[2] It has been said[3] that "of all the memorable phrases coined in the twentieth century none has greater resonance for the Welsh speaker than Tynged yr Iaith .
Lewis anticipated that the figures when published would "shock and disappoint",[10] and that Welsh would "end as a living language, should the present trend continue, about the beginning of the twenty-first century".
[11] The lecture proceeded with a historical analysis of the status of the Welsh language since the Act of Union of 1535 mandated the use of English for the purposes of law and administration in Wales.
He quotes specifically Commissioner R. W. Lingen's opinion that Welsh monoglots migrating from the countryside to the coalfields were prevented by their language from making any social advance.
[14] Lewis said that the anger and wrath provoked by the Blue Books resulted in no action, and that "the whole of Wales, and Welsh Nonconformity in particular, adopted all the policy and main recommendations of the baleful report".
[17] He discusses the ineffectual opposition to the drowning of the culturally significant Tryweryn valley, saying that government had "taken the measure of the feebleness of Welsh Wales" and "need not concern itself about it any more".
[2][usurped] Lewis took the Beasley case as a model for future action, but significantly added "this cannot be done reasonably except in those districts where Welsh-speakers are a substantial proportion of the population".
But he saw the across-the-board implementation of language policies as causing the increasingly English-speaking industrial working-class (contemptuously dismissed by Lewis) to feel disenfranchised and excluded.