Carrington, the clergyman of the parish, who was an excellent scholar, and
a very sensible, liberal-minded, worthy man. To him I am greatly indebted
for a deal of useful, sound information, and a knowledge of that portion
of mankind with whom my father had never associated. Mr. now the Rev. Dr.
Carrington, the Rector of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, took great
pleasure in completing my education; and at the end of one year, with the
advantage of this friendly assistance, I believe sincerely that I had
acquired more knowledge, both of literature and of ancient and modern
history, than I should have done in seven years at college.

Although my time was so much occupied in the business of the farms, yet I
longed for the refined instruction of the mind, which was conveyed with so
much kindness, with so much care, and with so much assiduity, by this
worthy and intelligent man. He was at that time denominated by the vulgar,
illiterate, grovelling, low-bred slaves of the day, a _jacobin_; and this
excellent, enlightened being, who possessed more real love of country than
a _legion_ of the reptiles with which he was surrounded, was constantly
exposed to the petty insults of some of his big-bellied, big-headed,
empty-pated neighbours, who termed themselves loyal and constitutional
subjects, and who took upon themselves to point him out as an enemy to his
country, because he did not choose to shut his eyes and join in the
war-whoop, the savage, stupid, ideotic cry against the patriotic efforts
that were then making by the friends of liberty in France, to rescue their
fellow countrymen from the accursed yoke, the double bondage of
superstition and tyranny.

This was the period that the people of England, at all times and in all
ages esteemed the most credulous people in the universe, were made drunk
with their own ignorance and folly. Mr. Paine had now written and
published his wonderful book, his "Rights of Man," and to put down, to