RELIGION OF THE VILLAGE 181 



killed P at last ! " No clergyman de- 

 nounced the wicked treatment of this man : his 

 own parson was popularly known as the " Devil 



of W " because of his savage treatment of 



poor-law applicants. But the case is still 

 recorded in the neighbouring villages and 

 serves, like the painful stories of other poor 

 " village Hampdens," to alienate the English 

 labourers from the Church of their ancestors. 



The rural clergy are usually generous and 

 kindly men, who subscribe to " charity " 

 a proportion of their small incomes which 

 would produce startling results were it applied 

 as a rule to lay offerings. Nevertheless, they 

 have in this matter thoroughly confused the 

 issues. It is not personal charity which the 

 neglected labourer primarily requires, but 

 social justice. The clergy are ready enough 

 to give alms, but they do not challenge the 

 vicious system of inadequate wages eked out 

 by charity. " The mistake of the best men," 

 says Ruskin, " through generation after genera- 

 tion, has been the great one of thinking to help 

 the poor by almsgiving and by preaching of 

 patience and of hope and of every other means 

 emollient or consolatory except the one thing 

 which God orders for them, justice." 



But the championship of such social justice 

 would place the rural clergy hi a " false 



