PARSON-STARVING IN WALES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2456, 7 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

PARSON-STARVING IN WALES.

— ♦ A sadder story has seldom been told than that which is narrated by the Dean of St. Asaph in a letter to tho Times. It concerns the sufferings of a Welsh clergyman who hm felt the full force of the tide of persecution directed <ig:iinst his order by the agitators acniust the Church in the Principality. The Rev. T. Major Rons was appointed early in ISSS to the vicarage of Cwm, in the Vale of Clywd. Ho came to his new charge with the best of credentials, and not a word has beeu said agaiust his personal goodness even by his worst enemies. He had no trouble with his parishioners until the autumu of 1886, when, under the influence of the new agitation, they wero moved to demand a reduction in their tithes of lo per cent. As the vicar was a poor man, and had been obliged to borrow £150 to cover tho expenses of his removnl, ho demurred, but eventually hid to givo wiiy. Next year 20 percent, reduction was demanded, with tho frank intimation that a larger concession would bo asked every year, until nothinir should be left. The vicur then appealed to the law, but in tho meantime he and hi.i family had undergone terrible suffering from privations. For months not a pound of butcher's meat was consumed in tho house, a son had to bo recalled from Oxford in the middle of bis University course, the one servant was dismissed, and two children died ef the sufferings occasioned by sheer want. It might be thought that these troubles would have softened hearts hardened by mingled greed of gold and relijr'ions rancour, but the persecution to which Mr Rees was subsequently expossd exceeds in brutality almost anything which has been recorded in recent times.

It is to be hoped that the appeal made to benevolent patrons to find this poor parson a new sphero of labour will be answered. His case, however, though, worse in some of its features than most, is but an illustration of the unscrupulous violence which has been directed against the clorjjy of Wales for no other reason than that they belong to a Church which Radicals and Liberationiats wish to destroy. It is surely high time that the doings of the Welsh agitators were disavowed by their English allies, both political and religious.—Globe.