is that they are considered-most of them as tithes from the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.; and, as they have been sold and resold, they have to be treated as private property.

As to the effect of the Bill upon the unbeneficed clergy it will suffice to point out that 561 of them, who are labouring in Wales at the present moment, will be turned adrift, penniless and without compensation. In the diocese of Llandaff alone, where there is such a dearth of curates, and the need of them so urgent, and becoming more urgent with the immense growth of population, not less than £6000 a year will be taken away from them without any compensation.

"How well these clergy look!" said one disestablisher to another, as he saw a Cardigan cleric leave a train. "But," he continued, "their days are numbered, and they will very soon have to work for their living like the rest of us." A Nonconformist minister who presided at a disestablishment meeting said that "it was for the strong to take and for the weak to squeak." To recapitulate such unworthy sentiments in a book of this character may appear somewhat out of place; but my justification is that it will give English Churchmen, and honourable men in England who are not Churchmen, some idea of the low view a great many ignorant and uncultured Nonconformist Radicals, who have votes, take of such a solemn question. They have persuaded themselves to believe that the clergy are in the direct employ of the State, that the Church is in possession of property and of funds, as a national Church, to which the State has a moral right; that Church endowments are vested in the State, and of which the State is owner and can dispose of at will. The tithe they speak of as a Church tax, and when enforced is enforced by the Church. According to the provisions of the Bills of 1895 and 1909 these tithes will continue to be paid after the Church is disendowed, but paid instead to the county council. It is clear that the tithe rent charge is not officially considered a Church tax, but an ordinary business transaction. It is a form of rent, therefore it is not proposed to abolish it.

This controversy over endowments has also its moral for Churchmen. It is to their credit that very large sums have

been raised for restorations, decorations, and accessaries. Is it not time that attention was directed to the provision of maintenance of the living agents, and lasting memorials took that shape rather than that of marbles and mosaics, organs and coloured glass? To be rational or businesslike is not the converse of spirituality, nor is it a synonym for worldliness. In small country parishes the clergy have to deal with a large number of business matters; their bishops expect them, often unreasonably so, to augment the value of their livings, and many of them are constrained to do it out of incomes that many skilled artisans would scorn to accept. When will some of our bishops realise, and the great mass of Church laity realise, what it means to bear the over-burdening weight of a perpetual struggle with the straitened circumstances of so many of the clergy, and how this seriously interferes with the due supply of men of the type and calibre that the Church needs to serve in her sacred ministry, and how it eats the heart out of many a devoted priest who offered himself in his early and enthusiastic years for his office, hardly realising what it involved financially?

With regard to this matter justice demands that a generous reference should be made to the excellent work that has been accomplished during the last twenty-five years by the Diocesan Fund in the Diocese of St. David's. This fund was commenced in 1885, and has two branches for increasing small livings; one by capital grants to be invested for their permanent augmentation, the second by income grants annually renewable. In capital grants every hundred pounds granted has to be met by another hundred pounds from local sources. A grant of two hundred pounds may be expected from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but the amount of grant to be expected from Queen Anne's Bounty is uncertain. The total capital amount thus raised is invested, bearing interest at the rate of 3 per cent., so as to produce a permanent annual addition to the endowment of the benefice, or it may go towards the provision of a parsonage. From the commencement of the fund in 1885 to the close of the year 1910, and in connection with the fund, a sum of over £220,710 has been added to the capital value of 157

benefices in this diocese, producing a permanent addition to their income of over £6621 per annum, being an average income to each of over £42 a year. Of the above sum of over £220,710, the Diocesan Fund contributes £44,682; contributions from local sources amounted to over £73,201; and these two sums were met by £102,827 from Queen Anne's Bounty Fund and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The branch dealing with income grants is affiliated to the Queen Victoria Fund, the condition being that one-fifth of the net available income of this branch be paid annually to the Queen Victoria Clergy Fund. This enables the diocese to receive a much larger block grant in return, which forms part of the amount available for distribution by the Board of the Diocesan Fund in income grants only. From 1898, the first year in which income grants were made, up to and including 1910, no less a sum than £29,146, 5s. has been distributed amongst about a hundred incumbents of poor benefices in this diocese. Of the above sum of £29,146, 5s., block grants amounting to £14,850 have been made by the Queen Victoria Clergy Fund in return for contributions from this fund amounting to £3630. The total amount contributed by the Diocesan Fund, inclusive of the above sum of £3630 sent to the Queen Victoria Fund, amounted to £17,926, 5s.

The Church to-day ministers to a much larger number than the number for which the ancient endowments were provided; and if the history of the several benefices were investigated separately, it would be seen that the endowments of each parish were given to that parish, not to the nation nor by the nation. They were given on the ground of Church discipline, doctrine, and authority. There is no uniformity in the amount of the endowments. Whatever abuses of particular endowments there may have been in the past have ceased, and the Church now makes just use of the various endowments. The Bill, which is erroneously described as "a measure to restore national endowments to national purposes," takes away not only ancient but modern endowments in new parishes where those endowments have come from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

IT

CHAPTER VI

LINGUISTIC PROBLEM

T is calculated that there are no less than nine hundred known languages. Decay and death take place among languages as among the nations that speak them. The language of Demosthenes has long ceased as a living language. Latin, likewise, is no longer spoken, though it lasted for many centuries among scholars; it was long-lived in comparison with Greek. The life of a language does not depend upon the will of individuals, or upon the mutual agreement of any large number of people. Language thrives, changes, and perishes in spite of affection for it. Just as it cannot be moulded at will, so its continued existence or extinction depends upon circumstances that are beyond the control of the nation, or of certain organisations in the nation. Language, like plants, requires soil, heat, and light, and above all, people who will use it. A language cannot survive in and by itself; there must be the material for the sustenance. Where could be found more productive soil than the home, the pulpit, and the Sunday School? These, together with the Welsh Bible, have given a new and a longer lease to the native language of Wales, but the trend of events is against it. Welsh has been long dead in Radnorshire, and is fast drawing its last breath in Breconshire; it is dying daily in all parts of Wales except Merionethshire, Carnarvonshire, and Anglesey. Wales bears unmistakable traces of the Englishman's influence, and in proportion as higher education spreads, and the Welsh universities do the work intended for them, the Welsh language will be found more and more of no use to twentieth-century Welshmen. It is true that there are more Welshmen speaking Welsh to-day than in any preceding period-there are more of them. It is

equally true that more Welshmen speak English to-day, which is a far more important consideration. The old prejudice against English has passed away, and the commercial and intellectual necessity of a deeper acquaintance with it has dawned upon the modern Welsh mind.

The relative importance of Welsh is now completely settled, the period of rivalry is over. Welsh no longer maintains a well-defined independency, it is now on the defensive, it is even struggling for an existence. Among the contributory causes may be mentioned (a) the Regal Act of Union with England, which brought the English language and English influences right into the heart of the country; (b) the spread of education; (c) English journalism and English literature; (d) the growth of the English population; (e) the new position which Wales occupies in the social and political life of the kingdom. The final and permanent supremacy of the English is, to all intents and purposes, fully established. Welsh is being driven from one stronghold after another. English is the habitual speech of Welshmen; it is moulding, modifying, and recasting the tastes, habits, and ideals of the people, and is fast extending their utterance to its model. Welshmen who speak English still preserve, in grammar, diction, and idiom, and above all, in accent, their native Welshicism. The Welsh accent dies hard, except in the case of those who are early trained in English schools and who are brought up in English society. The men of the North, and those from the county of Cardigan, retain the accent longer than the men of the South and those who hail from the county of Carmarthen, and they acquire a practical knowledge of English with greater difficulty.

Unusual and, it may be said, not unworthy efforts have been made of late years to prolong the existence of Welsh as a spoken language, and to introduce it as a subject of study into Welsh day schools and Welsh universities, and not without results. A Welsh Department at the Board of Education has now been established. Part of the portion of the code which refers to the teaching of the language is printed in Welsh. According to the Report of the Board of Education (Welsh Department) for the year 1909, we find that by