CLAUSE 4.—(Vesting of Property.)

HC Deb 13 December 1912 vol 45 cc965-1053

(1) As from the date of Disestablishment there shall, save as by this Section provided, vest in the Welsh Commissioners hereinafter mentioned—

1. (a) all property vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners or Queen Anne's Bounty, which is ascertained as hereinafter mentioned to be Welsh ecclesiastical property; and
2. (b) all property not so vested, and not consisting of charges on the common fund of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which, at the passing of this Act, belongs to or is appropriated to the use of any ecclesiastical office or cathedral corporation in the Church in Wales, or the holder of any such office as such;

subject, in the case of all such property, to all tenancies, charges, and incumbrances, and to all rights and interests saved by this Act, affecting the property.

(2) All plate, furniture, and other movable chattels belonging to any Church affected by this Act, or used in connection with the celebration of Divine worship therein, shall vest in the representative body hereinafter mentioned if and when incorporated:

Provided that if such a body is not incorporated at the date of Disestablishment all such movable chattels as aforesaid shall, until the incorporation of such a body, remain vested in the same persons and be applicable to the same purposes as before the date of Disestablishment.

The CHAIRMAN

Perhaps it may be convenient to the Committee if I indicate my view of the Amendments to this Clause, which is related rather closely to Clause 8 of the Bill, because a considerable number of the Amendments on the Paper to this Clause are more properly Amendments to Clause 8. The Committee will bear in mind that under the Clauses which have already been dealt with in Committee the bodies referred to in those Clauses have been dissolved, therefore, it is necessary to make provision for what is to be done with the various properties hitherto held by those bodies. I observe that in 1895, when a similar Bill was before the House, that a Clause corresponding to Clause 4 was treated quite shortly as a matter of machinery, and I think practically the whole of the questions dealing with the allocation or destination of the funds were dealt with on the subsequent Clause. There are on the Paper two important Amendments which may be dealt with either on this Clause or on Clause 8. I am referring to the Amendment in the name of the hon. and learned Member for South Bucks (Sir A. Cripps), and the one in the name of the hon. Member for the Morley Division of Yorkshire (Mr. France). The first one, in my opinion, is not quite in correct form, but with a slight modification it would be in order. It would be in order, in my opinion, to propose here that all the property of the bodies referred to in the earlier Clauses should be vested direct in the representative body constituted in the later part of the Bill. The hon. Member for the Morley Division proposes that the property should be vested in the Welsh Commissioners in trust for the representative body, with one exception, which he refers to in his proposed new paragraph (a). Therefore, it will be for the hon. and learned Member for South Bucks to decide whether he wishes to move his Amendment at this stage. If he does not, I shall call upon the hon. Member for the Morley Division. The question arises how far the discussion and decisions on this Clause 4 will affect future Amendments under Clause 8. My view is that an identical question which is raised here could not be raised again on Clause 8; but, of course, separate propositions could be made on Clause 8, which yet in the aggregate would amount to the same total as might have been proposed under this Clause.

Sir A. CRIPPS

May I ask your ruling, Mr. Whitley, on a point of Order, before I consider whether it is necessary to move the first of the Amendments which stand in my name? There are two Amendments, the one you have referred to and one which is subsequent to the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Morley Division. Both deal with the question of vesting the property and one not with its subsequent distribution, which comes on under Clause 8. I quite realise that distinction. I have regard to what you said in respect to the words of my first Amendment. It appears that the second Amendment would come on after the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Morley Division. If my second Amendment is in order, I propose not to move my first, and I would take your ruling on the words in the second as being a better form in which to move it.

The CHAIRMAN

I have suggested to the hon. and learned Member that there was a form in which he could move his first one by substituting the "representative body" there for the "same person or corporation."

Sir A. CRIPPS

In the second Amendment, which I think would be in order, that is really done. Therefore I think it would be better, having regard to your ruling, to leave it to the second Amendment and not to move the first one.

Mr. FRANCE

I beg to move, in Subsection (1), to leave out the words "save as by this Section provided."

Although I should have thought my consequential Amendment was long enough to be noticed by anyone, either with good eyesight or good intention, I congratulate you, Sir, on having noticed that it is still on the Paper. With regard to the words you have just used on the question of Order, I would, if I may, give my reasons for moving the Amendment upon Clause 4 and not upon Clause 8, as I originally intended to do. The life life history of this Amendment is very brief, but I think it has proved its health by growing in size day by day, and although it has passed through a process of death and resurrection during the last few days in the mind of some, it is still here and I am now moving it. My reasons for moving this Amendment are the same as they were, in announced intention, on the Second Reading of the Bill. May I remind the Committee, with great hesitation and reluctance, of the words I used on the Second Reading of the Bill, which I am afraid, owing to my own limited powers, I cannot improve upon, in giving the reasons for moving the Amendment:— I intend to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill, because I believe in the principle of Disestablishment, and I regard the Bill as one to Disestablish the Church in Wales. I regard Disendowment as incidental thereto, but as not so necessary a corollary as some speakers have tried to make it. I desire to see, and I will do my best to secure or to assist in securing, such changes in Committee as will give the most generous treatment to the Church, and I am not to be deflected in this course by the statement of bon. Members opposite that they are opposed to the Bill in every shape and form, and that no treatment, however generous or just, will affect their action, desire to see the most generous treatment given to the Church which is compatible with this principle, that no one shall be asked, much less compelled, to pay by lithe, tax, or rate, for the future upkeep of a Church in whose doctrines he does not believe, and which is not, in fact, am will, if the Bill is carried, no longer be a national Church. I have very little to add to that expression of opinion, which is the reason for my moving the Amendment that stands in my name to-day. In reply to that statement of opinion and to other statements of opinion of a similar character from this as well as from the other side of the House, the Prime Minister made on the second day of the Second Reading a very important pronouncement from my point of view. A few days ago I read to the House part of that paragraph. I would now venture to repeat rather a longer extract, because I feel that is of supreme importance that the Committee should understand why it is I am continuing and intend to continue in the course I have already marked out for myself. The Prime Minister said:— I cannot understand anyone who conscientiously maintains that a particular measure is a measure of spoliation and robbery supporting it in any shape or degree. If it is a question of degree or expediency. I can understand; if it is a question whether these terms are just and generous, then I quite agree that it is a matter of accommodation and not of principle; but if it is spoliation and robbery, if you will not accept even 19s. 11d. in the £, then the tiling is wrong in principle and nothing can justify it I can only say in regard to that, so far as we here are concerned—I speak for my colleagues and myself—we shall welcome in the fullest degree, when we get into the Committee stage, discussion both as to what is just and generous to leave to the Church. I move this Amendment in response to that invitation, and I think perhaps one is entitled to expect a little more cordiality in the welcome which was spoken of on that occasion. The effect of the Amendment, as I understand it, is to do in practice and in effect what was asked for on that occasion—that is, to take from the Church the tithe rent-charge and to leave to the Church the other funds which in the Bill it is proposed to take from them. In the speech made by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. McKenna), in introducing the Bill, he announced that the sum to be taken from the Church was £173,000. The sum proposed in this Amendment to be taken from the Church is £126,000, which, as far as I understand it, is the total sum representing the tithe rent-charge. The total difference between us, therefore, is £47,000 per annum. You have given a guidance as to the various occasions on which this matter might have been raised. I have read in the last few days certain newspaper criticisms, and in one column in particular, which is supposed to speak with some authority, as to the difficulties which this Amendment will create. May I say why it is down on Clause 4? I know one is not allowed to go into private conversations, and I have no intention of breaking that rule, but I do not think I am guilty of any breach of conduct or confidence in saying that, at any rate, I understood that if this matter was left until Clause 8 there might be occasions before Clause 8 on which it could be disposed of and settled, and as the rule is that if that happens the matter could not then again came up for discussion, and as I was afraid through an accident or through the rules of the House, of finding myself on Clause 8 prevented from moving the Amendment, which I had fully made up my mind to move, I thought it better to introduce it, in one Amendment, at an earlier stage, so that discussion might take place as soon as possible. I am convinced that in the words of the Amendment, which provide for the funds, which are to be handed over to the representative body when it is formed, being held in trust by the Welsh Commissioners until such body is formed, there is no fear of that wilderness into which the funds will wander and be lost which has been referred to in certain paragraphs in newspapers and in some speeches. There is, I have no hesitation in saying, really very little difference of opinion even on this side of the House as to the possibility of the course which I have suggested or as to the question as to whether or not this contravenes any question of principle. I, personally, do not think it does, and I have the authority of the Prime Minister, in the words I have just quoted, to that effect. This is not a question of principle, and I am under the impression that it is admitted on this side of the House that as far as principle is concerned there is no real reason why Disendowment should not consist only of the tithe rent-charge. I think it is admitted on all hands—I am trying not to be controversial but, as far as I can, to say what I believe to be true—at any rate that under certain circumstances a concession of this character or a line of demarcation drawn here might prove a settlement which, if not satisfactory, will at any rate be peaceful.

Mr. BOOTH made an observation which was inaudible.

Mr. FRANCE

I hope the hon. Member, to whom we listen with great attention and interest at times, will refrain from interrupting.

Mr. BOOTH

I apologise to my hon. Friend, but he said just now it was admitted on all hands. It was only from that I dissented, and I claim my right to dissent. It is not admitted on all hands.

Mr. FRANCE

I do not want in any way to complain unduly, and if I said anything which was misunderstood or was not true, I have no wish to press it. The point I am trying to make is that I have heard it said, and I have seen it in many quarters in print—again, of course, I am bound by tradition and not able to refer to any conversation—I am convinced that the opinion is held largely, if not generally, that at some point or other, at some time or other, a line such as this, or somewhat similar to this, might be accepted under certain circumstances as a compromise and a solution. I think I am entitled to go as far as that. But we are told it must not be offered now. We cannot make any offer; we cannot take this course; we cannot proceed on the line which some people think to be just and generous without we can make a bargain. We will show all the virtues of Christian charity and generosity if we get something in exchange. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am very sorry to hear that rather crude doctrine cheered from the Front Bench. It is a new theory of the olive branch. If that acceptation of the theory of the olive branch had prevailed at the time when that historic emblem first had its origin, I am afraid that the illustrious historical character who first handled it would have been drowned at sea, and none of us would have been here. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] I am sorry that the knowledge of scripture history possessed by hon. Members below the Gangway is so limited. May I say here that personally I am very sorry that those who oppose this I Bill as a whole are not prepared to recognise the sincerity, as I do, of the feeling in Wales on the question of Disestablishment, and in particular the grievance which exists in regard to the payment of tithe rent-charge. I wish to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that the Home Secretary in his opening speech on the First Reading of the Bill referred particularly to that grievance. So far as I recollect it was the only specific grievance to which he referred during the whole course of his speech. He referred to the historic grievance dating from the time of Giraldus Cambrensis. I gratefully recognise the tone of many of the speeches which have been delivered from the other side of the House on this subject. But some hon. Members who have been most vociferous have defended their religious convictions from time to time in a tone and temper which I consider more appropriate to the defence of fire worship, or some Pagan theory which had for its object the roasting of men alive.

Some of the speeches reminded me of an incident which I experienced some years ago when I stood myself in a remote rural district as a candidate in a local election. The chairman of that meeting gave a long catalogue of the iniquitous tendencies and vices of my opponent, and then turning to me—a very humble and young candidate— with a burst of eloquence he said, "Our candidate is diabolically opposed to all these things." I will not press that illustration further, but I am sorry that some of the speeches contained expressions of feeling which do not, at any rate, to me appear to be appropriate to the discussion of the subject which is before the Committee to-day. I maintain that people who profess to be Christians, and profess to speak in the name of religion, ought to try to find some way of agreement in this matter. I believe it is to be found on the line which I indicate in this Amendment. I believe it will be possible, under certain circumstances to which I will refer in a moment, to bury the hatchet in Wales in this way. I would remind the Committee that one of the first steps towards that specific process of hatchet burying is for both parties to be willing to let go the handle. So long as there is the spirit, "We will give concessions if you will do something in return," I do not think that is the best way to carry out the feeling which will promote peace and happiness in the future. I do not agree with this idea of bargaining at some future opportunity which may never occur, and which, left to uncertainty, probably never will occur in the history of this Bill. If this is the right line to take, as I think it is, why not take it now? Why not take a stand on this line and face the criticisms and judgments of the country upon it. If the Government will submit their Bill on these lines, having gone to the full limits of justice and generosity, then I have no fear whatever of the judgment of the country upon their action in this matter. The amount in dispute is a very small one—£47,000 per annum. Somebody said, in the course of the earlier Debates, that it is a petty sum about which to have a squabble—the sum of £47,000—between the State with its revenue of millions and a Christian Church. It may be said that the argument tells both ways. Candidly, I do not think it does tell with equal effect both ways in respect of what must be a painful change to many. I think that must be admitted.

I want to say a few words about the great responsibility which I feel in moving this Amendment. I can assure the Committee that I do not regard my position in doing so as an enviable one. I have read and re-read a speech to which I listened last year—a speech which was commented upon by the Prime Minister as the most remarkable speech in defence of this House as a representative institution to which he had ever listened. It was a speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Balfour), in which he gave his view as to the difficult, if not almost impossible position in which a private Member finds himself when he regards it his duty to move an Amendment or to vote against a Government which he wishes loyally to support, and which in the main he is returned with the object of supporting. I also heard, and I read again with great pleasure, a speech made in his new style, if I may say so, by the hon. and learned Member for Walton (Mr. F. E. Smith) on this subject only a few days ago, in which he referred to the difficult and almost impossible position in which a private Member of this House finds himself when he is in disagreement with the Government which he generally supports on a matter of this kind. I think from what I have said I can show that my case at this particular time is rather different from the case of the ordinary difficulty to which I have referred. If I may say so, there are many of us who made our opposition perfectly clear on the Second Reading. We have never concealed our views, and our course has been, so far as we could make it so, an honest and open one. The suggestions we made were openly made, and they were with equal honesty and frankness accepted on the Front Bench by no less a person than the Prime Minister, who made an offer of free and welcome discussion in this House on the Committee stage.

I greatly appreciated that response, and so did all those who think with me on the subject. Has it really come to this, that the offer only meant that we were to come and discuss and talk, and that when the time came to arrive at a decision our talk was to be so much waste-breath, that the Government had made up their mind from the first as to the course they would pursue, and that when the Division came, after our acceptance of the offer made to make the suggestions, we were meekly and calmly to follow our leaders, and under the eye and guidance of the Whips to go into the Lobby which did not for the time being represent the views which, on the invitation of the Prime Minister, we had expressed? I cannot think anyone who regards the present or the future of the House of Commons can for a moment give any attachment to such a theory as this. It is in response largely to the invitation I move this Amendment. I make these suggestions on the Committee stage in order to give the Government an opportunity of proving that they do not mean to take the unsatisfactory course to which I have just referred. One or two hon. Members made a public appeal on this matter that the Whips should be taken off, and that an open discussion should be followed by an open vote, so that the opinion of the House should be accepted on a matter of this kind. Why not? It is not on every measure that the Prime Minister, the responsible head of the Government, gives an invitation of that character requesting criticism. I assume from the invitation that he intends not to bind those who make criticisms on an occasion of this sort. If there are arguments such as I have feebly endeavoured to address to the House, what is to be the result? Are the arguments to go for nothing on an occasion such as this, and at the end of the arguments is there to be meek acceptance of the ordinary party position? I think that is a position quite intolerable and quite fatal to the position of the House of Commons as a really representative institution. It cannot for a moment be thought that any of us who think on the lines I have indicated are afraid of the amiable Gentlemen who act as Whips in this House. The object in asking the Whips to be taken off is to make it possible for the Government to ascertain the real opinion of the House.

Mr. CLEMENT EDWARDS

Is the hon. Member in order in discussing all these matters on this specific Amendment? May I suggest that it would be more in order to give some argument in favour of his proposal?

The CHAIRMAN

I cannot say that the hon. Member is out of order.

Mr. FRANCE

I thought my own description of the remarks I am addressing to the House as feeble would have satisfied the hon. Member. I am endeavouring to put before the Committee the reasons why I believe this Amendment would carry out a certain object which I have in view. I have tried, as briefly as I can, to give the reasons why I think that change should be made in the Bill. If I have given, as I have tried to give, a true account of the history of how the offer was made, and how this Amendment in consequence of that offer is moved, I am compelled to leave the matter now in the hands of those to whom, after all, I am principally responsible, to leave it to the judgment of those who have sent me to this House, and to whom alone, and the dictates of my own conscience, I owe any allegiance. During the last few days many doubts have been cast upon my loyalty as a Nonconformist and a Liberal. That does not matter to me in the least. I hope I have not yet got to that stage when such criticisms affect me in the slightest. What does matter is something more important than that. Although a convinced Nonconformist, and although on many occasions I have tried to show that I am a loyal Liberal, these are minor classifications which sink into insignificance as compared with what is involved in this matter of religion and conscience, and in regard to which I must take the course which I believe to be true and right.

12.0 M.

Mr. W. G. C. GLADSTONE

My reason for supporting this Amendment is very simple. It is that I feel convinced that there is to be found in it a basis of settlement of this controversy, and both sides, should they fail to take advantage of this Amendment, will be turning their backs upon the opportunity of making peace. Personally, I place the highest possible value upon anything that is calculated to bring about a termination of religious strife in Wales. It may be true to a limited extent, and during a certain period of time, that controversy exercises a stimulating and bracing effect upon the religious bodies concerned, but when a controversy like this becomes so protracted as to absorb too much time or thought, and when it arouses ill-feeling instead of fellow feeling, it begins to hinder co-operation and to substitute to some extent single-handed action in the direction of religious work and Christian endeavour. I see in this Amendment an opportunity for bringing to an end this religious strife. This Amendment, as my hon. Friend has said, amounts, as I understand, to this, that the Church shall retain all her Endowments with the exception of tithe. Personally—I am only expressing a personal view—the sooner that is taken away the better. If this Amendment can be proved to contain proposals which may appear illogical or inconsistent, or to lack a common basis, I should not be very deeply concerned, nor should I necessarily be deterred from voting for it, for it is peace and reconciliation we are pursuing, and we set that above other considerations; and whether or not the Opposition see fit to express appreciation of this Amendment in a practical and conciliatory form, we appeal to the Government not to allow their policy to be dictated by the attitude of the Opposition, but to strike out on the line of their own policy, and to let that policy be one which opens the door to peace and reconciliation.

I believe that this Amendment offers a settlement of the controversy. I go a little further, and I say I think it offers the only settlement of this controversy which both sides of the House can accept with honour and with satisfaction. I may mention, without being accused of egotism, that I am speaking as one who has an opportunity, at any rate, of understanding the point of view of both parties, for I am a Churchman, I live just over the border in Wales, I am a patron of two livings, and yet I am a supporter of Disestablishment, and, within the limits which I have mentioned, of Disendovment. And it is speaking from that double point of view, and I hope single-mindedly, that I submit my opinion to this House that this Amendment offers the only settlement which both sides of the House can accept with honour and satisfaction. To the Opposition I would venture to address this appeal. Surely no settlement of this question can be final so long as the Welsh Nonconformist is obliged by law to pay every year what seems to him a tribute to a Church to which he does not belong, between him and which there is a lamentable lack, only too often, of sympathy and understanding, while, at the same time, he has to scrape together, perhaps with difficulty, a contribution for the purpose of maintaining his own chapel, of which he is every bit as proud as any Churchman is of his Church, and for the maintenance of his Minister. You may attempt to convince him with your legal theories that he suffers no injustice. You may or may not be right. But one thing certain is that you will make no impression upon him. He is far more impressed with the idea that it is his energy, his labour, his productive capacity, which make that payment possible, and every year that tithe has to be paid he smarts under a sense of injustice. That sense of injustice is revived every year.

In that respect tithe differs from every other Endowment which the Church possesses. It is an annual and perpetual irritant and keeps alive the sense of injustice. Personally I believe there is no greater mistake than to think that tithe is any source of strength whatsoever to the Church in Wales. On the contrary, I think it is a great weakness to it, and I go so far as to say it is a millstone round the neck of the Established Church in Wales. It raises a barrier between the Church and the Welsh people, and I do submit to hon. Gentlemen opposite that it cannot be in the interests of the Church to maintain any part of an organisation or constitution which antagonises the people among whom she has to labour. If this is a continued source of irritation and of a feeling of injustice to the Welsh people, it is madness to the Church which desires to bring within her fold the Welsh people, not to east it away from her. Those with the most superficial acquaintance with the Scriptures, will recollect that there is therein an explicit injunction to cut off the part that offends and to cast it away. That should certainly be the fate of tithe. I now come to the other side of the compromise. We appeal to the Government to let their sense of justice be tempered with clemency and generosity. Neither will be out of place. We have to recognise sooner or later, and make allowance for the fact, that the Church has had a long and undisputed possession of these Endowments. Besides, we do not pretend to know as much, and certainly not more, the feelings of the people of Wales, than their representatives in this House, and we do know that the Welsh people have given no induction to their representatives in this House not to treat the Church with generosity.

On the contrary, we have heard that they desire to see the Church treated with generosity. The Welsh people, like other Celtic people, are generous in temperament, and I do not believe that they would wish to see themselves placed in any position in which they could be argued to be or accused of being hard-hearted or ungenerous, especially at the moment when victory in a cause for which they have fought so long appears to be within their grasp. I suppose we shall be met by the argument that we are asking for these large and generous concessions—and I confess that, in my opinion, the concessions that we are asking for in this Amendment are large and generous—not on account of their intrinsic merits, not on grounds of logic, but purely for the pin-pose of making a settlement and reconciliation. Well, that is so. We shall also be told that just as it takes two to make a quarrel so also it takes two to make a settlement of a compromise, and that as the party opposite will not entertain, so far as we know, the idea of a settlement or a compromise, so the only justification that we can advance for these concessions is absolutely gone. I can certainly appreciate the force of that argument. At the same time I do not think it goes the whole way. It is not the whole conclusion. Surely it is fallacious to assume that we must shape our policy, and that our policy must be dictated by the action of the Opposition. Let us do what we think is right without taking any notice whatsoever of the attitude of the Opposition. Our attitude should and can be independent of the attitude which the Opposition take up in this matter. Be that as it may, I look forward to hearing to-day that the Opposition will abandon the position that no concession and no compromise will alter their opposition to this Bill.

I feel very sure in my own mind that that position is a most dangerous and damaging position. The blank negation by the Church of the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the Welsh people is surely a colossal mistake of the first magnitude. The Established Church cannot claim to be the National Church of Wales if she turns her back contemptuously upon the demands of the greater part of the Welsh nation. If the supporters of this Amendment are going to be told at any time that this is not the time for Amendment and concession, and that they should wait until the Bill reaches the-House of Lords, our reply is that, under the provisions of the Parliament Act, opportunities for Amendment are somewhat restricted. And in our opinion the only opportunity we have of putting controversial Amendments into this Bill is here and now, before this Bill leaves the House of Commons. For, under the Parliament Act—I think I am right in this—once the Bill leaves this House no Amendment except by consent can be inserted into the Bill. It is not in the power of any Minister, however willing to undertake that Amendments shall be made in the House of Lords, because he has no longer sole control of the measure. His willingness to do so becomes conditional upon the willingness of the House of Lords-to insert those Amendments by consent, and the Lords, if they like, can prevent any single Amendment from being inserted into this Bill once it leaves the House of Commons.

It is not fair on the supporters of this Amendment that they should be expected, if they are expected, to leave that out of account We cannot do it. We must take into account the likelihood, or, if you like, the possibility only, of the Lords rejecting this Bill, not once, but twice. Surely it is possible that they may prefer the attitude to throw the odium upon those responsible for this Bill, and to represent it as a measure proving the harshness and the severity of the Liberal Government, proving their want of compassion for the Church, and of generosity, foretold, but not fulfilled. Those of us who support this Amendment are simply bound to take into account the fact that the House of Lords may prefer to risk having this Bill passed over our heads, rather than to insert Amendments by consent. I conclude by appealing once more to the Government not to allow their policy to be dictated by the action of the Opposition, and not to be afraid of showing their generosity here and now. Let us show which is the party that is open to reason, which is the party that desires to see peace brought about, and which is the party that, in order to make peace, is prepared to go to the utmost limit of what can be called fair and reasonable. Let us show which party it is that sets the highest value upon the settlement of this religious strife in Wales, knowing, as we do, the party which does that will do Christian service to the people of Wales.

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna)

My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Gladstone) in supporting this Amendment, has made a speech the spirit, the tone, and the temper of which I am sure will be received with cordial approval in every quarter of the House. I cannot help thinking that if the spirit he has shown, and to which he has given expression to-day, could be shared on both sides of the House——

Mr. LAURENCE HARDY

On a point of Order. Am I to understand that the Amendment has been moved?

The CHAIRMAN

The hen. Member must have been unobservant.

Mr. McKENNA

If that spirit could be shared on both sides of the House, there would be little difficulty in settling this much controverted problem. My hon. Friend supported the Amendment on the ground that it was the basis of a settlement. He said that it afforded an opportunity of bringing to an end this religious strife. He supported it on the ground that it would bring peace and reconciliation. If hon. Members opposite will give expression to the same view, if they will tell us here and now that they see in this Amendment a basis for peace and reconciliation, my hon. Friend's argument would be justified. There was, if he will forgive me for saying so, a real inconsistency between the beginning and the end of his speech. He justified the proposal on the ground that it would bring peace. He concluded by telling us not to allow our policy to be dictated by the Opposition. His conclusion was an admission that in his judgment this Amendment will not bring peace. He tells us that we should act solely on the ground of doing what we think right. I agree. That is why we have introduced this Bill. I agree, also, that a Bill of this kind, hotly contested as it is, can only pass with general consent, if there is a general burying of the hatchet, and large concessions are made on both sides. I admit that. But that does not in any way destroy the foundation on which we stand now, that this Bill, as it is, is a right and just Bill, and that the terms which we offer to the Church are fair and generous. My hon. Friend who proposed the Amendment founded himself largely upon the statement of the Prime Minister, that full consideration would be given to every argument brought forward in opposition to the particular proposals of the Bill on the subject of Endowment. I am not quoting him; I am summarising the meaning of his words. How does my hon. Friend, who founded himself on that statement, make use of it in this Debate?

Did he bring a single argument of any sort or kind in support of his Amendment? He said that he desired it as a settlement. That is not argument. He never referred to particular Endowments; he gave us no reason why the people should surrender to the Church the glebes; he never mentioned the Queen Anne Bounty Fund; he never referred to the Parliamentary Grant in his speech. But it was precisely for the discussion of each item in detail that the Prime Minister gave the promise that the Committee should have ample opportunity. My hon Friend said, with confident assurance, that if it is any question of tithe, rate, or tax, he is as firm as any of us in desiring to Disendow the Church in that respect. Why does my hon. Friend say that? He did not even support his own proposal to take the tithe from the Church. If he will allow me to say so, my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock, on the contrary, did give sound and good reasons for taking the tithe, and my hon. Friend the Member for Morley (Mr. France) based himself, if he will forgive me for saying it, upon the root principle—they may call it prejudice; I do not call it prejudice—on the root principle, in his own mind, that no tithe, rate, or tax should be used for the support of the Church. He based himself upon the principle that the Church should be supported by voluntary contributions, but that principle has not general acceptance. He neither gave a reason for taking the tithe, nor a reason for leaving the glebe, nor a reason for leaving anything else to the Church.

Mr. FRANCE

I think the right hon. Gentleman has hardly done me quite justice, if I may say so. I twice attempted to support my argument by repetition of the statement which I made, that what I objected to was the payment at the present time of a tax or charge, and, although I have put the matter badly, what I told the House was that there was a grievance in the payment of this tithe, and that that grievance does not apply in the other cases.

Mr. McKENNA

I was coming to that point. The hon. Member, in dealing with tithes, rates and taxes, expressed the view, which is deep-rooted in his mind, that it is abhorrent to him that tithe rates and taxes should be paid to the support of the Church of England in Wales. But, he says, give up glebe to the Church and you will get a settlement. Is he speaking for Wales in this respect? It is just as abhorrent to the people of Wales that the glebe, which they say belongs to the nation, should be left to the Church. I will not say the whole of Wales. I am speaking for those who agree with me; I am speaking of the majority.

Sir F. BANBURY

What nation?

Mr. McKENNA

The Welsh nation. It is just as abhorrent to the majority of the Welsh people to leave the glebe to the Church, and when my hon. Friend thinks that he is by short cuts going to get a settlement which will be acceptable to the Welsh people, he is entirely wrong. My hon. Friend did not touch upon the facts of the case. What is the case with regard to these Endowments which it is proposed to alienate, subject to life interests, from the Church? The total amount we state is £173,000 yearly. Of that amount tithe consists of £125,000. The hon. Member proposes to leave to the Church in Wales a certain amount of tithe. He does not take all the tithe, which is a grievance on his own argument, and he leaves to the Church in perpetuity about £4,000 which is now paid as tithe. I pass that by. He would surrender to the nation £125,000 or £126,000 per year in tithe. He would take from it in glebe all the proceeds of the sale of glebe, or the proceeds of the sale of tithe—roughly speaking, about £32,000 a year. He would take also the Welsh portion of Queen Anne's Bounty Fund, amounting to £9,000 a year, and he would take a further £6,000 a year, which represents the value of the Parliamentary Grant, All that he would take from the Welsh people, which it is proposed to give to them under the Bill, and leave to the Church. My hon. Friend thinks that that is right and proper that you should not take from the Church property which represents the sale of tithe, but that it is right and proper that you should take from the Church tithe because it is a grievance to the Welsh people to pay the tithe, but that it is right and proper to leave that grievance on the Welsh people in respect of tithe which has been bought. He offers to the Church the whole of the glebe, regardless of how that glebe came into the possession of the Church. I thought we would hear from him some argument as to why it is improper, under this Bill, to take the glebe from the Church. Not a word. Nothing about the short cut to generous treatment, but give up everything except so much of the tithe; not all the tithe, let the Committee mark, but so much of the tithe as is of ancient origin. My hon. Friend has not considered his own Amendment. He has thrown it to the Committee without argument, without thinking it out, and without taking advantage of the opportunity which the Prime Minister promised. Let me reassure my hon. Friend. In one respect I recognise he is labouring under a difficulty, because he has introduced this Amendment on Clause 4. Of course, I think he was perfectly right in the course he took, and I agree with him that Clause 4 offers an opportunity for discussing this question, although it does not offer an opportunity, as I shall explain very briefly in a moment, for this question being properly voted upon by the ruling of the Chair. But were this Amendment accepted now, of course I should have no alternative except to drop the Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because it would offer no settlement to Wales. It would be no settlement to offer to hon. Members opposite, and it would be no settlement to Wales, so that so far from having got peace and reconciliation, you would have a double war. I think under those circumstances, I should be justified in dropping the Bill. That is my reason. If the Amendment were accepted, I should think this Bill would be acceptable to nobody, and I should have no alternative except to drop the Bill. My hon. Friend, however, will have another opportunity on Clause 8. He will have the opportunity of bringing before the House his arguments on glebe. I shall be perfectly content to meet him in argument on glebe. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who has already stated his views on the point of glebe, I am satisfied will completely destroy his case. When my hon. Friend has brought forward his arguments one by one, they shall be answered one by one, and the strength of the case of this Bill will become only the more manifest on examination in detail. My hon. Friend, I know, desires, earnestly desires, to bring about a settlement. I know there are a number of Churchmen, Liberal Churchmen, who feel with him upon this subject, and who would sacrifice a great deal of what they regard as right and just in this Bill, in order to bring about its passage by agreement, in order that after the Bill is passed there may be real peace. They desire that as earnestly as any supporter of the Church of England in Wales could possibly wish, and if there were any proposals authoritatively made from the other side, that this Bill would be accepted and honestly worked with the desire to bring about union amongst the Christian bodies in Wales, then my hon. Friend would have a far better chance of support for his Amendment on this side of the House than I think he will get as it stands.

Mr. ALFRED LYTTELTON

I trust I shall not follow the last speaker in the tone of his observations. Frankly, they were, as addressed to his own side, if I may respectfully say so, and to those who have put arguments before us, those of crude menace. I wish to get away from that. I wish to get back to the speeches of the Mover and the Seconder, hon. Members who showed, I think, rare courage in the task which they have taken upon themselves, and, if I may say so, with regard to the Seconder of the Amendment (Mr. Gladstone) he made his speech in a tone not merely of rare persuasiveness, but of singular personal dignity, and whose admirable example the oldest of us may fitly follow in this Debate. He said, and said with truth, that when we have got a subject which deals with religion and with conscience, we have got to do what seems to us right; that that is what we have got to do. I say at once that in dealing with this subject, my Friends and myself desire to do what is right. It was said by a great man once, when a proposal was made to bury the hatchet, "Yes, but not in the heart of our Friend." The proposals that have been made with regard to tithe, and which have been made the subject of proposals for compromise, cannot be accepted, it is better to say it perfectly frankly, cannot be accepted by me or by those who act with me. I do not wish to labour this point, but let me take a single point with regard to tithe. The great bulk of the tithe income in the Diocese of St. Asaph, and the incomes of the parochial clergy of that diocese are derived from tithe. In what proportion are they paid? The hon. Seconder of this Amendment spoke of the grievous injury to the consciences of Nonconformists. Can he consider the other side? There are paid by Churchmen in tithes to the parochial tithes of St. Asaph, £40,297, and by Nonconformists £6,300.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George)

Does that not mean that those are landlords and that the tithe is paid through them in consequence of the Tithe Bent Recovery Act.

Mr. LYTTELTON

No!

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Oh, yes.

Mr. LYTTELTON

In any case it would be impossible on such a statement of the facts as those by responsible people as a matter of compromise here and now to give away the tithe position. What is the real truth of the matter? Of course, it cannot be denied that the onus of proof is upon the Government. They have come here to establish the position of taking away the tithes which have been paid for seven or eight hundred years. It is for them to make their case. I will not say no attempt has been made, but a farcical attempt has been made to do so, and, on the contrary, it has been suggested that we who stand in uninterrupted possession for all those years, that we have to go into this question, admitted by the Royal Commission to be one of great obscurity and great difficulty that we, having already a good title, should discharge the onus of proof which is upon then and prove affirmatively our title. I have already stated that in the Debates of 1895 and of 1909, when the custody of this Bill was in the hands of the Prime Minister, an historian and a lawyer, no suggestion was made on the points which the Home Secretary has relied upon as to tithe. It must not be forgotten either that the Royal Commission was appointed by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and they pronounced the question to be too obscure and difficult for them to deal with, and now we are asked to admit this paradox, that that which was preached as a Christian duty, and obeyed as such, passed over the Principality of Wales and did not affect it. That is what we cannot admit. I do not labour these points. The Home Secretary is right in saying that an opportunity will be given us hereafter of making good what we have said upon that point. I merely put to the hon. Member who seconded this Amendment, that it will be impossible here and now, in face of the extraordinary and flimsy case which exists for the secularisation of tithe, for us to assent to the proposal he made. This opposition to secularisation is a principle which all Churchmen regard as fundamentally important. The proposal is to divert these funds to secular uses, and that is a principle which it is impossible for us to admit.

I now come to the second portion of the Amendment which we have to argue here, and it deals with all property other than tithes. This point has been magnified by the Home Secretary as if it were a matter of transcendant importance to the Bill. What do these revenues consist of, and what is the proposal of the Government with regard to them. The proposal of the Government is to take away from Church funds to the extent of £47,000 a year and to devote those funds to libraries, museums and universities. That money is to go to relieve the taxpayers of this country in the main of a burden which is put upon them, and which has already been admitted. The State has already accepted the duty and obligation of subscribing money to maintain museums, libraries and universities in Wales. The State has admitted that, and it is doing it, and if money and funds are required for this purpose the State will continue to provide them. What is the proposal of this Bill? It is to relieve the taxpayer of that obligation, and to do it by taking money from the poor in Wales. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Yes, I submit it is taken from the poor, and it is a portion of their inheritance. At any rate, they are funds which have been dedicated, and which have been admitted by hon. Gentlemen opposite to be well used in the service of the poor of Wales. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I will not go back on that argument, because two Prime Ministers have admitted it. Those funds are therefore nobly used at the present moment, and well administered in the interests of the poor. What happens if you take away this sum of £47,000? Surely the relief to the taxpayers of the country is absolutely ridiculous. I believe that the whole sum of £260,000 is just under one-thousandth part of the revenue of this country, and it amounts to one-fourth of one farthing in the £. Therefore the relief which this I miserable sum of £47,000 gives to the tax payers of this country comes to something like one two-thousandth part of the national revenue, or something like one-eighth of a farthing in the £ to the tax- payer. That is the absolutely miserable microscopic gain, and for the purpose of giving that gain to the taxpayer of this country you are asked to alienate this sum from the Church in Wales.

We are bound to state our view with regard to that proposal. From our point of view it is absolutely against the fundamental good sense and principle of English law. These funds are admitted by two Prime Ministers to have been well used. They are not national property; they never were given to the nation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"]—they were given to the Church. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] It is really beyond argument to say that these people, when giving funds to the Church, believed they were giving to the State. The State at the time the ancient Endowments were given had no position in the minds of those who gave benefactions to the Church. Those benefactions were given by Churchmen because they loved the Church. The Church was very powerful, and it was much beloved, and I find it difficult to believe that anybody of intellectual sincerity who studies history would say that when those benefactions were given to the Church there was in the mind of the benefactors any regard for the State, and if that is so they cannot be national property. I quite conceive that it is public property, but that is quite a different thing. As regards public property that has been given by benefactors to universities and institutions the principles are perfectly settled. The State retains rights for itself, and acts both through the Court of Chancery and institutions like the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the Charity Commissioners, and the University Commissioners, and they all act upon fixed principles. I may remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that there is never any interference with those funds cither by the Court of Chancery or by schemes of the Charity Commissioners unless the funds which have been left for pious or other purposes have become obsolete in their use, excessive for the purposes for which they were left, or have been corruptly or ill-managed. I state that as the absolute fundamental position of the law in regard to it, and this principle has been enforced not merely by the Courts of Law, but by all those bodies I have mentioned which are statutory bodies, which have been established by legislation to enforce the law of Parliament in special circumstances. Nobody has put forward the argument that the funds of the Church in Wales are either obsolete, excessive, or corruptly or ill-managed. The whole basis, therefore, of the position is cut away from under your feet, and you are face to face with this principle, that the law has always dealt with these funds with this clear object in view, and that is to enforce as near as possible the will and intention of the original benefactor.

Here you have funds given to the Church, and if the Church has in any sense changed no one with any intellectual sincerity can say that to leave those funds with her now would not be nearer the intention of the founders than it would be to devote them to secular purposes. As we have been challenged again as to what is just and right, and that is what we are discussing, I must ask Nonconformists to consider, in the light of legislation which they enjoy themselves, to consider again the extraordinary difference in the attitude which they themselves maintain and which they ask us to give up. I am almost ashamed to mention again the Act of 1844, but that Act is really so extraordinarily cogent in its arguments against the present proposals that I must remind the House of it. A body which was originally Presbyterian had become in the course of years Unitarian, and an action was brought against them and was assented to by the Law Courts on the fundamental grounds that the doctrines Which they had been instituted to preach and minister had been altered. There could be no question that that was so. They had changed gradually from Trinitarian to Unitarian principles. The decision was given against them, and in 1844 an Act of Parliament was passed which was advocated by Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Villiers and Lord Macaulay—a Conservative Government was in office—to affirm the position of this Nonconformist body in their chapel and their funds, notwithstanding that they had become Unitarians, if they could establish that they had uninterrupted possession for twenty-five years.

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Ellis Griffith)

But the Trust Deeds were not signed.

1.0 P.M.

Mr. LYTTELTON

That is entirely irrelative. The Trust Deed had no significance whatever in this matter, and the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. There was no written Trust Deed, but the Court of Chancery, after clear evidence, decided that this body did start their worship in this Church as Trinitarians, and that was established as a fact before the Court of Chancery. The fact that these funds were left to a body who were Trinitarians, who began worship as Trinitarians, because no Unitarian faith was in existence at that time—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] That is so. We had therefore exactly as I stated that process of religious evolution from Trinitarian to Unitarian and on the ground that their funds were taken from them by a Court of Law on the principles of law, relief was sought from Parliament, and relief was given if they could show that for twenty-five years they had enjoyed uninterrupted possession of those funds. I should like really to read to the Committee what Lord (then Mr.) Macaulay said upon that matter:— The real truth is that the property of the Unitarians-is so mixed up in this case with the property which they have acquired under these Trust Deeds, that I believe it would be impossible in almost every case to take from them the original soil without taking also something of greater value, and which is indisputably their own. This is not the case of ordinary property where a man gets rents and profits, and expends nothing which increases the value of the ground. Now, are these places, which the British Legislature will consent to rob—for I can use no other word….. To those who seek to intrude into them (the chapels) they are of no value beyond that which belongs to any place where men can have a roof over their heads. If we throw out this Bill we shall rob one party of that which they consider to be invaluable to bestow it in a quarter where it can have no other value but as a trophy of a most inglorious war, am as an evidence of the humiliation of those from whom this property has been wrested. Those sentences were the sentences of a great Liberal. What do you imagine you will wrest from the Church in Wales in taking away this £50,000? What benefit will you gain to yourselves or to anyone? What will it be other than a trophy of a most inglorious war? I ask again of every sincere and candid Nonconformist in this House how he can really argue and maintain—as Nonconformists do justly for every one of their principles—the right of this Act of Parliament to pass on to the. Statute Book in view of the decision of the right of possession after uninterrupted possession for twenty-five years, no matter what change of doctrine those concerned may have gone through during that period? How can they deny that right to the Church of England which has had uninterrupted possession for 800 years, and whose doctrine to this day is substantially the doctrine of the primitive Church. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] I am aware that by some it has been genuinely urged that the theory of primitive evangelical poverty supports the position which hon. Members take up—that poverty is, in fact, good for the Church. I do not wish to retort upon Nonconformist opinion in regard to Endowments at the present time. I have recently returned to that question, and will not now repeat myself. But look at the history of the Welsh Church. The Welsh Church passed through the period of the Reformation in entire allegiance to the ancient doctrine—as modified by the Reformation——

Mr. BOOTH

Hear, hear.

Mr. LYTTELTON

And in its allegiance to the Tudor monarchy, for the Welsh Church was a very strong and keen supporter of that monarchy. The Church passed through that time. It progressed rapidly after the Reformation. Its members founded schools for the people. Jesus College, Oxford, was founded at that time, and, I believe, educated many of the poorer ranks of the population. From 1560 to about a century afterwards a greater number of bishops of the Church of England were found by Wales than by any other portion of the country. Then, as everybody knows who has studied history, came the Puritan time, in which, owing to Cromwell's deep resentment at the adherence of Wales to the Church and King, a persecution—and a ruthless persecution—was set on foot. It was not merely the divesting of a few ministers of their benefices; it despoiled the Church of much of its not ample store. It was reduced at that time to abject poverty. How does that bear out—the Committee will forgive me for dwelling on this—how does that bear out the present proposition that poverty is good for the Church? It was in that period after Puritan times that apathy arose, largely owing to insufficiency of means, and the abject poverty to which the Church at that time was reduced by Cromwell. Yet those, who are either ignorant or negligent of that history—seeing what the effects were of widespread despoiling of the Church's goods—are the same people who ought to know that history—and who perhaps do know it—and who come before this House and say, "You will be the better for your poverty; you will be the better if we despoil you of your goods; you will be the better if we take your pastors out of the villages where they are at present ministering to the extremely poor." I say that that statement, in face of the fact that the Church is already poor, is absolutely contrary, not only to common sense, but to all the history that is available to us.

May I say the last word which I shall address to the House? How can it really be to the advantage of religion or to the advantage of any Member who has the spirit of religion in this House, to take away this small sum; this £50,000? I can freely admit what the hon. Member the Seconder of this Motion clearly thought, with many of his Friends who are Liberal-Churchmen, that this would be a measurer of great mitigation. I freely admit on the part of many of my Friends also, so far as this is concerned, that the proposal is mitigated by the suggestion of the Amendment. We are grateful for that suggestion. Manifestly we must support, it is, our bounden duty to support, that mitigation so far as it goes. What is the position of hon. Members opposite? Can they really for the sake of this beggarly sum as it is, formally range the Christian bodies in Wales one against another? Some of us here only last Sunday in St. Margaret's, which is the Church of the House of Commons, heard in the most noble and dignified language the account which Canon Henson gave of the truth which he has endeavoured to enforce upon Members of Parliament, amongst others, whom he has addressed during the last twelve years. One of the main heads of his teaching has been the fundamental character of all Christian doctrine, and the paramount necessity of a greater drawing together of the Christian bodies of this country. We have seen, I venture to think, the effect of that teaching, and of teaching like it in this country, but more particularly in Scotland. We have seen the drawing together of the Christian bodies. I believe that something of the kind was happening in Wales before you introduced this Bill.

What must be the position hereafter? Every Minister—I am not speaking of those who are there now—every minister v.-ho goes into a Welsh Benefice will in the future have to repair the inroad which you propose to make upon his income. He must go to his congregation and to the people round about him in the country, and say that in this year, 1912, notwithstanding the protest which was made, not merely by us, but by hon. Gentlemen upon the opposite side, it was thought right by a Liberal Government to take away part of the possessions of a poor Church. He must rehearse this grievance again and again. He must point out how this humiliation has entailed the necessity on him of making further demands upon the purses of those who are not interested in museums or in libraries, but who are deeply and passionately interested in the Church which they have inherited and which they love. How can any hon. Member opposite believe that the dissensions which were beginning to heal will not be opened out again by such appeals, made under those circumstances of necessity, by thousands of men in thousands of quarters throughout the Principality? It is the rehearsal of these wrongs and grievances which must tend to the rekindling of the embers of controversy and acute dissension which were beginning to die down. It is on that ground above all others that I ask hon. Members on the opposite side who I know are in accord with this Amendment, upon this occasion, notwithstanding all ties of party allegiance—whose strength I recognise—to put aside those ties in the interest, not merely of religion and of conscience, but of peace and concord amongst religious people—a thing which every man of true sincerity in the House most passionately desires.

Sir J. COMPTON-RICKETT

I should like at once to answer the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to those Presbyterian Churches that have actually become Socinian or Unitarian in the course of a couple of hundred years. Those Presbyterian Churches were established largely upon the Ejection of 1662, and they were not in the true sense banded together in Presbyterian associations mainly for political reasons. They were practically Separatist Churches. The whole point of the argument of the right hon. Gentleman is that those Churches which had a continuous membership changed their views, and because of recent days, reaffirmed their right to the property in spite of their change of views. There is no suggestion that there was a defection in numbers. The recognition was of a change of views of members of those Churches in modern times. I venture to think that the argument really points to the changes which are necessary to bring up the Churches, and other societies and bodies of men—quite apart from old foundations—to the level of modern requirements. I should have thought the argument about sacrilegious hands being laid upon the Church in Wales, is in the opposite direction. I am quite prepared to accept the challenge put forward, very courteously I admit, to Nonconformists to consider and reconsider their position in relation to this Bill. In listening to the arguments urged in favour of the Amendment I fail to see where the distinction came in between saving one Endowment and appropriating another. Surely the question is not one of degree. There is a question of principle in the case which goes right down to the roots of the argument. Broadly speaking, the argument is that after 1662, if you like to take that date, which was the close of the process of the Reformation, the Act of Uniformity finally settled the question of the Church. The property which belonged to the Catholic Church was in its relation to the nation, quite different to that which belonged to the Church established by Act of Parliament, and which was subject to revision by Parliament from time to time. To say that the Church of England holds the same position in relation to the nation as she did at the close of the Reformation, is to ignore facts, because the attitude that is taken up with regard to Nonconformists is that we are an exotic, an alien Church in Wales, and that we have not an historic religious life. May I remind the Committee that our forbears were Catholics, the same as were those of the Anglicans. There was a time when the whole nation were Catholic, and there was a time when our forefathers might have said that from the cradle to the grave every matter of life is Rome. They lived under the control of the Papal Church and the Church of England was a daughter of Rome and a branch of the Church of Rome. We have only to look at history to see where the Roman Catholic Church interfered in the control of politics of this country. There we come to the point in which the Church and the nation was practically one. The State supported the Church and the Church supported and interfered in the politics of the State. The Catholic Church at that time was a corporation free from all changes of Government, and nations, and of kings, and laws, and I should have been quite content with that state of things, and I should have thought it far safer and better if we were going to benefit the nation through any acts of the Church. I will summarise what I said on the last occasion. In those days education was a matter for the Church. The poor were cared for by the Church, and that when the dissolution of the monasteries took place there was a flood of property let loose all over England. It was regarded as a matter of extreme importance by the pious men of those days that there should be provision made, not only for their passing through this world, but also while they were passing through another, and very large sums were given to the Church for the purposes of prayers for the dead. I do not say that in any way to satirise the Church. It was a deep conviction, and I have no objection to people praying for the dead. We cannot say they ear-marked certain sums for education, Poor Law, and so on, but we have a right to argue that the donor who left money to the great organisations of the Catholic Church intended some of that for the good of the nation in a sense which we call, improperly I think, secular as distinct from sacred. And when the nation finally broke with Rome, then by a series of Acts, beginning with the Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII., finishing up with the Acts of Elizabeth and the Act of Uniformity, the Church of England was constituted a new body, but in that sense. I do not mean that it did not inherit the conception and doctrine of the older Church, but, so far as its constitution is concerned, settling her ecclesiastical rights and her ritual, and when this was done a fresh beginning took place. Instantly the Catholics became Nonconformists. The Puritan Churches did not agree. I do not know whether it is a case of original sin or not, but they did not agree in the settlement; they differed more on vestments, I believe, than on questions of doctrine. They did not differ on the ground of Establishment, nor was the ground of Establishment the real reason for the great rejection in 1662. That was a question of doctrine. A certain number of people, the sons of men who were good Catholics, coming under the operations of the Reformation, declared for that form of the Reformation which was the form of the majority.

The Reformation of Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and Scotland were far more advanced than that of the English Church. I do not see it was a drawback to England to have a Church reform on compromise. There may be good reasons for it, and it certainly was the idea of the advisers of Elizabeth and prevented a religious war and effected its purpose. And in the belief of the Government of that day that there would be continuity of the Catholic Church in the Church of England, and that she would be the Church of the nation, should have transferred to her the property that belonged to another Church which did not accept her orders. The powers were largely ranged upon the side of the Church of England, and up to this time should have enjoyed these temporalities. In the case of Wales, she has lost for some reason or another her hold of the population, and there is almost complete abstention of the people in Wales from the Church of England at the present moment. The Church of England is totally different to what it was; she cannot claim more than one-fifth of the people, and that being so, surely there is no impropriety if the Church wishes to preserve the Establishment under conditions which no longer exist, and if she wishes to hold a relation to the people not contemplated at the time, surely there is no impropriety in saying that we must have some line of division. Surely we may say we entrusted you with certain funds which when you were the Church of the nation you were then justified in administering; but you are no longer now accepted in Wales, and these funds were vested in the Church of England for the benefit of the whole of the parish.

The very essence of the Church of England is that every member of the nation may go and present themselves at worship, and if their conduct is good they may present themselves again, and that being so, I respectfully submit that as Nonconformists nonconforming we are members of the Church of England. And we have on that account a right, and it is not an impertinence, to discuss the position of the Church, and we say she is not fulfilling her duty in Wales satisfactorily to justify her to retain Establishment and all the funds, and it must not be considered an act of hostility to that Church, because we feel that we are asking her to submit to such specific arrangements as we would be ourselves bound to submit to ourselves were we placed in the same position. I want to refer for a moment, to what was said in previous speeches on the subject of Endowments of Nonconformity. The argument is put forward, and it is a perfectly fair argument, that Nonconformists must have changed their views as to the value of Endowments, because they themselves at the present moment are ready to create Endowments. Let us see the kind of Endowments. They certainly found them in certain parts of the country where poverty is great, or where there may be slums, and where a Church cannot be maintained by the worshippers they help. But so far from regarding that as anything that should be treated as a reproach to them, should the Church of England be Disestablished, they are prepared to shoulder some of the responsibilities of the Church and to provide worship and teaching in any place where there was not sufficient people to support the Church. But these Endowments, so called, are for the purpose of maintaining a live Church in a live place. There are two kinds of Endowments which could be made to a particular Church which exist in Nonconformity. In the one, in almost every case I have heard, it has stifled the energy of the people, acting like a blight to the people relying upon this crutch, instead of helping themselves. The other effort is to make a central fund for the purpose of helping the local fund, where the local fund is not sufficient, and to supplement salaries of ministers where the local funds are not sufficient. The fund is handled at the centre by a committee which takes the greatest care to see that the money is given to no one particular place, unless there is very good ground for making a supplement.

Mr. LYTTELTON

The point is a perfectly fair one, and is well worked out; but that kind of Endowment is not foreign to the Church of England. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners, for Queen Anne's Bounty are an equalising agency in the Church of England, in similar circumstances as the hon. Member has mentioned.

Sir J. COMPTON-RICKETT

Most admirable. I should say it was very necessary to extend it to the Church of England. We should never lift a finger or dream of lifting a finger against any property of the Church of England as acquired since the time when she was Established as a Church by Act of Parliament. She has as much right to her property as any Nonconformist Church, and I would incidentally venture to remind hon. Gentlemen that under Disestablishment conditions the Church is relieved from responsibilities. She can use her resources where and how she pleases. She becomes, I presume, though I am not a lawyer, a corporation. She will actually own what is left to her, it will be placed at her disposal, and she will be able to rearrange it in terms for trust which hon. Gentlemen assume to be modified. She will be in a far better position. She will cease to be a trustee of the nation, she will be a trustee of her own property, and of the doctrine which she teaches. I venture to submit that that very largely covers the question of long usage. It is one thing for an individual or for a corporation to be possessed of property for a very considerable time, and quite another thing for an established organisation holding money as a trust to argue that if circumstances changed that trust and the conditions of that trust, and the disposal of the money must not come under the observation and revision of the body that constituted the trust and devolved the money. If that were not so all sorts of anomalies might arise.

I am afraid that nothing I can say will remove the impression held for the moment that there is an attack upon the Church. I can only say for a great many Nonconformist friends of mine that there is no such feeling. I, personally, was baptised in the Church of England and have joined, at the invitation of her clergy, in some of her sacred rites, and many of my family and friends are members of the Church. I understand her feelings, and I wish her God-speed. I have no feelings against the Church and that feeling is not so extensive or felt so deeply as hon. Gentlemen think. I do hope that when these difficulties are cut away, when the Church of England is a great organisation, a sacred corporation, an elder sister among younger, then it will be possible to give effect to that co-operation. We are at the present time somewhat in the state of an archipelago, but there is a unity of interest and sympathy still to be discovered and to be realised and enjoyed.

Mr. W. ORMSBY-GORE

Before I deal with the points raised by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Osgoldcross (Sir Compton-Rickett), let me at once pay my tribute to the tone and generosity of the speeches of the hon. Members for the Morley Division (Mr. France) and for the Kilmarnock Burghs (Mr. Gladstone). If ever this Bill passes, and I hope it will not pass, if ever the Church in Wales is Disestablished, those speeches, those brave attempts of those two hon. Members, will be remembered by Churchmen in Wales, I hope and believe, longer than the trouncing which they received from the Home Secretary for daring to stand up against the tyrannical Front Bench and ask for more generous treatment. I have never heard a trouncing given by a Minister so ungenerous and so unfair as that given by the Home Secretary, and I would say at the outset that the contrast between the speeches of the private Members of the Liberal party and of the Front Bench Members of the Liberal party has been the most significant event in the Debates on this Bill. Nothing which the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down said could offend a Churchman or cause us to introduce acrimony into our Debates. The hatchet could be buried easily if that was the tone introduced into these discussions. The Under-Secretary for the Home Office has referred to the Church as a retrograde and reactionary institution and the agent of oppression. It is the vilification of the Church by the Front Bench and the resistance to any fair play or any attempt from their own side to ask for more generous treatment, the way they rule it out, the whole attitude of contempt of the Home Secretary for any argument used on this side, that makes it impossible for us to maintain that tone which I wish had, and I regret has not always been, exhibited in these Debates. I remember under what provocation I had first to speak to this House. I was called after the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "with hands dripping with the fat of sacrilege." It is that kind of attitude which makes it impossible for the Opposition to deal with this question in the way in which it ought to be dealt with. It is perfectly clear from the Home Secretary's speeches in the country, and not by speeches made behind him in this House, and his attacks up and down the country on the Church, that it is very difficult indeed for us to meet them in the spirit in which they want to be met. But on this occasion I wish to pay my humble tribute to the two speeches delivered to-day by the hon. Members to whom I have referred.

They defended the proposal they made on these grounds: "It may be illogical, but we bring it forward with the idea of being generous." But the fact is that this is the poorest part of the Church working under the most difficult conditions, struggling in a mountainous country, or where the country is not mountainous there is a rapid increase of population, where new industrial towns and all the grime and poverty associated with them are springing up. The Church is doing its utmost to grapple with these problems, and the best use is being made of the funds available. I do not think anyone but the Under-Secretary for the Home Office and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury— who, of course, is far worse still, and who says that the only people in Wales op- posing this Bill are the rich and the Lords, and that the only people defending the Church are the Noble Lord and his brother—would make statements of that sort, which make it impossible to deal with the matter in a conciliatory spirit. The Church is struggling under great difficulties, for whereas the Churches in Scot-and Ireland are rich, the Church in Wales is very poor indeed. To-day religious work is needed more than it has almost ever been needed before. We all know that in Wales there are certain special problems. Thus nobody will maintain that the condition of morality in Wales to-day justifies the weakening of the Church by a single penny. Read the returns about illegitimacy. It is a sad thing for anyone who represents Wales to get up and bring these facts before the House. The condition of the morality of the people of Wales to-day does not warrant the weakening of any religious body or any religious force. This Amendment asks that more money should be left to the Church; that there should be less upheaval and spoliation. It asks that we should be left the glebes, the Queen Anne's bounty fund, and the income from Parliamentary Grants. These are questions we shall raise separately on Clause 8. I do not want to go into the historical fallacies on which the Under-Secretary's argument in this matter rest. The income on the glebes amounts to something like £30,000 a year. These are among the most ancient possessions of the Church. They are usually fields around the Church and around the parson's house. They have been in possession of the Church all through these centuries, and in most cases the parsonages which you are going to leave us are built on these ancient glebes. Yet you propose to leave the parson's house and take the glebe. These, glebes form a small but secure revenue in the parish, and go to the support of the incumbent in that parish as long as he is resident there.

The secret of the work of the Church, the work to which we attach the greatest importance, is the pastoral work. It is the ministers resident in those parishes, in the poor as well as the rich parishes, it is to that work that we attach enormous importance, and it is that organisation and that work which is threatened by the Government's proposal. It is the harshness of their treatment which would be mitigated by this Amendment, and, therefore, although of course I maintain that the tithe can be supported on just as good ground as this, and though I agree that we should like to see the tithe redeemed—the tithe after all is an ancient biblical and ecclesiastical form of revenue, for biblical and ecclesiastical reasons it was collected and granted—it is obviously not a secular matter at all. I quite agree with the hon. Member for Kilmarnock Boroughs that the machinery is nowadays out of date, and that there is considerable friction over this matter of tithe. The hon. Gentleman says it is a millstone about the neck of the Church. I would like to see the tithe redeemed everywhere, and a more settled and less irritating form of property in its place, and nobody doubts that Churchmen on this side are quite ready to see that financial reform is needed in the Church. But that is not your proposal. You resist everything of that kind, and say the finance of the Church must be secularised. That is your point, and that the money must be devoted to non-religious objects. You want to take away money that has a biblical and ecclesiastical origin and to devote it to these museums. That is all you want. That is the whole of your intention, and yours is a secularising Bill; that is the reason of the taunts you fling at us and why it is utterly impossible for us to adopt a conciliatory tone.

Let me come to the question of leaving the Queen Anne's Bounty Fund. Surely the Queen Anne's Bounty Fund is purely a Church Fund. What has it to do with the nation? It was raised from the clergy for purely religious purposes. It has nothing to do with the secular aspect at all; and then Nonconformists themselves have received Parliamentary Grants as well as other bodies. Why, therefore, if you give a Grant one day, must you take it away again the next. You give it in one Parliament and take it away in another. It is customary for Parliament to make Grants to museums. I suppose some day the Home Secretary will come down and say, "We made a Grant to a Welsh museum and it is not visited by all the people in Wales, and so we will take it away again. It is not appreciated. The money will be more appreciated for other purposes." The Home Secretary, in his severe trouncing of the hon. Member for Morley, did not attempt to show why this money should be taken away or why this Amendment should be rejected. Indeed he never went into any of the details. He brushed them utterly aside and dealt entirely in vague generalities with the Disendowment question. There is one point which has been raised in connection with this question of history. The hon. Member for Osgoldcross (Sir J. Compton-Rickett) based his case practically on history. His whole argument in favour of Disendowment was the old historical argument that because the Church or the State did something in the sixteenth century which was followed by consequences in the seventeenth century it was right for Parliament now to take away this money which the Church has enjoyed for this large number of years. Why was not the money taken away in 1662? Because the overwhelming majority of the Welsh people were Churchmen. The hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Llewelyn Williams) is learned in Welsh history. Can he say there was any large number of Nonconformists in Wales before the year 1811, when the Methodist societies separated themselves from the Church? It was not until then there was any number of Nonconformists in Wales. Yet it is the eighteenth, the seventeenth, and the sixteenth centuries which the hon. Member for Osgoldcross brings forward as an argument for supporting this proposal of Disendowment. Really, the only argument on those lines is with regard to the last century. It is only in the last century there has been any considerable falling off in the Church. There is no part of the religious forces of this country which suffered so harshly from the Henry VIII, regime as the Church in Wales. The spoliation of the monasteries and the disorganisation of the Church was followed by the Cromwellian regime, and everybody who has read history knows the absolute tyranny and persecution which the Church suffered during that time. When the clergy came back they found their parsonages were in ruins and their churches tumbling down, and for ten years the whole organisation of Church life was overthrown, the whole machinery of religious services being brought to a standstill. Clergy had been turned out, and there were no ministers in their places. I do not want to weary the House by going into these details, but there were petitions sent up showing the condition of the Church in Wales under that regime. It was not the fact that the Puritans stabled their horses in St. Asaph Cathedral and turned the font into a trough for the pigs to feed out of, but that they reduced the Church to poverty by squandering its resources. Some of them were put into prison for the dishonest way in which they dealt with its funds.

At the time of the Cromwellian regime you had a disorganised and a pauperised Church facing a very difficult time, a time of apathy, of reaction, and of great geographical and local difficulty. At the beginning of the eighteenth century over three-quarters of the parishes in Wales had an income of £80 a year or less; over one hundred out of the 800 parishes had an income of £10 a year; and over another hundred had less than £20 a year. The poverty of the Church in the eighteenth century was one of the grave difficulties with which the Church had to contend. Now you are going again to reduce the Church to poverty. It is no use saying the Church is the Church of the rich. Everyone who knows the Church in Wales knows it is not the Church of the rich The wealthy men sit on those benches opposite. Look at the Welsh Members of Parliament; from North to South the wealth of Wales supports the Liberal party, I do not care where you go— whether it is the hon. Member for Swansea (Sir A. Mond), or Lord Abercromby, or the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. David Davies), or the hon. Member for Flint Boroughs (Mr. Summers), or the hon. Member for East Denbighshire (Mr. John), or the hon. if ember for West Denbighshire (Sir J. H. Roberts)—the wealthy in Wales support the Liberal party. Are they going to support the Church? Everybody knows the greatest difficulty of any denomination is to get adequate subscriptions to-day. An hon. Member asks why it is difficult for any denomination to get subscriptions. [An HON. MEMBER: "Lack of interest."] That is an accusation against the Welsh people baseless and untrue. There is no apathy about religion in Wales. We are the most religious nation in the British Isles. The cause is poverty, and everybody knows it. Anybody who knows Wales or ever visits Wales knows the greatest difficulty of all the denominations is in getting money for any religious purpose. This Amendment, which asks for more generous treatment and which is a mitigation of the hardship, has been treated by the Front Bench with customary tyranny and the customary waving of the hand which cuts out all appeals, preventing Churchmen in Wales from sympathising with you in your other ideas and from assisting you in any of your objects, and which will make a lasting sore and make it ever impossible to bury that hatchet which we seek to bury and which this Amendment is designed to bury.

Mr. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS

Let me first of all, as one of the Welsh Members, associate myself with the speech of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Ellis Griffith). If I may judge the feelings of the Welsh Members by my own feelings as I listened to that memorable speech, I think we must all admit no more sympathetic appeal to anyone's intelligence or conscience was ever delivered in this House, and, though I disagree with my hon. Friend in the conclusions that he drew, I, for my own part, would like to associate myself entirely with the tone and spirit of his speech. If it were possible to discuss this matter to a conclusion on the same elevated plan, it would be greatly to the credit of this House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Mr. A. Lyttelton), has cleared the air. He has made the position quite clear, in spite of the eloquent appeal of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Gladstone). The right hon. Gentleman is prepared to vote for this Amendment, but he is not prepared to vote for it as a settlement or as the basis of a settlement of this controversy. Speaking as a Welshman and for myself, I do urge the Government to adhere to the position which has been taken up by the Home Secretary, and to say they must regard this Amendment as one which goes to the root of the whole matter, which, if accepted by the House, would mean that the Bill must go. I say deliberately, as one who has taken part in this controversy for many years, that, in my opinion, if this Amendment were accepted, the Welsh people would reject it as anything like the basis of a settlement of this controversy. It may be that concessions are possible; it is not for me to close the door to any concessions that may become possible in the course of the Debate, either here or in another place, but I do say most solemnly that, as far as I am concerned, I would never vote for a Bill which was based on proposals contained in the Amendment proposed by my hon. Friend.

2.0 P.M.

The right hon. Gentleman drew a distinction between the secular and religious purposes to which Endowments can be put. I entirely disclaim any such distinction. Hon. Members constantly talk as if that which is secular can be put into a water-tight compartment on the one hand and that which is religious can be put into another water-tight compartment on the other, and as if there can be no overlapping between them. I say that is impossible. I have only been a short time in this House, but, during the seven years I have been here, I can recall no vote I have given with greater satisfaction to myself than that which I cast in favour of what was called the Secular Amendment to the Education Bill of 1906. The reason I went into the secular Lobby, as I may term it, was that, in my view, no such thing as secular education was possible, and you cannot differentiate between the secular and religious in this matter. You have only to look at the history of tithe itself, and you will see it is impossible to draw such a distinction. Hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to think that tithe to-day is used for religious purposes only. It is being used to a large extent for the maintenance of religious worship, but is that all? It is used to a very large extent for the maintenance, not only of the clergy, but of the clergy's wives and families. It is supposed to be a religious duty to use tithe to educate the children of the clergy, but, if it is used for the education of the children of the poor of the country, then we are told it is secularising the country. You cannot draw such distinctions. It is impossible when a married clergyman succeeds a celibate clergyman to say that distinction which it is attempted to be drawn can be drawn between secular and religious purposes. If you look at the history of these ancient Endowments, you will find that from time immemorial they have been used, not only for what is narrowly called religious purposes, but for what I call the larger religious purposes of education. In my own native parish I believe half of the tithe has been devoted from the year 1290 to educational purposes. The story is this. The Bishop of St. David's after that date wanted to start a school in the parish. He diverted or secularised a portion of the tithe of that parish for educational purposes. But he was unable to found a school in that particular parish, so he founded it near his own palace, and so the school remained there from about the year 1295, and was kept on and maintained by tithes which were given for religious purposes in the parish of Abergwili. Then the Reformation came and Henry VIII. removed the school from Abergwili to Brecon, and the college there is to some extent maintained out of the tithes taken from my native parish. Yet we are told we must not secularise tithe by using it for the purposes of education. I could give innumerable instances of the same kind in my own Constituency. Take the town of Llanelly. What becomes of the tithes there? There you have a large growing industrial population, and I, for one, am glad to recognise that the Church is doing excellent work in that town. It is a progressive Church. It does not depend on tithe, for its income from tithe is infinitesimal compared with the income which it derives from voluntary resources. It is doing a great, good and growing work in that industrial town because it relies on the generosity of the people who believe in it. What became of the tithes? It was taken in the fourteenth century by John O'Gaunt as Duke of Lancaster. He was the Lord Marcher of Carmarthen, and as Lord of that district he took upon himself to divert the tithes of Llanelly to maintain a school, not at Llanelly but in Leicester. I do not know what has become of the tithe, but, at any rate, it has never been used for any purpose in Llanelly ever since the days of John O'Gaunt. I could multiply instances of that sort.

Hon. Members know there is no single college in Oxford or Cambridge which does not derive part of its sustenance from these ancient Endowments; yet we are told, because we propose to devote capitular and Episcopal Endowments for the maintenance of the new university in Wales, we are doing something we ought to be ashamed of—that we are robbing the Church, and that we are secularising Endowments given for religious purposes. I entirely disclaim that. I say that to educate people, to enlighten their mind and to strengthen their characters is to use these Endowments for as religious a purpose as the human mind can conceive. It is not as if the Welsh people were asking this House to relieve them of any burden. They are not doing anything of the kind, and I venture to say that if you were to search the history of the world throughout you would never find such devotion or such passion for education as the Welsh people have shown during the last thirty or forty years. Forty years ago we had no elementary education in Wales at all. There were not a dozen grammar schools in the whole of Wales. The money was largely appropriated at the time of Henry VIII., not by Welshmen, but by some people whose descendants to-day accuse us of sacrilege and robbery. [An HON. MEMBER: "Name them."] I could give the names, but I am not going to do so. Forty years ago, there were not a thousand—indeed I believe there were not 500 boy pupils in the grammar schools of Wales. Forty years ago there were no university colleges and no university. To day we have not only an elementary school in every parish, but the Welsh people pay more towards elementary education than any other part of the United Kingdom. They pay 6s. 6d. per head per child per year, whereas Scotland, with its noble educational record, spends 1s. less per child than Wales. During the last twenty years we have built ninety-five intermediate schools, and there are 15,000 children attending those schools to-day. At the same time we have established three university colleges and a Welsh University which contain over a thousand pupils and all this has been done in the course of one generation. I venture to say that the Welsh people do not regret a single penny of the enormous burden they have taken upon themselves, and, therefore, it is not too much to ask to-day that a portion of these released funds should go to that noble and really religious object—university education.

There is no distinction possible to be drawn between tithes and glebe. Glebe, if anything, is the more ancient Endowment of the two. They were given to a Church other than the Church which now enjoys this Endowment. We are told constantly that there was no breach in the continuity of the Church at the Reformation, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Mr. Lyttelton), turned on the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth) and accused him of ignorance because he said the Church had been changed. I do not want to set myself up as an authority on any historical matter, but I have read history in the same way as ordinary Members of this House have read it, and I say, without fear of contradiction, that, though I agree there was no breach in the legal continuity of the Church at the Reformation, there was a real breach in the essential part of the Church at that time. Of course there was no breach in the legal continuity because all the changes were brought about through Parliament. There never were such adepts as the English race have shown themselves to be in the matter of carrying revolutions within the forms of law. They have never done it except within the forms of law, and all the great revolutions in English history have been carried out in that way. The great revolution that took place at the time of the Reformation was also carried out within the forms of law, and, therefore, there was no breach of legal continuity. But those who know the story do not deny that there was a real breach.

May I give one illustration? At that time there was an enthusiastic young Welsh Protestant who was made Bishop of St. David's, Bishop Ferrers, under Edward VI. He remained in his office doing his duty, and carrying out the practices and doctrines of a reformed Church for three or four years. Then Queen Mary came to the Throne. She thought there had been a breach in the continuity, and determined to restore it to its ancient position. Bishop Ferrers stood out against the restoration, and was burnt at the stake in the town of Carmarthen. Yet we are told that that was a mistake and that there was no breach in the continuity of the Church. Everybody who brings a candid and impartial mind to bear upon this subject, knows that there was a revolutionary change, affecting not only the doctrines, but the organisation of the Church of England, at the time of the Reformation, and that all hon. Members opposite do is to stand on the mere technicality that these changes were carried out under forms of law with the sanction of Parliament.

Then we are told that whatever may be the case with regard to tithe and glebe, there is a distinction to be drawn—I think it was my hon. Friend's suggestion— between tithe on the one side and the more modern endowments, such as Queen Anne's Bounty and Parliamentary Grants, on the other. Although I have paid attention to the subject I utterly fail to see what ground of principle there is for separating these two forms of Endowment. What is the history of Queen Anne's Bounty? At the time of the Reformation, the first fruits and the tenths which had been paid up to that time to the clergy in Wales under the Pope were diverted, by Act of Parliament in the time of King Henry VIII., to the Civil List of this country. When Mary came to the throne, these first fruits and tenths were again given to the Church, but when Elizabeth succeeded her, in the first year of her reign, she diverted once more to the first fruits and the tenths to the Civil List. That remained the case until the third year of Queen Anne. All that had been done by Act of Parliament. In the third year of Queen Anne, again by Act of Parliament, a new disposition of the money was made by Parliament, that is to say, this money which had been enjoyed as part of the Civil List of this country, as part of the ordinary revenue of the country up to that time, was transferred to the Church. The hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) said just now, that at that time Nonconformity was of little or no account in Wales. I agree that Nonconformity was not of so much account in 1703 as it is at this period. Therefore, you get this: A Parliament composed entirely of Churchmen, at a time when Wales had not become what I call the nation of Nonconformists it has since become, transferring a sum which had been part of the Civil List of this country to a privileged Church for all time.

Since that time, things have changed in Wales. The hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs is quite right in saying that it was only during the next century that the Calvinistic Methodist connection originated. How did that great connection—the most numerous Nonconformist body in Wales to-day—become separated from the Establishment? If the Committee will bear with me for a moment, I will give the story. The originators and founders of the Calvinistic Methodist connection were almost to a man, not only members of the Church of England, but ordained ministers in the Church of England. They had no thought of separating themselves from the Established Church. All that they wanted was to save souls, and in order to do that, they did as John Wesley did in England, they travelled through the length and breadth of the Principality, and preached the Gospel wherever they could, mostly in the open air. Gradually, as these little communities were formed, it was found necessary to build fabrics where they could worship, according to their own ideas, without being exposed to the elements. When they did build their chapels, they did not call them meeting houses, which was the old Puritan name for Nonconformist places of worship, but they called them chapels, and in Wales to-day that distinction is still drawn. The origin has been forgotten. The Independents and the Baptists call their places of worship churches, but the Calvinistic Methodists call theirs chapels, because in their origin they were Chapels-of-Ease of the Established Church. For a long time they refused to administer the Communion in those chapels, and said, "You must go to the Church to which we belong to partake of Communion." How did these pious Churchmen, these men possessed with a zeal for religion, the very flower, you would have thought, of the Church, how did they become separated from the Established Church? It is all very well to taunt them now with schism, or what not. How did they secede from the Church in 1811? The story is a very sad one. It is this: That they were to be allowed to worship——

Sir A. CRIPPS

On a point of Order, Mr. Maclean. Having regard to the time at the disposal of the Committee, is not this rather wide of the Amendment?

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Maclean)

I was about to suggest to the hon. and learned Member that the argument he is now putting before the Committee, although not devoid of interest, is rather wide of the particular question raised by the Amendment.

Mr. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS

I bow to your ruling, Sir. The only relevance of the matter was this, that I was seeking to-show, that when in 1703 Queen Anne's Bounty was transferred to the Church in Wales, it was transferred to the Church under very different conditions from those which obtain to-day, and that the Calvinistic Methodist connection, for instance, had not been born in 1703, and I was seeking to show why they were forced out of communion with the Church as late as 1811. Since you think that it is rather wide of the Amendment, I do not wish to proceed with the matter any further. Let me bring my observations to a close by saying that I look upon this Bill, with all sincerity, as a concordat which will establish religious peace in Wales. I do not wish, for my own part, and I am perfectly certain that no Welshman, whatever his creed, or whatever his politics may be, wishes to be harsh or hard or ungenerous in any way to the Churchmen who are our fellow countrymen. What we want to do is so to allay this unhappy controversy, which has now embittered the life of Wales for the last forty or fifty years, as to enable our Church friends in Wales to join with us and to fight for our country shoulder to shoulder, upon terms of equality, and upon terms of peace in the future. I do honestly believe that this Bill will establish religious peace, and will put a stop to this secular controversy that has been going on in Wales. I am sorry that the Opposition have not even been able to suggest to us any means of settlement other than the means suggested in this Bill. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Gladstone) made that appeal to them in terms which moved us all. It has met with no response, and therefore I say that the proposal in the Bill holds the field. I urge the Government to adhere to their policy, and if they do I believe in my heart and in my conscience that it would be a good thing—for Wales, of course, because Wales will be free from the bitterness which has assailed it for so long, but good for the Church in Wales too, because it will reconcile the Church to the people of Wales in a way to which she has not been reconciled for centuries, and it will enable her to return to her true mission in Wales, as it is elsewhere, to bring peace and goodwill among men.

Sir JOHN RANDLES

I am sure we all believe in the entire sincerity with which the hon. Member has just addressed the House, but it is difficult to reconcile the opening remarks of the speech with the concluding portion of it. At the very outset he gave us to understand that under no circumstances would this Amendment be acceptable to himself or to his Friends, and in his closing remarks he used the language of a desire for generosity and for amicable settlement, and for peace and goodwill and all that we desire. But I do not see how the two things are going to be quite reconciled, and I think the type of speech that we have just listened to must be the explanation of the bludgeon speech which was delivered by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. McKenna) earlier in the day. It is in view of considerations like those embodied in the speech to which we have just listened, I take it, that the Home Secretary, who presumably will be glad to get this question settled, was obliged to say he would drop the Bill if the Amendment were carried. We have heard in this Debate, and it has been put recently as though there was a demand, particularly from Nonconformity, for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Welsh Church, and it has been accepted almost as though it were a truism that Nonconformity speaks with one voice on this matter. Nonconformity speaks in no such way. The voice of Nonconformity, not even by the hon. Member (Sir J. Compton-Bickett) who spoke in the name of Nonconformity, or any other Member in the House, can express the views of Nonconformity. There are amongst Non- conformists in this country a minority, I quite believe, and it may be a small minority, who neither desire the Disestablishment nor the Disendowment of the Church for England or for Wales. There is a very much larger number who, whilst not opposed to Disestablishment, are very strongly opposed to anything in the nature of Disendowment. The number of such is not confined to any one political party. Parties are not divided equally in this matter, but in Nonconformity, amongst the Liberal element—those who usually support this Government—there is a very strong disposition to resent what they think to be a dishonest dealing with the Endowments of the Welsh Church. It finds its reflection in this Amendment.

The hon. Member (Mr. France) expressed opinions that many Nonconformists hold outside of party politics, and he referred to the fact that because of that his own loyalty to his Church and to his party was called in question. Some of us are quite familiar with having our loyalty to our Church called in question because we do not see eye to eye with those of our Churches who are very much attached to the party opposite. When the hon. Member has been a little longer in pursuance of these views, I am sure he will get so familiar with this attitude of certain political Nonconformists that he will, entirely despise it. One of the misfortunes of Nonconformity to-day is that the politicals have to a large extent got Nonconformity by the throat. That is one of our disadvantages. If it does not show itself in the shrinkage of sincerity amongst Nonconformists, it certainly shows its effect in a certain shrinkage in the numbers of the Nonconformists. It is quite true that the Nonconformist conscience is a very much over-talked about subject, but even to-day there is such a thing, and that conscience is not on the side, so far as there is a conscience, of a dishonest dealing with the Endowments of any Church in any part of the world. If I might refer to one of the most distinguished Members of this House, and one of the most distinguished Nonconformists, I should like to quote what he had to say in reference to the question of Disestablishment. He was speaking of the proposed Disestablishment of the Church in this country as well as in Wales. He said:— I could conceive of a mode of Disestablishment which would deprive the Church of England of property to which she is as justly entitled as any other denominational Church to its private property, and as an honest man I would not consent to Disestablishment on such a principle. That was Lord Wolverhampton. The question of the honesty of the thing comes in, and while not impugning the honesty of men like the hon. Member (Mr. Llewelyn Williams), it is absolutely as flagrantly in opposition to the principles and the conception of honesty of large numbers of Nonconformists that the Church in Wales should be deprived of what they regard as its true right and proper heritage as much as the Endowments of any Nonconformist Church in any other part of the Kingdom. Reference has been made to the change from the Trinitarian to the Unitarian belief. Recently a Bill was brought forward in this House for the uniting of certain branches of the Methodist Church into one united Methodist Church. It was part of the arrangement for the amalgamation under which they came to seek power from this House that by a three-fourths majority any doctrinal belief that might be held by that Church could be changed. They could change their beliefs; they could alter the whole purpose and trend of the Church—indeed, so far as I can see, there was nothing in their proposal to prevent the United Methodist Church, if they were so minded, by a three-fourths majority, to continue to enjoy their endowments and become a branch of the Moslem or the Mahomedan faith. It was held that it was quite right, if a three-fourth majority decided that they would go this way or that way, that they should do it, and this House let the Bill go through, and there may be a complete severance of the moneys and property by which that Church is endowed from the purposes for which the donors of the property gave those Endowments and that property.

To-day, in the "Times," a very distinguished leader of Nonconformity (the Rev. F. B. Meyer) has a letter in which he lays it down that he admits that the clergy in Wales has not been faithless in the discharge of their duties. He recognises that. He goes on to argue that it is open to this House to do one of two things, either to say to the representatives of the Welsh Church, "We return to you all that you enjoy, and we allow you to retain such properties and Endowments as you may have, or we may on the other hand revert to the original purpose and intentions of the donors of this property, and, if we are so minded, fulfil the trust which was intended by the original donors. What institution, what individual, can retain property in this country any longer if we are to go back through centuries and try to find out what the original donors who bestowed the property intended it to be used for? The fact that there has been continuous possession through centuries should surely be a sufficient argument in reply to Mr. Meyer, who is an accredited and responsible leader of Nonconformity, and who is in favour of this particular measure. That argument would apply to the case I have just given of the United Methodist Church. Surely when we are considering this matter we should not go back into the original intention of the donors of the property. We are satisfied to take it that there might be continuity progress, and development, and such development as the future has to show is not for us to determine, and so in the case of the Church in Wales there has been development. The uses have developed and continued, and what right have we to go back and say that history should be ransacked, and the records of the past searched, to see if we can find some case where some person or some institution deviated perhaps from some intention, or some little stories or little tales which can be revived, in order to build up charges and try to upset the work of a great Church? I cannot understand how hon. Gentlemen sitting on the other side, who give expression to those sentiments about generosity and speak about peace and goodwill, can desire for one moment as members of a Church seeking the same ends, desiring the same objects, believing the same faith, preaching the same truths, united for all practical purposes in a common confession and a common faith, using the same liturgies in many cases, singing from the same hymnals, rejoicing in the Church's One Foundation, to filch from some portion of that Church its property and territories, and to pull down a few stones for the upbuilding of—what? Not of their own Church and faith, and still less the faith of those from whom they are taking away a little property which enables them to live and do their duty in a land where it is not easy to set forth the particular form of truth which they have embraced. I say myself, as a Nonconformist, I am opposed to the Bill. I am opposed to the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales, and I welcome any Amendment which points in the direction of some of that generosity of which so much is said and so little is realised, and which will do something to mitigate the severity of the blow which I think is a blow at the highest interests and the best welfare of Wales—a blow which I should no more think of committing or supporting myself than I should think of entering St. Paul's and taking the vessels from the altar of that Church.

Colonel PRYCE-JONES

I desire in a few words to appeal to the Government to accept the Amendment now before the Committee. As a Welsh Member I wish, on behalf of friends in Wales, to thank the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment for the speeches they made. They, in my opinion, more nearly represent on this question not only the feeling in England, but the feeling in Wales. On the question of Disestablishment the Government, of course, stand on much firmer ground, but when it comes to Disendowment I agree with the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment that the feeling in Wales is most certainly not in favour of the wretched pittance allowed to the Welsh Church by this Bill. I understand that the Government's attitude is that if those on this side would agree to this Amendment, on condition that the whole settlement of the Church question was agreed to, they would accept the Amendment. I think the Government are very wrong in taking up that attitude. When they see two hon. Gentlemen on their own side making a claim which finds a great number of supporters on that side, I cannot help thinking that the very least they can do in a matter so important to us in Wales and to religion is to give way. I do appeal to the Government, and in particular to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to help us in our present position. I am sure the bulk of Nonconformists in Wales would appreciate this little concession on this matter. I hope the Amendment will be accepted. If not, I am sure it will do damage to the Government and permanent injury to Nonconformity, while it will not help anybody in Wales.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

The hon. Gentleman, the Member for the Montgomery Boroughs (Colonel Pryce-Jones), is one of the three Welsh Members out of thirty-four who have been returned to oppose this proposal of the Government. In spite of his great and deserved popularity in his constituency the fact that his majority was very small, shows what the strength of feeling is in Wales in favour of this measure of Disestablishment and Disendowment. In fact, I do not believe any of his colleagues have got a substantial majority. One has a majority of nine, and the other has a majority running into two or three hundred out of a total poll of 30,000. So my hon. Friend and his colleagues are at any rate living proofs of the earnestness of the demand of the overwhelming majority of the Welsh people on this particular subject. I think he will be the first to admit the strength of that feeling. He has made an appeal that was quite characteristic to the Government, that we should give favourable consideration to this Amendment. The hon. Gentleman knows very well that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock said in his very able and powerful speech, you must have two to make an agreement. Will my hon. Friend, if this Amendment is accepted, be prepared to accept the Bill? It would be very interesting to get an answer to that.

Colonel PRYCE-JONES

No, because we consider that we have a strong case to maintain all the Endowments, and also that there is a necessity for an Established religion, and we should like to see Nonconformists the same as Churchmen, really Established. But I might make an appeal. I admired the hon. Member for Kilmarnock for deliberately stating that he knew that the Opposition at present would not accept a settlement, but still he asks the Government, whom he supports, to accept this Amendment, which is to reduce the injury done to the Church. For the life of me I cannot understand why the Government will not do so, and I ask them to accept this Amendment.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Now, really, when the most reasonable of the Welsh Tory Members takes up that attitude—I say that though the hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs is present—when the most temperate and reasonable representative of the Welsh Tories says that he never would accept this as a settlement, then I must despair of making any progress with anybody else. The hon. Gentleman says he is willing to accept this because, he says, "We claim all the Endowments." So do we. We say the whole of these Endowments are national property. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock admits that on purely logical grounds that is the right position.

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

All the Endowments?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

On purely logical grounds, certainly. When you Disestablish a national institution, of course its property is national property. We have not asked for it. But as long as the hon. Gentleman says, "We are not prepared to come to an agreement; you can strip the Bill bare of everything except tithe and we will resist it," that is a very hopeless position in which to try to effect a settlement of peace and reconciliation. This Amendment has been urged on two grounds—one by hon. Friends of mine on this side and the other by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square. I will deal with his first. He is going to support the Amendment, as far as I can understand from his speech, because he is opposed to it. The whole of his argument, as far as I heard it, was directed against the Amendment. The whole of his argument was an argument against Disendowment in any shape or form, and he admited no distinction between glebe and tithe. On the other hand, my hon. Friends on this side appeal to us on the ground of generosity and good feeling, rather—I am not speaking in any invidious sense—on a sentimental than on a logical ground. I will come to that lastly. I will first deal with the argument addressed to the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's. The right hon. Gentleman claims that this was property which belonged to the Church, which was given to the Church, and that you could no more deprive the Church of these than you could deprive a private owner of his property. The right hon. Gentleman says it was not given for the benefit of the State. I think he said that the State was not in existence when some of this property was given. That may be, but the community always has been in existence. But I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman will deny that it was given to the Church not for the benefit of the Church, but given to it as a trustee for the community, and if you Disestablish trustees you then have got to consider how you had best distribute or apply the property in the interests of the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries in this case are the particular communities in which the property was given and for whose benefit it was given. And when you Disestablish the Church and say you mean to determine the trust, then I think Parliament is entitled to say, "We must now consider the best method of applying this property in the interests of the community for whose benefit it was originally given." I am going to deal with the point raised by the right hon. Gentleman as to the distinction between secular and religious purposes. There is a distinction drawn between secular and religious purposes for which I do not think there is any warrant in history. I sat during the Debates in this House on the Education Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London, and the argument for religious instruction—which was put, I think, with greater force from the Catholic point of view and more clearly and more uncompromisingly than from the Church point of view—invariably was, "We do not recognise the distinction. You cannot draw the line." And I am perfectly certain of this, the early Church never drew any distinction between ministering to the poor and providing for the clergy. The only thing the Early Christian Church did was this: Its first collection was not to provide for the clergy, not for building the Church, not for endowing it. Its first organised collection and Endowment was for ministering to the poor. Where is the warrant for this distinction between ministering to the poor and providing for the needy and the sick on the one hand, and providing for the Church on the other?

Where is the warrant for it? Look through the history of the Church, the Church for which hon. and right hon. Members claim continuity. Let them follow it right down for centuries. There is no trace in either the action or the teachings of the Church for this contention put forward for the first time in political debate, that there is this distinction between providing for the sick, looking after the needy, feeding the poor, and the broken. I have no doubt some hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have read Gasquet's history of the disestablishment of the monasteries. It is a very remarkable account of the monasteries, and he points out that the monasteries used the whole of that property for what purpose? It is true, partly to maintain the monks, partly to maintain the monasteries, but in the main they undertook the functions which have been continued by boards of education and by boards of guardians. These are the very words which he himself used, and nobody can doubt the fact. When it is claimed that if property is going to be applied to public and charitable purposes, and purposes of general utility, and when it is claimed that it secularises Endow- ments and diverts them for purposes for which they were never originally intended, I take that to be a departure from every principle of the Christian Church, and from every precept and practice of the Church right through the ages.

Therefore, I repudiate the assumption that we are proposing to use this property for any purpose which is not absolutely consistent with the purposes for which it was originally intended to be used. What is my hon. Friend's proposal? He says, "I want you to be generous." I do not challenge that proposition. The only dispute between him and me, or between him and the Government is not as to the desirability of being generous, but as to the limits of generosity; and if I may say so, the actual terms of the generosity, too. The total Endowments comes to something like £260,000 a year. Under this Bill we are giving back to the Church £150,000 a year. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] I am including they life interest. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!" and "Hear, hear."] Let us have the figures to begin with to elucidate the argument, which can be based better on figures. What are the facts? First of all, I am not reckoning in cathedrals and churches and rectories; I am dealing purely with the income of the Church. The actual income of the Church is £260,000 a year in Endowments. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I am not dealing with voluntary subscriptions, but purely with Endowments. I did not think it was necessary to refer to voluntary subscriptions. The income of the National Church of Wales is £260,000; and taking what is returned, and the value of the life interest, we are giving back to the Church £150,000 a year. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] My right hon. Friend is shaking his head.

Mr. J. W. WILSON

My point is that if you consider life interest in one case, you ought to consider it in the other.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I may be rather dense, but I really do not follow the point of my right hon. Friend. I say that we are returning this amount to the Church, if my right hon. Friend attaches any value to life interest, which is a very serious matter from the point of view of Endowments. [An HON. MEMBER: "And the parson."] The parson gets it as long as he lives. But it is quite impossible to debate, if thirty or forty questions are addressed to me at the same time. The right hon. Gentleman opposite made an appeal, which I supported, that he should at any rate be allowed to develop his argument, and it is impossible to go on unless I am allowed to state my case. If it is inaccurate, it can very easily be pointed out. At any rate, the life interest is of real value, and it is to be returned to the Church. Nobody will deny that, if we proposed to take off the life interest, my right hon. Friend would soon discover what the value of this life interest is. It has an enormous value. The real value of what is restored to the Church is £150,000 out of £260,000. That means that this Disendowment of the National Church is conducted in such a way that the bulk of the property is restored to the Church itself. I do not think anyone can say that that is ungenerous, at any rate.

Mr. FRANCE

On the question of figures, may I ask if the Chancellor of the Exchequer agrees with the Home Secretary's figure that £173,000, as the amount to be taken from the Church, and may I ask whether the difference between that and the amount to be returned is not £47,000?

3.0 P.M.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Certainly. My right hon. Friend said that was subject to life interest, and that is exactly why I have gone into life interest. Let me come to the question of glebe. May I say here that, with the exception of my right hon. Friend, I should have been the first to deal with this subject. My hon. Friend—I am not complaining at all of this—dealt with it as a matter of a broad deal. If he does not mind, I will deal with the facts. It is very difficult for the House of Commons to decide, without there is some understanding of what the real facts are. What are they? My hon. Friend said, £48,000.

Mr. FRANCE

Forty-seven thousand pounds.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

The right hon. Gentleman opposite said it was a miserable and microscopic figure, but really is it? We have got to deal with it in relation to the country. I must be allowed to put my case from my point of view. If our contention is not right then the whole of the Disendowment proposals are exactly what the right hon. Gentleman calls them. If the contention of the Government is wrong, then I agree with him; but, on the assumption that when the National Church is Disestablished you have a right to Disendow it, then I say that you will be taking this £48,000 a year from the Welsh people. It is not a small sum as has been said. It is a small country, it is a poor country, and may I ask my hon. Friend's attention to this? Do they consider from what part of the country they will be taking this? They are accustomed to think of Wales as Cardiff and Glamorgan and Monmouthshire the richest counties probably in Great Britain, or some of the richest, where you have got wealth untold. There is very little of it in those counties. Cardiff and Swansea and Newport have hardly any. Where is this collected? Where does this £48,000 come from? Most of it comes from some of the poorest counties in the whole of the United Kingdom and some of the smallest counties in the whole of the United Kingdom, and just like the counties which have been depopulated in the Highlands, just the same kind of country, just as wild, and just as rank. I do not think it is irrelevant to say what kind of counties this money comes from. On the contrary, it was accepted by the hon. and learned Gentleman as an argument.

Sir A. CRIPPS made some observations which were inaudible.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

That is exactly what I say. The hon. Gentleman accepts the facts, although he draws a different inference, but when we have the facts then we will argue on that basis. Carnarvonshire, Cardiganshire, Merionethshire, Breconshire, Denbighshire, are some of the counties, and you are taking it from some of the poorest parishes in those counties. What would happen under this Bill? The money would be applied with due regard to the needs of those parishes. Do not let the House forget that when you are taking that property away you are depriving those parishes of property which we claim belongs to them and was given for their benefit, given, it is true, perhaps to a Church, not to the present Church, but to a Church as trustee for them, and if you take it away from those parishes you are depriving the great majority of the people of those parishes who stand sadly in need of that property. It is no use talking about a miserable £48,000. This is a matter of enormous interest to the poorest parishes in the whole of the United Kingdom. Not only that, but what is the problem with which we are confronted? We are confronted with the problem of those parishes being depopulated, people leaving them by the hundred, because the amenities of life there are getting so sadly out of contrast to what you get in the towns and in the industrial areas within reach of the population. There is no medical service, no hospitals, no nurses, within ten or fifteen miles of those people, and life is becoming intolerable by contrast there. If you are-going to take that property away, do not run away with the notion that it is simply £48,000 taken from a country which has got a revenue of £200,000,000. It is taking it from those poor parishes which stand in need of it.

Let me give a few instances, and, if the hon. Member will allow me to say so, I have got an advantage over him. He may have studied the general problem more thoroughly than I have, but, at any rate, there is one thing I know better than him: I know Wales, and I specially know the mountainous parts of Wales, and I will take two or three instances of parishes that I know thoroughly, and that I think some other hon. Members know also. I will take the parish of Dolwyddelan. I do not know whether there are some hon. Members who have been through the mountains, but this is just outside Snowdon, and I need hardly say it is about the wildest part of this country. This very huge parish has a total population of 1,112, scattered over an enormous area. The people who live there are very small holders—quarrymen, not earning a very big wage, who have got to walk very often from ten to fifteen miles across the mountain to get to their work, and shepherds. That is the population, and there are no rich people there at all except those who own the soil. How are the spiritual needs of that parish attended to? There are eighty-four acres of glebe there, and that is why I am quoting the place. Does anyone doubt for a moment that those eighty-four acres of glebe were given for the benefit of the people residing in that area, and of all the people residing in that area? No one can doubt that. Does anyone doubt that in the old days, before this distinction was drawn between secular and religious, that it was used there largely by the monks, who had it for the purpose of attending to the material needs of the people, looking after their health, seeing that they did not fall into hopeless-poverty, and occasionally to show hospitality to the wayfarers?

Let us see how the spiritual needs of the people are attended to there now. There is a population of 1,112. The total accommodation provided by the Church there is 540, and that is higher than in many cases. I am not taking one of those parishes where there are only a dozen communicants or no communicants at all. I could take a case of that kind. I could take a case of that kind in the very next parish to the one in which I lived, but I am not doing that. Hon. Members would say, if I did, "You are quoting exceptional cases." I am quoting a case where the Church is doing, on the whole, better than she is doing in most of these mountain parishes. She actually provides accommodation for very nearly one-half of the population. Who is looking after the rest? There are six or seven chapels. There is accommodation provided by Nonconformists for 1,090. The Church claims communicants and adherents, man, woman and child, out of a population of 1,100 that it has 160—that is, one-seventh of the population. That is a very high proportion for these mountain parishes. Who is looking after the rest? The Nonconformist chapels have got adherents and members totalling 933, that is—between them they are providing for 1,093 out of a population of 1,112. This is the sort of parish in which we are told, if we take away the glebe and the tithe, we will be depriving the people of some sort of spiritual comfort they have got at the present moment. What does my hon. Friend think of those facts? That is a typical case, inasmuch as it shows that the Nonconformists are providing for five-sixths, seven-eighths, and very often for nine-tenths, of the needs of spiritual accommodation in those parishes. My hon. Friend says leave the glebe to the Church. It is the richest Church in that parish and the landowners of that parish all belong to it.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

Are there any?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

The landowners are certainly rich by comparison. I do not know what the given standard of riches is, but my recollection is that the landowners are Churchmen, and I am certain they are far and away the richest people in that parish and they all belong to the Church. Now what does my hon. Friend propose? Here is a glebe of eighty-four acres given for the benefit of the whole of the 1,100 people in that parish. He proposes that in future it shall be ear-marked for the benefit of one-third of the population and that the richest portion. The hon. Gentleman who spoke a few minutes ago, who represents one of the Divisions of Manchester, condemned political Nonconformity in rather truculent terms. Let me give him what happens in the case of his own faith in that parish. There is a very small Wesleyan chapel there and it has thirty-five adherents altogether. They have built a chapel which cost £640, and they maintain their own minister, although they are all poor people. If the hon. Member wishes to display generosity towards these communities in Wales does he not think that on the whole a small struggling community of that kind is more deserving of sympathy than the more powerful communities which contain the richest people in the county.

Sir JOHN RANDLES

I do not propose to enrich my own Church at the expense of another Church.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Nor do we. The suggestion to do that came not from us, but from the other side of: the House. We do not propose to enrich any Church, but if the hon. Member wishes to be generous, I suggest two methods: First he should exercise his generosity towards the poor of the community and not at the expense of another parish. [An HON. MEMBER: "And of another Church."] Yes, of another Church because six-sevenths of those people belong to other Churches and they are entitled to claim that they ought to be beneficiaries.

Mr. C. H. DIXON

How much does the glebe actually bring in?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I will give the case of another parish——

Mr. DIXON

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how much the glebe brings in?

The CHAIRMAN

The hon. Member is not entitled to interrupt constantly unless the right hon. Gentleman gives way.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

It is quite impossible to go on in this way. I rarely object to answering questions of this kind, but it is impossible to proceed with my argument with a running commentary of questions like this. The next case I will take is that of the parish of Beddgelert. In this case there is a very considerable grievance. There is a population of 1,230, and the Church only claims, counting man, woman, and child, 138. Hon. Members will see that I am not taking a very exceptional case, but I am taking instances where the Church is doing on the whole well. In this case the Church attends to 138, which is about one-ninth of the population. I do not know whether my hon. Friend is aware of that fact. If that parish depended upon the National Church for spiritual administration, you would find four-fifths of the population absolutely deprived of it, because it is a huge parish, and a very wide one, and many of the people are not within reach of the parish church. There the Nonconformists are practically doing the whole of the work. They have 975 adherents, and they collected last year £985, and anyone who knows that parish will realise what that means. It is really a very poor parish, mostly pasture, and I do not believe there are more than two or three rich farmers there, and yet they collected £985 to maintain the spiritual necessities of the people. What will happen there? In this case there is a big glebe. My hon. Friend proposes that in that parish the whole of the glebe given for the benefit of the entire population of 1,230 should be devoted exclusively to the benefit of one-ninth of the population, not all of them resident. The hon. Gentleman must remember that a good many of those 138 are visitors in the parish, who come there occasionally, and they do not live there. Therefore, it is fair to assume that practically 1,230 inhabitants would be permanently deprived of property given for the benefit of the whole. Is that what the hon. Member calls a just proposal? I could give case after case taken from my own knowledge.

There is another parish just of the same kind as the other I have mentioned, in which the Church claims ten communicants. It has a small glebe and about £200 of tithe, and the population, I think, is about 600. The Church is down in the valley, while the chapels are right on the hills, where the people live, and those chapels are maintained by the people themselves, and yet the whole of that £200 is devoted merely to the interests of a Church representing one-fourteenth of the whole of that parish, whereas the money was given for the benefit of every parishioner there. I do not call it generosity to give that money away, but I call it a gross injustice to the people of that parish who stand sadly in need of it. No man who has lived in those parts will deny what I have stated. You cannot live in those districts without running the risk of requiring medical aid and other necessities, and those are the things which the glebes could be devoted to. But the hon. Gentleman proposes to alienate them for all time from the people of the parish and deprive those for whose benefit the glebes were given of what really belongs to them. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock, I think, used the phrase that this money has been in the long and undisputed possession of the Church. That is not strictly accurate, if I may say so. It has not been undisputed. The only challenge you could direct against property of this kind is in Parliament. I agree so far as the legal right is concerned, you could not challenge it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It would not be necessary to bring it up in Parliament if it were otherwise. But I challenge any man who has read Welsh history to dispute this fact, that whenever Welsh nationality became a dominant feeling in the Principality, whenever there was a resurgence of national feeling—I am not referring to those very long periods when Welsh spirit was more or less crushed under the weight of superior forces—but whenever there was a resurgence of national feeling in Wales—I am not referring to the last sixty years—it has always been followed by challenging the right of the See of Canterbury to govern the Welsh Church. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman has ever read the very interesting protest on this subject made by the Welsh princes.

Mr. BALFOUR

What is the year?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I am coming to that. It is 1199. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Well, surely that is far enough back? The protest was lodged by them with the Pope upon this subject, and it is rather interesting. It was lodged by all the princes of Wales. It ran as follows:— Be it known to your fatherly goodness the great sufferings and danger of losing souls that have fallen on the Church in Wales since, by Kingly oppression, and not by the authority of the Bishop of Rome, she became subjected to the authority of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS

Local dissenters!

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Local dissenters! What an interjection!

The CHAIRMAN

The discussion is now getting back to the question of Disestablishment, which was settled on Clause 1.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Of course, I need hardly say that I accept your ruling at once. I was only answering a point made in the course of this Debate. I leave it there. But I want to enter this caveat, that the Welsh people have never accepted, certainly at no moment of national assertion, the dominance of the See of Canterbury. They have always protested against it. I only want to make that point by the way. Another point made by my hon. Friend was on the question of Disendowment. I want to be very generous and chivalrous. What I say is this. The hon. Member has fixed up a great many things in this Amendment. It is not merely glebe; he has got five or six different matters, each of which have to be considered when we come to Clause 8, and each of which stands on a totally different footing. They are by no means in the same category. The Government will consider each upon its merits, when we come to them. My hon. Friend has lumped them all together in one sweeping Amendment where they have nothing whatever to do with each other. I am not complaining of that. He was right in challenging a discussion, at any rate, at this stage. I am not saying that I do by way of criticism, but rather by way of pointing out that we are not deciding every issue upon this Amendment. I come to deal with the question of generosity. If the appeal of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock had been responded to, I say it frankly, I should feel in a totally different position to deal with this Amendment. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock said: "Let us have peace, let us have settlement, let us put an end to this war between people who ought to be co-operating for great common purposes in Wales; do not let us allow £10,000. £20,000, or £40,000 to stand in the way of establishing peace, and working for the greatest purpose to which any community can devote itself." If that appeal had been responded to, I say without hesitation that the Government—and the Welsh Members—would be the first to respond to it.

How has it been answered I It has been answered quite courteously, and in the best possible spirit, but with great firmness by the right hon. Gentleman. He will have none of it. I am willing to seek peace and to ensure it. I am willing to go down to my Constituents and to recommend settlements which might on the face of them even appear to be unjust from our standpoint—if it is a settlement. Every suggestion of that kind has been received courteously by the right hon. Gentleman, but quite sternly. They have been received discourteously, angrily, and scornfully in many quarters. It was an appeal which went straight to my heart as a Welshman. The hon. Member knows me and spoke as one who knows me. He has spoken of the love of his Church, and also with affection for his native land. Therefore, I feel only too eager to respond—but you must have two to make a perfect peace. These terms, if embodied, would simply be depriving us of the means of establishing peace later on. That is all. You would not advance one step on the way of peace—not a step! The majority of hon. Members and of Welshmen heard the very moderate speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Montgomery Boroughs. Nothing could have been in better spirit. If the hon. Member and I sat down at the same table, we would soon settle this question, and settle it, I venture to say in the way that would be acceptable to the vast majority of the Welsh people. But I am afraid it is impossible. We would not be given credit for our intentions. We should not be accepted as plenipotentiaries. I am afraid the Noble Lord (Lord Hugh Cecil) and the hon. Member for Denbigh (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) would not quite trust us.

Under these conditions we are talking about settlement in an atmosphere which is not an atmosphere. In an atmosphere of peace and concord and conciliation all the arguments I advance I believe would be in harmony. But that is not the atmosphere. The hon. Gentleman can believe me that if he succeeded in incorporating his Amendment in the Bill containing these things, instead of helping a settlement he would be hindering it; there would be no inducement for settlement. All the advantages would be on one side for refusing a settlement if these words were put in, and there would be all the advantages for rejecting a settlement if these words were put in. What is the use of talking about settlement in these circumstances? It is only those who have lived in Wales who realise how important it is to effect a real settlement in this case, and that is why my hon. Friend has spoken with so much earnestness. It is a controversy that has lasted over sixty years, and as everybody knows who has been working in any sphere in Wales it has poisoned the wells of life there. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] It has. Does anyone doubt it? The hon. Gentleman whose authority upon ecclesiastical matters I would be the first to defer must allow me to say that when talking about the question of municipal work, local work, even charitable work, educational work, work in literature and education, every sort of common object on which people ought to work together, this spectre comes up and sunders us apart. Do you think Welshmen do not realise that? There are questions I have no hesitation in saying that I am keener about than about this, but we cannot work for common purposes like social reform, although there are men in the Nonconformist Churches eager—I saw it in Cardiff some years ago—to co-operate in this work, because you always have this dividing us. Do you think that Welshman are not eager to settle and that they would not regard a bad settlement as infinitely better than a good victory if it was possible to have a real settlement between the various religious bodies. This has gone on for over sixty years, and I know what it means. The right hon. Gentleman talked about this Bill, if it was carried in its present form, as being a trophy of an inglorious war. Not so inglorious. I cannot accept that. He does not know the conditions under which the conflict was carried on. I remember the first election which returned Members to this House to demand this forty-four years ago. Still Wales is asking for the same thing. The best men in Welsh religious life are behind it. Somebody suggested in the course of these discussions that it was purely a sort of political piratical raid upon the Church. No man who knows Wales will talk like that. If the right hon. Gentleman knew the conditions of religious life in Wales he would not talk like that.

Mr. LYTTELTON

I never said that.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. But it has been said. Anyone who knows the conditions of religious life in Wales know that pressure has been brought upon the politicians by others who are outside politics. I shall never forget the great conference called at Cardiff four or five years ago, called not by the politicians, but called because the people themselves felt the politicians were not earnest enough in pressing this forward. There were thousands of people there—I know political conferences well and the men who attend them—and they were not the men who attend political conferences, but they were men there who came from other districts in Wales charged with the organisation of its religious life. These were the people who were there. Therefore, it is not an inglorious war. The right hon. Gentleman does not realise the sacrifices the Welsh people have made to advance this cause. In 1868 there were hundreds of them deprived of their farms because they stood up for it. There are men in this House prepared, I have no doubt, to make great sacrifices for their religious and political convictions, but there are no men in this House who have made anything like the sacrifices which the Welsh peasants made for this cause. One of the first things I remember was boys disappearing from school because their Nonconformist parents had been turned out of their farms. Why? Because they defied the menaces of the land agents whom they feared; because they had done something which was much more difficult for a Celtic peasant to do, because they refused to listen to the appeals of landowners whom they respected.

The CHAIRMAN

I have allowed a wide discussion to-day on the suggestion made to me in order to cover the whole field of this Clause. But I do not think I can allow it to go back on Clause 1. The understanding was that the discussion should cover the various items of the proposals of the Government in this Clause.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

The point is very difficult. I was really only answering the taunt levelled at us by the right hon. Gentleman opposite about this being an inglorious war, and I was pointing out that it was by no means an inglorious war,, but, on the contrary, some of the episodes of this war are some of the finest examples of self-sacrifice by a poor peasantry ever exhibited in any struggle in the world. That is all I say upon the subject. All I say in conclusion is this, if there is any desire shown for a settlement in this controversy in any responsible quarter in this House, the Government and the Welsh Members will readily respond to it. But up to the present all suggestions of the kind—and they have not been made for the first time—have been repudiated sternly, wrathfully, and I do not believe the time has arrived for considering it. But if it does arrive there will be a very ready response as far as we are concerned. There is a real desire to make this a firm and lasting settlement of one of the bitterest and most distracting controversies that any country has ever engaged in.

Mr. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has made a speech as eloquent as his speeches commonly are, and as discursive as his speeches sometimes are, but I think it will be admitted by those who have followed the course of this Debate that he has really done very little to deal with the essential problem which faces the Committee upon this occasion. The last part of his speech, I confess, amazed me. He said if there had been the smallest sign among Gentlemen on this side of the House that the Amendment moved and seconded in a manner so interesting this morning by the hon. Members for Morley (Mr. France) and Kilmarnock (Mr. Gladstone)—if the smallest symptom had been shown of that being accepted as a peace offering by Gentlemen sitting on this side of the House, he himself would have gone down to Wales, in spite of the vehement protests made this afternoon by Members who said that nothing would induce them to accept it, and would have pressed it on the attention of the Welsh people.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I am very sorry to interrupt, but it is rather important, because it is not a matter of argument but of statement. I said that this Amendment had gathered together a good many things that were not of the same nature or kind, but I did not say if this Amendment were accepted that we were prepared to accept it. I said that if there were proposals in favour of peace and settlement they certainly would be responded to very generously by the Welsh people. This Amendment I rather criticised.

Mr. BALFOUR

I think the right hon. Gentleman does not always remember the precise import of the words he uses or the precise impression that they produce on their audience. I do not at all, of course, venture to run counter to what he has just said as expressing his meaning, but I think I am in the recollection of both sides of the House when I say that the impression on our minds was that if the Amendment had been accepted, he would have gone down and preached peace on this subject in Wales. That was the impression on both sides of the House which was conveyed, however unintentionally, to his hearers. There was, however, a speech made earlier this afternoon before anybody on this side of the House had uttered a single word on the Amendment now before us, and that speech was made by the Minister in charge of the Bill. What did that right hon. Gentleman say? Did he suggest that he was going to Wales to preach peace if we on this side of the House showed any desire to have peace on these terms? Not at all. Nothing more clear, uncompromising, almost brutal in its frankness than the statement made by the Home Secretary could be conceived, and before my right hon. Friend (Mr. Lyttelton), who was the first to speak on this side of the House, had uttered a single word, the Minister in charge of the Bill said that if this Amendment was accepted he would drop the Bill. The truth is that the two Ministers in charge of the Bill have spoken with different voices because they are addressing different sections of their followers. The Minister who first spoke meant to threaten all the waverers who were amenable to threats, but the Minister who last spoke used his cajoling voice to persuade, if he could, those Members of his party, who, he thought, could be cajoled but could not be threatened. Rhetorically, the device is admirable. The only difficulty comes when you put the two speeches side by side and try to comprehend how they can combine the undivided sentiments of one united Government. Although the right hon. Gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ended his speech in this peace-loving vein he began with a statement which I think must have startled a good many Gentlemen, even among those who most ardently support the general principle on which this Bill is founded. For he said that if logic were to be consulted not merely the tithe and the glebes should be taken from the Welsh Church, but that all its property should be taken. What was given to it last year by some generous donor byway of building a Church ought to be taken away. If that is the logic on which corporate property, possibly for anything I know private property, but certainly corporate property, is going to be dealt with by His Majesty's Government, I do not like that logic. If anything short of that is a dereliction from logic and merely sentimental generosity, then I am not sure that the Church in Wales the Church in England, or the Church in Scotland, are the only corporations and owners of property who have considerable reason to fear that a Chancellor of the Exchequer with any political or other object to serve may make some logical raid upon possessions which may have come down to them from time immemorial.

The right hon. Gentleman described my hon. Friend below the Gangway, the Member for Montgomery (Mr. Pryce-Jones) as the most moderate, the most reasonable, the most temperate of Conservative-Unionist Welsh Members. I do not know how to describe the other Welsh Members if this is to be their doctrine and if the right hon. Gentleman adequately and accurately expresses their views on the way in which corporate property should be owned. The truth is that, whether on logical grounds or not, they are utterly subversive of all recognised principles of law, honesty, or justice, and it is melancholy to see a Minister of the high authority of the right hon. Gentleman shake the very foundations on which civilised society rests by uttering these reckless obiter dicta without adequate reflection in the heat of debate.

The right hon. Gentleman was very indignant at the argument used, constantly and rightly used, on this side of the House, to the effect that one of the gravest blots on this Bill is that it transfers property intended for religious purposes to purposes that are secular, and he made one of those historical excursions into antiquity with which we are becoming familiar in these Debates. He went, however, far beyond the year 1199, to which he referred later in his speech. He went back to the primitive Church, and he said in that Church there was no distinction between money given for charitable purposes and money given for religious purposes, and that when the Government proposes to hand over to museums money originally given by its donors and constantly used since then for purposes of religion, that, after all, is only following out the precedent set by the early Church. Fancy the early Church giving to museums what was intended for the direct service of religion! Can the powers of historical travesty go further than to tell us that to help museums and universities in Wales, no doubt admirable objects in themselves, and to divert to those admirable objects money intended for religion, is really, after all, to return to the primitive Christianity which we have unfortunately forgotten for more than eighteen centuries? I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman should think it necessary to adorn his speeches on the Welsh Bill by these undigested facts of misconceived historical lore. I do not think he was much happier in his references to the monasteries. I do not think his general view of the monasteries or the cause of their dissolution, or the ground on which they were dissolved, would stand the test of historical investigation, but you, Sir, have reminded us it is possible to extend the limits even of this Debate rather too wide, and I shall not follow the right hon. Gentleman into that.

Let me, then, come to a point which is absolutely and directly germane to the particular Amendment before us. He explained to us that while in logic everything might be taken from the Church, even down to the last donation of its last benefactor, the Church in Wales was as a matter of fact, being treated with extraordinary generosity, and he gave us some figures, which I do not propose to examine in detail, including in the money left to the Church the life interest of those who are carrying out functions in it. That is a most extraordinary misrepresentation of the true equities of the case. It would be not merely an injury to religion—or, at any rate, to the Church—to take away its Endowments, but the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues rightly think that to turn all its existing incumbents into the street to starve would be an outrage which no one would tolerate. It is a thing, whether done by the Cromwellians or by the English Church a little later, has received the unanimous condemnation of all sections of opinion in these times, and for the Government to imitate that example would be regarded as intolerable by even the most subservient majority ever brought together in the House of Commons. To say that you ought to count among the resources of the Church as a great organ of religious work those funds which you are leaving her in order to prevent existing ministers from starving in the street is a gross and utter misrepresentation of the facts. It is a most perfervid view of what this Bill does, and I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman has taken up the line of saying that in such an amount of money as in their generosity they choose to leave them they should include that part of the money which is intended to do justice to the existing holders of office. I think probably the right hon. Gentleman relied most in his speech upon his personal knowledge of one or two parishes. He gave certain particulars of the amount of glebe and of the number of the members of the Church of England and of the Nonconformist bodies, respectively, which he seemed to think afforded sufficient ground for the whole proposals of this Clause.

I think, if he will allow me to say so with respect, it is one of the very worst characteristics of the right hon. Gentleman's Parliamentary and political methods that he is always trying to establish some colossal general proposition dealing with great classes, interests, and causes upon one or two concrete cases. Nothing could be more unjust, nothing could be more misleading, and the very fact that such individual cases, dealt with by an orator 80 expert as the right hon. Gentleman, naturally moves audiences whom he is addressing, makes his procedure not more justifiable in sound reason or political wisdom, but incomparably more dangerous as a persuasive weapon. I, of course, am not at all qualified to deal with the two or three parishes which he mentioned. I am told with regard to one of them that the glebe of which he spoke was not purchased before the Reformation; it never belonged to a monastery; it was purchased, I am told, for that parish in the year 1760.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

That would not be taken.

4.0 P.M.

Mr. BALFOUR

If that is not to be taken, my criticism of the right hon. Gentleman's oratorical methods is surely redoubled. To base your whole argument on a single case is bad, but then to admit that case is not relevant is surely worse. In truth, I must enter a protest against the whole of that class of argument. I have no doubt it is true, if not in those parishes, in other parishes—it certainly is true of many parishes in England and many parishes in Scotland—that the exact allocation of funds at their disposal does not bear the proportion to the work that is done in them which you would apportion if you had to do the whole thing now at the present time exactly in conformity with the varying needs of varying districts. That is almost inevitable in any institution long existing. It happens in cases which are not long established. Who will venture to say the provision of hospital accommodation is exactly in proportion to the needs of districts where hospitals have been established? I do not doubt there is discrepancy and a want of that perfect harmony and adjustment which we might desire, but that is not the point. The right hon. Gentleman did not pretend that in those parishes he quoted—he told us he could quote much worse, and I dare say he can —the work of the Church was either ill done or overpaid, and I say that is the point. There may be, I do not doubt there are, Nonconformist bodies in those very parishes which are poor and greatly in want of funds, and doing a good work, with which all in this House would desire to sympathise. I make two observations on that. In the first place, if the Church is not overpaid for doing its work, there can be no conceivable reason for depriving it of its funds because somebody else has not got funds, and, if there was that reason, it is not a reason for this Bill, because those Nonconformist bodies will not get a shilling of the funds taken from the Church. I cannot, therefore, see what was the point of all these appeals made by the right hon. Gentleman. What is the use of his coming down to this House and saying in picturesque and admirable language, "I know these mountain districts where the inhabitants are poor, where they are whole-heartedly devoted to their Church, and where they put their hands freely into their pockets to carry out great objects at great sacrifice that moves our admiration." That moves our respect. It may move our affection, but how could it be a reason for taking money away from a Church which is admittedly using it well, and not giving it to those who are at great sacrifices supporting other religious bodies? Neither the eloquence nor the logic of the right hon. Gentleman has surely enabled us to understand that. The right hon. Gentleman tells us that property in Wales has never been questioned. You cannot question property. That can only be done by Parliament. As my right hon. Friend the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, reminded us earlier this afternoon, this House has been asked to deal with the Endowments of religious bodies on more than one occasion. Why id it, when this House deals with the Endowment of religious bodies, it has always acted as an endowing agent? Why is it we have occupied months in giving back to religious bodies Endowments which they have lost through some change in their organisation, and why is it that only when you come to the Established Church of this country that you go in for spoliation? It is absolutely unintelligible. How any sincere and impartial investigator can look at such a transaction as the Act that was passed in connection with the United Free Churches of Scotland, or the Act of 1844, and not say that if, behind those Acts, there was any principle of logic, equity, and justice, then there is a thousandfold more reason why you ought to preserve the property of a Church which dates its title back not for twenty-five years, which has not acquired it within the memory of one generation, but whose title goes back 300 years or even 700 years?

The right hon. Gentleman concluded his speech by telling us that this desire for Disendowment was one which was passionately held by the Welsh people, and that it was not a product of political organisation or political propaganda, but that, on the contrary, the ardour of the Welsh people had outrun the ardour of their representatives in this House. He said that in his early days he recollected when the spontaneous movement of Welsh feeling compelled the Welsh politicians to take up a line in this House, which, if left to themselves, they would have been reluctant to do. I do not know enough about the history of this movement for the last thirty or forty years in Wales to set myself up as an authority. The right hon. Gentleman speaks from personal recollection. I neither have the time nor perhaps the inclination to examine or criticise the account which he gave to this House of the movement during his political lifetime. But I would like to put a question to him. I do not ask him to answer it across the floor of the House, but I think it is worthy reflection. He told us in a very interesting speech which he made, I think, on the First Reading of this Bill, that there had been a revolution going on in the entire religious life of Wales, in the way of looking at theological matters by Nonconformist bodies during the last few years. I believe he is perfectly right in what he has said about Nonconformist bodies, and that would probably be true, it may be, in a different measure, in different degrees of a different kind, of every religious organisation throughout the world—at any rate, throughout the Western world. Does it not occur to the right hon. Gentleman that if that were so, we should try to obtain a view of what is really wanted by looking a little in front of us rather than by looking behind us, and that it may be that by looking back to his Cardiff meeting of forty-four years ago—[HON. MEMBERS.: "Four years."]—I beg pardon—by looking back to the beginning of that agitation he described to us this afternoon, he is looking in the wrong direction? I know he is in more direct contact with these Welsh controversies, but I do know something of what is going on in the higher thought of many Churches, and I say, without the smallest doubt, that there is a movement among all, I do not say a movement in favour of formal union, but there is a movement in the best minds of all the Churches in the direction of emphasising what is common in their respective formulas, and that many of the things that were by our fathers, our grandfathers, and our great grandfathers regarded as absolutely essential characteristics of the particular denomination to which each severally belonged are now seen to be but historical accidents which, if removed, will leave behind a core of essential union. That is my first proposition.

The second proposition which I lay down with equal confidence is that there is a movement in regard to Endowments directly contrary to that which, when I was young, characterised a great many active and militant Nonconformists. It is felt more and more that in these days of sub-division and higher organisation of work, missionary work, educational work, religious work, social work, all the works which the Churches are taking upon themselves—it is felt more and more that the idea that these can be carried on without money, without Endowments, and without resources, is like a nation attempting to make war without the power of levying the necessary taxes. It cannot be done. All the practical minds, as well as all the religious minds, are getting to see more and more that you must have resources, either from annual subscriptions, from old Endowments, or from new Endowments—[An HON. MEMBER: "Not national money."] No Church really lives upon annual subscriptions. Some may have to do it. If they have to do it, they do it at the cost of much utility and much great, good, and admirable service which otherwise they would be able to perform. That is recognised universally. If you look at these two movements, which you may consider in combination, those who represent that Disendowment is in conformity with the vast mind of the Welsh peeople are looking back and not looking forward. I do not pretend to be an authority upon Wales, but I know that the Welsh, after all, are our countrymen, we have a common civilisation, a common literature, a common mode of thought, and what is going on elsewhere they cannot be and are not strangers to, and I believe, if the momentum which always attaches to a great political or religious movement could be stopped, if you could forget these old controversies going back to 1199, and think only of the ques- tions of future, you would find that the Welsh people themselves would revolt, not in favour of the Established Church, necessarily or even probably, but against a policy which deprives a Church, not too well endowed, of funds, which it is using more and more effectively for the work which all Churches are beginning to see is the common work of Christianity; and for those reasons I shall most heartily vote for the Amendment, moved, I must say, in the most admirable spirit by those responsible for it, which, however small the proportion which it proposes to restore, from what this Bill takes away, to the Welsh Church, does not propose to restore something substantial, and up to that measure and within that limit, diminishes the great crime, as I think it is, against religion and true social development which the Government are endeavouring to commit.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir John Simon)

The right hon. Gentleman, in his concluding sentence, made specific reference to the Amendment, but the greater part of his speech, as, indeed, is also true of a large part of the Debate to-day, has really dealt with a wider question. It is a question, no doubt, which is relevant to the Debate, and does not travel outside those restrictions which you indicated, but it is a wider question. From our point of view it raises the broad case for Disendowment as accompanying Disestablishment, and it is quite right that that question should be considered in its broad aspects, because it is only when it is considered in its broad aspects that we can see the true position of the Amendment. Let me state by way of reply to the right hon. Gentleman what I conceive to be the broad case for Disendowment accompanying Disestablishment. He would not have Disendowment at all and I do not suppose he would have Disestablishment either, but the broad case for Disendowment, which we on our side seek to put forward, is a case which does not, at, any rate, in my view, depend upon the correct solution of a number of very nice and difficult legal and historical questions. It really depends upon a very large and substantial change which has taken place in the position of the Church of England in Wales as it has existed in the middle ages on the one hand, and as it exists there, great and powerful as it is to-day, on the other, and the distinction put in a sentence is this. Without professing to be a minute historical student, but endeavouring to approach this matter in a fair spirit, I say this is not an unreasonable statement of the position of the Church of England in Wales before the Reformation. It was the community in its religious aspect. It was co-extensive with the community. It was not only an exponent of religion, it was the sole exponent of religion. It was on the one hand without a rival, it was, on the other, without an ally. It was, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend, and I think also by the right hon. Member for the Osgoldcross Division (Sir J. Compton-Rickett) a community in its religious aspect, not in any narrow, technical, or doctrinal sense, but as representing the whole conscience of the mediaeval community in endeavouring to grapple with all the problems of the time. It dispensed charity, it organised benevolence, it taught the youth, it was the very focus of learning in the days before the introduction of the printing press, and it was really responsible for the dissemination of literature. From every point of view wherever the community desired to come to the aid of those of its members who needed co-operative action, apart from the mere physical government of the police, it was the medieval Church which undertook to discharge that honourable task. I have never for a moment doubted that that great record and position would make strongly for the case which the Church now puts forward that, after all, she must be regarded as a great historical institution.

I have no patience with the people who imagine that the Church of England began in the reign of Henry VIII. It is not from that point of view I am dealing with the matter at all. There was the medieval Church co-extensive with the whole community, taking the funds given to it for a multitude of humane purposes, religious all of them, if you use that word in its wide and proper sense, but not for religion in some narrow doctrinal and restricted sense. Contrast that with the position in which we find the Church of England in Wales to-day. Surely no argument of lawyers to prove the historical continuity of the Church, and no contention of those who defend the Establishment to prove that, after all, they had a legal title to their funds, can blind people to the plain and definite distinction that today the Established Church in Wales is one of a number of religious bodies which, as the right hon. Gentleman has been saying, desire to co-operate together. It is not true to say of the modern Establishment in Wales that it discharges the immense variety of functions which were placed upon it in centuries past. It is no longer true that it has that claim, and that being so, the question comes down to this—and it is where my hon. Friend parts company with hon. Gentlemen opposite—is it really substantial justice to say that a body which has got a legal title and continuous succession for the whole community in its religious aspect should have the sole disposal of funds which surely were given for the community as a whole? I notice that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the St. George's Division (Mr. A. Lyttelton) this afternoon said that these were not the funds of the nation. But they were funds for the nation, for the community as a whole. Whatever be the illustration you take, at every point, at every stage, you can illustrate the immense difference that has arisen in the course of the centuries. I take one which occurs to one by the use of the word "community." Excommunication in the mediæval Church meant putting a man outside the pale of Christendom, in the sense that he was outside the community altogether. That explains what was written by Froude, in his history, that excommunication, which one may bear lightly when there are many communions, would be a very different thing in those days, when there was only one, and what is true of that is true of every other single department in the life of the mediæval Church, contrasted with the far more limited though none the less devoted exercise of its functions to-day. And the broad case for Disendowment, which I think does not rest upon these questions of the origin or continuity of the Church, depends on recognising a very plain and substantial matter, which I think candid people ought to recognise without prejudice to the extent to which they are going to carry Disendowment.

So much for the general case. Not only that, but observe also this enormous change which has taken place. If and in so far as there could be said to be any people outside the mediæval Church— an hon. Gentleman opposite said something about Dissenters in the twelfth century; I never met them myself—but it is clear that in times past the attitude of the Church of England towards those religious bodies who were not within its community was beyond all question an attitude of spiritual superiority. The right hon. Gentleman says that his ideal is that different religious bodies should co-operate side by side on equal terms in a common position for common purposes and with a common inspiration. Then on what principle is it said that the money provided for all should be confined to one? The broad case for Disendowment, therefore, is a case which is felt in its full force by a great many hon. Gentlemen on this side, and I do not think that my hon. Friend who moved this Amendment differs from the rest of us in this. It is not at all that point which he seeks to raise on this Amendment. If it were that he would be beyond all question on the side of those who believe in a reasonable and generous measure of Disendowment. The practical problem is to decide within what limit's you are going to apply that principle. Now I come to the hon. Member's own proposal. And quite rightly he raises it at the earliest possible moment under Clause 4, and he is quite entitled to raise it at this stage, and I make no complaint about it. But let us sec what is really involved in what the hon. Gentleman is proposing. He is seeking, in the first instance, to draw a distinction—I put it quite broadly for the moment—between tithe on the one hand and glebe on the other. It is not easy to see it in point of principle. If he himself said he would like to see even more generous terms, out of what-' ever particular fund may be selected, that is another matter. But that comes under Clause 8. If he is going to justify and carry to the end the proposal he now makes it must be based on some attempt to distinguish in point of principle between tithe on the one hand and glebe on the other. The Irish case is no precedent for that, and the attempt made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite to say something about glebe was singularly unfortunate. He was entirely misinformed about this property being alienated to museums. It is a common phrase among those who attack this Bill that it is being applied to museums, but it is quite inaccurate. There is not a single part which can be alienated to museums. The total sum of money which could possibly find its way to any museum would be £3,000, and that cannot by any conceivable possibility come out of glebe. Glebe is a property which in the language of the Bill is property to be used for the parochial benefit, and the provisions to which the hon. Gentleman and others have referred have nothing to do with that property at all. Let us see what we are doing by this Amendment, and what is the real justification for pressing it at this stage, and in these circumstances, in the way suggested.

I would point out the situation of my hon. Friends. They are not able to come here to-day—I wish most heartily they were—to point out to us a situation in which they are able to urge us to accept an offer, or to urge us to become some party to a compromise. Let me say at once for my part, and I speak with the authority of my right hon. Friends on these benches, that I draw no distinction between the importance of attaching weight to representation by Liberal Churchmen on this side of the House, and by Churchmen on the other side. They are not in a position, in fact, to come here to-day as a body of Churchmen prepared to make a suggestion as to terms, or to ask us to join in accepting negotiations which will lead to a settlement. Whether it is promoted or not is another matter. I ask my hon. Friend whether the present prospect of a settlement has really been shown to be very definite from the language used by some, at any rate, of the Opposition to-day. In discussing the Amendment of my hon. Friend they have declared their rooted opposition to all Disendowment. If that is the attitude they take up, I am entitled to put to my hon. Friends that while they may be quite right in raising this debate, they are not justified in saying they have brought us to the point where a settlement of the terms of arrangement is in sight at this moment, and would reasonably produce peace. It does not follow, because of that, that what my hon. Friend has been doing to-day may not bear good results. Their effort to-day is to bring a compromise nearer, and if they bring compromise nearer, why then those who desire to do what is just and fair in this matter will go very far to secure that compromise, very far indeed. But it really is not a fact, as my hon. Friend the Seconder of the Amendment seemed to think in the course of his admirable speech, that there are conditions facing us at this moment on this Clause of the Bill which makes this proposition a proposition which has got now either to be finally accepted or finally rejected. There is not a single topic covered by this Amendment which does not arise on Clause 8, and it arises in a form where you have definitely to consider which of the different funds is the one which has got the strongest claim.

Really, what my hon. Friends here are trying to do is to record their strong desire to give.—I do not think they mind for what fund—even more generous treatment to the Church than the Bill proposes. They are within their right in pointing out that that is their view, but I do submit they are not within their right if they take that action further. I heard the right hon. Gentleman refer just now to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on, I think, the Second Reading, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer referred to the general attitude of the Welsh people to the Established Church. It is very largely, I should suppose, the general attitude which creates both on one side and the other some of the occasional bitterness of feeling. I say nothing, and I intend to say nothing, which is in the least offensive to Churchmen, but it is certainly my view, and in my own way I know a little about Wales, for I am half a Welshman, it is I think true of the Church of England in Wales that its method and its manner is not always naturally attractive to the Welsh character and temperament. The solemnity and the grandeur of its ceremonial are easily misunderstood, or, at any rate, have been largely misunderstood for coldness and for formality. I remember seeing in an ancient cathedral the tomb of an eighteenth-century lady of undoubted piety, who was described on the monument, "She had spent her life in denouncing enthusiasm." Enthusiasm had a bad sense in the eighteenth century. Far be it from me to say that has been the scope and function of the Established Church in Wales, but it is true to say that the character and temperament of the Welsh people is a character and temperament which has not found itself attracted to that form of ritual and teaching which is distinct in the Church of England. In those circumstances, is it really surprising that one should find this intense feeling on one side and the other in Wales, and can it be doubted that the object of any reasonable man on either side of the House must be to arrive at a settlement and a real settlement of this question?

My hon. Friend, in the course of his speech, referred to the use of the Parliament Act. Does anybody suppose we want to carry this Bill by the Parliament Act if we could do so by a spirit of conciliation and compromise? Not at all. The last word which I venture to say is this, and I hope there is nothing in what I have said to embitter controversy, but I would say this, and I speak in this respect for my Friends as well as for myself, I say that we do not close the door. "The right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's (Mr. A. Lyttelton) concluded by saying that his great object was to produce concord and good feeling in Wales. I hope he will not take it amiss when I assure him that is our object, too. We may be mistaken in our methods, but that is our object, and I say that with equal sincerity to the right hon. Gentleman opposite and to my hon. Friends behind me. While, therefore, I appeal to liberal Churchmen in this House, I at the same time say, though I do not doubt their Liberalism or their Churchmanship, I do most sincerely urge upon them that, having raised this question, they really have no right—having raised the question, and having received the assurance of the fullest consideration to what they say when we come to Clause 8, to carry this thing to its final conclusion this afternoon.

Sir A. GRIFFITH - BOSCAWEN

I earnestly hope that the hon. Gentleman who moved this Motion to-day will not be led away by the very specious arguments of the Solicitor-General. Surely, hon. Members, no matter which side they belong to, have a perfect right to move an Amendment and press it if they wish to. I am astonished to hear the Solicitor-General tell hon. Members opposite that they have no right to carry an Amendment of this sort to its logical conclusion. I fully realise the difficulty of the position we are in. We had a most impressive appeal from the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Gladstone) to try and end this bitter controversy. We had a few words as to what he would do from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I wish to say emphatically that, having lived in Wales myself, there is nothing I would welcome more than an honourable settlement of this question. From my earliest days I can remember squabbles and squabbles between Church and chapel, and I cannot say that that is good, either for the community or the Welsh people. But the question is, can this proposal be a settlement? For my own part, I shall vote for the Amendment, because I believe it is better than the Bill which would never be a settlement, for it would only stir up religious strife in a manner which would make matters more serious than they are at the present time. Can this Amendment be a settlement? It is no good talking about removing the Nonconformist grievance, if you create a bigger grievance on the part of the Church of England. I have not heard one argument to-day as to why the Church should be deprived of the tithe. Why should the tithe be taken away? Is it not being properly used now? Nobody suggests that it is not. Is it that the funds of the Church are too large? Nobody suggests that. On the contrary, it is well known that the existing funds of the Church in Wales are insufficient for the work it has to do. What argument is there for removing the tithe? I was rather astonished that the hon. Member for Morley (Mr. France) made this particular proposal, because, on the Second Reading, he said:— I part company with the Government in regard to their proposals in this respect and to this extent, that I question very greatly whether it is right to take from any Church moneys which they may not have any moral or legal right to, but which have admittedly been used for two centuries for religious purposes, and which were being used at the present time for this purpose, and for which there is every intention to use them in the future. Has not the Church in Wales been using this money for religious purposes during the last two centuries, and has it not every intention of using them for religious purposes in the future? According to the hon. Member for Morley, there ought to be no Disendowment at all, and he cannot differentiate between tithe and other Endowments of the Church at the present time. The reason why I could not accept this as a settlement—although I agree it is an attempt at a settlement—is that on this side, whatever may be the view of hon. Members opposite, we cannot agree to any proposal for secularising a single penny of the funds of the Church of England. What is the proposition? It is to take the money from religious and give it to secular purposes.

Mr. BOOTH

No.

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

Has the hon. Member for Pontefract read the Bill? Does he not know that this money has to go for public purposes of general utility, and surely that is secularisation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer tried to draw a distinction, and he pointed out that these public purposes were really religious purposes, but I cannot follow that argument. Take the argument of the Solicitor-General. He said, that in the old days the Church was the whole community and did the whole of the public work, religious and eleemosynary. If that is an argument for taking away the property of the Church of Wales, it is equally an argument for taking away the property of the Church of England. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] What, therefore, becomes of the argument that this is purely a Welsh question, and ought to be decided according to Welsh ideas? In regard to this whole question of the general use to which this tithe was put; if that was the case in regard to tithe and other Endowments that belonged to the monasteries, it never was the case in regard to the tithe which in those days, and to-day, goes to support the parochial clergy. What happened in regard to the Endowments of the monasteries? [An HON. MEMBER: "They were secularised."] They were all taken away at the time of the Reformation. The secularisation of the money which went for educational and other purposes has been accomplished. Not only has it been accomplished; it has been denounced in very strong language by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and others. What do you propose to do now? To complete the secularisation and to take away from the Church that part which remains, not for purposes of general public utility, but for the support, of the clergy—to take away that remainder, and to secularise it. Your proposal in this Amendment would still secularise a large part of the Endowments of the Church. Because of that, although we on this side are most anxious to come to any settlement which would be a fair settlement, we could not agree to one that would contain any source of secularisation.

What is to be our position at the present time? I sincerely hope that the hon. Gentlemen the Members for Morley and for Kilmarnock will go into the Division Lobby with their Amendment. If so our position is clear. We fully sympathise with the objects they have in view. We entirely desire to remove the religious bitterness that has gone on in Wales for so many years. We recognise that it is a

hindrance to religion in Wales and to Wales altogether. We welcome any suggestion for the removal of that hindrance that comes from the other side. For my part I shall certainly support the Amendment, and I hope all my hon. Friends will do the same. If we are asked to accept it as a final solution we cannot so accept it. The Government do not accept it as a final solution. After all, they might have gone some way towards a solution. They might have acted in accordance with the proposal made by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and not have treated this as a party question. They might have tried to enable hon. Members to vote according to their conscience. If that were done, I believe some solution might be arrived at. If this is made a party question it is not our fault. It is the fault of the Home Secretary, and those who will not listen to the appeal of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock. If this is not made a party question Members can vote according to their conscience, and some solution is possible. If it is made a party question no solution, in my opinion, is possible. The matter rests now entirely with the House and with the Government. If they want to bury the hatchet and have religious peace let them accept this Amendment as the first step towards a final solution of the whole thing.

It being a quarter to Five of the clock, the CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 28th November, to put forthwith the Question on the Amendment already proposed from the Chair.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 265; Noes, 215.

Division No. 455.]	AYES.	[4.45 p.m.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Barton, William	Burke, E. Haviland-
Abraham, Rt. Hon. William (Rhondda)	Beale, Sir William Phipson	Burns, Rt. Hon. John
Acland, Francis Dyke	Beck, Arthur Cecil	Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar)
Adamson, William	Renn, W. W. (T. H'mts., St. George)	Byles, Sir William Pollard
Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D.	Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Carr-Gomm, H. W.
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Boland, John Plus	Cawley, Harold T. (Heywood)
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Booth, Frederick Handel	Chancellor, Henry George
Alden, Percy	Bowerman, C. W.	Chapple, Dr. William Allen
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)	Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.
Arnold, Sydney	Brace, William	Clancy, John Joseph
Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Brady, Patrick Joseph	Clough, William
Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A.	Brocklehurst, W. B.	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Brunner, John F. L.	Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.
Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)	Bryce, J. Annan	Condon, Thomas Joseph
Barnes, G. N.	Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.
Cory, Sir Clifford John	John, Edward Thomas	Pearson, Hon. Weetman H. M.
Cotton, William Francis	Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Sw'nsea)	Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)
Crawshay-Williams, Eliot	Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)	Pointer, Joseph
Crean, Eugene	Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Crooks, William	Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)	Power, Patrick Joseph
Crumley, Patrick	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)	Price, Sir R. J. (Norfolk, E.)
Cullinan, John	Jones, W. S. Glyn- (Stepney)	Pringle, William M. R.
Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)	Joyce, Michael	Radford, G. H.
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Keating, Matthew	Raffan, Peter Wilson
Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)	Kellaway, Frederick George	Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Kennedy, Vincent Paul	Reddy, M.
Davies, M. Vaugban- (Cardigan)	Kilbride, Denis	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)
Dawes, J. A.	King, J. (Somerset, North)	Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)
De Forest, Baron	Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton)	Richards, Thomas
Delany, William	Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)	Richardson, Albion (Peckham)
Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas	Lardner, James Carrige Rushe	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)
Devlin, Joseph	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Donelan, Captain A.	Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th)	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)
Doris, William	Leach, Charles	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)
Duffy, William J.	Levy, Sir Maurice	Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	Lewis, John Herbert	Robinson, Sidney
Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Lundon, Thomas	Roche, Augustine (Louth)
Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)	Lynch, A. A.	Roche, John (Galway, E.)
Elverston, Sir Harold	McGhee, Richard	Rowlands, James
Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)	Maclean, Donald	Rowntree, Arnold
Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)	Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.
Essex, Richard Walter	MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)
Esslemont, George Birnie	Macpherson, James Ian	Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir C. E
Falconer, James	MacVeagh, Jeremiah	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)
Farrell, James Patrick	M'Callum, Sir John M.	Sheehy, David
Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson	M'Kean, John	Sherwell, Arthur James
Ffrench, Peter	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Simon, Sir John Allsebrook
Field, William	M'Laren, Hon. F. W. S. (Lincs., Spalding)	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)
Fitzgibbon, John	Manfield, Harry	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)
Flavin, Michael Joseph	Markham, Sir Arthur Basil	Soames, Arthur Wellesley
George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd	Martin, Joseph	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert
Gilhooly, James	Mason, David M. (Coventry)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)
Gill, A. H.	Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G.	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)
Ginnell, Laurence	Meagher, Michael	Sutherland, J. E.
Glanville, H. J.	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Sutton, John E.
Goldstone, Frank	Menzies, Sir Walter	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)
Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough)	Millar, James Duncan	Tennant, Harold John
Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)	Molloy, Michael	Thomas, James Henry
Greig, Col. J. W.	Molteno, Percy Alport	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Griffith, Ellis J.	Mond, Sir Alfred M.	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Guest, Hon. Major C. H. C. (Pembroke)	Mooney, John J.	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)	Morgan, George Hay	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Guiney, Patrick	Morrell, Philip	Verney, Sir Harry
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)	Morison, Hector	Walsh, J. (Cork, South)
Hackett, John	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince)
Hancock, J. G.	Muldoon, John	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)	Nannetti, Joseph P	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Nolan, Joseph	Wardle, George J.
Hardie, J. Keir	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)	O'Brien, William (Cork)	Watt, Henry Anderson
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Webb, H.
Hayden, John Patrick	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Hazleton, Richard	O'Doherty, Philip	White, J. Dundas (Glas., Tradeston)
Healy, Timothy Michael (Cork, East)	O'Donnell, Thomas	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Helme, Sir Norval Watson	O'Dowd, John	Williams, John (Glamorgan)
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	O'Grady, James	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)	Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)
Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	O'Malley, William	Williamson, Sir Archibald
Higham, John Sharp	O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Hinds, John	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Winfrey, Richard
Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.	O'Shee, James John	Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.)
Hodge, John	O'Sullivan, Timothy	Young, Samuel (Cavan, E.)
Holmes, Daniel Turner	Outhwaite, R. L.	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Holt, Richard Durning	Palmer, Godfrey Mark
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Parker, James (Halifax)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.
Hughes, S. L.	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus
NOES.
Agnew, Sir George William	Baird, John Lawrence	Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)
Aitken, Sir William Max	Baker, Sir Randolf L. (Dorset, N.)	Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick)
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Balcarres, Lord	Bathurst, Hon. A. B. (Glouc., E.)
Anstruther-Gray, Major William	Baldwin, Stanley	Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)
Archer-Shee, Major M.	Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)	Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks.
Armitage, Robert	Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Beauchamp, Sir Edward
Ashley, Wilfrid W.	Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester)	Beckett, Hon. Gervase

Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence	Perkins, Walter F.
Beresford, Lord Charles	Harris, Henry Percy	Peto, Basil Edward
Blair, Reginald	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Pole-Carew, Sir R.
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-	Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry	Pollock, Ernest Murray
Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid)	Henderson, Major H. (Berkshire)	Pretyman, Ernest George
Boyton, James	Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.)	Pryce-Jones, Col. E.
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Hewins, William Albert Samuel	Quilter, Sir William Eley C.
Bull, Sir William James	Hickman, Col. Thomas E.	Randles, Sir John S.
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Hill, Sir Clement L.	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Burgoyne, Alan Hughes	Hill-Wood, Samuel	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Burn, Colonel C. R.	Hoare, S. J. G.	Rawson, Col. Richard H.
Butcher, John George	Hohler, Gerald Fitzroy	Rees, Sir J. D.
Campion, W. R.	Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)	Remnant, James Farquharson
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Horne, E. (Surrey, Guildford)	Rolleston, Sir John
Cassel, Felix	Hume-Williams, W. E.	Rothschild, Lionel de
Cator, John	Hunt, Rowland	Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)
Cautley, Henry Strother	Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk. (Bath)	Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby)
Cave, George	Ingleby, Holcombe	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Jessel, Captain H. M.	Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood)
Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford Univ.)	Joynson-Hicks, William	Sanders, Robert Arthur
Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin)	Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr	Sanderson, Lancelot
Chaloner, Col. R. G. W.	Kerry, Earl of	Sassoon, Sir Phillip
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Keswick, Henry	Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange)
Clive, Captain Percy Archer	Kimber, Sir Henry	Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'p'l., Walton)
Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement	Smith, Harold (Warrington)
Copper, Richard Ashmole	Knight, Captain Eric Ayshford	Stanier, Beville
Courthope, George Loyd	Kyffin-Taylor, G.	Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)
Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Craik, Sir Henry	Larmor, Sir J.	Starkey, John Ralph
Cripps, Sir Charles Alfred	Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle)	Steel-Maitland, A. D.
Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)	Stewart, Gershom
Denniss, E. R. B.	Lee, Arthur Hamilton	Swift, Rigby
Dixon, C. H.	Lewisham, Viscount	Talbot, Lord E.
Doughty, Sir George	Lloyd, G. A.	Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)
Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)	Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)
Faber, George Denison (Clapham)	Lockec-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)
Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Thynne, Lord A.
Falle, Bertram Godfray	Lonsdale, Sir John Brownlee	Tobin, Alfred Aspinall
Fell, Arthur	Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston)	Tullibardine, Marquess of
Finlay, Rt. Hon. Sir Robert	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo., Han. S.)	Valentia, Viscount
Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes	Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich)	Walker, Col. William Hall
Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.	MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue	Mackinder, Halford J.	Ward, A. (Herts, Watford)
Fleming, Valentine	Macmaster, Donald	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)	M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)	Wheler, Granville C. H.
Gardner, truest	Magnus, Sir Philip	White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)
Gastrell, Major W. Houghton	Malcolm, Ian	Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud
Gibbs, George Abraham	Mallaby-Deeley, Harry	Wills, Sir Gilbert
Gilmour, Captain John	Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Wilson, A. Stanley (Yorks, E. R.)
Goldman, C. S.	Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Goldsmith, Frank	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.)
Gordon, John (Londonderry, South)	Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)	Winterton, Earl
Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Mount. William Arthur	Wolmer, Viscount
Goulding, Edward Alfred	Neville, Reginald J. N.	Wood, Hon. E. F. L. (Yorks, Ripon)
Grant, J. A.	Newdegate, F. A.	Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Greene, Walter Raymond	Newton, Harry Kottingham	Worthington-Evans, L.
Gretton, John	Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S. E.)	Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)	Wright, Henry Fitzherbert
Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)	Meld, Herbert	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne)	Norton-Griffiths, J. (Wednesbury)	Yate, Colonel C. E.
Haddock, George Bahr	O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid)	Yerburgh, Robert A.
Hall, Fred (Dulwich)	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.	Younger, Sir George
Hail, Marshall (E. Toxteth)	Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William
Hamersley, Alfred St. George	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. France and Mr. Gladstone.
Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington, S.)	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Hamilton, Marquess of (Londonderry)	Peel, Captain R. F.

THE CHAIRMAN the proceeded to put forthwith the Question necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at a quarter of an hour before Five of the clock, at this day's sitting.

Question put, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 269; Noes, 202.

Division No. 456.]	AYES.	[4.50 p.m.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A.
Abraham, Rt. Hon. William (Rhondda)	Ainsworth, John Stirling	Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury. E.)
Acland, Francis Dyke	Alden Percy	Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)
Adamson, William	Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)	Barnes, G. N.
Addison, Dr. C.	Arnold, Sydney	Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick)
Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D.	Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Barton, William
Beale, Sir William Phipson	Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds.)	O'Malley, William
Beck, Arthur Cecil	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)	O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)
Benn, W. W. (T. H'mts., St George)	Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	O'Shee, James John
Boland, John Pius	Hayden, John Patrick	O'Sullivan, Timothy
Booth, Frederick Handel	Hazleton, Richard	Outhwaite, R. L.
Bowerman, C. W.	Healy, Timothy Michael (Cork, N. E.)	Palmer, Godfrey Mark
Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Helme, Sir Norval Watson	Parker, James (Halifax)
Brace, William	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Brady, Patrick Joseph	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Pearson, Hon. Weetman H. M.
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Higham, John Sharp	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)
Brunner, John F. L.	Hinds, John	Pointer, Joseph
Bryce, J. Annan	Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Hodge, John	Power, Patrick Joseph
Burke, E. Haviland-	Holmes, Daniel Turner	Price, Sir R. J. (Norfolk, E.)
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Holt, Richard Durning	Pringle, William M. R.
Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar)	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Radford, G. H.
Byles, Sir William Pollard	Hughes, S. L.	Raffan, Peter Wilson
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus	Raphael, Sir Herbert H.
Cawley, Harold T. (Heywood)	John, Edward Thomas	Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)
Chancellor, Henry George	Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Sw'nsea)	Reddy, M.
Chapple, Dr. William Allen	Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)	Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)
Clancy, John Joseph	Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)	Richards, Thomas
Clough, William	Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)	Richardson, Albion (Peckham)
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)
Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.	Jones, W. S. Glyn- (Stepney)	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Joyce, Michael	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Keating, Matthew	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Kellaway, Frederick George	Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)
Cotton, William Francis	Kennedy, Vincent Paul	Robinson, Sidney
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Kilbride, Denis	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)
Crawshay-Williams, Eliot	King, J. (Somerset, North)	Roche, Augustine (Louth)
Crean, Eugene	Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)	Roche, John (Galway, E.)
Crooks, William	Lardner, James Carrige Rushe	Rowlands, James
Crumley, Patrick	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Rowntree, Arnold
Cullinan, John	Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th)	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.
Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)	Leach, Charles	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Levy, Sir Maurice	Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E.
Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)	Lewis, John Herbert	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Lough, Rt. Hon Thomas	Sheehy, David
Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)	Lundon, Thomas	Sherwell, Arthur James
Dawes, J. A.	Lynch, A. A.	Simon, Sir John Allsebrook
De Forest, Baron	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)
Delany, William	McGhee, Richard	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)
Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas	Maclean, Donald	Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Devlin, Joseph	Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert
Donelan, Captain A.	MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Doris, William	Macpherson, James Ian	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)
Duffy, William J.	MacVeagh, Jeremiah	Sutherland, J. E.
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	M'Callum, Sir John M.	Sutton, John E.
Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)	M'Kean, John	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Tennant, Harold John
Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)	M'Laren, Hon. F. W. S. (Lincs., Spalding)	Thomas, James Henry
Elverston, Sir Harold	Manfield, Harry	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)	Markham, Sir Arthur Basil	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)	Martin, Joseph	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Essex, Richard Walter	Mason, David M. (Coventry)	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Esslemont, George Birnie	Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G.	Verney, Sir Harry
Falconer, James	Meagher, Michael	Walsh, J. (Cork, South)
Farrell, James Patrick	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince)
Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson	Menzies, Sir Walter	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Ffrench, Peter	Millar, James Duncan	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Field, William	Molloy, Michael	Wardle, George J.
Fitzgibbon, John	Molteno, Percy Alport	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Flavin, Michael Joseph	Mond, Sir Alfred M.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd	Mooney, John J.	Watt, Henry Anderson
Gilhooly, James	Morgan, George Hay	Webb, H.
Gill, A. H.	Morrell, Philip	Wedgwood, Josiah C
Ginnell, Laurence	Morison, Hector	White, J. Dundas (Glas., Tradeston)
Glanville, H. J.	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Goldstone, Frank	Muldoon, John	Whyte, A. F. (Perth)
Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough)	Murray, Captain Hon. Arthur C.	Williams, John (Glamorgan)
Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
Greig, Col. J. W.	Nolan, Joseph	Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)
Griffith, Ellis J.	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Williamson, Sir Archibald
Guest, Hon. Major C. H. C. (Pembroke)	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)	O'Brien, William (Cork)	Winfrey, Richard
Guiney, Patrick	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.)
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Young, Samuel (Cavan, E.)
Hackett, John	O'Doherty, Philip	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Hancock, J. G.	O'Donnell, Thomas
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)	O'Dowd, John	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	O'Grady, James
Hardie, J. Keir	O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)

NOES.
Aitken, Sir William Max	Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Norton-Griffiths, J. (Wednesbury)
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Goulding, Edward Alfred	O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid)
Anstruther-Gray, Major William	Grant, J. A.	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.
Archer-Shee, Major M.	Greene, Walter Raymond	Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William
Ashley, Wilfrid W.	Gretton, John	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Baird, John Lawrence	Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S. E.)	Peel, Captain R. F.
Baker, Sir Randolf L. (Dorset, N.)	Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)	Perkins, Walter F.
Balcarres, Lord	Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne)	Peto, Basil Edward
Baldwin, Stanley	Haddock, George Bahr	Pole-Carew, Sir R.
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)	Hall, Fred (Dulwich)	Pollock, Ernest Murray
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Hall, Marshall (E. Toxteth)	Pretyman, Ernest George
Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester)	Hamersley, Alfred St. George	Pryce-Jones, Col. E.
Bathurst, Hon. A. B. (Glouc., E.)	Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington, S.)	Randles, Sir John S.
Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)	Hamilton, Marquess of (Londonderry)	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks	Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Harris, Henry Percy	Rawson, Col. Richard H.
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Rees, Sir J. D.
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Henderson, Major H. (Berkshire)	Remnant, James Farquharson
Beresford, Lord Charles	Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.)	Rolleston, Sir John
Blair, Reginald	Hewins, William Albert Samuel	Rothschild, Lionel de
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-	Hickman, Col. Thomas E.	Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)
Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid)	Hill, Sir Clement L.	Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby}
Boyton, James	Hill-Wood, Samuel	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Hoare, S. J. G.	Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood)
Bull, Sir William James	Hohler, Gerald Fitzroy	Sanders, Robert Arthur
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)	Sanderson, Lancelot
Burgoyne, Alan Hughes	Horne, E. (Surrey, Guildford)	Sassoon, Sir Philip
Burn, Colonel C. R.	Hume-Williams, W. E.	Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange)
Butcher, John George	Hunt, Rowland	Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'p'L, Walton)
Campion, W. R.	Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk. (Bath)	Smith, Harold (Warrington)
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Ingleby, Holcombe	Stanier, Beville
Cassel, Felix	Jessel, Captain H. M.	Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)
Cator, John	Joynson-Hicks, William	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Cautley, Henry Strother	Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr	Starkey, John Ralph
Cave, George	Kerry, Earl of	Steel-Maitland, A. D.
Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford Univ.)	Keswick, Henry	Stewart, Gershom
Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin)	Kimber, Sir Henry	Swift, Rigby
Chaloner, Col. R. G. W.	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement	Talbot, Lord E.
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Knight, Captain Eric Ayshford	Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)
Clive, Captain Percy Archer	Kyffin-Taylor, G.	Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)
Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)
Cooper, Richard Ashmole	Larmor, Sir J.	Thynne, Lord A.
Courthope, George Loyd	Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle)	Tobin, Alfred Aspinall
Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)	Tullibardine, Marquess of
Craik, Sir Henry	Lee, Arthur Hamilton	Valentia, Viscount
Cripps, Sir Charles Alfred	Lewisham, Viscount	Walker, Col. William Hall
Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)	Lloyd, G. A.	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Denniss, E. R. B	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)	Ward, A. (Herts, Watford)
Dixon, C. H.	Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Doughty, Sir George	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Wheler, Granville C. H.
Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston)	White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)
Eaber, George Denison (Clapham)	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo., Han. s.)	Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud
Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich)	Wills, Sir Gilbert
Falle, Bertram Godfray	MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh	Wilson, A. Stanley (Yorks, E. R.)
Fell, Arthur	Mackinder, Halford J.	Winterton, Earl
Finlay, Rt. Hon. Sir Robert	Macmaster, Donald	Wolmer, Viscount
Fisher, Rt. Hon, W. Hayes	M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)	Wood, Hon. E. F. L. (Yorks, Ripon)
Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.	Magnus, Sir Philip	Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue	Malcolm, Ian	Worthington-Evans, L.
Fleming, Valentine	Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)	Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Wright, Henry Fitzherbert
Gardner, Ernest	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Gastrell, Major W. Houghton	Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)	Yate, Colonel C. E.
Gibbs, George Abraham	Mount, William Arthur	Yerburgh, Robert A.
Gilmour, Captain John	Neville, Reginald J. N.
Goldman, C. S.	Newdegate, F. A.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. E. Cecil and Mr. Montague Barlow.
Goldsmith, Frank	Newton, Harry Kottingham
Gordon, John (Londonderry, South)	Nield, Herbert

Committee report Progress; to sit again on Monday next, 16th December.

The Orders for the remaining Government business were read, and postponed.

Whereupon, Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of 14th October, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."