50. When you come to HISTORY, begin also with that _of your own
country_; and here it is my bounden duty to put you _well on your
guard_; for in this respect we are _peculiarly_ unfortunate, and for the
following reasons, to which I beg you to attend. Three _hundred years
ago_, the religion of England had been, during _nine hundred years_, the
Catholic religion: the Catholic clergy possessed about a third part of
all the lands and houses, which they held _in trust_ for their own
support, for the _building and repairing of churches_, and for the
relief of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; but, at the
time just mentioned, the king and the aristocracy changed the religion
to _Protestant_, took the estates of the church and the poor _to
themselves as their own property_, and _taxed the people at large_ for
the building and repairing of churches and for the relief of the poor.
This great and terrible change, effected partly by force against the
people and partly by the most artful means of deception, gave rise to a
series of efforts, which has been continued from that day _to this_, to
cause us all to believe, _that that change was for the better_, that it
was for _our good_; and that, _before that time_, our forefathers were a
set of the most miserable slaves that the sun ever warmed with his
beams. It happened, too, that the _art of printing_ was not discovered,
or, at least, it was very little understood, until about the time when
this change took place; so that the books relating to former times were
confined to manuscript; and, besides, even these manuscript libraries
were destroyed with great care by those who had made the change and had
grasped the property of the poor and the church. Our '_Historians_,' as
they are called, have written under _fear_ of the powerful, or have been
_bribed_ by them; and, generally speaking, both at the same time; and,
accordingly, their works are, as far as they relate to former times,
masses of lies unmatched by any others that the world has ever seen.