to legislate on the subject. It will be shown below that several matters require an elucidation to enable Parliament to move with knowledge and resolution. There are indications that since the abortive Bills of 1894 and 1895, the purpose of Liberals to attempt legislation on this matter has not wavered, and the present inquest is regarded as a prelude to another attempt. Of the policy of disestablishment in Wales, or elsewhere, I do not propose to say a word in this paper; nor would I touch disendowment as a policy except to say that it would cause more than surprise generally were a Government to attempt the one apart from the other, as has been suggested in some quarters. It may, however, as calculated to aid the appreciation of the labours and report of the present Royal Commission, be convenient to give a short account of the Bill of 1895,"to terminate the establishment of the Church in Wales and Monmouthshire, and to make provision in respect of the temporalities thereof." The area to which the Bill applied deserves our first attention. It applied to " Wales and Monmouthshire," the area in which the Royal Commission is prosecuting an inquiry now, and not to the area of the four dioceses which are regarded as Welsh. If the reader will interest himself so far as to compare a map of the dioceses, such as that which prefaces the forbidding pages of Crockford, with a map of the ancient counties of Wales and Monmouthshire, he will find that they overlap towards the borders of England. According to the census of 1901, there is a parish of Flintshire in Lichfield diocese; a parish of Monmouth in that of Hereford; four parishes of Montgomery and parts of seven more are in that of Hereford; four parishes of Radnor and parts of four others in that of Hereford; and one parish of Flintshire and parts of two more in that of Chester. On the other hand, two parishes of Herefordshire are in the diocese of Llandaff; a part of Threapwood in Cheshire in that of St. Asaph; and the deanery of Oswestry and parishes of St. Martin and the Lodge of Shropshire are in the diocese of St. Asaph also. The census of 1901 gives us the following conspectus of the four Welsh dioceses : These figures of dioceses require to be corrected for the true areas affected by the inquiry which the Royal Commission is now making. ... ... ... +Flintshire, par of Penley (in Lichfield diocese)... + Radnor (in Hereford diocese), parishes of Evancoed, ... +Monmouth (in Hereford diocese) parish of Kent ... ... - Herefordshire (in Llandaff diocese) parishes of Cwmyoy and Dixton ... - Cheshire (in St. Asaph diocese) part of parish of So that Wales and Monmouthshire in 1901 had 2,384 houses and 11,077 population less than the figures given above for the four dioceses. "Wales and Monmouthshire" in 1901, therefore, had 404,096 inhabited houses, with a population of 2,012,897; and besides the Welsh dioceses of Bangor, Llandaff, St. Asaph, and St. David's, the English dioceses of Lichfield, Hereford, and Chester are slightly affected by the inquiry in the charge of the Royal Commission. Other provisions of the Bill of 1895 (the committee on which was interrupted in June by the cordite vote, which brought about the resignation of the Government of the day) were the following. A date for disestablishment was fixed, after which no person should be appointed by her Majesty, or any patron, to any ecclesiastical office in or connected with the Church in Wales. On that date every cathedral and ecclesiastical corporation in Wales and Monmouthshire should be dissolved. After that date no Bishop of the Church in Wales should be summoned or sit in the House of Lords as such, but every dignitary of the Church in Wales during life should enjoy the same precedence as before. On that date there should be transferred to "Welsh Commissioners" all property vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners or Queen Anne's Bounty which was ascertained to be Welsh ecclesiastical property; and all property not so vested which at that time belonged to or was appropriated to the use of the Church in Wales or the holder of any office connected therewith, subject to all charges affecting such property, and, with the exception of tithe rent-charge, to the interest of all persons who held offices at that time, and in the case of tithe rent-charge, to the obligation to make provision in lieu of existing interests. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen Anne's Bounty were required forthwith after the passing of the Act to declare what property was vested in them belonging to the Church in Wales and Monmouthshire, and before the date of disestablishment to render an account of the allocation of their funds for the purposes of the Church and so forth. Property given by any private person from his own resources since 1703 (the date of Queen Anne's Bounty) was to be deemed a private benefaction, and should at the request of a representative body of the Church be vested in that body, but subject to charges and interests before the passing of the Act. The Welsh Commissioners were directed, after providing for interests and charges, to vest the transferred property as follows:All churches not being cathedral churches, and all parsonage houses in "the representative body"; the burial ground and glebe of any parish in the local authority, or in trustees on behalf of the local councils and bodies interested; the tithe rent-charge in the county council, every church, parsonage, burial ground, and glebe thus vested to be subject to all existing public and private rights. The Welsh Commissioners from the fund to maintain and repair all cathedral churches transferred to them, and all such churches to continue to be used for the same purposes as before as long as the representative body may desire. Any other transferred residence, not being a parsonage, on the request of the representative body, to be used for the purpose of an ecclesiastical residence provided it be kept in repair by the representative body. All furniture, plate, or movable chattels belonging to any church used for Divine Worship to vest in the representative body when incorporated. After providing for all vested interests the Welsh Commissioners were directed to apply the surplus, as to two-thirds toward the promotion of technical and higher education, including a museum or academy of art for Wales. For the rest it might be applied to the maintenance of hospitals, dispensaries, and convalescent homes, to training nurses for the poor, the foundation and maintenance of parish halls, institutes, and libraries; to the provision of labourers' dwellings at low rents, and of allotments; and to any other public purpose, local or general, for which provision is not made by statute out of public rates. There were other clauses of lesser consequence dealing with points of ecclesiastical law, supplemental provisions as to tithe, the power of exchanging an interest for a compensation annuity, and compensation to lay patrons and lay holders of freehold offices, together with instructions to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners after passing the Act, and a series of provisions dealing with administration principally. A rule was laid down that a compensated holder of fifty years and upwards at the time of application should receive an annuity not exceeding threefourths of the average net emoluments of his office arising from property transferred to the Welsh Commissioners by the Act during the seven years immediately preceding the application. When the compensated holder was less than fifty years of age a deduction of one-fiftieth was to be made from the three-fourths for every year wanting to make up his age to fifty years.1 Only a little attention is necessary to observe that the portion of the Bill devoted to disestablishment, as distinguished from disendowment, is but brief, and comparatively simple; and that, presumably, because the Church of England as a corporation does not exist. Little beyond a disqualification of the Bishops for the House of Lords, a dissolution of the corporations of cathedral chapters, and the withdrawal of all patronage to any ecclesiastical office seems required. When, however, that involves, as it must surely, a reconsideration of all the property now applied to the maintenance of the Church in the four dioceses, or rather the thirteen counties in question, it is found that questions of much complexity arise, questions involving history in that murky chapter of charity, and questions bringing up a host of the most delicate personal rights and claims. Given the chief assumptions of such a Bill, it might appear that clauses providing for the adjustment of vested interests and the application of the surplus fund ought to be matters of accommodation, and should not present very grave difficulties. Appearances, this time at least, are of a very deceptive character. It is found that a Bill may pass a second reading without difficulty, but on entering committee questions of principle are fought again stubbornly, and no case within the legislator's experience evokes a more heartfelt opposition than a Bill such as this, which touches the status of a great historic religious organisation, a Bill, moreover, which changes also the status of a large number of very influential people, who have long occupied a conspicuous position, not to say a privileged place, in society. This not unreasonable opposition becomes all the more articulate and clamant when the (1) The Bill is No. 144 of 1895. stipends and emoluments of a large number of incumbents and functionaries are involved in the decision to be taken. Hence the keen discussions in committee in 1895 on such points as the custody of cathedrals under the new conditions, the date from which gifts to the Church should be regarded as private benefactions to be retained by the Church, the position and prospects of patrons, and, certainly not least, the rate at which compensation should be calculated in the case of all office holders. Necessarily, too, the powers of the Commissioners under such a Bill would come in for sharp criticism. It appears inevitable that on any such Bill opposition will be strong and criticism keen, and the electorate cannot make itself acquainted with the main facts of the case too soon or too closely. Before proceeding to give an estimate of the property which may be regarded as applied now to the support of the Church in Wales and Monmouthshire it may be permitted to say that no difficulty need be apprehended because it is alleged sometimes that the four Welsh dioceses are an integral portion of the province of Canterbury. A similar difficulty was overcome in Ireland; and the fact already referred to, that the Church of England as a corporation does not exist, tends to simplify the legislator's task very much. He deals, therefore, with a variety of corporations, the parson a corporation sole, the chapter a corporation aggregate, within the limits of the Bill, with the patrons of offices of every grade and value, with the position of Bishops as barons of the realm with seats among the Lords, and with the great corporations to which have been entrusted funds long applied to ecclesiastical purposes. These last, together with the Commissioners to be appointed under the Bill, would not find difficulties of segregation and application of funds and buildings, presumably more formidable than in the Irish case. Seeing, then, that the chief and the most delicate of the operations to be undertaken under such a Bill as appears to be contemplated refer to endowments, what are the nature and the probable amount of the endowments of the Church in Wales and Monmouthshire? The problem resolves itself into the ascertainment of how much of the funds of the "Church of England" should be regarded as belonging to the Church in Wales and Monmouthshire. An examination of the question convinces me that the chief task of the present Royal Commissioners is by no means a superfluous work. Mr. Gladstone, in May, 1873, said : I once made a computation of what sort of allowance of property should be made to the Church of England if we were to disestablish her upon the same rules of equity and liberality with respect to property which we adopted in the case of the Irish Church, and I made out that between life incomes, |