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THURSDAY, MAROR 31, 1831.…

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!THE TROUBLES OF AN ABER!GAVENNY…

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THE TROUBLES OF AN ABER- GAVENNY GUARDIAN. MEMBERS of Parliament may well envy the Abergavenny Guardians. While the House of Commons has lapsed from ita scenes of unparalleled excitement to the intolerable dulness of ditchwater, Abergavenny is be- coming quite lively. The town's folks may not themselves participate largely in the sen- sational farces which are being played at their various boards, but the members of these boards must be congratulated on the amount of amusement which they manage eoa out of iwioee^iiti^wlij^ecftOidi& narily very unproductive The workhouse pigs, I for example, gave rise Ias:, Friday week to a lengthened discussion, which threatened at ( one time to be very serious, One guardian, ifc seems, had been commissioned to buy pigs for,-some purpose which has not. come out into the clear daylight. No doubt good)r pork might be relish& I by such paupers a8 -vare not too fastidious. Ordinary human beings a<Knl3" tomed to pay for their own eatables* generally relish a joint of pork or a slice of bacon or ham, but we will not venture to say that paupers would humble themselves ] to such fare. It is just possible that they r may not think it aristocratic enough for J them. We know that when ladies and gentlemen moving in very respectable circles were trying to make themselves eniov tinned roast beef, paupers were toss- ing it from them in disdain, aud denouncing it as an abomination. Working men and many middle-class sub- jects of Queen VICTORIA content themselves with butter of second quality, merely because they cannot afford a more expensive article, but paupers would take it as an insult to be asked even to smell at the distance of a hundred yards such t; vile garbage." It is quite possible that the pigs were not meant for the paupers themselves, but only as scavengers of a sort, a very convenient army of scavengers. This is a reasonable supposition if it be borne in mind that the guardian who bought them intimates that he did so be- cause he had seen an "accumulation of ¡ waste food." Fancy waste food iu a Poorhouse, and good folks struggling and starving outside Inside, the good food was running, to waste outside, men, women, and children,striving hard to maintain them- selves, were running to waste. The food, we are told, was actually running over the tubs," and there was neither a LAZARUS nor a dog to lick it up. The well-fattened paupers, no doubt, felt annoyed that some public officials were not commanded to remove from their sight an object so offen- sive. In lieu, however, of dogs, pigs were procured, and, for aught we know to the contrary, these pigs were to be fattened upon the overflowings of the paupers' dining- tables, and thou sold at Christmas to the highest bidder—who might be a squire. It was said, however, that the guardian who was commissioned to buy the pigs bought some for himself, and then sold them at a profit to the guardians. This is the state- ment made and, accordingly, he was soon reminded that he had unwittingly engaged in an illegal transaction, having made money in supplying an article to the Board. This trouble, however, was soon disposed of, but Abergavenny was not to be allowed to grow weary or dull. At a subsequent meeting, but one of a more public character, a vestry meeting to boot, certain important business was transacted, after which the parishioners were treated to an entertainment, at which the Rev. S. R. YOUNG,a Baptist minister, was chief performer. This gentleman—known, no doubt, to fame, though, much to our grief, unknown to us—had an anecdote to tell, or, if not an anecdote, yet something equally interesting to the people of Aberga- venny in vestry assembled. He wished to warn the inhabitants against a vice which is perhaps too common to' be relished by him and a few others, that of putting faith in reports of proceedings which appear in the columns of the South Wales Daily News. It appears, more- over, that his caution was not altoge- ther unnecessary, for had he not delivered a speech, and had not the South. Wales Daily News had the effrontery to omit certain por- tions of that speech ? We fear we must plead guilty. Very likely we did. It may, for anything we can remember to the con- trary, have been to make room for some ora- tion from the lips of a second-rate orator like Mr BRIGHT or Mr GLADSTONE that we were daring enough to drop a fow nciit«i«,ci> ficuj /1", ninrp brilliant utterances of the NESTOR of Abergavenny. If so, we humbly apologise. Occasionally we have to ask our readers to put up with these disappointments, but we are none the less conscious of the tremendous loss which the world sometimes sustains when such omissions have to be made. What is still more blameworthy, however, on our part, is the sad fact that we have actually, as tho rev. gentleman assures his fellow-townsmen, H garbled a report of his speech. His speech, it appears, had been delivered on what Mr YOUNG'S expostulating friends call that affair." The rev. gentleman has been ac- cused of wanting to hush up that affair "— that affair" being no other than the pig controversy, of which we have already said enough. To garble a speech delivered upon pigs fed with the overflow of food from a tub in a Poorhouse must surely be a new crime, but it may be none the less serious. According to Mr YOUNG'S own definition of the word "garble," it must be an unpardonable crime, for he informed his hearers at Abergavenny that "to garble" meant to sift, to part —— a bit here and a bit there." In other words, it seems that we sifted his speech, and if so, it is just possible that we dropped out the wheat and only published the chaff. Or we may have done exactly the reverse, in ivhich case we leave Lo return Illm the chaff. We understand that to garble" is to pick out the refuse portions," but how could we have done that with a speech delivered by so accomplished an orator? Can any one suppose Mr YOUNG'S elegant rhetoric to have refuse portions" ? We protest that it would have been, in the very nature of things, impossible to do him such an act of injustice. The inmates of the union may have "refuse portions" to be stowed away in a tub until it runs over, suggesting the idea of hungry pigs as an aid to overfed pauperism, but it never occurred to us to associate any such base idea with the pearls of speech and imagery which grace all Mr YOUNG s public utterances. We may not publish verbatim every word which falls from his lips, but we shall in future be most happy to do so if our readers desire it. We some- times take the liberty of condensing obser- vations made even at vestry meetings. This may be a calamity, and Mr YOUNG may suffer under it, but he has the future before him, and hardly knows yet what telephones and photophones will do for him. Time is on his side the dark shadow of hope de- parting cannot yet have fallen across his path he is still young when he is old he will thank us for cancelling much that he said in the greenness of his youth.

! DISTURBANCES IN AFGHANISTAN,j

---SCHOOL BOARD EXPENDITURE.

RESTRICTIONS UPON THE MONMOUTHSHIRE…

CRIMPlNiTAT^ARblFF.

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