dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

TELL him that the men who fought on either side at Hastings' plain cared nothing for national but everything for feudal allegiance; that lex terrae means the local custom of ordeal and not the "law of the land"; tell him that judicium parium means the right of a noble to be judged by nobles, and has nothing to do with the jury system; tell him that Magna Carta was certainly drawn up before the meeting at Runnymede; that not until the Lancastrians did English kings speak English; that Oliver Cromwell owed his position to the enormous wealth of the Williamses, of whom had he not been a cadet, he would never have been known; tell him that the whole force of the Parliament resided in the squires and that the Civil Wars turned England into an oligarchy; tell him the exact truth about the infamy of Churchill; tell him what proportion of Englishmen during the American War were taxed without being represented; tell him what proportion of Washington's troops were of English blood; tell him any one illuminating and true thing about the history of his country, and the novelty will so offend him that a direct insult would have pleased him better.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/First_and_Last_(Belloc)/On_the_Decline_of_the_Book