The Sun.
London, England, 1853-11-14 00:00:00

1853.

It is to be observed that the Bishop ceremoniously
compliments several of the Welsh ministers, whose pas-
toral exhortations he had distorted into libels, and extols
their personal piety, while reckoning the congregations
which share their zealous and vigilant care among the
most abandoned and wretched dregs of society.
Concluding the Welsh people to be sunk in specula-
tive infidelity and pratical paganism, the bishop adduced a
passage from the memoir of a pious minister (" Diwygiwr,"
1851, p. 273) showing that Thomas Howells had greatly
abhorred and deplored the sin of drunkenness.
His lordship afterwards brought forward a rule of the
Anglesea Society, framed by another zealous minister,
as a protest against vice and immorality.
His lordship closed his series of extracts by repeating
from a nameless magazine some of the grossest calumnies
contained in the Commissioners' Reports.
The statistics of the late J. Fletcher, Esq., giving a
" View of the Moral and Educational Condition of Eng-
land and Wales," afford the following results :
"Wales.—ln this district there is little more than
Sunday-school instruction in the Bible, in Welsh, owing
to the obstacle of language."
" In Wales there are fewer illegitimate children than
in other parts of the kingdom, the proportion being infi-
nitely less than in the northern and midland manufac-
turing mining counties. The amount of pauperism in
Wales is also considerably less than in most parts of
England, being 5.5, whereas in London it is 12.5, and
in the south, midland, and eastern - agricultural coun-
ties 39.5."
"The criminal returns for Wales are low as compared
with the average of the population."
" Everywhere, in districts of homogeneous character,
the more instructed appeared to have a much less
amount of depravity than the less instructed ; but there
were considerable deviations from this rule—the ignorant
Celtic regions of Cornwall and "Wales standing in as
favourable a light as the most instructed counties of the
north. The most ignorant region of the whole kingdom
was shown to be the eastern and midland countiies im-
mediately contiguous to the metropolitan ; being far
more uninstructed than Wales, with all its difficulties of
poverty, language, and remoteness ; and infinitely more
criminal, especially in serious offences against the per-
son, and malicious offences against property."— Vide
Athencrum, 1849. No. 1,118.
Such is the impartial and drily official testimony ren-
dered by statistical documents to the character of the
Welsh people, and to the beneficial effects of Sunday-
school instruction in the Welsh Bible.
To Wales, and to a "Welsh Dissenter, Great Britain
and the world stand indebted for the British and Foreign
Bible Society. The annual reports of its proceedings
show, that the contributions received by that institution
from the principality are of greater amount in propor-
tion to the population than those of any other part of
the United Kingdom. The same reports prove also, that
larger numbers of bibles in proportion to the population
are annually purchased by the Welsh than by any other
people under the sun. Hence it appears, according to
the judicious Hooker, "The Word which saveth our
souls is near us, we need for knowledge but to read and
live. The man which readeth the Word of God ; the
Word itself doth pronounce blessed, if he also observe
the same."—Eccl. Politie, book 5, sec. 22.
In 1847 Commissioner Lingen thus described the
Welsh inhabitants of his district :
" When not in chapel the people are generally at
their own homes, for they are not to be met with any
where on Sunday excepting on their way to and from
chapel."—Reports 1., 225.
The select " lamentations" culled by the Bishop, bear
witness that the Dissenting Ministers who made them
are earnestly living and diligently working to counteras
all the ill which they perceive and deplore. Hence it
clearly appears that the majority of the Welsh people,
driven as they originally were from the pale of their
National Church by English prelates, branded as they
now are by one of the unsympathising occupants of their
native sees with unmerited infamy, are not " without
the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without
law ;" but that the "covenant of life and peace" is still
among them.
Locke has warned us, that "he that has but ever so
little examined the citations of writers, cannot doubt
how little credit the quotations deserve where the origi-
nals are wanting." The cause of the Pastoral Aid
Society might safely have been allowed to rest upon the
numerical disproportion of the diocesan clergy, even in
combination with their volunteer auxiliaries, the Dis-
senting ministers, to the "strange multitudes" of people
congregated together from all parts oGreat Britain
Ireland in the mineral districts of Llandaff. ,
What
.would have been an nu-
ti seffort,effectualou an
are theyblaemarognugmesont
fmuraneyen?
answera
incentive to Christian diligence.
Dr. 011ivant , however, preferred
preftee a basis of solid rock.rredagroundworkof
shifting sandfor his fabrics
exaggeration exhibited by the Bishop of
LThisenmdaiffcrouspcoic
upnt
the comparatively insignificant objects
selected and pinned down for this cruelitntxnperiDmiesnlitkcinan
only be attributed to
people to whaomm he owes nalike his..former cle-
rical Welsh
present revenues .of his see, and
duerwiacanitinligvin
en
charity towards Dissent, he has
become so unfortunately
th.blinded by prejudice as to lose
flagrantperceiving evil under a pretext tha
the power of that he was, in calumniating a
whole nation,.. doingv
gs aCni:lristia
good might f,°„,-11°L.
eigh',Morgan, of St. Mary's, Cardiff,'
expatiated upon the active labours of a lay
that crowded parish, ventured to say :
as his lordship has taken up the field of
assistanta
cf
Inasmucht Thee r h aRv ni v
ng. •
Wales in his address to you, and has told you from
various authorities from the Dissenting body what the
state of the country is, I will state to you from another
authority the state of Cardiff."
The Rev. W. L. Morgan proceeded to read a set of
prepared extracts from his English Lay Assistant's
Weekly Reports, describing 8 cases of extreme wretched-
thecases
ness and depravity. The tendency of these
thus
brought
ev
vfeoiprtlwi
el,atrhdyee
tla wasnthg ta
Tog
eelaoocwfh eetrrh,
being entirely unac-
quainted character of the
alluded(l a iWelshnte
dpt
o must, of course, have
spoken spocountry,ken tthhee pEeergs
loins
hs
Tgillais nd
v, e Srycotland remarkable, or Ireland.
language, and were probably some poor outcasts o
En
meetingacK of the Pastoral Aid
Society received a verymeat suitable and emphatic supple-
, a letter published in the Cardiff and Mertltyr
Guardian of Oct. 18, 1853.
It eulogises the Bishop's " most noteworthy speech."
It describes the Dissenting writers as confessing con-
victs." It distinctly declares of the Welsh people,
"that practically their present religion is nothing ;" and
it concludes with the following words :—" The Bishop
of Llandaff reads Dissenting publications, and, as we
have recently seen, he turns them to a good and a moral
purpose. If we had no other argument for a Welsh
speaking and a Welsh reading bishop, his lordship's
usefulness in this alone would he quite sufficient."
This libellous epistle merely indicates the mischievous
effects s
effects which are closely following upon the bishop's
ed
public avowal of the enmity which he has long cherished
who constitute the ma-
against the Welsh Dissenters, w

j .
ortty- of the Welsh people.
Little hope can there be of his lordship's ever recalling
sectarians to the fold of the Church while thus he wields
the episcopal staff as a rod of scorpions.
Inveterate prejudice converts his episcopal activity
into national injury, and renders his slight acquaintance
with the Welsh language an additional means of pro-
voking the resentment of the people.
Three years have now elapsed since I had the honour
of calling your lordship's attention to Dr. 011ivant's
erroneous view of the real state and condition of his
diocese. Once more submitting to your lordship's con-
sideration the necessity of henceforth providing Welsh
bishops for Wales.—l remain your most obedient humble
servant,

GOLEUFER.

November 11, 1853.