lly assist the low.

It appears that the villagers were entirely convinced by
this pious reasoning; for they assembled one Saturday night
and burned an effigy of Tom Paine! This proceeding led to a
tragic consequence, for one of the "common people," known as
Robert, "was overtaken by liquor," and was unable to appear
at Sunday School next day. This fall from grace occasioned
intense remorse in Robert. "It preyed dreadfully upon his
mind for many months," records Martha More, "and despair
seemed at length to take possession of him." Hannah had some
conversation with him, and read him some suitable passages
from "The Rise and Progress". "At length the Almighty was
pleased to shine into his heart and give him comfort."

Nor should you imagine that this saintly stupidity was in
any way unique in the Anglican establishment. We read in the
letters of Shelley how his father tormented him with
Archdeacon Paley's "Evidences" as a cure for atheism. This
eminent churchman wrote a book, which he himself ranked
first among his writings, called "Reasons for Contentment,
addressed to the Labouring Classes of the British Public."
In this book he not merely proved that religion "smooths all
inequalities, because it unfolds a prospect which makes all
earthly distinctions nothing"; he went so far as to prove
that, quite apart from religion, the British exploiters were
less fortunate than those to whom they paid a shilling a
day.

Some of the conditions which poverty (if the condition of
the labouring part of mankind must be so called) imposes,
are not hardships, but pleasures. Frugality itself is a
pleasure. It is an exercise of attention and contrivance,
which, whenever it is successful, produces satisfaction....
This is lost among abundance.

And there was William Wilberforce, as sincere a philanthropist as
Anglicanism ever produced, an ardent supporter of Bible societies and
foreign missions, a champion of the anti-slavery movement, and also of
the ruthless "Combination Laws," which denied to British wage-slaves
all chance of bettering their lot. Wilberforce published a "Practical
View of the System of Christianity", in which he told unblushingly
what the Anglican establishment is for. In a chapter which he
described as "the basis of all politics," he explained that the
purpos