resist, were mercilessly evicted from their holdings, or otherwise injured and persecuted. All this sprang from the existence of the Established Church, as is evidenced by the fact, that in every instance we believe without a single exception--the oppressors were Churchmen and the sufferers Nonconformists. The other, and the only other, argument of Mr. Gladstone is this--that except for conventional purposes, there is really no Church in Wales, that the Welsh Church is only a part of the Church of England, and cannot therefore be dealt with separately. We confess we are not very much dismayed by this difficulty; for we can remember the time when the same reason was urged to show the impossibility of touching the Irish Church. Properly speaking, we were told there was no Church of Ireland, but only the united Church of England and Ireland--the two churches having, at the time of the Union, been joined together by a compact so solemn and binding, that Her Majesty the Queen could not give her consent to any measure for dissolving that compact, without incurring the danger of committing perjury and bringing her crown into jeopardy. And as for providing legislation for Ireland distinct from that of England, the suggestion was scouted as an absurdity. Ireland was as much a part of the United Kingdom as Yorkshire or Lancashire, and must be governed by the same laws. The sense of justice, however, and the urgent necessities of the case, triumphed over these foregone conclusions. There is one fact that gives a sort of sinister unity to the religious history of Wales through all its vicissitudes. It is this: that the influence of its relations with England, whether they were hostile or friendly, whether under Saxon or Norman rule, whether in Catholic or Protestant times, has been, in this respect, uniformly disastrous. We can only glance very briefly at the proofs of this allegation. Without raising again the controversial dust which envelopes the discussion as to the time and manner of the first introduction of Christianity into this island, we may at least assume it as an admitted historical fact, that early in the second century the Gospel had been planted here, and that long before the Saxon invasion there was a flourishing Christian Church in Britain. In the records of the first three or four hundred years of its existence, we find that many large collegiate establishments were formed and dedicated to religion and literature. From these institutions went forth men thoroughly instructed in the learning of their times, some of them bearing the fame of their country's piety and erudition to the uttermost parts of Europe. In the oecumenical councils summoned under Constantine the Great and his sons, in the third and fourth centuries, at Arles, at Nice, and at Sardica, to decide the great Donatist and Arian controversies that disturbed the unity of the Catholic faith, we are told that the British