Welsh Journals

MICHAEL DAVITT, DAVID LLOYD GEORGE AND T. E. ELLIS: THE WELSH EXPERIENCE, 1886* We must work for bringing together Celtic reformers and the Celtic peoples. The interests of Irishmen, Welshmen and Crofters are almost identical. Their past history is very similar, their present oppressors are the same and their immediate wants are the same riddance from landlordism and ampler opportunities for developing their own genius and their own powers. THUS, in February 1886, wrote Thomas Edward Ellis (soon to be nominated as the Liberal candidate for his native Merioneth) to his close associate, D. R. Daniel. The view that the Celtic nations faced common foes and oppressors, and shared common needs and characteristics, was one which gained widespread currency in Wales and elsewhere during the late nineteenth century.2 In no area did the parallels of the Welsh and Irish experiences seem more striking than in the case of the land question. In both countries, the fundamental difficulties of insecurity of tenure, unacceptably high rents, land hunger and land exhaustion were ever more keenly felt, while government legislation had proved hopelessly inadequate. From the autumn of 1879, the deep-rooted social tension and glaring lack of rapport between landlords and tenants (admittedly far more pronounced in Ireland than in Wales) had been sharply intensified by the advent of a disastrous agricultural depression and concomitant deep-rooted and widespread rural misery, the product of an international slump in the As always, I am most grateful to Professor Kenneth O. Morgan for much valuable assistance in the preparation of this article. 1 National Library of Wales (hereafter referred to as NLW), D. R. Daniel Papers 302, Ellis to Daniel, 17 February 1886. 2 See John Davies, 'Wales and Ireland', Planet, 95 (October-November 1992), 7-16, for a stimulating analysis.