The concessions made this week during the Committee on the
Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill, have been certainly very considerable, and we should hardly think at all to Mr. Asquith's taste. On Monday Mr. Asquith consented to push back the date from which any benefaction to the Church of England should be regarded as a private benefaction, from 1703 to 1662, the date of Charles II.'s Act of Uniformity,—a concession which will distinctly increase the endowments left to the Disestablished Church. But even after making this concession, the Government only got a majority of 11 (199 to 188) against the Opposition, who desired to go back to 1559. On Tuesday, on a motion of Mr. Jebb's, Mr. Asquith con- sented to leave the four Welsh cathedrals absolutely to the Disestablished Church ; and on Wednesday Mr. Asquith accepted an amendment permitting the Disestablished Church to retain all chapels and chapels-of-ease, as well as the ordinary churches, after Disestablishment, and another amendment allowing it to retain the structures of the Church schools ; subsequently he held out hopes of leaving portions of the glebe to the Disestablished Church, as the Irish Church Disestablishment Act had done, though he made no definite promise. It is obvious that these concessions are very considerable, and greatly modify the austerity of the Government scheme, in relation to the in- tended stripping of the Welsh Church. As the Bill is quite certain not to pass the House of Lords, even if it does not collapse in the Commons, we can only suppose that the Government find a good deal of dissatisfaction amongst their own more moderate followers, in the same sense as Mr. Gladstone's, and are trying to show that they are not as " thorough " as they are supposed to be. Even amongst pledged Home-rulers there is a clear disinclination to give local institutions up to local plunder.
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