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 purpose of religion is to remind the poor: