Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/50

 till one is forced to cry out in indignant remonstrance, to ask the historian whether he has forgotten that the English People ever existed.

Yet this is the farrago that we teach our children, this is the food on which we expect to rear good Free Churchmen and Liberals. Only the other day my little boy came home from school, as I could see, in a state of perplexity and distress. At first I was inclined to think that the master (who I believe to be a Jesuit in disguise) had been revolting the child's mind with the fetichism of Infant Baptism, or with some such degrading dogma, but I found that I was mistaken. The child had been learning about the Norman Conquest, and as he told me the story he burst into tears, and said at last: "But, papa, why didn't the County Council pass a resolution forbidding that bad man to conquer England? and was Mr. John Burns away for his holiday when they did it?" What could I say to the poor boy? I have brought him up in the belief that the County Council, the Free Churches,