With the Disestablishment of the Church the case is rather different. The abolition of hereditary aristocracy, though difficult and not particularly urgent, might be a good thing in itself. Church Disestablishment on the other hand would, I am convinced, be not only a waste of time and energy, but a most undesirable and retrograde step. Surely it is not for us Socialists to agitate for the desocialisation of national religion and for the transfer of what is now in effect national property to private and irresponsible hands. Moreover the denationalisation of the Church would be from a tactical point of view a most fatal step. I say this without reference to the question (upon which Socialists will hold all sorts of divergent opinions) of the truth of the doctrines of the Church of England or indeed of any form of Christianity or Theism. It has been often pointed out that the Church has shown itself more easily permeable by the Socialist movement than have any of the Dissenting bodies. Many reasons have been suggested to account for this, and no doubt there is an element of truth in all of them. Without doubt the Catholic and Sacramental system of theology blends more easily with Socialism than the Evangelical theology does. It is also unquestionably true that the feudal traditions which still linger in the English Church are more akin to the ideas of Socialism than are the Liberal and Individualist traditions of Dissent. But one of the most important causes of the more sympathetic attitude of the clergy of the Established Church is surely this, that the Church, being established and endowed, is responsible to the people and to the people alone, while the “Free” Churches are bound hand and foot to the wealthy deacons and elders on whose subscription they are forced to rely. Disestablish the Church and the rich subscriber will rule her with a rod of iron. Democratic priests will be hampered and harassed as democratic ministers are now. This, it seems to me, is not a result to which (whatever our religious views) we can look forward without anxiety. Whether “priestcraft” be a good or a bad force, it is without doubt an extremely powerful one; and it is clearly the business of Socialists, whether Christian or Secularist, to see that, so far as is possible, it shall be exercised on their side. The sound Socialist policy is not to disestablish the Church of England, but to establish concurrently all religious bodies of sufficient magnitude and importance to count. Had this been done in Ireland thirty years ago, as Matthew Arnold recommended, had we, instead of disestablishing the Anglican Church there, established and endowed the Roman Catholic Church along side of her, how much less serious might our difficulties in that country have been!