MR. DILLWYN'S MOTION.
rilHE debate on Mr. Dillvryn's motion was not, we think, unsatisfactory either in its character or in its result. It, proved that the ltouse of Commons is perfectly willing to take separate thought for the benefit of any section of the United Kingdom in which it can be shown that there is a special case for a special kind of treatment ; and yet it proved also that the House is not eager to inaugurate a special kind of treatment for special sections of the United Kingdom until it can be shown that there is no probability Qf the success of the treatment which has, on the whole, been found the best for the whole region to which that section belongs. There is, we should think, not a Tory, however extreme, in the House of Commons now, who would wish to force Episcopacy on Scotland as the Episcopalians of two or three centuries ago wished to force it upon Scotland. There is not a Tory in the House of Commons, however extreme, who would wish to restore the Protestant Estab- lishment in Ireland against the wish of the great majority of, the population of Ireland. But when it comes to selecting a section like Wales out of a country in which it has so long been politically merged, for a totally different religious policy from that of the rest of the island, there is naturally and rightly a demand that a very strong case shall be made out both for the wisdom of, such a change and for the exact dimensions of the gengraphical area to which it shall be extended. There are reasons for grave doubt on both heads. Mr. Dillwyn, in, his very moderate and prudent argument, did not even pretend to say that the case for a separate treatment of Wales is so strong now as it had been some centuries ago. His illustrations of the unfitness of the Established Church for the moral and religious teaching of Wales were taken, and had to be taken, from a past, and a long past age. He admitted frankly that the Established Church is aging its work far better now than in the old times, and thikt if it had set about its work then as it is setting about it now, the result might probably have been very different. New, that is an important admission, especially when we -Riiq it contended on the other side that the Church is making progress,—some close observers think, great pro- gress,—in the favour of the Welsh people, and that certain of the most popular of the Dissenting Churches, instead of making progress, are positively losing ground. We do not feel competent to pronounce on the truth of these state- nNents. But we do think it perfectly plain from the dis- cussion that the Established Church is, at all events, doing its work better now than it has ever done it, and that it is not losing, and is perhaps even decidedly gaining ground in the Principality. Again, the question of the t, • area for which this revolutionary demand is made is a serious one. Mr. Dillwyn asked for it for Wales only, but, a subsequent speaker evidently wished to include Mon- mouthshire in Wales, and virtually asked that the Church of Wales and of Monmouthshire should be disestablished. Xoci., here, again, there is a very serious reason for he,sitation. If portions of statutory England are to be sheared away from England and added to Wales for the purpose of such a change as this, it seems difficult to say what the end of such a policy will be. May it not be claimed that in every separate county, nay, in every separate town, where the Established Church can be shown to be doing less effective work than the Dissenters, the Church siipuld be disestablished ? For example, in Cornwall it is often maintained that the Wesleyans and the other Dis- senting bodies are more efficient than the Establishment. Supposing a case for that contention could be made out, would Mr. Dillwyn and his friends ask that the Church should be disestablished in Wales, Monmouthshire, and Cornwall? Whenever a claim is made for a sectional revo- lution of this kind, the utmost care must be taken to see that there is a plain and intelligible reason for putting a clear geographical boundary to the extension of the new policy, and a geographical boundary which will not demand constant disturbance, constant rectification. In the present case, no such geographical boundary appears to be clearly defined. Even in the course of the debate, the advocates of the ch ge were not agreed whether the change should apply to Wales, or to Wales and Monmouth- shire ; and so far as we can see, it would have been perfectly open to them to have asked that little bits of the rest of the Kingdom, like the little insulated bits of Cromarty which are distributed about Scotland, should be also included in the disestablishing statute. It is obvious that any ambiguity of this kind in so grave a change, would constitute a very serious argument against the change. Nothing could be more mischievous than to en- courage isolated fragments of the Kingdom to, ask for Disestablishing Bills, just as isolated fragments of the Kingdom have lately been asking for Sunday-Closing Bills. We shall be told soon, and told seriously, that the County Councils ought to have the right to determine whether they should disestablish the Church or not. And we may be quite sure that if any notion of that sort got about, the Local Government Act, instead of proving a great good, would turn out one of the greatest evils of our time,—a source of chaos and confusion. Nothing can be more wholesome than the rule that where a certain policy is for the benefit of any well-marked Kingdom as a whole, it is desirable that petty sections of that Kingdom, where the benefit is not so clear or even is not visible at all, should endeavour to adapt themselves to the general rule, instead of insisting that the general rule should be broken through to meet their particular case. We do not say with any confidence that this remark applies to Wales in regard to the policy of an Established Church ; but when we find that the demand is not limited to Wales, it is obvious that the utmost caution should be displayed in entering on such a policy as this.
On the whole, we take the result of the debate to be that, whether the Established Church in the Principality is or is not likely to regain its hold on the people of Wales„ it is doing so well now that the time is not opportune for the pressing of this demand. It may be that the Welsh Nonconformist pastors are, as Mr. Byron Reed maintained, rather alienating their flocks by their violent political bias, and by the dwindling attention which they give to spiritual matters. At all events, nothing can be clearer than that there is none of the positive dislike for the Established Church in Wales which was felt for the Church of Ireland by the Irish Catholics before 1869. The Welsh Dissenters are more often married and buried in church than they are in Nonconformist places of worship;. and even when they are buried in cemeteries, they appear to be at least as often buried in the consecrated as in the un- consecrated portions of those cemeteries. The Established Church is clearly not losing ground in Wales. It may be that it is gaining ground; and even if not gaining in the proportional number of its personal adherents, it is cer- tainly gaining in the good-will of the Dissenters, and is much more often visited by them than it was in times gone by. This, therefore, is hardly the opportune moment for a change which would be so drastic, and perhaps so likely to be followed by regret. There is in the present day too much local impatience of anything like the misfit of a great institution to a particular locality. Of course that misfit is a great evil ; but equally of course it is a great mis- take to assume that it cannot be remedied by local energy in bringing that institution nearer to its ideal in that par- ticular locality, instead of by quietly assuming that the con- ditions of life there do not admit of making it as effective as it is in neighbouring localities. If an institution which is beneficent in a great portion of a country, is not bene- ficent in another and much smaller portion, it should not be hastily assumed that it can never become so. And if, as seems probable in relation to the Established Church in Wales, it is at least becoming more beneficent than in former times, great patience should be displayed in waiting to see the full result of the ameliorating change in progress, before undermining the foundations on which the institution rests.
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