MR. CARVELL WILLIAMS ON DISESTAB- LISHMENT.
SPECIAL interest has been lent to the autumnal meetings of the Liberation Society this week by the celebration of the jubilee of Mr. Carvell Williams's appointment as Secretary of that body. A handsome present was made to Mr. Williams, together with an address dwelling upon the great value of his services, and many letters were read from eminent Nonconformists giving emphatic testimony to the high esteem in which his character and work are held by those most nearly acquainted with both. There was also a letter from Mr. Gladstone containing more than one entirely characteristic touch. The pronounced and undisguised High Church- man, who for so many years commanded the affectionate loyalty of the modern representatives of Puritanism, acknowledges that his "point of view differs from that of Mr. Carvell Williams with respect to Church estab- lishments." But "apart from the question of mere con- currence of opinion "—the "mere concurrence" would have placed the authorship of the document, if unsigned, beyond dispute—" it is always pleasant to see consistency, devotion, unselfishness, and ability receive their just reward." Mr. Carvell Williams replied very pleasantly and suitably to those who had assembled to make him both a substantial and an honorific acknowledgment of his life- long labours; and subject to some such reservation as that made by Mr. Gladstone, we find nothing to criticise in the tone of his speech of acknowledgment. It was, indeed, both a modest and an interesting speech, marked by self- restraint, not only in its personal allusions, but also in its treatment of the progress of the enterprise with which the speaker's name has always been so prominently associated. There was an almost pathetic candour in the manner in which, after a brief review of what might be claimed as the successes of the movement, Mr. Carvell Williams mentioned that he was sometimes asked, "Are you satisfied with your fifty years' labour ? " and again, "Do you ever expect to see the Church disestablished?" He gave his hearers on Monday last no direct answer to those searching queries, and only observed—we quote the Daily News report—that "he had graduated in the school of patience, and had learned to wait as well as to labour. It was enough for him to have had a share in advancing so important a work. The expression of his friends' feelings that he had just received would have the desired effect of strengthening his bands and of encouraging his heart." These sentences give us quite as much light as we desire, or have any right to look for, upon the question whether Mr. Carvell Williams is satisfied with the net result of a half- century of activity on the part of the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control. We must consider for ourselves—and it is an inquiry full of interest—whether Mr. Williams and those who have acted with him have more reason for satisfaction or for disappointment with the fruits of their labours.
Beyond doubt the Liberationists, as the apostles of " religious equality," have a record of important successes to which they can point, as having been secured or promoted by their efforts. University tests have been swept away, and the education, and, with very few excep- tions, the emoluments, of Oxford and Cambridge have been thrown open to persons of any creed or none. The right of burial in his own parish churchyard, with a service conducted by any minister of religion chosen by his surviving relatives, has been secured to every parishioner. Nearly thirty years have passed since the Anglican Church in Ireland was disestablished and, though in a liberal and considerate fashion, disendowed. Twice within the present decade a Radical Government has sought to disestablish the Anglican Church in Wales, and to disendow it on lines far more severe than those followed in the case of the Irish Church. It may be a moot point in what degree the existence and activity of the Liberation Society contributed to the successful prosecution of the first three of the important enterprises just referred to, and to the measure of progress attained by the hitherto abortive fourth. But it can hardly be disputed that in regard to all these matters the political Nonconformists were "the backbone of the Liberal party." Negatively, also, they have accomplished a good deal. It was mainly to oblige them that Mr. Forster's Education Act, as finally passed, set up a system which, quite con- trary to its author's intention, pointed towards the (more or less) "painless extinction" of voluntary schools estab- lished by religious denominations. Whether officially or unofficially exercised, it was the power of the Liberation Society which led to the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's, in many respects, valuable Irish University Bill in 1873, and it is the fear of that Society and the body of feeling which it represents and concentrates that has been a main element in the prevention of any permanent settlement of the same problem down to the present day. This is no mean record for half-a-century of work on the part of any political organisation of a definitely sectional character. Compare it with that which can be shown by any other important body devoted to the pursuit of objects of a particular class—say, for example, the United Kingdom Alliance or the Aborigines' Protection Society—and we should be surprised if the promoters of those special move- ments were not to acknowledge themselves as being envious of the results, quantitative and qualitative, secured by the Liberation Society. Nor, in our opinion, is there any doubt that from a public point of view some of the positive achievements of that Society are distinctly sub- jects for congratulation. Its members deserved well of their country for their share in making the old Universities and their Colleges entirely national institutions. There was something essentially unsound in a system which shut out the sons of the leading classes in a great section of the nation from full participation in the benefits of the historic centres of national culture. Such a system, besides its injustice, could not but aggravate the nar- rowing and insulating tendency, on which Matthew Arnold dwelt so strongly, as the inevitable result of association with religious bodies lying more or less apart from the main current of national life. Again, the removal of the rural Nonconformists' grievance in the matter of burials was called for, not less clearly by policy than by equity. A memorable speech of Mr. Bright's in the later seventies—notwithstanding a dis- figurement in point of taste, due to a dramatic hesitation about the word "consecrated "—accomplished all that was still necessary towards the persuasion of fair- minded Churchmen that the villager's graveside was not the place for claiming his allegiance to the national Church. Not for a moment do we wish to under- rate or belittle either the genuine merits of some of the achievements of the Liberation Society, and those whom it has stimulated and supported, or the substantial character of much of its negative work, with which we do not sympathise. There too, no doubt, they honestly think, though we do not, that by averting or mitigating the results of proceedings which might suitably be stigmatised as "concurrent endowment," they have saved these islands from many evils and sorrows.
But then comes the question whether, when they survey the whole field of their operations during the last half- century, marked as it is by trophies of progress here, and of successful resistance to what they deem reaction there, they are one yard nearer to the great goal which they set out to reach. Our profound belief is that the contrary is the fact, and that the most thoughtful of the Libera- tionists, and Mr. Carvell Williams in particular, are clearly and sorrowfully aware of it. Many of us remember, and all of us have read, Mr. Gladstone's reply from the Treasury Bench, some five and twenty years ago, to a Disestablishment Resolution moved by the late Mr. Edward Miall, that before the Member for Bradford induced the House of Commons to vote with him, he would have first to convert the people of England. That, in our judgment, is precisely what the united efforts of the late Mr. Miall and his energetic colleagues have signally failed to do. The most en- couraging view of the facts to which Mr. Carvell Williams committed himself last Monday was that whereas "in the early days to be a Liberationist was to be disqualified as a Liberal candidate, now Liberalism and Liberationism had become synonymous terms." If by this it is meant to convey that no Liberal candidate has now a chance of being elected who is not ready to vote for the Disestablishment of the Church of England, we do not believe the facts are by any means in accord with that claim. At the same time, it must doubtless be acknowledged that a very much larger proportion of Home-rule Members of the House of Commons have avowed sympathies with Disestablishment than was the case with the Liberal party of twenty-five, or even a dozen, years ago. But what does this mean ? First, that under the present system of selecting candidates for Parlia- mentary elections any considerable section of voters in the party to which any political aspirant belongs has the power of enforcing acceptance of its shib- boleth on all but very strong - backed men. But beyond that, it is to be noticed that, the Liberal party having lost the greater number of its moderate adherents, who were opposed to Disestablishment, as they were to Home-rule and any other destructive remodelling of national institutions, the political Nonconformists, the bulk of whom, as they are now beginning to regret, accepted Mr. Glad- stone's Irish policy without question, have in very many constituencies an overbalancing weight in the councils of the party. In other words, the Disestablishment vote has gained in relative importance within the so-called Liberal party from reasons which are directly connected with the present extraordinary weakness of that party. It has aot gained absolutely in the electorate as a whole, and has, as we believe, lost a great deal in relative importance. Since Mr. Gladstone's challenge to the late Mr. Miall was given, Oa?, working-class element in the constituencies has been immensely increased, and those who know most of the working classes will be the least inclined to believe that the new voters have furnished a hopeful recruiting_ ground for the forces of Disestablishment. One reason for that fact lies undoubtedly in the disappearance of the burials grievance in the rural districts. In that respect an honourable success of the party of religious equality has turned to their own disadvantage. It would have been much more to their interest to nurse that grievance, but they were too honest for so Machiavellian a line of action, and thus lost an opportunity of associating with themselves politically classes of the population between whom and themselves there has never been much spiritual or ecclesiastical affinity. The number of rural Noncon- formists who preferred their own burial rites to those of the Church of England was never large, and has proved, it is said, in practice very much smaller than was antici- pated by the promoters of reform in the Burial Law. It would probably have grown if the reform had been longer opposed. So also would the number of cultivated Non- conformists with a grievance against the Church in regard to University education. The academic doors being thrown open, and the academic treasuries too, to candidates with the requisite intellectual equipment, whatever their re- ligious denomination, the Nonconformists entered in goodly numbers. It has been an excellent thing for them, and an excellent thing too for the intellectual life of Oxford and Cambridge. But it has not resulted in any considerable accession to the number of both highly cultivated and strongly religious Nonconformist leaders. Here, too, the effect of Liberationist success in detail has been to reduce, rather than increase, the chances of Liberationist triumph in the field at large. All this is to the credit of Mr. Carvell Williams and his friends. But, of course, the fact of their failure to advance along the whole line, and their signal defeat when, as in the case of the Welsh Church, they have tried to do so, shows that along with the removal of Nonconformist grievances has gone an immense and a steady development in Anglican devotion and efficiency. The High Church movement, which is denounced at meetings of the Congregational Union and the Liberation Society, is associated all over the country conspicuously, though of course not by any means exclusively, with a degree of clerical self-sacrifice and personal consecration which has had no parallel since the Reformation. In richness and variety of services, in adaptability to the needs created by the life of the masses, in intensity of spiritual fervour, the Church of England has been re-born within the last half-century, and that is the great reason why the Society, which was formed to deprive it of its national position and its endowments, cannot rejoice very loudly or confidently at the end of its fifty years of work. The people of England are not apt to discard or punish those who are rendering them large- hearted and devoted service.
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