The Reform Act of 1832, which raised the number of Welsh Members from twenty-seven to thirty-two, seems to have made no alteration in the politics of the country; but soon afterwards the topics which were going to be fought over so passionately before the close of the century, began to emerge and to define themselves--the right of the Welshman to live his own life in his own way, to speak his own language, and to worship in his own chosen mode. It meant the recapturing of the lost dignity of Welsh nationality. In the eighteenth century Welshmen had, almost contentedly, sunk into a position of inferiority, and had never dreamed of asserting their claim to a place of equality in the Empire in which they were now, by law, partners. The cleavage between the newly anglicised gentry, and the middle and lower classes, had become wider; and after the Revival, to the difference of language, was further added the difference of religion. That any Welshman should aspire to occupy a position of trust and distinction would be scouted. Goronwy Owen, a curate in the Church of England, and the greatest Welsh poet, and possibly the greatest prose stylist too, of the eighteenth century, writes in one of his charming letters in 1753: "Do {234} you ever expect to see a Welshman a Bishop? Sooner would I give credence to the Brut which promises the second coming of Owain Lawgoch than expect ever to see a Welshman holding an office of the least distinction in either Church or State." South Wales was rapidly becoming industrialized; and the Chartist Movement found there, and even more in the small manufacturing towns of the Severn valley, places like Llanidloes, and Newtown, the home of Robert Owen, many followers. All through the centuries, owing to its geographical position, Wales had been influenced by two things, isolation and contact; isolation from all kindred beyond the seas, and contact with its unfriendly neighbours on the land side. In the ancient Hellenic world the sea united; but for the Celtic races it has been a barrier to divide. Between the Celt of Ireland and the Celt of Wales intercourse was always slight and intermittent; while between the Welshman and the Breton there was hardly any intercourse at all. Unlike his Breton kinsman, the Welshman has never taken kindly to the sea; he has looked at it, and then raised his eyes to the mountains. He became a farmer, and not a fisherman or a sailor; and when he did look out at the great {235} world he did so through the English window. This geographical isolation led also to a human isolation, which is a very marked characteristic of the Welsh nation. Fortunately the nation had been fully formed before the close of the eighteenth century, otherwise the combined influence of English political, social, and religious ascendancy might have swept away every vestige of the fine cultural inheritance of the past. In the great fight which began in 1832, and which occupied eighty years,