The Carmarthen Journal and South Wales Weekly Advertiser

HOME RULE. Numerous and lengthy as are the speeches that have been delivered on the Gladstonian policy in the abstract the country is not a whit wiser as to what Home Rule means in the concrete. The veteran leader has a shrewd guess that a distinct declaration would prove disastrous to his prospects at the coming General Election. There is a strong and growing tendency even in Welsh Radicals to condemn the proposed separation of Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom. An independent Ireland they will not hear of, much less would the most enlightened amongst them listen to a proposal that would in any way imperil the absolute freedom of their Protestant brethren in the sister isle by helping to give the upper hand in that country to the Roman Catholic Church. They justify their adherence to the Gladstonian flag on the supposition that Home Rule will not interfere with the liberty, civil or religious, of the subject in Ireland, and will not go so far as to establish a separate J and distinct Parliament on College Green. They are kept in the Gladstonian fold by their implicit faith in their leader. We ought, perhaps, to say of them that they cling to Home Rule with more probity of intention than knowledge of the subject. This knowledge is deliberately kept from them for the purposes of the next election. But if Mr Gladstone contrives to get into power by keeping the country ignorant of his intentions he cannot long remain in an undeclared position. And when he comes to take the country into his confidence we firmly believe he will again be deserted by those who credulously placed him in office. Mr Chamberlain who, after the elevation of Lord Hartington to the peerage through the lamented death of the aged Dnke of Devonshire, will, doubtless, be the leader of the Liberal Unionists in the next Parliament, made one of his clever and witty comparisons in reference to the attitude of Gladstonians to Home Rule last week. Speaking at Edinburgh he said it is quite true that many candidates have adopted Home Rule; they profess Home Rule they admire Home Rule in the abstract, but there is not a single one of them who is able and willing to say what Home Rule in the concrete is. I read the other day of the death of a Neapolitan noble- man who had a great reputation as an admirer of Dante, and it appeared that he had earned his reputation by fighting fourteen duels to prove the truth of his assertion that Dante was a greater poet than Ariosts but on his deathbed the other day he told his sorrowing relatives that he had never read a word either of Dante or of Ariosto. I assert that the candidates who have advocated and fought for Home Rule, and the electors who have voted for them, are in the most perfect ignorance of what Home Rule will be." This great truth was never placed before the people of this country with so apt an illustration. Nothing short of complete independence will satisfy the Irish Nationalists, and this England can and will never grant. The Separatists having, therefore, launched forth with Home Rule as their first and principal I object, impassable and impossible as it is, the electors of Great Britain would do well to con- sider seriously the chances they will be throwing away by voting in favour of the promoters of disruption. Solid and benefical legislation has been flowing from the Unionist fountain during the last six years. Let the country not stop the stream, but increase its volume by returning Unionist members at the next election in increasing numbers.

THE CHURCH AND THE SQUIRE. Thanks to her able and energetic Vicar, Aberystwyth has been well to the front in the campaign against disestablishment. Mr Byron-Reid and Mr Helm, who have been in many places doing excellent work, adopted a right line at Aberystwyth last week in appealing to the sense of farmers and kindlier feelings of Nonconformists, and giving them credit for honest motives and sincerity in their opinions. We have always believed that the solution of the difficulty will be arrived at by mutual forbearance and charity, and agree with Sidney Smith's wise dictum that all great alterations in human affairs are produced by compromise. Wher- ever Mr Helm and his friends have gone they have had to meet the same difficulties, and adopt the same methods but without being invidious we prefer the layman as an advo- cate, because he takes up the glove on behalf of his friend, whereas, whenever a clergyman appears in Church defence the public naturally only credit him with shrewdness for defending his own interest. It is true the public may be wrong, but we must take it as we find it. Whenever a meeting is organized let the clergy not be too prominent in taking np the cudgels, for after all it is the layman's loss if he loses. True, our Church is a Church militant, but we are too apt to forget that the clergy do not constitute the Church. It is a peculiar policy when the shepherds are attacked to expose them on public platforms, and to let them defend themselves. Among the common people are shrewd judges and interpreters who construe actions and question motives, and sometimes censure defaulters. Let other laymen, like Mr Reid, go to the front and fight their Church's battles. There should be no lack of men to do her talking when the Church is working. And it is working in Wales. We know the usual Disestablishment meetings interfere with the dinner-hour of the wealthy, and have heard it said that the squire will not leave his dinner to defend his Church. This is the external difficulty. If it is true, as we are told it is in far too many instances, it is a reproach that no effort should be spared to remove. The Church is bitterly attacked these days and the struggle will be a long and hard one. Every friend of the Establishment high and low, rich and poor cannot remain indifferent. They should be whipped into line and give a good Z5 account of themselves in the vindication of their common rights and privileges.

THRIFT. I think greater efforts to promote thrift amongst their fellow men would be made by our small ratepayers, if they realized how much of their hard-earned and carefully-saved money goes to support the thriftless neigh- ZD bours, who started fair.with them in the race of life, say some thirty-five years ago, but who ohose by drinking, or gambling and betting, or by reckless extravagance when money was plentiful, to throw away their chances of independence Here is an example :—Jack Jones had the good luck at 13 years old to get an errand boy's place at 5s. a week. He took all his weekly earnings to his mother, except- ing two-pence, which he deposited every week in the village penny-bank. At the end of his first year of service be drew out the 8s. 8d. so saved, and put it into the Post office Savings Bank. Going on at this rate be had a nice little sum in the bank when, through the steady character he had earned, he was taken into the shop. The self-denial he had learnt as a boy made it easy for him when a young man to bear the jeers of his shop-mates, because he would not even indulge in one pint of beer a day. He was now able to put by at least Is. weekly. Many of his mates spent more than that a great deal in beer. At the age of twenty-five he was saving at the rate of 2s. 4d. a week, which he calculated would equal L6 Is. 4d. a year. So having got L6 Is. 4d. yearly to invest he went in for a Post Office annuity, for which he paid L3 9s. 4d. yearly. A Post Office Life Insur- ance of .£45, which cost him .£1 2s. 6d. a year, and he got 15s. when ill, and the certainty of X15 at death, by joining the Church of England Benefit Society, for which he had to pay .£1 8s. 6d. yearly, to sum it up he paid:- £ s. d. For an annuity of X26 a year or 10s. a week 3 9 4 For a Life Insurance of £ 45 1 2 6 For 15s. a week when ill, and L15 at death 186 Y, 6 0 4 You may say how few could do this t But the fact is that with rare exceptions every man could do this, and most men a great deal more, if from their boyhood they would be steady and trustworthy, and content to be self-denying, even without being total ab- stainers, in the matter of drink and tobacco. Well, Jack Jones prospered, and became a small householder, and paid his rates and taxes like a man. His schoolfellow, Tom Smith, started as errand boy in the same firm, and went on right till the jeers of his mates made him ashamed of his friendship for his steady old school-fellow. He soon took to diinking and betting with an idle lot. He 0 9 was a clever fellow, and though he could never call a penny his own, and was always chan. ging his place, he contrived for a time to get employment. Moreover, a silly girl consented to marry him. She was as thriftless as he was. They went from bad to worse. It was a miserable existence. Sometimes in the workhouse, sometimes cadging in the streets, or tramping the country. When the two boys we started from school with equal chances were 35, Jack was a thriving salesman with a newly married wife, and a house of his own, and Tom was a pauper. Can you not fancy how tempted Jack was to grudge the rate he was forced to pay to support Tom who might haue been as well off as himself, but for his thriftless, extravagant ways ? 0 (To be continued).

THE CENSUS AND REPRESENTA- TION. ARTICLE II. [The following is the second of the three letters we intend publishing on the above subject. The last will be given next week.] In my previous letter I gave a general abstrac- of the whole question of population and represent tation. I now propose to go a little more into detail, and to examine the causes which place the Constitutional Party in a false position. I do not mean to charge very gross and flagrant jobbery against the authors of the Reform Bill of 1832, or against the majority of 1867 or 1885; but in all three cases it is undoubted that, following the instincts of human nature, they did in each case manipulate the constituencies as far as was consis- tent with decency and safety. No fair man at all cognisant with the facts will deny that the borough boundaries in 1833 and 1867 were drawn in favour of one political Party, nor that the Redistribution Bill of 1885, which in all probability would have been much worse but for the determined stand made by the Peers, was not equally in favour of the same side, and no provision, moreover, was made for the future, though it was obvious enough at the time that such provision was very requisite. Hence the anomalies which were then apparent, and, growing, have already attained portentions dimensions, though they are far from having reached maturity. England has at present 461 re- presentatives; Wales, 29; Scotland, 71; Ireland, 101; without including the University Members, of which there are 5 in England, 2 in Scotland, and 2 in Ireland. But the fair representation, would be-England, 488; Wales, 26; Scotland, 73; Ireland, 83. But if we leave out the bulk of the English counties and Scotland, and compare the Celtic 1 decrease in Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall with the increase in the mining, manufacturing and Metro- politan districts the results will be much more striking. Ireland has a population of 4,706,162, a decrease of 9'1 Wales (in nine counties), 568,243, a decrease of 4'0 Cornwall, 322,589, a decrease cf 2-5-total, 5,611,994. These possess :—Ireland, 101 members; Wales, 14; Cornwall, 7—total, 122. On the other hand, the mining and manufactur- ing districts, with a population of 11,289,068, and a rate of increase of 14'0, have 172 members. The Metropolitan, with a population of 8,229,500, and a rate of increase of 19-5, have 120 members. Here are some of the anomalies of the present state of the representation. Battersea and Clapham have in the last decade inereased from 143,643 to 194,146, but they have only two divisions, with one member each. Birmingham and Aston Manor, with eight divisions, have increased from 490,813 to 546,756. Bradford, with three divisions, 194,495 to 216,361. Per contra- Breek nock, which has de- creased from 57,74f. to 57,031, has one member. Brighton increasing from 128,440 to 142,121, has two members, while Carmarthen has two divisions and a group of boroughs, three members, and the combined population has increased from 124,864 to 130,574 only, while Carnarvon with two divisions and a group of boroughs has three members, though the population has actually decreased from 119,349 to 118,225. The district, or borough group of Carnarvon, has just risen from 28,801 to 29,573, and it has one member, while Chatham, which has risen from 46,988 to 59,389, has the same. But thi3 is as nothing to the monstrous case of Croy- don, which has risen from 78,81 i to 102,697. There could have been no excuse for this inequality even in 1885. Similarly the Flint Boroughs have de creased from 24,154 to 23,251, and the Montgomery Boroughs from 19,925 to 17,789, so that these two groups of decaying villages, for they are in reality- little else, mustering together but 41,040, have double the representation of the great and growing Borough of Deptford, which has increased from 76,752 to 101,326, and of Woolwich, which has increased from 74,963 to 98,976. And the combined increase alone in 10 years of those two Metropolitan boroughs, 38,587, nearly equal the whole of the Welsh constituencies. Again, Denbigh and Pembroke Boroughs, though each show a slight increase, muster together but 57,719 inhabitants, but they boast of three members. Denbigh and Pembroke together, boroughs and counties, have 207,075 population, a very slight increase, but have five members, while Camber- well, grown from 203,243 to 255,687 has only three, and Fulham, which has grown from 42,900 to 91,640, has only one, and West Ham, which has grown from 128,953 to 204,902, has, again, only two. The combined six Welsh boroughs, with 164,546 inhabitants, support no less than six mem- bers, as against Bristol, with a progress of from 253,107 to 285,611 with four, or Hackney, with its three, which has grown from 186,162 to 229,531. But the comparison is, if we look somewhat more closely, more striking still. Several, if not all of these boroughs are made up of an aggregate of hamlets or large villages. It is as if we were to put together half a dozen small country towns such ad every one knows of in his own district, dignify them by the name of a