CORRESPONDENCE.

THE PROFESSIONS PROFESSIONS AND ACTIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT.

Six,—The contrast exposed by you between the professions and actions of the Government is illustrated in the case of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, both in regard to the way in which it is forced through Parliament and to the provisions a

the measure.

1. According to the professions of the Government this is not a measure to which it ought to apply its power under the Parliament Act to evade an appeal to the country. The Prime Minister repeatedly declared during the debates on that Act that it was not intended to override public opinion, and the Colonial Secretary last January made the same profession in more specific terms. His words were :—

If this House were, without any public discussion, without any electoral authority, suddenly to introduce . . . a policy which few people believe commands any considerable amount of popular assent, I think they will be taking a course of action such as was never contemplated by the anthers or supporters of the Perlin, ment Act."

During the last general election no Cabinet Minister discussed Welsh Disestablishment in a single speech or mentioned it in his election address, and only thirteen Liberal candidates in England and Wales—four in England and nine in Wales—.

referred to it at all in their election addresses. Even the Chairman of the Welsh Parliamentary Party, Sir D. Brynmor Jones, 31.P., fails to claim that this Bill "commands any con- siderable amount of popular assent," for he sorrowfully confessed in an interview reported in the South Wales Daily .

News on December 26th, 1912, that the Bill had met with "the determined objection of a section of the Liberal Party

and the lukewarmness of nearly the whole." The action of the Government in using its power under the Parliament Act

to force the Welsh Disestablishment Bill through Parliament is therefore directly contrary to its professions. This contra- diction in the case of a Bill arousing strong religious feelings of repugnance is so scandalous as to warrant Mr. Bonar Law's warning to the Government on November 28th last:— "What is the value of your Welsh Disestablishment if the verdict of the neat election is against you ? . . . Does anyone doubt that if after you have carried that measure the election is against you . . . the first Act of the new Parliament would be to reverse what you are doing now ? What do you gain? You will have increased immensely sectarian bitterness, which on religious questions all over Great Britain was dying down. You will have increased it, and have increased it for nothing, because you will not have gained your object."

2. According to the professions of the Government upon the subject of Home Rule, a Bill specially affecting any part of the United Kingdom ought to be in accord with the views of the majority of the representatives of that part in the House of Commons. The part of the kingdom specially affected by this Bill is not Wales alone, but England and Wales together, for it is essentially a measure for the dismember- ment of the Church of England, and, as has been admitted by several Cabinet Ministers, a measure for its piecemeal dis- establishment and disendowment. It is a flank attempt to lay

down in advance the terms of English disendowment. The Westminster Gazette on December 21st last reminded Liberal members who felt that " it will look mean to take an intrinsically small sum " from the four poorest dioceses of the Church of England, that— "Needless to say, if there were nothing but money at stake we should be quite willing to see the Welsh Church left in possession of every penny which it now possesses. But very large issues will arise if ever the time comes when the Welsh precedent is quoted for an English Disestablishment Bill."

The division lists show that as far as the votes of the Parliamentary representatives of England and Wales together, apart from Scotland and Ireland, are concerned, there was a majority against the Government of twenty-four on the first reading, of sixteen on the second reading, while on the third reading the votes from England and Wales together were equally divided. When the terms of disendowment came to be discussed in Committee the Parliamentary representatives of England and Wales taken together gave a majority against the Government of forty-two for leaving the Church all its endowments except tithe, of twenty-seven for leaving the Church its glebe, of fifty-two for giving compensation to curates, while on Report the majority from England and Wales against the Government for leaving the Church its glebes went up to fifty-two. On these four crucial divisions upon the terms of Disendowment, primarily for Wales but ultimately for England, the Government was saved from defeat solely by the votes of Irish Nationalists, whose numbers, according to the Home Rule Bill, are to be largely reduced at the end of this Parliament. The use of Irish Nationalist votes to dictate the terms of the piecemeal disendowment of the Church of England against a substantial majority of the Parliamentary representatives of England and Wales taken together is a particularly audacious instance of the cynical sontempt of the Government for its own professions of policy.

3. The Government cannot escape from the moral obloquy of its own contradictions upon the pretext, manifestly opposed to common sense, that the terms of disendowment in this mean little Bill do not concern England but only Wales. In Clause 3 of the Irish Home Rule Bill the Government pro- fesses to prohibit a local majority in Ireland, even under Home Rule, from depriving any church of its lawful endowments. It will not do for the Government, therefore, to apply to Welsh Disendowment the excuse of a Welsh majority, which is only plausible in regard to Welsh Disestablishment by itself. The recent utterances of Welsh disestablishers have made this shuffling especially discreditable. One prominent Welsh member has said that "the only sort of programme

worth having" is " a programme with money at the back of it," while another prominent Welsh member has roundly declared that " disestablishment without disendowment is not worth asking for, much less fighting for," because it would be an " anaemia policy" and an " academical and infinitesimal reform," i.e., a very little thing which would do nobody any good. A deputation of sixteen Welsh ministers of religion escorted by a layman, presuming to speak officially on behalf of Welsh Nonconformists, warned Mr. McKenna last week that "rather than agree to any further modifications they would see the Bill dropped." It is fair to Welsh Non- conformists, in the light of this new departure, to observe that the support of a large and growing number of thoughtful men among them, who intensely dislike the idea of the secu- larization of religious endowments, has been obtained for this agitation on the pretence that it was primarily an agitation, as in a former generation it was, for " the liberation of the Church from State control" and for "religious equality." The concentration at the present time of all the energies of the Welsh promoters of this Bill upon secularizing, at the expiration of vested interests, all ancient Welsh religious endowments without leaving to the cause of religion any fragment of them as a memorial of ancient Welsh piety lands the Government, if it continues to plead a Welsh majority in justification of this Bill, in flagrant contra- diction to its profession of the relation of its Home Rule policy to the security of religious endowments. The other reasons advanced in favour of the disendowment clauses of this Bill by members of the Government were so chaotic and contradictory of each other that it is plain they were mere excuses for action dictated by the political exigencies of a coalition Government in a tight place. Cabinet Ministers contradicted not only each other, but also themselves. Mr. Lloyd George contradicted Mr. Asquith. Lord Crewe and Sir John Simon threw over Mr. McKenna, who shifted his own ground, while, as Lord Hugh Cecil observed, to analyse Mr. Lloyd George's contradictory arguments is " to navigate chaos."

4. According to Mr. Lloyd George, the Government appointed the Royal Commission in 1906 because "the evidence and facts collected and sifted carefully by the Royal Commis- sion . . . would be accepted by English public opinion as more or less settling the dispute." The Bill, however, is to be forced through Parliament without giving English public opinion a chance of declaring its mind upon it in the light of the Commission's Report, which was not published in time to have any effect on the last general election. The Report makes clear that the trust property of the Church in Wales is insufficient for its growing work, and has been faithfully used during the last seventy years, in the words of Mr. Asquith, with "a strong spiritual devotion to the best needs of the Welsh people." The Government's Welsh Bill is, from the point of view of equity, in direct contradiction to the Report of its own Royal Commission.

5. The professed policy of the Government is to take money from the rich to give to the poor. The policy of the Welsh Bill is the exact reverse, for it takes, at the expiration of vested interests, all the ancient religious endowments of the poorest part of the Church of England, amounting to only £158,000 a year in all, and gives this relatively small sum to the wealthiest State in the world, whose revenue from taxation this year, as estimated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, comes to £195,000,000. This is why I call this Bill an essentially mean little Bill. In applying this religious trust property to education and public health, for which rates and taxes are available, the Government violates the fundamental principle of equity in regard to trust property.

6. The Government professes to base this Bill upon the principle of "religious equality." In its action, however, it dismembers the Church of England so as to leave the Church in Wales in the future the only religious body in Wales with its organization circumscribed by law within the geographical boundaries of the Principality. A Wesleyan Methodist witness before the Royal Commission would not hear of any legislative separation of the Welsh part from the English part of his denomination, since it would be " dis- astrous " to Welsh Methodists. The Welsh Federations of the Free Church Council rejected on May 18th, 1909, a pro- posal for the separation of the Welsh part from the English part of the National Free Church Council of England and Wales, inasmuch as "it would not be for the good of the movement in Wales to have a distinct separate Council ; . . . nothing but good could come of the uniting of England and Wales in one solid force." It is not "religious equality" for Parliament to inflict upon the Church a measure of dis- memberment which Nonconformists would not accept for themselves.

7. The Government professes to base its Welsh Bill upon the principle of " religious liberty." The dismemberment of the Church of England by Parliament is, according to Mr. McKenna, of the "essence" of his Bill. Lord St. Aldwyn justly said on October 13th, 1911: " Parliament had the right if it chose to disestablish the Church as a whole. It had no moral right to divide the Church in spiritual matters into two bodies." The Bishop of Oxford, in the House of Lords on February 12th last, described dismemberment as a proposal " which grossly offends the instincts and principles of Church- men," and pledged himself "to wage war without truce" against it. It is clear beyond any dispute that "to divide the Church in spiritual matters into two bodies by Act of Parlia- ment, as this Bill does, in a way " which grossly offends the instincts and principles of Churchmen," is an audacious violation of the fundamental principle of "religious liberty" fervently professed by the Government, for which no precedent whatever can be found either in the history of this kingdom or of any other civilized country in modern times.—I am, Sir,