w, on an average, only about _a
mile and a half from each other_. Now, the questions for you to put to
yourself are these: Were churches formerly built and kept up _without
being wanted_, and especially by a poor and miserable people? Did these
miserable people build 74 churches out of 731, each of which 74 had not
a hundred souls belonging to it? Is it a sign of an augmented
population, that 22 churches out of 731 have tumbled down and been
effaced? Was it a country _thinly_ inhabited by miserable people that
could build and keep a church in every piece of ground a mile and a half
each way, besides having, in this same county, 77 monastic
establishments and 142 free chapels? Is it a sign of augmented
population, ease and plenty, that, out of 731 parishes, 268 have
suffered the parsonage houses to fall into ruins, and their sites to
become patches of nettles and of brambles? Put these questions calmly to
yourself: common sense will dictate the answers; and truth will call for
an expression of your indignation against the lying historians and the
still more lying population-mongers.

LETTER II

TO A YOUNG MAN

53. In the foregoing Letter, I have given my advice to a Youth. In
addressing myself to you, I am to presume that you have entered upon
your present stage of life, having acted upon the precepts contained in
that letter; and that, of course, you are a sober, abstinent,
industrious and well-informed young man. In the succeeding letters,
which will be addressed to the _Lover_, the _Husband_, the _Father_ and
the _Citizen_, I shall, of course, have to include my notion of your
duties as a _master_, and as a person employed by _another_. In the
present letter, therefore, I shall confine myself principally to the
conduct of a young man with regard to the management of his means, or
money.

54. Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your
misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to this matter; for
it very frequently happens, it has happened to thousands upon thousands,
not only to be ruined, according to the common acceptation of the word;
not only to be made poor, and to suffer from poverty, in consequence of
want of attention to pecuniary matters; but it has frequently, and even
generally, happened, that a want of attention to these matters has
impeded the progress of science, and of genius itself. A man, oppressed
with pecuniary cares and dangers, must be next to a miracle, if he