The Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard

WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT A g-ood deal is being said just now about the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales. The subject is not altogether a pleasant one, and it is almost impossible to dis- cuss it in any of its aspects without arousing- feelings more strong- than friendly and marked by anything rather than Christian brotherhood. The Church will doubtless be disestab- lished in Wales before long, and in the end disestablishment will be accom- plished in England also. There is no sound reason in these days why one church more than another should have State recognition, State endowments, State privileges, and State positions and honours. In Wales Nonconformists greatly out- number the members of the Church of England, even when those who are not identified with any religious organisa- tion are counted as adherents of the Church of England, as they often are counted for Church purposes. We are not sure that all the Welsh Churches put together cannot count more adherents than there are inhabitants in Wales, but that is a detail which we gladly leave to statistical experts. It is often said that the Church of England is rapidly gaining strength in Wales, but then the same thing is said of Roman Catholicism. If numerical strength is to settle the question of Establishment or Disestablishment in Wales, then the Church of England should be dis- established forthwith and the Calvin- istic Methodist denomination should become the State Church, with the Rev. EVAN JONES in the position of the Archbishop of CANTERBURY. Sup- pose there were no State Church, it is clear that the so-called Church of England would not be entitled to that position in Wales, and in these days of widely-differing religious organisa- tions it is impossible for any set of religious people to make out a claim for dominance, either by. numbers or anything else. The question is not one of religion, but of politics and place and pride. Nonconformist's are as religious as Conformists, and Roman Catholics are as religious as either. The issue is really one of equality, and that is the issue on which the battle is being fought. Most people inherit their religion and are no more responsible for it than for their physical and mental characteristics. There is religion in many parts of the world where there is no State Church, just as there is religion in this country outside the boundaries of the Church of England. It must be quite clear to the dullest partisaq. that the exist- ence of a State Church is not neces- sary in order to ensure religion among the people. 'It inevitably follows that religion will not be imperilled by dis- establishment. Let us look at the subject, then, apart from religion, which is clearly not vitally involved in it. We are not going to argue that we are in favour of disestablishment because it will strengthen the Church of England or will give increased force to religion. Our contention is that no one church has a right to State prefer- ence, or to monopoly of power and position. Nonconformists, and also religious persons who do not even con form to the requirements of Noncon- formity, have a right to equality before the State. There should be no specially-favoured religious organisa- tion in a country like this which pro- fesses to be free, and where by a strange fiction all the people, including women, are equal before the law. What will happen, to the Church of England in Wales when it is disestab- lished we will not try to predict. All we are quite sure of is that it will be disestablished, and the longer the pro- cess is delayed the more thorough and complete the process is likely to be. The most powerful force that is telling in favour of disestablishment is found, not inside, but outside the Noncon- formist churches, and is really an adumbration of a religious revolution that is gradually embodying itself in many lands. The Church of England is mainly a political and social machine, worked ecclesiastically, and Nonconformists desire to get rid of this powerful means of exclusion and preference in law-making at any cost. The battle is interesting, not only to disestablishment fanatics, but to those Nonconformists who are more or less outsiders, and who see that the longer the strife is prolonged the more drastic and widespread will be the changes when they do come. It is not only the connection between Church and State that is in the melting pot. but all sorts of religious and ecclesiastical laws and customs are in a state of unrest. For instance, marriage, ancient religious faiths, divine governance, human fate, and final destiny are no longer accepted as settled once for all. Disestablish- ment will' certainly mean to many thousands of earnest members of the Church of England sad and painful breakings up of old and venerated relations and associations. Those who have only known the State Church as their arrogant, political, and ecclesi- astical superior will never be able to fully sympathise with those to whom she is a tender nursing mother—a symbol of home and peace and right- eousness. How complete the rupture will ultimately be it is impossible to realise or to make plain. Every church in Wales after disestablishment will be at liberty to shape its own destiny, and in the end will have to depend mainly on its own resources. The changes will not come all at once, and although disestablishment will effect great and immediate differences the ecclesiastical system, as far as it is independent of the State, will remain and will be more free to act than it is at present. All the differences, again, will not be to the bad, for freedom has its advantages and its enlargements of possibilities which no ties can give, however beneficently intended. When the Church of England is placed in a state of freedom as entire and absolute for the regulation of its own religious concerns as any Nonconformist body there will be much to learn and to suffer. At present the laity are a negligible element in Church of England government, but after dis- establishment the ecclesiastic will not be the only person who counts. He will probably cease to be a freeholder and the master of the situation. There are doubtless large numbers of members of the Church of England who do not believe in the possibility of disestablishment in Wales. Some of them say that the Church in Wales is part and parcel of the national church, as if that were an obstacle in the way of disestablishment which, we believe, is sure to come in the life of the next Liberal Government, whether that life is renewed at the next general election or is postponed until the election afterwards. There are large numbers of Conformists who have so deep-rooted a contempt for what they call dis- senters and Radicals that they cannot conceive of their having the power to break the connection between Church and State. Yet there can be no ques- tion that they not only have this power, but they mean to exercise it, many of them in the true interests of peace, justice, religion, and equity. We have no more sympathy with those who look upon Nonconformists as religion wreckers than with those who look upon Conformists as freedom haters. Changes have been brought about bv popular education in the attitudes and relations of the masses of the people, and religious systems that prevailed in the days when education was a priestly monopoly are now completely out of date and are incapable of being worked cither for the advancement of the churches or for the progress of the people. If the Church of England in Wales is not disestablished after the next general election—we presume the Lords will reject the measure if it passes the Commons—then an Act will be passed when the Liberals again come into power for the disestablish- ment of both the Church of England and Wales, and the House of Lords, but not for the abolition of either. There are just now a good many Con- servative red herrings being trailed across the political scent, .but there are three great reforms upon which the country has made up its mind, namely, disestablishment, the reform of the House of Lords, and land law reform. Whether the enfranchisement of women will be added to the list depends on the spread of the women's movement among- the millions who now only take an outside interest in their own affairs. The country is riper for disestablishment than is believed by those who imagine that in some sort of way the Church is a bulwark of security for the Crown. They forget that the true church not only includes all the Nonconformist churches, but also millions of people who never pass through their doors. Wrales is in earnest on the disestab- lishment question, as may not be realised by those who only pay atten- tion to the shallower and noisier sort who have their own little interests to serve and are anxious at any cost to pose as leaders of public opinion on public platforms. Even these, if enly looked at as weathercocks, show which way the wind blows. They may not be the force behind the movement, but in some measure they are indica- cations of the way the movement is working.

THE POSITION OF WOMEN. Two more batches of women, about a score in number, have got themselves sent to prison in London for attempt- ing to interview the PRIME MINISTER and subsequently refusing to be bound over to keep the peace. There are many earnest male friends of the move- ment for the political enfranchisement of women who do not approve of these tactics. Wisely or unwisely the leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union, the most militant of the women's enfranchisement associations, have deliberately adopted these tactics, and it would be absurd in the face of all the facts to contend for a moment that the tactics are not keeping the subject, prominently, however unpleas- antly, before the public. Funds are being obtained, and much money is needed; the paper Votes for Women has been enlarged and is far away ahead of any publication that women have ever issued in this country to uphold their cause; the mili- tant organisation Is growing and de- veloping all over the country and is threatening to become a disquieting and even a dangerous element in the nation in ways that men up to the pre- sent time refuse to recognise. There are miUions of women who have not yet allied themselves with the emancipa- tion movement, but the militant force is being strengthened every week and, as we have tried to point out many times, once the movement becomes popular there is no force in the country that will be able to control it There arc eleven or twelve millions of women interested in this movement whether they know it or not, and indications are not wanting that the whole UlT heaval may at any moment pass out of the hands of the leaders and place the civil and other authorities of the country in a position which will leave them utterly helpless. All that is needed is a popular outbreak. The organisation is ready. With the policy that demands for women who obey laws and pay rates and taxes the same rights and privi- leges as men possess who obey laws and pay rates and taxes we are in com- plete sympathy. Force we have always looked upon as an inevitable preliminary to justice for women. There is nothing more absurd in the world than the contention that sex does not relieve women from obedience to law, or from responsibility for personal action, or from financial obligation as regards imperial taxes and municipal rates, but that sex—mere sex—which gives no immunity from burdens, national or local, utterly disqualifies for political rights and privileges. Mere sex is to make men the masters of the country and to doom women to slavery of the most complete and abject kind. This contention is too idiotic for serious discussion, but there it is. Sex is no more a justification for oppression than it is a defence for slavery. It is said by the men who contend that sex is the only qualification for political power and the only defence of political degradation, that the female cannot take part in wars. This de- fence was broken down more than fifty years ago by FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, and she has been paying ever since for the blow which she then struck at the brutality and arrogance of the male sex. If a man had done what she did he would have been made a member of the House of Lords and would have been given the necessary pecuniary means to maintain that dignitv. War is a hideous thing, but there are other aspects of life not less hideous in which women have to take their part. Why should not women be torn limb from limb by shot and shell and be gashed by swords, and be outraged in every possible way during the processes of glorious war? Are not women the in- feriors of men? Are they not unfit to record a vote which any drunken, syphilitic corrupt male may record? Why, then, talk rubbish about saving" women from the horrors of war, seeing that they have to bear all the nameless horrors of peace and are not even allowed to make a protest at the polling' booths ? We ask, why are women not allowed' to make protest? Women are more- numerous than men. Why, then, are they not allowed." This is the ques- tion that women have either not answered. They have not compre- hended the full meaning of the answer The reason is that males are greater bfutes than females, and the difference is not confined to the human species, as can easily be shown by quite familiar instances in many departments of animal life. Brute force may rule the world still, but conditions have so altered that even brute force is not now a monopoly of men to the total exclu- sion or subjection of women. We be- lieve that in the next great war, which so many men are doing- their best to bring about, women will play a promi- nent part, but very likely women will be engaged in fierce physical strife at home before they have an opportunity to join in strife abroad. Are not women already engaged in strife with the police? The question is not one of victory or defeat, but of strife, and women at last realise, after much telling, that legal equality with men can only be obtained by physical force Women connot depend on religion, or justice, or equity for fair treatment. Ineir only remedy against wrong, as every nation in the world realises, is sheer brute force. This is a sad con- iession to have to make after twenty centuries of Christian teaching, but the fact is indisputable as is made evident every day in the debates in Parlia- and the newspapers of the The question is not what ::1..11 "i'a.. have, but what they shall be allowed." There are women who oppose their own enfranchisement. A quar!<-r of a million of women have petitioned the House of Commons against being allowed to vote for members of Parlia- ment, and it is said that another quarter of a million are going to follow their example. These believers in their own subjection have not vet seen that their action is a proof of the pro- gress which the women's movement is making. Half a century ago two hundred and fifty thousand women would no more have signed a petition against their emancipation than they would have signed a petition against wearing crinolines, or ringlets. Women have been aroused, and it is an indication of a great change that many women have thrown themselves into the conflict against their own pro- grcss. There are women to-day who are in favour of their own enfranchise- ment, but who think that it is their duty to fight politically for parlia- mentary candidates who are opposed to women's enfranchisement. This is hard to believe, but there can be no doubt about the fact. Then there are great numbers of women who are pre- pared to make all sorts of personal sacrifices for the full emancipation of their .sex, but who shrink from every kind of militancy. They have waited all their lives for justice and will die waiting. They have faith, or at least strive hard to have faith, that men will be just to them and will not confine themselves to flattery and false promises. Women are in prison and men are opposed to doing justice to them, but still in thousands of ways the gates of freedom are being opened to women and they will in the end obtain political rights and privileges and justice before the law. What their future position will be no one can say until they are free as men are free and are no longer doomed to injustice on the mere ground of sex. Two of the greatest things women have yet to learn is to believe in themselves and to have faith in each other.

IN VAIN. AT the meeting of the Aberystwyth Town Council, on Tuesday, the annual report of the medical officer, Dr. ABRAHAM THOMAS, was received and referred to a committee. The report is as outspoken as usual and absolves Dr. IHOMAS from any responsibility whatever for the state of the town and also frees him from blame, no matter what disaster may one day befall the community. The members of the administrative body of the town are placed in possession of its actual position with a plainness and absence of exaggeration which leave nothing to be desired, and the full responsi- bility consequently rests upon them now as it has rested upon them for several years. We have no desire to cry Wolf, wolf," but it is our duty to the Aberystwyth readers rf this paper to deal with this subject in the interests of those who are individually helpless in the face of administrative ignorance, indifference, and apathy. The members of the Council, whatever else they may plead, cannot plead ignorance of what is required. They have been told year after vear what exists and have practically done nothing to provide the nefcessary reforms. This is a most serious charge to make in a place whose chief business is to provide accommodation for visitors. We will deal with the points in the order in which they appear in the MEDICAL OFFICER'S report. To begin with, the death-rate of the town for the year is 16 per 1,000 inhabitants, compared with 14.7 for England and Wales and 14.9 for the seventy-six large towns and 14 in the 142 smaller towns. No matter how the death-rate is compared with other communities the evidence is against Aberystwyth. This surely ought not to be. As regards infectious cases, the number notified was fifty-three, and included thirty cases of scarlet fever and nineteen of diphtheria, two of which ended fatally. The MEDICAL OFFICER says that he has from time to time strongly urged the Council to provide sufficient and proper "hospital accommodation for infec- tious diseases, to include a properly- equipped laundry, a mortuary, and a disinfecting apparatus for bedding, clothing, etc. In the year 1900 the Council unanimously resolved to carry out these measures but partly owing to the difficulty of a suitable site and partly on the scorc of expense involved, no practical progress has been made. Isolation 4,4 in small houses of the working- "clas;es is impossible. Had the 44 town possessed an isolation hospital 44 several cases of scarlet fever would 44 have been limited to a single mem- ber of a household and not spread to two, three, or four inmates, as was co the case last year." There is no shadow of doubt as to-