Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/30

 that has silently embodied itself in the Factory Acts, the Truck Acts, Employers' Liability Acts, Public Health Acts, Artisans' Dwellings Acts, Education Acts—in all that mass of beneficent legislation forcing the individual into the service and under the protection of the State." "Robert Owen preached the ancient doctrine of human brotherhood—the hope, the faith, the living fact of human fellowship." This strong, strenuous, fertile-brained Welshman can take his place proudly with Plato and Sir Thomas More among great Initiators. Ebenezer Elliott said that the appropriate epitaph for Robert Owen's tomb would be:— "In the land of castes Owen was a Man."

There is a fitting epitaph, but Wales has not supplied the national tombstone on which it can be engraved. Robert Owen was the bearer of Neges Cymru to the modem world, and it is the duty of Wales to place a fitting memorial of this fact in the town where he was born and where he died.