Welsh Journals

HUNGARIAN SUFFERINGS AN ABERYSTWYTH PUBLIC MEETING IN 1850 The affairs of Hungary in 1850 would at first glance seem of little concern to the readers of this journal, but the townspeople of Aberyst- wyth crowded into a meeting at the Town Hall in January of that year to express their sympathy with that war-torn country and its refugees. They did so in the approved manner of the day by adopting various resolutions and embodying them in a memorial to the Foreign Secre- tary. A more lively expression of their feeling was registered by publicly burning copies of the Times newspaper as a gesture of their disapproval of the Tory Press. This meeting throws light on the development of the political life of Aberystwyth at a point between the crumbling of the old order in the borough and the county and the victory of the new. Several important studies of the past political life of the county of Cardigan have been published in Ceredigion in recent years, tracing the change from the old order in the 18th century when parliamentary elections were contests between the county gentry,1 to the ascendancy of the liberals, with a completely different ruling elite.2 The instru- ments of change were the great parliamentary Reform Bills of the 19th century, but the underlying causes which made those legislative measures necessary and possible were profound social and economic changes together with the new ideas and opinions which arose out of those changes and in turn worked upon them. Professor Ieuan Gwynedd Jones in his article dealing with the elections of 1865 and '68,8 drew a distinction between the closed society of the rural areas and the relatively open society of the towns. The development of Aberystwyth therefore was of key importance to the change in the county. The volume published in celebration of the seventh centenary of the foundation of the borough4 has now given further information on the growth of the town in the 19th century as it developed as a watering-place as well as expanded commercially to meet the growing needs of the increasing population of the surrounding area. In the period studied by Dr. P. D. G. Thomas the opinions of the ordinary townsman were irrelevant, the affairs of the town being in the hands of the Court Leet, a self-perpetuating oligarchy working in agreement with the county family at Gogerddan. The only body in which the ratepayers at large could voice their opinion at all was the parish vestry, and Professor Jones has shown6 how their action in doing so in 1832-3-by opposing the levy of a Church rate to build a