NONCONFORMISTS AND THE CHURCH.

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I suspect that not a few of your readers, besides myself, would like to know from you what ground you have in law for so often stating editorially, and so positively and categorically, that the law of the land in relation to membership in the English Church is that the Dissenter, whom you term the "Nonconformist," has "not forfeited any of his rights therein." Of your favour, I venture to challenge you to make good your assertion, for that is all that it is at present.

I think that I am not mistaken in saying that your stated opinion of the law is entirely at variance with the law as it stands, and has stood, for over 230 years.

Your position involves confusion of thought about Dissent, or your " Nonconformity." Historically, and both by Statutes in general and by case law, Dissent and Nonconformity are not convertible terms. In the premises, Nonconformity has long ceased to exist, since the Toleration Act of 1689. And consequently a doctrine of law which was in any sense applicable to the old Nonconformist has no applicability to the evolutional Dissenter. Perhaps you have been misled by that eminent person of erratic opinion, Dean Stanley, who is said to have been in the habit of speaking of Dissenters as "Nonconformist members of the Church of England." But such a view finds no support in so eminent an authority on the subject, as well as a most loyal and devout Churchman, the first Earl of Selborne, Lord Chancellor of England in Mr. Gladstone's last Administration, in his A Defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment (1887 edition). In dealing with the point of Church Membership (chapter xi.) the learned author says :—

"It has sometimes been said, that every Englishman is, in the view of the law, a member of the Church of England. . . . Such a notion might, perhaps, have been a technical deduction from a former state of the law, which aimed at enforcing by penalties universal conformity to the Church ; but it could not, and did not, survive the Toleration Acts."

It is true, now as much as ever, we go on to read, that the Church does not repel from the rights and privileges of Church membership any persons, baptized and not excommunicated, who honestly seek or willingly accept them. It is also true that the law does not, without proof of the fact, presume any man to be a Dissenter. But the question is one of fact :— " The law is not so unreasonable as to call the same man at the same time a Churchman and a Dissenter from the Church. When, either in Statutes or judicially, it speaks of the members of the Church of England, it uses those words in that distinctive practical sense with which (since 1689, at all events) all men have been familiar."

Lord Selborne proceeds to cite the " Ihninster School Case," Baker v. Lee (House of Lords Cases, vol. viii., pp. 504,

505), which was before the House of Lords in 1860. The Law Lords unanimously rejected the proposition (which had been advanced at the Bar) "that Courts of Justice cannot recognize any distinction between members of the Church of England

and Dissenters, and that all the inhabitants of the parish are to be deemed members of the Church of England." Now, it seems to me that the Spectator would be well advised to follow

henceforth Bounden Earl of Selborne, instead of Dean Stanley (or Dr. Henson), as a true interpreter of the law of England in respect of Church membership.—! am, Sir, &c.,

[Mr. Hall, though apparently a very self-determined student of the Spectator, is not a very close reader. Otherwise he would have remembered that we had this controversy some nine or ten years ago over the question of the absolute

right of Nonconformists (and Nonconformists who are mem- bers of other Churches) to demand and receive the Holy Communion in their parish church. We published in 1914 a series of very able articles horn one of the greatest of eccle- siastical judges—he had been Dean of Arches, a Lord Justice, and a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council— in which the said judge laid down the law very clearly and as we have laid it down. That view of the law was accepted by many of the High Church papers, and in particular by

the Church Times, as undoubtedly correct, though it was a form of law with which, of course, they disagreed. Could there be any better proof of our contention as regards

the inalienable rights of Christian Nonconformists in the National Church ? Jf Nonconformity had a special legal status, it would be necessary to put an end to such alien status by some legal action. But everyone knows that a Nonconformist has simply to go to church to take up his membership. No one can exclude him. We have not room

to go further into the matter at this moment, but we may point out that Mr. Hall robustly bases his contention on a political pamphlet by Lord Selborne, which, of course, has not even the validity of an obiter dictum. We have not con-

sulted the report of the "'Ilminster School Case," but we

should be very much surprised if the decision is contrary to the law as set forth by the learned ex-Dean of Arches and member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the articles on the Communion Rubric and the alleged right to exclude Nonconformists. Perhaps later, when the pressure on our space is less, we may be able to find room for a quotation, not of one sentence, but of the essential portions in the judgment in Baker v. Lee. We may end by strongly advising our correspondent to read our articles on open Communion in the Church of England by "A. C., an Eccle- siastical Lawyer." They appeared in our columns on June lath and 20th, 1914. He should also consult the Statute 1 Edward VI., c. 1, repealed by Mary but revived by the Act of Elizabeth .—En. Spectator.]