twelve months have been the most productive of benefactions to the Society, to the amount of nearly 1,500 pounds, for the College and the superannuated Curates. We cannot

therefore despair of our efforts being finally successful, when to the yearly benefactions which we receive, we add the hope (we trust, not presumptuous hope,) of future aid from Parliament, of which we have an encouraging earnest, in the large bounty annually extended to the Roman Catholic College at Maynooth.

It was the intention of the Society to begin the building for the clerical Seminary, as soon as we were in possession of 2,000 pounds. But upon maturely calculating the expences, and considering the future purposes of this building, it seemed most prudent not to begin the building, till we were provided with a much larger sum, lest we should exhaust all our resources on the walls of our seminary, without any adequate provision for the maintenance of our students and their preceptors. By this change of our plan we are enabled to provide for a course of previous instruction, without which our intended College would avail us little.

A great defect in the ordinary education

of young men intended for Orders in this Diocese, consisted in the want of means to retain the greater part of them at School, long enough to ground them sufficiently in the elements of grammatical learning, before they were obliged to relieve their parents from the expences of education, by having recourse to such employment, as they could meet with, for their own maintenance. The great disadvantage of this defective education, had been long seen and lamented in its consequences on the Ordination week. And though it has been in some degree obviated, by requiring an attendance at the grammar schools of the Diocese, in a divinity class, for the four last years, previous to the full age for Deacon's Orders; yet nothing can compensate for the loss of a regular course of instruction, during those rising years, when the mind is most susceptible of right principles and impressions, and is most easily and permanently inured to habits of restraint, and diligence, and emulation.

The accumulation of our College fund, enables the Society to meet this difficulty, by providing poor parents with the means of keeping their children at School, longer than they could otherwise do. It was therefore

4

determined to appropriate 200 pounds of the interest, arising from our principal in the public funds, for the purpose of giving twenty exhibitions of ten pounds per annum, to be the several licenced grammar

divided among schools in the Diocese. We We may thus hope to have the eight valuable years preceding Ordination, so employed, as to secure, immediately, a considerable portion of the good, intended by our future Seminary, by such an initiation in grammatical, historical, ethical, and Christian studies, in the first four years, as may be matured into the most hopeful fruits during the four following years of professional instruction.

Next to increasing the means of knowledge for the young, the most effectual service to the Church may be expected, from provision for the infirmities and incapacities of age: There cannot be a greater object of compassion, than an aged and worthy Minister; whose life has been devoted to the service of religion, sinking under the infirmities of age, and incapacitated for his duties, and yet unable to retire from his only means of subsistence. The parish in the mean while suffers from his defective services; the incumbent suffers in the conscious feeling of injustice to his parish; the Church suffers, and is

exposed to the inroad of aliens and intruders and 'religion suffers by the opportunity which is thus afforded, for dissent, and diversities of doctrine, and uncharitable contention.

An Asylum was formerly founded in this Diocese, at Swansea, for aged and incapacitated Ministers, by the same princely munificence*, which built a palace at St. David's, a Castle at Llanddewit, and a College at Abergwilly. The Church was unfortunately deprived of this very useful Asylum, by one of those unhappy abuses of the Reformation, which alienated so many valuable institutions from the general service of the Church. This loss the Society is endeavouring to repair by soliciting the attention of the public to this object, and by the annual Deanery collections. It is a gratifying proof of the public liberality, that the benefactions and subscriptions already received, have enabled the Society to allot two annuities of 25 pounds to two cases of helpless superannuation.

I will not detain you longer in this account of the proceedings of our Society, than to notice some auxiliary objects, which the benefactions of our friends have enabled us to add

* Bishop Gower.

+ In Glamorganshire.

to our original plans; I mean the Annual Premiums for Prize Essays;-School Premiums for examination in books; for Hebrew Caligraphy; and Psalmody;-and the Curates' Lectures intended chiefly for the benefit of those, who could not profit, or were least likely to profit, from one of the earliest, but least practicable, of our general purposes, the gratuitous distribution of tracts.

I have now only to recall your attention to the primary purpose of our annual meetings, which is the maintaining of clerical association and union, so conducive to the well-being of our Church; and at the same time to remind you, that union, in order to produce its legitimate and best fruits, must have uniformity for its rule, lest the zeal of local association, should, at any time, deviate into proceedings, inconsistent with the established usages of our Church, and injurious to that consistency of discipline, which is one of the vital principles of an establishment. Let UNION AND UNIFORMITY be our watchword, the motto of our armorial bearings, the test of our professional sincerity.

That we may all, in our several ways, endeavour to render ourselves more and more worthy of our holy vocation, more and