It is a country with a thoughtful and intelligent
peasantry, and it is a country without a middle class. There is a
very small upper class--the old Welsh land-owning families who once,
before they turned their backs on Welsh literature, led the country.
They have never been hated or despised, they are simply ignored.
Their tendency now is to come into touch with the people, and they
are always welcomed. But a middle class, in the English sense, does
not exist. The wealthier industrial class is bound by the closest
ties of sympathy to the farmer and labourer. The farmer's holding is
generally small--from 50 to 250 acres--and he always treats his
servants and labourers as equals.
The three great levelling causes--religion, industry, {5} and
education--have been at work in Wales in recent years. Education
helps and is helped by equality. In town and country alike all Welsh
children attend the same schools--elementary and secondary; and they
proceed, those that do proceed, to the same University, and a
university is essentially a levelling institution. The dialects, as
well as the literary language, are recognised; and no dialect has a
stigma. In this respect Wales is more like Scotland than England.
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