Gladstone, W: Church in Wales

Excerpt from The Church in Wales: A Speech by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P., In the House of Commons, on the Resolution of Mr. (Now Mr. Justice) Watkin Williams

Church of the nation. It is not, indeed, at all in corre spondence with the disproportion which prevailed in Ireland, because there one-ninth or one-tenth of the population was the utmost at which the members of the Established Church could be reckoned. There is one other point in regard to which the Welsh Church corresponds - I use the expression for the sake of convenience - with that of the Irish Church; it is that so large a proportion of her members belong to the upper classes of the community - the classes who are the most able to provide themselves with the ministrations of religion - and therefore in whose special and peculiar interest it is most difficult to make any effectual appeal for public resources and support. But, sir, with regard to other points of not less consequence, the case of the Welsh Church is certainly widely different from that of the Irish Church. In the first place, it is quite impossible to compare the severance between the Established Church and the Nonconformists of Wales with the severance between the members of the Irish Establishment and the Roman Catholics in that country. Not _merely upon theological grounds, but also on the ground of actual sympathy or hostility of sentiment, the whole history of the case is entirely different. There was a' strong and sharp antagonism between the Established Church and Roman Catholic Church running through Ireland, and that ecclesiastical antagonism was complicated and embittered by intermixture with political questions, even graver than the ecclesiastical controversies of the country; so that the effect of the whole was that the several portions of the population were placed almost in an attitude of standing social hostility to each other. N ow, whatever View we take of the anomalies of the position of the Church in Wales, I, am sure my hon. And learned friend will admit it would be a gross exaggeration to profess that anything like a resemblance of the general position exists as between Wales and Ireland, or in the attitude of the members of the Church in Wales; on the one hand, or the members of the N onconforming bodies, on the other.

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