roductory lecture I intend to discuss "the
failure of the nation" (to use the words of Professor Rhys and Mr.
Brynmor Jones) "to effect any stable and lasting political
combination." Wales failed to produce or develope political
institutions of an enduring character--failed to become a state. Its
history does not possess the unity nor the kind of interest which the
history of England possesses, and which makes the study of English
history so peculiarly instructive to the student of politics. In
English history we study primarily the growth of the principle of
Representative Government, which we can trace for centuries through a
long series of authoritative records. That is the great gift of
England to the world. Not only has Wales entered on this inheritance;
it helped to create it. It was Llywelyn ap Iorwerth who began the
revolt against John which led to the Great Charter, and the clauses of
the Great Charter itself show that it was the joint work of English
and Welsh. Wales again exerted a decisive influence on the Barons'
War--the troubles in which the House of Commons first emerged. And
Wales--half of it for more than six hundred years--half of it for
nearly four hundred--has lived under the public law and administrative
system which the Norman and Angevin kings of England built up on
Anglo-Saxon foundations. This public law and this administrative
system have become part and parcel of the life and history of Wales.
The constitutional history of England is one of the elements which go
to make up the complex history of Wales.

The history of Wales, taken by itself, is constitutionally weak; and
its interest is social or personal, archaeological, artistic,
literary--anything but political. And the fact--which is
indisputable--that Wales failed to establish any permanent or united
political system needs explanation.

The ultimate explanation will perhaps be found in the geography of the
country. The mountains have done much to preserve the independence and
the language of Wales, but they have kept her people disunited; and
the Welsh needed a long drilling under institutions, which could only
grow up in a land less divided by nature, before they could develope
their political genius.

Wales, owing largely to its geography, had the misfortune never to be
conquered at one fell swoop by an alien race of conquerors. Such a
conquest may not at first sight strike one as a blessing, but it is,
if it takes place when a peo