13 MARCH 1915, Page 2

In the House of Lords on Tuesday Lord Bennehamp announced

that a compromise on the treatment of the Welsh Church during the suspensory period bad been arranged

between the leaders of the two parties "at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hone" The jertns were embodied in a Bill, which he moved, postponing the date of Diaestablishment till six months after the war. He explained that the Govern- ment had been unable to ignore the feeling .roused by the Duke of Devonshire's Bill for putting the Welsh Church Act on the same footing as the Home Rule Act. The new Bill stipulates that no proposals for the repeal or amendment of the Welsh Church Act shall be made in the meantime except with the consent of both parties. The Bill further gives to the representative body the value of the life interest of those benefices which were vacant on September 18th, 1914, and of those which become vacant between that date and the date of Disestablishment. Lord Lansdowne welcomed the con- ciliatory policy of the Government But he understood that the self-denying ordinance applied to Parliamentary proposals and not to discussions in the country. Lord Crewe accepted this interpretation. The Bill was then passed through all its stages and sent to the Commons, where, we may add, it is arousing angry opposition among the Welsh Liberals.