169. I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going to set my soldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the pamphlet you promised me, containing the Debates about Church-going, in which I find so interesting a text for my concluding letter that I must still let my soldiers stand at ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,) this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.) There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes did not attend places of worship: one was, that "the parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man. This was no doubt wearing away to a great extent" (the base habit of making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning to get education, and to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press from him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it were, to the parson.... It was the case all over England. The clergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr. Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority" (laughter, audience throughout course of meeting mainly in the right), "except, perhaps, on the score of his having received a classical education, which the poor man could not get." Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth century St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself alive;[A] coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution--if unwillingly convinced of the fact,--to seal the Better living thing down again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not intended, till we entered on the second section of our inquiry, namely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see, been wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out of our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by the speech of our superior carpenter, I am driven into it at once, and it is perhaps as well. [A] Compare 'Crown of Wild Olive,' Sec. 136.