nt is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government,
be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wise
laws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than by
priestcraft: but it is better that men should be governed by priestcraft
than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by such
a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere
physical force, has great reason to rejoice when a class, of which the
influence is intellectual and moral, rises to ascendancy. Such a class
will doubtless abuse its power: but mental power, even when abused,
is still a nobler and better power than that which consists merely in
corporeal strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who,
when at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse, who abhorred
the pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by guilt, who
abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by
cruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn forth
bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while they boasted
of liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the dark
ages, and whose habit was to apply to all events in the history of the
world the standard received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth
century. Yet surely a system which, however deformed by superstition,
introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously governed
only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which
taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest
bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a more
respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists.

The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in the
last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages, the
sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middle
ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal
curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude
inhabitant of the North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim,
than that he should never see anything but those squalid cabins and
uncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when life and when
female honour were exposed to daily risk from tyrants and marauders,
it was better that the precinct of a shrine should be regarded with
an irrational awe, than that there should be no refuge inacc