That Henry VIII's Welsh policy was immediately successful, if we omit that part of it which concerned religion, is abundantly evident. Two centuries later Edmund Burke, in the course of his great speech on Conciliation with America, cites Wales as an example which proves the truth of the rule which he is inculcating. "Your ancestors," he said, "did however at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all tyrannies {142} the least be endured; and that laws made against a whole nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII the course was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of English subjects. Political order was established; the military power gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into counties. But that a nation should have a right to English liberties and get no share at all in the fundamental security of these liberties--the grant of their own property--seemed a thing so incongruous that, eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by Act of Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided, obedience was restored, peace, order, and civilization followed in the train of liberty. When the day star of the English constitution had risen in their hearts, all was harmony within and without." Burke's eloquent contention is, in the main, perfectly right; yet we should be going too far if we attributed the tranquillity which so {143} speedily ensued to the grant of a constitution alone. At least three other factors have to be taken into account--(1) The termination of the Wars of the Roses, which had been productive of anarchy in England as well as in Wales. (2) The fact that Rowland Lee had done his work so thoroughly that evil-doers were cowed. (3) The fact that Wales looked upon the Tudor monarchs as Welsh people, and upon their supremacy as a victory of Wales over England. The Union marks the beginning of a new and better chapter in the history of Wales. The Principality shook itself free from the fetters of the Middle Ages, and took its place, shoulder to shoulder, with England as a democratic self-governing country. All previous efforts on the part of Welshmen and Englishmen to set up a unitary State had been failures. From time to time some man of exceptional character, like Llewelyn or Glyndwr, would arise, and, for a brief space, succeed in uniting all the petty chieftains in obedience to himself. But such unity had always been precarious, depending entirely upon the personality of the man who had brought it about, and with whose death it vanished. It is palpable that, throughout the Middle Ages, the