Lloyd-George romances
Posted: 02 Nov 2006 @ 00:00
October 21st 1904
MR LLOYD-GEORGE is gifted with so lively an imagination that many of his
public utterances, with which he splits the ears of the groundlings, are
masterpieces of fiction. On Wednesday, for instance, he treated an audience at
Blaenau Festiniog to two or three efforts of his in the art of romancing. The
Church Times, he said, is the organ of the English Church Union. As he seemed
to claim a "peculiar and extensive" acquaintaince with the inner history of the
English Church Union, we should have thought he would have refrained from
making a statement which has been contradicted both by that Society and by
ourselves not once only nor twice. Anyone repeating such a statement at this
time of day exposes himself to one of two charges. Either he is deliberately
stating what he knows to be false, or he does not know what he is talking
about. We do Mr Lloyd-George the justice to indict him on the lighter charge.
As might have been expected, in the case of a gentleman so singularly
ill-informed, the speech to which we refer contained some remarks upon "the
clergy of the Ritualistic persuasion" which would have served the turn of a
controversialist — say, in the ’sixties. Forty years ago, fairly intelligent
people did actually believe that "Ritualism" was an organisation "for the
purpose of promoting breaches of the law" to which the "Ritualistic clergy"
were paid to conform.