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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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