A Conference on the subject of the Disestablishment and Dis-
endowment of the Church met at the Masonic Hall, Birmingham, on Tuesday, but nothing particular came of it, except resolutions that a much more complete disendowment than any effected in the case of the Irish Church must accompany disestablishment when it comes, Mr. Illingworth even maintaining that all private gifts to the Established Church, however recent, as we understand him, should be regarded simply as national property, and devoted to any purpose to which the endowments conferred by the nation itself shall, in case of disestablishment and disendowment, be de- voted. The Conference refused to commit itself to the principle that Liberals should vote for nobody who did not accept the pledge to disestablish and disendow, and was certainly wise in that bit of moderation. On the whole, the Conference does not seem to have advanced the position of the movement by a single step, unless the candid and evidently serious recognition of the great difficulties with which it has to contend, be considered as such an advance. The official order of the day rather resembled Louis Napoleon's remarkably diffident proclamation, when he took the field against Prussia. It was full of "the difficulties to be en- countered," and "the necessity for activity, persistency, and firmness." The need is assuredly great, unless the Liberation Society wish to experience calamities him those of Worth, Gravelotte, and Sedan.
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