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THE LIBERATION SOCIETY AND WELSH POLITICS, 1844 TO 1868 WHEN A. H. Dodd described 1868 as an annus mirabilis in Welsh politics he was subscribing to a view of the events of that year which J has passed into the mythology of Welsh political and historical thinking. For Dodd 'the wholesale dethronement of great parliamentary dynasties' justified the appellation 'wonderful',1 and if we exclude the exaggeration of the word 'wholesale' we must agree that it is here that the importance of the general election of that year lies. Other historians and politicians from Henry Richard onwards have descanted on the same theme, but there has been curiously little serious effort to assess its significance in an objective and dis- interested manner and, in particular, scarcely any attempt to analyse the nature of politics in the preceding generation or so. Yet such studies are obviously crucially necessary, for wonderful changes in the world of politics do not occur in vacuo, are not unprepared, do not emerge fully fledged out of the minds of men. We cannot under- stand such changes until we know something of the operation of the forces which produced them. Such a knowledge of antecedent changes, of the causation of significant events must obviously be comprehensive if it is to be meaningful: it should concern itself not only with the mechanisms of politics, but with changing economic and social conditions, and take account of intellectual developments, of man's attempt to adjust himself to, and to control, the forces of change active in society. To attempt such a task within the compass of this paper would be impracticable, but something of profit along these lines might be attempted if we confined ourselves to thinking about one of the political agencies by which a new public opinion was created in Wales in the two or three generations preceding the 1 1 elections of 1868. There were many such agencies, of course: the complex, disorganized body of Welsh Nonconformity in its relations with English Nonconformity; the educational movements of the age; nascent party machines; the press; working class organizations, both industrial and political. But involved in all these, and coming j gradually to play a more formative role in their development and interactions, was a great religio-political society, namely the Anti- State-Church Association, or, as it later became known, the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control. To study the operations of this body is not a fringing issue, for in 1 In Studies in Stuart Wales (1952). p. 215.