Cylchgronau Cymru

it was an organ of the Country Party. The growing influence of H. A. Bruce can be seen as it concerned itself more with social and moral improvement, impressing on the working classes the advantages of Christian resignation, self-improvement, and the use of savings banks; the evils of trade unionism and Sunday drinking; and, on the governing classes, their obligation to attend to the educational and religious needs of the lower orders, and to improve the drains. The reduction of the newspaper stamp duty in 1836 was another mild stimulus to newspaper promotion, but did not, as the Guardian feared, release 'a flood of Radical filth'. The Silurian1 appeared within a few days of the reduction, but others followed more slowly. The Silurian was printed at Brecon, and published at Brecon and Merthyr simultaneously. It cost 4d. It may be described as a Liberal-Reformist paper; it wrote very favourably of J. J. Guest of Dowlais, and Major Gwynne-Holford of Buckland, who were thought by the Merthyr Guardian to have been two of its principal proprietors. In 1837-38, the Guardian published a special Brecon edition to answer it. Brecon was at first chosen as a suitable place to conduct the paper because Brecon lay on the Abergavenny- Llandovery-Carmarthen mail route and so could get the news early, and because the printed papers could be sent from there, albeit with difficulty, across the Beacons into the mining valleys. It was not a particularly good centre, however, and, when the railway and the telegraph lines were built along the coastal route, it lost what little advantage it had had. In 1851, John Williams, the son of William Williams, moved the paper to Cardiff, and was able to increase its circulation there from about 350 weekly to 550. Late in 1855, it was merged with the Monmouthshire Merlin, continued for a time as its Cardiff edition, and was then omitted from the Merlin's title. In 1837, two short-lived papers were produced at Merthyr, both printed by Josiah Thomas Jones,2 a Congregationalist minister. The South Wales Reporter was planned with the small capital sum of £ 500, to have been made up of a hundred £ 5 shares. Jones raised less than £ 100 of this, though with promises of more, ordered press and types for a large-sized paper, and, meanwhile, began printing the Reporter on his own small press. Within a few weeks he, and the editor, Charles Fitz Adderley, quarrelled with the group calling themselves the directors of the paper. Adderley was discharged, and 1 Holdings, very incomplete, at N.L.W. and Cardiff Public Library. I AberdareTimes, 1 February 1873 (obit. J. T. Jones). N.L.W. MSS. 3316; 3321-2; 3332-3; 3352-4; 3366-7 (papers, diaries, letters. accounts of J. T. Jones).