A great deal of solo spouting, by orators in orderly succession, went on till near two in the morning—Sunday. At least, falling asleep, I left this little patriot parliament sitting, and found it in full tongue on awaking at that hour. I suppose this sitting in judgment on toll-houses (and possibly other houses) of these anti-landlord committees, are not breaches of the observance of the Sabbath.
On the whole, we may remark, that neither Poor-Law, nor Tory, nor Whig, nor right rule, nor misrule, nor politics, nor party, had the slightest influence in this astounding moral revolution among an agricultural people. Utterly false is almost all that the London Press broached and broaches, implicating ministers in the provocation of this outbreak. Twenty years of residence, and leisure for observation among them, allows me to positively deny that any feeling of discontent, any sense of oppression, any knowledge of "Grievances," now so pompously heading columns of twaddle—ever existed before the one daily, weekly spur in their side, goaded this simple people to a foolish mode of resistance to it.
Why, not one in ten of the farmers has yet heard of Sir Robert Peel's accession to office! and I doubt if one in twenty knows whether they live under a Whig or Tory administration. Nor does one in a hundred care which, or form one guess about their comparative merits.
The only idea they have of Chartists, is a vague identification of them with "rebels," as they used to call all sorts of rioters, not dreaming of their forming any party with definite views, unless that of seizing the good things of the earth, and postponing, sine die, the day of payment.
Judge what chance the brawling apostles of Chartism would have here among them, especially under the difficulty of haranguing them through interpreters!
The Poor-Law they certainly hate, but from no pity for paupers. The dislike arises from a wide spread belief, that the host of "officers" attached to it swallows up great part of what they pay for the poor. They grudged the poor-rate before, even when their own overseer paid it away to poor old lame Davy or blind Gwinny; but now that it reaches them by a more circuitous route, and in the altered form of loaves or workhouse support, they seem to lose sight of it, and fancy that it stops by the way, in the pockets of these "strange" new middlemen, as we may call them, thrust in between the farmers and their poor and worn-out labourers.
The prevalence of the Welsh language perpetuates the ignorance which is at the root of the mischief. Of their native writers, I have given a specimen from the monthly magazine published at Llanelly, and the evil of these is uncorrected by English information.
The work of mounting heavenward was, we are told, defeated by a confusion of tongues—the advance of civilization (which we may designate a progress toward a divine goal, that of soul-exalting and soul-saving wisdom) is as utterly prevented by this non-intercourse system between the civilized and the half civilized; which, with all deference to the ancient Britons, I must venture to consider them. Camden, the antiquary, has preserved a tradition, that "certain Brittaines" (Britons) going over into Armorica, and taking wives from among the people of Normandy, "did cut out their tongues," through fear that, when they should become mothers, they might corrupt the Welsh tongue of the children, by teaching them that foreign language! The love of their own tongue thus appears to be of very old standing, if we are to believe this agreeable proof of it. I believe the extirpation of Welsh, as a spoken language, would pioneer the way to knowledge, civilization, and religion here, of which last blessing there is a grievous lack, judging from the morals of the people.