By studying diligently, the English language became as familiar to him as the Welsh language.  He bound himself to Welsh politicians and engaged himself in public affairs, and soon he was as an idol to a multitude of people, who were sensible only to his well-sung words, and who did not know that his utterances veiled his own avarice and that of his masters.  All that he did was for profit, and yet he could not win enough.

Men and women, soothed into false ease and quickened into counterfeit wrath, commended him, crying:  “Thank God for Ben Lloyd.”  Such praise puffed him up, and howsoever mighty he was in the view of fools, he was mightier in his own view.

“At the next election I’ll be in Parliament,” he boasted in his vanity.  “The basis of my solidity—­strength—­is as immovable—­is as impregnable as Birds’ Rock in Morfa.”

Though the grandson of Simon Idiot and Dull Anna prophesied great things for himself, it was evil that came to him.

He trembled from head to foot to ravish every comely woman on whom his ogling eyes dwelt.  His greed made him faithless to those whom he professed to serve:  in his eagerness to lift himself he planned, plotted, and trafficked with the foes of his officers.  Hearing that an account of his misdeeds was spoken abroad, he called the high London Welshmen into a room, and he said to them: 

“These cruel slanderers have all but broken my spirit.  They are the wicked inventions of fiends incarnate.  It is not my fall that is required—­if that were so I would gladly make the sacrifise—­the zupreme sacrifise, if wanted—­but it is the fall of the Party that these men are after.  He who repeats one foul thing is doing his level best to destroy the fabric of this magnificent organisation that has been reared by your brains.  It has no walls of stone and mortar, yet it is a sity builded by men.  We must have no more bickerings.  We have work to do.  The seeds are springing forth, and a goodly harvest is promised:  let us sharpen our blades and clear our barn floors.  Cymru fydd—­Wales for the Welsh—­is here.  At home and at Westminster our kith and kin are occupying prominent positions.  Disestablishment is at hand.  We have closed public-houses and erected chapels, each chapel being a factor in the education of the masses in ideas of righteous government.  You, my friends, have secured much of the land, around which you have made walls, and in which you have set water fountains, and have planted rare plants and flowers.  And you have put up your warning signs on it—­’Trespassers will be prosecuted.’

“There is coming the Registration of Workers Act, by which every worker will be held to his locality, to his own enormous advantage.  And it will end strikes, and trades unionism will deservedly crumble.  In future these men will be able to settle down, and with God’s blessing bring children into the world, and their condition will be a delight unto themselves and a profit to the community.