The provincial Congregations are precisely in the same injurious position, and sensibly feel the want of a defined and constituted authority--to decide upon many differences that arise--to interfere for the extinction of animosities (trifling in themselves, but made gigantic by continued contest) easy to be reconciled by a power to which all would feel compelled to bow--yet as pregnant with important consequences, if unchecked, as those causes which led for a period to the downfall of monarchy in these realms. The evil appears, so far as regards the Metropolitan Congregations, to have originated at, and been continued from, the period of the second settlement of the Israelites in this country. To the rapid increase of numbers and wealth, during the absence of one efficient regulating power, we can trace the successive formation of so many distinct communities. To those elements which ought to have contributed to our strength, we thus owe our weakness, and that disorganisation and separation of interests which characterises the various proceedings of our body, in the formation of the necessary places of worship, and in other affairs. Had our ancestors provided a government at the outset, or placed us under the control of an adequate authority, no material disagreements would have taken place. But the narrow policy which led to the formation of parties, compelled them to _take_ what might have been wisely and nobly given,--created feelings of aversion where the affection of parent and offspring ought to have existed. The wealth of the newer branches generated, on their part, a feeling of pride equally to be deplored; and in losing sight of the necessity for general co-operation, and for one common fund, every kindly feeling gave way to mutual jealousy. The example once set, was soon followed, and continues to be so on every opportunity: we blindly press onward in the same irrational course, without staying to consider that we impoverish the source, by continually increasing the number of the streams.