NONOONFORMIST ENDOWMENTS.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.'] SIR,—In his letter to you last week under the above heading Mr. Edward Robinson is neither correct as to his facts nor as to his law. He says that the tithe "is, like the Poor-rate, enforceable by law, and, like the Poor-rate, created by law," but that the other endowments of the Church are purely volun- tary gifts or bequests, and the Welsh Disestablishment Bill introduced by Mr. Asquith in 1896 (sic) reserved this latter class of endowment to the Church with the church buildings and parsonages. Mr. Asquith was out of office in 1896, but his Bill of 1895 proposed to confiscate and secularise all these other endowments except those given since 1703 (see Clauses 3 to 5 and 9). No doubt the tithe is "enforceable by law," but so also are the other endowments, as Mr. Robinson would speedily discover if he endeavoured to appropriate any of them to himself, or if, being a tenant on one of them, he refused to pay his rent to the ecclesiastical landlord. But the tithe was not, "like the Poor-rate, created by law." As the late Lord Granville stated, when he and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salis- bury were asked whether the Bishops and clergy of the Church of England were State-paid (see Daily News, February 18th, 1885), "tithes existed in England before Acts of Parliament." The laws relating to them did not create them, but regulated their payment. Mr. Robinson should consult on the subject the late Lord Selborne's " Defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment " and " Ancient Facts and Fictions Concerning Churches and Tithes."
Previous page
