and moderate Dissenters would have agreed in it.  On the general question, we are told that about the time of the Revolution of 1688 there was scarcely one Dissenter in a hundred who did not think the State was bound to use its authority in the interests of the religion of the people.  Half the last century had passed before any considerable number of them had begun to think differently.  John Wesley is sometimes quoted as unfavourable to the connection of Church and State.  Doubtless he did not greatly value it, and perhaps he may have used some expressions which, taken by themselves, might seem in some degree to warrant the inference just mentioned.  But the love and loyalty which, all his life through, he bore towards the English Church was certainly connected not only with a high estimation of its doctrines and modes of worship, but with respect for it as the acknowledged Church of the realm.  The Evangelical party in the Church were, without exception, thorough Church and State men.  John Newton’s ‘Apologia’ was, in particular, a very vigorous defence of Church establishments.  During the earlier stages of the French Revolution—­a period when unaccustomed thoughts of radical changes in society became very attractive to some ardent minds in every class—­the party among the Dissenters who would have welcomed disestablishment received the accession of a few cultivated Churchmen.  But Samuel Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth found reason afterwards wholly to change their views in this, as in many other respects.  Furthermore, the increased radicalism of the few was more than counterbalanced by the intensified conservatism of the many.  The glowing sentences in which Edmund Burke dwelt upon religion as the basis of civil society, and proclaimed the purpose of Englishmen, that, instead of quarrelling ’with establishments as some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion of their hostility to such institutions, they would cleave closely to them,’ found an echo in the minds of the vast majority of his countrymen.  This had been the general feeling throughout the century.  With all its faults—­and in many respects its condition was by no means satisfactory—­the Church of England had never ceased to be popular.  Sometimes it met with contumely, often with neglect; occasionally its alleged faults and shortcomings were sharply criticised, and people never ceased to relish a jest at the expense of its ministers.  But they were not the least inclined to subvert an institution which had not only rooted itself into the national habits, but was felt to be the mainstay throughout the country of religion and morals.  Although too often deficient in the power of evoking and sustaining the more fervent emotions of piety, it was representative to the great bulk of society of most of their aspirations towards a higher life, most of their realisations of spiritual things.  It was sleepy, but it was not corrupt; it was genuine in its kind, so that the good it did was received without distrust.  Nor