Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/139

 thousands of chapels all over Wales have grown up local communities on a religious basis. These religious societies were at first tiny, but they were earnest and self-reliant, and there reigned in them the sense of equality. Through them the common people of Wales learnt the art and practice of self-government. Around them have grown all the characteristic organisations of Welsh popular culture. I need not point out how the innumerable village choirs and classes, the reading circles and literary meetings and societies, the cymanfaoedd and eisteddfodau have given to Wales, especially to rural Wales, different modes of thought, different ideals,