THE TABLE A W eekly Newspaper and R eview .
T.
DÜM VOBIS GRATULAMÜR, ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMÜS ÜT IN INCCEPTIS VESTRIS CONSTANTER MANEAT1S.
From the B r i e f o f H is H o lin ess P iu s IX . to T h e T a b l e t , June 4, 1870.
V o l . 85. No. 2864.
L o n d o n , M a r c h 30, 1895.
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[R e g is t e r ed a t t h e G e n e r a l P ost O f f ic e a s a N ew spaper
'C h ronicle of t h e W e e k :
Page
Imperial Parliament : The Welsh Church Bill— Sir M. Hicks-Beach — Friday’s Sitting — Monday’s Sitting*—Irish Lights Board Bill — The Reichstag and Prince Bis•tmarck— The Action of the Emperor — Catholic Schools in Manitoba— French Aggression in Africa— The Chitral Expedition — Where is Chitral ?— The Franco-Malagasy War— Sweden and Norway— The New Spanish Government— The Liability of Railway Companies— The Recent Gale — Important Chemical Discovery— The War ie th e East — Intervention of the Great Powers . . •• •• 477 L e a d e r s :
The School Question in Manitoba 481 Lord Halifax and Reunion . . 482
C O N T
L eaders (Continued):
Page
Anglican Orders . . . . . . 483 N o tes . . — . . •• ~ 490 C orrespondence :
Rome :— (From Our Own Corre
spondent) . . ......................... 493 News from Ireland . . — — 494 L e t t e r s t o t h e E d it o r :
Conference of Catholic Guardians 49s Rate or State-aid . . . . . . 495 The Title “ Monsignore ” . . 495 “ S. Luke’s ” .. .. . . 493 “ The Athenaeum” and Bishop
Grosseteste . . ^ . .. 495 An Appeal from Calabria . . 495 R e v iew s :
Dr. Trenkle on the Epistle of
St. James.. . . . . .. 496 The Crusades ......................... 497
ENTS. ,
R evif.w s (Continued) :
Page
A Popular Chaucer . . . . 498 Dublin Verses .. . . . . 498 The Office of Holy Week . . 499 Books of the Week . . . . . 499 The Bishop of Salford’s Second
Lecture in Reply to the Bishop of Manchester’s Question . . 499 The Southwark Diocesan Educa
tion Council and Rescue Society 503 Irish Literary Revival . . . . 504 Catholicism in Northumberland . . 504 The Historic Winters o f Europe . . 504 So c ia l a n d P o l it i c a l . . ... 505
SU PPLEM EN T . N ew s from t h e S chools :
Lord Salisbury on Voluntary
Schools . . . . . . . . 509
N ew s from t h e S chools (Con
Page tinued) : Loan Libraries for Schools . . 5to The Buckfastleigh School Board
Election . . .. . . . . 5*0 Torquay Elementary Schools . . 511 Elementary Education in Swit
zerland .. . . . . . . 511 St. Joseph’s Industrial School,
Tranent . . . . . . . . 512 N ew s from t h e D io ceses : Westminster . . . . — 512
Southwark . . . . . . ..5x2 Birmingham.. . . . . . . 512 Clifton . . . . 512 Hexham and Newcastle . . . . 512 Leeds . . . . .. ..512 St. Andrews and Edinburgh . . 512 St. John’s Institution for Deaf and
Dumb, Boston Spa .. . . 513 Reminiscences of Professor Barff . . 513 Catholics and the Primrose League 5x4 Proposed Chapel at Retford . . 514
■ » * Rejected MS. cannot ie returned unless accompanied with address and postage.
CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK.
•----------- ♦ ----------
IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT — THE WELSH CHURCH
BILL.
ON Thursday of last week, Mr.
Asquith, in moving the Second Reading of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, devoted
'his speech to the grounds o f policy which had led to its introduction. H e maintained that the old idea of an Establishment, that the Church and State were co-extensive in area, had been slowly condemned, and that while the Church as a spiritual body was identical, continuous, and unchanging, as a State Establishment it was subject in all its forms and laws to the shifting current of public opinion. H e asserted that, from the earliest time, the State had exercised a controlling voice in the civil government and the regulation of the endowments of the Established Church ; and the existing Establishments, both in England and Wales, represented the remnants of far larger privileges and powers which the Church once possessed. The Bill, whether it was politic or impolitic, raised no new question, either o f Constitutional practice or the limits of the moral competence and authority of Parliament. He justified the right to cut off the four Welsh dioceses from the Province o f Canterbury, on the grounds that Wales was a distinct natioD, and that the Welsh Church, in its origin and inception, was national. It had originally been separate entirely from the English Church, but by its incorporation with the English Church, and by subordination through long centuries to the needs of England, it had become denationalized, and made into a kind o f annexe of the Church o f England. This led him into a sketch of the historical connection of the Church in Wales with that of England, in which he quoted a petition of the Welsh Princes to Pope Innocent I I I ., complaining that they had been made subject to the Kings of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. T o account for the present condition of Welsh opinion, he described the circumstances which produced the rise of ■ dissent and its growth from a hundred congregations in the beginning of the 18th century to upwards of a thousand at the beginning of the 19th. The growth of this body of dissent had made the Church of England the Church of the minority.
N e w S e r i e s , V o l . LIII., N o 2 , 1 7 3*
In moving that the Bill be read
— s i r m . h i c k s -b e a c h . that day six months, Sir M. Hicks-
Beach pointed out that the Home
Secretary’s whole argument tvas an argument for the Disestablishment of the Church of England as well as that o f Wales. Contrary to history and geographical fact, and in accordance with no views which the Government would be prepared to carry to their legitimate conclusion, Wales was to be treated as a separate nationality. I f the Church in Walts was to be disestablished because Wales was a separate nation, was the right hon. gentleman prepared, because Wales was a separate nation, to grant it also a separate Parliament and Government if its thirty-one members demanded it? Such a demand would be laughed out of court. The fact that thirty-one out of thirty-four Welsh members asked for Disestablishment was not a sufficient argument for it. The House and the country must be satisfied that the demand was right in itself. The Church had grown in strength, and shown increasing vitality, and it was monstrous that, because it might be at present the Church of the minority, it was to lose all claim to be considered the National Church, and was never to be in a position to reassert that claim. It was absolutely impossible for the members of the Church in Wales, after Disestablishment* to remain in ecclesiastical and spiritual connection with the rest of their Church in England. This wicked and cruel disruption could not be counterbalanced ecclesiastically by any benefits which could be gained. Whatever religious motives there might be in connection with this Bill, there were still stronger political motives at the bottom of it, and he believed it would give a distinct impetus to the policy o f Home Rule. Referring to Disendowment, he said he found no attempt whatever by the Home Secretary to justify it, and he had not given a single instance in which Parliament had deprived the Church of any endowments. Sir Michael denied that the endowments were national property, and, confining his argument chiefly to the tithes, which formed the bulk o f the endowments, he quoted Dr. Stubbs and Mr. Freeman to show that they had never belonged to the nation. Every penny of the endowments of the Church was the gift o f individual donors, and not a penny had ever belonged to the State. Parliament had been just to the Irish Church, but it was not just to the Church in Wales. It was treating the incumbents with absolute meanness, and meanest of all were the terms on which it was dealing with the Cathedrals and churchyards. The Home Secretary, in the case of the former, had not the courage o f confiscation, and he had not the grace of
