GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THEORY OF COMMUNISM 675
to know God, and in knowing Him to respect their betters.
Their betters should, then, it was felt, set them an example.
This they proceeded to do.
The Annual Register for 1798 remarks:
"It was a wonder to the lower orders throughout all
parts of England to see the avenues to the churches filled
with carriages. This novel appearance prompted the
simple country people to enquire what was the matter."
Soon afterwards Wilberforce managed to get the first
day of meeting of the House of Commons postponed from
Monday to Tuesday, lest the re-assembling of Parliament
on a Monday night might cause members to travel and
to be seen travelling through London on a Sunday.. For
the same reason, the opening of the Newmarket Races
was changed from Easter Monday to Tuesday. "In the
old times/' we read, "the villages on the route used to turn
out on 'Easter Sunday to admire the procession of rich
, revellers, and their gay colours and equipment The Duke
of York, in answer to remonstrances, said that it was true
he travelled to the races on a Sunday, but he always had
a Bible and a Prayer Book in his carriage."
The moral of all this is sufficiently obvious. It was,
indeed, put succinctly enough by Arthur Young, who, in
An Enquiry into the State of Mind amongst the Lower Classes,
written in 1798, says :
" A stranger would think our churches were built, as
indeed they are, only for the rich. Undersuchan arrangement
where are the lower classes to hear the Word of God, that
Gospel which in our Saviour's time was preached more
particularly to the poor? Where are they to learn the
doctrines of that truly excellent religion which exhorts to
content and to submission to the higher'powers? ..."
The governing classes appreciated the importance of Mr.
Young's question. "Twenty years later" I am quoting
from The Town Labourer, 1760-1832, by J. L. and Barbara
Hammond "one Englishman out of seven being at that
time a pauper, Parliament voted a million of public
money for the construction ofchurches to preach submission