At the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the most serious evil which beset the Church of England was the system of Pluralities and Non-Residence. A prosperous clergyman might hold half-a-dozen separate preferments, and, as long as he paid curates to perform the irreducible minimum of public duty, he need never show his face inside his deserted parishes. The ecclesiastical literature of the time abounds in quaint illustrations of the equanimity with which this system, and all its attendant evils, was regarded even by respectable and conscientious men. Thomas Newton, the commentator on Prophecy, was Dean of St. Paul's as well as Bishop of Bristol, and, before he became a bishop, held a living in the City, a Prebend of Westminster, the Precentorship of York, the Lectureship of St. George's, Hanover Square, and "the genteel office of Sub-Almoner." Richard Watson (who is believed never to have set foot in his diocese) was Bishop of Llandaff and Archdeacon of Ely, and drew the tithes of sixteen parishes. William Van Mildert, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was Rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, and also held the living of Farningmam, near Sevenoaks, "as an agreeable retreat within a convenient distance from town." Richard Valpy was Head Master of Reading School, and Rector of Stradishall in Suffolk. George Butler, afterwards Dean of Peterborough, was Head Master of Harrow and Rector of Gayton in Northamptonshire. Nearly every bishop had a living together with his see. The valuable Rectory of Stanhope in Durham was held by four successive bishops. Henry Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, was Rector of St. George's, Hanover Square. George Pelham, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Sussex, and Christopher Bethell, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Yorkshire.
When Sydney Smith was appointed to the rectory of Foston, there had been no resident Rector since the reign of Charles II. The churches of non-resident Rectors were commonly served by what were called "galloping parsons," who rattled through the services required by law, riding at full speed from parish to parish, so as to serve perhaps three churches on one Sunday. In many places the Holy Communion was celebrated only three times a year. At Alderley, before Edward Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, became Rector there, "the clerk used to go to the churchyard stile to see whether there were any more coming to church, for there were seldom enough to make a congregation. The former Rector used to boast that he had never set foot in a sick person's cottage." When the shepherds thus deserted and starved their flocks, it was only natural that the sheep betook themselves to every form of schism, irreligion, and immorality. To remedy these evils, Spencer Perceval, whose keen interest in the affairs of the Church had a curiously irritating effect on Sydney Smith, took in hand to pass the Clergy Residence Bill, and the Bill became an Act in 1803. In 1808 a new Archbishop[60] was enthroned at York. He immediately began to put the Act in force, and summoned Sydney Smith from the joys of London to the austerities of Foston-le-Clay. The choice lay between complying and resigning, for no exchange of livings seemed practicable. On the 8th of October 1808, Sydney wrote to Lady Holland—"My lot is now cast, and my heritage fixed—most probably. But you may choose to make me a bishop, and, if you do, I think I shall never do you discredit; for I believe it is out of the power of lawn and velvet, and the crisp hair of dead men fashioned into a wig,[61] to make me a dishonest man."
Two months later he wrote—"I have bought a book about drilling beans, and a greyhound puppy for the Malton Meeting. It is thought I shall be an eminent rural character." The expense of removing his family and furniture from London to Yorkshire was considerable, so he published two volumes of sermons and paid for the journey with the £200 which he received for them. The rectory-house at Foston was ruinous and uninhabitable, and it was necessary to rebuild it. Meanwhile, the Rector hired a house some way off, in the village of Heslington, and there he established himself on the 21st of June 1809, "two hundred miles," as he ruefully remarked, "from London." Three days later he wrote to Lady Holland that he had laid down two rules for his own guidance in the country:—
"1. Not to smite the partridge; for, if I fed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth, if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the Church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting for which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau.[62]
"2. I mean to come to town once a year, though of that, I suppose, I shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing weaker and weaker, and my acquaintances gradually falling off. I shall by this time have taken myself again to shy tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as I was before) your abomination…. Mrs. Sydney is all rural bustle, impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs; I wait patiently, knowing all will come in due season."
To Jeffrey he wrote on the 3rd of September:—
"Instead of being unamused by trifles, I am, as I well knew I should be, amused by them a great deal too much. I feel an ungovernable interest about my horses, my pigs, and my plants. I am forced, and always was forced, to task myself up into an interest for any higher objects."
Six days later he wrote to Lady Holland:—
"I hear you laugh at me for being happy in the country, and upon this I have a few words to say. In the first place, whether one lives or dies I hold, and have always held, to be of infinitely less moment than is generally supposed. But, if life is to be, then it is common sense to amuse yourself with the best you can find where you happen to be placed. I am not leading precisely the life I should choose, but that which (all things considered, as well as I could consider them) appeared to me to be the most eligible. I am resolved, therefore, to like it, and to reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post, of being thrown away, and being desolate, and such-like trash. I am prepared, therefore, either way. If the chances of life ever enable me to emerge, I will show you that I have not been wholly occupied by small and sordid pursuits. If (as the greater probability) I am come to the end of my career, I give myself quietly up to horticulture, etc. In short, if it be my lot to crawl, I will crawl contentedly; if to fly, I will fly with alacrity; but, as long as I can possibly avoid it, I will never be unhappy. If, with a pleasant wife, three children, and many friends who wish me well, I cannot be happy, I am a very silly, foolish fellow, and what becomes of me is of very little consequence."
If ample occupation be, as some strenuous moralists assert, the true secret of happiness, Sydney Smith had plenty to make him happy during the early years of his life in Yorkshire. Here is his own account of his translation:—
"A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, I was suddenly caught up by the Archbishop of York, and transported to my living in Yorkshire, where there had not been a resident clergyman for a hundred and fifty years. Fresh from London, and not knowing a turnip from a carrot, I was compelled to farm three hundred acres, and without capital to build a Parsonage House."
He was his own architect, his own builder, and his own clerk of the works. The cost of building a house, with borrowed money, made him a very poor man for several years.
"I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer, as I could not let my land…. Added to all these domestic cares, I was village parson, village doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and Edinburgh Reviewer; so you see I had not much time on my hands to regret London."
Every one has heard of "Bunch," the "little garden-girl, shaped like a milestone," who "became the best butler in the county"; of the gaunt riding-horse "Calamity," which "flung me over his head into a neighbouring parish, as if I had been a shuttlecock, and I felt grateful that it was not into a neighbouring planet"; and of the ancient carriage called "the Immortal," which was so well known on the road that "the village-boys cheered it and the village-dogs barked at it"—and surely remembrance should be made, amid this goodly caravan, of the four draught-oxen, Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl, even though "Tug and Lug took to fainting, and required buckets of salvolatile, and Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud."
When Sydney Smith says that he was "village doctor," he reminds us of his lifelong fancy for dabbling in medicine. When his daughter, not six months old, was attacked by croup, he gave her in twenty-four hours "32 grains of calomel, besides bleeding, blistering, and emetics." When he was called to baptize a sick baby, he seized the opportunity of giving it a dose of castor oil. One day he writes—
"I am performing miracles in my parish with garlic for whooping-cough."
Another:—
"We conquered the whooping-cough here with a pennyworth of salt of tartar, after having filled them with the expensive poisons of Halford.[63] What an odd thing that such a specific should not be more known!"
"I attended two of my children through a good stout fever of thetyphus kind without ever calling in an apothecary, but for one day. Idepended upon blessed antimony, and watched anxiously for the time ofgiving bark."
"Douglas[64] alarmed us the other night with the Croup. I darted into him all the mineral and vegetable resources of my shop, cravatted his throat with blisters and fringed it with leeches, and set him in five or six hours to playing marbles, breathing gently and inaudibly."
After an unhealthy winter he writes:—
"Our evils have been want of water, and scarlet-fever in our village; where, in three quarters of a year, we have buried fifteen, instead of one per annum. You will naturally suppose I have killed all these people by doctoring them; but scarlet-fever awes me, and is above my aim. I leave it to the professional and graduated homicides."[65]
In this connexion it is natural to cite the lines on "The Poetical Medicine Chest,"[66] which Mr. Stuart Reid has printed. They contain some excellent advice about the drugs which a mother should provide for the use of a young family, and end, majestically, thus:—
"Spare not in Eastern blasts, when babies die,The wholesome rigour of the Spanish Fly.From timely torture seek thy infant's rest,And spread the poison on his labouring breast.And so, fair lady, when in evil hourLess prudent mothers mourn some faded flower,Six Howards valiant, and six Howards fairShall live, and love thee, and reward thy care."
But parochial and domestic concerns could not altogether divert SydneySmith's mind from the strife of politics. He watched the turmoil from afar.On the 1st of January 1813, he wrote to his friend John Allen, who was moresanguine than himself about the prospects of the Whigs:—
"Everything is fast setting in for arbitrary power. The Court will grow bolder and bolder, a struggle will commence, and, if it ends as I wish, there will be Whigs again…. But when these things come to pass, you will no longer be a Warden,[67] but a brown and impalpable powder in the tombs of Dulwich. In the meantime, enough of liberty will remain to make our old-age tolerably comfortable; and to your last gasp you will remain in the perennial and pleasing delusion that the Whigs are coming in, and will expire mistaking the officiating clergyman for a King's Messenger."
While the new Rectory House at Foston was building, the Rector was wholly engrossed in the work. "I live," he wrote, "trowel in hand. My whole soul is filled up by lath and plaster." He laid the foundation-stone in June 1813, and took possession of the completed edifice in March 1814. "My house was considered the ugliest in the county, but all admitted that it was one of the most comfortable."[68] It remains to the present day pretty much as Sydney Smith left it. A room on the ground-floor, next to the drawing-room, served the threefold purposes of study, dispensary, and justice-room. As a rule, he wrote his sermons and his articles for theEdinburghin the drawing-room, not heeding the conversation of family and visitors; but in the "study" he dosed his parishioners; and here, having been made a Justice of the Peace, he administered mercy to poachers. He hated the Game-Laws as they stood, and it stirred his honest wrath to reflect that "for every ten pheasants which fluttered in the wood, one English peasant was rotting in gaol." So strong was his belief in the contaminating effects of a prisoner's life that he never, if he could help it, would commit a boy or girl to gaol. He sought permission to accompany Mrs. Fry on one of her visits to Newgate, and spoke of her ministry there as "the most solemn, the most Christian, the most affecting, which any human eye ever witnessed."[69] A pleasing trait of his incumbency at Foston was the creation of allotment-gardens for the poor. He divided several acres of the glebe into sixteenths, and let them, at a low rent, to the villagers. Each allotment was just big enough to supply a cottage with potatoes, and to support a pig. Cheap food for the poor was another of his excellent hobbies. His Common-Place Book contains receipts for nourishing soups made of rice and peas and flavoured with ox-cheek. He notes that more than thirty people were comfortably fed with these concoctions at a penny a head. After a bad harvest he and his family lived, like the labourers round them, on unleavened cakes made from the damaged flour of the sprouted wheat. His daughter writes—"The luxury of returning to bread again can hardly be imagined by those who have never been deprived of it."
But, in spite of occasional difficulties of this description, which were always faced and overcome with invincible good-humour, Sydney Smith's fifteen years at Foston were happily and profitably spent. He was in the fulness of his physical and intellectual vigour. He said of himself, "I am a rough writer of Sermons," but his energy in delivering them awoke the admiration of his sturdy flock.—
"When I began to thump the cushion of my pulpit, on first coming to Foston, as is my wont when I preach, the accumulated dust of a hundred and fifty years made such a cloud, that for some minutes I lost sight of my congregation."[70]
His Bible-class for boys was affectionately remembered sixty years afterwards.[71] By his constant contributions to theEdinburgh, he was both helping forward the great causes in which he most earnestly believed, and establishing his own fame. Good health, cheerfulness, and contentment reigned in the Rectory, which might well have been called "A Temple of Industrious Peace."[72]
In spite of some small irregularities and oddities in the furniture of the house and the arrangements of the establishment—all of which the Rector habitually and humorously exaggerated—the Rectory was an extremely comfortable home. It was so constructed as to be full of air, light, and warmth. The Rector said of it:—
"We are about equal to a second-rate inn, as Mrs. Sydney says; but I think myself we are equal to any inn on the North Road, except Ferrybridge."
The larder of this "second-rate inn" was pleasantly supplied by the kindness of faithful friends.
"I am very much obliged to you for sending me the pheasants. One of my numerous infirmities is a love of eating pheasants."—"Many thanks for two fine Gallicia hams; but, as for boiling them inwine, I am not as yet high enough in the Church for that; so they must do the best they can in water."—"Lord Tankerville has sent me a whole buck; this necessarily takes up a good deal of my time. Venison is an interesting subject, which is deemed among the clergy a professional one."—"Your grouse are not come by this day's mail, but I suppose they will come to-morrow. Even the rumour of grouse is agreeable."—"Lord Lauderdale has sent me two hundred and thirty pounds of salt fish."—"You have no idea what a number of handsome things were said of you when your six partridges were consumed to-day. Wit, literature, and polished manners were ascribed to you—some good quality for each bird."—"What is real piety? What is true attachment to the Church? How are these fine feelings best evinced? The answer is plain—by sending strawberries to a clergyman. Many thanks."
To the hostelry, thus well victualled, and called by its owner "The Rector's Head," many interesting visitors found their way. Lord and Lady Holland, Miss Fox, Miss Vernon, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Humphry Davy, Samuel Rogers, Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, and Francis Jeffrey were among the earliest guests. "Mrs. Sydney was dreadfully alarmed about her side-dishes the first time Luttrell[73] paid us a visit, and grew pale as the covers were lifted; but they stood the test. Luttrell tasted and praised."
The neighbours of whom the Smiths saw most were Lord and Lady Carlisle,[74] who drove over from Castle Howard[75] in a coach-and-four with outriders, and were upset in a ploughed field; their son and daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Georgiana Morpeth, who with their children made "no mean part of the population of Yorkshire"; and the Archbishop of York, who became one of the Smiths' kindest and most faithful friends. Every year Sydney paid a visit to London, receiving the warmest of welcomes from all his old associates. In 1821 he revisited his friends at Edinburgh, and going or coming he visited Lord Grey at Howick, Lord Tankerville at Chillingham, Lord Lauderdale at Dunbar, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards Lord Durham, at Lambton. At Chillingham he duly admired the beef supplied by the famous herd of wild cattle, but he admired still more the magnificent novelty of gas at Lambton.—
"What use of wealth so luxurious and delightful as to light your house with gas? What folly to have a diamond necklace or a Correggio, and not to light your house with gas! The splendour and glory of Lambton Hall make all other houses mean. How pitiful to submit to a farthing-candle existence, when science puts such intense gratification within your reach! Dear lady, spend all your fortune in a gas-apparatus. Better to eat dry bread by the splendour of gas, than to dine on wild beef with wax candles!"
Another friend whom the Smiths visited regularly was Mr., afterwards Sir George, Philips, an opulent cotton-spinner of Manchester. Once, when staying with Philips, Sydney undertook to preach a Charity Sermon in Prestwich Church, and with reference to this he wrote in the previous week; "I desire to make three or four hundred weavers cry, which it is impossible to do since the late rise in cottons."
Writing from Philips's house in 1820 he says:—
"Philips doubles his capital twice a week. We talk much of cotton, more of the fine arts, as he has lately returned from Italy, and purchased some pictures which were sent out from Piccadilly on purpose to intercept him."
His daughter tells us that, during these years of small income and large expenses, her father never bought any books. He had brought a small but serviceable library with him from London, and his friends made additions to it from time to time. He wrote to a friend in 1810:—
"I have read, since I saw you, Burke's works, some books of Homer, Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, Godwin'sEnquirer, and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have scarcely looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry."
Here are some of the plans which, year by year, he laid down for the regulation of his studies:—
"Translate every day ten lines of theDe Officiis, and re-translate into Latin. Five chapters of Greek Testament. Theological studies. Plato'sApology for Socrates; Horace'sEpodes, Epistles, Satires, andArs Poetica."
"Write sermons and reviews, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Read,Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Write ten lines of Latin on writing days.Read five chapters of Greek Testament on reading days. For morningreading, either Polybius, or Diodorus Siculus, or some tracts ofXenophon or Plato; and for Latin, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius.
"Monday: write, morning; read Tasso, evening. Tuesday: Latin or Greek, morning; evening, theology. Wednesday, same as Monday. Friday, ditto. Thursday and Saturday, same as Tuesday. Read every day a chapter in Greek Testament, and translate ten lines of Latin. Good books to read:—Terrasson'sHistory of Roman Jurisprudence; Bishop of Chester'sRecords of the Creation."
His daughter says that he read with great rapidity. "He galloped through the pages so rapidly that we often laughed at him when he shut up a thick quarto as his morning's work. 'Cross-examine me, then,' he said; and we generally found that he knew all that was worth knowing in it." Here, obviously, is the stuff out of which reviewers are made, and this was the very zenith of Sydney Smith's power and usefulness in theEdinburgh Review.
He wrote as quickly as he read. When once he had amassed the necessary facts, he sate down amid all the distracting sights and sounds of a drawing-room crowded with femininity, and wrote at full speed, without deliberations, embellishments, or erasures; only betraying by the movements of his expressive face his amusement and interest "as fresh images came clustering round his pen." As soon as the essay was finished, he would throw it on the table, saying to his wife, "There, Kate, just look it over—dot thei's and cross thet's;" and went out for his walk. It should be added that his writing was singularly difficult to read, that he was very infirm about spelling proper names, and that he was exceptionally careless in correcting his proofs.
Of those essays which he subsequently reprinted, as judging them most worthy of preservation, I see that by 1821 he had written fifty. Among these were such masterpieces of humour and argument as "Edgeworth on Bulls," "Methodism," "Indian Missions," "Hannah More," "Public Schools," "America," "Game-Laws" and "Botany Bay." On the 19th of May 1820, he wrote, "I found in London both my articles very popular—upon the Poor-Laws and America. The passage on Taxation had great success."[76] Some of these papers will be considered separately, when we come to discuss his style and his opinions; but space must here be found for an unrivalled specimen of his controversial method, which belongs to the year 1822. It is called "Persecuting Bishops." "IsBishopsin that title a nominative or an accusative?" grimly inquired a living prelate, when the present writer was extolling the essay so named. It is a nominative; and perhaps the exacter title would have been "A Persecuting Bishop."
Herbert Marsh[77] was Second Wrangler in 1779, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, Margaret Professor of Divinity, Bishop of Llandaff from 1816 to 1819, and of Peterborough from 1819 till his death. He was a "High Churchman of the old school"—perhaps the most unpleasant type of theologian in Christendom. We know, from the Life of Father "Ignatius" Spencer,[78] that Bishop Marsh played whist with his candidates for Orders on the eve of the ordination, and all that we read about him beautifully illustrates that tone of "quiet worldliness" which Dean Church described as the characteristic of the English clergy in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. But what he lacked in personal devotion he made up (as some have done since his day) by furious hostility to spiritual and religious enthusiasm in others. He opposed the civil claims alike of Roman Catholics and of Dissenters. He attacked the Bible Society. He denounced Charles Simeon. He insulted Isaac Milner; and he determined to purge his diocese of Evangelicalism (which, oddly enough, he seems to have identified with Calvinism). His manly resolve to stifle religious earnestness culminated in the year 1820, when he drew up a set of eighty-seven questions, which he proposed to every candidate for Orders, and to every clergyman who sought his license to officiate. Failure to answer these questions to the Bishop's satisfaction was to be punished by exclusion from the diocese of Peterborough. Happily, the Evangelical clergy of that period was very little disposed to sit down under Episcopal tyranny. The Bishop's set of questions was met by a hailstorm of pamphlets. Petitions for redress were poured into the House of Lords. The Bishop was forced into the open, and constrained to make the best defence he could in a published speech. In November 1822, Sydney Smith, in theEdinburgh Review, came to the assistance of his brother-clergy against the high-handed tyranny of the Persecuting Bishop.
The reviewer begins by giving the Bishop credit for good intentions; but maintains that his conduct has been—
"singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and in its effects (though not in its intentions) very oppressive and vexatious to the clergy…. We cannot believe that we are doing wrong in ranging ourselves on the weaker side, in the cause of propriety and justice. The Mitre protects its wearer from indignity; but it does not secure impunity."
After this preface Sydney Smith goes on to develop his argument against the Bishop, and he starts with the highly reasonable proposition that a man is presumably wrong when all his friends, whose habits and interests would naturally lead them to side with him, think him wrong.—
"If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the apothecary, the druggist, and the physician all called upon him to abandon his philocathartic propensities—if he were to gratify his convivial habits till the landlord demurred and the waiter shook his head—we should naturally imagine that advice so disinterested was not given before it was wanted."
The Bishop of Peterborough has all his brother-bishops against him, though they certainly love power as well as he. Not one will defend him in debate; not one will allege that he has acted or would act as Peterborough has acted.
Then, again, the bishop who refuses to license a curate unless he satisfactorily answers Eighty-Seven Questions, thereby puts himself in opposition to the bishop who ordained the curate. One standard of orthodoxy is established in one diocese; another in another. The theological system of the Church becomes local and arbitrary instead of national and fixed.—
"If a man is a captain in the army in one part of England, he is a captain in all. The general who commands north of the Tweed does not say, 'You shall never appear in my district, or exercise the functions of an officer, if you do not answer eighty-seven questions on the art of war, according to my notions.' The same officer who commands a ship of the line in the Mediterranean is considered as equal to the same office in the North Seas.The Sixth Commandment is suspended by one medical diploma from the North of England to the South.[79] But, by the new system of interrogation, a man may be admitted into Orders at Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, readmitted at Buckden, kicked out as a Calvinist at Witham Common, and hailed as an ardent Arminian on his arrival at York."
The Bishop's reply to the charges brought against him evinces surprise that any one should have the hardihood to criticize or to resist him; and yet, the reviewer asks, to what purpose has he read his ecclesiastical history, if he expects anything except the most strenuous opposition to his tyranny?—
"Does he think that every sturdy Supralapsarian bullock whom he tries to sacrifice to the Genius of Orthodoxy will not kick, and push, and toss; that he will not, if he can, shake the axe from his neck, and hurl his mitred butcher into the air? We know these men fully as well as the Bishop; he has not a chance of success against them. They will ravage, roar, and rush till the very chaplains, and the Masters and Misses Peterborough, request his lordship to desist. He is raising a storm in the English Church of which he has not the slightest conception, and which will end, as it ought to end, in his lordship's disgrace and defeat."
Then the reviewer goes on to urge that discretion and common sense, good nature and good manners, are qualities far more valuable in bishops than any "vigilance of inquisition." Prelates of the type of Bishop Marsh are the most dangerous enemies of the Establishment which they profess to serve.—
"Six such Bishops, multiplied by eighty-seven, and working with five hundred and twenty-two questions, would fetch everything to the ground in six months. But what if it pleased Divine Providence to afflict every prelate with the spirit of putting eighty-seven questions, and the two Archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man with the spirit of putting forty-three questions? There would then be a grand total of two thousand three hundred and thirty-five interrogations flying about the English Church, and sorely vexed would be the land with Question and Answer…. If eighty-seven questions are assumed to be necessary by one bishop, eight hundred may be considered as the minimum of interrogation by another. When once the ancient faith-marks of the Church are lost sight of and despised, any misled theologian may launch out on the boundless sea of polemical vexation."
The Bishop's main line of defence, when challenged in the House of Lords, was that he had a legal right to do what he had done. This was not disputed. "A man may persevere in doing what he has a right to do till the Chancellor shuts him up in Bedlam, or till the mob pelts him as he passes." But the reviewer reminds him that he has no similar right as against clergymen presented to benefices in his diocese. They are protected by the patron's action ofQuare Impedit; and all considerations of honour, decency, and common sense should restrain the Bishop from "letting himself loose against the working man of God," and enforcing against the curate a system of inquisition which he dare not apply to the incumbent.—
"Prelates are fond of talking aboutmysee,myclergy,mydiocese, as if these things belonged to them as their pigs and dogs belonged to them. They forget that the clergy, the diocese, and the bishops themselves, all exist only for the public good; that the public are a third and principal party in the whole concern. It is not simply the tormenting bishop against the tormented curate; but the public against the system of tormenting, as tending to bring scandal upon religion and religious men. By the late alteration in the laws,[80] the Labourers in the vineyard are given up to the power of the Inspector of the vineyard. If he has the meanness and malice to do so, an Inspector may worry and plague to death any Labourer against whom he may have conceived an antipathy…. Men of very small incomes have often very acute feelings, and a curate trod on feels a pang as great as a bishop refuted."
Another of the Bishop's ways of defending himself was to boast that, in spite of all his interrogations, he has actually excluded only two curates from his diocese: and this boast supplies the reviewer with one of his best apologues. "So the Emperor of Hayti boasted that he had only cut off two persons' heads for disagreeable behaviour at his table. In spite of the paucity of the visitors executed, the example operated as a considerable impediment to conversation; and the intensity of the punishment was found to be a full compensation for its rarity."
In conclusion, the reviewer says:—"Now we have done with the Bishop…. Our only object in meddling with the question is to restrain the arm of Power within the limits of moderation and justice—one of the great objects which first led to the establishment of this journal, and which, we hope, will always continue to characterize its efforts."
To this period also belong two splendid discourses on the principles of Christian Justice, which Sydney Smith, as Chaplain to the High Sheriff, preached in York Minster at the Spring and Summer Assizes of 1824. The first is styled "The Judge that smites contrary to the Law."[81]
At the outset, the preacher thus defines his ground:—
"I take these words of St. Paul as a condemnation of that man who smites contrary to the law; as a praise of that man who judges according to the law; as a religious theme upon the importance of human Justice to the happiness of mankind: and, if it be that theme, it is appropriate to this place, and to the solemn public duties of the past and the ensuing week, over which some here present will preside, at which many here present will assist, and which almost all here present will witness."
A Christian Judge in a free land must sedulously guard himself against the entanglements of Party. He must be careful to maintain his independence by seeking no promotion and asking no favours from those who govern. It may often be his duty to stand between the governors and the governed, and in that case his hopes of advantage may be found on one side, and his sense of duty on another. At such a crisis he is trebly armed, if he is able from his heart to say—"I have vowed a vow before God. I have put on the robe of justice. Farewell avarice, farewell ambition. Pass me who will, slight me who will, I will live henceforward only for the great duties of life. My business is on earth. My hope and my reward are with God."
"He who takes the office of a Judge as it now exists in this country, takes in his hands a splendid gem, good and glorious, perfect and pure. Shall he give it up mutilated, shall he mar it, shall he darken it, shall it emit no light, shall it be valued at no price, shall it excite no wonder? Shall he find it a diamond, shall he leave it a stone? What shall we say to the man who would wilfully destroy with fire the magnificent temple of God, in which I am now preaching? Far worse is he who ruins the moral edifices of the world, which time and toil, and many prayers to God, and many sufferings of men, have reared; who puts out the light of the times in which he lives, and leaves us to wander amid the darkness of corruption and the desolation of sin. There may be, there probably is, in this church, some young man who may hereafter fill the office of an English Judge, when the greater part of those who hear me are dead, and mingled with the dust of the grave. Let him remember my words, and let them form and fashion his spirit: he cannot tell in what dangerous and awful times he may be placed; but as a mariner looks to his compass in the calm, and looks to his compass in the storm, and never keeps his eyes off his compass, so in every vicissitude of a judicial life, deciding for the people, deciding against the people, protecting the just rights of kings, or restraining their unlawful ambition, let him ever cling to that pure, exalted, and Christian independence, which towers over the little motives of life; which no hope of favour can influence, which no effort of power can control.
"A Christian Judge in a free country should respect, on every occasion, those popular institutions of Justice, which were intended for his control, and for our security. To see humble men collected accidentally from the neighbourhood, treated with tenderness and courtesy by supreme magistrates of deep learning and practised understanding, from whose views they are perhaps at that moment differing, and whose directions they do not choose to follow; to see at such times every disposition to warmth restrained, and every tendency to contemptuous feeling kept back; to witness the submission of the great and wise, not when it is extorted by necessity, but when it is practised with willingness and grace, is a spectacle which is very grateful to Englishmen, which no other country sees, which, above all things, shows that a Judge has a pure, gentle, and Christian heart, and that he never wishes to smite contrary to the law.
"A Christian Judge who means to be just must not fear to smite according to the law; he must remember that he beareth not the sword in vain. Under his protection we live, under his protection we acquire, under his protection we enjoy. Without him, no man would defend his character, no man would preserve his substance. Proper pride, just gains, valuable exertions, all depend upon his firm wisdom. If he shrink from the severe duties of his office, he saps the foundation of social life, betrays the highest interests of the world, and sits not to judge according to the law."
But Justice, if it is to be truly just, must be tempered by mercy, and must have a scrupulous regard to the strength of temptation, the moral weakness of the subject, the degrading power of ignorance and poverty.—
"All magistrates feel these things in the early exercise of their judicial power; but the Christian Judge always feels them, is always youthful, always tender, when he is going to shed human blood; retires from the business of men, communes with his own heart, ponders on the work of death, and prays to that Saviour who redeemed him that he may not shed the blood of man in vain."
A pure, secure, and even-handed administration of Justice is the strongest safeguard of national stability and happiness.—
"The whole tone and tenor of public morals is affected by the state of supreme Justice; it extinguishes revenge, it communicates a spirit of purity and uprightness to inferior magistrates; it makes the great good, by taking away impunity; it banishes fraud, obliquity, and solicitation, and teaches men that the law is their right. Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion; safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest emanation of the Gospel, it is the greatest attribute of God: it is that centre round which human motives and passions turn: and Justice, sitting on high, sees Genius and Power, and Wealth and Birth, revolving round her throne; and teaches their paths and marks out their orbits, and warns with a loud voice, and rules with a strong arm, and carries order and discipline into a world, which but for her would only be a wild waste of passions. Look what we are, and what just laws have done for us:—a land of piety and charity;—a land of churches, and hospitals, and altars;—a nation of good Samaritans;—a people of universal compassion. All lands, all seas, have heard we are brave. We have just sheathed that sword which defended the world; we have just laid down that buckler which covered the nations of the earth. God blesses the soil with fertility; English looms labour for every climate. All the waters of the globe are covered with English ships. We are softened by fine arts, civilized by humane literature, instructed by deep science; and every people, as they break their feudal chains, look to the founders and fathers of freedom for examples which may animate, and rules which may guide. If ever a nation was happy, if ever a nation was visibly blessed by God—if ever a nation was honoured abroad, and left at home under a government (which we can now conscientiously call a liberal government) to the full career of talent, industry, and vigour, we are at this moment that people—and this is our happy lot.—First the Gospel has done it, and then Justice has done it; and he who thinks it his duty to labour that this happy condition of existence may remain, must guard the piety of these times, and he must watch over the spirit of Justice which exists in these times. First, he must take care that the altars of God are not polluted, that the Christian faith is retained in purity and in perfection: and then turning to human affairs, let him strive for spotless, incorruptible Justice;—praising, honouring, and loving the just Judge, and abhorring, as the worst enemy of mankind, him who is placed there to 'judge after the law, and who smites contrary to the law.'"
The second of these sermons is called "The Lawyer that tempted Christ."[82] The preacher begins by pointing out that the Lawyer who, in the hope of entangling the new Teacher, asked what he should do to inherit eternal life, received a very plain answer—"not flowery, not metaphysical, not doctrinal." The answer was, in effect, thus: "If you wish to live eternally, do your duty to God and man." Whereas the earlier sermon was addressed to the Bench, this is addressed, very directly indeed, to the Bar.
"There are probably in this church many persons of the profession of the law, who have often asked before, with better faith than their brother, and who do now ask this great question, 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?' I shall, therefore, direct to them some observations on the particular duties they owe to society, because I think it suitable to this particular season, because it is of much more importance to tell men how they are to be Christians in detail, than to exhort them to be Christians generally; because it is of the highest utility to avail ourselves of these occasions, to show to classes of mankind what those virtues are, which they have more frequent and valuable opportunities of practising, and what those faults and vices are, to which they are more particularly exposed.
"It falls to the lot of those who are engaged in the active and arduous profession of the law to pass their lives in great cities, amidst severe and incessant occupation, requiring all the faculties, and calling forth, from time to time, many of the strongest passions of our nature. In the midst of all this, rivals are to be watched, superiors are to be cultivated, connections cherished; some portion of life must be given to society, and some little to relaxation and amusement. When, then, is the question to be asked, 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?' what leisure for the altar, what time for God? I appeal to the experience of men engaged in this profession, whether religious feelings and religious practices are not, without any speculative disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to the business of the world? Are not the habits of devotion gradually displaced by other habits of solicitude, hurry, and care? Is not the taste for devotion lessened? Is not the time for devotion abridged? Are you not more and more conquered against your warnings and against your will; not, perhaps, without pain and compunction, by the Mammon of life? And what is the cure for this great evil to which your profession exposes you? The cure is, to keep a sacred place in your heart, where Almighty God is enshrined, and where nothing human can enter; to say to the world, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no further'; to remember you are a lawyer, without forgetting you are a Christian; to wish for no more wealth than ought to be possessed by an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven; to covet no more honour than is suitable to a child of God; boldly and bravely to set yourself limits, and to show to others you have limits, and that no professional eagerness, and no professional activity, shall ever induce you to infringe upon the rules and practices of religion: remember the text; put the great question really, which the tempter of Christ only pretended to put. In the midst of your highest success, in the most perfect gratification of your vanity, in the most ample increase of your wealth, fall down at the feet of Jesus, and say, 'Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?'"
The advocate's duty to his client, with its resulting risk to the advocate's own conscience, is thus set forth:—
"Justice is found, experimentally, to be most effectually promoted by the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious men presenting to the selection of an impartial judge the best arguments for the establishment and explanation of truth. It becomes, then, under such an arrangement, the decided duty of an advocate to use all the arguments in his power to defend the cause he has adopted, and to leave the effects of those arguments to the judgment of others. However useful this practice may be for the promotion of public justice, it is not without danger to the individual whose practice it becomes. It is apt to produce a profligate indifference to truth in higher occasions of life, where truth cannot for a moment be trifled with, much less callously trampled on, much less suddenly and totally yielded up to the basest of human motives. It is astonishing what unworthy and inadequate notions men are apt to form of the Christian faith. Christianity does not insist upon duties to an individual, and forget the duties which are owing to the great mass of individuals, which we call our country; it does not teach you how to benefit your neighbour, and leave you to inflict the most serious injuries upon all whose interest is bound up with you in the same land. I need not say to this congregation that there is a wrong and a right in public affairs, as there is a wrong and a right in private affairs. I need not prove that in any vote, in any line of conduct which affects the public interest, every Christian is bound, most solemnly and most religiously, to follow the dictates of his conscience. Let it be for, let it be against, let it please, let it displease, no matter with whom it sides, or what it thwarts, it is a solemn duty, on such occasions, to act from the pure dictates of conscience, and to be as faithful to the interests of the great mass of your fellow-creatures, as you would be to the interests of any individual of that mass. Why, then, if there be any truth in these observations, can that man be pure and innocent before God, can he be quite harmless and respectable before men, who in mature age, at a moment's notice, sacrifices to wealth and power all the fixed and firm opinions of his life; who puts his moral principles to sale, and barters his dignity and his soul for the baubles of the world? If these temptations come across you, then remember the memorable words of the text, 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?'"
After warning the younger barristers against their characteristic faults of self-sufficiency and affected pessimism, the preacher turns to another aspect of the advocate's duty towards his client.—
"Upon those who are engaged in studying the laws of their country devolves the honourable and Christian task of defending the accused: a sacred duty never to be yielded up, never to be influenced by any vehemence, nor intensity of public opinion. In these times of profound peace and unexampled prosperity, there is little danger in executing this duty, and little temptation to violate it; but human affairs change like the clouds of heaven; another year may find us, or may leave us, in all the perils and bitterness of internal dissension; and upon one of you may devolve the defence of some accused person, the object of men's hopes and fears, the single point on which the eyes of a whole people are bent. These are the occasions which try a man's inward heart, and separate the dross of human nature from the gold of human nature. On these occasions, never mind being mixed up for a moment with the criminal, and the crime; fling yourself back upon great principles, fling yourself back upon God; yield not one atom to violence; suffer not the slightest encroachments of injustice; retire not one step before the frowns of power; tremble not, for a single instant, at the dread of misrepresentation. The great interests of mankind are placed in your hands; it is not so much the individual you are defending; it is not so much a matter of consequence whether this, or that, is proved to be a crime; but on such occasions, you are often called upon to defend the occupation of a defender, to take care that the sacred rights belonging to that character are not destroyed; that that best privilege of your profession, which so much secures our regard, and so much redounds to your credit, is never soothed by flattery, never corrupted by favour, never chilled by fear. You may practise this wickedness secretly, as you may any other wickedness; you may suppress a topic of defence, or soften an attack upon opponents, or weaken your own argument and sacrifice the man who has put his trust in you, rather than provoke the powerful by the triumphant establishment of unwelcome innocence: but if you do this, you are a guilty man before God. It is better to keep within the pale of honour, it is better to be pure in Christ, and to feel that you are pure in Christ: and if ever the praises of mankind are sweet, if it be ever allowable to a Christian to breathe the incense of popular favour, and to say it is grateful and good, it is when the honest, temperate, unyielding advocate, who has protected innocence from the grasp of power, is followed from the hall of judgment by the prayers and blessings of a grateful people."
And then comes an admonition about private duty.—
"Do not lose God in the fervour and business of the world; remember that the churches of Christ are more solemn, and more sacred, than your tribunals: bend not before the judges of the king, and forget the Judge of Judges; search not other men's hearts without heeding that your own hearts will be searched; be innocent in the midst of subtility; do not carry the lawful arts of your profession beyond your profession; but when the robe of the advocate is laid aside, so live that no man shall dare to suppose your opinions venal, or that your talents and energy may be bought for a price: do not heap scorn and contempt upon your declining years by precipitate ardour for success in your profession; but set out with a firm determination to be unknown, rather than ill-known; and to rise honestly, if you rise at all. Let the world see that you have risen, because the natural probity of your heart leads you to truth; because the precision and extent of your legal knowledge enables you to find the right way of doing the right thing; because a thorough knowledge of legal art and legal form is, in your hands, not an instrument of chicanery, but the plainest, easiest and shortest way to the end of strife…. I hope you will weigh these observations, and apply them to the business of the ensuing week, and beyond that, in the common occupations of your profession: always bearing in your minds the emphatic words of the text, and often in the hurry of your busy, active lives, honestly, humbly, heartily exclaiming to the Son of God, 'Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?'"
[60] Edward Vernon, afterwards Harcourt (1757-1847).
[61] Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), Bishop of London, was the firstbishop to discard the episcopal wig; and John Bird Sumner (1780-1862),Archbishop of Canterbury, the last to wear it.
[62] In later life he said:—"If you shoot, the squire and the poacher bothconsider you as their natural enemies, and I thought it more clericalto be at peace with both."
[63] Sir Henry Halford, Bart., M.D. (1766-1844).
[64] His eldest son.
[65] Compare—"The Sixth Commandment in suspended, by one medical diploma, from the North of England to the South."—Essay on "Persecuting Bishops."
[66] Addressed to Mrs. Henry Howard.
[67] John Allen (1771-1843) was Warden of Dulwich College.
[68] Macaulay called it "the very neatest, most commodious, and most appropriate rectory that I ever saw."
[69] In 1818 he writes to Lady Mary Bennet:—"I am glad you liked what I said of Mrs. Fry. She is very unpopular with the clergy: examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose, and give birth to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive."
[70] Macaulay describes Foston Church as "a miserable little hovel with a wooden belfry."
[71] As testified by Mr. Stuart Reid.
[72] Carlyle's description of Dr. Arnold's house at Rugby.
[73] Henry Luttrell (1765-1835), wit and epicure.
[74] Frederick, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825) married Lady MargaretCaroline Leveson-Gower.
[75] In old age Sydney Smith wrote—"Castle Howard befriended me when Iwanted friends: I shall never forget it till I forget all."
[76]SeeAppendix B.
[77] (1757-1839).
[78] The Hon. and Rev. George Spencer (1799-1864).
[79]Seep. 83.
[80] The Residence Act, 1817.
[81] Acts xxiii. 3.
[82] St. Luke x. 25.
The first quarter of the nineteenth century was now nearing its close, and the most exciting topic in domestic politics was the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. The movement in favour of emancipation, though checked by the death of Pitt, had never completely collapsed, and now it was quickened by the exertions of the "Catholic Association" in Ireland, and stimulated by the eloquence of O'Connell and Sheil. Session after Session, emancipating Bills were brought into Parliament, and were supported by Castlereagh and Canning in opposition to their colleagues. The clergy of the Church of England—fashioned, almost to a man, on the model of Abraham Plymley—were dreadfully alarmed. Bishops charged against the proposed concession. Clerical meetings all over the country petitioned Parliament to defend them against insidious attacks on our national Protestantism. Before long, the storm rolled up to Yorkshire, and a meeting of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Cleveland was assembled at Thirsk on the 24th of March 1823. To this meeting a Resolution was submitted, protesting against the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. A counter-petition was submitted by Sydney Smith, begging for an inquiry into all laws affecting the Roman Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland, and "expressing a hope" that only those which were absolutely necessary to the safety of Church and State might be suffered to remain. It is difficult to conceive a milder proposition, but it was defeated by twenty-two votes to ten—Archdeacon Wrangham[83] and the Rev. William Vernon,[84] son of the Archbishop of York, voting in the minority. Sydney Smith's speech in support of his motion recapitulated the main arguments which, as Peter Plymley, he had adduced at an earlier stage of the same controversy. He urged that a Roman Catholic's oath was as sacred and as binding as a Protestant's; that the English Constitution, with great advantage to its subjects, tolerated, and behaved generously to, all forms of religion (except Romanism); and that all possible danger to civil order in Ireland was averted by the stringency of the restrictions with which it was proposed to safeguard the gift of Emancipation.—
"I defy Dr. Duigenan,[85] in the full vigour of his incapacity, in the strongest access of that Protestant epilepsy with which he was so often convulsed, to have added a single security to the security of that oath. If Catholics are formidable, are not Protestant members electedbyCatholics formidable? But what will the numbers of the Catholics be? Five or six in one house, and ten or twelve in the other; and this I state upon the printed authority of Lord Harrowby, the tried and acknowledged friend of our Church, the amiable and revered patron of its poorest members. The Catholics did not rebel during the war carried on for a Catholic king, in the year 1715, nor in 1745. The government armed the Catholics in the American war. The last rebellion no one pretends to have been a Catholic rebellion; the leaders were, with one exception, all Protestants. The king of Prussia, the emperor of Russia, do not complain of their Catholic subjects. The Swiss cantons, Catholic and Protestant, live together in harmony and peace. Childish prophecies of danger are always made, and always falsified. The Church of England (if you will believe some of its members) is the most fainting, sickly, hysterical institution that ever existed in the world. Every thing is to destroy it, every thing to work its dissolution and decay. If money is taken for tithes, the Church of England is to perish. If six old Catholic peers, and twelve commoners, come into Parliament, these holy hypochondriacs tear their hair, and beat their breast, and mourn over the ruin of their Established Church! The Ranter is cheerful and confident. The Presbyterian stands upon his principles. The Quaker is calm and contented. The strongest, and wisest, and best establishment in the world, suffers in the full vigour of manhood, all the fears and the tremblings of extreme old age.
* * * * *
"I conclude, Sir, remarks which, upon such a subject, might be carried to almost any extent, with presenting to you a petition to Parliament, and recommending it for the adoption of this meeting. And upon this petition, I beg leave to say a few words:—I am the writer of the petition I lay before you; and I have endeavoured to make it as mild and moderate as I possibly could. If I had consulted my own opinionsalone, I should have said, that the disabling laws against the Catholics were a disgrace to the statute-book, and that every principle of justice, prudence, and humanity, called for their immediate repeal; but he who wishes to do any thing useful in this world, must consult the opinions of others as well as his own. I knew very well if I had proposed such a petition to my excellent friend, the Archdeacon and Mr. William Vernon, it would not have suited the mildness and moderation of their character, that they should accede to it; and I knew very well, that without the authority of their names, I could have done nothing. The present petition, when proposed to them by me, met, as I expected, with their ready and cheerful compliance. But though I propose this petition as preferable to the other, I should infinitely prefer that we do nothing, and disperse without coming to any resolution.
"I am sick of these little clerico-political meetings. They bring a disgrace upon us and upon our profession, and make us hateful in the eyes of the laity. The best thing we could have done, would have been never to have met at all. The next best thing we can do (now we are met), is to do nothing. The third choice is to take my petition. The fourth, last, and worst, to adopt your own. The wisest thing I have heard here to-day, is the proposition of Mr. Chaloner, that we should burn both petitions, and ride home. Here we are, a set of obscure country clergymen, at the 'Three Tuns,' at Thirsk, like flies on the chariot-wheel; perched upon a question of which we can neither see the diameter, nor control the motion, nor influence the moving force. What good can such meetings do? They emanate from local conceit, advertize local ignorance; make men, who are venerable by their profession, ridiculous by their pretensions, and swell that mass of paper-lumber, which, got up with infinite rural bustle, and read without being heard in Parliament, is speedily consigned to merited contempt."[86]
So ended Sydney Smith's first political speech; and he took two years' holiday from the labours of the platform. On the 11th of April 1825, he returned to the charge. He had now acquired, in addition to Foston, the Rectory of Londesborough, which he held from 1823 to 1829, as "warming-pan" for his young friend and neighbour, William Howard.[87] As Rector of Londesborough, he attended a meeting of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of the East Riding, held at Beverley to protest against the Roman Catholic claims.
TheYorkshire Gazettereported the proceedings, and commented as follows:—
"The meeting was unanimous in its determination to petition Parliament against the claims of the Roman Catholics—one individual only excepted, the Rector of Londesborough. This gentleman made his speech on the occasion, enlarging on the inexpediency of refusing the Roman Catholics their claims…. The meeting, though by no means unprepared to hear extraordinary things from the Rector of Londesborough, as they had reason to anticipate from the proceedings of a meeting in another Archdeaconry about two years ago, were yet perfectly astonished to hear him assert that the Roman Catholic religion is now changed from what it was formerly, and that the oath of a Papist may, in all cases, be relied upon with the same confidence as that of a Protestant…. It is certainly due to the Rector of Londesborough to state in conclusion that he bore his defeat with his usual good humour, and further that, having learned previous to the meeting the intention of his curate to attend, but that he was hesitating out of delicacy to the declared opinions of his rector, the latter gentleman made it a particular request to his curate that he would persevere in his original intention."
Sydney Smith's peroration, though it failed to persuade his brother-clergy, is so good that it deserves to be reproduced.—
"When this bill passes, it will be a signal to all the religious sects of that unhappy country to lay aside their mutual hatred, and to live in peace, as equal men should live under equal law—when this bill passes, the Orange flag will fall—when this bill passes, the Green flag of the rebel will fall—when this bill passes, no other flag will fly in the land of Erin than that which blends the Lion with the Harp—that flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of freedom and of joy—the only banner in Europe which floats over a limited King and a free people."
On this occasion the orator fared even less well than before in the matter of votes. His "excellent and respectable curate, Mr. Milestone,"[88] voted against him; and he was left in a minority of one. But he had the satisfaction of being able to write to a friend—"A poor clergyman whispered to me that he was quite of my way of thinking, but had nine children.I begged he would remain a Protestant."
By this time the life of the Parliament, which had been elected on the demise of the Crown in 1820, was running out, and both parties were making vigorous preparations for the General Election. On the 29th January 1826, Sydney Smith wrote to Lady Grey:—
"Terrible work in Yorkshire with the Pope! I fight with the beasts at Ephesus every day…. This week I publish a pamphlet on the Catholic question, with my name to it. There is such an uproar here that I think it is gallant, and becoming a friend of Lord Grey's, to turn out and take a part in the affray…. What a detestable subject!—stale, threadbare, and exhausted; but ancient errors cannot be met with fresh refutations."
Not with fresh refutations, perhaps, but with a wonderful prodigality offresh illustrations and conceits.A Letter to the Electors upon theCatholic Questionbegins with the thrice-repeated question, "Why is not aCatholic to be believed on his oath?"
"What says the law of the land to this extravagant piece of injustice? It is no challenge against a juryman to say he is a Catholic, he sits in judgment upon your life and your property. Did any man ever hear it said that such or such a person was put to death, or that he lost his property, because a Catholic was among the jurymen? Is the question ever put? Does it ever enter into the mind of the attorney or the counsellor to enquire of the faith of the jury? If a man sell a horse, or a house, or a field, does he ask if the purchaser be a Catholic? Appeal to your own experience, and try, by that fairest of all tests, the justice of this enormous charge.
"We are in treaty with many of the powers of Europe, because we believe in the good faith of Catholics. Two-thirds of Europe are, in fact, Catholics; are they all perjured? For the first fourteen centuries all the Christian world were Catholics; did they live in a constant state of perjury? I am sure these objections against the Catholics are often made by very serious and honest men, but I much doubt if Voltaire has advanced any thing against the Christian religion so horrible as to say that two-thirds of those who profess it are unfit for all the purposes of civil life; for who is fit to live in society who does not respect oaths?
* * * * *
"I have lived a little in the world, but I never happened to hear a single Catholic even suspected of getting into office by violating his oath; the oath which they are accused of violating is an insuperable barrier to them all. Is there a more disgraceful spectacle in the world than that of the Duke of Norfolk hovering round the House of Lords in the execution of his office,[89] which he cannot enter as a peer of the realm? disgraceful to the bigotry and injustice of his country—to his own sense of duty, honourable in the extreme: he is the leader of a band of ancient and high-principled gentlemen, who submit patiently to obscurity and privation rather than do violence to their conscience. In all the fury of party, I never heard the name of a single Catholic mentioned, who was suspected of having gained, or aimed at, any political advantage, by violating his oath. I have never heard so bitter a slander supported by the slightest proof. Every man in the circle of his acquaintance has met with Catholics, and lived with them probably as companions. If this immoral lubricity were their characteristic, it would surely be perceived in common life. Every man's experience would corroborate the imputation; but I can honestly say that some of the best and most excellent men I have ever met with have been Catholics; perfectly alive to the evil and inconvenience of their situation, but thinking themselves bound by the law of God and the law of honour, not to avoid persecution by falsehood and apostasy. I remember hearing the Catholics accused from the Hustings of disregarding oaths, and within an hour of that time I saw five Catholic voters rejected, because they would not take the oath of Supremacy; and these were not men of rank who tendered themselves, but ordinary tradesmen. The accusation was received with loud huzzas, the poor Catholics retired unobserved and in silence. No one praised the conscientious feeling of the constituents; no one rebuked the calumny of the candidate.
* * * * *
"I beg to remind you, that in talking of the Catholic religion, you must talk of the Catholic religion as it is carried on in Ireland; you have nothing to do with Spain, or France, or Italy: the religion you are to examine is the Irish Catholic religion. You are not to consider what it was, but what it is; not what individuals profess, but what is generally professed; not what individuals do, but what is generally practised. I constantly see, in advertisements from county meetings, all these species of monstrous injustice played off against the Catholics. The Inquisition exists in Spain and Portugal, therefore I confound place, and vote against the Catholics of Ireland, where it never did exist, nor was purposed to be instituted. There have been many cruel persecutions of Protestants by Catholic governments; and, therefore, I will confound time and place, and vote against the Irish, who live centuries after these persecutions, and in a totally different country. Doctor this, or Doctor that, of the Catholic Church has written a very violent and absurd pamphlet; therefore I will confound persons, and vote against the whole Irish Catholic Church, which has neither sanctioned nor expressed any such opinions. I will continue the incapacities of men of this age, because some men, in distant ages, deserved ill of other men in distant ages. They shall expiate the crimes committed, before they were born, in a land they never saw; by individuals they never heard of. I will charge them with every act of folly which they have never sanctioned and cannot control. I will sacrifice space, time, and identity, to my zeal for the Protestant Church. Now, in the midst of all this violence, consider, for a moment, how you are imposed on by words, and what a serious violation of the rights of your fellow-creatures you are committing. Mr. Murphy lives in Limerick, and Mr. Murphy and his son are subjected to a thousand inconveniences and disadvantages because they are Catholics. Murphy is a wealthy, honourable, excellent man; he ought to be in the corporation; he cannot get in because he is a Catholic. His son ought to be King's Counsel for his talents, and his standing at the Bar; he is prevented from reaching this dignity, because he is a Catholic. Why, what reasons do you hear for all this? Because Queen Mary, three hundred years before the natal day of Mr. Murphy, murdered Protestants in Smithfield; because Louis XIV. dragooned his Protestant subjects, when the predecessor of Murphy's predecessor was not in being; because men are confined in prison, in Madrid, twelve degrees more south than Murphy has ever been in his life; all ages, all climates, are ransacked to perpetuate the slavery of Murphy, the ill-fated victim of political anachronisms.