Welsh Journals

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A tory in Wales H W J EDWARDS A TORY IN WALES might not be regarded as altogether out of place provided he were to live in, say, Cyncoed or within striking range of Dering Lines, Brecon. You might be persuaded that a Tory could manage well enough on the Marches around or in Welshpool or among the rentiers of the north east littoral. But a self-confessed Tory who can see Judges Hall, Trealaw, from the comer of his street, is surely an ec- centric, a loon or a publicity-seeker. Upon the score of publicity seeking I must confess to a certain weak- ness. I am not specially eager to publicise myself; but I have always been eager to publicise toryism. I recall in this connection some sage words of that contemporary English tory, Mr Christopher Hollis, 'Tories are always ridiculous, Toryism never is'. I also recall some words of that great Welsh tory, Wade-Evans, in an old issue of Wales. 'Henry Edwards of Bangor was any day as good a Welshman as Henry Richards of Merthyr.' And perhaps I might manage to found this tory sermon upon those two texts. Despite the easily discovered fact that in the past there have been a succession of intelligent tories, even intellectual tories, such as Henry St John, Dr Johnson, Cobbett (usually but badly called a Radical), Vaughan and Herbert, Fielding and Smollett-who hated the Act of Union between England and Scotland-Coleridge and Southey and de Quincy, it will be observed that very few were Welsh. If I name two in this list, only one appears to have been Welsh speaking and the other is in fact generally treated as an Englishman. This does not, of course, tell as much as some might suppose against the predominance of toryism in Wales until much more recent times than the radical myth-makers would have us suppose. Indeed, though it is customary to regard toryism as a political reflex of the alien Church of the Landlords, there were leading members of chapel sects such as Christmas Evans who were what we would today call die-hards. But we might discuss all this sort of thing for long without coming anywhere near the hub of the