as they once were to social reform; State, would assume an authority and spiritual power surprising to its powerful supporters. MR. LYTTELTON (St. George's, Hanover Square) said the discursive and characteristic speech of the right hon. Gentleman made one remember that the right hon. Gentleman had been Minister for Education. It appeared to him during the effort he had made to follow the right hon. Gentleman's speech that his experience as Minister of Education seemed to have coloured his impression of the present position of the Church of England. He hardly agreed with anything the right hon. Gentleman had said, with the exception of the tribute he had paid to the mover and seconder of the original Resolution. He wished to express on behalf of himself and his friends their sense of the dignity and temperateness with which both hon. Gentlemen had performed their part. They had, however, spoken of things not as they were now, but as they had been, when they talked of the Church's " ascendancy" and but he owned that when he used the language he did he was speaking not so much of measures that stood a chance of being repealed. He was thinking of some other matters. He was thinking of the people who were the pioneers of great popular causes, of men who stood by the side of persons enduring the position of shame and contumely, and whose names were for ever gloriously associated, not in the hour of triumph, but in the hour of danger and difficulty. When he could not find the Bishops in that place--he did not dream that he had been held to blame them in their individual capacity, eminent and distinguished men as he knew many of them to be; but he did think it might be supposed that they had failed to alter the secular almosphere in the other place. The secular atmosphere in both Houses of Parliament was noticeable enough. One might spend one's life there without coming into active contact with the Christian religion. One would have thought that the Bishops would have interfered with some good result. If they had not modified the secular atmos- aristocratic character." The Church. phere of the House of Lords, it was only had utterly abandoned all pretensions because they found their way within of ascendancy, privilege and power. those walls in the manner prelates did. There were only two grounds on which He therefore said that the Government the contrary could be maintained-the had no intention of assuming any re- presence of the bishops in the House of sponsibility for a Resolution of this kind. Lords, and the conferring of legality Their hands were already full enough. on a marriage performed in the Church They had work enough of their own to of England without further civil process.. do. But he had no doubt that Liberal As far as the bishops' presence in the sentiment in this country, now and fer House of Lords was concerned, he did many a long year, would more and more not think that many people would settle down, and would receive much desire to exclude the divines of other support from members of the Church of Churches from that privilege. But it England, in the deep-rooted conviction was argued that, because of the various and the time was long past when it could opinions held in this country to-day be doubted—that the Church of England, on religious questions, the Church had liberated from its connection with the no warrant to the peculiar prestige of Mr. Birrell. association with the State. Scarcely any Christian Church and to the Christian institution in the State could command faith. Of such an institution, they should be the first to say that it would be wrong, being "so majestical, to offer to show it violence." If that were so of those who held those opinions and cherished those ideals, surely those who adhered to the doctrines of the Church of England, who saw year after year evidence of her greater vitality, energy, and force-he did not recognise, in fact he absolutely denied the very black picture the right hon. Gentleman opposite had painted of the divisions in the Church and between the Church and other Churches the unanimous support of the people, except for a time. Even the Government was only temporarily the representative of the State or the majority of the State. Therefore, he did not think it was fair to say that the Church of England was not national simply because she did not represent all phases of the national thought. It might be asked why that should be denied to other churches which was accorded to the Church of England? His answer would be that those other churches did not demand association and who saw in those doctrines the with the State, and there was no proposal for such a connection. He asked those hon. Members, and they were mostly on the other side, who looked at the present moment to the State and to civic virtue for the realisation of their ideals whether they should proceed to repudiate a Christian basis for the State, because that was what, in his judgment, disestablishment meant. Were they going to sever from the State the Church which had been for 1,500 years rooted in British soil, and was still august and erect, although she was not the sole custodian of the spirit which made for righteousness? Those who expected so much from the State and from civic virtue ought to be the last to dissociate from the State that Christian basis which, he believed, the vast majority of the people of this country desired it should have. He called to mind, in this connection, the appeal that was made by the right hon. Gentleman last session, in his last speech on the Education Bill, in which he pointed out to hon. Gentlemen below the gangway the profound debt which all those social aspirations and civic ideals owed to the greatest and most elevating forces which existed at the present day, could not feel otherwise than that a repudiation of the connection of the Church with the State would be a blow to Christianity throughout the globe, and particularly to Christianity in this country. He did not like to pass over an argument which fell from the hon. Member for Ipswich, that there was a tendency in what he called the bonds of the doctrine of the Church, to stereotype existing religious opinion, and to obstruct the natural and healthy expansion of the religious spirit within its borders. That was a serious and weighty argument in theory, but it had no weight in practice, for the members of the Church of England and of other established Churches had generally succeeded in obtaining for themselves greater liberty than the members of the bodies which were called Free Churches, each of which stood very firmly by its Church's doctrines, and enforced them upon each other with an even greater vigour than did the members of the Church of England and other established Churches. There was greater expansion of the religious spirit, greater evolution, if he might so put it, of religious doctrines, had referred was that their funds differed in the Established Church, than than in from the Church's funds in that they were the Free Churches. Bishop Thirlwall, 'distinguished and earnest man, said Whatever complaints may be heard among 'ourselves, and whatever reproaches may be made against us by our adversaries, with regard to our ecclesiastical system, to the bondage, as it is sometimes termed, of the Church, none can seriously allege that he meets with any impediments arising from this cause, which would seriously limit his usefulness, or restrain him from applying all his faculties to it, or preclude him from hoping for an abundant blessing on his work." So much for disestablishment. But The was bound to say a word or two on .disendowment. What did disendowment mean? It meant the appropriation by the State of funds which had been deliberately given for religious purposes and the allocation of those funds for new unintended and secular purposes. That, he thought, was the undeniable meaning of disendowment. He would like to test the validity of the argument as to disendowment by applying it, say, to the Baptists or to the Wesleyans. The Wesleyan body, for which he had the greatest possible respect, had funds amounting to about ten millions, which were devoted to religious uses. Would it be legitimate or justifiable for the State to appropriate those funds and devote them to any secular or charitable purpose? He did not think anybody would say so. Indeed to justify the alienation of any property of such a kind there would have to be an overwhelming case of the misapplication of those funds, and of abuse in the use of them, or they would have to have overwhelming evidence of the total effacement, or practically total effacement, of the objects for which they were given. The whole case which would be made by hon. Gentlemen who belonged to the bodies to which he Mr. Lyttelton. the result of private subscriptions and that the Church received her endowments from the State. Wherein lay the difference between the funds of the Wesleyan body and the funds of the English Church? They were both for purposes which had still a vital force and energy behind them, and they were both used by worthy trustees for the objects for which they were intended. Then they were forced to the argument that the Church must have received these funds from some source which enabled the State to lay violent hands upon them. He affirmed that with the exception of tithes, the funds which were in the custody of the Church were funds which had been almost entirely the result of private benefactions. As to tithes, Professor Freeman, a strong Liberal, had shown that the clergy preached the payment of tithes to the laity for the support of spiritual work, and it was long after they had been established and subscribed as the result of those exhortations that the State sanctioned the payment of them. He did not think that could be denied. If they once admitted that it would be nothing but pillage to take away the large sums which belonged to the Wesleyan body, what reason was there for fixing any other term to the deprivation of the Church by the State of funds which were being used more energetically every day for the purposes of the Church by a body whose vitality and enthusiasm, in the opinion of all, was daily growing? The result of disendowment would be the taking away from the Church of a revenue of something like £5,000,000 a year, which was devoted almost entirely to parochial purposes. The result would fall with crushing force upon the poor. It would Church had made great progress in those towns, but that was because of voluntary effort, without any tithes. MR. LYTTELTON thought it behoved. every one who had a deep affection towards the Church of England to endeavour to persuade all those who were its members to sink individual and comparatively trifling differences, and to work together on the basis of frank and loyal acceptance of those principles which had guided their forefathers in the past, and which had lost none of their ancient virtue. cause the alienation from the parish churches of functions which they at present performed. People spoke now about passive resistance, but if it were really a question of turning our parish churches into free libraries-for that was amongst the suggestions of the Liberation Society and of certain Bills which had been presented to Parliament it would meet with the most passionate opposition that had ever been extended to any political proposal. It would be nothing but a calamity to repudiate the connection of the State with the Christian faith. It would be morally indefensible to convert to secular uses the funds of the Church, and thereby SIR ALFRED THOMAS (Glamorgandeprive the poorest parts of our towns and villages of their regular ministrations, shire, E.) said the Welsh Members were in the unique position of having, practically Disestablishment would produce a most bitter religious struggle, and disendow-speaking, the whole of the country united, ment would diminish the resources so largely employed for charitable purposes. The Church of England was still in close association with the vigorous life of the people. because every one of the constituencies of Wales and Monmouthshire had returned a member pledged to disestablishment. They were glad to hear once more on this question the voice of England, which had been long silent. It was a good omen, for when once John Bull woke up he gener MR. WILLIAM JONES (Carnarvon-ally meant business. The Welsh Members shire, Arfon) said that might be the case had the promise of the Premier that he in England, but not in Wales. MR. LYTTELTON said he would not enter into controversy with respect to Wales, but he would have thought the observation would apply to some of the great towns of South Wales. would bring in a Bill to disestablish the Church in Wales at the earliest opportunity, and they were anxiously waiting for it. Question put. The House divided:-Ayes, 206; Noes, MR. WILLIAM JONES agreed that the 93. (Division List No. 29.) Davies, Ellis William (Eifion) Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Dobson, Thomas W. Dolan, Charles Joseph Duffy, William J. Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness Ferguson, R. C. Munro Flynn, James Christopher Gardner, Col. Alan (Hereford,S. Ginnell, L. Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John Glover, Thomas Grant, Corrie Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) Griffith, Ellis J. Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton Halpin, J. Hardie, J. Keir(Merthyr Tydvil) Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) Paul, Herbert Harvey, W.E. (Derbyshire, N. E., O'Shee, James John Herbert, Colonel Ivor (Mon.,S.) Hope, John Deans (Fife, West) Hutton, Alfred Eddison Idris, T. H. W. Isaacs, Rufus Daniel Jacoby, Sir James Alfred Johnson, W. (Nuneaton) Jones, William (Carnarvonshire Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich Lewis, John Herbert Lundon, W. Lupton, Arnold Luttrell, Hugh Fownes MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down,S. Maddison, Frederick Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston) Masterman, C. F. G. O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N Pearce, Robert (Staffs. Leek) Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro❞ Redmond, John E. (Waterford). Richards, Thomas (W.Monm'th Richards, T.F. (Wolverh'mpt'n. Rickett, J. Compton Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) Roe, Sir Thomas Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford) Stewart, Halley (Greenock) Taylor, John W. (Durham) Vivian, Henry Waldron, Laurence Ambrose | Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) White, George (Norfolk) Whiteley, George (York, W.R.), Wilkie, Alexander Williams, J. (Glamorgan) TELLERS FOR THE AYESMr. Everett and Mr. Goddard. Agnew, George William NOES. Ashley, W. W. Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. SirH. Banbury, Sir Frederick George Balcarres, Lord Balfour, Rt. Hn. A.J. (City Lond.) Banner, John S. Harmood |