In the controversy in question Mr. Welldon, who ended by admitting that he had read only three of Zola's books, received the support of clerics of various denominations. One of them, Canon MacColl, of Ripon, who would seem to have been then very fond of writing to the newspapers on all sorts of subjects, raised the old argument that even if Zola might have had some justification for publishing, for instance, "La Terre" in France, there could have been none for its issue in English and in England by Henry Vizetelly. No doubt the canon was right. As was set forth in a previous chapter the rural districts of England were and are terrestrial paradises, where immorality and beastliness were and are absolutely unknown. The observers who assert the contrary must be either liars or deluded fools. The clergy who are to be found in every village vouch for the high moral tone of their parishioners, and it follows that one must not believe those who chance to sit on juries at provincial assizes to try the various horrible cases, frequently from the aforesaid rural districts, which are never reported by a decorous press. Everything is for the best, then, in rural England, and the most perfect men in the whole world are the truth-speaking bishops who begin life in modest circumstances and end by leaving huge fortunes to their families, the many-sided canons fond of joining in every controversy, and the dogmatic clerical schoolmasters who take as their guide the saying attributed, perhaps erroneously,[30] to Richelieu: "Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find in them enough to have him hanged."