A hundred years ago one of the most popular of British writers was Hannah More.  She and her sister Martha went to live in the coal-country, to teach this “catechism” to the children of the starving miners.  The “Mendip Annals” is the title of a book in which they tell of their ten years’ labors in a village popularly known as “Little Hell.”  In this place two hundred people were crowded into nineteen houses.  “There is not one creature in it that can give a cup of broth if it would save a life.”  In one winter eighteen perished of “a putrid fever”, and the clergyman “could not raise a six-pence to save a life.”

And what did the pious sisters make of all this?  From cover to cover you find in the “Mendip Annals” no single word of social protest, not even of social suspicion.  That wages of a shilling a day might have anything to do with moral degeneration was a proposition beyond the mental powers of England’s most popular woman writer.  She was perfectly content that a woman should be sentenced to death for stealing butter from a dealer who had asked what the woman thought too high a price.  When there came a famine, and the children of these mine-slaves were dying like flies, Hannah More bade them be happy because God had sent them her pious self.  “In suffering by the scarcity, you have but shared in the common lot, with the pleasure of knowing the advantage you have had over many villages in your having suffered no scarcity of religious instruction.”  And in another place she explained that the famine was caused by God to teach the poor to be grateful to the rich!

Let me remind you that probably that very scarcity has been permitted by an all-wise and gracious Providence to unite all ranks of people together, to show the poor how immediately they are dependent upon the rich, and to show both rich and poor that they are all dependent upon Himself.  It has also enabled you to see more clearly the advantages you derive from the government and constitution of this country—­to observe the benefits flowing from the distinction of rank and fortune, which has enabled the high to so liberally assist the low.

It appears that the villagers were entirely convinced by this pious reasoning; for they assembled one Saturday night and burned an effigy of Tom Paine!  This proceeding led to a tragic consequence, for one of the “common people,” known as Robert, “was overtaken by liquor,” and was unable to appear at Sunday School next day.  This fall from grace occasioned intense remorse in Robert.  “It preyed dreadfully upon his mind for many months,” records Martha More, “and despair seemed at length to take possession of him.”  Hannah had some conversation with him, and read him some suitable passages from “The Rise and Progress”.  “At length the Almighty was pleased to shine into his heart and give him comfort.”