THE LABOURERS IN THE COUNTIES.
LTO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—" Audi alteram partem ;" hence I need not make any appeal to you to allow me the opportunity of referring to Mr. Robert Bubb's letter in your issue of December 19th.
To the first twenty lines or so of his letter I can say ditto, except in one very important matter,—viz., that I live among a very Radical constituency in Radical Wales.
Mr. Bubb wishes the whole country to believe that wherever the Conservative candidates obtained success in the rural districts that that success was mainly due to "Tory landlord coercion," the labourer going to the poll " with chains on his hands," &G. Now, Sir, I am not in a position to deny these statements as far as Kent is concerned, but I wish your readers not to accept this version of Mr. Bubb's as a sample of what took place all over the Kingdom. Let me detail, as fairly as I can, what occurred in the Western or Gower division of Glamorgan. In some portions of the district a large number of voters are those employed in the various tin-plate, iron, and other works. As I had every means of knowing, and availed myself of the opportunity on the day of the poll, I observed some of the most prominent masters of these men. (I regret to say in this immediate neighbourhood there is no such thing as a Conservative master.) They spent nearly the whole day at and about the polling-booths. Is Mr. Bubb prepared to say there was no coercion in this ? Further, many a Conservative working-man told me that not only dare he not wear Conservative colours, but that he was afraid even to attend a Conservative committee-room.
Another paragraph I cannot pass without noticing,—" Most
of the parsons were in a panic." I should have wished Mr. Babb to be present in this district to watch the Dissenting ministers, who used their pulpits—aye, and permitted their Radical candidates to do so too—to harangue large political audiences therefrom. Panic ! panic, forsooth, 'twere too mild a phrase. "Temporary dementia" would be nearer the mark ; for, with the high temperature of the "election fever," the cerebral circulation became so exaggerated that the ordinary nerve-cells were unable to cope with so much extra demand ; hence too often disordered and vituperative thoughts.—I am, Sir, &a., Swansea Valley, December 22nd. E. RICE MORGAN.
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