* * * * *
"When are mercy and justice, in fact, ever to return upon the earth, if the sins of the elders are to be for ever visited on those who are not even their children! Should the first act of liberated Greece be to recommence the Trojan war? Are the French never to forget the Sicilian Vespers; or the Americans the long war waged against their liberties? Is any rule wise, which may set the Irish to recollect what they have suffered?
* * * * *
"It is no part of my province to defend every error of the Catholic Church; I believe it has many errors, though I am sure these errors are grievously exaggerated and misrepresented…. But, if you will take a long view instead of a confined view, and look generally to the increase of human happiness,the best check upon the increase of Popery, the best security for the establishment of the Protestant Church is, that the British empire shall be preserved in a state of the greatest strength, union, and opulence. My cry then is,No Popery; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not join with foreign Papists in time of war.Church, for ever; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not help to pull it down.King for ever; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may become his loyal subjects.Great Britain for ever; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not put an end to its perpetuity.Our Government is essentially Protestant; therefore, by emancipating the Catholics, give up a few circumstances which have nothing to do with the essence.The Catholics are disguised enemies; therefore, by emancipation, turn them into open friends.They have a double allegiance; therefore, by emancipation, make their allegiance to their King so grateful, that they will never confound it with the spiritual allegiance to their Pope. It is very difficult for electors, who are much occupied by other matters, to choose the right path amid the rage and fury of faction: but I give you one mark,vote for a free altar; give what the law compels you to give to the Establishment; (that done,) no chains, no prisons, no bonfires for a man's faith; and, above all, no modern chains and prisons under the names of disqualifications and incapacities, whichare only the cruelty and tyranny of a more civilized age; civil offices open to all, a Catholic or a Protestant alderman, a Moravian or a Church of England or a Wesleyan justice,no oppression, no tyranny in belief: a free altar, an open road to heaven; no human insolence, no human narrowness, hallowed by the name of God.
* * * * *
"Our Government is called essentially Protestant; but, if it be essentially Protestant in the distribution of office, it should be essentially Protestant in the imposition of taxes. The Treasury is open to all religions, Parliament only to one. The tax-gatherer is the most indulgent and liberal of human beings; he excludes no creed, imposes no articles; but counts Catholic cash, pockets Protestant paper, and is candidly and impartially oppressive to every description of the Christian world. Can anything be more base than when you want the blood or the money of Catholics, to forget that they are Catholics, and to remember only that they are British subjects; and, when they ask for the benefits of the British Constitution, to remember only that they are Catholics, and to forget that they are British subjects?
"No Poperywas the cry of the great English Revolution, because the increase and prevalence of Popery in England would, at that period, have rendered this island tributary to France. The Irish Catholics were, at that period, broken to pieces by the severity and military execution of Cromwell, and by the Penal Laws. They are since become a great and formidable people. The same dread of foreign influence makes it now necessary that they should be restored to political rights. Must the friends of rational liberty join in a clamour against the Catholics now, because, in a very different state of the world, they excited that clamour a hundred years ago? I remember a house near Battersea Bridge which caught fire, and there was a great cry of 'Water, water!' Ten years after, the Thames rose, and the people of the house were nearly drowned. Would it not have been rather singular to have said to the inhabitants—'I heard you calling for water ten years ago; why don't you call for it now?'"
* * * * *
"Mild and genteel people do not like the idea of persecution, and are advocates for toleration; but then they think it no act of intolerance to deprive Catholics of political power. The history of all this is, that all men scarcely like to punish others for not being of the same opinion with themselves, and that this sort of privation is the only species of persecution, of which the improved feeling and advanced cultivation of the age will admit. Fire and faggot, chains and stone walls, have been clamoured away; nothing remains but to mortify a man's pride, and to limit his resources, and to set a mark upon him, by cutting him off from his fair share of political power. By this receipt insolence is gratified, and humanity is not shocked. The gentlest Protestant can see, with dry eyes, Lord Stourton excluded from parliament, though he would abominate the most distant idea of personal cruelty to Mr. Petre. This is only to say that he lives in the nineteenth, instead of the sixteenth century, and that he is as intolerant in religious matters as the state of manners existing in his age will permit. Is it not the same spirit which wounds the pride of a fellow-creature on account of his faith, or which casts his body into the flames? Are they any thing else but degrees and modifications of the same principle? The minds of these two men no more differ because they differ in their degrees of punishment, than their bodies differ because one wore a doublet in the time of Mary, and the other wears a coat in the reign of George. I do not accuse them of intentional cruelty and injustice: I am sure there are very many excellent men who would be shocked if they could conceive themselves to be guilty of any thing like cruelty; but they innocently give a wrong name to the bad spirit which is within them, and think they are tolerant because they are not as intolerant as they could have been in other times, but cannot be now.The true spirit is to search after God and for another life with lowliness of heart; to fling down no man's altar, to punish no man's prayer; to heap no penalties and no pains on those solemn supplications which, in divers tongues, and in varied forms, and in temples of a thousand shapes, but with one deep sense of human dependence, men pour forth to God."
At this point of his Letter, the writer turns aside to combat the contention that, because Roman Catholics have in times past persecuted Protestants, therefore they must now be deprived of their civil rights. If this contention be sound, the Protestant must, by parity of reasoning, be disfranchised.
"The first object of men who love party better than truth, is to have it believed that the Catholics alone have been persecutors. But what can be more flagrantly unjust than to take over notions of history only from the conquering and triumphant party? If you think the Catholics have not their Book of Martyrs as well as the Protestants, take the following enumeration of some of their most learned and careful writers. The whole number of Catholics who suffered death in England for the exercise of the Catholic religion since the Reformation stands thus:—
"Henry VIII., 59Elizabeth, 204James I., 25Charles I., and Commonwealth, 23Charles II., 8———Total, 319
"Henry VIII., with consummate impartiality, burnt three Protestants and hanged four Catholics for different errors in religion on the same day, and at the same place. Elizabeth burnt two Dutch Anabaptists for some theological tenets, July 22, 1575, Fox the martyrologist vainly pleading with the queen in their favour. In 1579, the same Protestant queen cut off the hand of Stubbs, the author of a tract against popish connection, of Singleton, the printer, and Page, the disperser of the book. Camden saw it done. Warburton properly says it exceeds in cruelty any thing done by Charles I. On the 4th of June, Mr. Elias Thacker and Mr. John Capper, two ministers of the Brownist persuasion, were hanged at St. Edmund's-bury, for dispersing books against the Common Prayer. With respect to the great part of the Catholic victims, the law was fully and literally executed: after being hanged up, they were cut down alive, dismembered, ripped up, and their bowels burnt before their faces; after which they were beheaded and quartered. The time employed in this butchery was very considerable, and, in one instance, lasted more than half an hour.
"The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the greater part of these men were put to death for political, not for religious, crimes. That is, a law is first passed, making it high treason for a priest to exercise his function in England, and so, when he is caught and burnt, this is not religious persecution, but an offence against the State. We are, I hope, all too busy to need any answer to such childish, uncandid reasoning as this."
And then the Letter goes on to give, with the fullest apparatus of details, dates, and authorities, the miserable tale of religious persecution practised, during three centuries, at home and abroad, by Anglicans on Puritans, by Protestants on Romanists, by orthodox Protestants on heterodox Protestants; and then, to clinch his argument and drive it home, he gives the substance of the Penal Code under which Irish Catholics suffered so cruelly and so long.
"With such facts as these, the cry of persecution will not do; it is unwise to make it, because it can be so very easily, and so very justly retorted. The business is to forget and forgive, to kiss and be friends, and to say nothing of what has passed; which is to the credit of neither party. There have been atrocious cruelties, and abominable acts of injustice, on both sides. It is not worth while to contend who shed the most blood, or whether death by fire is worse than hanging or starving in prison. As far as England itself is concerned, the balance may be better preserved. Cruelties exercised upon the Irish go for nothing in English reasoning; but if it were not uncandid and vexatious to consider Irish persecutions[90] as part of the case, I firmly believe there have been two Catholics put to death for religious causes in Great Britain for one Protestant who has suffered: not that this proves much, because the Catholics have enjoyed the sovereign power for so few years between this period and the Reformation; and certainly it must be allowed that they were not inactive, during that period, in the great work of pious combustion.
"It is however some extenuation of the Catholic excesses, that their religion was the religion of the whole of Europe when the innovation began. They were the ancient lords and masters of faith, before men introduced the practice of thinking for themselves in these matters. The Protestants have less excuse, who claimed the right of innovation, and then turned round upon other Protestants who acted upon the same principle, or upon Catholics who remained as they were, and visited them with all the cruelties from which they had themselves so recently escaped.
"Both sides, as they acquired power, abused it; and both learnt, from their sufferings, the great secret of toleration and forbearance. If you wish to do good in the times in which you live, contribute your efforts to perfect this grand work. I have not the most distant intention to interfere in local politics; but I advise you never to give a vote to any man whose only title for asking it is that he means to continue the punishments, privations, and incapacities of any human beings, merely because they worship God in the way they think best: the man who asks for your vote upon such a plea, is,probably, a very weak man, who believes in his own bad reasoning, or a very artful man, who is laughing at you for your credulity: at all events, he is a man who knowingly or unknowingly exposes his country to the greatest dangers, and hands down to posterity all the foolish opinions and all the bad passions which prevail in those times in which he happens to live. Such a man is so far from being that friend to the Church, which he pretends to be, that he declares its safety cannot be reconciled with the franchises of the people; for what worse can be said of the Church of England than this, that wherever it is judged necessary to give it a legal establishment, it becomes necessary to deprive the body of the people, if they adhere to their old opinions, of their liberties, and of all their free customs, and to reduce them to a state of civil servitude?
After the discharge of this tremendous missile against the tottering fortress of bigotry, the energetic engineer sought a brief interlude of rest and recreation. His money-matters had of late years improved. An aunt had died and left him a legacy, and the Rectory of Londesborough was a profitable preferment. The income thus augmented enabled him to realize a long-cherished dream and pay his first visit to Paris, in the spring of 1826. There he met some old friends, made several new acquaintances, ate some excellent but expensive dinners, mastered the Louvre in a quarter of an hour, and saw Talma in tragedy and Mademoiselle Mars in "genteel comedy." At the Opera he noticed that "the house was full of English, who talk loud, and seem to care little for other people. This is their characteristic, and a very brutal and barbarous distinction it is." He keenly admired the luxury and beauty and prettiness of Paris, and especially the profusion of glass in French drawing-rooms. "I remember entering a room with glass all round it, and saw myself reflected on every side. I took it for a meeting of the clergy, and was delighted of course." He returned to England in May; on the 2nd of June Parliament was dissolved. "We have been," he wrote, "in the horror of Elections—each party acting and thinking as if the salvation of several planets depended upon the adoption of Mr. Johnson and the rejection of Mr. Jackson." In July, Thomas Babington Macaulay, a young and unsuccessful barrister, found himself on circuit at York. He was told that Mr. Smith had come to see him, and, when the visitor was admitted, he recognized—
"the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith,aliasPeter Plymley. I had forgotten his very existence till I discerned the queer contrast between his black coat and his snow-white head, and the equally curious contrast between the clerical amplitude of his person, and the most unclerical wit, whim, and petulance of his eye."
Macaulay spent the following Sunday at Foston Rectory, and thus records his impressions:—
"I understand that S.S. is a very respectable apothecary, and most liberal of his skill, his medicine, his soup, and his wine, among the sick. He preached a very queer sermon—the former half too familiar, and the latter half too florid, but not without some ingenuity of thought and expression….
"His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once above him and below him. Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality and bigotry would have made him a bishop; but he could neither rise to the duties of his order, nor stoop to its degradation."
In December Sydney wrote to a newly-elected Member of Parliament:—
"I see you have broken ice in the House of Commons. I shall be curious to hear your account of your feelings, of what colour the human creatures looked who surrounded you, and how the candles and Speaker appeared…. For God's sake, open upon the Chancery. On this subject there can be no excess of vituperation and severity. Advocate also free trade in ale and ale-houses. Respect the Church, and believe that the insignificant member of it who now addresses you is most truly yours,
At the same time he wrote as follows to a young friend—Lord JohnRussell—who had lost his seat and published a book:—
"DEAR JOHN,—I have read your book on theState of Europe since thePeace of Utrechtwith much pleasure—sensible, liberal, spirited,philosophical, well-written. Go on writing History. Write a History ofLouis XIV., and put the world right about that old Beast.
"I am sorry you are not in parliament. You ought to be everywherewhere honest and bold men can do good. Health and respect. Ever yours,
The year 1827 opened dramatically. On the 18th February Lord Liverpool, who had been Prime Minister since the assassination of Spencer Perceval in 1812, was suddenly stricken by fatal illness. On the 10th of April King George IV. found himself, much against his will, constrained to entrust the formation of a Government to George Canning. Canning was avowedly favourable to the Roman Catholic claims, and on that account some of the most important of his former colleagues declined to serve under him. The Ministry was reconstructed with an infusion of Whigs; and the brilliant but unscrupulous Copley became Chancellor with the title of Lord Lyndhurst.[91]
A Ministry, containing Whigs as well as Tories and committed to the cause of Roman Catholic emancipation, seemed likely to open the way of preferment to Sydney Smith. Knowing that his income would soon be materially reduced by the cessation of his tenure of Londesborough, he wrote to some of his friends among the new Ministers and boldly stated his claims. One of these Ministers seems to have made a rather chilly response; and the applicant did not spare him.—
"I am much obliged by your polite letter. You appeal to my good-nature to prevent me from considering your letter as a decent method of putting me off. Your appeal, I assure you, is not made in vain. I do not think you mean to put me off; because I am the most prominent, and was for a long time the only, clerical advocate of that question, by the proper arrangement of which you believe the happiness and safety of the country would be materially improved. I do not believe you mean to put me off; because, in giving me some promotion, you will teach the clergy, from whose timidity you have everything to apprehend, and whose influence upon the people you cannot doubt, that they may, under your Government, obey the dictates of their consciences without sacrificing the emoluments of their profession. I do not think you mean to put me off; because, in the conscientious administration of that patronage with which you are entrusted, I think it will occur to you that something is due to a person who, instead of basely chiming in with the bad passions of the multitude, has dedicated some talent and some activity to soften religious hatreds, and to make men less violent and less foolish than he found them."
In July he wrote to a friend:—
"The worst political news is that Canning is not well, and that the Duke of Wellington has dined with the King. Canning dead, Peel is the only man remaining alive in the House of Commons, I mean, the only man in his senses."
On the 8th of August Canning died, and was succeeded by Lord Goderich, who in turn made way for the Duke of Wellington in January 1828, Lord Lyndhurst again becoming Chancellor.
On the 1st of January 1828, Sydney Smith's Second daughter, Emily, was married to Nathaniel Hibbert, afterwards of Munden House, near Watford, Her father wrote:—
"We were married on New Year's Day, and aregone! I feel as if I had lost a limb, and were walking about with one leg—and nobody pities this description of invalids."
Three weeks later, Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, yielding to private friendship what the Whigs had refused to political loyalty, appointed the Rector of Foston to a Prebendal Stall in Bristol Cathedral. This brought him at length official station in the Church, and a permanent instead of a terminable income. He wrote from Bristol on the 17th of February:—
"An extremely comfortable Prebendal house; seven-stall stables and room for four carriages, so that I can hold all yourcortègewhen you come; looks to the south, and is perfectly snug and parsonic; masts of West-Indiamen seen from the windows… I have lived in perfect solitude ever since I have been here, but am perfectly happy. The novelty of this place amuses me."
From the time of his appointment to Bristol, Sydney Smith severed his connexion with theEdinburgh Review, holding that anonymous journalism was inconsistent with the position of an ecclesiastical dignitary. He had contributed to theReviewfor a quarter of a century; and, by a happy accident, his last utterance, in the organ through which he had so long and so strenuously fought for freedom, was yet one more plea for Roman Catholic emancipation. Yet once again he urged, with all his force, the baseness of deserting the good cause, and the danger and cruelty of delaying justice.—
"There is little new to be said; but we must not be silent, or, in these days of baseness and tergiversation, we shall be supposed to have deserted our friend the Pope, and they will say of us,Prostant venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall. God forbid it should ever be said of us with justice. It is pleasant to loll and roll and to accumulate—to be a purple-and-fine-linen man, and to be called by some of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of accumulating upon each other;—-but the best thing of all is to live like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality, justice, and truth.
* * * * *
"We should like to argue this matter with a regular Tory Lord, whose members vote steadily against the Catholic question. 'I wonder that mere fear does not make you give up the Catholic question! Do you mean to put this fine place in danger—the venison—the pictures—the pheasants—the cellars—the hot-house and the grapery? Should you like to see six or seven thousand French or Americans landed in Ireland, and aided by a universal insurrection of the Catholics? Is it worth your while to run the risk of their success? What evil from the possible encroachment of Catholics, by civil exertions, can equal the danger of such a position as this? How can a man of your carriages, and horses, and hounds, think of putting your high fortune in such a predicament, and crying out, like a schoolboy or a chaplain, 'Oh, we shall beat them! we shall put the rascals down!' No Popery, I admit to your Lordship, is a very convenient cry at an election, and has answered your end; but do not push the matter too far. To bring on a civil war for No Popery, is a very foolish proceeding in a man who has two courses and a remove! As you value your side-board of plate, your broad riband, your pier-glasses—if obsequious domestics and large rooms are dear to you—if you love ease and flattery, titles and coats of arms—if the labour of the French cook, the dedication of the expecting poet, can move you—if you hope for a long life of side-dishes—if you are not insensible to the periodical arrival of the turtle-fleets—emancipate the Catholics! Do it for your ease, do it for your indolence, do it for your safety—emancipate and eat, emancipate and drink—emancipate, and preserve the rent-roll and the family estate!"
In conclusion he gives a word of warning first to his Roman Catholic clients, imploring them to be patient as well as firm; and then to the various sections of the "No Popery" party in England—
"To the Base.—Sweet children of turpitude, beware! the old antipopery people are fast perishing away. Take heed that you are not surprised by an emancipating king, or an emancipating administration. Leave alocus poenitentiæ!—prepare a place for retreat—get ready your equivocations and denials. The dreadful day may yet come, when liberality may lead to place and power. We understand these matters here. It is safest to be moderately base—to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when any thing is to be gained by virtue,"
The suggested prophecy had not long to wait for its fulfilment. In the summer of 1828, William Vesey Fitzgerald, a great landowner in County Clare, and one of the Members for that county, accepted office in the Government as President of the Board of Trade, thereby vacating his seat. Lord Beaconsfield shall tell the remainder of the story. "An Irish lawyer, a professional agitator, himself a Roman Catholic and therefore ineligible, announced himself as a candidate in opposition to the new minister, and on the day of election thirty thousand peasants, setting at defiance all the landowners of the county, returned O'Connell at the head of the poll, and placed among not the least memorable of historical events—the Clare Election."[92]
This election decided the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and the cause, for which Sydney Smith had striven so heroically, was won at last. On the 28th of August 1828 he wrote to a Roman Catholic friend:—
"Brougham thinks the Catholic question as good as carried; but I never think myself as good as carried, till my horse brings me to my stable-door…. What am I to do with my time, or you with yours, after the Catholic question is carried?"
To the same friend he wrote:—
"You will be amused by hearing that I am to preach the 5th of November[93] sermon at Bristol, and to dine at the 5th of November dinner with the Mayor and Corporation of Bristol. All sorts of bad theology are preached at the Cathedral on that day, and all sorts of bad toasts drunk at the Mansion House. I will do neither the one nor the other, nor bow the knee in the house of Rimmon."
On the 5th of November 1828, he wrote to Lord Holland:—
"To-day I have preached an honest sermon before the Mayor andCorporation in the Cathedral—the most Protestant Corporation inEngland! They stared at me with all their eyes. Several of them couldnot keep the turtle on their stomachs."
The sermon[94] well deserved the epithet. It glanced, as the occasion demanded, at the civil grievances of the Roman Catholics, and then it went on to lay down some simple but sufficient rules by which men should regulate their judgment on religious forms and bodies with which they do not sympathize.—
"Our holy religion consists of some doctrines which influence practice, and of others which are purely speculative. If religious errors be of the former description, they may, perhaps, be fair objects of human interference; but, if the opinion be merely theological and speculative, there the right of human interference seems to end, because the necessity for such interference does not exist. Any error of this nature is between the Creator and the creature,—between the Redeemer and the redeemed. If such opinions are not the best opinions which can be found, God Almighty will punish the error, if mere error seemeth to the Almighty a fit object of punishment. Why may not a man wait if God waits? Where are we called upon in Scripture to pursue men for errors purely speculative?—to assist Heaven in punishing those offences which belong only to Heaven?—in fighting unasked for what we deem to be the battles of God,—of that patient and merciful God, who pities the frailties we do not pity—who forgives the errors we do not forgive,—who sends rain upon the just and the unjust, and maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and the good.
* * * * *
"I shall conclude my sermon (extended, I am afraid, already to an unreasonable length), by reciting to you a very short and beautiful apologue, taken from the Rabbinical writers. It is, I believe, quoted by Bishop Taylor in hisHoly Living and Dying. I have not now access to that book, but I quote it to you from memory, and should be made truly happy if you would quote it to others from memory also.
"'As Abraham was sitting in the door of his tent, there came unto him a wayfaring man; and Abraham gave him water for his feet, and set bread before him. And Abraham said unto him, Let us now worship the Lord our God before we eat of this bread. And the wayfaring man said unto Abraham, I will not worship the Lord thy God, for thy God is not my God; but I will worship my God, even the God of my fathers. But Abraham was exceeding wroth; and he rose up to put the wayfaring man forth from the door of his tent. And the voice of the Lord was heard in the tent—Abraham, Abraham! have I borne with this man for three score and ten years, and can'st thou not bear with him for one hour?'"[95]
This sermon was published by request, and the preacher apologized in the preface for "sending to the press such plain rudiments of common charity and common sense."
The beginning of 1829 was darkened by what Sydney Smith called "the first great misfortune of his life." On the 14th of April, his eldest son Douglas died, after a long illness, in his twenty-fifth year. His health had always been delicate, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, he had become Captain of the King's Scholars at Westminster,[96] and a Student of Christ Church. His epitaph says—"His life was blameless. His death was the first sorrow he ever occasioned his parents, but it was deep and lasting." On the 29th of April his father wrote—"Time and the necessary exertions of life will restore me;" but four months later the note is changed.—
"I never suspected how children weave themselves about the heart. My son had that quality which is longest remembered by those who remain behind—a deep and earnest affection and respect for his parents. God save you from similar distress!"
And again:—
"I did not know I had cared so much for anybody; but the habit of providing for human beings, and watching over them for so many years, generates a fund of affection, of the magnitude of which I was not aware"
Sixteen years later, when he lay dying and half-conscious, the cry"Douglas, Douglas!" was constantly on his lips.
The prebendal stall at Bristol carried with it the incumbency of Halberton, near Tiverton; and Sydney Smith exchanged the living of Foston for that of Combe Florey in Somerset, which could be held conjointly with Halberton. On the 14th of July 1829 he wrote from the "Sacred Valley of Flowers," as he loved to call it:—
"I am extremely pleased with Combe Florey, and pronounce it to be a very pretty place in a very beautiful country. The house I shall make decently convenient."
"I need not say how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the same as all other neighbourhoods. Red wine and white, soup and fish, commonplace dulness and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am, after my manner, making my place perfect, and have twenty-eight people constantly at work."
"I am going on fighting with bricklayers and carpenters, and shall ultimately make a very pretty place and a very good house." "I continue to be delighted with the country. My parsonage will be perfection. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop, that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so that a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."
"Luttrell came over for a day, from whence I know not, but I thought not from good pastures; at least, he had not his usual soup-and-pattie look. There was a forced smile upon his countenance, which seemed to indicate plain roast and boiled; and a sort of apple-pudding depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman…. He was very agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup, I took him aside, and reasoned the matter with him, but in vain; to speak the truth, Luttrell is not steady in his judgments on dishes. Individual failures with him soon degenerate into generic objections, till, by some fortunate accident, he eats himself into better opinions. A person of more calm reflection thinks not only of what he is consuming at that moment, but of the soups of the same kind he has met with in a long course of dining, and which have gradually and justly elevated the species. I am perhaps making too much of this; but the failures of a man of sense are always painful"
One of the chief features in the restored Rectory of Combe Florey was a library, twenty-eight feet long and eight high, ending in a bay-window supported by pillars, and looking into a brilliant garden. This room had been made by "throwing a pantry, a passage, and a shoe-hole together." Three sides of it were covered with books. "No furniture so charming as books," said Sydney, "even if you never open them, or read a single word." He passionately loved light and colour, sunshine and flowers; and all his books were bound in the most vivid blues and reds. "What makes a fire so pleasant is that it is a live thing in a dead room," A visitor thus describes him at his literary work:—
"At a large table in the bay-window, with his desk before him—on one end of this table a case, something like a small deal music-stand, filled with manuscript books—on the other a large deal tray, filled with a leaden ink-stand, containing ink enough for a county; a magnifying glass; a carpenter's rule; several large steel pens, which it was high treason to touch; a glass bowl full of shot and water, to clean these precious pens; and some red tape, which he called 'one of the grammars of life'; a measuring line, and various other articles, more useful than ornamental. At this writing establishment, unique of its kind, he could turn his mind with equal facility, in company or alone, to any subject, whether of business, study, politics, instruction, or amusement, and move the minds of his hearers to laughter or tears at his pleasure."
The daily life at Combe Florey was eminently patriarchal. He lived surrounded by children, grandchildren, and friends; chatting with the poor, comforting the sick, and petting the babies of the village. Old and young alike he doctored with extraordinary vehemence and persistency, "As I don't shoot or hunt, it is my only rural amusement." He wrote to a friend—"The influenza to my great joy has appeared here, and I am in high medical practice." "This is the house to be ill in," he used to say, "I take it as a delicate compliment when my guests have a slight illness here. Come and see my apothecary's shop." The "shop" was a room filled on one side with drugs and on the other with groceries. "Life is a difficult thing in the country, I assure you, and it requires a good deal of forethought to steer the ship, when you live twelve miles from a lemon."
The church of Combe Florey was described by Francis Jeffrey as "a horrid old barn." There the Rector performed two services a Sunday, celebrated the Holy Communion once a month, and preached his practical sermons, transcribed from his own execrable manuscript by a sedulous clerk. "I like," he said, "to look down upon my congregation—to fire into them. The common people say I am abould preacher, for I like to have my arms free, and to thump the pulpit." A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with the words, "Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion! I really can hardly keep my hands off you."
An anonymous correspondent kindly furnishes me with this description of theValley of Flowers as it was in more recent years:—
"I visited Combe Florey, with camera and vasculum, in 1893. It is one of the loveliest spots in that district of lovely villages, lying in the Vale of Taunton on the southern slope of the Quantocks. The parsonage is entirely unchanged: there is Sydney's study, a low-ceilinged room supported partly by pillars, level with the garden and opening into it. There is the old-fashioned fireplace by which he and his wife sate opposite each other in his last illness. 'Mrs. Sydney has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take something every hour, and pass the mixture from one to the other.' Outside still grow his Conifers, a large Atlantic Cedar and a Deodara; unchanged too are the palings over which Jack and Jill[97] peered with antlered heads. Old villagers still talk of his medical dispensary, and of the care with which he drove round to collect and carry into Taunton their monthly deposits for the Savings Bank."
Meanwhile, great events were transacting themselves in the political world, and they had an important bearing on the tranquil life of Combe Florey. On the 4th of May 1830, Sydney Smith wrote from London to his wife in the country:—
"The King is going downhill as before, but seems to be a long time in the descent. All kinds of intrigues are going on about change of Ministry, and all kinds of hopes and fears afloat. Nothing is more improbable than that I should be made a Bishop, and, if I ever had the opportunity, I am now, when far removed from it, decidedly of opinion that it would be the greatest act of folly and absurdity to accept it—to live with foolish people, to do foolish and formal things all day, to hold my tongue, or to twist it into conversation unnatural to me."
King George IV. died on the 26th of June. The accession of William IV., who was supposed to have some tendencies towards Whiggism, greatly stimulated the demand for Parliamentary Reform; and the revolution in France, which dethroned Charles X., gave a strong impetus to the democratic forces in England. Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July. On the 14th of August Charles Greville wrote, "The elections are still going against the Government, and the signs of the times are all for reform and retrenchment, and against slavery." In writing to congratulate a young Roman Catholic who had been elected for Carlisle, Sydney Smith said—
"I rejoice in the temple which has been reared to Toleration; and I am proud that I worked as a bricklayer's labourer at it—without pay, and with the enmity and abuse of those who were unfavourable to its construction."[98]
The new Parliament met on the 26th of October. On the 2nd of November, in the debate on the Address, the Duke of Wellington made a vehement declaration against Reform. This was the signal for an immense outcry. There were mobs and riots everywhere. The King's projected visit to the City on Lord Mayor's Day was abandoned. The Tory Government were beaten on a motion relating to the new Civil List. "Never was any Administration so completely and so suddenly destroyed; and, I believe, entirely by the Duke's declaration." Lord Grey[99] became Prime Minister, as the head of a Whig administration pledged to Reform. Soon afterwards Sydney Smith wrote to a friend—
"I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment if he stays in long enough; but the upper parsons live vindictively, and evince their aversion to a Whig Ministry by an improved health."
The Reform Bill was brought in on the 1st of March 1831. Sydney thought it "a magnificent measure, as wise as it is bold." Meetings of Reformers were held all over the country to support it. Such a meeting was held at Taunton on the 9th of March, and the Rector of Combe Florey attended and spoke.
"This," he said, "is the greatest measure which has ever been before Parliament in my time, and the most pregnant with good or evil to the country; and, though I seldom meddle with political meetings, I could not reconcile it to my conscience to be absent from this. Every year for this half century the question of Reform has been pressing upon us, till it has swelled up at last into this great and awful combination; so that almost every City and every Borough in England are at this moment assembled for the same purpose and are doing the same thing we are doing."
A great part of the controversy turned on the disfranchisement of the "Pocket Boroughs," and this was a subject which immediately suggested a happy apologue—
"These very same politicians are now looking in an agony of terror at the disfranchisement of Corporations containing twenty or thirty persons, sold to their representatives, who are themselves perhaps sold to the Government: and to put an end to these enormous abuses is calledCorporation robbery, and there are some persons wild enough to talk of compensation. This principle of compensation you will consider perhaps, in the following instance, to have been carried as far as sound discretion permits. When I was a young man, the place in England I remember as most notorious for highwaymen and their exploits was Finchley Common, near the metropolis; but Finchley Common, in the progress of improvement, came to be enclosed, and the highwaymen lost by these means the opportunity of exercising their gallant vocation. I remember a friend of mine proposed to draw up for them a petition to the House of Commons for compensation, which ran in this manner—'We, your loyal highwaymen of Finchley Common and its neighbourhood having, at great expense, laid in a stock of blunderbusses, pistols, and other instruments for plundering the public, and finding ourselves impeded in the exercise of our calling by the said enclosure of the said Common of Finchley, humbly petition your Honourable House will be pleased to assign to us such compensation as your Honourable House in its wisdom and justice may think fit.'—Gentlemen, I must leave the application to you….
"The greater part of human improvements, I am sorry to say, are made after war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: mankind seem to object to every species of gratuitous happiness, and to consider every advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased by some calamity. I shall esteem it as a singular act of God's providence, if this great nation, guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult for Reform, nor trusting Reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the people, shall amend their decayed institutions at a period when they are ruled by a popular monarch, guided by an upright minister, and blessed with profound peace."
On the 22nd of March the Second Reading was carried by a majority of one. But directly afterwards the Government was defeated on an amendment in Committee, and promptly appealed to the country. Parliament was dissolved on the 23rd of April. "Bold King! bold Ministers!" wrote Sydney on the 25th. Popular feeling was now really roused. "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill" was the war-cry from Caithness to Cornwall. Lord John Russell, who had brought the Bill into Parliament, was the hero of the hour. He contested Devonshire at the General Election, and Sydney, who had a vote for the county, met him at Exeter.—
"The people along the road were very much disappointed by his smallness. I told them he was much larger before the Bill was thrown out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about the people. This brought tears into their eyes!"
At this juncture Sydney composed (and published in the name of an imaginaryMr. Dyson), a "Speech to the Freeholders on Reform"—
"Stick to the Bill—it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede. King John made a present to the Barons. King William has made a similar present to you. Never mind common qualities, good in common times. If a man does not vote for the Bill, he is unclean—the plague-spot is upon him—push him into the lazaretto of the last century, with Wetherell[100] and Sadler[101]—purify the air before you approach him—bathe your hands in Chloride of Lime, if you have been contaminated by his touch….
"The thing I cannot, and will not bear, is this;—what right hasthisLord, orthatMarquis, to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the shape of Boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me? And how are these masses of power re-distributed? The eldest son of my Lord is just come from Eton—he knows a good deal about Æneas and Dido, Apollo and Daphne—and that is all; and to this boy his father gives a six-hundredth part of the power of making laws, as he would give him a horse or a double-barrelled gun. Then Vellum, the steward, is put in—an admirable man;—he has raised the estates—watched the progress of the family Road-and-Canal Bills—and Vellum shall help to rule over the people of England. A neighbouring country gentleman, Mr. Plumpkin, hunts with my Lord—opens him a gate or two, while the hounds are running—dines with my Lord—agrees with my Lord—wishes he could rival the South-Down sheep of my Lord—and upon Plumpkin is conferred a portion of the government. Then there is a distant relation of the same name, in the County Militia, with white teeth, who calls up the carriage at the Opera, and is always wishing O'Connell was hanged, drawn, and quartered—then a barrister, who has written an article in theQuarterly, and is very likely to speak, and refute M'Culloch; and these five people, in whose nomination I have no more agency than I have in the nomination of the toll-keepers of the Bosphorus, are to make laws for me and my family—to put their hands in my purse, and to sway the future destinies of this country; and when the neighbours step in, and beg permission to say a few words before these persons are chosen, there is an universal cry of rain, confusion, and destruction—'We have become a great people under Vellum and Plumpkin—under Vellum and Plumpkin our ships have covered the ocean—under Vellum and Plumpkin our armies have secured the strength of the Hills—to turn out Vellum and Plumpkin is not Reform, but Revolution.'"
It was said by the opponents of the Bill that the existing system worked well.—
"Work well! How does it work well, when every human being in-doors and out (with the exception of the Duke of Wellington) says it must be made to work better, or it will soon cease to work at all? It is little short of absolute nonsense to call a government good, which the great mass of Englishmen would, before twenty years were elapsed, if Reform were denied, rise up and destroy. Of what use have all the cruel laws been of Perceval, Eldon, and Castlereagh, to extinguish Reform? Lord John Russell, and his abettors, would have been committed to gaol twenty years ago for half only of his present Reform; and now relays of the people would drag them from London to Edinburgh; at which latter city we are told, by Mr. Dundas, that there is no eagerness for Reform. Five minutes before Moses struck the rock, this gentleman would have said that there was no eagerness for water.
"There are two methods of making alterations: the one is to despise the applicants, to begin with refusing every concession, then to relax by making concessions which are always too late; by offering in 1831 what is then too late, but would have been cheerfully accepted in 1830—gradually to O'Connellize the country, till at last, after this process has gone on for some time, the alarm becomes too great, and every thing is conceded in hurry and confusion. In the mean time fresh conspiracies have been hatched by the long delay, and no gratitude is expressed for what has been extorted by fear. In this way peace was concluded with America, and Emancipation granted to the Catholics; and in this way the War of Complexions will be finished in the West Indies. The other method us, to see at a distance that the thing must be done, and to do it effectually,and at once; to take it out of the hands of the common people, and to carry the measure in a manly liberal manner, so as to satisfy the great majority. The merit of this belongs to the administration of Lord Grey. He is the only Minister I know of, who has begun a great measure in good time, conceded at the beginning of twenty years what would have been extorted at the end of it, and prevented that folly, violence, and ignorance, which emanate from a long denial and extorted concession of justice to great masses of human beings. I believe the question of Reform, or any dangerous agitation of it, is set at rest for thirty or forty years; and this is an eternity in politics.
* * * * *
"I am old and tired,—thank me for ending; but one word more before I sit down. I am old, but I thank God I have lived to see more than my observations on human nature taught me I had any right to expect. I have lived to see an honest King, in whose word his ministers could trust, I have lived to see a King with a good heart, who, surrounded by nobles, thinks of common men; who loves the great mass of English people, and wishes to be loved by them; and who, in spite of clamour, interest, prejudice, and fear, has the manliness to carry these wise changes into immediate execution. Gentlemen, farewell! Shout for the King!"[102]
Having done his best for the good cause in the country, Sydney Smith returned to London to watch the results. On the 6th of June Macaulay met him at dinner, and writes thus next day:—
"Sydney Smith leaves London on the 20th—the day before Parliament meets for business, I advised him to stay and see something of his friends, who would be coming up to London. 'My flock!' said this good shepherd, 'my dear sir, remember my flock!
"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,"'
"…He begged me to come and see him at Combe Florey. 'There I am, sir, in a delightful parsonage, about which I care a great deal, and a delightful country, about which I do not care a straw.'"
When the new House of Commons assembled, it was found to contain a great majority of Reformers. A fresh Bill was introduced, and passed the Second Reading, by a majority of 136, on the 8th of July. While it was ploughing its way through Committee, the Coronation of William IV. took place on the 8th of September. The solemnity was made an occasion for public rejoicings in the country, and loyalty was judiciously reinforced by the suggestion that the King was, in this great controversy, on the same side as his people. At a meeting at Taunton, Sydney Smith spoke as follows:—
"I am particularly happy to assist on this occasion, because I think that the accession of the present King is a marked and important era in English history. Another coronation has taken place since I have been in the world, but I never assisted at its celebration. I saw in it a change of masters, not a change of system. I did not understand the joy which it occasioned. I did not feel it, and I did not counterfeit what I did not feel.
"I think very differently of the accession of his present Majesty. I believe I see in that accession a great probability of serious improvement, and a great increase of public happiness. The evils which have been long complained of by bold and intelligent men are now universally admitted. The public feeling, which has been so often appealed to, is now intensely excited. The remedies which have so often been called for are now, at last, vigorously, wisely, and faithfully applied, I admire, gentlemen, in the present King, his love of peace—I admire in him his disposition to economy, and I admire in him, above all, his faithful and honourable conduct to those who happen to be his ministers. He was, I believe, quite as faithful to the Duke of Wellington as to Lord Grey, and would, I have no doubt, be quite as faithful to the political enemies of Lord Grey (if he thought fit to employ them) as he is to Lord Grey himself. There is in this reign no secret influence, no double ministry—on whomsoever he confers the office, to him he gives that confidence without which the office cannot be holden with honour, nor executed with effect. He is not only a peaceful King, and an economical King, but he is an honest King. So far, I believe, every individual of this company will go with me.
* * * * *
"There is an argument I have often heard, and that is this—Are we to be afraid?—is this measure to be carried by intimidation?—is the House of Lords to be overawed? But this style of argument proceeds from confounding together two sets of feelings which are entirely distinct—personal fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this bill, because a mob may gather about the House of Lords—because stones may be flung at my head—because my house may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public affairs. But I may rationally be afraid of producing great public agitation; I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies—I may be wisely afraid of making the aristocracy hateful to the great body of the people. This surely has no more to do with fear than a loose identity of name; it is in fact prudence of the highest order; the deliberate reflection of a wise man, who does not like what he is going to do, but likes still less the consequences of not doing it, and who of two evils chooses the least.
"There are some men much afraid of what is to happen; my lively hope of good is, I confess, mingled with very little apprehension; but of one thing I must be candid enough to say that I am much afraid, and that is of the opinion now increasing, that the people are become indifferent to reform; and of that opinion I am afraid, because I believe in an evil hour it may lead some misguided members of the Upper House of Parliament to vote against the bill. As for the opinion itself, I hold it in the utmost contempt. The people are waiting in virtuous patience for the completion of the bill, because they know it is in the hands of men who do not mean to deceive them. I do not believe they have given up one atom of reform—I do not believe that a great people were ever before so firmly bent upon any one measure. I put it to any man of common sense, whether he believes it possible, after the King and Parliament have acted as they have done, that the people will ever be content with much less than the present bill contains. If a contrary principle be acted upon, and the bill attempted to be got rid of altogether, I confess I tremble for the consequences, which I believe will be of the worst and most painful description; and this I say deliberately, after the most diligent and extensive enquiry. Upon that diligent enquiry I repeat again my firm conviction, that the desire of reform has increased, not diminished; that the present repose is not indifference, but the calmness of victory, and the tranquillity of success. When I see all the wishes and appetites of created beings changed,—when I see an eagle, that, after long confinement, has escaped into the air, come back to his cage and his chain,—when I see the emancipated negro asking again for the hoe which has broken down his strength, and the lash which has tortured his body—I will then, and not till then, believe that the English people will return to their ancient degradation—that they will hold out their repentant hands for those manacles which at this moment lie broken into links at their feet."
This fine speech was delivered at a crucial moment of the speaker's personal fortunes. Whether he would or would not have made a good bishop, and whether the Whigs were or wore not justly chargeable with cowardice[103] in not having raised him to the Episcopal Bench, are disputable points. It seems certain, from his own declarations, that in later life he would have declined the honour; but there was a time when it might have been offered, and would probably have been accepted. When he feared that England might be dragged into war with France on behalf of Spain, he composed a skit purporting to be a Protest entered on the Journals of the Lords by the Bishop of Worcester, and signed it "Sydney Vigorn."[104] The Bishop of Worcester[105] died on the 5th of September 1831, and Lord Grey gave the vacant mitre to a Tory.[106] Sydney's emotions are not recorded; but on the 10th of September Lord Grey offered him a Residentiary Canonry of St. Paul's—"a snug thing, let me tell you, being worth full £2000 a year." It was not an overwhelming reward for such long and such brilliant service to the causes which Lord Grey represented, but it was a recognition—and it was enough. He was installed on the 27th of September, and on the day of his installation he wrote to a friend—"It puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing—never did anything shabby to procure preferment. These are pleasing recollections."
Soon afterwards, he was presented on his appointment, and met with a misadventure at the Palace.—
"I went to Court, and, horrible to relate, with strings to my shoes instead of buckles—not from Jacobinism, but ignorance. I saw two or three Tory lords looking at me with dismay, was informed by the Clerk of the Closet of my sin, and, gathering my sacerdotal petticoats about me (like a lady conscious of thick ankles) I escaped further observation."
[83] Francis Wrangham (1769-1842), Archdeacon of Cleveland.
[84] William Vernon-Harcourt {1789-1871}, father of Sir WilliamVernon-Harcourt, M.P.
[85] Patrick Duigenan (1735-1816), LL.D., M.P. for the City of Armagh, andProtestant agitator.
[86] TheYorkshire Gazettefor April 12, 1823, contains a long letter from "A North Riding Clergyman," protesting against the language used by Sydney Smith. This clergyman states that the report of the meeting at Thirsk, given by theYork Heraldof March 29, was "unquestionably by the Minority themselves." It "professes to be a sketch of what was said and done at the meeting of the North Riding Clergy. Then the public is favoured with three considerable speeches, filling three close columns of a newspaper, on the one side; and not with three lines, nay, not with one, of anything said on the other side…. Surely the whole of the twenty-two clergyman who differed from the ten were not so astounded by the eloquence and display of their opponents as to remain absolutely speechless." It is further said that "on the present occasion, and after assuring his learned brethren that he was not going to inflict upon them a speech, and some other remarks of similar accuracy, Mr. Smith immediately harangues them in a vehement and long speech; during which, with firm resolve, it may seem, not to possess either 'overheated mind' or body, he nearly exhausted the 'Three Tuns' of water," For this quotation, and for the date of the meeting, which had been erroneously stated by previous writers, I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. J.S.R. Phillips, editor of theYorkshire Post.
[87] (1808-1889): became 8th Earl of Carlisle in 1864 The Rev. Richard Wilton, Canon of York and Rector of Londesborough, wrote in 1895:—"My former venerable friend, the oldest inhabitant, gave me some graphic descriptions of Sydney Smith's visit to the parish once or twice a year, and the interest which was felt in the village when he drove over from Foston, his other living, to preach an occasional sermon at Londesborough. His reading, and manner in the pulpit, were described to me as having been 'bold and impressive.' As soon as the sermon was over, he would hasten out of the church along with his hearers, and chat with the farmers about their turnips, or cattle, or corn-crops, being anxious to utilize his scant opportunities of conversing with his parishioners…. There was until lately living in this parish an old man aged eighty, who was proud of telling how he was invited over to Foston to 'brew for Sydney,' as he affectionately called him."
[88] Mr. Stuart Reid gives to this curious name the more impressive form of Mayelstone.
[89] As Earl Marshal.
[90] "Thurloe writes to Henry Cromwell tocatchup some thousand Irish boys, to send to the colonies. Henry writes back he has done so; and desires to know whether his Highness would choose as many girls to be caught up: and he add, 'doubtless it is a business in which God will appear.' Supposebloody Queen Maryhad caught up and transported three or four thousand Protestant boys and girls from the three Ridings of Yorkshire!!!!!! S.S."
[91] John Singleton Copley (1772-1863).
[92]Endymion, vol. I. chapter vi.
[93] The special services for "Gunpowder Treason" and other State Holy Days were discontinued by Royal Warrant in 1859.
[94] From Col. iii. 12, 13—"Put on, as the elect of God, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another."
[95] This apologue (which, the preacher thought, "would make a charming and useful placard against the bigoted") occurs in theLiberty of Prophesying, and has been traced to Gentius, the Latin translator of Saadi.
[96] "Having become a King's Scholar, the hardships and cruelties he suffered, as a junior boy, from his fag-master, were such as at one time very nearly forced us to remove him from the school. He was taken home for a short period, to recover from his bruises, and restore his eye. His first act, on becoming Captain himself, was to endeavour to ameliorate the condition of the juniors, and to obtain additional comforts for them from the Head Master."—From Mrs, Sydney Smith's Journal.
[97] Two donkeys, which were disguised as deer for the astonishment ofvisitors.
[98] The Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill had become law on the 13th ofApril 1829.
[99] Charles, 2nd Earl Grey (1764-1846).
[100] Sir Charles Wetherell (1770-1846), Attorney-General, and Recorder of Bristol.
[101] Michael Thomas Sadler (1780-1835), M.P. for Newark.
[102] This is the "Speech respecting the Reform Bill" in Sydney Smith's Collected Works.
[103] Lord Houghton wrote in 1873—"I heard Lord Melbourne say, 'Sydney Smith has done more for the Whigs than all the clergy put together, and our not making him a bishop was mere cowardice."
[104] The archaic signature of the Bishops of Worcester. Mrs. Austin transcribes it "Vigour," and puts the Protest among the letters of 1831. Sir Spencer Walpole points out that it probably belongs to the year 1823, when Lord Ellenborough moved an Address to the Crown in favour of intervention in Spain.
[105] Ffolliot H.-W. Cornewall (1754-1831).
[106] Robert James Carr (1774-1841). It was said that this appointment was due to a promise made by George IV., whom Dr. Carr, formerly Vicar of Brighton, had attended in his last illness.