A Short History of Wales Part 6

Ideas of equality were advanced. They were looked upon at first as truths applicable only to a perfect and impossible condition, and their discoverers were ignored, if not hanged or burnt. But they always became a reality, and were victorious in the end. Take the truths discovered or championed by Welshmen. Walter Brute rediscovered the theory of justification by faith--that all men are equal in the sight of G.o.d, and that no lord could be responsible for them. Bishop Pec.o.c.k advocated the doctrine of toleration--that reason, not persecution, should rule. John Penry claimed that the people had a right to discuss publicly the questions that vitally affected them. The history of the past shows that the apostles were condemned, the life of the present shows that their ideas lived.

Industry and commerce became more free. In Tudor times piracy was repressed, the march lordships were abolished, the privileges of the towns ceased to fetter manufacture, trade with England became free.

In Stuart times roads were made, the industries depending on wool revived, and the industries of Britain began to move westwards towards the iron and the coal. In the Hanoverian period waste lands were enclosed, the slate mines of the north and the coal pits of the south were opened.

The Tudors succeeded in getting the upper cla.s.ses to speak English, and to turn their backs on Welsh life. The peasant was left supreme: he knew not what to do at first, but light soon came.

Pa.s.s through Wales, and you will see the life of both periods--the ruined castles and the ruined monasteries of the old; the quarries and pits, the towns and ports, the churches and chapels, the schools and colleges of the present.

CHAPTER XXI--HOWEL HARRIS

It is difficult to write about religion without giving offence.

Religion will come into politics, and must come into history. It has given much, perhaps most, of its strength to modern Wales; it has given it many, if not most, of its political difficulties.

There are periods of religious calm and periods of religious fervour in the life of every nation. I do not know whether it is necessary, but it is certainly the fact--the two periods condemn each other with great energy. With regard to creed--the life of religion--you will find that the periods of energy tend to be Calvinistic--an intense belief that man is a mere instrument in the hands of G.o.d, working out plans he does not understand; while in periods of rest it tends to be Arminian--a comfortable belief that man sees his future clearly, and that he can guide it as he likes. With regard to the Church--the body of religion--it is fortunate, in times of calm, if it is established, to keep the spirit of religion alive; it is fortunate, in times of fervour, if it is free, in order that the new life may give it a more perfect shape.

Now we must remember that there can be no calm without a little indifference, and that there can be no enthusiasm without a little intolerance. So men call each other fanatics and bigots and hypocrites, because they have not taken the trouble to realise that there is much variety in human character and in the workings of the human mind. Perhaps it is also worth remembering that an inst.i.tution is not placed at the mercy of a reformer, but gradually changed.

The eighteenth century was a century of indifference in religion in Wales, the nineteenth century was a century of enthusiasm. The Church at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at any rate as far as the higher clergy were concerned, was apathetic to religion, and alive only to selfish interests. The Whig bishops were appointed for political reasons; they hated the Tory principles of the Welsh squires, and they neglected and despised the Welsh people they had never tried to understand. In England, the Defoes and the Swifts of literature were encouraged and utilised by the political parties; in Wales, where clergymen were the only writers, the Whig bishops distrusted them, and silenced them where they could, because they wrote Welsh. The Church did not show more misapplication of revenue than the State, perhaps; but, while the people could not leave the State as a protest against corruption, they could leave the Church.

And, during the middle of the eighteenth century, a great national awakening began.

The trumpet blast of the awakening was Howel Harris. He was a Breconshire peasant, of strong pa.s.sion which became sanctified by a life-long struggle, of devouring ambition which he nearly succeeded in taming to a life of intense service to G.o.d. Many bitter things have been said about him, but nothing more bitter than he has said about himself in the volumes of prayers and recriminations he wrote to torture his own soul, and to goad himself into harder work. The fame of his eloquence filled the land, and districts expected his appearance anxiously, as in old times they expected Owen Glendower.

Howel Harris was, however, no political agitator. He had an imperious will, and he wished to rule his brethren; he was aggressive and military in spirit; G.o.d to him was the Lord of Hosts; he preached the gospel of peace in the uniform of an officer of the militia, and he sent many of his converts to fight abroad in the battles of the century. He had a love of organisation; he established at Trevecca what was partly a religious community, and partly a co-operative manufacturing company. But, wherever he stood to proclaim the wrath of G.o.d, no shower of stones or condemnation of minister or justice could make those who heard him forget him, or believe that what he said was wrong.

If I were writing for antiquarians, and not for those who read history in order to see why things are now as they are, I would write details--important and instructive--about the Church of the eighteenth century, and about the congregations of Dissenters which the seventeenth century handed over to the eighteenth to persecute and despise. The Independents and Baptists st.u.r.dily maintained their principles of religious liberty, but they found the century a stiff- necked one, and their congregations were content with merely existing. The Quakers maintained that war was wrong while Britain pa.s.sed through war fever after war fever--the Seven Years' War and the wars against Napoleon. Howel Harris' voice might have been a voice crying in the wilderness, if it had not been for the spiritual life of the existing congregations, conformist and dissenting.

Modern ideas in Wales have been profoundly affected by the Quakers, and especially in districts from which, as a sect, they have long pa.s.sed away.

The voice of Howel Harris called all these to a new life; and it is about that new life, in the variety given it by all the different actors in it, that I want you to think now. It made preaching necessary, for one thing; and it was followed by a century of great pulpit oratory. It profoundly affected literature. It gave Wales, to begin with, a hymn literature that no country in the world has surpa.s.sed. The contrast between the Reformation and the Revival is very striking--one gave the people a Church government established by law and a literature of translations, the other gave it inst.i.tutions of its own making and original living thought. The Revival gave literature in every branch a new strength and greater wealth.

It created a demand for education. Griffith Jones of Llanddowror established a system of circulating schools, the teachers moving from place to place as a room was offered them--sometimes a church and sometimes a barn. Charles of Bala established a system of Sunday Schools, and the whole nation gradually joined it. The Press became active, newspapers appeared. It became quite clear that a new life throbbed in the land.

CHAPTER XXII--THE REFORM ACTS

The new life brought an inevitable demand for a share in the government of the country, and this brought the old order and the new face to face. The political power was entirely in the hands of the squires, alienated from the peasants in many cases by a difference of language, and in most cases by a difference of religion.

The Act of 1535 had, as we have seen, given Wales a representation in Parliament. Each shire had one member only; except Monmouth, which had two. Each shire town had one member, except that of Merioneth; and Haverfordwest was given a member. The county franchise was the forty shilling freehold; it therefore excluded not only those who had no connection with the land, but the copyholder--who was really a landowner, but whose tenure was regarded as base, on account of his villein origin. This copyholder was undoubtedly the descendant of the Welsh serf of mediaeval times.

The first Reform Act, that of 1832, was won for the great manufacturing towns of England, but Wales benefited by it. It extended the franchise to the copyholder, and to the farmer paying 50 pounds rent, in the counties; it gave the towns a uniform 10 pounds household franchise. It also brought many of the towns into the system of representation. It raised the number of members from twenty-seven to thirty-two; the agricultural districts getting two, and the mining districts two.

The slight change in representation is a recognition of the growing industries of the country, especially in the coal and iron districts.

The coal of the great coalfield of South Wales had been worked as far back as Norman times; but it was in the nineteenth century that the coal and iron industries of South Wales, and the coal and slate industries of North Wales became important. Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport became important ports; and places that few had ever heard of before--like Ystradyfodwg or Blaenau Ffestiniog--became the centres of important industries. But, in 1832, Wales was still mainly pastoral and agricultural; and the Act, though it did much for the towns, left the representation of the counties in the hands of the same cla.s.s. Still, it was the towns that showed disappointment, as was seen in the Chartism of the wool district of Llanidloes and of the coal district of Newport.

The second Reform Act, of 1867, gave Merthyr Tydvil two representatives instead of one, otherwise it left the distribution of seats as it had been before. But the new extension of the franchise- -to the borough householder, the borough 10 pounds lodger, and especially the 12 pounds tenant farmer--gave new cla.s.ses political power. It was followed by a fierce struggle between the old landed gentry and their tenants, a struggle which was moderated to a certain extent by the Ballot Act of 1870, and by the great migration of the country population to the slate and coal districts.

The rapid rise of the importance of the industrial districts is seen in the third Reform Act of 1885. The country districts represented by the small boroughs of the agricultural counties of Brecon, Cardigan, Pembroke, and Anglesey, were wholly or partly disfranchised. But the slate county of Carnarvonshire had an additional member; and in the coal and iron country, Swansea and Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire had one additional member each, and Glamorgan three.

The third Reform Act enfranchised the agricultural labourer and the country artisan. In England many doubts were expressed about the intelligence or the colour of the politics of the new voter; but, in Wales, most would admit that he was as intelligent as any voter enfranchised before him; all knew there could be no doubt about his politics.

The character of the representation of Wales has entirely changed.

The squire gave place to the capitalist, and the capitalist to popular leaders. Wales, whose people blindly followed the gentry in the Great Civil War, is now the most democratic part of Britain.

CHAPTER XXIII--EDUCATION

The chief feature of the history of Wales during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is the growth of a system of education.

The most democratic, the most perfect, and the most efficient method is still that of the Sunday School. It was well established before the death of Charles of Bala, whose name is most closely connected with it, in 1814. It soon became, and it still remains, a school for the whole people, from children to patriarchs. Its language is that of its district. Its teachers are selected for efficiency--they are easily shifted to the cla.s.ses which they can teach best; and, if not successful, they go back willingly to the "teachers' cla.s.s," where all are equal. The reputation of a good Sunday School teacher is still the highest degree that can be won in Wales. Plentiful text books of high merit, and an elaborate system of oral and written examinations, mark the last stage in its development.

The Literary Meeting is a kind of secular Sunday School. The rules of alliterative poetry and the study of Welsh literature and history, and sometimes of more general knowledge, take the place of the study of Jewish history, and psalm, and gospel. The Literary Meetings feed the Eisteddvod.

The Eisteddvod pa.s.sed through the same phases as the nation. It was an aspect of the court of the prince during the Middle Ages. In Tudor times it was used partly to please the people, but chiefly to regulate the bards by forcing them to qualify for a degree--a sure method of moderating their patriotism and of diminishing their number. In modern times the Eisteddvod is a great democratic meeting, and it is the most characteristic of all Welsh inst.i.tutions.

Its chairing of the bards is an ancient ceremony; its gorsedd of bards is probably modern. But the people themselves still remain the judges of poetry; they care very little whether a poet has won a chair or not, while a gorsedd degree probably does him more harm than good.

Elementary education, in its modern sense, began with the circulating schools of Griffith Jones of Llanddowror in 1730. They were exceedingly successful because the instruction was given in Welsh, and they stopped after teaching 150,000 to read not because there was no demand for them, but on account of a dispute about their endowments in 1779, eighteen years after Griffith Jones' death. They were followed by voluntary schools, very often kept by illiterate teachers.

Between 1846 and 1848 two organisations--the Welsh Education Committee and the Cambrian Society--were formed; and they developed, respectively, the national schools and the British schools. After the Education Act of 1870, the schools became voluntary or Board; education gradually became compulsory and free; and in 1902 an attempt was made to give the whole system a unity and to connect it with the ordinary system of local government.

The training of teachers became a matter of the highest importance.

In 1846 a college for this purpose was established at Brecon, and then removed to Swansea. From 1848 to 1862, colleges were established at Carmarthen, Carnarvon, and Bangor.

The history of secondary education is longer. It was served, after the dissolution of the monasteries, by endowed schools--like that of the Friars at Bangor--and by proprietary schools. By the Education Act of 1889, a complete system of secondary schools, under popular control, was established. Two of the endowed schools still remain-- Brecon, founded by the religionists of the Reformation, and Llandovery, the Welsh school founded by a patriot of modern times.

It was princ.i.p.ally for the ministry of religion that secondary schools and colleges were first established. Schools were founded in many districts, and important colleges at Lampeter (degree-granting), Carmarthen, Brecon, Bala, Trevecca, Pontypool, Llangollen, Haverfordwest. Many of these have a long history.

Higher education had been the dream of many centuries. Owen Glendower had thought of establishing two new universities at the beginning of the period of the Revival of Letters; among his supporters were many of the Welsh students who led in the great faction fights of mediaeval Oxford. Oliver Cromwell and Richard Baxter had thought of Welsh higher education. But nothing was done.

In the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth until 1870, the Test Act shut the doors of the old Universities to most Welshmen; the new University of London did not teach, it only examined; the Scotch Universities, to which Welsh students crowded, were very far. In 1872, chiefly through the exertions of Sir Hugh Owen, the University College of Wales was opened at Aberystwyth, and maintained for ten years by support from the people. The Government helped, and two new colleges were added--the University College of South Wales at Cardiff in 1883, and the University College of North Wales at Bangor in 1884.

In 1893 Queen Victoria gave a charter which formed the three colleges into the University of Wales. Lord Aberdare, its first Chancellor, lived to see it in thorough working order. On Lord Aberdare's death, the Prince of Wales was elected Chancellor in 1896; and when he ascended the throne in 1901, the present Prince of Wales became Chancellor.

The tendency of the whole system of Welsh education is towards greater unity. There is a dual government of the secondary schools and of the colleges, the one by the Central Board and the other by the University Court--a historical accident which is now a blemish on the system. The Training Colleges are still outside the University, but they are gravitating rapidly towards it. The theological colleges are necessarily independent, but the University offers their students a course in arts, so that they can specialise on theology and its kindred subjects. The ideal system is: an efficient and patriotic University regulating the whole work of the secondary and elementary schools, guided by the willingness of the County Councils, or of an education authority appointed by them, to provide means.

The rise of the educational system is the most striking and the most interesting chapter in Welsh history. But the facts are so numerous and the development is so sudden that, in spite of one, it becomes a mere list of acts and dates.

CHAPTER XXIV--LOCAL GOVERNMENT