To those who object that morality was invented by God and not by politicians, and that the sanctions of right conduct are derived not from social utility but from divine ordinance, it should be observed that God himself is the most potent instrument yet devised for securing the performance of conduct beneficial to the stronger. This at least is true of the great bulk of the gods who have figured in history. On this point perhaps it would be best to let the stronger speak for themselves. Napoleon may be taken as a suitable representative. “What is it,” he writes, “that makes the poor man think it quite natural that there are fires in my parlour while he is dying of cold? That I have ten coats in my wardrobe while he goes naked? That at each of my meals enough is served to feed his family for a week? It is simply religion which tells him that in another life I shall be only his equal, and that he actually has more chances of being happy there than I. Yes, we must see to it that the floors of the churches are open to all, and that it does not cost the poor man much to have prayers said on his tomb.” Thenceforward, though an avowed free thinker, Napoleon set his face sternly against anti-Christian and anti-clerical legislation. The moral is sufficiently obvious. Men whose lives are miserable and oppressed will either rise in revolt against their misery and servitude, or console themselves with the prospect of generous compensation hereafter. If steps are taken to ensure that their faith is sufficiently lively, they will look to the next world to supply them with the divine equivalents of the champagne and cigars they are missing in this one, an expectation which confers obvious advantages upon those whom it enables to monopolize the champagne and cigars. Tack on the further belief that riches and power in this world are the best guarantees of torment and anguish in the next, and the utility of religion to “the stronger” is sufficiently manifest. The parable of the needle’s eye and the story of Lazarus have been responsible for a political and social quietism among the many, which do credit to the political acumen of the early governing class realists who slipped them into the text of the New Testament; and whenever that quietism has showed signs of giving, way, a religious revival or the endowment of a church has usually been found the most effective method of dealing with the situation. “In 1818 one Englishman out of seven being at that time a pauper, Parliament voted a million of public money for the construction of churches to preach submission to the higher powers. In the debates in the House of Lords, Lord Liverpool took occasion to lay stress on the social importance of guiding by this means the opinions of the masses who were for the first time beginning to receive education.”[2] God, it seems, is cheaper than a living wage, and no less effective as a means of securing social contentment.