In the debate next day Mr. Balfour eloquently appealed to the Welsh people to be more concerned with the great things they shared with the English people than with the relatively small things they held by a separate tenure. Granted that the Church had deservedly lost much of her earlier position, why should she be disestablished and disendowed? If Disestablishment meant dismemberment, why were the Welsh members to settle it alone? What good would Disestablishment do? On the central question of the Bill, Disendowment, weight should be given, not to Welsh sentiment, but to sound principles of jurisprudence, relating to corporate property, and these the Bill violated. The United States Supreme Court had decided that in Virginia Disestablishment did not involve Disendowment. The Parliament Act was passed to carry Home Rule and Welsh Disestablishment; it now seemed that these reforms were to be carried to justify the Act. The country was turning against them. There was something grandiose about the Irish policy of the Government, but the Welsh Bill was thoroughly mean. The Prime Minister asked on what grounds Mr. Balfour asserted that the country had changed its opinion. No question had had such a hold on the Welsh mind for the best part of two generations. Deference and concession, in matters of local concern, to strong local sentiment were among the first conditions of vivifying and sustaining Imperial strength. To the vast majority of the Welsh people the Welsh Church was not a national institution, but four dioceses in the Province of Canterbury. The Nonconformist deputation (p. 28) were all in favour of Disestablishment, and were very vague as to the Disendowment effected by the Bill. Against Establishment he cited the case of the United States. The Bill dealt with ancient endowments, given to the Church for charitable and educational, as well as for religious, reasons; it had a precedent in the Irish Church Act, carried by one of the greatest and most devout Churchmen of the time, and both parties had impartially used the released endowments for the most secular purposes conceivable. What was to prevent the continued community of action of the four dioceses with the Church of England? The Welsh Nonconformist farmer would gain the sense of religious equality which he and his forefathers for two centuries had looked upon as essential to the completion and quickening of their national life. Later, Mr. Bonar Law (U.) after commenting on the unreality of the debate, said that if the Church was alien to the Welsh temperament, it was the fault of the latter. The Church was the only denomination in Wales which was increasing its membership. The Irish Church was disendowed on the ground that the money was not being properly used. He did not think it would be possible to replace the endowments; one of the first acts of the next Unionist Government would be to restore them.