THE BISHOP OF HEREFORD ON WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT. T HE Bishop of
Hereford's speech in Convocation on Welsh Disestablishment on Tuesday was a model of what such a speech should be if it were to be given from that point of view at all. It was calm ; it was earnest ; it was delivered from the most sincerely religious conviction; and it was animated by a deep respect for the feelings, as well as for the opinions, of the other side of the House. It is a speech which eminently deserves to be fully considered and conscientiously answered. Dr. Percival first dealt with Disestablishment, and expressed his belief that the question of Establishment is always a question more of expediency than of principle, in which we heartily agree with him. As we understand him, an alliance between the State and a Church is natural and right where the State and the Church consist of the same persons united for different purposes, in the one case for the protection and enforcement of civil order, in the other for the promotion of their own spiritual welfare. When that is not the case, and exactly in proportion to the degree in which it is not the case, a sense of in- j astice and irritation will arise from any attempt of the State to use its power for the promotion of the spiritual ends contemplated by the Church ; and where the divergence is emphatic and notorious, such an alliance will do more harm than good to the religious temper of the people. The Bishop assumed, as practically admitted on all sides, that in Wales this divergence actually exists, and exists in so conspicuous a form that the identification of the civil power with the aims of the Church of a minority is hurtful to the peace and to the religious spirit of the people. The force of this position, as stated in the abstract by the Bishop, is unquestionable. Nor would any reasonable thinker pro- pose to apply in the first instance the principle of Establishment to a whole nation divided in religious con- victions as the Welsh people certainly are divided now. But we maintain that the question of Establishment de novo, and the question of Disestablishment when the Establishment has been brought about by perfectly natural and historical causes in a time long past, must he considered and argued on totally different grounds. When an ivy has grown round an old building for centuries, you do not look at the question of re- moving it from the same point of view from which vou look at the question of the wisdom of first planting it. You must consider how far its life is intertwined with that of the stability of the building ; how far the beauty and stateliness of the building is bound up with it ; how far you can sever the two without giving a deadly shock to each. The Welsh Church is not a separate Church as the Irish Church was. It is an organic part of the Church of England and Wales. You cannot amputate it without giving a great shock to the whole fabric of the Church. On whatever grounds you place the policy of Disestablishment, they will apply to other organic parts of the Church of England and Wales in which the same conditions more or less exist. If Yorkshire or Cornwall or Norfolk and Suffolk could be shown to be in the same attitude of mind towards the Established Church, as Wales is, or is believed to be, Yorkshire or Cornwall or Norfolk and Suffolk will surely learn the lesson and cry out for the same treatment. What has been the consequence of Mr. Gladstone's con- cession of a right of Home-rule to Ireland ? Why, that within ten years considerable parties have grown up for what is called " Home-rule all round," for conceding the same independence to Scotland, to Wales, and last, though not least, to England too ; in fact, to divisions of the kingdom in which this cry is quite new and wholly artificial, bred by emulation and jealousy, and not in the least by natural and inevitable needs. Indeed, the Bishop of Hereford's whole speech is thoroughly penetrated by the assumption that Wales is entitled to a separate national existence and national organisation. Is not that assumption a very significant and startling one ? Does it not involve a whole mass of political consequences of the most serious and far-reaching character ? Is it not certain that if those assumptions are endorsed by the nation at large, they will engender a practical logic of their cwn, such as we have already seen engendered in relation to Home-rule, and that we shall have a cracking and splitting and disintegration of all parts of the Kingdom ? Are we not bound before we give our assent to any move- ment so far-reaching, to count the cost very deliberately ou both sides ? Ought we not to know more particularly what the real conditions of the case are,—on points at present vehemently disputed, and disputed on very good grounds ? Can anything be more certain than that the virtual unanimity of the Welsh representatives on this subject does not truly represent at all the virtual unanimity of the Welsh people ? Is anything clearer than that the Irish precedent does not really apply to Wales, though the Welsh advocates of Disestablishment maintain that it applies to Wales in a much more complete sense than any in which it applied to Ireland. Is the gulf between Churchmen and Dissenters in Wales anything like as deep and wide as the gulf between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants ? Does any one even maintain that the Welsh people are divided as the Welsh Members are divided on the Disestablishment question, in the propor- tion of 31 to 3 ? All these are matters of the gravest possible importance, and the Bishop of Hereford must forgive us for saying that his interesting and candid speech appears to overlook all these points so completely, that it is difficult to believe that he has ever grasped their significance at all. The latent assumptions of his speech are far more important and far-reaching than his avowed principles, but they are not set forth in any form in which the religious and political importance of them is recog- nisable at all.
On the question of Disendowment we recognise that the Bishop of Hereford entertains far juster views than those of his political allies. He would, in the first place, push back the date at which he would regard endowments given to the Church as really meant for the Church, and not meant for any of the newer sects, to the date of the Act of Uniformity (1662), which is a concession that we do not suppose his allies are at all ready to make. And what is much more important, he would divide the older endowments in a reasonable proportion between the Church and the newer sects, in other words, he would concurrently endow the other sects with their share of the older endowments. Is there any prospect at all of the Welsh Disestablishment party accepting that far more reasonable and far more religious conception of the policy involved in Disendow- ment ? We do not believe it. We should be as much surprised to find that on this question the Bishop repre- sents the Welsh Dissenters, as we should to find that the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control would accept it. In plain words, the Bishop is just as much at odds with his political allies on the subject of Disendowment as he is in sympathy with them on the subject of Disestablishment, and it is pretty certain that the Bill for which he would contend would be rejected by his Welsh friends, and also by the present Government, with something like scorn.
On the subject of Disestablishment, then, we cannot recognise that the Bishop has really thought out the far- reaching consequences of his principles, either religious or political ; and we see the most ample reasons for thinking that, if accepted, they would result in a dissection and disintegration, first, of the most important of the national institutions of the United Kingdom, and, next, of the United Kingdom itself, of which it is as yet quite impos- sible to discount the effects. Far from producing greater harmony within the realm, we believe it would lead to inter- minable and very profound discords. And moreover, if he and his friends could carry Disestablishment, it would certainly lead to a scheme of Disendowment which differs so widely from his own that we should find him thinking and speaking of it with a disapprobation almost as deep as that with which we ourselves should regard it. We cannot therefore regard Dr. Percival's speech as in any sense adequate to his object. On Disestablishment it ignores all the most important aspects of the question, and on Disendowment it is so wide of the mark of the present Bill that it indicates the utmost possible cleavage between him and the Government of the day.
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