believe, that the nation is now more happy, more populous,
more powerful, _than it was before it was Protestant_, and thereby to
induce us to conclude, that it was _a good thing for us_ that the
aristocracy should take to themselves the property of the poor and the
church, and make the people at large _pay taxes for the support of
both_. This has been, and still is, the great object of all those heaps
of lies; and those lies are continually spread about amongst us in all
forms of publication, from heavy folios down to halfpenny tracts. In
refutation of those lies we have only very few and rare ancient books to
refer to, and their information is incidental, seeing that their authors
never dreamed of the possibility of the lying generations which were to
come. We have the ancient acts of parliament, the common-law, the
customs, the canons of the church, and _the churches themselves_; but
these demand _analyses_ and _argument_, and they demand also a _really
free press_, and _unprejudiced and patient readers_. Never in this
world, before, had truth to struggle with so many and such great
disadvantages!

52. To refute lies is not, at present, my business; but it is my
business to give you, in as small a compass as possible, one striking
proof that they are lies; and thereby to put you well upon your guard
for the whole of the rest of your life. The opinion sedulously
inculcated by these '_historians_' is this; that, before the
_Protestant_ times came, England was, comparatively, an insignificant
country, _having few people in it, and those few wretchedly poor and
miserable_. Now, take the following _undeniable facts_. All the parishes
in England are now (except where they have been _united_, and two,
three, or four, have been made into one) in point of _size_, what they
were _a thousand years ago_. The county of Norfolk is the best
cultivated of any one in England. This county has _now_ 731 parishes;
and the number was formerly greater. Of these parishes 22 _have now no
churches at all_; 74 contain less than 100 souls each: and 268 have _no
parsonage-houses_. Now, observe, every parish had, in old times, a
church and a parsonage-house. The county contains 2,092 square miles;
that is to say, something less than 3 square miles to each parish, and
that is 1,920 statute acres of land; and the _size_ of each parish is,
on an average, that of a piece of ground about one mile and a half each
way; so that the churches are, even no