent to three rents, one-tenth of the rent would be only equivalent to one-thirtieth of the produce. But, though he dissented from the petitioners' conclusion, he took occasion to say that he considered tithes the institution of a barbarous age-a remark which subjected him to the retort from Mr. O'Connell that tithes had been introduced by the English into Ireland, so that the English were the barbarous bestowers of tithes on that country.1 Thus, even if Sir Robert Peel had not proposed to deal with the subject, Lord John could hardly have avoided legislation upon it.

The Bill, which he brought forward at the commencement of the session of 1836, passed without material amendment, and proved a permanent settlement of a difficult question. Instead, however, of recording a dull Parliamentary discussion, it will probably be simplest to insert Lord John's own account of the measure and of his reasons for introducing it. The unsettled state of the tithe question, he wrote

was deeply injurious to the interests of agriculture and to those of the Church. In many instances where waste lands might have been brought into cultivation, or the produce of cultivated lands and the supply of food to the people largely augmented, the right of the Church to appropriate a tenth of the produce without regard to the expense of the improvement was a positive bar to cultivation. In many other instances, the attempts of the farmers to abate the rights of the Church, and to force the clergymen to be content with a twentieth part of the produce, or even less, instead of the legal tenth, had been the source of wrangling and ill-will between the farmers and the clergymen, to the destruction of Christian charity, and of the harmony that ought to prevail between the pastor and his flock. Pitt had attempted in vain to frame a complete measure on this subject. Peel had endeavoured

1 Hansard, xi, 1038-1047.

to remedy the notorious evils by a voluntary commutation; but a commutation short of compulsory would have left many of the worst cases untouched-cases in which the Church had insisted unwisely upon its full rights, or a combination of farmers had determined to vex and worry a clergyman of easy disposition, till they reduced him to penury by their obstinacy and injustice. All the evils of the tithe system were the subject of fair compromise and permanent settlement by the Act of 1836. Three commissioners, two of whom were appointed by the Crown and one by the Archbishop of Canterbury, were empowered, after examination, to proceed by certain fixed rules to a final adjudication. In about seven years this process was completed, and a work from which Pitt had shrunk was accomplished. The progress of agriculture was freed from vexatious impediments, and the clergy were spared the unseemly contentions which had fostered ill-will and disturbed social relations,1

Equally, or almost equally, complete was another measure carried in the same session. From the middle of the eighteenth century, when the Marriage Act was passed, to the year 1836, when it was reformed by Lord John Russell's efforts, marriage was a religious ceremony, which, except in the case of the Quaker or of the Jew, could only legally be performed by a clergyman of the Church of England. This law naturally produced great irritation among those who dissented from the doctrines of the Church; and in 1834, Lord John, on the part of the Whig Government, introduced a measure for the purpose of amending it. He proposed that Dissenters. should be married in their own chapels, which were to be licensed; but that the banns should be asked in the parish church, and the register forwarded to the diocesan registrar. The proposal created no enthusiasm among the Dissenters, and the Bill was dropped. In the following year Sir Robert Peel, during his brief administration, proposed that marriage. with Dissenters should be a civil contract, and not a religious ceremony. But this proposal also failed to excite any enthusiasm among Nonconformists. They desired as much as Churchmen that their marriages should be accompanied with

1 Recollections and Suggestions, p. 141.

religious ceremony; and the vast majority of them were unwilling that they should be deprived of the sanction which religion gave, or appeared to give, to these contracts.

Sir Robert Peel's Bill was suffered to fall with his Administration. But Sir R. Peel's failure as well as the abandonment of his own measure in the previous year had convinced Lord John that no solution of the question could be found until a general civil registration was substituted for the ecclesiastical registers which alone existed up to that time. As early as March 1834, indeed, he had said that the House would never see the end of the evils until they established a system of national registration; later on in that year he had declared that there was no sacrifice which the country ought not to make in order to get rid of the present imperfect system of registration. On the introduction of Sir Robert Peel's Bill he at once expressed his doubt whether any measure would succeed which did not establish a national registry; and after acceding to office, in declining to proceed with the Bill, he expressed his opinion that the first measure that ought to be adopted, with a view both to the Dissenters and the inhabitants of the country at large, is one to establish a civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths.1 In accordance with these reiterated opinions, he introduced two measures at the commencement of 1836, one establishing a national registry and the other providing for Dissenters' marriages, in the presence of the registrar, in their own chapels.

The conduct of these Bills fell almost exclusively on Lord John. One of them, the Registration Bill, involved only slight discussion. The Marriage Bill did not escape without serious amendment. In the Bill, as it was originally introduced, it was Lord John's object to assimilate as far as possible the marriage in the chapel to the marriage in the church; and in each case he accordingly required that the same notice should be given to the registrar. Peer and prelate revolted against a provision which deprived the ceremony of asking banns of any real significance, and the Bill was 1 Hansard, xxii. 400, xxiii. 950, xxvi. 1092, xxix. 12.

accordingly amended. Lord John accepted the amendment, which he disliked, for the sake of securing the passage of his Bill. But his own views were enlarged and strengthened by the experience of a long lifetime, and he lived to record his opinion that

It will be matter for consideration whether the future law, instead of recognising the marriage registers of every Christian communion and every Jewish synagogue, should not be founded on the same principle as the laws of France and Italy, constituting civil marriages the only bond recognised by the State, and leaving to the parties concerned to add any religious ceremony or ceremonies they may think proper.

These three great measures, the Tithe Commutation Act, the Registration Act, and the Marriage Act, would have reflected credit on any Government or on any Minister. In the same year, in which the Marriage Act was passed, another grievance under which Nonconformists lay was partly removed by the establishment of a new University at London with power to grant degrees.1 Thenceforward, if religious tests still barred the way to distinction at Oxford and Cambridge, men of every tone of thought were able to graduate in London.

While Lord John was thus endeavouring to satisfy the just demands of the Dissenters, he did not ignore the claims of the Church. In 1836, carrying out the recommendation of a commission which Sir Robert Peel had instituted and which Lord Melbourne had continued, he introduced three Billsone equalising the Bishops' incomes, combining some old sees and constituting some new ones; another applying the surplus

1 Lord John wished to go much further. Lord Melbourne wrote to him on December 15, 1836: 'Rice tells me that you want a Bill for the admission of Dissenters to the Universities. Is this absolutely necessary? Is not the charter of the new London University enough for the present? If it is not absolutely necessary, I am sure that it is not prudent to stir this question. There is none upon which prejudice is stronger or more violent. Many of our own friends are in their hearts against it. It is also a very difficult question, and one of which it is almost impossible to find a satisfactory solution. The Universities are so framed upon the principle of their students being members of the Church of England, that Dissenters can hardly be admitted without a complete change of their forms.'