THE PROSPECT OF THE LIBERATIONISTS. T HE Liberation Society's meeting on
Tuesday was of an unusually jubilant character. In part, this may have been due to the natural tendency of all fighting organisations to put the best possible face upon their prospects. No prudent general tells his men on the eve of an action that he is doubtful how the day will go. In part, probably, it may be explained by the undoubted fact that a large number of Nonconformists have been returned to the new Parliament. When men who are pledged to Disestablishment gain the confidence of one constituency after another, it seems a reasonable inference that these constituencies are themselves pledged to Dis- establishment. Mr. Carvell Williams dwelt with exulta- tion on the presence in the House of Commons of eighteen members of the Liberation Society Committee, and nearly one hundred members of the Society ; on all the Welsh members but three being in favour of Disestablish- ment in Wales, and forty-eight out of seventy-two Scottish members being supporters of Disestablishment in Scotland ; on the number of members in favour of Disestablishment being unprecedentedly great. The Society, he ended by saying, believes that in the next two or three years the cause of Disestablishment will make a very much greater advance than it has done in the past. If the Liberation Society is naturally over-sanguine on its own side, the Spectator may be suspected of a similar weakness on the opposite side. We are not conscious, however, of any desire to underrate the forces arrayed against us. There are many things which we greatly dis- like and yet believe the future to have in store, and we know of no reason why we should take the wish for the result in the case of Disestablishment any more than in that of any other change which we at once deprecate and expect. The first qualification we should apply to Mr. Carvell Williams's anticipations has to do with Scotland. There is an increase in the number of Scottish members pledged to support Disestablishment ; but will any one say that there is an increase in the number of Scottish electors pledged to support Disestablishment ? Does not the evidence rather go to show that as the Scottish people wake up to the approach of Disestablishment, they like the prospect less than it was expected they would ? What does the enormous diminution of Mr. Gladstone's majority in Midlothian mean if it does not mean this ? The Scottish people are not turning Tories, they are simply beginning to question the relevance of particular articles in the Liberal confession of faith. They may, in the end, decide that they wish for Disestablish- ment ; but, so far as appearances go, they are still waver- ing,—wavering, indeed, to a degree which the more enthusiastic Gladstonians were not prepared for. If we are asked how this estimate of their mental condition can be reconciled with the fact that forty-eight out of seventy- two Scottish Members are supporters of Disestablishment, the answer is plain. The party managers, the men who select the candidates, are, on this question, ahead of the electors, of the men who vote for the candidates ; con- sequently, the candidates they pick out are sworn enemies of the Established Church. But if this be so, why do the electors vote for these candidates ?
Because they are satisfied with them on other grounds, which for the moment come much more home to them than Disestablishment. The process which goes on in their minds is something like that which we hear of among the the subscribers to voting charities : ' I will vote for your Incurable if you will vote for my Idiot.' In politics, how- ever, the return vote is not always forthcoming. The elector takes the candidate who is pledged to Disestablish- ment, because be is also pledged, say, to an Eight-Hours Bill, and he cares too much about the one to mind swallow- ing the other. By-and-by, Disestablishment comes closer, and he likes the look of it less. But by that time, either he has got his Eight-Hours Bill, or he has found a candidate who is willing to sever the two questions, and give him what he wants without forcing bim to take what he does not want. In this way the diminution of certain Liberal majorities can be accounted for, and, rash as it is to speak positively of so mysterious an entity as the electoral mind, we are inclined to think that this is the true explanation. In- stead, therefore, of looking to see the cause of Disestab- lishment in Scotland make greater progress in the next two or three years than it has done in the past, we shall not be surprised if the tide should now begin to ebb, and 1892 be looked back to as the high-water mark of the movement.
In Wales the case is different, since we know of no such change of feeling in the electorate as seems to be ap- proaching in Scotland. Yet even here it is possible that 1892 may occupy the same exceptional position in the chronology of Disestablishment. Let it be granted that the Welsh people are agreed, and are likely to remain agreed, that the Church should be disestablished in Wales, they may still have to reckon with an English majority which is not at all disposed to see the Church disestab- lished in England. A great deal will depend upon the extent to which they can persuade this English majority that Disestablishment in Wales can be carried through without helping on Disestablishment in England. Some of the less cautions Liberationists are rather fond of treating Disestablishment in Wales as a step to a larger revolution behind. If they are right, and if the English people come to see that they are right, this step may never be taken. Lord Derby once said, with his characteristic detachment of thought, that the prospects of Welsh Dis- establishment depended on the view taken of the Welsh demand for Home-rule. If Wales is treated as a distinct nation from England, the Welsh Church is a distinct Church from the English Church. If England and Wales are regarded as inseparably united, the English and Welsh Churches are likely to remain one,—or rather, as the wiser advocates of the existing order of things are accustomed to put it, there is no such thing as a Welsh Church, but only four dioceses of the Church of England in which the population is bilingual.
There remains the larger question of Disestablishment in England. Here Mr. Carvell Williams's prediction is less likely to be discredited than in either of the other cases, because, even if all goes as well as he can wish, the date of its fulfilment is more remote. It is even possible that Disestablishment may come a good deal nearer than it has come yet, and Mr. Carvell Williams still prove in the end a false prophet. He is misled, we suspect, by the number of Nonconformists who have seats in the House of Commons, and takes it for granted that they represent a corresponding number in the electorate. There are no facts, so far as we know, which make this assumption good ; there is at least one which goes some way to disprove it. That one is the indifference of the working classes. The strength of the Nonconformists lies in a different social stratum from that which is now at the top. They were at their best under the Constitution of 1832, when they swayed the ten-pound householder at their pleasure. Under the present suffrage, they are strong here and there, and they have the tradition and the habit of strength, and these count for a good deal. But it is only a matter of tradition and habit. Disestab- lishment has little or no hold on the Labour Party ; it fills at best a very subordinate place in the programmes of Labour candidates. Indeed, the fundamental principle of the Liberation Society is diametrically opposed to the fundamental principle of the Labour Party. What is there in common between the man who advocates the liberation of religion from State control, and the man who advocates the subjection of every social function to public control, either State or Municipal ? Of the two we should be less surprised if the Democracy were hereafter to endeavour to make religion much more subservient to State patronage and control than it is, if, instead of the Church being completely separated from the State, an attempt were made to identify it more completely with the State. We have seen something of the kind in the proceedings of School Boards. What has all the Nonconformist outcry against State support of Church schools ended in ? In the municipal support, over the larger part of the country, of schools which, so far as the religious instruction goes, are Nonconformist. What is the difference in principle between applying the rates to the maintenance of schools in which the doctrines of the Church of England are taught to the children, and applying them to the maintenance of schools in which the doctrines accepted by the average Nonconformist are taught ? None at all. Yet, while the working-man voter would probably feel himself out- raged by a proposal to subsidise Church schools from the rates, he is perfectly ready, nine times out of ten, to have another form of religion taught in schools which are built and maintained out of the rates. Does not this show that his objection to the State teaching of religion is purely accidental, and that if the principle to which he objects to-day is presented to him to-morrow in a slightly different form, he is ready to accept it. It is quite conceivable that an analogous process may be applied to the Established Church. We do not say that the results would be such as we should like, or that we might not think Disestablishment preferable to Establishment in its changed form. All we contend is, that as regards the principle of Disestablishment, its advocates may be pre- maturely counting their chickens.
Previous page
