If you say that might be a casual jest, hear what Thackeray reports of that period, the eighteenth century, which he knew with peculiar intimacy: I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5000 pounds. (She betted him the 5000 pounds that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration? As I peep into George II's St. James, I see crowds of cassocks pushing up the back-stairs of the ladies of the court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that godless old king yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing. Discoursing about what?--About righteousness and judgment? Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the king is chattering in German and almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the clergyman actually burst out crying in his pulpit, because the defender of the faith and the dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him! Land and Livings And how is it in the twentieth century? Have conditions been much improved? There are great Englishmen who do not think so. I quote Robert Buchanan, a poet who spoke for the people, and who therefore has still to be recognized by English critics. He writes of the "New Rome", by which he means present-day England: The gods are dead, but in their name Humanity is sold to shame, While (then as now!) the tinsel'd priest Sitteth with robbers at the feast, Blesses the laden, blood-stained board, Weaves garlands round the butcher's sword, And poureth freely (now as then) The sacramental blood of Men! You see, the land system of England remains--the changes having been for the worse. William the Conqueror wanted to keep the Saxon peasantry contented, so he left them their "commons"; but in the eighteenth century these were nearly all filched away. We saw the same thing done within the last generation in Mexico, and from the same motive--because developing capitalism needs cheap labor, whereas people who have access to the land will not slave in mills and mines. In England, from the time of Queen Anne to that of William and Mary, the parliaments of the landlords passed some four thousand separate acts, whereby more than seven million acres of the common land were stolen from the people. It has been calculated that these acres might have supported a million families; and ever since then England has had to feed a million paupers all the time. As an old song puts the matter: Why prosecute the man or woman Who steals a goose from off the common, And let the greater felon loose Who steals the common from the goose?