But this gloomy period of oppression and exclusion was broken by a transient gleam. Pitt died on the 23rd of January 1806, and Lord Grenville[34] succeeded him, at the head of the ministry of "All the Talents." In this place, perhaps, may be not unsuitably inserted the epitaph which Sydney Smith suggested for Pitt's statue in Hanover Square.
To the Right Honourable William PittWhose errors in foreign policyAnd lavish expenditure of our Resources at homeHave laid the foundation of National BankruptcyAnd scattered the seeds of Revolution,This Monument was erectedBy many weak men, who mistook his eloquence for wisdomAnd his insolence for magnanimity,By many unworthy men whom he had ennobled,And by many base men, whom he had enriched at the PublicExpense.But for EnglishmenThis Statue raised from such motivesHas not been erected in vain.They learn from it those dreadful abusesWhich exist under the mockeryOf a free Representation,And feel the deep necessityOf a great and efficient Reform.
In Lord Grenville's ministry Lord Erskine became Lord Chancellor, and Lord Holland Lord Privy Seal. In the autumn of 1806 the living of Foston-le-Clay, eight miles from York, fell vacant. It was in the Chancellor's gift; the Lord Privy Seal said a word to his colleague; the Chancellor cordially accepted "the nominee of Lord and Lady Holland"; and that nominee was Sydney Smith. Foston was worth £500 a year, and Dr. Markham, Archbishop of York, allowed the new Rector to be non-resident, accepting his duties at the Foundling Hospital as a sufficient justification for absence from his parish. Early in 1807 he preached at the Temple Church, and published by request, a sermon on Toleration, which drew this testimony from a scandalized peer:[35]—
"Sydney Smith preached yesterday a sermon on the Catholic question…. It would have made an admirable party speech in Parliament, but as a sermon, the author deserved the Star Chamber, if it still existed."
During the summer of 1807, the Smiths lived in a hired house at Sonning on the Thames; and one of their neighbours was the great civilian Sir William Scott,[36] afterwards Lord Stowell (who deserves to be honoured for having coined the phrase—"The elegant simplicity of the Three per cents"). The old judge took a fancy to the young clergyman, and pointed out, in a friendly spirit, how much he had lost by his devotion to Whiggism. In later life, Sydney Smith wrote to Lord John Russell[37]—"I remember with pleasure, thirty years ago, old Lord Stowell saying to me, 'Mr. Smith, you would have been a much richer man if you had joined us.'"
But the Tory table-talk of Earley[38] was powerless to seduce this staunch partisan from his political allegiance; and, just at this period, he was meditating the most skilful and the most resounding blow which he ever struck for freedom and justice.
It was a critical time. The besotted resistance of the King to the slightest concession in favour of his Roman Catholic subjects had driven the ministry of "All the Talents" out of office in the spring. The High Tories succeeded them, and the General Election which ensued on the change of government gave a strong majority for "No Popery" and reaction. Meanwhile the greatest genius that the world has ever seen was wading through slaughter to a universal throne, and no effective resistance had as yet been offered to a progress which menaced the freedom of Europe and the existence of its states. At such a juncture it seemed to Sydney Smith that England could not spare a single soldier or sailor, nor afford to alienate the loyalty of a single citizen. "Buonaparte," he wrote, "is as rapid and as terrible as the lightning of God; would he were as transient." It was nothing short of national suicide to reject men desirous of serving in the army and navy on account of their beliefs, to madden English Romanists by defrauding them of their civil rights, and to outrage the whole people of Ireland by affixing a legal stigma to their religion.
His musings on this pregnant theme took shape in—
This Letter was published in the summer of 1807, and "its effect was like a spark on a heap of gunpowder," It was followed by nine more, bearing the same title, four of which appeared in the same year and five in the next. A little later Sydney Smith wrote to Lord Grey—"I wish I could write as well as Plymley: but, if I could, where is such a case to be found? When had any lawyer such a brief?"
In 1808Peter Plymley's Letterswere collected and published in a pamphlet, and the pamphlet ran through sixteen editions. "The government of that day," wrote Sydney Smith in 1839, "took great pains to find out the author; all that theycouldfind out was that they were brought to Mr. Budd, the publisher, by the Earl of Lauderdale.[39] Somehow or another it came to be conjectured that I was the author.[40]… They had an immense circulation at the time, and I think above twenty thousand copies were sold." Some little space must be bestowed upon these masterpieces of humour and wisdom.
[19] "Yet mark one caution, ere thy next ReviewSpread its light wings of Saffron and of Blue,Beware lest blundering Brougham spoil the sale,Turn Beef to Bannocks, Cauliflowers to Kail."
BYRON,English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
[20] Barrister, and writer of political pamphlets between 1791 and 1807.
[21] George Ticknor (1791-1871), American traveller and man of letters.
[22] Jeffrey's house near Edinburgh.
[23] (1778-1817.) Barrister and M.P. On his death, Sydney Smith wrote—-"I say nothing of the great and miserable loss we have all sustained. He will always live in our recollection; and it will be useful to us all, in the great occasions of life, to reflect how Horner would act and think in them, if God had prolonged his life."
[24] Sydney Smith used to say, "Bobus and I have inverted the laws of nature. He rose by his gravity; I sank by my levity."
[25] Henry Richard (1773-1840), 3rd Lord Holland.
[26] Macaulay, "Lord Holland."
[27] The Lady Holland who figures so frequently in Sydney Smith's correspondence was Elizabeth Vassall (1770-1845), wife of the 3rd Lord Holland. Sydney Smith's daughter, Saba, did not become Lady Holland till 1853, when her husband, Dr. Holland, was made a baronet.
[28] (1750-1818).
[29] William Whewell (1794-1866), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, author ofElements of Morality, 1845.
[30] Sydney Smith wrote his friend Sir George Philips in 1836—"Thomas Brown was an intimate friend of mine, and used to dine with me regularly every Sunday in Edinburgh. He was a Lake poet, a profound metaphysician, and one of the most virtuous men that ever lived. As a metaphysician, Dugald Stewart was a humbug to him. Brown had real talents for the thing. You must recognize, in reading Brown, many of those arguments with which I have so often reduced you to silence in metaphysical discussions. Your discovery of Brown is amusing. Go on! You will detect Dryden if you persevere; bring to light John Milton, and drag William Shakspeare from his ill-deserved obscurity!"
[31] See p. 185.
[32] See his Essay on "Toleration":—"A chapel belonging to the Swedenborgians, or Methodists of the New Jerusalem, was offered, two or three years since, in London, to a clergyman of the Establishment. The proprietor was tired of his irrational tenants, and wished for better doctrine. The rector, with every possible compliment to the fitness of the person in question, positively refused the application; and the church remains in the hands of Methodists."
[33] Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841) wrote in 1808:—"To church, where I heard Sydney Smith preach a sermon, which, for its eloquence and power of reasoning, exceeded anything I had ever heard. The subject was the Conversion of St. Paul, of which he proved the authenticity, in opposition to all the objections and doubts of infidelity."
[34] William Wyndham Grenville (1759-1834), created Lord Grenville in 1790.
[35] Morton Eden (1751-1830), created Lord Henley in 1799.
[36] (1745-1836), created Lord Stowell in 1821.
[37] (1792-1878).
[38] A house which Lord Stowell acquired by his marriage with an heiress, Anna Maria Bagnall.
[39] James, 8th Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839).
[40] Byron, inEnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers, attributes the authorship of Peter Plymley to "Smug Sydney." See also his allusion to "Peter Pith" inDon Juan, canto xvi.
Peter Plymley's Lettersare supposed to be written by a Londoner, who is in favour of removing the secular disabilities of Roman Catholics, to his brother Abraham, the parson of a rural parish. They proceed throughout on the assumption that the parson is a kind-hearted, honest, and conscientious man; but rather stupid, grossly ignorant of public affairs, and frightened to death by a bogy of his own imagining. That bogy is the idea of a Popish conspiracy against the crown, church, and commonwealth. Abraham communicates his alarms to his brother Peter in London, and Peter'sLettersare replies to these outpourings.
Letter I. begins by assuring Abraham that there is no truth in the rumour that the Pope has landed on English soil, and has been housed by the Spencers or the Hollands or the Grenvilles. "The best-informed clergy in the neighbourhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumour is without foundation." Having set this fear at rest, Peter deals with Abraham's argument.—
"You say that the Roman Catholics interpret the Scriptures in an unorthodox manner, Very likely…. But I want soldiers and sailors for the state; I want to make a greater use than I now can do of a poor country full of men; I want to render the military service popular among the Irish; to check the power of France; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe, which in twenty years' time will be nothing but a mass of French slaves: and then you, and ten thousand other such boobies as you, call out—'For God's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland! They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do…. 'What! when Turk, Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all combined against this country; when men of every religious persuasion, and no religious persuasion, when the population of half the globe, is up in arms against us; are we to stand examining our generals and armies as a bishop examines candidates for holy orders? and to suffer no one to bleed for England who does not agree with you about the Second of Timothy!"
And then Peter disclaims the reproach of unfriendliness to the EstablishedChurch.—
"I love the Church as well as you do; but you totally mistake the nature of an Establishment, when you contend that it ought to be connected with the military and civil careers of every individual in the state. It is quite right that there should be one clergyman in every parish interpreting the Scriptures after a particular manner, ruled by a regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of haycocks and wheat sheaves. When I have laid this foundation for a national religion in the state—when I have placed ten thousand well-educated men in different parts of the kingdom to preach it up, and compelled every one to pay them, whether they hear them or not—I have taken such measures as I know must always procure an immense majority in favour of the Established Church; but I can go no farther. I cannot set up a civil inquisition, and say to one—'You shall not be a butcher, because you are not orthodox'; and prohibit another from brewing, and a third from administering the law, and a fourth from defending the country. If common justice did not prohibit me from such a conduct, common sense would."
Persecution, Peter goes on to say, makes martyrs. Fanatics delight in the feeling that they are persecuted for righteousness' sake; and, the more they are harried, the more tenaciously they cling to their misbeliefs.—
"This is just the effect your disqualifying laws have produced. They have fed Dr. Rees and Dr. Kippis;[41] crowded the congregation of the Old Jewry[42] to suffocation; and enabled every sublapsarian, and supralapsarian, and semipelagian, clergyman to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live with some distant resemblance to the state of a gentleman."
But, says Abraham, the King is bound by his Coronation Oath to resist the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Peter replies—
"Suppose Bonaparte were to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to succeed, after repeated trials, in making an impression upon Ireland, do you think we should bear anything of the impediment of a Coronation Oath? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour such ministers and such unheard-of nonsense, if the most distant prospect existed of conciliating the Catholics by every species even of the most abject concession? And yet, if your argument is good for anything, the Coronation Oath ought to reject, at such a moment, every tendency to conciliation, and to bind Ireland for ever to the Crown of France."
After a cursory reference to Abraham's fears about Popish fires and faggots, and a reminder that "there were as many persons put to death for religious opinions under the mild Elizabeth as under the bloody Mary," Peter concludes with these vigorous sentences—
"You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my country in the hands of a pert London joker[43] and a second-rate lawyer.[44] Of the first, no other good is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses; the second seems to me to have the head of a country parson and the tongue of an Old Bailey barrister. If I could see good measures pursued, I care not who is in power; but I have a passionate love for common justice and for common sense, and I abhor and despise every man who builds up his political fortune upon their ruin."
Abraham's next objection to emancipation appears to have been that a Roman Catholic will not respect an oath. "Why not?" asks Peter in Letter II. "What upon earth has kept him out of Parliament, or excluded him from all the offices whence he is excluded, but his respect for oaths? There is no law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be no such law; because it is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of any man's mind…. The Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of his religion. The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is, that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are."
From Roman Catholics in general, Peter now turns to the Roman Catholics ofIreland.—
"The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots. Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth and intelligence, who, if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the power of France, and, if once wrested from their alliance with England, would in three years render its existence as an independent nation absolutely impossible. You speak of danger to the Establishment; I request to know when the Establishment was ever so much in danger as when Hoche was in Bantry Bay, and whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts of the Jesuits, were half so terrible?… Whatever you think of the Catholics, there they are—you cannot get rid of them. Your alternative is to give them a lawful place for stating their grievances, or an unlawful one. If you do not admit them to the House of Commons, they will hold their Parliament in Potatoe Place, Dublin, and be ten times as violent and inflammatory as they would be in Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea of security as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics as the fair and proper organ of their party. I should have thought it the height of good fortune that such a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of madness and ignorance to reject it."
A noble lord—his name unluckily has perished—had attempted to salve his own conscience and that of his colleagues in hostility to the Roman claims, by affirming that exclusion from civil office was not persecution; and Peter handles him with delighted vigour, in a passage which, more than eighty years later, was quoted with enthusiasm by Mr. Gladstone.[45]—
"A distinction, I perceive, is taken by one of the most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation of political power; whereas there is no more distinction between these two things than there is between him who makes the distinction and a booby. If I strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic and give him twenty stripes, I persecute. If I say, 'Everybody in the town where you live shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable offices but you, who are a Catholic,' I do not persecute! What barbarous nonsense is this! As if degradation was not as great an evil as bodily pain, or as severe poverty; as if I could not be as great a tyrant by saying, 'You shall not enjoy,' as by saying, 'You shall suffer.'… You may not be aware of it, most reverend Abraham, but you deny their freedom to the Catholics upon the same principle that Sarah your wife refuses to give the receipt for a ham or a gooseberry dumpling. She values her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because they remind her that her neighbours want it—a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of religious freedom."
Letter III. gives utterance to a genuine alarm inspired by Bonaparte's uninterrupted progress. England is confronted by the most formidable adversary whom she has ever known, and her defence is entrusted to Canning and Perceval. Canning's armoury contains nothing more serviceable than "schoolboy jokes and doggerel rhymes, an affronting petulance, and the tones and gesticulations of Mr. Pitt." Perceval, instead of looking after the national defences,
"will bestow the strictest attention on the smaller parts of ecclesiastical government. In the last agonies of England he will bring in a bill to regulate Easter offerings; and he will adjust the stipends of curates, when the flag of France is unfurled on the hills of Kent.[46]… Whatever can be done by very mistaken notions of the piety of a Christian, and by very wretched imitations of the eloquence of Mr. Pitt, will be done by these two gentlemen";
but these are no adequate defences against the genius and ambition of Bonaparte. "There is nothing to oppose to the conqueror of the world but a small table-wit, and the sallow Surveyor of the Meltings."[47]
Abraham, terrified by those prognostics, asks Peter if he thinks it possible for England to survive the recent misfortunes of Europe. Peter replies that if Bonaparte lives, and a great deal is not immediately conceded to the Roman Catholics, England must perish, and perish in disgrace.—
"It is doubly miserable to become slaves abroad, because we would be tyrants at home; and to perish because we have raised up worse enemies within, from our own bigotry, than we are exposed to without from the unprincipled ambition of France."
Then he goes on to a famous apologue. England is a frigate, attacked by a corsair of immense strength and size. The rigging is cut, there is water in the hold, men are dropping off very fast, the peril is extreme. How do you think the captain (whom we will call Perceval) acts? Does he call all hands on deck and talk to them of king, country, glory, sweethearts, gin, French prisons, wooden shoes, old England, and hearts of oak—till they give three cheers, rush to their guns, and, after a tremendous conflict, succeed in beating off the enemy?—
"Not a syllable of all this: this is not the manner in which the honourable commander goes to work. The first thing he does is to secure twenty or thirty of his prime sailors who happen to be Catholics, to clap them in irons, and set over them a guard of as many Protestants. Having taken this admirable method of defending himself against his infidel opponents, he goes upon deck, reminds the sailors, in a very bitter harangue, that they are of different religions; exhorts the Episcopal gunner not to trust to the Presbyterian quartermaster, issues positive orders that the Catholics should be fired at upon the first appearance of discontent; rushes through blood and brains, examining his men in the Catechism and xxxix. articles, and positively forbids every one to sponge or ram who has not taken the Sacrament according to the Church of England…. Built as she is of heart of oak, and admirably manned, is it possible with such a captain to save this ship from going to the bottom?"
Abraham's next argument against a policy of concession is that it would only lead to further demands in the future. In reply to this Peter makes vigorous use of Spencer Perceval's official career. Perceval had held a sinecure for several years; at the time of writing he was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and he had just attempted, and been defeated in attempting, a most nefarious job, by which the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster were to have been secured to him for life.
"Suppose the person to whom he applied for the Meltings had withstood every plea of wife and fourteen children, no business, and good character, and had refused him this paltry little office, because he might hereafter attempt to get hold of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster for life; would not Mr. Perceval have contended eagerly against the injustice of refusing moderate requests, because immoderate ones may hereafter be made? Would he not have said (and said truly), 'Leave such exorbitant attempts as these to the general indignation of the Commons, who will take care to defeat them when they do occur; but do not refuse me the Irons and the Meltings now, because I may totally lose sight of all moderation hereafter'?"
Letter IV. begins with a reply to those who contended that England ought not to pay for the education of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland.
"The whole sum now appropriated by Government to the religious education of four millions of Christians is £13,000—a sum about one hundred times as large being appropriated in the same country to about one-eighth part of this number of Protestants. When it was proposed to raise this grant from £8000 to £13,000, its present amount, this sum was objected to by that most indulgent of Christians, Mr. Spencer Perceval, as enormous; he himself having secured for his own eating and drinking, and the eating and drinking of the Master and Miss Percevals, the reversionary sum of £21,000 a year of the public money,[48] and having just failed in a desperate and rapacious attempt to secure to himself for life the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster; and the best of it is, that this Minister, after abusing his predecessors for their impious bounty to the Catholics, has found himself compelled, from the apprehension of immediate danger, to grant the sum in question."
Abraham now goes on to plead that our present relations with the Roman Catholics date from the Revolution of 1688, and that laws passed at that period are unalterable. To this Peter replies:—
"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool…. Besides, it happens that, to the principal incapacities under which the Irish suffer, they were subjectedafterthat great and glorious Revolution, to which we are indebted for so many blessings…. The Catholics were not excluded from the Irish House of Commons, or military commands, before the 3rd and 4th of William and Mary, and the 1st and 2nd of Queen Anne."
Then he goes on to cite the example of Scotland. There the English government had, in times past, tried to force the national conscience in matters of faith and worship. The government had failed, as it deserved to fail, for Scotland was resolute and rebellious. Then "the true and only remedy was applied. The Scotch were suffered to worship God after their own tiresome manner, without pain, penalty, and privation." And Scotland had become a contented, loyal, and profitable part of the United Kingdom. Exactly the reverse was happening in Ireland. A vehement hostility to the Union was spreading through all parts of the country and all classes of the people.
"The Irish see that their national independence is gone, without having recovered any single one of those advantages which they were taught to expect from the sacrifice. All good things were to flow from the Union; they have none of them gained anything. Every man's pride is wounded by it; no man's interest is promoted. In the seventh year of that Union, four million Catholics, lured by all kinds of promises to yield up the separate dignity and sovereignty of their country, are forced to squabble with such a man as Mr. Spencer Perceval for five thousand pounds with which to educate their children in their own mode of worship; he, the same Mr. Spencer, having secured to his own Protestant self a reversionary portion of the public money amounting to four times that sum…. Our conduct to Ireland, during the whole of this war, has been that of a man who subscribes to hospitals, weeps at charity-sermons, carries out broth and blankets to beggars, and then comes home and beats his wife and children. We have compassion for the victims of all other oppression and injustice, except our own."
It is of no use for statesmen to ignore the Irish question. It is much too urgent and too dangerous a topic to be long suppressed.—
"A man may command his family to say nothing more about the stone, and surgical operations; but the ponderous malice still lies upon the nerve, and gets so big that the patient breaks his own law of silence, clamours for the knife, and expires under its late operation. Believe me, you talk folly when you speak of suppressing the Irish question. I wish to God that the case admitted of such a remedy … but, if the wants of the Catholics are not heard in the manly tones of Lord Grenville, or the servile drawl of Lord Castlereagh, they will be heard ere long in the madness of mobs, and the conflicts of armed men."
In Letter V. Peter turns upon Abraham, who cannot believe that England will ever be ruined and conquered, and says:—
"Alas! so reasoned, in their time, the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian Plymleys. But the English are brave? So were all these nations. You might get together an hundred thousand men individually brave; but, without generals capable of commanding such a machine, it would be as useless as a first-rate man-of-war manned by Oxford clergymen or Parisian shopkeepers. I do not say this to the disparagement of English officers: they have had no means of acquiring experience. But I do say it to create alarm. We do not appear to me to be half alarmed enough, or to entertain that sense of our danger which leads to the most obvious means of self-defence. As for the spirit of the peasantry, in making a gallant defence behind hedgerows and through plate-racks and hencoops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with panic as the English; and this from their total unacquaintance with the science of war. Old wheat and beans blazing for twenty miles round—cart-mares shot—sows of Lord Somerville's[49] breed running wild over the country—the minister of the parish wounded sorely in his hinder parts—Mrs. Plymley in fits—all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian has seen three or four times over. But it is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled…. But whatever was our conduct—if every ploughman was as great a hero as he who was called from his oxen to save Rome from her enemies—I should still say that, at such a crisis, you want the affections of all your subjects in both islands. There is no spirit which you must alienate, no heart you must avert. Every man must feel he has a country, and that there is an urgent and pressing cause why he should expose himself to death."
Although Peter is so seriously concerned about the military disasters which will fall on England unless she behaves more wisely to her Roman Catholic population, he is not the least afraid of any dangers arising from the Roman Catholic religion. England has done with it, once for all—
"Tell me that the world will return again under the influence of the smallpox; that Lord Castlereagh will hereafter oppose the power of the court; that Lord Howick and Mr. Grattan will each of them do a mean and dishonourable action; that anybody who has heard Lord Redesdale speak will knowingly and willingly hear him again; that Lord Eldon has assented to the fact of two and two making four, without shedding tears, or expressing the smallest doubt or scruple; tell me any other thing absurd or incredible, but, for the love of common sense, let me hear no more of the danger to be apprehended from the general diffusion of Popery. It is too absurd to be reasoned upon; every man feels it is nonsense when he hears it stated, and so does every man while he is stating it."
No, the only real danger which Peter sees—and this he sees with startling clearness—is that Ireland will be absorbed by France, and will welcome her deliverance from England; that the civil existence of England will be most seriously imperilled; and that the Irish themselves will, in the long-run, suffer grievously by the change,—
"Who can doubt but that Ireland will experience ultimately from France a treatment to which the conduct they have experienced from England is the love of a parent or a brother? Who can doubt that, five years after he has got hold of the country, Ireland will be tossed by Bonaparte as a present to some one of his ruffian generals, who will knock the head of Mr. Keogh against the head of Cardinal Troy, shoot twenty of the most noisy blockheads of the Roman persuasion, wash his pug-dogs in holy water, and confiscate the salt butter of the Milesian Republic to the last tub? But what matters this? or who is wise enough in Ireland to heed it? or when had common sense much influence with my poor dear Irish? Mr. Perceval does not know the Irish; but I know them, and I know that, at every rash and mad hazard, they will break the Union, revenge their wounded pride and their insulted religion, and fling themselves into the open arms of France, sure of dying in the embrace…. In the six hundredth year of our Empire over Ireland, have we any memorial of ancient kindness to refer to? any people, any zeal, any country, on which we can depend? Have we any hope, but in the winds of heaven and the tides of the sea? any prayer to prefer to the Irish, but that they should forget and forgive their oppressors, who, in the very moment that they are calling upon them for their exertions, solemnly assure them that the oppression shall still remain?"
Letter VI. begins with one of those vivacious apologues in which Sydney Smith excelled. Abraham Plymley has been talking of the concessions which Roman Catholics hare already received, and their shameless ingratitude in asking for more. To the cry of ingratitude Peter thus replies.—There is a village, he says, in which, once a year, the inhabitants sit down to a dinner provided at the common expense. A hundred years ago the inhabitants of three of the streets seized the inhabitants of the fourth street, bound them hand and foot, laid them on their backs, and compelled them to look on while the majority were stuffing themselves with beef and beer—and this, although they had contributed an equal quota to the expense. Next year the same assault was perpetrated. It soon grew into a custom; and, as years went on, the village came to look on the annual act of tyranny as the most sacred of its institutions. Unfortunately, however, for the tyrannical majority, the inhabitants of the persecuted street increased in numbers, determination, and public spirit. They murmured, protested, and resisted, till the oppressors, "more afraid of injustice, were now disposed to be just." On the next occasion of the annual dinner, the victims were unbound. The year after, they were allowed to sit upright. Then they got a bit of bread and a glass of water. Finally, after a long series of small concessions, they grew so bold as to ask that they might sit down at the bottom of the table, and feast with their grander neighbours. Forthwith, a general cry of shame and scandal.—
"Ten years ago, were you not laid upon your backs? Don't you remember what a great thing you thought it to get a piece of bread? How thankful you were for cheese-parings? Have you forgotten that memorable æra, when the lord of the manor interfered to obtain for you a slice of the public pudding? And now, with an audacity only equalled by your ingratitude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, and to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that you may sit down to table with the rest, and be indulged even with beef and beer. There are not more than half a dozen dishes which we have reserved for ourselves; the rest has been thrown open to you in the utmost profusion; you have potatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the pan, and delicious toast-and-water, in incredible quantities. Beef, mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours; and, if you were not the most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, you would never think of aspiring to enjoy them."
Is not this, says Peter, the very nonsense and the very insult which you daily practise on the Roman Catholics? I, though I am an inhabitant of the village and live in one of the three favoured streets, have retained some sense of justice, and I most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to persevere in their just demands, till they are admitted to their just share of a dinner for which they pay as much as the others.
"And, if they see a little attenuated lawyer[50] squabbling at the head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding which he has filched from the public feasts, to carry home to his wife and children."
Before ending his letter, Peter has a fling at the Home Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, "the lesser of the two Jenkinsons."[51] Lord Hawkesbury has said that "nothing is to be granted to the Catholics from fear." Why not, asks Peter, if the thing demanded is just?
"The only true way to make the mass of mankind see the beauty of justice is by showing them in pretty plain terms the consequences of injustice. If any body of French troops land in Ireland, the whole population of that country will rise against you to a man, and you could not possibly survive such an event three years. Such, from the bottom of my heart, do I believe to be the present state of that country; and so little does it appear to me to be impolitic and unstatesmanlike to concede anything to such a danger, that if the Catholics, in addition to their present just demands, were to petition for the perpetual removal of the said Lord Hawkesbury from his Majesty's councils, I think the prayer of the petition should be instantly complied with. Canning's crocodile tears should not move me; the hoops of the Maids of Honour should not hide him. I would tear him from the banisters of the Back Stairs, and plunge him in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque Ports."[52]
Letter VII. begins with a rebuke to brother Abraham for placing all his hopes for the salvation of England in the "discretion" and "sound sense" of Mr. Secretary Canning.—
"To call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great nation, seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he is an extraordinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the highest lustre, I do most readily admit…. The Foreign Secretary is a gentleman—a respectable as well as a highly agreeable man in private life; but you may as well feed me with decayed potatoes as console me for the miseries of Ireland by the resources of his 'sense' and his 'discretion.' It is only the public situation which this gentleman holds that entitles me or induces me to say so much about him. He is a fly in amber: nobody cares about the fly; the only question is, How the devil did it get there? Nor do I attack him from the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province."
Under the rule of Canning and his colleagues, Ireland has become utterly disloyal.—
"The great mass of the Catholic population, upon the slightest appearance of a French force in that country, would rise upon you to a man. There is no loyalty among the Catholics: they detest you as their worst oppressors, and they will continue to detest you till you remove the cause of their hatred. It is in your power in six months' time to produce a total revolution of opinions among these people…. At present see what a dreadful state Ireland is in! The common toast among the low Irish is, 'The Feast of thePass-over.' Some allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately acted at Dublin, produced thunders of applause from the pit and the galleries; anda politician should not be inattentive to the public feelings expressed in theatres. Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish. He has no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his own public emoluments. An Irish peasant fills the barrel of his gun full of tow dipped in oil, butters the lock, buries it in a bog, and allows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at pleasure. Be just and kind to the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them; rescue them from the degraded servitude in which they are held by an handful of their own countrymen; and you will add four millions of brave and affectionate men to your strength."
But instead of these wise remedies, Mr. Secretary Canning only offers theIrish people his incessant, unseasonable, and sometimes indecent jokes.—
"He jokes upon neutral flags and frauds, jokes upon Irish rebels, jokes upon northern and western and southern foes, and gives himself no trouble upon any subject…. And this is the Secretary whose genius, in the estimation of brother Abraham, is to extinguish the genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliath smitten by a stripling; Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman. Tremble, thou great Gaul, from whose head an armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of danger; tremble, thou scourge of God, for a pleasant man is come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes."
Abraham comforts himself with his reflection that Bonaparte has no ships or sailors. But, says Peter, there are quite enough remains of the navies of France, Spain, Holland, and Denmark, for such a short excursion as would be needed for the capture of Ireland. And Bonaparte can increase his forces every day. With all Europe at his feet, he can get timber and stores and men to any conceivable amount. "He is at present the despotic monarch of above twenty thousand miles of sea-coast, and yet you suppose he cannot procure sailors for the invasion of Ireland." Ireland is still the burden of the song. Conciliate Ireland and all will be well. Tyrannize over her and we are undone.
"If Ireland was friendly, we might equally set at defiance the talents of Bonaparte and the blunders of his rival Mr. Canning: we could then support the ruinous and silly bustle of our useless expeditions, and the almost incredible ignorance of our commercial Orders in Council.[53] Let the present administration give up but this one point, and there is nothing which I would not consent to grant them. Perceval should have full liberty to insult the tomb of Mr. Fox, and to torment every eminent Dissenter in Great Britain. Lord Camden should have large boxes of plums; Mr. Rose receive permission to prefix to his name the appellation of Virtuous; and to the Viscount Castlereagh a round sum of ready money shall be well and truly paid into his hand.[54] Lastly, what remains to Mr. George Canning, but that he ride up and down Pall Mall glorious upon a white horse, and that they cry out before him, 'Thus shall it be done to the statesman who hath writtenThe Needy Knife-Grinder'?"
Letter VIII. begins with the statistics of Ireland, its area, population, trade, manufactures, exports and imports. "Ireland has the greatest possible facilities for carrying on commerce with the whole of Europe. It contains, within a circuit of 750 miles, 66 secure harbours, and presents a western frontier against Great Britain, reaching from the Firth of Clyde north to the Bristol Channel south, and varying in distance from 20 to 100 miles; so that the subjugation of Ireland would compel us to guard with ships and soldiers a new line of coast, certainly amounting, with all its sinuosities, to more than 700 miles—an addition of polemics, in our present state of hostility with all the world, which must highly gratify the vigorists and give them an ample opportunity of displaying that foolish energy upon which their claims to distinction are founded. Such is the country which the Chancellor of the Exchequer would drive into the arms of France."
Religious freedom, continues Peter, is the strongest safeguard of states. France has it, and is victorious over Europe; England lacks it, and is in imminent peril. "How sincerely and fervently have I often wished that the Emperor of the French had thought as Mr. Spencer Perceval does upon the subject of government; that he had entertained doubts and scruples upon the propriety of admitting the Protestants to an equality of rights with the Catholics, and that he had left in the middle of his empire these vigorous seeds of hatred and disaffection. But the world was never yet conquered by a blockhead. One of the very first measures we saw him recurring to was the complete establishment of religious liberty. If his subjects fought and paid as he pleased, he allowed them to believe as they pleased. The moment I saw this, my best hopes were lost. I perceived in a moment the kind of man we had to do with. I was well aware of the miserable ignorance and folly of the country upon the subject of Toleration; and every year has been adding to the success of that game which it was clear he had the will and the ability to play against us."
Abraham has suggested that the Emperor is not a religious man, and that his tolerance is the fruit of indifference. But, says Peter, "if Bonaparte is liberal in subjects of religion because he has no religion, is this a reason why we should be illiberal because we are Christians? If he owes this excellent quality to a vice, is that any reason why we may not owe it to a virtue? Toleration is a great good, and a good to be imitated, let it come from whom it will."
And now Peter turns upon Lord Sidmouth,[55] who has been prophesying woe and destruction from the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Such prophecies, he says, will, in the process of time, become matter of pleasantry even to "the sedulous housewife and the Rural Dean." There is always a copious supply of Lord Sidmouths in the world, and they have always uttered the most dismal predictions about every improvement in the lot of mankind.—
"Turnpike roads, navigable canals, inoculation, hops, tobacco, the Reformation, the Revolution—there are always a set of worthy and moderately-gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires."
The only contention of poor Abraham which Peter will in the slightest degree accept, is that the emancipation of the Roman Catholics will alienate the Orangemen. But, even if this be the result of a just act, it is far less formidable than the result of continued injustice. Brother Abraham, "skilled in the arithmetic of Tithe," must perceive that it is better to have four friends and one enemy, than four enemies and one friend; and, the more violent the hatred of the Orangemen, the more certain the reconciliation of the Catholics. Even supposing, for the sake of argument, that the Orangemen carry their disaffection to the point of resistance, and brave the discipline of the law, the prospect has no terrors for Peter Plymley.—
"My love of poetical justice does carry me as far as that—one summer's whipping, only one; the thumb-screw for a short season; a little light, easy torturing between Lady Day and Michaelmas; a short specimen of Mr. Perceval's rigour. I have malice enough to ask this slight atonement for the groans and shrieks of the poor Catholics, unheard by any human tribunal, but registered by the Angel of God against their Protestant and enlightened oppressors."
Letter IX. opens with an enumeration of offices not tenable by adherents of the Roman faith.
"No Catholic can be chief Governor or Governor of this Kingdom, Chancellor or Keeper of the Great Seal, Lord High Treasurer, Chief of any of the Courts of Justice, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Puisne Judge, Judge in the Admiralty, Master of the Rolls, Secretary of State, Keeper of the Privy Seal, Vice-Treasurer or his Deputy, Teller or Cashier of Exchequer, Auditor or General, Governor or Custos Rotulorum of Counties, Chief Governor's Secretary, Privy Councillor, King's Counsel, Serjeant, Attorney, Solicitor-General, Master in Chancery, Provost or Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, Postmaster-General, Master and Lieutenant-General of Ordnance, Commander-in-Chief, General on the Staff, Sheriff, Sub-Sheriff, Mayor, Bailiff, Recorder, Burgess, or any other officer in a City, or a Corporation. No Catholic can be guardian to a Protestant, and no priest guardian at all: no Catholic can be a gamekeeper, or have for sale, or otherwise, any arms or warlike stores; no Catholic can present to a living, unless he choose to turn Jew in order to obtain that privilege; and the pecuniary qualification of Catholic jurors is made higher than that of Protestants."
Out of that splendid list of unattainable posts, Peter Plymley chooses, to illustrate his theme, the offices of Sheriff and Deputy-Sheriff in Ireland. No one he says, who is unacquainted with that country, can conceive the obstacles to justice which exclusion from these offices entails. The lives, liberties, and properties of the Roman Catholic population are at the mercy of the Juries, and the Juries are nominated exclusively by Protestants—and this in a country where religious animosities are peculiarly inflamed.—
"A poor Catholic in Ireland may be tried by twelve Percevals, and destroyed, according to the manner of that gentleman, in the name of the law, and with all the insulting forms of justice. I will not go the length of saying that deliberate and wilful injustice is done. I have no doubt that the Orange Deputy-Sheriff thinks it would be a most unpardonable breach of his duty if he did not summon a Protestant panel. I can easily believe that the Protestant panel may conduct themselves very conscientiously in hanging the gentlemen of the Crucifix; but I blame the law which does not guard the Catholic against the probable tenour of those feelings which must unconsciously influence the judgments of mankind. I detest that state of society which extends unequal degrees of protection to different creeds and persuasions; and I cannot describe to you the contempt I feel for a man who, calling himself a statesman, defends a system which fills the heart of every Irishman with treason."
If then the Courts of Assize are, by the very nature of the case, instruments of injustice, it is the Grand Juries which are the great scene of Jobbery. They have the power of levying a county rate for roads, bridges, and other public accommodations. Milesian gentlemen, attendant on the Grand Inquest of Justice, arrange these little matters for their mutual convenience.—
"You suffer the road to be brought through my park, and I will have the bridge constructed in a situation where it will make a beautiful object to your house. You do my job, and I will do yours."
And so, as far as the Protestant gentry are concerned, all is well. But there is a religion even in jobs; "and it will be highly gratifying to Mr. Perceval to learn that no man in Ireland who believes in Seven Sacraments can carry a public road, or bridge, one yard out of its way, and that nobody can cheat the public who does not expound the Scriptures in the purest and most orthodox manner…. I ask if the human mind can experience a more dreadful sensation than to see its own jobs refused, and the jobs of another religion perpetually succeeding?"
And then again there is the grievance which consists in exclusion from the higher posts of the Professions.—
"Look at human nature. Your boy Joel is to be brought up to the Bar: has Mrs. Plymley the slightest doubt of his being Chancellor? Do not his two shrivelled aunts live in the certainty of seeing him in that situation, and of cutting-out with their own hands his equity habiliments? And I could name a certain Minister of the Gospel who does not, in the bottom of his heart, much differ from these opinions. Do you think that the fathers and mothers of the holy Catholic church are not as absurd as Protestant papas and mammas? The probability I admit to be, in each case, that the sweet little blockhead will in fact never get a brief. But I venture to say that there is not a parent from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay, who does not conceive that his child is the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and that nothing short of positive law could prevent his own dear, pre-eminent Paddy from rising to the highest honours of the State. So with the army, and Parliament. In fact, few are excluded; but, in imagination, all. You keep twenty or thirty Catholics out, and lose the affections of four millions."
And then Peter turns to the war-cry of No Popery, which had been so vigorously and successfully raised at the General Election of 1807, and derides the loyal indignation then directed against the Ministers who had the heart to worry George III. with plans of redress for Roman Catholics.—
"The general cry in the country was, that they would not see their beloved monarch used ill in his old age, and that they would stand by him to the last drop of their blood." This ebullition of ill-judging loyalty reminds Peter of an accident which once befell the Russian Ambassador in London. His Excellency fell down in a fit when paying a morning call. A doctor was summoned, who declared that the patient must be instantly bled; and he prepared to perform the operation. "But the barbarous servants of the Embassy, when they saw the gleaming lancet, drew their swords, threw themselves into an attitude of defiance, and swore they would kill the man who dared to hurt their beloved master."
Peter's own remedy for Irish disaffection was, first, to remove all civil penalties for religious faith, and then to subsidize the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy in Ireland, and pay for the maintenance of their schools and churches. He calculated that this would cost £250,000 a year. The clergy should all receive their salaries through the Bank of Ireland; the salaries were to be proportioned to the size of the congregations; and all patronage should be lodged in the hands of the Crown.—
"Now I appeal to any human being, what the disaffection of a clergy would amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the Crown; and whether Ignatius Loyola himself, if he were a living blockhead instead of a dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing from £100 a year in Sligo, to £300 in Tipperary. This is the miserable sum of money for which the merchants, and landowners, and nobility of England, are exposing themselves to the tremendous peril of losing Ireland."
If all these schemes of conciliation were rejected as dangerous and impracticable, there remained of course the time-honoured remedy of Coercion. This had been demanded by Spencer Perceval, when attacking the conciliatory administration of "All the Talents," and it provoked Peter Plymley to a characteristic outburst:—
"I cannot describe the horror and disgust which I felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call for measures of vigour in Ireland. If I lived at Hampstead[56] upon stewed meats and claret; if I walked to church every Sunday morning before eleven young gentlemen of my own begetting, with their faces washed, and their hair pleasingly combed; if the Almighty had blessed me with every earthly comfort—how awfully would I pause before I sent forth the flame and the sword over the cabins of the poor, brave, generous, open-hearted peasants of Ireland! How easy it is to shed human blood! How easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle! How much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind! How difficult it is to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection!"
Letter X. begins with some observations on the Law of Tithe in Ireland. "I submit to your common sense, if it is possible to explain to an Irish peasant upon what principle of justice he is to pay every tenth potato in his little garden to a clergyman in whose religion nobody believes for twenty miles round him, and who has nothing to preach to but bare walls." Let the landowner pay the tithe, and charge the labourer a higher rent. This, Peter seems to think, will meet all the difficulties of the case, and yet not impoverish the Established clergy. And he is more than ever persuaded that the best way to check the predominance of the Roman Church in Ireland is to deliver the Romanists from every species of religious disability. On this theme Peter harps in a vein which, if he were a clergyman writing over his own name, would be justly described as cynical.—
"If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would belong to White's and to Brookes's; would keep race-horses; would walk up and down Pall Mall; be exonerated of his ready money and his constitution; become as totally devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge, and civility, as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall; and return home with a supreme contempt for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan…. The true receipt for preserving the Roman Catholic religion is Mr. Perceval's receipt for destroying it: it is to deprive every rich Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him from the Protestants, and to shut him up in his castle with priests and relics."
However sound this estimate of theological results may be, Abraham thinks that a period of universal war is not the proper time for innovations in the Constitution. This, replies Peter, "is as much as to say that the worst time for making friends is the period when you have made many enemies; that it is the greatest of all errors to stop when you are breathless, and to lie down when you are fatigued."
Abraham, and those who think with him, hold that concession to Roman Catholics ought to be refused, if for no other reason, because King George III. dislikes it. This is an argument which Peter cannot away with. He respects the King as a good man, and holds that loyalty is one of the great instruments of English happiness.—
"But the love of the King may easily become more strong than the love of the Kingdom, and we may lose sight of the public welfare in our exaggerated admiration of him who is appointed to reign only for its promotion and support….God save the King, you say, warms your heart like the sound of a trumpet. I cannot make use of so violent a metaphor; but I am delighted to hear it, when it is a cry of genuine affection: I am delighted to hear it when they hail not only the individual man, but the outward and living sign of all English blessings. These are noble feelings, and the heart of every good man must go with them; butGod save the King, in these times, too often means—God save my pension and my place, God give my sisters an allowance out of the Privy Purse—make me Clerk of the Irons, let me survey the Meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public."
This brings us again to the "sepulchral Spencer Perceval," as he is called in another place, with his enormous emoluments from the public purse, his dream of pacifying Ireland by converting its inhabitants to Protestantism, and his fantastic policy of the Orders in Council.—
"He would bring the French to reason by keeping them without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits—but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a masterpiece of political sagacity."
And now, having exhausted the "Catholic Question" as it presents itself in England and Ireland, Peter Plymley (who has already called attention to the religious liberty established in France) cites the cases of Switzerland and Hungary as illustrating the civil strength of nations free from the legalized animosities of religion. Did Frederick the Great ever refuse the services of a Catholic soldier? There is a Catholic Secretary of State at St. Petersburgh. There was a Greek Patriarch associated with a Vicar-Apostolic in the government of Venice. A Catholic Emperor has entrusted the command of his guard to a Protestant Prince. But what signifies all this to Spencer Perceval? He looks at human nature from the top of Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the sphere of his own vision. And so we reach the conclusion of the whole matter.—
"I now take a final leave of this subject of Ireland. The only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance—a want of something difficult to unravel and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar: it is a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man says, 'I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it,' this mode of arguing upon the Catholic Question I can well understand. But that any human being with an understanding two degrees elevated above that of an Anabaptist preacher should conscientiously contend for the expediency and propriety of leaving the Irish Catholics in their present state, and of subjecting us to such tremendous peril in the present condition of the world, it is utterly out of my power to conceive. Such a measure as the Catholic Question is entirely beyond the common game of politics. It is a measure in which all parties ought to acquiesce, in order to preserve the place where and the stake for which they play. If Ireland is gone, where are jobs? where are reversions? where is my brother, Lord Arden?[57] where are 'my dear and near relations'? The game is up, and the Speaker of the House of Commons will be sent as a present to the menagerie at Paris. We talk of waiting, as if centuries of joy and prosperity were before us. In the next ten years our fate must be decided; we shall know, long before that period, whether we can bear up against the miseries by which we are threatened, or not: and yet, in the very midst of our crisis, we are enjoined to abstain from the most certain means of increasing our strength, and advised to wait for the remedy till the disease is removed by death or health. And now, instead of the plain and manly policy of increasing unanimity at home, by equalizing rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and wicked system which has been pursued? Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a grave-digger—the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every effort which they make…. Every Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his country; the character of the country is lost for ever. It is of the utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with the greatest part of Europe, that there should be a free entry of neutrals into the enemy's ports; the neutrals who carried our manufactures we have not only excluded, but we have compelled them to declare war against us. It was our interest to make a good peace, or convince our own people that it could not be obtained; we have not made a peace, and we have convinced the people of nothing but of the arrogance of the Foreign Secretary: and all this has taken place in the short space of a year, because a King's Bench barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned into Ministers of State, were determined to show country gentlemen that the late administration had no vigour. In the mean time commerce stands still, manufactures perish, Ireland is more and more irritated, India is threatened, fresh taxes are accumulated upon the wretched people, the war is carried on without it being possible to conceive any one single object which a rational being can propose to himself by its continuation; and in the midst of this unparalleled insanity we are told that the Continent is to be reconquered by the want of rhubarb and plums. A better spirit than exists in the English people never existed in any people in the world; it has been misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes in the most degrading and scandalous manner; they have been led to believe that they were benefiting the commerce of England by destroying the commerce of America, that they were defending their Sovereign by perpetuating the bigoted oppression of their fellow-subjects; their rulers and their guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of France by equalling her atrocity; and they have gone on wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, which, if husbanded by prudent and moderate counsels, might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of turning the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power to those who resemble him only in his vices; advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen to make them meanly submissive; their piety is turned into persecution, their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered because they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, so let it be; that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our tears and submit. But, that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar-houses and hospitals; that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry; that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human beings, and I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever stoop to such degradations."
So ends this vivid argument on behalf of political justice and social equality. Lord Grenville saw the resemblance to Swift, and Lord Holland kindly reminded the anonymous satirist that "the only author to whom he could be compared in English, lost a bishopric for his wittiest performance." In later years Lord Murray[58] said, "After Pascal'sLetters, it is the most instructive piece of wisdom in the form of Irony ever written." Macaulay declared that Sydney Smith was "universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift." Even now, after a century of publishing,Peter Plymley's Lettersretain their preeminence. The unexpurgated edition of theApologiamay rank with theProvincial Letters;[59] but the creator of Peter and Abraham Plymley stands alone.
[41] Abraham Rees, D.D. (1743-1825), and Andrew Kippis, D.D. (1723-1795), were Presbyterian ministers of great repute.
[42] The meeting-house in Old Jewry was built in 1701 and destroyed in 1808. It "covered 2600 square feet, and was lit with six bow windows." Dr. Rees was its last minister.
[43] George Canning (1770-1827).
[44] Spencer Perceval (1762-1812).
[45] When it was proposed to exclude King's College from the re-constitutedUniversity of London.
[46] Spencer Perceval brought in several bills to compel non-residentincumbents to pay their curates a living wage.
[47] Spencer Perceval obtained the sinecure office of Surveyor of theMeltings and Clerk of the Irons in 1791.
[48] Spencer Perceval procured the reversion of his brother's office of Registrar to the Court of Admiralty, and burked a parliamentary inquiry into reversions generally.
[49] John Southey, 15th Lord Somerville, President of the Board of Agriculture.
[50] Spencer Perceval.
[51] Robert Bankes Jenkinson (1770-1820), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, was LordHawkesbury from 1796 to 1808.
[52] Lord Hawkesbury was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports at asalary of £3000 a year.
[53] "The allusion is to the Orders in Council under which Mr. Perceval endeavoured to retaliate on Napoleon's Baltic decree by regulating British trade with the Continent. Under these orders the exportation of all goods to France was prohibited which were not carried from this country and had not paid an export-duty here. But there were certain articles which the Minister decided that the Continent should have on no terms, and amongst others quinine, or Jesuit's Bark, as it was called. Sydney Smith, writing as Peter Plymley, said, 'You cannot seriously suppose the people to be so degraded as to look for their safety from a man who proposes to subdue Europe by keeping it without Jesuit's Bark.'"—SIR SPENCER WALPOLE,Life of Lord John Russell.
[54] In 1839 Sydney Smith pronounced this "a very unjust imputation on Lord Castlereagh." Robert Stewart (1769-1823), Viscount Castlereagh, became Marquis of Londonderry in 1821.
[55] Henry Addington (1757-1844), created Viscount Sidmouth in 1805.
[56] Spencer Perceval had recently taken a villa on Hampstead Heath, forthe benefit of his wife's health.
[57] Spencer Perceval's elder brother, Charles George Perceval (1756-1840),was created Lord Arden in 1802.
[58] John Archibald Murray (1779-1859), a Judge of the Court of Session.
[59] In October 1844 Eugène Robin, reviewing Sydney Smith in theRevue des Deux Mondes, wrote as follows:—"Caché sous le pseudonyme de Peter Plymley il adresse ces nouvellesprovincialesà un révérend pasteur, qui est bien le parfait modèle de la sottise protestante, la quintessence des docteurs Bowles et des archidiacres Nares."