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."