When the Reformation came, the influence of the connection with England was, if possible, still more disastrous on the religious interests of Wales. 'The robbery in times of peace,' says Mr. Johnes, 'proved worse than the spoliation in the times of war, and the rapacity of the Reformation was added to the rapacity of Popery.' He then describes, in language of eloquent indignation, how the ecclesiastical endowments of the Principality were pitilessly plundered by being bestowed upon laymen, the descendants of the Norman invaders, or by being alienated from the Church of Wales to endow English bishoprics and colleges! For the last century and a half, again, the policy of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in dealing with the Welsh Church has, it would seem, been steadily directed to the extinction of the Welsh language and nationality by the appointment of Englishmen to bishoprics, canonries, deaneries, and most of the richest livings in Wales, in utter contempt of all decency. And now when, by the legitimate operation of a State establishment of religion, nearly the whole nation has been alienated from the Church, so that it has become a mere encumbrance in the land, we are told that Wales is so inseparably united with England that it cannot expect to be rid of the incubus until England has made up its mind to deal with its own Church Establishment. But what we have to do with most especially at present is the Protestant Church Establishment in Wales, and our indictment against it is this, that at no period of its history has it fulfilled, in anything approaching to a satisfactory manner, its proper function as the religious instructor of the Welsh people. We have a chain of testimonies in support of this allegation that are unimpeachable as to their quality, and of overwhelming force in their concurrence and cumulation of evidence. We are anxious to make this point clear, because the line of defence that has been lately taken by the friends of the Church of England in Wales is to this effect. It is true, they say, that towards the middle of the last century the Church had fallen into a deep sleep, and so afforded occasion, and to some degree excuse, for the rise of Nonconformity, which was previously almost unknown in Wales. And then they point in vague and sounding phrases to the golden age that preceded that period of spiritual torpor, when the Church, alive to her high mission, ruled by native bishops, who understood the language and commanded the confidence and veneration of the country, comprehended and cared for within her ample fold the whole population of the Principality. Dissent, we are assured, is in Wales an exotic of quite modern growth, which, it is further implied, will prove to have a very ephemeral life, like Jonah's gourd, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Now all this is pure fiction. Dissent is not a thing of modern growth in Wales. It has existed more or less for 230