at its twenty-fifth
page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,)
this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general
public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the
getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.)
There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes
did not attend places of worship: one was, that "the parson was
regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from,
if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man.
This was no doubt wearing away to a great extent" (the base habit of
making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning to get education,
and to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press
from him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it
were, to the parson.... It was the case all over England. The
clergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr.
Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority" (laughter, audience
throughout course of meeting mainly in the right), "except, perhaps,
on the score of his having received a classical education, which the
poor man could not get."

Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of
all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth
century St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself
alive;[A] coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution--if
unwillingly convinced of the fact,--to seal the Better living thing
down again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not
intended, till we entered on the second section of our inquiry,
namely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see,
been wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out
of our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by the
speech of our superior carpenter, I am driven into it at once, and it
is perhaps as well.

[A] Compare 'Crown of Wild Olive,' Sec. 136.

170. The speech is not, observe, without its own root of truth at the
bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intended by the speaker; but
you have in it a clear instance of what I was saying in the sixteenth
of these letters,--that education _was desired by the lower orders
because they thought it would make them upper orders_, and be a
leveler and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished,
when they really get it, to find