A great majority of Welsh farmers are Nonconformists, and their
political action is a little peculiar. On secular questions they are apt to follow their landlords, but on religious or semi- religious questions their Members must follow them. Mr. Bright, justly thinking they might be valuable allies against the Irish Church, has addressed a speech to them in Liverpool, which he described with some humour and more truth as the true capital of Wales. He made a fine speech in his more moderate style, stating the usual arguments against the Irish Establishment with lucid eloquence, but illustrating every point from Welsh and Scotch analogies. He believed that when the Church in Ireland was dis- established, a Convention of that Church would be called, which would lay down a creed and a system of discipline, and would start a sustentation fund for the maintenance of poorer congrega- tions, as the Scotch Free Church has done. This Church, we may mention, has this year raised the minimum income of every pastor to 1501. a year, and intends to persevere until the poorest minister in the Isles or Highlands has 2001. a year. Mr. Bright laid down his theory of the Union in a very distinct form. Wo have no right, he said, to impose Union on our own terms, but " we have a right to insist that the United Kingdom shall not be severed, while we are willing to do full justice to the different nations of which it is composed." Sound doctrine forcibly put, but does it cover the whole case, or is autonomy not a politically " just" demand? We deny it at home, as in America ; but what are the gentry who upheld it in regard to the South to say about it in regard to Ireland?
