To aggravate the evils of all kinds already sufficiently rife in the Welsh Church, the English Government, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, adopted the practice, which it has continued ever since, of appointing Englishmen utterly ignorant of the Welsh language to Welsh bishoprics.[160] And the bishops, following the example thus set by those acting for the head of the Church, inundated the Principality with English clergymen, their own relatives and connections, to whom all the highest dignities and the richest livings were, almost without exception, assigned. A more monstrous abuse than this it is difficult to conceive, and yet it has been persevered in for 150 years in the face of all complaint and remonstrance, and in the teeth of the express judgment of the Church itself, which declares in its 26th Article that 'it is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God, and to the custom of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the church, or to minister the sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.' We need not wonder, therefore, that great prominence should be henceforth given by the friends of the Church to this, as one of the causes, if not, indeed, the sole cause, of its inefficiency and decay. How far they are justified in attaching such supreme importance to it we shall consider hereafter. But we shall for the present resume our series of testimonies to the matter of fact. Most of our readers will doubtless have heard of the Rev. Griffith Jones, of Llanddowror, the founder of the remarkable circulating schools, which, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, rendered such inestimable service to the people of the Principality. We cannot here enter upon the history of the life and labours of this admirable clergyman. If one man could have saved the Church in Wales, he would have saved it. But as Mr. Johnes has remarked with great sagacity--though he does not appear to see the inevitable inference to be drawn from the remark--'it is a truth but too well sanctioned by experience, that a few pious ministers are the weakness, and not the strength, of an establishment, when the majority of its ministers are sunk in indifference to their sacred duties.' Our object now, however, is merely to cite the Rev. Griffith Jones as a witness to the condition of the Church about the middle of the eighteenth century. In the year 1749 he published a letter in Welsh, on the 'Duty of Catechising Ignorant Children and People.' In that letter he observes that the