Now that we have come to that conclusion, if indeed we
have come to it, let me ask you all a question or two. Should we like
to change with those forefathers of ours, whose lives were passed in
this parish in the way I have attempted to describe, six hundred
years ago? Were the former times better than these? Has the world
grown worse as it has grown older? Has there been no progress, but
only decline?
My friends, the people who lived in this village six hundred years
ago were living a life hugely below the level of yours. They were
more wretched in their poverty, they were incomparably less
prosperous in their prosperity, they were worse clad, worse fed,
worse housed, worse taught, worse tended, worse governed; they were
sufferers from loathsome diseases which you knew nothing of; the very
beasts of the field were dwarfed and stunted in their growth, and I
do not believe there were any giants in the earth in those days. The
death-rate among the children must have been tremendous. The
disregard of human life was so callous that we can hardly conceive
it. There was everything to harden, nothing to soften; everywhere
oppression, greed, and fierceness. Judged by our modern standards,
the people of our county village were beyond all doubt coarser, more
brutal, and more wicked, than they are. Progress is slow, but there
has been progress.
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