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unification is again advancing within her pale. It may be that another generation will be able to approach the problems involved in a revision of the Restoration Settlement with a larger measure of essential agreement than we at present possess. To that generation the task must be referred if its fulfilment is not to involve the nation in the folly of Disestablishment, and the Church in the disaster of Disruption.

III

Disendowment

BY C. A. WHITMORE, M.P.

HERE are some members of the Church of England

THERE

who are in favour of its disestablishment, provided that it be not disendowed, and who in their simplicity believe that the Parliament which carried a measure of disestablishment might leave the Church in possession of its ancient endowments. The first object of this essay is to show that this belief is wholly illusory, and that, for practical reasons, disendowment is the necessary and inevitable corollary of disestablishment. Its second object is to indicate roughly what disendowment would probably signify and involve. Lastly, I shall press upon the honest advocates of disestablishment without disendowment the obvious loss to the Church and the nation which must be caused by any measure of disendowment, and shall beg of them to balance this loss against any supposed gain which in their judgment will accrue to the Church from its disestablishment.

From a parliamentary point of view the disestablishment of the Church of England is a task of vast magnitude and difficulty. Any Bill dealing with the question could only be carried through Parliament by the Government of the day. No so-called "Church of England party" within the House, and no groups of private members,

could ever succeed in steering such a Bill through all its stages. The Bill must, therefore, be introduced either by a Radical or a Conservative Ministry. I suppose, however, that everyone will agree that no Radical Ministry could ever propose to disestablish the Church, and to leave her endowments untouched. This task, then, must be undertaken by a Conservative Ministry. I cannot myself conceive the political situation and atmosphere which could induce a Conservative Government to adopt this policy. However the feeling within the Church in favour of disestablishment may grow, I cannot believe that under any circumstances it will ever seduce the whole body of earnest Churchmen. But in the Conservative ranks there are in every constituency hundreds of electors who regard this as a policy which involves political as well as purely religious considerations, and who, for quite worthy political reasons, will never willingly assent to disestablishment. Let, however, for the sake of argument, the to me inconceivable happen. Let a Conservative Government introduce a Bill for the disestablishment of the Church, leaving its endowments absolutely untouched. What would be the course and the fate of that measure in the House of Commons? The whole of the Radical party would dislike the policy of disestablishment without disendowment. If they did not take a formal vote against the second reading of the Bill, they would certainly strain every parliamentary device to impede its progress, to embarrass its authors, and to make the position of the disestablished Church irksome and unacceptable to the conscientious Churchmen who, on grounds wholly different from theirs, were anxious to liberate the Church from State control. At the same time there would be sitting on the ministerial benches a large number of typical and true Conservatives, who regarded the Bill with aversion, who would be bound by all their traditions, by all their

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associations, and by their deliberate political convictions to offer to it an uncompromising and, in some cases, a passionate opposition. Anyone who knows anything of the House of Commons will perceive that under these conditions it would be astonishing if the Bill got through committee, and that it would be a parliamentary miracle if it emerged therefrom in a form that could be satisfactory, or even acceptable, to its Anglican promoters. Either the Government would have been compelled to promise to introduce some measure of disendowment in the near future, or some system of elective and popular control over the administration of the parochial and other endowments would have been engrafted on the original scheme. In either case the Church supporters of the Bill would be mortified, their ideals would receive a rude. shock, and much of the motive power at the back of the Bill would disappear. The Bill would remain a revolutionary one; but its transformation in committee would have this result, that it would now fail to give satisfaction to any section of those who, with diverse hopes, had been anxious that the Church should be disestablished. The Government under such circumstances would find it hopeless to proceed with the Bill. And so I arrive at this conclusion. It is as vain to expect to see disestablishment without disendowment carried by a Conservative as by a Radical Government, and, if ever disestablishment come, it will come under the auspices of a Radical Government, during the period of a Radical Parliament, and it will come accompanied by disendowment. The political history of our own times confirms this conclusion. We have seen one successful attempt and two unsuccessful attempts by Governments to disestablish a Church, or a part of a Church. When the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1868, its disestablishment was accompanied by a coincident disendowment. The abortive Bills of

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1894 and 1895 for the disestablishment of the Church in Wales were also Bills for its simultaneous disendowment.

Those who as friends of the Church have committed themselves to disestablishment must clearly understand what disendowment is, what it means, and what its effects are likely to be. The disendowment of any Church means the appropriation by the State of funds which have been deliberately given for religious purposes, and their allocation by the State to some new, unintended, and necessarily secular uses. Whether the act of disendowment be carried out with tender consideration or with rigid rapacity, whether the revenue taken by the State be large or small, any disendowment of a Church must mean the diversion of property from the religious uses to which it was given, and which it was intended for all time to subserve, and its regrant for the benefit of certain secular objects which it was never intended to help, and which have been selected by the passing caprice, at a particular date, of the State. Religious Nonconformists and others have drifted into an easy habit of thinking lightly of this alienation of sacred endowments. Let us see how it has been regarded by some thoughtful and good men. In Book VII. of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker deals with the contention of the opponents of the Church "that there ought not to be in the Church bishops endowed with such authority and honour as ours be," and considers the sources from which this "honour" springs. Amongst them he includes "honour by endowment with lands and livings." In chapter xxi. he discusses this source, and says:—

"And yet of all these things rehearsed it may be there never would have grown any question had Bishops been honoured only thus far. But the honouring of the clergy with wealth, this is, in the eyes of them which pretend to seek nothing but mere reformation of alms, a sin that might never be remitted.

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