THE REFERENDUM AT WORK.
[To TUB EDITOR OF TUE "SPECTATOR"]
Sre,—The result of the Referendum on the question of the separation of Church and State which was submitted to the people of Neuchiltel on Saturday and Sunday, January 19th and 20th, may perhaps be of interest to some of your readers, and though it only directly affects a little Swiss canton of some hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, yet it may possibly lead to wider results in Switzerland and elsewhere. By 15,000 to 8,000 votes the people of Neuchitel showed themselves unmistakably opposed to the separation of Church and State and in favour of the establishment of religion. In France, distant but a few miles, the Church has been found wanting. It has reso- lutely set itself against all progress, it has refused to admit free inquiry, it has failed to detect the spirit of Christ in the cry for justice between classes, it has allowed itself to be dominated by a distinctly anti-national policy. But here the Church has been in the closest possible touch with the nation ever since the Reformation, and it has continued to be so since 1873, when all subscription to articles of religion was finally abolished, The established results of critical inquiry are being silently and slowly absorbed by a clergy whose consciences are untrammelled. There is no intellectual estrangement between the clergy and the educated laity. Hence the tide in favour of the separation of Church and State which has been flowing so strongly from over the border has been arrested, and religion will gontinue to receive a national recognition. One trusts that the nationalist majority will be generous, and that a real grievance—that of coin- pulsory Church-rates—will speedily be removed.—I am,
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