Why should he? Was I not a Chartist and an Infidel? The truth is, the
clergy are afraid of us. To read the _Dispatch_, is to be excommunicated.
Young men's classes? Honour to them, however few they are--however hampered
by the restrictions of religious bigotry and political cowardice. But the
working men, whether rightly or wrongly, do not trust them; they do not
trust the clergy who set them on foot; they do not expect to be taught at
them the things they long to know--to be taught the whole truth in them
about history, politics, science, the Bible. They suspect them to be mere
tubs to the whale--mere substitutes for education, slowly and late adopted,
in order to stop the mouths of the importunate. They may misjudge the
clergy; but whose fault is it if they do? Clergymen of England!--look at
the history of your Establishment for the last fifty years, and say, what
wonder is it if the artisan mistrust you? Every spiritual reform, since the
time of John Wesley, has had to establish itself in the teeth of insult,
calumny, and persecution. Every ecclesiastical reform comes not from
within, but from without your body.
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