It has been one of the consequence of dissent in Wales--not intended, we believe, by the majority of the ministers, but following inevitably from the organisation of their congregations,--that a democratic spirit of self-government should have arisen among the people, and have interwoven itself with their habits of thought and their associations of daily life. The middle and lower classes, separated from the upper by a difference of language, and alienated from the church by its inefficiency and neglect, have thrown themselves into the system of dissent,--that is, of self-adopted religious opinions, meditated upon, sustained, and expounded in their own native tongue, with all the enthusiasm that marks the Celtic character. The gulf between the nobles and gentry of Wales on the one side, and the middle and lower classes on the other, was already sufficiently wide, without any new principle of disunion being introduced; but now the church has become emphatically the church of the upper classes alone,--the chapel is the chapel of the lower orders--and the country is divided thereby into two hostile and bitterly opposed parties. On the one hand are all the aristocratic and hierarchic traditions of the nation; on the other is the democratic self-governing spirit, opposed to the former as much as light is to darkness, and adopted with the greater readiness, because it is linked to the religious feelings and practices of the vast majority of the whole people. Dissent and democratic opinions have now become the traditions of the lower orders in Wales; and every thing that belongs to the church or the higher orders of the country, is repulsive to the feelings of the people, because they hold them identical with oppression and superstition. The traditions of the conquest were quite strong enough,--the Welshman hated the Englishman thoroughly enough already; but now that he finds his superiors all speaking the English tongue, all members of the English church, he clings the more fondly and more obstinately to his own self-formed, self-chosen, system of worship and government, and the work of reunion and reconciliation is made almost impossible. In the midst of all this, the church in Wales is itself divided into high and low, into genteel and vulgar; the dignitaries hold to the abuses of the system,--and some, less burdened with common sense than the rest, gabble about "Wales and the Welsh," as if any fresh fuel were wanted to feed the fire already burning beneath the surface of society! Even at the present moment, chartism is active in Wales: Mormonites and Latter-day Saints still preach and go forth from the Principality to the United States, (fortunately for this country;) and unprincipled itinerant lecturers on socialism, chartism, and infidelity, are now going their circuits in Wales, and obtaining numerous audiences.[18] FOOTNOTES: [1] A damper is a cake of flour baked without yeast, in the ashes.