THE WELSH CHURCH BILL.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1667, 6 February 1913, Page 6

THE WELSH CHURCH BILL.

« — • » Although the British Government has been very. adroit in managing the mixed programme which is forceu upon it by its mixed composition, it lias been unable to hold its constituent parts-, strongly enough together to conceal that it is merely a Faction Trust, each clement of which must support, however distasteful, _ the policy of every other of the factions. On /the Home Rule Bill it maintained, on the whole, something near its electoral majority; but on the Welsh Church Bill it has suffered many virtual reverses. Over and over again its proposals to. despoil the Church in Wales have been saved only by tho votes of . the Irish Nationalists, who may, and doubtless do, privately dislike the Bill, but who cannot endanger Home Rule for a conscientious scruplo about a question which is not an Irish question. To-day it is reported that the majority of tho Government, on a vital amendment, sank to 28. Since the Nationalists must havo voted, as on previous occasions, for the Government, it is clear that without tho Nationalist vote the Government would have been badly defeated. There could be no elearor evidenco than this that even the increasingly difficult and dangerous position "of the Government has failed to dissuade a large section of tho Liberal party proper from recording its hostility to what"tho Catholic Tablet hft3 called "tho meanest little. Bill." The Tablet is a sound witness in this matter, becausc it; has consistently denied that tiie Church has a perfect title to lands originally given to tho Catholic Church, often expressly for the saying of Masses for the dead.' And the Tablet declared that in the early committee stages tho opponents of the Bill had been "very successful in showing that it inflicts real hardship without doing good to anyone." ft proceeds to quote tho Bishop of St. Asaph, who said that if the Bill passed his successor would have "only the bare walls of the Bishop's Palace, every stone of which wfja 'built and'paid for since 1791 by two of his predecessors." Of tho 209 parishes in the. diocese, 112 would be left without one single penny of their, ancient' endowments: and of the 300 clergy, 100 would be turned, adrift at once, under the Billy without compensation. ■■ •The best tho Government could do was to urge, or to support the Welshmen who urge, that the Church must be despoiled because' it has no real title to its property. The Opposition retorted that in that case the nneierlt endowments should bo restored to the Catholic Church.' But the Welsh members care just, as little for the Catholic Church as for tho Anglican Establishment. ' They are simply bitter men "out for blood." ■As.the Saturday Review observed: |. From Radicals themselves '■ wo' gather that the only.living force in the present demand for Disestablishment is - h senso' of social inferiority. If there is this social grievance, how : will Disestablishment cure it or inalto it less? You can sever the Church from Stato by law, you can take away tho Church's property by law, but you cannot by any law mako people regard others as their equals socially if they do not. ' That mere revenge and spoliation are tho true purposes of the Sill is clear enough^from the Government's refusal' to , listen to. either of the only two courses which might justify disestablishment and disendowment. Theso are: first, the restoration of tho properties to the Catholic Church, and second, tho division of the property amongst air religious bodies. The Tablet gives prominence to a passage in a speech in which Lord Hugh Ceoil made this point. Lord Hugh declared that he could understand those who made either of these contentions, but "the one thing that seemed ito him absolutely remote from tho original intention of the donors was to treat the property as national property; and give it to any sort of national or public purpose." But, as tho Tablet pointed out' in a sentence that contains the whole moral case against tho Bill, "tho Government has to reckon with Mr. Lloyd-Gkorge and' the Nonconformist stalwarts, and so tho ancient endowments consecrated for ovor to the use of religion are, to go to provide provincial museums and municipal wash-houses." It is small winder that so many Liberals are displeased with the Bill that the Government can only scrano through inow with the aid of the Nationalists.