In his address at the Diocesan Conference, Aberystwyth, on the
21st inst. the Bishop of St. David's dealt at length with the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, which the Government were definitely pledged to reintroduce and carry through Parlia- ment as soon as they could find a convenient season. In the course of a damaging criticism of the objects of the Bill, the Bishop laid stress on the drastic nature of the disendow- meat clauses, which formed more than three-fourths of the whole :-
"It takes away from the Church in Wales not only all ancient endowments, but also all modern grants of every kind made by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen Anne's Bounty, and it prohibits these two central Church Corporations from making any grants at all in the future to the Church in Wales. . • . . . All that the Bill leaves to the Church in Wales is the endowment which is derived from such voluntary contributions (e.g., those made in oonnexion with our Diocesan Fund), subsequent to 1662, as even the promoters of the Bill have to acknowledge to be voluntary contributions within their
own narrow and arbitrary sense of the term The total net endowed income of the Church in Wales for its ministry at the end of 1909 (including grants to curates from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners) was in round numbers £269,000, and only £111,000 of this income is parochial tithe. Out of this total net amount the Bill applied £202,000 to secular objects, took .447,000 away altogether from Wales to England, and left the Church in Wales only .420,000."
The Bishop urged on his hearers the duty of explaining the Bill to the people and dispelling their ignorance as to its objects. There was no reason for panic or despondency ; indeed, he was satisfied that neither this nor any other Bill for separate Welsh Disestablishment would become law.
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