THE WRONG AND RIGHT WAY OF DEFENDING THE WELSH CHURCH.
THE opposition to the Welsh Suspensory Bill runs some risk of being hindered by the desire of some of those who direct or take part in it to overstate their case. It is not only that men who feel strongly are apt to speak strongly. That does but lead to violent language, and violent language is soon discounted and soon forgotten. It is that men who think that a particular course of action, is wicked as well as inexpedient, find a difficulty in con- fining themselves to the political side of the objection. If every one were logical, this would not much matter. The object of both parties would be the same, and it would be a consideration of no moment that they justified their pursuit of it on different grounds. Unfortunately, every one is not logical, and we constantly meet people who say that they cannot work with So-and so, not because they disapprove of what he is trying to do, but because they cannot admit the force of the reasons for which he does it. We do not defend this frame of mind ; we only say that it exists, and that, as it exists, it is expedient to make allowance for it. If that allowance is not made we shall be very likely to alienate some who might otherwise have helped us, while we shall gain over nobody who is not ours already. Much of what is written or spoken against the Suspensory Bill, or rather against the scheme of Dis- establishment and Disendowment which the Suspensory Bill takes for granted, seems to us to be open to objection on this ground. Instead of resting the opposition to the Bill on arguments which every defender of an Established Church can make his own, some reasoners prefer to take what they regard as higher ground, and to denounce Disendowment as an act of sacrilege and as a robbery of God. We can quite understand that those who take this view of it, feel that to oppose it on the plea that it is diverting money from a useful purpose to a useless one, and surrendering a solid, practical advantage because the Nonconformists cannot bear that the Church should have what they do not want, is to prefer the half to the whole. But what we want them to consider is whether a half which all sup- porters of the Established Church can make their own, is not better than a whole which is only shared by a few. Will not the opposition be more homogeneous, and work together with greater good-will, if those who compose it are willing to confine themselves to arguments of which all can see the force, than if one section of them is using language which the rest regard as extravagant or untrue? We are all agreed that Disendowment would be a wanton sacrifice of money now devoted to a very useful purpose. Some of us think it would be more than this,—that it would be impious, as well as inexpedient. But those who are convinced of its impiety will not oppose it any the less because they limit themselves to the objection of inex- pediency ; whereas those who take this tower ground may be so offended at what they think the extravagance of the charge of impiety, that they may refuse to co-operate with those who bring it. Perhaps we shall make this clearer if we consider for a moment the nature of the argument we are deprecating. Church property consists, in the main, of tithes, the col- lection of which can be enforced by law, and of lands or money given by individual Churchmen. The former derives its main value from the action of the State. If the State had made no special laws to secure its being paid, or if the State were now to repeal those laws, tithe would practically cease to exist. There is no need, there- fore, for Parliament to take away this form of endowment from the Church ; it would be quite enough for the purposes of Disendowment if it left the clergy to get their tithes without any special help. Is it reasonable to claim a religious sanction for property of this kind P No doubt, if we look to the antiquity of the charge, and the fact that the land has been bought over and. over again for less money than it would have fetched had no such impost been in ex- istence, it is as much property as houses or agricultural implements. But if we look to the method of collection, it is an impost very much like any other impost. It is levied without reference to the religion of those from whom it is due. It was enforced, till quite lately, by the same process of distraint that is em- ployed in enforcing payment of rent. Does the cause of religion benefit by the argument that a tithe- payer who is in arrear is robbing not man but God ? Is it not, at all events, essential to the fair use of such an argument that the defaulting tithe-payer should himself be a member of the Church of England, and admit that money due to the Church of England is money due to God ? Should we think it reasonable if Englishmen in India were compelled to pay a tax for the support of a Hindoo temple or a Mahommedan mosque, on the plea that Hiridoos or Mahommedans held that the tax, having been originally granted to God, could never be diverted from its original object ? To rob God, must mean to with- hold money which God regards as dedicated to his service. But if the body which has the use of this money is not one of which 0-ad approves, how can it be robbery to take it away ? The whole theory rests on the assumption that the Church of England is the true Church, and that money given to the Church of England is in a peculiar sense given to God. We say nothing as to the truth of this assumption ; we only point out that to put it forward as a ground for resisting Disendowment, may make it difficult for those who cannot make it their own to co-operate heartily with those who can. There is another argument often used which at first sight may seem less open to question. It makes no reference to any special religious sanction ; it only claims for the Church the same right to be pro- tected in the enjoyment of her property that is en- joyed by every other corporation. And undoubtedly in some countries this claim is a valid one. It was so far recognised in France, even at the time of the first Revolu- tion, that the National Assembly only evaded it by denying the legitimacy of any corporation. The foundation on which it rests is that the property of the Church was originally given by individuals to a body of which, and to purposes for which, they heartily approved ; and that it is as much robbery to take it away from the Church now, as it would have been to take it away on the day when it first became hers. It is evident that this consideration involves the moral identity of the corporation at all times of its history. It is assumed that what the donor wished to give to the Church of the fourteenth century, he would equally wish to give to the Church of the nineteenth century, because he would recognise in the Church at the later date the essential features which he had been familiar with at the earlier date. Legally, of course, there is a perfect identity between the two. But is there a moral identity ? To this question—and it is a vital question from the point of view of the sanctity of ecclesiastical endowments—we get widely divergent answers. The High Churchman declares that the moral identity is complete. All that is essential existed in the Church then, and exists in the Church now. The only changes that have taken place relate to matters of secondary moment. Un- fortunately, this view of the matter is challenged from two opposite quarters. The Low Churchman admits no such identity ; the Roman Catholic admits no such identity; and whatever we ourselves may think about it, we cannct but feel that it is a matter of absolute uncertainty whether, if a donor of the fourteenth century had lived on to the sixteenth, be would have beheaded others with Henry VIII., or have been beheaded himself with Sir Thomas More. Before, then, we can build the case for endowments on the indefeasible right of corporations to the property given to them, we have to determine wheth(r the reforms of the sixteenth century have not so changed the Church of England as to make it impossible to say whether the donors of a previous century would have accepted or rejected them.
It appears, then, that both the sacrilege argument and the corporation argument are two-edged weapons which, in expert hands, may readily be turned against those who wield them. No such objection applies to the common- sense contention that whether ecclesiastical property belongs in the last resort to the Church or to the State matters little, since on either ground we are prepared to resist any variation in the uses to which it is at present applied. If it be Church property, let the Church enjoy it undisturbed. If it be national property, let the nation continue as heretofore to assign the usufruct of it to the Church. Between those who are agreed as to who shall possess an estate there need be no serious controversy as to the nature of the title by which it is held.
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