The Prime Minister. Harold Spender
rugged and relentless claims of Welsh Nationalism.
Thus David Lloyd George was for the moment delayed in his progress to Parliament. Perhaps this was a fortunate accident, because it gave him a breathing time in which to master the needs of his own people and to train himself more thoroughly for the public stage.
CHAPTER V
MARRIAGE
“A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel!
O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!”
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Act I, Sc. iv.
Cut off from Parliament for the moment (1886) David Lloyd George spent no time in vain regrets. He resumed that life of combined public and private activity which was rapidly becoming his second nature. His diaries during the following years show that he was now absorbed in his growing “practice.” But that did not prevent him from continuing his eager and active interest in public affairs. Then, as ever after, the two interests developed together.
From this time forward he steadily directed his energies to work on behalf of his own beloved little nation. Perhaps never did he quite lose sight of that high ambition to command “listening senates” which had come to him when he first sat in the Gallery at Westminster and looked down on the combats of the great parliamentary gladiators. But for the moment there was urgent work to do nearer to hand; and David Lloyd George knew the wisdom of Carlyle’s great law of conduct—“Do the Duty that lies nearest thee.”[21]
So he plunged into the great work for Wales which was already on foot at his own doors.
In 1886 he joined eagerly in the great Anti-Tithe campaign which was being carried on throughout North Wales by those remarkable men, Mr. Thomas Gee and Mr. John Parry. David Lloyd George became the Secretary of that League in South Carnarvonshire, and he addressed meetings throughout the district. He accompanied Mr. Gee and Mr. Parry on many of their most daring raids. He drove long distances in a small governess cart and addressed meetings in little villages away in remote districts.
It was characteristic of David that he actually provoked and promoted hostility. He would hold his meetings by preference in the neighbourhood of the Parish Church or of the National School. He would regard it as his greatest triumph if he could draw the parson or the curate to come out and meet him in open warfare. One of the visions of him at this period handed down is that of a day in June 1887, when he was seen coatless and in his shirt-sleeves arguing against the curate in the open green at the village fair of Sarn Melltcyrn. He did not shrink from passive sympathy with the mild rioting which began to take place at the tithe sales resulting from the distraints that followed. His whole heart went out in sympathy to Welsh farmers compelled by law to contribute from their pocket to what they regarded as an alien Church.
The “Tithe War” gave David Lloyd George that best of training for a young public speaker—the training of public controversy in the open air. It made him quick and resourceful. Here was the best possible whetstone for his natural gift of courage. These speeches made him already a rising public champion.
This was a new portent for the Welsh farmer—a lawyer who was not in league with the rich. It flashed as a shining light on the eyes of a people who had always been used to regard the law as the paid servant of power and property. It brought more of those farmers flocking to his office: and once more it brought him forward as the legal friend of the poor and the oppressed—“the poor man’s lawyer” of Carnarvonshire.
The people gradually learned that here was a man skilled in the law who was ready on their behalf to face the tyrants of the Bench and to challenge their power.
In nothing had this power of the Bench been more ruthlessly exercised than in the matter of fishing. By a curious distortion of public rights, the rivers of this country have been mainly turned into private property. While fishing on the open sea is as free as the air, unlicensed fishing in fresh water in England outside navigable waters is often accounted a crime.[22]
This law of private property in fresh water fishing has fallen with peculiar harshness upon a people like the Welsh, who inherit a great passion for this particular sport. The pressure of the law has been made worse by the fact that the prohibition is perpetually being extended to waters where a customary right of fishing has existed.
Here has been a cause of perpetual conflict between the law and the public—a conflict in which the bias of the law has been mainly against the public.
Such a case occurred in North Wales in May 1889, when four quarrymen were prosecuted for fishing in a small mountain quarry lake.[23] The aim of the prosecution was to bring the lake within the definition of the word “river” in the Act of Parliament. It soon became quite clear from the proceedings that the bias of the Court was against the quarrymen. Mr. Lloyd George rapidly determined to bring this out in the most vivid manner possible. So when the chairman—a great local potentate and sportsman—gruffly interrupted his legal argument by saying that the legal point must be tried in a higher Court, Mr. Lloyd George swiftly replied:
“Yes, sir, and in a perfectly just and unbiassed Court too.”
The result of this remark was precisely what Mr. Lloyd George expected. The chairman rather unwisely asked Mr. Lloyd George to what magistrate he was referring. To this the young advocate immediately replied:
“I refer to you in particular, sir.”
Whereupon the chairman immediately rose with great pomp and dignity and left the court.
The other magistrates now felt that it laid with them to take some action. A second magistrate, allied to sport, protested. A third, noddingly acquainted, declined to proceed with the case: whereupon Mr. Lloyd George calmly remarked, “I am glad to hear it.” A fourth rose and left the court. One of the few left asked Mr. Lloyd George for an apology, whereupon he replied:
“I shall not withdraw anything, because every word I have spoken is true.”
The result was that all the magistrates left the court, and Mr. Lloyd George’s purpose was fully achieved.
Here was an incident by no means the result of mere thoughtless impertinence on the part of a young lawyer. Mr. Lloyd George has always regarded this as one of the proudest incidents of his life. He is still of opinion that it came at a critical moment to shake the petty tyranny of the local Bench, and he still quotes it as a good example of one of his favourite methods of public action.
A short time afterwards David Lloyd George was the chief actor in another famous case which showed the people of Wales that the spirit of British justice, if boldly challenged, was capable of maintaining their cause. This was a case arising from that incredible ecclesiastical inhumanity which consisted in attempting to visit ignominy upon a man of another faith even after he had passed through the gates of death. Nothing did more to shatter the power of the Established Church of Wales than the refusal of the parsons to bury the dead of other sects within the walls of the old parish burial-grounds. Those parish “God’s acres” had been in the possession of the people before the Reformation, and it was only by a chance turn of English history that they passed away from them.
The growth of the great Free Churches resulting from the immense religious revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries made this an acute matter. The