Papurau Newydd Cymru

Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru

Cuddio Rhestr Erthyglau

9 erthygl ar y dudalen hon

SONNHT.

TAKE BACK YOUR DIRTY MONEY!

@trnniug5.

/irrsik Clint.

. QJrllrrnt Mtm.

LOSS OF LIVES IN MINES.

GOLD TOWN.-A VISION.

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

GOLD TOWN.-A VISION. TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRINCIPALITY. SIR,-An immense town lay before m?. It was in a land of mountains, and nearly surrounded with hills. Vast it was and widely scattered. Nature had been lavish in enriching the spot on which it stood, and various m Ignines of her hidden trea- sures, which produced, year by year, untold riches, within and around the place. For this reason. Mammon had chosen it, as I learnt, and called it after his own name. But its aspect within was marvellous in my eyes, so that my soul was confounded to behold it. I thought GOLD TOWN should have been a city of more than eastern splendour,* of more than Parisian gaiety. But how great was my disappointment; for as I wan- dered through it, no golden domes, or minarets from which the midday sun might flish forth his ten thousand beams, arose before my gaze. No marble halls or stately mansions were there. Lowly, narrow, and confined, and, for the most part, mean, without ornament, and without order, were its crowded abodes. There were no bowers of ease, or gardens of pleasure, or monuments of the brave and beautiful. It contained no galleries of art, no museums of science, not a single golden street peered through surrounding meanness, nor one golden arcade opened its spacious portals to the strolling crowd. Far different indeed was its aspect. The streets, for the most part, were irregular and narrow, mr were they paved with the com- monest flag-stones; and the confined causeways, on which two could scarcely walk together, were in eyeryl street broken, and seemed to threaten to let me down into a gulph underneath. Some of the streets I could by no means cross. They had neither drain nor sewer, and the mud was ankle-deep. At night the streets were dark, save where a solitary ray shot from a neighbouring window, or strayed from a desolate lamp, here and there distributed in the way. Such was the general cha- racter of Gold Town. Wonder followed upon w mder as I be- held it. I was, after some time, led into a council-chamber, where sat many of the chief men in solemn consultation. While I remained, the following speech fell from the lips oe one present, who seemed a man of great iniluence in the place his words were these Let us seek our own good from ourselves, and from our own live to ourselves." Ah methought, this explaineth all." This solved the problem of Gold Town's miserable state. Although a town in which gold abounded, could I any more wonder at all its ? Now I learnt that ail they strove for was to get gold-to lvvrp it up for themselves. And every action, and every habit of their lives re-echoed those words of Mammon in the Pandemonian council :— "Let u< seek 0, own good from ourselves, and from our own Live to ourselves."—PAR. LOST., B. I. The men of Gold Town had no time for care no taste for no heed of others' good. They could abide in me- n dwellings, they heeded not the uncleansecl streets, breeding pestilence and death, and they could content themselves with mean minds too if they only succeeded in getting GOLD. Respect, and influence, and preferment -w,rc given to those who had most gold. The richest of the inhabitants were made priests and oracles of mammon. All were striving to attain the lofty pre-eminence, and many were ruined in the attempt, Some there were, for instance, who obtained a legal license to sell a pernicious, besotting, maddening drug, which turned men into beings more stupid than the dullest brutes, and more ferocious than the fiercest. In the houses where this trade was c mducted (and it was vastly successful in Gold town), health, reason, religion, the wife's happiness, an I, the children's broad were bartered. But those who frequented these haunts of pollution and poverty, it distressed me to behold. Although want stared them in the face, and filth and squalor were th >ir portion, who might have been in comfort and although I heard afar the flapping of ominous wings and the unearthly screams of ominous voices—the cho'era was coming—they still went on. Had labour was the lot of the majority, and they had to pay the strength of their bodies with sleepless nights, and rides of countless accidents for—Gold. But this class, like their bro- 8 '2" 4 ther gold-diggers of Peru, were mostly in poverty. Th«y enriched others, themselves unenriehed. And woman, too, sacred, retired woman, mingled in the struggle for gold. I saw woman foil and labour-—they bore the rude contact of heartless men-they brooked their ruffian insult-they uttered the horrid oath, and laughed to do it in their eagerness for gold. I beheld many other wonderful things; but most of all, men who called themselves by sacred nimes, who claimed aVacred mission, and assumed extraordinary revelations. But even they thought nathless of gold and their dreams, and speeches, and hopes were of a land of gold to end their days Paradise of Mammon There were in ieed in Gold Town true teachers; there were temples and warning voices, and many listened, but many listened not; a few obeyed—a few were saved. Now, as I was awaking from my dream in dreadful astonishment and confusion, i heard a mighty voice cry over the eitv, "The idols he shill utterly abolish Gold Town, where the scat of Mammon is, thy doom is sealed—thy day is fast approaching a fiery sword quivers over thee and thou, like Petra and Palmyra, Babylon and ancient Rome, shalt f.dl down, nndshalt no more be found Vf ATOIt.

REVIEWS OF THE " PRINCIPALITY.''

THE RATE OF WAGES iT THE IRON…