ORIGIN OF SOME FOR TUNES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 13 July 1912, Page 10

ORIGIN OF SOME FOR TUNES.

The debate in the House of Commons on the second reading of the Welsh Disestablishment and Disendowment Bill was the occasion of a picturesque duel between Lord Hugh Cecil and Mr Lloyd George, which recalled to the minds of parliamentary veterans the more sensational of the passages-at-arms between Gladstone and Disraeli. Lord Hugh Cecil, according to the Conservative Press, made a restrained and moderate speech. "Disendowment is a violation' of the rights of property and a hindrance to the cause of religion," he declared. He probed history and said that both Roman Catholics and Anglicans were contending that they were the true heirs to the property of the original Church. "Remember," he said gravely, "injustice stains the hands of those that use it and not of Avho suffer from it . You are fighting against the light, for darkness." Mr Lloyd George commenced his reply quietly, but his burning enthusiasm soon began to show itself. The touch of color fled from his face, and his y^oice hardened. His gestures became more emphatic, his manner more dramatic as he swung round and faced the Liberals, who had been in dire need of his inspiriting eloquence. He swe.it aside a suggestion by Lord Cecil that a change of religious thought was beginning in Wales. "There is not a constituency in the diocese of St. David's for which the bishop of that diocese would be returned," he said, with a glance at the Bishop of St. David's, who smiled down from the gallery. Then he pointed at Lord Hugh Cecil, and said: "What does he know of the people of Wales? AVhat does he know of us and our lift, and character? He is in the position of a doctor prescribing without knowing the patient. Endowments have been net aside for the service of God, but Parliament has been the interpreter of what is the service of God. I gay this property belongs not to the. Chivrch, not to the parsons; it belongs to the inhabitants of the country, for the benefit oi whom the trust was' created." "The Duke of Devonshire! Tlie D-u-u-ke of Devonshire!" continued Mr Lloyd George on the ton of his scorn, "has sent out a circular for subscriptions to fight against the Bill. Tlie charge is being brought by those whose family tree is laden with the fruit of sacrilege! The very fiundations of their fortunes are laid deep in sacrilege. These are fortunes built out of desecrated shrines and pillaged altars. They robbed the Catholic Church, they robbed the monastries, they robbed the altars, they robbed the almshouses, they robbed the poor, and they robbed the dead." Then he drew back, raised his shoulders, held up his arms above his head, and cried: "They venture, with hands drippings with the fat of sacrilege, to accuse us of robbing God!" Mr Bonar Law then tried to administer a rebuke to Mr Lloyd George, and complained, that it was unfair to attack any man through his ancestors.