NONCONFORMIST ENDOWMENTS.
ITO TRIG EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.1 you allow me to say, in reply to your correspondent Mr. G. H. F. Nye under the beading "Nonconformist Endow- ments" in your issue of March 24th, that the chief endowment of the Church of England is the tithe, and that the endow- ments given by private individuals to churches and chapels belong to quite a different category? The tithe is a compulsory payment of the tenth part of the produce of the cultivated soil of the country. There is no option about paying it. It is, like the Poor-rate, enforceable by law, and, like the Poor-rate, created by law. The other endowments referred to are purely voluntary gifts or bequests. I may remind your correspondent that the Bill for the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales, introduced in the House of Commons in 1896 by Mr. Asquith (which may be taken as representing the views of the advocates of Disestablishment), reserved this latter class of endowment to the Church, together with the church buildings and parsonages. Your correspondent, therefore, is setting "editors of parish magazines" a very difficult task in asking them to "show to the people that Church and Chapel endow- ments are very much alike, and that it would be neither fair nor reasonable to confiscate the one and to leave the other un-
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