It has always struck me, though, that the fetish machinery of the English Establishment is imperfect in one particular. While in actual fact all "lord" bishops, and most preachers therein, determinedly oppose whatsoever would emancipate the people from their bondage, the best of them never daring to strike boldly at the root of the evils that threaten England with extinction, that fill the land with misery, that huddle the bulk of our population into the fever dens of her cities--it has struck me, I say, that their liturgy is incomplete, almost hypocritical. A prayer like this should be inserted among the collects of the day, instead, say, of the collect for peace, which comes so ill from the lips of men whose ambition is usually to train some of their children as licensed men-slayers. Let the lawn-sleeved "lord" bishops look to it, then, and take this hint:-- "Sanctify might, O Lord, against right, and make it stronger and stronger. Bless iniquities in high places, and cause the hypocrisy of princes to be exalted in the eyes of the people. Protect the nobility and gentry in their harlotry, and let holiness be measured by the fineness of the garments. Grind the poor in their poverty, and cause them to pay that they owe not. And O Lord, we beseech Thee, suffer not the oppressed to have justice, lest they rise up against us and refuse to give us the tithes we have filched from the indignant. These things do, O Lord, and our lips shall praise Thee." If you will honestly pray thus, serene "lord" bishops, much-wrangling, gorgeously-embroidered deans, vicars, and incumbents, you will earn the respect of honest men. Whatever you do, I beseech you go not on as you do now, lest the people should one day _act_. They think not a little even now. Fare ye well, then, Cecil Wiseman, sham soldier, horse racer, blasphemer, drunkard, seducer, sot, farewell! The upper world "society" protects you, the Church shields you, nay, the priest must e'en bow when you abduct his daughter, and the very Jews themselves, wholesome scourge of your class though they be, cannot utterly ruin you--here. Go your ways--I leave you to God. What witness, think you, will that diseased body, that bloated face and hang-dog look of yours, bear against you in the judgment? In that day your very victims may pity you. And has not the judgment already come on your mother--cast out, despised, lonely, poor as she is? Alone, she lives in her little jointure house at Kenilworth, white-haired, feeble, full of bitterness of spirit. All the glory of her life has gone. The meanest servant in Warwickshire may look down on her with commiseration. Your sins have torn what heart she had, and she begins to awake to the fact that the law of compensation, the dim foretaste of divine justice, can reach even such as she. To her likewise let us bid adieu. CHAPTER XXI. BRINGS US ALL TO THE JOURNEY'S END.