LTG THE EDITOR or THE "SFECTATOR."3 Sre,—W h ilst much-
impressed by your plea for a State Church, -OR the principle that a nation should be definitely represented on its spiritual side, I find it difficult to resist the Welih case for Disestablishment. Wales is not as England. A. Referendum on the subject of Disestablishment in England would, I believe, confirm and strengthen the Anglican Church to an amazing degree. In Wales the situation is entirely different. Disestablishment has been demanded more than once before, and now it is being called for by the almost unanimous vote of the Welsh Parliamentary representatives. It might have been better, from some points of view, if Wales could have left the privileged:Church to her opportunities and responsibilities. But what the Principality has really done is the music we have to facie: There is a saying.—I think it is a Welsh saying—that it is not he who makes the shoe who knows where it pinches. The Welsh people beg that the Church of. England in Wales shall not any longer be permitted to assume exceptional and invulnerable prerogatives. What can we who are not: of her nationality reply F It is not enough to say, that Disestablishment will create a sense of injustice in the disestablished Church. A sense of injustice at present stings the nation and has led to the present Bill. Must we not remember, too, that the Church of England in Wales claims that her least important incumbent possesses spiritual powers which she denies to the most eminent minister whose ordination is not at her hands ? The Nonconformist may be saying. that • Disestabliehinent he, necessary ; certainly the Welsh people are saying it—not of envy, but in the name of
[These may be good arguments for Disestablishment, but surely our correspondent will not think them applicable to Disendowment, or rather to the soculerization of Church revenues. But the present Bill is first and foremost a Die-
endowing Spectator.]
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