MR. BIREELL ON ENDOWMENTS.
MR. BIRRELL'S speech on the Welsh Disestablish- went Bill was, we think, falsely described, even by its friends, as a light-minded speech. It contained, no doubt, some lively passages, especially that in which he explained the reason why, in his opinion, the State at the time of the Reformation drew so broad a distinction between charitable uses and superstitious uses,—namely, that charitable uses prevented the bodies of paupers from "coming on the rates ; " while superstitious uses were only intended to prevent souls from going to the place of penal suffering ; and souls, as they could not "come on the rates," were bound to shift for themselves. But m the main we regard his speech as directed to the heart of the issue much more effectually than the great majority of the speeches, most of which, like Homer's" winged words," seem to us to have flown off into space. Mr. Birrell.at least understood what the question was when he main- tained that it was a great and sound principle, that if any testator tried to create a perpetuity by leaving his money for a religious or charitable purpose, absolutely unlimited in time, he ought to be very glad to think that so soon as a future generation came to differ with him as to the utility of that trust, it would overrule his desires, and apply his gift to any pur- poses approved, or rather not disapproved, by the public opinion of that future age. Now we are not going to say that where charitable trusts so outlive the respect of any generation that they become either absolutely or relatively useless, they should not be appropriated to the most useful object which can be properly regarded as closely allied to that of the testator, and yet sufficiently valued by the new generation as to recover their full public utility. We quite agree that they should be so appropriated. But it is one thing to insist that the dead hand shall not make wealth use- less, and quite another to say that public opinion is so sacred that it is at perfect liberty to appropriate to the most frivolous objects, so long as they satisfy the conditions of exciting no petty religious jealousy, wealth originally intended for great and weighty purposes which are still held to be sound and good by a large pro- portion of the people to whose use it actually goes. Mr. Birrell appeared to contend that because the purpose to which a testator has devoted his money has become objectionable to (say) 60 per cent. of a population, it is perfectly right and legitimate that these 60 per cent. shall interfere and say, 'We dis- approve this trust, and therefore we will devote the pro- ceeds to erecting museums or respectable music-halls, and the 40 per cent, of us who would have greatly preferred the older and much more serious purpose, must congratu- late themselves that the whole has not been given to some private person who happened to be quite willing to accept it, as so many abbey lands were under the arbitrary decree of Henry VIII. or his favourites.' It is of course better to endow cricket or athletics of any kind, or even popular music, than to swell the property of unscrupulous nobles. But it does seem to us intolerable to put on the air of great reformers, because you propose to snatch from a living and active and useful Church, property willingly given to it in past ages, merely because there have grown up differences of opinion which make a majority of the people jealous of the influence of that Church and anxious to strip it of property which they choose to suppose that the testators, if they had lived to the present day, would have given to Nonconformist bodies. Of course we do not know that it would not have been so devoted, nor do we know that it would. We cannot tell. But if the majority of Welshmen some century or so hence become Churchmen again, as they very possibly may, how would the Nonconformist minority like the new generation to insist on seizing the endowments of the Nonconformist sects for such purposes as Art Galleries or popular amusements, only on the ground that the testators of those endowments might, had they lived to the present day, have changed their minds as to the uses to which they desired their property to be devoted ? It seems to us that the new doctrine about the right of the age to assimilate to its own temporary tastes all the most serious trusts of a past generation is a most mis- chievous and unreasonable one. What can be less just than to assume that because a past generation was serious, and the present generation is either frivolous, or serious in a quite different sense, and seriously jealous of the seriousness of its ancestors, it has the right to con- fiscate the endowments it disapproves, though they are being actively used, to the great benefit of the minority of the new generation, and to devote them to some more or less neutral purpose, of which the most that can be said is, that nobody will be the worse for it, and some may probably be the better ? If you can show that the uses to which the trust-property is devoted are either abuses or uselessnesses, that is a different matter altogether. But no one asserts that of the endowments of the Chunk. in Wales. They are all used, and economically used, and moreover they are very inadequate to the purposes for which they are wanted. All that can be said against them is, that they are uses dis- liked by the majority of the people of four dioceses. But there are other dioceses in England of which the same may be said, and no doubt, if the Welsh Church is disendowed, we shall soon have preachers all over England asking for the piecemeal disendowment of the Church in their parishes, and for the endowment of co-operative dairies or halls of amusement or parish athletics, out of the spoils. Will that be a reasonable or wise demand ? It seems to us a very unreasonable and unwise one. The sole excuse for it is that the machinery of the State has been employed to en- force voluntarily bestowed tithes which might, and perhaps would, have been withdrawn had not the State enforced them. But that was so long ago that property has been bought and sold for many generations subject to this rent- charge, and it cannot be pretended that any recent genera- tion has been taxed afresh for the purposes of an unpopular religion. The farmers, from whom till quite recently the tithe was collected, were never a penny the worse for it, and the landlords, who really lost it from their rent, were generally paying, and often willingly paying, for the support of their own religion. To our minds, the State has no right to meddle with endowments that are -srving the use for which they were intended, and serving it well. In the case of Ireland it was not so. They had been diverted from the service of the religion of the Irish people,—a religion which the people had never aban- doned,—and they ought to have been reappropriated to the religion of the Irish people, when the disendowment took place. There is no parity at all between the mis- appropriation of resources intended for the benefit of the Irish people to a very small proportion of the Irish people, and the retention by the Welsh Church of resources which were given to the very Church which now holds them, and for the benefit of the same teaching which it still teaches, and which have never belonged to any Church which represented the faith of Wales any better than it now represents that faith.
The new and petty jealousies of classes and institutions seem to us a very unsatisfactory sign of the times. As we said last week, the democracy is getting thin-skinned, and the various Dissenting sects are getting even more thin-skinned than the democracy at large. We can under- stand the argument against Establishment on the ground that it gives an undue influence to a particular religion. But we cannot at all understand the defence of Disendow- ment on the plea that part of the existing property of the Church, having been probably secured by the help of a law which could not be passed now, it is necessary to rob it at haphazard, without any pretence of an exact, or even roughly fair calculation, of a certain portion of its revenues, in order to appease the jealousy of sects which think them- selves unfairly dealt with. That is a principle which would soon end in stripping families which have inherited property from ancient gifts of Kings and courtiers, and that too only in order that our citizens may not have the annoyance of feeling that they are outshone as a mere consequence of the arbitrary deeds of departed despots. If we are to pick all the holes ii, titles to property which careful historians would enable us to pick, the security, not merely of institutions, but of a vast quantity of private property, would soon be abso- lutely extinguished. Would society be the better, or very much the worse, for such a change as that ?
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