LETTERS OF REGRET.
Mr Lewis Williams - I have received a number of communications from gentlemen who regret that they cannot be with us to-day; amongst others from the Lord-Lieutenant of this county, stating that his health forbids his undertaking any public duty at the present time.
I have also a letter from Mr Henry Richard—(applause)—which appears in to-day's paper; and I have similar letters from Mr Dillwyn, Mr Yeo, and others, who regret their inability to be with us, but I have one or two letters which I should like to read, one being from the worthy member of our own borough. (Applause.)
I have just received a letter from Mr William Abraham, M.P., regretting that owing to urgent business coming before the miners' executive this afternoon, the chairman and secretary had failed to see their way clear to allow him to leave.
There is one letter I should like to read which is from the Vicar of the parish, and is as follows :—
St. John's Vicarage, Cardiff, October 16, 1886.
Dear Mr Williams, — I desire to acknowledge your kindness in sending me an invitation to attend the unveiling of the Batchelor statue this afternoon. I interpret your act as an expression of a conviction on the part of yourself and others that I should regard with sympathy the endeavour to do signal honour to the memory of a worthy man. If this be so, you have judged right ; and because I cannot well be present with you at the ceremonial, I ask you to allow me to add a few words to this acknowledgment.
I cannot do otherwise to-day than recall the scene when, some three years ago, we followed him to his earthly rest. I then hoped, and expressed the hope, that the past and the future, friend and foe, would, over that open grave, blend their enmities and strifes with the charity that never faileth, and bury them, with his coffin, in its depth. That hope has been, to my grief, I trust also to the grief of others, sadly disappointed. I can understand antagonisms between public men. They are inevitable. But for this very reason, it seems to me a lamentable thing, especially in a community like ours, that when the battle has been fought, and, most of all, when the strife has been hushed by the solemn silence of death, that the combatants should refuse to bury the hatchet and agree to an honourable truce.
Mr Batchelor and I were, as you know, upon some, and those important, questions arrayed against one another. I wish to say that I ever found him a manly and an honourable foe, and because I found him such, I regarded him, not as an enemy, but as a friend. I wish further to say that, in my judgment, his friends may well be excused if they express in a practical way their opinion that some of the best virtues both of the citizen and the man, were pre-eminently conspicuous in the life and character of the late Mr Batchelor. That his life was marked by what the world calls failure goes for nothing.
Nay, instead of being a stigma it may be his most distinguished merit. This, at any rate, cannot be denied—that if he had gotten to himself the ill-will of many, he had secured the respect and affection of many more. And what explanation, can be given of this save that he was a man worthy to receive it? I know but little of the old controversies in which be was engaged. My knowledge is limited to the last seven or eight years of his life. That knowledge is sufficient to enable me to bear this testimony. He was often subjected to taunt and jeer. I never heard him say a single mean or unkind word of any of his foes on the contrary, I have heard him again and again speak most forbearingly and kindly of them.
He was poor; and even in his days of declining strength his poverty was by some thrown in his teeth. To my thinking he bore his poverty nobly and like a man, without a word of reproach against any, without a feeling of envy towards those more successful than himself. I need say no more, but I would fain express the hope that the better feelings which we all desire to see prevailing among us, and which seemed to be in the ascendant when the question of a site for the statue was before the corporation, may again hold sway, and allow his memory to rest in peace. — Very faithfully yours, C. J. Thompson.
