The Welsh Disestablishment Bill has given rise to some remarkable
speeches during the week. Yesterday week, Mr. Henry Matthews (the Home Secretary of the Conservative Government) delivered a speech from the Roman Catholic point of view, which Mr. George Russell subsequently described as a defence of a Church which mast, to the orator's mind, have been regarded as "an established heresy and an endowed schism." But there is really nothing remarkable in a Catholic's thinking that an established heresy is better than rampant indifference, and an endowed schism than "a Galli° who cares for none of these things." That was Cardinal Newman's view; and Mr. Matthews enforced it. He specially criticised the arguments for, and the methods of, the Disendowment proposed by the Government. Be maintained that before you take away property from a great institution you should at least show as much reason for taking it away as you would in the case of private property taken away for a public object; yet Parliament would never sanction the taking away of private property without compensation, in order to found a parish hall or a parish museum. The- Government first maintained that the Church was de- nationalised for the purpose of abolishing it, and then that: itsproperty remained national, in order that they might devote it to the purposes of public diversion. Mr. Asquith's- quotation of the Welsh chiefs' complaint to Innocent ilL of the selfishness of the Norman Bishops was going a long way back. He could quote most harrowing passages about the making of the New Forest by William the Conqueror, but would that be sufficient to sustain an argument for the dis- establishment of Queen Victoria ? And he condemned with great force the arrangements intended to prevent the Dia- established Church from recovering from this great blow.
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