LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT.
[To TRIO EDITOR OP TOO " SPROTATOR.1 Sin,—I have read with great interest the letter of Mr. John Owens in your last issue. Of its moderation and courtesy I will only say, 0 si sic amnia! I feel some sympathy for his contention. The statistics compiled for the Royal Commission by the various religious denominations have, I assume, been submitted in good faith, and I doubt the fairness and the wisdom of trying to discredit them. Discrepancies there may have been between the Noncon- formist Year-books and the compilations of the Evidence Committee presided over by Sir Herbert Roberts. Similar discrepancies were alleged to exist between the records of the Church of England Year-book and the evidence com- piled by the four dioceses. I dare say also it is true that John Jones, the Calvinist, was shown under cross-examination to have accidentally counted the same man twice. It may also be true that John Jones, the Churchman, under the stress of cross- examination, may have been proved to be vague and unreliable. Making full allowance for these natural lapses, I think it will be our wisdom to take the figures as they stand. If, however, statistics are in this controversy to be articulus stantis aut cadentis eccicsiae, then we must insist upon an official Parliamentary Census. While I am prepared to accept the figures as they stand, I claim the right to criticise their comparative value and significance. For example, the Nonconformist Sunday-school occupies in importance and numbers a different position among Nonconformists from that which the Sunday-school occupies in the. Church. The same remark applies to the Nonconformist member and the Church communicant. The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists gave in 1907 the total number of their members as 189,164, and of their hearers or adherents as 343,757, not quite two and a half times the number of members. " Adherent " or " hearer " is defined as including every man, woman, child, and infant that can be regarded as belonging to the denomi- nation. Deducting, therefore, from this total children and infants, it is clear that the number of adult adherents loft is comparatively small. The number of Church com- municants is 193,000. It is my belief that the number of those who would outer themselves as Church-people would be at least four times this number.
I have not, however, ventured to trespass on the hospitality of your columns in order to indulge in statistical com- pilations and conjectures, to which I do not attach supreme importance. I do, however, regard the speeches of the Bishops of Birmingham and Southwark as supremely important and ominous. The Bishop of Birmingham, with courage albeit with a note of sadness, declared clearly for disestablishment, and for some measure of disendow- meat for the whole Church of England. The Bishop of Southwark, while sympathetically regarding the arguments adduced for this declaration, did not it is true, vote against the resolution in Convocation, but his support did not go much beyond the position of "as at present advised." I do not presume to deal with the arguments of the Bishop of Birming- ham, or to discuss his general attitude on the questions of disestablishment and education. To those who have followed closely his utterances in recent years it is clear that he repre- sents a rising stream of tendency in the English Church ; but, unless I am gravely mistaken, it is a stream of tendency which is more likely to fall into the Tiber than into the Thames.
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