whole, we may remark, that neither Poor-Law, nor Tory, nor Whig,
nor right rule, nor misrule, nor politics, nor party, had the slightest
influence in this astounding moral revolution among an agricultural
people. Utterly false is almost all that the London Press broached and
broaches, implicating ministers in the provocation of this outbreak.
Twenty years of residence, and leisure for observation among them,
allows me to positively deny that any feeling of discontent, any sense
of oppression, any knowledge of "Grievances," now so pompously heading
columns of twaddle--ever existed before the _one_ daily, weekly spur in
their side, goaded this simple people to a foolish mode of resistance to
it.

Why, not one in ten of the farmers has yet heard of Sir Robert Peel's
accession to office! and I doubt if one in twenty knows whether they
live under a Whig or Tory administration. Nor does one in a hundred
_care_ which, or form one guess about their comparative merits.

The only idea they have of Chartists, is a vague identification of them
with "_rebels_," as they _used_ to call _all_ sorts of rioters, not
dreaming of their forming any party with definite views, unless that of
seizing the good things of the earth, and postponing, _sine die_, the
day of payment.

Judge what chance the brawling apostles of Chartism would have here
among them, especially under the difficulty of haranguing them through
interpreters!

The Poor-Law they certainly hate, but from no pity for paupers. The
dislike arises from a wide spread belief, that the host of "officers"
attached to it swallows up great part of what they pay for the poor.
They grudged the poor-rate before, even when their own overseer paid it
away to poor old lame Davy or blind Gwinny; but now that it reaches them
by a more circuitous route, and in the altered form of loaves or
workhouse support, they seem to lose sight of it, and fancy that it
stops _by the way_, in the pockets of these "strange" new middlemen, as
we may call them, thrust in between the farmers and their poor and
worn-out labourers.

The prevalence of the Welsh language perpetuates the ignorance which is
at the root of the mischief. Of their _native_ writers, I have given a
specimen from the monthly magazine published at Llanelly, and the evil
of these is uncorrected by English information.

The work of mounting heavenward was, we are told, defeated by a
confusion of tongues--the advance of civilization (whic