Welsh Journals

This compilation has 'involved an exhaustive study of old records and large scale maps combined with a physical examination of the ground wherever possible'. The work can be highly recommended not only as a contribution to the local history and industrial archaeology of various areas in Cardiganshire, but also as a salutary reminder of the enormous amount of human effort, often in health-destroying conditions, that was expended in rural as well as urban districts. R. O. ROBERTS Swansea INCIDENTS IN My OWN LIFE WHICH HAVE BEEN THOUGHT OF SOME IMPORTANCE. By David Williams. Edited by Peter France. University of Sussex Library, 1980. Pp. 131. £ 6.60. David Williams, the radical dissenter, has received scant attention from historians of late-eighteenth century Britain, but he certainly deserves a wider audience. Madame Roland, that femme fatale of the French Revolution, favourably compared him with his great contemporary Tom Paine. The two men had much in common. Williams, born near Caerphilly, was raised in the dissenting tradition, only to quit the Presbyterian ministry and open a Deist chapel in London. Moving in radical circles, he duly supported the American colonists, parliamentary reform and the Revolution in France. Like Paine, the archetypal cosmopolitan democrat, he too became a citizen of the French Republic in 1792 and crossed the channel to help draft a fresh constitution. Williams's comments upon Parisian politics, which include a perceptive appraisal of the ill-starred Girondin leadership, dominate this brief and fragmentary autobiography. Disillusioned by the Terror, he had recourse to native values: 'The transition from evil to good', he writes, succumbing to the British disease of gradualism, 'because suddenly attempted, often aggravated thaevil, instead of producing the good.' Above all, Williams's career illuminates the history of the Enlightenment in England, a phenomenon closely allied to both radicalism and dissent. He wrote much, if seldom memorably, on religion, education and politics, not to mention a History of Monmouthshire. Much of his work is held at Cardiff and Dr. France, who has performed an excellent task as editor, appends a critical bibliography besides extensive annotation. The University of Sussex Library is to be congratulated for rendering this 'Welsh philosophe' accessible to us all. MALCOLM CROOK Keele