§ On the first day of July next after the passing of this Act (in this Act referred to as the date of Disestablishment), the Church of England, so far as it extends to and exists in Wales and Monmouthshire (in this Act referred to as the Church in Wales), shall cease to be established bylaw, and, save as by this Act provided, no person shall, after the passing of this Act, be appointed or nominated by His Majesty or any person, by virtue of any existing right of patronage, to any ecclesiastical office in the Church in Wales.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSI beg to move, after the word "the" ["the first day"], to insert the words "expiration of two years."
This Amendment will have the effect of postponing the operation of the Clause until the expiration of two years after the 2527 passing of the Act. It appears to me that the question of time when the Bill is brought into force is of great importance. It depends on three considerations, and I wish to put each of them as shortly as I can. In dealing with this question of time, it is hardly possible to omit a somewhat general reference to the terms of the Clause, because they are necessarily of vital importance in considering the time within which the Bill should come into operation.
§ 5.0 P.M.
§ The CHAIRMANI do not wish to restrict the hon. Member narrowly. Just one other point: I should have called the attention of the hon. Member to the fact that his Amendment is not quite in the right form. He should move to leave out "the first day of July next," and substitute for those words, "expiration of two years."
§ Sir A. CRIPPSThe question put would then be, "That 'the first day of July next' stand part."
§ The CHAIRMANThat is so.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSAnd if those words are emitted, then of course the words of my Amendment would be put as if they were to be the substantive?
§ The CHAIRMANYes.
Mr. LLEWELYN WILLIAMSOn a point of Order, Sir. Will it be in order to discuss the Amendment of the Noble Lord the Member for Newton (Viscount Wolmer) to insert the words, in Sub-section (1) of Clause 1, after the word "law" ["established by law"], the words, "but shall not be separate from the remainder of the Church"?
§ The CHAIRMANIt does not appear to me that it arises on the question of time. The proposal here is that there shall be a longer time allowed, after the passing of the Act, for its coming into actual operation.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSI was about to say, in submitting my Amendment, that, having regard to the subject matter of the Clause, it appears to me to be a matter of great importance that there should be reasonable time allowed, after the passing of this Act, in order to proceed with any reorganisation which may be necessary under the proposals embodied in the Act, should this Bill by mischance or by misfortune become law. In one respect this 2528 Clause, for the point with which I am dealing, is absolutely and entirely distinct from the Irish precedent. I wish to put that quite fairly in regard to the point I am now dealing with, in order that it may not be said, in regard to the Amendment I am now proposing—and I think the same argument might be used as regards other Amendments—that, after all, we are only following the precedent established in the Irish Church Act. In the Irish Church Bill there was no question whatever of the dismemberment of the Church at all, and one of the great reasons which occurred to me why additional time is wanted is because, in this so-called Welsh Bill, we are really dealing with a portion of one Church. If the Bill is carried, it would necessitate the dismemberment of a body which is now one body, namely, the whole National Church, whether the dioceses happens to be in Wales or in any other part of the Kingdom. Just consider for a moment what that means. It is the first time, as far as I know, in this country, that a religious community has ever been dismembered compulsorily against the wish of its members. We are dealing, therefore, with an extraordinary important proposition. Let me take the case of the Nonconformist community. I say again, as I have often said, they ought to be treated with all respect when discussing matters of this kind. What would be said if, as regards the various Nonconformist communities which spread both into Wales and the other parts of the United Kingdom, you were to compulsorily dismember them and you were not to allow the members of a particular religious community in Wales to be a part of the same community that has residents in England who hold the same views that they do?
I should like to hear what the outcry would be if, as regards the Wesleyan community, or if as regards the various communities dealt with by the Free Church Councils, you were to pass an Act of Parliament saying, whether the members of that community desired it or not, that they were to be dismembered according to their territorial position. The point which has been put as to the feeling of the Welsh nationality has really nothing to do with a question of this kind. I agree that in religious matters religion overrides questions of nationality, yet no member of the Church of England desires to do anything, if he can help it, in contravention of what I call the spirit of Welsh nationality. But 2529 as a religious body, in our view, we have nothing to do with that, either one way or the other. But even assuming that the question of Welsh nationality comes in, how can any person who come from Wales desire that a religious body should be dismembered against the wish both of Welshmen and Englishmen? I believe the answer to this question on the other side would be, and I think the fair answer would be, "We do not desire it if it can be avoided." I beg to say that it can be avoided. Why should you break up Convocation, including both the Welsh part of the Church and the English part of the Church; why should you break up all the arrangements which we now have as regards the whole Church for common purposes? I am dealing not with our voluntary meetings, but the meetings which we have under the ægis of our existing constitution. It is an extremely important point, and I want an answer to it. What is there which Welsh nationality demands, what is there that the principle of religious equality demands, what is there as regards any principle put forward in favour of Disestablishment and Disendowment, which makes it right to dismember a religious community against the wish of all its members, wherever resident?
I beg to say that this is a wholly unparalleled suggestion which is being made. It is the use of coercive authority in matters of religion for which there is no precedent, and which this House has never heretofore exercised. If we are going to have this principle, which I consider a very monstrous principle, surely it is right that a dismembered community should have sufficient time to reconstitute itself, whether in Wales or in England. I think that consideration must appeal to everybody. How can that reorganisation be effected without you allow sufficient time for it after the passing of the Act? It is not an easy thing for the two disjointed members to reorganise themselves under the new conditions, and if you bring this Bill into operation before this reorganisation has been properly carried out, you leave both the portion in Wales and the portion in England subject to risks to which no religious community ought to be subject, even if you vote Disestablishment and Disendowment. I await an answer to my argument on this point. I protest in the name of the religious community to which I belong that this principle of coercive dismemberment is contrary to the whole principle and doctrine 2530 of religious freedom and religious equality as we have heard it heretofore in this country. Let me come to the next branch of this subject, the question of Disestablishment. Let us for a moment try to appreciate what that means. I am one of those who agree with the great dictum, often referred to, of Lord Mansfield, in dealing with the Toleration Act. He said that Nonconformist religious communities would properly be called Established according to the principles of our English law—Established in this sense, that they have got defined rights, defined property, and a defined constitution, protected under the legal rules and principles applicable to all corporations in this country. What I deduce from that is that, apart from the question of Establishment by law or not, you have the preceding consideration, as I have often put it, namely, the Establishment per se of a corporation with defined rights, defined privileges, and defined duties, and defined property, which is entitled to be considered from that point of view as one entity and one community. When we are dealing with the proposition in Clause 1 we have the expression "cease to be Established by law." What does that mean? Does that mean that the Church is no longer to be under what we call the Reformation Constitution—I mean the Acts of Unity.
§ The CHAIRMANI am afraid I have been misunderstood in my reference to allowing rather wide discussion on this Amendment. I did not mean that the whole Clause, or the principle of the Bill decided upon by the Second Reading, should be discussed. The real subject for discussion is the difference between the time of the passing of the Act and the time of its coming into operation, and I think that is the real purport of the Amendment.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSI bow to your ruling, Sir, and that was why I was anxious, in the first instance, to ascertain the limits of discussion to be allowed. I am dealing with the limit of time applied to the subject matter which I find in Clause 1, and what I am going to argue is that, having regard to the subject matter of that Clause, we ought to have an extension of time. I wanted to know, as regards the time limit, whether "Established by law" was some technical expression, or whether it referred to what we call established religion. I should have thought it would have been relevant to the 2531 question of time to know what the subject matter of the Clause is. I said on the point of dismemberment why I thought the time ought to be extended, because when you dismember a Church or community you ought to allow reasonable time for the reorganisation of a dismembered body. I assume for the moment we are dealing with Establishment by law in this Clause. Does that mean Establishment in the wider sense, or does it mean Establishment as brought about by the Reformation Statutes, and in reference to which I quoted Lord Mansfield's argument? If it means Disestablishment as regards the Reformation Statutes, and nothing else, and you leave the Church as an Established Church, although its statutory position has been so far altered, then I should agree, if I may say so, with great submission, that the period of time need not be so long; but, as I understand the Bill to mean, you do not limit the Establishment in that sense, and you mean that from top to bottom there is to be a new constitution differing entirely from the old constitution under which the Church is working at the present moment. If it is not a question of a new constitution—let me be careful about this—if it is merely a question, as it was in the time of the Reformation, of dealing with certain Statutes which affect the Establishment, that is one thing; but if, as I understand the Bill, under this Clause you mean something quite different, namely, a new constitution on a new foundation altogether, then I say myself distinctly that you must have a proper limit of time allowed in order that the new arrangements and the now constitution may properly be brought into force. I hope that will be dealt with. I do not think it will be out of order on this point, because to my mind it is a most crucial difficulty. It is vitally different to the Church, if I may put it in that way to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If yon are going to repeal certain Statutes affecting our Establishment, that is one matter. If you are going, on the other hand, to say you must have a new constitution from top to bottom, and that your old constitution is to be put into the fire and something substituted in its place, that is a different consideration altogether. If that is to be the proposal, and I gather that it is, then I say it is a monstrous suggestion that you could carry out that in a month or two after the passing of the Act, instead of 2532 giving sufficient time for having a reorganised body, with a new Constitution, which, as I read the Bill, is provided for it.
That is the second point I want to make, and let there be no mistake about it, in reference to what may be said by the Home Secretary or the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is an entirely different thing to repeal certain Statutes which now affect Ecclesiastical Law and the law of my Church, and it is an entirely different thing to Disestablish it and to introduce a new constitution from top to bottom. I want to know which is meant. I understand that the Bill means the latter, and if it does, then I say that the time given under Clause 1 is utterly inadequate. There is one other point which I admit is of wider range. I do not want to take up the time too long because many people want to bring to the notice of the House and the Committee important points which are raised under this Bill. There is another very important matter. I am not going into the question of mandate and matters of that kind, because I admit that is a Second Reading discussion in substance, and we get into a quagmire of difficulties and into the mere throwing across the House one at the other of reproaches when we come to this mandate point. This being a Bill dealing with the foundations of what I consider ought to be the religious constitution of this country, I want to go further than that. What I say is this, that supposing this Bill is going to be passed under existing conditions—that is to say, passed by the vote of one House only, and while there is no Second Chamber, under the Parliament Act—then under those circumstances the country is entitled to have reasonable and sufficient time before the Bill comes into operation, not only to consider that reorganisation, but really to consider—and it will be their first chance as I understand the matter—whether the Bill, although passed, should become operative at all. I think that is most important, because it is an entirely different point from the other point with which I am dealing. I am certain hon. Members opposite will appreciate this, that if something which touches their conscience and their faith very fully is being attacked, every Member opposite would say, "I may have to give way; I may be in a minority, but let us see what the people really feel and think about this in the first instance."
2533 That would be quite right, because as long as you have a representative system the whole basis of it is ascertaining as far as you can what the will of the electorate really may mean when they understand what the question is. We all admit that. Ought that not to be allowed in a Bill of this kind, and, as far as I can see, the only guarantee you have would be by postponing the operation of the Bill until an opportunity of that kind could be given. I say quite frankly that that is quite a different reason from my other reasons, but it is one of the reasons why I hope this Amendment will be carried, and I say it is a most legitimate reason. I am a law-abiding citizen; I am not in favour of law-breaking; but, on the other hand, surely I am entitled to say if a law is to be passed which excites all my feelings to the law-breaking point, if I ever were to do so, then surely I am entitled to say, as regards that Bill, that it ought not to be made a coercive Bill against my views until in the real and true sense I am satisfied, and those who agree with me, that we are bowing to the will of the majority of the electorate of the Kingdom. Hon. Members opposite must admit that that is a most important consideration. I am not going into it further at present. What you mean by law-abiding is really recognising, however much you may dislike the matter, that you are in a minority as regards the considered opinion of your country. That makes you submit, but until that is brought home to anyone on a matter of conscience and religion, you are stretching his law-abiding qualities to the utmost possible limit. Under your ruling, Sir, I do not think I ought to travel further as regards the Clause on this question of time, but I repeat the three points, and more particularly the first two, and I rely perhaps more particularly on the first one, and that is, that the fact that dismemberment of a religious community is being brought about for the first time is a new precedent and is, I say, out of conformity with everything Liberals have preached in the past as regards religious liberty and equality in the case of a Church. If the Church is to be dismembered, at least a reasonable time ought to be given to reorganise the two dismembered portions, and on that ground I move the Amendment, and you have already indicated how you would put the Question.
§ Mr. McKENNAThe first part of the hon. and learned Member's Amendment, I 2534 do not propose to oppose, that is to say, to leave out the words "First day of July next." I ought to explain to the Committee that those words were put originally in the Bill at a time when it was hoped, and when there was the somewhat sanguine expectation, that the Bill might pass the other House in the course of the present year. That would have left something over six months for the Bill to be brought into operation. I propose therefore, as we now see that the Bill cannot possibly become law this year, to leave out the words "First day of July next," but not to substitute, as the hon. and learned Gentleman proposes, an extended period of two years, but, as hon. Members will see, we have a proposal on the Paper that there shall be after the passing of the Bill into law a minimum period of six months, and by Order in Council an extension of that period, if required, to twelve months. For reasons which I can give, that time will, I think, prove amply sufficient to give the Disestablished Church sufficient time to organise itself. The hon. and learned Member made the point, and I think he put it as his strongest point, that by this Bill we are for the first time dismembering a Church. I would like to ask the hon. and learned Member whether Disestablishment of the Welsh Church is possible without dismemberment.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSCertainly.
§ Mr. McKENNAThat Disestablishment is possible?
§ Sir A. CRIPPSCertainly without dismemberment.
§ Mr. McKENNAPerhaps the hon. and learned Member would explain to me how we can Disestablish the English Church in Wales, by which I mean, bring the English Church in Wales into the same position as other Free Churches in Wales?—
§ The CHAIRMANThat is really opening up an argument which I conceive is an interesting one, but does not necessarily arise on this Amendment. The hon. and learned Gentleman put two alternatives, but did not argue the merits.
§ Mr. McKENNAI am only too glad to be relieved of the necessity of replying to that part of the hon. and learned Member's statement which I understand not to have been directly relevant to the discussion.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSIf I understood your ruling, it was this: What I said was that 2535 there was no precedent for the dismemberment of a Church up to this point, and that I consider that inconsistent with liberal thoughts on religious equality and religious freedom. What I want to know is, apart from the details, can the Home Secretary give any such precedents?
§ The CHAIRMANI thought that was the preamble of the hon. and learned Member's speech, and that he was leading up to the point that more time was required if his second proposition was not embodied in the Bill.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSI do not want to misunderstand you, and I do not want to argue the matter with you, but in that sense was I not right? I was saying that this Bill, or the first Clause, implies dismemberment and Disestablishment, which might mean one of two things. I said, taking that as the purport of the Clause and without going into details, whether on that basis the time should not be extended.
§ The CHAIRMANI think the hon. Member was right, and except in those opening sentences he did not really call for a reply on the merits to his first proposition, which was put as his preamble, and the point may arise on some later Amendment, but not on this.
§ Mr. McKENNAHe addressed his argument to the Committee by observing that time would be required for the two branches of the dismembered Church.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSYes.
§ Mr. McKENNAConsequently, he has got in his mind the conception of dismemberment as requiring time for the Church of England to heal itself, which I do not think is an idea ordinarily accepted. How can it be relevant to the time which should be given after the passing of this Bill and before it becomes operative in Wales to say that the Church of England in England, which has got all the time before it, should have an adequate period to heal itself from the wound? I cannot see the relevance of that argument. The only point which appears to me to be relevant in his observation is that the Church in Wales after Disestablishment will have to reorganise itself on a new basis, and I admit that, and SD far as time is concerned that appears to me to be the only relevant matter. The fact of dismemberment 2536 is not relevant to the question of time. Reorganisation is relevant to the question of time when the Church has to reorganise itself, but the fact that it was an integral member of the Church of England, and will still remain in communion with the Church of England and not Established, does not appear to me to be relevant to the question of time. I am going to submit to the Committee that the only point is, whether the time which we propose will give the new free Church of England and Wales time to reorganise itself before the Act becomes operative. What precedents have we got on that point? In the Irish case the actual period allowed was nearly eighteen months, but what had the Irish Church got to do? It had first of all to disentangle the whole of its finances, which was the longest part of the operation they had before them. With regard to Wales, the major part of that work has already been done. It must be appreciated by the Committee that the labours of the Royal Commission on the Welsh Church were in a large measure directed to this very point. We have now materials which I admit would have taken at least a year to accumulate, but are now in our hands and fully mastered, so that the difficulty with regard to finances is a difficulty which has already been got over. What, again, had the Irish Church to do with regard to reorganising itself? The case of the Irish Church was the first; newly Disestablished Church had for the first time to establish an organisation for its own government. We have to-day the precedent of the Irish Church. For forty-three years we have seen a free Anglican Church in Ireland working with a constitution without friction and without difficulty. What has the Welsh Church got to do? It has this precedent in front of it. It knows precisely what is the task that it has to perform. It has a model organisation before it. The hon. and learned Gentleman speaks of our breaking up its constitution.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSDismembering it.
§ Mr. McKENNADismembering the constitution and requiring the introduction of a new constitution from top to bottom. We require nothing of the sort. If we were requiring a new constitution in the Church of England, such as would be needed if we were to abolish Episcopacy, there would be something in his argument. But we abolish nothing in the Church of England except its connection with the State. If the Church in Wales 2537 approves, the day after Disestablishment it can, through its bishops, clergy, and laity, meeting in Synod, elect a representative body. It may, if it pleases, set up a constitution for itself, exactly the same as the constitution under which it is now, with the single exception—
§ Mr. GOULDINGWhat time is given to an ordinary public company to reorganise itself on winding up?
§ Mr. McKENNAI think that question would come better elsewhere than on this particular Amendment. I will answer it later if the hon. Member wishes.
§ Mr. GOULDINGThe Church, one day.
§ Mr. McKENNAI was submitting to the Committee the argument, which may be contradicted if I am wrong, that if the Church likes it can, with a single exception—the exception is a large one, I admit—reconstitute its reorganisation on precisely the same footing as it exists to-day. The single exception is that representatives of the Church in Wales will not be summoned to Convocation. That is not disastrous to the Church. For nearly 200 years the Church, whether in England or in Wales, was not summoned to Convocation.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSIt was summoned every year.
§ Lord HUGH CECILIt was always summoned, but it did not act.
§ Mr. McKENNAThe Noble Lord uses the correct term, but the substance is the same.
§ Lord HUGH CECILThe disaster is well known.
§ Mr. McKENNAI am dealing with what is essential to the Church. I am desirous of saying nothing in the least controversial. I am stating my point of view as simply as I can, and directing my observations solely to the question of time. I submit, in the first place, that it is desirable that the interim period after the passing of the Act and the date of Disestablishment should be as short as is convenient and suitable for the work that has to be done. I submit, secondly, that six months ought to be an adequate period, having regard to the facts I have stated, for the Church to reconstitute for itself a governing body. I submit, further, that the argument put forward by the hon. and learned Gentleman that we should allow an extended 2538 period in order that the nation may have an opportunity of being consulted upon the Welsh Bill, is not relevant to this Amendment. If he had placed that argument on the Paper in words which could have been appreciated, the Amendment containing it would have suffered the same fate as other Amendments on the Paper, which were ruled out as not being within the scope of the Bill. I would remind the hon. and learned Member that the principle of the Referendum has been recently repudiated by his own party.
§ The CHAIRMANI am reluctant to interfere in regard to a single sentence or two, but, if they are allowed, hon. Members pick them out, make a point of them, and follow them up, and then the whole Debate has to go on.
§ Mr. McKENNAOnce again I am much obliged to you for relieving me from following that argument. The only case that can be argued on this Amendment is whether sufficient time is given to enable the Disestablished Church to constitute for itself a representative body. I submit to the Committee that a minimum period of six months, and a maximum period of twelve months, is ample for that purpose.
§ Mr. A. LYTTELTONThe Home Secretary has absolutely ignored my hon. and learned Friend's distinction of the Irish precedent. My hon. and learned Friend anticipated what is rather a stock answer with hon. Gentlemen opposite, and himself at the very outset of his observations distinguished the so-called Irish precedent from the present case. The distinction is that there were no dismemberment provisions in the Irish Church Bill, whereas, for the first time in the history of these matters all over the world, dismemberment provisions—that is to say, provisions which mutilate the organism of the Church—have been inserted in this Bill. I submit with confidence to the Committee that that at once makes a complete difference with regard to the question of time. The present constitution of the Church of England, which of course embraces that of Wales, includes Convocation as one of its primary institutions. By the provisions which they have put in this Bill the Government not only cut off the Welsh portion of the Church from its position in Convocation, but, as I read the Bill, they make it absolutely impossible for it hereafter to join Convocation. Therefore, not only is the governing body or Convocation, to which the allegiance of 2539 Churchmen is due, cut off from the Welsh Church, but the Welsh Church is hereafter never to be able to join in its deliberations or to have part or voice in its decisions. That being so, it is absolutely childish to say in face of the provisions of the Bill, which the right hon. Gentleman ought to have mastered, that the Welsh Church can do as it likes afterwards. It cannot do precisely what I have said. It cannot join the ancient constitution under which it has for so many years existed.
§ Mr. McKENNAI mentioned Convocation.
§ Mr. A. LYTTELTONI understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that the Welsh Church could do precisely what it liked.
§ Mr. McKENNAWith one exception.
§ Mr. A. LYTTELTONAnd what a large exception it is. What an extraordinary thing it is that, whereas it has been publicly claimed for the Wesleyan body in Wales that it shall never be severed from the main body of Wesleyans in this country, most stringent reasons having been given showing the immense loss that the Wesleyans in Wales would suffer, and whereas the Free Church Council, speaking with very great, authority, has promulgated precisely the same view; yet the ancient body of the Church in Wales is to be selected as the one religious body to be fettered against the will of its own people in the matter of having the constitution which it desires for its own spiritual wants and requirements. The time required for reorganisation is surely much longer than the right hon. Gentleman proposes. Directly you upset the old constitution for the government of the Church, it must be perfectly obvious to every hon. Member opposite that you embark on most difficult and delicate questions. You have to ascertain the different functions and powers of the bishops, clergy, and laity. Anybody who knows the elements of this subject knows that that is a most difficult and delicate matter, and that anything like haste in the decision of such points simply takes the ship on to the rocks. If you want these decisions to be made in a satisfactory and pacific way you must give plenty of time. It being proposed to accord such unprecedented treatment to the Church in Wales, I appeal to the Committee to allow that Church the time pro- 2540 posed by my hon. and learned Friend, which I submit is manifestly necessary and reasonable.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI really think the Government might grant this Amendment. Why on earth should not the Church have sufficient time for this purpose? The Home Secretary, who takes the opportunity of going away—
§ Mr. McKENNAI will wait.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI do not mind whether you wait or not. The Under-Secretary may be a little more yielding. Here you are Disestablishing the Church, separating the Church in Wales from the Church in England, taking away two-thirds of its funds, and now you will not give us more than six months in which to reorganise. Why not? What difference does it make? If you pass your Bill it will make no particular difference whether it comes into operation in six months, twelve months, or two years after. The Amendment proposed by the Home Secretary is that there should be a period of six months, which may be extended to twelve months by Order in Council. Why cannot the Government allow it to be extended to whatever length of lime is found necessary? We are not asking for anything unreasonable; we simply ask for time. The Home Secretary is the most sanguine man on earth. He told us that, first of all, he hoped the Bill would pass this year. He then said that the new body could be constituted in a day. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] He said that the representative body, consisting of clergy and laity of the Church in Wales, could meet the day after the Bill passed. That is a most absurd and foolish statement. Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise the difficulties connected with this reconstitution? We are not told in the least, in the Bill what is to be the Church in Wales. Who are to be the laity? That is not laid down in the Bill. There is a very vague Clause—Clause 13—stating that a new constitution may be formed, but no indication is given as to how it is to be formed. We know who the bishops and clergy are, but it is a very important question who are to be the laity—who are to have the right to take part in the Church franchise and the Church assemblies. That is a question which certainly cannot be settled in a day, and for the settlement of which in decency we contend you ought to give us sufficient time. Why on earth this hurry? We do not 2541 in the least know in what this process of Disestablishment is going to involve us. I do not want again to go into the arguments hinted at by my right hon. and learned Friend, but what precisely does Disestablishment mean? We know that the Church of Wales is to be Disestablished when the Bill passes. We know further that it is to be re-established and become a State Church by charter. If you only give us six months to arrange matters, there may be an interval between Disestablishment and what I may call re-establishment. What is to be the position of the Church in that interval? I submit that it is not possible to re-establish in the interval of six months. That being so, we may well ask what exactly you mean by Disestablishment, because there will be this interval after we are Disestablished, and we do not know exactly what it means, because there will not have been time to be re-established.
Take, again, the precedent of the Irish Church. I really think the Home Secretary has not given sufficient consideration to that matter. It is all very well to say that in the case of Ireland that you have got a precedent. Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that the Irish Church was definitely Established by Statute, and that when the Irish Church was Disestablished we knew what was being done? We knew the Statutes that were being repealed. I may remind the Under-Secretary and the Committee that at the commencement of the Committee stage of the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill the Statutes by which the Irish Church was Established were read out in the House. I invite the Under-Secretary, who is a very clever lawyer, to read out the Statutes under which the Church of Wales was Established, and which are to be repealed by this Bill! If he does, we shall know rather better than we know now what we are doing. He tells us, again, that it will be much easier to disentangle the funds. I question that. Let me remind him of this: There was not that mix up—if I may use a common phrase—in the case of Ireland as there is now in the case of the funds of the English and Welsh Churches. If he will only look at Clauses 5, 6, and 7 of the Bill he will find that there is special machinery by which Queen Anne's Bounty and the Ecclesiastical Commission are to separate those funds now going to the Church in Wales which are provided from English sources, and those funds derived from Welsh sources. Nothing 2542 of the sort took place in the case of Ireland—because it did not arise. So I say, in the case of Wales, there will be much more to do than in the case of Ireland as regards disentanglement of funds.
I take another and a broader point, which gives us a very strong additional reason why we should have more time than in the case of the Irish Church. The endowed funds of the Irish Church were very great. You took away about half of them. You left the Church in Ireland more money, a good deal, than the Church of Wales has got now. If this Bill passes, and Disendowment is carried out in the way you suggest, whereby you take away two-thirds of the Endowments of the Church in Wales—I am taking the figures given by the Home Secretary, who is going to leave us 6s. 8d. in the £[An HON. MEMBER: "Of the Endowments?"] Exactly! two-thirds of the Endowments—it will be a tremendous question for the new Church body to know to what extent it will be possible to maintain the existing parochial system. It will be necessary to look around and see to what extent the inadequate sum that you leave us can be supplemented by voluntary contributions. It will be necessary for Churchmen to see exactly what their position will be, what parishes will have to be amalgamated—as I am afraid they will have to be in some cases—and to what extent it will be possible to maintain existing Church organisation. That is not going to be done in a day. That cannot be settled in this offhand, slap-dash manner. That will require a lot of time. You have no right, when you are taking away the money of the Church in Wales, robbing her of two-thirds of her property, to say that this thing is to come into operation at once—to add insult to injury, and to say you must get all your now arrangements into order. This is only a small machinery Amendment, but it is a matter of great importance to the Church, and I venture to make an appeal to the Under-Secretary and hon. Members opposite, who are never tired of telling us that they are doing this for the good of the Church—though I have never been able to distinguish the good myself—to meet us in this small matter of machinery. It cannot possibly make any difference to them. I therefore most earnestly hope that the Government will give way, at all events to the extent of taking out the maximum, and allowing the Church such time as is really required to bring the new constitution into operation.
§ Mr. LAURENCE HARDYYou mentioned, Mr. Whitley, an Amendment of mine as being possibly in order after this discussion. Seeing the line that much of the discussion has taken, I had perhaps better put the special point connected with my Amendment in connection with the present discussion. I confess that I do not entirely like the Amendment that is before us, especially as qualified by the Amendment of the Home Secretary, because the object of my Amendment is to obtain a more indefinite time for a special object, that object being that at no moment shall the portion of the Church in Wales which is now to be severed from England cease to be part of the Church as a whole. If you have any particular time fixed, especially if it is reduced to six or twelve months, it is quite possible, even probable, that there will be a time between. The result will be that Churchmen in Wales will be exposed to having their Church Established by Statute, a thing that has not, in our opinion, ever taken place in connection with the National Church in England or Wales. I desire, therefore, until the Church as a whole in Wales and England, acting together through their Convocations, have had time to consider this new position, have given thought to it, and have devised a scheme of their own for carrying on the Church in Wales under very different circumstances—the still incomplete union with the old Church, with that part of the Church in England—that this Bill shall not come into operation. I certainly desire to have a more elastic arrangement, as mentioned in my Amendment.
Surely there cannot be anybody on the other side of the House who can deny to the right of Churchmen to decide in the future how this and that should be organised? They cannot deny us that right, because they would always assume it for themselves in connection with any question of religious equality or religious liberty. Therefore it is on those grounds, I think, that we may very justly ask hon. Members opposite to support us in the appeal we are making for more time. If I cannot get my Amendment accepted, I shall support my hon. and learned Friend in his desire to have two years, because possibly that might be time enough to do what I require. At all events, that question of time is one which is of very much larger importance than the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary has given to 2544 it. He said lightly: "The Church may tomorrow meet and do everything that is desired." My hon. Friend below me just alluded to the question of the laity. We know that by Clause 3 Ecclesiastical Law is abolished. I do not know that Statute Law is abolished in this land. Therefore we shall still be under the Toleration Act. We know the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary claims to be a Churchman under the Toleration Act. As an Ecclesiastical Commissioner he will be one of the laity of the new Church in Wales, one of this representative body which can meet on the morrow after this Act has passed! I think that he must realise that this is really a more serious matter than we can gather from the way he treated it. This new constitution is not a question that can be settled in a moment. Still less can it be settled how it is to work.
Churchmen are unanimous, I believe, or practically unaimous, in a desire that the Church shall remain an ecclesiastical whole, and unity. I think we are perfectly justified in asking for a great deal more time than the Government are affording us in connection with this. Of course there are the extreme difficulties of the Endowment question. We do not know yet really how we stand in connection with that matter. There are plenty of difficult questions raised under the Bill already which certainly require a considerable amount of time to consider. The Government have suggested that they are treating us with a certain amount of generosity because they have allowed Queen Anne's Bounty and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to pay English money in Wales. That question requires a good deal of consideration before we know that it can be done, and what security can be given to Wales that this money from England may not subsequently be taken from England by a Ministry which follows the present Government, and tries to Disestablish the Church in England? We have, on the one hand, a new proposition entirely different from those which arose in connection with the Irish Church. But I do not myself desire to go into that side of the question, because I want rather to confine myself to the special point in connection with my own Amendment. I do feel on that question we have the right to appeal to hon. Members opposite to support us in our desire. We have been told that this is not a question of dismemberment. It is a question of dismemberment. It must remain a question of dismemberment. We have a 2545 reasonable claim to call upon hon. Members to help us when we are trying to prevent this dismemberment. We may be overcome on the question of Disestablishment, but we do require this one thing—that we shall be given time to make our new constitution without having any lapse whatsoever between the old condition of the Church and the new constitution that may be devised. It is that we may know that, that we do ask for a longer time than the Government now are affording us.
6.0 P.M.
I do not know that I shall be in order now in going into the question of how far the great changes in the Church, for which the State is responsible, were or were not supported by Convocation at the time they passed. At all events, we know that at a period which the Government are very fond of quoting, the period of the Reformation, King Henry VIII. was always most careful that in the great changes he made he was supported by Convocation. On every occasion I think you will find that Convocation is quoted as supporting that passed by the State. You will see that the King was especially careful that the Church remained one right through all these great moments of change, and did not, as has been put forward by some Members of the Government, somewhat rashly, become entirely a new Church. They got through that period by an appeal to Convocation, and by an appeal to the opinion of the Church. And it is that opinion and that appeal we make again now when you are making another far greater change by tearing to pieces the Church. We ask that you should at all events allow Churchmen on the ecclesiastical side to state exactly what they desire with reference to the future constitution of the Church. It is impossible for us to do it if you limit the time; it is impossible for us to carry through that reorganisation which we believe to be necessary if you limit it to six months, and it is upon that ground that I most earnestly ask hon. Members opposite to support us and to give us more time in order to carry out the system.
§ Mr. ORMSBY-GOREI wish to add my appeal to that of the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, to the Government and to hon. Members on the other side, for some further elasticity in regard to the time they are giving for the reconstitution of the Church and for consideration of the aspects in which Disendowment will 2546 immediately place the Church the moment it passes into law. This is a point which affects the whole of the Bill, but the only other reference to time that I can find in the Bill is that in Clause 5, Sub-section (2), which says, "Queen Anne's Bounty shall, as soon as may be after the passing of the Act," go into all these questions. Let me put the Disendowment point first. The moment this Act passes, under Clause 6, Queen Anne's Bounty ceases to have any power in Wales or any jurisdiction in Wales, and what is the first thing that will happen? Security for the loans which Queen Anne's Bounty has made to Wales immediately comes in, and I presume these loans will have to be paid the first thing. The first thing Queen Anne's Bounty will require under their Statutes and re-establishment will be the repayment of these temporary loans by the Welsh Church, suffering at that moment from disorganisation, disruption, and Disendowment. But that is not all. Under Clause 8, Sub-section A (4), the moment the Church is Disestablished and Disendowed she has suddenly got to find money under that Subsection (4) to repurchase all the glebes which are actually to be taken away. The hon. Member for Merthyr said "No" two or three times. He said "No" the last time I raised this point.
§ Mr. EDGAR JONESI did not say anything now.
§ Mr. ORMSBY-GOREI am glad of that. What is the Church required to do the moment it is Disestablished and Disendowed? She has got to find the money to rebuy all these glebe lands, that is to say, she has got to hand over to the Welsh Commissioners at their valuation a sum of money which certainly will not be less than half a million sterling. That will be found at the top of page 7 of the Bill. I do submit that the Church does require time for that. How can the Church, going through this crisis in its history, suddenly raise this large sum of money? I could enumerate several other points, but it is perfectly clear under your drastic Disendowment proposals, the Church will require two years or at any rate a period of elasticity in order to get any sort of organisation to start this work. Let me go back to the point of dismemberment. The Home Secretary this afternoon said he is going to leave the Church free with the exception of one point. That is to say, the Church is no longer to be represented in Convocation. He seems to forget he answered 2547 questions on this subject between the time of the First and Second Reading. I bombarded him from day to day with questions and I discovered that the Church is not going to be constituted merely under a representative body, there is to be a sort of bifurcated system. The Synod is suddenly going to be given power. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] An hon. Member says "Why not?" Because we do not want it. You say you are going to free the Church; you are going to do nothing of the kind. Under Clause 3, which we shall probably not have an opportunity of discussing at all, you are going to have no delay or give any time for the Church to look round. You are going to set up this under a bifurcated constitution. Certain parts of the Church is to be governed by a Synod; the right of ceremony and various other things are to be governed by representative bodies.
I do not think the right hon. Gentleman's attention was called to a protest by the Bishop of North Queensland, published in the "Nineteenth Century," arising out of his reply, where the Bishop shows that this system of Church government in Australia from his experience is the very worst you could possibly have. The whole of this Clause will necessitate and make it absolutely essential that we should have time. There will be most difficult negotiations. The first thing to be settled is admittedly exceedingly difficult in this country. That is, what exactly is a member of the Church? The Home Secretary says he is a member of the Church, but he is rather a peculiar member of the Church. Then you have got to have some representative organisation, and they have got to decide how-many laymen and clergy are to be represented in the Synod and how many in the representative body, and these negotiations have to take place, and the King in Council is to re-establish the Church by charter under Clause 38. One thing is perfectly clear from the feeling amongst laymen and clergymen in the Church in Wales, and it is that we are not going to have the Home Secretary's draft constitution forced upon us in this matter, and the first thing we shall do before anything of this sort takes place is to press for a most drastic provision, for some order or re-Establishment proposal under Clause 3, binding ecclesiastical laws or matters of contract on an appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is to be no longer any part of us, and will be a sort of court, to 2548 whom all ecclesiastical points are to be put, but whose decision will not be enforced, as we find in the ridiculous proposal like that at the bottom of Clause 2. No Church can constitute itself under a constitution of that kind; no Church could live and frame any constitution under the proposals in this Bill or in your charter. This question of Establishment and re-Establishment will be full of the strongest and most bitter controversy. Yet you are going to try and force this through without delay in opposition to this appeal and without any elasticity. It seems to me you are going to take away all the revenues of the Church and the money for Queen Anne's Bounty, and the Welsh Commissioners will want to be repaid without delay for the glebe lands belonging to the Church for centuries. We ask for elasticity for some delay, and therefore I urge the Government to accept this Amendment.
§ Mr. EDGAR JONESThe hon. Gentleman who has just sat down made a very pointed allusion to me personally. That has become the practice of the hon. Member, and he has done it before. I do not think he has any business to do anything of the kind.
§ Lord ROBERT CECILWhy?
§ Mr. EDGAR JONESDoes the Noble Lord suggest that an hon. Member who, like myself, never said anything, neither whispered nor shook his head, is to be accused across the floor of the House of having made an interruption or an interjection. Does the Noble Lord justify that?
§ Lord ROBERT CECILI do not think if the hon. Member said nothing anyone would be justified in making an accusation that he had said something, but as I understand it my hon. Friend immediately withdrew that. As for the right of an hon. Member of this House to refer to any other hon. Member or make any criticism on an hon. Member I think that right is undisputed and indisputable.
§ Mr. ORMSBY-GOREI made a mistake. It was the hon. Gentleman near the hon. Member for Merthyr who dissented, and I attributed it to the hon. Gentleman because it was on this particular point the hon. Member for Merthyr interrupted me the last time. I beg the hon. Member's pardon, and I hope he will accept my apology.
§ The CHAIRMANMay I point out the inconvenience of interruptions of any kind. We are here to listen to things that we do not agree to and it is not necessary to express dissent at everything that is said.
§ Mr. EDGAR JONESI made no interruption and said nothing and I never moved my head, but I am not going to allow the hon. Member by implication to suggest that I was doing a thing I never did and never intended to do, and I do not think the hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs has the right to make imputations of that kind.
§ The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member in accordance with the usual courtesy of the House withdrew and apologised.
§ Mr. DUKEI do not think that right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite really appreciate what they propose to do in not giving a reasonable period for carrying out the purposes of this Clause. It is said, and reiterated that there is no intention to disturb in any way the spiritual and religious work of the Church in Wales or to destroy the spiritual and religious identity of the Church in Wales. If that is a true profession and if right hon. Gentlemen appreciate the difficulty of the position which exists they will feel themselves bound to yield to the demand for a reasonable time for bringing this Bill into operation in order that the continuity of the existence of the work of the Church in Wales may not be broken. As I said I do not think that what is proposed to be done can be fully appreciated. Take the case of the parochial life of the Church in Wales. That is suddenly by a stroke to be extinguished. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Yes, it is to be extinguished, but as I say I do not think that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen really appreciate what they are doing. There will be no status for parishioners of any parish in the Church in Wales when this Bill becomes law unless it is preserved. I gather, from the observations made across the floor, that there are hon. Members who do not think that that is any misfortune, but we believe it is a great misfortune, and, at any rate, it is declared not to be the object of this Bill. This Debate has shown clearly that what is proposed to be done is to establish a new organisation in Wales. You are to replace in six months an organisation which has grown up in the course of very nearly 2,000 years. It cannot be done, and hon. and right hon. Gentle- 2550 men will appreciate that it cannot be done if they think about it. Take the case of the parochial organisation. Every parishioner in Wales at the present time has, at any rate, a set of rights as a parishioner and as a member of the National Church as it at present exists. When this Bill has become an Act, unless Clauses are introduced which preserve those rights they will be gone. With regard to the position of the clergy vis-a-vis with the members of the Church, and what I might call the hierarchy of the Church, their duties will have been destroyed, their duties to their parishioners will have ceased, and their obligations to any authority above them will have passed away, obligations and duties which depend not upon the statutes of the time of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Charles II., but which depend upon laws as old as the Common Laws of England, and some a good deal older. Can it be conceived that six months is a sufficient time in which you can reorganise an old Church or constitute a new Church? It is impossible. Take the higher question of the spiritual and religious life of the Church of England as it at present exists as one organic entity. The only consistent feature in the operation of this Bill is that it proposes to blot out for the time being the Welsh member and the Welsh minister of the National Church, and it leaves them to be brought into a new institution, and it leaves all the future relations of the Churchman to the Church in which he has been born to be established either by new Statutes or a new Charter. Is six months a sufficient time to carry such a purpose as that into effect? My hon. Friends who live in Wales, and are members of the Church there, feel a sensitiveness about this which no man who shares and enjoys the membership of the Church of England can fail to appreciate. They realise that the effect of this Bill will cause them to cease by Statute to be members of the Church in the sense in which they are members at the present time. The Home Secretary rather boasts of his membership of the Church of England, but if it is a real membership, if it carries with it either responsibilities or privileges, and the right hon. Gentleman appreciates them, his sympathy ought to go out to people face to face with what they regard as a catastrophe to a Church to which they are devoted, he ought to see that if this blow is to fall it should not produce the detestable result of lopping off—[laughter]—that amuses some hon. Members opposite 2551 who are not going to hurt the Church in England. You should see that it does not produce the lopping off of dioceses and great masses of the parishioners of that ancient National Church, leaving them to flounder under the care of the Privy Council to ascertain whether they can ever again come into effective communion with the Church of England. I beg the Home Secretary to consider what he is doing in this respect, and do it with ordinary humanity and regard to the deep-seated feelings and apprehensions of members of the Church in this country and members of the Church in Wales.
§ Mr. GOULDINGI desire to join in the appeal made by so many of my hon. Friends on this side that the Government should give more serious consideration to this Amendment. May I remind the Home Secretary that when the Prime Minister moved the Guillotine Resolution in regard to this Bill he specifically stated that when the Bill got into Committee, while the Government would resolutely adhere to the principles of their measure, they would lend favourable consideration to any proposals put forward by Churchmen on this side of the House. Now we are in the Committee, and this is the first proposal made by Churchmen on this side of the House, I ask the right hon. Gentleman can he or one of his colleagues explain to us where the principle of this Bill will be hurt, or where the party opposite will be hurt, or where a single vested interest will be created against their desire, or in what single material point will they, and those who hold their views, gain any advantage by not conceding this Amendment? The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that no vested interest will be created by accepting this Amendment, and not a single penny will be taken from all your glorious aims for providing funds for museums and menageries. This Amendment will enable you to show clearly the bona fides of your statement, again and again repeated, that you do not want to persecute the Church, that you do not want to level at her unfair and harsh treatment, and that all you do want is, to the best of your ability, to do away with what you call an injustice as regards the inequalities of religious institutions in Wales.
I again most earnestly appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to consider the facts. This is a Church you are going to 2552 attack and from which you are going to take two-thirds of its funds. Is there a single individual who possesses an average amount of wealth who himself would not feel crippled in his affairs if two-thirds of his income were taken away from him? You are dealing with an institution which has not great wealth, and you are going to take two-thirds of the funds of the Church. Under these circumstances I think it is only common decency that she should have ample time to put her house in order, so that she can carry out and continue the good missionary work which the Prime Minister has submitted she is doing to-day for all classes of the community in Wales. It is perfectly idle for the right hon. Gentleman to say that this question is on all fours with the Irish Church, because there is no analogy whatsoever between the two. The Irish Church creation was quite of recent date, whilst the history of the Welsh Church goes back to the Dark Ages. Her history is entwined with all these questions, which you cannot unravel in a moment, and which will require the care and infinite pains of those who are going to put this house in order. The right hon. Gentleman says this thing can be established in a day. In the case of the Synod established in Ireland at that time, we see to-day immeasurable loopholes and difficulties which, if there had been more time for discussion would not have existed. Every single person knows when you set up any of these institutions, if you are going to make the basis sound, it must be done at the beginning, for then you have a better chance of success than if you delay the matter until the thing is established, when the people concerned have other duties more closely associated with their own interests which engage their special attention.
The Home Secretary said that the Irish Church was only given this short time because it was found impossible to disentangle the conditions. Remember, the Irish Church was a rich body with ample funds, and even when they were taken away from her she was left richer than the Church of Wales is before you take anything from her. Therefore, it is not right to say that you are going to impose upon these people only the task of disentanglement, because you are also imposing upon them the task of having to find the necessary money to keep the Church going in the particular parishes and districts where your spoliation will lead to the crippling and shutting down of Church institutions. 2553 If you take any single institution, like the Church in Wales, where there maybe some 1,200 or 1,500 parsons, there must be an average of something like fifty or sixty of them who die every year, and that entails upon individuals the huge task of paying their successors the inadequate salary of £150 a year, and that means raising £7,500 each year to enable them to carry on the work. I ask the right hon. Gentleman what do you secure in this Bill by depriving us of ample time to put our house in order? Even if this iniquitous Bill is carried into force, do you wish it to be said that not only did you carry out your spoliation, but you did every single thing you could in order to prevent us putting our house, in order and to prevent the people in Wales from carrying out the great work they are doing? I ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell me where you are going to be harmed by accepting this Amendment. If you are not being harmed, are you not bound by the statement of the Prime Minister that you would give favourable consideration to the suggestions coming from Churchmen on this side of the House, if those suggestions did not interfere with the principle of the Bill?
The Home Secretary alluded to the Irish Church, and he asked us to remember that her Disestablishment did not lead to dismemberment of the Church of England. May I point out that the Irish Church was a perfectly separate organisation? It was never controlled and influenced by the entirely different connections and principles which animate the Church of England as she is to-day, and, therefore, when she was Disestablished, she had that foundation to go upon which existed previously to the Disestablishment Bill being passed. But you have nothing of the kind in Wales. Let me put one point to the Home Secretary as regards a particular parish. Do you think it is an easy thing, first and foremost, to find who are the people to vote in the parish; and, secondly, if a vacancy occurs in a living, who is to appoint? If there is a difference of opinion as regards the appointment, what kind of appeal do you give? Those are questions which, when the Irish Church was Disestablished, took endless time for consideration. Why in the name of patience do you deny to the Church in Wales ample time for the consideration of such questions as these? They are not hurting you. You are not going to lose one penny by it. You are proceeding with a spirit of poli- 2554 tical persecution against your political opponents and against Churchmen in Wales. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to allow one of his colleagues to see what he can do to meet us on this point, and do not start by the rejection of this Amendment, but deal with it fairly and squarely, and show that it is not your intention to persecute and chivvy the Church at every point.
§ Mr. KINGI desire, if I can, to bring the Committee back to a spirit of reasonable and moderate discussion on this Amendment. I understand the proposal is that after the Act is passed two years shall be allowed to elapse before the Statute really comes into operation. The Home Secretary has already made a concession by the Amendment on the Paper, which I suppose will be moved, to extend the period before the Act comes into force to twelve months. [HON. MEMBERS: "Six months."] Well, it extends it six months beyond the original six months. The words in the Amendment are "twelve months." It will therefore be quite possible to have twelve months before the Act comes into operation. I would like to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that that concession has not received a word of thanks.
§ Lord R. CECILNo.
§ Mr. KINGWell, if we are to get no thanks for offering six months more, why do you expect us to think you are sincere when you ask for two years more? The fact is that any concessions from this side are not met in a spirit which I can understand. We have frequently been told this Bill is going to dismember the Church. I should like to understand what hon. Members mean by that. I do not see anything about disemberment in the Bill at all. What is disemberment? We know, if a criminal is dismembered, he is hanged, drawn, and quartered, but when you talk in a metaphorical way of dismembering the Church, it can only be correct if you forcibly prevent a certain section of that Church being in communication, or having common life with another part of it, and that is just what we do not do by this Bill.
§ The CHAIRMANWe are not on the merits of that question now. I think it will arise later. Hon Members who have made reference to it have only done so on the point of the amount of time required for constructing and putting into effect the new constitution.
§ Mr. KINGI quite understand, but surely it is in order to point out there is, as far as we understand it, no real dismemberment in the strict sense of the word? A great deal has been made of the point that a brand-new constitution from top to bottom is being imposed on the Church. I do not see that it is a brand-new constitution. The four bishops remain as they were before.
§ Mr. ORMSBY-GORERead Clause 13.
§ Mr. KINGI have read Clause 13, but we are on Clause 1 at the present time. A brand new constitution is not being imposed upon the Church. It is a mere adaptation of the present constitution and order of the Church to very slightly altered spiritual conditions, and I believe the Committee is firmly convinced the point of view we take is reasonable. The Church of England in Wales has been warned this was coming for at least twenty-five years. This Bill has now been introduced for the third time into the House of Commons. There has been ample warning for the Church to set its house in order, and, in view of this fact, which no one can deny, I trust the Government will not give way any further.
§ Mr. CAMPIONThe hon. Member who has just spoken said the Government were proposing to extend the period to twelve months. I do not think he can have read the Government Amendment very carefully, because, if he had done so, he would have seen the six months could only be extended to twelve months by an Order in Council. I am very much astounded at the fact the Government give no indication whatever of accepting this Amendment. There is an immense amount of work the Church will have to do between the passing of the Act and the time it comes into force, and I think a strong case has been made out for further time, whilst no real reason has been produced for refusing our suggestion. It could not in any way injure the Bill or the Government. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have referred frequently to precedent. They referred to the Irish precedent which, in my opinion, is in no way an analogous case. There is one precedent to which no reference has been made, and it is the precedent of the Bill of 1909, and. I think I am correct in saying, the Bill also of 1885. According to the Bill of 1909, when circumstances were quite different and when we had a constitution, longer time was allowed than in the present Bill. 2556 The Bill of 1909 entered the Committee stage in May, and, presumably, if it had been proceeded with, it would have passed during that year. The Act was to come into force in January, 1911, so that it was then proposed to give at least eighteen months for the Church to organise its affairs and to set its house in order. It is certainly pertinent to ask why the Government have changed their minds and have now adopted a still more drastic proposal. I would add my voice, as a Churchman, to that of others who feel strongly on this question, and beg the Government even now to allow us further time. Let them show us they are bonâ fide in their contention, that they do not wish ill to the Church, that they are in earnest, and that they really wish well to the Church. Surely, they might agree to this Amendment. It could do them no harm, and it would at any rate prevent chaos in the Church and be better for the religious life of the country generally.
§ Mr. HOAREThe hon. Member for Somerset (Mr. King) seems to think, when the Government come forward with an Amendment likely to make the Bill less unjust than it is already, we ought to fall down on our knees and thank the Home Secretary. Let me at once tell hon. Members opposite we intend to do no such thing. We know perfectly well these Amendments are not put down on the Paper because hon. Members opposite wish to meet us, but because they feel the pressure of Liberal Churchmen outside is so strong and that their seats would not I be safe if they did not do so. The reception which my hon. Friend's Amendment has had seems to me to be most significant. We have heard over and over again that the Government are prepared to consider any reasonable Amendment. Here is an Amendment so reasonable that no substantial argument has been urged against it at all. The Home Secretary pointed to two arguments to justify his refusal. He said first of all no great delay was necessary, because the Royal Commission on the statistics and condition of the Welsh Church had done a large quantity of work which it would not be necessary to do over again. I cannot see the relevance in that argument. I have read both the evidence and the Report of that Commission in some detail, and the lesson it seems to me to teach is not that the work has been done, and that therefore no hardship will be imposed upon the Church if Disestablishment comes into operation at once, but 2557 how extraordinarily complicated are all the questions, financial and administrative, involved in the separation you propose of an organic whole.
It seems to me hon. Members opposite quote the Irish precedent when it suits their purpose, and refuse to acknowledge it applies when it does not suit their purpose. That takes away all justification whatever for their arguments from that precedent. My hon. Friend only this afternoon pointed to the fact that the Instruction which was moved was in exact accordance with the Irish precedent, but it was refused by hon. Members opposite, and now we are told by the Home Secretary that it was in accordance with the Irish precedent the transaction should be carried through in all haste, and no argument we could urge would have any applicability or make the Government alter their decision. If the Irish precedent proves anything at all, it immensely strengthens the case for the Amendment and for our demand for more time. It does not matter whether you take the question of dismemberment, the question of Disestablishment, or the question of Disendowment. In each of those three respects the Irish case was much simpler than the present case. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Laurence Hardy) has already drawn attention to one point in which delay is of the utmost importance to the Church you are Disestablishing and Disendowing. He pointed out that under Clause 3 and Clause 13 a new body is to be set up, into whose hands the Home Secretary desires the management and government of the Disestablished Church should pass. It is of the utmost importance that full time should be allowed to the Church to decide of whom that representative body is to consist. During the Debates we have already had, we have had impressed upon us the extraordinary difficulties that will arise in defining what are the rights of the Commissioners and in what manner they will be able to deal with general questions such as the Marriage Laws and many other questions of the utmost complication which can only be settled with a reasonable allowance of time. I, therefore, say we have the strongest case in the world for demanding that the operation of the Bill should be put off until a time when the Church has had an opportunity of really putting its house in order, so that it may meet the extraordinary difficulties 2558 which are bound to arise. If this Amendment is not accepted by the Government we can only assume that the reason of their refusal is to be found in the fact that an election would intervene between passing the Bill and its operation. I think that that is really at the back of the minds of hon. Members opposite in refusing to accept this Amendment. They do not like the idea of having the Bill referred to the country before it comes into force.
§ Mr. WALTER ROCHI approach this Amendment with a perfectly open mind, and I can assert there is no wish on the part of any single Welsh Member to make this Bill operate harshly on the Church. The Welsh Liberal Members number amongst their ranks twice as many Churchmen as are to be found in the Welsh Unionist party. I am one of those Churchmen, and I am prepared to state that in all the discussions which the Welsh Members have had on this Bill I have never found a single one of my colleagues who has no desire to meet any legitimate point put forward by the Church. I will try and put before the House why I think the arguments which have been adduced in support of this Amendment have no weight at all. The narrow point of this Amendment is that there should be more time given for the Church to set its house in order. There are two arguments advanced in favour of that. The first is in regard to Convocation, where the discussions range over a very wide area. I admit it is a point well deserving of consideration, but I venture to suggest that no single Member who has spoken from the other side of the House has shown that the great of more time could have anything to do with the question of dismemberment. Whether it is two years or five years, there is no shred of difficulty which an extension of time would meet. Apart from what may be said of the merits of Convocation that has nothing whatever to do with the extension of time.
The second argument, put: forward was this—we must give the Church more time to set its house in order. That is a point of considerable importance. But I venture to suggest that an extension of time is not really necessary. I approach this as a Churchman living in Wales, and as a parishioner taking an interest in the Church as it now is and as it is to be in the future. Why do I say that no great length of time is wanted? My view is that the Church, even when this Bill becomes law, will have a considerable period given it to 2559 discover exactly what its position is, and it will be able to keep going all its existing ecclesiastical organisations. In fact, the Church will go along just the same as before. It is said that time is wanted to put its finances in order, but I do not think that much time is wanted, because we must not lose sight of the fact that this Bill preserves the existing life interests of the beneficed clergy. Therefore, for a considerable time, no difficulty can arise. The beneficed clergy will have their life interests preserved under this Bill, and, in consequence, it is an undoubted fact that in a great many parishes the difficulty with regard to finance will not arise for a long time. I do not see how there can be any real difficulty on that ground, and I believe that practical, common-sense Churchmen will agree with me that ample time is allowed.
§ Lord ROBERT CECILThe hon. Member opposite has made a speech with the tone of which none of us will quarrel. It gives a glimpse of the feeling of apprehension among Churchmen which we do not notice on the Treasury Bench. In the first place, let me say a word as to his point about finance. He seems to think that the only financial problem will be how to pay the vicar or rector of the parish. But you have to provide also for the curate, and, in the places which this Bill will most seriously hit, namely, the poorer parts of the big towns, the question of the curate will be a very serious thing. There is another point. It is stated in the great towns that the resources of the Church will be affected badly by this question of Endowment. But the Endowments only represent a part of that which will have to be supplied, and that part which will have to be supplied will have to be obtained from the poorer districts. That is the matter which will require very earnest consideration. You will have to consider whether you are going to form a central fund or a local fund. You will have a vast amount of financial detail to deal with, and anyone who has had experience in the administration of Church funds will not dispute the enormous amount of work which arises in connection with funds of that character. The hon. Member suggests that no great change will be made in the constitution of the Church, and that it will go on as before, subject only to this fact, that it will be a voluntary Church. But you cannot have a voluntary Church in the same position as the Church which now exists. The 2560 two things are absolutely distinct, and you will have to provide fresh machinery. That is one of the difficulties you will have to meet.
Then there is another difficulty. I observe that in Sub-section (4) one of the things that may be done by the Constitution is to alter or modify certain Acts of Parliament. But owing to the operation of the guillotine we shall not be able to discuss what will be the effect of Disestablishment in itself. Personally, I do not understand how that Sub-section (4) is to work. The thing will prove to be very complicated. When a Clause absolutely wipes out Statute Law, surely it is an absurdity to talk of modifying it, and we shall have to carefully consider what is to be done in this matter. The whole code of the law is very complicated and very difficult as it applies to the Church at present, and the point will be how is it to be modified and what changes will be necessary in order to meet the new state of things. No one who really seriously thinks the matter over will deny that these changes must take an immense amount of time. The Home Secretary seems to be of opinion that six months will be sufficient, but I think that that is perfectly ludicrous and ridiculous, and hon. Members must know that quite well. No injury could be done or accrue by further delay, and the only reason for opposing the Amendment is the solitary one that hon. Gentlemen opposite do not care to face a General Election before the Bill comes into operation as an Act of Parliament. But that is a characteristic of the modern Liberal. He always desires to govern without reference to the people. I venture to assert there is not the slightest doubt in the mind of any single Member in this House that if this Bill were submitted to the country it would be rejected, as it deserves to be, by an overwhelming majority.
§ The UNDER-SECRETARY for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Ellis Griffith)I will not follow the Noble Lord in his peroration. No one doubts that the Church must do a certain amount of work after this Bill becomes law, and the real question is whether the time allowed for that should be six months, or, possibly, twelve months on the one side, or two years on the other. I agree with the doctrine laid down by my hon. Friend. But the Noble Lord referred to the large towns. Does he remember that in the 2561 three large towns, Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport, the Endowments only represent about £l,000 a year, or less than one halfpenny per head of population. Does he think the Church will have any difficulty in making up that amount under the altered state of affairs? The difficulty can only arise as the Endowments cease.
§ Lord ROBERT CECILThe Under-Secretary omits the fact that there is a great deal which these Endowments do besides paying the salary of the local incumbent, and if you take away the Endowments you have to provide money for the other purposes to which they are now applied.
§ 7.0 P.M.
§ Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITHI do not know whether the Noble Lord means the £14,000 for the Curates Sustentation Fund. Of course, the Church gets that under the Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I think I am quite right. All this money goes either to the incumbents or to the curates. I really think the Noble Lord's point is not well founded in this particular instance. There are two points to consider, the Disendowment point and the Disestablishment point. With regard to Disendowment certain information is necessary before the Church can know where it stands. It took a considerable time to get that information in the Irish case. I do not know whether the Committee will take it from me, but we believe that all this information is absolutely ready, so far as the Welsh Church is concerned. There were certain facts omitted from the Welsh Church Commission, but we think we are now in a position to supply all the figures. We know how much comes from tithe, how much comes from glebe, we know how much comes from the Welsh portion of Queen Anne's Bounty, and from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. We believe we have all these facts, and that, so far as figures are concerned, no substantial time is necessary to make any preparation, so far as Disendowment is concerned.
A word upon the Disestablishment point. When we say Disestablishment, an hon. Member says, do not forget dismemberment, but it is no worse, because you repeat the same objection in two forms. They are the two names given to the same thing. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] If you look at it from the Welsh point of view it is Disestablishment, and if you look at it from the English point of view it is dismemberment. You cannot Disestablish the Church in Wales without, in a sense, 2562 dismembering it. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I say it is impossible to Disestablish the Church in Wales without dismembering it, because it is a part of the province of Canterbury, and you cannot set it up as a free Church without dismembering it in order to Disestablish it. Something has been said, and rightly said, about the reconstitution which will require time. The representative body has got to be formed, and something has got to be done for the government—we call it the self-government—of the Church in the altered circumstances. It has been suggested by the hon. Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) that we first of all Disestablish the Church for a certain number of months, and then re-establish it by Charter. If that is so, I cannot quite understand his objection to the Bill, because the Church will still remain Established, only in one case by Act of Parliament, and in the other case by Charter.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENMy point was that unless you give sufficient time, there may be an interval between Disestablishment and re-establishment.
§ Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITHI understand the hon. Member's opinion is that it is Established to-day, that after this Bill is passed it will be Disestablished, and that by Charter it will be re-established again. That is not our view. Let me say explicitly what our view is upon that point. When the Church is Disestablished the connection between the Church in Wales and the State is severed. It will then be for the Church in Wales to form whatever constitution it likes for itself. Hon. Members opposite ask, "Why do not you refer it to Convocation?" We say frankly that that is not our business as a Parliament, and that it is for you to say under what government you wish to live. I am enough of a Welsh Nationalist to believe that the Welsh Church, when it is severed from the State, when it is governed by itself, not merely by the bishops and clergy, but also by the laity, will be a powerful Church in the sense it has never been before.
§ The CHAIRMANI rather think that is a matter for Second Reading.
§ Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITHI bow to your ruling, Sir. I was led into the subject. Hon. Members say that it will take time to formulate the constitution. It would take less time if we were going to impose a constitution upon it.
§ Mr. ORMSBY-GOREDid not the Home Secretary say that under this Bill he was going to leave the constitution to the Synod? You are going to impose upon us something under this Bill which we do not like.
§ Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITHIf we were gong to impose it upon you it would take less time to do it. Although this is an important point, I do not think it is relevant to this particular Amendment, but I think it will be an advantage to both sides if I were to say, and my right hon. Friend agrees, that it will be for the Church to do whatever it thinks right in the circumstances. The point we put to hon. Members opposite is that we think six months with a possible limit of twelve months, is quite sufficient for the purpose. I believe it took a little over six months to frame a constitution in the case of the Irish Church, and I believe six months will be quite ample in this case for the Welsh Church. I agree that in the case of the Irish Church it took longer from start to finish, but after the body which had to be brought into existence met it took from February until November. At any rate, we claim that in these circumstances the limit we propose is a reasonable limit. An hon. Member opposite said he wanted to make it an indefinite time. We do not think it ought to be an indefinite time. We say that six months, or, at the most, twelve months, is quite sufficient time for the Church in Wales to be Disestablished and Disendowed, as it is by this Bill, to take all steps that are necessary to place itself upon a firm footing as a free Church under a constitution adapted to itself, by which it will be able to rule and govern itself, and that it will have time within this period to take all necessary steps with regard to the Endowments left to it and to provide the necessary parochial organisation.
§ Viscount WOLMERIf there is any sincerity at all in the profession we have had from the opposite side of the Committee that there is no intention to injure or persecute the Church, the Government would have accepted this Amendment without the slightest hesitation. This Amendment in no way interferes with the Bill or with the object of hon. Members opposite, and the refusal of it can only mean that they desire to impose upon the Church a petty piece of tyranny and to make it as difficult for that Church as they can. The 2564 work the Church will have to do after the passing of this Bill will be perfectly colossal. Attempts have been made from the other side to belittle what the Church will have to do. I will give hon. Members opposite a list of the things which will have to be accomplished to make good the damage that will be done by the passing of this Bill. In the first place, the Church will have to hold a Synod to make a new constitution, and to settle on what franchise the laity are to vote in order to have elections, if there are to be elections. That means that they will have to take a sort of religious census all over the country. Then they will have to hold these elections, if elections are decided upon. Then the whole question of parishes will have to be settled. My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Duke) said that under this Bill all parishioners' rights would cease, but I venture to suggest that the point is left in absolute confusion by the Bill. I ask hon. Members opposite to look at Clause 8, Sub-section (2), in which it is said:—
"Save as otherwise provided by this Act, all property transferred under this Section shall be held subject to all existing public and private rights with respect thereto."
That means that when the Churches are restored to the Disestablished Church, the property will be held by the Church subject to the existing rights which parishioners have at the present moment. At any rate the matter is one of the very gravest doubt. The clearing up of the ambiguities in this Bill will be one of the most difficult tasks for those who are responsible for the government of a Church in her new Disestablished form. That shows the extraordinary amount of chaos and confusion the Church will have to wade through before she can adapt herself to the new conditions under which she will find herself after this Bill is passed. Then the Church will have to reconstitute, from beginning to end, the Ecclesiastical Courts and all the machinery connected with them. The dioceses of the Church will have to be made afresh, so as to fit in with the geographical limits imposed by the Bill. Hon. Members are well aware that this Bill breaks up the diocesan organisation of the Church. The whole of that will have to be readjusted. Alteration and modification will have to take place in all the parishes, in all the deaneries, and in all the dioceses. The Church will be faced with a great financial problem which will be suddenly forced upon her. She will have 2565 to see how this generation is to meet the strain imposed upon it through having the benefactions of a dozen generations suddenly taken away from the Church. There is a question to which attention was drawn by the hon. Member for Denbigh (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) which has not yet been answered by any hon. Member opposite. That is to say, the Church will be forced to buy back her own glebes immediately Disestablishment takes place. I suppose the object of that is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer shall be able to confiscate that property on some future occasion. At any rate, it will mean a very complicated and difficult financial transaction for the Church to carry through.
Then there is another point which I do not think has been mentioned yet, and that is that the Welsh Commissioners under this Bill will have to make a whole series of regulations which will have to be approved by Order in Council, and then laid upon the Table of the House; and then the Church will have to adapt herself to these regulations. That is to say, that none of the work of reorganisation and reconstruction can be commenced until those regulations are completed and approved and made public. Therefore, before these regulations—there are several sets of them in the Bill—are completed and published it will be impossible for the Church to start off to adapt herself to the new circumstances. Then there is this point, that the Bill will pass into law so very little discussed that there are certain to be a great many ambiguities and difficulties which will arise under the working of it, and that again will make the work of reorganisation more difficult than it would have been otherwise. That is a summary, I think an inadequate one, of part of the work the Church will have to do between the passage of this Bill into law and the date of the Disestablishment; and to think that the Church can do that in six months or in twelve months is perfectly asburd. What you are asking the Church to do in twelve months is to absolutely re-do what she has taken twelve centuries to do, and you are asking her
§ to reorganise and to reinvigorate that bleeding and lacerated mass which you are leaving. There is in this Amendment not a single thing which would in any way hinder or prevent the scheme which we are trying to carry out. It is simply an Amendment to enable the Church to suffer this great injury with a minimum of difficulty attending it. If you were really anxious to carry out this Disestablishment, Disendowment, and dismemberment with a minimum of injury to the Church, you would agree to the Amendment without the slightest hesitation. It is only because you wish to inflict injury and harm upon the Church that you refuse to allow her to have even a decent amount of time.
§ Mr. KINGMay I call your attention, Sir, to the remarks that Mr. Speaker made on Friday last about provocative language, and may I ask your ruling whether the language of the Noble Lord does not come within that description?
§ The CHAIRMANI am quite aware of that ruling. I think the hon. Member must trust me. I did not see anything provocative in it.
§ Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause," put, and negatived.
§ Question proposed, "That the words 'expiration of two years' be there inserted."
§ Mr. McKENNAI beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, to leave out the words "two years," and insert instead thereof the words "six months or such extended period as His Majesty may fix by Order in Council, not being more than twelve months."
§ Question put, "That the words 'two years' stand part of the proposed Amendment."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 174; Noes, 289.
2569| Division No. 392.] | AYES. | [7.21 p.m. |
| Agg-Gardner, James Tynte | Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Bigland, Alfred |
| Aitken, Sir William Max | Barlow, Montague (Salford, South) | Blair, Reginald |
| Amery, L. C. M. S. | Barnston, Harry | Boles, Lieut.-Col. Dennis Fortescue |
| Archer-Shee, Major M. | Barrie, H. T. | Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith- |
| Ashley, W. W. | Bathurst, C. (Wilts, Wilton) | Boyton, James |
| Baird, J. L. | Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell |
| Baker, Sir R. L. (Dorset, N.) | Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Bridgeman, W. Clive |
| Balcarres, Lord | Bonn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth) | Bull, Sir William James |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish- | Burdett-Coutts, W. |
| Burn, Colonel C. R. | Hamersley, Alfred St. George | Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington) |
| Butcher, John George | Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence | Peto, Basil Edward |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. (Dublin Univ.) | Harris, Henry Percy | Pollock, Ernest Murray |
| Campion, W. R. | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Pretyman, Ernest George |
| Cassell, Felix | Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon) | Pryce-Jones, Col. E. |
| Cator, John | Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.) | Quilter, Sir William Eley C. |
| Cautley, H. S. | Hewins, William Albert Samuel | Rawlinson, John Frederick Peet |
| Cave, George | Hickman, Colonel Thomas E. | Rees, Sir J. D. |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Hill, Sir Clement L. | Remnant, James Farquharson |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin) | Hoare, S. J. G. | Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Chaloner, Col. R. G. W. | Hohler, G. F. | Royds, Edmund |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen) |
| Clay, Capt. H. H. Spender | Houston, Robert Paterson | Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby) |
| Clive, Captain Percy Archer | Hume-Williams, Wm. Ellis | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Cooper, Richard Ashmole | Hunt, Rowland | Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood) |
| Craig. Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Hunter, Sir C. R. | Sanders, Robert Arthur |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | Ingleby, Holcombe | Sanderson, Lancelot |
| Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet) | Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, East) | Sassoon, Sir Philip |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Jessel, Captain H. M. | Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange) |
| Dalziel, D. (Brixton) | Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr | Scott, Sir s. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Denniss, E. R. B. | Kimber, Sir Henry | Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'p'l., Walton) |
| Dixon, C. H. | Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement | Smith, Harold (Warrington) |
| Doughty, Sir George | Knight, Captain Eric Ayshford | Spear, Sir John Ward |
| Duke, Henry Edward | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Stanler, Beville |
| Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M. | Larmor, Sir J. | Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston) |
| Faber, George Denison (Clapham) | Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle) | Starkey, John Ralph |
| Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | Lloyd, George Ambrose | Steel-Maitland, A. D. |
| Falle, B. G. | Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey) | Stewart, Gershom |
| Fell, Arthur | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North) |
| Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey | Lonsdale, Sir John Brownlee | Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford) |
| Finlay, Rt. Hon. Sir Robert | Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston) | Talbot, Lord E. |
| Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A. | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo., Han. S.) | Terrell, G. (Wilts, N.W.) |
| Fletcher, John Samuel | MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh | Terrell, Henry (Gloucester) |
| Forster, Henry William | Macmaster, Donald | Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North) |
| Foster, Philip Staveley | Magnus, Sir Philip | Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North) |
| Gardner, Ernest | Malcolm, Ian | Tryon, Captain George Clement |
| Gastrell, Major W. Houghton | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Tullibardine, Marquess of |
| Gibbs, G. A. | Mildmay, Francis Bingham | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Glazebrook, Captain Philip K. | Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas | White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport) |
| Goldman, C. S. | Moore, William | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Goldsmith, Frank | Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton) | Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud |
| Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton) | Mount, William Arthur | Winterton, Earl |
| Goulding, Edward Alfred | Neville, Reginald J. N. | Wolmer, Viscount |
| Grant, J. A. | Newdegate, F. A. | Worthington-Evans, L. |
| Greene, W. R. | Newman, John R. P. | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Gretton, John | Newton, Harry Kottingham | Yate, Colonel C. E. |
| Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne) | Nield, Herbert | Yerburgh, Robert A. |
| Haddock, George Bahr | O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid) | |
| Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight) | Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A. | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Sir |
| Hall, Marshall (L'pool, E. Toxteth) | Parker, sir Gilbert (Gravesend) | A. Cripps and Mr. Ormsby-Gore. |
| Hambro, Angus Valdemar | ||
| NOES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour) | Brocklehurst, William B. | Denman, Hon. R. D. |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Bryce, J. Annan | Devlin, Joseph |
| Adamson, William | Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Dickinson, W. H. |
| Addison, Dr. C. | Burke, E. Haviland- | Dillon, John |
| Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D. | Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar) | Donelan, Captain A. |
| Agnew, Sir George William | Byles, Sir William Pollard | Doris, William |
| Allen, Arthur Acland (Dumbartonshire) | Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Duffy, William J. |
| Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud) | Cewley, H. T. (Heywood) | Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) |
| Armitage, Robert | Chancellor, H. G. | Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley) |
| Arnold, Sydney | Chapple, Dr. William Allen | Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.) |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry | Clancy, John Joseph | Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) |
| Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A. | Clough, William | Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid) |
| Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.) | Clynes, John R. | Elverston, Sir Harold |
| Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark) | Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.) |
| Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple) | Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J. | Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.) |
| Barnes, George N. | Condon, Thomas Joseph | Essex, Richard Walter |
| Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick) | Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Essiemont, George Birnie |
| Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.) | Cory, Sir Clifford John | Falconer, James |
| Barton, William | Cotton, William Francis | Farrell, James Patrick |
| Beale, Sir William Phipson | Crean, Eugene | Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles |
| Beck, Arthur Cecil | Crooks, William | French, Peter |
| Benn, W. W. (Tower Hamlets, S. Geo.) | Crumley, Patrick | Field, William |
| Bentham, George Jackson | Cullinan, John | Fitzgibbon, John |
| Bethell, Sir John Henry | Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Flavin, Michael Joseph |
| Black, Arthur W. | Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth) | France, Gerald Ashburner |
| Boland, John Pius | Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd |
| Booth, Frederick Handel | Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardiganshire) | Gilhooly, James |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Dawes, J. A. | Gill, A. H. |
| Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North) | De Forest, Baron | Ginnell, L. |
| Brady, P. J. | Delany, William | Gladstone, W. G. C. |
| Glanville, H. J. | MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South) | Richardson, Albion (Peckham) |
| Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Macpherson, James Ian | Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven) |
| Goldstone, Frank | MacVeagh, Jeremiah | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough) | M'Kean, John | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland) | McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs) |
| Griffith, Ellis Jones | M'Laren, Hon. H. D, (Leics.) | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) |
| Guest, Hon. Major c. H. C. (Pembroke) | M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding) | Robinson, Sidney |
| Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.) | Manfield, Harry | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| Guiney, Patrick | Markham, Sir Arthur Basil | Roche, Augustine (Louth) |
| Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway) | Marks, Sir George Croydon | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Hackett, J. | Mason, David M. (Coventry) | Rowlands, James |
| Hancock, John George | Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G. | Rowntree, Arnold |
| Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Meagher, Michael | Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W. |
| Hardie, J. Keir | Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.) | Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland) |
| Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds) | Menzies, Sir Walter | Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees) |
| Marmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire) | Molloy, Michael | Scanlan, Thomas |
| Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Molteno, Percy Alport | Schwann, Rt. Hon, Sir Charles E. |
| Harvey, T. E. (Leeds W.) | Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz | Sheehy, David |
| Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.) | Mooney, J. J. | Sherwell, Arthur James |
| Haslam, James (Deroyshire) | Morrell, Philip | Shortt, Edward |
| Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Morison, Hector | Simon, Sir John Allsebrook |
| Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry | Muldoon, John | Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe) |
| Hayden, John Patrick | Munro, R. | Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim) |
| Hazleton, Richard | Nannetti, Joseph P. | Snowden, Philip |
| Healy, Maurice (Cork) | Nellson, Francis | Soames, Arthur Wellesley |
| Healy, Timothy Michael (Cork, N.E.) | Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster) | Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.) |
| Helme, Sir Norval Watson | Nolan, Joseph | Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West) |
| Hemmerde, Edward George | Norton, Captain Cecil W. | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Nugent, Sir Walter Richard | Sutton, John E. |
| Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.) | Nuttall, Harry | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Henry, Sir Charles | O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) | Taylor, Thomas (Bolton) |
| Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.) | O'Connor, T. P. Liverpool) | Tennant, Harold John |
| Higham, John Sharp | O'Doherty, Philip | Thomas, James Henry |
| Hinds, John | O'Donnell, Thomas | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) |
| Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | O'Grady, James | Toulmin, Sir George |
| Hodge, John | O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.) | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Hope, John Deans (Haddington) | O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.) | Wadsworth, J. |
| Horne, C. Silvester (Ipswich) | O'Malley, William | Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince) |
| Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.) | Walters, Sir John Tudor |
| Hudson, Walter | O'Shaughnessy, P. J. | Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent) |
| Hughes, Spencer Leigh | O'Shee, James John | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus | O'Sullivan, Timothy | Wardle, George J. |
| John, Edward Thomas | Outhwaite, R. L. | Waring, Walter |
| Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D.Brynmor (Swansea) | Palmer, Godfrey Mark | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) |
| Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil) | Parker, James (Halifax) | Watt, Henry Anderson |
| Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth) | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) | Webb, H. |
| Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe) | Pearce, William (Limehouse) | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East) | Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham) | White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E.R.) |
| Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton) | White, Patrick (Meath, North) |
| Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney) | Phillips, John (Longford, S.) | Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P. |
| Joyce, Michael | Pirie, Duncan V. | Whyte, A. F. (Perth) |
| Keating, Matthew | Pointer, Joseph | Wiles, Thomas |
| Kellaway, Frederick George | Pollard, Sir George H. | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Kennedy, Vincent Paul | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. | Williams, John (Glamorgan) |
| Kilbride, Denis | Power, Patrick Joseph | Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen) |
| King, J. | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) | Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough) |
| Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton) | Priestley, Sir W. E. (Bradford) | Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.) |
| Lambert, Richard (Wilts. Cricklade) | Pringle, William M. R. | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Lardner, James Carrige Rushe | Radford, G. H. | Winfrey, Richard |
| Leach, Charles | Raffan, Peter Wilson | Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.) |
| Levy, Sir Maurice | Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields) | Young, Samuel (Cavan, E.) |
| Lewis, John Herbert | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough) | Young, W. (Perthshire, E.) |
| Lundon, T. | Reddy, M. | Yoxall, Sir James Henry |
| Lyell, Charles Henry | Redmond, John E. (Waterford) | |
| Lynch, A. A. | Redmond, William (Clare, E.) | |
| Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester) | Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.) | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. |
| McGhee, Richard | Rendall, Athelstan | Illingworth and Mr. Gulland. |
| Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J. | Richards, Thomas |
Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause," put, and agreed to.
§ Mr. HOAREI beg to move to leave out the words "so far as it extends to and exists in Wales and Monmouthshire," and to insert instead thereof the words "in the dioceses of St. David's, St. Asaph, Bangor, and Llandaff."
The object of this Amendment is to take the diocesan boundary instead of the 2570 geographical boundary. Its effect will be this. At present there are eleven English parishes now attached to English dioceses situated in Wales. I am anxious that these parishes should not be touched by the Bill. It may seem a small point to move an Amendment which affects only eleven parishes. At the same time, I venture to think that it covers two very big principles. I believe, first of all, that it shows 2571 this Bill is not simply a Bill to Disestablish the Church in Wales, but that it is also a Bill which affects English parishes. My Amendment, therefore, brings up at once the question of dismemberment; and, secondly, I believe it brings up another question of very great importance. For the first time, I believe I am right in saying, in our history Parliament is asked to interfere with spiritual jurisdiction and with ecclesiastical boundaries without having obtained the assent, formal or informal, of the Church. First of all, with reference to dismemberment, the Bill as it stands Disestablishes and Disendows eleven English parishes. That shows at once that it is not simply a precedent for English Disestablishment; it is the first instalment; and it further shows that it is impossible to treat this Bill as if you can isolate part of what is really an indivisible organic whole. I know that two objections may be urged to that proposition. In the first place, it may be said that for practical reasons you must take the geographical boundaries. It seems to me that in the matter of boundaries the Government are playing the game, "Heads I win, tails you lose." They take the geographical boundaries in order to bring in the eleven English parishes, and they take the diocesan boundaries in order to include Monmouth as part of the diocese of Llandaff. It may be said that my Amendment is double-edged, and that while there are eleven English parishes in Wales, there are fourteen Welsh parishes in England, and if, therefore, it was carried, you would have these fourteen Welsh parishes in England Disestablished and Disendowed, although the eleven English parishes in Wales would have been saved.
That brings me to the second point. For here comes up the very important question of the necessity of acting in matters of this kind with the assent of the accredited authorities of the Church. I am told that if my Amendment is carried the Welsh bishops who have parishes in England would be perfectly willing to transfer those parishes to the appropriate English dioceses, and that, therefore, there would be no reason for their inclusion in the scope of the Bill. It is one thing to interfere with ecclesiastical boundaries with the assent of the Church and quite a different thing to interfere with them without the assent of the Church. I believe I am right in saying that on no occasion has interference of this kind taken 2572 place without the assent of the Church in some shape or form. There are many precedents for what I say. There are, for instance, a number of Acts of Parliament which deal with the union and disunion of parishes. It has been found at certain periods that parochial boundaries had for one reason or another to be altered. What happened? Parliament passed a series of Acts under which parochial boundaries have been altered, but it has always been expressly declared that no alteration could take place until first of all the bishop concerned had approved of it, and secondly, the Archbishop of the province had given his sanction. More marked still there are the cases in which isolated districts have been for reasons of convenience transferred to different ecclesiastical jurisdiction. There again the same procedure has taken place. In every case it was necessary to obtain, first of all, the approval of the bishop, and, secondly, the sanction of the Metropolitan of the province. When I come to the diocesan boundaries the case is just as strong. As the Committee are aware on several occasions diocesan boundaries have been altered. New bishoprics have been created and changes in ecclesiastical jurisdiction have taken place, but I challenge hon. Gentlemen opposite to point to any case from the sixteenth century to the present time in which the assent of the Church was not first obtained.
In the sixteenth century, in the reign of Henry VIII., there was a marked instance of a change of diocesan jurisdiction in the case of the Channel Islands. During the sixteenth century the Channel Islands changed their civil allegiance from France to England, and the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Coutances ceased to exist. The Channel Islands were transferred to the diocese of Winchester. You would have thought that so autocratic a monarch as Henry VIII. would have paid attention in a matter of that kind to the desire of the Church. What did he do? He took the precaution to obtain a special Bull from the Pope of the day, Alexander the VII., to allow the Channel Islands to be transferred from the diocese of Coutances to the diocese of Winchester. You can take the case of the six bishoprics created as the result of the abolition of the monasteries. There, again, Henry VIII. had the full approval of the authorities of the Church concerned. If you come to modern times, on each occasion when a new bishopric was created during the 2573 nineteenth century, Parliament did not act until it was convinced that it had the approval of the bishops and archbishops of the Church. There was one very marked instance in 1838, when as the result of a report of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners a number of changes were made in diocesan boundaries and diocesan jurisdiction. The recommendation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners which way afterwards carried out was that methods of internal administration should be left as they were left to a Special, Commission consisting of the Archbishop of Canterbury and three other bishops. I therefore claim that there is no instance of interference with spiritual jurisdiction over ecclesiastical boundaries by this House without the approval in some shape or form of the authorities of the Church. This seems to me to raise a most important question. From what some hon. Members opposite have said it would appear that they are under the impression that this House has a perfect right to make what alterations it likes in the government of the Established Church, and I take this opportunity —the first opportunity that has been given to us in these discussions—to protest against such a claim. It seems to me that the Government in proposing to disregard diocesan boundaries and ecclesiastical jurisdiction is giving some countenance to that claim, and I hope that as a protest against that attitude this Committee will accept my Amendment, and by so doing will show in a manner which cannot be disputed that the Church is a voluntary religious body, and that whilst in several directions the civil power may interfere with its external acts, it has no right without the Church's consent to meddle with its internal administration.
§ The CHANCELLOR of the DUCHY of LANCASTER (Mr. Hobhouse)I hope the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hoare) who moved this Amendment will forgive me if I do not follow him into his researches in mediaeval history. I hope I may be able to persuade him that the proposal of the Government is more favourable to the Church than that in the Amendment he has moved. I would point out that there are no English parishes in the geographical sense concerned at all in this matter. All the parishes which are in dispute are either partly in Wales or Monmouthshire or wholly in Wales. There are fourteen parishes partly in Wales and Monmouthshire which are included in English dioceses. Two are in the diocese of Chester, 2574 ten in the diocese of Hereford, and two in the diocese of Lichfield. There are, besides, six parishes partly in Wales and Monmouthshire, but included in Welsh dioceses. Four are in the diocese of St. Asaph and two in the diocese of Llandaff. There are fourteen parishes not themselves in Wales or Monmouthshire, but all in the diocese of St. David's. There are ten parishes wholly in Wales and Monmouthshire, but included in English dioceses, one being in the diocese of Chester, one in the diocese of Lichfield, and eight in the diocese of Hereford. What would happen if the Amendment were carried? Supposing the Welsh diocese were substituted in the Bill for Wales and Monmouthshire, these fourteen parishes which belong to the English dioceses which I have enumerated, and would under the Bill, as they lie partly in Wales or Monmouthshire, have the right of option, as the opinion of the people who live in the parishes would have to be ascertained, would under the Amendment automatically remain Established, and from that point of view the Church would gain. But go a step further and take the fourteen parishes in England, which are in the diocese of St. David's. These, under the Bill, remain Established, because they do not belong to Wales or Monmouthshire geographically. Under the Amendment they would be Disestablished, because they are in Welsh dioceses. So the Church would gain fourteen and lose fourteen. But there are besides that six other parishes which under Sub-section (1) of Clause 9 have the right of option, because they are partly in Wales or Monmouthshire, although they belong to Welsh dioceses. Under the Amendment those six parishes would be Disestablished. You would have to add up the total result of what the Amendment would effect and compare it with what the Bill proposes. The hon. Member will thus see that the Church stands to lose far more than it would gain under the Amendment, and I trust therefore that he will be in agreement with the Government on this particular matter.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANThe right hon. Gentleman seems to have lost sight of the words in lines 14 and 15 of Clause 1, "save as by this Act provided." I understand from his speech that he threatens that if this Amendment should be carried he will then withdraw the definitions under Clause 9, which exclude parishes in England in Welsh dioceses from the 2575 provisions of the Bill. Do I understand from him that if the Amendment is carried he will leave out the provisions of Clause 9 altogether?
§ Mr. HOBHOUSENo.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANIf that is not so there is no point in his argument as to the Church being much worse off under the Amendment than under the Bill. Surely it is quite possible for a diocese voluntarily to rearrange its boundaries before this Act comes into force. In such cases they would do what is best for themselves, and there would be no forcible dismemberment of the parishes.
§ Captain CLIVEI understand from my hon. Friend that it is suggested that the Welsh bishops might voluntarily transfer the parishes which are in England to English dioceses. If that is so, perhaps this Amendment would be linked with one that stands in my own name, as regards the question of putting under the Bill those parishes in which I am chiefly interested which are near Hereford. I do think it would be very desirable to take ecclesiastical boundaries in that respect rather than geographical boundaries. It would get rid, so far as the dividing parishes are concerned, of the extraordinary complications of procedure under Clause 9, Sub-section (1), where those parishes are allowed to decide by majority whether they will come under the Bill or not. And then there is left the option to any particular parishioner to appeal against such order to His Majesty in Council. I suppose in every one of those parishes a parishioner will be found ready to appeal, and so a very complicated legal procedure would ensue. That might be avoided by accepting either this Amendment or some similar Amendment embodying the principle which my hon. Friend announces. I cannot speak from personal knowledge for the parishes of Montgomery, which are in the diocese of Hereford in Wales, but as regards the parishes of Radnor I can speak from personal knowledge. There the parishes are geographically much more attached to Herefordshire than they are to Wales, because they are divided by a considerable mountainous district and Radnor forest from the rest of Wales. As regards railway communication they are closely connected with Hereford, and they have no railway connection with the other part of Radnor, which is on the other side of the Radnor forest. For these reasons I 2576 hope, if the right hon. Gentleman will not accept the Amendment on the Paper, he will favourably consider the possibilities of retaining, at any rate, those parishes which are in this diocese.
§ Mr. ORMSBY-GOREI do protest against the way in which the Chancellor of the Duchy approaches the question. He seems to treat it as a sort of profit and loss account, that the Church will gain so much and lose so much, and that the loss, on the whole, is greater than the gain. What you are doing in opposing this Amendment is: You are disrupting and disarranging diocesan boundaries against the will of the parishioners. I know one of those parishes very well in the diocese of St. Asaph, and there is a very strong feeling indeed among the people. I had a letter from one person, who says: "Here are all my ancestors buried in this parish. They are Welsh people. That parish has been in the diocese of St. Asaph for many centuries. Now you are going to take it out of that diocese and put it into Heaven knows what diocese, with which you have no connection and no historical link." I know you say that this is a question of Endowment, but the destroying of diocesan boundaries against the wishes of the parishioners is a very weighty matter. The Government regard this matter merely as one of dealing with a profit and loss account and seeing how much we can get for the Church. That is not what we want. I trust that this Bill will never be on the Statute-book, but this Amendment serves to show how utterly false is the pretence of the Government that they are caring for the interests of the Church. Here is an organisation going back to the Middle Ages. Here are diocesan boundaries fixed in this way, and you are disregarding them altogether, in favour of mere geographical secular boundaries, and you are utterly disregarding the wishes of the Church.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENAs my hon. Friend has pointed out, the real point of this Amendment is not what we are going to gain or lose. To tell us that we should lose more parishes than we should gain is entirely to misunderstand the feelings of the Church people. That is not the way we are looking at this question at all The importance of the Amendment is as showing that this is a Bill completely disrupting our Church. The proposals made in the Bill are more extraordinary still when we remember the main con- 2577 sideration used by advocates of Disestablishment, namely, that the Church as at present constituted is an Erastian body set up by the State at the time of the Reformation. I do not hold that view myself, I need hardly say, but that is the argument constantly used by the other side. You will find it written large over all the books published on this question by the Liberation Society and various bodies advocating this Bill. The Government object to us because they say we have an Erastian constitution. Then they proceed by State Act, without consulting the Church, to rearrange the dioceses. What can be more Erastian than that? You take the dioceses as you find them. You say, "Some of these parishes happen to be in England. Therefore they ought not to be Disestablished or Disendowed. Other parishes which are in Wales happen to be in English dioceses. Therefore they ought to be Disestablished and Disendowed." My point is that the State has no right "whatever to take that action. We talk about the Church being free, and able to manage its own affairs. What nonsense it is when by your own action you are deciding what are to be the dioceses of the Church in the future! That, therefore, is the reason that this Amendment is raised. We claim, and claim very strongly, that the State have no right whatever to do this thing. We are constantly hearing about the Irish precedent, but it breaks down at every turn. Look at the difference. In the case of the Irish precedent you had an undoubtedly separate Church, a Church which had been united about seventy years before by an Act of Parliament. You had a broad geographical distinction which anybody could see. You had St. George's Channel flowing between the Church of Ireland and this country. As regards the Church in Wales, the fact is that it is bound so closely with the Church of England, owing to the lapse of centuries, that when you seek to Disestablish and Disendow her, not only is it necessary to dismember her, but you have actually got by Act of Parliament to rearrange the boundaries. This shows how entirely different the case is from that of the Irish Church. Shortly before the Irish Church Bill was discussed on the Resolution which the late Mr. Gladstone moved leading up to the Irish Disestablishment Bill, he used these words:—
The operation of Disestablishing the Church of Ireland will not be an easy one. It will be found that it is tied, knitted and tangled in such a mass of legal bonds and meshes with the general body of the Church, that it will be a very formidable matter to accomplish the untieing process.2578 How much more formidable is it to accomplish the untieing process in the case of the Church in Wales? The case is very much stronger, and it is because we want to point out the absurdity of the Government proposals and their inconsistency in talking about our being an Erastian Church and then by Act of Parliament altering our boundaries and reconstituting us that this Amendment has been moved. I do not know whether my hon. Friend will go to a Division upon it, but at any rate it will have served its purpose by exposing the futility of the Government's proposals.
§ 8.0 P.M.
§ Lord ROBERT CECILThe real difficulty which we experience in this Debate is that the Home Secretary and others on the opposite side are not able to realise the point of view of those who oppose this Bill. The Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Masterman) and the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd George) are exactly the two Members of the House of all others to whom I wish to make a few observations in regard to this Amendment. Both right hon. Gentlemen have made very eloquent speeches in this House, dealing with the feeling of nationality. I must say some of the observations made by the Secretary to the Treasury were grotesquely exaggerated. The absorption of the individual into a corporate whole is really the principle upon which the feeling of nationality ultimately rests, and it is, of course, one of the strongest and most powerful feelings which actuate human nature. But you must not imagine the feeling of nationality stands by itself. It is one example of the phenomenon found in all relations of human life that the ordinary man has a feeling in favour of every corporate institution to which he belongs, even to the House of Commons, and it is exactly the same in the case of his nationality. If he is a Welshman he will have the feeling of Welsh nationality, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has often assured us that it does not interfere with the strong feeling of patriotism for the United Kingdom or the British Empire. I quite agree that all these things are examples of the same feeling, but right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite do not appear to understand that the feeling of Churchmanship is just as strong as the feeling of nationality.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to understand it, but he does not act upon it; he never allows for it. As for the Chancellor of the Duchy, he does not have 2579 a glimmering of it, nor does the Home Secretary—they simply have not the slightest idea. They do their best indeed, but the result is extraordinarily unsuccessful in promoting conviction, at any rate on this side of the House. My hon. Friend has moved his Amendment as a protest against mutilation and dismemberment of the Church, and the right hon. Gentleman says, "Oh, you are quite wrong; it is quite true we are going to cut off this bit and that bit of the diocese, that we are going to rearrange it—we, the House of Commons, are going to interfere with the internal management of the Church and the internal existence and life of the Church; we are going to do it entirely on our own authority, without consulting the members of the Church inside or outside Wales; we are going to do the most Erastian thing ever done in this country, without any attempt to obtain the consent of the Ecclesiastical Corporation with which we are going to interfere." The right hon. Gentleman makes no reply to that. He says, "I need not bother about it, if I can show that if you add up the parishes of the Church, the Church would gain this and the Church would lose that under this Bill." At any rate, that is a frank admission that it will be an injury to the Church. But, apart from that, the right lion. Gentleman made this elaborate subtraction first on this side and then on that side, and he said that we will lose a little less, or we will lose more by this Amendment than if we left the Bill as it is. But that really misses the whole point of my hon. Friend's argument, and shows complete misunderstanding of what we are really driving at when we protest against the dismemberment of the Church and the interference of Parliament in the internal management and internal life of the Church.
§ Sir J. D. REESOn this Amendment a discussion has been allowed on the question of nationality, and I shall not be out of order if I suggest that though there may be a very strong feeling of nationality in Wales, at any rate, that feeling is not common to North and South Wales.
§ The DEPUTY - CHAIRMAN (Mr. Maclean)I think the question of nationality should not be discussed in reference to any particular part of the country. The reference to nationality should be purely of a general kind. If the hon. Gentleman makes any reference to nationality, he 2580 must keep his observations within the limit I have indicated.
§ Sir J. D. REESI will make it as brief as possible, at least as brief as the references by the Noble Lord whose observations were passed without objection. The nationality of Wales as an entity has no immediate relevance to the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales and Monmouth, because the whole case is that the Principality and the county make a nation, and that therefore it is because of the national feeling which exists that this proposal is laid before the House of Commons. I submit that upon the argument which has been advanced and which is allowed to be strictly relevant, that Wales has a separate nationality. I take the test of nationality to be an existence apart from any other existence which is recognised as a separate existence; that, to my mind, is a nationality. But accepting the other definition, which seems to obtain in the House, that a separate nationality is marked by something of an ethnic or linguistic character—and I gather that is the test for the moment—then I submit there is no solidarity or community of interests whatsoever, whether linguistic, commercial, sentimental or other, between North Wales and South Wales. They are absolutely separate, and even the Welsh which is spoken is perhaps hardly the same in North and South Wales. If that criterion, which seems to be allowed to pass without comment in the House, is once admitted, then I do submit that South Wales—
§ Mr. HEMMERDEOn a point of Order, Sir. Is the hon. Member in order in discussing South Wales and North Wales?
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANI call the hon. Member's attention to the observations I have already made to him.
§ Sir J. D. REESI submit that it is a relevant point which I make; at any rate, it is a novel point. I am not speaking from a brief; I am speaking what I honestly believe, and from no brief at all, as the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. T. M. Healy) the other evening described it. Whether it is a good point or not, hon. and right hon. Gentlemen can refute it, or confound me if I am wrong. I submit that if Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church in Wales is in any way to depend upon a national, individual, and separate corporate existence in North and South Wales, it is founded upon a quicksand, because there is no community of interests, 2581 from any point of view, between North and South Wales; nay, more than that, there is none between parts of South Wales, and the argument of the other side must fall to the ground.
§ Mr. CAMPIONI beg to move, in Subsection (1), after the word "be" ["cease to be"], to insert the words "as now."
With this Amendment the Clause would read, "Shall cease to be as now established by law." The Home Secretary in answer to this side said that the only difference in the Church in future would be that instead of being Established by Act of Parliament she would be Established by the Lord Chancellor. I think this Amendment raises the whole question of Establishment and what is meant by Establishment. We on this side of the House and the country generally desire to know what is meant by Establishment, because there is a good deal of indefinite-ness at the present time as to exactly what the position of the Church in Wales will be when it is Disestablished—what will be its legal position, whether the law dealing with the Church, the Statute Law and Common Law, will cease to apply, and whether, if that is the case and from what has transpired this afternoon I am inclined to think that it is the case—we ought not to have scheduled a list of the Statutes that will necessarily have to be repealed. But there is another feature, to my mind a more important feature, with regard to Establishment, namely, when the Church is Disestablished will it necessitate that the obligation of the Church to service and duty in the parishes cease to be imposed upon it? Amongst many other important features of the Establishment— which I may say perfectly straightforwardly is to me far more important than Endowment—is the service which it renders in the parishes. I regard it as one of the most valuable assets of the principle of Establishment that it is a duty laid upon the Church to provide ministration throughout the length and breadth of the country for every man and woman in the country. The Church is comprehensive, and is neither the Church of high or low, rich or poor. It has to organise the whole country into parishes from one end of the land to the other, and in those parishes 2582 it is the duty of the clergyman to minister in times of sickness, trouble, and death, to rich or poor, and even if they do not belong to the Church at all, every man and woman has the right to ministration and to attend divine service in the Church. I should like to know whether in future, if this Bill passes into law, that same duty is to remain with the Church. I think when I find the suggestion that the Church has been established by law, it is pertinent for us to ask, what is the difference between the Establishment of the National Church and the establishment of Nonconformist bodies, because to use the words "established by law" to my mind, and I think to the minds of most people on this side, will apply quite as closely and even more closely to many cases of the establishment of Nonconformist denominations. Hon. Members opposite are very found of appealing to the idea that all religious denominations should be equal under the law. If that is so, I do think we ought to know how exactly we should stand, and I want to be assured of what I an in considerable fear about, that when this Bill is passed that the Church of England will not be inferior in legal position to other religious denominations in this country. I maintain that as regards establishment, many Nonconformist denominations are established legally quite as strictly, and more strictly, than the Church of England. In order to bear that out I should like to refer to one or two questions. I have here a quotation from Lord Mansfield in 1767, in giving a legal judgment in the House of Lords, in which he said:—
The Dissenters way of worship is permitted and allowed by this Act. It is not only exempted from punishment, but rendered innocent and lawful. It is established, it is put under protection. It is not merely under the connivance of the law.I might refer also to recent Acts such as the United Methodist Act of 1907, where it was desired by the United Methodist Church and the Bible Christian and the Methodist New Connection, to unite into one Church, a perfectly desirable object, and an object with which we, on this side, would be always ready to assist. But in order to do so, it was necessary to pass an Act of Parliament. I might refer again to the notable case of 1844, when it was necessary to pass the Dissenting Chapels Act in order to allow property to be owned by a body, although there had been a change in doctrine. One could refer also, of course, to the well-known case of the Scottish Church 2583 and only last year there was the Humber-stone Act authorising officials to hold Church office even though there had been a change of doctrine. I would refer particularly to a quotation from the Archbishop of Canterbury in regard to an Act that was passed in the year 1907, I refer to the Longton Caroline Street Chapel Charity Bill and the Kingswood Whitfield Tabernacle Charity Bill, and with regard to which the Archbishop of Canterbury said:—You will find that in each of those Bills arrangements are made by Act of Parliament as to the conditions upon which alone the Pastor and other officials of those different chapels may hold office, and you will find in the Schedule of the Bill, every word of which is capable of amendment, a setting forth of the whole doctrines and creeds which are there to be held. The doctrines are set forth in words so profound and so solemn that they are really practically the teaching of the Apostle's Creed, though they are put in other terms. Now I will say, without fear of contradiction, that yon may search the Acts of Parliament for 300 years before you will find a single Act dealing with the affairs of the Established Church of England with such an amount of doctrinal detail as the affairs of those non-established people were dealt with in Parliament last year.Having established, I think, that Nonconformist bodies have to come to Parliament for the protection of the law, and have come to Parliament in order to secure their positions under the law, and that they are, certainly to a great extent, established by law, then I think we have some right to ask the Government what exactly is meant and what they mean by Establishment. I think we have also some justification in our desire to feel satisfied, though I confess I do not feel satisfied now, that after Disestablishment there may be at any rate equality under the law, and not, as I am afraid, for the Church of England, inferiority under the law.
§ Mr. McKENNAI am utterly at a loss to understand how the hon. Member can read into the Bill any proposal that it is intended when the Church of England is Disestablished that it should be inferior to the other Free Churches in Wales. I have listened with great attention to his argument upon the point, and I confess I am quite at a loss to understand what he means. We have here introduced into the Clause words which have got the sanction of the Irish Act. Does he contend that the Church of England in Ireland is in a less happy position or in a less free position than any other Church in Ireland I Yet the Church of Ireland lives under words precisely the same as those in the present Bill. On the face of them the 2584 words of the hon. Member seem to be perfectly innocent, and after his speech I really do not know if they do not convey some hidden meaning or some hidden purpose which is not apparent in the words themselves. There is no need to accept them since, so far as I can understand, they do not do anything. The Church by law established is the Church as now by law established. I do not know if the words contain some subtle meaning, but we have the example of forty-three years of the Irish Church, and does anybody opposite contend that the English Church in Ireland is inferior to any other Church? The proposition cannot be sustained for a single instant. If the hon. Member can really show that there is any danger or probability or possibility of the Church of England hereafter being placed in an inferior position to any other Church in Wales, then I will accept any words which are necessary to secure the Church of England there, as we have no desire to injure the Church. We desire to put the Church on precisely the same footing, legally and socially, as every other denomination; we have no other object. The words of the hon. Member, if they have any meaning at all, have not the meaning he contends, and ought not to be accepted.
§ Sir J. D. REESThe right hon. Gentleman has covered this Amendment with scorn. I should like to know whether it is not the Government case that upon the appointed day the Church of England in Wales, so far as it exists in Wales, shall cease to be as now by law established.
§ Mr. McKENNAIt is the same as the Amendment. I do not see any difference.
§ Sir J. D. REESThen why does the right hon. Gentleman pour scorn upon an Amendment which merely emphasises what he admits to be his own position? Although I agree with every word my hon. Friend said, I am not quite certain that I understand what alteration the acceptance of this Amendment would entail. But, so far as I can understand its effect, it does not entail any alteration in the intentions of the Government. Therefore I do not understand why the right hon. Gentleman, instead of accepting the Amendment, poured scorn upon it, and suggested that my hon. Friend was making an unreasonable proposal.
§ Mr. EVELYN CECILThe object of this Amendment is to ascertain from the Government what is the difference that will be 2585 introduced by this Bill. The Government clearly desire to alter, and we wish to retain, the present state of things; we wish to say that the Establishment shall remain as it is now. If the Government are really altering the Establishment, we want to know precisely in what respect they are doing so. It would be very desirable from that point of view to have a list of the Statutes which it is proposed to abrogate. There is no Schedule stating what are the Statutes which Establish by law the Church, and until we know what those Statutes are it is extremely difficult to appreciate what is the difference between the position the Government desire to bring about by this Bill and the position which exists to-day. The suggestion of this Clause seems to be that all Statute Law with regard to the Church is to be abrogated, but in Clause 3 the Government apparently contemplate that the existing Ecclesiastical Law is to be modified. If the existing law is to be "abrogated" by this Clause and "modified" by another, the position of the Government appears to be inconsistent. Therefore, we want a clear explanation as to what exactly Establishment is and what Statutes the Government propose to abrogate. I believe that such a Schedule was forthcoming in connection with the Irish Chuch Bill, and I do not understand why the Government have not followed that course in the present case. My hon. Friend, by moving this Amendment, wishes to obtain from the Government a statement showing what good they suppose will result from Disestablishment. I cannot see that any good will result to anybody. It certainly will not result to the Church; the Chancellor of the Duchy admitted as much in a speech a little while ago. It seems equally clear that no good will result to any other religious body. We believe the object of the Bill to be to divorce the State from all recognition of religion. If that is the position, well and good; we know where we are. But at present it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to understand what is really the position of the Government, and it would be only right that they should make it clear on this Amendment.
§ Viscount WOLMERThe reason we support this Amendment is that we want to make it perfectly clear, not only to hon. Members in this House, but, what is more important, to the country also, that this Bill is not going to do away with the Establishment of the Church at all. It is going 'to Disestablish the Church and 2586 afterwards to re-establish it in a new form. We submit that Establishment of the Church as such constitutes no grievance or disadvantage to our Nonconformist fellow countrymen. In fact, all Nonconformist bodies are Established by law at the present moment. They are established by law in their property. They are Established by law in the community from rates which their chapels enjoy. They are recognised by law as corporations. When the Government by this Bill sever the connection of the Church with the State they are not merely Disestablishing the Church, they are simply altering the form of the present Disestablishment; they are re-establishing the Church. It is our object that this Bill should set forth in plain English what it: really does. The Government have a great habit of saying they are doing a certain thing in an Act of Parliament, when the real effect of the Act is something wholly different. We have seen that in several measures before now, and it is especially the case in the present Bill. This measure pretends to Disestablish and free the Church. Our submission is that it does nothing of the sort. It simply alters the form of Establishment—that is to say, it terminates the present Establishment and sets up a brand-new one. In fact, this Bill does exactly the opposite of what it pretends to do. It really does Establish the Church by an Act of Parliament. We are told by hon. Members opposite that the Church is by law Established. We have asked them again and again, but have never got an answer, by what law the Church is Established.
§ Mr. McKENNAThe Noble Lord has been answered again and again.
§ Viscount WOLMERPerhaps the right hon. Gentleman will kindly tell me What law has Established the Church. We shall be very much obliged if he will. But he cannot. No one can, because there is no such law. The Church was Established long before there were any laws in this country at all. The effect of this Bill will be to Establish the Church by law, and by a very bad law, too. Therefore we want this Bill, if it ever becomes an Act of Parliament, to set forth in its first Clause what its real effect is. That is a very important consideration, because, after all, this Bill, whether it passes into law or not, must be referred to the electorate of the country; and if the electors declare against it at the next election, it will, of 2587 Course, be repealed. Therefore you cannot, even by rushing the Bill through in this Parliament, as you are trying to do, dodge the opinion of the electors of the country. Therefore, when the Bill comes before the electors and the country for their approval it should be plainly set forth in the Bill what its effect is, in order that there should be no misunderstanding or misconception as to what the effect is. We desire that it should be realised not only in this House but also in the country at large that the effect of the Bill is to reestablish the Church, not in a constitution of her own seeking, but in a new constitution and upon a new legislative plan, dictated not by the free opinion of the Church, but by the terms of an Act of Parliament prompted by the right hon. Gentlemen opposite. I submit that it is a matter of real importance that this should be set forth in the first Clause, of the Bill; that the idea of getting rid of the Establishment and of freeing the Church is pure humbug and hypocrisy, and that what you are doing is to set up a new Establishment, to put new fetters upon the Church, and that you are merely altering the Establishment instead of terminating it.
§ Mr. KINGI am really very much indebted to the Noble Lord, and I think the Committee ought to be, for his contribution to this interesting Debate. Personally, I thank him for having at last delivered a speech which has not provoked my ire and indignation. If he will only continue on those lines, lines which he has shown us he is so capable a master of, I shall enjoy the Debates more and more. I also thank him for what he stated at least three times, that this Bill was not going to Disestablish the Church in Wales.
§ Viscount WOLMERI did not say anything of the sort. I said it was going to Disestablish, and then re-establish.
§ Mr. KINGThat is what I mean, of course. If a man takes six pennies out of one of my pockets and puts the sixpenny piece into the other, what is the difference? [HON. MEMBEBS: "He might put a bad sixpence."]
§ Viscount WOLMERIt is a bad sixpence!
§ Mr. KINGI do not want to quibble about words, but I appeal to hon. Members whether the Noble Lord did not repeatedly say that this Bill was going to re-establish the Church of England in Wales. Very 2588 well, if that is to be so, where are you worse off than before?
§ Viscount WOLMERYou lose your money.
§ Mr. KINGThe Church then exists for money and not for spiritual purposes! The real fact of the matter is, what we have often thought in this Committee and in this House before, that those few keen hon. Members on the opposite side, a small band, a devoted band, and I will say a very energetic band, who oppose this Bill do not represent the rank and file of their party. [An HON. MEMBER: "How do you know?"]
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANUp to the present I have not heard a single word from the hon. Gentleman relevant to the Amendment before the House. I must ask him to keep to it.
§ Mr. KINGThe Amendment before the House is "as now." I suppose that the words "as now" embrace all the present conditions of this large and complex question. I cannot deal with them all at once, but I, at any rate, will go as near as possible to dealing with the present position. I want to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that we have been told again and again, as we were when we were discussing last week the Closure Resolution, that we were not allowing adequate time for the discussion of these very large and important issues. I hope I am not misinterpreting or misstating the views of hon. Members opposite.
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANWhat has this to do with the Amendment?
§ Mr. KINGI shall endeavour to show its bearing on the Amendment in relation to the general course of the Debate on the Bill.
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANThe hon. Member must really confine his comments to the Amendment before the Committee.
§ Mr. KINGI have a great many comments to make, so that if these are not in order, I will go on to those that are. I do not complain at all. I wish to point out that the contention repeatedly made, certainly by two hon. Members on the opposite side, is that it has not been stated either in this House or in any Schedule of the Bill what the Statutes or laws are by which the Church of England was Established in Wales. Therefore, they apparently think either that the Church in 2589 Wales is not Established by law in the ordinary sense of the term or that, if it is Established by law, it is by some peculiar custom or Common Law different from Statute Law. The Noble Lord certainly said more than once that it was impossible for us to point to a single Statute by which the Church of England was Established in Wales. Quite a large number of Statutes have been quoted and have been published. The difficulty is that if you proceed to put all of these Statutes into a Schedule you may omit one or two which have a distinct bearing upon the case, and which may be obsolete, except in one or two Clauses. The fact of the matter is that the Church of England is now Established by law by a great number of Statutes, and I hope the Home Secretary will resist the invitation which has been kindly pressed upon him to put a Schedule into this Bill. It is quite unnecessary.
It would only at the best satisfy the curiosity of a few Noble Lords and hon. Members. I maintain that the obvious and palpable fact that the Church of England is Established by law does not want any further proof. Certainly it does not want the citation of Acts of Parliament to prove it. With these few observations, I want to back up the Home Secretary, if I may. I know he does not need it. His case is quite strong enough, but I want to urge him not to accept this Amendment, which is really perfectly useless and unnecessary. The discussion to which it has given rise has had no real advantage to the opposite side. It has brought out nothing further of a new or important character. The only advantage that I can see that the Mover of the Amendment found in bringing it forward was that he was able to quote the larger part of a speech of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Personally, I like to read the speeches of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the paper the next morning, and not have them hashed up in the House of Commons several weeks late. For these reasons I strongly hope that the Government will not give way again. They have given way far too often. I hope that, with my support, they will resist this Amendment.
§ Mr. LAURENCE HARDYWe have just heard one of those speeches that we are rather too apt to get from the hon. Member in reference to these matters. I should be very sorry to follow him through it, because I should probably be subject to the same interruptions from you, Mr. 2590 Maclean, that he almost inevitably receives whenever he is on his legs. I really must protest against the manner in which the hon. Member approaches this question. He always says that he backs up the Home Secretary. That is the only thing in which he is absolutely consistent. Apart from that, he endeavours to raise trivial issues, issues entirely irrelevant to the particular question of the Bill, and which I think are best left to the hon. Member's own imagination. I only rose to ask the Home Secretary whether he considers his answer was in any way a reply to my hon. Friend's contention when he introduced his Amendment? The right hon. Gentleman thinks that on every Amendment it is merely sufficient to say it is in the Irish Church Bill and therefore we need not consider the matter any further. How can you bring the Irish Church Bill into the argument at all? We know that the Irish Church was Established by law within a comparatively few years of the time it was Disestablished, and, therefore, it is not the least remarkable that these words in the Clause should have been used in connection with the Irish Church. The Clause was a different Clause; it was one for the dissolution of the Church of Ireland from the Church of England and that the Church of Ireland should cease to be Established by law. It was pretty clear in that case; we say it is not the least-clear in this case. We never had an argument from the right hon. Gentleman to show what the meaning is. We desire by two simple words to make the meaning clear to the House and to the country. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke just now said "it does not matter about putting in Schedules; we might forget to put in some Acts that are important." But it is for the Government to discover what Acts should be put into the Schedule, and to see that the Schedule is a comprehensive Schedule, especially in, a matter of this kind, where you are going absolutely against the wishes of the people concerned by breaking up the arrangements which have existed for all these hundreds of years.
We are justified in saying, if you are going to do this entirely against our will, you must tell us what exactly it is you are doing and what you mean by this expression; what was our position in the past in your opinion: how you can prove it from the Statutes of the Common Law of this realm; and what our position, if we are to start afresh, is to be in order that we may 2591 know exactly where we stand. We demand that at the hands of the Government; and the Government's answer is that "it is in the Irish Church Act of forty or fifty years ago, and it is quite unnecessary to argue the point now." The matter cannot be turned off in that way; we are justified in asking for some more efficient answer. We have always contended and it was laid down very clearly by my hon. and learned Friend that there is a different meaning given to the word "Established" in different sides of the House. We may regard it from different points of view. It is quite evident from the discussion that there are those different points of view. We are now putting words into an Act of Parliament, and as there are these different points of view it is eminently desirable that it should be disposed of once and finally before this Clause is passed. We make that demand upon the Government, and I think we are justified in asking for a reply. It would be very much simpler if you could deal with the matter in the way other denominations are treated. I have only to take a Bill which is before this House at the present time; it would be very easy to apply it in the case of the "Wibsey (Bradford) Independent Chapel." That is a chapel I knew very well when I lived in Yorkshire. If the words were applied to that, the right hon. Gentleman's argument would be quite to the point, because there it definitely says:—
the trustees shall permit to officiate in the said buildings as stated minister or pastor of the church such persons only as are of the denomination aforesaid being Pædobaptists, and shall hold, preach, and maintain the doctrine set out in the schedule.And in the schedule you find the most solemn terms, such as—"the Creed, the United of the Godhead, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the indwelling of the Spirit and the Revelation of God's grace."
Of course, if it was a question of a chapel or body of that sort, it is at once secured that this is established by Act of Parliament, the doctrines and everything else, and that that is the only commission by which a minister can hold his office; but we say there is nothing of that sort in connection with the Church of England, and the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends have never been able to give any 2592 information opposite to that. We have challenged it again and again, both in the country and in this House, and we have never been told what these Acts are, and it is in consequence of that we feel bound to raise it at this point. The hon. Gentleman opposite desired to show that we were wasting the time of the House in raising questions of this sort. This is one of the greatest and most important questions that can be raised in connection with this Bill. Hon. Members have little appreciation of what it all means to us when they try to turn it all into a question of pounds, shillings, and pence. The hon. Gentleman opposite said if you take sixpence out of one pocket and put it into another it is all the same. In this case you take sixpence out of the pocket of the Church of England, but there is no intention of putting another sixpence in. Disendowment is very important, but it is not so material to the long history of the Church and the future of the Church as the question we are discussing in this Amendment, and it is upon that ground that we must press for a more sufficient answer than we have received, and I do hope we may receive it from the Government Benches.
§ Mr. McKENNAI am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman was in the House when this Amendment was moved.
§ Mr. L. HARDYI was.
McKENNAThen I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. But the point put by the Mover of the Amendment was to insert words that appeared to add nothing to the Bill, and to take nothing from the Bill. The argument he used, as I understood him was that, unless these words were introduced, the Church of England, if Disestablished in Wales, would be placed upon an inferior footing to other Free Churches. I understood that to be his argument, and if I am wrong, I beg his pardon, but believing that to be his argument, I pointed out that the same words existed in the Irish Church Act for forty-three years, and that we had experience of the Church of England in Ireland, and that nobody could allege for a single instant that the English Church in Ireland was on any footing of inferiority with other Churches. That was the sole argument I adduced. I felt it was a respectful argument and, in reply to the speech made, that it was a complete argument. Now the right hon. Gentleman brings forward an entirely 2593 different case. He says that these words are intended to call from the Government an elucidation of their views on Establishment. [HON. MEMBEBS: "Why not?"] I answer by saying it would be hardly relevant to this part of the Debate.
§ Lord ROBERT CECILOn a point of Order. I wish to ask you, Mr. Maclean, whether the Home Secretary would, or would not, be in order in giving to the Committee now the views of the Government as to the meaning of Establishment, and whether it was not understood between the occupant of the Chair and those who moved this Amendment, that the Amendment should be moved for that purpose?
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANI understood when this Amendment was moved, that it would open up the question of the present condition of the Church in Wales, and what would be the position of the Church in Wales after Disestablishment.
§ Mr. CAMPIONWhen introducing my Amendment, I suggested that it raised the whole question of Establishment, and that an answer could be given on that subject.
§ Mr. McKENNAI am very sorry if I did the lion. Member any injustice. I gathered that his argument was that the Church would hereafterwards be in a position of inferiority. I understand the decision of the Chair to be that this Amendment is to be construed as an occasion for a comparison of the present position of the Church of England in Wales with its future position. I am asked to give an exposition of the meaning of the Establishment. I am perfectly sure that the various representatives of Church policy on the opposite benches, like the hon. Member for Liverpool and the hon. Member for South Bucks, would take an entirely different view as to the meaning of Establishment. What the meaning of Establishment may be, or what precise meaning you give to the relationship between the members of this Church of the origin of that relationship, has nothing to do with the question as to whether that relationship which existed should cease to exist, and, whatever the Establishment may be, this Bill proposes to put an end to it. [An HON. MEMBER: "You do not know what it means."] I will tell the Committee what I understand it means. In the first place, I understand that the Church of England in Wales is an Episcopal 2594 Church, the bishops being appointed by the Crown, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. I understand that is one of the principal marks of Establishment. The highest officers of the Church are appointed on the recommendation of a gentleman who may or may not be a member of that Church. Secondly, I understand that by virtue of the Establishment the Church in Wales enjoys the possession of a considerable amount of national property. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Well, I understand that, and hon. Members asked me for an explanation. I conceive that a considerable amount of national property was devoted to the service of the nation in its religious aspect, the religion at that time providing that the property devoted to this purpose having a far wider meaning, and being generally interpreted as something quite beyond the meaning and interpretation now given to it. I believe that the incident of the Establishment of the Church of England in Wales is subject to the jurisdiction of Ecclesiastical Courts, which are recognised by the State, their judgments having a coercive force, and necessarily being exacted by the power of the State. All those are incidents of Establishment. There are many others, but I think those are the principal incidents of Establishment.
9.0 P.M.
In the organisation and government of the Church in the last resort the appointment of officers is in the hands of the State. In the enforcement of the discipline of the Church the Ecclesiastical Courts are recognised by the secular State, and in the possession and enjoyment of their Endowments they are placed in possession of funds which were national in their object. I do not lay so much stress as I might do upon the fact that the Prayer Book, doctrines, and ritual of the Church of England are, technically at any rate, subject to the control of Parliament. I do not lay stress upon that because, personally, I think no modern Parliament at any rate would ever interfere. If questions relating to the Prayer Book were brought up in this House, I should not vote for any alteration of the Prayer Book which was not approved by the majority of the Church itself, the opinion of the Church being expressed in Convocation. I do not lay stress upon the right of Parliament to alter the Prayer Book, because I do not think any Parliament would do it except upon the recommendation of Convocation. What 2595 I have referred to are incidents of Establishment, and when we seek to Disestablish the Church in Wales we wish to put an end to all the incidents I have named in the Church of England in Wales. We wish to abolish the power of appointments on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, or the power of any other officer of State to nominate the priests and bishops of the Church, and we wish to leave to the Church the power to decide for itself by whom its preferments shall be filled and who shall be its bishops. We wish to withdraw from the Ecclesiastical Courts any coercive jurisdiction they may now enjoy, and we wish to take from the Church and restore to the nation such property as we believe in its origin to be national. We also wish to take away from Parliament the power or duty of prescribing what shall be the doctrines, rights, or rituals of any Church. In other words, we wish to disconnect the Church and State in Wales.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI am sure we are very much obliged to the right lion. Gentleman, for we have got at last a definition, although it is a very confused one, in which he was coached by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Ellis Griffith).
§ Mr. McKENNAThat is quite untrue.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENThe right hon. Gentleman has given us a very confused meaning of what is meant by the Establishment. If my hon. Friend wanted to get some arguments in favour of his Amendment he could not have done better than ask the Home Secretary to make the speech he has just made. We want to know what this Disestablishment is that you are going to accomplish. Is it to be some special incidence of the present Establishment or a complete Disestablishment, which means cutting off the Church from all law altogether. It is perfectly clear from the Home Secretary's explanation that it is intended to get rid of certain incidents he has mentioned. I do not know whether they were all the incidents, and I am not quite sure whether he has got to the end of his list. Let us look at them. He says, for example, that the Prayer Book is technically subject to Parliament, by which, I suppose, he means that no alteration could be made in the Prayer Book without the confirmation of this House. Can any alteration be made 2596 in the doctrines or liturgy, if there be any. of the Wesleyan body without the intervention of Parliament?
§ Mr. McKENNAWhy, of course it can.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENAll I can say is the right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, if that is so, the trust is no longer fulfilled, and the ministers will either be deprived of their cures, or whatever they are called, by the Courts, or else they will have to come to this House as the United Presbyterian Church did in order to confirm them in the enjoyment of those Endowments and property which otherwise they would lose. I venture to say, if that is the incident of Establishment which is to be abolished, it is perfectly clear you have got to define Disestablishment rather more than it is defined in this Bill, and that is an argument for inserting the words moved by my hon. Friend. Another incident the Home Secretary mentioned was that the Church because it was Established, enjoyed a certain amount of national property. I should like to ask him at what date he thinks the Church was Established. Does he agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who quoted Professor Maitland as saying the Church was first Established by law at the Reformation? If he does, then most of the property you are taking away, on the ground that it was national property, was given long before the Reformation, and you are therefore taking away from the Church property she enjoys, because you say she is Established, which was given to her before she was Established. If the Home Secretary does not agree with that proposition, and I take it he does not, we only have another remarkable instance of the very lax views held by different Members of the Cabinet and the fact that every Cabinet Minister in this Government differs from his colleagues on nearly every subject. When we ask the Prime Minister if he has noticed a speech of some colleague, he nearly always says, "He was only speaking for himself and not for the Cabinet." I suppose the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he said the Church was Established at the time of the Reformation and not before, was only speaking for himself, and now, when the Home Secretary says the Church enjoys national property because she is Established, he is only speaking for himself. We want to know what the Government really mean when they talk about Establishment and Disestablishment.
2597 I will not go through all the other incidents. We did have some other examples of Establishment given by the Under-Secretary, and, as far as I remember, one of them was that the King had to be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and by no other religious personage. After all, that is very immaterial, but this Bill will not even alter that. There is the other case of the Ecclesiastical Courts, which is really a small matter, and there is the point that so long as the Church is Established its clergy are the only people who can call themselves "Clerks in Holy Orders." We do not particularly mind about that, and, if all you want is to enable ministers of other religious bodies to call themselves "Clerks in Holy Orders," why do you not bring in a simple Bill with this object? It would be very much simpler than bringing in this Bill and asking the House, without any definition, to Disestablish the Church. What do you really mean by Disestablishment? Do you mean to take away from the Church those special privileges, if you like to put it so, which she enjoys now and which other religious bodies do not? If that is your object, then I say you must put in certain limiting words whether "as now Established" or "Established in the sense which other religious bodies are not Established." It is perfectly clear you must have some limiting words or you Disestablish the Church altogether and leave her, as far as I can understand, with no legal status whatever. It has been laid down that other religious bodies are Established now, and have been ever since the Toleration Act. There was a very interesting Debate upon this question in 1895, and the late Mr. Stanley Leighton quoted some remarkable examples of how other religious bodies are Established. The matter, therefore, must be dealt with in this limited way, or you put the Church in a worse position than other religious bodies. He quoted, for example, the case of a Lord Mayor of London who did certain things because, he said, being, I think, a Wesleyan, he belonged to the Established Church. He was Lord Mayor in the reign of William and Mary.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI fully admit the error.
§ Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENI do not know why the hon. Member should interfere. I know the matter quite as well as he does. It is perfectly easy for anyone to make a slip. This gentleman not only worshipped quite publicly with Dissenters, according to his usual custom, but he carried the regalia with him to the Meeting House, which very much disgusted many of the Church of England. The practice was defended by one of his party by the argument that by the Act of Parliament by which Dissenters had their liberty their religion was as much Established as that of the Church. There is the well-known case quoted by my hon. and learned Friend, in which Lord Mansfield laid it down:—
The Toleration Act renders that which was illegal before now legal. The simplest way of worshipping is permitted and allowed by this Act. It is not only exempted from punishment, but rendered innocent and lawful. It is Established.That is the judgment of Lord Mansfield. If, therefore, the Nonconformist way of worshipping is established and has been established since the Toleration Act, what you want to do by this Bill is not to Disestablish the Church altogether, but only to Disestablish it in those incidents in which the Establishment of the Church of England differs from the Establishment of other religious bodies. Some limiting words like "as now" are therefore absolutely necessary. It cannot be doubted that Nonconformist bodies are Established. Take the Act regulating them. The doors of any chapel have to be kept open during service so that anybody can enter for public worship, and they are guaranteed against disturbance. They have a privilege, a very big privilege, in exemption from rates, saving them probably some £40,000 a year. They are in a great many ways distinctly recognised by the State and Established. Therefore, I say, unless you are going to put the Church in a worse position than other religious bodies stand at the present time, you are bound to limit the word "Disestablished" by introducing some such words as my hon. Friend has moved. The matter therefore is really one of very great importance. It is not a mere verbal triviality. We want to get some kind of idea, some definition, of what the Government mean by Establishment. We want to safeguard our Church so that it shall not be put in a worse position than other bodies. We are told that in the case of the Irish Bill no such words were introduced, But I must repeat that the two 2599 cases are entirely different. The Establishment of the Church of Ireland was defined by Statute, but we do not know what we are doing in this connection, because the Establishment of the Church of England in Wales has grown up through centuries, and there are no Acts of Parliament to define exactly what it is. Therefore we are entitled to have a rather more full discussion on this point than we have yet received from the Treasury Bench.
§ Mr. CAVEI think the Debate is interesting, because we have got for the first time in this House an attempt to define the effect of the proposed enactment that the Church shall cease to be established by law. I have followed closely the definition given by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary but I think he will admit that the terms "Establishment" and "Disendowment" are two different things. You can have Establishment without Endowment, and you can have Endowment without Establishment. Under the present system the bishops of the Church of England are nominated by the Crown, but that is not a privilege of the Church. It is a privilege of the State, and therefore the first thing you want to do is not to take something from the Church, but to take something from the State. And, incidentally, the effect is that you take one step towards severing the connection between the State and religion. The next point the right hon. Gentleman made was this, that by virtue of the Establishment the Ecclesiastical Courts have coercive jurisdiction, but he forgot to mention that the decisions of those Courts are only binding on Churchmen. The only other matter I wish to mention is that the Church is under the control of Parliament. That is not a privilege of the Church. It is rather a shackle on the Church, and so long as the Church is the Church of the whole nation, in this sense, that every man in this country, has certain rights he can claim from the Church in relation, for instance, to marriage or burial, so long is it right that the Church should be under national control. Every Church is under the same control, although it is exercised more frequently in some cases than others. According to the right hon. Gentleman, Establishment is a burden upon the Church, and there the effect of the Bill now before the House is to take away that burden. Is that the object of the Bill. If it is the object, why 2600 is it defended by attacks on the Church? You know in your hearts that is not the object. There is no fair-minded man opposite who will say that it is the object. But I do want, if possible, to find out what Establishment means. I believe that the real meaning of established by law is nothing more than "recognised by law," and I am certain that that is the original meaning of the phrase. Let us go a little further, and see what is meant by it. I believe the main effect of these words on the subsequent Clauses of the Bill will be to put an end to very many of the obligations of the Church. I may mention some of them. The Church has a duty in every parish towards every parishioner. That duty you are going to destroy. You may think it is a good thing for the Church. I am not at all sure of it. Indeed, I am certain it is a bad thing for the country, and I cannot believe, if that is the object, hon. Members will support this Bill. I suppose what is at the back of it is the idea that the Church has certain privileges. But what are the privileges of the Church of England? What are the privileges which you seek to destroy? There is not a member of the Church of England who would, not willingly give up that privilege, if it is merely of a social kind.
Is there some other privilege? Is it that you think the Church is too much recognised or exclusively recognised in public functions? It may have been so; it was so at one time, but I believe it to be so no longer. In all local functions, municipal, and other public functions it is more and more the custom, and I believe a very wise one, that we should all of us recognise not one Church, not the Church of some, but the Churches of all. The more that is done, the better good Churchmen should like it, because nobody who cares about his Church, whatever the Church may be, fails to recognise that the more the nation as a whole gives recognition to the Churches the better it is for the nation. Therefore, if it is a question of privilege, deal with it, specially if you please, by your Bill; put it in words, and we will deal with it. If that is your object, I do not believe you attain it by general words such as these, destroying the establishment. My object in saying that is to beg the Committee to be quite clear about what they are doing. The effect of these words may be, and perhaps is, to destroy the connection between the State and religion. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] Is that what you want? [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] 2601 I am glad to hear some hon. Gentleman opposite say "No." Will not he and others join us, not in weakening the links between religion and the State, but in strengthening them; not in cutting oil the connection between one Church and the State, but in making the connection between the State and other Churches as strong as the link which now binds the Church of England to the State. I have said these few words with regard to what is called concurrent establishment, although I would rather say concurrent recognition of the religious bodies in this country. Why is it that Christian bodies spend their time and their energies in flying at each other's throats? Why are you here trying to destroy the Church of England—[HON. MKMBERS: "We are not."]—by impoverishing it and by destroying its connection with the State? Is that work of which you are proud to-day, or of which you will be proud hereafter? I ask hon. Members to believe that in resisting this proposal for Disestablishment we are mainly influenced not by the desire to retain for our Church any special privileges, but by the earnest desire to maintain, if we can, the historic connection between religion and the State in our country.
Mr. SILVESTER HORNENobody in this House ever listens to the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Cave) with more sincere pleasure than I do, but I am bound to say that this evening he has discussed this question from a point of view which shows, if he will allow me to say so without any offence, that if there is misunderstanding on this side in regard to the position of the Church of England there is certainly just as much misunderstanding on the other side with regard to the arguments by which this policy is being supported. I think I may say that the hon. and learned Member has assumed all through his speech that those of us who have been consistently advocating the policy of Disestablishment have been influenced by the desire to weaken the Episcopal Church in Wales, and he has assumed all through that we should be weakening that Church and its influence if we succeed in the policy of Disestablishment. I am quite certain of this, that the hon. and learned Member knows, probably from his own personal recollection, men who have stood in this House as advocates and representatives of the policy of Disestablishment whom he dare not charge on the floor of this House with trying to 2602 weaken the cause of religion. Nothing astonishes me more in this House than the different views hon. Members opposite take of a great representative man, like Mr. John Bright, if they are regarding him from the point of view of a person who disagrees with Home Rule or regarding him from the point of view of a person who was in favour of Disestablishment. When he was opposing Home Rule he was a superior form of patriot, but when he was agitating Disestablishment he was an inferior form of pirate. That is the line of argument which has been pursued upon that side of the Committee. I do not want to add any recriminations to this Debate, but I do want to ask the hon. and learned Member to believe that there are, sitting in the Welsh party at the present time, at least half a dozen members of the Church of England advocating the policy of Disestablishment, and who are here advocating that policy, not because they want to weaken their Church, but because they believe that the policy of freedom and the concession to the other religious bodies of absolute religious equality will be good for their Church. Surely the hon. and learned Member can appreciate that point of view.
Let me add another thing. I know the people of Wales pretty well, and I know my fellow Nonconformists exceedingly well, and I should like to say to the hon. and learned Member this, which I think he also understands, because I know of many kindly and sympathetic things he personally has done to Nonconformist Churches. Every true Nonconformist is a High Churchman, in the sense that he resents the connection of the State in regard to the creeds he holds, and the forms of worship he follows. He is taught in his schools and in his Churches that a Church ought to be free. He is taught that the highest prerogative of the Church is that it should be free—free to frame its own dogmas and its own forms of worship, and to determine its own forms of government. If he believes that that is the highest conception of the Church, surely the hon. and learned Member might assume in this House that there are those who advocate this policy from motives that are at least as fair and as sincere as those of any High Churchman. We have been asked from the other side whether we resent certain privileges that are held by State Churchmen at the present time. Let me discuss, for instance—perhaps I have the greatest right in this House to discuss it—the question 2603 of the ministry. What would the hon. and learned Member think if there were an artificial line drawn clean across the profession which he represents, drawn by the State, dividing the orthodox from the heterodox, separating the sheep from the goats? I wonder what he would think? Let me suppose for a moment that there was a party in the legal profession which stood by the unchangeable character of the Law as it stands, and that the State established and endowed that particular profession and set the mark of its sanction and patronage upon them, while those who advocated some reform and change in connection with the law were regarded by the State as standing in a totally different position. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows perfectly well that he would introduce a cleavage which would run through his own profession, which would be mischievous and injurious to his profession, and which would inevitably create a feeling of friction and division.
Just in the same way there is at present a ministry in the Church which is sanctioned by the State under the Act of Uniformity which is treated as being worthy of the sanction and the patronage of the State, and. on the other hand, there is a great body of ministers of the Free Churches in Wales, men well educated, men who have increasingly been taking the highest positions in their Welsh universities, men, many of whom have made great contributions to theological literature, men who absolutely have the esteem and regard of all Churchmen whose esteem and regard is worth having, and yet these men, by these artificial arrangements, are regarded as outside the fold which could receive any sort of recognition by the State—these men whom the Welsh people trust and love. Disestablishment means to us religious equality in this sense, that henceforth they will all stand on an absolute equality in the eye of the State, as they ought to do, and surely they are tendencies which we all glady recognise—tendencies of our time—which reinforce our argument. There is going on at the present time a practical process of Disestablishment of the universities in which we all rejoice. Up to the present time there has been that line of cleavage and demarcation there, and Nonconformists could not obtain their Divinity degree. Now even the University of Oxford, with which I am 2604 proud to be associated, is willing to throw open even its examination in theology to men of all ecclesiastical opinions. Surely if that tendency is going on in the universities, which cling as we know obstinately to their privileges, surely the time has come when in the great, broad area of the Church of Christ in this land and in Wales, these old barriers should be abolished, and all should be treated as being absolutely entitled to the same measure of State regard. There was a phrase used by the late Earl Selborne, which has been quoted already, but not in its entirety, in that pamphlet of 1886, and it was quoted by the Prime Minister in the Debates of 1895:—
Disestablishment without Disendowment was a renunciation by the State of such powers of control as are involved in Establishment without total or large secularisation of the Endowments of the Church.We are challenged on this side of the House to say what we think Establishment really means. What did Earl Selborne think of it? "Such powers of control as are involved in the Establishment." We all know perfectly well that there are these great powers of control resting with Parliament in the management of a Parliamentary Church. We all know quite well that under the Act of Uniformity the State undertook that the revenues of the Church should only be applied in support of men who held a certain creed, who were strictly observant of certain forms, and who submitted to a certain order of government. That was control of the ecclesiastical revenues entrusted to these purposes in order that there might be established in this country one definite, uniform typo of religion. That still holds. That was an Act of Parliament, and if Parliament could interfere in an Act of Uniformity like that, and impose that Act upon the whole population, quite clearly the Church of England as by law established is a Parliamentary Church, and we have a right to come here in Parliament to see that still its ministers, as far as we can, hold by those creeds; as far as we can observe those forms of worship, and as far as we can support that order of government. Only the other day the Bishop of Manchester made what seemed to me an exceedingly interesting speech. He proposed that Parliament should be obliged to pass a new ordinance, or rubric, in order to settle questions regarding what costumes might be worn and what ceremonies might be observed. He proposed that they should come to Parliament for a Bill for that purpose. That 2605 shows that it is a Parliamentary Church. They would not come to Parliament if they were not obliged to come to Parliament. We quite believe that the Church would prefer to get its alterations and reforms without coming here. I quite believe that it would prefer not to come here. We are not at all a fit and proper assembly to decide these questions. The Church of the Establishment goes back to a time when every Member of this House was a member of the Church of England, and, I quite agree, in those days, when you were legislating for the Church of England, you, at any rate, knew that everyone who took part in the Debates and in the votes of this House was a member of that Church in the strict sense. Consequently there was no particular impropriety in making Parliament the chief ruling spirit of that Church.But everything is different now. Roman Catholics, Protestants, Nonconformists, and Churchmen, we all sit here alike, and this House is the last assembly in this country that ought to be entrusted with authority over the Church. That is Disestablishment. As far as the Church in Wales is concerned, that Church is going to resume the ancient prerogative of the Christian Church. It is going to have freedom. I should like to appeal to hon. Members opposite to believe that there are Members here who have taken a part, and perhaps a foremost part, in this controversy who have no interest and no feeling whatever of animus against the spiritual communion in which most hon. Members opposite are interested. I was once accused, I think by the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen), of having used upon the platform an adjective which, if it had ever occurred to me would have caused a single moment's sorrow or anxiety to people on that side of the House, I would never have used. But I was arguing this very point. I was arguing that the reason why certain canons are still included and published in the Book of Canons and Constitutions, is just because under the Parliamentary system you can never hope to bring your Church, by reform, really into line and up to date in the matter of all that is necessary of change and of reform, and you cannot do it because it is a Parliamentary Church and subject to Parliament. Therefore, when I spoke of one of the ancient canons as a pagan regulation and said it still was degrading that book, it was simply that I might force home the 2606 argument that you cannot get rid of an old canon like that simply because it is a Parliamentary Church. It is quite time the Church resumed her freedom. There are big questions coming before us, questions raised, for instance, in the Divorce Report, which raise the whole question of the relations of Church and State. If the Church is to be free to speak her mind and to have her real influence over the people of this country, she must not be in toils to the State when she comes to discuss a question like this. I believe the Noble Lord the Member for the Hitchin Division (Lord Robert Cecil) and the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil) have spoken in that strain. The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University has written these sentiments in a book, where he says that, in the face of the Gospel, Parliament has no right to interfere in spiritual things. I do appeal to them, if they will take occasion by the hand, and if they will at this time achieve freedom for the Church, which is really the only dignified position for the Church, and say that they would find there will be beyond Disestablishment, which is bound to come, a growing unity among the Christian forces of Wales that will be ominous of the highest conceivable advantage to the people of the Principality.
§ Mr. ALFRED LYTTELTONI am the last man to underrate the sincerity of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Home), or indeed of many of those who advocate the Disestablishment of the Church, but I think the hon. Member has forgotten that this Bill embraces proposals not merely to disorganise and impoverish the Church, but also to secularise the State. That is in plain English the function of this Bill. I freely admit that there are certain aspects of the relation between Parliament and the Church, as there are certain aspects of the relation between the State and Nonconformity, which T think might well be redressed, but it seems to me to be quite idle argumentatively to talk of the control of Parliament by the Church and to ignore the control of Nonconformity by the State. It does not forward the argument in the least to do so. Directly you get property in a Church, whether Nonconformist Church, or Free Church, or State Church—I admit, and all serious Nonconformists admit, that you should have ample Endowments, as ample as you can get—the moment these are organised, as they must be in trusts for the promotion of certain doctrines, of course from 2607 that moment you must have the control of the State to which people can apply when trusts are broken. It is absolutely necessary, and it seems to me that the true remedy for the grievances of which the hon. Member spoke with so much vehemence and eloquence is that there should be Church reform and not Church Disestablishment. What was the great point which, in making his speech, he obviously felt very much. He obviously felt very much what he called the line drawn between Nonconformist ministers and ministers of the Church of England. I do not recognise any such line. Where is such a line drawn? Test it in this way. How would you get rid of that line by the passage of this Bill? It is impossible. I hope there always will be a very great number of people who would be deeply attached to the old Established Church of England, and, of course, all those who were attached to that Church would always feel in a different way, though I hope not an uncharitable way, towards the ministers of that Church and the ministers of other Churches.
But what other difference in substance exists? I tried to understand the hon. Gentleman's argument. I suppose he meant that there was a certain prestige attached to the recognition of the Church of England by reason of its being called the Established Church. But really that is a very small matter. The substance of the matter is that attachment, prestige, and honour are given to ministers of the Church of England by those who believe they are doing their duty well, and who love the Church to which they belong. I submit to the hon. Member opposite that whatever you do by the Bill, whether you Disestablish the Church or Disendow the Church, you will never obliterate that line between Church of England ministers and others, so far as that difference arises from honest difference of opinion. Every tolerant man respects the Church at the present moment, and I hope that respect will continue. I protest against the idea that there is a line drawn by any honest Churchman between Church of England ministers and ministers of other Churches. Just think what it means. I submit to the Committee that the hon. Member's views are really out of date. I remember the Liberationist views perfectly as held by Bright, Miall, and Dr. Dale, for whom I entertain great respect. We never hear anything of these views now. Those views were largely founded upon this position, 2608 that you have got a body in the Established Church which was made powerful by great Endowments, that Endowments were wrong in an apostolic Church which exists on the voluntary contributions given by their congregations, and that to have Endowments was to stereotype views which might not be honestly entertained by those who were deriving advantage from the Endowments. That is the old position. But it is absolutely changed now. Every Nonconformist body of importance realises the impossibility of ministering to the poor without Endowments. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, that is the opinion of Nonconformist bodies. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I see the Financial Secretary to the Treasury there. He is a very active, not to say acrimonious, advocate of this Bill. I am not quoting his exact words, but the substance of what he inserted in a book was that no Church or Christian body could reach the very poor unless its ministers had some sustenance from Endowments.
§ The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Masterman)Never in any circumstances did I give vent to such a sentiment as that. I have said something on the subject, and I am prepared to defend it. I think at the present moment the very poor are being reached by Churches which have no Endowments.
§ Mr. A. LYTTELTONI have a very distinct recollection of the passage, and I believe it is what I have stated it to be.
§ Mr. MASTERMANIn the very book to which the right hon. Gentleman has made allusion I said that in my own experience the two parties most reaching the very poor in the poor district in which I live were the Roman Catholics and the Salvation Army, neither of whom had Endowments.
§ Mr. A. LYTTELTONThe right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten at the time he was writing that passage a certain qualification he was inserting elsewhere. It is quite sufficient for my purpose to accept the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman. I am perfectly clear that of late appeals have been made by leading-members of the Baptist Church and the Congregational Church in the strongest terms for Endowments. It is quite possible to prove those facts. The old Liberationist position has not been maintained that the Church cannot be deemed apostolic which has an Endowment. The 2609 hon. Gentleman further went on to mention, I think quite rightly, that the tendency of the times was against what he called Parliamentary control. Again I say there is no Parliamentary control of the doctrine of the Church of England. No man for a hundred years past has brought forward a single measure in this House which has been passed which dealt with a doctrine of the Church of England, and no member of that Church would submit for a single moment to any control over his doctrines by this Parliament. Cambridge and Oxford Universities have opened their examinations to Nonconformists, and I believe that that takes away the very last grievance which Nonconformists have. If you look not to this country only and not to Wales only, but if you look to Scotland you will see that the Scotch people are taking now what is a true and right course with regard to Establishment. The two great bodies—the Established Church in Scotland and the United Free Church—have by consent ruled out from their discussions all violations of the Endowments of either. They commenced their great negotiations by ruling out that subject altogether as inadmissible. Then they go on to discuss, and discuss in the most friendly and definite way, how they can unite again in one Established Church— [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]
§ Mr. A. F. WHYTEI must dispute that. There are negotiations going on, but certainly they do not contemplate that the United Church, which is the outcome of it. will be in the presently understood sense an Established Church.
§ Mr. A. LYTTELTONI cannot agree with the hon. Member. The unity between those Churches is being attempted. The Endowments are respected on both sides. Nobody for a moment in Scotland expects or desires to touch the Endowment of the other Church. Those are sacred and respected on both sides. I have studied the subject carefully, and my distinct impression is that both sides are striving to enter together into one body, and that that body so existing shall be recognised by the Church as the Christian exponent of the State. I was studying the matter, and that is my most distinct opinion as to the object of those who are engaged in this discussion. My last words shall be, I beg the House that that spirit, which prevailing all through Scotland, which was commencing in Wales before this Bill, and which is now, I think happily 2610 progressing in England also, should not be interrupted by an attack made on a Church poor in itself with the idea of making it more poor still, and that both parties embarking on this discussion should be at any rate friendly and respect one another, instead of indulging in bitter and exasperating discussions about funds.
§ 10.0 P.M.
§ Mr. A. F. WHYTEI should not have intervened in this Debate had not the right hon. Gentleman drawn into the discussion what I think, from his point of view was perfectly legitimate, namely, the action taken in Scotland by what I suppose I may call without offence to others, the two leading exponents of the Presbyterian form of religion in that country. I regret very much that the question was introduced into this Debate, and for the reason which the right hon. Gentleman himself propounded to the House, namely, that the question is undoubtedly being discussed in a spirit very different from that which animates discussion between the Established Church in England and the Non-established Churches. But I should enter a caveat in this House, seeing that the question is being publicly brought forward, against the assumption that one of the bodies to that discussion necessarily divests itself of the important doctrine as regards Church government for which it has stood in the past in Scotland. I wish to say most emphatically that I divest myself entirely of any shred of right to speak for that Church, and I would most earnestly suggest to the right hon. Gentleman and to anyone else in this House who desires to" use that illustration to be somewhat cautious in using it if he desires to see that those admirable negotiations which are going forward in Scotland carried to a fruitful conclusion. They are negotiations of a most delicate character, and they have been carried on to a length which is astonishing to everyone who has watched them. I believe there is a very great hope indeed for them, but only if they are kept on as far apart as possible from the ordinary conflict which gathers around Establishment. As I am on my feet I may refer to one further remark made by the right hon. Gentleman. He spoke of this Bill as a Bill to secularise the State. I must borrow a remark of my hon. Friend (Mr. Horne) behind me, whose splendid speech the whole House was glad to hear, and say that again illustrates the chasm that lies between the two sides 2611 of the House. Certainly, if there is misunderstanding on one side, it is on both sides. For, after all, a State can only be secular if there is no religion in the heart of its people. There is the broad ground on which we stand, and if you describe this Bill as a Bill to secularise the State, then you mistake both the nature of the State and the nature of religion.
§ Sir A. CRIPPSI wish to say one word in reference to the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, and the speech of the hon. Member for Ipswich. As I understand the Scottish question, and I have studied it most carefully, there is a tendency there towards reunion. I am a very strong advocate of reunion in this country, and the moral I draw from the Scotch precedent is that if religious communions in this country set to work and join together, instead of attacking one another, they might carry out in this country the work which is being done in Scotland at the present time. The hon. Member for Ipswich talked about unity, and used very eloquent language as regards unity between Christian bodies in this country. Does he really think that Christian unity is promoted when a particular religious community in this country is practically robbed? I give the hon. Member full credit for sincerity in. what he said. Let him look at the position of affairs; if he is sincere in desiring reunion between Nonconformity and Churchmen, surely the very worst step to take is to attack Churchmen in a way they feel most bitterly, and which they cannot but resent for a very long period of time. When a man puts his hand into your pocket, he does not bring about a very friendly feeling; and I would put to the lion. Gentleman, if he is sincere in what he says, if he wants Christian unity, that he must withdraw from this attempt to attack Churchmen, which is the real basis of the present Bill. Then with regard to privilege and duties, I agree with Bishop Magee, who said:—
Show me a single privilege and I am willing to abrogate it, because I do not want to be a member of a Church of which it can be urged we have privileges which do not belong to any other religions bodies in this country.Let me put the other side of the case. If the hon. Member for Ipswich had been a clergyman of the Church of England, instead of minister of a Nonconformist body, he could not have had a seat in this House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because there 2612 is a Statutory disability. Does not that carry out what I say? I think it does. Whether it is right or wrong I am not discussing, but I understood the hon. Member for Ipswich to say that there was some line drawn which put a minister who was not a minister of the Church in England in an inferior position. I deny that altogether; but the very moment I take a test which we all know, namely, where there is a privilege or obligation as regards this House, the privilege is for the Nonconformist minister, and the duty and disability is on the clergymen of the Church of England. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the bishops?"] I am coming to that by and by. I am dealing with the speech of the hon. Member for Ipswich, who, among other points, referred to the question of Divinity degrees. What has that got to do with this Bill at all? I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke just now. I am a member of the Oxford University, and I think he is a member of the Cambridge University; I rejoice that in both universities anything in the nature of intolerance as regards the conferring of divinity degree has been done away with. But that is not a privilege of the Church; it has nothing to do with the question of Church Disestablishment. That is a reform carried out in the two universities quite independently of this Bill, and over which this Bill has no influence one way or the other. The hon. Member referred to the name of John Bright. Let me quote Mr. Bright's view, which he put in a striking manner, when speaking on the question of Disestablishment in Ireland. He said in this House that lie supported it on one ground, and that was that the Church in Ireland was not doing its religious duty as it ought to do. I quite agree that if you could make an allegation of that kind against the Church in Wales, you might quote John Bright in your favour, but as you cannot, and as the Royal Commission found the distinct opposite, so far from the opinion of John Bright being in your favour, it is opposed to the very proposals which the Government are now bringing forward.If you referred to what was said by Wycliffe, you will find that he said, when religious Endowments were not properly used, it was for the State to interfere. We are all agreed with the view that if religious Endowments are not properly used, there is a case for interference, but that leads to the opposite conclusion when 2613 they are properly used, as they are at the present moment for religious purposes. The argument of Mr. Bright, therefore, supports the opposite view to that of the Government, and he would never have supported the proposals made from the Front Bench opposite. The hon. Member for Ipswich seemed to forget, when he was talking of privilege, the question of duty. Let me ask him, in the cause of religion, whether it is right from the national standpoint to bring Christian ministration and service within the reach of every citizen. I assume he would think that right, because no doubt he spoke from the religious standpoint; but I want to know how we can guarantee that if we have no Established Church with that duty thrown upon it. Without you have the assistance of Endowments you cannot do it. The very object of Endowments in the first instance was to bring Christian ministration within the range of every citizen, and that is what I mean by Establishment— I mean having a Church which has this duty thrown upon it of bringing Christian ministration and Christian service within the range of every criticism, in the very poorest parts of our country and in the crowded slums of our industrial centres. That is the great duty thrown upon the Church by its Established position. Upon that point may I quote what was said by the Secretary to the Treasury, which I think will bear repetition. He said:—
Nonconformists are strongest amongst the middle classes; as one penetrates from the border regions to the actual depth they are found to become less and less an operative force in the life of the people. This seems due to two main causes. In the first place they do not possess the necessary machinery to maintain Endowed Churches—What is that but Establishment?Throughout the vast district few of its scattered missions are in a position to support themselves.I claim that quotation carries out to the full what I said. The hon. Member for Ipswich has taken great part in Nonconformist work in the poorest districts, and may I ask him whether the great obstacle in the way of Nonconformist work and Nonconformist religious development is that they have not got Endowments, that they cannot get sufficient stipends to assure the position of their ministers, and at the present moment they are seeking to put themselves into a better position in regard to Endowments and securing the position of the various resident ministers. Even Nonconformist ministers, as well as Church of England clergymen, must have some living wage. And I think it is absolutely quixotic to 2614 say, as I think the hon. Member said, and I join issue with him in this, that by putting your hands in the pocket of the Church and by depriving our poor clergymen of the poor stipends they now have, you cannot possibly have a real influence on religious life. He said Nonconformists sympathised with the High Churchmen. I see the Home Secretary is not present. He thought I was a High Churchman. I am afraid High Churchmen would not agree with him, and that is all I need say upon that point. But what does that mean? It does not mean Disestablishment; it means reform. If the hon. Member for Ipswich is as sincere as I give him credit for, will he join with Churchmen in order to get that reform, which would give them what he considers proper control over their own religious life and services? I may remind him—and I will ask him to take the testimony of the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. A. F. Whyte)— this control, this Erastian control, is not an element of Establishment. In the Scottish Church, on all spiritual matters the Scottish Established Church is wholly independent. When William tried to attack the independence in spiritual control of the Scottish Church he very soon had to draw back.There is no greater mistake for anyone who understands this question of Establishment than to suppose that this measure of Parliamentary control, which I agree is too severe and goes too far, and I agree we want greater freedom as regards the Church of England—but there is no greater mistake than to suppose that Establishment has anything to do with it. You may have an Established Church as in Scotland, which on spiritual matters has absolute freedom and discretion amongst its own members, and if the hon. Member would come and help us, and if he will say we ought to be completely free from this control, and ought to have this reform, he will have no stauncher assistant than myself, and I believe the great mass of other Churchmen. I have dealt, I think, with what was said by the hon. Member for Ipswich, whose speech well deserves recognition, and I am sure he will give me credit in the same way as I give him credit. I will tell him this: if he wants to work with us he must realise our feelings and our ideas, he must cease to attack us, and, more than anything else, abstain from robbing us of the funds which, in my view and conscience, are absolutely vital to enable us to carry out the great duties thrown upon us. Every Churchman knows 2615 that a great deal of our best work is crippled by want of funds, and the same thing in Nonconformity. I wish this work and all religious work was properly provided for under a voluntary system. It is not true, and it is quixotic to take an attitude of that kind, and every Churchman and every Nonconformist knows that one of the great difficulties in their work is to get sufficient funds to carry out the great duties which are cast upon religion at the present time.
I have answered, I think, as well as I can what was said by the hon. Member for Ipswich, and let me say a word or two in answer to the Home Secretary. What we asked the Home Secretary was this: We asked him for a definition in order that we may appreciate what was meant by the first Clause; and we asked him for this reason: We wanted to know whether he took the view that the Church established by law started from the Reformation Statutes or whether it started at some earlier date. We wanted him to tell us for this reason: It is very important as regards nearly all the subsequent Clauses. We wanted to ask him this: What is your test of continuity as regards the Church? You are telling us that whether Established or not, the Church is going to continue in the future much in the same way as at present, and I think such an argument has been used by more than one speaker on the other side. The Home Secretary is not present, but perhaps the Under-Secretary will take this question to him: What is his case as to continuity? What is it which, he says, enables a Church to go on as it did before, whether Established or Disestablished? I want to know what it means. Did he mean continuity of doctrine? Did he mean continuity of ritual? Did he mean continuity of service? Or what does he mean when he says, "You may Disestablish the Church and yet leave it to go on in the same way as it was working before"? That is the great question, because here we have something quite distinct from the Irish case. It is a question not only of Disestablishment, but of dismemberment. We want to know what, according to the view of the Government, the position of the dismembered portion of the Church in Wales will be if we pass this first Clause. I may give one important illustration of what I mean. Every serious Nonconformist opposite will realise what it is. According to Clause 3, the Church in Wales after Disestablishment is to have 2616 power to alter the articles, doctrines, rites, rules, discipline, and ordinances as they exist in the Church of England now. What becomes of continuity? What becomes of the argument that the whole Church is not going to be dismembered when one branch of it may in every respect upset every doctrine, ritual, and rite which we value from every religious standpoint, and which we believe to be vital to our Christian faith?
What is there on the other side? If there was not going to be dismemberment in a case of this kind, if the Church, as a whole, in both England and Wales, dealt under proper authority with its rites and rules, it would be in the same position as the Disestablished Church in Ireland. As regards a matter of that kind I, for one, would not find any fault. But the fact is the exact contrary. After this Bill is passed, you may have the two dismembered portions of the same Church under different ritual, different rites, different services—in every respect different if you take any religious test as regards continuity in the life of a religious community. I will put this to the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Silvester Horne). I forget for the moment to which denomination he belongs, whether the Wesleyan or the Congregational. [HON. MEMBERS: "Congregational."] I do not speak in disparagement of either one or the other. What would he say if by coercion you separated the Congregationalists in Wales from the Congregationalists in England, and gave them power to adopt ritual, rites, and services wholly inconsistent with those in England? [HON. MEMBERS: "They have the power."] I differ from that. But put it this way. Suppose you have one Nonconformist community in England and Wales with one government, one ritual, and one service. That being their desire, aim, and object, what would any hon. Member opposite say if by coercion you prevented that continuity of religious life from going on and put it in the power of one portion of the community to separate itself, as regards ritual and so on, from the other portion? [HON. MEMBERS: "They have the power now."] I entirely deny that. So far as the Church is concerned, at present we are one religious community, with one ritual, and one government, and we desire to remain so. There has never been a precedent where, under those circumstances,. Parliament has intervened, by a compulsory process dividing a Church forming one 2617 community, and given to one portion as against the rest complete independence so that it might alter its ritual and service in any way it pleased. I strongly support the Amendment which has been moved.
§ Mr. HEMMERDEThe hon. and learned Gentleman who last spoke, began by appealing to us in the name of Christian charity. He then, on two occasions, proceeded to call us robbers. But I only rise at this late hour because I have sat through the Debate to-day, and listened to all the speeches, and I have not heard one speech from the Opposition side that has allowed any decent motives at all to the people in this House, or the country who are supporting this Bill. They talk upon the assumption that they speak for the entire Church of England. That is absolutely erroneous. I do not myself know of a single member of the Church of England who usually supports the Liberal party, who has in any way ceased in his alliegance to the Liberal party—
§ Mr. GOULDINGWhat about the Dean of Lincoln?
§ Mr. HEMMERDEI will take the Dean of Lincoln. Unfortunately I do not know him. [Interruption.]
§ The CHAIRMANThe hon. and learned Gentleman who last spoke had a patient hearing, and I would ask hon. Members to hear the other side.
§ Mr. HEMMERDEI hope my remarks did not irritate the Opposition, for as I said, I do not, as a matter of fact, know of any gentleman who has supported the Liberal party and who has left them upon this question. The Dean of Lincoln did not intervene in a recent by-election, at which I was speaking, but some of the members of his flock showed me letters which he wrote. As a matter of fact, two bishops, at least, of the English Church are in strong support of this measure. [An HON. MEMBER: "Three."] Three, and certainly not the least notable. I can, however, say for myself that I do not in my own short political experience know of a single case of a well-known Liberal who is not strongly in favour of the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church of England. [An HON. MEMBER:
§ "Wales?"] It was merely a slip that I said "England," but my remark would be equally true. I do not know of any prominent Liberal or Labour politician—[An HON. MEMBER: "A Churchman?"]—Yes, Churchman or otherwise—who has not always been in favour of the Disestablishment and Disendowment, not only the Church in Wales, but also in England! I do think that we ought to be credited with the fact that some of the most distinguished members of the Church of England, some of the most distinguished bishops, are in favour of this Bill, and have been for years. I think, at any rate, we might be credited with decent sentiments about the Church. I represented at one time a Welsh constituency, and I never heard there this measure supported by attacks upon the Church. The arguments I heard almost invariably were those that I have heard expressed to-night put forward by hon. Members that it would be far better for the members of the Church and for the State if the Church was Disestablished. There is only another point which came rather as a surprise from the last speaker, and that was that there was a statutory disability against the clergy sitting in this House. I was under the impression that the clergy were one of the estates of the realm, and were in the same position as the estate of the realm that sits a little way off. The hon. Member who spoke last said he could see no likeness at all between the clergy and the ministers of Nonconformity. All I can say is, if it is the case, and if the clergy cannot sit here simply because they are an estate of the realm and Nonconformists can, you can hardly have a clearer line of how the State differentiates between one order and another by putting one into a position of superiority over the other!
§ It being half-past Ten of the Clock, the CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to the Order of the House of 28th November, to put forthwith the Question on the Amendment already proposed from the Chair.
§ Question put, "That the words 'as now' be there inserted."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 182; Noes, 297.
2621| Division No. 393] | AYES. | [10.30 p.m. |
| Agg-Gardner, James Tynte | Ashley, W. W. | Balcarres, Lord |
| Aitken, Sir William Max | Baird, J. L. | Baldwin, Stanley |
| Amery, L. C. M. S. | Baker, Sir R. L. (Dorset, N.) | Banbury, Sir Frederick George |
| Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester) | Greene, W. R. | Newton, Harry Kottingham |
| Barlow, Montague (Salford, South) | Gretton, John | Norton-Griffiths, J. |
| Barnston, H. | Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S.E.) | O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid) |
| Barrie, H. T. | Guinness, Hon. W.E. (Bury S.Edmunds) | Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A. |
| Bathurst, C. (Wilts, Wilton) | Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne) | Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William |
| Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Haddock, George Bahr | Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend) |
| Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth) | Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight) | Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington) |
| Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish- | Hall, Marshall (L'pool, E. Toxteth) | Perkins, Walter Frank |
| Bigland, Alfred | Hambro, Angus Valdemar | Peto, Basil Edward |
| Blair, Reginald | Hamersley, Alfred St. George | Pretyman, Ernest George |
| Boles, Lieut.-Col. Dennis Fortescue | Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence | Pryce-Jones, Col. E. (M'tgom'y B'ghs.) |
| Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith- | Harris, Henry Percy | Quilter, Sir William Eley C. |
| Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid) | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel |
| Boyton, James | Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon) | Rees, Sir J. D. |
| Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell | Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.) | Remnant, James Farquharson |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hewins, William Albert Samuel | Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Hickman, Colonel Thomas E. | Royds, Edmund |
| Burdett-Coutts, W. | Hill, Sir Clement L. | Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen) |
| Burn, Colonel C. R. | Hoare, S. J. G. | Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby) |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. (Dublin Univ.) | Hohler, G. F. | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood) |
| Cassel, Felix | Horne, Wm. E. (Surrey, Guildford) | Sanders, Robert A. |
| Cator, John | Houston, Robert Paterson | Sanderson, Lancelot |
| Cautley, H. S. | Hume-Williams, William Ellis | Sassoon, Sir Philip |
| Cave, George | Hunt, Rowland | Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Hunter, Sir C. R. | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin) | Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, E.) | Smith, Harold (Warrington) |
| Chambers, James | Jessel, Capt. H. M. | Spear, Sir John Ward |
| Clay, Captain H. H. Spender | Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr | Stanier, Beville |
| Clive, Captain Percy Archer | Kerry, Earl of | Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston) |
| Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham | Kimber, Sir Henry | Starkey, John R. |
| Cooper, Richard Ashmole | Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Knight, Captain Eric Ayshford | Steel-Maitland, A. D. |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Stewart, Gershom |
| Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet) | Larmor, Sir J. | Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North) |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle) | Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford) |
| Cripps, Sir C. A. | Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts, Mile End) | Talbot, Lord E. |
| Denniss, E. R. B. | Lloyd, George Ambrose | Terrell, H. (Gloucester) |
| Dixon, C. H. | Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury) | Thompson, Robert (Belfast, N.) |
| Doughty, Sir George | Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey) | Thynne, Lord Alexander |
| Duke, Henry Edward | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Tobin, Alfred Aspinall |
| Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M. | Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston) | Touche, George Alexander |
| Faber, George Denison (Clapham) | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo. Han. S.) | Tryon, Capt. George Clement |
| Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh | Tullibardine, Marquess of |
| Falle, B. G. | Mackinder, Halford J. | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Fell, Arthur | Macmaster, Donald | White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport) |
| Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey | M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's) | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A. | Magnus, Sir Philip | Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud |
| Fletcher, John Samuel | Malcolm, Ian | Wills, Sir Gilbert |
| Forster, Henry William | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Foster, Philip Staveley | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Winterton, Earl |
| Gardner, Ernest | Mildmay, Francis Bingham | Wolmer, Viscount |
| Gibbs, G. A. | Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas | Worthington-Evans, L. |
| Glazebrook, Capt. Philip K. | Moore, William | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Goldman, C. S. | Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton) | Yate, Col. Charles Edward |
| Goldsmith, Frank | Mount, William Arthur | Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong |
| Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton) | Newdegate, F. A. | |
| Goulding, Edward Alfred | Newman, John R. P. | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. |
| Grant, J. A. | Campion and Mr. Pollock. | |
| NOES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour) | Black, Arthur W. | Condon, Thomas Joseph |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Boland, John Plus | Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. |
| Adamson, William | Booth, Frederick Handel | Cotton, William Francis |
| Addison, Dr. Christopher | Bowerman, C. W. | Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) |
| Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D. | Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North) | Crawshay-Williams, Eliot |
| Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R. | Brady, P. J. | Crean, Eugene |
| Agnew, Sir George William | Brocklehurst, William B. | Crooks, William |
| Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbarton) | Bryce, J. Annan | Crumley, Patrick |
| Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud) | Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) |
| Arnold, Sydney | Burke, E. Haviland- | Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth) |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry | Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar) | Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) |
| Baker, Harold T. (Accrington) | Byles, Sir William Pollard | Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardiganshire) |
| Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.) | Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Dawes, J. A. |
| Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark) | Cawley, H. T. (Heywood) | De Forest, Baron |
| Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple) | Chancellor, H. G. | Delany, William |
| Barnes, George N. | Chapple, Dr. William Allen | Denman, Hon. R. D. |
| Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick) | Clancy, John Joseph | Devlin, Joseph |
| Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.) | Clough, William | Dillon, John |
| Barton, William | Clynes, John R. | Donelan, Captain A. |
| Beale, Sir William Phipson | Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock) | Doris, William |
| Beck, Arthur Cecil | Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Duffy, William J. |
| Bentham, George Jackson | Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J. | Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) |
| Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley) | Kennedy, Vincent Paul | Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields) |
| Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.) | Kilbride, Denis | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough) |
| Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | King, J. | Reddy, M |
| Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid) | Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S.Molton) | Redmond, John E. (Waterford) |
| Elverston, Sir Harold | Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade) | Redmond, William (Clare, E.) |
| Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.) | Lardner, James Carrige Rushe | Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)> |
| Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.) | Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rid, Cockerm'th) | Rendall, Athelstan |
| Essex, Richard Walter | Leach, Charles | Richards, Thomas |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Levy, Sir Maurice | Richardson, Albion (Peckham) |
| Falconer, James | Lewis, John Herbert | Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven) |
| Farrell, James Patrick | Low, Sir F. (Norwich) | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles | Lundon, T. | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Ffrench, Peter | Lyell, Charles Henry | Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs) |
| Field, William | Lynch, A. A. | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) |
| Fitzgibbon, John | Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester) | Robertson, John M (Tyneside) |
| Flavin, Michael Joseph | McGhee, Richard | Robinson, Sidney |
| France, Gerald Ashburner | Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J. | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd | MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South) | Roche, Augustine (Louth) |
| Gilhooly, James | Macpherson, James Ian | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Gill, A. H. | MacVeagh, Jeremiah | Rowlands, James |
| Ginnell, L. | M'Kean, John | Rowntree, Arnold |
| Gladstone, W. G. C. | McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W. |
| Glanville, H. J. | M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.) | Samuel, Rt. Hon, H. L. (Cleveland) |
| Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding) | Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees) |
| Goldstone, Frank | Manfield, Harry | Scanlan, Thomas |
| Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough) | Marks, Sir George Croydon | Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir C. E. |
| Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland) | Martin, J. | Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton) |
| Griffith, Ellis Jones | Mason, David M. (Coventry) | Sheehy, David |
| Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke) | Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G. | Sherwell, Arthur James |
| Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.) | Meagher, Michael | Shortt, Edward |
| Guiney, Patrick | Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.) | Simon, Sir John Allsebrook |
| Gulland, John William | Menzies, Sir Waiter | Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe) |
| Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway) | Millar, James Duncan | Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.) |
| Hackett, J. | Molloy, Michael | Snowden, Philip |
| Hancock, John George | Molteno, Percy Alport | Soames, Arthur Wellesley |
| Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz | Stanley, Albert (Staffs., N.W.) |
| Hardie, J. Keir | Morrell, Philip | Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West) |
| Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds.) | Morison, Hector | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire) | Muldoon, John | Sutton, John E. |
| Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Munro, R. | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, W.) | Nannetti, Joseph P. | Taylor, Thomas (Bolton) |
| Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.) | Needham, Christopher Thomas | Tennant, Harold John |
| Haslam, James (Derbyshire) | Neilson, Francis | Thomas, J. H. |
| Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster) | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) |
| Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry | Nolan, Joseph | Toulmin, Sir George |
| Hayden, John Patrick | Norton, Capt. Cecil W. | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Hayward, Evan | Nugent, Sir Walter Richard | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Hazleton, Richard | Nuttall, Harry | Wadsworth, J. |
| Healy, Maurice (Cork) | O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny | Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince) |
| Healy, Timothy Michael (Cork, N.E.) | O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.) | Walters, Sir John Tudor |
| Helme, Sir Norval Watson | O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool) | Walton, Sir Joseph |
| Hemmerde, Edward George | O'Doherty, Philip | Ward, John (Stoke-on-Trent) |
| Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | O'Donnell, Thomas | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Henry, Sir Charles | O'Grady, James | Wardle, George J. |
| Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.) | O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.) | Waring, Walter |
| Higham, John Sharp | O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.) | Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay |
| Hinds, John | O'Malley, William | Watt, Henry A. |
| Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.) | Webb, H. |
| Hodge, John | O'Shaughnessy, P. J. | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Hope, John Deans (Haddington) | O'Shee, James John | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Horne, C. Silvester (Ipswich) | O'Sullivan, Timothy | White, Patrick (Heath, North) |
| Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Outhwaite, R. L. | Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P. |
| Hudson, Walter | Palmer, Godfrey Mark | Whyte, A. F. (Perth) |
| Hughes, Spencer Leigh | Parker, James (Halifax) | Wiles, Thomas |
| Illingworth, Percy H. | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus | Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham) | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) |
| Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh) | Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton) | Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen) |
| John, Edward Thomas | Phillips, John (Longford, S.) | Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough) |
| Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Sw'nsea) | Pirie, Duncan Vernon | Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.) |
| Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil) | Pointer, Joseph | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth) | Pollard, Sir George H. | Winfrey, Richard |
| Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East) | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. | Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.) |
| Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe) | Power, Patrick Joseph | Young, Samuel (Cavan, East) |
| Jones, W. S. Glyn- (T. H'mts, Stepney) | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) | Young, William (Perth, East) |
| Joyce, Michael | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) | Yoxall, Sir James Henry |
| Keating, Matthew | Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.) | |
| Kellaway, Frederick George | Radford, G. H | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. |
| Raffan, Peter Wilson | Wedgwood Benn and Mr. W. Jones. |
§ The CHAIRMAN then proceeded to put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at half-past Ten of the Clock at this day's sitting.
2622§ Question put, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 298; Noes, 179.
2625| Division No. 394.] | AYES. | [10.40 p.m. |
| Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour) | Flavin, Michael Joseph | MacVeagh, Jeremiah |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | France, Gerald Ashburner | M'Kean, John |
| Adamson, William | George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd | McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald |
| Addison, Dr. Christopher | Gilhooly, James | M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.) |
| Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D. | Gill, A. H. | M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding) |
| Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R. | Ginnell, L. | Manfield, Harry |
| Agnew, Sir George William | Gladstone, W. G. C. | Marks, Sir George Croydon |
| Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbarton) | Glanville, H. J. | Martin, J. |
| Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud) | Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Mason, David M. (Coventry) |
| Arnold, Sydney | Goldstone, Frank | Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G. |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry | Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough) | Meagher, Michael |
| Baker, Harold T. (Accrington) | Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland) | Median, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.) |
| Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.) | Griffith, Ellis Jones | Menzies, Sir Waiter |
| Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark) | Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke) | Millar, James Duncan |
| Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple) | Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.) | Molloy, Michael |
| Barnes, George N. | Guiney, Patrick | Molteno, Percy Alport |
| Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick) | Gulland, John William | Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz |
| Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.) | Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway) | Morrell, Philip |
| Barton, William | Hackett, J. | Morison, Hector |
| Beale, Sir William Phipson | Hancock, John George | Muldoon, John |
| Beck, Arthur Cecil | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Munro, R. |
| Bentham, George Jackson | Hardie, J. Keir | Nannetti, Joseph P. |
| Black, Arthur W. | Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds.) | Needham, Christopher Thomas |
| Boland, John Pius | Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire) | Neilson, Francis |
| Booth, Frederick Handel | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster) |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, W.) | Nolan, Joseph |
| Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North) | Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.) | Norton, Capt. Cecil W. |
| Brady, P. J. | Haslam, James (Derbyshire) | Nugent, Sir Walter Richard |
| Brocklehurst, William B. | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Nuttall, Harry |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry | O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Hayden, John Patrick | O'Connor, John, (Kildare, N.) |
| Burke, E. Haviland- | Hayward, Evan | O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool) |
| Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar) | Hazleton, Richard | O'Doherty, Philip |
| Byles, Sir William Pollard | Healy, Maurice (Cork) | O'Donnell, Thomas |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Healy, Timothy Michael (Cork, N.E.) | O'Grady, James |
| Cawley, H. T. (Heywood) | Helme, Sir Norval Watson | O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.) |
| Chancellor, H. G. | Hemmerde, Edward George | O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.) |
| Chapple, Dr. William Allen | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | O'Malley William |
| Clancy, John Joseph | Henry, Sir Charles | O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.) |
| Clough, William | Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.) | O'Shaughnessy, P. J. |
| Clynes, John R. | Higham, John Sharp | O'Shee, James John |
| Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock) | Hinds, John | O'Sullivan, Timothy |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | Outhwaite, R. L. |
| Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J. | Hodge, John | Palmer, Godfrey Mark |
| Condon, Thomas Joseph | Holmes, Daniel Turner | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Hope, John Deans (Haddington) | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) |
| Cotton, William Francis | Horne, C. Silvester (Ipswich) | Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham) |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton) |
| Crawshay-Williams, Eliot | Hudson, Walter | Phillips, John (Longford, S.) |
| Crean, Eugene | Hughes, Spencer Leigh | Pirie, Duncan Vernon |
| Crooks, William | Illingworth, Percy H. | Pointer, Joseph |
| Crumley, Patrick | Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus | Pollard, Sir George H. |
| Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) | Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh) | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. |
| Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth) | John, Edward Thomas | Power, Patrick Joseph |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Sw'nsea) | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) |
| Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardiganshire) | Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil) | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) |
| Dawes, J. A. | Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth) | Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.) |
| De Forest, Baron | Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East) | Radford, G. H. |
| Delany, William | Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe) | Raffan, Peter Wilson |
| Denman, Hon. R. D, | Jones, W. S. Glyn- (T. H'mts, Stepney) | Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields) |
| Devlin, Joseph | Joyce, Michael | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough) |
| Dillon, John | Keating, Matthew | Reddy, M. |
| Donelan, Captain A. | Kellaway, Frederick George | Redmond, John E. (Waterford) |
| Doris, William | Kennedy, Vincent Paul | Redmond, William (Clare, E.) |
| Duffy, William J. | Kilbride, Denis | Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.) |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | King, J. | Rendall, Athelstan |
| Richards, Thomas | ||
| Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley) | Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S.Molton) | Richardson, Albion (Peckham) |
| Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.) | Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade) | Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven) |
| Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Lardner, James Carrige Rushe | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid) | Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th) | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Leach, Charles | Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs) | |
| Elverston, Sir Harold | Levy, Sir Maurice | Robertson, sir G. Scott (Bradford) |
| Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.) | Lewis, John Herbert | Robertson, John M. (Tyneside) |
| Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.) | Low, Sir F. (Norwich) | Robinson, Sidney |
| Essex, Richard Walter | Lundon, T. | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Lyell, Charles Henry | Roche, Augustine (Louth) |
| Falconer, James | Lynch, A. A. | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Farrell, James Patrick | Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester) | Rowlands, James |
| Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles | McGhee, Richard | Rowntree, Arnold |
| Ffrench, Peter | Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J. | Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W. |
| Field, William | MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South) | Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland) |
| Fitzgibbon, John | Macpherson, James Ian | Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees) |
| Scanlan, Thomas | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) | White, Patrick (Meath, North) |
| Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir C. E. | Toulmin, Sir George | Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P. |
| Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton) | Trevelyan, Charles Philips | Whyte, A. F. (Perth) |
| Sheehy, David | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander | Wiles, Thomas |
| Sherwell, Arthur James | Wadsworth, J. | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Shortt, Edward | Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince) | Williams, J. (Glamorgan) |
| Simon, Sir John Allsebrook | Walters, Sir John Tudor | Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen) |
| Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe) | Walton, Sir Joseph | Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough) |
| Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.) | Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent) | Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.) |
| Snowden, Philip | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Soames, Arthur Wellesley | Wardle, George J. | Winfrey, Richard |
| Stanley, Albert (Staffs., N.W.) | Waring, Walter | Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.) |
| Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West) | Warner, Sir Thomas Courtsnay | Young, Samuel (Cavan, East) |
| Sutherland, J. E. | Watt, Henry A. | Young, William (Perth, East) |
| Sutton, John E. | Webb, H. | Yoxall, Sir James Henry |
| Taylor, John W. (Durham) | Wedgwood, Josiah C. | |
| Taylor, Thomas (Bolton) | White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. |
| Tennant, Harold John | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) | Wedgwood Benn and Mr. W. Jones. |
| Thomas, J. H. |
| NOES. | ||
| Agg-Gardner, James Tynte | Gibbs, G. A. | Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton) |
| Aitken, Sir William Max | Glazebrook, Capt. Philip K. | Mount, William Arthur |
| Amery, L. C. M. S. | Goldman, C. S. | Newdegate, F. A. |
| Ashley, W. W. | Goldsmith, Frank | Newman, John R. P. |
| Baird, J. L. | Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton) | Newton, Harry Kottingham |
| Baker, Sir R. L. (Dorset, N.) | Goulding, Edward Alfred | Norton-Griffiths, J. |
| Balcarres, Lord | Grant, J. A. | O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid) |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Greene, W. R. | Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A. |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Gretton, John | Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William |
| Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester) | Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S.E.) | Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend) |
| Barlow, Montague (Salford, South) | Guinness, Hon. W.E. (Bury S.Edmunds) | Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington) |
| Barnston, H, | Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne) | Perkins, Walter Frank |
| Barrie, H. T. | Haddock, George Bahr | Peto, Basil Edward |
| Bathurst, C. (Wilts, Wilton) | Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight) | Pretyman, Ernest George |
| Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Hall, Marshall (L'pool, E. Toxteth) | Pryce-Jones, Col. E. (M'tgom'y B'ghs.) |
| Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth) | Hambro, Angus Valdemar | Quilter, Sir William Eley C. |
| Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish- | Hamersley, Alfred St. George | Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel |
| Bigland, Alfred | Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence | Rees, Sir J. D. |
| Blair, Reginald | Harris, Henry Percy | Remnant, James Farquharson |
| Boles, Lieut.-Col. Dennis Fortescue | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith- | Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon) | Royds, Edmund |
| Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid) | Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.) | Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen) |
| Boyton, James | Hewins, William Albert Samuel | Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby) |
| Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell | Hickman, Colonel Thomas E. | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hill, Sir Clement L. | Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Hoare, S. J. G. | Sanders, Robert A. |
| Burdett-Coutts, W. | Hohler, G. F. | Sanderson, Lancelot |
| Burn, Colonel, C. R. | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Sasson, Sir Philip |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. (Dublin Univ.) | Horne, Wm. E. (Surrey, Guildford) | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred | Houston, Robert Paterson | Spear, Sir John Ward |
| Cassel, Felix | Hume-Williams, William Ellis | Stanier, Beville |
| Cator, John | Hunt, Rowland | Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston) |
| Cautley, H. S. | Hunter, Sir C. R. | Starkey, John R. |
| Cave, George | Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, E.) | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Jessel, Capt. H. M. | Steel-Maitland, A. D. |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin) | Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr | Stewart, Gershom |
| Chambers, James | Kerry, Earl of | Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North) |
| Clay, Captain H. H. Spender | Kimber, Sir Henry | Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford) |
| Clive, Captain Percy Archer | Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement | Talbot, Lord E. |
| Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham | Knight, Captain Eric Ayshford | Terrell, H. (Gloucester) |
| Cooper, Richard Ashmole | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Thompson, Robert (Belfast, N.) |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Larmor, Sir J. | Thynne, Lord Alexander |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle) | Tobin, Alfred Aspinall |
| Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet) | Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts, Mile End) | Touche, George Alexander |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Lloyd, George Ambrose | Tryon, Capt. George Clement |
| Cripps, Sir C. A. | Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury) | Tullibardine, Marquess of |
| Denniss, E. R. B. | Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey) | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Dixon, C. H. | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport) |
| Doughty, Sir George | Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston) | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Duke, Henry Edward | MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh | Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud |
| Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M. | Mackinder, Halford J. | Wills, Sir Gilbert |
| Faber, George Denison (Clapham) | Macmaster, Donald | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Faber, Capt, W. V. (Hants, W.) | M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's) | Winterton, Earl |
| Falle, B. G. | Magnus, Sir Philip | Wolmer, Viscount |
| Fell, Arthur | Malcolm, Ian | Worthington-Evans, L. |
| Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A. | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Yate, Col. Charles Edward |
| Fletcher, John Samuel | Mildmay, Francis Bingham | Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong |
| Forster, Henry William | Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas | |
| Foster, Philip Staveley | Moore, William | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. |
| Gardner, Ernest | Campion and Mr. Pollock. |