And such was the literature which was to stop reform, and make the poor contented with their bitter lot! But the seed, such as it was, often fell on stony soil. The labourers became discontented, and began more and more to feel that it was not always true that all was for the best, as their masters told them. They were wretchedly clad, and lodged, and fed. Science, sanitary or otherwise, was quite overlooked then. The parson and the squire took no note of them, except when they heard that they went to the Baptist, or Independent, or Methodist chapel, when great was their anger and dire their threats. Again Hannah More took the field “to improve the habits and raise the principles of the common people at a time when their dangers and temptations—social and political—were multiplied beyond the example of any former period. The inferior ranks were learning to read, and they preferred to read the corrupt and inflammatory publications which the French Revolution had called into existence.” Alas! all was in vain. Rachel, weeping for her children who had been torn from her to die in foreign lands, fighting to keep up the Holy Alliance and the right divine of kings to govern wrong, or had toiled and moiled in winter’s cold and summer’s heat, merely to end their days in the parish workhouse, refused to be comforted. Good people grew alarmed, and goody tracts were circulated more than ever. The edifying history of the “Shepherd of Salisbury Plain” was to be seen in many a cottage in our village. The shepherd earned a shilling a day; he lived in a wretched cottage which had a hole in the thatch which made his poor wife a martyr to rheumatism in consequence of the rain coming through. He had eight children to keep, chiefly on potatoes and salt, but he was happy because he was pious and contented. A gentleman says to him, “How do you support yourself under the pressure of actual want? Is not hunger a great weakener of your faith?” “Sir,” replied the shepherd, “I live upon the promises.” Yes, that was the kind of teaching in our village and all over England, and the villagers got tired of it, and took to firing stacks and barns, and actually in towns were heard to cry “More pay and less parsons.” What was the world coming to? said dear old ladies. It was well Hannah More had died and thus been saved from the evil to come. The Evangelicals were at their wits’ end. They wanted people to think of the life to come, while the people preferred to think of the life that was—of this world rather than the next.