acts of injustice, and without leaving behind an odious Court of Inquisition, which will inevitably fall into the hands of a single individual, and will be an eternal source of vexation, jealousy, and change. I give sincere credit to the Commissioners for good intentions. How can such men have intended any thing but good? And I firmly believe that they are hardly conscious of the extraordinary predilection they have shown for Bishops in all their proceedings: it is like those errors in tradesmen's bills of which the retail arithmetician is really unconscious, but which somehow or another always happens to be in his own favour. Such men as the Commissioners do not say this patronage belongs justly to the Cathedrals, and we will take it away unjustly for ourselves; but after the manner of human nature a thousand weak reasons prevail, which would have no effect, if self-interest were not concerned: they are practising a deception on themselves, and sincerely believe they are doing right. When I talk of spoil and plunder, I do not speak of the intention, but of the effect, and the precedent. Still the Commissioners are on the eve of entailing an immense evil upon the country, and unfortunately they have gone so far, that it is necessary they should ruin the Cathedrals to preserve their character for consistency. They themselves have been frightened a great deal too much by the mob; have overlooked the chances in their favour produced by delay; have been afraid of being suspected (as Tories) of not doing enough; and have allowed themselves to be hurried on by the constitutional impetuosity of one man, who cannot be brought to believe that wisdom often consists in leaving alone, standing still and doing nothing. From the joint operation of all these causes, all the Cathedrals of England will in a few weeks be knocked about our ears. You, Mr. Archdeacon Singleton, will sit like Caius Marius on the ruins, and we shall lose for ever the wisest scheme for securing a well-educated Clergy upon the most economical terms, and for preventing that low fanaticism which is the greatest curse upon human happiness, and the greatest enemy of true religion. We shall have all the evils of an Establishment, and none of its good. You tell me I shall be laughed at as a rich and overgrown Churchman. Be it so. I have been laughed at a hundred times in my life, and care little or nothing about it. If I am well provided for now I have had my full share of the blanks in the lottery as well as the prizes. Till thirty years of age I never received a farthing from the Church; then 50l. per annum for two years then nothing for ten yearsthen 500l. per annum, increased for two or three years to 8007., till, in my grand climacteric, I was made Canon of St. Paul's; and before that period, I had built a Parsonage-house with farm offices for a large farm, which cost me 40007., and had reclaimed another from ruins at the expense of 20001. A Lawyer, or a Physician in good practice, would smile at this picture of great Ecclesiastical wealth; and yet I am considered as a perfect monster of Ecclesiastical prosperity. I should be very sorry to give offence to the dignified Ecclesiastics who are in the Commission: I hope they will allow for the provocation, if I have been a little too warm in the defence of St. Paul's, which I have taken a solemn oath to defend. I was at school and college with the Archbishop of Canterbury: fifty-three years ago he knocked me down with the chess-board for checkmating him—and now he is attempting to take away my patronage. I believe these are the only two acts of violence he ever committed in his life: the interval has been one of gentleness, kindness, and the most amiable and high-principled courtesy to his Clergy. For the Archbishop of York I feel an affectionate respect the result of that invariable kindness I have received from him and who can see the Bishop of London without admiring his superior talents being pleased with his society without admitting that, upon the whole*, the * I have heard that the Bishop of London employs eight hours per day in the government of his diocese in which no part of Asia, Africa, or public is benefited by his ungovernable passion for business; and without receiving the constant workings of a really good heart, as an atonement for the occasional excesses of an impetuous disposition? I am quite sure if the tables had been turned, and if it had been his lot, as a Canon, to fight against the encroachments of Bishops, that he would have made as stout a defence as I have done the only difference is, that he would have done it with much greater talent. As for my friends the Whigs, I neither wish to offend them nor any body else. I consider myself to be as good a Whig as any amongst them. I was a Whig before many of them were born- and while some of them were Tories and Waverers. I have always turned out to fight their battles, and when I saw no other Clergyman turn out but myself—and this in times before liberality was well recompensed, and therefore in fashion, and when the smallest appearance of it seemed to condemn a Churchman to the grossest obloquy, and the most hopeless poverty. It may suit the purpose of the Ministers to flatter the Bench; it does not suit mine. I do not choose in my old age to be tossed as a prey to the Bishop; I have not deserved this of my Whig friends. I know very well there can be no justice for Deans and Chapters, and that the momentary Lords of the earth will receive our statement with derision and persiflage -the great principle which is now called in for the government of mankind. Nobody admires the general conduct of the Whig Administration more than I do. They have conferred, in their domestic policy, the most striking benefits on the country. To say that there is no risk in what they have done is mere nonsense : there is great risk; and all honest men must balance to counteract it holding back as firmly down hill as they pulled vigorously up hill. Still, great as the risk is, it was worth while to incur it in the Poor Law Bill, in the Tithe Bill, in the Corporation Bill, and in the circumscrip America is included. The world is, I believe, taking one day with another, 346 tion of the Irish Protestant Church. In all these matters, the Whig Ministry, after the heat of party is over, and when Joseph Hume and Wilson Croker* are powdered into the dust of death, will gain great and deserved fame. In the question of the Church Commission they have behaved with the grossest injustice; delighted to see this temporary delirium of Archbishops and Bishops, scarcely believing their eyes, and carefully suppressing their laughter, when they saw these eminent Conservatives laying about them with the fury of Mr. Tyler or Mr. Straw; they have taken the greatest care not to disturb them, and to give them no offence: "Do as you like, my Lords, with the Chapters and the Parochial Clergy; you will find some pleasing morsels in the ruins of the Cathedrals. Keep for yourselves any thing you like whatever is agreeable to you cannot be unpleasant to us." In the mean time, the old friends of, and the old sufferers for, liberty, do not understand this new meanness, and are not a little astonished to find their leaders prostrate on their knees before the Lords of the Church, and to receive no other answer from them than that, if they are disturbed in their adulation, they will immediately resign! FIRST LETTER TO ARCHDEACON SINGLETON. I remain, My dear Sir, - With sincere good will and respect, Yours, SYDNEY SMITH. * I meant no harm by the comparison, but I have made two bitter enemies by it. |