The failure

(Page 137) Various attempts were made by Nonconformist County and Denominational witnesses to estimate for the Commission the number of Nonconformist adherents, but none of these attempts can be regarded as an adequate reply to the Nonconformist side of the question put to the Commission in the Terms of Reference. The enumeration of Nonconformist adherents was the most important problem before the Central Evidence Committee, in its compilation of its county statistics, inasmuch as statstics for ministers, full members, Sunday scholars and (to a large extent) accommodation, were already available in the Nonconformist denominational Year-Books.

The blame

(Page 137) There is no room for any question that, as the Report says, the number of those who are called 'adherents' in the county statistics is 'of little or no use' as an answer to the Terms of Reference. The Central Evidence Committee failed entirely to provide for anything approaching uniformity in the meaning attached to the word 'adherents' in the county statistics, collected under its direction by Nonconformist County Committees and appended to the Report of the Commission. The figures given in the column of 'adherents' in these county statistics, as is abundantly shown in the evidence of county witnesses, represents a great variety of meaning of this ambiguous term, not only as between the several counties, but also between different districts, and not only as between churches of different denominations, but also as between churches of the same denomination in the same county. It is impossible to obtain any useful result by adding up a column composed of such heterrogeneous figures.