Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/132

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118
EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT.

ticular school of Christians! for never were they more sorely needed than at present.

"Keep thou the childlike heart
 That shall His kingdom be;
 The soul pure-eyed that wisdom-led
 E'en now His blessed face shall see."

Henry Richard, M.P., was born at the little town of Tregaron, Cardiganshire, in 1812. The locality is peculiarly Welsh in all its aspects; and the "member for Wales" is, as is befitting, of pure Welsh descent, his mother's maiden name having been Williams. His father and grandfather were both ministers of the Calvinistic Methodist persuasion, the latter for the long space of sixty years. In one of his addresses to his constituents at Merthyr, Mr. Richard told them, with manifest pride, "that he had come of a good stock, who had served Wales well in days gone by." And so it was. His father, the Rev. Ebenezer Richard of Tregaron, was no ordinary man. Welshmen, even more than Scotsmen, appear to benefit by the kind of instruction which is conveyed in "sermons;" and Richard, senior, was a powerful preacher, the memory of whose pulpit oratory is still cherished in South Wales. Nor was he prominent only in spiritual things. For many years he was general secretary to his denomination: and, along with the Rev. Thomas Charles of Bala, he conferred on the principality what was at the time an inestimable boon; viz., a thoroughly comprehensive system of Sunday-school education, which had regard to the wants of adults as well as of juveniles.

His home at Tregaron was the rallying-point of much of the religious and philanthropic activity of