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WELSH INDUS- TRIES. ANTHONY BACON AND THE BEGINNING OF CYFARTHFA. THE FIRST FUKXACK- JOHX WESLEY AT MEHTHYR. By CHARLES WILKINS, F.G. S. And vho was the great Anthony Eaoor., the man who preceded the Crawsliays, whose Hume was on every tongue a hundred years ilgu. REd of whom no memorial remains in Hone or graven imageThe most trust- count of iiijil i, liea worthy account of him is that he was a Dative of Whitehaven, famous for its iron ore Jteposifcs, largely used in the days of Anthony *"U at Plymouth; that he was a successful nifcichant in London ana, hearing 01 tne future of Lewis and Guest, travelled down 'es into Wales to see for himself if the reports were true of its being a land of iron and, con- •s^iuenily, gold. Xlie old inhabitants who knew him have |ong, Eeen dead, but the narrative I;lu been handed down from them, and is preserved m the history of the neighbourhood, that toe made his entry about 1763 into Merthyr, .0-Rd, there was no road down ths valley, must have come over the Waun Mountain. 7*18 Rioae of travel wao uy mvtie carixiig* *nd he put up at. the Star Inn, from where he made trips around the district, in parti- cular visiting Hirwain, ^heve the north crop ox the ironstone measures wa.s well developed aaf! trie simplest tyro in lromnaiang could see t-nat prospects were good. It took some kioae to note the various features of the moun- tain land which was to be the scene of his Pioneer efforts, but eventually, in August, .65, the lease was drawn up between ^es.sr^. Bacon and Brownrigg, of Whitehaven, Earl Talbot and Mr. Richards, of Car- whereby, subject to conditions and the of small leaseholders, they were to nave the great mineral tract of Cyfarthfa teight miles in length and live m 'width) for 99 years, the rental tc be .€200 per ^HQuiti. Messrs. Talbot and Richards were going to give their property away, as -vioigaoi, of Newport, had done, for a paltry rent of £26. They must have, who considered a la.rge sum in those days, two undred pounds <. And there was another Proviso; the sma.id leaseholders had to be beetled with; the little farmers of the moun- ams. Most of these were in monetary diffi- cultly and the gossip in the villa.ge a cen- ago was, that one Williams, a dealer, lelj most of the "skins," and he, too, had be bargained with. Anthony Bacon was evidently bent upon ,IV Going the thing in a thorough maimer, for in y(,ai be th 'Sa"le 7eai- May 1, 1765> he bought up ieac-e of the Wannwyllt family, previously Ranted to one of the venturers by the Hon. eyis Windsor Hickman, Karl of Plymouth thus, white Lewis ana Guest held land roir, the Bowlais heights to Merthyr, Baoon dl d. his fr ends ruled over Plymouth ani M'lartofa, a track of bud such as would Ve ciosely approached the domain of a Lord r^arc'her a century or two before, and com- pared with which a German barony would been nowhere. t "7ne lease was drawn up by the great lawyer 1 the district, who did all the legal business l^r a wide are?.—Bold, of Brecon, Cardiff belng almost aa insigniifcant then as ~*erthyr though it was the abode of one of lne officials of the hill districts, the coroner. 7*1 sariy parish books many are the entries early ironworks days to "fetching the crownei- Bacon's first difficulty after sign- is the k:,?e Was to come to terms witr, the email farmers, wao held leases for the soil ti- /a;TtEe terms and dates. The rental of i^rms varied from .-05 tc £ 10 Very tw were more, and Bacon arranged to buy uem. out for £ 100 aash. which tliev gladly s'ocepted, especially as it was accompanied by the offer that employment should be found leathern and their II(I-.les in ooa-i getting or QMting materials for the furnace. There c.a.? onl: Ir:n, however, who was not to be settled 30 easily, and this was Evan Williams, ^"ho did -a little ch and ling it the a:i:~ bvea in &. thatched "ge on the -C Penheolgerrig road. a \Jlarr,s wanted more than a hundred pounds, set* k Thes? details settled Bacon Tf* work in earnest. Old traditions an 'k9*' ai-s first furnace was at Plymouth. WV»* the forerunner of the great Cyfarthfa *'Va's a f°rge- as may, year 1755 saw the building of TilK TIKST i'URXAGL AT CYFARTHFA. f0A ^Ul'dred years ago it stood unchanged be- com IUO'jt*riasing inhuences of steel had j^fca,wJut, the notable, remarkable "Number grev ^aa never had time to get ivied and 6 -e a iNonnau castie, for it wan never ,Jf anything but industry. Stern asc^M 'race bres had been unceasingly ac9c" with it. Time hid covered it over 5oir,t)re cast, making it blend with age livin- 1' «^ere it stood, while every iUul, from tkfc master to the simpiesD 'la(* 'Deen <TA''ept away, the old C the _° :s falling oway a,3 an ebbing tide; 4ag., c°ming in cefoseiessly the tide yst liberties iad beer, ftriv'r "1011 ,^13 °'(- furnace, stray seeds of *Mid Sowere had found out quiet and ie-r,-red recesses, and there in the spring OioQa^111'161" soothed, as if, were, the old da^k ""i ^ust as iVm gbnts do at times some birds r and niore than that; wild of th *Kiea the .smoke and fire and roar n « biast would gather there, too, and chiros 5ea,.f)eo.t-(i bejiernxi clear above the ring of jr "eQ -ron- This was nearly 50 years ago. --d€r t'lat Number Five iriakes one hotp •* « en °ne reca!*s wonderful history* om- as the years went b7 in turning h /.?n. tok Part the American ',Var„ ekow'i! 3 H1 eveL7 industrial need here and ft nrvf er2' antJ' w"hen the land had peace, took that part in supplying the iron re(i;,ir«d to rail our own counhw a"d pro,ff a' a°d Russia, as well. Bacons fcQdT+K*8 M as.as as that of Guest had been, both S^ing of fuel was the difficulty with Work EJeiV e °°urse °f things was that ^ae furnace should be carried on three to w eek, and the other three to be devoted irrWen 'i cuti;mS- which the men. enjoyed thev e specially as on their own account blaekr>C>,lr>k*ried it with snaring game, shooting fiteho C?CK, and making a foray amongst the ths ?CK^ anai °ther vermin that alxiunde-d in and Tbese sports recessitated do-f«, VVoorl S ^ar';big that ensued in Cyfarthfa a,s ,• '? Was- in the past generation, suggested tIl. origin to the name "Cy-farthfa," or rMici Jrkmg place of dogs. This name is now *Wi! 1Tu>re Plausibly suggested to be the Suit fGr'?g ^'e mountains." The very pur- ^■hicu>r lia« suggested that Aberdare .Uiil, ■^as nas Principally the foraging ground, haun/ c Gwyddil, not as being the but s" 4)' ^'e -r's'i poets in bvegone days, In the haunt of these woodmen, the ^'n rect>^ections of the old people of ami Ji &e> handed down to their children Aatl <e'r ^iidren's children, the bounty of tin: aoay Bacon to Vae small farmers wan PUt to good u«e. The tale told V, tha'' of them frequented the ale-hoi.se Wcli ^as gone, and then were oaly get employment a A the works I |l ha->ijjj^g coal froni the mount<i.iit le'r-P, ir iiu 3 ^hole district there were ninety farms, j) 9' these Cyfarthfa, swallowed up twenty. ^ui-t himselt a hoivse, can • a ^een froat^jig the office, blackened with the smoke of a century and a half, and there applied himself diligently to the make of iron and its despatch by mulei and ponies to Cardiff by the mountain road. Some idea of the difficulty a.ttending this method of transport can be gained even now by anyone choosing to climb up the Wa-un Mountain and travelling even to Gelligaer, and in Bacon's time the hardship was stili greater. lie appears to have been a man of resources, and when he had, in 1767, built another furnace and found a good market for his iron the old charcoal make being of great excel- lence, he began to make known to the farmers the desirability for the general good of the parish that a road should be made down through the valley to Cardiff. He was an adroit man. The historian tells us that, so far as the vihge history wa.s con- cerned, he was the first to put into practice the theory that one of the most approachable ways of getting a. man's sympathy in any movement is, hrst. to give him a. good dinner and plenty of drinkables. The plan has always found favour since, and, no matter what the movement is, goes along more merrily with an accompaniment of the clink of knives and forks and popping of corks. Bacon gave a. dinner, where we are not told, oniy that it wa-s in the village, and very probably at the Star, and to this he invited all the farmers. It was one of the red-letter days of village history. The tables were well laid. There was no champagne then in vil- lage inns but plenty of good nut-brown ale, for which Merthyr had great repute, even in the days of the CommionweaJth. The d'mner aittracrted every one of the fanners and leading villagers, and the way the ale went around showed that business was meant. We are told that when the tables were cleared more ale stili was brought forward; "0 that when Bacon arose to speak, and brought on a number of good, sound reasons why a, read should be made, and spoke of the abundance of coal and iron in the valley, the audience were in a good mood to listen and to applaud. It is true that, some needed an interpreter, but they got on very well with an occasional aid Then Bacon spoke of himself, and his partner, Brownrig. of Whitehaven, and promised that if the road were made he and his partner would carry OIl the works with energy. This, and his offer ot a large sum in aid. of the cost, finished his appeal. and a paper was handed around, and soon bore good wit- ness in a lengthy and substantial subscription list of the strength of his appeal. The road was; contracted for by Mr Robert Thomas grandfather of Dr Thomas, The Court, and in 1767. the date of the second furnace, was completed. In the meanwhile. Guest, at, Dowiais, wa,s plodding along, and it is interesting to not*, that the two ironmasters^ Guest and Bacon, never appeared as rivals, but in a good homely way had struck up a. friendship, a-no. often met to cement it One of the recollections of old village life is that Guest was frequently to be seen either walking down or riding a pony in the direction of Cyfarthfa, ajic. always carrying j, little basket in which was his dinner. So the two old-fashioned men met in this homely thrifty way Tney were both Englishmen- living amongst strangers, in a strange land, and this alone led to an inti- macy such as occurs now in African wila's, or an American prairie clearings, when white men get within cable tow 01 -.ne .1<11, other. Some of the incidents of Bacon's early 'e career were the stapie subject of gossip for many yea.rs after his time He built. a, smith's shop at Cyfarthfa, and c. great deal of tiie iron used was brought from Plymouth furnace on the backs of horses. A. number of men were employed in this shop and one day a. woman from the country come by r/'th a donkey load of the old-fashioned red plums, offering them at a penny a jugfull, and all' the men with the exception of two rushed out and were regaling themselves, when the roof of tlie shep feU, killing the two who had remained. In his. time a brutal murder was committed in fcts house This was a prelude to the ep- pesrance of shady characters, who thrc-nged to the works as they expanded, and there sought and found concealment; for in the early years of iron-making, and as well into the middle of this century, whenever a man wa- waiited for some crime or other, one oi the likeliest places searched. wns the iron valley. The, murder at Bacon's house was perpetrated upon one of iris servant maids by a discarded lover. The poor girl had sent him adrift for some reason or another, and having given r. new sweetheart a pi"> of silver buckles, the new lover wore them very ostentatiously in public, some say to Ynyscan Chapel, which. was one ot the first places built after Cwmglo, and these buckles were recognised by the jilted man. and he Towec revenge It is probabk that the buckles were his own gift, and so were quickly detected. Making his way to Bacon's house he saw the girl, and aceused her of her falseness to him Tnra roused her anger, hot words passed, and, catching up a knife, he stabbed her fatally. She did not die at the moment for she was able to crawl tlp- st-sirs. marking hei progress on the wall with a blood-red hand, and this wa? 3een wher trie otlie; servants came home, and the body o" the poor girl found. There was SOOf. a great outcry. The fellow was known, I and quickly jvunted down, tried, and hanged ivt Cardiff, Another renmiscence of Bacon's career is of more general interest. The clergyman, or the parson, as he was called at the time, T--R? Thoma,3 Price. On his mother 2 side he "n.2ki a Scudamore. and descended from Ower., Glyndwr He had been an Oxford stvdent, and for a college chum had the Karl or Oxford, who never forgot the happy days oassed with him, and when he had the oppor- tunity presented him to the living of Merthyr, Previous to his time the villagers and the parson were often at loggerheads, z. fact borne out by the records of St. Tvdvil s Church bul Thomas Price endeared himself to his peopj'e, and no matter whether they eschewed religious worship foi sports^ ^or were stern Presbyterians, they ah lived «o- ;,+ -e of C'ethei with him in amity. An instance of this was often, told by the old people Price, from lining In an agricultural district, found -m time parsed that sulphur and smoke and coal dust were not pleasant or healthy changes from th-e. odour of clover fields, and he became ill, and had; tc retire for a lengthened period into Monmouthshire This for some months was borne quietly, but when the stav became prolonged, s. petition was formulated by the vHIagers, and sent to him begging his return, and he did so, Fifty of thn villagers met him at Abergavenny, aim 03 there were no roads they had to cross the mountains on horseback, the rector can- ned in one of the primitive vehicles used for carting hay and leD, At one of the hating places the clergyman had arranged a. substantial dinner, which put everyone into good humour, and after this the pro- oesskm was re-formed, s-ud, passing over fcho Trevil range by Twyn y Gynor anfl Pant reached Gw-aelodygarth, then the rector ■% dwelling. Worthy families, fifty years ago. oould be named in many places of the district descended from the good oid rector one or two in past years holding position? of :nfluenoe. The rector was an old friend of Jonn Wesley, and it is shown by the itinerary of the that he great apostie that he visited Aberoare and Brecon, and, hearing that his old friend was the rector of Merthyr, came down from tne mountains to call upon, him, but, iintor- tunatety. Price- wa-s from home. It ic on record that the rector wa~ th:» first to introduce tea into the village, and this he did wh-er. the price was 20s the pound. Price knew the "value oi tea,, aud- how to snake it, but some of his friends for ■vhom he obtained packages were not so well informed, and one boiled it a. h .■ would cabbage, and, when he sat dowc. to snjoy hie costly dish came to the conclusion that the "mess'" was not worth the money. While Guest was inviting friends to join him in his increasing works, Bacon did the saane thing, and one may ea.sily infer that this wa. done after one of the. interviews between the two ironmasters, for Bacon's invite was also to Broseley to a Mr. Hom- fray, another of the early pioneers, whose family have made their mark from Merthyr over the hills to Newport, and whose entry will fittingly form the subject of our next notice. (All Rights Reserved). TOCTear.ioixri»:j; y .Tr.r—lf1,—rrrr-lf|—,

ATLANTIC DERELICTS. The 13ritish ship St. IFTicKli, which ha5 arrived from San Francisco, reports having ■sighted oil June 2, 300 miles south-west of the American schooner Alma Commings, lumber laden. She was nearly burned to the water's edge, and wa3 waterlogged and aban- doned, being a great source of danger to navi- gation.

AN ACTRESS KILLED. Mrs. Nelson, an American serio-comic and ecoentnc danseuse, who performed with considerable success at me Folios Bergsre and other Parisian music-halls about two years ago. was killed this week by falling out of a window of a room in the flat which she occupied in the Rue Lauriston.

'd'R-AttpS IN THIS MSTMCT.— CAUTION."—Where imitation or niimicry g-c&s no further than fai-rpiay, there is eoine-- thing to be said in its defence, It argues a cert,a,in humility of mmd that a person should acknowledge himself incapable of originality, and it is better to follow humhlv a, beaten tracA than to do nothing. In some other ways, however, imitation is an unpardonable crime' Where some groat discovery has benefited thou! eands of people, and. is being sought after by al-1 on that account, it is a cruel swindle for anyone ignorant of the true, discovery co foist upon unsuspecting people something1 resembling it in name OT outward show, but, "worthies* in comparison with the true invention. Of course, the worst example cf fraudulent imita.- tion in this sense is the fabricating of pretended medicines, useless in themselves, on the strength of t isuperiicia.i ne.>emblancie to a known remedy. Such imitators literally juggle with life and death. This journal hr«, in common with all the newspapers of this part of the country, pub- lished during th& last two years a numvber of remarkable cases, in which apparent]- dying persons have been cured by the discovery pub- lished under the name of Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People, and a large number of persons suffering from various disorders have sought the fame remedy. Advantage has, un- fortunately, been taken of this dem: "d t upon the innocence c.f the sufferer- br offering a. substitute for Dr. Williams' pink p;:lK It is important that the futility of such imitations should be publicly known. Any retailer or dealer who pretends to hove "the same thing" as Dr. W illiam?' Pink Pill* is trying to cheat the customer. Anyone who trie-s to sell l>r. Williams' Pink Pills loose or in bulk is trying to sell a worthless thing under false bre- ferees. The genuine ViII., are never sold in that. way. Anyone who says he can preparE the formula himself says what is not true; no one can possibly know what is in Dr. Williams' Pink Pills, or divine the new curative prin- ciple that they ron tain. Not Ion? sanO? a so-called analysis of Dr. Williams' was pub- lished—it was an absolute failure, and entirely failed to show the composition of this impor- tant- remedy. Another noint i< that "cheaper" substitutes for Dr. Williams' Pink Pills are- a self-confessed fraud. There is no substitute at any price: but in no event oould Dr. Williams' formula be sold cheap. The com- position does not. admit of it.. But the pries at. which Dr. Wil liams' Pink PiTl-^ sold and their extraordinary curative effects make the cost very low indeed compared with other remedies or medical treatment. As a. final word, the nublic should be warned against the statement sometimes made that '(»r. William,' Pink Pills are- identical with the well-known French Pharmacopoeia remedy Bland's Pills. Anyone who says so manifests the most ludicrous ignorance of the very elements of pharmacy, and the mil. lie will be well advised not to run the. risk of buying medicine in any form from a self-confessed incompetent. When any difficulty is expe- rienced in obtaining Dr. Williams' Pink PiMs for Pale People, in wooden tube, with pink wrapper, and the full name Drinteti in red I ink outride and_ in, or whenever doubt is felt ass *o the genuineness of the goods supplied, the public are invited to auplv direct to Dr. Williams' IWdicirH- Co.. 16 TTnlborr-vridv-'t li.indop, C.. for .tiny, !i< wMoh will v -er. r^-i-free at 2s. 9d. a, bos, or «.ix 'or 9d- Ijo1156

THE v HUIJC'H IN AMiDjfcii.UA. A (xLAi3»UE AT ITS PAJST JiiftTOtilL. (BY THE VICAR uir- AliiiRPERGWM.) LiiilTi^ii ii. We have passed rapiaiy in review the brief history oi we (Jhuiuli 111 the (States till it ueca-me, in Massacnusetts, the iistabusliea vjlmrcii. We nave seen tnat the ciescenuents of those who were lier leientiess enemies there u-ie now her most ioyal friends. One would iia\e iiougiit that the Church, having gained the upper nand, would have made it uncomfor- table ior her former persecutors, tHe l'uri- i-ans, but, though the first governui that came in was au uncompromising Churelimmi, great indulgence was shown, and the representative of tile King was content for a time to worship on a hard bench in a mean buií jng, while the Puritan-s. sat at their ease in comfortable sanctuaries. Now, that the worship, accord- ing to tne Prayer Hook, was not only allowed but recognised by autnority, the Church steadiiy grew throughout the century, till the grandsons of her enemies became her most aiving mends. In the same way, in 15yu, the Church was established in the Romanist colony of Mary- land. Jtroiii the planting of the colony by the Baltimore family in 1634 there had been no Established Church strict-iy so caued, Ro- mamstor any other, though, at hrst, the offices of the province were in the hands of the Roman Catholics, but when the Charter was revoked m losO the people came back under English law, and the English Church became part of the machinery of the Realm. A poll-tax ot 401 bs. of tobacco was assessed for its support upon every ratepayer. This was in addition to the giebes whiLti the Church possessed. Jvien resisted [he tax then, as they do the tithe now, but upon more honest grounds, and the oojectors were, in many cases, good Church- men. Iney either evaded the tux altogether, or p-aia «ucn inferior tobacco that the parsons would not take it. It was in lDdi that the Church was set up as an Established Church in New York. It had bes-n pianted in the Colony some 50 years before, unen the city was wrested from the jJutck ana Aew Amsterdam became New Lurk. The Act of tlie local Assembly divided tHe province into parishes, made an assess- ment for tile support of public worship, and vested in the Governor the right to nominate tne incumbent. In 1697 Trinity Parish in -New ione was organised. The wardens and vestry were chosen by ail the freeholders of the town as electors, and the Bishop of Lon- don was made rector at a salary of £ 100 a year, raised by assessment upon real estate. As the King's farm, which that Church also possessed and which, at the time, was of trifling value, ha.s since become one of the most valuable properties in the Anglican Church, and has made Trinity the richest of ecclesiastical corporations I pro- pose in a later communication to give the result of my inquiry at New York respecting tins very valuable Church endowment, and to iiiow in what way it is being utilised, and why there is in America 110 movement for secularis- ing what is S'ate property in a sense in which the propei ly of the Welsh Church never was. As it is leierrcc. to in Lord Melbourne's well- known work on the Church (in the pieface addressed to Mr. Gladstone), your readers will oe interested to know something more about '.t. and why, in a country where rights of property are scarcely as much respected as in our own. this valuable Church property, once the possession of the State, has not been coniiscated. Pennsylvania, to which we come next, was meant to be for all time a Quaker State, but it is remarkable that the names of the founders of the Colony are now conspicuous In the Church lists. The descendents of Penn and Jennings and of the Welsh Evans and iloberts are now Episcopalians. It seems to be a rule, at least as regards the States, that when a (Quaker ceases to be a Quaker he be- Mnrs a Churchman. There was a provision in the terms of Penn's grant that twenty people should have the right, if they chose, to organise a Church of England parish, and to ask the Bishop of London to &end them a clergyman. By 1700 the first parish had been organised in Philadelphia under a Welsh rector, Evan Evans, and frum that time the Church made rapid progress, especially among the Welsh. Pennsylvania being not a Crown Colony, the Church was not there established. Going still further south, the first church was built in the Ca.rolinas in the same year in which Penn's colony landed in America, The following is an account of the planting of the. Church of England (or shall we not rather say the Church of Wales '<) in the On Good i'riday, 1660, two ships, ldden with adventurers, lanfted in South Caro- lina. The company piled their goods upon the Peach, and the ships which had brought them sailed away home. The adventurers, ignorant aline of woodcraft and husbandry, after a few months found themselves starving. Their chaplain was a brave Welshman of the name of Morgan Jones, who went out with a few others to look for succour. After many days' journey, they were taken captive by a band of l:"«dians, who bound them to the stake and were about to apply the torture when, the e.sh clergyman, returning unconsciously to his mother tongue, muttered his prayers in Welsh. To his amazement lie found that the savages understood his speech. The captives' bonds were cut and their lives were spared. The Welshman then became a missionary to "he Indians, and taught them in the principles of the Welsh Church. The Carociitns being a Crown Colony, and, therefore, an iategrai part of Great Britain, the Church was there, 'n a certain vague sense, establishes. But the Church in South Carolina never made much headway among the class of people who seti-ied there. At the outbreak of the revolution, when disestablish- ment came there was only the one parish which ha.d been organised a hundred years I before. At the opening of the eighteenth century there was in Charleston a log church with an endowment for the incumbent, "and his successors for ever," of L150 per annum (raised by assessment), together with two slaves and four cows-a. very liberal endow- ment for the times. I don't know whether the arrangement which was to last "for ever survived di^esf. blis-hment. We have now seen the Church of England planted m all the American Colonies except one, Georgia, and. in some of them legally established. Whether ic was ever established in Georgia is, not very cLear; John Wesley became one of it-1 first rectors, and proved himself an extreme Kitualist. The Established- Chrrc-h to which we are referred in House of Commons oratory was scarcely an organisation from which an argu- ment either for or against disestablishment could be -Irawn. It was not to have a hishoo yet for nearly a century, through 110 fault of its own, as for many years American Church- men were persistent in their demand for a bishop. But, apart from legal difficulties a bishop without great state, such as a Colonial bishop would necessarily be, was to the average Englishman impossible. To him a bishop is a great dignitary a, peer of the realm, a bein? of exalted state. as much for show a.s for use. Even many years Inter up to the middle of the present" century the same standard of a bishop prevailed. In the early days of Bishop Wilberforce's episcopate an Oxford don was heard to complain "I remember when a bishop never came'into Oxfo v: a. coach and six. But what does ? .Tu?t mounts his horse, without even p" groom bph;nd him, and rides away to visitation before breakfast!" It was this :r<r-.s-<n of the "dignitv" of the office -n-hmh i to do with the episcopate brill£! so long denied to the American Church. Ameri- can uhurchmeu were too poor to make suitable provision for a bishop so tÜat he llligHt "i ve in styie which the home authorities thought he ought to maintain. Most 01 the churches were yet 01 wgs-a stone or brick chuicii was an exception. To these churches the paiisiiioners, came on liorseoac-k and in canoes from a distance of 40 nines, often leaving their plantations on the Saturday. Prayer- books were scarce, the clerk generally doing the responses himself. Most of the clergy were also planters., the income derived from endowments being insufficient to maintain tnem. They were independent, and preached with a freedom with which, probably, few would preach under the voluntary system. We read of the wife of a Koyal Governor pulling the clergyman's wife out of a pew because her husband had offended its guilty owner by preaching a little too pointedly against adultery. One muscular rector tiirashea his churchwardens, unci the following Sunday preached before them from Nell, xiii., 2, 'And 1 contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and pmcked off their liair." Such are a. few 01 the things wdiich were possible in the Ameri- can Church in the ante-disestablishment days, but are so no longer. I do not say that all the. clergy, or even the majority of them, weic censors of morals, because in too many cases their own morals were lax, nor chat they were the stern disciplinarians which they were enabled by their positions to be, because too often they viiu not discipline themselves, but, having regard to the laxity of the times and to tha circumstances of a new country, they did not, as a body, abuse the independence which as the clergy of an Established Church they enjoyed. A case known as the "parsons' cause" came before the courts in Virginia in the old Establishment days which is not with- out interest to the Welsh clergy under their pit-sent circumstances. It was a few years before the Revolution terminated the Estab- lishment. The salary of the clergy was y derived directly from taxation. In this respect the case could have no parallel im Wales. Sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was due to them by law, to be collected by the sheriff. The value of the plant fluctuated very considerably from year to year. In years when the price was low the parson would pocket his loss, and wait for better times. In 1763 prices, which for severe years had been very low, stood very high. The parson cuuld now put his tobacco upon the market, and make good what ha had lost in the preceding years. But the taxpayers were also alive to the good times, and were unwilling to pay the weed. They found they could not evade the law, and so they got the local Legislature to pass an Act to pay the parsons' salaries in Virginia currency at the rate of 2jd. per pound for the tobacco. This was less than one-fourth the price which it 'would have fetched in tin. market. But the Act was null and void, as it had not received the sanction of the Crown. The clergy sent a deputation to England to protest. The Crown lawyers assured them that the Act was of no force whatever, and advised them to return and sue for their salaries. A clergyman made his case a test case, and proceeded against his vestiy. The case for the vestry wa.s so bad that no lawyer with a reputation could be induced to take it up. At the last moment the great Patrick Henry, then of no reputation or social standing, took it in hand. Though he was a devout communicant of the Church and the jury were staunch Churchmen, he made such a stirring appeal that the cause of the Church in the person of its ciergy was lost. He brushed awav all questions of law, and worked entirely upon the feeling wdiich was then rising "against England and in favour of self-government, insisting that the clergy, by appealing to a foreign Power, had proved themselves to bs bad citizens and luaworthy ministers. The case was takea as final; it was evident that in the then state of public sentiment against England no redress was possible. At the outbreak of the War of Indepen- dence. as far as can be made out, the Church only remained established in the provinces of Virginia and Maryland, and in the former it was formally disestablished by the Colonial Legislature. The vast majority of the clergy at that time were missionaries of the S.P.G*, from which they received their stipends. It was not so much its alliance with the Stats that was obnoxious to the people as its alliance with the English State. It is well known that the leaders of the American people against the English Government were staunch Episcopalians and devout commu- nicants and personal friends of leading clergy, such as Washington and Patrick Henry. Franklin, as far as he was any things was a Churchman. When we read of churches being wrecked and Church property confiscated, and of the clergy being robbed and otherwise roughly handled, it must not be put down to a feeling on the part of the populace against an Established Church as such, though one historian of marked bias is at some pains to convey that idea. It was a time of revolution against a, hated Gr-vernment, and all and everything asso* ciated with that Government suffered fro# the fury of the populace. We have seen the Church disestablished in America, in one of the Colonies (Virginia) formally, if unconstitutionally, disestablished before the actual revolution, and in the other Colonies when that event was an accom- plished fact, and when every ligature that connected America with the mother country was severed. If the Church had been at the time the war broke out that complete organisa- tion which some represent it, with such men as Washigton among her faithful adherents much of the property of which she was deprived might have been recovered, and she might even have been set up in the new State as an Established Church. Her pro- perty in Virginia, and Maryland was a valuable one. It consisted not only of churches, parsonages, glebes, and other landed endowments, but also of the rmlit to the proceeds of taxation for religious objects. But the difficulty which confronted Crown lawyers wag-Who was its owner? What was the new State to do with the Church property which it found on its hands? If it 'was to go to the representatives of the Episcopal Church, who were her true repre- sentatives? It could scarcely be the Bishop of London—it was with reluctance that he had exercised such right as he had. Nop could it be the various parishes, as they were not legal corporations, but only sub- divisions of an empire which was now ox 11 net. The bulk of the Church property was lost because there was no organised Church on the ground to take it over. With the leaders of the Revolution in the ranks of the Church there was no real disposition to treat the Church unjustly. It was in Virginia that the spoliation of the Church was most wanton. Glebes and churches were sold for a song, and the pro- ceeds embezzled by the sheriff's officers. Tobacco planters drank from stolen chalices, and used the patens a.s chx'Ae plates. A font became a horse trough. Communion plate, the gift of Queen Anne, was found on the sideboards of couat v houses. What the Church has since l*jrome, thrown almost entirely upon her own rwoar<v^ and disconnected from the State, and e,<peJ-i'Iy what she is doing at tlu present day. T diail leave to others to testify. I propose to give you. as far as one with ;ua imperfect knowledge of shorthand can, the v^ry word;; of some of her leading dignil arie*, her most- active and experienced parish priests in town and country, and her promir»eiit. laymen, an i leave my readers to draw th«-ir own con- clusions from the evidence which ill be laid before them as to whether the resu,+s are such as they would expect to find after a century's working of the muoh-vfumted voluntary system. (To be CcutluuedW ( J