This, then, is really the rate at which each body “is advancing in the path of self extension;” and the best proof of its accuracy is, that it exactly tallies with what one would have expected beforehand. Mr. Mann’s tables, on the contrary, are absolutely incredible. We must never forget, that during the Great Rebellion, Puritanism was actually the dominant faction; and even at the Restoration it cannot be supposed that the Dissenters were a small or an uninfluential class. In 1662 no fewer than 2,000 ministers were ejected under the new Act of Uniformity; and as at the last census there were only 6405 professional Protestant Ministers, it will be seen that the ejected preachers alone formed a larger body, in comparison with the existing population, than the Protestant Dissenting Ministry does now. It cannot be doubted that every one of those men had a greater or less following; and it must be remembered that in the days of the Commonwealth there was always a rabble of sects who might even then be called Dissenters. It is true that, after the Restoration, Nonconformity was subjected to severe repressive laws, but those laws were not enforced with unvarying rigour. In 1672 there was the Indulgence, and in 1681 the House of Commons passed a strong resolution against the prosecution of Protestant Dissenters. Besides, after all, the Conventicle Acts only continued in force about 23 years—not much longer, in fact, than Episcopacy had been proscribed by law. The natural result which would follow the famous proclamation of James II., and the subsequent passing of the Toleration Act, would be a great and sudden revival of Dissent. How small was the church-feeling of Parliament at the Revolution may be gathered from a curious fact mentioned in Mr. Macaulay’s third volume. It was proposed that the Commons should sit on Easter Monday. The Churchmen vigorously protested against the innovation; but they did not dare to divide, and the House did sit on the festival in question. Without at all straining the inference to be drawn from this incident, it would be difficult, indeed, to suppose that Churchmen had matters their own way. Even under the penal laws, the Dissenters must have been a large body; for James the Second’s scheme for forming a coalition of Roman Catholic and Protestant Dissenters against the Establishment would have been stark folly unless the two bodies, when combined, would have made up, at least, a powerful minority. From the Revolution to 1801 the Dissenters had more than a century to increase and multiply; and all the circumstances of the case were in their favour. Worn out by the political struggles of a century and a half, during which she had been made the tool of contending factions; deprived of her Legislative powers; silenced and frowned upon by the powers that were, the Church had sunk into that fatal lethargy from which the present generation has only just seen her awake. During