Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/53

 were described as an irresistible popular movement; how can we honestly teach our children that this fair land was subdued by William the Conqueror?

You ask my remedy. It is a simple one enough: I would abolish history. Nay; why do you start? Is the world always to be the slave of the past? Is generation after generation to be bound fast in the swaddling bands of antiquity? There was a worthy Puritan in the seventeenth century who proposed that the new order should be consolidated by the burning of all the records of England, and I heartily wish that this most sensible suggestion had been carried out. I confess I grind my teeth when I pass the Record Office; for what is it but a great storehouse of evil precedents; an armoury from which the enemy draws arguments to support his infamous and absurd conclusions. A Romanist Cardinal once said that the appeal to history was treason to the church; I say it is treason to the people and the people's cause. We know that all Kings were remorseless tyrants; the