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chain of painful and humiliating recollections. On these grounds he put himself at the head of the movement for its disestablishment and disendowment. To the Welsh Church he applied the same test, and discovered none of the conditions to be present which had decided his action against the Irish body. He found, on the contrary, that it was doing its work in much with the hope and prospect of doing it in more; that it still possessed a broad and living way to the heart of the Welsh people; that it commended its services in the present by the venerable traditions of a noble past. He demonstrated, once and for all, that the Church in Wales has behind it centuries of continuous existence in which it was the rallying-point of Welsh patriotism, around it a present of renewed activity, and before it a future of expanding utility.

In 1868 the Irish Church was not an institution which had grown up with the growth of the Irish people, but an institution which was asserted, with some show of reason, to be a badge of conquest, and the symbol of Protestant ascendency in the midst of a Roman Catholic population. It was a wealthy body, which ministered, as official statistics declared, to less than an eighth of the population. Between its adherents and four-fifths of the people there yawned the impassable gulf which severs Roman Catholics from Protestants. The attempt to find any parallel between these conditions and those of the Church in Wales wholly fails. The Church in Wales is the oldest institution in the country, more venerable than dynasties or Parliaments. It was present at the birth of the State, and, like an elder sister, guided its infant footsteps, moulded its character, and inspired its laws. For centuries it was the most national of Welsh institutions; to its worship the people were enthusiastically loyal, and in it Welsh patriotism found its citadel. It is the link which binds the Wales of the second century to the Wales of to-day. So far from being wealthy, it is a very poor Church, and it alone ministers to those who, being neither householders nor ratepayers, and unable to pay for their religion, would, without its help, be destitute of spiritual assistance. It predominates over any one of the rival communions by which it is surrounded, and claims as its adherents very little short of half the total population. Between Ireland and England flows the Irish Channel, and still more broad and deep is the antagonism of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Between Wales and England is a broad belt of borderland, in which the Welsh and English peoples are inextricably interwoven in race and language, business and habits. As with the geographical distinctions, so with the religious. The Church is in Wales

the

the Old Mother,' from whose womb has sprung the whole religious life of the Principality. No impassable gulf separates Churchmen and Nonconformists. Both are Protestants. Welsh Nonconformists welcome the parochial visitations of the clergy. If they are dissatisfied with their own denomination, it is the Church and not a rival sect that they join. The Burials Act is very rarely used; but the great mass of the inhabitants are buried, as they are married, according to the rites of the Church. The following extract from a vernacular newspaper called the Tyst' (April 22, 1887), which is one of the most virulent assailants of the Church, conclusively proves that the division between the rival religious bodies is not impassable, like that which divides Irish Protestants from Irish Roman Catholics :

Nearly all the North Wales clergy come from Cardiganshire. They are descended from old Nonconformist families, chiefly Calvinistic Methodists, and there are no greater enemies of Nonconformity than they. There is scarcely a Calvinistic Chapel in the county where there is not a son, a brother, or a nephew of a "blaenor" (i.e. leader) in the Church. This is the reason why the Cardiganshire people are so backward about Disestablishment. Some of our people went to Church on Census Sunday, and many of them signed the petition against Mr. Dillwyn's motion. They are Methodists by profession, but Churchmen in principle.'

Nor, we may add, is it wise to ignore the lessons of experience. We know more in 1894 than we knew in 1869. The disestablishment of the Church in Ireland has been followed by disastrous results. The attack upon the Protestant clergy has been rapidly succeeded by an attack upon Protestant landlords and on landlords as a class. The demand for the severance of the statutory union in matters of religion between the Irish and English Churches fostered the cry for Home Rule and the complete political separation of the two countries. There is abundant proof, as we shall presently show, that the distablishment and disendowment of the Church in Wales is only the first act in a drama, in which it will not be the fault of agitators if the same scenes are not re-enacted.

The circumstances of the Welsh Church therefore invite, even from its opponents, greater liberality of treatment than was granted to the Irish Establishment. Yet as a matter of fact the present Government has proposed a scheme which is tenfold more drastic and severe in its operation. A few of the more striking points of contrast may be noticed. But before passing on to these, it will be convenient to point out that the real

author

author of the Bill is not Mr. Asquith, but one of the most pronounced and extravagant advocates of Welsh independence.

From the scheme of Mr. Gee, rather than on previous legislation, the present Bill seems, beyond all question, to be modelled. Mr. Gee, a Calvinistic Methodist minister, residing at Denbigh, the proprietor and editor of a vernacular newspaper called the 'Baner,' is better known in Wales than in England. His scheme was privately circulated in February 1893, with an urgent request that it should not be communicated to the press. The document in which it is explained is too long to print in its entirety; it will be sufficient to call attention to its principal provisions. The first clause proposes the appointment of three Commissioners to carry on the administrative work of disendowment; their qualifications are to be, not membership of the Church, but acquaintance with the Welsh language and residence in Wales. A group of clauses dealing with compensation for life-interests suggests that pensions calculated on the Government scale of pensions for life should be paid to the dignitaries and clergy of the Church, whether they continue to perform their duties or not. The produce of the tithe in the whole county is to be collected by the County Council, and the amount arising within each parish is be paid to the Parish Council, by whom it is to be devoted to certain purposes, among which are parochial rooms and loans for the erection of cottages on freehold allotments. Churchyards and burialgrounds are to be handed over to the exclusive control of the Parish. Churches are to be left in the hands of the disestablished Church, but are not to be used by their congregations in a way which the parishioners think inconsistent with the Protestant character. No holders of advowsons are to be compensated.

If we compare the Irish Church Act with the Welsh Church Bill, we shall find that the Government has followed the lines of Mr. Gee's scheme rather than those of previous legislation, and often with a significant similarity of language.

The Irish Church Act provided that the three Commissioners, to whom the administrative work of disendowment was entrusted, were to be members of the Established Church. The Welsh Bill, following Mr. Gee, makes no such provision, and it may, therefore, be reasonably concluded that Nonconformists will be appointed.

The Irish Church Act offered facilities for the re-endowment of the disestablished body by encouraging the capitalisation of commuted life-interests, and by so firmly securing the vested life-interests of clergy that they could effect insurances upon

their annuities for the future benefit of the Church. The Welsh Bill, adopting Mr. Gee's suggestion of life pensions on a Government scale, permits their commutation, but prohibits any profit derived from the transaction to be applied to ecclesiastical uses, and, by exposing the life interests of the clergy to uncertain deductions and by rendering their tenure precarious, so destroys their value as to preclude the holders from reendowing the Church by effecting voluntary insurances in its favour. The Irish Act secured their full vested interest to the clergy so long as they discharged the duties of their office, and provided facilities for their moving from one benefice to another. The Welsh Bill, following Mr. Gee, not only renders the vested interest extremely precarious, but frees the clergy from the obligation of discharging their duties, and penalises them in a prohibitive sum if they seek a change of work.

Following the suggestions of Mr. Gee, and rejecting the principle of the Irish Act, the Welsh Bill vests the glebe lands and burial-grounds in the Parish Councils. The objects to which the produce of the tithe is to be appropriated are those suggested by Mr. Gee and not those defined by the Irish Act. The rights of lay patrons were recognized by the Irish Act: Mr. Gee recommends that they should be ignored. Although the Legislature has authorized the sale of advowsons, and although it has expressly sanctioned the sale of the Lord Chancellor's livings, the Welsh Bill practically adopts Mr. Gee's recommendation, and by offering a year's value as compensation confiscates a property which has repeatedly changed hands under its sanction.

In two respects the Welsh Bill goes not only beyond the precedent of the Irish Act, but also beyond the suggestions of Mr. Gee. In the Irish Act the vested interests of Curates were fully recognized; but the Welsh Bill sends them about their business without compensation. Again, under the Irish Act the Cathedrals were included under Churches and passed to the representatives of the disestablished body. The Welsh Bill transfers the four Cathedrals to the Commissioners, although about 150,000l. have been, in the present century, expended on their maintenance by the free gifts of Churchmen.

In the proposal put forward by the Government for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church in Wales, principles that Mr. Gladstone supported as matters of 'property, privilege, and duty' are ignored. The Bill, as it stands, can have no other result it can scarcely have any other objectthan to strip the Church bare of its property and condemn it to a penury and an isolation which render its re-organization a

matter

matter almost of impossibility. A most aggressive and drastic scheme is laid before the House of Commons by the Government with an ostentatious disregard of argument; it is to be presented to the constituencies, mixed up with a variety of other questions which have been deliberately accumulated for the sake of confusing the issue; its proceeds are offered as a gigantic bribe to the pockets of the electors, who are to be reinforced by a mass of raw and inexperienced voters, enfranchised for the special purpose of supporting the Govern ment. A Bill of such a character, proposed in such a manner, and intended to be carried by such methods, can no longer pretend to a religious character. Its one satisfactory aspect is that it strips off the disguise of cant, and makes the plea that such a proposal is intended to invigorate the spiritual work of the Church transparently ridiculous. The scheme now before Parliament bears on the face of it every sign that it deals with the question on political grounds, and in a spirit of avowed hostility to the most ancient religious institution in this country.

The present attack upon the Church in Wales is an assault upon the National Church Establishment, an attempt to decide an imperial question upon the narrowest of local grounds, a new and extended application of the disastrous doctrine that national institutions are doomed to piecemeal destruction as soon as the vote of a district is unfavourable to their maintenance. But although we hold that it is impossible to confine the measure to its provincial, local aspects, we are prepared to meet the case against the Church in Wales, as if the question were capable of such a limitation. To this purpose we shall dedicate our remaining space.

The special case against that portion of the National Church which carries on its religious work in Wales and the English county of Monmouth can with difficulty be gleaned from the speeches of the advocates of the existing Bill. But it will probably be accepted as a fair statement that the attack on the Church in Wales is directed against it as an 'alien' institution; in other words, that it is an institution which was intended and established in the country against the wishes of the people by the hands of the conquering English, and that it ministers to a small minority of the inhabitants whose prevailing sentiments are irreconcilably opposed to its existence.

The theory of an alien Church has been as a historical fact shattered by Mr. Gladstone in 1891, and we may be permitted to refer our readers for detailed information on the subject to an article on 'The Church in Wales,' which appeared in this Review in January 1890. The alien theory cannot now be

revived

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