Village books

Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able
to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent;
ages of compulsory disuse of his hands have atrophied them, and he never
uses them now. This history has a very, very commercial look, a most
sordid and practical commercial look, the business aspect of a Chinese
cheap-labour crusade. Religious prejudices may account for one part of
it, but not for the other nine.
Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did not take their
livelihoods away from them. The Catholics have persecuted the
Protestants with bloody and awful bitterness, but they never closed
agriculture and the handicrafts against them. Why was that? That has
the candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade-union
boycott in a religious dispute.
The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and Germany, and lately in
France; but England and America give them an open field and yet survive.
Scotland offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are not many
takers.


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