Chapter C: (dated From Adelaide.) (4)

We have before us a valuable and interesting work on a portion of the British dominions much visited but little known, and one which is satisfactory, not only from the good feeling and taste it evinces on the part of its author, but also from its setting at rest a question that was lately much agitated, and to which we at the time adverted in our pages for May 1848. Sir Thomas Phillips has taken up the cudgel, or rather the pen, to defend the honour of his beloved country, and has acquitted himself well of the task, partly in combating real opponents, partly in knocking down men of straw. The book, however, comes so far late of its subject as that the interest felt upon it had been gradually subsiding. No very mighty grievance could be alleged by our hot-blooded Cambrian brethren; many hard words and blustering speeches had been uttered throughout the length and breadth of Wales, and a sort of Celtic agitation had been got up by sundry ladies and gentlemen, not much connected with the country. The nation at large, however, had not paid great attention to it; the British lion did not show any indication to lash his sides into foam with his magnanimous tail; the storm in a tea-cup was left to itself: oil had been floating on the face of the troubled waters; and though a few disappointed persons had tried to revive a little excitement, for the sake of "having their names before the public," peace was again reigning throughout Cambria's vales, and her people were following their own simple occupations, unknowing and unknown. Sir Thomas Phillips, however, with a most patriotic motive, determined to fire one shot more against his country's traducers; and thus, while concocting a final reply to the "Blue Books,"--as they are commonly called in the Principality--found himself led on and on, from page to page, and chapter to chapter, until, instead of a pamphlet, he has produced a thick volume of six hundred pages, and has compiled what may be termed a complete apology for Wales.

Our readers will very likely remember that certain Reports on the state of education in Wales, printed by order of the House of Commons, gave immense offence to all who had got ever so little Welsh blood in their veins. We reviewed these very reports, and gave our opinions on Welsh education at considerable length; and therefore we do not open Sir Thomas Phillips' pages with the intention of reverting to that part of the subject, though the author, in compiling it, seems to have had the education of his countrymen principally in view.

We consider, however, that a work written by a gentleman, known for his forensic abilities and literary pursuits, upon a large portion of this island, and purporting to be a complete account of its moral and social condition, must form a suitable topic for review and discussion. Our readers will not repent our introducing it to their notice: we can at once assure them that it will amply repay the trouble--if it be a trouble at all--of perusing it. The style is graceful and yet nervous; the whole tone and colour of the thoughts of the author show the gentleman; while the general compilation and discussion of the facts collected prove Sir Thomas Phillips to have the mind and the abilities of a statesman.[15] Another, and a more important reason, however, why this work will be acceptable to many of our readers, is that it touches upon various questions which, at times like the present, are of vital importance to the welfare, not of Wales only, but of the British empire; and that it proves the existence of feelings in the Principality--mentioned by us on a previous occasion--which ought to be brought before the notice of the public, and commented upon. This is the task which we reserve for ourselves after reviewing more in detail the work of the learned author; for Wales _may_ become a second Ireland in time, if neglected, or it _may_ continue to be a source of permanent strength to the crown, if properly treated and protected. The existence of such a state of things is hinted at in the preface--an uncommonly good one, by the way, and dated, with thorough Cambrian spirit, on _St David's Day_, if not from the top of Snowdon, yet from the more prosaic and less mountainous locality of the Inner Temple. The author's words are--

"Amongst the mischievous results which the temper and spirit of
the reports have provoked in Wales, I regard with discomfort
and anxiety a spirit of isolation from England, to which
sectarian agencies, actively working through various channels,
have largely ministered. In ordinary times this result might
be disregarded; but at a period of the world's history when
the process of decomposition is active amongst nations, and
phrases which appeal to the sympathies of race become readily
mischievous, it behoves those very excellent persons, who claim
Wales for the Welsh, to consider whether they are prepared
to give up England to the English, and to relinquish the
advantages which a poor province enjoys by its union with a
rich kingdom. For generations, Welshmen have been admitted to
an equal rivalry with Englishmen, as well in England as in
those colonial possessions of the British crown, which have
offered so wide a field for enterprise, and secured such ample
rewards to provident industry; and, whether at the bar or in
the senate, or in the more stirring feats of war, they have
obtained a fair field, and have won honourable distinction.
There are offices in the Principality, the duties of which
demand a knowledge of the Welsh language, and for them such
knowledge should be made a condition of eligibility, in the
same manner as a knowledge of English would be required, under
analogous circumstances, in England. In the law these offices
will be few, and probably confined to the local judges; as it
will not be seriously proposed that, in our assize courts, the
pleadings of the advocate, and the address of the judge, shall
be delivered in the Welsh language; and even in the courts
of quarter-sessions, which are composed of local magistrates
most of whom were born and reside in the country, but few of
those gentlemen could address a jury in their own tongue. A
remedy for the inconvenience occasioned by an ignorant or
imperfect acquaintance, on the part of the people, with the
language employed in courts of justice, must be looked for in
that instruction in the English language which is intended to
be provided for all, and which is necessary to qualify men to
appear as witnesses, or to serve as jurors, in courts wherein
the proceedings are conducted in that tongue. The difficulties
arising from language are principally felt in the Church:
and it seems a truism to affirm, that where Welsh is the
ordinary language of public worship, and the common medium of
conversation, the language should be known to those who are
to teach and exhort the people, and to withstand and convince
gainsayers. The nomination of foreign prelates to English
sees before the Reformation, occasioned great dissatisfaction
in the minds of the English clergy, and tended to alienate
them from the papacy; and yet men who are prompt to recognise
that grievance, are insensible to the effect produced on the
Welsh clergy, by their general exclusion from the higher
offices of the Church. The ignorance of Welsh in men promoted
to bishoprics in Wales, may be more than compensated for by
the possession of other qualifications; and a rigid exclusion
from the episcopal office in the Principality of every man
who is unacquainted with the language of the people, might be
inconvenient, if not injurious, to the best interests of the
Church. The selection, however, for the episcopal office of men
conversant with the language of the country, when otherwise
qualified to bear rule in the Christian ministry, would give a
living reality to the episcopate in the Principality, and might
materially aid in bringing back the people into the fold of the
Church."

The difference of language is here made the principal grievance between the Saxon and Celtic population; and it is certainly one of the principal, though not the main, nor the only, cause of the unpleasantness and unsettledness of feeling that exists in Wales towards England and English people. Where two languages exist, it is impossible but that national distinctions should exist also; and as the traditions of conquest, and the hereditary consciousness of political inferiority, are some of the last sentiments that abandon a vanquished people, so it is probable that the Welsh will remain a distinct people for more centuries to come than we care to count up. We do not know but that, to a certain extent, it may be a source of strength to England that it should be so, though it will undoubtedly be a cause of weakness and division to Wales. Nevertheless, the difficulty is not so great as may be at first sight supposed. In adverting to this part of the subject, Sir Thomas Phillips observes--

"When Edward the First conquered the country, and subjected
the natives to English rule, he was deeply sensible of the
difficulty which now paralyses education commissioners, and
he dealt with it in a manner characteristic of the monarch
and the times. Of him Carlyle would say, he was a real man,
and no sham; and did not believe in any distracted jargon
of universal rose-water in this world still so full of sin.
Accordingly, he gathered all the Welsh bards together, and
put them to death; and Hume, a philosophic and ordinarily not
a cruel historian, says this policy was not absurd. English
legislation, between the conquest of the country by Edward
the First and its incorporation with England by Henry the
Eighth, was characterised by a deliberate and pertinacious
endeavour to extirpate the language and subjugate the spirit
of the inhabitants. By laws of the Lancastrian princes, (whose
usurpation was long resisted by the Welsh people,) 'rhymers,
minstrels, and other Welsh vagabonds,' were forbidden to burden
the country; the natives were not permitted to have any house
of defence, to bear arms, or to exercise any authority; and
an Englishman, by the act of marrying a Welsh woman, became
ineligible to hold office in his adopted country. By statutes
of Henry the Eighth, it was enacted, that law proceedings
should be in the English tongue; that all oaths, affidavits,
and verdicts, should be given and made in English; and that no
Welsh person, 'who did not use the English speech' should hold
office within the King's dominions. Even at the Reformation,
which secured the sacred volume to Englishmen 'in their own
tongue wherein they were born,' the revelation to man of God's
will was not given to Welshmen in a language understood by the
people. In 1562, however, provision was made for translating
the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer into the British or
Welsh tongue, by an act which declared that the most and
greatest part of the Queen's loving subjects in Wales did not
understand the English tongue, and therefore were utterly
destitute of God's holy Word, and did remain in the like, or
rather more, darkness and ignorance than they were in the time
of papistry, and required that not only a Welsh, but also an
English, Bible and Book of Common Prayer should be laid in
every church throughout Wales, there to remain, that such
as understood them might read and peruse the same; and that
such as understood them not might, by conferring both tongues
together, the sooner attain to the knowledge of the English
tongue.

"Nearly six centuries have elapsed since the first Edward
crossed the lofty mountains of North Wales, which, before
him, no King of England had trodden, and in the citadel of
Caernarvon received the submission of the Welsh people; and
more than three centuries have passed away since the country
was incorporated with, and made part of, the realm of England;
and although, for so long a period, English laws have been
enforced, and the use of the Welsh language discouraged, yet,
when the question is now asked, what progress has been made
in introducing the English language? the answer maybe given
from Part II. of the Reports of the Education Commissioners,
page 68. In Cardiganshire, 3000 people out of 68,766 speak
English.[16] The result may be yet more strikingly shown by
saying that double the number of persons now speak Welsh who
spoke that language in the reign of Elizabeth."

It is a mistaken idea to suppose that the Welsh language is hard to be acquired,--the very reverse of this is the fact,: there is probably no spoken language of Europe, not derived from the Latin, which may be so soon or so agreeably acquired as the Welsh. A good knowledge of it, so as to enable the learner to read and write it currently, may be attained certainly within a year by even a moderately diligent student; and the power of conversing in it with ease and fluency is to be gained within the course of perhaps a couple of years. The language is daily studied more and more by persons not connected with the Principality, and acquired by them; nay, what is a remarkable fact, next to the galaxy of the Williamses,[17] the best Welsh scholar of the present day is Dr Meyer, the learned German librarian at Buckingham Palace; while Dr Thirlwall, the present bishop of St David's, has made himself, with only a few years' study, as good a Welsh scholar as he had long before been a German one. We believe that, if the present system of education be steadily carried out, with its consequent developments, in the Principality, the two languages, English and Welsh, will become _equally_ familiar to those who may be born in the second generation from the present day; and that the inhabitants of Wales, becoming thoroughly _bilingual_--for we do not anticipate that they will abandon their ancient tongue--this apparent obstacle to a more complete amalgamation of interests between the two races will be entirely removed. One thing is certain, that the aptitude of Welsh children to learn English, of the purest dialectic kind, is very remarkable--and that the desire to acquire English is prevalent amongst all the people.

We confess that we should be sorry to see any language impaired, much less forgotten: they constitute some of the great marks which the Almighty has impressed upon the various tribes of his children--not lightly to be neglected nor set aside. They form some of the surest grounds of national strength and permanence; and they are some of those old and venerable things which, as true conservatives, we are by no means desirous to see obliterated or injured. As, however, it is obviously impossible that the whole literature of the Anglo-Saxon race should be translated into Welsh, it is essential to the Cambrians that they should no longer hesitate as to qualifying themselves for reading, in its own tongue, that literature which is exercising so great an influence over a large portion of the globe; and the possession of the two languages will tend to elevate the character, as well as to remove the prejudices, of the people that shall take the trouble to acquire them.

The social condition of Wales is gone into by the author at some length; but he confines his observations principally to the manufacturing and mining population of Glamorgan and the southern counties. Upon this part of the subject he has compiled much valuable information which, though not exactly new, tells well in his work when brought into a focus and reasoned upon. He introduces the subject thus:--

"The social condition of the inhabitants is influenced by
the configuration of the country, for the most part abrupt,
and broken into hill and valley; the elevation of the upper
mountain ranges, which are the loftiest in South Britain, and
the large proportion of waste and barren land; the humidity
of the climate; the variety and extent of the mineral riches
in certain localities; and the great length of the sea-coast,
forming numerous bays and havens; and thus there is presented
much variety in the occupation, and remarkable contrasts in
the means of subsistence and habits of life, of the people.
Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, and the southern extremity
of Breconshire, are the seat of the iron and coal trades.
In the western part of Glamorganshire, around Swansea, and
in the south-eastern corner of Carmarthenshire, copper ore,
imported from Cornwall, as well as from foreign countries, is
smelted in large quantities; and the same neighbourhood is
the seat of potteries, at which an inexpensive description of
earthenware is made. Coal, in limited quantities, and of a
particular description, is exported from Carmarthenshire and
Pembrokeshire; and lead ore and quarries of slate are worked in
Cardiganshire. In North Wales, considerable masses of people
are collected around the copper mines of Anglesey; amidst the
slate quarries opened in the lofty mountains of Caernarvonshire
and Merionethshire, as well as in some of the sea-ports of
those counties; amongst the lead mines of Flintshire, and the
coal and iron districts, which extend from the confines of
Cheshire, through Flintshire and Denbighshire, to the confines
of Merionethshire; and in those parts of Montgomeryshire,
on the banks of the Severn, where flannel-weaving prevails.
Formerly, the woollen cloths and flannels with which the
people clothed themselves were manufactured throughout the
country, at small mills or factories placed on the margin
of mountain streams, which furnished the power or agency
necessary for carrying on the process; but the growth of the
large manufacturing establishments in the north of England
and Scotland, and the substitution of cotton for wool in
various articles of clothing, have uprooted many of the native
factories, and reduced to very small dimensions the once
important manufacture of homemade cloths and flannels. The
larger portion of the industrial population of North Wales, and
of the counties of Cardigan, Carmarthen, Radnor, and Pembroke,
in South Wales, is engaged in agriculture. It consists, for the
most part, of small farmers--a frugal and cautious race of men,
employing but few labourers, and cultivating, by means of their
own families and a few domestic servants, the lands on which
they live.

"In times of mining and manufacturing prosperity, the
productions of the agricultural and pastoral districts find
ready purchasers, at remunerating prices, at the mining and
manufacturing establishments, to which they are conveyed from
distant places; and the surplus labour of the agricultural
districts finds profitable employment at the mines, factories,
and shipping ports, where a heterogeneous population is
collected from every part of the kingdom. The wages of labour
are, nevertheless, very low, in the agricultural portions
both of North and South Wales; and are probably lower in the
western counties of South Wales, and in some districts of
North Wales, than in any other part of South Britain. The
Welsh farmer presents, however, a stronger contrast than even
the Welsh labourer to the same class in England. He occupies
a small farm, employs an inconsiderable amount of capital,
and is but little removed, either in his mode of life, his
laborious occupation, his dwelling, or his habits, from the
day-labourers by whom he is surrounded; feeding on brown bread,
often made of barley, and partaking but seldom of animal food.
The agricultural and pastoral population is, for the most
part, scattered in lone dwellings, or found in small hamlets,
in passes amongst the hills, on the sides of lofty mountains,
or the margin of a rugged sea-coast, or on lofty moors, or
table-land; and oftentimes this population can be approached
only along sheep-tracks or bridle-paths, by which these
mountain solitudes are traversed.

"Whilst, however, such is the condition of a wide area of
the Principality, there is found in particular districts, of
which mention has been already made, a population congregated
together in large numbers, which has grown with a rapidity of
which there is scarcely another example--not by the gradual
increase of births over deaths, but by immigration from
other districts, as well of Wales and England, as of Ireland
and Scotland also. That immigration is not constant in its
operation and regular in its amount, but fluctuating, or
abruptly suspended; and in times of adversity, which frequently
recur, men, drawn hither by the prospect of high wages, however
short-lived such prosperity may prove, migrate in search of
employment to other districts, or are removed to their former
homes. In the iron and coal districts of South Wales, these
colonies are collected at two points--the mountain sides, at
which the minerals are raised, and the shipping ports, at which
the produce of the mines is exported."

It appears that the total value of shipments from the counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan, and Carmarthen, in metals and minerals, during the year 1847 was, in round numbers, as follows:--

Iron, £4,000,000
Copper, 2,000,000
Coal, 800,000
Tin plate, 400,000
----------
£7,200,000
----------

The copper specified above is not copper found in Wales, but that which is brought to Swansea, and other ports of Glamorgan and Carmarthen, for the purpose of being smelted, and then reshipped for various parts of the world, principally to France and South America. This trade gives occupation to a large population in those districts, and it forms one of the few branches of British manufactures, in which no very great fluctuations have been experienced during the last few years. It is, indeed, estimated that more than three-fourths of all the copper used on the face of the globe is smelted in the South-Welsh coal-field. But how prosperous soever may have been the condition of the great capitalists and iron-masters in South Wales, it does not appear that, with two or three bright exceptions, they have done much to ameliorate the condition of the people in their employment,--and even, in the present unsettled state of the world, the influence upon their hearts, of the metals they deal in, may be but too evidently seen. We find a most ingenious and important passage in Sir T. Phillips' work upon this subject, full of sound philosophy and excellent feeling. He observes:--

"The wilderness, or mountain waste, has been covered with
people; an activity and energy almost superhuman characterise
the operations of the district; wealth has been accumulated by
the employer; and large wages have been earned by the labourer.
Thus far the picture which has been presented is gratifying
enough; but the more serious question arises--How have the
social and moral relations of the district been influenced
by the changes which it has witnessed? May it not be said
with truth, that the wealth of the capitalist has ordinarily
ministered to the selfish enjoyments of the possessor, whilst
the ample wages earned in prosperous times by the labourer
have been usually squandered in coarse intemperance, or
careless extravagance? Prosperity is succeeded periodically by
those seasons of adversity to which manufacturing industry is
peculiarly exposed; when the labourer, whose wants grew with
increased means, experiences positive suffering at a rate of
wages on which he would have lived in comfort, had he not been
accustomed to larger earnings. Crowded dwellings, badly-drained
habitations, constant incitements to intemperance, and, above
all, association with men of lawless and abandoned character,
(who so frequently resort to newly-peopled districts,) are
also unfavourable elements in the social condition of this
people. To those influences may be added, the absence of a
middle class, as a connecting link between the employer and
the employed; the neglect of such moral supervision on the
part of the employers as might influence the character of
their workmen; and the want of those institutions for the
relief of moral or physical destitution--whether churches,
schools, almshouses, or hospitals--which characterise our older
communities. Wealth accumulated by the employer is found by
the side of destitution and suffering in the labourer--often,
no doubt, the result of intemperance and improvidence, but
not seldom the effect of those calamities against which no
forethought can adequately guard; and when no provision is
made for the relief of physical or moral suffering, by a
dedication to God's service, for the relief of His creatures,
of any portion of that wealth, to the accumulation of which
by the capitalist the labourer has contributed, it will be
manifest that the social and political institutions of our land
are exposed to trials of no ordinary severity in these new
communities.

"We live in times of great mental and moral activity. In
the year which has now reached its close, changes have been
accomplished, far more extensive and important than are
usually witnessed by an entire generation of the sons of men;
and around and about us opinions may be discerned, which
involve, not merely the machinery of government, but the very
framework of society: and these opinions are not confined
to the closets of the studious, but pervade the workshop
and the market, and interest the men who fill our crowded
thoroughfares. In former ages, as well as in other conditions
than the manufacturing in our own times, social inequalities
may have presented themselves, or may still exist, great
as those which characterise, in our own age, the seats of
manufacturing labour; and the lord and vassal of the feudal
system may have exhibited, and the squire and the peasant of
some of our agricultural districts may still present, as wide
a disparity of condition, as exists at this day between the
master manufacturer and the operative; but the antagonism of
interests, whether real or apparent, between the manufacturer
and the operative, is altogether unlike that simple disparity
of condition which may have perplexed former serfdom, or may
excite wonder in the agricultural mind of our own age. To the
eyes and the contemplations of the serf, as of the peasant,
the lord or the squire was the possessor of wide and fertile
lands, which he had inherited from other times, and which
neither serf nor peasant had produced, but which both believed
would minister to their necessities, whether in sickness or
in poverty, because neither the castle-gate nor the hall-door
had ever been closed against their tales of suffering and woe.
Neither the ancient serf, nor the modern peasant, witnessed
that rapid accumulation of wealth, which is so peculiarly
the product of our manufacturing system, and saw not, as the
operative does, fortunes built up from day to day, which he
regards as the creation of his sweat and labour--and at once
the result and the evidence of a polity which fosters capital
more than industry, and regards not the poverty with which
labour is so often associated. Different ages and conditions
produce different maxims. The modern manufacturer is not a
worse (he may be, and often is, a better) man than the ancient
baron, but he has been brought up in a different philosophy.
By him, the operative is well-nigh regarded as a machine,
from whom certain economical results may be obtained--who is
free to make his own bargains, and whose moral condition is a
problem to be solved by himself, because, for that condition,
no duty attaches to his employer, who has contracted with
him none other than an economical relation. Yet, is there
not danger that, in pursuing with logical precision, and
with the confidence of demonstrated truths, the doctrines
of political economy, we may forget duties far higher than
any which that science can teach--duties which man owes
to his fellow, and which are alike independent of capital
and labour? It is no doubt true, that men who earn large
wages, whilst blessed with health and strength, and in full
employment, ought to make provision for sickness, old age, or
want of work; but suppose that duty neglected, even then the
obligation attaches to the employer to care for those of his
own household. In old communities, too, the proportion must
ever be large of those who, in prosperity, can barely provide
for their bodily wants, and, in adversity, experience the
bitterness of actual want in some of its sharpest visitations.
To the humble-minded Christian, who has been accustomed
to consider the gifts of God, whether bodily strength, or
mental power, or wealth, or rank and influential station, as
talents intrusted to him, as God's steward, for the good of
his fellow-creatures--afflicting, indeed, is the spectacle of
wealth, rapidly accumulated by the agency of labour, employed
only for self-aggrandisement, with no fitting acknowledgment,
by its possessor, of the claims of his fellow-men.

"In our new and neglected communities, Chartism is found in
its worst manifestations--not as an adhesion to political
dogmas, but as an indication of that class-antagonism which
proclaims the rejection of our common Christianity, by denying
the brotherhood of Christians. This antagonism originated,
as great social evils ever do, in the neglect of duty by the
master, or ruling class. They first practically denied the
obligation imposed on every man who undertakes to govern or
to guide others, whether as master or ruler, to care for, to
counsel, to instruct, and, when necessary, to control those
who have contracted with him the dependent relation of servant
or subject; and from that neglect of duty has sprung up, and
been nourished in the subject, or dependent class, impatience
of restraint, discontent with their condition, a jealousy,
often amounting to hatred, of the classes above them, and a
desire, first to destroy to the base, and then to reconstruct
on different principles, the political and social systems
under which they live. Thus will it ever be, as thus it ever
has been, throughout the world's history; and the violation or
neglect of duty, whether by nations or individuals, in its own
direct and immediate consequences, works out the appropriate
national or individual punishment; and those who sow the wind,
will surely reap the whirlwind--it may be, not in their own
persons, but in the visitation of their children's children."

Notwithstanding the lamentable prevalence of diseased political and moral feeling among a certain portion of the inhabitants of South Wales, it is certain that the primitive simplicity of character by which the Welsh nation is still distinguished, tends in a great degree to keep them from the commission of those crimes which attract the serious notice of the law. In most of the counties of Wales, the business on the crown side at the assizes is generally light, sometimes only nominal; and the general condition of the public mind may be fairly judged of from the following table of criminal returns for 1846:--

Convictions-- }
England, 17,644, or 1 in 850}
Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire, 250, or 1 in 1200}
11 counties of North and South Wales, 250, or 1 in 3000} O
} f
Executions-- }
England, 6, } t
Wales, None. } h
} e
Transportations-- }
England, 2801, or 1 in 5300} p
Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire, 29, or 1 in 10,000} o
11 Welsh counties, 25, or 1 in 30,000} p
} u
Imprisonments above a year-- } l
England, 322, or 1 in 4500} a
Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire, 10, or 1 in 30,000} t
11 Welsh counties, 2, or 1 in 350,000} i
} o
Imprisonments not above a year-- } n
England, 14,515, or 1 in 1000} .
Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire, 211, or 1 in 1500}
11 Welsh counties, 223, or 1 in 3300}

"The comparative rarity of crime in the eleven Welsh counties
is represented by 1 offence to 3000 of the population;
and the absence of serious crimes by the small number of
transportations, namely, 25, or 1 in 30,000; and still more
remarkably, by the large proportion of the offenders whose
punishment did not exceed a year's imprisonment, namely, 223
out of 250, leaving 27 as the number of all the criminals
convicted in a year, in eleven counties, whose punishment
exceeded a year's imprisonment."

The accusation that was brought forward in the unfortunate Blue Books against the chastity of the Welsh women, and which was the _real_ cause of the hubbub made about them, we dismiss from our consideration. It arose from a misapprehension of the degree of criminality implied by the prevalence of an ancient custom, which exists not in Wales only, but we rather think amongst the peasants of the whole of Europe, and certainly as widely in England as in Wales. Whether existing in other nations or not, the Welsh press, (generally conducted by Englishmen, be it observed,) and the pseudo-patriots of Wales, a noisy empty-headed class, made a great stir about it, and declaimed violently: they did not, however, adduce a single solid argument in disproof of the accusation. There is one fact alone which is quite sufficient to explain the accusation and to remove the stain: bastardy is not less common than in England, but prostitution is almost unknown; the common people do not consider that to be a crime before marriage, which after it they look upon as a heinous enormity. Such is their code of national morals: whether right or wrong, they abide by it pretty consistently; and they appear to have done so from time immemorial. They mean no harm by it, and they look upon it as venial: this is the state of the national feeling, and it settles the question.

We now turn to the chapters that refer to the religious condition of the country, which is treated of by the author at full length, though our own comments must be necessarily brief. He gives a luminous account of the rise and progress of modern dissent in Wales; from which, however, we give the highly improbable statement, that the actual number of _members_ of dissenting congregations, of all denominations in Wales, amounted to only 166,606 in 1846, with 1890 ministers. We should rather say that, whatever the gross population of the country may be at the present moment, there is not more than one person out of ten, who have arrived at years of discretion, belonging _altogether_ to the church; and we infer the fulness of dissenting chapels, not only from the crowds that we have seen thronging them, on all occasions, but also from the thinness of the congregations at church. For the Welsh are eminently an enthusiastic, and we might almost say, a religious people: they are decidedly a congregational people; and as for staying at home on days of public worship, no such idea ever yet entered a true Welshman's head. We think that the author must have been misinformed on this head, and that the numbers should rather be the other way--100,000 out of 900,000 being a very fair proportion for the members of the church.

For all this there are good and legitimate reasons to be found, not only in what is adduced in this work on the church establishment, but also in the current experience of every man of common observation throughout the Principality. The wonder is, not that dissent should have attained its present height, but that the church should have continued to exist at all, amidst so many abuses, so much ignorance, so much neglect, and such extraordinary apathy--until of late days--on the part of her rulers. The actual condition of the church in Wales may be summed up in a few words--it is that of the church in Ireland: only those who differ from it are Protestants instead of Roman Catholics. Let us quote Sir Thomas Phillips again:--

"We have now passed in review various influences by which
the church in Wales has been weakened. We have seen the
religious edifices erected by the piety of other times, and
with the sustentation of which the lands of the country have
been charged, greatly neglected, whilst the lay officers,
on whom the duty of maintaining those buildings in decent
condition was imposed, are sometimes not appointed, or, if
appointed, make light or naught of their duties: we have seen
ecclesiastical officers, specially charged with the oversight
of the churches, not required to exercise functions which have
been revived by recent legislative enactments: we have found a
clergy, with scanty incomes, and a want of decent residences,
ministering in a peculiar language, with which the gentry have
most commonly an imperfect and often no acquaintance--even
where it is the language of public worship--influences which
lower the moral and intellectual standard of the clergy,
by introducing into holy orders too large a proportion of
men, whose early occupations, habits, and feelings, do not
ordinarily conduce to maintain the highest standard of conduct,
and who (instead of forming, as in England, a minority of the
whole body, and being elevated in tone, morally and mentally,
by association with minds of higher culture) compose the
large majority of the clergy of the Principality. It cannot,
then, be matter of surprise, if amongst those men some should
be found who (not being received on a footing of equality
into the houses of the gentry, over whom they exercise but
little influence) again resume the habits from which they
were temporarily rescued by an education itself imperfect,
and, selecting for daily companionship uneducated men, are
either driven for social converse to the village alehouse,
or become familiarised with ideas and practices unsuited to
the character, injurious to the position, and destructive to
the influence of the Christian pastor. Nor could we wonder,
if even the religious opinions and well-meant activity of the
more zealous among persons thus circumstanced, were to borrow
their tone and colour from the more popular influences by which
they are surrounded, rather than from the profounder and more
disciplined theology of the church of which they are ministers.
We have found the ecclesiastical rulers of this clergy and
chief pastors of the people, as well as many other holders
of valuable church preferment, to consist often of strangers
to the country, ignorant alike of the language and character
of the inhabitants, by many of whom they are regarded with
distrust and dislike; unable to instruct the flock committed to
their charge, or to teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine,
or to preach the word, or to withstand and convince gainsayers,
in the language familiar to the common people of the land.
Finally, we have seen the church, whilst she compassed sea and
land to gain one proselyte from the heathendom without, allow
a more deplorable heathendom to spring into life within her
own borders; and the term baptised heathens, instead of being
a contradiction in terms, has become the true appellation
of thousands of men and women in this island of Christian
profession and Christian action. Nevertheless the Welsh are
not an irreligious people; and whilst the religious fabrics of
dissent are reared up by the poor dwellers of their mountain
valleys, in every corner in which a few Christian men are
congregated, and these buildings are thronged by earnest-minded
worshippers, assembled for religious services in the only
places, it may be, there dedicated to God's glory, the feeling
must be ever present, 'Surely these men and women might
have been kept within the fold of the church.' A supposed
excitability in the Cambro-Briton, a love for extemporaneous
worship, and an impatience of formal services, have been
represented as intractable elements in the character of this
people. Even if such elements exist, it does not follow that
they might not have received a wholesome direction; while,
unfortunately, their action now finds excuse in the neglect
and provocation which alone render them dangerous. The church
in Wales has been presented in her least engaging aspect; her
offices have been reduced to the baldest and lowest standard;
and whilst no sufficient efforts have been employed to make
the beauty of our liturgical services appreciated by the
people, neither has any general attempt been made to enlist,
in the performance of public worship, their profound and
characteristic enjoyment of psalmody, by accustoming them to
chant or sing the hymns of the church."

All the abuses of ecclesiastical property seem to have flourished in the land of Wales, as in a nook where there was no chance of their being ever brought to light;--more than one-half of the income of the church, for parochial purposes, totally alienated; the bishops and other dignitaries totally asleep, and exercising no spiritual supervision; pluralities and non-residence prevailing to a great extent; the character of the clergy degraded; the gentry and aristocracy of the land starving the church, and giving it a formal, not a real support;--how can any spiritual system flourish under such an accumulation of evils? The true spirit of the church being dead, a reaction on the part of the people inevitably took place; and it is hardly going too far to say, that had it not been for the efforts of dissenters, "progressing by antagonism," Christianity would by this time have fallen into desuetude within the Principality.

It is a very thorny subject to touch upon, in the present excitable state of the world, and therefore we refrain; but we would earnestly solicit the attention of our readers to the pages of Sir Thomas Phillips,--himself one of the very few orthodox churchmen still left in Wales,--for a proof of what we have asserted; and should they still doubt, let them try an excursion among the wilds of the northern, or the vales of the southern division of the country, and they will become full converts to our opinion. Things, however, in this respect are mending--the church has at length stirred, abuses are becoming corrected, the ecclesiastical commissioners have done justice in several cases--and in none more signally than in the extraordinary epitome of all possible abuses, shown by the chapter of Brecon--abuses existing long before the Reformation, but increased, like many others, tenfold since that period. The church has never yet had fair play in the country, for she has never yet done herself--_much less her people_--justice; so that what she is capable of effecting among the Cambrian mountains cannot yet be predicated. We fondly think, at times, that all these evils might be abolished; but this is not the place for such a lengthy topic: we have adverted to the state of things as they have hitherto existed in the Principality, chiefly with the view of showing their influence upon the peculiar political and ethnical condition of the people, which it is our main object to discuss. We will content ourselves with observing, that Sir Thomas Phillips' remarks on this subject, and on the connexion of the state with the education of the country, are characterised by sound religious feeling, and a true conservative interpretation of the political condition of the empire.

On a calm view of the general condition of Wales, we are of opinion that the inhabitants, the mass of the nation, are as well off, in proportion to the means of the country itself, to the moderate quantity of capital collected in the Principality, and the number of resident gentry--which is not very great--as might have been fairly expected; and that it is no true argument against the national capabilities of the Welsh, that they are not more nearly on a level with the inhabitants of some parts of England. The Welsh inhabit a peculiar land, where fog and rain, and snow and wind, are more prevalent than fine working weather in more favoured spots of this island. A considerable part of their land is still unreclaimed and uncultivated--their country does not serve as a place of passage for foreigners. Visitors, indeed, come among them; but, with the exception of the annual flocks of summer tourists, and the passengers for Ireland on the northern line of railroad, they are left to themselves without much foreign admixture during a great portion of each year. The mass of the gentry are neither rich nor generous: there are some large and liberal proprietors, but the body of the gentry do not exert themselves as much as might be expected for the benefit of their dependants; and hence the Welsh agriculturist lacks both example and encouragement. That the cultivation of the land, therefore, should be somewhat in arrear, that the mineral riches of the country should be but partially taken advantage of, and that extensive manufactures should rarely exist amongst the Welsh, ought not to form any just causes of surprise: these things will in course of time be remedied of themselves. The main evil that the Welsh have to contend against is one that belongs to their blood as a Celtic nation; and which, while that blood remains as much unmixed as at present, there is no chance of eradicating. We allude to that which has distinguished all Celtic tribes wherever found, and at whatever period of their history--we mean their national indolence and want of perseverance--the absence of that indomitable energy and spirit of improvement which has raised the Anglo-Saxon race, crossed as it has been with so many other tribes, to such a mighty position in the dominion of the world.

This absence of energy is evident upon the very face of things, and lies at the bottom of whatever slowness of improvement is complained of in Wales. It is the same pest that infests Ireland, only it exists in a minor degree; it is that which did so much harm to the Scottish Highlands at one period of their history; and it is a component cause of many anomalies in the French character, though in this case it is nearly bred out. One of the most striking evidences and effects of it is the dirt and untidiness which is so striking and offensive a peculiarity of Welsh villages and towns--that shabby, neglected state of the houses, streets, and gardens, which forms such a painful contrast the moment you step across the border into the Principality. In this the Welsh do not go to the extremes of the Irish: they are preserved from that depth of degradation by some other and better points of their character; but they approach very closely to the want of cleanliness observable in France--and the look of a Welsh and a French village, nay, the very smell of the two places, is nearly identical. A Welsh peasant, amidst his own mountains, if he can get a shilling a-day, will prefer starving upon that to labouring for another twelvepence. A farmer with £50 a-year rent has no ambition to become one of £200; the shopkeeper goes on in the small-ware line all his life, and dies a pedlar rather than a tradesman. There are brilliant and extraordinary exceptions to all this, we are well aware; nay, there are differences in this respect between the various counties,--and generally the southern parts of Wales are as much in advance of the northern, in point of industry, as they are in point of intellect and agricultural wealth. It is the general characteristic of this nation--and it evidences itself, sometimes most disagreeably, in the want of punctuality, and too often of straightforward dealing, which all who have any commercial or industrial communications--with the lower and middle classes of the Welsh have inevitably experienced. It is the vice of all Celtic nations, and is not to be eradicated except by a cross in the blood. Joined with all this, there is a mean and petty spirit of deceit and concealment too often shown even in the middle classes; and there is also the old Celtic vice of feud and clanship, which tends to divide the nation, and to impede its advancement in civilisation. Thus the old feud between North and South Wales still subsists, rife as ever; the northern man, prejudiced, ignorant, and indolent, comes forth from his mountains and looks down with contempt on the dweller in the southern vales, his superior in all the arts and pursuits of civilised life. Even a difference of colloquial dialects causes a national enmity; and the rough Cymro of Gwynedd still derides the softer man from Gwent and Morganwg. All these minor vices and follies tend to impair the national character--and they are evidences of a spirit which requires alteration, if the condition of the people is to be permanently elevated. On the other hand, the Welsh have many excellent qualifications which tend to counteract their innate weaknesses, and afford promise of much future good: their intellectual acuteness, their natural kindliness of heart, their constitutional poetry and religious enthusiasm, their indomitable love of country--which they share with all mountain tribes--all these good qualities form a counterbalance to their failings, and tend to rectify their national course. Take a Welshman out of Wales, place him in London or Liverpool, send him to the East Indies or to North America, and he becomes a banker of fabulous wealth, a merchant of illimitable resources, a great captain of his country's hosts, or an eminent traveller and philosopher; but leave him in his native valley, and he walks about with his hands in his pockets, angles for trout, and goes to chapel with hopeless pertinacity. Such was the Highlander once; but his shrewd good sense has got the better of his indolence, and he has come out of his fastnesses, conquering and to conquer. Not such, but far, far worse is the Irishman; and such will he be till he loses his national existence. St Andrew is a better saint than St David, and St David than St Patrick; but they all had the same faults once, and it is only by external circumstances that any amelioration has been produced.

It is a fact of ethnology, that while a tribe of men, kept to itself and free from foreign admixture, preserves its natural good qualities in undiminished excellence through numerous ages, all its natural vices become increased in intensity and vitality by the same circumstances of isolation. Look at the miserable Irish, always standing in their own light; look at the Spaniards, keeping to themselves, and stifling all their noble qualities by the permanence of their national vices; look at the tribes of Asia, doomed to perpetual subjection while they remain unmixed in blood. Had the Saxons remained with uncrossed blood, they had still been stolid, heavy, dreaming, impracticable Germans, though they had peopled the plains of England; but, when mixed with the Celts and the Danes, they formed the Lowland Scots, the most industrious and canniest chields in the wide world: fused with the Dane and Norman, and subsequently mixed with all people, they became Englishmen--_rerum Domini_--like the Romans of old. It may be mortifying enough to national pride, but the fact is, nevertheless, patent and certain, that extensive admixture of blood commonly benefits a nation more than all its geographical advantages.

It is our intimate conviction of the truth of this fact, so clearly deducible from the page of universal history, and especially from the border history of England and Wales, that shows us, _inter alia_, how false and absurd is the pretended patriotism of a small party among the gentry and clergy of Wales who have lately raised the cry of "Wales for the Welsh!" and who would, if they could, get up a sort of agitation for a repeal of the Norman conquest! There are sundry persons in Wales who, principally for local and party purposes, are trying to keep the Welsh still more distinct from the English than they now are,--who try to revive the old animosities between Celt and Saxon,--who pretend that Englishmen have no right even to settle in Wales,--and who, instead of promoting a knowledge of the English language, declaim in favour of the exclusive maintenance of the Welsh. These persons, actuated by a desire to bring themselves forward into temporary notoriety, profess, at the same time, by an extraordinary contradiction, to be of the high Conservative party, and amuse themselves by thwarting the Whigs, and abusing the Dissenters, to the utmost of their power. They are mainly supported--not by the Welsh of the middle classes, who have their separate hobby to ride, and who distrust the former too much to co-operate with them--but by English settlers in Wales, and on its borders, who, in order to make for themselves an interest in the country, pander to the prejudices of a few ambitious twaddlers, and get up public meetings, at which more nonsense is talked than any people can be supposed gullible enough to swallow. This spirit exists in the extreme northern portion of Wales, in Flintshire, Denbighshire, and Caernarvonshire; and on the south-eastern border of the country, in Monmouthshire, more than in any other district. It is doomed to be transient, because it is opposed, not less to the wishes and the good sense of the mass of the people, than to the views and policy of the nobles and leading gentry of the Principality. One or two radical M.P.s, a few disappointed clergymen, who fancy that their chance of preferment lies in abusing England, and a few amateur students of Welsh literature, who think that they shall thereby rise to literary eminence, constitute the clique, which will talk and strut for its day, and then die away into its primitive insignificance. But, by the side of this unimportant faction, there does exist, amongst the working classes and the lower portion of the middle orders, a spirit of radicalism, chartism, or republicanism,--for they are in reality synonymous terms,--which is doing much damage to the Principality, and which it lies easily within the power of the upper classes to extinguish,--not by force, but by kindness and by example.