Y Tyst Cymreig

TO THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLAD- STONE, M.P. SIR,-It was, about the latter end of the last century that the Welsh became' A nation of Nonconformists, as it has been usually design- ated. There were indeed prior to that time sev- eral churches and congregations of Protestant Dissenters in South Wales, and a few in North Wales, which had been gathered and formed by the Ministers who were driven out of the Estab- lished Church by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, but the mass of the population was not reached by the influence of those churches, whose opera- tions were crippled by the restraining power of the Five Mile and the Conventicle Acts. The great majority of the people, properly speaking, were neither Churchmen nor Dissenters; they cared not for the church, neither did the church care for them,—excepting so far as the clergy were anxious to keep them from the conventicles. The people might have gone anywhere else on the Sabbath day, as far as they (the clergy) were concerned. A few would attend the service, in the parish Church on the Sunday morning, and then priest and people would join together in various games of sport in the afternoon; and in scenes of drunken revelry in the evening of the sacred day. There are country villages to be found here and there in the Principality, which still remain in their primitive condition, where the three ancient institutions of' the good old times' are now standing in close proximity- viz., The Parish Church, the Public House, and the Stocks. Many years ago, an old farmer in Merionethshire told the writer, that he remem- bered the time, when the order of the Sabbath day in his parish was,—To the Church in the morning,—the playground in the afternoon,—the tavern and the stocks in the evening. It so hap- pened sometimes, he said, that the parson would be put in the stocks by his parishioners, for disorderly conduct, of whom it was said, that he preached well in the morning, played well in the afternoon, drank well in the evening; and pre- sented a wholesome warning to the people of his charge in the stocks, as the fitting close of his Sunday labours. Sir, suck facts should never be mentioned but with deep and solemn regret: but they form an essential part of the moral and religious history of the Welsh nation at that time, and have an important bearing on the great question of the present day,—the question of the State Establish- ment of religion. Our ancestors indeed had been in that state of barbarous ignorance for generations prior to the time when the state Church became nominally Protestant. The ancient British Churches after having for a long time; stoutly maintained their spiritual and ecclesiastical freedom against the aggressions of the Church of Rome, were at last forced to sub- mit to the galling yoke by the intervention of Saxon arms, and the Welsh, the last of all the nations of Western Europe, became subjugated to the authority of Rome. The light and glory of the ancient pure Christianity departed, dark- ness covered the land; and the soul of the nation was trampled in the durt by the iron hoofs of the Priest and the Monk. The change in the religion of the state in the time of Henry VIII, brought no change for the better in the state of things in Wales. With the restoration of Popery under Queen Mary, the Welsh clergy, with but very few exceptions, re- nounced their Protestantism, and returned to their former faith; and again in obedience to the mandate of the crown under Elizabeth, they as readily denied Popery, and embraced the Pro- testant faith the second time. Many ol the Welsh clergy in those days, and for generations after, were ignorant and illiterate as well as immoral, men who could not even write their own names, nor read the lessons and the prayers in the church with anything like decency and :propriety. The authorities of the church imitated the example of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made of the lowest of the people priests of the high places—' blind leading the blind, and no wonder that they both fell into the ditch.' But, Sir, there was once a bright spot in the dark horizon of those times to which indeed it is delightful to refer. William Salisbury, of f Cae dia, in the obscure .Parish of Llansannan, Denbighshire, a lay gentleman, and an eminent scholar in the time of Elizabeth, spent some years of his life in that secluded spot on the border of the Hiraethog mountain, in translating the New Testament from the original into the vernacular Welsh; which he published with a letter of dedication to the Queen in 1567. In about twenty years afterwards the whole Bible was translated by Dr. W. Morgan, who became bishop of St. Asaph, and published in 1588. In 1620, another edition of Dr. Morgan's transla- tion with many alterations and corrections, was published by Dr. Parry, Morgan's successor in the bishopric of St. Asaph. Those editions were meant only for the use of divine service in the Churches. The Bible was yet inaccessible to the mass of the people, who were likewise, most of them, unable to read it had it been put in their possession. Nevertheless a great inestimable benefit. was thus conferred on benighted Wales. Dissenters as well as Churchmen feel delighted to honor the memories of bishops Morgan, Parry, Vaughan, Davies, all Welshmen, who were or- naments to their Church, and to their country. They were good and holy men, nevertheless there was no noise, no shaking among the dry bones, no perceptible reformation of manners in their days. The Churches remained compara- tively empty, the high places (playgrounds) were not taken away, for the people assembled yet in those places in the afternoon of the Sabbath day to enjoy their sport. After the above noble band of bishops, there came a race of Saxon prelates, hirelings, whose own the sheep were not.' Feed the flock com- mitted to their charge they could not if they would. The sheep would not follow after them because they were strangers, and knew not their voice. Those English bishops put their sons, nephews, and relations and friends in possession of all the rich benefices and fat livings; the poor Welsh Clergy were made bondsmen, hewers of wood and drawers of water,' to their English masters, unto whom it was but a small thing to have eaten up the good pasture, and to have drunk the deep waters, but they must have trodden down, and foul the residue with their feet. Many of those dignitaries, no doubt, were able and learned men, masters of many langua- ges, but of the language of the people over the spiritual and eternal interests of whose souls they were appointed to watch they knew absol- utely nothing. Now, Sir, let us suppose for a moment that a. Welshman, a Frenchman, or a Hottentot, who knew not a word of English, should have been appointed to English bishoprics, and those bish- ops again to appoint their own sons, nephews, and friends, who also knew not a word of the language of the people, to the richest benefices in their Dioceses, what would the English people say to that P Would they tamely submit for a moment to such a monstrous abomination ? No! all the country from John o Groat to the Land's End, would raise such a cry of indignation against the insult as had seldom or never been heard in England before. But the Welsh people, (and I am somewhat ashamed to own it), have submitted for generations to this insulting treat- ment on the part of the English Government. They have borne with it partly, because as a nation, they feel no interest in the State Church, having prepared Churches and elected bishops for themselves, from among themselves, they chose to pay upwards of three hundred thousand pounds annually for the maintenance of an alien Church, in addition to the cost of supporting their own Churches, rather than to raise an agi- tation for the removal of that incubus, whilst there seemed no reasonable hope of success. But they have been well educated on the question of state endowment of religion, and are deeply convinced, that all acts on the part of the Civil power for connecting the Kingdom which is not of this world,' with the Kingdoms that are of it, are acts of high treason against the nature, the genius, and principles of that spiritual and heavenly Kingdom; and on this high ground, chiefly, and not on the lower, though important consideration, of the Church being the Church of the minority in their country, they mean to take their stand in seeking its disestablishment and disendowmentj in the struggle which is now fast approaching. I have the honor to be, Right Hon. Sir, Your obedient servant, W. BEES,

CYNWYSIAD. Yr Wythnos-To the Right Hon. W. E. Glad- stone, M.P. 1 GOHEBIAETHAU 2 Cyfarfodydd Mai-Bayddoniaeth-Nodiau a Nidiau 8 Uchelwyliau Mis Mai-Yr Undeb Cynnulleid- faol—Blaenau Ffestiniog 4 Etholiad Bristol—Crynliodeb Seneddol—Newyddion Tramor a Chyffredinol-Liverpool a'r Cylchoedd —Treherbert a'i Helyntion-Marwolpethau, &c. 5 Merthyr Tydfil,-Manion o Fynwy-Cenhadaeth yr Annibynwyr ••• 6