Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/214

 Llenyddol Dr. Edwards, p. 669; Williams's Eminent Welshmen, pp. 450–1; Y Geninen for 1896.] 

RICHARD, HENRY (1812–1888), politician, born on 3 April 1812, was second son of the Rev. Ebenezer Richard (1781–1837), by his wife Mary, the only daughter of William Williams of Tregaron. The father, a Calvinistic methodist minister, was well known as an eloquent preacher and an organiser of his denomination in South Wales. His two sons, Edward, a London doctor, and Henry, jointly wrote his biography in Welsh (‘Bywyd y Parch. Eb. Richard, gan ei Feibion,’ London, 1839, 8vo, with a portrait).

Henry was educated at Llangeitho grammar school, and in 1826 was apprenticed for three years to a draper at Carmarthen; but in September 1830, with a view to the ministry, he entered Highbury College, where he remained four years. He was ordained, 11 Nov. 1835, pastor of Marlborough (congregational) chapel, Old Kent Road, and devoted himself to church work until 19 June 1850, when he relinquished the ministry.

The chief work of Richard's life, whence he was often called ‘the Apostle of Peace,’ was the advocacy of arbitration as a method for settling international disputes. He first publicly enunciated his principles on 5 Feb. 1845 at the Hall of Commerce, Threadneedle Street, in a lecture on ‘Defensive War’ (London, 1846, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1890, 8vo). Early in 1848 he was appointed to succeed John Jefferson as secretary to the Peace Society. In this capacity he attended at Brussels (September 1848) the first of a series of international peace congresses, and, on his return, conducted a vigorous propaganda in England. The next three years proved a period of great progress for the movement. In June 1849 Cobden brought forward the first motion submitted to the House of Commons in favour of arbitration. In August 1849, through Richard's exertions, another congress was opened at Paris under the presidency of Victor Hugo. Richard and Elihu Burritt, the American champion for peace, also organised an influential congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main in August 1850 (see [] Proceedings of the Third General Peace Congress, held in Frankfort, on 22, 23, and 24 Aug. 1850, London, 1851, 8vo). An equally successful gathering followed in London during the Great Exhibition in July 1851. This was succeeded by lesser congresses at Manchester (January 1853) and Edinburgh (October 1853). But the breaking out of the Crimean war, which was denounced by Richard in ‘A History of the Origin of the War with Russia’ (London, 1855), stayed the progress of the movement.

At the end of the war Richard, accompanied by Joseph Sturge and Charles Hindley (then M.P. for Ashton), went to Paris in March 1856 to present to the plenipotentiaries there assembled a memorial urging the insertion of an arbitration clause in the treaty of Paris. The result was that for the first time in European history a declaration in favour of arbitration was inserted in a treaty. As secretary of the Peace Society, Richard had charge of the ‘Herald of Peace,’ its monthly organ. Towards the end of 1855 the ‘Morning Star’ and ‘Evening Star’ were started as daily papers to advocate a pacific policy in addition to general liberal principles, and for several years Richard shared in the editorial management.

Second only to his efforts on behalf of arbitration were the services he rendered to Wales, between which country and England he may be said (adopting his own expression) to have acted as an ‘interpreter.’ In 1843, when the Rebecca riots broke out in South Wales, Richard explained their real significance in a letter to the ‘Daily News,’ and in a paper read before the Congregational Union. In 1844 he visited Wales as a deputation from the Congregational Union, and was instrumental in bringing the nonconformists of England and Wales into closer relation. At his suggestion, an educational conference was convened at Llandovery, where a ‘South Wales Committee on Education’ was formed, and this led to the establishment of a normal school for teachers there and indirectly to the opening of many day schools throughout South Wales. In 1866 Richard contributed to the ‘Morning Star’ a series of ‘Letters on the Social and Political Condition of the Principality of Wales,’ which attracted wide attention, were reproduced in separate form, and were translated into Welsh. A second edition, containing two additional articles dealing with the position of the established church in Wales, was issued in 1884 (London, 8vo).

In 1862 the bicentenary of protestant nonconformity was deemed by the Liberation Society a suitable occasion for spreading its views in Wales by means of a deputation from the society, consisting of Richard, Edward Miall, and Mr. J. Carvell Williams. At a conference at Swansea on 23 and 24 Sept. an agitation was also begun for securing a more democratic representation of Wales in parliament, and in the autumn of 1866 Richard, with his two colleagues, renewed efforts in this direction by means of conferences and local committees. In 1865 Richard had come out as a parliamentary candidate for his native county of Cardigan, but had withdrawn, as