Llanelly, Sept. 11, Monday.
The headquarters of vindictive rebellion, arson, and spiritual oratory! An ugly populous town near the sea, now in a ferment of mixed fear and fury, from recent savage acts of the Rebeccaites against a most respectable magistrate, resident in the town, Mr W. Chambers, jun., the denounced landlord of our old Welsh hostess at Llanon. Two of his farm-houses have been burned to the ground, and his life has been threatened. His grievous offence I stated before. Soldiers are seen every where; and verily, the mixture of brute-ignorance and brute-ferocity, depicted in the faces of the great mass of "operatives" that we meet, seem to hint that their presence is not prematurely invoked. Their begrimed features and figures, caused by their various employments, give greater effect to the wild character of the coatless groups, who, in their blue check shirt-sleeves, congregate at every corner to cabal, rather than to dispute, it seems; for, fond as they are of dissent, (though not one in fifty could tell you from what they dissent, or to what they cleave in doctrine,) there seems no leaning to dissent from the glorious new Rebecca law of might (or midnight surprisals) against right.
In this neighbourhood, our Welsh annals will have to record—the first dwelling-house, not being a toll-house, was laid in ashes; the first blood was shed by "Rebecca's company," as they call the rioters here. And here resides, rants, prays, and preaches, and scribbles sedition, an illiterate fanatic, who is recognised as an organ of one sect of Methodists, Whitfieldites publishing a monthly inflammatory Magazine, called Y Diwygiwr, (the "Reformer!")—God bless the mark!
This little pope, within his little circle of the "great unwashed," is very oracular, and his infallibility a dogma with his followers and readers. How much he himself and his vulgar trash of prose run mad, stand in need of that wholesome reform which some of his English brother-firebrands have been taught in Coldbathfields and Newgate, let my reader judge from the following extract. The Times newspaper did good service in gibbeting this precious morceau, supplied by its indefatigable reporter, in its broad sheet. How great was the neglect of Welsh society, and every thing Welsh, when this sort of war-cry of treason could be raised, this trump of rebellion sounded, and, as it were, from the pulpit "Evangelical," with perfect impunity to the demagogue, thus prostituting religion itself to the cause of anarchical crime!—
"We cannot regard these tumults, with their like in other parts, but as the effects of Tory oppression. Our wish is to see Rebecca and her children arrayed by thousands, for the suppression of Toryism. These are the only means to remove the burden from the back of the country.... Resolve to see the sword of reason plunged in oppression's heart." He goes on to say, "there must be a hard-blowing storm before the high places in State and Church can be levelled," &c. &c. There is the usual twaddle about "moral force," forsooth, under which saving periphrasis, now-a-days, every rebel ranter in field, or tub, or conventicle, insinuates lawless violence without naming it. Jack Cade would have made it the rallying cry of his raggamuffins, so would Wat Tyler, had it been hit upon in his day. The array of thousands is intelligible "to the meanest capacity." The dullest Welsh "copper-man," or collier, or wild farm cultivator, could not miss the meaning. But as to this magical weapon, "moral force," which they are to handle when so arrayed—the brightest capacity must be at a loss to know what it means. How absurd (if he pretends such a thing) to expect that enlightened statesmen will stand reformed, restrained, stricken through, with a new light in politics by the exhibition of these smutty patriots' minds alone!—by the force of conviction, wrought by ascertaining their convictions, (the illuminati of Llanelly coal-works, of Swansea copper-works, of Carmarthen farm-yards,) will instantly tack—put the vessel of State right about, and bring her triumphant into the placid haven of Radicalism! And why physical "array" to wield such shadowy arms as "moral" force? This favourite stalking-horse of incendiary politics is but the secret hiding-place of retreat from the "force of government." The peace, the forbearance it breathes, is like the brief silence maintained—the holding of the breath—by those snugly ensconced within that other horse of famous memory, the Trojan, which served admirably to lay vigilance asleep, and evade the defensive force of the garrison, till the hour came to leap from its protection, and fire the citadel. This "moral force" covert of revolt, is every whit as hollow, as treacherous, as fatal, if trusted to. Inflame, enrage, and then gather together "thousands" of the most ignorant of mankind, pointing to a body, or a class, or a government, as the sole cause of whatever they suffer or dislike, and then—tell them to be moral! peaceable! not to use those tens of thousands of brawny arms, inured to the sledge-hammer; oh, no! tell them that force means to stand still—or disperse—or gabble—any thing but to—fight! And such vile "juggling with us in a double sense" as this, is evangelical morality!
In justice to the Liberal party, I shall add that it does not sanction the ravings of this hypocrite, but laughs at his illiterate pretensions to the character of a public writer. As evidence of this, the editor of the Welshman, a Liberal journal, published at Carmarthen, has ably castigated this sedition-monger, who has exposed his own ignorance in venting his wrath at the infliction.