THE CRY FOR DISESTABLISHMENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTLTOR.'l
Sra,—I heartily hope and somewhat confidently believe that sour article on "The Cry for Disestablishment" will give pause to some who are now inclined to press Liberal candidates for pledges upon this point. If not, I am sure they will have reason to regret it. Those who judge of the views of Nonconformists in relation to the Church of England solely by the platform utterances of some of the more active and prominent of their number, have no notion of the large proportion who would be very slow indeed to do anything to weaken that great historic institution. They know that it is doing a work to which their *own organisations would be wholly unequal, and they are not likely to be led away by abstract theories into a crusade of mere destruction.
But there is one point of some importance on which your article does not touch, though it bears very directly on the duty of electors in the next few months. One of the warmest supporters of the Liberation Society, Mr. Henry Lee, M.P., said not long ago in public that, so entirely was the work of that society directed to the formation of public opinion, that be would not even accept Disestablishment if offered, unless he was sure that the majority of the nation felt it to be the right and wise course. (I am quoting his words from memory, but have- no doubt that I have correctly retained their substance, for they struck me at the time as of very happy -augury.) How can it be argued, even if a majority of the members of the various committees of selection should succeed in forcing upon all, or nearly all, the Liberal candidates a pledge 'to vote for Disestablishment, that this will be anything like a judgment of the majority of the nation in favour of it P When- ever Disestablishment comes, if it is fated to come, it must be attended with a bitter sense of injustice on the part of a large minority. How unhappy would be the policy of forcing on premature action, the only result of which will be that this sense of injustice, and of folly besides, will be widely spread, even among the party which is in name triumphant.
To raise the question of Disestablishment at the next election would be not only to run grave risk of splitting the party, as you justly say, but it would be to intensify the evil which would result from success, and to shat us np to the alternative of a shameful defeat or of a victory still more "dishonest" and lamentable than defeat itself.
But the place from which I am writing bids me not to forget that the case of the Church in Wales is by no means the same as that of the Church in England. No one can reasonably assert that there is any danger of " Paganism" in the former part of our country, as there may be in the latter. The Non- conformists of Wales have proved their strength by providing for the religious life of the poorer districts in a manner to which there are few parallels in England. I think. it might even be said that, great as would be the loss to many of the educated if the Church in Wales were disestablished and disendowed to- morrow, the real vigour of spiritual life among the poor would hardly be exposed to the slightest danger, while certainly the "bitterness of sectarian feeling," and "the concern for the -triumph of any controversial doctrine," would be in no way increased.
The cases of Wales and England differ hardly less than those of Ireland and England ; and if the Liberal leaders should think that the time has come for action in the case of Wales, it will not be for any Liberal to hold back. For the voice of the Welsh people will be no less clear and unmistakeable than was that of the people of Ireland.—I am, Sir, &c., A. S. W.
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