When monasteries and chantries were swept away by Henry VIII. and his son, the lands, tithes, and all other kinds of property passed to the Crown, and the Crown granted the greater part of the tithes to bishops and chapters in exchange for landed estates which were granted to laymen, many of whose posterity or assignees hold them at the present day. In Edward VI.’s reign about six millions of acres were under cultivation, but from that time to the present over twenty millions of acres of waste lands have been brought under cultivation, and for which tithes are paid. From A.D. 1547 to 1890, about 5,000 new parishes and districts have been formed, of which 1,530 were formed from A.D. 1547 to 1818, and about 3,470 from 1818 to the end of 1890. Towards the end of the first quarter of the present century there arose a cry for Church Reform. Dr. Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first to take steps, in 1829, to reform the then existing abuses in the Established Church, as to episcopal revenues, commendams, non-residence of incumbents, sinecures, pluralities, etc., which were like so many cancers eating away the body politic. This led to Earl Grey’s Royal Commission of Inquiry, dated 23rd of June, 1832; to Sir Robert Peel’s Commission, dated 4th February, 1835; to the five remarkable reports of this Commission; to the Episcopal Act and Tithe Commutation Act of 1836; to the Ecclesiastical Commission for England, 1836; to the Pluralities Act of 1838; to the Cathedral Act of 1840; in fine, to the passing, from 1836 to 1890, or fifty-five years, of about one hundred and thirty statutes directly and indirectly affecting the Church of England, besides some thousands of Orders in Council, having the force of Acts of Parliament when published in the _London Gazette_. Yet many Churchmen boastingly assert that the Church of England has received no help from the State (!) The Ecclesiastical Commission is actually a State Department. And what amount of money would have remunerated the members of the various successive governments from 1832, who boldly stepped forward to drag the State Church out of that sink of abuses in which the first Reformed Parliament found her? If our leading statesmen in and after 1832 had not promptly and energetically taken steps to reform the flagrant abuses of the Church, it could not possibly long survive as an Established Church.