ESTABLISHED CHURCH (WALES) BILL.

HC Deb 21 April 1914 vol 61 cc776-891

Order read for resuming adjourned Debate on Amendment to Question [30th April], "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Which Amendment was, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—[Lord Robert Cecil.]

Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question." Debate resumed.

4.0 P.M.

Mr. HAYES FISHER

It was a matter of common observation yesterday, notwithstanding that speakers of great competence took part in the Debate and the speeches were of unusual excellence, that the House paid but very languid attention to the discussion—indeed, that the benches, especially the Treasury Bench, were singularly empty, and very little interest was taken in this question, although it is one of the deepest interest and touches the whole spiritual life of the nation. The Under-Secretary for Home Affairs, who wound up the Debate last night, gave as one of the reasons for that lack of interest on the third time that this question has been presented under the Parliament Act the fact that we were in two camps, that the question of principle had been decided between us, that there was no use whatever in dealing with details, and that whilst hon. Gentlemen opposite were firmly persuaded that it was right to Disestablish and partially Disendow the Church, we on this side were convinced, to use his own words, that Disestablishment was an act of national apostasy, and Disendowment an act of national spoliation and even of sacrilege. Those were the words in which the Under-Secretary described our attitude, and he did not describe it falsely. We do, indeed, consider that Disestablishment is an act of national apostasy, and Disendowment an act of national spoliation and even of sacrilege. Another reason why undoubtedly the House was empty and the Debate excited little interest was the operation of the Parliament Act. The Parliament Act has reduced the House of Commons on all occasions when large Bills of this character are presented for the second or third time to the position of a melancholy mausoleum. There were very few people here, because it was quite obvious that, although the Government may feel that the country have turned against them since they introduced the measure, that voters are going over from their side to ours, and that the House itself is in favour of many Amendments to their Bill, they cannot introduce a single Amendment, as they are hedged in and bound by the operation of the Parliament Act.

The Under-Secretary, who is capable of a most serious contribution to this or any other Debate, chose rather to indulge in jokes and ridicule of a kind far more suited to cause mirth and merriment in a Radical drinking club on a Good Friday. The hon. Gentleman went on to say that we on our side made no attempt to arouse or to test the indignation of the people against a measure which we call an act of spoliation and sacrilege. He quoted as evidence of that the fact that in three elections—Linlithgow, Wick, and Bethnal Green—no mention of the Welsh Church question was made by the Unionist candidates either in their addresses or in any other prominent way. I do not know what happened at Linlithgow, but I do know what happened at Wick. We all know what happened at Wick. Interest was concentrated, not on the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church, but on the establishment and endowment of a harbour. In the face of the very tempting bait held out by the Radical candidate, I dare say it might have been useless for the Unionist candidate to have tried to interest the Wick electors in the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church in Wales. I know still more what happened at Bethnal Green. The hon. Gentleman's information on that point is entirely incorrect. The hon. Member who now represents South-West Bethnal Green, in the place of the latest Member of the Cabinet, who is so popular that it is quite impossible for the Government to find him a seat in either England, Scotland, or Wales, put very prominently, not in his first address, but in his second address, which he issued with the voting card to every elector, that be was entirely opposed to the robbery proposed to be perpetrated on the Church. He not only placed it in his address, but he put on all his voting cards, "Vote for Wilson, and no robbery of the Church." I would inform the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swansea (Sir A. Mond), who is so eager to dethrone Christianity in this country, that he carries the bag, I am told, into which are poured the contributions of his rich friends for that purpose, that a large number of the Jew electors in Bethnal Green told us that, while they had never voted before for a Conservative or Unionist candidate, on this occasion they would do so, because they entirely disapproved of Disendowing a Church of any kind.

The Under-Secretary for Home Affairs might have mentioned other by-elections while he was on that topic. He might have mentioned Poplar. There, also, men "who had never voted Conservative in their lives gave their active support to our candidate on the sole ground that he was pledged to resist the spoliation of a great Church. He might have referred to the recent election at Reading, when many avowed Liberals voted and worked for the Unionist candidate, with the result that there was a considerable turnover of votes. My hon. Friend who now represents Reading owes his election to a great extent to the attitude which he took up on the Welsh Church question, and to the fact that many old Liberals were hopelessly disgusted with the policy of the Government towards the Church in Wales. The hon. Gentleman can hardly say that we have been shy of bringing this question before the electors, nor can he deny that we have obtained votes at every election on this question, so far as English constituencies are concerned. While the Government have gained no votes on this question, there is hardly a constituency in England in which a by-election has taken place where we have not gained votes, and whenever the General Election comes this question will play a very great part in turning out hon. Gentlemen opposite and in placing our party in their places. [Laughter.] If that pleases hon. Gentlemen opposite, it pleases us as well. We are winning votes, and we are trying to do so. The only way in which we can stop these infamous measures is by winning votes. But hon. Gentlemen will not give us the chance if they can possibly help it. They will not put any of these questions before the people. We would beat them on any one of them individually, but collectively we would beat them even more.

It is not we, but hon. Gentlemen opposite, who are shy of consulting the people on these questions. They very seldom find an opportunity of discussing Disestablishment and Disendowment. When they do, they do not use the word "Disendowment"; it is always called "religious equality," or something of that kind, so that the people shall be singularly unsuspicious of what is really intended. Every day we are winning votes in Wales alone. Take the recent petition, which seems to have caused such anger in the opposite camp. One hundred and three thousand, two hundred and twenty-four Nonconformists over twenty-one years of age signed that petition. There may have been here and there, perhaps owing to the fault or folly of a canvasser, some want of explanation to the person signing the petition, and possibly a few hundreds, if you like, would like to withdraw their signatures. But thousands would remain —a hundred thousand, at any rate. Let hon. Gentlemen examine the petition as carefully as they like, it is impossible to avoid the enormous significance of the change of opinion which is coming over Wales now that the people actually know what is intended by Disendowment. The right hon. Baronet (Sir A. Mond) had some second-hand stones which he has picked up somewhere as to the way in which a few signatures were obtained. It is impossible to deny that the opposition to the signing of the petition was organised, systematic, and influential, and proceeded from the great governing body of the Free Churches. If it had not been for the influence used to prevent people from signing that petition, there would, I believe, have been at least 50,000 more signatures appended to it. It is a very powerful petition, and one which must carry great weight, and I believe it will be followed by other petitions of the same kind, unless the whole organisation of the Free Church Council is put into force to threaten and bully those who would like to sign, but who may possibly find, in view of their material interests, that they had better not to do so.

The only argument of any strength which the Government have put forward in favour of the Bill is that upon which the Attorney-General laid such stress yesterday, namely, that from the point of view of representation in this House Wales has, for years and years past, always sent Members to Parliament to support Disestablishment and Disendowment. That that is a powerful argument we cannot and do not attempt to deny, but I think it is carried a great deal too far. Hon. Gentlemen opposite put a limitation on this right of local majorities. Would they put forward the view that a local majority in Wales was entitled to hold any religious views, and to put those religious views into an Act of Parliament? Of course they would not—at all events, the Government would not. If the whole of the Members for Wales, without a single exception, should hereafter become persuaded that Wales was in many ways deteriorating in manners, morals, and spiritual growth, and if they then desired to set up again in these parishes resident ministers and all the apparatus of a religious establishment, would the Government say that they were bound to accede to that request because all the Members from Wales demanded it? Of course, they would not. The Government would say that there must be some limitation even if the whole of the Members for Wales demand that they shall have some form of Established and Endowed Church. "That," the Government would say, "we cannot grant: once we concede that, it is giving away all our arguments in favour of Disestablishment and Disendowment." I put another question. I would put it to the Members of the Government if there were any of them here. They never are here. The Prime Minister is never here. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is rarely here. There is only one Member of the Government here on an occasion like this. [An HON. MEMBER: "And not a Cabinet Minister either."] Not a Cabinet Minister! But what do they care? What does it matter to them what takes places in this House? There is another House to which this Bill will go. Then the Bill will go somewhere else; then no matter what the people may think, the Bill will become law—no matter either what we may say or do.

I would put this case to the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Ellis Griffith). He attaches much weight to this argument of a, local majority to do what it likes in the matter of religion, or to do nearly all that it likes. Suppose a local majority were to come to this House, and to say, "No matter what the people of England think, we in Wales think that we ought to limit the use of taxes and the use of rates to secular education." Would the Government allow that? I doubt it—I very much doubt it! I doubt very much if the whole of the Members from Wales were to insist upon having a system of secular education in which no rates and no taxes were used for any religious education of any sort or kind, whether the Government would bring in a Bill to satisfy the desires of these Members from Wales. Therefore, I say that the Government themselves put some limitation, and a strong limitation, too, to this right of the local majority to demand measures connected with religion. I say again there is a very important difference between the demand made by the majority of the Irish Members in 1869, and the demand made by a majority of Welsh Members in 1914 and previous years. After all, the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church of Ireland did not dismember the Church in England. This is a very different matter. Is a local majority in Wales to be allowed to dismember the Church in England when a great majority of the Members returned by English constituencies are entirely and wholly opposed to anything of the sort? The hon. Gentleman who yesterday finished up the Debate said that dismemberment must accompany Disestablishment.

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

I said that they were the same thing. If Wales desires Disestablishment from the point of view of the rest of the Province of Canterbury, it is dismemberment. I said they were two names to the same thing.

Mr. HAYES FISHER

Exactly! I do not want to misinterpret the right hon. Gentleman at all, and I do not think I am doing so. If we are to give Wales Disestablishment affecting four dioceses, that naturally means dismemberment of the Church so far as these four dioceses are concerned.

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

Yes.

Mr. HAYES FISHER

Yes, but I say it is a double sin. If it is not so in Wales, it is certainly a great sin as regards the English Church, to force these four dioceses in the Church of England out, and to deny them the ordinary rights which all the other dioceses still will have.

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

They are two names for the same subject!

Mr. HAYES FISHER

They are two injuries. The one is the injury in Wales and the other undoubtedly an injury in England, and to a majority of the English Members. That is my point: that the Government is now using this argument of a local majority to force something on England which a majority of Englishmen do not want. I say there ought to be some limitation to this argument of the rights of a local majority. I say it is pushed too far, much too far, when it is applied to the dismemberment of the Church which has a majority of supporters in this House. Apart from that, it is in my opinion, a retrograde measure. What the Government ought to ask is not whether there is a majority—in these days of quick changes majorities may be temporary—in favour of the Bill, but whether the measure will strengthen or weaken the position of the Christian religion in a Christian country. Does the Church of Wales in this country tend to promote or weaken the cause of Christianity? Are its means inadequate or are they far too great? If they were too great there might be some argument for taking them away. But it would still be spoliation. Possibly we might consent if we had more money than we wanted to give some of that money for other good works; possibly to endow other Churches. We are not, I hope, illiberal in our views. We have not too much money to carry out all that we would wish our Church to do. In these days, when there is a universal complaint—anyone who reads the papers devoted to Church work—and I am now talking of the work of all the Churches—will find the universal complaint that the great octopus of materialism is spreading itself out and is gradually engulfing the soul of the nation. The right hon. Gentleman to whom I alluded just now who has lately been admitted to the Cabinet is the same right hon. Gentleman who, speaking on one occasion, deplored from that box the way matters were moving. He said:— England was slowly drifting away from the Christian religion. England and Wales were slowly drifting away from the Christian religion! I do not share that gloomy view myself, but at all events, if he holds that view, what is going to arrest this drifting away from the Christian religion? Are you going to arrest it by Disendowing the Church in Wales, by taking away from her something like £158,000 a year out of her present Endowments? What could we do with that £158,000? If it were a separate gift handed over to us now it would suffice to keep 400 resident parish ministers at £400 a year, which, I think it will be allowed, is not too much for ministers of religion to have. Does anybody mean to tell me that that would not help to stop the drifting away from the Christian religion? Will anyone tell me that if you take that money away you are doing nothing to hasten that drifting away from the Christian religion? The question has been asked and answered very often as to whether the Church in Wales is doing its duty at the present time. Again and again I think it may be admitted possibly must be admitted—that there have been periods in the history of the Church of England, both in England and Wales, when it would have been perhaps difficult to say that if you Disendowed her at that particular period that you were doing any great harm in the cause of Christianity or religion. Those were the evil days of the Church spoken of yesterday by the Attorney-General. They were well depicted by Mr. Gladstone himself in an article he wrote in one of the magazines. Describing the Church as it was some forty or fifty years before 1874, he said:— After a full half century the actual state of things as to worship was bad beyond all parallel known to me in experience or reading. Taking together the expulsion of the poor and labouring classes (especially from the town churches), the mutilation and blockages of the fabrics, the baldness of the service, the elaborate horrors of the so-called music…and, above all, the coldness and indifference of the lounging and sleeping congregation, our services were probably without a parallel in the world for their debasement; and as they would have shocked a Brahmin or a Buddhist, so they hardly could have been endured in this country had nut the faculty of taste and the perception of the seemly or unseemly been as dead as the spirit of devotion. That was Mr. Gladstone's opinion of the Church at the time to which I refer. He wrote another article some years afterwards, after the Tractarian movement had had its effect. This is what he said of the Church then:— A strange vitality was soon discernible in the long-neglected parishes. The doctrinal and practical teaching of the Prayer Book was again taught from the pulpit. The Sacraments were rightly and duly administered: services were celebrated on Saints' Days, and even daily. New churches rose to meet the requirements of the increasing town population. Parsonages were built in the country parishes, the ancient fabrics were purged, repaired, and beautified, and music was again, made the handmaid of devotion. Every accessory of worship was once more instinct with life and meaning. Above all, to the poor the Gospel was preached. Which of these two pictures is applicable to the Welsh Church to-day? We have it on the authority of the Prime Minister himself that it is the later picture, the favourable picture, of the work of the Church which is applicable to the Church of Wales to-day. I have the Prime Minister's words here. In the Debate on the Bill in 1912 he said:— Things have changed, and no one has acknowledged more fully than I have during the whole of this controversy the great work which the Anglican Church in, Wales has been doing for a generation past, not only to make atonement for the shortcomings of the past, but to discharge the duties it owes to the community."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th May. 1912, col. 1150, Vol. XXXVIII.] If that is so, why do that which tends to prevent her further ingratiating and endearing herself to the people? For my own part, I do not despair that she will do it. Why take away her funds? Why Disendow her? Why maim and mutilate her at this time when she is doing her duty? Surely there is nobody going to argue, nobody in or out of this House, that the Church would be stronger if you take away from her £158,000 a year! I know the hon. Gentleman yesterday disputed this figure. He said, "We are not taking away £158,000 yearly from the Endowments of the Church in Wales." Well, when divergent, absolutely different statements are made by Members of the Front Bench opposite to the statements which are made by other Cabinet Ministers in another place, we have learnt lately that the truth is to be found in the other place—not here! Lord Crewe himself stated in the House of Lords only a short time ago that the Church was to have £158,000 a year taken away from her Endowments. We all know that that is subject to life interests; of course it is. But are we legislating for to-day or to-morrow only? Have we no thought for the great future of the Christian Church? What is twenty, thirty, or forty years in the history of the Church, a Church which has done good work through centuries, and will do good work through the centuries to come?

I say the hon. Gentleman himself must be perfectly well aware of the fact that the sum which the Church will be deprived of—taken, that is to say, from her present Endowments—is not £51,000 a year, but £158,000. After all, the life interests have ceased and have absorbed the amount of money set at their disposal. That is not the style of speech that the hon. Gentleman generally adopts. I cannot help thinking that he must have learnt it from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to see double when he sees a duke, and the hon. Gentleman appears to see less than half when he sees the Church. We have had better speeches from him than we had last night, and I hope we may have better speeches from him. I am deeply in earnest about this matter. We know that we shall have to make this money up if it is taken away—of course we shall, as good Churchmen. Those who have to do it will have to take it from other things. There is only a limited amount of money, and if we give to one Church, probably you cannot give to another. If we give to one object, possibly we shall have to diminish our subscriptions to something else. I do not say the money cannot be found. I am perfectly certain it will be found. But it will be found at the expense of other good works, of other charities, and other philanthropic enterprises. It must be so! For whose good? The one question right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite never will answer is, for whose good? Look now at the purposes for which this money is applied, and look at the purposes to which you propose to apply it to-morrow, and ask yourselves which of these purposes is for the real benefit of the people, which of these purposes will most advance their moral and spiritual welfare? I am perfectly certain that if the question was put to any fair and open-minded jury which is the better use of the money, whether it would be better used by the Church or the county councils or the universities, this money never would be taken away from the purposes for which it was intended. This House has a noble record, which is ideal and high. It has done much for the welfare of the people from the physical, moral and spiritual point of view. In the long course of its career blemishes have occurred, cases of injustice have occurred, cases of persecution, cases of cruelty and cases of shame. To-day, I say, if this House should pass this Bill, it will mark another blemish in its history by an act of gross injustice, and an act which will strike a grave and serious blow at the cause of Christianity.

Sir DAVID BRYNMOR JONES

I listened with great attention to the remarks of the right horn Gentleman who has just spoken. I believe this is almost the first, if not the only occasion, upon which he has taken part in the Debates upon this Bill in the last two Sessions and this Session, and I confess that, having regard to the general tenor of our discussions, I find it a little difficult to reply to his observations.

Mr. HAYES FISHER

I have tried again and again to enter into the Debates upon this question, but I have not been successful; but it was not for want of interest in the subject.

Sir D. BRYNMOR JONES

I can only say that I regret that the House has not had before now the benefit of his contribution to the controversy. But, on the other-hand, let me say this, that he has intervened by bringing all sorts of irrelevant matter, electoral and otherwise, into the discussion that seems hardly fitted for debate upon the Second Reading of a Bill of this character. He began his speech with tempestuous words, and I could not help thinking when I listened to him of an expression used by a great Liberal statesman about the "ill-advised ravings of a rash, rancorous tongue." He took up the subject of Saturday Radical drinking clubs, and he referred to all sorts of considerations that perhaps occupy the attention of some of our fellow-citizens, but which have nothing on earth to do with the grave controversy in which we are concerned. What Radical drinking club does he refer to? He referred to a Radical drinking club meeting on a Good Friday to discuss this topic. What club does he refer to? Has he no connection with clubs? Is he not the honoured president of the Fulham Football Club, which played a game on Good Friday last 2 What is his point? Is it worth mentioning these things upon an occasion of this kind? If the right hon. Gentleman will pardon me, I will not attempt to answer arguments and points of that kind. I shall refer to the speech of the Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil) who moved the rejection of this Bill, and I will try to answer the more substantial ground and considerations which he advanced in the course of his speech.

I refer to the speech of the Noble Lord who moved the rejection of the Bill, because I regard it as of importance in other respects. First of all, it is the speech of the Mover of the rejection of this Bill on the third occasion that it comes before the consideration of this House under the Parliament Act. I take it, from the very wide ground which he covered, and from the part which he has played in this controversy, that we may regard his speech as the considered answer of the Opposition, and because I also conceive that his statement, though his language is sometimes strong, is the result not of ingrained prejudice, but is founded upon what he believes to be adequate and trustworthy information and upon sound reasons. I have been considering his speech as a whole, and I find that he does not know yet the very first principle upon which we base our claims to this Bill. He has not replied to our main argument. What is that argument? That argument is that Wales is a separate nationality. We say, for reasons which the Prime Minister expressed most felicitously in one of his speeches in this House not long ago, that whether judged by every test of a separate nation that as Ireland and Scotland may claim to be separate political entities, so also Wales may claim to be a separate political entity. And as a corollary from that, we say we are entitled to manage our own domestic affairs. We do not claim any special position in regard to foreign policy in regard to the Army and the Navy, but we do say that in regard to our domestic concerns—in the sphere of education, in the sphere of religion, in the sphere of certain Departmental matters, including such topics as agriculture—we are entitled to decide questions for ourselves. That being so, the Noble Lord did not, in the whole course of his speech, meet that main point upon which we depend. He came very near it when he said that our argument is that in whatever we say here we convey the wishes of the Welsh people, constantly and overwhelmingly expressed, that these wishes should be gratified. He said that that argument is a plausible one. I put it higher. I said this is a convincing argument once our first principle is admitted. The Noble Lord went on then to base upon the Act of 1662, the Act of Uniformity of Charles II., the leading burden of his argument. He said you may go back very far into history if you like, but for myself I say there was a real adjustment of the relations in regard to the Church of England and the nation at large in the year 1662.

I may remind the House that in the very first speech I made upon this question, when the Bill was first introduced, in 1912, I suggested that the Act of 1662 might be looked upon as a resettlement of the religious conditions of England and of Wales. The Noble Lord yesterday recited the facts and the history of the disputes arising in the reign of Henry VIII., and carried it down to 1660, when Charles H. was restored to the throne. I suggested I was willing to look upon the Act of 1662 as a kind of resettlement of these religious controversies in regard to the whole country, and I pointed out that in regard to Wales there is a special provision introduced into the Act. Taking our stand, then, upon the Act of 1662, for the sake of argument—I do not want to abandon any argument any hon. Friend of mine might like to base upon the preceding period—but starting from the year 1662, when this Act of Parliament was passed, let us see how the conditions stand. I admit that grave wrongs have been done to the Church of England by the Parliamentary party—by the Puritan faction, if you call it a faction—in the middle of the seventeenth century. But I have also to assert that very grave wrong was done by the resettlement effected in 1662. I pass by any attempt to recount the influence of the injustice in regard to many of the ministers who had occupied benefices in Wales after the Act of 1662 came into operation. But taking that as a starting point, what has happened in Wales between 1662 and the present time?

If you admit our first principle—the principle that Wales is a national entity and entitled to decide this question for itself—the question really is this: How has it come about that Nonconformity has attained to a position of unparalleled supremacy, I might almost call it, in Wales as a result of something like 225 years' operation of the Act of 1662, and all the arrangements then made? The Noble Lord did not yesterday, I think—though at the earlier period of our controversy he did—raise the question of figures as to the strength of Nonconformity. He did not state the number of Nonconformist members as compared with the communicants of the Church of England, or enlarge upon the position which Nonconformity occupies at the present moment in the Principality of Wales. The Noble Lord, and I think the whole House, has now frankly accepted the position that the overwhelming majority, or at any rate the very great majority, of the Welsh people have abandoned the National Church and have adopted various persuasions, of which the four great denominations, Calvinistic Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Wesleyan Methodists are the principal. How has this great change come about? I am always arguing on the basis of the first principle.

Go back a little earlier, to the reign of Queen Elizabeth or Henry VIII., and you find Ireland and Wales intensely Roman Catholic. Notwithstanding all the changes that have taken place, Ireland has remained overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. How does it come about, taking England and Wales, that in Wales alone the various phases of Nonconformity have become the overwhelming influence in national affairs and the religious life of the nation. The Noble Lord opposite (Lord Robert Cecil), who is a great advocate, and knows how to conduct his case, yesterday fastened upon something which did play a part in this transformation when he dwelt upon what he called the general lethargy and apathy of the nation during the eighteenth century in regard to religious matters. I adopt that, but I do think that among the causes, and perhaps the first cause, of the phenomena that has taken place in Wales, was the lethargy and apathy in general of the people and their leaders during the eighteenth century. But here I enter a caveat. I think the Noble Lord exaggerated to some extent this lethargy and apathy of the eighteenth century in regard to religious matters. I do not think that a century that produced so many illustrious Churchmen can be described as lethargic or apathetic. In view of this fact I am not inclined to attach so much importance to this argument about lethargy and apathy as one of the contributing causes towards this great change in Wales. A more important cause to my mind is what I might describe as the social condition of the Welsh people, and a want of recognition on the part of the central Government of the special problem which that condition generally raised.

What was the position of Wales at the beginning of the eighteenth century? Most of us think of Wales simply as a part of England, where the whole of the Welsh counties are practically so many English counties, but the moment you read any books about the condition of Wales at the beginning of the eighteenth century, you form a totally different impression. You find the people with a structure of society quite different in many respects from the structure of English society. The people are not of a totally different race, but while they have lived in this island side by side with the English people for many centuries they have never lost the characteristics and, to a certain extent, the blood of the original tribe who were here when the Romans left the island. You find that owing to English legislation the conquest of the South was a rather prolonged matter, extending over something like 260 years, and it took that time to arrive at the final result Then followed the conquest of North Wales by Edward I., and finally the conversion of the whole of the Western part into the thirteen counties which now form the Principality of Wales, and in that society you find two different classes—the upper or governing classes, English in sentiment, speaking English, brought up under English influences, and carrying out the behests of the central Government. Under them you have the people of Wales who have been living for centuries upon the land, speaking a different language to that of their rulers, and coming into contact with people who spoke Norman-French and ecclesiastics who spoke Latin, but in the main a set of people speaking their own ancient tongue, which has been handed down to them from generation to generation, and which they still speak in defiance of all the attempts of the central Government to Anglicise them. At the beginning of the eighteenth century you had, in fact, two nations, and on this point I should like to read an extract from a report, written long after the time I am referring to by a gentleman who was appointed a Commissioner to consider the state of education as late as the year 1847. He says that in the year of his investigation he finds a singular phenomena. He finds an upper class speaking the English language, and well below he finds a large population speaking a peculiar language, living in an underworld of their own. Some of these people are agriculturists, whilst others are engaged in industrial pursuits. He describes the Welsh people as living in an under-world of their own. If that were true in the year 1847, it was was still more abundantly true at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and that structure of society is a very large factor in the rise of Nonconformity in Wales. The next cause to which I attribute the rise of Nonconformity in Wales is the neglect of the provisions of the Act of 1662 by the governors of the Church. By the 27th Section of that Act it is provided that, on and after the printing of the Prayer Book, the whole of the Divine Service shall be used and said by the ministers throughout all Wales within the said diocese where the Welsh tongue is commonly used in the Welsh tongue. That was studiously ignored from the time the Act of 1662 became law. For a few years, however, some attempt was made to conform to the law, but, as a matter of fact, shortly afterwards it became almost universal to disregard that provision, and not only was it disregarded, but another construction was placed upon if. Not only was it ignored in regard to the benefices, but as a matter of policy the Crown gave up the practice of appointing Welsh-speaking bishops, and for nearly 170 years not a single bishop appointed was a Welshman or able to speak the Welsh language, or carry on any service in Wales in the Welsh language. That I take to be the true reason why this rise of Nonconformity on an unparalleled scale took place.

I think the next reason was the misuse of the funds of the Church, and the maladministration in general of its affairs. At that time the Government could not possibly undertake the pooling of the funds of the Church, or treat Wales apart from the rest of the area over which the English Church reigned. There may be some excuse for this, but looking back at the causes, it seems to me not unfair on our part to point out that the maladministration of the funds with which we are concerned in this Bill was undoubtedly a very great contributing cause to the failure of the Church and the rise of Nonconformity. I think we have been very lenient in our criticism of the conduct of the leaders of the Church in the eighteenth century, and we are quite willing to accept the proposition that the Church failed in its duty. We have not attempted to enlarge upon that part of the subject by referring to many of the things which were little short of scandals that took place in regard to the use of what we consider was national property. In reply to some of the attacks made upon us, I remember one instance which was given of a very flagrant character, in which the trust funds were, in our judgment, misused. There was the case of a Bishop of St. Asaph's not more than 100 years ago, who, with four or five of his relations, was in the possession of Church preferments to the amount of £25,000 per year, and at the same moment the total amount in the diocese of St. Asaph's devoted to the working clergy of the diocese only amounted to something like £17,000. I quote that as showing that it is quite un-necessary for me to attempt to apportion responsibility for what I regard as the wrong use of trust funds; but, somehow or other, owing to some want of understanding of the dignity of his calling, this bishop allowed these things to go on.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

The law would not allow the Church to deal with the question.

5.0 P.M.

Sir D. BRYNMOR JONES

I think that point is quite immaterial. I am speaking as a Welshman representing the Welsh nationality. We never asked to be joined with you. We were brought by Act of Parliament after Act of Parliament into the British realm. We were incorporated with the British realm, and now the Welsh people are commenting on the deeds of the Government, and are entitled to do so. The Noble Lord admitted that the Church had neglected its duty in the eighteenth century, and I am explaining how this has come about. The more you examine it, the more just seems to be the present claim of the Welsh people. Your argument is that it is all past history. You say, "We are doing our duty now." I will deal with that point presently. I was pointing out that the general policy of the Government was towards this suppression of every effort of the Welsh people to be governed according to their own views. Yours was a policy of anglicising them. It began before the time of Henry VIII. The moment that Henry VIII. determined to make the whole area as like England as possible, there at once arose the first movement in an opposite direction, and with it came the rise of Nonconformity in Wales. I say the policy of the Government as a whole was one of the factors in that rise, not only in regard to religion, but in regard to many other matters; but, above all, it was in regard to religion. You used the Church and its preferments as a political instrument—as part of a political game.

Another point which has to be borne in mind was adverted to by my right hon. Friend the Attorney-General yesterday, and it was the character and temperament of the Welsh people. That is an element which I venture to think the Church does not at the present time take sufficiently into account. Anybody who knows anything of the life of Wales, knows that when you go into a Church of England and a Nonconformist's place of worship, you will see in the latter a different and warmer tone throughout the whole service. I should like if I had time to analyse the character of the Welsh people. Really in the Middle Ages we were very different from what we are now. We were described, without contradiction, as "a haughty nation, proud in arms," but except that we were very devoted to the Catholic religion and to many of the usages connected with it; there was nothing specially religious about us. If I may trust the accounts I have read, I should say it was very much the other way. Taking all these things into consideration, what reason can we urge for not complying with our wishes in regard to this Bill. Here we are overwhelming Nonconformist. You are not disinclined to give us some measure of Home Rule—some devolution of autonomy. Federalism is very much in the air. Opinion seems to be trending in that direction, and I should like to know what sound reason can be urged against allowing us to govern ourselves in these matters in our own way. Is there any reason why the ecclesiastical law so far as we are concerned should not be abolished. That is my general answer to the Noble Lord's speech. He has not grappled, as I conceive, with our first principle—the principle of nationality. He admits it, but only in a qualified way.

Taking it even on its own basis, and starting from the year 1662, I say that changes have taken place which entitle us to ask at the hands of this Parliament, an opportunity of developing according to the natural bent of our beliefs.

There are many points on which I should like to say a word or two, but having regard to the time I will only deal with one or two. I should like to touch on the general principles upon which we base the Disendowment Clauses of this Bill. Our contention is that the property of the dissolved corporations must be dealt with in a just and expedient way, and we assert that the adjustment made by the Bill is a fair and reasonable one. We say that, according to the original trusts, the funds were appropriated to the corporations, not simply for purposes of worship, but for a much more enlarged spiritual purpose—for various godly uses, and for other purposes which involved a performance of duties wider than those usually performed by the Church. On this question the subject of the origin of tithes arises. That is the largest head of property which is proposed to be transferred to the Commissioners under this Bill. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been very bitterly attacked for a statement he made as to the origin of tithes. It has been called by the bishops "a Greek theory of the origin of tithes." We can all admit that the origin is obscure. I notice, however, that the bishops rush in where lawyers fear to tread. The origin of tithes is part of a great historical development, and in order to find it out you have to read the whole of the history of the Church, not only in the Principality, but in other countries as well. My view is that the origin of tithes, by which I mean the custom of paying a tenth part of certain annual produce, becomes important in our Debate because tithe was a species of property which arose before the Church organisations became general. The real point of controversy is as to the appropriation of this tithe property for tithe. I will not remind the House of the provisions made by Statute for the appropriation for parochial purposes of this kind of property, but I should like to give my views as to the origin of tithes in Wales.

My right hon. Friend asserted that before the tenth century there is no evidence that tithe was commonly payable in Wales. That was stated in answer to the argument that tithe was a spontaneous, voluntary offering on the part of the Church people of that time towards Church purposes. I admit that at that time probably only renters had paid. I am nearly certain my right hon. Friend is right in this matter. The question is being discussed outside this House in magazine articles as to what is meant by tithe. I have looked at the works of Giraldus, and have examined all the texts I can find that have a bearing on this point. The first and principal refers to the existence of a somewhat curious custom about tithe. Tithe on special occasions was paid. On such occasions, for instance, as death one-tenth of the property was paid over. English lawyers have been talking about the special tithe a Welshman paid to the bishop on the occasion of his marriage, or on the occurrence of some equally important event. But those gifts of one-tenth of a man's property had nothing to do with the general custom of giving one-tenth of the agricultural produce every year. There is no doubt that that is the way in which tithe was originally paid in Wales, and the question is, when did this custom of paying annually by the renter arise in Wales? It appears to me, on general considerations, it is extremely unlikely the custom became usual before the Norman Conquest. We have direct testimony in regard to Ireland that no such tithe was paid in the twelfth century. On that we have the personal evidence of Giraldus Cambrensis, and we have the fact that the organisation of the Church in Wales was at that time very similar to the organisation of the Church in Ireland. In England and Wales alike the origin of the Church organisation appears to have been this: First the diocese, next the parish in some form or other, next your archdeaconries and rural deaneries. In regard to Wales, the bulk of the dioceses were only created at a very late period, and the reason was that the character of the Church in Wales before the Norman Conquest, and before they came under the influence of Theodore and his successor, was monastic, not monastic in the sense in which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Denbigh Boroughs (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) spoke yesterday, when he interposed with a remark during the speech of the Attorney-General, but monastic in the sense of a kind of tribal community. That was the character of the Church organisation. In that kind of organisation all the brethren worked themselves, and it is almost inconceivable that they should have been able to go outside their own area and demand that the population should pay one-tenth of the produce of the soil. That is a general observation. My next observation is that we have direct evidence from Giraldus Cambrensis upon the point. I would ask the permission of the House to read one extract from his biography, because it is directed to the condition of things in Wales, and it seems to me to carry with it the mark of absolute truth. He said:— On his return from studying at Paris, he immediately began to apply himself, and with the very greatest success, to Church work both in England and Wales. Afterwards as one born for the benefit not of himself but of his country, and proposing to the utmost of his powers to be a good man for the sake of the common weal, he displayed remarkable character in working for the Church's profit and doing his best to make good her losses. Accordingly seeing that throughout nearly the whole diocese of St. David's, especially in the counties of Pembroke and Cardigan, owing to the remissness of prelates tithes were not given either of wool or cheese, he went to Canterbury, to which at that time the Church of St. David's as indeed also all Wales was de facto by the lex provincialis sub-ordinate, and on his pointing out these losses to Archbishop Richard, the then president, who had risen to be both Primate of all England and legate of the Court of Rome, he was at once sent back by the archbishop to Wales as his legate, to cure these defects and any others he might there find. The archbishop further issued an admonition in his spiritual letter; and with a view to a remission of sins enjoined on all who had hitherto failed to give these tithes, that in future they should give them. And to such as were willing to comply with his admonition and give tithes he remitted one-third of the penance that had been enjoined, but to such as were recalcitrant and refused to give tithes he directed that the judgment of the Church should be strictly enforced against them. Immediately all the Welsh people in obedience to these reasonable admonitions conceded that the above-mentioned tithes should be given, and not only all the Welsh people, but the whole population of the whole country except the Flemings of Ros and their associates. That appears to me to show exactly what the Home Secretary suggested, that it was, at the beginning of the end of the twelfth century, when the Normans forced Norman bishops upon the four Welsh dioceses, that this custom of paying tithe became obligatory according to law. Here you have the direct evidence of Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the third quarter of that century, to the effect that it was only upon a direct order and admonition from the Archbishop of Canterbury that the people of Wales complied with the custom and paid tithe. I shall not delay the House further by a reference to these topics, but it seemed right as the Debate proceeded for those of us who get up and speak on the side of the majority to deal respectfully with the arguments on the other side. That must be my apology for dealing at such length with what may be only one and that not a very important point in our controversy. I am much obliged to the House for the kind indulgence they have shown to me, and I can only say that, notwithstanding the criticism that has been made upon this Bill, it appears to me to be eminently just and expedient, and I am perfectly certain that it will not lead to that amount of bitterness, to which it is generally asserted on the other side that it will mean, but that it will be a great message of peace and prosperity to that country.

Mr. BALFOUR

The hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down devoted the last twenty minutes of his speech to a discussion of the theory of tithes advanced first in this House by the Home Secretary. I might have supposed that the Home Secretary had got that theory by a kind of inward illumination, but it appears, although Giraldus Cambrensis is an authority which I presume everybody who is interested in the early history of Wales has studied, that the passage which is so conclusive to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, has escaped the notice of many learned historians who have dealt with this subject, and that it was reserved for the learned Gentleman, acting upon this hint derived from his inner consciousness by the Home Secretary, to discover that there really Was historical foundation for a theory, which, though advanced from that bench by one high authority, has been contradicted from the same bench by another authority equally high. I do not propose to follow the right hon. and learned Gentleman in his discussion for more than one reason. In the first place, I have not the apparatus, either of inward intuition or acquired learning, which distinguishes both the first author of the theory and its last supporter. I am quite unable to add anything from what I know of theory or of Giraldus Cambrensis either for or against the argument which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has advanced. In the second place, I heartily agree with an observation with which he prefaced that very interesting discussion to which we have just listened, the remark, I mean, that it had very little to do with the subject before the House, and that it really had very little bearing upon the fundamental issues which we are discussing. Indeed, the beginning of his speech was quite sufficient proof that was so. How did the right hon. and learned Gentleman begin? He began by reproaching my Noble Friend behind me (Lord Robert Cecil) for having made in the course of his very admirable speech yesterday no reference at all to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite called the "central argument" on which everything else in this discussion depends. That central argument, I need hardly say, has nothing whatever to do either with tithe or Giraldus Cambrensis.

What is that "central argument"? The central argument, according to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, is that Wales is a separate nationality, and, being a separate nationality, and having declared by the votes of the Members it sends to this House year after year that it desire" the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church in Wales, it follows from those two things, the fact that it is claimed to be a separate nationality and the fact that its representatives here have given their support to that policy, that this House ought to accept it. I always touch on this question of nationality in fear and trembling. I do not at all deny that we may very properly, each one of us, consider and be moved by the particular patriotism of the part of the United Kingdom in which we happen to have been born, or where our fathers were born. I quite agree with that; but I think, and I must say so frankly, that we are getting—not we alone, but other communities are also getting—to abuse this notion of nationality and are carrying it to an excess which is really deleterious from the point of view of the interests of the separate party. I do not suggest for a moment that a Welshman ought not to be proud of being a Welshman. Of course, I do not. I do not suggest for a moment that the Welsh have not shown and do not now show qualities which, to a certain extent, are different from other citizens of the United Kingdom, partly due to their history and partly due to their origin, and which make them a most invaluable element in that historic compound which we call the United Kingdom. Do not let us, and do not let them, drive this point of view to excess. There is a danger of its being driven to excess.

I am told that at this moment just across the North Sea the small country of Belgium is being torn asunder by the controversies of two sections of its population, to whom this principle of nationality has begun to appeal in a way which it never appealed to them before, and who no doubt do speak different languages, and are to a certain extent of different blood. Nothing but harm can come to Belgium from that division, and nothing but harm can come to us if we are perpetually thinking not of what we have in common but what there is which separates us. I do not in the least want to undervalue the historic continuity of the Welsh people. The right hon. and learned Gentleman traces it down from mediaeval time. He told us, among other things, that although there had been a continuity of blood and of tradition, that bad not been found inconsistent with a great change in character. He said that in mediæval times the Welsh were a cheerful nation, and a gay nation, and a happy nation, and that in modern times a shade of melancholy had come over them, some traces of which I even thought I discovered in the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but, be the Welsh grave or gay, be they like the happy mediæ;val peasants or whether they prefer the more learned melancholy type, whether in past times or in the present, they are an element in the United Kingdom which deserves and receives all other respect and affection. But do not let them always be thinking that they are Welshmen and not Britons. Do not let them always be reflecting what events in their history have made a division between the East and the West, between their mountains and the great plains of England. Let them remember, whatever the past may have been, that in the historical future we must be one nation, each, no doubt, adding some separate elements of excellence to the common stock, but more concerned with the great things which we share together than with the relatively small things which we each hold by a separate tenure.

The right hon. Gentleman will perhaps allow me to leave the learned part of his speech and come to the application of what I have just been saying—to what he calls the central argument on which all this controversy in which we are engaged depends. He seems to claim—he does claim, as I understand it—that because the vast majority of the Welsh Members have shown persistently for several Parliaments and for many years that they desire Disestablishment and Disendowment, therefore, on the principle of nationality, it ought to be given to them. On the principle of nationality, as interpreted by the present Government, it ought not to be given to them. In the part of the United Kingdom which, above all others, the present Government treats as a separate nation, and to which they wish to give separate powers, they deliberately exclude from the Parliament which is to be set up—a Parliament with powers far in excess of anything I understand to be desired or claimed by the Welsh Members, even those who are most anxious for a federal system—that Irish Parliament is not allowed to touch the questions analogous to those which the right hon. Gentleman says it is inherent in the very notion of nationality should be decided by the separate Parliament. I do not understand how he can vote for the Home Rule Bill after that. According to him, it is a direct insult to Irish nationality. The one great thing he claims for Welsh nationality is that it should determine the very things, religious and educational, which are deliberately excluded from the Irish Bill. There fore, if he will allow me to say so, the doctrines of nationality as practised by his own friends are wholly inconsistent with the doctrines of nationality as he desires to see them practised in connection with this Bill.

I do not wish to dwell too much upon the inconsistency of the application of those principles as exhibited by the present Government and their supporters. The contradictions are great. I say that as long as Welsh Members are an element in this House they must carry with them authority as to the wishes of Wales, but that authority does not settle how a question they bring before us is to be decided. We must be allowed to use our own reason; we must be allowed to apply the principles of justice which we think generally applicable to the claims that they put forward. They come before us with all the authority behind them of a majority in their respective constituencies, but that authority, however great and however high you choose to put it, docs not overbear the great principles which ought to animate an assembly like this when it is dealing with vast interests of property and vast interests connected with religion. It is an extraordinary thing that, while the right hon. Gentleman tells us that we ignore the one argument for this Bill, he and his Friends spend almost the whole of their time in explaining—in speeches of great interest, let me add—and bringing forward facts which, in many cases, I am not at all prepared to dispute, how it comes about that the Church has lost the position which it once had. I do not know how many explanations have not been given of that fact, which I think is important. The Attorney-General, who is not at this moment in his place, gave us a very interesting account, from his point of view, of how it happened. He says, and I am not at all sure that his argument was not endorsed by the right hon. Gentleman who just sat down, that the English Established Church has lost its position in Wales because it really is not suited to the Celtic temperament. Why is it not suited to the Celtic temperament according to these Gentlemen? It is because there is a certain cold dignity—this is their view—about the services of the Established Church which does not commend itself to the warmer sentiments and more readily aroused feelings of the native Welsh. I do not see how that theory, that ingenious ethnological theory, really fits in with the facts. In the first place, as the right hon. Gentleman told us, the Welsh were at one time most devoted adherents of the Roman Catholic Church.

Mr. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS

Never of the Reformed Church.

Mr. BALFOUR

I said the Roman Catholic Church. Then we come to the time between the Reformation and the outburst of religious revival in the eighteenth century. The right hon. Gentleman says they were not devoted to the Reformed Episcopal English Church. The Attorney-General says just the reverse. He told us—it is one of his criticisms of my Noble Friend (Lord Robert Cecil)—that when the Parliamentary settlement of 1662 took place, Parliament in England dealt with ecclesiastical property which had at one time belonged to the State considered in its religious aspect—I do not say I endorse all this, but it is the argument—and that in 1662 it used all those resources for the English Church. But he went on to say that the argument of my Noble Friend that there was a Parliamentary settlement in which Parliament, well knowing the existence of dissent, nevertheless, in spite of their knowledge, gave a Parliamentary title to the English Church and to the property now held by the English Church, that argument, says the Attorney-General, does not really apply in the case of Wales, because in Wales there was no dissent. That was the whole point of the Attorney-General's argument. These right hon. Gentlemen, sitting upon benches in the closest proximity, seem to me to differ upon a question which I will not say is vital to this issue, because in my opinion all these historical arguments, with which I am now dealing out of respect to those who have preceded me in the discussion, are very remotely connected with the issue upon which we have to decide. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there was this great devotion in mediæval times to the Roman Catholic Church, which surely is as far separated as the English Church from the present Welsh religious position! I am utterly unable to follow this argument about the Celtic character. When I consider what the view of the peoples whose language is or has recently been Celtic, either in Ireland, in Wales, in Britain, or in the Highlands, I am utterly unable to bring together the theory of the Attorney-General with the notorious facts of the case in those other parts of the world where the Celtic temperament is, I presume, as strong as in Wales, of which he was speaking.

I do not really think that we ought to waste too much time over these discussions. We have to consider in this Bill what we are doing for the future. Hon. Gentlemen opposite really appear to think that when they have accounted for the fact of dissent in Wales they have justified what they are going to do to the Church. There is no connection that I can see, in logic or anything else, between the two propositions. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down almost apologised to the House for bringing forward some story—I know he takes a great deal "of trouble over his facts—some discreditable story about a Bishop of St. Asaph who lived a hundred years ago. I do not care whether there are a hundred stories about a Bishop of St. Asaph one hundred years ago or two hundred years ago. It is important to know that these unhappy results have occurred, and that there is this division, which, perhaps, need never have happened, in Welsh religious feeling, and that that has been partly due—I do not say wholly due—to the apathy or misunderstanding of the English Church, and partly to the shameless way in which Welsh benefices were used as political rewards by eighteenth-century statesmen.

I have no doubt that these stories are true and might be multiplied. I have no doubt they have a great deal to do with the present position in Wales. I accept the account of them, although you might qualify it by a discussion of details—probably the right hon. Gentleman and I would not wholly agree as to the details—but as to the broad facts we all accept, on both sides of the House, that events have occurred for which, no doubt, the general religious condition in England and Europe was partly responsible, which have had the melancholy result of dividing the Church of England from many of those who, in happier circumstances, would have been her contented and her devoted sons. I do not think there was a speech made from this side of the House which did not accept that statement. We ask two simple questions. Grant that the Church has lost much of the position which she once held, grant that in times past she deserved to lose it, what is there in contemporary history which justifies this Bill, which, firstly, Disestablishes her, and secondly, Disendows her? I think those two questions ought to be treated separately. There I differ from the Under-Secretary for the Home Department who, at the beginning of the proceedings, in an interposition in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Hayes Fisher), said that Disendowment and Disestablishment were two names for the same thing.

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was here when I made the interruption?

Mr. BALFOUR

I was.

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

I am in the recollection of the House. What I said was that Disestablishment and Dismemberment were two names for the same thing.

Mr. BALFOUR

I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. May I take up that revised—

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

It is not revised.

Mr. BALFOUR

I never confounded the hon. Gentleman with the Lord Chancellor—not for a moment! I quite admit that I misunderstood him. I think what he has now said is interesting and important. He says Disestablishment means Dismemberment. If it means dismemberment, what becomes of the national argument? If it means dismemberment, why are the Welsh Members, and the Welsh Members alone, to settle the dismemberment of the English Church? And what becomes of the right hon. Gentleman who told us that the whole essence and foundation of the case they were laying before us was that the Welsh Members wanted to Disestablish the Welsh Church, when the learned Gentleman who speaks on the same side from the Front Bench says that carries with it dismemberment of the English Church, and the English Members are not to have any say in the matter? They are to follow the lead of the Welsh Members, and because the Welsh Members desire the division of the English Church, they are to follow on the grounds of rationality. The English never are allowed to have a nationality. I do not think there can really be a stronger argument against that aspect of the Bill, or against the fundamental proposition of the right hon. Gentleman, than the doctrine laid down earlier in the evening by the learned Gentleman. Disestablishment and Disendowment are then, it is agreed, quite different propositions. One can take place without the other, and I should have thought it would be even possible for the full sentiment of Welsh nationality to be satisfied by some arrangement which would prevent what apparently hurts their feelings so much, namely, the Metropolitan authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. They do not appear to desire that. All they want is to cut the English Church into two, and treat the Welsh party as if it had no connection with the body of which for centuries it has been an integral portion.

I cannot understand quite what is expected to be gained by Disestablishment. Take one of these small Welsh farmers, who, I quite agree, are, largely in agricultural districts, the people we have to consider. In what way will his position or his outlook on the religion of his country or his own religious practice, or that of his friends or anything else, be altered by the Disestablishment of the Church in his district, supposing he is a Nonconformist? The vicar is not removed; the old services go on in the old church. No doubt they may be in time crippled by want of funds. No doubt great suffering will be or may be inflicted upon the curates, but how does he benefit by that? What religious or irreligious sentiment is aided by the fact that the bishops of the Welsh diocese no longer take part in Convocation and that there is no further appeal to Ecclesiastical Courts? He thinks perhaps now, when he votes for an hon. Gentleman who is in favour of Disestablishment, that there will be some change which affects him. What change will there be? No one has ever been able to describe it. You hear some talk of religious equality. I am not going to discuss realities or irrealities of that kind, but I am asking how equality will have been gained in the eyes of my supposed parishioner. How are Church and Chapel more levelled than they were before, except that the Church is poorer than it was before? What other difference is there? I believe it is a confusion of ideas rather than a want of generosity of spirit which makes people talk in this way about inequality. I do not believe that any important section of Welshmen gloat over the impoverishment of the Church to which they do not belong. All the same, what is it they mean by equality in concrete fact? What is it that in their actual lives makes a difference in anything which is within the ambit of their own experience in their own parish or diocese? Nothing; it can make no difference to them—this local difference of the Court of Appeal. It can make no difference to them that the four dioceses of Wales are within the Metropolitan See of Canterbury. Is that what you mean by inequality? And if it is not, what is it except money? It all comes back to that. No one has ever been able to tell me what it is except money. I rather think I have the explicit declaration of certain Welsh Members that it is money. Did not the hon. and learned Gentleman express his contempt for any ecclesiastical reform which had not money in it?

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

What I said was that Disestablishment was a social programme, and that no social programme was worth having unless there was money in it.

Mr. BALFOUR

I do not see that the hon. and learned Gentleman has bettered. his case by that explanation. He will see, I think, that he has confirmed the proposition I was trying to establish, which is that really and truly when they talk of equality all they are thinking of is money. Unconsciously it is money. No one has ever been able to explain what else it is, and no one can now explain. That brings us to what is really the central point of this Bill, which is not Disestablishment but Disendowment. That is what you are really after. It is this £158,000 which is in question to-day. High-sounding phrases—the use of the word "equality" and the word "liberty"—are brought in with reckless frequency and no meaning, as far as I can discover, whatever. But if you come to Disestablishment, you come across principles on which, if the Welsh Members will allow me to say so, it is not for them specially to offer an opinion. You come to the question of the principles of jurisprudence, on which the House ought to be guided when it is dealing with great corporate property. I say that without doubt this is a violation of every sound principle for dealing with corporate property. I believe I am not wrong in saying that the Supreme Court of the United States had to deal with this very question of Disestablishment and Disendowment not so long after the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the American Constitution. It was, I think, in Virginia, where there had been an Established Church, and where that Church was Disestablished, and then came the question which so interests hon. Gentlemen opposite—whether it should be Disendowed also. It is not a matter in which I have any special learning, but I believe the case came before the Supreme Court of America, and I believe they decided that by every principle of equity and justice—those, I think, were the phrases they used—it was a fact that the Church being Disestablished did not carry with it any ground whatever for saying it ought to be Disendowed, and implying that there must be some abuse of the trust before they could deprive a corporation of its property.

6.0 P.M.

Were not the Supreme Court of the United States perfectly correct in their statement? Is it not contrary to natural equity and natural justice that you should take away from a great body like the Church of England money which, by common admission, is being properly used and, by common admission, is being used for the purposes for which it ought to be used? No amount of historical refining will ever get over that broad principle. The unfortunate Church of England is not allowed ever to have a claim. If you say that her title goes back for immemorial centuries, you say there was a break at the Reformation, and you take advantage of the inevitable fact that anything which goes through centuries must undergo some alteration. If you take my Noble Friend's point and say that Parliament gave a title in 1662, in the Act of Settlement, then you say Parliament did a most iniquitous thing, because it took funds which were intended for the nation and gave them to a sect. Then comes down the hon. and learned Gentleman and says they were not a sect; they were a nation. That is turned round and made an argument for saying that the Act of 1662 did not give a Parliamentary title. This unfortunate Church never can be right. If you were dealing, not with a Church which for various historical reasons you wanted to injure, or, at all events, to Disestablish and Disendow, if you were dealing with any other corporation, if you were dealing with a Nonconformist corporation, what would you say to people who said it had a Parliamentary title 260 years old, but it was a Parliamentary title that ought never to have been given? Can you manage civilised societies on these principles? The jurisprudence of every civilised society in the world regards security of possession and long tenure as being a necessary element in every well-governed State, and you are going to bring in insecurity where security ought to have been found, you are going to disturb property, you are going to disturb ancient landmarks which ought to be left, at the very time when you are violating all the principles which you try to apply to an Established Church in order to secure the property of this or that Nonconformist body. The inconsistency is so gross, and the violation of all sound principles is so grave, that I cannot believe that hon. Gentlemen, when they come to think it over, and when they can get out of their heads the mere fact that the Welsh political representatives have desired this for two or three Parliaments, will feel that they should come to the House of Commons and in the name of Wales make this application and offer up this prayer to us that we should endorse this gross act of injustice. I think they will feel when they have had time to think it over that they are doing not only a very ill service to the Church, and a very ill service to religion, but a very ill service to those fundamental principles of public policy which we are all bound to respect if we mean to maintain the stability of civilised institutions. I certainly do not think it worth while, even if I were capable, to deal with the historical arguments which, I think, are largely irrelevant, and the irrelevancy of which I have tried to show.

There is one observation, suggested to me by the learned Attorney-General's speech, which I think I may be allowed to make in conclusion. The learned Attorney-General when he got to his peroration passed a eulogy upon the Parliament Act, and he turned round to his Friends—I do not quote his exact words—and said in substance that this happy reform of our institutions will make this the last time upon which we shall have to read this Bill a second time. That may well be the case. I think it is quite possible, but have not the Parliament Act and the Welsh Bill rather changed places? The Parliament Act was originally an interim arrangement, intended to allow the Home Rule Bill and the Welsh Church Bill to pass. That was the object with which it was brought in. We were avowedly and boastingly deprived of our old constitution, and we were reluctantly deprived of any immediate hope of the new and revised constitution promised at the time, and the promise of which remains on the Statute Book. But the unhappy interval in which we are working under these provisional institutions was to be used for passing the Irish and the Welsh Bills. That was the avowed object. The Parliament Act was the instrument intended to carry out these reforms. I now begin to think that these reforms are going to be carried in order to justify the instrument. I do not believe for a moment that hon. Gentlemen opposite are happy either over the Irish Bill or the Welsh Bill.

I do not for a moment believe that they think that either the events or the arguments which have occurred in the last two years since the Parliament Act was passed have made those measures, for which the Parliament Act was passed, more acceptable to their countrymen, or more likely to conduce to the return to office of the party who proposed them. On the contrary, every human being who has discussed the Home Rule Bill—we will have other opportunities of dealing with that subject—everybody knows that has got them into difficulties they never foresaw. The difficulties of the Welsh Bill are of a less lurid description, but I think more and more the country is beginning to feel what we have always felt, and is opening its ears to arguments that we have always urged, namely, that in essence and fundamentally this Bill is nothing else than a Bill for robbing a Church which is doing its duty. The Nonconformist deputation which the right hon. Gentleman refused to see is but a symptom of what is going on in every part of the country, and in every part of the country where this problem is being considered they brush all your irrelevant history aside, and they ask themselves this question, "Is the Church in Wales doing its duty?" And the answer they get is a unanimous answer from all sides, that it is doing its duty. The next question they ask is, "Is the Church in Wales over-endowed with this world's goods; has it got more than is required to enable it to carry out its duty?" And again the answer comes unanimously from every party and quarter of the House, from every authority, that it has not got more than is required. With the plain common sense of Englishmen, whether they be Nonconformists or Conformists, whether they belong to the Established Church or not, can they do otherwise than draw the inevitable conclusion? Then why in that case are you taking away money which is avowedly not being misused by those who are responsible for its expenditure? [An HON. MEMBER: "Because it does not belong to them."] If the hon. Gentleman who interrupted me can find a single Nonconformist body in this country, or anywhere else, which has a better title to its funds than the Church in Wales has to its funds, it will be time to take his interruption seriously.

I think myself that what I have ventured to put to the House as to the change of opinion in the country, both on the Irish Bill and on this Bill, is coming home to hon. Gentlemen opposite, and that I did not exaggerate when I said that they are quite as anxious to pass these Bills in order to justify the Parliament Act as they were originally to pass the Parliament Act in order to get these Bills. It is the cry of baffled legislators as much as anything else which moves them to give the Government the steady support—well, I do not think it is very steady on the Welsh Bill—but to give the measure of support which the Government can still claim on this matter. I think the whole procedure of forcing these Bills through under these circumstances is iniquitous. There is something grandiose, no doubt, about the Irish part of the policy. You dismember a great historic union. You have a lurid background of possible civil war. There is a certain splendour about it and a certain dramatic impressiveness. But what are we to say of this Bill? There is no splendour about this Bill. There is nothing impressive and nothing dramatic. It is a thoroughly mean proposal, having for its object nothing connected with the spread of religion, nothing connected with those social reforms spoken of by the learned Gentleman, if by social reforms he means, as I hope he does, not merely certain material changes, but the development of the spiritual life of the whole community. There is nothing connected with these. No, the one object of the Bill, and the only object which it will successfully attain, is that of taking away from those who have too little money already to carry out their great duties two-thirds of the Endowments they have inherited by an undoubted title from an immemorial past.

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith)

I will not do more in regard to the concluding part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, in which he dwelt on the relation of this Bill to the Parliament Act, than make two observations. The first is that I take note of his statement that the Parliament Act was avowedly passed as an instrument in order that this Bill and another Bill with which we are familiar might pass into law.

Mr. BALFOUR

Immediately pass.

The PRIME MINISTER

The second observation I have to make is that the right hon. Gentleman decerns by some form of intuition, which I certainly do not share with him, indications of opinion that the country is less in favour of these Bills now than it was two or three years ago. I should like very much to know on what evidence that statement is made. The truth is, and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree with me here—it is my apology for making a very short draft on the patience of the House—it is extremely difficult at this time of day to say anything in regard to this measure which has not been said, and said well, before, in many cases twenty or even a hundred times. Twenty years ago, when I held the office of Home Secretary, I introduced a similar Bill—a less generous Bill I agree as regards its dealings with the Endowments of the Welsh Church—and we argued then those same great differences of principle which have been repeatedly argued afresh in the course of these Debates.

Lord HUGH CECIL

And you were immediately defeated at the General Election.

The PRIME MINISTER

At that time, apart from the argument of principle, the point of policy—though I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is not conclusive, but still it lies very near the root of the matter—namely, that the opinion of the Welsh people, for whom, if for anybody, the claim for Disestablishment exists, clearly expressed as it has been, was certainly not so plainly defined or so emphatically asserted as it has been now, for in these twenty years we must, I think, in all fairness regard as the settled judgment of the Welsh electorate the opinion which has been expressed at three, if not more, General Elections. That opinion has been affirmed and reaffirmed. The right hon. Gentleman says this is a petty affair. Well, Wales is a small place. The Welsh people are not a numerous population, but although Wales is small in area, although her inhabitants are not numerous, judged by the standard of England or other great countries, they have just as intense a feeling of national patriotism. They are quite as much moved by corporate sentiment, corporate instincts, corporate aspirations and ideals, as any of the larger communities which go to make up the British Empire.

Mr. BALFOUR

I think that the right hon. Gentleman has misinterpreted what I said, in quoting my use of the word "petty." I did not mean that the Bill was petty because Wales was a small country. I meant that it was petty because it was mean.

The PRIME MINISTER

Wales is a small country, but the Welsh people regard this as the most serious of all matters. I do not believe that there is one political or social question which has had the same tenacious and enduring hold upon the mind of the Welsh people as this question has had for the best part of the lifetime of two generations. Therefore, though the sum of money involved is very small, and though the right hon. Gentleman may think that in this respect more generous terms might have been held out to the Church, yet when we come to the question as to whether or not this Bill should be read a second time, we are really face to face with the question whether this repeated insistent demand by the vast majority of the Welsh people with regard to a matter in which they themselves are most intimately and directly concerned should not have effect given to it by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The right hon. Gentleman made some interesting remarks in the early part of his speech on the subject of nationality. He paid a tribute, not, I think, for the first time—I have heard him do so more than once before—to the value of these separate threads or strands which go to make up the cable of our Imperial unity or strength, and he said, very truly, that we ought not to get into the habit of thinking not of what we have in common, but of what separates us.

I agree with him. But unless you do that with due regard to that which is distinctive, and that which is peculiar, in its historical origin—for unlike the right hon. Gentleman I maintain that in a matter of this kind you cannot divorce either the present or the future from the past—and unless you have regard to those elements which were and are distinctive, those peculiar characteristics, which are deep-rooted in many cases in the past traditions and experience of one of these constituent elements in our common unity, you will not get that habit of thinking in common in regard to common interests which it is all-important that we should develop to the utmost of our power. In other words, the deference and concession in all matters of local concern, where local sentiment and interests are deeply indicated, are one of the first conditions of vivifying and stimulating our Imperial strength. I agree again with the right hon. Gentleman that in a complex organism like the United Kingdom it may be that for special reasons, and in special cases, in reference to some particular section of the community, even a strongly expressed wish must be either denied or at any rate postponed. But the burden of proof lies ort those who maintain that proposition in a particular case. I am not going into these elaborate, and, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, to some extent irrelevant historical disquisitions on this subject. But we cannot get rid of this simple fact, that to the vast majority of the Welsh people the Welsh Church, as it is called, is not a national institution. It is four dioceses in the Province of Canterbury.

The reason for that deeply rooted and ineradicable conviction in their mind is owing to the fact that for over two centuries, if not for more, the Church in Wales was treated as an outpost and a convenience of the Church of England. Before I pass from that point, though I may be old-fashioned, I have some belief in representative Government, and I take it that the opinions of the elected representatives from Wales, returned, so far as this matter is concerned, in substantially the same numbers over a long series of elections, must be taken as the authentic expression of the convictions and judgment of the Welsh people. We were told in the course of this Debate that we ought to modify that view in consequence of certain petitions and protests which have been presented to me by Welsh Nonconformists. The right hon. Gentleman was wrong in saying that I refused to receive a deputation. I did receive one deputation. I refused to receive a second one, but I received the first one and heard it for a considerable time, and I have, in regard to the petitions, to make these two observations: In the first place, it was quite impossible, as it would have been possible if they had proceeded in the ordinary way of petitions to the House of Commons, to test the reality and genuineness of these signatures which were adhibited to the petition. Of course, grave allegations were made, both on one side and the other, as to how these petitions were got up or were more or less canvassed. It is impossible for me to form a judgment on a point like that. I can have no means of forming a judgment. I cannot say how much Nonconformist sentiment these gentlemen, either in one case or the other, really represent.

But the second point, which was much more important was this: I asked them—we had to conduct our communications through the medium of an interpreter; they were obviously Welsh peasants and tradesmen—but in answer to my question they were all in favour of Disestablishment. The hon. Gentleman who introduced the deputation will agree with me that that was the case. They were in favour of Disestablishment. The only part of the Bill to which, they took exception was the Disendowment Clauses, and it seems to me that prima facie, at any rate, many of them had a very vague notion as to what the Bill itself did and what it took away from the Church. I confess that I cannot see anything in this particular proceeding by way of Nonconformist protest which invalidates or impairs in any way the weight of evidence that both Disestablishment and Disendowment are desired by the overwhelming majority of the people of Wales. I only say I do not think that that is conclusive, but I think that it takes us a considerable distance on the road when you are considering this question from the point of view of policy. I will now go briefly into one or two points, which were insisted on by the right hon. Gentleman, around which, as at the beginning so now at the end, this controversy seems to me to turn. The first is as to the ethics. The question of Disestablishment, I think can hardly be described as an ethical question.

People may hold, and many people do hold, perhaps the majority of the people in England, that an Established Church acquiesced in and supported by a majority of the nation, has from the religious and spiritual point of view, special and peculiar advantages In the first place, they will say that it gives corporate expression to what may be described as the religious aspect of the community. In the next place—and I think that I have heard the right hon. Gentleman on previous occasions develop this argument—they say that it secures a wider range of thought and activity, a more elastic interpretation of formularies and dogmas, a more educated ministry, a more independent laity, and a larger and freer atmosphere, both theological and ecclesiastical. That is the argument which has been presented with the illustration of experience, in favour of Establishment. But may I not gain general assent when I say that the strongest supporter of Establishment must admit, if he is a candid and fair-minded man, that there are conditions under which a nation can, without any such Establishment, show itself as religious in the truest, highest, and deepest sense of the word, and at least as free and efficient. What true friend of the Church of England—and I hope I may count myself as one of the number—who is not at this moment at times tempted to lament that in matters real and vital she has no autonomy, and that she is bound and fettered by dogmas and formularies of the sixteenth and seventeenth century? After all, wisdom did not cease with these centuries, and as our recent experience has shown, any substantial modification, however much desired in the interests of a larger ecclesiastical life, is a painful, laborious, even if indeed it be a. possible task.

Look rather, then, to our great kindred nation, the United States of America. There we see how it is possible both to have without Establishment the religious life of a community as strong and vital as it could possibly be under the ægis of an Established Church, and with at least as large and liberal an atmosphere of thought and an infinitely greater power of elasticity. I think that the argument with regard to Disestablishment is not an ethical one, although one's individual standpoint may vary, but is really based on considerations of expediency, and, at any rate, of experience. As regards Disendowment, where the ethical question undoubtedly does come in, as I have frequently said, in the course of these discussions, we claim here to deal with the ancient, as distinguished from the modern Endowments, as we believe in the interests of the community, and with all due regard to existing interests, and I believe that that is a claim which is vindicated both by history and by precedent. I do not want to go once again into the much vexed question of the origin and purpose of these old Endowments. It is common ground which cannot be disputed, though we have not been able to dive into the bosom or the secret thoughts of those pious benefactors who have long since crumbled into the dust, that these Endowments were given to the nation on its spiritual side in the days when Church and State were co-extensive entities.

Lord ROBERT CECIL

There is no such common ground. It is not common to our side.

The PRIME MINISTER

I thought that it was. I thought that I should have commanded assent in that. They were given at a time when Church and State were coextensive entities. I always held—and I incurred some disfavour, I think, with some of my best friends, who reproached me with lukewarmness in this respect—that those benefactions were given to the Church, not only as the only religious, but by far the greatest eleemosynary agency then existing. You cannot speculate as to the precise intentions or motives of those pious founders in the past, but if you look at the form which their benefactions took, it seems to me at any rate reasonable to suppose that in many cases, while undoubtedly the religious was the dominating factors, they were people who were intensely interested in the promotion of charity and the development of education, and they found in the mediæval Anglican Church the only agency by which their interests in that respect could possibly be carried into effect. Therefore, when you are dealing with the ethics of this Bill, I do not think it is possible to ignore that side of the case. But when you come to the question of precedent, the right hon. Gentleman talks, as he did in his peroration just now, about robbing the Church. When we hear of robbery, spoliation, and sacrilege as though they were appropriate epithets to describe the process on which we are engaged in this Bill, I am obliged to say once more that you have a precedent in this respect which is absolutely material—the precedent which is on our Statute Book, the Irish Church Act. In point of principle you have there placed on the Statute Book, initiated by one of the most devout and greatest of Churchmen of our time, and carried through the House of Lords, a measure to which, if your argument is well-founded, every one of those terms is at least as applicable. But when you come to the purposes to which that part of the Endowments of the Church, which is now going to be appropriated, are to be applied, you will find that in the use of a very large surplus which was left undisposed of by Parliament on the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church, both parties in the State, with perfect impartiality, have dipped their hands into this sacrilegious windfall, if I may use such a word, for the most secular and least religious purposes possible to conceive. I now come to the question of dismemberment, which means, in this connection as I understand it, the formal separation of these dioceses from their synodical position in the Convocation, or otherwise of the Province of Canterbury. I agree that it is a very necessary effect of the Bill, just as in the case of the Irish Church, which was united by the Act of Union to the Church of England. You dissolved the bond which had then existed for very nearly seventy years, and dismembered two bodies which had previously been united. When you have made that admission, as I do, it follows that Disestablishment means in that sense dismemberment. What then! What is there to prevent the continued union and community of interest and connection of these four dioceses with the rest of the Church of England in any different sense from what they are now? Unless you treat Convocation as something so essential to the unity of the Church and the common corporate action of its different parts that the fact that a diocese is separated from legal representation in Convocation inflicts upon it and upon the Church from which it is separated something in the nature of an irreparable injury, I do not see that this argument about dismemberment amounts to really more than a technical one. The experience of this and other Christian Churches, not only in this but in other countries, shows that it is perfectly possible, without anything in the nature of such formal legal incorporation as a common representation in Convocation involves, to co-operate to the fullest extent, with the most fruitful results for all the common purposes for which a Church exists.

The right hon. Gentleman, towards the close of his speech, said what does the Welsh Nonconformist farmer gain by Disestablishment? He said he was not speaking of money, and I am not speaking of money either. What does the Welsh Nonconformist farmer, he asked, gain by Disestablishment? What difference does it make to him? Is he better off after the Church is Disestablished than before. To what length does that argument of the right hon. Gentleman take us? If carried to its logical conclusion, that argument means, or ought to mean, to a rational, sober-minded, industrious, and perhaps not over-zealous inhabitant of this country, a matter of the greatest indifference whether the Roman Catholic Church is Established or whether the Anglican Church is Disestablished, or whether any other form of religious organisation is singled out for a position of superiority as compared with its rivals? It is not a question of pounds, shillings and pence. The Welsh Nonconformist farmer will gain very little materially from the passing of this Bill, but he will gain that which he and his forefathers and the forefathers of his forefathers for two centuries past have looked upon as essential to the completion and quickening of their national life, the sense that all religious denominations are put on one and the same footing, and that the principle of religious equality has been established.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

The right hon. Gentleman has been guilty of a very grave historical inaccuracy. The right hon. Gentleman said that for two centuries the forefathers of Welsh Nonconformists have been in favour of religious equality by means of Disestablishment.

The PRIME MINISTER

I did not say that. What I had in my mind was this, that the founders of Welsh Nonconformity, who were all zealous Churchmen, down to the eighteenth century, and who were all anxious, I agree, to remain within the walls of the Church, were really the originators of this movement.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that even as late as 1834, the leaders of Welsh Nonconformity publicly dissociated themselves from the Disestablishment movement. As regards the eighteenth century, the congregations of Nonconformists in Wales were few and far between. I quite admit that the congregations of Church people were not very large cither. To represent that this movement goes right away back in the history of Wales is to state what is not the case. In regard to Convocation, I cannot understand what difference it would make if the Government cut out part of Clause 3, thus giving the Church in Wales what she is asking for, namely, the right to attend the deliberations of the Province of Canterbury, the right that she should remain an integral part of the Church of that union of which the Church in Wales wishes to remain part. That would not affect Disestablishment at all; it would merely be that the Church of Wales would be represented where she desires to be represented, and that she would maintain that spiritual continuity and descent which she believes is vitally necessary to her traditional position. Many Churchmen look to the day when Convocation will be the real and vital spiritual authority in the Church. If Disestablishment comes, and if further autonomy comes, it will give a new direction to Convocation, to which Churchmen look for the future guidance of their spiritual life. Churchmen in Wales at their diocesan conference have asked for and demanded that they should have that freedom which is enjoyed by other Congregational Churches, by being represented in the Synod of England and Wales together. I remember at Nottingham meeting the hon. Member for Mid-Glamorgan (Mr. Hugh Edwards), and I asked him, "What are you doing here?" He told me he was a Welsh representative at the annual meeting of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. All we are asking is that we should be allowed to send, as we have sent for centuries, our clergy and our bishops to that Synod, that ancient Synod, of the Church of England, where purely spiritual matters affecting the Church of England are discussed by the spiritual leaders of our denomination. That is denied to us specifically in this Sub-clause in the Government Bill. We do ask as Churchmen, and not as politicians in any way, for that essential freedom and the right of any free Church to remain part of the communion of which we wish to remain part. That is our position on that point. I do think that the right hon. Gentleman's Liberationist principles ought to concede that point. It is one of the outstanding points of difference which is causing the greatest ill-feeling in Wales. By it you are doing something on the spiritual side against the Church in Wales. One of the first things we should agitate for would be the removal of that Clause which forbids us to remain members of Convocation. One of the first things we should do if this Bill passes is to ask for the repeal of that part and other parts of the Bill.

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has fairly estimated the opinion even of Wales, and certainly not of England, upon this Bill. I do not wish to exaggerate the importance of the protest. I do not wish to bring it out as a great party triumph, but to take it absolutely at its face value. The protest from the diocese of St. Asaph's was very much the smallest and the humblest, as it was the first, and I hope they will not consider it offensive on my part if I say that it was the most amateur of those protests, compared with the gigantic protests from South Wales, led by the treasurer of the Anglesey Liberal Association. Here you have prominent leaders of Liberal opinion in Wales giving their names and going out to organise this protest. It seems to me far more significant than the 103,000 signatures to the protest which the Prime Minister so courteously allowed me to bring to his room are the remarkable names which followed upon that protest. There were all the members of the Cory family in Cardiff, one of whom was High Sheriff of Glamorgan, and another treasurer of the Baptist College in Cardiff, and a Mr. Richard Cory was a conspicuous figure in South Wales with great Liberal traditions behind him while you have, again, the treasurer of the Cardiff Liberal Association. You have those gentlemen coming cut for the first time against the Disendowment proposals of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said that those people are in favour of Disestablishment. A great many of them are, but some are not. Some of the gentlemen he indicated were in favour of Disestablishment and some opposed to it, but all are opposed to Disendowment. When he says that these gentlemen are led away by misrepresentation, are gentlemen like the members of the Cory family going to be led away by them? Is Mr. Henry Radcliff going to be led away in that way? Some hon. gentlemen opposite laugh when Mr. Radcliff's name is mentioned, but every Nonconformist denomination in Wales is only too anxious to get money out of Mr. Henry Radcliff—[HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no!"]—and to praise him and to flatter him, and to regard him as a leader of Nonconformity in Wales, when he subscribes to their Church with admirable munificence and supports them in that way, but when he objects to their political propaganda—and I take the statement of the Leader of the Welsh Liberal party that this is a political question and not a religious question—then they laugh at him and they throw over Mr. Henry Radcliff. As one who represents a Welsh constituency and who has some Welsh blood in his veins, I say that that is the sort of thing which makes people accuse the Welsh people of being an ungrateful people. I have heard that accusation made by English people against the Welsh people. I think it is a very unjust accusation, but it is the attitude of the hon. and reverend Member, with his sneers at Mr. Henry Radcliff, which causes—

Mr. TOWYN JONES

I never sneered at Mr. Radcliff, and I never received a penny. We would be very glad to give to the Church party Mr. Henry Radcliff.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

I am sorry if the hon. Member wishes to turn him out of his denomination. I thought his laughter, when I mentioned his name, was a sneer. Whatever the Prime Minister may say to English Members, he will admit that I, as a Welsh Member, have a right to speak against this Bill in the name of a small section, and I believe a growing section, of Welsh opinion. I think the right hon. Gentleman has not done justice to the significance of the protest, and I think he has quite exaggerated the electioneering mandate. I would remind him that the great elction of 1906, which was claimed yesterday as a clean sweep in Wales, was not a clean sweep of Wales for this policy. If a single proof of that were wanted, we have it in the fact that the then Prime Minister, the late Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, went down to Wales at the election and made one speech there, and, while he dealt with a variety of questions, he never mentioned Disestablishment or Disendowment in the whole of that speech. I do not believe the Prime Minister has been in Wales since, or that he has made a speech there. If I look for another confirmation of that attitude I take the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Everybody will admit that he is the leader of Welsh Liberalism. How many speeches has he made on this question? He has made dozens of speeches on the land, and on the Budget, and upon every conceivable question, even on Home Rule for Ireland, but never in the country does he speak on Welsh Disestablishment. The truth is that the Liberal party do all they can when face to face with the people to keep this question in the background, and to bring to the front other items of the Liberal programme which are attractive. The land question and great industrial questions and a social programme have proved most attractive, and Wales has been consistent in her support of the Liberal party, not because of any antagonism or real animosity to the Church, and not because of this Disestablishment or Disendowment question of any shape or kind, but because Wales as a whole is thoroughly Radical.

I do think that the Disestablishment and Disendowment question has helped the Liberal party with a certain section of the people in Wales, not as against the Conservative party, but as against the Labour party, who, in South Wales, would, I believe, have swept the Liberal party entirely out of the way if it had not been that they had the organised force of the chapels, and the deacons, and of the middle clases in South Wales to stem the tide of the socialist and syndicalist advance in South Wales. I wish to bring one further testimony from Welsh sources as to the changing attitude in Wales to this question of Disendowment in particular. There is a growing feeling in Wales against voluntaryism, of which I think the Member for West Carmarthen (Mr. Hinds) is still old-fashioned enough to be one of the few supporters left. There is hardly a denomination that is not searching the ends of Wales and England in order to get a Central Endowment Fund. If the hon. Member opposite doubts that, I have here a very remarkable quotation from a meeting of Nonconformists ministers, and which appeared in the "Manchester Guardian" on the 16th April, as follows:— The quarterly meetings of the South Wales Calvinistic Methodist Association opened at Borth. Recommendations were received from various monthly meetings as to establishing a fund for the maintenance of the ministry. Pembrokeshire suggested the formation of a fund of £150,000 for the purpose. West Glamorgan and Hast Glamorgan approved of the proposal, with a minimum salary of £100 per year to rural pastors and £125 per year to urban pastors. The Rev. Evan Williams moved an amendment that a large central fund be formed. If ministers were paid from such a fund, rather than be dependent upon the uncertain good-will of their flocks, it would be a moral gain to the churches. There you have in fact the complete overthrow of the old voluntary principle—[HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no!"]—and the demand of those Methodist societies to have a central endowment fund, so as to enable the pastors to be independent of the fluctuating good-will of their congregation.

Mr. HINDS

Have they ever asked for or have they ever come to the State to ask for a single penny?

Lord ROBERT CECIL

Nor does the Church of England.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

The Church of England has never asked for Endowment of any sort or kind.

An HON. MEMBER

They have taken it.

7.0 P.M.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

So have the Nonconformists. There was at one time in the nineteenth century a Parliamentary Grant, and Nonconformists took it as well as the Church. It is rather a significant thing, that one of the few Endowments left to the Church under this Bill are those very Parliamentary Grants and State Endowments, whereas absolutely clear, voluntary titles are set aside. While on that point of the origin of voluntary titles, I want to bring forward an instance I have come across in my own Constituency. We have heard that tithe and glebe and all that sort of thing were given to the Church as well as to the monasteries—which, I think, is historically inaccurate—not merely for specifically religious purposes, such as the provision of a resident minister, but for education and for almsgiving. I do not think that has ever been proved in regard to the secular clergy. I think there is a great deal to be said for it in regard to some abbey and monastic foundation. Look at what happened. In my own Constituency there was an ancient monastic foundation of St. Peter's at Ruthin. That monastic foundation, along with all the other monastic foundations in Wales, was Disestablished and Disendowed by King Henry VIII., and the money used, as it is to be used under this Bill, for secular purposes. The Endowment of the ancient collegiate church was secularised and passed into the private hands of two citizens in London, namely, John Bates and Henry Wells. They became the lay impropriators of the tithe; they enjoyed the Endowment and the glebe of the ancient collegiate church of St. Peter's, Ruthin. I noticed a very remarkable phrase by the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen Boroughs (Mr. Llewelyn Williams) in the current issue of a magazine edited by the hon. Member for Mid-Glamorgan. It was astonishing to find this sentence:— The worst tiling that Henry VIII. did in Wales was to destroy the monasteries. To return to the point with which I was dealing, there was a small boy growing up who remembered the secularisation of this ancient church fund. When he grew up to be a distinguished scholar he bought with his own private money the ancient Endowment of St. Peter's from these two citizens of London or their descendants. The deed relating to the transaction is still in existence. At the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign he died, and left that money by another deed, which is also in existence, to St. Peter's Church. For what? For the maintenance of a minister, who should live in the ancient cloisters the minister in St. Peter's, for six almshouses, and for the foundation of a grammar school. That leads me to think that the ancient collegiate church fulfilled those obligations? What are you going to do now? You are going to leave the money to the grammar school and the almshouses, but to take away every penny that goes to the spiritual work. That will be the second time St. Peter's Church has been Disendowed. That money was given to St. Peter's when the same services as now were being held, the same liturgy used, and the same Bible read. Can you wonder that there is feeling in Wales when there are cases of this sort? This case does not stand alone. If there is anything in the argument of the Attorney General that some of these Endowments were given for the poor and for educational purposes, that is an argument which ought to have been used to Henry VIII.; £38,000 a year of Welsh tithe goes to private individuals and secular corporations. In the town of Carmarthen only £7 a year of tithe goes to the church, while over £1,000 a year goes to secular lay impropriators. But that £1,000 is not to be touched. What comes of the theory of frankalmoign, of the necessity of saying masses for the dead, of respecting the wishes of the pious donors and the original purposes for which the money was given? Everybody knows that that is not your object. The object of this Bill is to take money from the Church, because hon. Members opposite think that the Church in Wales is a very good nursing ground for Conservatives and political opponents. For some reason or another they regard the Church as a political opponent, and, therefore, they are determined to spoliate her.

Look at the concessions which have been offered. We ask for certain other small concessions, the most important of which are the churchyards. Indignation is rising high among Churchmen in Wales against the proposal to take away the churchyards and hand them over sometimes to this authority, sometimes to that, in some cases to the borough council, in some to the burial authority, in some to the parish council, and, where there is no parish council, to the chairman of the parish meeting and the overseers of the poor. An hon. Member spoke about the ancient Celtic Church. I believe that the only remains of the ancient Celtic Church in Wales are to be found in some of the ancient churchyards. It was the custom of the Celtic Church, and I think almost the individual custom of that Church, to plant yew trees in the churchyards. The largest yew trees and the oldest are in Wales. In the old churchyards of Wales there are yew trees which aboricultural authorities declare to be 1,500 years old, dating from the earliest introduction of Christianity into Wales. They were the specific emblems of the Celtic Church in Wales. The churchyards are to be taken away from the traditional body which has come down through the centuries, and handed over to these new secular authorities. I cannot see the justice of that. It was not done in Ireland. Wherever Disendowment has been carried out, that has not been done. There is no precedent for the confiscation of the churchyards. The hon. Member for Carnarvon (Mr. Ellis Davies) attended a meeting the other day, and said that the whole Bill should go rather than that the churchyards should be surrendered. There is a most violent feeling on the part of hon. Members opposite against the Church's retaining her ancient churchyards. The Church in Wales is perfectly prepared to give every parishioner the right to be buried in the parish churchyard. The Government can put that in their Bill if they like. In fact I believe it is in the Bill at present. To take away this sacred spot and hand it over to the chairman of the parish meeting, who may be most hostile to the Church and not a Christian at all, is most unwarrantable persecution. There is no other word for it. It is a persecution of the tenderest feelings and sentiments of Church people in Wales. We were not able to discuss this question of the allocation on Clause 8. My Amendment on the question of glebe was the last part of the Clause to be reached.

Mr. EDGAR JONES

We had a long discussion on churchyards. I spoke on the question myself.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

I think the hon. Member is wrong. I remember the particular day. The whole of Clause 8, after the word "glebe," went through under the Closure. The only discussion we were able to take on the question of the churchyards was on a subsequent Clause, on which we could not raise the question of principle or of allocation. It was ruled by the Chairman that that formed part of Clause 8.

Mr. E. JONES

I spoke on the point.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

I will pass from that to the question of the curates. The junior Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. Keir Hardie) announced yesterday on behalf of the Labour party, that they would support compensation for curates. [An HON. MEMBER: "NO."] He stated, at any rate, that he and some of his Friends would support it. I do not accuse the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) of having done so. He is always more liberal than the Liberals. He has lost all traces of independence. With regard to the curates, I have a letter, which it is my duty to read, from the president of the Association of Welsh Curates, who have banded themselves together to put their case before the Government. It runs as follows:—

"Dear Sir,—I should feel much obliged if you would refer in your speeches in the House of Commons to the injustice which is about to be done to Welsh curates (about 500 in number) if the Welsh Bill passes. We have spent hundreds of pounds at great sacrifices on our own and parents part to be trained, and this Bill will probably cause many of us to leave our present curacies for lack of funds, etc., and yet not a penny compensation is granted us. It will mean a notice to quit for no offence on our part. I have not seen anyone trying to defend this injustice, but have heard many denouncing it, and saying all the clergy should be treated alike. From a legal point of view "re cannot claim compensation, but from a moral standpoint our claims are irresistible.

Yours very truly,

ROBERT R. ROBERTS,

President Curates' Defence Movement."

That is what the curates of Wales ask. I believe that they will be content with less generous terms than you gave to the Irish Church, where you put in safeguards that no unfair advantage should be taken of them. These people, who have educated themselves for service in the Welsh Church expecting the Church to continue in the enjoyment of its Endowments, are suddenly told that they are to be part of a Church cut off from the great stream of the Church of England, and that they can never hope to get on in the Church of England as a whole.

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

Why not?

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

Because it will be dismembered. You say that dismemberment is the essence of your Bill.

Mr. McKENNA

Does the hon. Gentleman say that branches of the Church of England which do not share in Convocation do not provide ministers for the Church in England?

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

In one or two rare instances they may, but in the majority of cases the curates go through the ranks in their own or a neighbouring diocese. The number of curates or clergymen serving in the Church of England, as a whole, drawn from the Dominions or from other Churches in communion with the Church of England is comparatively very small. You minimise, you lessen their chances of being adopted elsewhere. The right hon. Gentleman agrees with me.

Mr. McKENNA

You said we spoilt their chances.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

I will say lessen their chances. The very first people to suffer in Wales under Disendowment will be the people who have no legal claim under this Bill, or no legal claim on the Church of England now. They, as the hon. Gentleman has said, are the workers of the Church. I think that you err in not giving them some compensation for the loss of prospects, as well as for the loss of their immediate position. I think their claim ought to be met. That is one of the things which is making your Bill so profoundly unpopular in Wales. These are three points of this aspect of the question of Disendowment. I want just to say one or two words upon the general question of Disendowment, not that I can add anything to what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Balfour) on the general ethical question of Disendowment at such a time as this. The other day I came across a most remarkable quotation from one of Macaulay's Essays. I think my mind, running, as it usually does, upon the iniquities of this Bill, suggested how exactly the cap fitted. What does Macaulay say:— The laws of all nations have widely established a time limitation after which titles, however illegitimate in their origin, cannot be questioned. It is felt by everybody that to eject a person or persons from his estate on the grounds of some injustice committed in the times of the Tudors would produce all the evils which result from arbitrary confiscation, and would make all forms of property insecure. It concerns the Commonwealth—so runs a legal maxim—that there be an end of litigation. When you are bringing up the evils of the eighteenth century, when you bring up the case of the Bishop of St Asaph's a hundred or more years, the origin of tithes and glebe, and say that because of all these things that thereby you are going to set aside the prescriptive right of at least 250 years, you set aside the very foundation principle upon which all kinds of property are held, namely, that so long as a body makes a good use of its money, and uses its funds for high and good purposes, that that body shall be secure in its title, and secure in the enjoyment of that property. I say that the ethical case and the legal case against Disendowment is overwhelming, especially at such a moment as this. Three Nonconformist deacons in South Wales wrote to the "Western Mail" the other day, and in their remarkable letter they said:— We, Nonconformist deacons in a mining district of Pontyates, wish to express our deep appreciation of the self-sacrificing efforts of the local Church people in the building of their new Church, and that we desire to live and work with them in peace and harmony. The means of carrying on God's work in industrial centres are far too scarce, and we earnestly believe that the taking away of the ancient Endowments of the Church and applying them to worldly purposes, would not only be injurious to the Church, but to every religious cause in the place. (Signed) JOHN-BEVAN. Baptist, Ponthewry, WILLIAM Lewis, Independent, Pontyates, and MOSES REES, Baptist. The hon. Gentleman opposite discounts that letter.

Mr. E. JONES

We are not taking money away from the mining district.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE

Is the district round about Abergavenny a mining district? I happen to know that in a particular area, I think it is in the constituency of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, that you have there ten contiguous parishes who will lose every single penny of their Endowments. Two thousand nine hundred and fifty pounds a year is to be taken away and devoted to secular purposes. Of course it is said, I know, that the Endowments are to be pooled. Do hon. Members opposite think that the Representative Church Body will have so little regard for the existing trustees, and so little regard for the trust deeds of the Endowments in the parishes—and mark you, the only Endowments you are leaving are modern Endowments, so that the trustees will probably be in existence! Do you think we shall have so little regard for the parishes, and their titles to their Endowments, that we shall take the money from them under your Bill and spend it on other parishes We are not likely to disregard the legal titles, trust deeds, or specific Endowments of special parishes for special purposes. I am perfectly certain that the Church in Wales will not so disregard them. You say that in addition to the private benefactions you have left the Grants from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. What security have we got there? The greater portion of the Endowments left to the Church is what? Is it from Welsh sources? No. The Grants from the English Ecclesiastical Commissioners are from English sources. That is the thing you are leaving. In that very moment you are saying that your Cabinet Ministers and leaders are saying in the country that the Disendowment of the Church in Wales is only one argument for the Disendowment of the Church in England, and that they mean to go forward immediately to the Disendowment of the English Church. In twenty or thirty years from now the present case will be a precedent. The "Westminster Gazette" urged hon. Members opposite not to make too many concessions to the Church in Wales because this Bill would be used as a precedent, and a line upon which the Disestablishment and Disendowment would be followed for the English Church. Yet the only Endowments which we have for pooling purposes are Grants from the English Ecclesiastical Commissioners from English sources.

We all know that the Liberal party today is similar to the Combes party in France. The Liberal party stands as an anti-Church party. It stands for taking away the funds of the Church and for hampering the Church in the matter of its Endowment. We ask for liberty, and it is always the Liberal party that blocks our Bills and stands in our way. Look at the Liberal party's action in connection with our schools! Look at the action of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen Boroughs (Mr. Llewelyn Williams)! May I say that I consider him the most able, the most lucid, and the most eloquent leader of the Welsh Nonconformists in this House. It has been publicly given out in the "Times" and other newspapers that he stands for absolute secularisation in the schools. He is for complete secularisation, for no religious teaching of any kind, not even undenominationalism, not even New Theology. What is the Welsh Nonconformist to-day? A complete secularist, and the Liberal party, too, is heading straight for secularisation! That is the position to-day. We do not look forward to the future in this matter with any great hope. We see nothing ahead but danger. We see Wales to-day torn not with religious differences or with theological points as she used to be 100 years ago. We see Wales torn by different philosophies, not by theologies any more. In the mining districts there is a general loosening of the bonds of all the religious denominations. It is not moral difference. It is complete doubt. It is a complete overthrow of the historical Christianity that has come down to us in these lands. We know what follows in the wake of all this! The new theological principles assert that man is absolutely divine: that it is human to err, and that therefore to err is divine: that there is no such thing as good and evil, that it is a sort of sliding scale—and that sort of thing! This is what we, see generally advancing in the country.

Hon. Members opposite say they are going to Disestablish the Church in order to nationalise it. We shall set our faces against nationalisation of that kind. We do not wish to be cut away from the greatest things which have come down to us. We do not wish to become a small sect. We wish to remain an integral part of the great Catholic Church. It is most important to us to see what some Welsh Nonconformists think about this matter. There is a paper called the "Welsh Outlook," and in it there has been a discussion with regard to co-operation between the various denominations in Wales. All the Nonconformist writers agree that any prospect of co-operation with the Church of England either before or after the Bill is passed it quite out of place. I agree it is absurd to suppose it will be possible after this Bill. A Calvinist Methodist minister says that "co-operation with the Anglican Church in Wales will, we fear, be difficult owing to political differences or the recollection of them." Far more significant is the letter of "A Congregationalist," who writing last month to the "Outlook," says:— I am deeply interested in those problems which were so ably dealt with by 'Free Churchmen' in your February number… In looking towards that 'happy day' (of union), let us not delude ourselves with regard to at least two things:(1) That the Established Church (even when it will he no longer 'Established') can form part of that union for many generations. With regard to this first point, I am absolutely certain that the Disestablished Welsh Church will always gravitate towards England rather than towards a federation in Wales. That has always been our complaint against the Mother Church, and the signs of the times seem to indicate that this tendency Englandward is likely to become more pronounced as time goes on. It is not the tendency Englandward; it is the tendency towards Catholicism—not Roman Catholicism. It is a tendency which is growing, but growing towards the Church as a whole. It is one that does not regard sects and national values as important, but regards the primitive and universal organisation of the Church as important. That is what I agree the Church of England is rapidly tending more and more towards, and will so tend after Disestablishment, and the reason is not far to seek. One of the reasons against Disestablishment is that I contend it is against breadth in the Church. Sooner or later you have a definite, clear, code or creed, and principles. That is an argument generally against Disestablishment from the Church point of view. Disestablishment we know is only an academic question. There are only three Clauses in the Bill in any way touch it. The rest of the Clauses are Disendowment Clauses. Public opinion in Wales, as in England, is growing against these Disendowment Clauses. They are held to be wrong. They will create bitterness in the Church, and will hamper our power for good. They will restrict our energies, and will throw our organisation into confusion. I believe the proposal will recoil more and more upon the head of Wales. As a Welsh Member more than a Churchman, I deplore the Disendowment Clauses of this Bill. In this policy of secularisation you do not seem to care where the money goes to or what your county council schemes shall be. It seems to me that this policy, which other nations have tried, can only lead to one thing—that is moral ruin! It is because of the future of Wales that I say this—and I am perfectly certain of it—that if one of the first actions of Wales as a nationality, as a political entity, is to destroy or hamper or to restrict the most ancient institution of that country—whether you like it or whether you do not, at any rate it is ancient—and to hamper the greatest tradition of all time, it can only redound not to the credit, but to the discredit, of the people in Wales to-day, and your children will be saying what the right hon. Gentleman has said of Henry VIH., that the worst thing Henry VIII. did was to destroy the monasteries. Your children will be saying that the worst thing you can do in Wales is to hamper or Disendow her ancient Church.

Mr. JOHN WILLIAMS

I rise to heartily support the Second Reading of the Bill now before the House. In doing so I am conscious of the fact that nothing new can be said for or against the Bill. And the more I hear, the more I attend or listen to the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite, the more I am confirmed that I am doing the right thing. No new argument or suggestion can be adduced to-night that would enlighten the Debate upon the subject-matter of this Bill. I have listened to all the arguments before, and I have read them all in the last quarter of a century. I am absolutely cognisant of all the facts which the hon. Gentleman has given us to-night. The Debate, Session after Session upon this Bill, or similar Bills to that now before the House, have been of a very exhaustive and searching character, and, therefore, I agree nothing new can be obtained by further discussion of the principle of the Bill now before the House. I do not believe that any arguments other than those adduced in former Debates can be further adduced. The arguments contained in these Debates were all of an historical and also of a logical character. I appreciated the tone and spirit when listening to these Debates, and I plead that hon. Members to-night could not improve upon the speeches then made. If I desire to deal with this matter historically I would start, I believe, with Melchizedek. He had something to do with tithes, and then I would come down to Moses, who had something to do with the Church and State in Egypt, and, further, I would come down from those to the time of Judas Maccabeus and his brother, the first reformers of the Jewish Church, and from them to John the Baptist, and from him to the end of the first century, and then I could quote from the writings of many others to confirm me in the action I am taking to-night in supporting this Bill.

I do not intend to-night to discuss the present Bill from either of the two standpoints I mentioned, namely, the historical or the logical standpoint, as I fully believe that sufficient has been said from these two standpoints up to the present moment, and as the case for the Disestablishment of the Church in England has been fully established upon the floor of this House over and over again by right hon. Gentlemen sitting upon these benches, and by hon. Members behind me. From time to time I have been fully convinced that the case for Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church of England in Wales has been established. I do not intend to repeat the arguments that have been used in Debates from time to time, but I desire to inform the House that upon the strength of these arguments a majority of the Welsh nation are looking forward to this Parliament for an immediate redress of their long-standing grievances. So long as preferential treatment is kept up by the British Government to one particular denomination at the expense of another denomination, so long will the majority of the Welsh nation feel greatly wronged and deeply aggrieved. The treatment meted out to Welsh Nonconformity, in my opinion, is as cruel as it is unjust. The Welsh nation is fully entitled to all that she is asking for, and that without in the least degree inflicting any injustice upon the Anglican Church in Wales. The Welsh nation is entitled to all she desires from the standpoint of her representation in Parliament. At the last General Election Wales sent thirty-one representatives to this House, pledged to the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Established Church in Wales, and only three pledged against it. Surely this great majority entitles her to be heard upon the floor of this House; but I cannot for a single moment understand the opponents of this Bill towards majorities.

I thought majority rule was one of the fundamental principles upon which the British Constitution had been built, but I am beginning to believe otherwise. The majority of the Welsh nation has for generations been endeavouring to accomplish that which I hope she "will accomplish, notwithstanding the attitude of the opponents of this Bill in this House and in another place. What is the attitude of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen and also Noble Lords opposite towards majorities? During the past years I noticed in this House that their attitude has been one of disrespectful disregard, and also one of bitter and obstinate hostility. They have declined to listen to the voice of the majority of the Welsh nation up to the present moment. The opponents of this Bill are also the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland. They also decline to give ear to the majority of gallant little Wales, who are appealing for religious freedom and equality. Further, the party opposite decline to observe the majority decision of the last General Election which took place in 1910. In fact, they decline to hear their master's voice. The nation is their master, let them remember that. The democracy, after all, is their master. In fact, hon. Members do not know their master's voice, but thanks to the Parliament Act, they will presently recognise their master's voice, when they will hear that voice calling upon this Bill, as it stands, to proceed to another place. I hope and trust that the Lords spiritual and the, Lords temporal will receive this Bill with open arms. Otherwise, if they do not, they will witness it pass by them to receive the Royal Assent, whilst they with their arms folded look on sullenly, and with an expression of mortification upon theirfaces.

Before the Bill proceeds to the other House. I should like to draw the attention of the Home Secretary; who is in charge of this Bill, and to whom I must say the majority of the Welsh nation owes so much for the brilliant and able manner in which he has conducted their case, and for his sympathy with their national aspirations and ideals, to the fact that the present spirit and temperament of Welsh Nonconformity in the Principality will not allow any further alterations in this Bill. They are sick and tired of hearing of concessions. They hate and detest the words "further compromise." To grant further concessions in the matter of the Endowments to the Anglican Church, in my opinion, would be to destroy every particle of confidence reposed by Welshmen in the present Government. We, on this side of the House, have been described as robbers and confiscators. Personally, I am not a confiscator, neither am I a robber.

[An HON. MEMBER: "Prove it!"] I have my own opinion as to what a robber is, and what a confiscator is. [An HON. MEMBER: "So has a robber."] If I allowed my Celtic spirit to lead me, I should probably make such statements as would not be very agreeable to Noble Lords opposite; again I say that I am not a confiscator, neither am I a robber. Personally, I am fully prepared to mete out the most just and even generous treatment to the Church in Wales in the matter of Endowments. From the point of view of justice, undoubtedly the Anglican Church in Wales is fully entitled to make a strong, and I hope a noble effort, to secure all that is due to her, and to which she has a good title, but when one peruses this Bill, one cannot fail to discover the very, very generous treatment which is meted out to the Established Church in Wales by the Home Secretary; in fact, his generosity has already incurred the displeasure of many of his supporters on this side of the House. I trust that the Government will solidly and most emphatically decline to consider for a single moment any further overtures that may be made to them by the opponents of this Bill for further concessions.

The people of Wales believe that the Government have been too weak in the defence of their case, and they appear to have been quite unable to withstand the overtures for concessions made by the representatives of the privileged Church in Wales. This weakness or impotency must disappear forthwith, and the rights of Welsh Nonconformity must be fully respected and maintained. It has been pointed out to us by hon. Members opposite that it is the urgent desire or sole object or wish of Welsh Nonconformists to Disestablish the Anglican Church in Wales in order that they may secure the Endowments. A more wicked and misleading statement could not be made, and such a statement is absolutely untrue and without foundation. We are also charged with having the desire to destroy the Anglican Church as an institution. Again, this statement is as false as it is misleading. Who can destroy the Church of God? Who can destroy the real and true Ecclesia? I am sorry for the people who have more faith in their gold than in their God. Has the spiritualising power of Christianity failed? Has the vital power of Christianity decayed? Is the religious life of the Anglican Church dependent upon temporalities? It is not for me to answer. I fully believe that the passing of this Bill and the consequent Disestablishment and the Disendowment of the Church in Wales will be conducive to the spiritual welfare of the Church itself, and will conduce to religious unity and co-operation between Episcopalians and Nonconformists in the Welsh Principality. In conclusion, I desire to say that the great progressive forces of this country are extremely anxious to see this religious controversy ended, and Welsh Disestablishment and Disendowment removed from the political arena to make room for legislation of a character that will assist and help the poor people of this country to become better Christians and nobler citizens.

Mr. CASSEL

This is the first occasion upon which I have intervened in these Debates, and I do not propose now to deal with the general merits of the Bill. I intend to confine my attention to one particular question, which if it is not entirely new, at all events, I think has not received sufficient consideration. It is a question of very grave constitutional importance, namely, that it is contrary to the letter and spirit, and manifestly and clearly contrary to the Act of union between Scotland and England, that this Bill should be forced upon the people of England against the wishes of the majority of the representatives of England, including Wales, which is included under the Act of Union. It is contrary to the letter and spirit of that Act that this Bill should be forced upon England purely by Irish and Scottish votes. During the course of this Debate not a single Scottish or Irish Member has spoken, and yet they are going to do their duty in the Division Lobby in favour of this Bill at the end of the discussion. The point I desire to make clear is that at the time of the Union between Scotland and England greater precautions could not have been taken to ensure that the Establishment in each country should be safe from interference by the votes of representatives of the other country at every stage. In the first instance, there were two Acts of Parliament, under which power was given to the Queen to appoint Commissioners to negotiate a treaty between Scotland and England. In that Act a special Clause was inserted which placed the Establishment of the Churches in the two countries entirely outside the authority of any Commissioners that might be appointed.

The next step is that the Commissioners met, and on the 22nd July, 1706, they agreed to a treaty, and that treaty was referred for ratification to the two Parliaments of Scotland and England. It came before the Scottish Parliament first, and what did they do? Before they proceeded to ratify the treaty they first passed an Act securing the Presbyterian government of the Church of Scotland, and only after they had passed that Act did they proceed to ratify the treaty, and in the Act ratifying that treaty they not only recited the actual terms of the Act securing the Scottish Church, but they stated that it was to be an essential and fundamental condition of Union that that Act should be maintained, and that the Establishment of the Scottish Church should also be maintained. There was also a Clause that the English Parliament was to be at liberty to do the same, and any steps the English Parliament took to secure the Establishment of the English Church were ratified by the Act of the Scottish Parliament. Then you come to the English Parliament, which adopted precisely the same procedure. Before they adopted the Act ratifying the treaty they passed an Act securing the Establishment of the Church of England and, having passed that Act, they then proceeded to pass an Act ratifying the treaty, and in that Act they recited both the Scottish and the English Acts securing the Establishment of the Church in the two countries. After having recited them, they proceeded to say that an essential and fundamental condition of the continuance of the Union was that the Establishment of the Churches in each of the countries was to be maintained. It is put so clearly that I will read to the House Clause 11 of the Act of the English Parliament ratifying the Articles of Union. These are the words:—

"And it is hereby further enacted by the authority aforesaid that the said Act passed in this present Session of Parliament, intituled the Act for securing the Church of England as by the law established, and all and every the matters and things therein contained, and also the said Act of Parliament for Scotland, intituled an Act for securing the Protestant religion and the Presbyterian Church government, with the Establishment of the said Act contained, be and shall for ever be held and adjudged to be, and observed as fundamental and essential conditions of the said Union, and shall in all times coming be taken to be and are hereby declared to be essential and fundamental parts of the said Articles of Union; and the said Articles of Union so as aforesaid ratified, approved, and confirmed by Act of Parliament of Scotland and by this present Act, and the said Act passed in this present Session of Parliament, intituled an Act for securing the Church of England as by law established, and also the said Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland intituled an Act for securing the Protestant religion, and the Presbyterian Church government are hereby enacted and ordained to be and continue in all times coming a complete and entire union of the Union of the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland."

8.0 P.M.

It would have been impossible for any two Parliaments to have taken greater precautions to ensure that the Established religion of neither country should be interfered with by the representatives of the other. Unless those precautions had been taken the Union between England and Scotland would never have taken place. The one block in the way of Union was that the Scotch Presbyterians were afraid that the result of Union might be that English representatives might swamp them and Disestablish the Church in Scotland and introduce an Episcopalian Establishment. On the other hand, in England the greatest alarm was felt that the Scottish members might combine with the minority of Dissenters in this country to Disestablish the Church in England. That is the contingency which alarmed them, and which they meant to prevent, and which will happen to-day if this Bill is carried against the wishes of the majority of the representatives of England by Scottish and Irish votes. For this purpose the only unit which you can regard is England, including Wales. You cannot for this purpose regard Wales as a separate unit. The contract was between Scotland on the one hand and England, including Wales, on the other. No lawyer can place a different interpretation on the Act of Union. The Church referred to in the Act of Union, the maintenance of which was by the Act of Union declared to be an essential and fundamental condition, was the Church of England, including the four Welsh dioceses, and no other Church. If the Welsh representatives—and I do not think it is right in this connection to speak of the Welsh Church—it is the Church of England in Wales—if the Welsh representatives were able to establish that for some reasons of nationality coming down from the past they ought to be entitled to separate Church government; then it is to the English representatives alone that they should address their arguments, and they are debarred by contract and statute from carrying their case against the English representatives to a tribunal of Scottish and Irish representatives—the thing which they are endeavouring to do now in flagrant defiance of all plain national obligations. I do not go so far as to say that if this Bill is carried in defiance of English votes by Scottish votes, the Act will not be a valid Act recognised by the Courts. I think, although they may not have intended it, that as a result of the Union they have set up a Sovereign legislature, which is all-powerful so far as legislation is concerned. It is true they may not be able to make black white, but they get the nearest approach to that by saying that black shall be deemed to be white. But although they have these great powers, I say that the Union Parliament is bound to exercise them honourably, having regard to the terms of the treaty and the essential condition on which that treaty was based.

It may be said that there have been some variations in the Establishment of the Scottish Church through various Acts of Parliament—the Churches of Scotland Act, 1905, the University of Scotland Act, 1853, and the Church Patronage Act, 1712. But with regard to all of these it cannot be said that they were carried against the wishes of the Scottish people. The Church of Scotland Act, 1905, was introduced into this House and carried as a result of the almost unanimous wish of the Scottish people. The same applies to the University (Scotland) Act, 1853. All these are mere modifications in the existing Church establishment in Scotland, and are not disestablishment of the Scottish Church. I should like to know what the Scottish representatives would say if, in defiance of the wishes of the majority of the Scottish representatives, the representatives in England were to force on them the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Established Church of Scotland in any part of Scotland. It would unite the whole Scottish representatives in one strong protest against any such thing being done. My appeal to them to-night—I see there is not a single one here on this occasion—my appeal to them would be if they were present to do as they would be done by. I must say one word on the argument with reference to the Irish Act of Union. With regard to that Act it may be said there is some precedent for what is being done now, because under the Irish Act of Union, in the 5th Article, the maintenance of the united English and Irish Churches, was made an essential and fundamental condition, and yet the Irish Church has been Disestablished. If that argument is going to be used against me I have a very complete answer. I have heard Members on the Nationalist Benches, and on the Front Bench opposite also, defend it on the ground that it was because the majority of the Irish representatives were in favour of the Disestablishment of that Church. I have not myself been able to appreciate the force of that argument, because it is difficult to see how the Irish representatives to-day are really the successors of Grattan's Parliament. But if it be an argument it is in my favour, because, if the Disestablishment of the Irish Church was justified because the majority of Irishmen were in favour of it, there can be no justification for the Disestablishment of the English Church by Scottish votes, when the majority of English representatives are against it. The very act of justifying the Disestablishment of the Irish Church on the ground that the majority of the Irish representatives were in favour of it, turns against the Government when you have regard to the fact that the majority of the English representatives are against this measure and have been against it on every important Division. I have had every important Division analysed—that which was taken on the First Reading, and those on every Second and Third Reading, and on every important Amendment—and on each occasion there has been a substantial majority of English Members overborne simply by Irish and Scottish votes.

There is one further argument to be drawn from the Irish Act of Union, and it is this: Members opposite are always telling us that we should not be justified in reducing the number of Irish representatives in this House because that would be contrary to the Act of Union with Ireland, and against the wishes of the Irish representatives. If that be their argument, surely they have no justification whatever for violating the Article in the Scottish Act of Union! It is, in fact, an argument in my favour. They constantly rely upon this Article in the Act of Union with Ireland as a ground for not reducing the number of Irish representatives in this House. It may be said against me that we have argued that we are entitled to reduce it, but in the Fourth Article of the Act of Union of the countries of Great Britain and Ireland it is not stated to be an unalterable, essential, fundamental condition. By reason of its nature it must be alterable. The Fourth Article provides—

"That it be the Fourth Article of Union that four Lords Spiritual of Ireland by rotation of Session and twenty-eight Lords Temporal of Ireland elected for life by the Peers of Ireland shall be the number to sit and vote on the part of Ireland in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom: and 100 Commoners two for each county of Ireland two for the City of Dublin two for the City of Cork one for the University of Trinity College and one for each of the thirty-one most considerable cities towns and boroughs be the number to sit and vote on the part of Ireland in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom."

I put it that that cannot possibly have been intended to be an unalterable condition. It obviously must be alterable when it changes according as new cities, towns and boroughs spring up. From the very nature of the case it must be alterable. But even with regard to that I have heard the Foreign Secretary argue that it would be grossly unfair to alter it against the wishes of the majority of the Irish representatives. If the Liberal Government argue that that Article is unalterable, how can they say, with regard to the essential and fundamental condition on which the Act of Union with Scotland was based, it can be right for the Scottish Members to take part in enforcing this upon England against the wishes of the majority of the English people?

I am told not very much importance has been attached to this point, because it is a constitutional point, a point of treaty obligations, and treaty obligations are of no consequence any longer. I should like to put that matter, at least, to the proof. Is it to be said by the Government that treaty obligations are no longer worth the paper on which they are written? I know that in the matter of private contracts they have been ready by their Acts of Parliament to tear them up. Their maxim has been taken from Mr. Larkin, who said, "To hell with contracts!" Is their watchword now to be "To hell with treaties"? Has the Foreign Secretary, who has just gone over to France, gone there having nailed to his mast the motto, "To hell with treaties"? If this House no longer pays any attention to treaties, I say it has no right any longer to demand or insist upon the observance of treaties. There could have been no more solemn treaty obligation or contract entered into between two countries than the contract and obligation entered into by England and Scotland at the time of the Act of Union, when they mutually guaranteed the establishment of their respective Churches in their own countries, free from the interference of the representatives of the other. I only wish to make this appeal to the Scottish Members. I believe that Scottish people have been recognised to be honourable and scrupulous in the observance of their bargains. I call upon them to implement and to fulfil their bargain and not to commit what would be a plain, palpable, flagrant, and indefensible violation of an essential and fundamental condition of the Act of Union.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

The hon. Gentleman opposite appears to attach great importance to petitions, and I rise to refer to a petition which is supposed to have been sent by Nonconformists in the Principality. Last Session or the Session before we had an example of a petition from Wales against this Bill. We had a petition against the Bill as a whole—against both the Disestablishment and Disendowment Clauses. The petition just received is against the Disendowment Clauses only, and that in itself is a step in advance. With regard to the first petition, the general one against the whole Bill, 564,000 people are supposed to have signed it, people who were said to be resident in Wales, but many of whom had no connection of any kind whatever with the Principality. One significant fact in regard to the petition is this: By the Rules of the House more than 200 petitions, with 364,000 odd signatures, were set aside as having transgressed the Rule of the House. That is very significant.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

Were they not ruled out of order?

Mr. HAYDN JONES

Yes, by the Petitions Committee on account of having a large number of signatures in the same handwriting. Now I come to the last of the petitions presented. Personally, I never attach any importance to petitions. I attach importance only to the expressed wish of the people when they have the secrecy that is in the ballot box, for then we get at the real opinion of the people. We are told that a petition with 103,000 signatures of Nonconformists has been presented to the Prime Minister. The first question I ask is this: Why is the petition presented to the Prime Minister and not to the House of Commons? The second question I ask is this: Did the petition really originate with Nonconformists? It was so in the case of the diocese of St. Asaph, where a number of Nonconformists took it in hand, and, I believe, organised the matter, but what more did they do? A significant thing about those Nonconformists is that they are more Tory than they are Nonconformist. That is one of the facts I wish to impress upon the House.

There are, in Wales, thousands of Nonconformists who have invariably voted Tory. I know them in my own Constituency, and it is no matter of surprise to me to find them signing a petition against Disestablishment, because they have always voted for Tory candidates. After the Nonconformists started the petition in the diocese of St. Asaph, I ask hon. Members opposite what connection Nonconformity had with the petition? I have made careful inquiry in that part of my Constituency which is in the diocese of St. Asaph, and I find that invariably the petition was taken round, not by a Nonconformist, but by the parson, or the curate, or a landlord, or an agent, or an agent's wife. If Nonconformity were going to express its free and unfettered opinion on this Bill, surely there would be some other way of doing it than to get Tories to take a petition round. I find that people were selected to go round and see certain persons, because it was felt that if they called upon them they could not refuse to sign. I will give an instance. The wife of one of the agents of a large estate called upon the people on the estate. How many of those people could be expected to say "No" in a case of that kind? [HON. MEMBERS: "All of them."] Is that your view? It is not my view of it. If they were allowed to express their views for or against it in the ballot box, you would find that not a man would vote against it.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

I thought you said they were all Tories.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

I never said so.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

You said so about five minutes ago.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

I said that a large number of these people are Tories. The petition might have been left in a central place, and an advertisement or some notice might have been given that anybody wishing to sign it, if they called at a certain place, might do so. Nothing of the kind took place. It was taken from door to door by the vicar. I would have said nothing if he had represented facts as they really are, but here is one tale that did much service for the Church: "Are you in favour of closing this graveyard? Are you in favour of doing away with it? Is it not a fact that you have relations buried here, and is it not your desire to be interred here also?" "Yes, of course." Then immediately came the reply, "You have got to sign this or there will be no graveyard." That is a tale which did service in my Constituency, and I venture to challenge contradiction. You can show me no case of a Nonconformist signing that petition knowing that he was signing against the Disendowment of the Church in Wales. There is another matter. I have already referred to the petition of last year with 500,000 odd signatures, and I would ask hon. Members opposite if they have ever inquired how many of the signatories to the last petition were contained in the first petition. I have made inquiries here and there, and I find that in one of the most populous towns in that part of my Constituency which is embraced in the diocese of St. Asaph it is said that, on careful calculation, nearly 50 per cent. had previously signed. We are told this is an indication of the growing indignation of Nonconformity against the Bill. If Nonconformity had indignation, and if that indignation were growing, it would not be necessary for a parson or a curate, or an agent, or anybody else to go round and solicit signatures. There is no spontaneity about this petition at all. It is simply a case of the Church making use of its position, employing agents, and practically compelling people to sign, and to sign against their will. I go further, and tell the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Bridgeman) that I can give him an instance of a parson who went round my Constituency and obtained the signatures of wives who knew nothing at all what they were signing. They allowed them also to sign the names of their husbands in their absence and without their consent. Does he approve of that?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

I certainly do not approve of it, but I should like to have instances of it.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

I can give evidence of it, if necessary, and prove the case right up to the hilt. If the hon. Member will allow me, I will show him names and everything. Even people under twenty-one have signed. I simply say this: If you are going to attach any value to that petition at all, you will agree to refer it straight away to the Petitions Committee or to some impartial tribunal for investigation. Let us inquire into the methods adopted to get the signatures.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

We have already asked that it should go to the Petitions Committee.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

I am pleased to hear it, and I have no doubt that we shall hear more about it in a day or so. The only possible way of dealing justly by Nonconformity is to allow the petition to be inquired into so that the House may know how it is that so many Nonconformists or alleged Nonconformists have signed. I want to make one other point. I venture to assert here that amongst the 103,000 signatures you will find a large proportion of people who are not Nonconformists at all. The Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin (Lord Robert Cecil) yesterday said that they were all members. He then corrected himself by saying that they were adherents. I venture to prophesy that you will find that a large number of them have never frequented any place of worship, Nonconformist or Established Church, or Catholic. They have for this purpose been counted as Nonconformists; but what would they become if you had that religious census in Wales which you so ardently desire. Every person who does not frequent a Nonconformist chapel would then be said to be a member of the Church of England; every one of them. I venture to prophesy that you will find thousands of that class in the petition. In view of the fact that it is common ground that this petition is to be referred to the Petitions Committee for investigation, I will leave the matter there.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

The Prime Minister would not allow it.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

Are you prepared to let it be investigated by the Petitions Committee?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

We asked him, and he said that he would not allow it.

Mr. CROOKS

It was not presented to the House.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

Will hon. Gentlemen agree to present it to the House so as to get it referred to the Petitions Committee?

Mr. POLLOCK

How could you put it in form?

Mr. HAYDN JONES

Then I take it that hon. Gentlemen do not want it referred to the Petitions Committee?

Mr. POLLOCK

His original point was that certain petitions were not in accordance with the forms of the House, and he now asks the impossible task that some hundreds of thousands of signatures should be cast in a form in which they can be presented to the House. It is obviously an impossibility, and he has given the answer himself.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

The Prime Minister did receive one deputation, and he told it distinctly that it was not in a form in which it could be presented to the House. There were further pettions prepared, and they knew perfectly well that they could not be received, but they still persisted on doing it. Hon. Members will draw their own inference as to why they insisted on doing it. The fact of the matter is that they do not want it investigated, and hon. Members know it perfectly well.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN

That is not true.

Mr. HAYDNJONES

That is my opinion in any case, and notwithstanding what the hon. Member for the Oswestry Division says, I adhere to that opinion. You must always remember that there is among Nonconformity a Tory section in Wales. You must also remember that there is among Nonconformists a large section of the people who are dependent upon the Church people, the. landlords and the wealthy class in Wales. These people have not the independence which I would like to see them have. It is radically wrong in anybody to go round to these people and give them even an opportunity of signing things they do not believe. We in Wales are looking forward to the passage of this Bill. We have looked forward to it for many a year, and are now pleased to feel that we are about to achieve the object we have had in view, namely, religious equality. It has been said that we Nonconformists are robbing the Church. We have managed to paddle our own canoe without any of their Endowments. We are not robbing the Church. It is grossly unjust and unfair to say that we are robbing them of £157,000, when in the Bill there is a commutation scheme which will enable these people to start, not on the same common ground as Nonconformists, but with an Endowment fund of £2,000,000. It would be far juster to state the true position of affairs, instead of going round with petitions of this kind, and instead of saying that we are going to close the burial grounds. The burial question in Wales is a burning question. We are going to fight to the bitter end to get for the parishioners the right of managing their own burial grounds. The hon. Member for the Denbigh Boroughs (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) was very indignant at the idea of handing over the burial ground to a body elected by the parishioners. The parishioners will have far more confidence in the elected body than in any one who is preferred to a living without any consultation with them. Small as we are, we are a nation for all that. We have our ideals, and are determined to get justice in this matter. It would be far better if hon. Gentlemen opposite realised that the question is not one of Nonconformity versus the Church, but a question of privilege. We want to be put on an equality. If hon. Members only realised that, they would not attack us for wanting to rob the Church or to do injury to a body which is engaged in religious work. We have no such object in view. We only want to be put on an equality, and until we are put on an equality we are not going to rest.

Mr. CAMPION

In the course of my wanderings I have paid several visits to the Principality of Wales, and have made many friends there. I appreciate the Welsh people, but I have never yet heard a speech more derogatory to their intelligence and dignity than the speech to which we have just listened. What does it come to? It comes to this: that so small is the intelligence of the Welshman that he is prepared to sign an important petition, and to state that he is a Nonconformist when he knows that he is not. That is the point the hon. Member made. He said that many of these men were not Nonconformists at all.

Mr. HAYDN JONES

The information I have is that a large number of people signed the petition, and that the denomination has been filled in by somebody else.

Mr. CAMPION

I do not believe it. I think better of the Welsh nation than to believe that a man has so little regard for his religious opinions and his principles that he is willing to sign a petition and allow another man to fill in the statement as to what his religion is, and fill it in wrongly. I believe the Welsh nation is a much more earnest, more upright, and more religious-minded people than to allow anything of that sort to occur. The hon. Member's intervention in this Debate has not weakened my conviction in the absolute honesty and bono, fides of this great manifesto of protest with 103,000 signatures of Nonconformists in Wales. The hon. Member tells us that some of the men who signed are Nonconformists, but Tory Nonconformists. What then becomes of the argument that has been put before this House over and over again, that Wales is a Nonconformist nation, if a great number of the Nonconformists of Wales are themselves opposed to, and prepared to sign a protest against the Disendowment of the Church of England in Wales. The whole of that argument, or a great part of it, at once falls to the ground. Another statement which the hon. Member made at the commencement of his speech is one which certainly I, and I believe most hon. Members of this House, will be prepared to accept. He advocated the secrecy of the ballot - box. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Precisely! Then why not give the people not only of Wales, but of England also, who are equally interested in this matter, an opportunity of expressing their opinion in the ballot-box?

Mr. HAYDN JONES

They have done it many times.

Mr. CAMPION

The hon. Member said he did not attach importance to a petition, but he did attach importance to the secrecy of the ballot-box. Will he take advantage of the secrecy of the ballot and allow the voters of this country to express their opinion in the ballot? That is all that we want. We are perfectly prepared to abide by their decision. That is what the Government and the hon. Member and those who sit by him refuse, namely, to allow the people the privilege of deciding this question for themselves—a question that has never been put before them adequately. The line which the hon. Member took up, supporting the argument which has been repeated over and over again by the Government and their supporters, is the only argument really left to them—that is, the argument that we must allow the Church to be dismembered and the four dioceses in Wales to be Disestablished and Disendowed because thirty-one Members out of thirty-four from Wales support Disestablishment and Disendowment. It is the argument that Wales demands Disestablishment and Disendowment. It was the argument dwelt upon by the Home Secretary and dwelt upon yesterday by the Attorney-General, and which was referred to this afternoon by the Prime Minister when he said there is a repeated and insistent demand from Wales for Disestablishment. They are perfectly right to bring that argument prominently forward, because it is the only argument that has not been absolutely defeated and disparaged in this House up to the present moment. What does it come to? You admit, we all admit, that some fifty or sixty years ago, or even forty years ago, there was a real demand from Wales for Disestablishment. But the position has changed. It has not only changed since that time, but all the evidence in this country and in Wales is to the effect that we have every reason to suppose—let us put it to the test and go to the ballot-box, if you like—that the position has very considerably changed since this Bill was first introduced into this House.

What is the position in the House of Commons? We all remember the oft quoted statement of the Leader of the Welsh Liberal party in which he referred to the determined objection of a section of the Liberal party to this Bill, and to the lukewarmness of the whole of the Liberal party with regard to it. It is common knowledge that the supporters of the Government are very much divided on the question of Disendowment. We know that there are many who desire to see the Clauses with regard to Disendowment modified and made less drastic. We know that many Liberal Members from Wales are in deadly fear lest the Government may give way and weaken the Disendowment Clauses. We know that this Bill is not popular, and that it grows every day less popular, with the supporters of the Government in proportion as the day of a possible General Election cames closer and they will have once again to appeal to the suffrages of their constituents, and they know that if they come before their constituents as out-and-out supporters of this Bill their seats will be in considerable jeopardy. The position in the House of Commons is weakening every day. I need hardly refer to the proof of what I say in the fact that this Bill most distinctly would not be before the House at the present moment if it had not been for the support of the Nationalist Members from Ireland, who, for other reasons, and not for interest in this question, have voted in support of it. I was interested a day or two ago, in looking up the Debates on this Bill, in reading a speech by the Noble Lord (Lord Hugh Cecil), who made a challenge in these words:— If the hon. Member would resign his seat at South-West Bethnal Green and fight an election on the Welsh Church Still or Home Rule, or the two together. I do not think he would continue to be a Member of this Assembly. That challenge was not accepted. I know that the Under-Secretary for the Home Office stated last night that at the by-election at Bethnal Green no reference was made in the address of the present Member, who sits on this side of the House, to the question of the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church, but we know now, because it has been answered in this House this afternoon, that that question was made a prominent issue at the South-West Bethnal Green election. It was mentioned on the platform time after time—it was mentioned in the literature, and it was repeatedly referred to in the second address which was issued by the present Member. The Noble Lord's prophecy has been well fulfilled. The electors of that important constituency have shown that they do not desire to return as their Member the latest Member of His Majesty's Cabinet, who is still without a seat.

One might carry that further. One might refer to other by-elections, and I do not suppose there is a single candidate on either side who will frankly say that the question of the Disestablishment of our Church did not have a great influence on the issue of these by-elections. I listened to a speech last night by the hon. Member (Mr. Parry). I remember going down to speak at Flint Boroughs, and I remember most distinctly what was happening at that by-election. We were prepared to make a prime issue of this question of the Disestablishment of our Church and the supporters of the Government were determined to blind that issue and to try to make the issue a question as to whether we should have Tariff Reform or Free Trade. The result, in spite of their conefforts, and largely, I think, owing to the fact that we concentrated on this question, was a considerable reduction, at any rate, in the majority previously enjoyed. After all, as has been said over and over again, this is not only a question for Wales, but to my mind it is a question in which England is equally interested. Surely, if you sever the partnership between two individuals, each individual has a right to be consulted. We have an equal right to be consulted on this question with our brother members of the Church in Wales. They wish to abide in partnership with us, and we are determined to go on supporting them.

I was rather amazed this afternoon at what was said by the Prime Minister. He said the case of dismemberment with regard to the Church in Wales was entirely analogous to the question affecting the Church in Ireland in 1869. To my mind, that is a most extraordinary statement. The cases were entirely different. In one case you have four dioceses belonging to the Province of Canterbury under the supreme control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the other, you have an entirely separate organisation under the control of the Primate of Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh. No dismembertnent occurred there. You were not tearing away four dioceses from the rest of the province. You were disestablishing a whole province. If you came before us in what I think would be a much more straightforward and businesslike way and said, "We are not going to dismember your Church, which you object to so strongly, but we are going to Disestablish and Disendow the Province of Canterbury as a whole," then the cases would be parallel. Then you would be putting the question as a whole to the nation as a whole. It would be far more businesslike, and far more honest, if with all respect I may say so, and I have no doubt what the result would be. I noticed that a speech was made the other day by a supporter of the Government in which he ventured to say that there was no sustained enthusiasm for open this Bill—with which I entirely agree-though there was no antagonism to it. What is the case on the other side? All through the last two or three years by meetings, demonstrations, and petitions, ending up with the remarkable protests of Nonconformist feeling from Wales, we have had proof that there is sustained, earnest, keen, and growing opposition from all parts of the country to this Bill—an opposition which is not confined to one party alone, but which embraces men of all different parties and all different political and religious beliefs.

We were told some time ago by the Prime Minister that it would be impossible that a measure under the Parliament Act should become the law of the land if it was condemned by public opinion. What other proof do you want? You have petitions bearing 556,000 signatures from Wales, and something like 2,000,000 from England, presented to this House and examined, and yet no attention whatever is paid to them. You have demonstrations, and no attention is paid to them. What other course is open now to these Nonconformists in Wales who object to the Disendowment Clauses than the course they have taken of protesting to the Prime Minister himself, and asking to be heard by him in opposition to the Bill? I noticed that this afternoon the Prime Minister in his speech, referring to the Church, made some reference to Church management. He seemed to adumbrate that if the Church was Disestablished, her freedom would be greater. He said that now the Church has no authority, and that she is bound and fettered by regulations of centuries ago. I have heard that argument before, and to a certain extent I agree with it. What does this Bill do? Does it give greater freedom to the Church in Wales? To my mind, it restricts the freedom of the Church that will be created in Wales if it becomes law. The Church then will be less free and less autonomous than the Church at the present moment. You say that the bishops and the clergy of the Church are not to be members of Convocation. You tell them what they may not do. That is not giving them greater freedom. If you lay down regulations as to what the constitution of the Church is to be, and what the area in which the Church can operate is to be, you are not increasing freedom, but restricting it, and if in addition you say that the Church that is to be by law created in Wales may set up Ecclesiastical Courts, but that appeal from those Courts can only lie to the Provincial Courts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the consent of the King in Council, you are setting up in future the Prime Minister of the day as the arbiter as to whether these appeals shall or shall not lie to these Provincial Courts. That is not increased freedom. To my mind, it is diminishing the autonomy of the Church.

In conclusion, I should like to say a word in support of the reasons which, I believe, induce Nonconformists in increasing numbers not only in Wales, but also in England, to support our opposition to this Bill. It is quite true that on the question of Disestablishment most of those Nonconformists, or many of them, do not think as I think, but on the question of Disendowment there are undoubtedly an increasing number of earnest-minded men—men who, with all respect, if I may say so, put religion before politics—who are giving us their support. I noticed the other day that a leaflet was issued by the Liberation Society which was headed, "The Welsh Disestablishment Bill: Where the Money Goes." That leaflet attempted to show that under the Disendowment Clauses of this Bill many places would not suffer to the extent that many people believe they would suffer. For instance, it referred to the populous centres of Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, and the Rhondda Valley, and it gave the population of these places as 490,000. It said that in those places with that population only £1,200—it should have said per annum—would be taken away from the Church. Yes, but in that district there are forty-five parishes, 143 Churches and mission rooms, and 140 clergy. The total Endowment for these forty-five parishes amounts to £10,230 per annum, and for 140 clergy that is not an extravagant Endowment. If you are going to take away £1,200 a year from them, you cannot call it a small thing, as this pamphlet intended to suggest. I may add that there are no less than twenty-one village parishes in which the whole of the Endowment of the Church would be taken away, in which there is no Nonconformist minister at all, and in which there is no Nonconformist chapel at all.

Under this Bill, if the Disendowment Clauses are carried out, there will be little opportunity for those who live in these parishes to have the benefit of the ministrations of religion. They object to this Bill because of its unfairness with regard to the Disendowment Clauses, because they realise that the voluntary system has broken down. They realise that in some of the poorest districts in this country and in Wales chapels have been sold—I regret it, but such is the case—and Nonconformist activity has been hampered because funds are not forthcoming to maintain ministers, and to maintain services in those districts. They realise that, and as a consequence they build up their sustentation funds. Realising what inadequate means have meant to Nonconformists, and realising the handicap which they have entailed, surely it is rather unfair for hon. Members to support the Government in depriving the Church of England of those funds which it possesses, and so imposing upon her the same hardship and the same handicap as that which Nonconformists have suffered in the past. It is a fact on which we must congratulate ourselves, that during the last few years in Wales as in England, Nonconformists and members of the Church of England, and different religious bodies in this country, have begun to understand one another better. They are all working for a common cause, the cause of Christianity, and if you injure one you injure the whole force in support of Christianity and in support of religion in this country. We were understanding one another better. One hoped that we were on the right road towards that unity of Christianity which all of us would welcome. And I often wonder whether many Nonconformists do not think that the fact that in the last six or seven years membership of Nonconformist denominations has largely decreased, while membership of the Church has increased, as shown by the figures given in the Free Church Year Book issued not long ago, brings home to earnest-minded Nonconformists the doubt as to whether all this political controversy is not doing themselves a great deal of harm.

9.0 P.M.

Religious bodies were not meant for political controversy. They were meant to do their work in the cause of Christianity and the support of religion, and this political controversy, instead of promoting that union and better understanding which we all hope for, must only tend to put it back. I have tried to give some of the reasons which induce Nonconformists in increasing numbers to support our opposition to this Bill. They support it, I admit, not on the question of Disestablishment, but on the principle of Disendowment. I would like to conclude by reading a quotation from a Nonconformist minister, the Rev. W. A. Jones, a Welsh Congregationalist minister, who sums up from his point of view in a way which I never heard better expressed the reasons for opposing Disendowment of the Church. Speaking at Liverpool, he is reported to have said:— At one time I was a zealous advocate of Disendowment, but I have changed my opinion. The Church in Wales to-day is not what it was 200 years ago. It is not what it was fifty years ago. It has aroused itself am is doing excellent work. To be frank, I believe that it has made more progress during the last twenty years than any other religious body in Wales. In many a parish and town in the country it makes rapid progress, giving to us all an example of faithfulness and energy, in face of so much impiety and religious apostasy, it will be a mistake in my opinion to curtail the financial resources of the Church and to divert them to objects less serviceable to religion I am unable to agree with the argument that it would be an advantage to the Church to deprive it of its Endowment. There is not a single Nonconformist in Wales who would believe this in regard to his own denomination, and for the life of me I cannot help thinking that such an argument is hypocritical and dishonest.

Mr. TOWYN JONES

He is not a Congregational minister. He is a Minister of the Free Church in Wales.

Mr. CAMPION

To my mind that interruption is immaterial. He is a Free Churchman and he was a supporter of Disestablishment and Disendowment. He has altered his opinion, and he gives his opinion frankly and clearly in the quotation which I have just read. That quotation very well sums up to my mind the position taken up by these 103,000 odd Nonconformists who so honestly and straightforwardly come forward in the face of considerable opposition and raise their protest against this Bill.

Mr. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS

The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has wandered over so very wide a field that he will forgive me if I do not propose to follow him into all the matters which he has brought forward. There is one statement, however, which I think will startle most hon. Members of this House—that is, that this question has not been adequately discussed. Why this afternoon, when I came into this House, I amused myself for an hour or so looking through what the Leader of the Opposition once called the unfathomable bog of "Hansard."

Mr. CAMPION

I do not think that I said that. What I said was that there was no mandate for it in the country.

Mr. WILLIAMS

I am very glad to hear the hon. Member dissociate himself from that opinion, though I noticed his words, but I know how difficult it is for an hon. Member sometimes to express himself when on his feet. I was looking this afternoon through the pages of "Hansard" of twenty years ago. It was this week in 1894 that this Bill, or, rather, another Bill less generous to the Church than this Bill, was introduced into this House. It was discussed at length, and in the following year was reintroduced, and no less than five days were given to the discussion on the Second Reading, and from that day to this there certainly has not been in Wales a year in which some such measure as this has not been discussed. In the twenty years which have elapsed since then many things have happened—Empires have been dissolved, dynasties have been overthrown, great wars have been waged, parties have come and parties have gone, new political and social issues have been raised in this country, and have challenged the attention of this House, but in this world of flux and change there is one thing that has remained constant and inflexible, and that is the determination of Wales to get this Bill put on the Statute Book.

Why is it? Twenty years ago there were thirty-one out of the thirty-four Members from Wales all demanding this Bill. Today the same proportion of numbers demand this act of justice for our country. When you consider how unstable political opinion is in England, and even in Scotland, when you know how a war like the South African War will change the whole political current of thought for the time being, when you know how easy it is to lead and to deflect popular opinion, it is worthy of note that during the whole of those twenty years, in spite of war and rumours of war, in spite of Tariff Reform and great changes in our social and fiscal system, Wales has remained loyally faithful to the demand she put forward twenty or thirty years ago. I suggest to hon. Members opposite that that is a consideration well worthy of their attention. When I was looking through the Debates of twenty years ago I was rather staggered to find that exactly the same arguments were used then on those benches as have been used yesterday and to-day. The same appeal for more time for the Church was made. "Give us a little more time," said the hon. and gallant Member for Dudley, who has since wandered about from one seat to another in England, and whose action on this question made it impossible for him to become a Welsh Member. At the end of his eloquent speech in 1895 he said that if this House would only grant a little time to the Church, that she should redeem herself in Wales, and would become truly and in reality the national Church, and that this ephemeral demand for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church would disappear. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was then a private Member sitting on those benches in those days, and he asked how long the hon. and gallant Gentleman required for this process to take place. The hon. and gallant Gentleman replied, "Very soon."

Twenty years have gone by, and here we are to-day with the Church exactly in the same comparative position with regard to Wales, no stronger in comparison with Nonconformity than it was twenty years ago. I agree that as the population of Wales has increased, the membership of the Church of England in Wales has also-increased. But precisely the same thing is true of Nonconformists. If you compare the relative strength of the Church in Wales to-day with Nonconformity you will find no appreciable difference in the position from what it was twenty years ago. Then we have heard about the petition. I was quite startled to find that a gentleman (Mr. J. R. Davis)—who figured very prominently as one of the signatories and organisers of this petition—was referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, as he then was, who vouched for him as a pious Nonconformist. All Nonconformists signing these petitions are called earnest and pious. I think it is a very invidious thing to inquire into the religious opinions of any man, and I am, therefore, not going to inquire very minutely into the question whether these men are entitled to call themselves Nonconformists or not, for, with great respect, that is not the point. The real point in regard to these petitions is this: Are the signatories to the petition Liberals or Conservatives? Are they Nonconformists who voted Liberal at the last election, and who are now alienated from the Government and from the Liberal party because of these Disendowment proposals? That is the real test. Mr. J. B. Davis, who was chairman of the Bangor Organising Committee, was twenty years ago in the foremost ranks of those Nonconformists who were opposing Disestablishment and Disendowment.

Let me turn for a moment to South Wales, and here I confess we are under a great disadvantage, because we do not know the names of the people who are said to have signed the petition. We are told that several hundreds of Ministers and office bearers in Nonconformist churches have signed this petition, and the hon. Member for Oswestry said he "would be quite willing that the House of Commons should investigate this petition. Let me tell him that the people who have got up that petition must oppose any such course. I will tell him why. I have been given a copy of the circular which was sent to, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen. It is headed in this way:— A protest; as a Nonconformist minister in South Wales and Monmouthshire, I desire to express my conscientious opposition to the proposal, And so on. Then it adds: Each name will be kept absolutely undisclosed unless the signet gives his consent for it to be published. How are we to investigate a petition of this sort, when a pledge is given that the names are to be absolutely undisclosed? How is it to be presented to this House and investigated as petitions ought to be investigated? Who are those gentlemen? The promoter is a member of my own profession, and I am sure he would not object to my calling him a personal friend—Mr. G. N. W. Thomas, the son and grandson of a Nonconformist minister. It is also quite true that he is not a member of any Nonconformist body or any Church in Cardiff to-day. It is further true that he is a life long Conservative, and that he is now a member in the Tory interest of the Corporation of Cardiff. Although a Nonconformist, he is very ready to be considered an opponent of this Bill. Then we have Mr. Henry Radcliffe, who was last year elected a sidesman of the Church, and this year, I do not know from what motive, he refused to be re-elected a sidesman, and said that it was a mistake that he had been elected. Hon. Gentlemen may draw their own conclusions from that, and Mr. Henry Radcliffe could not be called, and has not been called for many years now, a member of the Liberal party. The hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs spoke of four gentlemen of the name of Cory, as though the four Corys belonged to the same family. Everybody knows that there are several Corys in Cardiff who have no kind of connection whatever. There is one bearing the great and respected name of Cory, Uncle to the Member for one of the Cornish Divisions, who, since 1886, he severed himself from the Liberal party, and he has been a Unionist, and a very strong Unionist, all through these years. The other gentleman of the name of Cory, mentioned by the hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs, was High Sheriff of Glamorgan a year or so ago, and is chairman of the Conservative Association. Sir John Gunn, who is also one of the names of the organisers of this Nonconformist protest, fought Cardiff in the Conservative interest some years ago. These names have been published. Let me tell hon. Gentlemen to guage the value of this petition by this fact, that the only individual whose name is published from my Constituency is a gentleman who ever since 1886 has been a keen Unionist, and one of the leading Tariff Reformers since 1903, and who this year is chairman of the Conservative Association. Or, even if you go further afield, I happen to come from a little rural parish where I pretty well know every man in the village. There are two names of men from that parish, and they have always fought against Liberalism, both in local and Parliamentary elections. I was not surprised to find the name of a cousin of mine. He has always been a Tory. You might as well say because the Leader of the Opposition is a Dissenter, in England at any rate, that because he is willing conscientiously to sign a petition against Disestablishment and Disendowment that that showed that the Presbyterians of Scotland are against this Bill, as to say that because the names of these gentlemen, who are very well known and respected—and I say nothing against them— who are Tories speak, vote, and sign a petition against Disestablishment and Disendowment, that therefore the Nonconformists of Wales are against the Bill. I have no time to deal with the matter any further now, though I should like to do so.

I would ask the House to consider for a moment why it is that Wales shows this impregnable front against the Establishment of the Church of England in Wales. Why is it that Wales, in spite of all the changes that occur in our political system, goes on year after year, I might almost say generation after generation, demanding this act of justice. In order to find that out, I agree with the Attorney-General, you must go back to the history of Wales. I wish I had time to develop the theme, but I will only say this now: The hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs quoted something I wrote about the Reformation. I do say here, as I have always said, that the way in which the Church was partly Disestablished and partly Disendowed at the time of Henry VIII. wrought great injury to the people of Wales. There was no part of the United Kingdom that was so greatly injured as Wales was by the Reformation, because there was no part of the United Kingdom where monasteries were so well endowed as in Wales. Wales undoubtedly, according to all contemporary evidence, was the most Catholic part of the United Kingdom at the time of the Reformation, and for a hundred years afterwards. For reasons which I need not enter into now, the Catholic Church left Wales derelict after the Reformation, and the Reformation Church as established by law had no rival, no competitor, in Wales for a hundred years. It was not that there were not great men in the Church, good men, who gave devoted service to Wales, for there was Bishop Morgan, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who translated the Bible into inimitable Welsh, Archdeacon Prys, and a host of others whose names are familiar to the people of Wales, who did all they could to bring the Church into close sympathy and touch with the people of Wales. Yet at the end of a century, after they were in the field without rivals or competitors, what was the condition of things in Wales? I venture to say that no Welshman can read the history of his country without a feeling of shame and almost of indignation that such things should have been allowed. Welsh literature was dead, the Eisteddfod disappeared, culture was non existent, education there was none, religion there was none. One quarter of the churches in Wales, and there were no chapels, were shut up from the beginning of the year to the end of the year without any Christian service at all. One out of every fifteen of the ministers of the Church in Wales knew not how to read or to preach in Welsh.

That was the condition of things after a hundred years of unrivalled work. Then what happened? Some great men arose in Wales. Who were they? They were men who were beneficed clergymen in the Established Church. The Rev. William Wroth, rector of Llanfaches; the Rev. William Erbury, Vicar of St. Mary's, his curate, and the Rev. Walter Cradock. They were the men who started to rouse Wales from the religious lethargy and paganism into which it had sunk. They wanted to remain inside the Church. What was their reward? Walter Cradock was brought before the Bishop of Llandaff, who called him, this great man, the morning star of Welsh Nonconformity, not a man who was an inspired preacher, but told him he was a bold, ignorant young fellow, and he was inhibited from preaching. He had to go to North Wales to start a mission. Gradually the toils of the Ecclesiastical Court gathered round the other men. William Wroth and William Erbury were deprived of their benefices. William Wroth, in 1636, because he was deprived of working within the Church, an old man, having spent himself in the service of the Church, and, deprived of the opportunity of doing good in his own Church, set up the first independent chapel in his own parish. That movement, I agree, did not apply to the whole of Wales. It only affected Glamorgan, Monmouth, Carmarthen, and the Southern Counties to a small extent, but it did this much good, that it arrested the decay of religion in Wales, and made it possible to found chapels and schools in Wales. It revived the love of learning in Wales; it kept alive and purified the Welsh language; it made the Welsh language once more an instrument of culture and a means of salvation. After some fifty or sixty years the force of this movement, which is sometimes called the Puritan movement—inaccurately, in my belief, because it arose quite independently of the Puritan movement in England—was spent, and the Church had a chance of retrieving her position. We have heard a great deal of Griffith Jones, of Llandowror. It is true that he was a beneficed clergyman of the Church, but he was the son of an Independent deaeon. If you look at the history of the Methodist revival of the eighteenth century you will find that everyone of the Methodist leaders drew their fullest inspiration from the old Puritan movement which had died out. What had happened was this: As time went on the force of the movement was spent: the old Puritan movement got lost in the dry husks of theological controversy. Arianism and other "isms" seemed to crop up. The best and most zealous men amongst the Nonconformists themselves felt that they could not labour with any advantage within the old Dissenting movement, and they turned once more to the Church.

This was a chance which no other institution, as far as I know, has ever had. Griffith Jones was the son of a Nonconformist deacon and became a beneficed clergyman. William Williams, of Pantycelyn, son of another Independent deacon, received ordination. Then there was Howell Harries, of Trevecca, the first leader of the Methodist movement who applied in vain for Episcopal ordination, Daniel Rowlands, of Llangeitho, the greatest preacher Wales has ever produced, was in priest's orders, and remained so to the end of his days. For eighty years these men laboured within the Church. They did not become Dissenters out of cantankerousness, or because they had any doctrinal differences. Daniel Rowlands was to the end of his days a member of the Church. Williams, of Pantycelyn, says that he founded his faith on the Articles of the Church of England and the Catechism of Westminster. Thomas Charles, of Bala, was not only in priest's orders, but it was against his will that he was—not inhibited from preaching, it is true, but deprived of his curacy, and he failed to get another curacy in the whole of Wales. Why did this great movement of devoted souls within the Church become the beginning of a new era in Nonconformity? Because the Church would not have it. The Church thrust these men out. How did they do it? Thomas Charles, of Bala, the most revered name in the history of Welsh Nonconformity, has told the story. I would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to turn up the pamphlet printed in the year 1802, written by Thomas Charles. It is called "The Vindication of the Methodists of Wales." In this, he says, among other things, that the Methodists have been compelled to seek protection under the Toleration Act. They wished to cling to the Established Church and they do not consider themselves a separate body." Why? Because these Methodists, having built their chapels as mission rooms belonging to the Church, refused to look upon them as Nonconformist chapels. They said, "We are members of the Church of England. These chapels we have built as mission rooms in which we can worship, where we can exhort each other, and meet for prayer. We are members of the Church of England, and we will go to the parish church for the Sacrament. We will not take the Sacrament except at the hands of episcopally ordained clergy."

What did the Church do? They took out summonses against these men for worshipping in meeting houses not licensed under the Toleration Act. £100 in fines were paid in one year only. Other men, exhortera and preachers, who took part in these religious services, were proceeded against because, being members of the Church of England, as they thought, but being Dissenters, as the Church said, they were taking part in these religious exercises without a licence-under the Toleration Act. One man whose name is mentioned was imprisoned for six months for that offence alone. Thomas Charles in 1802 wrote his "Vindication" as a warning to the Church authorities. The warning fell on deaf ears. In 1811, for that and other reasons, the Methodists had to form a connection of their own. There is not a single Nonconformist sect or a single Dissenting denomination in Wales to-day that has not been driven out of the Church, not because of any doctrinal differences, but because these good men were men with souls on fire for the work of bringing salvation to their fellowmen. If that had happened in any other Church, say the Church of Rome, do you not think that the Church of Rome would have found some means of keeping these men within her fold? She would have formed an Order of Preaching Friars, or something of that sort, in order to keep these, the best men the Church ever had, within her borders. But the Church drove them out, and, with them, the best part of the Welsh people.

I agree that the Church to-day is doing good work. No one disputes it. But, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Balfour) asks, "Is the Church in Wales doing her duty?" I say no. Her duty, according to her own idea, if she be a National Church, is to minister to the whole nation. It is for that reason that these Endowments are given to her. She is not doing accepted these national Endowments, well in the sense that she is ministering to her own flocks; but she is not doing the duty which she took upon herself when she-accepted these National Endowments. She is ministering to a small minority of the people among whom she dwells. She is given this chance to-day, as I believe, to reconcile herself with the people of Wales. She will never become the only National Church. She has lost that position. But I believe that if she accepts this opportunity, she may yet reconcile herself to the people of Wales and become a great power for good in Wales, breaking down those unhappy barriers which have been set up by circumstances between her and a great proportion of the people of Wales.

But I am not concerned so much with that. I am here as a representative of Wales. I ask hon. Gentlemen opposite this earnest question: What answer will they give to Wales? Wales, after all, is the oldest partner of England. At a time when Scotland was still an independent Kingdom, fighting the arms of England at Solway Moss and Pinkie Cleugh; at a time when unhappy Ireland was in a welter of confusion and anarchy, Wales was asked by the Parliament to send representatives to sit at Westminster, and for 400 years we have at the invitation of England sent representatives here. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London said that we must not over emphasise the parochialism of our national spirit. When has Wales, except in this Bill, ever made any claim upon this Parliament? We have been here for 400 years, and this is the only big measure we have ever asked at the hands of this House of Commons. Why should you refuse us? Wales stands to-day at your Bar, at the Bar of this High Court of Parliament, a suppliant for justice. She comes to seek equity, and she comes with clean hands. When was it that Wales proved unfaithful, or treacherous, or disloyal? She comes at your invitation in a constitutional way. She comes armed with all those constitutional sanctions which you Englishmen, the creators and inventors of the system of representative Government have taught her are the sure passports to the Temple of Justice. Why should you deny Wales this measure of justice? You do not seek to impose the Anglican yoke upon Scotland. You did it once. You are ashamed of it to-day. "Few," said Burke, "are the friends of a departed tyranny." You tried it on Ireland, and for two generations Ireland has enjoyed religious equality.

You do not proceed to set up this Anglican establishment in any of your great Dominions beyond the seas. You do not ask the pious Hindoos of Bengal to suffer your yoke, or the fanatical Mahomedans of the Soudan, or the heathen savages of Nigeria or Uganda! Surely if there is anything in the Establishment as a national recognition of religion, you want it more in those far-off countries where society is more loosely organised, and where Christianity is not indigenous to the soil as is the case with Wales. Wales, so far as outward observance is concerned, is one of the most religious of countries. You need fear nothing from that point of view for Wales. Why should you insist on leaving this ignominy to Wales alone, who is your oldest partner, your most faithful ally, and the elder daughter of this House? Englishmen may be slow to move, but they have a sense of justice, upon which we Welsh people rest our claims. I look forward to the future with a calm, serene and confident eye. Time is on our side. This mediæval conception of the Church and her relation to the State is worn out by the attrition of time and circumstance. That is why I believe that this year of grace will see the redemption of the trembling hopes of my people.

Mr. BONAR LAW

I always listen with interest, though with a qualified pleasure, to the speeches of the hon. and learned Member who has just sat down. I confess that the pleasure is greater when he is engaged in chastising the backslidings of his own Government than when he is employed only in recommending his own view. No one, I think, can fail to have a certain feeling of sympathy with anyone who feels as strongly as the hon. Member evidently does, and who is capable of expressing his view so forcibly, though I must say I listened in vain in the hope of seeing some connection between the views—and Liberal views on many points which the hon. Member expressed—and the proposals which are contained in this Bill. What were the main grounds of his speech—that part, at all events, that I have had the pleasure of listening to? His first effort was to minimise the importance of the Nonconformist petition, in regard to which I may say a word or two later. The only remark which I would like to make now upon it is this: That the hon. Member seems to think that the Noncon conformist who is not an out-and-out Liberal is not entitled to give any expression to his views. Another view that perhaps may emerge from that point is this: If he is really right in thinking that there are 103,000 Nonconformists who have become converts to the party to which I belong, then I have a greater hope for the elections in Wales than I have had in the past. The next point of the hon. Member was to dwell upon the backslidings of the Church in the eighteenth century. I really do not see what connection that has with what you are now proposing to do with the Church. A great deal that the hon. Gentleman has said is true, but I think he will find that a great deal of it would be true in regard to many other Churches besides the Church in Wales. Anyone who studies the history of the Church in Scotland in the eighteenth century will find there was very much the same lethargy and indifference, and the offences to which he referred certainly were not confined to Wales. But in any case what ground is there for depriving the Church, which is doing good work now, of funds which are necessary for that work because some Church did not fulfil its duties 100 years ago? The hon. Member says the Church is not doing its duty now. He gave a curious definition of what that duty is. He does not deny that the Church is doing everything it can. It is not doing its duty, he said, because everybody will not come within its fold. Surely of all arguments which have ever been adduced for taking money from any corporation, that is one of the worst that has ever been presented to this House!

I confess I have a feeling, which I think must be shared by hon. Members in all parts of the House who take a certain pride and continuous interest in the House of Commons, whatever other result the "Parliament Act has had, it has certainly brought a new feature into our practice. There is a smaller attendance of the Members of the Government than used to be customary. In this Debate we have had a new phenomena. A Minister comes and makes a speech, as the Attorney-General did yesterday, listens for a short time to the speaker that follows him, and then disappears. As regards the Prime Minister, he did not appear at all yesterday. He came in to-day only to hear the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London. Apparently now he has done with the House of Commons. What is the meaning of it? It really means that everyone recognises that our Debates on this subject are unreal. It is not, as the Under-Secretary for the Home Department said yesterday, entirely due to the change brought about by the Parliament Act. It is due to this—and every Member in the House must be aware of it—that the fate of this Bill does not depend in the least on anything that can happen to it, or on any merits of this Bill, but it is contingent on the larger questions with which it is bound up, and the conditions under which business is now carried on. The Parliament Act has had another disadvantage. It has given us less opportunity than we used to have of discussion in Committee—the only kind of discussion which enables us to go into the details of a Bill. It has given, at least I think so, too large an opportunity for Second Reading discussion—it has given a larger opportunity than I appreciate from that point of view. I agree therefore, both with the Prime Minister and with the Under-Secretary, that it is very difficult for anyone not merely to say anything new, but to find anything to say which he has not said already in connection with these Debates. Now I shall try, but I am not sure I shall succeed—for my experience is that the more time you take in preparing a speech the shorter it is—I shall try to endeavour to consider two points in connection with this Bill. I shall examine as briefly as I can the merits or the demerits of the Measure, and then I shall consider what, to me, under present conditions, is almost more important, and that is the way in which it is proposed to carry this Bill into law, if it ever is carried into law.

This Bill proposes to do three things to the Church in Wales. It proposes to Disestablish it, to compel it by law to break the connection which has existed for so many centuries with the Church of England as a whole, and it proposes to deprive the Church of its Endowments. The Prime Minister told us this afternoon that Disestablishment was purely a question of expediency. I do not think that is a view which would be universally held, or perhaps generally adopted. At all events, I was brought up in the belief that nothing could be more heretical than that view, and there certainly is a large body of opinion in this country on both sides which does look upon the question of Disestablishment as a question of principle, as a question of right and wrong, as much as any question which can be discussed in this House. On the other hand, there is a large body of opinion which I think looks for equality, and if I have time later on I shall try to put before the House some of the reasons which, in my opinion, cause that. There is a large body of opinion which holds the view that religion is a question for the individual citizen, that it is something with which the State ought not to have anything to do. That is a view which was very strongly held at one time in this country. This is the view on which the plea for religious equality is based. It is a conviction which has been very strongly held, and is still held strongly, and which everyone must regard with respect, but it is a view which I am afraid has not much influence on those who form the motive power behind this particular Bill.

The hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, in a very interesting and ingenious interruption which he made this afternoon, told us that Disestablishment to him "was a social reform with money in it, and if I am not mistaken the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, and who I have always regarded as not only the most strenuous but, if I may say so without offence to others, as the most effective fighter on this subject, has I think stated that Disestablishment without Disendowment was an academic question which was not worth considering. Well, if that is the case, then there is no question here of religious equality, and it is idle to keep constantly repeating, as hon. Gentlemen do, phrases which for them have no meaning, at all events no practical meaning. There is a body of opinion which holds the view today to which I referred, but there is also a large body of opinion which I think is not greatly diminished which holds the view that religion is essential, is one of the vital factors of national life, which ought to be recognised in some form by the State. That view is held and largely held, and I am of opinion that so far as one can judge it is a view which on the whole is understood by the mass of the people in this country. I think that is shown in another connection. Logically it seems to me that if you take the view that the State ought to have nothing to do with religion as religion, you must also take the view that education, in so far as it is controlled by the State, ought to be secular and free from religious teaching. Everybody knows that is not the view which is held by the great mass of the people in this country.

If people believe, and I am one of them, that the national recognition of religion is good, both for religion and for the State, then whatever else may be in doubt this is certain, that if there is to be any national recognition of religion in Wales, the Church in Wales, not only from its past history, but from the fact that it is admittedly, whatever else is in doubt, the largest Christian denomination in Wales, is entitled to that recognition. That claim has been denied. It was denied yesterday by the Attorney-General, who adduced two arguments, one borrowed from his colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one his own invention, and I hardly know which of the two is the more fantastic. The borrowed argument was this, that the Church in Wales is alien to the Welsh temperament. That seems very strange to me. The Anglican Church, with its liturgy, which for spiritual elevation, which for beauty and sublimity of expression is second only to the English Bible, has added to the joy and has consoled the sorrow of countless generations of Christians in this country, and more than that, it is not here alone, but wherever the English language is spoken that the Church still appeals with its old force to the Christian people in these countries. If it be true that such a Church can make no appeal to the Welsh temperament, I think that it is a condemnation not of the Church, but of the Welsh temperament. But, as a matter of fact, it is not true, and everybody knows that it is not true. Why is it that those who are, I was going to say bitterly hostile to the Church, but, at any rate, who are so strongly in favour of this Bill, have always refused to have a religious census in Wales. Is it out of pity for the Church? Is it through their fear of showing up the weakness of the Church that they refuse to allow that to be done? I think not, and I will prove it. At present, whatever it may have been in the past, the Church in Wales has no power to impose its administration on anyone who does not want it. It is a fact, and an admitted fact, that the Church is growing, and growing constantly in power and influence in Wales, and what is more, that it is the only denomination, I believe, which is actually increasing in membership, and the same cannot be said of other denominations. So much for its being alien to the Welsh temperament.

I now come to the original intervention of the right hon. Gentleman the Attorney-General, who has just honoured us by coming into the House. He says the Church in Wales never could be the proper vehicle for the expression of Welsh religious sentiment, because it is only four dioceses of the Church of England. It cannot, according to that theory, obey the national spirit unless there is a separate Church. I fancy the right hon. Gentleman is aware that for many centuries the whole of Western Christendom was under one Church, and it was I remember at that time, as he will remember, that the battle of Bannockburn was fought, and I never found any Scotchman who would be prepared to deny that there was a strong national sentiment in Scotland, although the Church of England and Scotland were the same at that time. It is to fantastic arguments of that kind that hon. Genleinen and right hon. Gentlemen are driven in order to defend "what they know is indefensible. Everybody knows that the real ground of hostility to the Church of England is not because it is not appealing to the Welsh people, but because it is growing strong, and is appealing with greater force to the people than is agreeable to those who are opposed to the Church. The avowed object of this Bill is to force the Church of England in Wales by law to break the connection which has existed for I do not know how many centuries with the Church of England. We are told by those who profess to have the good of the Church at heart that one of the effects of Disestablishment will be greater freedom. What is the form this greater freedom takes at the outset? It is to compel the Church in Wales to break its connection with the Church in England.

10.0 P.M.

Although there are many parts of this Bill more important, there is no part which seems to me more indefensible and more unjust. Suppose the attempt were made to prevent any of the Welsh Free Churches from having as close a communion as applies to similar denominations in England, is there any hon. Member of this House who would tolerate that for a moment? The Prime Minister this afternoon attempted to make out that what has been done in this Bill meant very little in the way of dismemberment. He was answered by the hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs (Mr. Ormsby-Gore), and all I need to say on this point is that the Bishop of Oxford, who is in favour of Disestablishment, and yet dislikes Disendowment, is utterly opposed to these proposals, because of their injustice to the Church of England, and because they will break the connection which exists. That is simply tyranny, and I do not believe for a moment that it is necessary. I believe there are Clauses in the Bill which might be removed which would allow this, and if this is not allowed I can see no reason for saying that severing this close connection will give greater strength to the Church in Wales, which is asserted by those who are trying to carry this Bill through. It is the Disendowment proposals of this Bill which are stamped with that mark of meanness to which my right hon. Friend refers, and which I think has shocked the conscience, not only of all Churchmen, but of a vast number of Nonconformists. Why have they done it? There is no necessary connection between Disendowment and Disestablishment. That is a fact, and I believe even the Home Secretary has admitted that there have been many cases of Disestablishment without Disendowment. If, therefore, what you want is religious equality, why do you not leave to the Church the funds which it is using well, and which admittedly are being used for purposes which are to the advantage of Wales? Why do you propose to take these funds, and on what grounds? I am not going into the vexed question of the origin of tithes. I shall not do so, not only because I am not competent to adequately deal with them, but I do not think the question is relevant. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Welsh party was rather hard upon the Home Secretary, for he told us that bishops stepped in where lawyers feared to tread. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is not a bishop, but I was under the impression that he was a lawyer. I am not going into the origin of tithes, but I will put this question, if the right hon. Gentleman cares to answer it. The ground on which you say you take the tithes from the Church is that tithes are national property, that they were given improperly to the Church, and that the nation has a right to resume possession of them. If that is true, if that is the ground, then tithes which at the same time were given in the same way to private individuals are equally national property, and the Government has an equal right to resume them. Why do they take one and not the other? I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman will give an answer to that, but I think I can give it. I have no doubt there are hon. Members supporting the right hon. Gentleman who would gladly seize them or any other form of property, although this has not yet commended itself as a hen-roost even to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and for this reason, that if you begin to interfere with the property of private individuals all security of property would be gone, and there would be a rising against the Government which they would find impossible to resist. I do not base the right of the Church on any historic ground. I shall take the claim which puts it at its lowest. I have heard right hon. Gentlemen say that this property was given to the Church by Act of Parliament, and they implied because Parliament had given it Parliament had a right to take it away. Until recently, at least, a Parliamentary title was considered the best of all titles for property of this kind.

The right hon. Gentleman the Attorney-General, in another of those fantastic arguments to which he has reduced us, told us that when the Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662, there were practically no Dissenters in Wales. That is a curious commentary on the Anglican Church being hostile to the Welsh Disestablishment. But the right hon. Gentleman was reminded by my hon. Friend who introduced this Amendment that that Parliamentary title has been confirmed, and it was confirmed in the early days of the last century, in 1836, when, admittedly, there was Nonconformity in Wales, as there was in England. Under any other circumstances a Parliamentary title, dating even from 1836, would be good enough for any property in this country, and has by Act of Parliament been made three times stronger than is necessary in the case of every Free Church throughout the country. But, after all, the right of the Church to this property rests upon something stronger even than a Parliamentary title. It rests on prescription, which in every civilised country at every period of the world's history has been recognised as the best title which can be given to property of any kind. For more than two hundred and fifty years the Church has enjoyed undisputed right to that property, and I venture to say that if it were any other body, if it were a question of a school, a corporation, or a private individual, there is no body of opinion in this House which would for a moment tolerate the taking away of property which had been enjoyed for such a time. It has never been done in this; country. It has never been done in any civilised country. I admit that the Prime Minister this afternoon—and again this is another example of the way in which we repeat arguments which had been refuted over and over again—told us that the Irish Church was an analogy for what is being done now. There is not a word of truth in that. No one claims that the property of a trust of any kind is in the same position as the property of a private individual, but we do claim that the Parliament of this country has never taken away property from any trust, except on the ground that that property was not being properly used for the purposes for which the trust was founded. That was the sole ground on which the Irish Church was Disestablished.

The Prime Minister told us this afternoon, using a legal phrase which has become part of the vernacular in Scotland, that we were estopped from making the claim because the Conservative Government had used the funds they were taking away. What an absurdity! Certainly the Prime Minister was estopped, if ever anyone was, from using the analogy of the Irish Church as an argument in favour of this Bill. He told us that this was done by Mr. Gladstone, who was a devoted son of the Church. Yes, but at the time Mr. Gladstone carried the Bill, he used words which I have quoted before, and which I shall quote again as long as the Prime Minister uses this argument. Mr. Gladstone said: We never could admit an establishment which we think in the main good and efficient for its purpose is to be endangered by the course which we may adopt in reference to an establishment which we look upon as inefficient and bad. It is quite true that twenty years after Mr. Gladstone did claim that there was some points of resemblance between the Welsh Church and the Irish Church. But that claim cannot be made by this Government because the Prime Minister over and over again has said that this establishment is not inefficient or bad, but is doing well the work entrusted to it. There is no doubt, if what is being done to this Church were being done to any other body, it would be admitted to be wrong, and the fact that it is being done from party motives and by the full use of the party machine makes it not less, but more, un-disguisedly robbery. I should like to go a step further. I hold that Parliament has absolutely no right to take these Endowments. But even if it had, and if there were some justification, I can imagine nothing more unwise than that these Endowments should be taken away? What is the object of taking them away? The hon. Gentleman who spoke last is very strong on this subject, but I think that, in his heart, he will admit that what has influenced the Welsh Members in this matter is not what use has been made of the money to be taken from the Church, but that their motive is, at all costs, to take, it from the Church. They decided to take it from the Church long before they decided on what they would spend it. They have changed the destination of it. I do not complain of the use to which the money is being put, but there is no one who will contend for a moment that funds for these services could not be got more easily in other ways than by taking them from the Church.

Why are they taking them from the Church? No one will deny that to deprive the Church in Wales of these funds is to weaken that Church. It will, therefore, injure religion. In what way will it benefit the community? I think most people will agree, whatever their religious views may be, or even if they have no religious views at all, that social work is best done by organisations which are controlled by people who have a higher object in view and who recognise that the men they are trying to improve have not only bodies to be clothed and fed, but souls to be saved. It is far easier to get money for secular purposes than for religious objects. Every Free Church knows that it is extremely difficult to get the funds necessary for the full work of the Church. Why, then take this money away? My Noble Friend who moved the rejection of this Bill in a speech which impressed me both by its sincerity and power, said persecution did harm to the persecutors, but not to the persecuted. I am sorry to say my reading of history does not bear that out. I think that in many cases, persecution has actually killed a religious sect which would otherwise have continued to exist. The hon. Member who thinks that under this Act, the spirit of the Church will not suffer takes an unduly sanguine view. If this Bill is carried through there are hundreds of parishes in Wales to-day which will be deprived of the whole of their Endowments. I do not doubt that when Disestablishment takes place, there will be a wave of enthusiasm amongst Churchmen, which "will cause large subscriptions to be given. I have no doubt that large annual sums can be collected, but I do not believe it will be possible to raise the total sum which is necessary to produce the interest of what the Church is to be deprived by this Act.

Who is going to gain? My right hon. Friend the Member for the Strand Division (Mr. Long) yesterday gave an instance which will account for much of the feeling about this matter. He spoke of a parish in Wales where the clergyman of the Church of England ministers to a minority, and perhaps a small minority of the population, while the pastor of the Free Church is in a much worse position financially than he. That is probably true, but how are you going to improve the position of the Free Church by depriving the Established Church of her resources? Instead of improving it, you are going to make it worse. In Wales and elsewhere, there is a growing desire to put ministers of Free Churches on a permanent basis. If you take away from them the example held up by the better conditions of the Church in Wales, instead of doing good, you will do harm to that motive, which is actuating the members of the Free Churches. I can see no ground on which the Disendowment proposals of this Bill can be defended?

I should like very briefly to take the" other side of the question, and that is, the condition under which this Bill is being carried through. I do not think there is any Member of this House who disagrees with me in reality when I say that this Bill would actually have no chance of becoming law if it were not deprived, not of the right of appeal to the House of Lords, but of a right to appeal to the electors who send Members here. I do not think that is in doubt. The Prime Minister, in recommending the Parliament Act, said that no Bill should go through under it unless it had staple support in this House and the staple support of this country. Has this Bill complied with that condition? The right hon. Gentleman says it has. He is easily pleased. Consider first what happened in this House. Hon. Gentlemen will remember that the first act of the Government was to put off its Second Heading until the Nationalist Members had come back from Ireland. And what happened then has been the history from that day to this of the progress of this Bill. But for the support of the Nationalist Members it would have been dead long ago, and no one would have regretted it. On four occasions at least, and some of them were vital occasions, the Government were supported by a majority smaller than the number of Nationalist Members who voted with it. I know that some hon. Members—I think the hon. Member for Donegal was one—claimed that they were voting in accordance with their convictions. That may be true in the case of the hon. Member for Donegal, but it is making a very great demand on the credulity of this House to suggest that all the Nationalist Members would have taken that view if they had been free to vote on the merits of the Bill. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), in the words quoted earlier in this Debate, when he claimed, and justly claimed, that the fact that this Bill is alive is due to the Nationalist Members, did not claim it on the ground of the convictions of the Nationalist Members; he claimed it on the ground of their "splendid discipline."

Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR

I have over and over again stated that we knew what it was to have an alien Church of a minority in Ireland, and we were anxious to extend to another country the same principle we had established in Ireland.

Mr. BONAR LAW

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman has over and over again stated, but I do know that he stated that the fact that this Bill was alive was due to the splendid discipline of the Nationalist party. I know this, that the Leader of the Nationalist party himself said in this House in my hearing:— Your British politics do not concern us. Our votes will in this Parliament, as in past Parliaments, be directed by one sole consideration, by what we regard to be the interests of Ireland. There is no doubt about that: There is no doubt about this fact: that this Bill would have been dead to-day but for the votes of men who, in the words of the Irish Leader, have given their votes without any regard to the merits of the question. But there is more than that: on two occasions at least the Bill would have been dead if the number of Nationalists, even although they had all voted for it, had been the number to which they would have been entitled if the Home Rule Bill had been law. We know the principle of the Government. It is that that is the proportion in which they ought to interfere in British questions. We have this fact: that the last use the Government have made of the full number is to destroy a Church which they could not destroy if they depended only upon that proportion which they think is the right proportion. What about the stable opinion in the constituencies? How is that to be tested? It is a fact which I do not think anyone will deny that there has been a larger number of more enthusiastic meetings against this Bill throughout England than has ever taken place with regard to any political subject in this country. Let me give one example. The Bishop of St. David's addressed a large meeting in Peterborough. There were more than 2,000 people present. The local Liberals thought that was rather awful, and I am told that they invited the hon. Gentleman the Member for Carmar then (Mr. Llewelyn Williams), whose ability as a speaker we all recognise, to come down and supply the antidote. He may have had an enthusiastic audience, but I am told that it was less than 200, in reply to the demonstration. The same thing is even true of Wales. Let me refer to an indication of the opinion in Wales itself. There has, first of all, been a petition from the people of Wales against this Bill. It is easy to exaggerate the importance of it, but it is very easy to underestimate it also, and it is a fact that the protest against this Bill was signed by more than one-third of the population over fifteen years of age in the Principality of Wales. I question if it be possible on any other subject to get so large a proportion of the people to sign a petition, and in face of that it is absolutely idle to pretend that the proportion in which the Welsh Members came to this House represents anything like the feeling of the Welsh people in regard to this matter.

Then we had only a few days ago a petition presented by the Nonconformists to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister objected to the form of it. When it suits him—although, as a matter of fact, no one who has ever filled his position has so completely destroyed the Constitution of this country—he is very fond of Constitutional precedents. He says that the petition ought to have been presented to the House of Commons. I think they had very good reasons for presenting it to him. They had tried the House of Commons without success, and it was he who gave the pledge that the Parliament Act would not be used unless there was stable opinion behind it. An attempt has been made to belittle this petition. The hon. Baronet the Member for Swansea (Sir A. Mond), whose speech I did not hear, seemed to assume that those who got up that petition used the same methods with which he is himself familiar. But he is wrong. I am told that the utmost care was taken by those who were responsible for it that no pressure of any kind should be used in getting signatures. I do not say that there may not have been instances in which pressure was used—it is hardly possible to avoid it—but I do say this: that the whole influence of the Free Church Council was used to prevent petitions being signed. I say further, without any possibility of its being questioned, that the great majority of the Free Church pulpits in Wales used all their influence to prevent it being signed. When we realise how close is the connection in these, villages between the chapels and social life, anyone will realise that it required unusual force and unusual determination to sign this petition in spite of the pressure which was brought to bear upon them to prevent them doing so.

Here again, over 100,000 adherents o£ the Free Churches above twenty-one years of age signed. That means at least one-sixth, and probably more, of the total number of Nonconformists in Wales. Such a testimony has never been given before in any case which has been presented to this House. This all bears out what we all feel. The hon. Gentleman who spoke last said that time was on his side. Does he not realise that he is entirely wrong; that he is fighting now a quarrel which is dead and which has lost all the force that was once behind it, and that every year that passes makes it less likely rather than more likely that any vital force is behind it? I remember pointing out in this House the great change which had taken place in England and Scotland. I said then that although I was not acquainted with Wales I could not suppose that a current which was running so strong through the rest of the United Kingdom was less strong in Wales. I put it to any Welsh Member: Is it not true That any such expression against this Bill would have been impossible ten years ago in Wales, and that there is the clearest proof that, whatever they may think about Disestablishment, there is no love among religious Nonconformists for depriving the Christian Church of funds which it is using well in accordance with its trusts?

I have only to say, in conclusion, that supposing hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite get their will, what will they achieve? They talk about getting rid of religious bitterness. I should welcome that, and I should be prepared, personally, to make great sacrifices to secure it. But what a way of getting rid of religious bitterness! To carry a Bill which in the eyes not only of every Churchman, but of every fair-minded Nonconformist, is intolerably unjust, is a strange way to get rid of religious bitterness. I have, myself, this conviction, that there is not a Member of the Cabinet, not one, who, if he were allowed, would not carry Disestablishment, while leaving to the Church the funds which it now enjoys. I do not believe there is one. The Prime Minister gave a clear indication of it this afternoon. I do not say he said it—that is impossible—but he gave an indication of it. When speaking of this Nonconformist petition, he turned round and said:— After all, it is nut against Disestablishment; it is only against Disendowment. We all understand. If what the Government and the Welsh Members want is to get rid of this bitterness between different religious bodies, let them not mar the claim for religious equality with a claim which can be based on no other ground than a desire to injure the Church of England by depriving it of funds which it is using well. If I am right in thinking this Bill is not supported by the people of this country, there must be an election soon, and the Prime Minister has himself told us that one of the beauties of the Parliament Act, this high watermark of Radical opportunist statesmanship, is that if one Parliament does what the nation does not approve of, the next Parliament will upset it. In this case there is no doubt about it. What will you have gained? You will only have added to religious bitterness for no object, and you will have done something else which is not out of keeping with your idea of representative government, and you will have done what you can to make it impossible that the will of the people shall be carried out. It will be in vain, for if a Unionist Government is returned to power I am sure that, whoever may be the Members of that Government, one of the first things that Government will do will be to restore to the Church in Wales the funds of which you have deprived her.

Mr. McKENNA

The right hon. Gentleman directed the last part of his speech to an argument founded upon the Parliament Act. He urged that there was a growing expression of opinion from Wales adverse to this Bill, and that in accordance with the Prime Minister's speech in relation to the Parliament Act the Bill ought to be fundamentally reconsidered. The evidence which the right hon. Gentleman brought in support of his assertion was that a petition had been signed by upwards of a third of the adult population against the Bill, and that a further petition signed by upwards of a sixth of the Nonconformists in Wales had been directed against part of the Bill. There is a constitutional means of expressing opinion, and I quite readily admit that if no occasion had been given in any part of Wales for such an expression we might turn our attention to petitions and public meetings, but at the very time that this great petition was being got up in Wales, and almost at the very time of the Nonconformist petition—a little before it—we had three by-elections in Wales, and three of my hon. Friends now sit on these benches representing the views of the Welsh people in favour of Disestablishment and Disendowment. [An HON. MEMBER: "By a reduced majority."] The majorities, I think, were still large enough to be tenfold greater than the whole of the majorities of the three Conservative Members who sit on that side of the House. When we have got this constitutional means of knowing what the opinion of Wales is, we are not going to be misled by arguments founded upon petitions, about which, whatever hon. Gentlemen opposite may say, we, who know by personal experience how these petitions in Wales are obtained, know them in the main to be valueless. I will tell the hon. Gentleman one thing more about these petitions, and that is that the way they are got up in the interest of the Church of England and the pressure which is brought to bear to get people to sign them is one of the strongest proofs that the Church of England in Wales is an alien Church, and that it ought not to be the Established Church in Wales. One of the proofs given by the right hon. Gentleman that there has been a change of opinion with regard to this Bill was founded on the allegation that on four material occasions in the course of its progress through the House the measure had only been saved by the Irish Nationalist Members of Parliament. I remember one of these occasions. It was early in the afternoon when a Division was taken. I think it was on a Friday, about three o'clock, when the majority in support of the Government's proposal numbered, I believe, only twenty-nine. It is quite true that upon that occasion some twenty-nine Irish Nationalist Members voted on the side of the Government. But a little later in the same afternoon, when the subject had been thoroughly discussed—

Mr. HEWINS

You were telephoning all over London.

Mr. McKENNA

I take it from the hon. Member's interruption that he considers it was a victory of telephonic messages, but I would point out that hon. Gentlemen belonging to the Opposition who were brought here at a quarter past three had not the patience to wait even until seven o'clock. [Interruption.] I think it was seven o'clock on a Friday. It may have been half-past seven. [An HON. MEMBER: "On a Friday."] The hon. Gentleman has forgotten that the five o'clock rule was suspended, and, moreover, I have no doubt that he has forgotten the very important fact that late in the same afternoon the Government's majority was well over 100, giving proof positive that it was through no change of opinion, but through a mere accident that the Government's majority fell earlier in the day. If hon. Gentlemen opposite had some success, no one on this side need complain of the result of their attempt to organise a snap Division early in the afternoon, for it was defeated by a majority of twenty-nine. There is no single occasion on which, if all the representatives from Ireland had been absent from this House, we should have failed to carry any single important provision of the Bill during its progress. Let me turn to the argument which has been mentioned once more about dismemberment. A very interesting speech was made by the hon. Gentleman opposite on that point. He represented to us that we were breaking the unity of the Church of England by Disestablishing the Church in Wales, and that we were preventing the progress of one united Church which might take place if the English Church in Wales were allowed to attend Convocation. If what the hon. Member means is that the Disestablished English Church in Wales should be allowed to send its representatives to a Synod of the English Church, that Synod consisting, if you like, of exactly the same representatives as now attend Convocation, there would not be the slightest objection their doing so. What they may not do is this: The Disestablished Church in Wales may not send its representatives to the Convocation, which is the Fourth Estate of the Realm, to the Convocation, which is summoned under the King's Writ, which is liable to be prorogued by the Sovereign, which can do no business, not even discuss the affairs of the Church, except on the issue of that writ—a body which is, in truth, correctly called the Fourth Estate of the Realm.

That body being a common law body with statutory authority, is not a body of which a Disestablished Church could properly be a part. But for all purposes of intercommunion or joint synodical action, the Disestablished Church in Wales may remain an integral part of the Established Church of England, and when the hon. Gentleman speaks of a break in the union of the two Churches through Convocation, he is not appreciating the full force of what he is saying. What power has Convocation got? You cannot alter ritual, you cannot touch doctrine, you cannot reform any abuse, however admitted it may be, without coining to Parliament. The Noble Lord the Member for the University of Oxford introduced into this House a Bill which he described as a real Bill, containing thirty-nine Clauses, to make better provision for the organisation and discipline of the Church of England. He was unable to pass that Bill, though I believe that it had the support of the great majority of Convocation; and the Church of England in England has to submit, with the knowledge that its organisation needs reform and that there are abuses which ought to be abolished, to this situation, that it cannot effect reform and it cannot abolish abuses, because it cannot obtain the support of either party in Parliament to pass such a Bill as that of the Noble Lord. Now we propose to make the Church of England in Wales a free Church. We propose to give the Church of England in Wales complete freedom. The hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Hewins) made a very interesting reference to this point last night. He was describing what would be the effect of the Bill on the English Church in Wales, and he said:— It may reject the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. It may go bodily over to Rome. It may become Unitarian. It may become Presbyterian. It may abolish or retain episcopalianism. It may turn the Prayer Book inside out. You are giving to this body, on whose future conduct you are putting no control and no guidance, and no anything, a lot of public money, I understand. Will the Home Secretary, when he comes to speak, kindly explain by what authority and by what right they take money which they say is national property, public money, and simply give it to an institution which is to have this absolute freedom to preach or teach anything in the world it likes?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT. Monday. 20th April, 1914, cols. 679–680.] In his description of the effect of this Bill the hon. Gentleman was absolutely correct. When this Bill is passed it would be perfectly free for the Church of England in Wales to adopt any body of doctrine it pleases. I do not suppose it will join the Roman Catholic Church, I do not suppose it will become a Unitarian body, but it will certainly be a Free Church, actually free to reform its ritual, to change its doctrine, and to get rid of abuses such as the Noble Lord desires to get rid of. When the hon. Member went on to ask me to explain by "what right and by what authority they take money which they say is national property, public money, and simply give it to a community that is to have absolute freedom to preach or teach anything in the world it likes," I answer that it is because we give this freedom that we should not be justified in leaving to the Church public money. Those who say that in our action we have been prompted merely by the desire to rob the Church are not doing justice to themselves. I would ask hon. Gentlemen whether they agree with Welshmen or do not agree with them for one moment to try and put themselves in the place of Welshmen. A Welshman has got a patriotism of his own. He is patriotic to the United Kingdom, just as patriotic as Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Irishmen. He has also got the patriotism of a Welshman. As a Welshman he looks upon the Church of England in Wales as an alien Church. [An HON. MEMBER: "No!"] The majority—I am speaking only of the majority, not the friends of the Church. The hon. Member, who is a Welshman and an ardent Churchman, takes quite the opposite view. I am speaking of those whom I represent in this matter. They have a patriotism of their own, and as Welshmen they look upon the Church of England in Wales as an alien Church. History in this point of view is not irrelevant. They look upon the Church of England as an established political organisation, associated with all the worst memories of Welsh history. They consider that all their great national movements have been frustrated, hampered, and impeded by the Church. And they believe that the real organisation that has converted the Welsh Church with this engine of hostility to their national life has been the Establishment; they believe it has been the political connection with England. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] I am not asking hon. Gentlemen to say that they are right or they are wrong; I am not asking them to agree with me; but I can assure them from my observation of Wales, which now covers a very long period, that what I state is strictly accurate as regards the views of the majority of Welshmen. But it is said, how will anyone be a penny the better off for this Bill. I would ask hon. Gentlemen to realise that a man may have been wounded in his feelings and his sentiments, and may feel the injury ten times more than if he had been robbed in his pocket.

We may take an illustration from our own doors. [An HON. MEMBER: "Ulster!"] We may take an illustration from Ulster. If the Roman Catholic Church were the Established Church in Belfast, not a man in Ulster would be a penny the worse. But what would the Protestants of Ulster think? Would they not feel themselves injured, would they not say that to the institution of the Roman Catholic Church as a National Church they would never submit? That is what Welshmen say of the Church of England. It is not robbery, and it is not a desire for robbery. [An HON MEMBER: "It is!"] I have expressed my own view, and I am sure hon. Gentlemen will forgive me because it is a serious charge to make. It is made lightly, but it is a serious charge to make, and I am trying to give my reasons. And although I recognise that you make the charge honestly, believing it to be true, I am trying to give reasons to prove to you that you are mistaken, and that the charge is not true. That is the reason why we ask for Disestablishment. I have quoted the hon. Member for Hereford, who puts to me the question, and asks me will I explain on what principle. I can justify giving national property to a Church which is freed from Parliamentary control, which is at liberty to teach anything it pleases, which might become a Unitarian body, and which might separate itself altogether from the body of Christian doctrine. We should not be justified in giving national property, to a Church under those conditions when we know that that property originally was handed to the Church for the use of the whole Christian community teaching a particular doctrine, and for eleemosynary and public purposes. We should not be justified in leaving national property to the Church on those terms. What have we taken? Have we gone one inch beyond the limits which are imposed upon us by the reasons I have given for taking any of the property at all? Have we touched one single farthing of the money now administered by the Church, except what in the truest sense of the term is national property? I make no apology for going once more over the figures of this Bill. There has been very remarkable misunderstanding with regard to the Disendowment Clauses of this Bill. Let me give the House an example. The hon. Member for North Hants, speaking at Ipswich a little over a year ago, in 1912, of the payment of, £400 per year to Members of Parliament, said:— He had never asked for money and did not want it. He was ready to work for nothing. It meant £250,000 per year to Members of Parliament. Perhaps they did not know that the revenues of the Church in Wales amounted to £250,000, and the Government proposed to take that sum of money from the Church in Wales and to give it to men like himself. It meant taking money from needy ministers of the Gospel in Wales to give it to Members of Parliament, many of whom were millionaires. Was it right that Members of Parliament should he paid under those conditions? I am quite sure that when the hon. Gentleman made that statement he believed it to be true. [Laughter.] The reference to Members of Parliament was probably rhetoric, but I think that when he said that we took the whole of the income of the Church, he believed that to be true. Therefore, I make no apology for giving the figures again. We have the figures accurately for the year 1906. In that year the total income of the Church of England in Wales from all sources other than fees, about which we have no records, was £560,000, with which the Church was enabled to do its work. Of that sum £300,000 was derived from voluntary subscriptions, and the remaining £260,000 from Endowments. I am dealing with our principle in treating the Endowments of the Church. The Endowments may be divided into three parts: modern benefactions, amounting to £19,000; grants by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen Anne's Bounty out of sources of other than Welsh origin amounting to £84,000; and £157,000, consisting of ancient property of the Church derived in the main from tithes. We leave to the Church the private benefactions, because they were given to the Church precisely as benefactions are given to Nonconformists. We restore to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen Anne's Bounty the £84,000 a year which they have given to the Church. [An HON. MEMBER: "Restore?"] We propose to hand it back. [An HON. MEMBER: "You have not taken it."] We offer to restore to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen Anne's Bounty the £84,000 a year which they have given to the Church out of sources of other than Welsh origin, and they authorise me in the Bill to restore these sums of money to the Church, partly at the time, and partly in consequence of Amendments in this House. The remaining £157,000, consisting mainly of tithes, is ultimately alienated from the Church, but the whole of the property is left subject to life interests. The life interests in the alienated property of the Church, according to the latest calculations which I have been able to get, are worth no less than £2,000,000, and if after Disestablishment the Church accept commutation, they will be able to commute the life interests for a sum of £2,000,000, which, invested at 4 per cent., would bring in a further £80,000 a year. They will have, therefore, on this assumption, £19,000 for private benefactions, £84,000 for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen Anne's Bounty, and £80,000 for the commutation of life interests, making a total altogether from these sources of £183,000. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty further inform me that, so long as existing conditions continue, they hope to be able to augment out of surplus income their previous grants to the Church of England in Wales by a further sum of £31,000 or £33,000 a year—I am quoting the figures from memory. The final balancing shows that from all these combined sources the Church of England in Wales will have, after Disestablishment, an income of from £215,000 a year, as compared with £260,000 a year which she possesses now.

Lord ROBERT CECIL

No, no!

Mr. McKENNA

She therefore will be in this position: That if from her subscribers and voluntary supporters she is able to increase her subscriptions from £300,000 to £345,000 a year, she will be in precisely the same position as now as regards income. She will have to meet life interests, but if she obtains an additional

£45,000 a year from voluntary subscribers she will have the same total income—[HON. MEMBERS: "No!"]—with which to meet her liabilities.

Lord ROBERT CECIL

£31,000 must be added on both sides. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"]

Mr. McKENNA

I have no time further to trouble the House, as I intended to do, with figures relating to the present distribution of the property of the Church in Wales. I will say this to hon. Members who really in their hearts believe that the Church is spending this money well: In the diocese of Llandaff there are, I think, seventy-two parishes with less than fifty communicants. The amount spent upon each of those communicants per head is seven guineas.

Lord ROBERT CECIL

You cannot buy communicants at so much per head. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear." "Order!" and Interruption.]

Mr. McKENNA

It is useless to attempt argument in face of that interruption.

Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 349; Noes, 265.

Division No. 80.]	AYES.	[11.0 p.m.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)
Abraham, Rt. Hon. William (Rhondda)	Brace, William	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)
Acland, Francis Dyke	Brady, P. J.	Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)
Adamson, William	Brocklehurst, William B.	Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)
Addison, Dr. Christopher	Brunner, J. F. L.	Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardiganshire)
Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D.	Bryce, J. Annan	Dawes, J. A.
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Buckmaster, Sir Stanley O.	De Forest, Baron
Agnew, Sir George William	Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Delany, William
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Denman, Hon. R. D.
Alden, Percy	Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North)	Devlin, Joseph
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbarton)	Byles, Sir William Pollard	Dewar, Sir J. A.
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Dickinson, Rt. Hon. Willoughby H.
Arnold, Sydney	Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)	Dillon, John
Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Cawley, H. T. (Heywood)	Donelan, Captain A.
Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)	Chancellor, H. G.	Doris, William
Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.)	Chappie, Dr. William Allen	Duffy, William J.
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)
Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)	Clancy, John Joseph	Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)
Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)	Clough, William	Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)
Barnes, George N.	Clynes, John R.	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)
Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick Burghs)	Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock)	Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)
Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.)	Collins, Sir Stephen (Lambeth)	Elverston, Sir Harold
Barton, William	Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.	Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)
Beale, Sir William Phipson	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)
Beck, Arthur Cecil	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Essex, Sir Richard Walter
Benn, W. W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)	Cory, Sir Clifford John	Esslemont, George Birnie
Bentham, George Jackson	Cotton, William Francis	Falconer, James
Bethell, Sir John Henry	Cowan, W. H.	Farrell, James Patrick
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles
Black, Arthur W.	Crooks, William	Ffrench, Peter
Boland, John Pius	Crumley, Patrick	Field, William
Booth, Frederick Handel	Cullinan, John	Fitzgibbon, John
Bowerntan, C. W.	Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)	Flavin, Michael Joseph
France, Gerald Ashburner	Maclean, Donald	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)
Furness, Sir Stephen Wilson	Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.	Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)
Geider, Sir William Alfred	MacNeill, J. G. Switt (Donegal, South)	Rendall, Athelstan
George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd	Macpherson, James Ian	Richards, Thomas
Gill, A. H.	MacVeagh, Jeremiah	Richardson, Albion (Peckham)
Ginnell, L.	M'Callum, Sir John M.	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)
Gladstone, W. G. C.	M'Curdy, C. A.	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Glanville, H. J.	McGhee, Richard	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)
Goldstone, Frank	M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.)	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford).
Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)	M'Micking, Major Gilbert	Robertson, John M. (Tyneside)
Greig, Colonel James William	Manfield, Harry	Robinson, Sidney
Griffith, Ellis Jones	Markham, Sir Arthur Basil	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)
Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke)	Marks, Sir George Croydon	Roche, Augustine (Louth)
Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)	Marshall, Arthur Harold	Roe, Sir Thomas
Gulland, John William	Martin, J.	Rowlands, James
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)	Mason, David M. (Coventry)	Rowntree, Arnold
Hackett, J.	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.
Hall, Frederick (Yorks, Normanton)	Meehan, Patrick J. (Queen's Co., Leix)	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)
Hancock, John George	Middlebrook, William	Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)	Millar, James Duncan	Scanlan, Thomas
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Molloy, Michael	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)
Hardie, J. Keir	Molteno, Percy Alport	Seely, Rt. Hon. Colonel J. E. B.
Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)	Mond, Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred	Sheehy, David
Harmsworth, Rt. L. (Caithness-shire)	Money, L. G. Chiozza	Shortt, Edward
Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Montagu, Hon. E. S.	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook
Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, W.)	Mooney, John J.	Smith, Albert (Lancs, Clitheroe)
Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)	Morgan, George Hay	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Morrell, Philip	Snowden, Philip
Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry	Morison, Hector	Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Hayden, John Patrick	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert
Hayward, Evan	Muidoon, John	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Hazleton, Richard	Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)
Helme, Sir Norval Watson	Murphy, Martin J.	Swann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E.
Hemmerde, Edward George	Murray, Captain Hon. Arthur C.	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
Henry, Sir Charles	Needham, Christopher Thomas	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)
Herbert, General Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Neilson, Francis	Tennant, Harold John
Hewart, Gordon	Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster)	Thomas, J. H.
Higham, John Sharp	Nolan, Joseph	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Hinds, John	Norton, Captain Cecil W.	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Toulmin, Sir George
Hodge, John	Nuttall, Harry	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Hogge, James Myles	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Verney, Sir Harry
Holmes, Daniel Turner	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Wadsworth, J.
Holt, Richard Durning	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Walsh, Stephen (Lancs, Ince)
Hope, John Deans (Haddington)	O'Doherty, Philip	Walters, Sir John Tudor
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	O'Donnell, Thomas	Walton, Sir Joseph
Hudson, Walter	O'Dowd, John	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Hughes, Spencer Leigh	Ogden, Fred	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)	O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)	Wardie, George J.
John, Edward Thomas	O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)	Waring, Walter
Johnson, W.	O'Malley, William	Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay
Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)	O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)	O'Shee, James John	Watt, Henry A.
Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)	O'Sullivan, Timothy	Webb, H.
Jones, Leif (Notts, Rushcliffe)	Outhwaite, R. L.	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Jones, William S. Glyn (Stepney)	Palmer, Godfrey Mark	White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)
Jowett, Frederick William	Parker, James (Halifax)	White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E. R.)
Joyce, Michael	Parry, Thomas H.	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Keating, Matthew	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Whitehouse, John Howard
Kellaway, Frederick George	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P
Kelly, Edward	Pearson, Hon. Weetman H. M.	Whyte, A. F. (Perth)
Kennedy, Vincent Paul	Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)	Wiles, Thomas
Kenyon, Barnet	Philipps, Colonel Ivor (Southampton)	Wilkie, Alexander
Kilbride, Denis	Phillips, John (Longford, S)	Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N. W.)
King, J.	Pine, Duncan Vernon	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Lamb, Ernest Henry	Pointer, Joseph	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton)	Pollard, Sir George H.	Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)
Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Williamson, Sir Archibald
Lardner, James C. R.	Pratt, J. W.	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)	Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs, N.)
Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th)	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Leach, Charles	Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)	Winfrey, Sir Richard
Levy, Sir Maurice	Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Wing, Thomas Edward
Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert	Primrose, Hon. Neil James	Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.)
Logan, John William	Pringle, William M. R.	Yeo, Alfred William
Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Radford, G. H.	Young, William (Perthshire, East)
Low, Sir F. (Norwich)	Raffan, Peter Wilson	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Lundon, Thomas	Raphael, Sir Herbert H.
Lyell, Charles Henry	Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)
Lynch, A. A.	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)	Reddy, Michael	Mr. Illingworth and Mr. W. Jones.
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

NOES
Agg-Gardner, James Tynte	Falle, B. G.	Mackinder, Halford J.
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Fell, Arthur	Macmaster, Donald
Anson, Rt. Hon. Sir William R.	Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey	M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)
Anstruther-Gray, Major William	Finlay, Rt. Hon. Sir Robert	Magnus, Sir Philip
Archer-Shee, Major Martin	Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes	Malcolm, Ian
Ashley, W. W.	Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.	Mallaby-Deeley, Harry
Astor, Waldorf	Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue	Mason, James F. (Windsor)
Baird, J. L.	Fleming, Valentine	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.
Baker, Sir R. L. (Dorset, N.)	Fletcher, John Samuel	Middlemore, John Throgmorton
Baldwin, Stanley	Forster, Henry William	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, London)	Foster, Philip Staveley	Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Gardner, Ernest	Moore, William
Banner, Sir John S. Harmood-	Gastrell, Major W. Houghton	Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F (Ashburton)
Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester)	Gibbs, G. A.	Morrison-Bell, Major A. C. (Honiton)
Barnston, H.	Gilmour, Captain John	Mount, William Arthur
Barrie, H. T.	Glazebrook, Captain Philip K.	Neville, Reginald J. N.
Bathurst, Hon. A. B. (Glouc., E.)	Goldman, C. S.	Newdegate, F. A.
Bathurst, C. (Wills, Wilton)	Goldsmith, Frank	Newman, John R. P.
Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks	Gordon, John (Londonderry, South)	Newton, Harry Kottingham
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Goulding, Edward Alfred	Nield, Herbert
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Grant, J. A.	Norton-Griffiths, J.
Benn, Ion Hamilton (Greenwich)	Greene, W. R.	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.
Bennett-Goldney, Francis	Gretton, John	Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William
Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish-	Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S. E.)	Paget, Almeric Hugh
Beresford, Lord C.	Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)	Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)
Bigland, Alfred	Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne)	Parkes, Ebenezer
Blair, Reginald	Haddock, George Bahr	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Boles, Lieut.-Colonel Dennis Fortescue	Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight)	Peel, Lieut.-Colonel R. F.
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith.	Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)	Perkins, Walter Frank
Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid)	Hall, Marshall (L'pool, E. Toxteth)	Peto, Basil Edward
Boyton, James	Hambro, Augustine Valdemar	Pole-Carew, Sir R.
Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell	Hamersley, Alfred St. George	Pollock, Ernest Murray
Bull, Sir William James	Hamilton, C. G. C. (Ches., Altrincham)	Pretyman, Ernest George
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington, S.)	Pryce-Jones, Colonel E.
Burgoyne, A. H.	Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence	Quitter, Sir William Eley C.
Burn, Colonel C. R.	Harris, Henry Percy	Randles, Sir John S.
Butcher, John George	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Ratcliff, R. F.
Campbell, Captain Duncan F. (Ayr, N.)	Helmsley, Viscount	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. (Dublin Univ.)	Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon)	Rawson, Colonel R. H.
Campion, W. R.	Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset. S.)	Rees, Sir J. D.
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Hewins, William Albert Samuel	Remnant, James Farquharson
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.	Hibbert, Sir Henry F.	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Cassel, Felix	Hickman, Colonel Thomas E.	Rolleston, Sir John
Castlereagh, Viscount	Hills, John Waller	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Cator, John	Hill-Wood, Samuel	Rothschild, Lionel de
Cautley, H. S.	Hoare, S. J. G.	Royds, Edmund
Cave, George	Hohler, G. F.	Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Hope, Harry (Bute)	Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby)
Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University)	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin)	Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)	Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood)
Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.	Home, Edgar (Surrey, Guildford)	Samuel, Samuel (Wandsworth)
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)	Horner, Andrew Long	Sanders, Robert A.
Chambers, James	Houston, Robert Paterson	Sanderson, Lancelot
Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry	Hume-Williams, William Ellis	Sandys, G. J.
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Hunt, Rowland	Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange)
Clive, Captain Percy Archer	Hunter, Sir C. R.	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Clyde, J. Avon	Ingleby, Holcombe	Sharman-Crawford, Colonel R. G.
Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham	Jackson, Sir John	Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'p'l., Walton)
Collings, Rt. Hon. J. (Birmingham)	Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)	Smith, Harold (Warrington)
Cooper, Sir Richard Ashmole	Jessel, Capt. H. M.	Spear, Sir John Ward
Courthope, George Loyd	Joynson-Hicks, William	Stanler, Beville
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr	Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)
Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)	Kerry, Earl of	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Keswick, Henry	Starkey, John R.
Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement	Staveley-Hill, Henry
Craik, Sir Henry	Knight, Captain Eric Ayshford	Steel-Maitland, A. D.
Crichton-Stuart, Lord Ninlan	Kyffin-Taylor, G.	Stewart, Gershom
Croft, Henry Page	Larmor, Sir J.	Swift, Rigby
Dairymple, Viscount	Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle)	Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford)
Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)	Sykes, Sir Mark (Hull, Central)
Denison-Pender, J. C.	Lee, Arthur Hamilton	Terrell, G. (Wilts, N. W.)
Denniss, E. R. B.	Lewisham, Viscount	Terrell, H. (Gloucester)
Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott	Lloyd, George Ambrose (Stafford, W.)	Thompson, Robert (Belfast, N.)
Dixon, C. H.	Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, N.)
Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)	Thynne, Lord Alexander
Duke, Henry Edward	Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)	Tobin, Alfred Aspinall
Duncannon, Viscount	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Touche, George Alexander
Du Pre, W. Baring	Long, Rt. Hon. Walter	Tryon, Captain George Clement
Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston)	Valentia, Viscount
Faber, George Denison (Clapham)	Lyttelton, Hon. J. C.	Walker, Col. William Hall
Faber, Captain W. V. (Hants, W.)	MacCaw, Win. J. MacGeagh	Ward, A. S. (Herts, Watford)

Warde, Colonel C. E. (Kent, Mid)	Wilson, Captain Leslie O. (Reading)	Yate, Colonel Charles Edward
Watson, Hon. W.	Wilson, Maj. Sir M. (Bethnal Green, S. W.)	Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong
Weston, Colonel J. W.	Winterton, Earl	Younger, Sir George
Wheler, Granville C. H.	Wolmer, Viscount
White, Major G. D. (Lancs, Southport)	Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.)	Worthington-Evans, L.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Lord
Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-	Edmund Talbet and Mr. Bridgeman.
Wills, Sir Gilbert	Wright, Henry Fitzherbert

Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for to-morrow (Wednesday).