Welsh Journals

LEGALISM AND C/ESARISM I look around me and there is no longer a society of men, But only the Law,' as it is called, and the machine-printed text, the inanimate will, a vain idol.Paul Claudel, Syngc." IN the March number of the Welsh Outlook Principal Thomas Rees laments the failure of Welsh Non- conformity at the crisis of the war. He says- It stood by and approved or tolerated the undermining of its own foundations; the suspension of civic liberty, the imposition of military compulsion, and the betrayal of the principles for which their founders made the supreme sacrifice." I will not enter into the question how far the learned Professor's view is accurate in point of detail. Noncon- formity may have behaved a trifle better or a. trifle worse than he supposes, but of one thing there can be no doubt, Nonconformity is no longer the political force that it once was. Substantially, at least, the Principal is right when he says The war has eliminated the Nonconformist conscience from politics." And the worst of it is, that no other Church seems ready to take up the banner which Nonconformity has dropped. Where I differ from Principal Rees is that I refuse to regard the present weakness of Nonconformity as the sole result of its action during the war. The causes lie far deeper back in Welsh history. Indeed, if Welsh Non- conformity had been in a healthy state when the war com- menced, the results which the Principal deplored would have been impossible. Reformations do not occur when a Church is in an healthy condition. If the fifteenth century had been an age of Faith, the Reformation in the sixteenth century would have been an impossibility. We must, I fear, trace the declension of Nonconformist enthusiasm to the days when Henry Richard was himself a power in the land. The fundamental misfortune of Wales in the later period of the 19th century was that after having broken with legalism in the Church, Nonconformity proceded to set up legalism in the State. It may have done this at first unconsciously it may have done it with excellent motives, but the consequences were no less fatal, and they were the more fatal, because in Wales the great opposing Church was imbued with a like error. Let us see, now, how the misfortune came about. The old Nonconformists had little belief in the State. They refused to pay Church Rates. They built up religious organisations independent of the State system. They founded a marvellous system of religious education in which the State had no part. The original Welsh Liber- ationist gospel which Pugh of Mostyn expounded to the farmers of East Merioneth was an attack on State claims to dominate the spiritual life of man. And this indepen- dence of the State system, an independence verging on hostility, gave the old Nonconformists a spiritual and moral power which their successors have not maintained. True it was that in those days a Nonconformist stood, from a wordly point of view, at a great disadvantage by reason of his Nonconformity, as in an even greater degree a Christian in the Roman Empire of the third century stood to lose by his Christian profession, but in both cases worldly loss was spiritual and intellectual gain. Nonconformity was a By Observer power in Wales in the early nineteenth century for the same reason that Christianity was a power in the Roman Empire of the third. What both lost in social and political influence was more than made up by enthusiasm and zeal. The same result followed in both cases. Politicians sought the alliance of the new power, and as Christianity became the most influential force in the Roman world, so Non- conformity became the governing factor in Welsh political life. In either case the victory was followed by a quick spiritual decline. The Church thought that it had converted the world it soon became evident that the world had mastered the Church. In Wales the sign and the cause of the decline may be found in the enormous influence in the political movement acquired by the lawyers. The legal regime commenced as far back as 1868. Osborne Morgan and Morgan Lloyd were the names at one time; Sam Evans and Sir Ellis Griffith at another. Even the Prime Minister himself, and Mr. Herbert Lewis, have had a legal training. Now let us see what the English legal system is in which these leaders of Welsh opinion were trained. It is a system which claims for the Legislature omnipotence and in- fallibility. It may surprise my readers to learn that a distinguished judge, who is still sitting on the English judicial bench once went so far as to express the opinion that the law of God had been altered by an Act of Parliament. Yet this is what Mr. Justice Darling said in the Thompson v. Barnster case, which the curious may read in the Law Reports (Probate Division) for 1910 (f 81). The particular subject which the learned Judge was discussing was the legal effect of the deceased wife's sister Marriage Act and he says For my own part, I am of opinion that this marriage which before was contrary to the Law of God, merely because the Statute condemned it as such, is so no longer, and that by virtue of the Statute which legalises it. For otherwise we should have here a declaration that statutes recognise a certain contract as continuing con- trary to the Law of God, and do yet enact that it shall be good by the law of England." The English of the learned Judge is not particularly lucid, but a moment's thought will reveal his meaning. He makes a claim for English Statute Law that no Roman Catholic has ever made for the Papacy. He claims that it is impeccable, that sin is impossible for it. The Law, of England, he argues, declares that a marriage between a man and his deceased wife's sister is contrary to the Law of God, and so it is, because the Law of England so says, but when the Law of England is altered, the Law of God is also altered. In other words, Parliament has the prero- gative of God. Now Mr. Justice Darling is, no doubt, the enfant terrible of England's Judicial Bench. He has the honesty to say plainly what his colleagues think. But after all, if such sentiments seem to my better instructed reader, who has learned some of the elements of Christianity in a Sunday School, to be little removed from blasphemous non- sense, it must be remembered that the learned Judge was only voicing the orthodox paganism of the Roman Empire.