nted Records. In anticipation of any
possible charge of unfairness in judging from isolated
instances, we disclaim simply all desire to judge--all
wish to do anything beyond relating certain ascertained
stories. Let it remain, to those who are perverse
enough to insist upon it, an open question whether
the monasteries were more corrupt under Henry VIII.
than they had been four hundred years earlier. The
dissolution would have been equally a necessity; for no
reasonable person would desire that bodies of men
should have been maintained for the only business of
singing masses, when the efficacy of masses was no
longer believed. Our present desire is merely this--to
satisfy ourselves whether the Government, in discharging
a duty which could not be dispensed with, condescended
to falsehood in seeking a vindication for
themselves which they did not require; or whether
they had cause really to believe the majority of the
monastic bodies to be as they affirmed--whether, that
is to say, there really were such cases either of flagrant
immorality, neglect of discipline, or careless waste and
prodigality, as to justify the general censure which was
pronounced against the system by the Parliament and
the Privy Council.

Secure in the supposed completeness with which
Queen Mary's agents destroyed the Records of the
visitation under her father, Roman-catholic writers have
taken refuge in a disdainful denial; and the Anglicans,
who for the most part (while contented to enjoy the
fruits of the Reformation) detest the means by which
it was brought about, have taken the same view.
Bishop Latimer tells us that, when the Report of the
visitors of the abbeys was read in the Commons
House, there rose from all sides one long cry of "Down
with them." But Bishop Latimer, in the opinion of
High Churchmen, is not to be believed. Do we produce
letters of the visitors themselves, we are told that
they are the slanders prepared to justify a preconceived
purpose of spoliation. No witness, it seems, will be
admitted unless it be the witness of a friend. Unless
some enemy of the Reformation can be found to confess
the crimes which made the Reformation necessary, the
crimes themselves are to be regarded as unproved.
This is a hard condition. We appeal to Wolsey.

Wolsey commenced the suppression. Wolsey first
made public the infamies which disgraced the Church;
while, notwithstanding, he died the devoted servant of
the Church. This evidence