Sir George Trevelyan's reply was like Mr. Asquith's speech,. virtually
a plea for Home-rule for Wales. He maintained that the position of the Welsh Members, as almost unanimous in their policy for Wales, and yet in a hopeless minority as a. very small section of that House, was almost intolerable, and asserted that the motives of the Welsh Liberationists were most disinterested and noble, and contained no tinge of envy or jealousy. Bat if so highly disinterested, why do they claim the religious endowments given chiefly by Church- men to the Church; and that not even for the religious uses of their own religious bodies, but for secondary and almost- trivial purposes, the only serious object being apparently to level down the Church to the level of the sects? As a plea for Home-rule for Wales, Sir G. Trevelyan's speech had some power, as a justification of a very jealous and niggardly scheme of Disendowment, it had none. Monday's debate was not of the same importance, though Sir Edward Clarke made a very amusing application of the parable of the good Samaritan to the subject in debate. The thieves,. he said, who robbed the Jewish traveller and left him half- dead, should have defended themselves as Mr. Asquith defended the Government for proposing to rob the Welsh Church. The traveller, they should have said, was too- wealthy, and needed poverty and calamity to save his soul. If they could only give him a splendid opportunity of prac- tising fortitude, patience, and resignation, they would have proved themselves his greatest benefactors.
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