WILLIAM PRITCHARD-MORGEN

Temuka Leader, Issue 1819, 22 November 1888, Page 4

WILLIAM PRITCHARD-MORGEN

Writing from Mcthyr an account of liia interview on September 11th with Mr William Pritchard-Morgan, a representative of the Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, says that outwardly the Castle Hotel at Methyr resembles any ordinary English county hostelry. Inside one is struck by the long, rambling passage and the many steps which, in dark corners, are traps to the feet of the unwary. Ghosts might lurk in the shadow, scaring belated commercials as they stumble upstairs to bed, for bloody history has been written here. Fifty-two years ago this inn was the headquarters of a Highland regiment marched from Brecon to put down with an arm of authority the protests of the then starving thousands of South Wales. The people called for bread: the reply o2 “ authority ” was lead and steel. That passage by the bar, where smiling mademoiselle concocts “ spotreachers,” and Mrs Sarvis and the cook hold counsel as to the commercial dinner, famed “ on the road ” throughout. Great Britain, was then piled up with dead bodies; and from the upstairs sitting-room, where Mr William Pritchard-Morgan and his secretary are at work, the kilted soldiers fired down on the hungry and angry crowd. In those days it was a misdemeanour to be poor, a felony to express discontent. The representative, as he shakes hands with the “ Welsh Gold King,” thinks that they have not altered things much in this respect —at least so far as Ireland is concerned.

THE EETDENED ATTSTEALIAN . who woos the electors of Merthyr is every inch a Celt. He is full of restless energy of his race. Short, muscular, sunburnt, with hands browned and hardened by toil in early youth, and hair already streaked with grey, the flashing black eyes are the great feature of the man. The soul of the orator looks through them—for, although Mr Pritchard-Morgan has, amongst other things, been a journalist, it is evident that the tongue is his weapon. He walks up and down the room rapidly, dictating rounded periods, which are taken down in shorthand by his private secretary, a young gentleman who is cousin of a prominent Australian lawyer and legislator. An Australian journalist is at another table writing out his “ copy ” lor the Antipodes, -where Mr. Pritchard-Morgan/s 1 candidature is an event of much interest; for, as our reporter opens his notebook, there comes a cablegram of congratulation from miners at Charters Towers, which the recipient seems to value a great deal more than another cablegram announcing that rich gold has been struck at a Queensland mine of which, he is the principal shareholder. The reporter soon sees that Pritchard-Morgan is a different type of returned Australian to those shoddy Conservatives who seek notoriety by inhabiting dead men’s houses, and would sell their souls as well as their votes to date their ' letters from the Carlton Club.