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apartments at the London Coffee House, one side of which was alas-within the rules of the Fleet Prison. His wife, the rich Dame Rebecca Elenora Lewes, had died in 1799, but it is to be hoped that his friends rallied round him and did what they could to ensure his comfort. We get one last glimpse of him from an old- fashioned writer, who, discoursing of this same Coffee House and its well-born lodgers, remarks that Sir Watkin Lewes took his brandy and water there, and he adds He drank three glasses 8 Probably the brilliant Col. Forrester of the Guards, author of The Polite Philosopher.' Self- Respect. By J. Alun Pugh. FEW of us care to contemplate an unpleasant fact that concerns us as individuals. Per- haps most of us are already hard at work explaining away the unpleasantness before we have fully grasped the fact. Few likewise care to contemplate an unpleasant fact that con- cerns us as members of a nation and instinctively we avoid discussing it-all of us, that is, except a few queer fish, who appear to be only happy in a mud-bath of unpleasantness about their own people. We, as Welshmen, do not appear to be facing one unpleasant fact about ourselves, namely :­-Whereas abroad we are as a people practically unknown, in these islands, where we are known, we are almost universally disliked. Exceptions of course there are, but almost invari- ably those exceptions consist of people who have been intimately connected with us by close friend- ship, marriage or long residence in Welsh dis- tricts. Perhaps the writer has been the victim of the saddest series of coincidences that could beset a man, but, apart from those exceptions, the verdict of every English, Scotch and Irish being, male and female, that he has heard, has been simple, direct and unhesitating, the only variation being in the strength of the verb used. It has been either, I don't like the Welsh or I can't stand the Welsh or I detest the Welsh. Perhaps some outraged reader will declare in his wrath how entirely contradictory his own experi- ence has been, how he has found that, with a few exceptions, Scotch, Irish and English have, on being asked their opinion, invariably responded either respect the Welsh or I admire the Welsh or I love the Welsh," or even I've never bothered my head about it one way or the other." Anyone who has had such a delightful experience need read no further for him there will be no point in this article. He can be stimu- lated, however, by the thought that, if we are not disliked, then by all the canons of history we oueht to be. W)e are a conquered people. To which, of course, the obvious answer is, What if we are? with Forrester6 and his friend the other night. He complains of ill-usage from the City of London and says his Worcester Election cost him £ 30,000." Notwithstanding his troubles, this hardy Welsh gentleman attained to the age of eighty-four years- He died on the 13th of July, 1821, and it would be interesting to know-what the writer of this article has failed to ascertain-whether any sepulchral slab in the City of London records his name and the list of his numerous public activities. It's centuries ago since we were conquered and nobody bothers about it now. Besides, the English were conquered in 1066." That answer would be superficially true and fundamentally false. It is true that nobody bothers about it; it is true that we are free to play our part in the drama of the great British Empire it is true that Welshmen hold positions of trust from Pen- maenmawr to Penang. It is equally true that the English were conquered years and years ago and that everybody, except the Channel Islanders, has ceased to bother about that, too. There is a distinction between the two cases all the same. He would be a bold man who would trace in the character of the modern Englishman the effects of the Norman Conquest, but the modern Welsh- man still exhibits in the most startling fashion the characteristics of a conquered people. Now one of the most curious things about the character- istics of a conquered people is that they always provoke feelings of dislike and contempt in the conquerors. Not that the Englishman walks with a jauntier step in Wales as he recalls its final annexation by that obese megalomaniac, Henry VIII. he is mercifully oblivious of the fact that his country sentenced ours to a prolonged experi- ence of moral, intellectual and spiritual Dark Ages, from which it is still only slowly emerging. The average Englishman's historical knowledge of Wales consists of a belief that Edward I. rather scored off a lot of wild and woolly savages with a joke about a baby and that there was some sort of a religious revival there a few years ago. The statement that the conquering Englishman des- pises the conquered Welshman merely means that the English, being by history and -nature a con- quering race (just as the Irish are similarly an unconquerable one), instinctively feels that a race, that is neither the one nor the other, must some- how be inferior. It is probably therefore true that, until those characteistics are eliminated, the Welsh will remain, as far as these islands are concerned, disliked, distrusted and despised. These are the days of Y Blaid Genedlaethol and other interesting political manifestations, but with questions of politics this article is not concerned. It is solely concerned with our own hearts and hearths and the text is merely the creation of self-