The priests told me about this, and were generously
hot to have him punished. Something of this disagreeable sort
was turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed
that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many,
even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground
among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and
devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings.
Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom fretted
about it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been my
way to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I did
not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people
reconciled to an Established Church. We _must_ have a religion
--it goes without saying--but my idea is, to have it cut up into
forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been
the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power
in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is
only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed,
cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and
does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered
condition. That wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only
an opinion--my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn't
worth any more than the pope's--or any less, for that matter.
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