CANON SCOTT HOLLAND ON WELSH DISE STABLISHMENT. B ELIEVERS in the
Revolution of 1688 may be thank- ful that Canon Scott Holland was not in power under Queen Anne or George I. Had he been, the Pre- tender would undoubtedly have been restored. We know now that popular feeling was hostile to the new order of things ; that if the nation had been freely and often con- sulted, the superficial discontents that accompany all political change would have blinded Englishmen to the solid advantages of the Revolution Settlement. But, according to Canon Scott Holland, the men who were then in authority ought to have sacrificed the solid advantages to the gratification of the superficial dis- contents. No matter how convinced they may have been that the security and prosperity of the nation depended on the maintenance of the Hanoverian Succession, they should have remembered that "law is limited by popular consent," and that "the nobility of an ideal cannot cancel the necessity of winning this consent." They might have realised as strongly as possible the dangers from which England had escaped by getting rid of the House of Stuart ; but all the same, it would have been their duty to expose her to these dangers once more. Popular consent would have been wanting to the Revolution, and, without popular consent there can be no lawful Government.
It may be a relief to our readers to know that Canon Scott Holland is not meditating a reversal of the Settle- ment of 1688. He is not a convert to the White Rose, nor does he feel under any obligation to speak of Queen Victoria as the Princess Dowager of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The diffi- culty about the Revolution is merely a difficulty of analogy. All that it comes to is that Canon Scott Holland, had he lived two centuries ago, would have been "bound to win the consent and the free-will of the people engaged," and if he had failed, to make way for others who might hope to be more fortunate. The particular obligation that devolves on him at this moment has reference not to the occupancy of the Throne, but to the establishment of the Church in Wales. "We cannot," he told the Christian Social Union last week, "force upon the Welsh an ideal of a national Church which they refuse and repudiate." Canon Scott Holland has nothing to say against the ideal in itself. Indeed, he has a much higher opinion of it than he has of the alterna- tive ideal. That alternative ideal is, he confesses, a poor and thin one. It" comes from the individualistic, narrow Liberalism of fifty years ago." It belongs to the period when Liberals "were simply doing negative work ;" when they were "removing obstructions and undoing wrongs ; " when they "had to be taught to respect the individual conscience." Still, though the hatred of the Welsh to the Established Church is only a tender corn, it must be deferred to. It is not pleasant, indeed, to be reminded that corns are so tender, to be compelled to put up with an ideal "narrow and small and poor and thin." But this is one of the sacrifices that the Liberal creed demands. The root- principle of democratic government is that law is "limited by popular consent," and the law which establishes the Church in Wales, fails to satisfy this indispensable test. Eighty per cent. of the Welsh people say to the Estab- lished Church, You cannot be my spiritual organ, you know it, and you ought to go ; ' and under these circum- stances, in Canon Scott Holland's opinion, the Established Church "should simply not fight, but go."
If Establishment, as distinct from Endowment, were a reality in Wales, we could understand Canon Scott Holland's position better. By Establishment, we mean the possession and exercise of certain privileges. There was a time, of course, when Establishment did mean this.,—:when membership of the Established Church was a distinct advantage to a man, when it was a condition of holding certain offices in the State, and of enjoying the full rights of citizenship. Had this state of things continued in Wel( s, one of two things must have been done. Either the Church, while remaining es- tablished, must have been deprived of rights which naturally made her hated by non-Churchmen, or she must have been disestablished. But the former process has already been carried out. Membership of the Established Church no longer confers a single privilege ; non-member- ship of the Established Church no longer entails a single disability. To belong to the Established Church simply means that a man chooses to avail himself of certain opportunities of worship secured to him by law. The Church of England is established in the sense that the British Museum is established. Every Englishman has a right, if he chooses, to use the British Museum to study the Elgin Marbles at Bloomsbury, or the geological collections at South Kensington, free of charge ; and wherever there is a church, every Englishman has a similar right to avail himself of the services which the law directs to be cele- brated there. If we look at the money question from Canon Scott Holland's point of view, we fail to see that the position of the Welsh Nonconformist is in any respect worse than the position of the man who does not care for Greek art or for fossil remains. In one case as in the other, public money is spent in a way which gives A or B no satisfaction. Quakers are even worse off, since the outlay on the Army and Navy not merely gives them no satisfaction, but implies an expenditure which they think positively wrong. Would Canon Scott Holland levy no taxes for the purposes of national defence in Wales, sup- posing that 80 per cent, of the Welsh people were Quakers ? The objection to ecclesiastical endowments is now of the purely dog-in-the-manger order. The Nonconformists do not ask to share in the benefits which these endowments confer,—which would be a reasonable demand ; they only insist that those who now enjoy these benefits shall be deprived of them. It would be equally just for a Member of Parliament to vote against the grant to the National Gallery on the plea that he had no taste for pictures, and wished the money to go to reduce the price of cigars.
We are disposed to think that Canon Scott Holland's attitude on this question is really the result not so much of his sense of justice as of his hopeful temperament. At the end of his speech, he drew a glowing picture of the results of Disestablishment derived from his experience at Oxford. When University tests were abolished, "we went about," he said, "like mice. We crept about in corners, and we thought that we should eat cheese in the back par- lours for the rest of onr mortal days." Instead of this, Churchmen soon found that they were in a better position than before. The abuse had gone, "and your lips were loosed, and you could speak to the people in front of you, and they believed your words." But Canon Scott Holland forgets that at Oxford there was a real sharing of privileges which, before the passing of the University Test Act, had been confined to Church- men. Under the old system, a Dissenter might come up as well qualified as any of his fellows to win scholar- ships and fellowships, and to take honours in the schools. But between him and the enjoyment of these advantages was interposed a barrier which he could not conscientiously pass. He must sign the Thirty-nine Articles before he could matriculate in the University. At Cambridge the barrier was shifted a little further on, but in the end it was equally prohibitive. To every student the time came when he must either declare himself a member of the Church of England, or forfeit advantages to which he had made good his intellectual claim. Where is there anything comparable to this in the case of the Welsh Nonconformist ? What are the "privileged positions" from which be is shut out, because he is not a member of the Established Church? He is prevented, indeed, from attending the services at the parish church ; but the thing that stands in the way is his own want of will, and this would be equally efficacious if the Church were disestab- lished and disendowed. We are not questioning the right of the State to allocate so much of the revenues of the Church of England as is not derived from private endow- ments to other objects than those to which they are now devoted. We only ask what the reason for thus varying the use of these revenues really amounts to; arid we deny that the mere dislike of A that B should have something which A does not want, and would not have were it offered him, is in any sense a valid reason for making the change. Of course, if 'Wales gets a Parlia- ment and an Executive of her own, and ceases to be a, part of the United Kingdom, or to have any connection with England other than subjection to the same Sovereign, Welshmen will be able to do what they like in the matter. But to take Welsh Disestablishment in advance of Welsh Home-rule, is to put the cart before the horse ; and so long as the relative positions of the two questions remain unaltered, Canon Scott Holland's 80 per cent. argument is as irrelevant as it would be in the case of Cornwall.
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