Lord Beauchamp moved the Second Reading of the Welsh Disestablishment
Bill in the Lords on Tuesday in a cold and unsympathetic speech. His main argument was that the majority of the people of Wales asked for Disestablishment, and that the Welsh Church was the Church of the minority of Welshmen. Church and State were thus yoked together in an unwilling partnership. The results of Disestablishment in Ireland had been salutary, and the severance had done good in Canada, Ceylon, and New South Wales. Turning to the provisions of the Bill, he maintained that the real amount of disendowment which the Church would suffer was £51,338, or only about one-sixth of its present voluntary income. The Government could not compensate the curates because of what happened under the Irish Church Act. On the day the Act was passed the number of curates in Ireland was 467, and on the day it came into operation it had jumped up to 918, to whom £55,000 had to be paid. Lord Kenyon moved the rejection of the Bill as unwise, not wanted, and unjust.
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