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THIRD LETTER

ARCHDEACON SINGLETON.

BY

THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

LONDON:
LONGMAN, ORWE, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS,
PA TERNOSTER-ROW. 18S9.

THIRD LETTER,
Sfc.

My dear Sir,
I HOPE this is the last letter you will receive
from me on Church matters. I am tired of the
subject ; so are you ; so is every body. In spite
of many Bishops' charges, I am unbroken ; and
remain entirely of the same opinion as I was
two or three years since, — that the mutilation
of Deans and Chapters is a rash, foolish, and
imprudent measure.
I do not think the Charge of the Bishop of
London successful, in combating those argu
ments which have been used against the im
pending Dean and Chapter Bill ; but it is quiet,
gentlemanlike, temperate, and written in a man
ner which entirely becomes the high office,
and character which he bears.
A 2

I agree with him in saying that the Plurality
and Residence Bill is, upon the whole, a very
good bill ; — nobody, however, knows better
than the Bishop of London the various changes
it has undergone, and the improvements it has
received. I could point out fourteen or fifteen
very material alterations for the better since it
came out of the hands of the Commission, and
all hearing materially upon the happiness and
comfort qf the parochial Clergy. I will mention
only a few : — the Bill, as originally introduced,
gave the Bishop a power, when he considered
the duties of the parish to be improperly per
formed, to suspend the Clergyman and appoint
a Curate with a salary. Some impious person
thought it not impossible that occasionally such
a power might be maliciously, and vindictively
exercised, and that some check to it should be
admitted into the Bill ; accordingly, under the
existing act, an Ecclesiastical Jury is to be sum
moned, and into that jury the defendant Clergy
man may introduce a friend of his own.
If a Clergyman from illness or any other
overwhelming necessity, was prevented from

having two services, he was exposed to an
information, and penalty. In answering the
Bishop, he was subjected to two opposite sets
of penalties — the one for saying Yes ; the
other for saying No : he was amenable to the
needless and impertinent scrutiny of a rural
Dean before he was exposed to the scrutiny of
the Bishop. Curates might be forced upon him
by subscribing parishioners, and the certainty
of a schism established in the parish ; a curate
might have been forced upon present incum
bents by the Bishop without any complaint
made ; upon men who took, or, perhaps, bought,
their livings under very different laws ; — all
these acts of injustice are done away with, but
it is not to the credit of the framers of the Bill
that they were ever admitted, and they com
pletely justify the opposition with which the
Bill was received by me and by others. I add,
however, with great pleasure, that, when these
and other objections were made, they were heard
with candour, and promised to be remedied by
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop
of London and Lord John Russell.

I have spoken of the power to issue a Com
mission to inquire into the wellbeing of any
parish: a vindictive and malicious Bishop,
might, it is true, convert this, which was in
tended for the protection, to the oppression of
the Clergy — afraid to dispossess a Clergyman
of his own authority, he might attempt to
do the same thing under the cover of a jury of
his ecclesiastical creatures. But I can hardly
conceive such baseness in the Prelate, or such
infamous subserviency in the agents. An honest
afld respectable Bishop will remember that
the very issue of such a Commission is a serious
slur upon the character of a Clergyman ; he will
do all he can to prevent it by private monition
and remonstrance ; and if driven to such an act
of power, he will of course state to the accused
Clergyman the subjects of accusation, the names
of his accusers, and give him ample time for his
defence. If upon anonymous accusation he
subjects a Clergyman to such an investigation
or refuses to him any advantage which the law
gives to every accused person, he is an infamous,
degraded, and scandalous tyrant : but I cannot

believe there is such a man to be found upon
the bench.
There is- in this new Bill a very, humane
clause, (though not introduced by the Commis
sion,) enabling the widow of the deceased clergy
man to retain possession of the parsonage house
for two months after the death of the In
cumbent. It ought, in fairness, to be extended
to the heirs, executors, and administrators of the
Incumbent. It is a great hardship that a family
settled in a parish for fifty years perhaps, should
be torn up by the roots in eight or ten days : and
the interval of two months allowing time for
repairs, might put to rest many questions of
dilapidation. To the Bishop's power of intruding a Curate
without any complaint on the part of the parish
that the duty has been inadequately performed,
I retaiathe same objections as before. It is a
power which without this condition will be un
fairly and partially exercised. The first object
I admit is not the provision of the Clergyman,
but the care of the parish; but one way of
A 4

taking care of parishes is to take care that Clergy
men are not treated with tyranny, partiality, and
injustice : and the best way of effecting this is to
remember that their superiors have the sarae
human passions as other people ; and not to
trust them with a power which may be so
grossly abused, and which (incredible as the
Bishop of London may deem it) has been, in
some instances, grossly abused.
I cannot imagine what the Bishop means by
saying, that the members of Cathedrals do not
in virtue of their office bear any part in the paro
chial instruction of the people. This is a fine
deceitful word, the word parochial, and eminent
ly calculated to coax the public. If he means
simply that cathedrals do not belong to parishes,
that St. Paul's is not the parish church of Up
per Puddicomb, and that the Vicar of St. Fiddle-
frid does not officiate in Westminster Abbey : all
this is true enough, but do they not in the most
material points instruct the people precisely in
the same manner as the parochial Clergy ? Are
not prayers and sermons the most important
means of spiritual instruction ? And are there

9
not eighteen or twenty services in every Cathe
dral for one which is heard in parish churches? I
have very often counted in the afternoon of week
days in St. Paul's 150 people, and on Sundays it
is full to suffocation. Is all this to go for no
thing ? and what right has the Bishop of London
to suppose that there is not as much real piety
in Cathedrals, as in thfe most roadless, postless,
melancholy, sequestered hamlet preached to by
the most provincial, sequestered bucolic Clergy
man in the Queen's dominions ?
A nuraber of little children, it is true, do not
repeat a catechism of which they do not compre
hend a word ; but it is rather rapid and whole
sale to say, that the parochial Clergy are spiritual
instructors of the people, and that the cathedral
Clergy are only so in a very restricted sense. I
say that in the most material points and acts of
instruction, they are much more laborious and
incessant than any parochial Clergy. It might
really be supposed from the Bishop of London's
reasoning, that some other methods of instruction
took place in Cathedrals than prayers and ser
mons can afford; that lectures were read on

10
chemistry, or lessons given on dancing ; or that
it was a Mechanics' Institute or a vast receptacle
for hexameter and pentameter boys. His own
most respectable Chaplain, who is often there as
a member of the body, will tell him that the
prayers are strictly adhered to, according to the
rubric, with the difference only that the service
is beautifully chanted instead of being badly read ;
that instead of the atrocious bawling of parish
Churches, the Anthems are sung with great taste
and feeling : and if the preaching is not good,
it is the fault of the Bishop of London, who has
the whole range of London preachers from whom
to make his selection. The real fact is, that,
instead of being something materially different
from the parochial Clergy, as the Commissioners
wish to make them, the cathedral Clergy are
fellow labourers with the parochial Clergy, out
working them ten to one ; but the Commission
having provided snugly for the Bishops, have by
the merest accident in the world entangled them
selves in this quarrel with Cathedrals.
" Had the question " says the Bishop, " been
proposed to the religious part of the commuifity,

11
Whether, if no other means were to be found, the
effective cure of souls should be provided for by
the total suppression of those Ecclesiastical Cor
porations which have no cure of souls, nor bear
any part in the parochial labours of the Clergy ;
that question, I verily believe, would have been
carried in the affirmative by an immense major
ity of suffrages." But suppose no other means
could be found for the effective cure of souls
than the suppression of Bishops, does the
Bishop of London imagine that the majority of
suffrages would have been less immense ? How
idle to put such cases.
A pious man leaves a large sum of money in
Catholic times for some purposes which are su
perstitious, and for others, such as preaching
and reading prayers, which are applicable to all
times ; the superstitious usages are abolished,
the pious usages remain : now the Bishop must
admit if you take half or any part of this money
from Clergymen to whom it was given, and
divide it for similar purposes among Clergy to
whom it was not given, you deviate materially
from the intentions of the founder. These

12
foundations are made in loco ; in many of them
the locus was perhaps the original cause of the
gift. A man who founds an alms-house at Ed
monton do^s not mean that the poor of Totten
ham should avail themselves of it ; and if he
could have anticipated such a consequence, he
would not have endowed any alms-house at all.
Such is the respect for property that the Court
of Chancery, when it becomes impracticable to
carry the will of the donor into execution, always
attend to the cy pres, and apply the charitable
fund to a purpose as germane as possible to the in
tention of the founder; buthere whenmenofLin-
coln have left to Lincoln Cathedral, and men of
Hereford to Hereford, the Commissioners seize
it all, melt it into a common mass, and disperse it
over the kingdom. Surely the Bishop of London
cannot contend that this is not a greater deviation
from the will of the founder than if the same
people remaining in the same place receiving all
the founder gave them, and doing all things
not forbidden by the law, which the founder
ordered ; were to do something more than the
founder ordered, were to become the guardians
of education, the counsel to the Bishop, and

13
the Curators of the Diocese in his old age and
decay. The public are greater robbers and plunderers
than any one in the public ; look at the whole
transaction, it is a mixture of meanness and vio
lence. The country choose to have an established
religion, and a resident parochial Clergy, but
they do not choose to build houses for their paro
chial Clergy, or to pay them in many instances
more than a butler or a coachman receives. How
is this deficiency to be supplied ? The heads of
the Church propose to this public to seize upon
estates which never belonged to the public, and
which were left for another purpose ; and by the
seizure of these estates to save that, which ought
to come out of the public purse.
Suppose Parliament were to seize upon all
the alms-houses in England, and apply them to
the diminution of the poor-rate, what a number
of ingenious arguments might be pressed into
the service of this robbery : " Can- any thing
be more revolting than that the poor of Nor-
thumberland should be starving, while the

14
poor of the suburban hamlets are dividing the
benefactions of the pious dead ? " We want for
these purposes all that we can obtain from what
ever sources derived." I do not deny the right
of Parliament to do this, or any thing else ;
but I deny that it would be expedient, because
I think it better to make any sacrifices, and to
endure any evil, than to gratify this rapacious
spirit of plunder and confiscation. Suppose
these Commissioner Prelates firm and un
moved, when we were all alarmed, had told
the public that the parochial Clergy were
badly provided for, and that it was the duty
of that public to provide a proper support for
their Ministers ; — suppose the Commissioners in
stead of leading them on to confiscation, had
warned their fellow subjects against the base
economy, and the perilous injustice of seizing
on that which was not their own ; — suppose they
had called for water and washed their hands, and
said, "We call you all to witness that we are in
nocent of this great ruin ; " — does the Bishop of
London imagine that the Prelates who made such
a stand would have gone down to posterity less
respected and less revered than those men upon

15
whose tombs it must (after all the enumeration
of their virtues) be written, that under their
auspices and hy their counsels the destruction
of the English Church began. Pity that the
Archbishop of Canterbury had not retained those
feelings, when, at the first meeting of Bishops, the
Bishop of London proposed this holy innovation
upon Cathedrals, and the head of our Church
declared with vehemence and indignation that
nothing in the earth would induce him to consent
to it. Si mens non laeva fuisset,
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres.
"But," says the Lord Bishop of London, " you
admit the principle of confiscation by proposing
the confiscation and partition of Prebends." I
am thinking of something else, and I see all of a
sudden a great blaze of light ; I behold a great
number of gentlemen in short aprons, neat purple
coats, and gold buckles, rushing about with
torches in their hands, calling each other " my
lord," and setting fire to all the rooms in the house,
and the people below delighted with the com
bustion: finding it impossible to turn them from
their purpose, and finding that they are all what

16
they are, by divine permission ; I endeavour to
direct their holy innovations into another channel ;
and I say to them, " My Lords, had not you
better set fire to the out of door offices, to the
barns and stables, and spare this fine library
and this noble drawing-room ? Yonder are
several cow-houses of which no use is made ; pray
direct your fury against them, and leave this
beautiful and venerable mansion as you found it."
If I address the divinely permitted in this
manner, has the Bishop of London any right to
call me a brother incendiary ?
Our holy innovator, the Bishop of London,
has drawn a very affecting picture of sheep
having no shepherd, and of millions who have no
spiritual food : our wants, he says, are most im
perious ; even if we were to tax large livings
we must still have the money of the Cathedrals :
no plea will exempt you, nothing can stop us,
for the formation of benefices, and the endow
ment of new ones. We want (and he prints
it in italics) for these purposes " all that we can
obtain from whatever sources derived." I never
remeraber to have been more alarmed in my life

17
than by this passage. I said to myself, the
necessities of the Church have got such complete
hold of the imagination of this energetic Prelate,
who is so captivated by the holiness of his inno
vations, that all grades and orders of the Church
and all present and future interests will be sacri
ficed to it. I imraediatelv rushed to the acts of
Parliament which I always have under ray piUow
to see at once the worst of what had happened.
I found present revenues of the Bishops all safe ;
that is soraecorafort, Isaidtorayself: Canterbury,
24,000 or 25,000/. per annum; London, 18,000
or 20,000. I began to feel some corafort: "things
are not so bad ; the Bishops do not raean to sa
crifice to sheep and shepherds' money their present
revenues ; the Bishop of London is less violent
and headstrong than I thought he would be."
I looked a little further and found that 15,000/.
per annum is allotted to the future Archbishop
of Canterbury, 10,000/. to the Bishop of London,
8000/. to Durham, and 8000/. each to Winchester
and Ely. " Nothing of sheep and shepherd in all
this," I exclaimed, and felt still more comforted.
It was not till after the Bishops were taken care
of, and the revenues of the Cathedrals came into
B

18
full view, that I saw the perfect development of
the sheep and shepherd principle, the deep and
heartfelt compassion for spiritual labourers, and
that inward groaning for the destitute state of
the Church, and that firm purpose, printed in
italics, of taking for these purposes all that could
be obtained from whatever source derived; and
even in this delicious rummage of Cathedral
property, where all the fine church feelings of
the Bishop's heart coiild be indulged without
costing the poor sufferer a penny. Stalls for
Archdeacons in Lincoln and St. Paul's are to the
amount of 2000/. per annum, are taken from the
sheep and shepherd fund, and the patronage of
them divided between two commissioners, the
Bishop of London, and the Bishop of Lincoln,
instead of being paid to additional labourers in
the Vineyard.
Has there been any difficulty, I would ask, in
procuring Archdeacons upon the very moderate
pay they now receive? Can any Clergymen
be more thoroughly respectable than the present
Archdeacons in the see of London ? but men
bearing such an office in the Church, it may be

19
said, should be highly paid, and Archbishops
who could very well keep up their dignity upon
7000/. per annum, are to be allowed 15,000/. I
make no objection to all this; but then what
becomes of all these heart-rending phrases of
sheep and shepherd, and drooping vineyards
and flocks without spiritual consolation ? The
Bishop's argument is, that the superfluous
must give way to the necessary ; but in
fighting, the Bishop should take great care that
his cannons are not seized, and turned against
himself. He has awarded to the Bishops of
England a superfluity as great as that which
he intends to take from the Cathedrals ; and then
when he legislates for an order to which he
does not belong, begins to remember the dis
tresses of the lower Clergy, paints them with
all the colours of impassioned eloquence, and
informs the Cathedral institutions that he must
have every farthing he can lay his hand upon.
Is not this as if one afFected powerfully by a
charity sermon were to put his hands in another
man's pocket, and cast, from what he had ex
tracted, a liberal contribution into the plate ?

B 2

20
I beg not to be mistaken ; I am very far from
considering the Bishop of London as a sordid and
interested person : but this is a complete in
stance of how the best of men deceive them
selves, where their interests are concerned. I
have no doubt the Bishop firmly imagined he
was doing his duty ; but there should have
been men of all grades in the Commission, some
one to say a word for Cathedrals and against
Bishops. " The Bishop," says his antagonists, " has
allowed three Canons to be sufficient for St. Paul's,
and therefore four must be sufficient for other
Cathedrals. Sufficient to read the prayers and
preach the sermons, certainly, and so would
one be ; but not sufficient to excite properly,
by the hope of increased rank and wealth,
eleven thousand parochial Clergy."
The most important and cogent arguments
against the Dean and Chapter confiscations are
past over in silence in the Bishops' Charge.
This, in reasoning, is always the wisest and
most convenignt plan, and which all young

21
Bishops should imitate after the manner of this
wary polemic. I object to the confiscation
because it will throw a great deal more of
capital out of the parochial Church than it will
bring into it. I am very sorry to come forward
with so homely an argument, which shocks so
many Clergymen, and particularly those with
the largest incomes, and the best Bishoprics ;
but the truth is, the greater number of cler
gymen go into the Church in order that they
may derive a comfortable income from the
church. Such men intend to do their duty,
and they do it ; but the duty is, however, not
the motive, but the adjunct. If I was writing
in gala and parade, I would not hold this lan
guage ; but we are in earnest, and on business ;
and as very rash and hasty charges are founded
upon contrary suppositions of the pure dis
interestedness and perfect inattention to tem
porals in the Clergy, we must get down at once
to the solid rock without heeding how we disturb
the turf and the flowers above. The parochial
Clergy maintain their present decent appearance
quite as much by their own capital as by the
income they derive from the Church. I will
B 3

22
now state the income and capital of seven Cler
gymen, taken promiscuously in this neighbour
hood : —No. 1. Living 200/., Capital 12,000/.;
No. 2. Li\ang 800/., Capital 15,000/. ; No. 3. Liv
ing 500/., Capital 12,000/. ; No. 4. Living 150/.,
Capital 10,000/. ; No. 5. Living 800/., Capital
12,000/. ; No. 6. Living 150/., Capital 1000/. ;
No. 7. Living 600/., Capital 16,000/. I have dili
gently inquired into the circumstances of seven
Unitarian and Wesleyan ministers, and I ques
tion much if the whole seven could make up
6000/. between them ; and the zeal of enthu
siasm of this last division is certainly not inferior
to that of the former. Now here is a capital of
72,000/. carried into the Church, which the
confiscations of the Commissioners would force
out of it, by taking away the good things which
were the temptation to its introduction. So
that by the old plan of paying by lottery instead
of giving a proper competence to each, not only
do you obtain a parochial Clergy upon much
cheaper terms ; but from the gambling propensi
ties of human nature, and the irresistible tend
ency to hope that they shall gain the great
prizes, you tempt men into your service who

23
keep up their credit and yours, not by your
allowance, but by their own capital, and to de
stroy this wise and well-working arrrangement,
a great number of Bishops, Marquisses, and
John Russells, are huddled into a chamber, and
proposing a scheme which will turn the English
Church into a collection of consecrated beggars.
We are informed by the Bishop of London —
that it is an Holy Innovation.
1 have no manner of doubt, that the immediate
effect of passing the Dean and Chapter Bill will
be, that a great nuraber of fathers and uncles,
judging, and properly judging, that the Church
is a very altered and deteriorated profession,
will turn the industry and capital of their
eUves into another channel. My friend, Robert
Eden, says " this is of the earth earthy:" be it
so; I cannot help it, I paint raankind as I
find thera, and ara not answerable for their
defects. When an argument taken from real
life, and the actual condition of the world is
brought among the shadowy discussions of ec
clesiastics, it always occasions terror and dismay ;
B 4

24
it is hke ^Eneas stepping into Charon's boat,
which carried only ghosts and spirits.
Gemuit sub pondere cymba
Sutilis.
The whole plan of the Bishop of London is
a ptochogony — a generation of beggars. He pur
pose, out of the spoils of the Cathedral, to create
a thousand livings, and to give to the thousand
Clergyraen 130/. per annum each : — a Christian
Bishop proposing, in cold blood, to create a thou
sand livings of 130/. per annum each ; to call into
existence a thousand of the raost unhappy men
on the face of the earth, — the sons of the poor,
without hope, without the assistance of private
fortune, chained to the soil, ashamed to live
with their inferiors, unfit for the society of the
better classes, and dragging about the English
curse of poverty without the smallest hope that
they can ever shake it off: at present, such
livings are fiUed by young men who have better
hopes — who have reason to expect good pro
perty — who look forward to a College or a
family living — who are the sons of men of some
substance, and hope so to pass on to soraething
better — who exist under the delusion of being

25
hereafter Deans and Prebendaries — who are paid
once by money and three times by hope. Will
the Bishop of London promise to the progeny of
any of these thousand victims of the Holy In
novation that, if they behave well, one of them
shall have his butler's place ; another take care of
the cedars and hyssops of his garden ? Will he take
their daughters for his nursery-maids ; and may
some of the sons of these " labourers of the vine
yard" hope one day to ride the leaders from
St. James's to Fulham ? Here is hope — here is
room for ambition — a field for genius, and a ray
of amelioration ! If these beautiful feelings of
compassion are throbbing under the cassock of
the Bishop, he ought, in common justice to
himself, to make thera known.
If it were a scherae for giving ease and inde
pendence to any large bodies of Clergymen, it
might be listened to ; but the revenues of the
English Church are such as to render this
wholly and entirely out of the question. If you
place a man in a village in the country ; require
that he should be of good manners and well edu
cated ; that his habits and appearance should be
above those of the farmers to whom he preaches.

26
if he has nothing else to expect (as would be the
case in a Church of equal division) ; and if upon
his village income he is to support a wife and
educate a family without any power of making
himself known in a remote and solitary situation,
such a person ought to receive 500/. per annum,
and be furnished with a house. There are
about 10,700 parishes in England and Wales,
whose average income is 285/. per annum.
Now, to provide these incumbents with decent
houses, to keep them in repair, and to raise
the income of the incumbent to 500/. per an
num, would require (if all the incomes of the
Bishops, Deans, and Chapters of separate dig
nitaries, of sinecure rectories, were confiscated,
and if the excess of all the livings in Eng
land above 500/. per annum were added to them,)
a sum of two millions and a half in addition to
the present income of the whole church ; and
no power on earth could persuade the present
Parliament of Great Britain to grant a single
shilling for that purpose. Now, is it possible
to pay such a Church upon any other prin
ciple than that of unequal division ? The
proposed pillage of the Cathedral and College

27
Churches (omitting all consideration of the
separate estate of dignitaries) would amount,
divided among all the Benefices of England,
to about 51 12*. (5\d. per man : and this,
which would not stop an hiatus in a cassock,
and would drive out of the parochial Church
ten times as much as it brought into it, is the
panacea for pauperism recommended by Her
Majesty's Commissioners.
But if this plan were to drive men of capital
out of the Church, and to pauperise the English
Clergy, where would the harm be ? Could not
all the duties of religion be performed as well
by poor Clergymen as by men of good sub
stance ? My great and serious apprehension is,
that such would not be the case. There would
be the greatest risk that your Clergy would be fa
natical, and ignorant ; that their habits would be
low and mean, and that they would be despised.
Then a picture is drawn of a Clergyman of
130/. per annum, who combines all moral, phy
sical, and intellectual advantages, a learned man,
dedicatmg himself intensely to the care of his

28
parish — of charming manners and dignified de
portment — six feet two inches high, beautifully
proportioned, with a magnificent countenance,
expressive of all the cardinal virtues and the
Ten Commandments, — and it is asked with an
air of triumph, if such a man as this will fall
into contempt on account of his poverty ? But
substitute for him an average, ordinary, unin
teresting Minister ; obese, dumpy, neither ill-
natured nor good-natured ; neither learned nor
ignorant, striding over the stiles to church,
with a second-rate wife — dusty and deliquescent
— and four parochial children, full of catechism
and bread and butter : or let him be seen in
one of those Shem-Hara-and-Japhet buggies —
made on Mount Ararat soon after the subsidence
of the waters driving in the High Street of
Edmonton ; — among all his pecuniary, sapo
naceous, oleaginous parishioners, can any man
of comraon sense say that all these outward
circurastances of the Ministers of religion have
no bearing on religion itself?
I ask the Bishop of London, a raan of
honour and conscience, as he is, if he thinks

29
five years will elapse before a second attack is
made upon Deans and Chapters ? Does he
think, after Reformers have tasted the flesh of
the Church, that they will put up with any
other diet? Does he forget that Deans and
Chapters are But mock turtle — that more
delicious delicacies remain behind ? Five years
hence he will attempt to make a stand, and
he will be laughed at and eaten up.
Much is said of the conduct of the Com
missioners, but that is of the least possible con
sequence. They may have acted for the best
according to the then existing circumstances ;
they may seriously have intended to do their
duty to the country ; and I ara far from saying
or thinking they did not ; but without the least
reference to the Commissioners, the question is
is it wise to pass this bill, and to justify such
an open and tremendous sacrifice of Church
property ? Does public opinion now call for any
such measure ; is it a wise distribution of the
funds of an ill paid Church ? and will it not
force more capital out of the parochial part of
the Church than it brings into it? If the bill is

30
bad, it is surely not to pass out of compliment
to the feelings of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
If the project is hasty, it is not to be adopted to
gratify the Bishop of London. The mischief to
the Church is surely a greater evU than the
stultification of the Commissioflers, &c. If the
physician has prescribed hastily, is the medicine
to be taken to the death or disease of the
patient? If the judge has condemned impro-
perly is the criminal to be hung, that the wisdom
of the magistrate may not be impugned ?
But, why are the Comraissioners to be stultified
bythe rejection of the measure? The measuremay
have been very good when it was recommended,
and very objectionable now. I thought, and
many men thought, that the Church was going
to pieces — that the affections of the coramon
people were lost to the establishment ; and that
large sacrifices must be instantly made, to avert
the effects of this temporary madness ; but those
days are gone by — and with them ought to be
put aside measures which might have been wise
in those days, but are wise no longer.

31
After all the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London are good and placable men ;
and will ere long forget and forgive the successful
effiarts of their enemies in defeating this mis-
ecclesiastic law.
Suppose the Commission were now be
ginning to sit for the first time, will any
man living say that they would make such re
ports as they have raade ; and that they would
seriously propose such a tremendous revolution
inChurch property ? And if they would not, the
inference is irresistible, that to consult the feel
ings of two or three churchmen, we are compli
menting away the safety of the Church.
Milton asked where the nymphs were when
Lycidas perished ? I ask where the Bishops
are when the remorseless deep is closing over
the head of their beloved establishment ? *
You must have read an attack upon rae
by the Bishop of Gloucester, in the course of
* What is the use of publishing separate charges as the
Bishops of Winchester, Oxford, and Eochester have done?
Why do not the dissentient Bishops form into a firm pha
lanx to save the Church and fling out the bill ?

32
which he says, that I have not been appointed
to my situation as Canon of St. Paul's for
my piety and learning, but because I am a
scoffer and a jester. Is not this rather strong
for a Bishop, and does it not appear to you, Mr.
Archdeacon, as rather too close an imitation of
that language which is used in the apostolic
occupation of trafficking in fish? Whether I
have been appointed for my piety or not must
depend upon what this poor man means by piety.
He means by that word, of course, a defence of
all the tyrannical and oppressive abuses of the
Church which have been swept away within the
last fifteen or twenty years of my life; the Cor
poration and Test Acts ; the Penal Laws against
the Catholics ; the Compulsory Marriages of Dis
senters, and all those disabling and disqualifying
laws which were the disgrace of our Church,
and which he has always looked up to as the
consummation of human wisdora. If piety
consisted in the defence of these — if it was ira-
pious to struggle for their abrogation, I have
indeed led an ungodly life.
There is nothing pompous gentlemen are so

S3
much afraid of as a little humour. It is like the ob
jection of certain cephalic animalculse to the use of
small tooth-combs, " Finger and thumb, precipi
tate powder, or any thing else you please ; but for
heaven's sake no small tooth-combs ! " After all,
I believe, Bishop Monk has been the cause of
much more laughter than ever I have been ; I
cannot account for it, but I never see him enter
a room without exciting a smile on every coun
tenance within it. Dr. Monk is furious at my
attacking the heads of the Church; but how
can I help it ? If the heads of the Church are
at the head of the Mob ; if I find the best of
men doing that, which has in all times drawn
upon the worst enemies of the human race the
bitterest curses of History, ara I to stop because
the motives of these men are pure, and their
lives blameless ? I wish I could find a blot in
their lives, or a vice in tKeir motives* The
whole power of the motion is in the character
of the movers : feeble friends, false friends, and
foolish friends, all cease to look into the measure,
and say. Would such a measure have been re
commended by such men as the Prelates of
Canterbury and London, if it were not for the

34
public advantage ? And in this way, the great
good of a religious establishment, now rendered
moderate and compatible with all men's liberties
and rights, is sacrificed to names. Canterbury
and London have been frightened — they have
overlooked the effect of time and delay — they
have been betrayed into a fearful and ruinous
mistake. Painful as it is to teach men who
ought to teach us, the legislature ought, while
there is yet time, to awake and read them this
lesson. It is dangerous for a Prelate to write ; and
whoever does it ought to be a very wise one.
He has speculated why I was made a Canon of
St. Paul's. Suppose I were to follow his example,
and, going through the bench of Bishops, were
to ask for what reason each man had been made
a Bishop ; suppose I were to go into the county
of Gloucester, &c. &c. &c. ! ! I ! !
I was afraid the Bishop would attribute my
promotion to the Edinburgh Review ; but upon
the subject of promotion by Reviews he pre
serves an impenetrable silence. If my excellent

35
patron Earl Grey had any reasons of this kind.
he may at least be sure that the Reviews com
monly attributed to me were really written by rae.
I should have considered myself as the lowest
of created beings to have disguised myself in
another man's wit and sense, and to have received
a reward to which I was not entitled.*
I presume that what has drawn upon me the
indignation of this prelate, is the observations
I have from time to time made on the conduct
of the Commissioners ; of which he positively
asserts himself to have been a member : but
whether he was, or was not a member, I ut
terly acquit him of all possible blame, and of
every species of imputation which may attach
to the conduct of the Commission. In using
that word, I have always meant the Archbishop
of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and Lord
* I understand that the Bishop bursts into tears every
now and then, and says that I have set him the name of Simon,
and that all the Bishops now call him Simon. Simon of Glou
cester, however^ after all is a real writer, and how could I know
that Dr. Monk's name was Simon ? When tutor in Lord Car-
rington's family, he was called by the endearing though some
what unmajestic name oi Dich ; and if I had thought about
hisname at all, I should have called him Richard of Gloucester.
c 2

36
John Russell ; and have, honestly speaking,
given no more heed to the Bishop of Glou
cester, than if he had been sitting in a Commis
sion of Bonzes in the Court of Pekin.
To read, however, his Lordship a lesson
of good manners, I had prepared for him a
chastisement which would have been echoed
from the Seagrave who banqueteth in the
castle, to the idiot who spitteth over the
bridge at Gloucester ; but the following ap
peal struck my eye, and stopped my pen : —
*' Since that time my inadequate qualifica-
tions have sustained an appaUing diminution,
by the affection of my eyes, which have im
paired my vision, and the progress of which
threatens to consign rae to darkness : I beg the
benefit of your prayers to the Father of all
mercies, that he wUl restore to me the better
use of the visual organs, to be employed on his
service; or that he will inwardly illumine the
intellectual vision, with a particle of that
Divine ray, which his Holy Spirit can alone
impart."

37
It might have been better taste, perhaps, if a^
mitred invalid, in describing his bodily infirmities
before a church full of Clergymen, whose
prayers he asked, had been a little more sparing
in the abuse of his enemies ; but a good deal
must be forgiven to the sick. I wish that every
Christian was as well aware as this poor Bishop
of what he needed from Divine assistance ; and
in his supplication for the restoration of his sight
and the improvement of his understanding I
most fervently and cordially join.
I was much amused with what old Hermann*
says of the Bishop of London's .^schylus. "We
find," he says, " a great arbitrariness of pro
ceeding and much boldnessqf innovation guided by
no sure principle ; " here it is : qualis ab incepto.
He begins with ^schylus and ends with the
Church of England ; begins with profane and
ends with holy innovations — scratching out old
readings which every commentator had sanc
tioned, abolishing ecclesiastical dignities which
* Ueber die behandlung der Griechischen Dichter beiden
Englandren Von Gottfried Hermann. Wiemer Tahrbucher,
vol. liv. 1831.

38
every reformer had spared ; thrusting an ana-
poest into a verse, which will not bear it;
and intruding a Canon into a Cathedral, which.
does not want it ; and this is the Prelate by
whom the proposed reforra of the Church has;
been principally planned, and to whose practical
wisdora the Legislature is called upon to defer.
The Bishop of London, is a man of very great
ability, humane, placable, generous, munificent,^
very agreeable, but not to be trusted with great
interests where calmness and judgment are re
quired ; unfortunately, my old and amiable
schoolfellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
has melted away before him, and sacrificed that
wisdora on which we all founded our security.
Much writing and much talking are very tire
some, and above all they are so to men, who,
living in the world, arrive at those rapid and
just conclusions, which are only to be made by
living in the world. This bill past, every
raan of sense acquainted with huraan affairs
must see, that as far as the Church is concerned,
the thing is at an end. From Lord John Russell,
the present improver of the Church, we shaU

39
descend to Hume, from Hume to Roebuck, and
after Roebuck we shall receive our last im
provements from Dr. Wade : plunder will follow
after plunder, degradation after degradation.
The Church is gone, and what remains is not
life, but sickness, spasm, and struggle.
Whatever happens, I am not to blame; I
have fought my fight. — Farewell. SYDNEY SMITH.

THE END.

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