(jtC<^^ w^&m^M3g:. c mLC:^, m^ mm''<^i^'' rX 'f^. irt -(msxmt:( ^^2iK^ Henry D. Bacon, St. Louis, Mo. University of California. ' GITT OF HENRY DOUGLASS BACON. i I 1877. i [ Accessions No. .y 5 This is all verj' bad ; and if the Governor had cherished the iiitention of destroying the colony, he could have done nothing more de- trimental to its interests. The high price of labour is the very corner-stone on which the prosperity of a new colony depends. It ena- bles the poor man to live with ease ; and is the strongest incitement to population, by render- ing children rather a source of riches than of poverty. If the same difficulty of subsist- ence existed in new countries as in old, it is plain that the progress of population would be equally slow in each. The very circumstances which'cause the difference are, that, in the lat- ter, there is a competition among the labour- ers to be employed ; and, in the former, a com- petition among the occupiers of land to obtain labourers. In the one, land is scarce and men plenty; in the other, men are scarce, and land is plentv- To disturb this natural order of things (a practice injurious at all times) must be particularly so where the predominant dis- position of the colonist is an aversion to la- bour, produced bj- a long course of dissolute habits. In such cases the high prices of la- bour, which the Governor was so desirous of abating, bid fair not only to increase the agri- cultural prosperity, but to efiect the moral re- formation of the colony. We observe the same unfortunate ignorance of the elementary prin- ciples of commerce in the attempts of the Go- vernor to reduce the prices of the European commodities, by bulletins and authoritative interference, as if there were any other mode of lowering the price of an article (while the demand continues the same) but by increasing its quantity. The avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutar}^ purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labour, which is best encouraged by the love of money. We have very great doubts on the policy of reserving the best timber on the estates as go- vernment timber. Such a reservation would probably operate as a check upon the clearing of lands without attaining the object desired; for the timber, instead of being immediately cleared, would be slowly destroyed, by the neg- lect or malice of the settlers whose lands it en- cumbered. Timber is such a drug in new coun- tries, that it is at any time to be purchased for little more than the labour of cutting. To se- cure a supply of it by vexatious and invidious laws, is surel}' a work of supererogation and danger. The greatest evil which the govern- ment has yet to contend with is, the inordinate use of spirituous liquors ; a passion which puts the interests of agriculture at variance with those of morals : for a dram-drinker will consume as much corn, in the form of alcohol, in one day, as would supply him with bread for three ; and thus, by his vices, opens an ad- mirable market to the industry of a new set- tlement. The only mode, we believe, of en- countering this evil, is by deriving froni it such a revenue as w^ill not admit of smuggling. Beyond this it is almost invincible by autho- rity ; and is probably to be cured only by the progressive refinement of manners. To evince the increasing commerce of the WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 25 settlement, a list is subjoined of 140 ships, which have arrived there since its first foun- dation, forty only of which were from Eng- land. The colony at I'Jorfolk Island is repre- sented to be in a very deplorable situation, and will most probably be abandoned for one about to be formed on Van Diemen's Land,* though the capital defect of the former settlement has been partly obviated, by a discovery of the harbour for small craft. The most important and curious information contained in this volume, is the discovery of straits which separate Van Diemen's Land (hitherto considered as its southern extremity) from New Holland. For this discovery we are indebted to Mr. Bass, a surgeon, after whom the straits have been named, and who was led to a suspicion of their existence by a prodi- gious swell which he observed to set in from the westward, at the mouth of the opening which he had reached on a voyage of disco- very, prosecuted in a common whale-boat. To verify this suspicion, he proceeded afterwards in a vessel of 25 tons, accompanied by Mr. Flanders, a naval gentleman ; and, entering the straits between the latitudes of 39° and 40° south, actually circumnavigated Van Die- men's Land. Mr. Bass's ideas of the import- ance of this discovery, we shall give from hi* narrative, as reported by Mr. Collins. "The most promment advantage which seemed likely to accrue to the settlement from this discovery was, the expediting of the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to Port Jackson : for, although a line drawn from the Cape to 44° of south latitude, and to the longitude of the South Cape of Van Diemen's Land, would not sensibly differ from one drawn to the latitude of 40° to the same longi- tude ; yet it must be allowed, that a ship will be four degrees nearer to Port Jackson in the latter situation than it would be in the former. But there is, perhaps, a greater advantage to be gained by making a passage through the strait, than the mere saving of four degrees of latitude along the coast. The major part of the ships that have arrived at Port Jackson have met with N. E. winds, on opening the sea round the South Cape and Cape Pillar; and have been so much retarded by them, that a fourteen days' passage to the port is reckoned to be a fair one, although the difference of lati- tude is but ten degrees, and the most prevail- ing winds at the latter place are from S. E. to S. in summer, and from W. S. W. to S. in ,winter. If, by going through Bass Strait, these N. E. winds can be avoided, which in many cases would probably be the case, there is no doubt but a week or more would be gained by it ; and the expense, with the wear and tear of a ship for one week, are objects to most owners, more especially when freighted with convicts by the run. *It is sinffular that Governments are not more desir- ous of pusliing their settlements rather to the north than the south of Port Jackson. The soil and climate would probably improve, in the latitude nearer the equator ; and settlements in that position would be more contigu- ous to our Indian colonies. "This strait likewise presents another ad- vantage. From the prevalence of the N. E. and easterly winds of the South Cape, many suppose that a passage may be made from thence to the westward, either to the Cape of Good Hope, or to India ; but the fear of the great unknown bight between the South Cape and the S. W. Cape of Lewen's Land, lying in about 35° south and 113° east, has hitherto prevented the trial being made. Now, the strait removes a part of this danger, by pre- senting a certain place of retreat, should a gale oppose itself to the ship in the 5rst part of the essay : and should the wind come at S, W, she need not fear making a good stretch to ihe W. N. W., which course, if made good, is within a few degrees of going clear of all. There is, besides. King George the Third's Sound, discovered by Captain Vancouver, situate in the latitude»of 35° 30' south, and longitude 118° 12' east; and it is to be hoped, that a few years will disclose many others upon the coast, as well as the confirmation or futility of the conjecture that a still larger than Bass Strait dismembers New Holland." — (p. 192, 193.) We learn from a note subjoined to this pas- sage, that, in order to verify or refute this con- jecture, of the existence of other important inlets on the west coast of New Holland, Cap- tain Flinders has sailed with two ships under his command, and is said to be accompanied by several professional men of considerable ability. Such are the most important contents of Mr. CoUins's book, the style of which we very much approve, because it appears to be writ- ten by himself; and we must repeat again, that nothing can be more injurious to the opi- nion the public will form of the authenticity of a book of this kind, than the suspicion that it has been tricked out and embellished by other hands. Such men, to be sure, have ex- isted as Julius Csesar; but, in general, a cor- rect and elegant style is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in action : and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing, as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical truth. The events which Mr. Collins's book records, we have read with great interest. There is a charm in thus seeing villages, and churches, and farms, rising from a wilderness, where civilized man has never set his foot since the creation of the world. The contrast between fertility and bar- renness, population and solitude, activity and indolence, fills the mind with the pleasing images of happiness and increase. Man seems to move in his proper sphere, while he is thus dedicating the powers of his mind and body to reap those rewards which the bounti- ful Author of all things has assigned to his in- dustry. Neither is it "any common enjoyment, to turn for a while from the memory of those distractions which have so recently agitated the Old World, and to reflect that its very hor- rors and crimes may have thus prepared a long era of opulence and peace for a people yet involved in the womb of time. 86 WORKS OF THE KEV. SYDNEY SMrfH. J. EIEVEE.* [Edinburgh Review, 1809.] Of all the species of travels, that -«-hich has moral observation for its object is the most liable to error, and has the greatest difhculties to overcome, before it can arrive at excellence. Stones, and roots, and leaves, are subjects which may exercise the understanding without rousing the passions. A mineralogical travel- ler will hardly fall fouler upon the granite and the feldspar of other countries than his own; a botanist will not conceal its non-descripts ; and an agricultural tourist will faithfully detail the average crop per acre ; but the traveller who observes on the manners, habits, and institutions of other countries, must have emancipated his mind from tho extensive and powerful dominion of association, must have extinguished the agreeable ai d deceitful feel- ings of national vanity, and cultivated that patient humility which builds general infer- ences only upon the repetition of individual facts. Every thing he sees shocks some pas- sion or flatters it ; and he is perpetually se- duced to distort facts, so as to render them agreeable to his system and his feelings ! Hooks of travels are now published in such vast abundance, that it may not be useless, perhaps, to state a few of the reasons why their value so commonly happens to be in the inverse ratio of their number. 1st, Travels are bad, from a want of oppor- tunity for observation in those who write them. If the sides of a building are to be measured, and the number of its windows to be counted, a very short space of time may suffice for these operations ; but to gain such a knowledge of their prevalent opinions and propensities, as will enable a stranger to comprehend (what is commonly called) the genius of people, re- quires a long residence among them, a fami- liar acquaintance with their language, and an easy circulation among their various societies. The society into which a transient stranger gains the most easy access in any country, is not often that which ought to stamp the na- tional character; and no criterion can be more fallible, in a people so reserved and inaccessi- ble as the British, who (even when they open Iheir doors to letters of introduction) cannot for years overcome the awkward timidity of their nature. The same expressions are of so different a value in diiferent countries, the same actions proceed from such different causes, and produce such different effects, that a judgment of foreign nations, founded on rapid observation, is almost certainly a mere tissue of ludicrous and disgraceful mistakes ; and yet a residence of a month or two seems to entitle a traveller to present the world with a picture of manners in London, Paris, or Vienna, and even to dogmatize upon the poli- ■■ Lettres sur VAngUterre. Par J. Fievee. 1802. tical, religious, and legal institutions, as if it were one and the same thing to speak of ah- sirad effects of such institutions, and of their effects combined with all the peculiar circum- stances in which any nation may be placed. 2dly, An affectation of quickness in obser- vation, an intuitive glance that requires only a moment, and a part, to judge of a perpetuity, and a whole. The late Mr. Petion, Avho was sent over into this countiy to acquire a know- ledge of our criminal law, is said to have de- clared himself thoroughly informed upon the subject after remaining precisely two and thirty minutes in the Old Bailey. 3dly, The tendency to found observation on a system, rather than a system upon observa- tion. The fact is, there are very few original eyes and ears. The great mass see and hear as they are directed by others, and bring back from a residence in foreign countries nothing but the vague and customary notions concern- ing it, which are carried and brought back for half a century, without verification or change. The most ordinary shape in which this ten- dency to prejudge makes its appearance among travellers, is by a disposition to exalt, or, a still more absurd disposition to depre- ciate their native country. They are incapable of considering a foreign people but under one single point of view — the relation in which they stand to their own ; and the whole narra- tive is frequently nothing more than a mere triumph of national vanity, or the ostentation of superiority to so common a failing. But we are wasting our time in giving a theory of the faults of travellers, when we have such ample means of exemplifying them all from the publication now before us, in which Mr. Jacob Fievee, with the most sur- prising talents for doing wrong, has contrived to condense and agglomerate every species of absurdity that has hitherto been made known, and even to launch out occasionally into new regions of nonsense, with a boldness which well entitles him to the merit of originality in folly, and discover}' in impertinence. We con- sider Mr. Fievee's book as extremely valuable in one point of view. It affords a sort of limit or mind-mark, beyond which we conceive it to be impossible in future that pertness and petulance should pass. It is well to be ac- quainted with the boundaries of our nature on both sides ; and to Mr. Fievee we are indebted for this valuable approach to pessimism. The height of knowledge no man has yet scanned ; but we have now pretty well fathomed the gulf of ignorance. We must, however, do justice to Mr. Fievee when he deserves it. He evinces, in his pre- face, a lurking uneasiness at the apprehen- sion of exciting war between the two coun tries, from the anger to which his letters will WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 2V give birth in England. He pretends to deny that they will occasion a war ; but it is very easy to see he is not convinced by his own arguments; and we confess ourselves ex- tremely pleased by this amiable solicitude at the probable effusion of human blood. We hope Mr. Fievee is deceived by his philan- thropy, and that no such unhappy conse- quences will ensue, as he really believes, though he affects to deny them. We dare to pav the dignity of this country will be satis- fied if the publication in question is disowned b\' the French government, or, at most, if the author is given up. At all events, we have no scruple to say, that to sacrifice 20,000 lives, and a hundred millions of money to resent Mr. Fievee's book, would be an unjustifiable waste of blood and treasure ; and that to take him off privately by assassination would be an undertaking hardly compatible with the dignity of a great empire. To show, however, the magnitude of the pi-ovocation, we shall specify a few of the charges Avhich he makes against the English. That they do not understand fireworks as well as the French -, that they charge a shilling for admission to the exhibition ; that they have the misfortune of being incommoded by a cer- tain disgraceful privilege, called the liberty of the press ; that the opera band plays out of tune ; that the English are so fond of drinking that they get drunk with a certain air called the gas of Paradise ; that the privilege of elect- ing members of Parliament is so burthensome that cities sometimes petition to be exempted from it; that the great obstacle to a Parlia- mentary reform is the mob ; that women some- times have titles distinct from those of their husbands, although, in England, any body can sell his wife at market, with a rope about her neck. To these complaints he adds — that the English are so far from enjoying that equality of which their partisans boast, that none but the servants of the higher nobility can carry canes behind a carriage ; that the power which the French kings had of pardoning before trial is much the same thing as the English mode of pardoning after trial; that he should con- ceive it to be a good reason for rejecting any measure in France that it was imitated from the English, who have no family affections, and who love money so much that their first queftion, in an inquiry concerning the cha- racter of any man, is, as to his degree of for- tune. Lastly, Mr. Fievee alleges against the English, that they have great pleasure in con- templating the spectacle of men deprived of their reason. And, indeed, we must have the candour to allow that the hospitality which Mr. Fievee experienced seems to afford some pretext for this assertion. One of the principal objects of Mr. Fievee's book is to combat the Anglomania which has raged so long among his countrjnnen, at>4 which.prevailed at Paris to such an excess that even M. Neckar, a foreigner (incredible as it may seem), after having been twice minis- . ter of France, retained a considerable share of admiration for the English government. This is quite inexplicable. But this is nothing to the treason of the Encyclopedists, who, instead of attributing the merit of the experimental philosophy and the reasoning by induction to a Frenchman, have shown themselves so lost to all sense of duty which they owed their country, that they have attributed it to an Englishman* of the name of Bacon, and this for no better reason than that he really was the author of it. The whole of this passage is written so entirely in the genius of Mr. Fievee, and so completely exemplifies that very caricature species of Frenchmen from which our gross and popular notions of the whole people are taken, that we shall give the whole passage at full length, cautiously ab- staining from the sin of translating it. "Quand je reproche aux philosophes d' avoir vante I'Angleterre, par haine pour les institu- tions qui soutenoient la France, je ne hasarde rien, et je fournirai une nouvelle preuve de cette assertion, en citant les encyclopedistes, chefs avoues de la philosophic moderne. " Comment nous ont-ils presents I'Ency- clopedie ■? Comme un monument immortel, comme le depot precieux de toutes les con- noissances humaines. Sous quel patronage I'ont-ils eleve ce monument immortel 1 Est ce sous I'egide des ecrivains dont la France s'honoroitl Non, ils ont choisi pour maitre et pour idole un Anglais, Bacon; ils lui on fait dire tout ce qu'ils ont voulu, parce que cet auteur, extraordinairement volumineux, n'etoit pas connu en France, et ne Test guere en Angleterre que de quelques hommes studieux; mais les philosophes sentoient que leur suc- ces, pour introduire des nouveautes, tenoit a faire croire qu'elles n'etoient pas neuves pour les grands esprits ; et comme les grands es- prits Franpais, trop connus, ne ce pretoient pas a un pareil dessein, les philosophes ont eu recours a I'Angleterre. Ainsi, un ouvrage fait en France, et offert A I'admiration de I'Eu- rope comme I'ouvrage par excellence, fut mis par des Frangais sous la protection du genie Anglais. honte! Et les philosophes se sont dit patriotes, et la France, pour prix de sa de- gradation, leur a eleve des statues ! La siecle qui commence, plus juite, parce qu'il a le sen- timent de la veritable grandeur, laissera ces statues et I'Encyclopedie s'ensevelir sous la meme poussiere." When to this are added the commendations that have been bestowed on Newton, the magnitude and the originality of the discoveries which have been attributed to him, the admiration which the words of Locke have excited, and the ho mage that has been paid to Milton and Shak speare, the treason which lurks at the bottom of it 'all will not escape the penetrating glance of Mr. Fievee ; and he will discern that same cause from which every good Frenchman knows the defeat of Aboukir and of the first of June to have proceeded — the monster Pitt, and his English guineas. * "Gaul was conquered by a person of the name of Julius Cssar," is the first phrase in one of Mr. New ^ berry's little books. ^ WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. EDGEWORTH ON BULLS.* [Edinburgh Review, 1603.] We hardly know what to say about this | the matter. Though the question is not a very rambling, scrambling book; but that we are | easy one, we shall venture to say, that a bull quite sure the author, when he began any sen- tence in it, had not the smallest suspicion of what it was about to contain. We say the author; because, in spite of the mixture of sexes in the title-page, we are strongly in- clined to suspect that the male contributions exceed the female in a very great degree. The Essay on Bulls is wiitten much with the same mind, and in the same manner, as a schoolboy takes a walk: he moves on for ten yards on the straight road, with surprising persever- ance; then sets out after a butterfly, looks for a bird's nest, or jumps backwards and forwards over a ditch. In the same manner, this nim- ble and digressive gentleman is away after every object which crosses his mind. If you leave him at the end of a comma, in a steady pursuit of his subject, you are sure to find him, before the next full stop, a hundred yards to the right or left, frisking, capering, and grin- ning in a high paroxysm of merriment and agility. Mr. Edgeworth seems to possess the sentiments of an accomplished gentleman, the information of a scholar, and the vivacity of a first-rate harlequin. He i,' fuddled with ani- mal spirits, giddy with con.-dtutional joy; in such a state he must have written on, or burst. A discharge of ink was an evacuation abso- lutely necessary, to avoid fatal and plethoric congestion. The object of the book is to prove, that the practice of making bulls is not more imputa- ble to the Irish than to any other people; and the manner ir svhich he sets about it, is to quote examples of bulls produced in other countries. But this is surely a singular way of reasoning the question: for there are goitres out of Valais, extortioners who do not wor- ship Moses, oat cakes out of the Tweed, and balm beyond the precincts ofGilead. If nothing can be said to exist pre-eminently and em- phatically in one country, which exists at all in another, then Frenchmen are not gay, nor Spaniards grave, nor are gentlemen of the Milesian race remarkable for their disinte- rested contempt of wealth in their connubial relations. It is probable there is some founda- tion for a character so generally diflused; though it is also probable that such founda- tion is extremely enlarged by fame. If there Avere no foundation for the common opinion, we must suppose national characters formed by chance ; and that the Irish might, by acci- dent, have been laughed at as bashful and sheepish; which is impossible. The author puzzles himself a good deal about the nature of bulls, without coming to any decision about * Essay on Irish Bulls. By RiCHAnn Lovell Edge WORTH, and Maria Edgeworth. London, 1802. is an apparent congruity, and real incongruuy, of ideas, suddenly discovered. And if this account of bulls be just, they are (as might have been supposed) the very reverse of wit; for as wit discovers real relations, that are not apparent, bulls admit apparent relations that are not real. The pleasure arising from wit proceeds from our surprise at suddenly disco- vering two things to be similar, in vv'hich we suspected no similarity. The pleasure aris- ing from bulls proceeds from our discovering two things to be dissimilar, in which a re- semblance might have been suspected. The same doctrine Avill apply to wit, and to bulls in action. Practical wit discovers connection or relation between actions, in which duller understandings discover none ; and practical bulls originate from an apparent relation be- tween two actions, which more correct under- standings immediately perceive to have no relation at all. Louis XIV. being extremely harassed by the repeated solicitations of a veteran officer for promotion, said one day, loud enough to be heard, " That gentleman is the most trouble- some ofiicer I have in my service." " That is precisely the charge (said the old man) which your majesty's enemies bring against me." "An English gentleman," (says Mr. Edge- worth, in a story cited from Joe Millar,) "was writing a letter in a coffee-house; and per- ceiving that an Irishman stationed behind him was taking that liberty which Parmenio used with his friend Alexander, instead of putting his seal upon the lips of the curious impertinent, the English gentleman thought proper to re- prove the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at least with poetical justice. He concluded writ- ing his letter in these words: 'I would say more, but a damned tall Irishman is reading over my shoulder every word I write.' "'You lie, you scoundrel,' said the self- convicted Hibernian.'" — (p. 29.) The pleasure derived from the first of these stories, proceeds from the discovery of the relation that subsists between the object he had in view, and the assent of the officer to an observation so unfriendly to that end. In the first rapid glance Avhich the mind throws upon his words, he appears, by his acquies- cence, to be pleading against himself. There seems to be no relation between what he says and what he wishes to effect by speaking. In the second story, the pleasure is directly the reverse. The lie given was apparently the readiest means of proving his innocence, and really the most effectual way of establishing his guilt. There seems for a moment to be a strong relation between the means and the ob- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 29 ject; Avhile, in fact, no irrelation can be so complete. What connection is there between pelting stones at monkeys, and gathering cocoa-nuts from lofty trees'? Apparently none. But monkeys "sit upon cocoa-nut trees; monkeys are imitative animals; and if you pelt a monkey with a stone, he pelts you with a cocoa-nut in return. This scheme of gather- ing cocoa-nuts is very witty, and would be more so, if it did not appear viseful: for the idea of utility is always inimical to the idea of M'it.* There appears, on the contrary, to be some relation between the revenge of the Irish rebels against a banker, and the means which they took to gratify it, by burning all bis notes wherever they found them ; whereas they could not have rendered him a more essential service. In both these cases of bulls, the one verbal, the other practical, there is an apparent congruity, and real incongruity of ideas. In both the cases of wit, there is an apparent incongruity and a real relation. It is clear that a bull cannot depend upon mere incongruity alone; for if a man were to say that he would ride to London upon a cocked hat, or that he would cut his throat with a pound of pickled salmon, this, though com- pletely incongruous, would not be to make bulls, but to talk nonsense. The stronger the apparent connection, and the more complete the real disconnection of the ideas, the greater the surprise, and the better the bull. The less apparent, and the more com.plete the relations established by wit, the higher gratification does it afford. A great deal of the pleasure experienced from bulls, proceeds from the sense of superiority in ourselves. Bulls which we invented, or knev/ to be invented, might please, but in a less degree, for want of this additional zest. As there must be apparent connection, and leal incongruity, it is seldom that a man of sense and education finds any form of words by which he is conscious that he might have been deceived into a bull. To conceive how the person has been deceived, he must sup- pose a degree of information very different from, and a species of character very hete- * It must he nl)served, that all the ereat passions, and many other feelings, extinffuish the relish for wit. Thus lympha pudica Deum vidit et erebuit, would be witty, were it not borderin? on the sublime. The resemblance be- tween the sandal tree imparting (while it falls) its aro- matic flavonr to the edge of the axe, and the benevolent man rewarding evil with good, would be witty, did it not excite virtuous emotions. There are many mechan- ical contrivances which excite sensations very similar to wit; but the attention is absorbed by their utility. Some of Merlin's machines, which have no utility at all, are quite similar to wit. A small model of a steam- engine, or mere squirt, is wit to a child. A man specu- lates on the causes of the first, or in its consequences, and so loses the feelings of wit ; with the latter, he is too familiar to be surprised. In short, the essence of every species of wit is surprise ; which vi termini, must be sudden ; and the sensations which wit has a tendency to excite, are impaired or destroyed as often as they are mingled with much thought or passion. rogeneous to, his own ; a process which di- minishes surprise, and consequently pleasure. In the above-mentioned story of the Irishman overlooking the man writing, no person of ordinary sagacity can suppose himself be- trayed into such a mistake; but he can easily represent to himself a kind of character tha\ might have been so betrayed. There ar<^ some bulls so extremely fallacious, that any man may imagine himself to have been be trayed into them; but these are rare: and, ip general, it is a poor, contemptible species ol amusement; a delight in which evinces a very bad taste in wit. Whether the Irish make more bulls thar. their neighbours, is, as we have before re marked, not a point of much importance; bus it is of considerable importance, that the cha racter of a nation should not be degraded; and Mr. Edgeworth has great merit in his verj' benevolent intention of doing justice to the excellent qualities of the Irish. It is not pos sible to read his book, without feeling a strong and a r^w disposition in their favour. Whe ther the imitation of the Irish manner be accu rate in his little stories we cannot determine ; but we feel the same confidence in the accu- racy of the imitation, that is often felt in the resemblance of a portrait, of which we have never seen the original. It is no very high compliment to Mr. Edgeworth's creative pow- ers, to say, he could not have formed anything, which was not real, so like reality; but such a remark only robs Peter to pay Paul; and gives every thing to his powers of observation, which it takes from those of his imagination. In truth, nothing can be better than his imita- tion of the Irish manner: It is first-rate painting. Edgeworth and Co. have another faculty in great perfection. They are eminently masters of the pathos. The Firm drew tears from us in the stories of little Dominick, and of the Irish beggar, who killed his sweetheart : Never was any grief more natural or simple. . The first, however, ends in a very foolish way; formosa superne Desinit in piscevi. We are extremely glad thai our avocations did not call us from Bath to London on the day that the Bath coach conversation took place. W^e except from this wish the stt ry with which the conversation terminates ; for as soon as Mr. Edgeworth enters upon a story he excels. We must confess we have been much more pleased with Mr. Edgeworth in hi.? laughing and in his pathetic, than in his grave and rea- soning moods. He meant, perhaps, that ws should ; and it certainly is not very necessary that a writer should be profound on the sub- ject of bulls. Whatever be the deficiencies of the book, they are, in our estimation, amply atoned for by its merits ; by none more than that lively feeling of compassion which per- vades it for the distresses of the wild, kind hearted, blundering poor of Ireland. c3 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. TEIMMER AND LANCASTER. [Edinburgh Review, 1806.] This is a book written by a lady who has gained considerable reputation at the corner of St. Paul's churchyard ; who flames in the van of Mr. Newberry's shop ; and is, upon the whole, dearer to naothers and aunts than any other author who pours the milk of science into the mouths of babes and sucklings. Tired at last of scribbling for children, and getting ripe in ambition, she has now written a book for grown-up people, and selected for her an- tagonist as stiff a controversialist as the whole field of dispute could well have supplied. Her opponent is Mr. Lancaster,! a Quaker, who has lately given to the world new and striking lights upon the subject of Education, and come forward to the notice of his country by spread- ing order, knowledge, and innocence among the lowest of mankind. Mr. Lancaster, she says, wants method in his book ; and therefore her answer to him is without any arrangement. The same excuse must suffice for the desultory observations we shall make upon this lady's publication. The first sensation of disgust we experienced at Mrs. Trimmer's book, was from the patron- izing and protecting air with which she speaks of some small part of Mr. Lancaster's plan. She seems to suppose, because she has dedi- cated her mind to the subject, that her opinion must necessarily be valuable upon it ; forget- ting it to be barely possible, that her applica- tion may have made her more wrong, instead of more right If she can make out her case, that Mr. Lancaster is doing mischief in so im- portant a point as that of national education, she has a right, in common with every one else, to lay her complaint before the public; but a right to publish praises must be earned by something more ditficult than the writing sixpenny books for children. This may be very good; though we never remember to have seen any one of them; but if they be no more remarkable for judgment and discretion than parts of the work before us, there are many thriving children quite capable of repaying the obligations they owe to their amiable in- structress, and of teaching, with grateful reta- liation, "the old idea how to shoot." In remarking upon the work before us, we shall exactly follow the plan of the authoress, * A Comparative View of the JVew Plan of Education promulgated by Mr. Joseph Lancaster, in his Tracts con- cerning the Instruction of the Children of the Labouring Part of the Community; and of the System of Christian Education founded by our pious Forefathers for the Initia- tion of the Young Members of the Established Church in the Principles of the Reformed Religion. By Mrs. Trim- mer. 1805. t Lancaster Invented the new method of education. The Church was sorely vexed at his success, endeavour- ed to set up Dr. Bell as the discoverer, and to run down I poor Lancaster. George the Third was irritated by this ehabby conduct, and always protected Lancaster. He was delighted with this Review, and made Sir Herbert T.aylor read it a second time to him. I and prefix, as she does, the titles of those subjects on which her observations are made ; doing her the justice to presume, that her quo- tations are fairly taken from Mr. Lancaster's book. 1. Mr. Lancaster's Preface. — Mrs. Trimmer here contends, in opposition to Mr. Lancaster, that ever since the establishment of the Pro- testant Church, the education of the poor has been a national concern in this country; and the only argument she produces in support of this extravagant assertion, is an appeal to the act of uniformity. If there are millions of Englishmen who cannot spell their own names, or read a sign-po.st which bids them turn to the right or left, is it any answer to this deplorable ignorance to say, there is an act of Parliament for public instruction? — to show the very line and chapter where the King, Lords, and Commons, in Parliament as- sembled, ordained the universality of reading and Avriting, when, centuries afterwards, the ploughman is no more capable of the one or the other than the beast which he drives ] In point of fact, there is no Protestant countr}' in the world where the education of the poor has been so grossly and infamously neglected as in England. Mr. Lancaster has the veiy high merit of calling the public attention to this evil, and of calling it in the best waj^ by new and active remedies; and this uncandid and feeble lady, instead of using the influence she has obtained over the anility of these realms, to join that useful remonstrance which Mr. Lancaster has begun, pretends to deny that the evil exists; and when you ask where are the schools, rods, pedagogues, primers, histories of Jack the Giant-killer, and all the usual ap- paratus for education, the only thing she can produce is the act of uniformity and common prayer. 2. The Principles on which Mr. Lancaster's Listitution is conducted. — " Happily for man- kind," says Mr. Lancaster, " it is possible to combine precept and practice together in the education of youth: that public spirit, or gene- ral opinion, which gives such strength to vice, may be rendered serviceable to the cause of virtue ; and in thus directing it, the whole se- cret, the beauty, and simplicity of national edu- cation consists. Suppose, for instance, it be required to train a youth to strict veracity. He has learnt to read at school : he there reads the declaration of the Divine will respecting liars: he is there informed of the pernicious effects that practice produces on society at large ; and he is enjoined, for the fear of God, for the approbation of his friends, and for the good of his school-fellows, never to tell an un- truth. This is a most excellent precept ; but let it be taught, and yet, if the contrary prac- tice be treated with indifference by parents. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 31 teachers, or associates, ft will either weaken or destroy all the good that can be derived from it : But if the parents or teachers tender- ly nip the rising shoots of vice ; if the asso- ciates of youth pour contempt on the liar ; he •will soon hide his head with shame, and most likely leave off the practice." — (p. 24, 25.) The objection which Mrs. Trimmer makes to this passage, is, that it is exalting the fear of man above the fear of God. This observation is as mischievous as it is imfounded. Un- doubtedly the fear of God ought to be the para- mount principle from the very beginning of life, if it were possible to make it so; but it is a feeling which can only be built up by de- grees. The awe and respect which a child entertains for its parent and instructor, is the first scaffolding upon which the sacred edifice of religion is reared. A child begins to pray, to act, and to abstain, not to please God, but to please the parent, who tells him that such is the will of God. The religious principle gains ground from the power of association and the im- provement of reason ; but without the fear of man, — the desire of pleasing, and the dread of offending those with v/hom he lives, — it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to cherish it at all in the minds of the children. If you tell (says Mr. Lancaster) a child not to swear, because it is forbidden by God, and he finds everybody whom he lives with addicted to that vice, the mere precept will soon be obliterated ; which would acquire its just in- fluence if aided by the effect of example. Mr. Lancaster does not say that the fear of man ever ought to be a stronger motive than the fear of God, or that, in a thoroughly formed character, it ever is.- he merely says, that the fear of ma,n may be made the most powerful mean to raise up the fear of God; and nothing, in our opinion, can be more plain, more sen- sible, or better expressed, than his opinions upon these subjects. In corroboration of this sentiment, Mr. Lancaster tells the following story : — " A benevolent friend of mine," sa)'S he, "who resides at a village near London, where he has a school of the class called Sunday Schools, recommended several lads to me for education. He is a pious man, and these children had the advantage of good precepts under his instruction in an eminent degree, but had reduced them to very little practice. As they came to my school from some distance, they were permitted to bring their dinners; and, in the interval between morning and after- noon school hours, spent their time with a numberof lads under similar circumstances in a play-ground adjoining the school-room. In this play-ground the boys usually enjoy an hour's recreation ; tops, balls, races, or what best suits their inclination or the season of the year; but with this charge, 'Let all be kept in innocence.' These lads thought themselves very happy at play with their new associates ; but on a sudden they were seized and over- come by numbers, were brought into school just as people in the street would seize a pick- pocket, and bring him to the police office. Happening at that time to be within, I inquired, 'Well, boys, what is all this bustle about?' — 'Why, sir,' was the general reply, 'these lads have been swearing." This was announced with as much emphasis and solemnity as a judge would use in passing sentence upon a criminal. The culprits were, as may be sup- posed, in much terror. After the examinatioa of witnesses and proof of the facts, they re- ceived admonition as to the offence ; and, on promise of better behaviour, were dismissed. No more was ever heard of their swearing; yet it was observable, that they were better acquainted with the theory of Cliristianity, and could give a more rational answer to questions from the scripture, than several of the boys who had thus treated them, on comparison as con- stables ivould do a thief. I call this," adds Mr. Lancaster, "practical religious instruction, and could, if needful, give many such anecdotes." —(p. 26, 27.) All that Mrs. Trimmer has to observe against this very striking illustration of Mr. Lancas- ter's doctrine, is, that the monitors behaved to the swearers in a very rude and unchristian- like manner. She begins with being cruel, and ends with being silly. Her first observa- tion is calculated to raise the posse comiiatus against Mr. Lancaster, to get him stoned for impiety ; and then, when he produces the most forcible example of the effect of opinion to encourage religious precept, she says such a method of preventing swearing is too rude for the gospel. True, modest, unobtrusive reli- gion — charitable, forgiving, indulgent Chris- tianity, is the greatest ornament and the greatest blessing that can dwell in the mind of man. But if there is one character more base, more infamous, and more shocking than another, it is him who, for the sake of some paltry distinction in the world, is ever ready to accuse conspicuous persons of irreligion — to turn common informer for the church — and to convert the most beautiful feelings of the human heart to the destruction of the good and great, by fixing upon talents the indelible stigma of irreligion. It matters not how trifling and how insignificant the accuser; cry out that the church is in danger, and your object is accomplished ; lurk in the walk of hypocrisy, to accuse your enem}' of the crime of Atheism, and his ruin is quite certain ; acquitted or condemned, is the same thing; it is only suffi- cient that he be accused, in order that his destruction be accomplished. If we could satisfy ourselves that such were the real views of Mrs. Trimmer, and that she were capable of such baseness, we would have drawn blood from her at every line, and left her in a state of martyrdom more piteous than that of St. Uba. Let her attribute the milk and mildness she meets with in this review of her book, to the conviction we entertain, that she knew no better — that she really did understand Mr. Lan- caster as she pretends to understand him — and that if she had been aware of the extent of the mischief she was doing, she would have tossed the manuscript spelling-book in which she was engaged into the fire, rather than have done it. As a proof that we are in earnest in speaking of Mrs. Trimmer's simplicity, we must state the objection she makes to one of Mr. Lancaster's punishmer .s. " When I meet/ WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. says Mr. Lancaster, " with a slovenly boy, I put a label upon his breast, I walk him round the school with a tin or a paper crown upon his head." " Surely," says Mrs. Trimmer (in reply to this), " surely it should be remember- ed, that the Saviour of the world was crowned toith thorns, in derision, and that this is the rea- son why croioning is mi improper punishment for a slovenly boy".'!.' Rewards and Pu7iishments. — Mrs. Trimmer objects to the fear of ridicule being made an instrument of education, because it may be hereafter employed to shame a boy out of his religion. She might, for the same reason, object to the cultivation of the reasoning faculty, because a boy may hereafter be rea- soned out of his religion : she surely does not mean to say that she would make boys insen- sible to ridicule, the fear of which is one curb upon the follies and eccentricities of human nature. Such an object it would be impossible to effect, even if it were useful : Put a hundred boys together, and the fear of being laughed at will always be a strong influencing motive with every individual among thera. If a mas- ter can turn this principle to his own use, and get boys to laugh at vice, instead of the old plan of laughing at virtue, is he not doing a very new, a very difficult, and a very laudable thing 1 When Mr. Lancaster finds a little boy with a very dirty face, he sends for a little girl, and makes her wash off" the dirt before the whole school: and she is directed to accompany her ablutions with a gentle box of the ear. To us, this punishment appears well adapted to the off"ence; and in this, and in most other in- stances of Mr. Lancaster's interference in scholastic discipline, we are struck with his good sense, and delighted that arrangements apparently so trivial, really so important, .■should have fallen under the attention of so ingenious and so original a man. Mrs. Trim- mer objects to this practice, that it destroys female modesty, and inculcates, in that sex, a habit of giving boxes on the ear. "When a boy gets into a singing tone in reading," says Mr. Lancaster, "the best mode of cure that I have hitherto found effectual is by the force of ridicule. — Decorate the offender with matches, ballads, (dying speeches if needful;) and in this garb send him round the school, with some boys before him cr3'ing matches, &c., exactly imitating the dismal tones with which such things are hawked about London streets, as will readily recur to the reader's memory. I believe many boys behave rudely to Jews more on account of the manner in which they cr>' ' old clothes,' than because they are Jews. I have always found excellent effects from treating boys, who sing or tone in their reading, in the manner de- scribed. It is sure to turn the laugh of the whole school upon the delinquent ; it provokes risibility, in spite of every endeavour to check it, in all but the offender. I have seldom known a boy thus punished once, for whom it was needful a second time. It is also very seldom that a boy deserves both a log and a shackle at the same time. Most boys are wise enough, when under one punishment, not to transgress immediately, lest it should be doubled." — (p. 47, 48.) This punishment is objected to on the part of Mrs. Trimmer, because it inculcates a dis- like to Jews, and an indifference about dying speeches! Toys, she says, given as rewards, are worldly things ; children are to be taught that there are eternal rewards in store for them. It is very dangerous to give prints as rewards, because prints may hereafter be the vehicle of indecent ideas. It is, above all things, perilous to create an order of merit in the borough school, because it gives the boys an idea of the origin of nobility, " especially in times (we use Mrs. Trimmer's own words) which furnish iiistances of the extinction of a race of ancient iiohility, in a neighbouring na- tion, and the elevation of some of the lowest peo- ple to the highest stations. Boys accustomed to consider themselves the nobles of the school, may, in their future lives, form a conceit of their own merits (imless they have very sound principles), aspire to be nobles of the land, and to take place of the hereditary nobility." We think these extracts will sufhciently satisfy every reader of common sense, of the merits of this publication. For our part, when we saw these ragged and interesting little nobles, shining in their tin stars, we only thought it probable that the spirit of emulation would make them better ushers, tradesmen, and mechanics. We did, in truth, imagine we had observed, in some of their faces, a bold project for procuring better breeches for keep- ing out the blast of heaven, which howled through those garments in every direction, and of aspiring hereafter to greater strength of seam, and more perfect continuity of cloth. But for the safety of the titled orders we had no fear; nor did we once dream that the black rod which whipt these dirty little dukes, would one day be borne before them as the emblem of legislative dignity, and the sign of noble blood. Order. — The order of Mr. Lancaster has dis- played in the school is quite astonishing. Every boy seems to be the cog of a wheel — the whole school a perfect machine. This is far from being a burden or constraint to the boys, that Mr^ Lancaster has made it quite pleasant and interesting to them, by giving to it the air of military arrangement ; not fore- seeing, as Mrs. Trimmer foresees, that, in times of public dangers, this plan furnishes the disaffected with the immediate means of raising an army ; for what have they to do but to send for all the children educated by Mr. Lancaster, from the different corners of the kingdom into which they are dispersed, — to beg it as a particular favour of them to fall into the same order as they adopted in the spelling class twenty-five years ago ; and the rest is all matter of course — Jamque faces, et Saxa volaiit. The main object, however, for which this book is written, is to prove that the church es- tablishment is in danger, from the increase of Mr. Lancaster's institutions. Mr. Lancaster is, as we have before observed, a Quaker. As a Quaker, he says, I cannot teach your creeds ; WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 33 but I pledge mvself not to teach my own. I pledge myself (and if I deceive you, desert me, and give me up) to confine myself to those points of Chi'istianity in which all Christians agree. To which Mrs. Trimmer replies, that, in the first place, he cannot do this ; and, in the next place, if he did do it, it would not be enough. But why, we would ask, cannot Mr. Lancaster effect his first object ? The prac- tical and the feeling parts of religion are much more likely to attract the attention and provoke the questions of children than its speculative doctrines. A child is not very likely to put any questions at all to a catechising master, and still less likely to lead him into subtle and profound disquisition. It appears to us not only practicable, but very easy, to confine the religious instruction of the poor, in the first years of life, to those general feelings and principles which are suitable to the estab- lished church, and to every sect; afterwards, the discriminating tenets of each subdivision of Christians may be fixed upon this general basis. To say this is not enough, that a child should be made an Antisocinian, or an Antipe- lagian, in his tenderest years, may be very just ; but what prevents you from making him so ? Mr. Lancaster, purposely and intention- ally, to allay all jealousy, leaves him in a state as well adapted for one creed as another. Be- gin ; make your pupil a firm advocate for the peculiar doctrines of the English church; dig round about him, on every side, a trench that shall guard him from every species of heresy. In spite of all this clamour you do nothing; you do not stir a single step; you educate alike the swineherd and his hog; and then, when a man of real genius and enterprise rises up, and says. Let me dedicate my life to this neglected object ; I will do every thing but that which must necessarily devolve upon you alone ; you refuse to do your little, and compel him, by the cry of infidel and Atheist, to leave you to your ancient repose, and not to drive you, by insidious comparisons, to any system of active utility. We deny, again and again, that Mr. Lancaster's instruction is any kind of impediment to the propagation of the doc- trines of the church ; and if Mr. Lancaster was to perish with his system to-morrow, these boys would positively be taught nothing; the doctrines which Mrs. Trimmer considers pro- hibited would not rush in, but there would be an absolute vacuum. We will, however, say this in favour of Mrs. Trimmer, that if every one who has joined in her clamour, had la- boured one-hundredth part as much as she has done in the cause of national education, the clamour would be much more rational, and much more consistent, than it now is. By liv- ing with a few people as active as herself, she is perhaps somehow or another persuaded that there is a national education going on in this country. But our principal argument is, that Mr. Lancaster's plan is at leastbelter than the nothina; which preceded it. The authoress herself seems to be a lady of respectable opi- nions, and very ordinary talents; defending what is right without judgment, and believing what is holy without charity. PAENELL AND IRELAND.* [Edinburgh Review, 1807.] If ever a nation exhibited symptoms of downright madness, or utter stupidity, we con- ceive these symptoms may be easily recog- nized in the conduct of this country upon the Catholic question-! A man has a wound in his great toe, and a violent and perilous tever at the same time; and he refuses to take the medicines for the fever, because it will discon- cert his toe ! The mournful and folly-stricken blockhead forgets that his toe cannot survive him ; — that if he dies, there can he no digital life apart from him ; yet he lingers and fondles over this last part of his body, soothing it madly with little plasters, and anile fomenta- tions, while the neglected fever rages in his * Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics. By Wil- liam Pabnell, Esq. Fitzpatrick, Dublin, 1807. fl do not retract one syllable (or one iota) of what I have said or written upon the Catholic question. What was wanted for Ireland was emancipation, time and jus- tice, abolition of present wrongs ; time for forgetting past wrongs, and that continued and even justice which would make such oblivion wise. It is now only difficult to tranquillize Ireland, before emancipation it wasimpos- sible. As to the danger from Catholic doctrines, I must leave such apprehensions to the respectable anility of these realms. I will not meddle with it. 5 entrails, and burns away his whole life. If the comparatively little questions of Establish- ment are all that this countiy is capable of discussing or regarding, for God's sake let us remember, that the foreign conquest which de- stroys all, destroys this beloved foe also. Pass over freedom, industry, and science — and look upon this great empire, by which we are about to be swallowed up, only as it affects the man- ner of collecting tithes, and of reading the li- tnrsy — still, if all goes, these must go too; I and even, for their interests, it is worth while to conciliate Ireland, to avert the hostility, and to employ the strength of the Catholic popula- tion. We plead the question as the sincerest friends to the Establishment; — as wishing to it all the prosperity and duration its warmest advocates can desire. — but remembering al- ways, what these advocates seem to forget, that the Establishment cannot be threatened by any danger so great as the perdition of the kingdom in which it is established. We are truly glad to agree so entirely with Mr. Parnell upon this great question ; we ad- mire his way of thinking ; and most covdlaily WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. recommend his work to the attention of the ' public. The general conclusion which he at- tempts to prove is this ; that religious senti- , ment, however perverted to bigotry or fanati- ' cism, has always a tendency to moderation ; that it seldom assumes any great portion of activity or enthusiasm, except from novelty of opinion, or from opposition, contumely and persecution, when novelty ceases ; that a go- vernment has little to fear from any religious sect, except while that sect is new. Give a government only time, and, provided it has the good sense to treat folly with forbearance, it must ultimately prevail. When, therefore, a sect is found, after a lapse of years, to be ill disposed to the government, we may be certain that government has widened its separation by marked distinctions, roused its resentment by contumely, or supported its enthusiasm by per- secution. The particular conclusion Mr. Parnell at- tempts to prove is, that the Catholic religion in Ireland had sunk into torpor and inactivity, till government roused it with the lash : that even then, from the respect and attachment, which men are always inclined to show to- wards government, there still remained a large body of loyal Catholics ; that these only de- creased in number from the rapid increase of persecution ; and that, after all, the effects which the resentment of the Roman Catholics had in creating rebellions had been very much exaggerated. In support of these two conclusions, Mr. Parnell takes a survey of the history of Ireland from the conquest imder Henry, to the rebellion under Charles the First, passing very rapidly over the period which preceded the Reforma- tion, and dwelling principally upon the various rebellions which broke out in Ireland between the Reformation and the grand rebellion in the reign of Charles the First. The celebrated conquest of Ireland by Henry the Second, ex- tended only to a very few counties in Lein- ster ; nine-tenths of the whole kingdom were left, as he found them, under the dominion of their native princes. The influence of ex- ample was as strong in this, as in most other instances ; and great numbers of the English settlers who came over under various adven- turers, resigned their pretensions to superior civilization, cast off" their lower garments, and lapsed into the nudity and barbarism of the Irish. The limit which divided the posses- sions of the English settler from those of the native Irish, was called the pale ; and the ex- pression of inhabitants within pale, and with- out the pale, were the terms by which the two nations were distinguished. It is almost su- perfluous to state, that the most bloody and pernicious warfare was carried on upon the borders— sometimes for something — sometimes for nothing — most commonly for cows. The Irish, over whom the sovereigns of Eng- land aflected a sort of nominal dominion, were entirely governed by their own laws ; and so very little connection had they with the justice of the invading country, that it was as lawful to kin an Irishman, as it was to kill a badger or a fox. The instances are innumerable, where the defendant has pleaded that the de- ceased was an Irishman, and that therefore defendant had a right to kill him; — and upon the proof of Hibernicism, acquittal followed of course. When the English army mustered in any great stren-gth, the Irish chieftains would do exterior homage to the English Crown ; and they very frequently, by this artifice, averted from their country the miseries of invasion : but they remained completely unsubdued, till the rebellion which took place in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, of which that politic woman availed herself to the complete subjugation of Ireland. In speaking of the Irish about the reign of Elizabeth, or James the First, we must not draw our comparisons from England, but from New Zealand ; they were not civilized men, but savages ; and if we reason about their conduct, we must reason of them as savages. " After reading every account of Irish his- tory," (says Mr. Parnell,) "one great perplexity appears to remain : How does it happen, that, from the first invasion of the English, till the reign of James I., Ireland seems not to have made the smallest progress in civilization or wealth ■? " That it was divided into a number of small principalities, which waged constant war on each other; or that the appointment of the chieftains was elective ; do not appear sufli- cient reasons, although these are the only ones assigned by those who have been at the trou- ble of considering the subject : neither are the confiscations of property quite sufficient to account for the effect. There have been great confiscations in other countries, and still they have flourished : the petty states of Greece were quite analogous to the chiefries (as they were called) in Ireland ; and yet they seemed to flourish almost in proportion to their dissen- sions. Poland felt the bad effects of an elec- tive monarchy more than any other country ; and yet, in point of civilization, it maintained a very respectable rank among the nations of Europe ; but Ireland never, for an instant, made any progress in improvement till the reign of James I. " It is scarcely credible, that in a climate like that of Ireland, and at a period so far advanced in civilization as the end of Elizabeth's reign, the greater part of the natives should go naked. Yet this is rendered certain by the testimony of an eye-witness, Fynes Moryson. ' In the remote parts,' he says, ' where the English laws and manners are unknown, the very chief of the Irish, as well men as women, go naked in the winter time, only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and their bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of my own experience; yet remembering that a Bohemian Baron coming out of Scotland to us by the north parts of the wild Irish, told me in great earnestness, that he, coming to the house of O'Kane, a great lord amongst them, was met at the door by sixteen women all naked, excepting their loose mantles, whereof eight or ten were very fair; with which strange sight his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not but offend chaste eyes, desired him WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 35 to sit down with them. Soon after, O'Kane, the lord of the counlrj^ came in all naked, except a loose mantle and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in ; and, entertaining the Baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burden to him, and to sit naked. '"To conclude, men and women at night, going to sleep, lye thus naked in a round cir- cle about the fire, with their feet towards it. They fold their heads and their upper parts in •woollen mantles, first steeped in water to keep them warm ; for they say, that woollen cloth, wetted, preserves heat, (as linen, wetted, pre- serves cold,) when the smoke of their bodies has warmed the woollen cloth.' " The cause of this extreme poverty, and of its long continuance, we must conclude, arose from the peculiar laws of property, which were in force under the Irish dynasties. These laws have been described by most writers as similar to the Kentish custom of gavelkind; and in- deed so little attention was paid to the subject, that were it not for the researches of Sir J. Davis, the knowledge of this singular usage would have been entirely lost. " The Brehon law of property, he tells us, was similar to the custom (as the English law- yers term it) of hodge-podge. V/hen any one of the sept died, his lands did not descend to his sons, but were divided among the whole sept: and, for this purpose, the chief of the sept made a new division of the whole lands belonging to the sept, and gave every one his part according to seniority. So that no man had a property which could descend to his children; and even during his own life, his possession of any particular spot was quite uncertain, being liable to be constantly shuffled and changed by new partitions. The conse- quence of this was that there was not a house of brick or stone, among the Irish, down to the reign of Henry VII.; not even a garden or orchard, or well fenced or improved field, neither village or town, or in any respect the least provision for posterity. This monstrous custom, so opposite to the natural feelings of mankind, was probably perpetuated by the policy of the chiefs. In the first place, the power of partitioning being lodged in their hands, made them the most absolute of tyrants, being the dispensers of the property as well as of the liberty of their subjects. In the second place, it had the appearance of adding to the number of their savage armies ; for, where there was no improvement or tillage, war was pursued as an occupation. "In the early history of Ireland, we find several instances of chieftains discountenanc- ing tillage; and so late as Elizabeth's reign, Moryson says, that 'Sir Neal Garve restrained his people from ploughing, that they might assist him to do any mischief.' " — (p. 98 — 102.) These quotations and observations will ena- ble us to state a few plain facts for the recol- lection of our English readers. 1st. Ireland was never subdued till the rebellion in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 2d. For four hundred years before that period, the two nations had been almost constantly at war; and in conse- quence of this, a deep and irreconcileable ha tred existed between the people within and without the pale. 3d. The Irish, at the acces- sion of Queen Elizabeth, were unquestionably the most barbarous people in Europe. So much for what had happened previous to the reign of Queen Elizabeth : and let any man, who has the most superficial knowledge of human affairs, determine, v.'hether national hatred, proceeding from such powerful causes, could possibly have been kept under by the de- feat of one single rebellion ; whether it would not have been easy to have foreseen, at that period, that a proud, brave, half-savage people, would cherish the memory of their wrongs for centuries to come, and break forth into arms at every period when they were particularly exasperated by oppression, or invited by op- portunity. If the Protestant religion had spread in Ireland as it did in England, and if there never had been any difference of faith between the two countries, — can it be believed that the Irish, ill-treated, and infamously go- verned as they have been, would never have made any efforts to shake off the yoke of Eng- land 1 Surely there are causes enough to account for their impatience of that yoke, without endeavouring to inflame the zeal of ignorant people against the Catholic religion, and to make that mode of faith responsible for all the butchery which the Irish and English, for these last two centuries, have exercised upon each other. Every body, of course, must admit, that if to the causes of hatred already specified, there be added the additional cause of religious distinction, this last will give greater force (and what is of more conse- quence to observe, give a name) to the whole aggregate motive. But what Mr. Parnell con- tends for, and clearly and decisively proves, is, that many of those sanguinary scenes attributed to the Catholic religion, are to be partly im- puted to causes totally disconnected from reli- gion ; that the unjust invasion, and the tyran- nical, infamous policy of the English, are to take their full share of blame with the sophisms and plots of Catholic priests. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, Mr. Parnell shows, that feudal submission was readily paid to him by all the Irish chiefs; that the Reformation was received without the slightest opposition ; and that the troubles which took place at that period in Ireland, are to be entirely attributed to the ambition and injustice of Henry. In the reign of Queen Mary, there was no recrimi- nation upon the Protestants: — a striking proof, that the bigotry of the Catholic religion had not, at that period, risen to any great height in Ireland. The insurrections of the various Irish princes were as numerous, during this reign, as they had been in the two preceding reigns, — a circumstance rather difficult of ex- planation, if, as is commonly believed, the Ca- tholic religion was at that period the maiu spring of men's actions. In the reign of Elizabeth, the Catholic in the pale regularly fought against the Catholic out of the pale. O'Sullivan, a bigoted Papist, re- proaches them with doing so. Speaking of the reign of James the First, he says, "And now the eyes even of the English Irish" (the Ca- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. tholics of the pale) " were opened ; and they cursed their former foil}' for helping the here- tic." The English government were so sen- sible of the loyalty of the Irish English Catho- lics, that they entrusted them with the most confidential services. The Earl of Kildare was the principal instrument in waging war against the chieftains of Leix and Offal. Wil- liam O'Bourge, another Catholic, was created Lord Castle Connel for his eminent services; and MacGully Patrick, a priest, was the state spy. We presume that this wise and manly conduct of Queen Elizabeth was utterly un- known both to the Pastrycook and the Secre- tary of State, who have published upon the dangers of employing Catholics even against foreign enemies; and in those publications have said a great deal about the wisdom of our ancestors — the usual topic whenever the folly of their descendants is to be defended. To whatever other of our ancestors they may allude, they may spare all compliments to this illustrious Princess, who would certainly have kept the worthy confectioner to the composition of tarts, and most probably furnished him with the productions of the Right Honourable Sec- retary, as the means of conveying those juicy delicacies to an hun,gry and discerning pub- lic. In the next two reigns, Mr. Parnell shows by what injudicious measures of the English government the spirit of Catholic opposition was gradually formed ; for that it did produce nowerful effects at a subsequent period, he does not denj^ ; but contends only (as we have before stated), that these effects have been much overrated, and ascribed solely to the Catholic religion, Avhen other causes have at least had an equal agency in bringing them about. He concludes with some general re- marks on the dreadful state of Ireland, and the contemptible folly and bigotry of the Eng- lish ;* — remarks full of truth, of good sense, and of political courage. How melancholy to reflect, that there would be still some chance of saving England from the general wreck of empires, bat that it may not be saved, because one politician will lose two thousand a year by it, and another three thou- sand — a third a place in reversion, and a fourth a pension for his aunt! — Alas! these are the ♦ It would be as well, in future, to say no more of the revocation of the edict of Nantz. powerful causes which have always settled the destiny of great kingdoms, and which may level Old England, with all its boasted free- dom, and boasted wisdom, to the dust. Nor is it the least singular among the political phenomena of the present day, that the sole consideration which seems to influence the unbigoted part of the English people, in this great question of Ireland, is a regard for the personal feelings of the Monarch. Nothing is said or thought of the enormous risk to which Ireland is exposed, — nothing of the gross injustice with which the Catholics are treated, — nothing of the lucrative apostasy of those from whom they experience this treatment : but the only concern by which we all seem to be agitated is, that the King must not be vexed in his old age. We have a great respect for the King; and wish him all the happiness compatible with the happiness of his people. But these are not times to pay foolish compliments to Kings, or the sons of Kings, or to any body else : this journal has always preserved its character for courag^e and honesty ; and it shall do so to the last. If the people of this country are solely occu- pied in considering what is personally agree- able to the King, w"ithout considering what is for his permanent good, and for the safety of his dominions ; if all public men, quitting the common vulgar scramble for emolument, do not concur in conciliating the people of Ire- land ; if the unfounded alarms, and the com- paratively trifling interests of the clergy, are to supersede the great question of freedom or slavery, it does appear to us quite impossible that so mean and so foolish a people can escape that destruction which is ready to burst upon them ; — a destruction so imminent, that it can only be averted by arming all in our defence who would evidently be sharers in our ruin, — and by such a change of system as may save us from the hazard of being ruined by the ignorance and cowardice of any gene- ral, by the bigotry or the ambition of any minister, or by the well-meaning scruples of any human being, let his dignity be what it may. These minor and domestic dangers we must endeavour firmly and temperately to avert as we best can ; but, at all hazards, we must keep out the destroyer from among us, or perish like wise and brave men in the attempt. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. METHODISM.* [Edinburgh Review, 1S08.] This is the production of an honest man, possessed of a fair share of understanding. He cries out lustily (and not before it is time), upon the increase of Methodism ; proposes various remedies for the diminution of this evil ; and speaks his opinions with a freedom which does him great credit, and convinces us that he is a respectable man. The clergy are accused of not exerting themselves. What temporal motive, Mr. Ingram asks, have they for exertion 1 Would a curate, who had served thirty years upon a living in the most exemplary manner, secure to himself, by such a conduct, the slightest right or title to promo- tion in the church 1 What can you expect of a whole profession, in which there is no more connection between merit and reward, than between merit and beauty, or merit and strength 1 This is the substance of what Mr. Ingram says upon this subject; and he speaks the truth. We regret, however, that this gen- tleman has thought fit to use against the dis- senters, the exploded clamour of Jacobinism ; or that he deems it necessary to call into the aid of the Church, the power of intolerant laws, in spite of the odious and impolitic tests to which the dissenters are still subjected. We believe them to be very good subjects; and we have no doubt but that any further at- tempt upon their religious liberties, without reconciling them to the Church, would have a direct tendency to render them disaffected to to the Stale. Mr. Ingram (whose book, by the by, is very dull and tedious) has fallen into the common mistake of supposing his readers to be as well acquainted with his subject as he is himself; and hag talked a great deal about dissenters, without giving us any distinct notions of the spirit which pervades these people — the ob- jects they have in view — or the degree of talent which is to be found among them. To remedy this very capital defect, we shall en- deavour to set before the eyes of the reader a complete section of the tabernacle; and to present him with a near view of those secta- -ries, who are at present at work upon the de- struction of the orthodox churches, and are destined hereafter, perhaps, to act as conspi- cuous a part in public affairs, as the children of Sion did in the time of Cromwell. The sources from which we shall derive our extracts, are the Evangelical and Metho- distical Magazines for the year 1807; — works which are said to be circulated to the amount of 18,000 or 20,000 each, every month; and which contain the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the evan- gelical clergymen of the Church of England. We shall use the general term of Methodism, * Causes of the Increase of Methodism and Dissension. By Robert Acklem Ingbam, B. D. Hatcliard. to designate these three classes of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades, and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but treating them all as in one general conspi- racy against common sense, and rational or- thodox Christianit}'. In reading these very curious productions, we seemed to be in a new world, and to have got among a set of beings, of whose existence we had hardly before entertained the slightest conception. It has been our good fortune to be acquainted with many truly religious per- sons, both in the Presbyterian and Episcopa- lian churches ; and from their manly, rational, and serious characters, our conceptions of true practical piety have been formed. To these confined habits, and to our want of pro- per introductions among the children of light and grace, any degree of surprise is to be at- tributed, which may be excited by the publi- cations before us ; which, under opposite cir- cumstances, would (we doubt not) have proved as great a source of instruction and delight to the Edinburgh reviewers, as they are to the most melodious votaries of the tabernacle. It is not wantonly, or with the most distant intention of trifling upon serious subjects, that we call the attention of the public to these sort of publications. Their circulation is so enor- mous, and so increasing, — they contain the opinions, and display the habits of so many human beings, — that they cannot but be ob- jects of curiosity and importance. The com- mon and the middling classes of the people are the purchasers ; and the subject is reli- gion, — though not that religion certainly which is established by law, and encouraged by na- tional provision. This may lead to unpleasant consequences, or it may not ; but it carries with it a sort of aspect, which ought to insure to it serious attention and reflection. It is impossible to arrive at any knowledge of a religious sect, by merely detailing the set- tled articles of their belief: it may be the fashion of such a sect to insist upon some arti- cles very slightly ; to bring forward others pro- minently ; and to consider some portion of their formal creed as obsolete. As the knowledge of the jurisprudence of any country can never be obtained by the perusal of volumes which contain some statutes that are daily enforced, and others that have been silently antiquated: in the same manner, the practice, the preach- ing, and the writing of sects, are comments absolutely necessary to render the perusal of their creed of any degree of utility. It is the practice, we believe, with the ortho dox, both in the Scotch and English churches, to insist very rarely, and very discreetly, upon the particular instances of the interference of Divine Providence. They do not contend that the world,is governed only by general laws, — WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. that a Superintending Mind never interferes for particular purposes ; but such purposes are represented to be of a nature very awful and sublime, — when a guilty people are to be de- stroyed, when an oppressed nation is to be lift- ed up, and some remarkable change introduced into the order and arrangement of the world. With this kind of theology we can have no quarrel ; we bow to its truth ; we are satisfied with the moderation which it exhibits; and we have no doubt of the salutary effect which it produces upon the human heart. Let us now come to those special cases of the interference of Providence as they are exhibited in the pub- lications before us. Jin interference with respect to the Rev. James Moody. " Mr. James Moody was descended from pious ancestors, who resided at Paisley; — his heart was devoted to music, dancing, and theatrical amusements; of the latter he was so fond, that he used to meet with some men of a similar cast to rehearse plays, and used to entertain a hope that he should make a figure upon the stage. To improve himself in music, he would rise very early, even in severely cold weather, and practise on the German flute: by his skill in music and singing, with his general powers of entertaining, he became a desirable com- panion : he would sometimes venture to pro- fane the day of God, by turning it into a season of carnal pleasure : and would join in excur- sions on the water, to various parts of the vi- cinity of London. But the time was approach- ing, tcheii the Lord, rcho had designs of mercy for him, and for many others by his means, was about to stop him in his vain career of sin and folly. There were two professing servants in the house where he lived ; one of these was a porter, who, in brushing liis clothes, would say, 'Master James, this will never do — you must be other- wise employed — you must be a minister of the gospel.' This worthy man, earnestly wishing his conversion, put into his hands that excel- lent book which God hath so much owned, AUeine's Alarm to the Unconverted. " About this time, it pleased God to visit him with a disorder in his eyes, occasioned, as it was thought, by his sitting up in the night to improve himself in drawing. The apprehen- sion of losing his sight occasioned many seri- ous reflections; his mind was impressed with the importance and necessity of seeking the salvation of his soul, and he was induced to attend the preaching of the gospel. The first sermon that he heard with a desire to profit, was at Spa-fields Chapel ; a place where he had formerly frequented, when it was a temple of vanity and dissipation. Strong convictions of sin fixed on his mind; and he continued to at- tend the preached word, particularly at Totten- ham-court Chapel. Every sermon increased his sorrow and grief that he had not earlier sought the Lord. It was a considerable time before he found comfort from the gospel. He has stood in the free part of the chapel, hear- ing with such emotion, that the tears have flowed from his eyes in torrents ; and, when he has returned home, he has continued a great part of the night on his knees, praying over what he had heard. " The change effected by the power of the Holy Spirit on his heart now became visible to all. Nor did he halt between two opinions, as some persons do ; he became at once a decided character, and gave up for ever all his vain pursuits and amusements; devoting himself with as much resolution and diligence to the service of God, as he had formerly done to folly." Ev. Mag. p. 194. Jin interference respecting Cards, "A clergyman not far distant from the spot on which these lines were written, was spend- ing an evening — not in his closet wrestling with his Divine Master for the communication of that grace which is so peculiarly necessary for the faithful discharge of the ministerial function, — not in bis study searching the sacred oracles of divine truth for materials v/herewith to prepare for his public exercises and feed the flock under his cafe, — not in pastoral visits to that flock, to inquire into the state of their souls, and endeavour, by his pious and affectionate conversation, to conciliate their esteem, and promote their edification, — but at the card table." — After stating that when it was his turn to deal, he dropped down dead, "It is worthy of remark (says the writer), that within a very tew years this was the third character in the neighbourhood which had been summoned from the card table to the bar of God."—Ev. Mag. p. 262, Interference respecting Swearing — a Bee the instru- ment. " A young man is stung by a bee, upon which he buffets the bees with his hat, uttering at the same time the most dreadful oaths and impre- cations. In the midst of his fury, one of these little combatants stung him upon the tip of tha* unruly member (his tongue), which was then employed in blaspheming his Maker. Thus can the Lord engage one of the meanest of his creatures in reproving the bold transgressor who dares to take his name ia vain." — Ev, Mag. p. 363. Interference with respect to David White, who was cured of Atheism and Sa-ofula by one Sermon of Mr. Coles. This case is too long to quote in the lan- guage and Avith the evidences of the writers. The substance of it is what our title implies. — David Wright was a man with scrofulous legs and atheistical principles ; — being with diffi- culty persuaded to hear one sermon from Mr. Coles, he limped to the church in extreme pain, and arrived there after great exertion; — dur- ing church time he v\'as entirely converted, walked home with the greatest ease, and never after experienced the slightest return of scro- fula or infidelity. — Ev. Mag. p. 444. The displeasure of Providence is expressed at Cap- tain Scott^s going to preaeh in Mr. Romaine's Chapel. The sign of this displeasure is a violent storm of thunder and lightning just as he came into town,— £r, Mag, p. 537, WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Interference with respect to an Innkeeper, who was destroyed for having appointed a cock-fight at the very time that the service was beginning at the Methodist Chapel. " ' Never mind,' says the innkeeper, ' I'll get a greater congregation than the Methodist par- son ;— we'll have a cock-fight.' But what is man ! how insignificant his designs, how im- potent his strength, how ill-fated his plans, when opposed to that Being who is infinite in wisdom, boundless in power, terrible in judgment, and who frequently reverses, and suddenly renders abortive, the projects of the wicked ! A few days after the avowal of his intention, the inn- keeper sickened," &c. &c. And then the nar- rator goes on to state, that his corpse was car- ried by the meeting-house, "on the day, and exactly at the lime, the deceased had fixed for the cock-fight."— ilfc. Mag. p. 74. Danang ill suited to a creature on trial for eternity "If dancing be a waste of time ; if the pre- cious hours devoted to it may be better em- ployed; if it be a species of trifling ill suited to a creature on trial for eternity, and hasten- ing towards it on the swift wings of time ; if it be incompatible with genuine renentance, true faith in Christ, supreme love to God, and a state of genuine devotcdness to him, — then is dancing a practice utterly opposed to the whole spirit and temper of Christianity, and subversive of the best interests of the rising generation." — Meth. Mag. p. 127, 128. The Methodists consider themselves as con- stituting a chosen and separate people, living in a land of atheists and voluptuaries. The expressions by which they designate their own sects, are the dear people — tlie elect — the people of God. The rest of mankind are carnal peo- ple, the people of this world, &c. &c. The chil- dren of Israel were not more separated, through the favour of God, from the Egyptians, than the Methodists are, in their own estimation, from the rest of mankind. We had hitherto supposed that the disciples of the Established churches in England and Scotland had been Christians; and that, after baptism, duly per- formed by the appointed minister, and partici- pation in the customary worship of these two churches, Christianity was the religion of which they were to be considered as mem- bers. We see, however, in these publications, men of twenty or thirty years of age first called to a knowledge of Christ under a sermon by the Rev% Mr. Venn, — or first admitted into the church of Christ under a sermon by the Rev. Mr. Romaine. The apparent admission turns out to have been a mere mockery; and the pseudo-christian to have had no religion at all, till the business was really and effectually done under these sermons by Mr. Venn and Mr. Romaine. .'in aivftd and general departure from the Christian Faith in the Church of England. "A second volume of Mr. Cooper's sermons is before us, stamped with the same broad seal of truth and excellence as the former. Amidst the awful and general departure from the faith, as once delivered to the saints, in the Church of England, and sealed by the blood of our Reformers, it is pleasing to observe that there is a remnant, according to the election of grace, who continue rising up to testify the gospel of the grace of God, and to call back their fellows to the consideration of the great and leading doctrines on which the Reformation was built, and the Church of England by law established. The author of these sermons, avoiding all matters of more doubtful disputation, avowedly attaches himself to the great fundamental truths; and on the two substantial pillars, ihe Jachin and Boaz of the living temple, erects his superstructure. 1. Justification by faith, without works, free and full, by grace alone, through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ, stands at the commencement of the first volume ; and on its side rises in the beauty of holiness," &c. — Ev. Mag. p. 79. Mr. Robinson called to the knoidedge of Christ under Mr. Venn's Sermon, " Mr. Robinson was called in early life to the knowledge of Christ, under a sermon at Su Dunstan's, by the late Rev. Mr. Venn, from Ezek. xxxvi. 25, 26 ; the remembrance of which greatly refreshed his soul upon his death bed."— £i7. Mag p. 176. d2 42 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Christianity introduced into the Parish of Launlon, near Bicester, in the year 1807. "A very general spirit of inquiry having ap- peared for some time in the village of Launton, near Bicester, some serious persons were ex- eited to communicate to them the word of life." Ev. Mag. p. 380. We learn in page 12S, Meth. Ma^., that twelve months had elapsed from the time of Mrs. Cocker's joining the people of God, before she obtained a clear sense of forgiveness. jl religious Hoy sets off every u-cek for Margate, "Religious Passengers accommodated. — To the Editor. — Sir, it afforded me considerable plea- sure to see upon the cover of your Magazine for the present month, an advertisement, an- nouncing the establishment of a packet, to sail ■weekly between London and Margate, during the season ; which appears to have been set on foot for the accommodation of religious cha- racters; and in which 'no profane conversa- tion is to be allowed.' " To those among the followers of a crucified Redeemer, who are in the habit of visiting the Isle of Thanet in the summer, and who, for the sea air, or from other circumstances, prefer travelling by water, such a conveyance must certainly be a desideratum, especially if they have experienced a mortification similar to that of the writer, in the course of the last summer, when shut up in a cabin with a mixed multi- tude, who spake almost all languages but that of Canaan. Totally unconnected with the con- cern, and personally a stranger to the worthy owner, I take the liberty of recommending this vessel to the notice of my fellow-Christians ; persuaded that they will think themselves bound to patronise and encourage an undertaking that has the honour of the dear Redeemer for its professed object. It ought ever to be remem- bered, that every talent we possess, whether large or small, is given us in trust to be laid out for God ; — and I have often thought that Christians act inconsistently with their high profession, when they omit, even in their most common and trivial expenditures, to give a decided preference to the friends of their Lord. I do not, however, anticipate any such ground of complaint in this instance ; but rather believe that the religious world in general will cheer- fully unite with me, while I most cordially wish success to the Princess of Wales Yacht, and pray that she may ever sail under the divine protection and blessing; — that the humble fol- lowers of Him who spoke the storm into a calm, when crossing the lake of Gennesareth, may often feel their hearts glowing with sacred ardour, while in her cabins they enjoy sweet communion with their Lord and with each other; — and that strangers, who may be provi- dentially brought among them, may see so much of the beauty and excellency of the religion of Jesus exemplified in their conduct and conver- sation, that they may be constrained to say, ' We will go with you, for we perceive that God is with you. — Your God shall be our God, and his people shall henceforth be our chosen companions and associates.' I am, Mr. Editor, your obliged friend and sister in the gospel, E T."— £i'. Mag, p. 268. Ji religious newspaper is announced in the Ev, M. for September. — It is said of common newspa- pers, " That they are absorbed in temporal concerns, while the consideration of those ivhich are eternal is postponed; the business of this life has super- seded the claims of immortality; and the monarchs of. the world have engrossed an at- tention which would have been more properly devoted to the Saviour of the universe." It is then stated, " that the columns of this paper {The Instructor, price 6d.) will be supplied by pious reflections; suitable comments to im- prove the dispensations of Providence will be introduced ; and the whole conducted with an eye to our spiritual, as well as temporal, wel- fare. The work will contain the latest news up to four o'clock on the day of publication, together with the most recent religious occur- rences. The prices of stock, and correct market-tables, will also be accurately detailed." Ev. Mag. September Advertisement. The Eclectic Review is also understood to be carried on upon Methodistical principles. Nothing can evince more strongly the influ- ence which Methodism now exercises upon common life, and the fast hold it has got of the people, than the advertisements which are cir- culated every month in these very singular publications. On the cover of a single num- ber, for example, we have the following: — " Wanted, by Mr. Turner, shoemaker, a steady apprentice ; he will have the privilege of attending the ministry of the gospel ; — a premium expected, p. 3. — Wanted, a serious young woman, as servant of all work, 3. — Wanted, a man of serious character, who can shave, 3. — Wanted, a serious woman to assist in a shop, 3. — A young person in the millinery line wishes to be in a serious family, 4. — Wants a place, a young man who has brewed in a se- rious family, 4. — Ditto, a young woman of evangelical principles, 4. — Wanted, an active serious shopman, 5. — To be sold, an eligible residence, with sixty acres of land; gospel preached in three places within half a mile, 5. — A single gentleman may be accommodated with lodging in a small serious family, 5. — To let, a genteel first floor in an airy situation near the Tabernacle, 6. — Wanted, a governess, of evangelical principles and corresponding cha- racter, 10." The religious vessel we have before spoken of, is thus advertised : — " The Princess of Wales Yacht, J. Chapman, W. Bourn, master, by divine permission, will leave Ralph's Quay every Friday, 11," &c.«&c. —July Ev. Mag. After the specimens we have given of these people, any thing which is said of their activity can very easily be credited. The army and navy appear to be particular objects of their attention. "British Navy.—ll is with peculiar pleasure we insert the following extract of a letter from the pious chaplain of a man-of-wai", to a gen- tleman at Gosport, intimating the power and grace of God manifested towards our brave seamen. " Off Cadiz, Nov. 26, 1806.— My dear friend — A fleet for England found us in the night, and is just going away. I have only to WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 43 tell you that the work of God seems to prosper. Many are under convictions ;— sonne, I trust, are converted. I preach every night, and am obliged to have a private meeting afterwards with those who wish to speak about their souls. But my own health is suffering much, nor shall I probably be able long to bear it. The ship is like a tabernacle; and really there is much external reformation. Capt. raises no objeclion. I have near a hundred hearers every night at six o'clock. How unworthy am I !— Pray for us.' "—Ev. Mag. 84. The Testimony of a profane Officer to the worth of Pious Sailors. "Mr. Editor — In the mouth of two or three witnesses a truth shall be established. I re- cently met with a pleasing confirmation of a narrative, stated sometime since in your Maga- zine. I was surprised by a visit from an old acquaintance of mine the other day, who is now an officer of rank in his Majesty's navy. In the course of conversation, I was shocked at the profane oaths that perpetually interrupted his sentences; and took an opportunity to express my regret that such language should be so common among so valuable a body of men. 'Sir,' said he, still interspersing many solemn imprecations, 'an officer cannot live at sea without swearing; — not one of my men would mind a word without an oath ; it is com- mon sea-language. If we were not to swear, the rascals would take us for lubbers, stare in our faces, and leave us to do our commands ourselves. I never knew but one exception; and that was extraordinary. I declare, believe me 'lis true (suspecting that I might not credit it), there was a set of fellows called Methodists, on board the Victory, Lord Nelson's ship (to be sure he was rather a religious man him- self!), and those men never wanted swearing at. The dogs were the best seamen on board. Every man knew his duty, and every man did his duty. They used to meet together and sing hymns; and nobody dared molest them. The commander would not have suffered it, had they attempted it. They were allowed a mess by themselves ; and never mixed with the other men. I have often heard them singing away myself; and 'tis true, I assure you, but not one of them was either killed or wounded at the battle of Trafalgar, though they did their duty as well as any men. No, not one of the psalm- einging gentry was even hurt; and there the fellows are swimming away in the Bay of Bis- cay at this very time, singing like the d . They are now under a new commander; but still are allowed the same privileges, and mess by themselves. These were the only fellows that ever I knew do their duty without swear- ing; and I will do them the justice to say they do it.' J. C."— £w. Mag. p. 119, 120. These people are spread over the face of the whole earth in the shape of missionaries. — Upon the subject of missions we shall say very little or nothing at present, because we reserve it for another article in a subsequent Number. But we cannot help remarking the magnitude of the collections made in favour of the mis- sionaries at the Methodistical chapels, when compared with the collections for any common object of charily in the orthodox churches and chapels. " Religious Trad Society.— K most satisfac- tory report was presented by the committee ; from which it appeared that, since the com- mencement of the institution in the year 1799, upwards of four millions of religious tracts have been issued under the auspices of the society; and that considerably more than one- fourth of that number have been sold during the last year."— £«. Mag. p. 284. These tracts are dropped in villages by the Methodists, and thus every chance for con- version aflforded to the common people. There is a proposal in one of the numbers of the volumes before us, that travellers, for every pound they spend on the road, should fling one shilling's worth of these tracts out of the chaise window; — thus taxing his pleasures at 5 per cent, for the purposes of doing good. "Every Christian who expects the protec- tion and blessing of God ought to take with him as many shillings' ivorth, at least, of cheap ti-acts to throw on the road, and leave at inns, as he takes out pounds to expend on himself and family. This is really but a tri- fling sacrifice. It is a highly reasonable one; and one which God will accept."— £u. Mag. p. 405. It is part of their policy to have a great change of Ministers. " Same day, the Rev. W. Haward, from Hox- ton Academy, was ordained over the Indepen- dent church at Rendhara, Suffolk. Mr. Pic- kles, of Walpole, began with prayer and read- ing; Mr. Price, of Woodbridge, delivered the in- troductory discourse, and asked the questions; Mr. Dennant, of Halesworth, offered the ordi- nation prayer ; Mr. Shufflebottom, of Bungay, gave the charge from Acts xx. 28 ; Mr. Vincent, of Deal, the general prayer; and Mr. Walford, of Yarmouth, preached to the people from 2 Phil. ii. lG."~Ev. Mag. p. 429. Chapels opened. — " Hambledon, Bucks, Sept. 22. — Eighteen months ago this parish was des titute of the gospel ; the people have now one of the Rev. G. Collison's students, the Rev. Mr. Eastmead, settled among them. Mr. Eng- lish, of Wooburn, and Mr. Frey, preached on the occasion ; and Mr. Jones, of London, Mr. Churchill, of Henley, Mr. Redford, of Windsor, and Mr. Barratt, now of Petersfield, prayed." — Ev. Mag. p. 533. Methodism in his Majesty's ship To7mant — i Letter from the Sail-maker. " It is with great satisfaction that I can now inform you God has deigned, in a yet greater degree, to own the weak efforts of his servant to turn many from Satan to himself. Many are called here, as is plain to be seen by their pensive looks and deep sighs. And if they would be obedient to the heavenly call, in- stead of grieving the Spirit of grace, I dare say we should soon have near half the ship's company brought to God. I doubt not, how- ever, but, as I have cast my bread upon the waters, it will be found after many days. Our 13 are now increased to upwards of 30. Surely WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. the Lord delighteth not in the death of him that dieth."— Me^A. Mag. p. 188. It appears, also, from p. 193, 3Ieth. Mag., that the same principles prevail on board his Majesty's ship Sea-horse, 44 guns. And in one part of Evan. Mag. great hopes are enter- tained of the 25th regiment. We believe this is the number; but we quote this fact from memory. We must remember, in addition to these trifling specimens of their active disposition, that the Methodists have found a powerful party in the House of Commons, who, by the neutrality which they affect, and partly adhere to, are courted both by ministers and opposi- tion ; that they have gained complete posses- sion of the India-House ; and under the pre- tence, or perhaps with the serious intention of educating young people for India, will take care to introduce (as much as they dare with- out provoking attention) their own particular tenets. In fact, one thing must always be taken for granted respecting these pebple, — that wherever they gain a footing, or whatever be the institutions to which they give birth, proselytism will he their main object; every thing else is a mere instrument — this is their principal aim. When every proselyte is not only an addition to their temporal power, but when the act of conversion which gains a vote, saves (as they suppose) a soul from destruc- tion, — it is quite needless to state, that every faculty of their minds will be dedicated to this most important of all temporal and eternal concerns. Their attack upon the Church is not merely confined to publications ; it is generally under- stood that they have a very considerable fund for the purchase of livings, to which, of course, ministers of their own profession are always presented. Upon the foregoing facts, and upon the spi- rit evinced by these extracts, we shall make a few comments. 1. It is obvious that this description of Christians entertain Very erroneous and dan- gerous notions of the present judgments of God. A belief that Providence interferes in all the little actions of our lives, refers all merit and demerit to bad and good fortune; and causes the successful man to be always con- sidered as a good man, and the unhappy man as the object of divine vengeance. It fur- nishes ignorant and designing men with a l)ower which is sure to be abused : — the cry of s. judgment, a. judgment, it is always easy to make, but not easy to resist. It encourages the grossest superstitions ; for if the Deity rewards and punishes on every slight occa- sion, it is quite impossible, but that such an helpless being as man will set himself at work to discover the will of Heaven in the appear- ances of outward nature, to apply all the phe- nomena of thunder, lightning, wind, and every striking appearance to the regulation of his conduct; as the poor Methodist, when he rode into Piccadilly in a thunder storm, and ima- gined that all the uproar of the elements was a mere hint to him not to preach at Mr. Ro- maine's chapel. Hence a great deal of error, and a great deal of secret misery. This doc- trine of a theocracy must necessarily place an excessive power in the hands of the clergy: it applies so instantly and so tremendously to men's hopes and fears, that it must make the priest omnipotent over the people, as it always has done where it has been established. It has a great tendency to check human exer- tions, and to prevent the employment of those secondary means of effecting an object which Providence has placed in our power. The doctrine of the immediate and perpetual inter- ference of Divine providence is not true. If two men travel the same road, the one to rob, the other to relieve a fellow-creature who is starving; will any but the most fanatic con- tend that they do not both run the same chance of falling over a stone and breaking their legs 1 and is it not matter of fact, that the robber often returns safe, and the just man sustains the injury 1 Have not the soundest divines, of both churches, always urged this unequal dis- tribution of good and evil, in the present state, as one of the strongest natural arguments for a future state of retribution 1 Have not they contended, and well, and admirably contend- ed, that the supposition of such a state is ab- solutely necessary to our notion of the justice of God, — absolutely necessary to restore order to that moral confusion which we all observe and deplore in the present world 1 The man who places religion upon a false basis is the greatest enemy to religion. If victory is al- ways to the just and good, — how is the fortune of impious conquerors to be accounted for] Why do they erect dynasties and found fami- lies Avhich last for centuries 1 The reflecting mind Avhom you have instructed in this man- ner, and for present effect only, naturally comes upon you hereafter with difficulties of this sort ; he finds he has been deceived ; and you will soon discover that, in breeding up a fanatic, you have unwittingly laid the founda- tion of an atheist. The honest and the ortho- dox method is to prepare young people for the world as it actually exists ; to tell them that they will often find vice perfectly successful, virtue exposed to a long train of afflictions ; that they must bear this patiently, and look to another world for its rectification. 2. The second doctrine which it is necef> sary to notice among the Methodists, is the doctrine of inward impulse and emotions, which, it is quite plain, must lead, if univer- sally insisted upon, and preached among the common people, to every species of folly and enormity. When an human being believes that his internal feelings are the monitions of God, and that these monitions must govern his conduct ; and when a great stress is purposely laid upon these inward feelings in all the dis- courses from the pulpit; it is impossible to say to what a pitch of extravagance mankind may not be carried, under the influence of such dangerous doctrines. 3. The Methodists hate pleasure and amuse- ments ; no theatre, no cards, no dancing, no Punchinello, no dancing dogs, no blind fid- dlers; — all the amusements of the rich and of the poor must disappear wherever these WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 45 gloomy people get « footing. It is not the abuse of pleasure which they attack, but the interspersion of pleasure, however much it is guarded by good sense and moderation ; — it is not only wicked to hear the licentious plays of Congreve, but wicked to hear Henry the Vth, or the School for Scandal : — it is not only dissipated to run about to all the parties in London and Edinburgh, — hut dancing is 7iot Jit for a being who is preparing liimself for Eternity. Ennui, wretchedness, melancholj^ groans and sighs, are the offerings which these unhappy men make to a Deity Avho has covered the earth with gay colours, and scented it with rich perfumes *, and shown us, by the plan and order of his works, that he has given to man something better than a bare existence, and scattered over his creation a thousand superfluous joys, which are totally unnecessary to the mere support of life. 4. The Methodists lay very little stress upon practical righteousness. They do not say to their people, do not be deceitful; do not be idle ; get rid of your bad passions ; or at least (if they do say these things) they say them very seldom. ISTot that they preach faith with- out works ; for if they told the people that they might rob and murder with impunity, the civil magistrate must be compelled to interfere with such doctrine : — but they say a great deal about faith, and very little about works. What are commonly called the mysterious parts of our religion, are brought into the foreground much more than the doctrines which lead to practice; — and this among the lowest of the community. The Methodists have hitherto been accused of dissenting from the Church of England. This, as far as it relates to mere subscription to articles, is not true; but they difter in their choice of the articles upon which they dilate and expand, and to which they appear to give a preference, from the stress which they place upon them. There is nothing heretical in say- ing, that God sometimes intervenes with his special providence; but these people differ from the Established Church, in the degree in which they insist upon this doctiine. In the hands of a man of sense and education, it is a safe doctrine ; — in the management of the Methodists, we have seen how ridiculous and degrading it becomes. In the same manner, a clergyman of the Church of England would not do his duty, if he did not insist upon the necessity of faith, as well as of good works; but as he believes that it is much more easy to give credit to doctrines than to live well, he labours most in those points where human nature is the most liable to prove defective. Be- cause he does so, he is accused of giving up the articles of his faith, by men Avho have their partialities also in doctrine; but parties, not founded upon the same sound discretion, and knowledge of human nature. 5. The Methodists are always desirous of making men more religious than it is possible, from the constitution of human nature, to make them. If they could succeed as much as they wish to succeed, there would be at once an end of delving and spinning, and of every exertion of human industry. Men must eat, and drink, and work; and if you wish to fix upon them high and elevated notions, as the ordinary fur- niture of their minds, you do these two things : you drive men of warm temperaments mad, — and you introduce in the rest of the world, a low and shocking familiarity with words and images, which every real friend to religion would wish to keep sacred. The friends of the dear Redeemer, who are in the habit of visiting the Isle of Thanet — (as in the extract we have quoted) — Is it possible that this mixture of the most awful with the most familiar images, so common among Methodists now, and with the enthusiasts in the time of Cromwell, must not, in the end, divest religion of all the deep and solemn impressions which it is calculated to produce 7 In a man of common imagination (as Ave have before observed), the terror, and the feeling which it first excited, must neces- sarily be soon separated: but, where the fer- vour of impression is long preserved, piety ends in Bedlam. Accordingly, there is not a mad-house in England, Avhere a considerable part of the patients have not been driven to insanity by the extravagance of these people. We cannot enter such places without seeing a number of honest artisans, covered with blankets, and calling themselves angels and apostles, who, if they had remained contented with the instruction of men of learning and education, would have been sound masters of their own trade, sober Christians, and useful members of society. 6. It is impossible not to observe how di- rectly all the doctrine of the Methodists is cal- culated to gain power among the poor and ignorant. To say, that the Deity governs this Avorld by general rules, and that we must wait for another and a final scene of existence, be- fore vice meets with its merited punishment, and virtue with its merited reward; to preach this up daily, would not add a single votary to the Tabernacle, nor sell a Number of the Methodistical Magazine : — but to publish an account of a man who was cured of scrofula by a single sermon — of Providence destroying the innkeeper at Garstang for appointing a cock- fight near the Tabernacle ; — this promptness of judgment and immediate execution is so much lilie human justice, and so much better adapted to vulgar capacities, that the system is at once admitted as soon as any one can be found Avho is impudent or ignorant enough to teach it; and being once admitted, it produces too strong an effect upon the passions to be easily relinquished. The case is the same with the doctrine of inward impulse, or, as they term it, experience. If you preach up to ploughmen and artisans, that every singular feeling Avhich comes across them is a visita- tion of the Divine Spirit — can there be any difiiculty, under the influence of this nonsense, in converting these simple creatures into ac- tive and mysterious fools, and making them your slaves for life '? It is not possible to raise up any dangerous enthusiasm, by telling men to be just, and good, and charitable ; but keep this part of Christianity out of sight — and talk long and enthusiastically before igno- rant people, of the mysteries of our religion, and you will not fail to attract a crowd of fol 46 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. lowers : — verily the Tabernacle loveth not that which is simple, intelligible, and leadeth to good sound practice. Having endeavoured to point out the spirit which pervades these people, we shall say a few words upon the causes, the effects, and the cure of this calamity. — The fanaticism so prevalent in the present day, is one of those evils from which society is never wholly ex- empt ; but which bursts out at different periods, with peculiar violence, and sometimes over- whelms every thing in its course. The last eruption took place about a century and a half ago, and destroyed both Church and Throne with its tremendous force. Though irresistible, it was short; enthusiasm spent its force — the usual reaction took place ; and England was deluged with ribaldry and inde- cency, because it had been worried with fana- tical restrictions. By degrees, however, it was found out that orthodoxy and loyalty might be secured by other methods than licentious con- duct and immodest conversation. The public morals improved ; and there appeared as much good sense and moderation upon the subject of religion as ever can be expected from mankind in large masses. Still, how- ever, the mischief which the Puritans had done was not forgotten ; a general suspicion prevailed of the dangers of religious enthusi- asm; and the fanatical preacher wanted his accustomed power among a people recently recovered from a religious war, and guarded by songs, proverbs, popular stories, and the general tide of humour and opinion, against all excesses of that nature. About the middle of the last centur)', however, the character of the genuine fanatic was a good deal forgotten, and the memory of the civil wars worn away; the field was clear for extravagance in piety; and causes, which must always produce an immense influence upon the mind of man, were left to their own unimpeded operations. Religion is so noble and powerful a consider- ation — it is so buoyant and so insubmergi- ble — that it may be made, by fanatics, to carry with it any degree of error and of perilous absurdity. In this instance Messrs. Whitefield and Wesley happened to begin. They were men of considerable talents ; they observed the common decorums of life ; they did not run naked into the streets, or pretend to the pro- phetical character; — and therefore they were not committed to Newgate. They preached with great energy to weak people ; who first stared — then listened — then believed — then felt the inward feeling of grace, and became as foolish as their teachers could possibly wish them to be ; — in short, folly ran its ancient course, — and human nature evinced itself to be what it always has been under similar cir- cumstances. The great and permanent cause, therefore, of the increase of- Methodism, is the cause which has given birth to fanaticism in all ages, — the facility nf mingling human errors with the fundamental truths of religion. The formerly imperfect residence of the clergy may, perhaps, in some trifling degree, have aided this source of Methodism. But unless a man of education, and a gentleman, could stoop to such disingenuous arts as the Metho- dist preachers, unless he hears heavenly musia all of a sudden, and enjoys sweet experiences, — it is quite impossible that he can contend against such artists as these. More active than they are at present the clergy might per- haps be : but the calmness and moderation of an Establishment can never possibly be a match for sectarian activity. — If the common people are emiui'd with the fine acting of Mrs. Siddons, they go to Sadler's Wells. The sub- ject is too serious for ludicrous comparisons : — but the Tabernacle really is to the Church, what Sadler's Wells is to the Drama. There popularity is gained by vaulting and tumbling, — by low arts, which the regular clergy are not too idle to have recourse to, but too digni- fied: their institutions are chaste and severe, — they endeavour to do that which, upon the whole, and for a great 7iumber of years, will be found to be the most admirable and the most useful : it is no part of their plan to descend to small artifices for the sake of present popu- larity and effrct. The religion of the common people undei the government of the Church may remain as it is for ever; — enthusiasm must be progressive, or it will expire. It is probable that the dreadful scenes which have lately been acted in the world, and the dangers to which we are exposed, have increased the numbers of the Methodists. To what degree will Methodism extend in this country 1 — This question is not easy to an- swer. That it has rapidly increased within these few j'ears, we have no manner of doubt ; and we confess we cannot see what is likelv to impede its progress. The party which it has formed in the legislature ; and the artful neutrality with which they give respectability to their small number, the talents of some of this party, and the unimpeached excellence of their characters, all make it probable that fanaticism w'ill increase rather than diminish. The Methodists have made an alarming inroad into the Church, and they are attacking the army and navy. The principality of Wales, and the East India Company, they have already acquired. All mines and subterraneous places belong to them ; they creep into hospitals and small schools, and so work their way upwards. It is the custom of the religious neutrals to beg all the little livings, particularly in the north of England, from the minister for the time being; and from these fixed points they make incursions upon the happiness and common sense of the vicinage. We most sincerely deprecate such an event; but it will excite in us no manner of surprise, if a period arrives when the churches of the sober and orthodox part of the English clergy are completely de- serted by the middling and lower classes of the communit)% We do not prophesy any such event ; but we contend that it is not im- possible, — hardly improbable. If such, in fu- ture, should be the situation of this country, it is impossible to say what political animosities may not be ingrafted upon this marked and dangerous division of mankind into the godly and the ungodly. At all events, we are quite sure that happiness will be destroyed, reason degraded, sound religion banished from the world ; and that when fanaticism becomes too WORKS OF THE HEy. SYDNEY SMITH. *7 foolish and too prurient to be endured, (as is at last sure to be the case,) it will be suc- ceeded by a long period of the grossest immo- rality, atheism, and debauchery. We are not sure that this evil admits of any cure, — or of any considerable palliation. We most sincerely hope that the government of this country will never be guilty of such in- discretion as to tamper with the Toleration Act, or to attempt to put down these follies by the intervention of the law. If experience has taught us any thing, it is the absurdity of con- trolling men's notions of eternity by acts of Parliament. Something may perhaps be done, in the way of ridicule, towards turning the popular opinion. It may be as well to ex- tend the privileges of the dissenters to the members of the Church of England; for, as the law noAV stands, any man who dissents from the established church may open a place of worship where he pleases. No orthodox cler- gyman can do so, without the consent of the parson of the parish, — who always refuses, because he does not choose to have his mono- poly disturbed; and refuses in parishes where there are not accommodations for one half of the persons who wish to frequent the Church of England, and in instances where he knows that the chapels from which he excludes the established worship will be immediately oc- cupied by sectaries. It may be as well to en- courage in the early education of the clergy, as Mr. Ingram recommends, a better and more animated method of preaching; and it may be necessary, hereafter, if the evil gets to a great height, to relax the articles of the English Church, and to admit a greater variety of Christians within the pale. The greatest and best of all remedies is perhaps the education of the poor ; — we are astonished, that the Es- tablished Church of England is not awake to this mean of arresting the progress of Method- ism. Of course, none of these things will be done; nor is it clear, if they were done, they would do much good. Whatever happens, we are for common sense and orthodoxy. Inso- lence, servile politics, and the spirit of perse- cution, we condemn and attack, whenever we observe them ; — but to the learning, the mode- ration, and the rational piety of the Establish- ment, we most earnestly wish a decided vic- tory over the nonsense, the melancholy, and the madness of the Tabernacle.* God send that our wishes be not in vain. * There is one circumstance to which we have neglect- ed to advert in the proper place, — the dreadful pillage of the earnings of the poor which is made by the Methodists. A case is mentioned in one of the Numbers of these two magazines for 1807, of a poor man with a family, earn- ing only twenty-eight shillines a week, who has made two donations of ten guineas each to the missionary fund I WO^<:S OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. INDIAN MISSIONS. (Edinburgh Review, At two o'clock in the morning, July the 10th, 1806, the European barracks, at Vellore, con- taining then four complete companies of the 69th regiment, were surrounded by two battal- ions of Sepoys in the Company's service, who poured in an heavy fire of musketry, at every door and window, upon the soldiers : at the same time the European sentries, the soldiers at the main-guard, and the sick in the hospital, were put to death; the officers' houses were ransacked, and every body found in them mur- dered. Upon the arrival of the 19th Light Dragoons under Colonel Gillespie, the Sepoys •were immediately attacked ; 600 cut down upon the spot; and 200 taken from their hiding places, and shot. There perished, of the four European companies, about 164, besides offi- cers ; and many British officers of the native troops were murdered by the insurgents. Subsequent to this explosion, there was a mutiny at Nundydroog ; and, in one day, 450 Mahomedan Sepoys were disarmed, and turned out of the fort, on the ground of an intended massacre. It appeared, also, from the infor- mation of the commanding officer at Tritchi- nopoly, that, at that period, a spirit of disaffec- tion had manifested itself at Bangalore, and other places; and seemed to gain ground in every direction. On the 3d of December, 1806, the government of Madras issued the follow- ing proclamation : — "A Proclamation. — The Right Hon. the Governor in Council, having observed that, in some late instances, an extraordinary degree of agitation has prevailed among several corps of the native army of this coast, it has been his Lordship's particular endeavour to ascertain the motives which may have led to conduct so different from that which formerly distinguished the native army. From this inquiry, it has appeared that many persons of evil intention have endeavoured, for malicious purposes, to impress upon the native troops a belief that it is the wish of the British govern- * Considerations on the Policy of communicating the Knowledge of Christianity to the J^atives in India. By a late Resident in Bengal. London. Hatchard, 1807. An Address to the Chairman of the East India Com- pany occasioned by Mr. Twining's Letter to that Gentle- man. By the Rev. John Owen. London. Hatchard. A Letter to the Chairman of the East India Company, on the Danger of interfering in the religious Opinions of the JVatives of India. By Thomas Twining. London. Uidgevvay. Vindication of the Hindoos. By a Bengal Officer. London. Rodwell. Letter to John Scott Waring. London. HatcViard. Cunningham's Christianity in India. London. Hatch- ard. Ansicer to Major Scott Waring. Extracted from the Christian Observer. Observations on the Present State of the East IndiO, Company. By Major Scott Waring. Ridgeway. Lon- don. ment to convert them by forcible means to Christianity; and his Lordship in Council has observed with concern, that such malicious reports have been believed by many of the native troops. "The Right Hon. the Governor in Council, therefore, deems it proper', in this public man- ner, to repeat to the native troops his assur- ance, that the same respect which has been invariably shown by the British government for their religion and for their customs, will be always continued; and that no interruption will be given to any native, whether Hindoo or Mussulman, in the practice of his religious ceremonies. "His Lordship in Council desires that the native troops will not give belief to the idle rumours which are circulated by enemies of their happiness, who endeavour, with the basest designs, to weaken the confidence of the troops in the British government. His Lordship in Council desires that the native troops will te- member the constant attention and humanity which have been shown by the British govern- ment, in providing for their comfort, by aug- menting the pay of the native officers and Sepoys ; by allowing liberal pensions to those who have done their duty faithfully; by mak- ing ample provisions for the families of those who may have died in battle ; and by receiving their children into the service of the Honour- able Compan)', to be treated with the same care and bounty as their fathers had experienced. "The Right Hon. the Governor in Council trusts, that the native troops, remembering these circumstances, will be sensible of the happiness of their situation, which is greater than what the troops of any other part of the woi'ld enjoy; and that they will continue to observe the same good conduct for which they were distinguished in the days of Gen. Law- rence, of Srr Eyre Coote, and of other renowned heroes. " The native troops must at the same time be sensible, that if they should fail in the duties of their allegiance, and should show themselves disobedient to their officers, their conduct will not fail to receive merited punishment, as the British government is not less prepared to punish the guilty, than to protect and distin- guish those who are deserving of its favour. "It is directed that this paper be translated with care into the Tamul, Telinga, and Hin- doostany languages; and that copies of it be circulated to each native battalion, of which the European officers are enjoined and ordered to be careful in making it known to every na- tive officer and Sepoy under his command. " It is also directed, that copies of the paper be circulated to all the magistrates and collect- ors under this government, for the purpose of WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 49 being fully understood in all parts of the country. " Published by order of the Right Hon. the Governor in Council. " G. BucHAjr, Chief Secretary to Government. ''Dated in Fort St. George, 3rf Dec. 1806." Scott Waring's Preface, iii — v. So late as March 1807, three months after the date of this proclamation, so universal was the dread of a general revoU among the native troops, that the British officers attached to the native troops constantly slept with loaded pis- tols under their pillows. It appears that an attempt had been made by the military men at Madras, to change the shape of the Sepoy turban into something resembling the helmet of the light infantry of Europe, and to prevent the native troops from wearing, on their foreheads, the marij, Another reason for giving up the task of conversion, is the want of success. In India, religion extends its empire over the minutest actions of life. It is not merely a law for moral conduct, and for occasional worship; but it dictates to a man his trade, his dress, his food, and his whole behaviour. His religion also punishes a violation of its exactions, not by eternal and future punishments, but by pre- sent infamy. If an Hindoo is irreligious, or, in other words, if he loses his caste, he is deserted by father, mother, wife, child, and kin- dred, and becomes instantly a solitary wan- derer upon the earth ; to touch him, to receive him, to eat with him, is a pollution producing a similar loss of caste ; and the state of such a degraded man is worse than death itself. To these evils an Hindoo must expose himself before he becomes a Christian ; and this diffi- culty must a missionary overcome, before he can expect the smallest success ; a difficulty which, it is quite clear, they themselves, after a short residence in India, consider to be insu- perable. As a proof of the tenacious manner, in which the Hindoos cling to their religious prejudices, we shall state two or three very short anecdotes, to which any person who has resided in India might easily produce many- parallels. "In the year 1766, the late Lord Clive and Mr. Verelst employed the whole influence of Government to restore a Hindoo to his caste, who had forfeited it, not by any neglect of his own, but by having been compelled, by a most unpardonable act of violence, to swallow a drojT of cow broth. The Brahmins, from the peculiar circumstances of the case, were very anxious to comply with the wishes of Govern- ment ; the principal men among them met once at Kishnagur, and once at Calcutta; but after consultations, and an examination of their most ancient records, they declared to Lord Clive, that as there was no precedent to justify the act, they found it impossible to restore the unfortunate man to his caste, and he died soon after of a broken heart." — Scott Waring's Pre- face, p. Ivi. It is the custom of the Hindoos to expose dying people upon the banks of the Ganges. There is something peculiarly holy in that river; and it soothes the agonies of death to look upon its waters in the last moments. A party of English were coming down in a boat, and perceived upon the bank a pious Hindoo, WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 59 in a state of the last imbecility— about to be drowned by the rising of the tide, after the most approved and orthodox manner of their religion. They had the curiosity to land; and as they perceived some more signs of life than -were at first apparent, a young Englishman poured down his throat the greatest part of a bottle of lavender water, which he happened to have in his pocket. The effects of such a stimulus, applied to a stomach accustomed to nothing stronger than water, were instantane- ous and powerful. The Hindoo revived suffi- ciently to admit of his being conveyed to the boat, was carried to Calcutta, and perfectly re- covered. He had drunk, however, in the com- pany of Europeans ;— no matter whether vo- luntary or involuntary, — the offence was com- mitted: he lost caste, was turned away from his home, and avoided, of course, by every re- lation and friend. The poor man came before the police, making the bitterest complaints upon being restored to life ; and for three years the burden of supporting him fell upon the mis- taken Samaritan who had rescued him from death. During that period, scarcely a day elapsed in which the degraded resurgent did not appear before the European, and curse him with the bitterest curses— as the cause of all his misery and desolation. At the end of that period he fell ill, and of course was not again thwarted in his passion for dying. The writer of this article vouches for the truth of this anecdote; and many persons who were at Calcutta at the time must have a distinct recol- lection of the fact, which excited a great deal of conversation and amusement, mingled with compassion. It is this institution of castes which has pre- served India in the same state in which it ex- isted in the days of Alexander ; and which ■would leave it without the slightest change in habits and manners, if we were to abandon the country to-morrow. We are astonished to ob- serve the Inte resident in Bengal speaking of the fifteen millions of Mahomedans in India as converts from the Hindoos; an opinion, in support of which he does not offer the shadow of an argument, except by asking, whether the Mahomedans have the Tartar face ] and if not, how they can be the descendants of the first conquerors of India 1 Probably not altogether. But does this writer imagine, that the Mahome- dan empire could exist in Hindostan for 700 years without the intrusion of Persians, Ara- bians, and every species of Mussulmen adven- turers from every part of the East, which had embraced the religion of Mahomed 1 And let them come from what quarter they would, could they ally themselves to Hindoo women without producing in their descendants an ap- proximation to the Hindoo features! Dr. Robertson, who has investigated this subject with the greatest care, and looked into all the authorities, is expressly of an opposite opinion ; and considers the Mussulman inhabitants of Hindostan to be merely the descendants of Mahomedan adventurers, and not converts from the Hindoo faith. "The armies" (says Orme) "which made the first conquests for the heads of the respect- .'ve dynasties, or for other invaders, left behind them numbers of Mahomedans, who, seduced by a finer climate, and a richer country, forgot their own. " The Mahomedan princes of India naturally gave a preference to the service of men of their own religion, who, from whatever country they came, were of a more vigorous constitu- tion than the stoutest of the subjected nation. This preference has continually encouraged adventurers from Tartary, Persia, and Arabia, to seek their fortunes under a government from which they were sure of receiving greater en- couragement than they could expect at home. Fi-om these origins, time has formed in India a mighty nation of near ten millions of Mahome- dans." — Orme's Inclostan, I. p. 24. Precisely similar to this is the opinion of Dr. Robertson, Note xl. — Indian Disquisiiion. As to the religion of the Ceylonese, from which the Bengal resident would infer the faci- lity of making converts of the Hindoos, it is to be observed, that the religion of Boudhou, in ancient times, extended from the north of Tar- tary to Ceylon, from the Indus to Slam, and (il Foe and Boudhou are the same persons) over China. That of the two religions of Boudhou and Brama, the one was the parent of the other, there can be very little doubt; but the compa- rative antiquity of the two is so very disputed a point, that it is quite unfair to state the case of the Ceylonese as an instance of conversion from the Hindoo religion to any other: and even if the religion of Bramd is the most an- cient of the two, it is still to be proved, that the Ceylonese professed that religion before they changed it for their present faith. In point of fact, however, the boasted Christianity of the Ceylonese is proved by the testimony of the missionaries themselves, to he little better than nominal. The following extract from one of their own communications, dated Columbo, 1805, will set this matter in its true light: — "The elders, deacons, and some of the mem- bers of the Dutch congregation, came to see us, and we paid them a visit in return, and made a little inquiry concerning the state of the church on this island, which is, in one word, miserable! One hundred thousand of those who are called Christians (because they are baptized) need not go back to heathenism, for they never have been any thing else but heathens, worshippers of Budda: they have been induced, for worldly reasons, to be baptized. O Lord have mercy on the poor inhabitants of this populous island!" —Trajis. Miss. Soc. II. 265. What success the Syrian Christians had in making converts ; in what degree they have gained their numbers by victories over the native superstition, or lost their original num- bers by the idolatrous examples to which for so many centuries they have been exposed ; are points wrapt up in so much obscurity, that no kind of inference, as to the facility of convert- ing the natives, can be drawn from them. Their present number is supposed to be about 150,000. It would be of no use to quote the example of Japan and China, even if the progress of the faith in these empires had been much greater than it is. We do not say it is difficult to con- vert the Japanese, or the Chinese; but the WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Hindoos. We are not saying it is difficult to convert human creatures; but difficult to con- vert human creatures with such institutions. To mention the example of other nations who have them not, is to pass over the material ob- jection, and to answer others which are merely imaginary, and have never been made. 3f//i/, The duty of conver.sion is less plain, and less imperious, when conversion exposes the convert to great present misery. An Afri- can or an Otaheite proselyte might not perhaps be less honoured by his countrymen if he be- came a Christian; an Hindoo is instantly sub- jected to the most perfect degradation. A change of faith might increase the immediate happiness of any other individual; it annihi- lates for ever all the human coinforts which an Hindoo enjoys. The eternal happiness which you proffer him, is therefore less attractive to him than to any other heathen, from the life of misery by which he purchases it. Nothing is more precarious than our empire in India. Suppose we were to be driven out of it to-morrow, and to leave behind us twenty thousand converted Hindoos, it is most proba- ble they would relapse into heathenism; but their original station in society could not be regained. The duty of making converts, therefore, among such a people, as it arises from the general duty of benevolence, is less strong than it would be in many other cases; because, situated as we are, it is quite certain we shall expose them to a great deal of misery, and not quite certain we shall do them any future good. 4:'kly, Conversion is no duty at all, if it mere- ly destroys the old religion, without really and effectually teaching the new one. Brother Ringletaube may write home that he makes a Christian, when, in reality, he ought only to state that he has destroyed an Hindoo. Foolish and imperfect as the religion of an Hindoo is, It is at least some restraint upon the intemper- ance of human passions. It is better a Brah- min should be respected, than that nobody should be respected. An Hindoo had better believe that a deity with an hundred legs and arms, will reward and punish him hereafter, than that he is not to be punished at all. Now, when you have destroyed the faith of an Hin- doo, are you quite sure that you will graft upon his mind fresh principles of action, and make him any more than a nominal Christian? You have 30,000 Europeans in India, and fiO millions of other subjects. If proselytism were to go on as rapidly as the most visionary Anabaptist could dream or desire, in what man- ner are these people to be taught the genuine truths and practices of Christianity 1 Where are the clergy to come from? Who is to de- fray the expense of the establishment? and who can foresee the immense and perilous dif- ficulties of bending the laws, manners, and in- ^iitutions of a country to the dictates of a new leligioni If it were easy to persuade the Hin- doos that their own religion was folly, it would be indefinitely difficult effectually to teach them any other. They would tumble their own idols into the river, and you would build them no churches : you would destroy all their present motives for doing right and avoiding wrong, without being able to fix upon their minds the more sublime motives by which you profess to be actuated. What a missionary will do here- after with the heart of a convert, is a matter of doubt and speculation. He is quite certain, however, that he must accustom the man to see himself considered infamous; and good prin- ciples can hardly be exposed to a ruder shock. Whoever has seen much of Hindoo Christians must have perceived, that the man who bears that name is very commonly nothing more than a drunken reprobate, who conceives himself at liberty to eat and drink anything he pleases, and annexes hardly any other meaning to the name of Christianity. Such sort of converts may swell the list of names, and gratify the puerile pride of a missionary ; but what real, discreet Christian can wish to see such Chris- tianity prevail? But it will be urged, if the present converts should become worse Hindoos, and very indifferent Christians, still the next generation will do better; and by degrees, and at the expiration of half a century, or a century, true Christianity may prevail. We may apply to such sort of Jacobin converters what Mr. Burke said of the Jacobin politicians in his time, — "To such men a whole generation of human beings are of no more consequence than a frog in an air-pump." For the distant pros- pect of doing what most probably after all, they will never be able to effect, there is no de- gree of present misery and horror to which they will not expose the subjects of their expe- riment. As the duty of making proselytes springs from the duty of benevolence, there is a priority of choice in conversion. The greatest zeal should plainly be directed to the most desperate misery and ignorance. Now, in comparison to many other nations who are equally ignorant of the truths of Christianity, the Hindoos are a civilized and a moral people. That they have remained in the same state for so many centu- ries, is at once a proof that the institutions which established that state could not be highly unfavourable to human happiness. After all that has been said of the vices of the Hindoos, we believe that an Hindoo is more mild and sober than most Europeans, and as honest and chaste. In astronomy the Hindoos have cer- tainly made very high advances; — some, and not an unimportant progress in many sciences. As manufacturers, they are extremely in- genious—and as agriculturists, industrious. Christianity would improve them ; (whom would it not improve ?) but if Christianity can- not be extended to all, there are many other na- tions who want it more.* The Hindoos have some very savage cus- toms, which it would be desirable to abolish. Some swing on hooks, some run knives through their hands, and widows burn themselves to death : but these follies (even the last) are quite voluntary on the part of the sufferers. We dis- like all misery, voluntary or involuntary ; but the difference between the tormetits which a man chooses, and those which he endures from * We are here, of course, arguing the question only in a worldly point of view. This is one point of view in which it must be placed, though certainly the lowest and least important. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Gl the choice of others, is very great. It is a con- siderable wretchedness that men and women should be shut up in religious houses ; but it is only an object of legislative interference, when such incarceration is compulsory. Monasteries and nunneries with us would be harmless in- stitutions; because the moment adevotee found he had acted like a fool, he might avail himself of the discovery and run away ; and so may an Hindoo, if he repents of his resolution of run- ning hooks into his flesh. The duties of conversion appear to be of less importance, when it is impossible to procure proper persons to undertake them, and when such religious embassies, in consequence, de- volve upon the lowest of the people. Who wishes to see scrofula and atheism cured by a single sermon in Bengal! who wishes to see the religious hoy riding at anchor in the Hoogly river? or shoals of jumpers exhibiting their nimble piety before the learned Brahmins of Benares'? This madness is disgusting and dangerous enough at home: — Why are we to sendoutlittledetachmentsof maniacs to spread over the fine regions of the world the most un- just and contemptible opinion of the gospel! The wise and rational part of the Christian ministry find they have enough to do at home to combat with passions unfavourable to human happiness, and to make men act up to their professions. But if a tinker is a devout man, he infallibly sets off for the East. Let any man read the Anabaptist missions : — can he do so without deeming such men pernicious and extravag-ant in their own country, — and with- out feeling that they are benefiting us much more by their absence, than the Hindoos by their advice 1 It is somewhat strange, in a duty which is stated by one patty to be so clear and so indis- pensable, that no man of moderation and good sense can be found to perform it. And if no other instruments remain but visionary enthu- siasts, some doubt may be honestly raised whether it is not better to drop the scheme en- tirely. Shortly stated, then, our argument is this ; — We see not the slightest pros-pect of success ; — we see much danger in making the attempt; — and we doubt if the conversion of the Hindoos would ever be more than nominal. If it is a duty of general benevolence to convert the Heathen, it is less a duty to convert the Hin- doos than any other people, because they are already highly civilized, and because you must infallibly subject them to infamy and present degradation. The instruments employed for these purpo,ses are calculated to bring ridicule and disgrace upon the gospel ; and in the dis- cretion of those at home, whom we consider as their patrons, we have not the smallest reli- ance ; but, on the contrary, we are convinced they would behold the loss of our Indian em- pire, not with the humility of men convinced of erroneous views and projects, but with the pride, the exultation, and the alacrity of martyrs. Of the books which have handled this sub- ject on either side, we have little to say. Ma- jor Scott Waring's book is the best against the Missions ; but he wants arrangement and pru- dence. The late resident writes well ; but is miserably fanatical towards the conclusion. Mr. Cunningham has been diligent in looking into books upon the subject : and though an evangelical gentleman, is not uncharitable to those who differ from him in opinion. There is a passage in the publication of his reverend brother, Mr. Owen, which, had we been less accustomed than we have been of late to this kind of writing, would appear to be quite m- credible. " I have not pointed out the comparative in- difference, upon Mr. Twining's principles, be- tween one religion and another, to the welfare of a people ; nor the impossibility, on those principles, of India being Christianized by any human means, so long as it shall remain under the dominion of the Company; nor the alternu' live to which Providence is by consequence reduced, of either giving up that anintry to everlasting su- perstition, or of tcorking some miracle in order to accomplish its conversion." — Owenh Address, p. 28. This is really beyond any thing we ever re- member to have read. The ho}', the cock-fight, and the religious newspaper, are pure reason when compared to it. The idea of reducing Providence to an alternative ! ! and, by a motion at the India House, carried by ballot ! We would not insinuate, in the most distant man- ner, that Mr. Owen is not a gentleman of the most sincere piety; but the misfortune is, all extra superfine persons accustom themselves to a familiar phraseology upon the most sacred subjects, which is quite shocking to the com- mon and inferior orders of Christians. Provi- dence reduced to an alternative.'!!!! Let it be remembered, this phrase comes from a member of a religious party, who are loud in their com- plaints of being confounded with enthusiasts and fanatics. We cannot conclude without the most pointed reprobation of the low mischief of the Christian Observer ; a publication which appears to have no other method of discussing a question fairly open to discussion, than that of accusing their antagonists of infidelity. No art can be more unmanly, or, if its consequences are foreseen, more wicked. If this publication had been the work of a single individual, we might have passed it over in silent disgust; but as it is looked upon as the organ of a great political religious party in this country, we think it right to notice the very unworthy manner in which they are attempting to extend their influence. For ourselves, if there were a fair prospect of carrying the gospel into regions where it was before unknown, — if such a project did not expose the best possessions of the country to extreme danger, and if it was in the hands of men who were discreet, as well as devout, we should consider it to be a scheme of true piety, benevolence, and wisdom : but the baseness and malignity of fanaticism shall never prevent us from attacking its arrogance, its ignorance, and its activity. For what vice can be more tre- mendous than that which, while it wears the outward appearance of religion, destroys the happiness of man, and dishonours the name of Godi ti WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. CATHOLICS.^ [Edinburgh Review, The various publications which have issued from the press in favour of religious liberty, ftave now nearly silenced the arguments of their opponents; and, teaching sense to some, and inspiring others with shame, have left xhose only on the field who can neither learn nor blush. But, though the argument is given up, and the justice of the Catholic cause admitted, it seems to be generally conceived, that their case, at present, is utterly hopeless ; and that, to advo- cate it any longer, will only irritate the op- pressed, without producing any change of opinion in those by whose influence and autho- rity that oppression is continued. To this opinion, unfortunately too prevalent, we have many i-easons for not subscribing. We do not understand what is meant in this country by the notion, that a measure, of con- summate wisdom and imperious necessity, is to be deferred for any time, or to depend upon any contingency. Whenever it can be made clear to the understanding of the great mass of enlightened people, that any system of poli- tical conduct is necessary to the public welfare, every obstacle (as it ought) will be swept away before it; and as we conceive it to be by no means improbable, that the country maj', ere long, he placed in a situation where its safety or ruin will depend upon its conduct towards the Catholics, we sincerely believe we are doing our duty in throwing every possible light on this momentous question. Neither do we understand where this passive submission to ignorance and error is to end. Is it confined to religion 1 or does it extend to war and peace, as weil as religion 1 Would it be tolerated, if any man were to say, "Abstain from all argu- ments in favour of peace ; the court have resolved upon eternal war; and, as you cannot have peace, to what purpose urge the necessity of itl" We answer, — that courts must be pre- sumed to be open to the influence of reason ; or, if they were not, to the influence of pru- dence and discretion, when they perceive the public opinion to be loudly and clearly against them. To lie by in timid and indolent silence, — to suppose an inflexibility, in which no court ever could, under pressing circumstances, per- severe — and to neglect a regular and vigorous appeal to public opinion, is to give up all chance of doing good, and to abandon the only instrument by which the few are ever prevented from ruining the many. It is folly to talk of any other ultimatum in government than perfect justice to the fair claims of the subject. The concessions to the Irish Catholics in 1792 were to be the ne plus ultra. Every engine was set on foot to induce * Hiittory of the Penal Laws against the Irish Catho- lics, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Union. By Henry Parnell Esq. M.P. the grand juries in Ireland to petition against further concessions ; and, in six months after- wards, government were compelled to intro- duce, themselves, those further relaxations of the penal code, of which they had just before assured the Catholics they must abandon all hope. Such is the absurdity of supposing that a few interested and ignorant individuals can postpone, at their pleasure and caprice, the happiness of millions. As to the feeling of irritation with which such continued discussion may inspire the Irish Catholics, we are convinced that no opi- nion could be so prejudicial to the cordial union which we hope may always subsist be- tween the two countries, as that all the eflbrts of the Irish were unavailing, — that argument was hopeless, — that their case was prejudged with a sullen inflexibility which circumstances could not influence, pity soften, or reason sub- due. We are by no means convinced, that the decorous silence recommended upon the Ca- tholic question would be rewarded by those future concessions, of which many persons appear to be so certain. We have a strange incredulity where persecution is to be abo- lished, and any class of men restored to their indisputable rights. When we see it done, we will believe it. Till it is done, we shall always consider it to be highly improbable — much too improbable — to justify the smallest relaxation in the Catholics themselves, or in those who are well-wishers to their cause. When the fanciful period at present assigned for the emancipation arrives, new scruples may arise — fresh forbearance be called for — and the ope- rations of common sense be deferred for an- other generation. Toleration never had a present tense, nor taxation a future one. The answer which Paul received from Felix, he owed to the subject on which he spoke. When justice and righteousness were his theme, Felix told him to go away, and he would hear him some other time. All men who have spoken to courts upon such disagreeable topics, have received the same answer. Felix, how- ever, trembled when he gave it; but his fear was ill-directed. He trembled at the subject — he ought to have trembled at the delay. Little or nothing is to be expected from the shame of deferring what it is so wicked and per- ilous to defer. Profligacy in taking office is so extreme, that we have no doubt public men may be found, who, for half a century, would postpone all remedies for a pestilence, if the preservation of their places depended upon the propagation of the virus. To us, such kind of conduct conveys no other action than that of sordid avaricious impudence : — it puts to sale the best interests of the country for some improvement in the wines and meats and carriages which a WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. '3 man uses, — and encourages a new political morality which may always postpone any other great measure — and every other great measure as well as the emancipation of the Catholics. We terminate this apologetical preamble with expressing the most earnest hope that the Catholics will not, from any notion that their cause IS effectually carried, relax in any one constitutional effort necessary to their purpose. Their cause is the cause of common sense and justice ; — the safety of England and of the ■world may depend upon it. It rests upon the soundest principles ; leads to the most import- ant consequences; and therefore cannot be too frequently brought before the notice of the pu blic. The book before us is written by Mr. Henry Parnell, the brother of Mr. William Parneil, author of the Historical Apology, reviewed in one of our late numbers; and it contains a very well written history of the penal laws en- acted against the Irish Catholics, from the peace of Limerick, in the reign of King William, to the late Union. Of these we shall present a very short, and, we hope even to loungers, a readable abstract. The war carried on in Ireland against King William cannot deserve the name of a re- bellion: it was a struggle for their lawful Prince, whom they had sworn to maintain ; and whose zeal for the Catholic religion, what- ever effect it might have produced in England, could not by them be considered as a crime. This war was terminated by the surrender of fjimerick. upon conditions by which the Catho- lics hoped, and very rationally hoped, to secure to themselves the free enjoyment of their re- ligion in future, and an exemption from all those civil penalties and incapacities which the reigning creed is so fond of heaping upon its subjugated rivals. By the various articles of this treaty, they are to enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion, as they did enjoy in the time of Charles II. : and the King promises upon the meeting of Parliament, " to endeavor to pro- cure for them such further security in that par- ticular, as may preserve \\\em from any disturb- ance on account of their said religion." They are to be restored to their estates, privileges, and immunities, as they enjoyed them in the time of Charless II. The gentlemen are to be allowed to carry arms ; and no other oath is to be tendered to the Catholics who submit to King William than the oath of allegiance. These and other articles, King William ratifies for himself, his heirs and successors, as far as in him lies ; and confirms the same, and every other clause and matter therein contained. These articles were signed by the English general on the 3d of October, 1691 ; and dif- fused comfort, confidence, and tranquillity among the Catholics. On the 22d of October, the English Parliament excluded Catholics from the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons, hy compelling them to take the oaths of su- premacy before admission. In 1695, the Catholics were deprived of all means of educating their children, at home or abroad, and of the privilege of being guardians to their own or to other persons' children. Then all the Catholics were disarmed, — and then all the priests banished. Jfer this (proba- bly by way of joke), an act was jiassed to con- firm the treaty of Limerick, — the great and glorious King William totally forgetting the contract he had entered into of recommending the religious liberties of the Catholics to the attention of Parliament. On the 4th of March, 1704, it was enacted, that any son of a Catholic who would turn Protestant, should succeed to the family estate, which from that moment could no longer be sold, or charged with debt and legacy. On the same day, Popish fathers were debarred, by a penalty of 500?., from being guardians to their own children. If the child, however young, declared himself a Protestant, he was to be delivered immediately to the custody of some Protestant relation. No Protestant to marry a Papist. No Papist to purchase land, or take a lease of land for more than thirty-one years. If the profits of the lands so leased by the Catholics amounted to above a certain rate settled by the act, — farm to belong to the first Protestant who made the discovery. No Papist to be in a line of entail ; but the estate to pass on to the next Protestant heir, as if the Papist were dead. If a Papist dies intestate, and no Pro- testant heir can be found, property to be equally divided among all the sons ; or, if he has none, among all the daughters. By the I6th clause of this bill, no Papist to hold any office civil or military. Not to dwell in Limerick or Galway, except on certain conditions. Not to vote at elections. Not to hold advowsons. In 1709, Papists were prevented from hold- ing an annuity for life. If any son of a Papist chose to turn P^rotestant, and enrol the certifi- cate of his conversion in the Court of Chan- cery, that court is empowered to compel his father to state the value of his properly upon oath, and to make out of that property a com- petent allowance to the son, at their own dis- cretion, not only for his present maintenance, but for his future portion after the death of his father. An increase of jointure to be enjoyed by Papist wives upon their conversion. Papists keeping schools to be prosecuted as convicts. Popish priests who are converted, to receive 307. per annum. Rewards are given by the same act for the discovery of the Popish clergy ; — 50/. for dis- covering a Popish bishop ; 20/. for a conimon Popish clergyman; 10/. for a Popish usher! Two justices of the peace can compel any Papist above eighteen years of age to disclose every particular which has come to his know- ledge respecting Popish priests, celebration of mass, or Papist schools. Imprisonment for a year if he refuses to answer. Nobody can hold property in trust for a Catholic. Juries, in all trials growing out of these statutes, to be Protestants. No Papist to take more than two apprentices, except in the linen trade. All the Catholic clergy to give in their names and places of abode at the quarter-sessions, and to keep no curates. Catholics not to serve on grand juries. In any trial upon statutes for strengthening the Protestant interest, a Papist juror may be peremptorily challenged. In the next reign, Popish horses were at- 64 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. tached, and allowed to be seized for the militia. Papists cannot be either high or petty consta- bles. No Papists to vote at elections. Papists in towns to provide Protestant watchmen ; — and not to vote at vestries. In the reign of George II., Papists were pro- hibited from being barristers. Barristers and solicitors marrying Papists, considered to be Papists, and subjected to all penalties as such. Persons robbed by privateers, during a war with a Popish prince, to be indemnified by grand jury pi-esentments, and the money to be levied on the Catholics only. No Papist to marry a Protestant; — any priest celebrating such a marriage to be hanged. During all this time there was not the slight- est rebellion in Ireland. In 1715 and 1745, while Scotland and the north of England were up in arms, not a man stirred in Ireland ; yet the spirit of persecution against the Catholics continued till the 18th of his present Majesty, and then gradually gave way to the increase of knowledge, the huma- nity of our Sovereign, the abilities of Mr. Grattan, the weakness of England struggling in America, and the dread inspired by the French revolution. Such is the rapid outline of a code of laws which reflects indelible disgrace upon the Eng- lish character, and explains but too clearly the cause of that hatred in which the English name has been so long held in Ireland. It would require centuries to eflace such an im- pression ; and yet, when we find it fresh, and operating at the end of a few years, we explain the fact by every cause which can degrade the Irish, and by none which can remind us of our own scandalous policy. With the folly and the horror of such a code before our eyes, — with the conviction of recent and domestic history, that mankind are not to be lashed and chaimed out of their faith, — we are striving to teaze and worry them into a better theology. Heavy oppression is removed; light insults and provocations are retained; the scourge does not fall upon their shoulders, but it sounds in their ears. And this is the conduct we are pursuing, when it is still a great doubt whether this country alone may not be opposed to the united efl^orts of the whole of Europe. It is really difficult to ascertain which is the most utterly destitute of common sense, — the capri- cious and arbitrary stop we have made in our concessions to the Catholics, or the precise period we have chosen for this grand eflfort of obstinate folly. In whatsoever manner the contest now in agitation on the Continent may terminate, its relation to the emancipation of the Catholics will be very striking. If the Spaniards succeed in establishing their own liberties, and in res- cuing Europe from the tyranny under which it at present labours, it will still be contended, within the walls of our own Parliament, that the Catholics cannot I\ilfil the duties of social life. Venal politicians will still argue that the time is not j'et come. Sacred and laj' syco- phants will still lavish upon the Catholic faith their well-paid abuse, and England still pas- sively submit to such a disgraceful spectacle of ingratitude and injustice. If, on the con- trary (as may probably be the case), the Spa- niards fall before the numbers and military skill of the French, then are we left alone ia the world, without another ray of hope ; and compelled to employ against internal disaffec- tion that force which, exalted to its utmost en- ergy, would in all probability prove but barely equal to the external danger by which we should be surrounded. Whence comes it that these things are universally admitted to be true, but looked upon in servile silence by a country hitherto accustomed to make great efforts for its prosperity, safety and indepen- dence 1 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. METHODISM.* [Edinburgh Review, 1809.] In routing out a nest of consecrated cobblers, and in bringing to light such a perilous heap of trash as we were obliged to work through, in our articles upon the Methodists and Mis- sionaries, we are generally conceived to have rendered an useful service to the cause of ra- tional religion. Every one, however, at all acquainted with the true character of Method- ism, must have known the extent of the abuse and misrepresentation to which we exposed ourselves in such a service. All this obloquy, however, we were very willing to encounter, from our conviction of the necessity of expos- ing and correcting the growing evil of fanati- cism. In spite of all misrepresentation, we have ever been, and ever shall be, the sincere friends of sober and rational Christianity. We are quite ready, if any fair opportunity occur, to defend it, to the best of our ability, from the tiger-spring of infidelity ; and we are quite de- termined, if we can prevent such an evil, that it shall not be eaten up by the nasty and nu- merous vermin of Methodism. For this pur- pose, we shall proceed to make a few short remarks upon the sacred and silly gentleman before us, — not, certainly, because we feel any sort of anxiety as to the effect of his strictures on our own credit or reputation, but because his direct and articulate defence of the princi- ples and practices which we have condemned, affords us the fai-rest opportunity of exposing, still more clearly, both the extravagance and the danger of these popular sectaries. These very impudent people have one ruling canon, which pervades every thing they say and do. Whoever is unfriendly to Methodistn, is an infidel and an atheist. This reasonable and amiable maxim, repeated, in every form of duluess, and varied in every attitude of malig- nity, is the sum and substance of Mr. Styles's pamphlet. Whoever wishes to rescue religion from the hands of didactic artisans, — whoever prefers a respectable clergyman for his teacher to a delirious mechanic, — whoever wishes to keep the intervals between churches and luna- tic asylums as wide as possible, — all such men, in the estimation of Mr. Styles, are nothing better than open or concealed enemies of Christianity. His catechism is very simple. In what hoy do you navigate 1 By what shoe- maker or carpenter are you instructed 1 What miracles have you to relate 1 Do you think it sinful to reduce Providence to an alternative, &c. &c. &c. Now, if we were to content ourselves with using to Mr. Styles, while he is dealing about his imputations of infidelity, the un- courtly language which is sometimes applied to those who are little curious about truth ♦ Strictures on two Critiques in the Edinburgh Review, on the Subject of Methodism and Missions ; with Remarks on the Influence of Reviews, in general, on Morals and Happiness. By Johk Styles. 8vo. London, 1809. or falsehood, what Methodist would think the worse of him for such an attack? Who is there among them that would not glory to lie for the tabernacle ] who that would not believe he was pleasing his Maker, by sacrificing truth, justice and common sense, to the inte- rests of his own little chapel, and his own de- ranged instructor? Something more than con- tradiction or confutation, therefore, is necessary to discredit those charitable dogmatists, and to diminish their pernicious influence; — and the first accusation against us is, that we have endeavoured to add ridicule to reasoning. We are a good deal amused, indeed, with the extreme disrelish which Mr. John Styles ex- hibits to the humour and pleasantry with which he admits the Methodists to have been attacked; but Mr. John Styles should remember, that it is not the practice with destroyers of vermin to allow the little victims a veto upon the wea- pons used against them. If this were other- wise, we should have one set of vermin banish- ing small-tooth combs; another protesting against mouse-traps ; a third prohibiting the finger and thumb; a fourth exclaiming against the intolerable infamy of using soap and wa- ter. It is impossible, however, to listen to such pleas. They must all be caught, killed and cracked, in the manner, and by the instruments which are found most eflicacious to their de- struction ; and the more they cry out, the greater plainly is the skill used against them. We are convinced a little laughter will do them more harm than all the arguments in the world. Such men as the author before us cannot understand when they are out-argued ; but he has given us a specimen, from his irri- tability, that he fully comprehends when he has become the object of universal contempt and derision. We agree with him, that ridi- cule is not exactly the weapon to be used ia matters of religion ; but the use of it is ex- cusable, when there is no other which can make fools tremble. Besides, he should re- member the particular sort of ridicule we have used, which is nothing more than accurate quotation from the Methodists themselves. It is true, that this is the most severe and cutting ridicule to which we could have had recourse; but, whose fault is that? Nothing can be more disingenuous than tne attacks Mr. Styles has made upon us for our use of Scripture language. Light and grace are certainly terms of Scripture. It is not to the words themselves that any ridicule caa ever attach. It is from the preposterous ap- plication of those words, in the mouths of the most arrogant and ignorant of human beings; — it is from their use in the most trivial, low and familiar scenes of life ; — it is from the illiterate and ungrammatical prelacy of Mr. John Styles, that any tinge of ridicule ever is f2 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. or ever can be imparted to the sacred language of Scripture. We admit also, with this gentleman, that it would certainly evince the most vulgar and contracted heart, to ridicule any religious opinions, methodistical or otherwise, because they were the opinions of the poor, and were conveyed in the language of the poor. But are we to respect the poor, when they wish to step out of their province, and become the teachers of the land? — when men, whose pro- per "talk is of bullocks, pretend to have wis- dom and understanding," is it not lawful to tell them they have none? An ironmonger is a very respectable man, so long as he is merely an ironmonger, — an admirable man if he is a religious ironmonger; but a great blockhead if he sets up for a bishop or a dean, and lec- tures upon theology. It is not the poor we have attacked, — but the writing poor, the pub- lishing poor, — the limited arrogance which mistakes its own trumpery sect for the world: nor have we attacked them for want of talent, but for want of modesty, want of sense, and want of true rational religion, — for every fault which Mr. John Styles defends and exemplifies. It is scarcely possible to reduce the drunken declamations of Methodism to a point, to grasp the wriggling lubricity of these cunning ani- mals, and to fix them in one position. We have said, in our review of the Methodists, that it is extremely wrong to suppose that Provi- dence interferes with special and extraordinary judgments on every trifling occasion of life : that to represent an innkeeper killed for pre- venting a Methodist meeting, or loud claps of thunder rattling along the heavens, merely to hint to Mr. Scott that he was not to preach at a particular tabernacle in Oxford-road, appear- ed to us to be blasphemous and mischievous nonsense. With great events, which change the destiny of mankind, we might suppose such interference, the discovery of which, upon ever}' trifling occasion, we considered to be pregnant with very mischievous conse- quences. To all which Mr. Styles replies, that, with Providence, nothing is great, or no- thing little, — nothing difficult, or nothing easy; that a worm and a whale are equal in the esti- mation of a Supreme Being. I3ut did any hu- man being but a Methodist, and a third or fourth rate Methodist, ever make such a reply to such an argument 1 We are not talking of what is great or important to Providence, but to us. The creation of a worm or a whale, a Newton or a Styles, are tasks equally easy to Omnipotence. But are they, in their results, equally important to us ? The lightning may as easily strike the head of the French empe- ror, as of an innocent cottager; but we are surely neither impious nor obscure, when we say, that one would be an important interfer- ence of Providence, and the other compara- tively not so. But it is a loss of time to reply to such trash; it presents no stimulus of diffi- culty to us, nor would it offer any of novelty to our readers. To our attack upon the melancholy ten- dency of Methodism, Mr. Styles replies, " that a man must have studied in the schook of Hume, 'ioltairc, and Koizebue, who can plead in be- half of the theatre ; that, at fashionable ball- rooms and assemblies, seduction is drawn out to a system ; that dancing excites the fever of the passions, and raises a delirium too often fatal to innocence and peace ; and that, for the poor, instead of the common rough amuse- ments to which they are now addicted, there remain the simple beauties of nature, the gay colours, and scented perfumes of the earth." These are the blessings which the common people have to expect from their Methodistical instructors. They are pilfered of all their money, — shut out from all their dances and country wakes, — and are then sent pennyless into the fields, to gaze on the clouds, and to smell dandelions ! Against the orthodox clergy of all descrip- tions, our sour devotee proclaims, as was to have been expected, the most implacable war, — declaring that, " in one century, they would have ohUteraied all the remaining practical reli- gion in the church, had it not been for this 7iew sect, everywhere spoken against." Undoubtedly, the distinction of mankind into godly and un- godly — if by godly is really meant those who apply religion to the extinction of bad pas- sions — would be highly desirable. But when, by that word, is only intended a sect more de- sirous of possessing the appellation than of deserving it, — when, under that term, are com- prehended thousands of canting hypocrites and raving enthusiasts — men despicable from their ignorance, and formidable from their madness, — the distinction may hereafter prove to be truly terrific ; and a dynasty of fools may again sweep away both church and state in one hideous ruin. There may be, at present, some very respectable men at the head of these maniacs, who would insanify them with some degree of prudence, and keep them only half mad, if they could. But this won't do ; Bedlam will break loose, and overpower its keepers. If the preacher sees visions, and has visitations, the clerk will come next, and then the congregation ; every man will be his own prophet, and dream dreams for himself: the competition in extravagance will be hot and lively, and the whole island a receptacle for incurables. There is, at this moment, a man in London who prays for what garments he wants, and finds them next morning in his room, tight and fitting. This man, as might be expected, gains between two and three thousand a year from the common people, by preaching. Anna, the prophetess, encamps in the woods of America, with thirteen or four- teen thousand followers, and has visits every night from the prophet Elijah. Joanna South- cote raises the dead, &c. &c. Mr. Styles will call us atheists, and disciples of the French school, for what we are about to say ; but it is our decided opinion, that there is some fraud in the prophetic visit ; and it is but too pro- bable, that the clothes are merely human, and the man measured for them in the common way. When such blasphemous deceptions are practised upon mankind, how can remon- strance be misplaced, or exposure mischiev- ous 1 If the choice rested with us, we should say, — give us back our wolves again, — restore our Danish invaders,— curse us with any evil WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. but the evil of a canting, deluded, and Metho- distical populace. Wherever Methodism ex- tends its baneful influence, the character of the English people is constantly changed by it. Boldness and rough honesty are broken down into meanness, prevarication, and fraud. While Mr. Styles is so severe upon the in- dolence of the Church, he should recollect that his Methodists are the ex-party ; that it is not in human nature, that any persons who quietly possess power can be as active as those who are pursuing it. The fair way to state the merit of the two parties is, to esti- mate what the exertions of the lachrymal and suspirious clergy would be, if they stepped into the endowments of their competitors. The moment they ceased to be paid by the groan, — the instant that Easter oflerings no longer depended upon jumping and convul- sions, — Mr. Styles may assure himself, that the character of his darling preachers would be totally changed ; their bodies would become quiet, and their minds reasonable. It is not true, as this bad writer is perpe- tually saying, that the world hates piety. That modest and unobtrusive piety which fills the heart with all human charities, and makes a man gentle to others, and severe to himself, is an object of universal love and veneration. But mankind hate the lust of power when it is veiled under the garb of piety; — they hate canting and hypocrisy ; — they hate advertisers and quacks and piety ; — they do not choose to be insulted; — they love to tear folly and im- prudence from that altar which should only be a sanctuary for the wretched and the good. Having concluded his defence of Method- ism, this fanatical writer opens upon us his Missionary battery, firing away with the most incessant fury, and calling names, all the time, as loud as lungs accustomed to the eloquence of the tub usually vociferate. In speaking of the cruelties which their religion entails upon the Hindoos, Mr. Styles is peculiarly severe upon us for not being more shocked at their piercing their limbs with kimes. This is rather an unfair mode of alarming his readers ■with the idea of some unknown instrument. He represents himself as having paid consi- derable attention to the manners and customs of the Hindoos; and, therefore, the peculiar stress he lays upon this instrument is na- turally calculated to produce, in the minds of the humane, a great degree of mysterious terror. A drawing of the liime was impe- riously called for; and the want of it is a subtle evasion, for which Mr. Styles is fairly accountable. As he has been silent on this subject, it is for us to explain the plan and nature of this terrible and unknown piece of mechanism. A kime, then, is neither more nor less than a false print in the Edinburgh Review for a knife ,■ and from this blunder of the printer has Mr. Styles manufactured this Dasdalean instrument of torture, called a kime ! We were at first nearly persuaded by his arguments against kimes ; — we grew frightened ; — we stated to ourselves the hor- ror of not sending missionaries to a nation w^hich used kimes ,- — we were struck with the nice and accurate information of the Taber- nacle upon this important subject: — but vre looked m the errata, and found Mr. Styles to be always Mr. Styles, — always cut off from every hope of mercy, and remaining for ever himself. Mr. Styles is right in saying we have abo- lished many practices of the Hindoos since the establishment of our empire ; but then we have always consulted the Brahmins, whether or not such practices were conformable to their religion ; and it is upon the authority of their condemnation that we have proceeded to abolition. To the whole of Mr. Styles's observations upon the introduction of Christianity into India, we have one short answer : — it is not Christianity which is introduced there, but the debased mummery and nonsense of Metho- dists, which has little more to do with the Christian religion than it has to do with tha religion of China. We would as soon con- sent that Brodum and Solomon should carry the medical art of Europe into India, as that Mr. Styles and his Anabaptists should give to the Eastern World their notions of our reli- gion. We send men of the highest character for the administration of justice and the re- gulation of trade, — nay, we take great pains to impress upon the minds of the natives the highest ideas of our arts and manufactures, by laying before them the finest specimens of our skill and ingenuity, — why, then, are com- mon sense and decency to be forgotten in re- ligion alone ] and so foolish a set of men allowed to engage themselves in this occupsr tion, that the natives almost instinctively duck and pelt them 1 But the missionaries, we are told, have mastered the languages of the East. They may also, for aught we know, in the Same time, have learnt perspective, astrono- my, or any thing else. What is all this to us 1 Our charge is, that they want sense, conduct, and sound religion ; and that, if they are not watched, the throat of every European in India will be cut : — the answer to which is^ that their progress in languages is truly asto nishing ! If they expose us to eminent peril, what matters it if they have every virtue under heaven 1 We are not writing disserta' tions upon the intellect of Brother Carey, bti* stating his character so far as it concerns us and caring for it no further. But these pious gentlemen care nothing about the loss of the countrj'. The plan, it seems, is this : — We are to educate India in Christianity, as a pat- rent does his child ; and, when it is perfect in its catechism, then to pack up, qujt i'. entirely, and leave it to its own management This is the evangelical project for separating; a colony from the parent country. They see nothing of the bloodshed, and massacres, and devasta- tions, nor of the speeches in parliament, squan- dered millions, fruitless expeditions, jobs and pensions, with which the loss of our Indip possessions would necessarily be accompar nied ; nor will they see that these consequences could arise from the attempt, and not from the completion, of their scheme of conversion. We should be swept from the peninsula by Par gan zealots; and should lose,among other things, all chance of ever really converting thea. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. What is the use, too, of telling us what these I men endure 1 Suffering is not a merit, but only useful suffering. Prove to us that they are fit men, doing a fit thing, and we are ready to praise the missionaries ; but it gives us no pleasure to hear that a man has walked a thousand miles with peas in his shoes, unless we know why, and wherefore, and to what good purpose he has done it. But these men, it is urged, foolish and ex- travagant as they are, may be very useful pre- cursors of the established clergy. This is much as if a regular physician should send a quack doctor before him, and say, do you go and look after this disease for a day or two, and ply the patient well with your nostrums, and then I will step in and complete the cure; a more notable expedient we have seldom heard of Its patrons forget that these self- ordained ministers, with Mr. John Styles at their head, abominate the established clergy ten thousand times more than they do Pagans, who cut themselves with cruel kimes. The eflbrts of these precursors would be directed with infinitely more zeal to make the Hindoos disbelieve in bishops, than to make them be- lieve in Christ. The darling passion in the soul of eveiy missionary is, not to teach the great leading truths of the Christian faith, but to enforce the little paltry modification and distinction which he first taught from his own tub. And then what a way of teaching Chris- tianity is this ! There are five sects, if not six, now employed as missionaries, every one in- structing the Hindoos in their own particular method of interpreting the Scriptures ; and, when these have completely succeeded, the Church of England is to step in, and convert them all over again to its own doctrines. There is, indeed, a very fine varnish of proba- bility over this ingenious andplausible scheme. Mr. John Styles, however, would much rather see a kime in the flesh of an Hindoo than the hand of a bishop on his head. The missionaries complain of intolerance. A vreasel might as well complain of intoler- ance when he is throttled for sucking eggs. Toleration for their own opinions, — toleration for their domestic worship, for their private groans and convulsions, they possess in the fullest extent; but who ever heard of tolera- tion for intolerance? Who ever before heard men cry out that they were persecuted, be- cause they might not insult the religion, shock the feelings, irritate the passions of their fel- low-creatures, and throw a whole colony into bloodshed and confusion? We did not say that a man was not an object of pity who tormented himself from a sense of duty, but that he was not so great an object of pity as one equally tormented by the tyranny of an- other, and without any sense of duty to sup- port him. Let Mr. Styles first inflict forty lashes upon himself, then let him allow an " Edinburgh Reviewer to give him forty more, — he will find no comparison between the two flagellations. These men talk of the loss of our posses- sions in India, as if it made the argument against them only more or less strong ; where- a.s, in our estimation, it makes the argument against them conclusive, and shuts up the case. Two men possess a cow, and they quar- rel violently how they shall manage this cow. They will surely both of them (if they have a particle of common sense) agree, that there is an absolute necessity for preventing the cow from ninning away. It is not only the loss of India that is in question, — but how will it be lost 1 By the massacre of ten or twenty thousand English, by the blood of our sons and brothers, who have been toiling so many years to return to their native country-. But what is all this to a ferocious Methodist! What care brothers Barrel and Ringletub for us and our colonies 1 If it were possible to invent a method by which a few men sent from a distant cotintry could hold such masses of people as the Hin- doos in subjection, that method wottld be the institution of castes. There is no institution which can so effectually curb the ambition of genius, reconcile the individual more com- pletely to his station, and reduce the varieties of human character to such a state of insipid and monotonous tameness ; and yet the re- ligidn which destroys castes is said to render our empire in India more certain ! It may be our duty to make the Hindoos Christians, — that is another argument : but, that we shall by so doing strengthen our empire, we utterly deny. What signifies identity of religion to a question of this kindl Diversity of bodily colour and of language would soon overpower this consideration. Make the Hindoos enter- prising, active, and reasonable as yourselves, — destroy the eternal track in which they have moved for ages — and, in a moment, they would sweep you off the face of the earth. Let us ask, too, if the Bible is universally diffused in Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal ; — we whg^ in fifty years, have extended our empire from a few acres about Madras over the whole peninsula, and sixty millions of people, and exemplified in our public conduct every crime of which hu- man nature is capable. What matchless im- pudence to follow up such practice with such precepts ! If we have common prudence, let us keep the gospel at home, and tell them that Machiavel is our prophet, and the god of the Manicheans our god. There is nothing which disgusts us more than the familiarity which these impious cox- combs affect with the ways and designs of Pro- vidence. Every man, now-a-days, is an Amos or a Malachi. One rushes out of his chambers, and tells us we are beaten by the French, be- cause we do not abolish the slave trade. An- other assures us, that we have no chance of victor)^ till India is evangelized. The new Christians are now come to speak of the ways of their Creator with as much confidence as they would of the plans of an earthly ruler. We remember when the ways of God to man were gazed upon with trembling humility, — when they were called inscrutable, — when piety looked to another scene of existence for the true explanation of this ambiguous and distressing world. We were taught in our childhood that this was true religion; but it WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 69 tarns out now to be nothing but atheism and infidelity. If any thing could surprise us from the pen of a Methodist, we should be truly sur- prised at the very irreligious and presump- tuous answer which Mr. Styles makes to some of our arguments. Our title to one of the an- ecdotes from the Methodist Magazine is as follows: — "A sinner punished — a Bee the in- strument," to which Mr. Styles replies, that we might as well ridicule the Scriptures, by re- lating their contents in the same ludicrous manner. An interference with respect to a tra- velling Jew,- blindness the consequence. Acts, the ninth chapter, and first nine verses. The account of Paul's conversion, Sfc. c^-c. <^c. page 38. But does Mr. Styles forget that the one is a shameless falsehood, introduced to sell a two- penny book, and the other a miracle recorded by inspired writers ] In the same manner, when we express our surprise that sixty mil- lions of Hindoos should be converted by four men and sixteen guineas, he asks, what would have become of Christianity if the twelve Apostles had argued in the same way'? It is impossible to make this infatuated gentleman understand that the lies of the Evangelical Magazine are not the miracles of Scripture; and that the Baptist Missionaries are not the Apostles. He seriously expects that we should speak of Brother Carey as we would speak of St. Paul; and treat with an equal respect the miracles of the Magazine and the Gospel. Mr. Styles knows very well that we have never said, because a nation has present hap- piness, that it can therefore dispense with im- mortal happiness ; but we have said that, where of two nations both cannot be made Christians, it is more the duty of a missionary to convert the one, which is exposed to every evil of bar- barism, than the other possessing every bless- ing of civilization. Our argument is merely comparative : Mr. Styles must have known it to be so: — but who does not love the Taber- nacle better than truth 1 When the tenacity of the Hindoos on the subject of their religion is adduced as a reason against the success of the missions, the friends of this understanding are always fond of reminding us how patiently the Hindoos submitted to the religious perse- cutions and butchery of Tippoo. The infer- ence from such citations is truly alarming. It is the imperious duty of Government to watch some of these men most narrowly. — There is nothing of which they are not capa- ble. And what, after all, did Tippoo effect in the way of conversion 1 How many Mahome- dans did he makel There was all the car- nage of Medea's Kettle, and none of the trans- formation. He deprived multitudes of Hindoos of their caste, indeed; and cut them off from all the benefits of their religion. That he did, and we may do, by violence; but, did he make Mahomedansi — or shall we make Christians T This, however, it seems, is a matter of plea- santry. To make a poor Hindoo hateful to himself and his kindred, and to fix a curse upon him to the end of his days ! — we have no doubt but that this is very entertaining; and particularly to the friends of toleration. But our ideas of comedy have been formed in another school. We are dull enough to think, too, that it is more innocent to exile pigs than to offend conscience, and destroy human hap- piness. The scheme of baptizing with beef iDroth is about as brutal and preposterous as the assertion that you may vilify the gods and, priests of the Hindoos with safety, provided] you do not meddle with their turbans and toupees, (which are cherished solely on a principle of religion,) is silly and coiitemptible. After all, if the Mahomedan did persecute the Hindoo with impunity, is that any precedent of safety to a government that offends every feeling both of Mahomedan and Hindoo at the same timel You have a tiger and a buffalo in the same enclosure; and the tiger drives the buffalo before him ; — is it therefore prudent, in you to do that which will irritate them both,' and bring their united strength upon you? In answer to the low malignity of this au- thor, we have only to reply, that we are, as we always have been, sincere friends to the con- version of the Hindoos. We admit the Hin- doo religion to be full of follies, and full of enormities; — we think conversion a great duty ; and should think, if it could be effected, a great blessing; but our opinion of the mis- sionaries and of their employer is such, that we most firmly believe, in less than twenty years, for the conversion of a few degraded wretches, who would be neither Methodists nor Hindoos, they would infallibly produce the massacre of every European in India;* the loss of our settlements ; and, consequently, of the chance of that slow, solid, and temperate introduction of Christianity, which the supe- riority of the European character may ulti- mately effect in the Eastern world. The Board of Control (all Atheists, and disciples of Vol- taire, of course) are so entirely of our way of thinking, that the most peremptory orders have been issued to send all the missionaries home upon the slightest appearance of disturbance. Those who have sons and brothers in India may now sleep in peace. Upon the transmis- sion of this order, Mr. Styles is said to have destroyed himself with a kime. ♦Every opponent says of Major Scott's book, "What a dangerous book! the arrival of it at Calcutta may throw the whole Indian empire into confusion ;" and yet these are the people whose religious prejudices may bo insulted with impunity. 70 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, HANNAH MOEE. [Edinburgh Review, 1809.] This book is written, or supposed to be writ- ten, (for we would speak timidly of the mys- teries of superior beings,) by the celebrated Mrs. Hannah More ! We shall probably give great offence by such indiscretion; but still we must be excused for treating it as a book merely human, — an uninspired production, — the result of mortality left to itself, and de- pending on its own limited resources. In tak- ing up the subject in this point of view, we so- lemnly disclaim the slightest intention of in- dulging in any indecorous levity, or of wound- ing the religious feelings of a large class of very respectable persons. It is the only method in which we can possibly make this work a pro- per object of criticism. We have the strong- est possible doubts of the attributes usually ascribed to this authoress; and we think it more simple and manly to say so at once, than to admit nominally superlunary claims, which, in the progress of our remarks, we should vir- tually deny. Coelebs wants a wife: and, after the death ©f his father, quits his estate in Northumber- land to see the world, and to seek for one of its best productions, a woman, who may add materially to the happiness of his future life. His first journey is to London, where, in the midst of the gay society of the metropolis, of course, he does not find a wife; and his next journey is to the family of Mr. Stanley, the head of the Methodists, a serious people, where, of course, he does find a wife. The exaltation, therefore, of what the authoress deems to be the religious, and the depreciation of what she considers to be the worldly character, and the influence of both upon matrimonial happiness, form the subject of this novel, — rather of this dramatic sermon. The machinery upon which the discourse is suspended is of the slightest and most inarti- ficial texture, bearing every mark of liaste, and possessing not the slightest claim to merit. Events there are none ; and scarcely a charac- ter of any interest. The book is intended to convey religious advice; and no more labour' appears to have been bestowed upon the story, than was merely sufficient to throw it out of the dry, didactic form. Lucilla is totally un- interesting; so is Mr. Stanley; Dr. Barlow still worse; and Coelebs a mere clod or dolt. Sir John and Lady Belfield are rather more inte- resting — and for a very obvious reason: they have some faults; they put us in mind of men and women ; they seem to belong to one com- mon nature with ourselves. As we read, we seem to think we might act as such people act, and therefore we attend; whereas imita- * C(rJebs in Search nf a Wife ; comprehending Oiserva- tions on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Mo- rals. 2 vols. London, 1809. tion is hopeless in the more perfect characters which Mrs. More has set before us; and therefore they inspire us with very little inte- rest. There are books, however, of all kinds ; and those may not be unwisely planned which set before us very pure models. They are less probable, and therefore less amusing, than or- dinary stories; but they are more amusing than plain, unfabled precept. Sir Charles Grandison is less agreeable than Tom Jones; but it is more agreeable than Sherlock and Tillotson; and teaches religion and morality to many who would not seek it in the produc- tions of these professional writers. But, making every' allowance for the diffi- culty of the task which Mrs. More has pre- scribed to herself, the book abounds with marks of negligence and want of skill ; with repre- sentations of life and manners which are either false or trite. Temples to friendship and virtue must be totally laid aside, for many years to come, in novels. Mr. Lane, of the Minerva Press, has given them up long since; and we were quite surprised to find such a writer as Mrs. More busied in moral brick and mortar. Such an idea, at first, was merely juvenile; the second time, a little nauseous; but the ten thousandth time it is quite intolerable. Coelebs, upon his first arrival in London, dines out, — meets with a bad dinner, — supposes the cause of that bad dinner to be the erudition of the ladies of the house, — talks to them upon learned subjects, and finds them as dull and ignorant as if they had piqued themselves upon all the mysteries of housewifery. We humbly submit to Mrs. More, that this is not humorous, but strained and unnatural. Philippics against frugivo- rous children after dinner are too common. Lady Melbur}' has been introduced into every novel for these four years last past. Peace to her ashes ! The characters in this novel which evince the greatest skill are unquestionably those of Mrs. Ranby and her daughters. There are some scenes in this part of the book extremely well painted, and which evince that Mrs. More could amuse, in no common degree, if amuse- ment was her object. "At tea I found the young ladies took no more interest in the conversation than they had done at dinner, but sat whispering and laughing, and netting white silk gloves, till they were summoned to the harpsichord. Despairing of getting on with them in com pany, I proposed a walk in the garden. I now found them as willing to talk as destitute of any thing to say. Their conversation was vapid and frivolous. They laid great stress on small things. They seemed to have no shades in their understanding, but used the WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 71 strongest terms for the commonest occasions ; and admiration was excited by tilings hardly worthy to command attention. They were extremely glad and extremely sorry on sub- jects not calculated to excite affections of any kind. They were animated about trifles, and indifferent on things of importance. They were, I must confess, frank and good-na- tured ; but it was evident that, as they were too open to have any thing to conceal, so they were too uninformed to have any thing to produce; and I was resolved not to risk my happiness with a woman who could not contribute her full share towards spending a wet winter cheerfully in the country." — (I. 54, 55.) This trait of character appears to us to be very good. The following passage is still better. "In the evening, Mrs. Ranby was lamenting in general, in rather customary terms, her own exceeding sinfulness. Mr. Ranby said, ' You accuse yourself rather too heavily, my dear; you have sins to be sure.' ' And pray what sins have I, Mr. Ranby V said she, turning upon him with so much quickness that the poor man started. ' Nay,' said he, meekly, ' I did not mean to offend you ; so far from it, that, hearing you condemn yourself so grievously, I intended to comfort you, and to say that, except a few faults ' ' And pray what faults V interrupted she, continuing to speak, however, lest he should catch an interval to tell them. ' I defy you, Mr. Ranby, to produce one.' ' My dear,' replied he, ' as you charged yourself with all, I thought it would be letting you off cheaply, by naming only two or three, such as ' Here, fearing matters would go too far, I interposed ; and, softening things as much as I could for the lady, said, ' I con- ceived that Mr. Ranby meant, that though she partook of the general corruption ' Here Ranby, interrupting me with more spirit than I thought he possessed, said, ' General corrup- tion, sir, must be the source of particular cor- ruption. I did not mean that my wife was worse 'han other women.' — ' Worse, Mr. Ranby, worse 1' cried she. Ranby, for the first time in his life, not minding her, went on, 'As she is always insisting that the whole species is corrupt, she cannot help allowing that she herself has not quite escaped the infec- tion. Now, to be a sinner in the gross, and a saint in the detail — that is, to have all sins, and no faults — is a thing I do not quite com- prehend.' « After he had left the room, which he did as the shortest way of allaying the storm, she, apologizing for him, said, 'he was a well- meaning man, and acted up to the little light he had ;' but added, ' that he was unacquainted with religious feelings, and knew little of the nature of conversion.' " Mrs. Ranby, I found, seems to consider Christianity as a kind of free-masonry; and therefore thinks it superfluous to speak on serious subjects to any but the initiated. If they do not return the sign, she gives them up as blind and dead. She thinks she can only make herself intelligible to those to whom certain peculiar phrases are familiar: and though her friends may be correct, devout, and both doctrinally and practically pious ; yet, if they cannot catch a certain mystic meaning, — if there is not a sympathy of intelligence between her and them, — if they do not fully conceive of impressions, and cannot respond to mysterious communications, she holds them unworthy of intercourse with her. She does not so much insist on high moral excellence as the criterion of their worth, as on their own account of their internal feelings." — (I. 60—63.) The great object kept in view, throughout the whole of this introduction, is the enforce- ment of religious principle, and the condemna- tion of a life lavished in dissipation and fashionable amusement. In the pursuit of this object, it appears to us that Mrs. More is much too severe upon the ordinary amusements of mankind, many of which she does not object to in this or that degree, but altogether. Coelebs and Lucilla, her opfimus and optima, never dance, and never go to the play. They not only stay away from the comedies of Congreve and Farquhar, for which they may easily enough be forgiven ; but they never go to see Mrs. Siddons in the Gamester, or in Jane Shore. The finest exhibition of talent, and the most beautiful moral lessons, are in- terdicted at the theatre. There is something in the word Playhouse which seems so closely connected, in the minds of these people, with sin and Satan, — that it stands in their vocabu- lary for every species of abomination. And yet why? Where is every feeling more roused in favour of virtue than at a good play? Where is goodness so feelingly, so enthusias- tically learnt 1 What so solemn as to see the excellent passions of the human heart called forth by a great actor, animated by a great poet 1 To hear Siddons repeat what Shakspeare wrote 1 To behold the child and his mother — the noble and the poor artisan — the monarch and his subjects — all ages and all ranks convulsed with one common passion — wrung with one common anguish, and, with loud sobs and cries, doing involuntary homage to the God that made their hearts ! What wretched infa- tuation to inter(jlict such amusements as these I What a blessing that mankind can be allure(?. from sensual gratification, and find relaxation and pleasure in such pursuits ! But the excel- lent Mr. Stanley is uniformly paltry and nar- row, — always trembling at the idea of being entertained, and thinking no Christian safe M'ho is not dull. As to the spectacles of im- propriety which are sometimes witnessed in parts of the theatre, such reasons apply, in a much stronger degree, to not driving along the Strand, or any of the great public streets of London, after dark; and, if the virtue of well- educated young persons is made of such very frail materials, their best resource is a nun nery at once. It is a very bad rule, however, never to quit the house for fear of catching cold. Mrs. More practically extends the same doctrine to cards and assemblies. No cards — because cards are employed in gaming; no assemblies — because many dissipated persons 7S WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. pass their lives in assemblies. Carry this but a little further, and vre must say, no wine — because of drunkenness ; no meat — because of gluttony; no use, that there may be no abuse ! The fact is, that Mr. Stanley wants, not only to be religious, but to be at the head of the religious. These little abstinences are the cockades by which the party are known, — the rallying points for the evangelical faction. So natural is the love of power, that it some- times becomes the influencing motive with the sincere advocates of that blessed religion whose very characteristic excellence is the humility which it inculcates. We observe that Mrs. More, in one part of her work, falls into the common error about dress. She first blames ladies for exposing their persons in the present style of dress, and then says, if they knew their own interest, — if they Avere aware how much more alluring they were to men when their charms are less displayed, they would make the desired altera- tion from motives merely selfish. " Oh ! if women in general knew what was their real interest, if they could guess with what a charm even the uppearmice of modesty invests its possessor, they would dress deco- rously from mere self-love, if not from prin- ciple. The designing would assume modesty as an artifice ; the coquette would adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate attraction ; and the voluptuous as the most infallible art of seduction." — (I. 189.) If there is any truth in this passage, nudity becomes a virtue ; and no decent woman, for the future, can be seen in garments. We have a few more of Mrs. More's opinions to notice. — It is not fair to attack the religion of the times, because, in large and indiscri- minate parties, religion does not become the subject of conversation. Conversation must and ought to grow out of materials on which men can agree, not upon subjects which try the passions. But this good lady wants to see men chatting togetlier upon the Pelagian heresy — to hear, in the afternoon, the theolo- gical rumours of the day — and to glean pole- mical tittle-tattle at a tea-table rout. All the disciples of this school uniformly fall into the same mistake. They are perpetually calling upon their votaries for religious thoughts and religious conversation in every thing ; inviting I them to ride, walk, row, wrestle, and dine out I religiously ; — forgetting that the being to whom this impossible purity is recommended, is a being compelled to scramble for his existence ! and support for ten hours out of the sixteen he is awake ; — forgettmg that he must dig, beg, read, think, move, pay, receive, praise, scold, command, and obey ; — forgetting, also, that if men conversed as often upon religious subjects as they do upon the ordinary occurrences of the world, thej^ would converse upon them with the same familiarity and want of respect, — that religion would then produce feelings not more solemn or exalted than any other topics which constitute at present the common furni- ture of human understandings. We are glad to find in this work some strong compliments to the efficacy of works, — some distinct admissions that it is necessary to be honest and just, before we can be considered as religious. Such sort of concessions are very gratifying to us ; but how will they be received by the children of the Tabernacle 7 It is quite clear, indeed, throughout the whole of the work, that an apologetical explanation of certain religious opinions is intended; and there is a considerable abatement of that tone of insolence with whicli the improved Chris- tians are apt to tieat the bungling specimens of piety to be met with in the more ancient churches. So much for the extravagances of this lady. — With equal sincerity, and with greater plea- sure, we bear testimony to her talents, her good sense, and her real piety. There occur every now and then, in her productions, very original, and very profound observations. Her advice is very often characterized by the most amiable good sense, and conveyed in the most brilliant and inviting style. If, instead of belonging to a trumpery faction, she had only Avatched over those great points of religion in which the hearts of every sect of Christians are interest- ed, she would have been one of the most useful and valuable writers of her Aay. As it is, every man would wish his wife and his children to read Calebs ,- — watching himself its effects ; — separating the piety from the puerility ; — and showing that it is very possible to be a good Christian, without degrading the human understanding to the trash and folly of Me- thodism. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION.* [Edinbukgh Review, 1809.] There ar<" two questions to be asked respect- ing every new publication. Is it worth bu3'ing 1 Is it worth borrowing] and we would advise our readers to weigh diligently the importance of these interrogations, before they take any decided step as to this work of Mr. Edgeworth ; the more especially as the name carries with it considerable authority, and seems, in the estimation of the unwary, almost to include the idea of purchase. For our own part, we would rather decline giving a direct answer to these questions; and shall content ourselves for the present with making a few such slight observations as may enable the sagacious to conjecture what our direct answer would be ■were we compelled to be more e.vplicit. One great and signal praise we think to be the eminent due of Mr. Edgeworth: in a cant- ing age, he does not cant; — at a period when hypocrisy and fanaticism will almost certainly insure the success of any publication, he has constantly disdained to have recourse to any such arts; — without ever having been accused of disloyalty or irreligion, he is not always harping upon Church and King, in order to catch at a little popularity, and sell his books; — he is manly, independent, liberal — and main- tains enlightened opinions with discretion and honesty. There is also in this work of Mr. Edgeworth an agreeable diffusion of anecdote and example, such as a man acquires M'ho reads with a view to talking or writing. With these merits, we cannot say that Mr. Edgeworth is either very new, very profound, or very apt to be right in his opinion. He is active, enter- prising, and unprejudiced ; but we have not been very much instructed by what he has ■written, or always satisfied that he has got to the bottom of his subject. On one subject, however, we cordially agree with this gentleman ; and return him our thanks for the courage with which he has combated the excessive abuse of classical learning in England. It is a subject upon which we have long wished for an opportunity of saying something; and one which we consider to be of the very highest importance. "The principal defect," says Mr. Edgeworth, "in the present system of our great schools is, that they devote too large a portion of time to Latin and Greek. It is true, that the attainment of classical literature is highly desirable ; but it should not, or rather it need not, be the ex- clusive object of boys during eight or nine years. " Much less time, judiciously managed, would give them an acquaintance with the classics sufficient for all useful purposes, and would make them as good scholars as gentlemen or f * Essays on Professional Education. By R. I,. Edge- WOETH, Esq., F. R. S., &c. London, 1809. 10 professional men need to be. It is not requi- site that every man should make Latin or Greek verses ; therefore, a knowledge of pro- sody beyond the structure of hexameter and pentameter verses, is as worthless an acquisi- tion as any which folly or fashion has intro- duced amongst the higher classes of mankind. It must indeed be acknowledged that there are some rare exceptions ; but even party prejudice would allow, that the persons alluded to must have risen to eminence though they had never written sapphics or iambics. Though precep- tors, parents, and the public in general, may be convinced of the absurdity of making boys spend so much of life in learning what can be of no use to them ; such are the difficulties of making any change in the ancient rules of great establishments, that masters themselves, however reasonable, dare not, and cannot make sudden alterations. "The only remedies that can be suggested might be, perhaps, to take those boys, who are not intended for professions in which deep scholarship is necessary, away from school before they reach the highest classes, where prosody and Greek and Latin verses are required. " In the college of Dublin, where an admira- ble course of instruction has been long esta- blished, where this course is superintended by men of acknowledged learning and abilities, and pursued by students of unco.mmon in- dustry, such is the force of example, and such the fear of appearing inferior in tritles to En- glish universities, that much pains have been lately taken to introduce the practice of writ- ing Greek and Latin verses, and much solici- tude has been shown about the prosody of the learned languages, without any attention being paid to the prosody of our own. "Boarding-houses for the scholars at Eton and Westminster, which are at present mere lodging houses, might be kept by private tutors, who might, during the hours when the boys were not in their public classes, assist them in acquiring general literature, or such know- ledge as might be advantageous for their re- spective professions. " New schools, that are not restricted to any established routine, should give a fair trial to experiments in education, which afford a ra- tional prospect of success. If nothing can be altered in the old schools, leave them as they are. Destroy nothing — injure none — but let the public try whether they cannot have some- thing better. If the experiment do not suc- ceed, the public will be convinced that they ought to acquiesce in the established methods of instruction, and parents will send their children to the ancient seminaries with in- creased confidence." — (p. 47 — 49.) We are well aware that nothing very ntvf G H WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. can remain to be said upon a topic so often j debated. The complaints we have to malce . are at least as old as the time of Locke and | Dr. Samuel Clarke; and the evil which is the | subject of these complaints has certainly 1 rather increased than diminished since the j period of those two great men. An hundred years, to be sure, is a very little time for the duration of a national error; and it is so far from being reasonable to look for its decay at so short a date, that it can hardly be expected, within such limits, to have displayed the full bloom of its imbecility. There are several feelings to which attention must be paid, before the question of classical learning can be fairly and temperately dis- cussed. We are apt, in the first place, to remember the immense benefits which the study of the classics once conferred on mankind; and to feel for those models on which the taste of Europe has been formed, something like senti- ments of gratitude and obligation. This is all well enough, so long as it continues to be a mere feeling; but, as soon as it interferes with action, it nourishes dangerous prejudices about education. Nothing will do in the pursuit of knowledge but the blackest ingratitude; the moment we have got up the ladder we must kick it down; — as soon as we have passed over the bridge, we must let it rot; — when we have got upon the shoulders of the ancients, we must look over their heads. The man who forgets the friends of his childhood in real life, is base: but he who clings to the props of his childhood in literature, must be content to re- main as ignorant as he was when a child. His business is to forget, disown, and deny — to think himself above every thing which has been of use to him in time past — and to culti- vate that exclusively from which he expects future advantage : in short, to do every thing for the advancement of his knowledge which it would be infamous to do for the advancement of his fortune. If manlcind still derive advan- tage from classical literature proportionate to the labour they bestow upon it, let their labour and their study proceed; but the moment we cease to read Latin and Greek for the solid utility we derive from them, it would be a very romantic application of human talents to do so from any feeling of gratitude, and recollection of past service. To almost every Englishman up to the age of three or four and twenty, classical learning has been the great object of existence ; and no man is very apt to suspect, or very much pleased to hear, that what he has done for so long a time was not worth doing. His clas- sical literature, too, reminds every man of the scenes of his childhood, and brings to his fancy several of the most pleasing associations which we are capable of forming. A certain sort of vanity, also, very naturally grows among men occupied in a common pursuit. Classical quotations are the watchwords of scholars, by which they distinguish each other from the ignorant and illiterate; and Greek and Latin are insensibly become almost the only test of a cultivated mind. Some men through indolence, others through ignorance, and most through necessity, submit to the established education of the times ; and seek for their children that species of distinc- tion which happens, at the period in which they live, to be stamped with the approbation of mankind. This mere question of conve- nience every parent must determine for him- self. A poor man, who has his fortune to gain, must be a quibbling theologian, or a classical pedant, as fashion dictates ; and he must vary his error with the error of the times. But it would be much more fortunate for man- kind, if the public opinion, which regulates the pursuits of individuals, were more wise and enlightened than it at present is. All these considerations make it extremely difficult to procure a candid hearing on this question; and to refer this branch of educa- tion to the only proper criterion of every branch of education — its utility in future life. There are two questions which grow out of this subject: 1st, How far is any sort of clas- sical education useful 1 2d, How far is that particular classical education adopted in this country useful ] Latin and Greek are, in the first place, use- ful, as they inure children to intellectual diffi- culties, and make the life of a young student what it ought to be, a life of considerable labour. We do not, of course, mean to con- fine this praise exclusively to the study of Latin and Greek; or to suppose that other difficulties might not be found which it would be useful to overcome : but though Latin and Greek have this merit in common with many arts and sciences., still they have it ; and, if they do nothing else, they at least secure a solid and vigorous application at a period of life which materially influences all other pe- riods. To go through the grammar of one language thoroughly is of great use for the mastery of every other grammar; because there obtains, through all languages, a certain analogy to each other in their grammatical construction. Latin and Greek have now mixed themselves etymologically with all the languages of mo- dern Europe — and with none more than our own ; so that it is necessary to read these two tongues for other objects than themselves. The two ancient languages are, as mere in- ventions — as pieces of mechanism — incompa- rably more beautiful than any of the modern languages of Europe : their mode of signifying time and case by terminations, instead of aux- iliary verbs and participles, would of itself stamp their superiority. Add to this, the co- piousness of the Greek language, with the fancy, majesty, and harmony of its com- pounds ; and there are quite sufficient reasons why the classics should be studied for the beauties of language. Compared to them, merely as vehicles of thought and passion, all modern languages are dull, ill-contrived, and barbarous. That a great part of the Scriptures has come down to us in the Greek language, is of itself a reason, if all others were wanting, why education should be planned so as to produce a supply of Greek scholars. The cultivation of style is very justly made WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 75 a part of education. Every thing which is written is meant either to please or to instruct. The second object it is difficult to effect, with- out attending to the first; and the cultivation of style is the acquisition of those rules and literary habits which sagacity anticipates, or experience shows to be the most effectual means of pleasing. Those works are the best which have longest stood the test of time, and pleased the greatest numbers of exercised minds. Whatever, therefore, our conjectures may be, we cannot be so sure that the best modern writers can afford us as good models as the ancients;— we cannot be certain that they will live through the revolutions of the world, and continue to please in every climate — under every species of government — through every stage of civilization. The moderns have been well taught by their masters ; but the time is hardly yet come when the necessity for such instruction no longer exists. We may still borrow descriptive power from Ta- citus ; dignified perspicuity from Livy ; simpli- city from Csesar ; and from Homer some por- tion of that light and heat which, dispersed into ten thousand channels, has filled the world with bright images and illustrious thoughts. Let the cultivator of modern literature addict himself to the purest models of taste which France, Italy, and England could supply, he might still learn from Virgil to be majestic, and from TibuUus to be tender; he might not yet look upon the face of nature as Theocritus saw it; nor might he reach those springs of pathos with which Euripides softened the hearts of his audience. In short, it appears to us, that there are so many excellent reasons why a certain number of scholars should be kept up in this and in every civilized country, that we should consider every system of edu- cation from which classical education was excluded, as radically erroneous and com- pletely absurd. That vast advantages, then, may be derived from classical learning, there can be no doubt. The advantages which are derived from clas- sical learning by the English manner of teach- ing, involve anbther and a very different ques- tion ; and we will venture to say, that there never was a more complete instance in any country of such extravagant and overacted attachment to any branch of knowledge as that which ob- tains in this country with regard to classical knowledge. A young Englishman goes to school at six or seven years old; and he re- mains in a course of education till twenty-three or twenty-four years of age. In all that time, his sole and exclusive occupation is learning Latin and Greek :* he has scarcely a notion that there is any other kind of excellence; and the great system of facts with which he is the most perfectly acquainted, are the intrigues of the heathen gods : with whom Pan slept ? — with whom Jupiter? — whom Apollo ravished? These facts the English youth get by heart the moment they quit the nursery; and are most sedulously and industriously instructed in them till the best and most active part of life * Unless he goes to the University of Cambridge ; and then classics occupy him entirely ifbr about ten years; and divide bim with matheaiatics for four or five more. is passed away. Now, thts long career of classical learning, we may, if we please, de- nominate a foundation; but it is a foundation so far above ground, that there is absolutely no room to put any thing upon it. If you occupy a man with one thing till he is twenty- four years of age, you have exhausted all his leisure time : he is called into the world, and compelled to act; or is surrounded with plea- sures, and thinks and reads no more. If you have neglected to put other things in him, they will never get in afterwards ; — if you have fed him only with words, he will remain a narrow and limited being to the end of his existence. The bias given to men's minds is so strong, that it is no uncommon thing to meet with Englishmen, whom, but for their gray hairs and wrinkles, we might easily mistake for schoolboys. Their talk is of Latin verses ; and it is quite clear, if men's ages are to be dated from the state of their mental progress, that such men are eighteen years of age, and not a day older. Their minds have been so completely possessed by exaggerated notions of classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness. Attend, too, to the public feelings — look to all the terms of applause. A learned man ! — a scholar ! — a man of erudition ! Upon whom are these epi- thets of approbation bestowed! Are they given to men acquainted with the science of government! thoroughly masters of the geo- graphical and commercial relations of Europe ? to men who know the properties of bodies, and their action upon each other 1 No : this is not learning: it is chemistry, or political economy — not learning. The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet of Scholar, is reserved for him who writes on the (Eolic reduplication, and is familiar with the Sylburgian method of arranging defectives in a> and /xi. The picture which a young Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of knowledge, draws — his beau ideal of human nature — his top and consummation of man's powers — is a knowledge of the Greek language. His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate, de- cline, and derive. The situations of imagina- ry glory which he draws for himself, are the detection of an anaprest in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti failed to observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet the greatest chemist or the greatest mechanician, or the most profound political economist of his time, in company with the greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between them ever come across his mind! — would he ever dream that such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were equal in dignity of understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley and Heyne ! We are inclined to think, that the feeling excited would be a good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the praises of the great King of Prussia, who entertained considerable doubts whether the king, with all his victories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in /ut. Another misfortune of classical learning, a.% taught ia England, is, that scholars have come 76 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. in process of time, and from the effects of asso- ciation, to love the instrument better than the end; — not the luxury which the ditficulty en- closes, but the difficulty; — not the filbert, but the shell ; — not what may be read in Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who has mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, as he who displays his know- ledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is conveyed. The glory is to show I am a scho- lar. The good sense and ingenuity I may gain by my acquaintance with ancient authors is matter of opinion ; but if I bestow an immen- sity of pains upon a point of accent or quan- tity, this is something positive ; I establish my pretensions to the name of scholar, and gain the credit of learning, while I sacrifice all its utility. Another evil in the present system of classi- cal education is the extraordinary perfection which is aimed at in teaching those languages ; a needless perfection; an accuracy which is sought for in nothing else. There are few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or nineteen at a public school, without making above ten thousand Latin verses ; — a greater number than is contained in the JFlneid: and after he has made this quantity of verses in a dead language, unless the poet should happen to be a very weak man indeed, he never makes another as long as he lives. It may be urged, and it is urged, that this is of use in teaching the delicacies of the language. No doubt it is of use for this purpose, if we put out of view the immense time and trouble sacrificed in gaining these little delicacies. It would be of use that we should go on till fifty years of age making Latin verses, if the price of a whole life were not too much to pay for it. We effect our object ; but we do it at the price of something greater than our object. And whence comes it, that the expenditure of life and labour is totally put out of the calculation, when Latin and Greek are to be attained ] In every other occupation, the question is fairly stated between the attainment, and the time employed in the pursuit ; — but, in classical learning, it seems to be sufficient if the least possible good is gained by the greatest possible exertion ; if the end is any thing, and the means every thing. It is of some importance to speak and write French ; and innumerable delicacies would be gained by writing ten thousand French verses : but it makes no part of our education to write French poetry. It is of some importance that there should be good botanists ; but no botanist can repeat, by heart, the na.mes of all the plants in the known world ; nor is any astronomer acquainted with the appellation and magnitude of every star in the map of the heavens. The only department of human knowledge in which there can be no excess, no arithmetic, no balance of profit and loss, is classical learning. The prodigious honour in which Latin verses are held at public schools, is surely the most absurd of all absurd distinctions. You rest all reputation upon doing that which is a natural gift, and which no labour can attain. If a lad won't learn the words of a language, his de- gradation in the school is a very natural pun- ishment for his disobedience, or his indolence; but it would be as reasonable to expect that all boys should be witty, or beautiful, as that they should be poets. In either case, it would be to make an accidental, unattainable, and not a very important gift of nature, the only, or the principal, test of merit. This is the reason why boys, who make a very considerable figure at school, so very often make no figure in the world ; — and why other lads, who are passed over without notice, turn out to be va- luable, important men. The test established in the world is widely different from that esta- blished in a place which is presumed to be a preparation for the world; and the head of a public school, who is a perfect miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself shrink into ab- solute insignificance, because he has nothing else to command respect or regard, but a talent for fugitive poetry in a dead language. The present state of classical education cul- tivates the imagination a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great deal too little- and trains up many young men in a style of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which nature has endowed them. It may be said, there are profound investiga- tions, and subjects quite powerful enough for any understanding, to be met with in classical literature. So there are; but no man likes to add the difliculties of a language to the dilfi- culties of a subject; and to study metaphysics, morals, and politics in Greek, when the Greek alone is study enough without them. In all foreign languages, the most popular works are works of imagination. Even in the French language, which we know so well, for one serious work which has any currency in this country, we have twenty which are mere works of imagination. This is still more true in classical literature; because what their poets and orators have left us, is of infinitely greater value than the remains of their philosophy ; for, as society advances, men think more ac- curately and deeply, and imagine more tamely; works of reasoning advance, and works of fancy decay. So that the matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or twenty- four years of age, is a man principally conver- sant with the works of imagination. His feel- ings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste good. Talents for speculation and original inquiry he has none ; nor has he formed the invaluable habit of pushing things up to their first principles, or of collecting dry and un- amusing facts as the materials of reasoning. All the solid and masculine parts of his under- standing are left wholly without cultivation; he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man whose boldness and originality call upon him to defend his opinions and prove his assertions. A very curious argument is sometimes em- ployed in justification of the learned minutias to which all young men are doomed, whatever be their propensities in future life. What are you to do with a young man up to the age of se- venteen 1 Just as if there was such a want of difficulties to overcome, and of important tastes to inspire, that from the mere necessity of doing something, and the impossibility of! WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 77 doing any thing else, you were driven to the expedient of metre and poetry; — as if a young man within that period might not acquire the modern languages, modern history, experimen- tal philosophy, geography, chronology, and a considerable share of mathematics ; — as if the memory of things was not more agreeable and more profitable than the memory of words. The great objection is, that we are not mak- ing the most of human life, when we consti- tute such an extensive, and such minute clas- sical erudition, an indispensable article in education. Up to a certain point we would educate every young man in Latin and Greek ; but to a point far short of that to which this species of education is now carried. After- wards, we would grant to classical erudition as high honours as to every other department of knowledge, but not higher. We would place it upon a footing with many other objects of study ; but allow it no superiority. Good scholars would be as certainly produced by these means as good chemists, astronomers, and mathematicians are now produced, with- out any direct provision whatsoever for their production. Why are we to trust to the diver- sity of human tastes, and the varieties of human ambition in every thing else, and distrust it in classics alone"! The passion for language is just as strong as any other literary passion. There are very good Persian and Arabic scholars in this country. Large heaps of trash have been dug up from Sanscrit ruins. We have seen, in our own times, a clergyman of the University of Oxford complimenting their majesties in Coptic and Syrophcenician verses; and yet we doubt whether there will be a sufli- cient avidity in literary men to get at the beau- ties of the finest writers which the world has yet seen ; and though the Bagvat Ghecta has (as can be proved) met with human beings to translate, and other human beings to read it, we think that, in order to secure an attention to Homer and Virgil, we must catch up every man — whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke, — begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life "and death ; and so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians. The English clergy, in whose hands educa- tion entirely rests, bring up the first young men of the country as if they were all to keep grammar schools in little country towns ; and a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and libe- rality the honour and welfare of his country may depend, is diligently worried, for half his life, with the small pedantry of longs and shorts. There is a timid and absurd appre- hension, on the part of ecclesiastical tutors, of letting out the minds of youth upon difficult and important subjects. They fancy that men- tal exertion must end in religious scepticism; and, to preserve the principles of their pupils, they confine them to the safe and elegant im- becility of classical learning. A genuine Ox- ford tutor would shudder to hear his young men disputing upon moral and political truth, forming and pulling down theories, and indulg- ing in all the boldness of youthful discussion. I He would augur nothing from it hut impiety to God and treason to kings. And yet, who vili- fies both more than the holy poltroon who care- fully averts from them the searching eye of reason, and who knows no better method of teaching the highest duties, than by extirpating the finest qualities and habits of the mind"? If our religion is a fable, the sooner it is ex- ploded the better. If our government is bad, it should be amended. But we have no doubt of the truth of the one, or of the excellence of the other; and are convinced that both will be placed on a firmer basis in proportion as the minds of men are more trained to the investi- gation of truth. At present, we act with the minds of our young men as the Dutch did with their exuberant spices. An infinite quantity of talent is annually destroyed in the universities of England by the miserable jealousy and lit- tleness of ecclesiastical instructors. It is in vain to say we have produced great men under this system. We have produced great men under all systems. Every Englishman must pass half his life in learning Latin and Greek; and classical learning is supposed to have pro- duced the talents which it has not been able to extinguish. It is scarcely possible to prevent great men from rising up under any system of education, however bad. Teach men demono- logy or astrology, and you will still have a cer- tain portion of original genius, in spite of these or any other branches of ignorance and folly. There is a delusive sort of splendour in a vast body of men pursuing one object, and thoroughly obtaining it; and j-et, though it is very splendid, it is far from being useful. Classical literature is the great object at Ox- ford. Many minds so employed have produced many works and much fame in that depart- ment; but if all liberal arts and sciences use- ful to human life had been taught there, — if some have dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some to experimental philosophy, — and if every attainment had been honoured in the mixed ratio of its difficulty and utility, — the system of such an University would have been much more valuable, but the splendour of its name something less. When an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it appears at first de- grading to theiu to be useful. A set of lectures upon political economy would be discouraged in Oxford,* probably despised, probably not permitted. To discuss the inclosure of com- mons, and to dwell upon imports and exports, — to come so near to common life, would seem to be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr, or the Bentlcy of his day, would be scandalized in an University to be put on a level with the discoverer of a neu tral salt; and yet, what other measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness and difficulty 1 And what ought the term Uni- versity to mean, but a place where eveiy science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to mankind"? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical litera- ture within proper bounds, as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests in our appre- ■ They have since been established. G 2 78 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. elation of all human knowledge. The puffed up pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses, and the rememberer of words, would soon assume that station which is the lot of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast. We should be sorry if what we have said should appear too coniemptuous towards clas- sical learning, which we most sincerely hope will always be held in great honour in this country, though we certainly do not wish to it that exclusive honour which it at pre- sent enjoys. A great classical scholar is an ornament, and an important acquisition to nis country ; but, in a place of education, we would give to all knowledge an equal chance for distinction ; and would trust to the varieties of human disposition that every science worth cultivation would be cultivated. Looking al- ways to real utility as our guide, we should see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inqui- sitive mind arranging the productions of na- ture, investigating the qualities of bodies, or mastering the difficulties of the learned lan- guages. Wei^hould not care whether he were chemist, naturalist, or scholar; because we know it to be as necessary that matter should be studied, and subdued to the use of man, as that taste should be gratified, and imagination inflamed. In those who were destined for the church, we would undoubtedly encourage classical learning more than in any other body of men ; but if we had to do with a young man going out into public life, we would exhort him to contemn, or at least not to affect, the reputa- tion of a great scholar, but to educate himself for the offices of civil life. He should learn what the constitution of his country really was, — how it had grown into its present state, — the perils that had threatened it, — the malignity that had attacked it, — the courage that had fought for it, and the wisdom that had made it great. We would bring strongly before his mind the characters of those Englishmen who have been the steady friends of the public hap- piness ; and by their examples, would breathe into him a pure public taste which should keep him untainted in all the vicissitudes of politi- cal fortune. We would teach him to burst through the well paid, and the pernicious cant of indiscriminate loyalty; and to know his sovereign only as he discharged those duties, and displayed those qualities, for which the blood and the treasure of his people are con- fided to his hands. We should deem it of the utmost importance that his attention was di- rected to the true principles of legislation, — what effect laws can produce upon opinions, and opinions upon laws, — what subjects are fit for legislative interference, and when men may be left to the management of their own interests. The mischief occasioned by bad laws, and the perplexity which arises from numerous laws, — the causes of national wealth, — the relations of foreign trade, — the encou- ragement of manufactures and agriculture, — the fictitious wealth occasioned by paper cre- dit, — the laAvs of population, — the management of poverty and mendicity, — the use and abuse of monopoly, — the theory of taxation, — the consequences of the public debt. These are some of the subjects, and some of the branches of civil education to which we would turn the minds of future judges, future senators, and future noblemen. After the first period of life had been given up to the cultivation of the classics, and the reasoning powers were now beginning to evolve themselves, these are some of the propensities in study which we would endeavour to inspire. Great knowledge, at such a period of life, we could not convey ; but we might fix a decided taste for its acqui- sition, and a strong disposition to respect it in others. The formation of some great scholars we should certainly prevent, and hinder many from learning what, in a few years, they would necessarily forget ; but this loss would be well repaid, — if we could show the future rulers of the country that thought and labour which it requires to make a nation happy, — or if we could inspire them with that love of public virtue, which, after religion, we most solemnly believe to be the brightest ornament of the mind of man. WORKS OF -THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. FEMALE EDUCATION.* Edinburgh Review, 1810. Mr. Broadhurst is a very good sort of a man, who has not written a very bad book upon a very important subject. His object (a very laudable one) is to recommend a better system of female education than at present prevails in this country — to turn the attention of women from the trifling pursuits to which the)tare now condemned — and to cultivate faculties which, under the actual system of management, might almost as well not exist. To the examination of his ideas upon these points, we .shall Y^ry cheerfully give up a portion of our time at^at* tention. A great deal has been said of the original difference of capacity between men and wo- men; as if women were more quick, ^d men more judicious — as if women were mor^'re- markable for delicacy of association, and men for stronger powers of attention. All this, we confess, appears to us very fanciful. That there is a difference in the understandings of the men and the women we every day meet with, every body, we suppose, must perceive : but there is none surely which may not be accounted for by the difference of circumstances in which they have been placed, without referring to any conjectural difference of original conformation of mind. As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one half of these creatures, and train them to a particu- lar set of actions and opinions, and the other lialf to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understandings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations has called this or that ta- lent into action. There is surely no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reason- ing, in order to explain so very simple a phe- nomenon. Taking it, then, for granted, that nature has been as bountiful of understanding to one sex as the other, it is incumbent on us to consider what are the principal objections commonly made against the communication of a greater share of knowledge to women than commonly falls to their lot at present : for though it may be doubted whether women should learn all that men learn, the immense disparity which now exists between their knowledge we should hardly think could admit of any rational de- fence. It is not easy to imagine that there can be any just cause why a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve years of age. If there be any good at all in female ig- norance, this (to use a very colloquial phrase) is surely too much of a good thing. Something in this question must depend, no doubt, upon the leisure which either sex en- joys for the cultivation of their understand- ings: — and we cannot help thinking, that wo- men have fully as much, if not more, idle time upon their hands than men. Women are ex- cluded from all the serious business of the * Advice to Young: Ladies on the Improvement of the Mind. By Thomas Broadhurst. 8vo. London, 1808. world ; men are lawyers, physicians, clergy- men, apothecaries, and justices of the peace — • sources of exertion which consume a greal deal more time than producing and suckling child- ren ; so that, if the thing is a thing that ought to be done — if the attainments of literature are objects really worthy the attention of females, they cannot plead the want of leisure as an ex- cuse for indolence and neglect. The lawyer who passes his day in exasperating the bicker- ings of Roe and Doe, is certainly as much en- gaged as his lady who has the whole of the morning befffre lier to "correct the children and pay the bills. The apothecary, who rushes from an act of phlebotomy in the western parts of the town to insinuate a bolus in the east, is sij^«ly%s eompletely^fibsorbed as that fortunate JkmaAe who is daftiing tWf garment, or prepar- "ing the repast of her ^^sculapius at home; and, in every degree and situation cf life, it seems that men inust necessarily be exposed to more serious demands upon their time and at- tention tlian can possibly be the case with re- spect to the other sex. We are speaking al- ways of the fair demands which ought to be made upon the time and attention of women; for, as the matter now stands, the time of wo- men is considered as worth nothing at all. Daughters are kept to occupations in sewing, patching, mantua-making, and mending, by which it is impossible they can earn tenpence a day. The intellectual improvement of wo- men is considered to be of such subordinate importance, that twenty pounds paid for needle- work would give to a whole family leisure to acquire a fund of real knowledge. They are kept with nimble lingers and vacant under- standings till the season for improvement is ut- terly passed way, and all chance of forming more important habits completely lost. We do not therefore say that women have more leisure than men, if it be necessary that they should lead the life of artisans ; but we make this assertion only upon the supposition, that it is of some importance women sliould be in- structed ; and that many ordinary occupations, for wliich a little money will find a better substi- tute, should be sacrificed to this consideration. We bar, in this discussion, any objection which proceeds from the mere novelty of teach ing women more than they are already taught. It may be useless that their education should be improved, or it may be pernicious ; and these are the fair grounds on which the ques- tion may be argued. But those who cannot bring their minds to consider such an unusual extension of knowledge, without connecting with it some sensation of the ludicrous, should remember that, in the progress from absolute ignorance, there is a period when cultivation of mind is new to every rank and description of persons. A century ago, who would have be- lieved that country gentlemen could be brought to read and spell with the ease and accuracy which we now so frequently remark, — or sup- posed that they could be carried up even to t)i»! WORKS OF THE REV/"SY©^EY SMITH. elements of ancient and modern history ? No- thinjj is more common, or more stupid, than to take the actual for the possible — to believe that all which is, is all which can be ; fim to l^ugh^ at every proposed deviation from practice as impossible — then, when it is carried into effect, to be astonished that it did not take place before. . It is said, that the effect of kn0.wledg#fs to make women pedantic and affected ; and that nothing can be more offensive than to see a woman stepping out of the natural modesty of her sex to make an ostentatious display of her literary attainments. This may be tri^ enough ; but the answer is so trite and obvious, that we are almost ashamed to make it. All affectation and display proceed from the sujMiosition of ' possessing something better tRurr'the "rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of pos- sessing two legs and two arms; — because that is the precise quantity of either^or^ of liiTilii»b which every body p(jg^^ses. WRo ever heard a lady boast that she understood French? — for no other reason, that we know of, but because every body in these days does unders^nd French; and though tl^e-ftiay»bei sftm**»%is- grace in being ignoffnt of that language, thfte is little or no merit in its acquisition. Diffuse knowledge generally among women, and you will at once cure the conceit which knowledge occasions while it is rare. Vanity and conceit we shall of course witness in men and women as long as the world endures : but by multiply- ing the attainments upon which these feelings are founded, you increase the difficulty of in- dulging them, and render them much more to- lerable, by making them the proofs of a much higher merit. When learning ceases to be un- common among women, learned women will cease to be affected. A great many of the lessar and more obscure diujes of life necessarily devolve upon the fe- male sex. The arrangement of all household matters, and the care of children in their early infancy, must of course depend upon them. Now, there is a very general notion, that the moment you put the education of women upon a better footing than it is at present, at that mo- ment there will be an end of all domestic econo- my; and that, if you once suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family will very soon be reduced to the same kind of aerial and unsatisfactory diet. These, and all such opinions, are referable to one great and common cause of error; that man does every thing, and that nature does nothing ; and that ornamental and delightful in women as the bt- 82 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. nevolent fiffections; but time cannot be filled up, and life employed, with high and impas- sioned virtues. Some of these feehngs are of rare occurrence — all of short duration — or na- ture would sink under them. A scene of dis- tress and anguish is an occasion where the finest qualities of the female mind may be dis- played ; but it is a monstrous exaggeration to tell women that they are born only for scenes of distress and anguish. Nurse father, mother, sister, and brother, if they want it; — it would be a violation of the plainest duties to neglect them. But, when we are talking of the com- mon occupations of life, do not let us mistake the accidents for the occupations; — when we are arguing how the twenty-three hours of the day are to be filled up, it is idle to tell us of those feelings and agitations above the level of common existence, which may employ the re- maining hour. Compassion, and every other virtue, are the great objects we all ought to have in view; but no man (and no woman) can fill up the twenty-four hours by acts of virtue. J3ut one is a lawyer, and the other a plough- man, and the third a merchant ; and then, acts of goodness, and intervals of compassion and fine feeling, are scattered up and down the common occupations of life. We know women are to be compassionate; but they cannot be compassionate from eight o'clock in the morn- ing till twelve at night : — and what are they to do in the interval? This is the only question we have been putting all along, and is all that can be meant by literary education. Then, again, as to the notoriety which is in- curred by literature. — The cultivation of know- ledge is a very distinct thing from its publica- tion; nor does it follow that a woman is to be- come an author merely because she has talent enough for it. We do not wish a lady to write books, — to defend and reply, — to squabble about the tomb of Achilles, or the plain of Troy, — any more than we wish her to dance at the opera, to play at a public concert, or to put pictures in the exhibition, because she has learned music, dancing and drawing. The great use of her knowledge will be that it contributes to her private happiness. She may make it public : but it is not the principal object which the friends of female education have in view. Among men, the few who write bear no com- parison to the many who read. We hear most of the former, indeed, because they are, in ge- neral, the most ostentatious part of literary men ; but tliere are innumerable persons who, without ever laying themselves before the pub- lic, have made use of literature to add to the strength of theirunderstandings, and to improve the happiness of their lives. After all, it may be an evil for ladies to be talked of: but we really think those ladies who are talked of only as Mrs. Marcet, Mrs. Somerville, and Miss Mar- tineau are talked of, may bear their misfortunes With a very great degree of Christian patience. Their exemption from all the necessary busi- ness of life is one of the most powerful motives for tlie improvement of education in women. Lawyers and phy?-.„ians have in their profes- sions a constant motive to exertion ; if you ne- glect their education, they must in a certain degree educate themselves by their commerce with the world : they must learn caution, accu- racy, and judgment, because they must incur responsibilhy. But if you neglect to educate ■•the mind of a woman, by the speculative diffi- culties which occur in literature, it caft never be educated at all : if you do not effectually rouse it by education, it must remain for ever languid. Uneducated men may escape intellectual degra- dation ; uneducated women cannot. They have nothing to do ; and if they come untaught from the schools of education, they will never be in- structed in the school of events. Women have not their livelihood to gain by knowledge ; and that is one motive for relaxing all those efforts which are made in the educa- tion of men. They certainly have not ; but they have happiness to gain, to which know- ledge leads as probably as it does to profit; and that is a reason against mistaken indul- gence. Besides, we conceive the labour and fatigue of accomplishments to be quite equal to the labour and fatigue of knowledge ; and that it takes quite as many years to be charming as it does to be learned. Another difference of the sexes is, that women are attended to, and men attend. All acts of courtesy and politeness originate from the one sex, and are received by the other. We can see no sort of reason, in this diversity of condi- tion, for giving to women a trifling and insig- nificant education ; but we see in it a very pow- erful reason for strengthening their judgment, and inspiring them with the habit of employing time usefully. We admit many striking differ- ences in the situation of the two sexes, and many striking differences of understanding, pro- ceeding from the different circumstances in which they are placed : but there is not a single difference of this kind which does not afford a new argument for making the education of wo- men better than it is. They have nothing se- rious to do ; — is that a reason why they should be brought up to do nothing but what is tri- fling 1 They are exposed to greater dangers ; — is that a reason why their faculties are to be purposely and industriously weakened? They are to form the characters of future men ; — is that a cause why their own characters are to be broken and frittered down as they now are ? In short, there is not a single trait in that diver- sity of circumstances, in which the two sexes are placed, that does not decidedly prove the magnitude of the error we commit in neglect- ing (as we do neglect) the education of women. If the objections against the better education of women could be overruled, one of the great advantages that would ensue v/ould be the ex- tinction of innumerable follies. A decided and prevailing taste for one or anothe- mode of education there must be. A centary past, it was for housewifery — now it is for accomplish- ments. The object now is, to make women artists, — to give them an excellence in drawing, music, painting and dancing, — of which, per- sons who make these pursuits the occupation of their lives, and derive from them their sub- sistence, need not be ashamed. Now, one great evil of this is, that it does not last. If the whole of life were an Olympic game, — if we could go on feasting and dancing to the end, — this might do ; but it is in truth merely a provision for the little interval between coming into life, and set- tling in it; while it leaves a long and dreary expanse behind, devoid both of dignity and cheerfulness. No mother, no woman who haa passed over the few first years of life, sings, or dances, or draws, or plays upon musical instru- ments. These are merely means for displaying WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. the grace and vivacity of youth, which every I woman gives up, as she gives up the dress and manners of eighteen: she has no wish to retain | theui , or, if she has, she is driven out of them i by diameter and derision. The system of fe- i male education, as it now stands, aims only at j embellishing a few years of life, which are in | themselves so full of grace and happiness, that they hardly want it ; and then leaves the rest of existence a miserable prey to idle insignificance. No woman of understanding and reflection can possibly conceive she is doing justice to her children by such kind of education. The object is, to give to children resources that will en- dure as long as life endures, — habits that time will ameliorate, not destjoy, — occupations that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and therefore death less terrible : and the com- pensation which is offered for the omijsion of all this, is a short-lived blaze, — a little tempo- rary effect, which has no other consequence than to deprive the remainder of life of all taste and relish. There may be women who have a taste for the fine arts, and who evince a decided talent for drawing, or for music. In that case, there can be no objection to the cultivation of these arts ; but the error is, to make such things the grand and universal object, — to insist upon it that every woman is to sing, and draw, and dance — with nature, or against nature, — to bind her apprentice to some accomplishment, and if she cannot succeed in oil or water-colours, to prefer gilding, varnish- ing, burnisliing, box-making, to real solid im- provement in taste, knowledge, and under^^^ standing. A great deal is said in favour of the social nature of the fine arts. Music gives pleasure to others. Drawing is an art, the amusement of which does not centre in him who exercises it, but it is diffused among the rest of the world. This is true ; but there is nothing, after all, so social as a cultivated mind. We do not moan to speak slightingly of the fine arts, or to depre- ciate thegoodhumourwithwhichthey are some- times exhibited; but we appeal to any man, whether a little spirited and sensible conversa- tion — displaying, modestly, useful acquirement^ — and evincing rational curiosity, is not w*i1 worth the highest exertions of musical or gra- phical skill. A woman of accomplishments may entertain those who have the pleasure of knowing her for half an hour with great brillian- cy ; but a mind full of ideas, and with that elas- tic spring which the love of knowledge only can convey, is a perpetual source of exhilaration and amusement to all that come within its reach ; — not collecting its force into single and insu- lated achievements, like the effort made in the fine arts — but diffusing, equally over the whole of existence, a calm pleasure — better loved as it is longer felt — and suitable to every variety and every period of life. Therefore, instead of hanging the understanding of a woman upon walls, or hearing it vibrate upon strings, — in- stead of seeing it in clouds, or hearing it in the wind, we would make it the first spring and or- nament of society, by enriching it with attain- ments upon which alone such power depends. If the education of women were improved, the education of men would be improved also. Let any one consider (in order to bring the matter more home by an individual instance) of what immense importance to society it is, whether a nobleman of first-rate fortune and distinction is well or ill brought up ; — what a taste and fashion he may inspire for private and for political vice ! — and what misery and mis- chief he may produce to the thousand human beings who are dependent on him ! A country contains no such curse within its bosom. Youth, wealth, high rank, and vice, form a combina- tion which baffies all remonstrance and beats down all opposition. A man of high rank who combines these qualifications for corruption, is almost the master of the manners of the age, and has the public happiness within his grasp. But the most beautiful possession which a coun- try can have is a noble and rich man, who loves virtue and knowledge ; — who without being feeble or fanatical is pious — and who withouc being factious is firm and independent ; — who, in his political life, is an equitable mediator be- tween king and people ; and in his civil life, a firm promoter of all which can shed a lustre upon his country, or promote the peace and or- der of the world. But if these objects are of the importance which we attribute to them, the education of women must be important, as the formation of character for the first seven or eight years of life seems to depend almost en- tirely upon them. It is certainly in the power of a sensible and well-educated mother to in- spire, within that period, such tastes and pro- pensities as shall nearly decide the destiny of the future man ; and this is done, not only by the intentional exertions of the mother, but by the gradual and insensible imitation of the child ; for there is something extremely contagious in greatness and rectitude of thinking, even at that age ; and the character of the mother with whom he passes his early infancy, is always an event of the utmost importance to the child. A merely accomplished woman cannot infuse her tastes into the minds of her sons ; and, if she could, nothing could be more unfortunate than her success. Besides, when her accom- plishments are given up, she has nothing left for it but to amuse herself in the best way she can ; and, becoming entirely frivolous, either declines altogether the fatigue of attending to her children, or, attending to them, has neither talents nor knowledge to succeed ; and, there- fore, here is a plain and fair answer to thosp who ask so triumphantly, why should a woman dedicate herself to this branch of knowledge ? or why should she be attached to such science? — Because, by having gained information on these points, she may inspire her son with valu- able tastes, which may abide by him through life, and carry him up to all the sublimities of knowledge ; because she cannot lay the founda- tion of a great character, if she is absorbed in frivolous amusements, nor inspire her child with noble desires, when a long course of trifling has destroyed the little talents which were left by a bad education. It is of great importance to a couritry, that there should be as many understandings as pos- sible actively employed within it. Mankind are much happier for the discovery of barome- ters, thermometers, steam-engines, and all the innumerable inventions in the arts and sciences. We are every day and every hour reaping thii benefit of such talent and ingenuity. The same observation is true of such works as those of Dryden, Pope, Milton and Shakspeare. Man- kind are much happier that such individuails have lived and written ; they add every day to 84 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. the stock of public enjoyment — and perpetually gladden and embellish life. Now, the number of those who exercise their understandings to any good purpose, is exactly in proportion to those who exercise it at all ; but, as tlie matter s^tands at present, half the talent in the universe runs to waste, and is totally unprofitable. It would have been almost as well for the world, hitherto, that women, instead of possessing the capacities they do at present, should have been born wholly destitute of wit, genius, and every other attribute of mind, of which men make so eminent a use : and the ideas of use and pos- session, are so united together, that, because it has been the custom in almost all countries to give to women a difierent and a worse educa- fion than to men, the notion has obtained that they do not possess faculties which they do not cultivate. Just as, in breaking up a com- mon, it is sometimes very difficult to make the*' poor believe it will carry corn, merely because they have been hitherto accustomecl to see it produce nothing but weeds and grass — they very naturally mistake present condition for general nature. So completely have the talents of women been kept down, that there is scarcely a single work, either of reason or imagination, w^ritten by a woman, which is in gerieral cir- culation either in the English, French, or Ita- lian literature ; — scarcely one that has crept even into the ranks of our minor poets. If the possession of excellent talents is not a conclusive reason why they shoukl be im- proved, it at least amounts to a very strong presumption; and, if it can be shown that wo- men may be trained to reason and imagine as well as men, the strongest reasons are certainly necessary to show us why we should not avail ourselves of such rich gifts of nature ; and we have a right to call for a clear statement of those perils which make it necessary that such talents should be totally extinguished, or, at most, very partially drawn out. The burthen of proof does not lie with those who say, increase the quanity of talent in any country as much as possible — for such a proposition is in con- formity with every man's feelings: but it lies with those who say, take care to keep that un- derstanding weak and trifling, which nature has made capable of becoming strong and powerful. The paradox is with them, not with us. In all human reasoning, knowledge must be taken for a good, till it can be shown to be an evil. But now, nature makes to us rich and magnificent presents ; and we say to her — You are too luxuriant and munificent — we must keep you under, and prune you ; — we have talents enough in the other half of the creation ; — and, if you will not stupefy and en- feeble the mind of women to our hands, we ourselves must expose them to a narcotic pro- cess, and educate away that fatal redundance with which the world is afflicted, and the order of sublunary things deranged. One of the greatest pleasures of life is con- versation ; — and the pleasures of conversation are of course enhance^ by every increase of knowledge: not that we should meet together to talk of alkalies and angles, or to add to our stock of history and philology — though a little of these things is no bad ingredient in conver- sation ; but let the subject be what it may, there is always a prodigious difference between the conversation of those who have been well edu- L-ated and of those who have not enjoyed this advantage. Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigour, fancy, words, images and illustrations; — it decorates every cotnmon thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurb. The subjects themselves may not be wanted, upon which the talents of an edu- cated man have been exercised; but there is always a demand for those talents which his education has rendered strong and quick. Now, really, nothing can be further from our intention than to say any thing rude and un- pleasant ; but we must be excused for observing, that it is not now a very common thing to be interested by the variety and extent of female knowledge, but it is a very common thing to lament, that the finest faculties in the world have been confined to trifles utterly unworthy their richness and their strength. ursuit of knowledge is the most inno- cent and interesting occupation %vhich can be given to the female sex ; nor can there he a better method of checking a spirit of dissipation than by difiusing a taste for literature. The true way to attack vice, is by setting up some- thing else against it. Give to women, in early youth, something to acquire, of sufficient in- terest and importance to command the appli- cation of their mature faculties, and to excite their perseverance in future life; — teach them that happiness is to be derived from the acqui- sition of knowledge, as well as the gratification of vanity: and you will raise up a much more formidable barrier against dissipation than a host of invectives and exhortations can supply. *f It sometimes happens that an unfortunate man gets drunk with very bad wine, — not to gratify his palate, but to forget his oares: he (loes not set any value on what he receives, but on account of what it excludes; — it keeps out something worse than itself Now, though it were denied that the acquisition of serious knowledge is of itself important to a woman, still it prevents a taste for silly and pernicious works of imagination ; it keeps away the horrid trash of novels; and, in lieu of that eagerness for emotion and adventure which books of that isort inspire, promotes a calm and steady tem- Wrament of mind. A man who deserves such a piece of good fortune, may generally find an excellent com- panion for all the vicissitudes of his life, but it is not so easy to find a coinpanion for his uri- derstanding, who has similar pursuits with himself, or who can comprehend the pleasure he derives from them. We really can see no reason why it should not be otherwise ; nor comprehend how the pleasures of domestic life can be promoted by diminishing the number of subjects in which persons who are to spend their lives together take a common interest. One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge is the respect and importance which it communicates to old age. Men rise in cha- racter often as they increase in years ; — they are venerable from what they have acquired, and pleasing from what they can impart. If they outlive their faculties, the mere frame it- self is respected for what it once contained; but women (such is their unfortunate style of edu- cation) hazard every thing upon one cast of the die ; — when youth is gone, all is gone. No hu man creature gives his admiration for nothing either the eye must be charmed, or the under standinir gratified. A woman must talk wisely WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 83 or look well. Every human being must put up with the coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest commiseration for decayed accomplishments ; — no man mourns over the fragments of a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill. They are flowers destined to perish; but the decay of great talents is always the subject of solemn pity; and, even when their last memorial is over, their ruins and vestiges are regarded with pious affection. • '^There is no connexion between the igno- rance in which women are kept, and the pre-i servation of moral and religious principle; and yet certainly there is, in the minds of some timid and respectable persons, a vague, indefi- nite dread of knowledge, as if it were capable of producing these elibcts. It might also be supposed, from the dread which the propagation of knowledge has excited, that there was some great secret which was to be kept in impene- trable obscurity, — that all moral rules were a species of delusion and imposture, the detection of which, by the improvement of the under- standing, would be attended with the most fatal consequences to all, and particularly to women. If we could possibly understand what these great secrets were, we might perhaps be dis- posed to concur in their preservation; but be- lieving that all the salutary rules which are imposed on women are the result of true wis- dom, and productive of the greatest happiness, we cannot understand how they are to become less sensible of this truth in proportion as their power of discovering truth in general is in- creased, and the liabit of viewing questions with accuracy and comprehension established by education. There are men. indeed, who are always exclaiming against every species of power, because it is connected with danger : their dread of abuses is so much stronger than their admiration of uses, that they would cheer- fully give up the use of fire, gunpowder, and printing, to be freed from robbers, incendiaries, and libels. It is true, that every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its applicalion. But, trust to the natural love of good where there is no temp- tation to be bad — it operates no where more forcibly than in education. No man, whether he be tutor, guardian, or friend, ever contents himself with infusing the mere ability to ac- quire; but giving the power, he gives with it a taste for the wise and rational exercise of that power; so that an educated person is not only one with stronger and better faculties than others, but with a more useful propensity — a disposition better cultivated — and associations ola higher and more important class. In short, and to recapitulate the main points upon which we have insisted : — Why the dis- proportion in knowledge between the two sexes should be so great, when the inequality in natural talents is so small ; or why the un- derstanding of women should be lavished upon trifles, when nature has made it capable of higher and better things, we profess ourselves not able to understand. The affectation charged upon female knowledge is best cured by making that knowledge more general: and the economy devolved upon women is best secured by the ruin, disgrace, and inconvenience which pro- ceeds from neglecting it. For the care of child- ren, nature has made a direct and powerful provision ; and the gentleness and elegance of women is the natural consequence of that de- sire to please, which is productive of the greatest part of civilization and refinement, and which rests upon a foundation too deep to be shaken by any such modifications in education as we have proposed. If you educate women to at- tend to dignified and important subjects, you are multiplying beyond measure the chances of human improvement, by preparing and me- dicating those early impressions, which always come from the mother ; and which, in a great majority of instances, are quite decisive of character and genius. Nor is it only in the business of education that women would influ- ence the destiny of men. If women knew more, men must learn more — for ignorance would then be shameful — and it would become the fashion to be instructed. The instruction of women improves the stock of national talents, and employs more minds for the instruction and amusement of the world ; — it increases the pleasures of society, by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a common in- terest ; and makes marriage an intercourse of understanding as well as of affection, by giving dignity and importance to the female character. The education of women favours public mo- rals ; it provides for every season of life, as well as for the brightest and the best : and leaves a woman when she is stricken by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of every thing, and neglected by all; but with the full power and the splendid attractions of knowledge, — diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite litera- ture, and receiving the just homage of learned and accomplished men. H WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. PUBLIC SCHOOLS.* (Edinburgh Review, 1810.) There is a set of wdl-dressed, prosperous gentlemen, who assemble daily at 5lr. Hatch- ard's shop ; — clean, civil personages, well in with people in power, — delighted with every existing institution — and almost with every ex- isting circumstance : and, every now and then, one of these personages writes a little book ; — and the rest praise that little book — expecting to be praised, in their turn, for their own little books : — and of these little books, thus written by these clean, civil personages, so expecting to be praised, the pamphlet before us appears to be one. The subject of it is the advantage of public schools ; and the author, very creditably to him- self, ridicules the absurd clamour, first set on foot by Dr. Rennel, of the irreligious tendency of public schools : he then proceeds to an investiga- tion of the eifects which public schools may produce upon the moral character ; and here the subject becomes more difficult, and the pamphlet worse. In arguing any large or general question, it is of infinite importance to attend to the first feelings which the mention of the topic has a tendency to excite ; and the name of a public school brings with it immediately the idea of brilliant classical attainments : but, upon the importance of these studies, we are not now oflering any opinion. ' The only points for con- sideration are, whether boys are put in the way of becoming good and wise men by these schools ; and whether they actually gather there those attainments which it pleases mankind, for the time being, to consider as valuable, and to decorate by the name of learning. By a public school, we mean any endowed place of education, of old standing, to which the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable numbers, and where they continue to reside, from eight or nine, to eighteen years of age. We do not give this as a definition which would have satisfied Porphyry or Duns-Scotus, but as one sufficiently accurate for our purpose. The characteristic features of these schools are, their antiquity, the numbers, and the ages of the young people who are educated at them. We beg leave, however, to premise, that we have not the slightest intention of insinuating any thing to the disparagement of the present dis- cipline or present rulers of these schools, as compared with other times and other men : we have no reason whatever to doubt that they are as ably governed at this as they have been at any preceding period. Whatever objections we may have to these institutions, they are to faults, not depending on prnsent administration, but upon original construction. f At a public school (for such is the system es- * Remarks on the System of Education in Public Schools. 6vo. Hatchard. London, 1809. + A public school is thought to be the best cure for the insolence of youthful aristocracy. This insolence, however, is not a little increased by the homaire of mas- ters, and would soon meet with its natural check in the tablished by immemorial custom) , every boy ia alternately tyrant and slave. The power which the elder part of these communities exercises ipver the younger is exeedingly great — very dif- ficult to be controlled — and accompanied, not unfrequently, with cruelty and caprice. It is the common law of the place, that the young should be implicitly obedient to the elder boys; and this obedience resembles more the submis- sion of a slave to his master, or of a sailor to his captain, than the common and natural de- ference which would always be shown by one boy to another a few years older than himself. Now, this system we cannot help considering as an evil, — because it inflicts upon boys, for two or three years of their lives, many painful hardships, and much unpleasant servitude. These suffer- ings might perhaps be of some use in military schools ; but, to give a boy the habit of enduring privations to which he will never again be called upon to submit — to inure him to pains which he will never again feel — and to subject him to the privation of comforts with which he will always in future abound — is surely not a very useful and valuable severity in education. It is not the life in miniature which he is to lead hereafter — nor does it bear any relation to it : — he will never again be subjected to so much in- solence and caprice ; nor ever, in all human probability, be called upon to make so many sa- crifices. The servile obedience which it teaches might be useful to a menial domestic; or the habits of enterprise which it encourages prove of importance to a military partisan; but we cannot see what bearing it has upon the calm, regular, civil life, which the sons of gentlemen, destined to opulent idleness, or to any of the three learned professions, are destined to lead. Such a system inakes many boys very misera- ble ; and produces those bad effects upon the temper and disposition, which unjust suffering always does produce ; — ^but what ^od it does we are much at a loss to conceive. Reasonable 'obedience is extremely useful in forming the disposition. Submission to tyranny lays the foundation of hatred, suspicion, cunning, and a variety of odious passions. We are convinced that those young people will turn out to be the best men, who have been guarded most effec- tually in their childhood, from every species of useless vexation ; and experienced, in the greatest degree, the blessings of a wise and rational indulgence. But even if these effects upon future character are not produced, still four or five years in childhood make a very considerable period of human existence ; and it is by no means a trifling consideration whether they are passed happily or unhappily. The wretchedness of school tyranny is trifling enough to a man who only contemplates it in world. There can be no occasion to brin? five hun- dred boys together to teach to a young noblemen that proper demeanour which he would learn so much better from the first English gentleman whom he might think proper to insult. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 87 ease of body and tranquillity of mind, through the medium of twenty intervening years ; but it is quite as real, and quite as acute, while it lasts, as any of the sulTerings of mature life: and the utility of these sutferings, or the price paid in compensation for them, should be clear- ly made out to a conscientious parent before he consents to expose his children to them. This system also gives to the elder boys an absurd and pernicious opinion of their own importance, which is often with difficulty ef- faced by a considerable commerce with the world. The head of a public school is gene- rally a very conceited young man, utterly igncf- rant of his own dimensions, and losing all that habit of conciliation towards others, and that anxiety for self-improvement, which result from tlie natural modesty of youtli. Nor is this con- ceit very easily and speedily gotten rid of; — we have seen (if we mistake not) public school importance lasting through the half of after life, strutting in lawn, swelling in ermine, and displaying itself, both ridiculously and offen- sively, in the haunts and business of bearded men. There is a manliness in the athletic exercises of public schools which is as seductive to the imagination as it is utterly unimportant in it- self Of what importance is it in after life Mdiether a boy can play well or ill at cricket ; or row a boat with the skill and precision of a waterman? If our young lords and esquires were hereafter to wrestle together in public, or the gentlemen of the Bar to exhibit Olympic games in Hilary Term, the glory attached to these exercises at public schools would be ra- tional and important. But of what use is the body of an athlete, when we have good laws over our heads, — or v'hen a pistol, a postchaise, or a porter, can be hired for a few shillings ? A gentleman does nothing but ride or walk ; and yet such a ridiculous stress is laid upon the manliness of the exercises customary at public schools — exercises in which the greatest Ijlock- heads commonly excel the most — which often render habits of idleness inveterate — and often lead to foolish expense and dissipation at a more advanced period of life. One of the supposed advantages of a public school is the greater knowledge of the world which a boy is considered to derive from those situations ; but if, by a knowledge of the world, is meant a knowledge of the forms and man- ners which are found to be the most pleasing and viseful in the world, a boy from a public school is almost always extremely deficient in these particulars ; and his sister, who has re- mained at home at the apron-strings of her mother, is very much his superior in the science of manners. It is probably true, that a boy at a public school has made more observation on human character, because he has had more op- 'lortunities of observing than luave been en- joyed by young persons educated either at home or at private schools : but this little ad- vance gained at a public school is so soon over- taken at college or in the world, that, to liave made it, is of the least possible consequence, and utterly underserving of any risk incurred in the acquisition. Is it any injury to a man of thirty or tliirty-five years of age — to a learned Serjeant or venerable dean — that at eighteen they did not know so much of the world as some other boys of the same standing? They liave probably escaped the arrogant character so often attendant upon this trifling superiority ; nor is there much chance that they have ever fallen into the common and youthful error of mistaking a premature initiation into vice for a knowledge of the ways of mankind ; and, in addition to these salutary exemptions, a winter in London brings it all to a level ; and offers to every novice the advantages which are sup- posed to be derived from this precocity of con- fidence and polish. According to the general prejudice in favour of public schools, it would be thought quite as absurd and superfluous to enumerate the illus- trious characters who have been bred at our three great seminaries of this description, as it would be to descant upon the illustrious cha- racters who have passed in and out of London over our three great bridges. Almost every con- spicuous person is supposed to have been edu- cated at public schools; and there are scarcely any means (as it is imagined) of making an actual comparison; and yet, great as the rage is, and long has been, for public schools, it is very remarkable, that the most eminent men in every art and science have not been educated in public schools ; and this is true, even if we include, in the term of public schools, not only Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, but the Charter-House, St. Paul's School, Alerchant Tailors', Rugby, and every school in England, at all conducted upon the plan of the three first. The great schools of Scotland we do not call public schools; because, in these, the mixture of domestic life gives to them a widely different character. Spenser, Pope, Shakspeare, Butler, Rochester, Spratt, Parnell, Garth, Congreve, Gay, Swift, Thomson. Shenstone, Akenside, Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sydney, Savage, Arbuthnot, and Burns, among the poets, were not educated in the system of English schools. Sir Isaac Newton, ]Maclaurin, Wallis, Hamstead, Saunderson, Simpson, and Napier, among men of science, were not educated in public schools. The three best historians that the English language has produced. Clarendon, Hume, and Robertson, were not educated at public schools. Public schools have done little in England for the fine arts — as in the examples of Inigo Jones, Vanbrugh, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Garrick, &c. The great medical writers and discoverers in Great Britain, Harvey, Cheselden, Hunter, Jenner, Meade, Brown, and CuUen, were not educated at public schools. Of the great writers on morals and metaphysics, it was not the sys- tem of public schools which produced Bacon, Shaftesbury, Hobbes, Berkeley. Butler, Hume, Hartley, or Dugald Stewart. The greatest dis- coverers in chemistry have not been brought up at public schools ; — we mean Dr. Priestley, Dr. Black, and Mr. Davy. The only English- men who have evinced a remarkable genius, in modern times, for the art of war, — the Duke of JVIarlborough, Lord Peterborough, General Wolfe, and Lord Clive, were all trained in pri- vate schools. So were Lord Coke, Sir ]\Iatthew Hale, and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, and Chief Justice Holt, among the lawyers. So- also, among statesmen, were Lord Burleigh.. Walsingham, the Earl of Slraiford, Thurlut;, Cromwell, Hampden, Lord Clarendon, Sir Wa! ter Raleigh, Sydney, Russel, Sir W. Temple, Lord Somers, Burke, Sheridan, Pitt. In addi- tion to this list, we must not forge^ the names of such eminent scholars and men of letters, as WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Cndworth. Chillingworth, Tillotson, Archbishop King, Selden, Conyeis, MidJleton, Bentley, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Bishops Sher- lock and Wilkius, Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Hooker, Bishops Usher, StillingUeet, and Spelman, Dr. Samuel Clarke, Bishop Hoadley, and Dr. Lard- iier. Nor must it be Ibrgotten, in this examina- tion, that none of the conspicnous writers upon political economy which this country has as yet produced, have been brought up in public schools. If it be urged that pulilic schools have only assumed their present character within this last century, or half century, and that what are now called public schools partook, before this period, of the nature of private schools, there must then be added to our lists the names of Milton, Dryden, Addison, &c., &c.: and it will follow, that the Enslish have done almost all that they have done in the arts and sciences, "without the aid of that system of education to which they are now so much attached. Ample as this catalogue of celebrated names already is. it would be easy to double it ; yet. as it stands, it is obviously sulhcient to show that great eminence may be attained in any line of fame without the aid of public schools. Some more striking inferences might perhaps be drawn from it; but we content ourselves with the simple fact. The most important peculiarity in the consti- tulion of a public school is its numbers, which art so great, that a close inspection of the mas- ter into the studies and conduct of each indi- vidual is quite impossible. We must be al- lowed to doubt, whether such an arrangement is favourable either to literature or morals. Upon this system, a boy is left almost entirely to himself, to impress upon his own mind, as well as he can, the distant advantages of know- ledge, and to withstand, from his own innate resolution, the examples and the seductions of idleness. A firm character survives this brave neglect; and very exalted talents may some- times remedy it by subsequent diligence : but schools are not made for a few youths of pre- eminent talents, and strong characters; such prizes can, of course, be drawn but by a very few parents. The best school is that which is best accommodated to the greatest variety of characters, and which embraces the greatest number of cases. It cannot be the main ob- ject of education to render the splendid more splendid, and to lavish care upon those who would almost thrive without any care at all. A public school does this effectually; but it commonly leaves the idle almost as idle, and the dull almost as dull as it found them. It dis- dains the tedious cultivation of those middling talents of which only the great mass of human beings are possessed. When a strong desire of improvement exists, it is encouraged, but no pains are taken to inspire it. A boy is cast in among five or six hundred other boys, and is left to form his own character: — if his love of knowledge survives this severe trial, it, in gene- ral, carries him very far: and. upon the^ame principle, a savage, who grows up to manhood, 's, in general, well made, and free from all bodily defects: not because the severities of such a state are favourable to animal life, but because they are so much the reverse, that none but the strongest can survive them. A few boys are incorrigibly idle, and a few incor- rigibly eager for knowledge ; but the great mass uie in a state of doubt and fluctuation ; and they come to school for the express purpose, not of being left to themselves — for that could be done any where — but that their wavering tastes and propensities should be decided by the interven- tion of a master. In a forest, or public school for oaks and elms, the trees are left to them- selves; the strong plants live, and the weak ones die : the towering oak that remains is ad- mired; the saplings that perish around it are cast into the flames and forgotten. But it is not surely to the vegetable struggle of a forest, or the hasty glance of a forester, that a bota- nist would commit a favourite plant; he would riaturally seek for it a situation of less hazard, and a cultivator whoie limited occupations would enable him to give to it a reasonable share of his time and attention. The very mean- ing of education seems to us to be, that the old should teach the young, and the wise direct the weak: that a man who professes to instruct, should get among his pupils, study their cha- racters, gain their atfections, and form their in- clinations and aversions. In a public school, the numbers render this impossible ; it is im- possible that suflicient time should be found for this useful and aflectionate interference. Boys, therefore, are left to their own crude concep- tions and ill-formed propensities; and this ne- glect is called a spirited and manly education. In by far the Greatest number of cases, we cannot think puljlic schools favourable to the cultivation of knowledge ; and we have equally strong doubts if they be so to the cultivation of morals, — though we admit, that, upon this point, the most striking arguments have been pro- duced in their favour. It is contended by the friends to public schools, that every person, before he comes to man's estate, must run through a certain career of dis- sipation ; and that if that career is, by the means of a private education, deferred to a more ad- vanced period of life, it will only be begun with greater eagerness, and pursued into more blameable excess. The time must, of course, come when every man must be his own master ; when his conduct can be no longer regulated by the watchful superintendence of another, but must be guided by his own discretion. Emancipation must come at last; and we ad- mit, that the object to be aimed at is, that such emancipation should be gradual, and not pre- mature. Upon this very invidious point of the discussion, we rather wish to avoiil otferlng- any opinion. The manners of great schools vary considerably from time to time ; and what may have been true many years ago. is very possi- bly not true at the present period. In this in- stance, ever}' parent must be governed by his own observations and means of informaticn. If the license which prevails at public schools is only a fair increase of liberty, proportionate to advancing age, and calsulated to prevent the bad eflects of a sudden transition from tute- lary thraldom to perfect self-government, it is certainly a good rather than an evil. If, on the contrary, there exists in these places of educa- tion a system of premature debauchery, and if they only prevent men from being corrupted by the world, by corrupting them before their entry into the world, they can then only be looked upon as evils of the greatest magni- tude, however they may be sanctioned by opi- nion, or rendered familiar to us by habit. The vital and essential part of a school is thf> master ; but, at a public school, no boy, or, at WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 89 the best, only a very few. cati see enough of him to derive finy coiisidfialile benefit iVom his character, manners, an.l iiiti>rnr,ii.ion. It is certainly ot'eminent use. pari i<'iilarly tea young man of rank, that he sliouid have Hved among boys ; but it is only so when they are all mo- derately watehed by some superior understand- ino-. The niorality of boys is generally very im- perfect; their iicitions of honour extremely mis- taken; and their objects of ambition frequently very absurd. 'I'lie probability then is, that the kind of discipline they exercise over each other will produce (when left to itself) a great deal of mischief; and yet this is the discipline to which every child at a public school is not only ne- cessarily exposed, but principally confined. Our objection (we again repeat) is not to the interference of boys in the formation of the character of boys; their chavacter, we are per- suaded, will be very imperfectly formed without their assistance; but our objection is to that almost exclusive agency which they exercise in ]5ublic schools. After liaving said so much in opposition to the general prejudice in favour of public schools, we maybe expected to state what species of scliool we think preferable to them; for if pub- lic schools, with all their disadvantages, are the best that can actually be found, or easily attained, the objections to them are certainly made to very little purpose. We have no hesitation, however, in saying, that that education seems to us to be the best which mingles a domestic with a school lile ; and which gives to a youth the advantage which is to be derived from the learning of a master, and the emulation w^hicli results from the society of other boys, together with the affectionate vigilance which he must experience in the house of his parents. But where this species of education, from peculiarity of circum- stances or situation, is not attainable, v/e are disposed to think a society of twenty or thirty boys, under the guidance of a learned man, and, above all, of a man of good sense, to be a seminary the best adapted for the education of youth. The numbers are sufficient to excite a considerable degree of emulation, to give to a boy some insight into the diversities of the human character, and to subject him to the ob- servation and control of his superiors. It by no means follows, that a judicious man should al- ways interfere with his authority and advice be- cause he has always the means ; he may con- nive at many things which he cannot approve, and suffer some little failures to proceed to a certain extent, which, if indulged in wider limits, would be attended with" irretrievable mischief: he will be aware, that his object is to fit his pupil for the world; that constant con- trol is a very bad preparation for complete emancipation from all control; that it is not bad policy to expose a young man, under the eye of superior wisdom, to some of those dan- gers which will assail him hereafter in greater number, and in greater strength — when he has only his own resources to depend upon. A private education, conducted upon these prin- eijiles, is not calculated to gratify quickly the vanity of a parent who is blest with a child of strong character and pre-eminent abilities: to be the first scholar of an obscure master, at an obscure place, is no very splendid distinction; nor does it afford that opportunity, of which so many parents are desirous, of forming great connexions for their children: but if the ob- ject be, to induce the young to love knowledge and virtue, we are inclined to suspect, that, lor the average of hinnan talents and characters, these are the situations in which such tastes will be the most effectually formed. 90 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. TOLERATION.* [Edinburgh Review, ISll.] If a prudent man sees a child playing with a porcelain cup of great value, he takes the ves- sel out of his hand, pats him on the head, tells him his mamma will be sorry if it is broken, and gently cheats him into the use of some less precious substitute. Why will Lord Sidmouth meddle with the Toleration Act, when there are so many other subjects in which his abilities might be so eminently useful — when enclosure bills are drawn up with such scandalous negli- 1 gence — turnpike roads so shamefully neglected — and public conveyances illegitimately loaded in the face of day, and in defiance of the wisest legislative provisions] We confess our trepi- dation at seeing the Toleration Act in the hands of Lord Sidmouth ; and should be very glad if it were fairly back in the statute book, and the sedulity of this well-meaning nobleman diverted into another channel. The alarm and suspicion of the Dissenters upon these measures are wise and rational. They are right to consider the Toleration Act as their palladium ; and they may be certain that in this country there is always a strong party read}', not only to prevent the further ex- tension of tolerant principles, but to abridge (if they dared) their present operation within the narrowest limits. Whoever makes this a\- i tempt, will be sure to make it under professions \ of the most earnest regard for mildness and | toleration, and with the strongest declarations of respect for King William, the Revolution, and the principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of these realms ; — and then will follow the clauses for whipping Dissenters, imprisoning preachers, and sub- jecting them to rigid qualifications, &c. &c. &c. The infringement on the militia acts is a mere pretence. The real object is to diminish the number of Dissenters from the Church of England, by abridging the liberties and privi- leges they now possess. This is the project which we shall examine, for we sincerely be- lieve it to be the project in agitation. The mode in which it is proposed to attack the Dis- senters is, first, by exacting greater qualifica- tions in their teachers : next, by preventing the interchange or itinerancy of preachers, and fixing them to one spot. It can never, we presume, be intended to subject dissenting ministers to any kind of the- ological examination. A teacher examined in doctrinal opinions, by another teacher who dif- fers from him, is so very absurd a project, that we entirely acquit Lord Sidmouth of any in- tention of this sort. We rather presume his lordship to mean, that a man who professes to teach his fellow creatures, should at least have * Hints on Toleration, in Five Essays, ^c. suggested for the consideration of Lord Viscouvt Sidmouth. and the Dis- senters. By Philagatharches. London. 1610. made some progress in human learning;— that he should not be wholly without educa- tion ; — that he should be able at least to read and write. If the test is of this very ordinary nature, it can scarcely exclude many teachers of religion ; and it was hardly ^"orth while, for the very insignificant diminution of numbers which this must occasion to the dissenting clergy, to have raised all the alarm which this attack upon the Toleration Act has occasioned. But, without any reference to the magnitude of the effects, is the principle right ] or, What is the meaning of religious toleration 1 That a man should hold, without pain or penalty, any religious opinions, — and choose for his instruction, in the business of salvation, any guide whom he pleases ; — care being taken that the teacher and the doctrine injure neither the policy nor the morals of the countr}% We maintain that perfect religious toleration ap- plies as much to the teacher as the thing taught; and that it is quite as intolerant to make a man hear Thomas, who wants to hear John, as it would be to make a man profess Arminian, who wished to profess Calvinistical principles. What right has any government to dictate to any man who shall guide him to heaven, any more than it has to persecute the religious tenets by which he hopes to arrive there 1 You believe that the heretic professes doctrines utterly incompatible with the true spirit of the gospel; — first you burnt him for this, — then you whipt him, then you fined him, — then you put him in prison. All this did no good ; — and, for these hundred years last past, you have let him alone. The heresy is now firmly protected by law ; — and you know it must he preached : — What matters it then, who preaches it 1 If the evil must be commu- nicated, the organ and instrument through which it is communicated cannot be of much consequence. It is true, this kind of persecu- tion against persons, has not been quite so much tried as the other against doctrines ; but the folly and inexpediency of it rest precisely upon the same grounds. Would it not be a singular thing if the friends of the Church of England were to make the most strenuous efforts to render their enemies eloquent and learned 1 — and to found places of education for Dissenters 1 But, if their learn- ing would not be a good, why is their ignorance an evin — unless it be necessarily supposed, that all increase of learning must bring men over to the Church of England; in which sup- position, the Scottish and Catholic universities, and the college at Hackney, would hardly ac- quiesce. Ignorance surely matures and quick- ens the progress, by insuring the dissolution of absurdity. Rational and learned Dissenters remain : — religious mobs, under some ignorant WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 91 fanatic of the day, become foolish overmuch, — dissolve, and return to the Church. The Uni- tarian, who reads and writes gets some sort of discipline, and returns no more. What connection is there (as Lord Sid- mouth's plan assumes) between the zeal and piety required for religious instruction and the common attainments of literature 1 But, if knowledge and education are required for re- ligious instruction, why be content with the common elements of learning 1 why not require higher attainments in dissenting candidates for orders; and examine them in the languages in which the books of their religion are con- veyed"? A dissenting minister of vulgar aspect and homely appearance, declares that he entered into that holy office because he felt a call; — and a clergyman of the Establishment smiles at him for the declaration. But it should be remembered, that no minister of the Establish- ment is admitted into orders, before he has been expressly interrogated by the bishop whether he feels himself called to that sacred office. The doctrine of calling, or inward feeling, is quite orthodox in the English Church; — and, in arguing this subject in Parliament, it will hardly be contended, that the Episcopalian only is the judge when that call is genuine, and when it is only imaginary. The attempt at making the dissenting clergy stationary, and persecuting their circulation, appears to us quite as unjust and inexpedient as the other measure of qualifications. It ap- pears a gross inconsistency to say — "I admit that what you are doing is legal, — but you must not do it thoroughly and eflectually. I allow you to propagate your heresy, — but I object to all means of propagating it which appear to be useful and effisctive." If there are any oj^her grounds upon which the circulation of the dis- senting clergy is objected to, let these grounds be stated and examined; but to object to their circtilation merely because it is the best method of effecting the object which you allow them to effi;ct, does appear to be rather unnatural and inconsistent. It is persumed, in this argument, that the only reason urged for the prevention of itiner- ant preachers is the increase of heresy ; for, if heresy is not increased by it, it must be im- material to the feelings of Lord Sidmoulh, and of the imperial Parliament, whether Mr. Shuf- flebottom preaches at Bungay, and Mr. Ringle- tub at Ipswich ; or whether an artful vicissitude is adopted, a'nd the order of insane predication reversed. But, supposing all this new interference to be just, what good will it dol You find a dis- senting preacher, whom you have prohibited, still continuing to preach, — or preaching at Ealing when he ought to preach at Acton ; — his number is taken, and the next morning he is summoned. Is it believed that this descrip- tion of persons can be put down by fine and imprisonment 1 His fine is paid for him; and he returns from imprisonment ten times as much sought after and as popular as he was before. This is a receipt for making a stupid preacher popular, and a popular preacher more popular, but can have no possible tendency to prevent the mischief against which it is level- ed. It is precisely the old history of perse- cution against opinions turned into a perse- cution against persons. The prisons will be filled, — the enemies of the Church made ene- mies of the state also, — and the Methodists rendered ten times more actively mad than they are at present. This is the direct and obvious tendency of Lord Sidmouth's plan. Nothing dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerance. The fires are put out, and no liv- ing nostril has scented the nidor of a human creature roasted for faith ; — then, after this, the prison doors were got open, and the chains knocked off; and now Lord Sidmouth only begs that men who disagree with him in re- ligious opinions may be deprived of all civil offices and not be allowed to hear the preachers they like best. Chains and whips he would not hear of; but these mild gratifications of his bill every orthodox mind is surely entitled to. The hardship would indeed be great if a churchman were deprived of the amusement of putting a dissenting parson in prison. We are convinced Lord Sidmouth is a very amia- ble and well-intentioned man : his error is not the error of his heart, but of his time, above which few men ever rise. It is the error of some four or five hundred thousand English gentlemen of decent education and worthy characters, who conscientiously believe that they are punishing, and continuing incapaci- ties, for the good of the state ; while they are, in fact (though without knowing it), only grati- fying that insolence, hatred, and revenge, which all human beings are unfortunately so ready to feel against those who will not conform to their own sentiments. But. instead of making the dissenting church- es less popular, why not make the English church more popular, and raise the English clergy to the privileges of the Dissenters 1 In any parish of England, any layman, or clergy- man, by paying sixpence, can open a place of worship, — provided it be not the worship of the Church of England. If he wishes to attack the doctrines of the bishop or the incumbent, he is not compelled to ask the consent of any person; but if, by any evil chance, he should be per- suaded of the truth of those doctrines, and build a chapel or mount a pulpit to support them, he is instantly put in the spiritual court; for the regular incumbent, who has a legal monopoly of this doctrine, does not choose to suflfer any interloper; and without his consent, it is ille- gal to preach the doctrines of the church within his precincts.* Now this appears to us a great * It might be supposed that the general interests of the Church would outweigh the particular interests of the rector; and that any clergyman would be glad to see places of worship opened within his parish for the doctrines of the Established Church. The fact, how- ever, is directly the reverse. It is scarcely possible to obtain permission from the established clergyman of the parish to open a chapel there ; and, when it is granted, it is granted upon very hard and interested conditions. The parishes of St. George— of St. James— of Mary-le- bone— andof St. Anne's, in London— may, in the parish churches, chapels of ease, and mercenary chapels, con- tain, perhaps, one-hundredlh part of their Episcopalian inhabitants. Let the rectors, lay and clerical, meet together, and give notice that any clergyman of the Church of England, approved by the bishop, may preach there ; and we will venture to say, that places of wor- 92 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. and manifest absurdity, and a disadvantage against the Established Church which very few establishments could bear. The persons who preach and who build chapels, or for whom chapels are built, among the Dissenters, are active clever persons, with considerable talents for that kind of employment. These talents have, with them, their free and unbounded scope; while in the English Church they are wholly extinguished and destroyed. Till this evil is corrected, the Church contends with fear- ful odds against its opponents. On the one side, any man who can command the attention of a congregation — to whom nature has given the animal and inleilectual qualifications of a preacher — such a man is the member of every corporation ; — all impediments are removed ; — there is not a single position m Great Britain which he may not take, provided he is hostile to the Established Church. In the other case, if the English Church were to breed up a Mas- sillon or a Bourdalouc, he finds every place occupied, and every where a regular and re- spectable clergyman ready to put him in the spiritual court, if he attracts, within his pre- cincts, any attention to the doctrines and wor- ship of the Established Church. The necessity of having the bishop's consent would prevent any improper person from preaching. That consent should be withheld, not capriciously, but for good and lawful cause to be assigned. The profits of an incumbent proceed from fixed or voluntary contributions. The fixed could not be affected; and the voluntary ought to vary according to the exertions of the in- cumbent and the good will of the parishioners ; but, if this is wrong, pecuniary compensation might be made (at the discretion of the ordina- ry) from the supernumerary to the regular cler- gyman.* Such a plan, it is true, would make the Church of England more popular in its nature ; and it ought to be made more popular, or it will not endure for another half century. There are two methods; the Church must be made more popular or the Dissenters less so. To cflTect the latter object by force and restriction is unjust and impossible. The only remedy seems to be, to grant to the Church the same privileges which are enjoyed by the Dissenters, and to excite, in one party, that competition of talent which is of such palpable advantage to the other. A remedy suggested by some well-wishers to the Church, is the appointment of men to bene- sViipcapalile of containing 20,000'persons would be built within ten years. But, in these cases, the interest of the rector and'of the Establishment is not the same. A chapel belonging to the Swedenborgians, or Methodists of the New Jerusalem, was offered, two or three years since, in London, to a clergyman of the Establishment. The proprietor was tired of his irrational tenants, and wished for better doctrine The rector (since a digni- tary), with every possible compliment to the fitness of the person in question, positively refuseduhe applica- tion; and the church remains in the hands of Metho- dists. No particular blame is intended, by this anec- dote, against the individual rector. He acted as many have done before and since; but the incumbent clergy- man ought to possess no such power. It is his interest, but not the interest of the Establishment. * All this has been since placed on a better footing. fices who have talents for advancing the inter- ests of religion ; but, till each particular patron can be persuaded to care more for the general good of the Church than for the particular good of the person whom he patronizes, little expec- tation of improvement can be derived from this quarter. The competition between the Established clergy, to which this method would give birth, would throw the incumbent in the back-ground only when he was unfit to stand forward, — im- moral, negligent, or stupid. His income would still remain; and, if his influence were super- seded by a man of better qualities and attain- ments, the general good of the Establishment would be consulted by the change. The bene- ficed clergyman would always come to the contest with great advantages ; and his defici- encies must be very great indeed, if he lost the esteem of his parishioners. But the contest would rarely or never take place, where the friends of the Establishment were not numer- ous enough for all. At present, the selfish incumbent, who cannot accommodate the fif- tieth part of his parishioners, is determined that no one else shall do it for him. It is in such situations that the benefit to the Establishment would be greatest, and the injury to the ap- pointed minister none at all. We beg of men of sense to reflect, that the question is not whether they wish the English Church to stand as it now is, but whether the English Church can stand as it now is ; and whether the moderate activity here recom- mended is not the minimum of exertion neces- sary for its preservation. At the same time, we hope nobody will rate our sagacity so very low as to imagine we have much hope that any measure of the kind will ever be adopted. Ml establishmoits die of dignify. They are too proud to think themselves ill, and to take a little physic. To show that we have not misstated the ob- stinacy or the conscience of sectaries, and the spirit with which they will meet the regulations of Lord Sidmouth, we will lay before our readers the sentiments of Philagatharches — a stern subacid Dissenter. " I shall not here enter into a comprehensive discussion of the nature of a call to the minis- terial office ; but deduce my proposition from a sentiment admitted equally by conformists and nonconformists. It is essential to the nature of a call to preach ' that a man be moved by the Holy Ghost to enter upon the work of the min- istry :' and, if the Spirit of God operate power- fully upon his heart to contrain him to appear as a public teacher of religion, who shall com- mand him to desist 1 We have seen that the sanction of the magistrate can give no autho- rity to preach the gospel ; and if he were to forbid our exertions, we must persist in the work ; we dare not relinquish a task that God has required us to perform ; we cannot keep our consciences in peace, if our lips are closed in silence, while the Holy Ghost is moving our hearts to proclaim the tidings of salvation: — 'Yea, woe is unto me,' saith St. Paul, 'if I preach not the gospel.' Thus, when the Jewish priests had taken Peter and John into custody, and after examining them concerning their doc WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. trine, 'commanded them not to speak at all, nor to teach in the name of Jesus,' these apos- tolical champions of the cross undauntedly replied, 'Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye : for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.' Thus, also, in our da}'-, when the Holy Ghost excites a man to preach the gospel to his fellow sinners, his message is sanctioned by an authority which is 'far above all principality and power;' and, consequently, neither needs the approbation of subordinate rulers, nor admits of revocation by their countermanding edicts. "3dly. He who receives a license should not expect to derive from it a testimony of qualifi- cation to preach. "It would be grossly absurd to seek a testi- mony of this description from any single indi- vidual, even though he were an experienced veteran in the service cf Christ; for aH are fallible ; and, under some unfavourable prepos- session, even the wisest or the best of men might give an erroneous decision upon the case. But this observation will gain additional force when we suppose the power of judging transferred to the person of the magistrate — We cannot presume that a civil ruler under- stands as much of theology as a minister of the gospel. His necessary duties prevent him from critically investigating questions upon divinity; and confine his attention to that par- ticular department which society has deputed him to occupy ; and hence to expect at his hands a testimony of qualification to preach would be almost as ludicrous as to require an obscure country curate to fill the office of Lord Chancellor. " But again— admitting that a magistrate who is nominated by the sovereign to issue forth licenses to dissenting ministers, is com- petent to the task of judging of their natural and acquired abilities, it must still remain a doubtful question whether they are moved to preach by the influences of the Holy Ghost; for it is the prerogative of God alone to 'search the heart and try ihe reins' of the children of men. Consequently, after every effort of the ruling powers to assume to themselves the right of judging whether a man be or be not qualified to preach, the most essential property of the call must remain to be determined by the conscience of the individual. "It is further worthy of observation that the talents of a preacher may be acceptable to many persons, if not to him who issues the license. The taste of a person thus high in office may be too refined to derive gratification from any but the most learned, intelligent, and accomplished preachers. Yet, as the gospel is sent to the poor as well as to the rich, per- haps hundreds of preachers may be highly acceptable, much esteemed, and eminently useful in their respective circles, who would be despised as men of mean attainments by one whose mind is well stored with literature, and cultivated by science. From these re- marks, I infer, that a man's own judgment must be the criterion, in determining what line of conduct to pursue before he begins to preach ; and the opinion of the people to whom he ministers must determine v/hether it be desirable that he should continue to fill their pulpit."— (168— 173.) The sentiments of Philagatharches are ex- pressed still more strongly in a subsequent passage. " Here a question may arise — what line of conduct conscientious ministers ought to pur- sue, if laws were to be enacted, forbidding either all dissenting ministers to preach, or only lay preachers ; or forbidding to preach in an unlicensed place ; and, at the same time, refusing to license persons and places, except under such security as the property of the parties would not meet, or under limi- tations to which their consciences could not accede. What has been advanced ought to outweigh every consideration of temporal interest; and if the evil genius of persecu- tion were to appear again, I pray God that we might all be faithful to Him who hath called us to preach the gospel. Under such circum- stances, let us continue to preach : if fined, let us pay the penalt)', and persevere in preach- ing ; and, when unable to pay the fine, or deeming it impolitic so to do, let us submit to go quietly to prison, but with the resolution still to preach upon the first opportunity, and, if possible, to collect a church even within the precincts of the gaol. He who, by these zealous exertions, becomes the honoured in- strunient of converting one sinner unto God, will find that single seal to his ministerial la- bours an ample compensation for all his suf- ferings. In this manner the venerable apostle of the Gentiles both avowed and proved his sincere attachment to the cause in which he had embarked : — ' The Holy Ghost witn'^sseth, in every city, that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.' "In the early ages of Christianity martyr- dom was considered an eminent honour ; and many of the primitive Christians thrust them- selves upon the notice of their heathen per- secutors, that they might be brought to sufl^er in the cause of that Redeemer whom they ardently loved. In the present day Christiana in general incline to estimate such rash ardour as a species of enthusiasm, and feel no dispo- sition to court the horrors of persecution ; yet, if such dark and tremendous days were to return in this age of the world, ministers should retain their stations; they should be true to their charge; they should continue their ministrations, each man in his sphere, shining with all the lustre of genuine godli- ness, to dispel the gloom in which the nation would then be enveloped. If this line of con- duct were to be adopted, and acted upon with decision, the cause of piety, of nonconformity, and of itinerant preaching, must eventually triumph. All the gaols in the country would speedily be filled: those houses of correction which were erected for the chastisement of the vicious in the community, would be replen- ished with thousands of the most pious, active, and useful men in the kingdom, whose cha- 94 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. rasters are held in general esteem. But the ultimate result of such despotic proceedings is beyond the ken of human prescience :— pro- bably, appeals to the public and the legislature would teem from the press, and, under such circumstances, might diffuse a revolutionary spirit throughout the country."— (239— 243.) We quote these opinions at length, not be- cause they are the opinions of Philagatharches, but because we are confident that they are the opinions of ten thousand hot-headed fanatics, and that they would firmly and conscientiously be acted upon. Philagatharches is an instance (not uncom- mon, we are sorry to say, even among the most ] rational of the Protestant Dissenters) of a love j of toleration combined with a love of persecu- tion. He is a Dissenter, and earnestly demands i religious liberty for that body of men ; but as j for the Catholics, he would not only continue their present disabilities, but load them with every new one that could be conceived. He| expressly says that an Atheist or a Deist may be allowed to propagate their doctrines, but not a Catholic ; and then proceeds with all the customary trash against that sect which nine schoolboys out of ten now know how to refute. So it is with Philagatharches ; — so it is with weak men in every sect. It has ever been our object, and (in spite of misrepresentation and abuse) ever shall be our object, to put down this spirit — to protect the true interests, and to diffuse the true spirit, of toleration. To a well- supported national Establishment, effectually discharging its duties, we are very sincere friends. If any man, after he has paid his contribution to this great security for the exist- ence of religion in any shape, chooses to adopt a religion of his own, that man should be per- mitted to do so without let, molestation, or dis- qualification for any of the offices of life. We apologize to men of sense for sentiments so trite ; and patiently endure the anger which they will excite among those with whom they will pass for original. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. CHARLES FOX/ [Edinburgh Review, 1811.] Thocgh Mr. Fox's history was, of course, as muoh open to animadversion and rebuke as any other book, the task, we think, Avould have become any other person better than Mr. Rose. The whole of Mr. Fox's life w.t.s spent in opposing the profligacy and exposing the ignorance of his own court. In the first half of his political career, while Lord North was losing America, and in the latter half, while Mr. Pitt was ruinirrg Europe, the creatures of the government were eternally exposed to the attacks of this discerning, dauntless, and most powerful speaker. Folly and corruption never had a more terrible enemy in the English House of Commons — one whom it was so im- possible to bribe, so hopeless to elude, and so difiicult to answer. Now it so happened that, during the whole of this period, the historical critic of Mr. Fox was employed in subordinate oflJices of government; — that the detail of taxes passed through his hands ; — that he amassed a large fortune by those occupations ; — and that, both in the measures which he support- ed, and in the friends from whose patronage he received his emoluments, he was complete- ly and perpetually opposed to Mr. Fox. Again, it must be remembered, that very great people have very long memories for the injuries which they receive, or which they think they receive. No speculation was so good, therefore, as to vilify the memory of Mr. Fox, — nothing so delicious as to lower him in the public estimation, — no service so likely to be well rewarded — so eminently grate- ful to those of whose favour Mr. Rose'had so often tasted the sweets, and of the value of whose patronage he must, from long experi- ence, have been so thoroughly aware. We are almost inclined to think that we might at one time have worked ourselves up to suspect Mr. Rose of being actuated by some of these motives : — not because we have any reason to think worse of that gentleman than of most of his political associates, but merely because it seemed to us so very probable that he should have been so influenced. Our sus- picions, however, were entirely removed b}' the frequency and violence of his own pro- testations. He vows so solemnly that he has no bad motive in writing his critique, that we find it impossible to withhold our belief in his purity. But Mr. Rose does not trust to his protestations alone. He is not satisfied with assurances that he did not write this book from any bad motive, but he informs us that his motive was excellent, — and is even obliging enough to tell us what that motive was. The Earl of Marchmont, it seems, was Mr. Rose's friend. To Mr. Rose he left his manuscripts ; and among these manuscripts was a narrative * A Vindication of Mr. Fox's History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second. By Samuel Hey wood, Serjeant-at-Law. London. Johnson & Co. 1811. written by Sir Patrick Hume, an ancestor of the Earl of Marchmont, and one of the leaders in Argyle's rebellion. Of Sir Patrick Hume Mr. Rose conceives (a little erroneously to be sure, but he assures us he does conceive) Mr. Fox to have spoken disrespectfully ; and the case comes out, therefore, as clearly as possi- ble, as follows. Sir Patrick was the progenitor, and Mr. Rose was the friend and sole executor, of the Earl of Marchmont; and therefore, says Mr. Rose, I consider it as a sacred duty to vindi- cate the character of Sir Patrick, and, for that purpose, to publish a long and elaborate cri- tique upon all the doctrines and statements contained in Mr. Fox's history ! This appears to us about as satisfactory an explanation of Mr. Rose's authorship as the exclamation of the traveller was of the name of Stony Stratford. Before Mr. Rose gave way to this intense value for Sir Patrick, and resolved to write a book, he should have inquired what accurate men there were about in society; and if he had once received the slightest notice of the existence of Mr. Samuel Heywood, serjeant- at-law, we are convinced he would have trans- fused into his own will and testament the feel- ings he derived from that of Lord Marchmont, and devolved upon another executor the sacred and dangerous duty of vindicating Sir Patrick Hume. The life of Mr. Rose has been principally employed in the painful, yet perhaps neces- sary, duty of increasing the burdens of his fellow-creatures. It has been a life of detail, onerous to th£ subject — onerous and lucrative to himself. It would be unfair to expect from one thus occupied any great depth of thought, or any remarkable graces of composition ; but we have a fair right to look for habits of pa- tient research and scrupulous accuracy. We might naturally expect industry in collecting facts, and fidelity in quoting them ; and hope, in the absence of commanding genius, to re- ceive a compensation from the more humble and ordinary qualities of the mind. How far this is the case, our subsequent remarks will enable the reader to judge. We shall not ex- tend them to any great length, as we have befoi-e treated on the same subject in our re- view of Mr. Rose's work. Our great object at present is to abridge the observations of Serjeant Heywood. For Serjeant Heywood, though a most respectable, honest, and en- lightened man, really does require an abridger. He has not the talent of saying what he has to say quickly ; nor is he aware that brevity is in writing what charity is to all other vir- tues. Righteousness is worth nothing without the one, nor authorship without the other. But whoever will forgive this little defect will find in all his productions great learning, immacu- late honesty, and the most scrupulous accu 96 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, racy. Whatever detections of Mr. Rose's in- accuracies are made in this Review are to be entirely given to him ; and we confess our- selves quite astonished at their number and extent. "Among the modes of destroying persons (says Mr. Fox, p. 14-,) in such a situation (/. e. monarchs deposed), there can be little doubt but that adopted by Cromwell and his adherents is the leant dishonourable. Edward II., Richard II., Henry VI., Edward V., had none of them long survived their deposal; but this was the first instance, in our history at least, when of such an act it could be truly said it was not done in a corner." What Mr. Rose can find in this sentiment to quarrel with, we are utterly at a loss to con- ceive. If a human being is to be put to death unjustly, is it no mitigation of such a lot that the death should be public 1 Is any thing better calculated to prevent secret torture and cruelty ] And would Mr. Rose, in mercy to Charles, have preferred that red-hot iron should have been secretly thrust into his en- trails 1 — or that he should have disappeared as Pichegru and Toussaint have disappeared in our times 1 The periods of the Edwards and Henrys were, it is true, barbarous periods : but this is the very argument Mr. Fox uses. All these murders, he contends, were immoral and bad ; but that where the manner was the least objectionable, was the murder of Charles the First, — because it was public. And can any human being doubt, in the first place, that these crimes would be marked by less in- tense cruelty if they were public; and, second- ly, that they would become less frequent, where the perpetrators incurred responsibility, than if they were committed by an uncertain hand in secrecy and concealment 1 There never was, in short, not only a more innocent, but a more obvious sentiment; and to object to it in the manner which Mr. Rose has done, is surely to love Sir Patrick Hume too much, — if there can be any excess in so very com- mendable a passion in the breast of a sole executor. Mr. Fox proceeds to observe, that "he who has discussed this subject with foreigners, must have observed, that the act of the execu- tion of Charles, even in the minds of those who condemn it, excites more admiration than disgust." If the sentiment is bad, let those who feel it answer for it. Mr. Fox only as- serts the fact, and explains, without justifying it. The only question (as concerns Mr. Fox) is, whether such is, or is not, the feeling of foreigners; and whether that feeling (if it ex- ists) is riglitly explained 1 We have no doubt either of the fact or of the explanation. The conduct of Cromwell and his associates was iiot to be excused in the main act ; but, in the manner, it ims magnanimous. And among the servile nations of the Continent, it must naturally excite a feeling of joy and won- der, that the power of the people had for once been felt, and so memorable a lesson read to those whom they must naturally con- sider as the great oppressors of mankind. The most unjustifiable point of Mr. Rose's accusation, however, is still to come. "If such high praise," says that gentleman, "was, in the judgment of Mr. Fox, due to Cromwell for the publicity of the proceedings against the king, how would he have found language suf- ficiently commendatory to express his admi- ration of the magnanimity of those who brought Lewis the Sixteenth to an open triall" Mr. Rose accuses Mr. Fox, then, of approving the execution of Lewis the Sixteenth : but, on the 20th of December, 1792, Mr. Fox said, in the House of Commons, in the presence of Mr. Rose, " The proceedings with respect to the royal family of France are so far from being mag- nanimity, justice, or merc}^ that they are di- rectly the reverse ; they are injustice, cruelty, and pusillanimity." And afterwards declared his wish for an address to his majesty, to which he would add an expression "of our abhorrence of the proceedings against the royal family of France, in which, I have no doubt, we shall be supported by the whole countr}'. If there can be anj^ means suggested that will be better adapted to produce the unanimous concurrence of thi? House, and of all the country, with respect to the measure now under consideration in Paris, I should be obliged to any person for his better suggestion upon the subject." Then, after stating that such address, especially if the Lords joined in it, must have a decisive influence in France, he added, "I have said thus much in order to contradict one of the most cruel misrepresentations of what I had before said in our late debates ; and that my language may not be interpreted from the manner in which other gentlemen have chosen to answer it. I have spoken the genuine sentiments of my heart, and I anxiously wish the House to come to some re- solution upon the subject." And on the follow- ing day, when a copy of instruction sent to Earl Gower, signifying that he should leave Paris, was laid before the House of Commons, Mr. Fox said, "he had heard it said, that the proceedings against the King of France are unnecessary. He would go a great deal far- ther, and say, he believed them to be highly unjust ; and not only repugnant to all the com- mon feelings of mankind, but also contrary to all the fundamental principles of law." — (p. 20, 21.) On Monday the 28th January, he said, — "With regard to that part of the communi- cation from his majesty, which related to the late detestable scene exhibited in a neigh- bouring country, he could not suppose there were two opinions in that House ; he knew they were all ready to declare their ab- horrence of that abominable proceeding." — (p. 21.) Two days afterwards, in the debate on the message, Mr. Fox pronounced the condemna- tion and execution of the king to be — "an act as disgraceful as any that histoiy recorded : and whatever opinions he might at any time have expressed in private conversa- tion, he had expressed none certainly in that House on the justice of bringing kings to trial: revenge being unjustifiable, and punishment useless, where it could not operate either by WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 97 ^' way of prevention or example; he did not view with less detestation the injustice and inhiimanity that had been committed towards that unhappy monarch. Not only were the rules of criminal justice — rules that more than any other ought to be strictly observed — viola- ted with respect to him: not only was he tried and condemned without existing law, to which he was personally amenable, and even con- trary to laws that did actually exist, but the degrading circumstances of his imprisonment, the unnecessary and insulting asperity with which he had been treated, the total want of re- publican magnanimity in the ivhole transaction, (for even in that House it could be no offence to say, that there might be such a thing as magnanimity in a republic,) added every ag- gravation to the inhumanity and injustice." That Mr. Fox had held this language in the House of Commons, Mr. Rose knew perfectly well, when he accused that gentleman of ap- roving the murder of the King of Fra*ice. hatever be the faults imputed to Mr. Fox, duplicity and hj'pocrisy were never among the number ; and no human being ever doubted but that Mr. Fox, in this instance, spoke his real sentiments : but the love of Sir Patrick Hume is an overwhelming passion; and no man who gives way to it, can ever say into what excesses he may be hurried. Non simul cuiquam conceditur, amare et sapere. The next point upon which Sergeant Hey- wood attacks Mr. Rose, is that of General Monk. Mr. Fox says of Monk, "that he ac- quiesced in the insult so meanly put upon the illustrious corpse of Blake, under whose au- spices and command he had performed the most creditable services of his life." This story, Mr. Rose says, rests upon the authority of Neale, in his History of the Puritans. This is the first of many blunders made by Mr. Rose itpon this particular topic : for Anthony Wood, in his Fasti Oxonienses, enumerating Blake among the bachelors, says, "His body was taken up, and, with others, buried in a pit in St, Margarefs church-yard adjoining, near to the back door of one of the prebendaries of Westminster, in lohich place it now remaineth, enjoying no other monument but what it reared by its valour, which time itself can hardly efface." But the difficulty is to find how the denial of Mr. Rose affects Mr. Fox's assertion. Mr. Rose admits that Blake's body was dug tip by an order of the king ; and does not deny that it was done with the acquiescence of Monk. But if this be the case, Mr. Fox's po- sition that Blake was insulted, and that Monk acquiesced in the insult, is clearly made out. Nor has Mr. Rose the shadow of an authority for saying that the corpse of Blake was rein- terred luith great decorum. Kennet is silent •upon the subject. We have already given Serjeant Heywood's quotation from Anthony Wood; and this statement, for the present, rests entirely upon the assertion of Mr. Rose ; and upon that basis will remain to all eternity. Mr. Rose, who, we must say, on all occa- sions through the whole of this book, makes the greatest parade of his accuracy, states that the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Blake, 13 were taken up at the same time ; whereas the fact is, that those of Cromwell and Ireton were taken up on the 26th of January, and that of Blake on the 10th of September, nearly nine months afterwards. It may appear frivolous to notice such errors as these ; but they lead to very strong suspicions in a critic of history and of historians. They show that those ha- bits of punctuality, on the faith of which he demands implicit confidence from his readers, really do not exist ; they prove that such a writer will be exact only when he thinks the occasion of importance, and as he himself is the only judge of that importance, it is neces- sary to examine his proofs in every instance, and impossible to trust him anywhere. Mr. Rose remarks that, in the weekly paper entitled Mercurius Rusticus, No. 4, where an account is given of the disinterment of Crom- well aijd Ireton, not a syllable is said respect- ing the corpse of Blake. This is very true ; but the reason (which does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Rose) is, that Blake's corpse was not touched till six months afterwards. This is really a little too much. That Mr. Rose should quit his usual pursuits, erect him- self into an historical critic, perch upon the body of the dead lion, impugn the accuracy of one of the greatest, as well as most accurate men of his time, — and himself be guilty of such gross and unpardonable negligence, looks so very much like an insensibility to shame, that we should be loth to characterize his con- duct by the severe epithets which it appears to merit, and which, we are quite certain. Sir Patrick, the defendee, would have been the first to bestow upon it. The next passage in Mr. Fox's work ob- jected to is that which charges Monk, at the trial of Argyle, " with having produced letters of friendship and confidence to take away the life of a nobleman, the zeal and cordiality of whose co-operation with him, proved by such documents, was the chief ground of his exe- cution." This accusation, says Mr. Rose, rests upon the sole authority of Bishop Bur- net; and yet no sooner has he said this, than he tells us, Mr. Laing considers the bishop's authority to be confirmed by Cunningham and Baillie, both contemporary writers. Into Cun- ningham or Baillie Mr. Rose never looks to see Avhether or not they do really confirm the authority of the bishop ; and so gross is his negligence, that the very misprint from Mr. Laing's work is copied, and page 431 of Baillie is cited instead of 451. If Mr. Rose had really taken the trouble of referring to these books, all doubt of the meanness and guilt of Monk must have been instantly removed. " Monk was moved," says Baillie, "/o send down four or five of Ar gyle's letters to himself and others, promising liis full compliance with them, that the king should not reprieve him." — Baillie'' s Letters, p. 451. "He endeavoured to make his defence," says Cunningham; "-bat chiefly by the discoveries of Monk was condemned of high treason, and lost his head." — Cunning- haul's History, i. p. 13. Would it have been more than common de- cency required, if Mr. Rose, who had been ap- prised of the existence of these authorities, had 98 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. had recourse to them, before he impugned the accuracy of Mr. Fox 1 Or is it possible to read, without some portion of contempt, this slovenly and indolent corrector of supposed inaccura- cies in a man, not only so much greater than himself in his general nature, but a man who, as it turns out, excels Mr. Rose in his own little arts of looking, searching, and comparing ; and is as much his superior in the retail qualities which small people arrogate to themselves, as he was in every commanding faculty to the rest of his fellow creatures'? Mr. Rose searches Thurloe's State Papers ; but Serjeant Heyvvood searches them after Mr. Rose: and, by a series of the plainest references, proves the probability there is that Argyle did receive letters which might mate- rially have affected his life. To Monk's duplicity of conduct may be principally attributed the destruction of his friends, who were prevented, by their confi- dence in him, from taking measures to secure themselves. He selected those among them whom he thought fit for trial — sal as a commis- sioner upon their trial— and interfered not to save the lives eren of those with whom he had Jived in habits of the greatest kindness. "I cannot," says a witness of the most un- question ble authority, "I cannot forget o/ic/)ns- sage that I saiv. Monk and his wife, before they were moved to the Tower, while they were yet I prisoners at Lambeth House, came one evening 10 the garden, and caused them to be brought (town, only to stare at them ; which was such a barbarism, for that man who had betrayed so )nany poor men to death and misery, that never hurt him, but had honoured him, and trusted their lives and interests with him, to glut his bloody eyes with beholding them in their bond- age, as no story can parallel the inhumanity of." — (p. 83.) Hutrhinsou's Memoirs, 378. This, however, is the man whom Mr. Fox, at the distance of a century and a half, may not mark with infamy, without incurring, from the candour of Mr. Rose, the imputation of repub- lican principles; — as if attachment to monarchy could have justified, in Monk, the coldness, cruelt)', and treachery of his character, — as if ihe historian became the advocale,or the enemy of any form of government, by praising the good, or blaming the bad men which it might produce Serjeant Hey wood sums up the whole article as follows : " Having examined and commented upon the evidence produced by Mr. Rose, than which 'it is hardly possible,' he says, 'to conceive that stronger could be formed in any case to estab- lish a negative,' we now safely assert that Mr. Fox had fully informed himself upon the sub- ject before he wrote, and was amply justified in the condemnation of Monk, and the conse- quent severe censures upon him. It has been already demonstrated that the character of Monk had been truly given, when of him he said, ' the army had fallen into the hands of one, than whom a baser could not be found in its lowest ranks.' The transactions between l>im and Argyle for a certain period of time were such as must naturally, if not necessarily, have led them into an epistolary correspond- ence; and it was in exact conformity with Monk's character and conduct to the regicides, that he should betray the letters written to him, in order to destroy a man whom he had, in the latter part of his command in Scotland, both feared and hated. If the fact of the production of these letters had stood merely on the testi- mony of Bishop Burnet, we have seen that nothing has been produced by Mr. Rose and Dr. Campbell to impeach it; on the contrary, an inquiry into the authorities and documents they have cited, strongly confirm it. But, as before observed, it is a surprising instance of Ml-. Rose's indolence, that he should state the question to depend now, as it did in Dr. Camp- bell's time, on the bishop's authority solely. But that authority is, in itself, no light one Burnet was almost eighteen years of age at the time of Argyle's trial; he was never an unob- serving spectator of public events ; he was probably at Edinburgh, and, for some years afterwards, remained in Scotland, with ample means of information respecting events which had taken place so recently. Baillie seems also to have been upon the spot, and expressly confirms the testimony of Burnet. To these must be added Cunningham, v/ho, writing as a person perfectly acquainted with the circum- stances of the transaction, says it was owing to the interference of Monk, who had been his great friend in Oliver's time, that he was sent back to Scotland, and brought to trial ; and that he was condemned chiefly by his discoveries. We may now ask where is the improbability of this story, when related of such a man ] and what ground there is for not giving credit to a fact attested by three witnesses of veracity, each writing at a distance, and separate from each other? In this instance Bishop Burnet is so confirmed, that no reasonable being, who will attend to the subject, can doubt of the fact he relates being true; and we shall hereafter prove that the general imputation against his accu- racy, made by Mr. Rose, is totally without foundation. If facts so proved are not to be credited, historians may lay aside their pens, and every man must content himself with the scanty pittance of knowledge he may be able to collect for himself in the very limited sphere of his own immediate observation." — (p. 86—88.) This, we think, is conclusive enough : but we are happy to be enabled, out of our own store, to set this part of the question finally to rest, by an authority which Mr. Rose himself will probably admit to be decisive. Sir George Mackenzie, the great tory lawyer of Scotland in that day, and Lord Advocate to Charles II. through the greater part of his reign, was the leading counsel for Argyle on the trial alluded to. In 1678, this learned person, who was then Lord Advocate to Charles, published an elabo- rate treatise on the criminal law of Scotland; in which, when treating of probation, or evi- dence, he observes, that missive letters, not written, but only signed by the party, should not be received in evidence; and immediately adds, "And yet the Marquis of Argyle ivas con- vict of treason upon letters wihttev by hiim TO General Monk; these letters being only subscribed by him, and not holograph, and the subscription being proved per coniparationem WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 99 literarum ; which were very hard in other cases," &c. — Mackenzie's Criminals, first edit. p. 524, Part II. tit. 25, § 3. Now this, we conceive, is neither more nor less than a solemn profes- sional report of the case,— and leaves just as little room for doubt as to the fact, as if the original record of the trial had been recovered. Mr. Rose next objects to Mr. Fox's assertion, that " the king kept from his cabal ministry the real state of his connection with France — and from some of them the secret of what he was pleased to call his religion ;" and Mr. Fox doubts whether to attribute this conduct to the habitual treachery of Charles, or to an ap- prehension that his ministers might demand for themselves some share of the French money; which he was unwilling to give them. In answer to this conjecture, Mr. Rose quotes Barillon's Letters to Lewis XIV., to show that Charles's ministers were fully apprised of his money transactions with France. The letters so quoted were, however, written seven years after the cabal ministry were inpoiver — for Barillon did not come to England as ambassador till 1677 — and these letters were not written till after that period. Poor Sir Patrick — It was for thee and thy defence this book was written ! ! ! ! Mr. Fox has said, that from some of the ministers of the cabal the secret of Charles's religion was concealed. It was known to Ar- lington, admitted by Mr. Rose to be a concealed Catholic ; it was known to Clifford, an avowed Catholic; Mr. Rose admits it not to have been known to Buckingham, thongh he explains the reserve, with respect to him, in a different way. He has not, however, attempted to prove that Lauderdale or Ashley were consulted; — on the contrary, in Colbert's letter of the 25th August, 1670, cited by Mr. Rose, it is stated that Charles had proposed the traite simule, which should be a repetition of the former one in all things, except the article relative to the king's declaring himself a Catholic, and that the Protestant mi- nisters, Buckingham, Ashley, Cooper, and Lau- derdale, should be brought to be parties to it: — Can there be a stronger proof (asks Serjeant Hey wood), that they were ignorant of the same treaty made the year before, and remaining then in force"? Historical research is. cer- tainly not the peculiar talent of Mr. Rose ; and as for the official accuracy of which he is so apt to boast, we would have Mr. Rose to remem- ber, that the term official accuracy has of late days become one of very ambiguous import. Mr. Rose, we can see, would imply by it the highest possible accuracy — as we see office pens advertised in the window of a shop, by way of excellence. The public reports of those, how- ever, who have been appointed to look into the manner in which public offices are conducted, by no means justify this usage of the term ; — and we are not without apprehensions, that Dutch politeness, Carthaginian faith, Boeotian genius, and official accuracy, may be terms equally current in the world ; and that Mr. Rose may, without intending it, have contributed to make this valuable addition to the mass of our ironical phraseology. Speaking of the early part of James's reign, Mr. Fox says, it is by no means certain that he had yet thoughts of obtaining for his religion, any thing more than a complete toleration ; and if Mr. Rose had understood the meaning of the French word etablisscment, one of his many in- correct corrections of Mr. Fox might have been spared. A system of religion is said to be es- tablished when it is enacted and endowed by Parliament; but a toleration (as Serjeant Hey- wood observes) is established, when it is recog- nised and protected by the supreme power. And in the letters of Barillon, to which Mr. Rose refers for the justification of his attack upon Mr. Fox, it is quite manifest that it is in this latter sense that the word etablissement is used; and that the object in view was, not the substi- tution of the Catholic religion for the Estab- lished Church, but merely its toleration. In the first letter cited by Mr. Rose, James says, that " he knew well he should never be in safety unless liberty of conscience for them should be fully established in England." The letter of the 24th of April is quoted by Mr. Rose, as if the French king had written, the establishment of the Catholic religion ; whereas the real words are, the establishment of the free exercise of tite Catholic religion. The world are so inveterately resolved to believe, that a man who has no brilliant talents must be accurate, that Mr. Rose, in re- ferring to authorities, has a great and decided advantage. He is, however, in point of fact, as lax and incorrect as a poet ; and it is absolutely necessary, in spite of every parade of line, and page, and number, to follow him in the most minute particular. The Serjeant, like a blood- hound of the old breed, is always upon his track ; and always looks if there are any such passages in the page quoted, and if the passages are accurately quoted or accurately translated. Nor will he by any means be content with official accuracy, nor submit to be treated, in his- torical questions, as if he were hearing finan- cial statements in the House of Commons. Barillon writes, in another letter to Lewis XIV. — "What your majesty has most besides at heart, that is to say, for the establishment of a free exercise of the Catholic religion." On the 9th of May, Lewis writes to Barillon, that he is persuaded Charles will employ all his authority to establish the free exercise of the Catholic religion : he mentions also, in the same letter, the Parliament consenting to the free exercise of our religion. On the 15th of June, he writes to Barilion— " There now re- mains only to obtain the repeal of the penal Icnvs in favour ''of the Catholics, and the free exercise of our religion in all his states." Immediately after Monmouth's execution, when his views of success must have been as lofty as they ever could have been, Lewis writes — " It will be easy to the King of England, and as useful for the security of his reign as for the repose of his conscience, to re-establish the exercise of the Catholic religion." In a letter of Ba- rillon, July 16th, Sunderland is made to say, that the king would always be exposed to the indiscreet zeal of those who would inflame the people against the Catholic religion, so long as it should not be more fulhj established. The French expression is ta7it qiCelle ne sera pas plus pleinement e^atjUe ,- and this Mr. Rose ha.s had the modesty to translate, till it shall be com- 100 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. pletely established, and to mark the passage with Italics, as of the greatest importance to his argument. These false quotations and translations being detected, and those passages of early writers, from which Mr. Fox had made \ip his opinion, brought to light, it is not possible to doubt, but that the object of James, before Monmouth's defeat, was not the destruction of the Protestant, but the toleration of the Catho- lic religion; and after the execution of Mon- mouth, Mr. Fox admits, that he became more bold and sanguine upon the subject of religion. We do not consider those observations of Serjeant He}T\^ood to be the most fortunate in his book, where he attempts to show the re- publican tendency of Mr. Rose's principles. Of any disposition to principles of this nature, we most heartily acquit that right honourable gentleman. He has too much knowledge of mankind to believe their happiness can be pro- moted in the stormy and tempestuous regions of republicanism; and, besides this, that sys- tem of slender pay, and deficient perquisites, to which the subordinate agents of govern- ment are confined in republics, is much too painful to be thought of for a single instant. We are afraid of becoming tedious by the enumeration of blunders into which Mr. Rose has fallen, and which Serjeant Heywood has detected. But the burthen of this sole execu- tor's song is accuracy — his own oflicial accu- racy — and the little dependence which is to be placed on the accuracy of Mr. Fox. We will venture to assert, that, in the whole of his work, he has not detected Mr. Fox in one shi- gle error. Whether Serjeant Heywood has been more fortunate with respect to Mr. Rose, might be determined, perhaps with suthcient certainty, by our previous extracts from his remarks. But for some indulgent readers, these may not seem enough : and we must pro- ceed in the task, till we have settled Mr. Rose's pretensions to accuracy on a still firmer foun- dation. And if we be thought minutely se- vere, let it be remembered tliat Mr. Rose is himself an accuser; and if there is justice upon earth, every man has a right to pull sto- len goods out of the pocket of him who cries, '•Slop thief I" In the story which Mr. Rose states of the seat in Parliament sold for five pounds (Jour- nal of the Commons, vol. v.), he is wrong, both in the sum and the volume. The sum is four pounds; and it is told, not in the fifth A-olume, but the first. Mr. Rose states, that a perpetual excise was granted to the crown, in lieu of the profits of the court of wards ; and adds, that the question in favour of the crown was car- ried by a majority of two. The real fact is, that the half only of an excise upon certain articles was granted to government in lieu of these profits ; and this grant was carried with- out a division. An attempt was made to grant the other half, and this was negatived by a ma- jority of two. The Journals are open ; — Mr. Rose reads them ; — he is oflicially accurate. What can the meaning be of these most ex- traordinary mistakes'? Mr. Rose says that, in 1679, the writ de Jias- retico comburendo had been a dead letter for more than a century. It would have been ex- tremely agreeable to Mr. Bartholomew Legate, if this had been the case ; for, in 1612, he was burnt at Smithfield for being an Arian. Mr. Wightman would probably have participated in the satisfaction of Mr. Legate ; as he was burnt also, the same year, at Lichfield, for the same ofl^ence. With the same correctness, this scourge of historians makes the Duke of Lauderdale, who died in 1682, a confidential adviser of James II. after his accession in 1689. In page 13, he quotes, as written by Mr. Fox, that which was written by Lord Holland. This, however, is a familiar practice with him. Ten pages afterward, in Mr. Fox's History, he makes the same mistake. " Mr. Fox added" — whereas it was Lord Holland that added. The same mistake again, in p. 147 of his own book; and after this, he makes Mr. Fox the person who selected the appendix of Barillon's pa- pers; whereas it is particularly stated in the preface to the History, that this appendix was selected by Laing. Mr. Rose aflirms, that compassing to levy war against the king was made high treason by the statute of 25 Edward the Third; and, in support of this aflirmation, he cites Coke and Blackstoue. His stern antagonist, a pro- fessional man, is convinced he has read nei- ther. The former says, "a compassing to levy war is no treason" (Inst. 3, p. 9 ;) and Black- stone, "a bare conspiracy to levy war does not amount to this species of treason." (Com. iv. p. 82.) This really does not look as if the Serjeant had made out his assertion. Of the bill introduced in 1685, for the pre- servation of the person of James II., Mr. Rose observes — " Mr. Fox has not told us for which of our modern statutes this bill was used as a model; and it will be diflicult for any one to show such an instance." It might have been thought, that no prudent man would have made such a challenge, without a tolerable certainty of the ground upon which it was made. Ser- jeant Hevwood answers the challenge by cit- ing the 36 Geo. III. c. 7, which is a mere copy of the act of James. In the fifth section of Mr. Rose's work is contained his grand attack upon Mr. Fox for his abuse of Sir Patrick Hume ; and his obser- vations upon this point admit of a fourfold an- swer. 1st, Mr. Fox does not use the M-ords quoted by Mr. Rose ; 2dly, He makes no men- tion whatever of Sir Patrick Hume in the pas- sage cited by Mr. Rose ; 3dh', Sir Patrick Hume is attacked by nobody in that history; 4thly, If he had been so attacked he would have deserved it. The passage from Mr. Fox is this: — "In recounting the failure of his expedition, it is impossible for him not to touch upon what he deemed the misconduct of his friends; and this is the subject upon which, of all others, his temper must have been most irritable. A certain description of friends (the words de- scribing them are omitted) were all of them, M-ithout exception, his greatest enemies, both to betray and destroy him : and and (the names again omitted) were the greatest cause of his rout, and his being taken, though not designedly, he acknowledges, but by igno- rance, cowardice, and faction. This sentence WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 101 liad scarce escaped him, when, notwithstand- ing the qualif3-ing words with which his can- dour has acquitted the last mentioned persons of intentional treachery, it appeared too harsh to his gentle nature; and, declaring himself dis- pleased with the hard epithets he had used, he desires that they may be put out of any ac- count that is to be given of these transactions." — Hei/wood, p. 365, 366. Argyle names neither the description of friends who were his greatest enemies, nor the two individuals who were the principal cause of the failure of his scheme. Mr. Fox leaves the blanks as he finds them. But two notes are added by the editor, which Mr. Rose might have observed are marked with an E. In the latter of them we are told, that Mr. Fox ob- serves, in a private letter, " Cochrane and Hume certainly filled up the two principal blanks." But is this communication of a private letter any part of Mr. Fox's history] And would it not have been equally fair in Mr. Rose to have commented upon any private conversation of Mr. Fox, and then to have called it his history 1 Or, if Mr. Fox had filled up the blanks in the body of his history, does it follow that he adopts Argyle's censure because he shows against whom it is levelled ] Mr. Rose has described the charge against Sir Patrick Hume to be, of faction, cowardice, and treachery. Mr. Rose has more than once altered the terms of a pro- position before he has proceeded to answer it ; and, in this instance, the charge of treachery against Sir Patrick Hume is not made either in Argyle's letter, Mr. Fox's text, or the editor's note, or any where but in the imagination of Mr. Rose. The sum of it all is, that Mr. Rose first supposes the relation of Argyle's opinion to be the expression of the relator's opinion, that Mr. Fox adopts Argyle's insinuations be- cause he explains them ; — then he looks upon a quotation from a privale letter, made by the editor, to be the same as if included in a work intended for publication by the author ; — then he remembers that he is the sole executor of Sir Patrick's grandson, whose blank is so filled up; — and goes on blundering and blub- bering, — grateful and inaccurate, — teeming with false quotations and friendly recollections to the conclusion of his book. Multa gemens ignQminiam. Mr. Rose came into possession of the Earl of Marchmonl's papers, containing, among other things, the narrative of Sir Patrick Hume. He is very severe upon Mr. Fox for not having been more diligent in searching for original papers; and observes, that if any application had been made to him (Mr. Rose), this narra- tive should have been at Mr. Fox's service. We should be glad to know, if Mr. Rose saw a person tumbled into a ditch, whether he would wait for a regular application till he pulled him out? Or, if he happened to espy the lost piece of silver for which the good woman was diligently sweeping the house, would he wait for formal interrogation before he imparted his discovery, and suffer the lady to sweep on till the question had been put to him in the most Bolemn forms of politeness 1 The established practice, we admit, is to apply, and to apply vigorously and incessantly, for sinecure places and pensions — or they cannot be had. This is true enough. But did any human being ever think of carrying this practice into literature, and compelling another to make interest for papers essential to the good conduct of his undertaking? We are perfectly astonished at Mr. Rose's conduct in this particular; and should have thought that the ordinary exercise of his good nature would have led him to a very different way of acting. " On the ivhole, and tipon the most attentive con- sideration of every tiling xchich has been imitlcn upon the subject, there does not appear to have been any intention of applying torture in the caseof the Earl of Argyle." (i\osc, p. 182.) If this every ^/n'wghad included the following extract from Barillon, the above cited, and very dis- graceful inaccuracy of Mr. Rose would have been spared. "The Earl of Argyle has been executed at Edinburgh, and has left a full con- fession in writing, in which he discovers all those who have assisted him with money, and have aided his designs. This has saved him from the torture." And Argyle, in his letter to Mrs. Smith, confesses he has made discoveries. In his very inaccurate history of torture in the southern part of this island, Mr. Rose says, that except in the case of Felton, — in the at- tempt to introduce the civil law in Henry VI.'s reign, — and in some cases of treason in Mary's reign, torture was never attempted in this country. The fact, however, is, that in the reign of Henry VIII., Anne Askew was tor- tured by the chancellor himself. Simson was tortured in 1558 ; Francis Throgmorton in 1571 ; Charles Baillie, and Banastie, the Duke of Norfolk's servant, were tortured in 1581; Campier, the Jesuit, was put upon the rack; and Dr. Astlow is supposed to have been racked in 1558, So much for Mr. Ruse as the historian of punishments. We have seen him, a few pages before, at the stake, — where he makes quite as bad a figure as he does now upon the rack. Precipitation and error are his foibles. If he were to write the history of sieges, he would forget the siege of Troy; — if he were making a list of poets, he would leave out Virgil: — Csesar would not appear in his catalogue of generals; — and Newton would be overlooked in his collection of eminent mathe- maticians. In some cases, Mr. Rose is to be met only with flat denial. Mr. Fox docs not call the sol- diers who were defending James against Ar- gyle authorized assassins : but he uses that ex- pression against the soldiers who were murder- ing the peasants, and committing every sort of licentious cruelty in the twelve counties given up to military execution ; and this Mr. Rose must have known, by using the most ordinary diligence in the perusal of the text, — and would have known it in any other history than that of Mr. Fox. "Mr. Rose, in his concluding paragraph, boasts of his speaking 'impersonally,' and he hopes it will be allowed justly, when he makes a general observation respecting the proper province of histor}^ But the last sentence evidently shows that, though he might be speaking justly, he was not speaking impev sonalhj, if by that word is meant, without refe i2 102 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. rence to any person. His words are, 'But history cannot connect itself with party, with- out forfeiting its name ; without departing from the truth, the dignity, and the usefulness of its functions.' After the remarks he has made in some of his preceding pages, and the apology he has offered for Mr. Fox, in his last preceding paragraph, for having been mistaken in his view of some leading points, there can be no difficulty in concluding, that this general ob- servation is meant to be applied to the histori- cal work. The charge intended to be insinu- ated must be, that, in Mr. Fox's hands, history has forfeited the name by being connected with party; and has departed from the truth, the dignity, and the usefulness of its functions. It ■were to be wished that Mr. Rose had explained himself more fully; for, after assuming that the application of this observation is too ob- vious to be mistaken, there still remains some diificulty with respect to its meaning. If it is confined to such publications as are written under the title of histories, but are intended to serve the purposes of a party; and truth is sacrificed, and facts perverted, to defend and give currency to their tenets, we do not dispute its propriety; but, if that is the character which Mr. Rose would give to Mr. Fox's labours, he has not. treated him with candour, or even commo-n justice. Mr. Rose has never, in any one instance, intimated that Mr. Fox has wil- fully departed from truth, or strayed from the proper province of history, for the purpose of indulging his private or party feelings. But, if Mr. Rose intends that the observation should be applied to all histories, the authors of which have felt strongly the influence of political connections and principles, what must become of most of the histories of England ] Is the title of historian to be denied to Mr. Hume? and in what class are to be placed Echard, Kennet, Rapin, Dalrymple, or Macpherson ] In this point of view the principle laid down is too broad. A person, though connected with party, may write an impartial history of events which occurred a century before; and, till this last sentence, Mr. Rose has not ventured to intimate that Mr. Fox has not done so. On the contrary, he has declared his approbation of a great portion of the work ; and his attempts to discover material errors in the remainder have uniformly failed in every particular. If it might be assumed that there existed in the book no faults, besides those which the scrutinizing eye of Mr. Rose has discovered, it might be justly deemed the most perfect work that ever came from the press; for not a single devia- tion from the strictest duty of an historian has been pointed out ; while instances of candour and impartiality present themselves in almost every page; and Mr. Rose himself has ac- knowledged and applauded many of them." — (pp. 422—424.) These extracts from both books are sufficient to show the nature of Serjeant Heywood's ex- amination of Mr. Rose,— the boldness of this latter gentleman's assertions, — and the extreme inaccuracy of the researches upon which these assertions are founded. If any credit could be gained from such a book as Mr. Rose has pub- lished, it could be gained from accuracy alone. Whatever the execution of his book had been, the world would have remembered the infinite disparity of the two authors, and the long po- litical opposition in which they lived — if that, indeed, can be called opposition, where the thunderbolt strikes, and the clay yields. They would have remembered also that Hector was dead; and that every cowardly Grecian could now thrust his spear into the hero's body. But still, if Mr. Rose had really succeeded in ex- posing the inaccuracy of Mr. Fox, — if he could have fairly shown that authorities were overlooked, or slightly examined, or wilfully perverted, — the incipient feelings to which such a controversy had given birth must have yielded to the evidence of facts ; and Mr. Fox, however qualified in other particulars, must have appeared totally defective in that laborious industry and scrupulous good faith so indis- pensable to every historian. But he absolutely comes out of the contest not worse even in a single tooth or nail — unvilified even by a wrong date — without one misnomer proved upon him — immaculate in his years and days of the month — blameless to the most musty and limited pedant that ever yellowed himself amidst rolls and records. But how fares it with his critic? He rests his credit with the world as a man of labour, — and he turns out to be a careless inspector of proofs, and an historical sloven. The species of talent which he pretends to is humble, — and he possesses it not. He has not done that which all men may do, and which every man ought to do, who rebukes his superiors for not doing it. His claims, too, it should he remembered, to these every-day qualities, are by no means enforced with gentleness and humility. He is a braggadocio of minuteness — a swaggering chronologer; — a man bristling up with small facts — prurient with dates — wantoning in obsolete evidence — loftily dull, and haughty in his drudgery; — and yet all this is pretence. Drawing is no very unusual power in animals ; but he cannot draw ; he is not even the ox which he is so fond of being. In attempting to vilify Mr. Fo.x, he has only shown us that there was no labour from which that great man shrunk, and that no object con- nected with his history was too minute for his investigation. He has thoroughly convinced us that Mr. Fox was as industrious, and as ac- curate, as if these were the only qualities upon which he had ever rested his hope of fortune or of fame. Such, indeed, are the customary results when little people sit down to debase the characters of great men, and to exalt them- selves upon the ruins of what they have pulled down. They only provoke a spirit of inquiry, which places every thing in its true light and magnitude, — shows those who appear little to be still less, and displays new and unexpected excellence in others who were before known to excel. These are the usual consequences of such attacks. The fame of Mr. Fox has stood this, and will stand much ruder shocks. NoH hiemes illam, non flabra neqtie imhres Convellunt ; immota manet, multosque per annot Multa viritm volvens durando sascula vincit. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 103 MAD QUAKERS." [Edinburgh Review, 1814.] The Quakers always seem to succeed in any institution which they undertake. The gaol at Philadelphia will remain a lasting monument of their skill and patience ; and, in the plan and conduct of this retreat for the insane, they have evinced the same wisdom and perse- verance. The present account is given us by Mr. Tuke, a respectable tea-dealer, living in York, — and given in a manner which we are quite sure the most opulent and important of his customers could not excel. The long account of the subscription, at the beginning of the book, is evidently made tedious for the Quaker market; and Mr. Tuke is a little too much addicted to quoting. But, with these trifling exceptions, his book does him very great credit; — it is full of good sense and humanity, right feelings and rational views. The retreat for insane Quakers is situated about a mile from the city of York, upon an eminence com- manding the adjacent country, and in the midst of a garden and fields belonging to the institu- tion. The great principle on which it appears to be conducted is that of kindness to the pa- tients. It does not appear to them, because a man is mad upon one particular subject, that he is to be considered in a state of complete mental degradation, or insensible to the feel- ings of kindness and gratitude. When a mad- man does not do what he is bid to do, the shortest method, to be sure, is to knock him down; and straps and chains are the species of prohibition which are the least frequently disregarded. But the Society of Friends seem rather to consult the interest of the patient than the ease of his keeper; and to aim at the government of the insane, by creating in them the kindest disposition towards those who have the command over them. Nor can any thing be more wise, humane, or interesting, than the strict attention to the feelings of their patients •which seems to prevail in their institutions. The following specimens of their disposition upon this point we have great pleasure in lay- ing before our readers : — " The smallness of the court," says Mr. Tuke, "would be a serious defect, if it was not generally compensated by taking such patients as are suitable into the garden ; and by fre- quent excursions into the city, or the surround- ing country, and into the fields of the institu- tion. One of these is surrounded by a walk interspersed with trees and shrubs. "The superintendent has also endeavoured to furnish a source of amasement to those pa- * Description of the Retreat, an Institution near York, for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends. Containing are account of its Origin and Progress, the Modes of Treat- ment, and a Statement of Cases. By Samuel Tuke. York, 1813. tients whose walks are necessarily more cir cumscribed, by supplying each of the courts with a number of animals, such as rabbits, sea gulls, hawks, and poultry. These crea- tures are generally very familiar with the patients ; and it is believed they are not only the means of innocent pleasure, but that the intercourse with them sometimes tends to awaken the social and benevolent feelings." — (p. 9.5, 96.) Chains are never permitted at the Retreat; nor is it left to the option of the lower attend- ants when they are to impose an additional degree of restraint upon the patients; and this compels them to pay attention to the feelings of the patients, and to attempt to gain an influ- ence over them by kindness. Patients who are not disposed to injure themselves are merely- confined by the strait waistcoat, and left to walk about the room, or lie down on the bed, at pleasure ; and even in those cases where there is a strong tendency to self-destruction, as much attention is paid to the feelings and ease of the patient as is consistent with his safety. "Except in cases of violent mania, which is far from being a frequent recurrence at the Retreat, coercion, when requisite, is considered as a necessary evil; that is, it is thought ab- stractedly to have a tendency to retard the cure, by opposing the influence of the moral reme- dies employed. It is therefore used very spar- ingly; and the superintendent has often assured me, that he would rather run some risk than have recourse to restraint where it was not absolutely necessary, except in those cases where it was likely to have a salutary moral tendency. "I feel no small satisfaction in stating, upon the authority of the superintendents, that dur- ing the last year, in which the number of pa- tients has generally been sixty-four, there has not been occasion to seclude, on an average^ two patients at one time. I am also able to state, that although it is occasionally necessary to restrain, by the waistcoat, straps, or other means, several patients at one time, yet that the average number so restrained does not ex- ceed four, including those who are secluded. "The safety of those who attend upon the insane is certainly an object of great import- ance ; but it is worthy of inquiry whether it may not be attained without materially inter- fering with another object,— the recovery of the patient. It may also deserve inquiry, whether the extensive practice of coercion, which ob- tains in some institutions, does not arise from erroneous views of the character of insane persons; from indifference to their comfort; or from having rendered coercion necessarv by previous unkind treatment. 104 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. "The power of judicious kindness over this unhappy class of society is much greater than is generally imagined. It is, perhaps, not too much to apply to kind treatment the words of our great poet, — The claspin; ' She can unlock charm, and thaw the numbing spell.' JMlLTON. "In no instances has this power been more strikingly displayed, or exerted with more beneficial effects, jhan in those deplorable cases in which the patient refuses to take food. The kind persuasions and ingenious arts of the superintendents have been singularly success- ful in overcoming this distressing symptom; and very few instances now occur in which it is necessary to employ violent means for sup- plying the patient with food. " Some patients, who refuse to partake of the family meals, are induced to eat by being taken into the larder, and there allowed to help them- selves. Some are found willing to eat when food is left with them in their rooms, or when they can obtain it unobserved by their attend- ants. Others, whose determination is stronger, are frequently induced, by repeated persuasion, to take a small quantity of nutritious liquid; and it is equally true in these, as in general cases, that every breach of resolution weakens the power and disposition to resistance. " Sometimes, however, persuasion seems to strengthen the unhappy determination. In one of these cases the attendants were completely wearied with their endeavours ; and, on remov- ing the food, one of them took a piece of meat which had been repeatedly offered to the pa- tient, and threw it under the fire-grate, at the same time exclaiming that she should not have it. The poor creature, who seemed governed by the rule of contraries, immediately rushed from her seat, seized the meat from the ashes, and devoured it. For a short time she was induced to eat, by the attendants availing themselves of this contrary disposition ; but it was soon rendered unnecessary by the removal of this unhappy feature of the disorder."-— (p. 166, 167, 168, 169.) When it is deemed necessary to apply any mode of coercion, such an overpowering force is employed as precludes all possibility of suc- cessful resistance ; and most commonly, there- fore, extinguishes every idea of making any at all. An attendant upon a madhouse ex- poses himself to some risk — and to some he ought to expose himself, or he is totally unfit for his situation. If the security of the attend- ants were the only object, the situation of the patients would soon become truly desperate. The business is, not to risk nothing, but not to risk too much. The generosity of the Quakers, and their courage in managing mad people, are placed, by this institution, in a very strik- ing point of view. This cannot be better illus- trated than by the two following cases: — "The superintendent was one day walking in a field adjacent to the house, in company with a patient who was apt to be vindictive on veiy slight occasions. An exciting circum- stance occurred. The maniac retired a few paces, and seized a large stone, which he im- jnediately held up, as in the act of throwing At his companion. The superintendent, in no degree rulHed, fixed his eye upon the patient, and in a resolute tone of voice, at the same time advancing, commanded him to lay down the stone. As he approached, the hand of the lunatic gradually sunk from its threatening position, and permitted the stone to drop to the ground. He then submitted to be quietly led to his apartment." " Some years ago, a man, about thirty-four 5'ears of age, of almost herculean size and "figure, was brought to the house. He had been aiHicted several times before; and so constantly, during the present attack, had he been kept chained, that his clothes were con- trived to be taken ofl' and put on by means of strings, without removing his manacles. They were, however, taken off when he entered the Retreat, and he was ushered into the apart- ment where the superintendents were supping. He was calm: his attention appeared to be arrested by his new situation. He was de- sired to join in the repast, during which he behaved with tolerable propriety. After it was concluded the superintendent conducted him to his apartment, and told him the circum- stances on which his treatment would depend; that it was his anxious wish to make every inhabitant in the house as comfortable as pos- sible; and that he sincerely hoped the patient's conduct woitld render it unnecessaiy for him to have i-ecourse to coercion. The maniac was sensible of the Irindness of his treatment. He promised to restrain himself; and he so com- pletely succeeded, that, duringhis stay, no coer- cive means were ever employed towards him. This case affords a striking example of the effi- cacy of mild treatment. The patient was fre- quently very vociferous, and threatened his at- tendants, who, in their defence, were very desir- ous of restraining him by the jacket. The super- intendent on these occasions went to his apart- ment: and though the first sight of him seemed rather to increase the patient's irritation, yet, after sitting some time quietly beside him, the violent excitement subsided, and he would listen with attention to the persuasions and arguments of his friendly visitor. ' After such conversations the patient Avas generally better for some days or a week; and in about four months he was discharged perfectly recovered. "Can it be doubted that, in this case, the disease had been greatly exasperated by the mode of management! or that the subsequent kind treatment; had a great tendency to pro- mote his recovery]"— (p. 172, 173, 146, 147.) And yet, in spite of this apparent contempt of danger, for eighteen years not a single acci- dent has happened to the keepers. In the day room the sashes are made of cast-iron, and give to the building the security of bars, without their unpleasant appearance. With the same laudable attention to the feel- ings of these poor people, the straps of their strait waistcoats are made of some showy colour, and are not unfrequently considered by them as ornaments. No advantage what- ever has been found to arise from reasoning with patients on their particular delusions: it is found rather to exasperate than convince them. Indeed, that state of mind would hardly WORKS OF TOE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 105 deserve the name of insanity where argument was sufficient for the refutation of error. The classification of patients accordmg to their degree of convalescence is very properly attended to at the Retreat, and every assist- ance given to returning reason by the force of example. We were particularly pleased with the following specimens of Quaker sense and humanity : — "The female superintendent, who possesses an uncommon share of benevolent activity, and who has the chief management of the fe- male patients, as well as of the domestic de- partment, occasionally gives a general invita- tion to the patients to a tea-party. All who attend dress in their best clothes, and vie with each other in politeness and propriety. The best fare is provided, and the visitors are treated with all the attention of strangers. The evening generally passes in the greatest har- mony and enjoyment. It rarely happens Hiat any unpleasant circumstance occurs. The patients control, in a wonderful degree, their different propensities; and the scene is at once curious and affectingly gratifying. " Some of the patients occasionally pay visits to their friends in the city; and female visitors are appointed every month by the committee to pay visits to those of their own sex, to con- verse with them, and to propose to the super- intendents, or the committee, any improve- ments which may occur to them. The visitors sometimes take tea with the patients, who are much gratified with the attention of their friends, and mostly behave with propriety. "It will be necessary here to mention that the visits of former intimate friends have fre- quently been attended with disadvantage to the patients, except when convalescence had so far advanced as to afford a prospect of a speedy return to the bosom of society. It is, however, very certain that, as soon as reason begins to return, the conversation of judicious indifferent persons greatly increases the com- fort, and is considered almost essential to the recovery of many patients. On this account the convalescents of every class are frequently introduced into the society of the rational parts of the family. They are also permitted to sit up till the usual time for the family to retire to rest, and are allowed as much liberty as their state of mind will admit."— (p. 178, 179.) To the effects of kindness in the Retreat are superadded those of constant employment. The female patients are employed as much as possible in sewing, knitting, and domestic affairs ; and several of the convalescents assist the attendants. For the men are selected those species of bodily employments most agreeable to the patient, and most opposite to the illu- sions of his disease. Though the effect of fear is not excluded from the institution, yet the love of esteem is considered as a still more powerful principle. "That fear is not the only motive which operates in producing self-restraint in the minds of maniacs, is evident from its being often exercised in the presence of strangers 14 who are merely passing through the house; and which, I presume, can only be accounted for from that desire of esteem which has been stated to be a powerful motive to conduct. "It is, probably, from encouraging the action of this principle, that so much advantage has been found, m this institution, from treating the patient as much in the manner of a rational being as the state of his mind will possibly allow. The superintendent is particularly at- tentive to this point in his conversation with the patients. He introduces such topics as he knows will most interest them ; and which, at the same time, allows them to display their knowledge to the greatest advantage. If the patient is an agriculturist, he asks him ques- tions relative to his art; and frequently con- sults him upon any occasion in which his knowledge may be useful. I have heard one of the worst patients in the house, who, pre- viously to his indisposition, had been a consi- derable grazier, give very sensible directions for the treatment of a diseased cow. " These considerations are undoubtedly very material as they regard the comfort of insane persons ; but they are of far greater import- ance as they relate to the cure of the disorder. The patient, feeling himself of some conse- quence, is induced to support it by the exertion of his reason, and by restraining those dispo- sitions which, if indulged, would lessen the respectful treatment he receives, or lower his character in the eyes of his companions and attendants. " They who are unacquainted with the cha- racter of insane persons are very apt to con- verse with them in a childish, or, which is worse, in a domineering'manner; and hence it has been frequently remarked, by the pa- tients at the Retreat, that a stranger Vv'ho has visited them seemed to imagine they were children. " The natural tendency of such treatment is to degrade the mind of the patient, and to make him indifferent to those moral feelings which, under judicious direction and encou- ragement, are found capable, in no small de- gree, to strengthen the power of self-restraint, and which render the resort to coercion in many cases unnecessary. Even when it is absolutely requisite to employ coercion, if the patient pro- mises to control himself on its removal, great confidence is generally placed upon his word. I have known patients, such is their sense of honour and moral obligation under this kind of engagement, hold, for a long time, a suc- cessful struggle with the violent propensities of their disorder ; and such aitempts ought to be sedulously encouraged by the attendant. " Hitherto we have chiefly considered those modes of inducing the patient to control his , disordered propensities which arise from an application to the general powers of the mind; but considerable advantage may certainly be derived, in this part of moral managemtnt, from an acquaintance Avith the previous habits, manners, and prejudices of the individual. Nor must we forget to call to our aid, in en- i deavouring to promote self-restraint, the mild ! but powerful influence of the precepts of our holy religion. Where these have been strongly WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 106 imbued in early life, they become little less than principles of our nature : and their re- straining power is frequently felt, even under the delirious excitement of insanit)^ To en- courage the influence of religious principles over the mind of the insane is considered of great consequence as a means of cure. For this purpose, as well as for others still more important, it is certainly right to promote in the patient an attention to his accustomed modes of paying homage to his Maker. " Many patients attend the religious meet- ings of the society held in the city; and most of them are assembled, on a first day after- noon, at which time the superintendent reads to them several chapters in the Bible. A pro- found silence generally ensues ; during which, as well as at the time of reading, it is very gratifying to observe their orderly conduct, and the degree in which those who are much disposed to action restrain their difierent pro- pensities." — (p. 158 — 161.) Very little dependence is to be placed on me- dicine alone for the cure of insanity. The ex- perience, at least, of this well-governed insti- tution is very unfavourable to its etiicacy. Where an insane person happens to be dis- eased in body as well as in mind, medicine is not only of as great importance to him as to any other person, but much greater ; for the diseases oi" the body are commonly found to aggravate those of the mind ; but against mere insanity, unaccompanied by bodily derange- ment, it appears to be almost powerless. There is one remedy, however, which is very frequently employed at the Retreat, and which appears to have been attended with the hap- piest eflect, and that is the warm bath, — the least recommended, and the most important, of all remedies in melancholy madness. Un- der this mode of treatment, the number of re- coveries, in cases oi melancholia, has been very unusual ; though no advantage has been found from it in the case of mania. At the end of the work is given a table of all the cases which have occurred in the insti- tution from its first commencement. It appears that, from its opening in the year 1796 to the end of 1811, 149 patients have been admitted. Of this number 61 have been recent cases: 31 of these patients have been maniacal; of ■whom 2 have died, 6 remain, 21 have been discharged perfectly recovered, 2 so much im- proved as not to require further confinement. The remainder, 30 recent cases, have been those of melancholy madness ; of whom 5 have died, 4 remain, 19 have been discharged cured, and 2 so much improved as not to require further confinement. The old cases, or, as they are commonly termed, incurable cases, are divided into 61 cases of mania, 21 of me- lancholia, and 6 of dementia ; afibrding the following tables : — " Mania. «11 died. 31 remain in the house. 5 have been removed by their friends im- proved. 10 have been discharged perfectly recovered. 4 so much improved as not to require fur- ther confinement," " Melancholia. " 6 died. 6 remain. 1 removed somewhat improved. 6 perfectly cured. 2 so much improved as not to require fur- ther confinement." " Dementia. « 2 died. 2 remain. 2 discharged as unsuitable objects." The following statement shows the ages of patients at present in the house : — " 15 to 20 inclusive 2 20 to 30 — 8 30 to 40 — 12 40 to 50 — 7 60 to 70 — 11 70 to 80 — 4 80 to 90 — 2" Of 79 patients it appears that " 12 went mad from disappointed afiections. 2 from epilepsy. 49 from constitutional causes. 8 from failure in business. 4 from hereditary disposition to madness. 2 from injury of the skull. 1 from mercury. 1 from parturition." The following case is extremely curious: and we wish it had been authenticated by name, place, and signature. " A young woman, who was employed as a domestic servant by the father of the relator when he was a boy, became insane, and at length sunk into a 3tate of perfect idiocy. In this condition she remained for many years, when she was attacked by a typhus fever; and my friend, having then practised some time, attended her. He was surprised to ob- serve, as the fever advanced, a development of the mental poM-ers. During that period of the fever, when others were delirious, this patient was entirely rational. She recognised in the face of her medical attendant the son of her old master, whom she had known so many years before; and she related many circum- stances respecting his family, and others which had happened to herself in her earlier days. But, alas ! it was only the gleam of reason. As the fever abated, clouds again enveloped the mind : she sunk into her former deplora- ble state, and remained in it until her death, which happened a few years afterwards. I leave to the metaphysical reader further spe- culation on this, certainly, very curious case." -(p. 137.) Upon the whole, we have little doubt that this is the best managed asylum for the insane that has ever yet been established ; and a part of the explanation no doubt is, that the Quakers take more pains than other people with their madmen. A mad Quaker belongs to a small and rich sect ; and is, therefore, of greater im- portance than any other mad person of theen extremely fortu- nate in the choice of their male and female superintend- ents at the asylum, Mr. and Mrs. Jephson. It is not easy to find a greater combination of good sense a. id good feeling than these two persons possess : — I)ut then the merit of selecting them rests with their employers WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. strongs proofs of their increasing strength, tend to extinguish pleasantry, and provoke thought. We were surprised and pleased to find from these accounts that the Americans on the Red River and the Arkansas River have begun to make sugar and wine. Their importation of wool into this countr}^ is becoming also an object of some consequence; and they have inexhaustible supplies of salt and coal. But one of the great sources of wealth in America is and will be an astonishing command of in- land navigation. The Mississippi, flowing from the north to the Gulf of Mexico, through seventeen degrees of latitude; the Ohio and the Alleghany almost coirnecting it with the Northern Lakes; the Wabash, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Red River, flowing from the confines of New Mexico ; — these rivers, ah navigable, and most of them already frequented by steamboats, constitute a facility of internal communication not, we believe, to be paralleled in the whole world. One of the great advantages of the American government is its cheapness. The American king has about 5000/. per annum, the vice-king 1000/. They hire their Lord Liverpool a't not the influence of sense and character, but the influence of money and punch. A very disgusting feature in the character of the present English government is its ex- treme timidity, and the cruelty and violence to which its timidity gives birth. Some hot- headed young person, in defending the princi- ples of liberty, and attacking those abuses to which all governments are liable, passes the bounds of reason and moderation, or is thought to have passed them by those whose interest it is to think so. What matters it whether he has or has notl You are strong enough to let him alone. With such institu- tions as ours he can do no mischief; perhaps he may owe his celebrity to your opposition ; or, if he must be opposed, write against him, — set Candidus, Scrutator, Vindex, or any of the conductitious penmen of government to write him down ; — any thing but the savage spectacle of a poor wretch, perhaps a very honest man, contending in vain against the weight of an immense government, pursued by a jealous attorney, and sentenced, by some candidate, perhaps, for the favour of the crown, to the long miseries of the dungeon.* A still bout a thousand per annum, and their Lord more flagrant instance may be found in our Sidraouth (a good bargain) at the same sum Their Mr. Crokers are inexpressibly reason- able, — somewhere about the price of an Eng- lish doorkeeper, or bearer of a mace. Life, hov.ever, seems to go on very well, in spite of these low salaries; and the purposes of go- vernment to be very fairly answered. What- ever may be the evils of universal suffrage in other countries, they have not yet been felt in America; and one thing at least is established by her expeiience, that this institution is not necessarily followed by those tumults, the dread of which excites so much apprehension in this country. In the most democratic states, where the payment of direct taxes is the only qualification of a voter, the elections are car- ried on with the utmost tranquiUity; and the ■whole business, b}' taking votes in each parish or section, concluded all over the state in a single day. A great deal is said by Fearon about Caucus, the cant word of the Americans for the committees and party meetings in which the business of the elections is prejiared — the influence of which he seems to consider as prejudicial. To us, however, it appears to be nothing more than the natural, fair, and unavoidable influence Avhich talent, popularity and activity alwaj's must have upon such occasions. What other influence can the leading characters of the democratic party in Congress possibly possess 1 Bribery is entirely out of the question — equally so is the influence of family and fortune. What then can they do, with their caucus or without it, but recom- mend 1 And what charge is it against the American government to saj' that those mem- bers of whom the people have the highest opinion meet together to consult whom they shall recommend for president, and that their recommendation is successful in their differ- ent states'? Could any friend to good order wish other means to be employed, or other re- sults to folloM'l No statesman can Avish to cxcludft influence, but only bad influence; — late suspensions of the habeas corpus act. Nothing vras trusted to the voluntar)^ activity of a bi-ave people, thoroughly attached to their government — nothing to the good sense and prudence of the gentlemen and yeomen of the country — nothing to a little forbearance, pa- tience, and watchfulness. There was no other security but despotism; nothing but the aliena- tion of that right which no king nor minister can love, and which no human beings but the English have had the valour to win, and the prudence to keep. The contrast between our government and that ( f the Americans, upon the subject of suspending the habeas corpus, is drawn in so very able a manner by Mr. Hall, that we must give the passage at large. " It has ever been the policy of the federal- ists to 'strengthen the hands of government.' No measure can be imagined more efl^ectual for this purpose, than a law which gifts the ruling powers with infallibility; but no sooner was it enacted, than it revealed its hostility to the principles of the American system, by * A great deal is said aliout the independence and in- tegrity of English judges. In causes between individuals they are strictly independent and upright ; hut they have strong temptations to be otherwise, in cases where the crown prosecutes for libel. Such cases often involve questions of party, and are viewed with great passion and agitation by "the minister and his friends. Judges have often favours to ask for their friends and families, and dignities to aspire to for themselves. It is human nature, that such powerful motives should create a great bias against the prisoner. Suppose the chief justice of any court to be in an infirm state of health, and a go- vernment libel-cause to be tried by one of the puisne judges.— of what immense importance is it to that man to be called a strong friend to government— how injuri- ous to his natural and fair hopes to be called lukewarm, or addicted to popular notions— and how easily the run- ners of the government would attach such a character to him! The useful inference from these observations is, that, in all government cases, the jury, instead of being influenced bv the cant phrases about the integrity of English judges, should suspect the operation of such motives— watch the judge with the most acute jealousy —and compel him to be honest, by throwing themselves into the opposite scale whenever he is inclined to be otherwise. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 109 generating oppression under the cloak of de- fending social order. " If there ever was a period vrhen circnm- stances seemed to justify what are called ener- getic measures, it was during the administra- tions of Mr. Jefferson and his successor. A disastrous war began to rage, not only on tlie frontiers, but in the very penetralia of the re- public. To oppose veteran troops, the ablest generals, and the largest fleets in the world, the American government had raw recruits, officers who had never seen an enemy, half a dozen frigates, and a population unaccustomed to sacrifices, and impatient of taxation. To crown these disadvantages, a most important section of the Union, the New England states, openly set up the standard of separation and rebellion. A convention sat for the express purpose of thwarting the measures of govern- ment; while the press and puVpit thundered every species of denunciation against whoever should assist their own country in the hour of danger.* And this was the work, not of jacobins and democrats, but of the stanch friends of religion and social order, who had been so zealously attached to the government, while it was administered by their own party, Ihat they suffered not the popular breath ' to visit the president's breech too roughly.' " The course pursued, both by Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison throughout this season of difficulty, merits the gratitude of their country, and the" imitation of all governments pretend- ing to be free. " So far were they from demanding any ex- traordinary powers from Congress, that they did not even enforce, to their full extent, those with which they were by the constitution in- vested. The process of reasoning, on which they probably acted, may be thus stated. The majority of the nation is with us, because the war is national. The interests of a minority suffer; and self-interest is clamorous when injured. It carries its opposition to an ex- treme inconsistent with its political duty. Shall we leave it in an undisturbed career of faction, or seek to put it down with libel and sedition laws ] In the first case it will grow bold from impunity; its proceedings will be more and more outrageous : but every step it takes to thwart us will be a step in favour of the enemy, and, consequently, so much ground lost in public opinion. But, as public opinion is the only instrument by which a minority can convert a majority to its views, impunity, by revealing its motives, affords the surest chance of defeating its intent. In the latter case, we quit the ground of reason to take that of force ; we give the factious the advan- tage of seeming, persecuted; by repressing * "In Boston, nssociations were entered into for the purpose of preventing the filling up of governnient loans. Individuals disposed to subscribe were obliged to do it in secret, and conceal their names, as if the action had been dishonest." — Vide 'Olive Branch,' p. 307. At tlie same time, immense runs were made by the Boston banks on those of the Central and Southern states ; while the specie thus drained was transmitted to Canada, in payment for smuggled goods and British eo- vernment bills, which were drawn in Quebec, and dis- posed of in great numbers, on advantageous terms, to moneyed men in the states. Mr. Henry's mi.ssion is the best proof of the result anticipated by our government from those proceedings in New England. intemperate discussion, we confess ourselves liable to be injured by it. If we seek to shield our reputation by a libel-law, we acknowledge, either that our conduct will not bear investi- gation, or that the people are incapable of distinguishing betwixt truth and falsehood : but for a popular government to impeach the sanctity of the nation's judgment is to over- throw the pillars of its own elevation. "The event triumphantly proved the cor- rectness of this reasoning. The federalists awoke from the delirium of factious intoxica- tion, and found themselves covered with con- tempt and shame. Their country had been in danger, and they gloried in her distress. She had exposed herself to privations from which they had extracted profit. In her tri- umphs they had no part, except that of having mourned over and depreciated them. Since the war federalism has been scarcely heard of."— ifo//, 508— 511. The Americans, we believe, are the first persons who have discarded the tailor in the administration of justice, and his auxiliary the barber — two persons of endless importance in codes and pandects of Europe. A judge administers justice, without a calorific wig and particoloured gown, in a coat and panta- loons. He is obe\ed, however; and life and property are not badly protected in the United States. We shall be denounced by the lau- reate as atheists and jacobins; but we must say, that we have doubts whether one atom of useful influence is added to men in impor- tant situations by any colour, quantity, or con- figuration of cloth and hair. The true pro- gress of refinement, we conceive, is to discard all the mountebank drapery of barbarous ages. One row of gold and fur falls ofiT after another from the robe of power, and is picked up and worn by the parish beadle and the ex- hibitor of wild beasts. Meantime, the afflicted wiseacre mourns over equality of garment ; and wotteth not of two men, whose doublet.s have cost alike, how one shall command and the other obey. The dress of lawyers, however, is, at all events, of less importance than their charges. Law is cheap in America: in England, it is better, in a mere pecuniary point of view, to give up forty pounds than to contend for it in a court of common law. It costs that sum in England to win a cause; and, in the court of equity, it is better to abandon five hundred or a thousand pounds than to contend for it. We mean to say nothing disrespectful of the chan- cellor — who is an upright judge, a very great lawyer, and zealous to do all he can ; but we believe the Court of Chancery to be in a state which imperiously requires legislative con ec- tion. We do not accuse it of any malversa- tion, but of a complication, formality, entan- glement, and delay, which the life, the wealth, and the patience of man cannot endure. How such a subject comes not to have been taken up in the House of Commons, we are wholly at a loss to conceive. We feel for climbing boys as much as anybody can do ; but what is a climbing boy in a chimney to a full-grown suitor in the Master's office. And whenc<; comes it, in the midst of ter. thousand com K no WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. passions and charities, that no Wilberforce, or Sister Fry, has started up for the suitors in Chancery 1* and M'h}-, in the name of these afflicted and attorne3'-'n-orn people, are there united in their judge three or four offices, any one of which is sufricient to occupy the whole time of a very able and active man 7 There are no very prominent men at present in America ; at least none -whose fame is strong enough for exportation. Monroe is a man of plain, unaffected good sense. Jeffer- son, -n-e believe, is still alive ; and has always been more remarkable, perhaps, for the early share he took in the formation of the republic, than from any very predominant superiority of understanding. Mr. Hall made him a visit : — " I slept a night at Monticello, and left it in the morning with such a feeling as the travel- ler quits the mouldering remains of a Grecian temple, or the pilgrim a fountain in the desert. It would indeed argue great torpor both of imderstanding and heart, to have looked with- out veneration and interest on the man who drew up the declaration of American indepen- dence ; who shared in the councils by which her freedom was established; whom "the un- bought voice of his fellow-c'tizens called to the exercise of a dignity from which his own mo- deration impelled him, when such example was most salutar}-, to withdraw; and who, while he dedicates the evening of his glorious days to the pursuits of science and literature, shuns none of the humbler duties of private life ; but, having filled a seat higher than that of kings, succeeds with graceful dignity to that of the good neighbour, and becomes the friendly adviser, lawyer, physician, and even gardener of his vicinity. This is the * still small voice' of philosophy, deeper and holier than the lightnings and earthquakes which have preceded it. What monarch would ven- ture thus to exhibit himself in the nakedness of his humanity] On what royal brow would the laurel replace the diadem?" — Hall, 3S4, 385. Mr. Fearon dined -uith another of the Ex- Kings, Mr. Adams. " The ex-president is a handsome old gen- tleman of eighty-lour; — his lady is seveutj-- six; — she has the reputation of superior ta- .ents, and great literary acquirements. I was not perfectly a stranger here; as, a few days previous to this, I had received the honour of an hospitable reception at their mansion. Upon the present occasion the minister (the day being Sunday) was of the dinner part}-. As the table of a 'late King' may amuse some of you, take the following particulars : — first course, a pudding made of Indian corn, molasses, and butter; — second, veal, bacon, neck of mutton, potatoes, cabbages, carrots, * This is still one of the great uncorrected evils of the country. Nolhins can be so utterly absurd as to leave the head of the Court of Chancery apolitical officer, and to subject forty millions of litieated property to all the delays and interruptions which are occasioned by his present multiplicity of offices. (1S39.)— The Chancellor is Speaker of the House of Lords; he might as well be wade Archbishop of Canterbury j— it in one of the great- eei of eiisting lollies. I and Indian beans ; Madeira wine, of which I each drank two glasses. We sat down to din- j ner at one o'clock; at two, nearly all went ' a second time to church. For tea, we had I pound-cake, sweet bread and butter, and bread ( made of Indian corn and rj-e (similar to our I brown home-made). Tea was brought from ' the kitchen, and handed round by a neat, white ' servant-girl. The topics of conversation were j various — England, America, religion, politics, literature, science. Dr. Priestley, Miss Edge- I worth, Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Kean, France, Shak- speare. Moore, Lord Byron, Cobbett, American Revolution, the traitor General Arnold. I " The establishment of this political patri- arch consists of a house two stories high, con- taining, I believe, eight rooms ; of two men and three maid-servants ; three horses, and a plain carriage. How great is the contrast between this individual — a man of knowledge and in- formation — without pomp, parade, or vicious and expensive establishments, as compared I with the costly trappings, the depraved cha- racters, and the profligate expenditure of I house, and ! What a lesson in this ■ does America teach ! There are now in this land no less than three Cincinnati!" — Fearon, 111—113. The travellers agree, we think, in complain- ing of the insubordination of American child- ren — and do not much like American ladies. In their criticisms upon American gasconade, theyforget that vulgar people of all countries aie full of gasconade. The Americans love titles. j The following extract from the Boston Senti- jnel of last August (1817), is quoted by Mr I Fearon. I " ' Dinner to Mr. Adams. — Yesterday a pub- lic dinner was given to the Hon. John Q. I Adams, in the Exchange Coffee-House, by j his fellow-citizens of Boston. The Hon. Wm. Gray presided, assisted by the Hon. Harrison I Gray Otis, George Blake, Esq., and the Hon. I Jonathan Mason, vice-presidents. Of the [ guests were, the Hon. Mr. Adams, late presi- I dent of the United States, his Excellency Go- I vernor Brooks, his Honour Lt. Gov. Phillips, Chief Justice Parker, Judge Story, President Kirkland, Gen. Dearborn, Com. Hull, Gen. Miller, several of the reverend cXergy, and many public officers, and strangers of emi- nence.' " They all, in common with j\Ir. Birkbeck, seem to be struck with the indolence of the American character. Mr. Fearon makes the j charge ; and gives us below the right expla- j nation of its cause. '• The life of boarders at an American tavern presents the most senseless and comfortless ! mode of killing time which I have ever seen. I Every house of this description that I have I been in, is thronged to excess ; and there is j not amauAvho appears to have a single earth- j ly object in view, except spitting, and smoking segars. I have not seen a book in the hands I of any person since I left Philadelphia. Ob- jjectionable as these habits are, they afford de- I cided evidence of the prosperity of that coun- 1 try, vrhich can admit so large a body of its WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Ill citizens to waste in indolence three-fourths of their lives, and would also appear to hold out encouragement to Englishmen with English habits, who could retain their industry amid a nation of indolence, and have sufficient firmness to live in America, and yet bid defiance to the deadly example of its natives." — Fearon, p. 252, 253. Yet this charge can hardly apply to the north- eastern parts of the Union. The following sample of American vulgarity is not unentertaining. "On arriving at the tavern door the landlord makes his appearance. — Landlord. Your ser- vant, gentlemen, this is a fine day. — Answer. Very fine. — Land. You've got two nice creatures,- they are right elegant matches. Ans. Yes, we bought them for matches. — Land. They cost a heap of dollars, (a pause, and knowing look) ; 200 I calculate. Ans. Yes, they cost a good sum. Land. Possible! (a pause); going westward to Ohio, gentlemen? Ans. We are going to Phila- delphia. — Land. Philadelphia, ah ! that's a dreadful large place, three or four times as big as Lexington. Ans. Ten times as large. — Land. Is it, by George ! what a mighty heap of houses, (a pause) ; bat I reckon you was not reared in Philadelphia. Ans. Philadelphia is not our native place. — Land. Perhaps au-ay up in Canada. Ans. No; we are from England. — Land. Is it possible ! well, I calculated you were I'rom abroad, (pause) ; how long have you been from the old country? Ans. We left England last March. — Land. And in August here you are in Keniuclc. Well, I should have guessed you had been in the state some years; you speak almost as good English as we do! "This dialogue is not a literal copy; but it embraces most of the frequent and improper applications of words used in the back country, with a few New England phrases. By the log- house farmer and tavern keeper, they are used as often, and as erroneously, as they occur in the above discourse." — Palmer, p. 129, 1.30. This is of course intended as a representation of the manners of the low, or, at best, the mid- dling class of people in America. The four travellers, of whose works we are giving an account, made extensive tours in every part of America, as well in the old as in the new settlements; and, generally speaking, we should say their testimony is in favour of American manners. We must except, perhaps, Mr. Fearon; — and yet he seems to have very little to say against them. Mr. Palmer tells us that he found his companions, officers and far- mers, unobtrusive, civil and obliging; — that what the servants do for you, they do with ala- crity;— that at their tables d'hote ladies are treat- ed with great politeness. We have real plea- sure in making the following extract from Mr. Bradbury's tour. " In regard to the manners of the people west of the Alleghanies, it would be absurd to expect that a general character could be now formed, or that it w)ll be, for many years yet to come. The population is at present compouTided of a great number of nations, not yet amalgamated, consisting of emigrants from every state in the Union, mixed with English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, Swiss, Germans, French and almost from every country in Europe. In some traits they partake in common with the inhabitants of the Atlantic states, which results from the nature of their government. That species of hauteur which one class of society in some countries shows in their intercourse with the other, is here utterly unknown. By their constitution, the existence of a privileged order, vested by birth with here- ditary privileges, honours or emoluments, is for ever interdicted. If, therefore, we should here expect to find that contemptuous feeling in man for man, we should naturally examine amongst those clothed with judicial or military authority; but we should search in vain. The justice on the bench, or theofticer in the field, is respected and obeyed whilst discharging the functions of his oflice, as the representative or agent of the law, enacted for the good of all,- but should he be tempted to treat even the least wealthy of his neighbours or fellow-citizens with contumely, he would soon find that he could not do it with impunity. Travellers- from Europe, in passing through the western country, or indeed any part of the United States, ought to be previously ac- quainted with this part of the American charac- ter, and more particularly if they have been in the habit of treating with contempt, or irritating with abuse, those whom accidental circum- stances may have placed in a situation to ad- minister to their wants. Let no one hei-e in- dulge himself in abusing the waiter or ostler at an inn; that waiter or ostler is probably a citizen, and does not, nor cannot conceive, that a situa- tion in which he discharges a duty to society, not in itself dishonourable, should subject him to insult: but this feeling, so far as I have ex- perienced, is entirely defensive. I have travelled near 10,000 miles in the United States, and never met with the least incivility or affront. "The Americans, in general, are accused by travellers of being inquisitive. If this be a crime, the western people are guilty; but, for my part, I may say that it is a practice that I never was disposed to complain of, because I always found them as ready to answer a question as to ask one, and therefore I always came ofl^a gainer by this kind of barter; and if any tra- veller does not, it is his own fault. As this leads me to notice their general conduct to strangers, I feel myself bound, by gratitude and regard to truth, to speak of their hospitality. In my tra^ vels through the inhabited parts of the United States, not less than 2C00 miles was through parts where there were no taverns, and where a traveller is under the necessity of appealing to the hospitality of the inhabitants. In no one instance has my appeal been fruitless ; although, in many cases, the furnishing of a bed has been evidently attended with inconvenience, and in a great many instances no remuneration would be received. Other European travellers have experienced this liberal spirit of hospitality, and some have repaid it by calumny." — Bradhuiy, p. 304—306. We think it of so much importance to do justice to other nations, and to lessen that hatred and contempt which race feels for race, that we subjoin two short passages from Mr. Hall to ths same effect. 112 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. "I had bills on Philadelphia, and applied to a respectable storekeeper, that is, tradesman, of the village, to cash me one; the amount, however, was beyond any remittance he had occasion to make, but he immediately offered me whatever sum I might require for my journey, with no better security than my word for its repayment at Philadelphia: he even insisted on my taking more than I mentioned as sufHcient. I do not believe this trait of liberality would surprise an American ; for no one in the states, to whom I mentioned it, seemed to consider it as more than any stranger of respectable appearance 'might have looked for, in similar circumstan- ces: but it might well surprise an English traveller, who had been told, as I had, that the Americans never failed to cheat and insult every Englishman who travelled through their coun- try, especially if ihey knew him to be an oflicer. This latter particular they never failed to inform themselves of, for they are by no means bashful in inquiries: but if the discovery operated in any way upon their behaviour, it was rather to my advantage; nor did I meet with a sin- gle instance of incivility betwixt Canada and Charleston, except at the Shenandoah Point, from a drunken English deserter. My testimony in this particular, will certainly not invalidate the complaints of many other travellers, who, I doubt not, have frequently encountered rude treatment, and quite as frequently deserved it; but it will at least prove the possibility of tra- versing the United States without insult or interruption, and even of being occasionally surprised by liberality and kindness." — Hall, p. 255, 256. " I fell into very pleasant society at Washing- ton. Strangers who intend staying some days in a town, usually take lodgings at a boarding- house, in preference to a tavern: in this way they obtain the best society the place affords; for there are always gentlemen and frequently ladies, either visitors or temporary residents, who live in this manner to avoid the trouble of housekeeping. At Washington, during the sit- tings of Congress, the boarding-houses are di- vided into messes, according to the political principles of the inmates, nor is a stranger admitted without some introduction, and the consent of the whole company. I chanced to join a democratic mess, and name a few of its members with gratitude, for the pleasure their society gave me — Commodore Decatur and his lady, the Abbe Correa, the great botanist and plenipotentiary of Portugal, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Navy Board, known 'as the author of a humorous publication entitled '.fohn Bull and Brother Jonathan,' with eight or ten members of Congress, principally from the western states, which are generally consi- dered as most decidedly hostile to England, but whom I did not on this account find less good- humouied and courteous. It is from thus living in daily intercourse with the leading characters of the country, that one is enabled to judge with some degree of certainty of the practices of its government; for to know the paper theory is nothing, unless it be compared with the instru- ments employed to carry it into eflect. A poli- tical constitution mav be nothing but a cabalistic form, to extort money and power from the people; but then the jugglers must be in the dark, and " no admittance behind the curtain." This way of living affords, too, the best insight into the best part of society: for if in a free nation the depositaries of the public confidence be ignorant or vulgar, it is a very fruitless search to look for the opposite qualities in those they represent; whereas, if these be well-informed in mind and manners, it proves at the least an inclination towards knowledge and refinement in the gene- ral mass of citizens by whom they are selected. My own experience obliges me to a favourable verdict in this particular. I found the little circle into which I had happily fallen full of good sense and good humour, and never quitted it without feeling myself a gainer, on the score either of useful information or of social enjoyment." — /7a//, p. 329—331. In page 252 Mr. Hall pays some very hand- some compliments to the gallantry, high feeling and humanity of the American troops. Such passages reflect the highest honour upon Mr. Hall. They are full of courage as well as kind- ness, and will never be forgiven at home. Literature the Americans have none — no na- tive literature, we mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed; and may afford to live for half a century on his fame. There is, or was a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems; and his baptismal name was Timothy. There is also a small account of Virginia by Jefferson, and an epic by Joel Barlow; and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should the Americans write book's, when a six weeks' passage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, science and genius, in bales and hogs- heads? Prairies, steam-boats, grist-mills, are their natural objects for centuries to come. Then, when they have got to the Pacific Ocean — epic poems, plays, pleasures of memory and all the elegant gratifications of an ancient people who have tamed the wild earth, and set down to amuse themselves. — This is the natural march of human affairs. The Americans, at least in the old states, are a very religious people: but there is no sect there which enjoys the satisfaction of excluding others from civil offices; nor does any denomi- nation of Christians take for their support a tenth of produce. Their clergy, however, are respectable, respected, and possess no small share of influence. The places of worship in Philadelphia in 1810, were as follows: — Pres- byterian, 8; Episcopalian, 4; Methodists, 5; Catholic, 4; Baptist, 5; Quakers, 4; Fighting Quakers, 1 ; Lutheran, 3; Calvinist,3; Jews, 2; Universalists, 1 ; Swedish Lutheran, 1; Mora- vian, 1; Congregationalists, 1; Unitarians, 1; Covenanters, 1 ; Black Baptists,! ; Black Epis- copalians, 1 ; Black Methodists, 2. The Metho- dists, Mr. Palmer tells us, are becoming the most numerous sect in the United States. Mr. Fearon gives us this account of the state of religion at New York. "Upon this interesting topic I would repeat, what, indeed, you are already acquainted with, that legalli/ there is the most unlimited liberty. There is no state religion, and no government i prosecution of individuals -for conscience sake WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 113 Whether those halcyon days, which I think ■would attend a similar state of things in Eng- land, are in existence here, must be left for future observation. There are five Dutch Re- formed churches; six Presbyterian; three As- sociated Reformed ditto, one Associated Pres- byterian; one Reformed ditto; five Methodist; two d'Mo fur blacks; one German Reformed; one Evangelical Lutheran; one Moravian; four Trinitarian Baptist; one Universalist; two Ca- tholic; three Quaker; eight Episcopalian; one Jews' Synagogue; and to this I would add a small meeting which is but little known, at ■which the priest is dispensed with, every mem- ber following what they call the apostolic plan of instructing each other, and ' building one another up in their most holy faith.' The Pres- byterian and Episcopalian, or Church of Eng- land sects, take the precedence in numbers and in respectability. Their ministers receive from two to eight thousand dollars per annum. All the churches are well filled: they are the fash- ionable places for display,- and the sermons and talents of the minister offer never-ending sub- jects of interest when social converse has been exhausted upon the bad conduct and inferior nature of niggars (negroes); the price of flour at Liverpoof; the capture of the Giierriere,- and the battle of New Orleans. The perfect equali- ty of all sects seems to have deadened party feeling: controversy is but little known." — Fearon, p. 45, 46. The absence of controversy, Mr. Fearon seems to imagine, has produced indifference; and he heaves a sigh to the memory of depart- ed oppression. " Can it be possible (he asks) that the non-existence of religious oppression has lessened religious knowledge, and made men superstitiously dependent upon outward form, instead of internal purity 1" To which question (a singular one from an enlightened man like Mr. Fearon), we answer, that the ab- sence of religious oppression has not lessened religious knowledge, but theological animosity; and made men more dependent upon pious ac- tions, and less upon useless and unintelligible ■wrangling.* The great curse of America is the institution of slavery — of itself far more than the foulest blot upon their national character, and an evil which counterbalances all the excisemen, licens- ers, and tax-galherers of England. No virtu- ous man ought to trust his own character, or the character of his children, to the demoral- izing effects produced by commanding slaves. Justice, gentleness, pity and humility soon give ■way before them. Conscience suspends its func- tions. The love of command — the impatience of restraint, get the better of every other feel- ing; and cruelty has no other limit than fear. '" There must doubtless,' says Mr. Jefferson, 'be an unhappy influence on the manners of the people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between mas- * Mr. Fearon mentions a religious lottery for building a Presliylerian church. What will Mr. Littleton say to this? he'i?! hardly prepared, we suspect, for this union of Cnl vin and the Little Go. Every advantage will be made of it by the w\x and eloquence of his fiscal opponent; — aor w;ll it pass unheeded by Mr. Bish. 15 ter and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting des- potism on the one part, and degrading submis- sions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative ani- mal. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineainents of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can- not but be stamped by it with odious peculiari- ties. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances.' — Notes, p. 241." — Hall, p. 459. The following picture of a slave song is quot- ed by Mr. Hall from the "Letters on Virginia." " 'I took the boat this morning, and crossed the ferry over to Portsmouth, the small town which I told you is opposite to this place. It was court-day, and a large crowd of people was gathered about the door of the court-house. I had hardly got upon the steps to look in, when my ears were assailed by the voice of singing; and turning round to discover from what quarter it came, I saw a group of about thirty negroes, of diflerent sizes and ages, following a rough- looking white man, who sat carelessly lolling in his sulky. They had just turned round ihe cor- ner, and were coming up the main street to pass by the spot where I stood, on their way out of town. As they came nearer, I saw some of them loaded with chains to prevent their escape; while others had hold of each other's hands, strongly grasped, as if to support themselves in their affliction. I particularly noticed a poor mother, with an infant suckling at her breast as she walked along, while two small children had hold of her apron on either side, almost running to keep up with the rest. They came along singing a little wild hymn, of sweet and mournful melody, flying, by a divine instinct of the heart, to the consolation of religion, the last refuge of the unhappy, to support them in their distress. The sulky now stopped before the tavern, at a little distance beyond the court- house, and the driver got out. ' My dear sir,' said I to a person who stood near me, 'can you tell me what these poor people have been doing? What is their crime] and what is to be their punishment 1' ' 0,' said he, 'it's nothing at all but a parcel of negroes sold to Carolina; and that man is their driver, who has bought them ' 'But what have they done, that they should bu sold into banishment r 'Done,' said he, 'no- thing at all, that I know of; their masters wanted money, I suppose, and these drivers give good prices.' Here the driver having supplied him- self with brandy, and his horse wiih water, (the poor negroes, of course, wanted nothing,) stepped into his chair again, cracked his whi[i, and drove on, while the miserable exiles fol- lowed in funeral procession behind him.' " Hall, 358—360 The law by which slaves are governed in tlie Carolinas, is a provincial law as old as 1740, but made perpetual in 1783. By this law it is enacted, that every negro shall be presumed a slave, unless the contrary appear. The 9th clause allows two justices of the peace, and ]14 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. three freeholders, power to put them to any manner of death; the evidence against them may be without oath. — No slave is to traffic on his own account. — Any per.-^on murdering a slave is to pay 100/. — or 14/. if he cuts out the tongue of a slave. — Any white man meeting seven slaves together on an high road, may give them twenty lashes each. — No man must leach a slave to write, under penally of 100/. currency. We have Mr. Hall's authority for the existence and enforcement of this law at the present day. Mr. Fearon has recorded some facts still more instructive. " Observing a great many coloured people, par- ticularly females, in these boats, I concluded that they were emigrants, who had proceeded thus far on their route towards a settlement. The fact proved to be, that fourteen of the flats were freighted with human beings for sale. They had been collected in the several states by slave dealers, and shipped from Kentucky for a mar- ket. They were dressed up to the best advan- tage, on the same principle that jockeys do horses upon sale. The following is a specimen of advertisements on this subject. 'twenty dollars rewaed "'Will be paid for apprehending and lodging in jail, or delivering to the subscriber, the fol- lowing slaves, belonging to Joseph Irvix, of Ibtrvilk. — TOM, a very light mulatto, blue eyes, 5 feet 10 inches high, appears to be about 35 years of age ; an artful fellow — can read and write, and preaches occasionally. — CHAR- LOTTE, a black wench, round and full faced, tall, straight and likely — about 2.5 years of age, and wife of the above-named Tom. — These slaves decamped from their owner's plantation on the night of the 14th September inst.' " — Fearon, p. 270. "The three 'African churches,' as they are called, are for all those native Americans who are black, or have any shade of colour darker than white. These persons, though many of them are possessed of the rights of citizenship, are not admitted into the churches which are visited by ■whites. There exists a penal law, deeply writ- ten in the mind of the whole white population, which subjects their coloured fellow-citizens to unconditional contumely and never-ceasing in- sult. No respectabilit}', however unquestionable, — no property, however large, — no character, however unblemished, will gain a man, whose body is (in American estimation) cursed with even a twentieth portion of the blood of his African ancestry, admission into society!!! They are considered as mere Pariahs — as out- casts and vagrants upon the face of the earth! I make no reflection upon these things, but leave the facts for your consideration." — Ibid., p. 168, 169. That such feelings and such practices should exist among men who know the value of liberty, and profess to understand its principles, is the consummation of wickedness. Every Ameri- can who loves his country, should dedicate his -whole life, and every faculty of his soul, to efface this foul slain from its character. If nations rank according to their wisdom and llieir virtue, what right has the American, a scourger and murderer of slaves, to compare himself with the least and lowest of the Eu- ropean nations? — much more with this great and humane country, where the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon the meanest peasant? What is freedom, where all are not free? where the greatest of God's blessings is limited, with impious caprice, to the colour of the body? And these are the men who taunt the English with their corrupt Parliament, with their buying and selling votes. Let the world judge which is the most liable to censure — we who, in the midst of our rottenness, have torn oft' the manacles of slaves all over the world; — or they who, with their idle purity and useless perfection, have remained mute and careless, while groans echoed and whips clanked round the very walls of their spotless Congress. We wish well to America — we rejoice in her pros- perity — and are delighted to resist the absurd impertinence with which the character of her people is often treated in this country: but the existence of slavery in America is an atrocious crime, with which no measures can be kept — for which her situation affords no sort of apology — which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the boast of it disgusting. As for emigration, every man, of course, must determine for himself. A carpenter under thirty years of age, who finds himself at Cincinnati with an axe over his shoulder, and ten pounds in his pocket, will get rich in America, if the change of climate does not kill him. So will a farmer who emigrates early with some capital. Bui any person with tolerable prosperity here had better remain where he is. There are considerable evils, no doubt, in England: but it would be madness not to admit that it is, upon the whole, a very happy country, — and we are much mistaken if the next twenty years will not bring with it a great deal of internal improvement. The country has long been groaning under the evils of the greatest foreign war we were ever engaged in; and we are just beginning to look again into our home affairs. Political economy has made an astonishing pro- gress since they were last investigated; and every session of Parliament brushes off some of the cobwebs and dust of our ancestors.* The Apprentice Laws have been swept away; the absurd nonsense of the Usury Laws will probably soon follow; Public Education and Saving Banks have been the invention of these last ten years ; and the strong fortress of bigotry has been rudely assailed. Then, with all its defects, we have a Parliament of inestimable value. If there be a place in any country where 500 well-educated men can meet together and talk with impunity of public affairs, and if what they say is published, that country must im- prove. It is not pleasant to emigrate into a country of changes and revolution, the size and integrity of whose empire no man can predict. * In a scarcity which occurred little more than twenty years ago, every judge, (except the lord chancellor, then Justice of the Common Pleas, and Serjeant Rem n^ton,) when they charged the grand jury, attriljuted the scarcity to the combinations of the farmers ; and complained of it as a very ser ous evil. Such doctrines would not now be tolerated in the mouth of a schoolboy. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 115 The Americans are a very sensible, reflecting people, and have conducted their afiairs ex- tremely well; but it is scarcely possible to con- ceive that such an empire should very long remain undivided, or that the dwellers on the Columbia should have common interest with the navigators of the Hudson and the Delaware. England is, to be sure, a very expensive coun- try; but amillionof millions has been expended in making it habitable and comfortable; and this is a constant source of revenue, or, what is the same thing, a constant diminution of ex- pense to every man living in it. The price an Englishman pays for a turnpike road is not equal to the tenth part of what the delay would cost him without a turnpike. The New River Company brings water to every inhabitant of London at an infinitely less price than he could dip for Jt out of the Thames. No country, in fact, is so expensive as one which human be- ings are just beginning to inhabit; — where there are no roads, no bridges, no skill, no help, no combination of powers, and no force of capital. How, too, can any man lake upon himself to say that he is so indifferent to his country that he will not begin to love it intensely, when he is 5000 or 6000 miles from it? And what a dreadful disease Nostalgia must be on the banks of the Missouri ! Severe and painful poverty will drive us all anywhere: but a wise man should be quite sure that he has so irresistible a plea, before he ventures on the Great or the Little Wabash. He should be quite sure that he does not go there from ill temper — or to be pitied — or to be regretted — or from ignorance of what is to happen to him — of because he is a poet — but because he has not enough to eat here, and is sure of abundance where he is going. 116 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. GAME LAWS.* [Edinbuhgh Review, 1819.] The evil of the Game Laws, in their present state, has long been felt, and of late years has certainly rather increased than diminished. We believe that they cannot long remain in their present state; and we are anxious to express our opinion of those changes which they ought to experience. We thoroughly acquiesce in the importance of encouraging those field sports which are so congenial to the habits of Englishmen, and which, in the present state of society, afford the only effectual counterbalance to the allurements of great towns. We cannot conceive a more jiernicious condition for a great nation, than that its aristocracy should be shut up from one year's end to another in a metropolis, while the iiiass of its rural inhabitants are left to the management of factors and agents. A great man returning from London to spend his sum- mer in the country, diffuses his intelligence, improves manners, communicates pleasure, re- strains the extreme violence of subordinate politicians, and makes the middling and lower classes better acquainted with, and more attach- ed to their natural leaders. At the same time, a residence in the country gives to the makers of laws an opportunity of studying those interests ■which they may afterwards be called upon to protect and arrange. Nor is it unimportant to the character of the higher orders themselves, that they should pass' a considerable part of the year in the midst of these their larger families; that they should occasionally be thrown among simple, laborious, frugal people, and be stimu- lated to resist the prodigality of courts, by view- ing with their own eyes the merits and the ■wretchedness of the poor. Laws for the preservation of game are not only of importance, as they increase the amuse- ments of the country, but they may be so con- structed as to be jierfecily just. The game ■which my land feeds is certainly mine; or, in other words, the game which all the land feeds certainly belongs to all the owners of the land; and the only practical way of dividing it is, to give to each proprietor what he can take on his own ground. Those who contribute nothing to the support of the animal, can have no possible right to a share in the distribution. To say of animals, that they are ferw Naturu, means only, that the precise place of their birth and nurture is not k-nown. How they shall be divided, is a matter of arrangement among those whose col- lected property certainly has produced and fed them ; but the case is completely made out against those who have no land at all, and who cannot, therefore, have been in the slightest de- gree instrumental to their production. If a large • Jliret Lett^ > on the Game Latvs. Rest Fenner, Black & Co. London, 1&18. pond were divided by certain marks into fo-ar parts, and allotted to that number of proprietors, the fish contained in that pond would be, in the same sense, yf?-^ Naturd. Nobody could tell in which particular division each carp had been born and bred. The owners would arrange their respective rights and pretensions in the best way they could; but the clearest of all pos- sible propositions would be, that the four pro- prietors, among them, made a complete title to all the fish; and that nobody but them had the smallest title to the smallest share. This we say in answer to those who contend that there is no foundation for any system of game laws; that animals born wild are the property of the public ; and that their appropriation is nothing but tyranny and usurpation. In addition to these arguments, it is perhaps scarcely necessary to add, that nothing which is worth having, which is accessible, and sup- plied only in limited quantities, could exist at all, if it was not considered as the property of some individual. If every body might take game wherever they found it, there would soon be an end of every species of game. The ad- vantage would not be extended to fresh classes, but be annihilated for all classes. Besides all this, the privilege of killing game could not be granted without the privilege of trespassing on landed property; — an intolerable evil, which would entirely destroy the comfort and privacy of a country life. But though a system of game laws is of great use in promoting country amusements, and may, in itself, be placed on a footing of justice, its effects, we are sorry to say, are by no means favourable to the morals of the poor. It is impossible to make an uneducated man understand in what manner a bird hatched no- body knows where, — to-day living in my field, to-morrow in yours, — should be as strictly pro- perty as the goose whose whole history can be traced, in the most authentic and satisfactory manner, from the egg to the spit. The argu- ments upon which this depends are so contrary to the notions of the poor, — so repugnant to their passions, — and, perhaps, so much above their comprehension, that they are totally una- vailing. The same man who would respect an orchard, a garden or an hen-roost, scarcely thinks he is committing any fault at all in in- vading the game-covers of his richer neigh- bour; and as soon as he becomes wearied of honest industry, his first resource is in plunder- ing the rich magazine of hares, pheasants and partridges — the top and bottom dishes, which on every side of his village are running and flying before his eyes. As these things cannot be done with safety in the day, they must be done in the night; — and in this manner a lawless marauder is often formed, who proceeds from WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 117 one infrinpement of law and property to an- other, till he becomes a thoroughly bad and corrupted member of society. These few preliminary observations lead na- turally to the two principal considerations which are to be kept in view, in reforming the game laws ; — to preserve, as far as is consistent with justice, the amusements of the rich and to di- minish, as much as possible, the temptations of the poor. And these ends, it seems to us, will be best answered, 1. By abolishing qualifications. 2. By giving to every man a property in the game upon his land. 3, By allowing game to be bought by any body, and sold by its lawful possessors.* Nothing can be more grossly absurd than the present state of the game laws, as far as they concern the qualification for shooting. In Eng- land, no man can possibly have a legal right to kill game, who has not 100/. a year in land rent. With us in Scotland, the rule is not quite so inflexible, though in principle not very difl^erent. But we shall speak to the case which concerns by far the greatest number : and certainly it is scarcely possible to imagine a more absurd and capricious limitation. For what possible reason is a man, who has only 90/. per annum in land, not to kill the game which his own land nou- rishes ? If the legislature really conceives, as we have heard surmised by certain learned squires, that a person of such a degree of for- tune should be confined to profitable pursuits, and debarred from that pernicious idleness into ■which he would be betrayed by field sports, it would then be expedient to make a qualification for bowls or skittles — to prevent small land- owners from going to races or following a pack of hounds — and to prohibit to men of a certain income, every other species of amusement as well as this. The only instance, however, in which this paternal care is exercised, is that in which the amusement of the smaller landowner is supposed to interfere with those of his richer neighbour. He may do what he pleases, and elect any other species of ruinous idleness but that in which the upper classes of society are his rivals. i Nay, the law is so excessively ridiculous in the case of small landed proprietors, that on a property of less than 100/. per annum, no human being has the right of shooting. It is not con- fined but annihilated. The lord of the manor may be warned off by the proprietor; and the proprietor may be informed against by any body who sees him sporting. .The case is still stronger in the instance of large farms. In Northumberland, and on the borders of Scot- land, there are large capitalists who farm to the amount of two or three thousand per annum, who have the permission of their distant non- resident landlords to do what they please with the game, and yet who dare not fire otf a gun upon their own land. Can any thing he more utterly absurd and preposterous, than that the landlord and the wealthy tenant together cannot make up a title to the hare which is fattened upon the choicest produce of their land ? That the landlord, who can let to farm the fertility of the land for growing wheat, cannot let to farm its power of growing partridges 1 That he may reap by deputy, but cannot on that manor shoot by deputy] Is it possible that any respectable magistrate could fine a farmer for killing a hare upon his own grounds with his landlord's con- sent, without feeling that he was violating every feeling of common sense and justice 1 Since the enactment of the game laws, there has sprung up an entirely new species of pro- perty, which of course is completely overlooked by their provisions. An Englishman may pos- sess a million of money in funds or merchan- dize — may be the Baring or the //o/?e of Europe — provide to government the sudden means of equipping fleets and armies, and yet be without the power of smiting a single partridge, though invited by the owner of the game to participate in his amusement. It is idle to say that the difficulty may be got over by purchasing land: the question is, upon what principle of justice can the existence of the difliculty be defended] If the right of keeping men-servants was con- fined to persons who had more than 100/. a year in the funds, the difficulty might be got over by every man who would change his landed pro- perly to that extent. But what could justify so capricious a partiality to one species of pro- perty 1 There might be some apology for such laws at the time they were made; but there can be none for their not being now accommodated to the changes which time has introduced. If you choose to exclude poverty from this species of amusernent, and to open it to wealth, why is it not opened to every species of wealth ] What amusement can there be morally lawful to an holder of turnip land, and criminal in a posses- sor of exchequer bills'! What delights ought to be tolerated to long annuities, from which wheat and beans should be excluded? What matters whether it is scrip or short-horned cattle! If the locus quo is conceded — if the trespass is waived — and if the qualification for any amuse- ment is wealth, let it be any probable wealth — Dives agris, dices positis in/amore nummis. All this has since been established. It will be very easy for any country gentleman who wishes to monopolize to himself the plea- sures of shooting, to let to his tenant every other right attached to the land, except the right of killing game; and it will be equally easy, in the formation of a new game act, to give to the landlord a summary process against his tenant, if such tenant fraudulently exercises the privi- leges he has agreed to surrender. The case which seems most to alarm coun- try gentlemen, is that of a person possessing a few acres in the heart of a manor, who might, byplanting food of which they are fond, allure the game into his own little domain, and thus reap an harvest prepared at the expense of the neighbour who surrounded him. But, under the present game laws, if the smaller posses- sion belongs to a qualified person, the danger of intrusion is equally great as it would be un- der the proposed alteration ; and the danger from the poacher would be the same in both cases. But if it is of such great consequence to keep clear from all interference, may not such apjiece of land be rented or bought! Or, may not the food which tempts the game be sown in the same abundance in the surrounding as in the enclosed 118 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. land Afcer all, it is only common justice, that be whose property is surrounded on every side by a preserver of game, whose corn and turnips are demolished by animals preserved for the amusement of his neighbour, should himself be entitled to that share of game which plunders upon his land. The complaint which the landed grandee makes is this. "Here is a man who has only a twenty-fourth part of the land, and be expects a twenty-fourth part of the game. He is so captious and litigious, that he will not be contented to supply his share of the food without requiring his share of what the food pro- duces. I want a neighbour who has talents only for suffering, not one who evinces such a fatal disposition for enjoying." Upon such princi- ples as these, many of the game laws have been constructed, and are preserved. The interfer- ence of a very small property with a very large one ; the critical position of one or two fields, is a very serious source of vexation on many other occasions besides those of game. He who possesses a field in the middle of my pre- mises, may build so as to obstruct my view; and may present to me the hinder parts of a barn, instead of one of the finest landscapes in nature. Nay, he may turn his fields into tea- gardens, and destroy my privacy by the intro- duction of every species of vulgar company. The legislature, in all these instances, has pro- vided no remedy for the inconveniences which a small property, by such intermixture, may in- flict upon a large one, but has secured the same rights to unequal proportions. It is very diffi- cult to conceive why these equitable principles are to be violated in the case of game alone. Our securities against that rabble of sports- men which the abolition of qualifications might be supposed to produce, are, the consent of the owner of the soil as an indispensable prelimi- nary, guarded by heavy penalties — and the price of a certificate, rendered, perhaps, greater than it is at present. It is impossible to conceive why the owner of the soil, if the right of game IS secufed to him, has not a right to sell, or grant the right of killing it to whom he pleases — just as much as he has the power of appointing whom he pleases to kill his ducks, pigeons and chickens. The danger of making the poor idle IS a mere pretence. It is monopoly calling in the aid of hypocrisy, and tyranny veiling itself in the garb of philosophical humanity. A poor man goes to wakes, fairs and horse-races, with- out pain and penalty; a little shopkeeper, when his work is over, may go to a buUbait, or to the cock-pit; but the idea of his pursuing an hare, even with the consent of the landowner, fills the Bucolic senator with the most lively apprehen- sions of relaxed industry and ruinous dissipation. The truth is,ifa poor man does not oflend against morals or religion, and supports himself and his family without assistance, the law has nothing to do with his amusements. The real barriers against increase of sportsmen (if the proposed alteration were admitted), are, as we have before said, the prohibition of the landowner; the tax to the state for a certificate ; the necessity of labouring for support. — Whoever violates none of these rights, and neglects none of these duties in his sporting, sports without crime ;-^and to punish him would be gross and scandalous ty- ranny The next alteration which we would propose is that game should be made property; that is, that every man should have aright to the game found upon his land — and that the violation of it should be punished as poaching now is, by pecuniary penalties, and summary conviction before magistrates. This change in the game laws would be an additional defence of game: for the landed proprietor has now no other remedy against the qualified intruder upon his game, than an action at law for a trespass on the land; and if the trespasser has received no notice, this can hardly be called any remedy at all. It is now no uncommon practice for per- sons who have the exterior, and perhaps the fortunes of gentlemen, as they are travelling from place to place, to shoot over manors where they have no property, and from which, as strangers, they cannot have been warned. In such case (which, we repeat again, is by no means one of rare occurrence), it would, under the reformed system, be no more difficult for the lord of the soil to protect his game, than it would be to protect his geese and ducks. But though game should be considered as property it should still be considered as the lowest species of pro- perty — because it is in its nature more vague and mutable than any other species of property, and because depredations upon it are carried on at a distance from the dwelling, and without personal alarm to the proprietors. It would be very easy to increase the penalties, in proportion to the number of oflTences committed by the same individual. The punishments which country gentlemen expect by making game property, are the pun- ishments affixed to offences of a much higher order: but country gentlemen must not be al- lowed to legislate exclusively on this, more than on any other subject. The very mention of hares and partridges in the country, too often puts an end to common humanity and common sense. Game must be protected; but protected without violating those principles of justice, and that adaptation of punishment to crime, which (incredible as it may appear), are of in- finitely greater importance than the amusements of country gentlemen. We come now to the sale of game. — The foundation on which the propriety of allowing this partly rests, is the impossibility of prevent- ing it. There exists, and has s'prung up since the game laws, an enormous mass of wealth, which has nothing to do with land. Do the country gentlemen imagine that it is in the power of human laws to deprive the three per cents of pheasants'? That there is upon earth, air, or sea, a single flavour (cost what crime it may to procure it), that mercantile opulence will not procure 1 Increase the difficulty, and you enlist vanity on the side of luxury; and make that be sought for as a display of wealth, which was before valued only for the gratifica- tion of appetite. The law may multiply penal- ties by reams. Squires may ifret and justices commit, and gamekeepers and poachers con- tinue their nocturnal wars. There must be game on Lord Mayor's day, do what you will. You may multiply the crimes by which it is pro- cured ; but nothing can arrest its inevitable pro- gress, from the wood of the esquire to the spit WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 119 of the citizen. The late law for preventing the sale of game produced some little temporary difficulty in London at the beginning of the sea- son. The poulterers were alarmed, and came to some resolutions. But the alarm soon began to subside and the difficulties to vanish. In another season, the law will be entirely nugatory and forgotten. The experiment was tried of increased severity, and a law passed to punish poachers with transportation who were caught poaching in the night time with arms. What has the consequence beenl — Not a cessation of poaching, but a succession of village guerillas; — an internecive war between the gamekeepers and marauders of game: — the whole country flung into brawls and convulsions, for the unjust and exorbitant pleasures of country gentlemen. The poacher hardly believes he is doing any wrong in taking partridges and pheasants. He would admit the justice of being transported for stealing sheep; and his courage in such a transaction would be impaired by a conscious- ness he was doing wrong: but he has no such feeling in taking game; and the preposterous punishment of transportation makes him despe- rate, and not timid. Single poachers are gathered into large companies, for their mutual protec- tion; and go out, not only with the intention of taking game, but of defending what they take •with their lives. Such feelings soon produce a rivalry of personal courage, and a thirst of re- venge between the villagers and the agents of power. We extract the following passages on this subject from the Three Letters on the Game Laws. "The first and most palpable effi3ct has natu- rally been, an exaltation of all the savage and desperate features in the poacher's character. The war between him and the gamekeeper has necessarily become a ' helium internecivum.' A marauder may hesitate perhaps at killing his fellow man, when the alternative is only six months' imprisonment in the county jail ; but when the alternative is to overcome the keeper, or to be torn from his family and connections, and sent to hard labour at the antipodes, we cannot be much surprised that murders and midnight combats have considerably increased this season; or that information, such as the following, has frequently enriched the columns of the country newspapers." '"Poaching. — Richard Barnett was on Tues- day convicted before T. Clutterbuck, Esq., of keeping and using engines or wires for the de- struction of game in the parish of Dunkerton, and fined 5/. He was taken into custody by C. Coates, keeper to Sir Charles Bamfylde, Bart., who found upon him seventeen wire-snares. The new act that has just passed against these illegal practices, seems only to have irritated the offenders, and made them more daring and desperate. The following is a copy of an anony- mous circular letter, which has been received by several magistrates, and other eminent cha- racters in this neighbourhood. "'Take notice. — We have lately heard and seen that there is an act passed, arid whatever poacher is caught destroying the game, is to be transported for seven years. — This is English liberty! " 'iVow, we do swear to each other, that the Vol. I.-n first of our company that this law is inflicted on, that there shall not one gentleman's seat in our country escape the rage of fire. We are nine in number, and we will burn every gentle- man's house of note. The first that impeaches shall be shot. We have sworn not to impeach. You may think it a threat, but they will find it reality. The game-laws were too severe be- fore. The Lord of all men sent these animals for the peasants as well as for the prince. God will not let his people be oppressed. He will assist us in our undertaking, and we will exe- cute it with caution.'" — Bath Paper. "'Death of a Poacheii. — On the evening of Saturday se'ennight, about eight or nine o'clock, a body of poachers, seven in number, assembled by mutual agreement on the estate of the Hon. John Dutton at Sherborne, Glouce- stershire, for the purpose of taking hares and other game. With the assistance of two dogs, and some nets and snares which they brought with them, they had succeeded in catching nine hares, and were carrying them awa^', when they were discovered by the gamekeeper and seven others who were engaged with him in patroling the different covers, in order to pro- tect the game from nightly depredators. Imme- diately on perceiving the poachers, the keeper summoned them in a civil and peaceable man- ner to give up their names, the dogs, imple- ments, &c. they had with them, and the game they had taken ; at the same time assuring them, that his party had firearms (which were produced for the purpose of convincing and alarming them), and representing to them the folly of resistance, as, in the event of an affray, they must inevitably be overpowered by supe- rior numbers, even without firearms, which they were determined not to resort to unless compelled in self-defence. Notwithstanding this remonstrance of the keeper, the men unanimous- ly refused to give up on any terms, declaring, that if they were followed, they would give them "a brush," and would repel force by force. The poachers then directly took off their great coats, threw them down with the game, &c. behind them, and approached the keepers in an atti- tude of attack. A smart contest instantly en- sued, both parties using only the sticks or blud- geons they carried: and such was the confusion during the battle, that some of the keepers were occasionally struck by their own comrades in mistake for their opponents. After they had fought in this manner about eight or ten minutes, one of the poachers named Robert Simmons, received a violent blow upon his left temple, which felled him to the ground, where he lay, crying out murder, and asking for mer cy. The keepers very humanely desired that all violence might cease on both sides: upon which three of the poachers took to flight and escaped, and the remaining three, together with Simmons, Avere secured by the keepers. Sim- mons, by the assistance of the other men, walked to the keeper's house, -where he was placed in a chair: but he soon after died. His death was no doubt caused by the pressure of blood upon the brain, occasioned by the rupture of a vessel from the blow he had received. The three poachers who had been taken were committed , to Northleach prison. The inquest upon the 120 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. body of Simmons -vras taken on Monday, before VV. Trigge, Gent., Coroner; and the above ac- count is extracted from the evidence given upon that occasion. The poachers were all armed with bludgeons, except the deceased, who had provided himself with the thick part of a flail, made of firm knotted crabtree, and pointed at the extremit}', in order to thrust with, if occa- sion required. The deceased was an athletic muscular man, very active, and about twenty- eight years of age. He resided at Bowie, in Oxfordshire, and has left a wife but no child. The three prisoners were heard in evidence; and all concurred in stating that the keepers were in no way blameable, and attributed their disaster to their own indiscretion and impru- dence. Several of the keepers' party were so much beat as to be now confined to their beds. The two parties are said to be total strangers to each other, consequently no malice prepense could have existed between ihem; and as it appeared to the jury, after a most minute and deliberate investigation, that the confusion dur- ing the affray was so great, that the deceased was as likely to be struck by one of his own party as by the keepers', they returned a ver- dict of — Manslaughter against some person or persons unknown.' " Wretched as the first of these productions is, I think it can scarcely be denied, that both its spirit and its probable consequences are wholly to be ascribed to the exasperation natu- rally consequent upon the severe enactment just alluded to. And the last case is at least a strong proof that severity of enactment is quite inade- quate to correct the evil." — (P. 3.56-359.) Poaching will exist in some degree, let the laws be what they may; but the most certain method of checking the poacher seems to be by underselling him. If game can be lawfully sold, the quantity sent to market will be increased, the price lowered, and, with that, the profits and temptations of the poacher. Not only would the prices of the poacher be lowered, but we much doubt if he would find any sale at all. Licenses to sell game might be confined to real poulterers, and real occupiers of a certain portion of land. It might be rendered penal to purchase it from any but licensed persons; and in this way the facility of the lawful, and the danger of the un- lawful trade, would either annihilate the poach- er's trade, or reduce his prices so much, that it would be hardly worth his while to carry it on. What poulterer in London, or in any of the large towns, would deal with poachers, and expose liimself to indictment for receiving stolen goods, when he might supply his customers at fair prices by dealing with the lawful proprietor of gamel Opinion is of more power than law. Such conduct would soon become infamous; and every respectable tradesman would be shamed out of it. The consumer himself would rather buy his game of a poulterer ^. an increase of price, than pick it up clandestinely, and at a great risk, though a somewhat smaller price, from porters and boothkeepers. Give them a chance of getting it fairly, and they will not get it unfairly. At present, no one has the slightest shame at violating a law which every body feels JO be absurd and unjust. Poultry-houses are sometimes robbed; — but stolen poultry is rarely ofl^ered to sale ; — at least, nobody pretends that the shops of poulterers and the tables of moneyed gentlemen are supplied by these means. Out of one hundred geese that are consumed at Michaelmas, ninety-nine come into the jaws of the consumer by honest means ; — and yet, if it had pleased the country gentle- men to have goose laws as well as game laws; — if goose-keepers had been appointed, and the sale and pnrchase of this savoury bird prohi- bited, the same enjoyments would have been procured by the crimes and convictions of the poor; and the periodical gluttony of Michaelmas have been rendered as guilty and criminal, as it is indigestible and unwholesome. Upon this subject we shall quote a passage from the very sensible and spirited letters before ui "In favourable situations, game would be reared and preserved for the express purpose of regularly supplying the market in fair and open competition ; which would so reduce its price, that I see no reason why a partridge should be dearer than a rabbit, or a hare and pheasant than a duck or goose. This is about the proportion of price which the animals bear to each other in France, where game can be legally sold, and is regularly brought to market; and where, by the way, game is as plentiful as in any cultivated country in Europe. The price so reduced would never be enough to compensate the risk and pe- nalties of the unlawful poacher, who must there- fore be driven out of the market. Doubtless, the great poulterers of London and the commercial towns, who are the principal instigators of poach- ing, would cease to have any temptation to con- tinue so, as they could fairly and lawfully pro- cure game for their customers at a cheaper rate from the regular breeders. They would, as they now do for rabbits and wild-fowl, contract with persons to rear and preserve them for the regu- larf supply of their shops, which would be a much more commodious and satisfactory, an^ less hazardous way for them, than the irregular and dishonest and corrupting methods now pursued. It is not saying very much in favour of human nature to assert, that men in respectable stations of society had rather procure the same ends by honest than dishonest means. Thus would all the temptations to offend against the game laws, arising from the change of society, together with the long chain of moral and political mischiefg, at once disappear. " But then, in order to secure a sufl5cient breed of game for the supply of the market, in fair and open competition, it will be necessary to author- ize a certain number of persons, likely to breed game for sale, to take and dispose of it when reared at their expense. For this purpose, I would suggest the propriety of permitting by law occupiers of land to take and kill game, for sale or otherwise, on their ou-n occupations only, un- less, (if tenants,) they are specifically prohibited by agreement with their landlord; reserving the game and the power of taking it to himself, (as is now frequently done in leases.) This per- mission should not, of course, operate during the current leases, unless by agreement. With this precaution, nothing could be fairer than such an enactment; for it is certainly at the ex- pense of the occupier that the game is raised and maintained : and unless he receive an equivalent WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 121 for it, either by abatement of rent upon agree- ment, or by permission to take and dispose of it, he is certainly an injured man. "Whereas it is perfectly just that the owner of the land should have the option either to increase his rent by leaving the disposal of his game to his tenant, or vice versa. Game would be held to be (as in fact it is) an outgoing from the land, like tithe and other burdens, and therefore to be consi- dered in a bargain ; and land would either be let game-free, or a special reservation of it made by agreement. "Moreover, since the breed of game must always depend upon the occupier of the land, who may, and frequently does, destroy every head of it, or prevent its coming to maturity, unless it is considered in his rent; the license for which I am novvcontending, by affording an inducement to preserve the breed in particular spots, would evidently have a considerable ef- fect in increasing the stock of game in other parts, and in the country at large. There would be introduced a general system of protection depending upon individual interest, instead of a general system of destruction. I have, therefore, very little doubt that the provision here recom- mended would, upon the whole, add facilities to the amusements of the sportsman, rather than subtract from them. A sportsman without land might also hire from the occupier of a large tract of land the privilege of shooting over it, ■which would answer to the latter as well as sending his game to the market. In short, he might in various ways get a fair return, to which he is well entitled for the expense and trouble incurred in rearing and preserving that particu- lar species of stock upon his land." — (P. 337 — 339.) There are sometimes 400 or .500 head of game killed in great manors on a single day. We think it highly probable the greater part of this harvest (if the game laws were altered) would go to the poulterer, to purchase poultry or fish for the ensuing London season. Nobody is so poor and so distressed as men of very large for- tunes, who are fond of making an unwise dis- play to the world; and if they had recourse to these means of supplying game, it is impossible to suppose that the occupation of the poacher could be continued. — The smuggler can com- pete with the spirit merchant on account of the great duty imposed by the revenue; but where there is no duty to be saved, the mere thief — the man who brings the article to market with a halter around his neck — the man of whom it is disreputable and penal to buy — who hazards life, liberty and property, to procure the articles which he sells; such an adventurer can never be long the rival of him who honestly and fairly produces the articles in which he deals. — Fines, imprisonments, concealment, loss of character, are great deductions from the profits of any trade to which they attach, and great discou- ragement to its pursuit. It is not the custom at present for gentlemen to sell their game; but the custom would soon begin, and public opinion soon change. It is not unusual for men of fortune to contract with their gardeners to supply their own table and to send the residue to market, or to sell their veni- son ; and the same thing might be done with the 16 manor. If game could be bought, it would not be sent in presents: — barn-door fowls are never so sent, precisely for this reason. The price of game would, under the system of laws of which we are speaking, be further lowered by the introduction of foreign game, the sale of which, at present prohibited, would tend very much to the preservation of English game by underselling the poacher. It would not be just, if it were possible, to confine any of the valuable productions of nature to the use of one class of men, and to prevent them from becoming the subject of barter, when the pro- prietor wished so to exchange them. It would be just as reasonable that the consumption of salmon should be confined to the proprietors of that sort of fishery — that the use of charr should be limited to the inhabitants of the lakes — that maritime Englishmen should alone eat oysters and lobsters as that every other class of the community than landowners should be prohibit- ed from the acquisition of game. It will be necessary, whenever the game laws are revised, that some of the worst punishments now inflicted for an inMngement of these laws should be repealed. To transport a man for seven years, on account of partridges, and to harass a poor wretched peasant in the Crown Oflice, are very preposterous punishments for such offences; humanity revolts against then?. — they are grossly tyrannical — and it is disgrace- ful that they should be sufl^ered to remain on our statute books. But the most singular of till abuses, is the new class of punishments which the squirarchy have themselves enacted against depredations on game. The law says, that an unqualified man who kills a pheasant, shall pay five pounds ; but the squire says he shall be shot; — and accordingly he places a spring-gun in the path of the poacher, and does all he can to take away his life. The more humane and mitigated squire mangles him with traps; and the supra- fine country gentleman only detains him in ma- chines, which prevent his escape, but do not lacerate their captive. Of the gross illegality of such proceedings, there can be no reasonable doubt. Theirimmorality and cruelty are equally clear. If they are not put down by some decla- ratory law, it will be absolutely necessary that the judges, in their invaluable circuits of Oyer and Terminer, should leave two or three of his majesty's squires to a fate too vulgar and indeli- cate to be alluded to in this journal. Men have certainly a clear right to defend their property; but then it must be by such means as the law allows: — their houses by pis- tols, their fields by actions for trespass, their game by information. There is an end of law, if every man is to measure out his punishment for his own wrong. Nor are we able to distin- guish between the guilt of two persons, — the one of whom deliberately shoots a man whom he sees in his fields — the other of whom purposely places such instruments as he knows will shoot trespassers upon his fields. Better that it should be lawful to kill a trespasser face to face ihau to place engines which will kill him. The tres- passer may be a child — a wom^n — a son or friend. The spring-gun cannot accommodate itself to circumstances,— the squire or the game keeper may. 122 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. These, then, are our opinions respecting the alterations in the game laws, which, as they now stand, are perhaps the only system which could possibly render the possession of game so very insecure as it now is. We would give to every man an absolute property in the game upon his land, with full power to kill — to permit others to kill — and to sell; — we would punish any viola- tion of that property by summary conviction, and pecuniary penalties — rising in value according to the number of offences. This would of course abolish all qualifications; and we sincerely be- lieve it would lessen the profits of selling game il- legal ly, so as very materially to lessen the number of poachers. It would make game as an article of food, accessible to all classes, without infring- ing the laws. It would limit the amusement of country gentlemen within the boundaries of jus- tice — and would enable the magistrate cheerful- ly and conscientiously to execute laws, of the moderation and justice of which he must be tho- roughly convinced. To this conclusion, too, we have no doubt we shall come at the last. After many years of scutigeral folly — loaded prisons* — nightly battles — poachers tempted — and fami- lies ruined, these principles will finally prevail, and make law once more coincident with rea- son and justice. * In the course of the last year, no fewer than twelve hundred persons were committed for offences against tho game ; besides those wlio ran away from their families for the fear of commitment. This is no slight quantity of misery BOTANY BAY.* [Ebinbuugh Review, 1819.] This land of convicts and kangaroos is be- ginning to rise into a very fine and flourishing settlement : — And great indeed must be the natu- ral resources, and splendid the endowments of that land that has been able to survive the sys- tem of neglectf and oppression experienced from the mother country, and the series of igno- rant and absurd governors that have been se- lected for the administration of its affairs. But mankind live and flourish not only in spite of storms and tempests, but (which could not have been anticipated previous to experience) in spite of colonial secretaries expressly paid to watch over their interests. The supineness and profligacy of public officers cannot always overcome the amazing energy with which hu- man beings pursue their happiness, nor the sa- gacity with which they determine on the means by which that end is to be promoted. Be it our care, however, to record for the future inhabit- ants of Australasia, the political sufferings of their larcenous forefathers; and let them appre- ciate, as they ought, that energy which founded a mighty empire in spite of the afliicting blun- * 1. ^ Statistical. Historical andFolitical Description of the Colony of New South Wales, and its dependent Settlements in Van Die7nen\<: Land; vjith a particular Enumeration of the Advantages which these colonies offer for Emigration. a7id their Superiority in many respects over those possessed by the United States of America. By W. C. Wentworth, Esq., a Native of the Colony. Whiltaker. London, 1819. 2. I^etter to Viscount Sidmouth, Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the Transportation Laws, the State of the Hulks, and of the Colonies in New South Wales. By the Hon. Henry Grey Bennet, M. P. Ridgway. London, 1819. 3. O'Hara's History of New South Wales. Hatchard. London, 1818. t One and no small excuse for the misconduct of colo- nial secretaries is, the enormous quantity of business by which they are distracted. There should be two or three .rj of Climbing Boys. Baldwin, &c. Loidoii, may be easily conceived how slender the frame of that human body must be, which can force itself through such an aperture. "What is the age of the youngest boys who have been employed in this trade, to your know- ledge? About five years of age: I know one now between five or six years old; it is the man's own son in the Strand : now there is an- other at Somer's Town, 1 think, said he was between four and five, orabout five; Jack Hall, a little lad, takes him about. — Did you ever know any female children employed ! Yes, I know one now. About two years ago there was a woman told me she had climbed scores of times, and there is one at Paddington now whose father taught her to climb: but I have often heard talk of them when I v/as an appren- tice, in ditferent places. — What is the smallest sized flue you have ever met with in the course of yourexperience? Abouteightinches by nine; these they are always obliged to climb in this posture {describing it), keeping the arms up straight; if they slip their arms down, they get jammed in; unless they get their arms close over their head they cannot climb." — Lord's Minuien, No. 1. p. 8. The following is a specimen of the manner in which they are taught this art of climbing chimneys. "Do you remember being taught to climb chimneysl Yes.— What did you feel upon the first attempt to climb a chimney? The first chimney I went up, they told me there was some plum-pudding and money up at the top of it, and thai is the way they enticed me up; and when I 132 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. got up, I would not let the other boy get from under me to get at it; I thought he would get it; I could not get up, and shoved the pot and half the chimnej' down into the yard. — Did you expe- rience any inconvenience to your knees, or your elbows 1 Yes, the skin was oif my knees and elbows too, in climbing up the new chimneys they forced me up. — How did they force you up! When I got up, I cried out about my sore knees. — Were you beat or compelled to go up by any violent means 1 Yes, when I went to a narrow chimney, if I could not do it, I durst not go home; when I used to come down, my master would well beat me with the brush; and not only my master, but when he used to go with the journeymen, if we could not do it, they used to hit us three or four times with the brush." — ifW.s' Minutes, No. 1. p. 5. In practising the art of climbing they are often crippled. "You talked of the pargetting to chimneys; are many chimneys pargettedl There used to be more than are now; we used to have to go and sit all a-twist to parge them, according to the floors, to keep the smoke from coming out ; then I could not straighten my legs; and that is the reason that many are cripples, — from parging and stopping the holes." — Lords' Minutes,No. 1. p. 17. They are often stuck fast in a chimney, and, after remaining there many hours, are cut out. "Have you known, in the course of your practice, boys stick in chimneys at alii Yes, frequently. — Did you ever know an instance of. a boy being suffocated to death ? No ; I do not recollect anyone at present, but I have assisted in taking boys out when they have been nearly exhausted. — Did you ever know an instance of its being necessary to break open a chimney to take the boy out ] O yes. — Frequently? Monthly I might say,- it is done with a cloak, if possible, that it should not be discovered ; a master in general wishes it not to be known, and therefore speaks to the people belonging to the house not to mention it, for it was merely the boy's neglect; they often say it was the boy's neglect. — Why do they say that? The boy's climbing shirt is often very bad; the boy coming down, if the chimney be very narrow, and numbers of them are only nine inches, gets his shirt rumpled underneath him, and he has no power after he is fixed in that way {with- his hand up.) Does a boy frequently stick in the chimney ] Yes, I have known more instances of that the last twelvemonth than be- fore. — Do you ever have to break open in the inside of a room? Yes, I have helped to break through into a kitchen chimney in a dining room." — Lards' Minutes, p. 34. To the same effect is the evidence of John Daniels, {Minutes, p. 100,) and of James Lud- ford, {Lords' Minutes, p. 147.) "You have swept the Penitentiary? I have. — Did you ever know a boy stick in any of the chimneys there? Yes, I have. — Was it one of your boys? It was. — Was there one or two that stuck"! Two of them. — How long did they stick there? Two hours. — How were they got out? They were cut out. — Was there any danger ■while they were in that situation? It was the core .''rom the pargetting of the chimney, and the rubbish that the labourers had thrown down, that stopped them, and when they got it aside them, they could not pass. — They both stuck together! Yes." — Lords' Minutes, \>. 147. One more instance we shall give from the evidence before the Commons. "Have you heard of any accidents that have recently happened to climbing boys in the small flues? Yes; I have often met with accidents myself M'hen I was a boy; there was lately one in Mary-le-bone, where the boy lost his life in a flue, a boy of the name of Tinsey (his father was of the same trade); that boy I think was about eleven or twelve years old. — Was there a coroner's inquest sat on the body of that boy you mentioned? Yes, there was; he was an apprentice of a man of the name of Gay. — How many accidents do you recollect which were attended with loss of life to the climbing boys? I have heard talk of many more than I know of; I never knew of more than three since I have been at the trade, but I have heard talk of many more. — Of twenty or thirty? I cannot say; I have been near losing my own life several times." — Commons' Report, p. 53. We come now to burning little chimney sweepers. A large party are invited to dinner — a great display is to be made; — and about an hour before dinner, there is an alarm' that the kitchen chimney is on fire ! It is impossible to put off the distinguished personages who are expected. It gets very late for the soup and fish — the cook is frantic — all e3'es are turned upon the sable consolation of the master chimney sweeper — and up into the midst of the burning chimney is sent one of the miserable little in- fants of the brush! There is a positive pro- hibition of this practice, and an enactment of penalties in one of the acts of Parliament which respects chimney sweepers. But what matter acts of Parliament, when the pleasures of gen- teel people are concerned ? Or what is a toasted child, compared to the agonies of the mistress of the house with a deranged dinner? " Did you ever know a boy get burnt up a chimney? Yes. — Is that usuaP Yes, I have been burnt myself, and have got the scars on my legs; a year ago I was up a chimney in Liquor Pond Street; I have been up more than forty chimneys ivhere I have been burnt- — Did your master or the journeymen ever direct you to go up a chimney that was on fire? Yes, it is a general case. — Do they compel you to go up a chimney that is on fire? Oh yes, it was the general practice for two of us to stop at home on Sunday to be ready in case of a chimney being a-fire. — You say it is general to compel the boys to go up chimneys on fire? Yes, boys get very ill-treated if they do not go up." — Lords' Minutes, p. .34. " Were you ever forced up a chimney on fire ? Yes, I was forced up one once, and, be- cause I could not do it, I was taken home and well hided with a brush by the journeyman. — Have you frequently been burnt in ascending chimneys on fire? Three times.— Are such hardships as you have described common in the trade with other boys? Yes, they are." — Ibid., p. 100. " What is the price for sending a boy up a chimney badly on fire? The price allowed is five shillings, but most of them charge half a WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 133 guinea. — Is any part of that given to the boyl 1 No, but very often the boy gets half a crown , | and then the journeyman has half, and his mis- tress takes the other part to take care of against Sunday.— Have you never seen water thrown down from the top of a chimney when it is on firel Yes.— Is not that generally done "! Yes; I have seen that done twenty times, and the boy in the chimney; at the time when the boy has hallooed out, 'It is so hot I cannot go any fur- ther;' and then the expression is, with an oath, 'Stop, and I will heave a pail of water down.' " —Ibid., p. 39. Chimney sweepers are subject to a peculiar sort of cancer, which often brings them to a premature death. "He appeared perfectly willing to try the machines everywhere? I must say the man appeared perfectly willing; he had a fear that he and his family would be ruined by them; but I must say of him that he is very different from other sweeps I have seen ; he attends very much to his own business; he was as black as any boy he had got, and unfortunately in the course of conversation he told me he had got a cancer; he was a fine healthy strong looking man; he told me he dreaded having an operation performed, but his father died of the same complaint, and his father was sweeper to King George the Second." — Lords' Minutes, p. 84. " What is the nature of the particular dis- eases! The diseases that we particularly no- ticed, to which they were subject, were of a cancerous description. In what part? The scrotum in particular, &c. — Did you ever hear of cases of that description that were fatal 1 No, I do not think them as being altogether fatal, unless they will not submit to the operation ; they have such a dread of the operation that they will not submit to it, and if they do not let it be perfectly removed they will be liable to the return of it. To what cause do you attribute that disease? I think it begins from a want of care : the scrotum being in so many folds or crevices, the soot lodges in them and creates an itching, and I conceive, that hy scratching it and tearing it, the soot gets in and creates the irrita- bility; which disease we know by the name of the chimney sweeper's cancer, and is always lectured upon separately as a distinct disease. — Then the committee understands that the phy- sicians who are entrusted with the care and management of those hospitals think that dis- ease of such common occurrence, that it is necessary to make it a part of surgical educa- tion? Most assuredly; I remember Mr. Cline and Mr. Cooper were particular on that subject. — Without an operation there is no cure? I conceive not; I conceive without the operation it is death; for cancers are of that nature that unless you extirpate them entirely they will never be cured." — Commons' Rep. pp. 60, 61. In addition to the life they lead as chimney sweepers, is superadded the occupation of night- men. "{By a Lord.) Is it generally the custom that many masters are likewise nightmen ? Yes: I forgot that circumstance, which is very griev- ous; I have been lied round the middle and let down several privies, for the purpose of fetching watches and such things; it is generally made the practice to take the smallest boy, to let him through the hole without taking up the seat, and to paddle about there until he finds it; they do not take a big boy, because it disturbs the stat." — Lords'' Minutes, p. 38. The bed of these poor little wretches is often the soot they have swept in the day. " How are the boys generally lodged ; where do they sleep at night? Some masters maybe better than others, but I know I have slept on the soot that was gathered in the day myself. — Where do boys generally sleep? Never on a bed; I never slept on a bed myself while I was apprentice — Do they sleep in cellars? Yes, very often : I have slept in the cellar myself on the sacks I took out. — What had you to cover you? The same. — Had you any pillow? No further than my breeches and jacket under my head. How were you clothed? When I was apprentice we had a pair of leather breeches and a small flannel jacket. Any shoes and stockings? Ohdear,no; no stockings.— Had you any other clothes for Sunday ? Sometimes we had an old bit of a jacket, that we might wash out ourselves, and a shirt." — Lords' Minutes, p. 40. Girls are occasionally employed as chimney sweepers. "Another circumstance, which has not been mentioned to the committee, is, that there are several little girls employed; there are two of the name of Morgan at Windsor, daughters of the chimney sweeper, who is employed to sweep the chimneys of the castle; another instance at Uxbridge, and at Brighton, and at Whitechapel (which was some years ago), and at Hadley near Barnet, and Witham in Essex, and else- where." — Commons' Report, p. 71. Another peculiar danger to which chimney sweepers are exposed, is the rottenness of the pots at the top of chimneys;— for they must as- cend to the very summit, and show their brushes above them, or there is no proof that the work is properly completed. These chimney-pots from their exposed situation, are very subject to de- cay; and when the poor little wretch has worked his way up to the top, pot and boy give way together, and are both shivered to atoms. There are many instances of this in the evidence be- fore both Houses. When they outgrow the pow- er of going up a chimney, they are fit for nothing else. The miseries they have suffered lead to nothing. They are not only enormous, but un- profitable: having suffered, in what is called the happiest part of life, every misery which an human being can suffer, they are then cast out to rob and steal, and given up to the law. Not the least of their miseries, while their trial endures, is their exposure to cold. It will easily be believed that much money is not ex- pended on the clothes of a poor boy stolen from his parents, or sold by them for a few shillings, and constantly occupied in dirty work. Yet the nature of their occupations renders chimney sweepers peculiarly susceptible of cold. And as chimneys must be swept very early, at four or five o'clock of a winter morning, the poor boys are shivering at the door, and attempting by repeated ringings to rouse ihe profligate foot- man ; but the more they ring the more the foot- man does not come. 134 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. "Do the}' go out in the winter time without stockings? Oh yes. — Always? I never saw one go out loith stockings; I have known masters make their boys pull ofT their leggins, and cut off the feet, to keep their feet warm when they have chilblains. — Are chimney sweepers' boys peculiarly subject to chilblains] Yes; I believe it is owing to the weather: they often go out at two or three in the morning, and their shoes are generally very bad. Do they go out at that hour at Christmas? Yes; a man will have twenty jobs at four, and twenty more at five or six. — Are chimneys generally swept much about Christmastime? Yes; they are in general; it is left to the Christmas week. — Do you suppose it is frequent that, in the Christmas week, boys are out from three o'clock in the morning to nine or ten? Yes, further than that; I have known that a boy has been only in and out again directly all day till five o'clock in the evening. — Do you consider the journeymen and masters treat those boys generally with greater cruelty than other apprentices in other trades are treated? They do, most horrid and shock- ing." — Lords' Minutes, p. 33. The following is the reluctant evidence of a master. "At what hour in the morning did your boys go out upon their employment? According to orders. — At any time? To be sure; suppose a nobleman wished ta have his chimney done before four or five o'clock in the morning, it was done, or how were the servants to get their things done? — Supposing you had an order to attend at four o'clock in the morning in the month of December, you sent your boy ? I was generally with him, or had a careful follower with him. Do you think those early hours beneficial for him? I do; and I have heard that ' early to bed and early to rise, is the way to be healthy, wealthy and wise.' — Did they always get in as soon as they knocked? No; it would be pleasant to the profession if they could. — How long did they wait ? Till the ser- vants please to rise. — How long might that be? According how heavy they were to sleep. — How long was that? It is impossible to say; ten minutes at one house, and twenty at ano- ther. — Perhaps half an hour? U'e cannot see in the dark how the minutes go. — Do you think it healthy to let them stand there twenty minutes at four o'clock in the morning in the winter time? He has a cloth to wrap himself in like a mantle, and keep himself warm." — Lords' Minutes, pp. 138, 139. We must not forget sore eyes. Soot lodges on their eyelids, produces irritability, which requires friction ; and the friction of dirty hands of course increases the disease. The greater proportion of chimney sweepers are in conse- quence blear-eyed. The boys are very small, but they are compelled to carry heavy loads of soot. "Are you at all lame yourself? No: but lam 'knapped-kneed' with carrying heavy loads when I was an apprentice. That was the oc- casion of it? It was. In general, are persons employed in your trade either stunted or knock- kneed by carrying heavy loads during their childhood? It is owing to their masters a great deal ; and when they climb a great deal it makes them weak." — Cumntons' Report, p. 58, In climbing a chimney, the great hold is by the knees and elbows. A young child of 6 or 7 years old, working with knees and elbows against hard bricks soon rubs off the skin from these bony projections, and is forced to climb high chimneys with raw and bloody knees and elbows. "Are the boys' knees and elbows rendered sore when they first begin to learn to climb? Yes, they are, and pieces out of them. — Is that almost generally the case? It is; there is not one out of twenty who is not; and they are sure to take the scars to their grave: I have some now. — Are they usually compelled to continue climbing while those sores are open ? Yes; the way they use to make them hard is that way. — Might not this severity be obviated by the use of pads in learning to climb ? Yes ; but they con- sider in the business, learning a boy, that he is never thoroughly learned until the boy's knees are hard after being sore; then they consider it necessary to put a pad on, from seeing the boys have bad knees; the children generally walk stifi-kneed. — Is it usual among the chimney sweepers to teach their boys to learn by means of pads? No; they learn them with nearly naked knees.— Is it done in one instance in twenty ? No, nor one in fifty." — Lords' Minutes, p. 32. According to the humanity of the master, the soot remains upon the bodies of the children, unwashed off, for any time from a week to a year. "Are the boys generally washed regularly? No, unless they wash themselves. — Did not your master take care you were washed? No. — Not once in three months? No, not once a year. — Did not he find you soap? No; lean take my oath on the Bible that he never found me one piece of soap during the time I was apprentice." — Lords' Minutes, p. 41. The life of these poor little wretches is so miserable, that they often lie sulking in the flues unwilling to come out. "Did you ever see severity used to boys that were not obstinate and perverse ? Yes. — Very often? Yes, very often. The boys are rather obstinate; some of them are; some of them will get half-way up the chimney, and will not go any further, and then the journeyman will swear at them to come down, or go on ; but the boys are too frightened to come down; they halloo out, we cannot get up, and they are afraid to come down; sometimes they will send for ano- ther boy, and drag them down; sometimes get up to the top of the chimney, and throw down water, and drive them down; then, when they get them down, they will begin to drag, or beat, or Icick them about the house; then, when they get home, the master will beat them all round the kitchen afterwards, and give them no break- fast, perhaps." — Lords' Minutes, pp. 9, 10. When a chimney boy has done sufficient work for the master he must work for the man; and he thus becomes for sev^eral hours after his morning's work a perquisite to the journeyman. "It is frequently the perquisite of the journey- man, when the first labour of the day on account of the master is finished, to 'call the streets,' in search of employment on their own account, with the apprentices, whose labour is thus ua- WOKKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 135 reasonably extended, and whose limbs are weak- ened and distorted by the weights which they have to carry, and by the distance which they have to walk. John Lawless says, ' I have known a boy to Ciimb from twenty to thirty chimneys for his masler in the morning; he has then been sent out instantly with the jour- neyman, who has kept him out till three or four o'clock, till he has accumulated from six to eight bushels of soot.'" — Lords' Report, p. 24. The sight of a little chimney sweeper often excites pity: and they have small presents made to them at the houses where they sweep. These benevolent alms are disposed of in the following manner: — " Do the boys receive little presents of money from people often in your trade 1 Yes, it is in general the custom. — Are they allowed to keep that for their own use 1 Not the whole of it, — the jonrneymen take what they think proper. The journeymen are entitled to half by the master's orders; and whatever a boy may get, if two boys and one journeyman are sent to a large house to sweep a number of chimneys, and after they have done, there should be a shilling or eighteen pence given to the boys, the journeyman has his full half, and the two boys in general have the other. Is it usual or customary for the journeymen to play at chuck farthing or other games with the boysT Frequently.— Do they win the money from the boys ? Frequently: the children give their money to the journeymen to screen for them. — What do you mean by screening 1 Such a thing as sifting the soot, — The child is tired, and he says, ' Jem, I will give you two-pence if you will sift my share of the soot ;' there is sometimes twenty or thirty bushels to sift. Do you think the boys retain one quar- ter of that given them for their own use ? No." — Lords' Minutes, p. 35. To this most horrible list of calamities is to be added the dreadful deaths by which chimney sweepers are often destroyed. Of these we | once thought of giving two examples; one from London, the other from our own town of Edin- burgh: but we confine ourselves to the latter. "James Thomson, chimney-sweeper. — One day, in the beginning of June, witness and panel (that is, the master, the party accused) had been sweeping vents together. About four o'clock in the alternoon, the panel proposed to go to Albany street, where the panel's brother was cleaning a vent, with the assistance of Frazer, whom he had borrowed from the panel for the occasion. When witness and panel got to the house in Albany street, they found Frazer, who had gone up the vent between eleven and twelve o'clock, not yet come down. On entering the house they found a mason making a hole in the wall. Panel said, what was he doing 1 I sup- pose he has taken a lazy fit. The panel called to the boy, ' What are you doing] what's keep- ing you V The boy answered that he could not come. The panel worked a long while, some- times persuading him, sometimes threatening and swearing at the boy to get him down. Panel then said, ' I will go to a hardware shop and get a barrel of gunpowder, and blow you and the vent to the devil, if you do not come down.' — Panel then began to slap at the wall — witness tnen went up a ladder, and spoke to the boy through a small hole in the wall previously made by the mason — but the boy did not answer Panel's brother told witness to come down, as the boy's master knew best how to manage him. Witness then threw off his jacket, and put a handkerchief about his head, and said to the panel, let me go up the chimney to see what's keeping him. The panel made no answer, but pushed witness away from the chimney, and continued bullying the boy. At this time the panel was standing on the grate, so that witness could not go up the chimney; witness then said to panel's brother, there is no use for me here, meaning that panel would not permit him to use his services. He prevented the mason making the hole larger, saying. Stop, and I'll bring him down in five minutes' time. Witness then put on his jacket, and continued an hour in the room, diirins; all which time the panel continued bullying the hoy. Panel then desired witness to go to Reid's house to get the loan of his boy Alison. Witness went to Reid's house, and asked Reid to come and speak to panel's bro- ther. Reid asked if panel was there] Witness answered he was; Reid said he would send his boy to the panel, but not to the panel's brother. Witness and Reid went to Albany street; and when they got into the room, panel took his head out of the chimney and asked Reid if he would lend him his boy; Reid agreed; witness then returned to Reid's house for his boy, and Reid called after him, 'Fetch down a set of ropes with you.' By this time witness had been ten minutes in the room, during which time panel was swearing, and asking what's keeping you, you scoundrel! When witness returned with the boy and ropes, Reid t(jok hold of the rope, and having loosed it, gave Alison one end, and directed him to go up the chimney, saying, do not go farther than his feet, and when you get there fasten it to his foot. Panel said nothing all this time. Alison went up, and having fast- ened the rope, Reid desired him to come down; Reid took the rope and pulled, but did not bring down the boy; the rope broke! Alison was sent up again with the other end of the rope, which was fastened to the boy's foot. When Reid was pulling the rope, panel said, 'You have not the strength of a cat;' he took the rope into his own hands, pulling as strong as he could. Having pulled about a quarter of an hour, panel and Reid fastened the rope round a crow bar, which they applied to the wall as a lever, and both pulled with all their strength for about a quarter of an hour longer, when it broke. — During this time witness heard the boy cry, and say, ' My God Almighty !' Panel said, ' If I had you here, I would God Almighty you.' Witness thought the cries were in agony. The master of the house brought a new piece of rope, and the panel's brother spliced an eye on it. Reid expressed a wish to have it fastened on both thighs, to have greater purchase. Alison was sent up for this purpose, but came down, and said he could not get it fastened. Panel then began to slap at the wall. After striking a long while at the wall, he got out a large stone; he then put in his head and called to Frazer, 'Do you hear, you sirl' but got no answer: he then put in his hands, and threw down deceased's breeches. He then came down from the ladder 136 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. At this time the panel was in a state of perspi- ration: he sat down on a stool, and the master of the house gave him a dram. Witness did not hear panel make any remarks as to the situation of the boy Frazer. Witness thinks ihat, from panel's appearance, he knew that the boy was dead." — Commons' Report, pp. 136 — 138. We have been thus particular in stating the case of the chimney sweepers, and in founding it upon the basis of facts, that we may make an answer to those protligate persons who are al- ways ready to fling an air of ridicule upon the labours of humanity, because they are desirous that what they have not virtue to do themselves, should appear to be foolish and romantic when done by others. A still higher degree of depra- vity than this, is to want every sort of compas- sion for human misery, when it is accompanied by filth, poverty and ignorance, — to regulate humanity by the income tax, and to deem the bodily wretchedness and the dirty tears of the poor, a fit subject for pleasantry and contempt. We should have been loath to believe that such deep-seated and disgusting immorality existed in these days ; but the notice of it is forced upon us. Nor must we pass over a set of marvel- lously weak gentlemen who discover democracy and revolution in every effort to improve the condition of the lower orders, and to lake off a little of the load of misery from those points where it presses the hardest. Such are the men into whose heart Mrs. Fry has struck the deepest terror, — who abhor Mr. Bentham and his penitentiary; Mr. Bennet and his hulks; Sir James Mackintosh and his bloodless assizes ; Mr. Tuke and his sweeping machines, — and every human being who is great and good enough to sacrifice his quiet to his love for his fellow-creatures. Certainly we admit that hu- manity is sometmaes the veil of ambition or of faction; but we have no doubt that there are a great many excellent persons to whom it is misery to see misery, and pleasure to lessen it; and who, by calling the public attention to the worst cases, and by giving birth to judicious legislative enactments for their improvement, have made, and are making, the world some- what happier than they found it. Upon these principles we join hands with the friends of the chimney sweepers, and most heartily wish for the diminution of their numbers, and the limi- tation of their trade. We are thoroughly convinced, there are many respectable master chimney sweepers; though we suspect their numbers have been increased by the alarm which their former tyranny excited, and by the severe laws made for their coercion : but even with good masters the trade is mise- rable, — with bad ones it is not to be endured; and the evidence already quoted shows us how many of that character are to be met with in the occupation of sweeping chimneys. After all, we must own that it was quite right to throw out the bill for prohibiting the sweep- ing of chimneys by boys — because humanity is a modern invention; and there are many chim- neys in old houses which cannot possibly be swept in any other manner. But the construc- tion of chimneys should be attended to in some new building act; and the treatment of boys be watched over with the most severe jealousy of the law. Above all, those who have chimneys accessible to machiner)% should encourage the use of machines,* and not think it beneath their dignity to take a little trouble, in order to do a great deal of good. We should have been very glad to have seconded the views of the Climbing Society, and to have pleaded for the complete abolition of climbing boys, if we could consci- entiously have done so. But such a measure, we are convinced from the evidence, could not be carried into execution without great injury to property, and great increased risk of fire. The lords have investigated the matter with the greatest patience, humanity and good sense; and they do not venture, in their report, to re- commend to the House the abolition of climbing boys. * Tho price of a machine is fifteen sliilliug*. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 13T AMERICA.* [Edinburgh Retiew, 1820.] This is a book of character and authority ; but it is a very large book; and therefore we think we shall do an acceptable service to our readers, by presenting them with a short epi- tome of its contents, observing the same order which has been chosen b)^ the author. The whole, we conceive, will form a pretty complete picture of America, and teach us how to appre- ciate that country, either as a powerful enemy or a profitable friend. The first subject with which Mr. Seybert begins, is the population of the United States. Pupulution. — As representatives and direct taxes are apportioned among the different states in proportion to their numbers, it is provided for in the American constitution, that there shall be an actual enumeration of the people every ten years. It is the duty of the marshals in each state to number the inhabitants of their respective districts: and a correct copy of the lists, containing the names of the persons re- turned, must be set up in a public place within each district, before they are transmitted to the secretary of state: — they are then laid before Congress by the president. Under this act three census, or enumerations of the people, have been already laid before Congress — for the years 1790, 1800 and 1810. In the year 1790, the population of America was 3,921,326 per- sons, of whom 697,697 were slaves. In 1800, the numbers were 5,319,762, of which 896,849 were slaves. In 1810, the numbers were 7,239,- 903, of whom 1,191,364 were slaves; so that at a rate at which free population has proceeded between 1790 and 1810, it doubles itself, in the United Slates, in a very little more than 22 years. The slave population, according to its rate of proceeding in the same time, would be doubled in about 26 years. The increase of the f^lave population in this statement is owing to the importation of negroes between 1800 and 1808, especially in 1806 and 1807, from the ex- pected prohibition against importation. The number of slaves was also increased by the ac- quisitions of territory in Louisiana, where they constituted nearly half the population. From 1801 to 1811, the inhabitants of Great Britain acquired an augmentation of 14 per cent.; the Americans, within the same period, were aug- mented 36 per cent. Emigration seems to be of very little import- ance to the United States. In the" year 1817, by far the most considerable year of emigration, there arrived in ten of the principal ports of America, from the old world, 22,000 persons as passengers. Thenumberofemigi-ants,from 1790 to 1810, is not supposed to have exceeded 6000 * Statiitical Annals of Oie United States of America. By .Adam Seybert, 4to. Philadelphia, 1S18. 18 per annum. None of the separate states have been retrograde during these three enumerations, though some have been nearly stationary. The most remarkable increase is that of New York, which has risen from 340,120 in the year 1790, to 959,049 in the year 1810. The emigration from the eastern to the western states is calcu- lated at 60,000 persons per annum. In all the American enumerations, the males uniformly predominate in the proportion of about 100 to 92. We are better off in Great Britain and Ire- land, — where the women were to the men, by the census of 1811, as 110 to 100. The density of population in the United States is less than 4 persons to a square mile; that of Holland, in 1803, was 275 to the square mile; that of England and Wales, 169. So that the fifteen provinces which formed the union in 1810, would contain, if they were as thickly peopled as Holland, 135 million souls. The next head is that of Trade and Commerce. — In 1790, the exports of the United States were above 19 millions of dollars; in 1791, above 20 millions; in 1792, 26 millions ; in 1793, 33 mil- lions of dollars. Prior to 1795, there was no discrimination, in the American treasury ac- counts, between the exportation of domestic, and the re-exportation of foreign articles. In 1795, the aggregate value of the merchandize exported was 67 millions of dollars, of which the foreign produce re-exported was 26 millions. In 1800, the total value of exports was 94 mil- lions; in 1805, 101 millions; and in 1808, when they arrived at their maximum, 108 million dollars. In the year 1809, from the effects of the French and English orders in council, the exports fell to 52 millions of dollars; in 1810 to 66 millions ; in 1811, to 61 millions; In the first year of the war with England, to 38 mil- lions ; in the second to 27; in the year 1814, when peace was made, to 6 millions. So that the exports of the republic, in six years, had tumbled down from 108 to 6 millions of dollars; after the peace, in the years 181.5-16-17, the exports rose to 52, 81,87 million dollars. In 1817, the exportation of cotton was 85 million pounds. In 1815, the sugar made on the banks of the Mississippi was 10 million pounds. In 1792, when the wheat trade was at the maximum, a million and a half of bushels were exported. The proportions of the exports to Great Britain, Spain, France, Holland and Portugal, on an average of ten years ending 1812, are as 27, 16, 13, 12 and 7; the actual value of exports to the dominions of Great Britain, in the three years ending 1804, were consecutively, in millions of dollars, 16, 17, 13. Imports. — in 1791, the imports of the United States were 19 millions; on an average of three consecutive years, ending 1804 inclusive, thej m2 138 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. were 68 millions; in 1806-7, they were 138 millions; and in 1815, 133 millions of dollars. The annual value of the imports, on an average of three years ending 1804, was 75,000,000, of which the dominions of Great Britain furnished nearly one half. On an average of three years ending in 1804, America imported from Great Britain to the amount of about 36 millions, and returned goods to the amount of about 23 mil- lions. Cf rlainly these are countries that have some belter employment for their time and energy than cutting each other's throats, and may meet for more profitable purposes. — The American imports from the dominions of Gi'eat Britain, before the great American war, amount- ed to about 3 millions sterling; soon after the war, to the same. From 1805 to 1811, bolh in- clusive, the average annual exportation of Great Britain to all parts of the world, in real value, was about 43 millions sterling, of which one- fifth, or nearly 9 millions, was sent to America. Tonnage and Navigation. — Before the revolu- tionary war, the American tonnage, whether ownecl by British or American subjects, was about 127,000 tons; immediately after that war, 108,000. In 17S9, it had amounted to 437,733 tons, of which 279,000 was .'\merican property. In 1790, the total was 605,825, of which 354,000 was American. In 1816, the tonnage, all Ame- rican, was 1,300,000. On an average of three years, from 1810 to 1812, both inclusive, the registered tonnage of the British empire was 2,459,000 ; or little more than double the Ame- rican. Lands. — All public lands are surveyed before they a^-e offered for sale, and divided into town- ships of six miles square, which are subdivided into thirty-six sections of one mile square, con- taining each 640 acres. The following lands are excepted from the sales. One thirty-sixth part of the lands, or a section of 640 acres in each township, is uniformly reserved for the support of schools ; seven entire townships, con- taining each 23,000 acres, have been reserved in perpetuity for the support of learning: all salt springs and lead mines are also reserved. The Mississippi, tlie Ohio, and all the navigable rivers and waters leading into either, or into the river St. Lawrence, remain common highways, and forever free to all the citizens of the United States, without payment of any tax. All the other public lands, not thus excepted, are offered for public sale in quarter sections of 160 acres, at a price not less than two dollars per acre, and as much more as they will fetch by public auction. It was formerly the duty of the secre tary of the treasury to superintend the sales of lands. In 1812, an office, denominated the General Land-Otiice, was instituted. The public lands sold prior to the opening of the land-ofiices, amounted to one million and a half of acres. The aggregate of the sales since the opening of the land-offices, N. W. of the river Ohio, to the end of September, 1817, amounted to 8,469,644 acres; and the purchase-money to 18,000,000 dollars. The lands sold since the opening of the land-offices in the Mississippi territory, amount to 1,600,000 acres. The stock of un- sold land on hand is calculated at 400,000,000 acres. In the year 1817 there were sold above two millions of acres. Post- Office.— In 1789, the number of post- offices in the United States was 75; the amount of postage 38,000 dollars ; the miles of post-road 1800. In 1817, the number of post-offices was 3,459; the amount of postage 961,000 dollars; and the extent of post-roads 51,600 miles. Revenue. — The revenues of the United States are derived from the customs; from duties on distilled spirits, carriages, snuff, refined sugar, auctions, stamped paper, goods, wares and mer- chandise manufactured within the United States, household furniture, gold and silver watches and postage of letters; from money arising from the sale of public lands and from fees on letters- patent. The following are the duties paid at the custom-house for some of the principal arti- cles of importation:— 7^ per cent, on dyeing drugs, jewellery and watch-work; 15 per cent, on hempen cloth and on all articles manu- factured from iron, tin, brass and lead — on but- tons, buckles, china, earthenware and glass, except window glass; 25 per cent, on cotton and woollen goods and cotton twist; 30 per cent, on carriages, leather and leather manu- factures, &c. The average annual produce of the customs, between 1801 and 1810, both inclusive, was about twelve millions of dollars. In the year 1814, the customs amounted onli/ to four mil- lions; and, in the year 1815, the first year after the war, rose to thirty-seven millions. From 1789 to 1814, the customs have constituted 65 per cent, of the American revenues; loans 26 per cent.; and all other branches 8 to 9 per cent. They collect their custoins at about 4 per cent.; — the English expense of collection is 6/. 2^. 6d. per cent. The duty upon spirits is extremely trifling to the consumer— not a penny per gallon. The number of distilleries is about 15,000. The licenses produce a very inconsiderable sum. The tax laid upon carriages in 1814, varied from fifty dollars to one dollar, according to the value of the machine. In the year 1801, there were more than fifteen thousand carriages of dif- ferent descriptions paying duty. The furniture- tax seems to have been a very singular species of tax, laid on during the last war. It was an ad valorem duty upon all the furniture in any man's possession, the value of which exceeded 600 dollars. Furniture cannot be estimated without domiciliary visits, nor domiciliary visits allowed without tyranny and vexation. An information laid against a new arm-chair, or a clandestine sideboard — a search-warrant, and a conviction consequent upon it — have much more the ap- pearance of English than American libertj'. The license for a watch, too, is purely English. A truly free Englishman walks out covered with licenses. It is impossible to convict him. He has paid a guinea for his powdered head — a guinea for the coat of arms upon his seals — a three guinea license for the gun he carries upon his shoulder to shoot game: and is so fortified with permits and official sanctions, that the most eagle-eyed informer cannot obtain the most tri- fling advantage over him. America has borrowed, between 1791 and 1815, one hundred and seven millions of dol lars, of which forty-nine millions were bor- rowed in 1813 and 1814. The internal revenue WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY S.MITH. 139 in the year 1815 amounted to ei?;ht million dollars; the gross revenue of the same year, including the loan, to fifty-one million dollars. Army. — During the late war with Great Brit- tain, Congress authorized the raising of 62,000 men for the armies of the United States,— though the actual number raised never amount- ed to half that force. In February, 1815, the army of the United States did not amount to more than 32,000 men; in January, 1814, to 23,000.* The recruiting service, as may be easily conceived, where the wages of labour are so high, goes on very slowly in America. The military peace establishment was fixed in 1815 at 10,000 men. The Americans are fortu- nately exempt from the insanity of garrisoning little rocks and islands all over the world ; nor would they lavish millions upon the ignoble end of the Spanish Peninsula — the most useless and extravagant possession with which any Eu- ropean power was ever afflicted. In 1812, any recruit honourably discharged from the service, was allowed three months' pay, and 160 acres of land. In 1814, every non-commissioned ofEcer, musician and private, who enlisted and was afterwards honourably discharged, was al- lowed, upon such discharge, 320 acres. The enlistment was for five years, or during the war. The widow, child or parent of any person en- listed, who was killed, or died in the service of the United States, was entitled to receive the same bounty in land. Every free white male between eighteen and forty-five, is liable to be called out in the militia, which is stated, in official papers, to amount to 748,000 persons. Navy.— On the 8th of June, 1781, the Ameri- cans had only one vessel of war, the Alliance,- and that was thought to be too expensive ; it was sold! The attacks of the Barbary powers first roused them to form a navy; which, in 1797, amounted to three frigates. In 1814, besides a great increase of frigates, four seventy-fours were ordered to be built. In 1816, in conse- quence of some brilliant actions of their fri- gates, the naval service had become very popu- lar throughout the United States. One million of dollars was appropriated annually, for eight years to the gradual increase of the navy; nine seventy-fours,-j- and twelve forty-four gun-ships were ordered to be built. Vacant and unappro- priated lands belonging to the United States, fit to produce oak and cedar, were to be selected for the use of the navy. The peace establish- ment of the marine corps was increased, and six navy yards were established. We were surprised to find Dr. Seybert complaining of a want of ship timber in America. "Many per- sons (he says) believe that our stock of live oak is very considerable ; but upon good authority we have been told, in 1801, that supplies of live oak from Georgia will be obtained with great difficulty, and that the larger pieces are very scarce." In treating of naval aflTairs, Dr. Sey- bert, with a very different purpose in view, pays the following involuntary tribute to the activity * Peace with Great Britain was signed in December, 1814, at Ghent. t The American seventy-four gtm ships are as big as our first-rates, and their frigates nearly as big as ships of the line. and effect of onr late naval warfare against the Americans. "For a long time the majority of the people of the United States was opposed to an exten- sive and permanent naval establishment; and the force authorized by the legislature, until very lately, was intended for temporary purposes. A navy was considered to be beyond the financial means of our country; and it was supposed the people would not submit to be taxed for its sup- port. Our brilliant success in the late war has changed the public sentiment on this subject: many persons who formerly opposed the navy, now consider it as an essential means for our defence. The late transactions on the borders of the Chesapeake Bay, cannot be forgotten; the extent of that immense estuary enabled the enemy to sail triumphant into the interior of the United States. For hundreds of miles along the shores of that great bay, our people were in- sulted; our towns were ravaged and destroyed; a considerable population was teased and irri- tated; depredations were hourly committed by an enemy who could penetrate into the bosom of the country, without our being able to molest him whilst he kept on the water. By the time a sufficient force was collected to check his operations in one situation, his ships had al- ready transported him to another, which was feeble, and offered a booty to him. An army could make no resistance to this mode of war- fare; the people were annoyed; and they suf- fered in the field only to be satisfied of their inability to check those who had the dominion upon our waters. The inhabitants who were in the immediate vicinity, were not alone affected by the enemy; his operations extended their influence to our great towns on the Atlantic coast; domestic intercourse and internal com- merce were interrupted, whilst that with foreign nations was, in some instances, entirely sus- pended. The treasury documents for 1814, ex- hibit the phenomenon of the State of Pennsyl- vania not being returned in the list of the exporting states. We were not only deprived of revenue, but our expenditures were very much augmented. It is probable the amount of the expenditures incurred on the borders of the Chesapeake would have been adequate to provide naval means for the defence ol those waters: the people might then have remained at home, secure from depredation in the pur- suit of their tranquil occupations. The ex- penses of the government, as well as of indi- viduals, were very much augmented for every species of transportation. Every thing had to be conveyed by land carriage. Our communi- cation with the ocean was cut off. One thou- sand dollars were paid for the transportation of each of the thirty-two pounder cannon from Washington city to Lake Ontario for the public service. Our roads became almost impassable from the heavy loads which were carried over them. Thesefacts should induce us, in times of tranquillity, to provide for the national de- fence, and execute such internal improvements as cannot be effected during the agitations of war." — (p. 679.) Expenditure. — The President of the United Stales receives about 6000/. a year; the Vice- President about 600/.; the deputies to Congress 140 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. have 8 dollars per day, and 8 dollars for every 20 miles of journey. The first clerk of the House of Representatives receives about 750/. per annum ; the Secretary of State, 1200/.; the Postmaster-General, 7.50/.; the Chief Justice of the United States, 1000/.; a Minister Plenipo- tentiary, 2200/. per annum. There are, doubt- less, reasons why there should be two noblemen appointed in this country as postmasters-gene- ral, with enormous salaries, neither of whom know a twopenny post letter from a general one, and where further retrenchments are stated to be impossible. This is clearly a case to which that impossibility extends, i3ut these are matters where a prostration of understanding is called for; and good subjects are not to rea- son, but to pay. If, however, we were ever to indulge in the Saxon practice of looking into our own affairs, some important documents might be derived from these American salaries. Jonathan, for instance, sees no reason why the first clerk of his House of Commons should derive emoluments from his situation to the amount of 600(7. or 7000/. per annum : but Jonathan is vulgar and arithmetical. The total expenditure of the United States varied, between 1799 and 1811, both inclusive, from 11 to 17 millions of dollars. From 1812 to 1814, both inclusive, and all these years of war with this country, the expenditure was consecutively, 22, 29, and 38 millions of dollars. The total ex- penditure of the United States, for 14 years from 1791 to 1814, was .33o millions of dollars ; of which, in the three last years of war with this country, fr(^m 1812 to 1814, there were ex- pended 100 millions of dollars, of which only 35 were supplied by revenue, the rest by loans and government paper. The sum total received by the American treasury from the 3d of March, l'789, to the 31st of March, 1816, is 354 millions of dollars; of which 107 millions have been raised by loan, and 222 millions by the customs and tonnage: so that, exclusive of the revenue derived from loans, 222 parts out of 247 of the American revenue have been derived from fo- reign commerce. In the mind of any sensible American, this consideration ought to prevail over the few splendid actions of their half dozen frigates, which must, in a continued war, have been, with all their bravery and activity, swept from the face of the ocean by the superior force and equal bravery of the English. It would be the height of madness in America to run into another naval war with this country, if it could be averted by any other means than a sacrifice of proper dignity and character. They have, comparatively, no land revenue; and, in spile of the Franklin and Guerrlere, though lined with cedar and mounted with brass cannon, they must soon be reduced to the same state which has been described by Dr. Seybert, and from which they were so opportunely extricated by the treaty of Ghent. David Porter and Ste- phen Decatur are very brave men; but they will prove an unspeakable misfortune to their country, if they inflame Jonathan into a love of naval glory, and inspire him with any other love of war than that which is founded upon a determination not to submit to serious insult and injury. We can inform Jonathan what are the inevi- table con segueti ces nf being too fond of glory; — Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot — taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste — taxes upon ivarmth, light and locomotion — taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth — mi every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home — taxes on the raw material — taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man — taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health — on the ermine ivhich decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal — on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice — on the brass nails nf the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride — at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. — The school-boy whips his taxed top — the beard- less youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road: — and the dying English- man, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., into a spoon that has paid \^ per cent., — flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent., — and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a -license of a hundred pounds fur the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to \0 per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble ; and he is then gathered to his fathers, — to be taxed no more. In addition to all this, the habit of dealing with large sums will make the government avaricious and profuse; and the system itself will infallibly generate the base vermin of spies and informers, and a still more pestilent race of political tools and retainers of the meanest and most odious description; — while the prodigious patronage which the collecting of this splendid revenue will throw into the hands of government, will invest it with so vast an influence, and hold out such means and temptations to corruption, as all the virtue and public spirit, even of repub- licans, will be unable to resist. Every wise Jonathan should remember this, when he sees the rabble huzzaing at the heels of the truly respectable Decatur, or inflaming the vanity of that still more popular leader, whose justification has lowered the character of his government with all the civilized nations of the world. Dei/.— America owed 42 million dollars after the Revolutionary war; in 1790, 79 millions; in 1803,70 millions; and in thebeginningof Janu- ary, 1812, the public debt was diminished to 45 million dollars. After the last war with Eng- land, it had risen to 123 millions ; and so it stood on the 1st of January, 1816. The total amount carried to the credit of the commissioners of the sinking fund, on the 31st of December, 1816, was about 34 millions of dollars. Such is the land of Jonathan — and thus has it been governed. In his honest endeavours to better his situation, and in his manly purpose of resisting injury and insult we most cordially sympathize. We hope he will always continue to watch and suspect his government as he now does — remembering that it is the constant ten- dency of those entrusted with power, to con- ceive that they enjoy it by their own merits, WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 141 and for their own use, and not by delegation, and for the benefit of others. Thus far we are the friends and admirers of Jonathan. But he must not grow vain and ambitious; or allow himself to be dazzled b}^ that galaxy of epithets by which his orators and newspaper scribblers endeavour to persuade their supporters that they are the greatest, the most refined, the most en- lightened and most moral people upon earth. The effect of this is unspeakably ludicrous on this side of the Atlantic — and, even on the other, we shall imagine, must be rather humiliating to the reasonable part of the population. The Americans are a brave, industrious and acute people ; but they have, hitherto, given no indi- cations of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or cha- racter. They are but a recent ofiset, indeed, from England; and should make it their chief boast, for many generations to come, that they are sprung from the same race with Bacon and Shakspeare and Newton. Considering their numbers, indeed, and the favourable circum- stances in which they have been placed, they have yet done marvellously little to assert the honour of such a descent, or to show that their English blood has been exalted or refined by their republican training and institutions. — Their Franklins and Washingtons, and all the other sages and heroes of their Revolution, were born and bred subjects of the King of England, — and not among the freest or most valued of his subjects. And since the period of their separation, a far greater proportion of their statesmen and artists and political writers have been foreigners than ever occurred before in the history of any civilized and educated people. During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the Sciences, for the Arts, for Lite- rature, or even for the statesman-like studies of Politics or Political Economy. Confining our- selves to our own countr)', and to the period that has elapsed since ihey had an independent existence, we would ask, where are their Foxes, their Burkes, their Sheridans, their Windhams, their Homers, their WilberforcesT — where their Arkwrights, their Watts, their Davys?— their Robertsons, Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, Paleys, and Malthuses"? — their Porsons, Parrs, Bur- neys, or Bloomfields? — their Scolts, Rogers's, Campbells, Byrons, Moores, or Crabbesl — their Siddons's, Kembles, Keans, or O'Neilsl — their Wilkies, Lawrences, Chantrys? — or their parallels to the hundred other names that have spread themselves over the world from our little island in the course of the last thirty years, and blest or delighted mankind by their works, inventions or examples? In so far as we know, there is no such parallel to be pro- duced from the whole annals of this self- adulating race. In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons'! What new substances have their chemists dis- covered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What have they done in the mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses ? or eats from Ameri- can plates? or wears American coats or gownsi or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Eu- rope is every sixth man a slave, whom his fel- low-creatures may buy and sell and torture ? When these questions are lairly and favour- ably answered, their laudatory epithets may be allowed: but till that can be done, we would seriously advise them to keep clear of super- latives. 142 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. IRELAND/ [Edinbuegh Review, 1820.] These are all the late publications that treat of Irish interests in general, — and none of them are of first-rate importance. i\Tr. Gamble's Tra- vels in Ireland are of a very ordinary description — low scenes and low humour making up the principal part of the narrative. There are readers, however, whom it will amuse; and the reading market becomes more and more exten- sive, and embraces a greater variety of persons every day. Mr. Whitelaw's History of Dublin is a book of great accuracy and research, highly creditable to the industry, good sense and be- nevolence of its author. Of the Travels of Mr. Christian Curwen, we hardly know what to say. He is bold and honest in his politics — a great enemy to abuses — vapid in his levity and plea- santry', and intinitely too much inclined to de- claim upon common-place topicsof morality and benevolence. But, with these drawbacks, the book is not ill written; and may be advantage- ously read by those who are desirous of informa- tion upon the present state of Ireland. So great and so long has been the misgo- vernment of that country, that we verily believe the empire ■would be much stronger if every thirg was open sea between England and ihe Atlantic, and if skates and codfish swam over the fair land of Ulster. Such jobbing, such profligacy — so much direct tyranny and oppres- sion — such an abuse of God's gifts — such a profanation of God's name for the purposes of bigotry and party spirit, cannot be exceeded in the history of civilized Europe, and will long remain a monument of infamy and shame to England. But it will be more useful to suppress the indignation which the very name of Ireland inspires, and to consider impartially those causes which have marred this fair portion of the crea- tion, and kept it wild and savage in the midst of improving Europe. The great misfortune of Ireland is, that the mass of the people have been given up for a century to a handful of Protestants, by whom they have been treated as Heluts, and subjected to every species of persecution and disgrace. The suifTenngs of the Catholics have been so loudly chaunled in the very streets, that it is al- most needless to remind our readers that, during the reigns of George I. and Genrge II., the Irish Roman Catholics were disabled from holding any civil or military office, from voting at elec- tions, from admission into corporations, from practising law or physic. A younger brother, by turning Protestant, might deprive his elder » 1. Wl,ite!au's History of the City qf Dublin. 4to Ca- dell and Davies. 2. Obserralicns on the Slate of Trelani. principally di- recteri to iti Agriculture and Kurnl Population; in a smes rf Letters urritten on a Tour through that Country. In 2 vols. By J. C. Curwen, Esq., M. P. London, Itia 3. Gamble's Views of Society in Ireland. brother of his birthright; by the same process, he might force his father, under the name of a liberal provision, to yield up to him a part of his landed property: and, if an eldest son, he might, in the same v.-ay, reduce his father's fee- simple to a life estate. A papist was disabled from purchasing freehold lands — and even from holding long leases — and any person might take his Catholic neighbour's house by paying .5/. for it. If the child of a Catholic father turned Pro- testant, he was taken away from his father and put into the hands of a Protestant relation. No papist could purchase a freehold, or lease for more than thirty years — or inherit from an in- testate Protestant — nor from an intestate Catho- lic — nor dwell in Limerick or Galwa)' — nor hold an advowson, nor buy an annuity for life. 50/. was given for discovering a popish archbishop — 30/. fqr a popish clergyman — and 10s. for a schoolmaster. No one was allowed to be trustee for Catholics ; no Catholic was allowed to take more than two apprentices; no papist to be so- licitor, sheriff, or to serve on grand juries. Horses of papists might be seized for the militia; for which militia papists were to pay double, and to find Protestant substitutes. Papists were prt)hibited from being present at vestries, or from being high or petty constables; and, when resident in towns, they were compelled to find Protestant watchmen. Barristers and solicitors marrying Catholics, were exposed to the penal- ties of Catholics. Persons plundered by pri- vateers during a war with any popish prince, were reimbursed by a levy on the Catholic in- habitants where they lived. All popish priests celebrating marriages contrary to 12 Geo. Leap. 3, were to be hanged. The greater part of these incapacities are re- moved, though many of a very serious and op- pressive nature still remain. But the grand misfortune is, that the spirit which these op- pressive laws engendered remains. The Pro- testant still looks upon the Catholic as a degraded being. The Catholic does not yet consider himself upon an equality with his for- mer tyrant and taskmaster. That religious hatred which required all the prohibiting vigi- lance of the law for its restraint, has found in the law its strongest support; and the spirit which the law first exasperated and embittered, continues to act long after the original slimulus is withdrawn. The law which prevented Ca- tholics from serving on grand juries is repealed ; but Catholics are not called upon grand juries in the proportion in which they are entitled, by their rank and fortune. The Duke of Bedford did all he could to give them the benefit of those laws which are already passed in their favour. But power is seldom entrusted in this country to one of the Duke of Bedford's liberality; and WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. every thing has fallen back in the hands of his successors into the ancient division of the pri- vileged and degraded castes. We do not mean Jo cast any reflection upon the present secretary for Ireland, whom we believe to be upon this subject a very liberal politician, and on all sub- jecis an honourable and excellent man. The government under which he serves allows him to indulge in a little harmless liberality; but it is perfectly understood that nothing is intended to be done for the Catholics; that no loaves and fishes will be lost by indulgence in Protestant insolence and tyranny; and, therefore, among the generality of Irish Protestants, insolence, tyranny and exclusion continue to operate. Ho\vever eligible the Catholic may be, he is not elected; whatever barriers may be thrown down, he does not advance a i-tep. He was first kept out by law; he is now kept out by opinion and habit. They have been so long in chains, that nobody believes they are capable of using their hands and feet. It is not, however, the only or the worst misfor- tune of the Catholics, that the relaxations of the law are hitherto of little benefit to them ; the law is not yet sufficiently relaxed. A Catholic, as every body knows, cannot be made sheriff; can- not be in Parliament; cannot be a director of the Irish Bank; cannot fill the great departments of the law, the army and the navy; is cut off from all the high objects of human ambition, and treated as a marked and degraded person. The common admission now is, that the Ca- tholics are to the Protestants in Ireland as about 4 to I — of which Protestants, not more than one half he]ox\g to the Church of Ireland. This, then, is one of the most striking features in the state of Ireland. That the great mass of the popula- tion is completely subjugated and overawed by a handful of comparatively recent settlers, — in whom all the power and patronage of the coun- try are vested, — who have been reluctantly com- pelled to desist from still greater abuses of authority, — and who look with trembling appre- hension to the increasing liberality of the Par- liament and the country towards these unfortu- nate persons whom they have always looked upon as their property and their prey. Whatever evils may result from these pro- portions between the oppressor and the op- pressed — to whatever dangers a country so situated may be considered to be exposed — these evils and dangers are rapidly increasing in Ire- land. The proportion of Catholics to Protestants is infinitely greater novv than it was thirty years ago, and is becoming more and more favourable to the former. By a return made to the Irish House of Lords in 1732, the proportion of Ca- tholics to Protestants was not 2 to 1. It is now (as we have already observed) 4 to 1 ; and the causes which have thus altered the proportion in favour of the Catholics are sufficiently ob- vious to any one acquainted with the state of Ireland. The Roman Catholic priest resides: his income .entirely depends upon the number of his flock; and he must exert himself, or he starves. There is some chance of success, therefore, in his efforts to convert; but the Pro- testant clergyman, if he were equally eager, has little or no probability of persuading so much larger a proportion of the population to come over to his church. The Catholic clergyman belongs to a religion that has always been more desirous of gaining proselytes than the Pro- testant church; and he is animated by a sense of injury and a desire of revenge. Another rea- son for the disproportionate increase of Catho- lics is, that the Catholics will marry upon means which the Protestant considers as insufficient for marriage. A few potatoes and a shed of turf are all that Luther has left for the Roman- ist ; and, when the latter gets these, he instantly begins upon the great Irish manufacture of chil- dren. But a Protestant belongs to the sect that eats the fine flour, and leaves the bran to others; he must have comforts, and he does not marry till he gets them. He would be ashamed, if he were seen living as a Catholic lives. This is the principal reason why the Protestants who remain attached to their church do not increase so fast as the Catholics. But in common minds, daily scenes, the example of the majority, the power of imitation, decide their habits, religious as well as civil. A Protestant labourer who w^orks among Catholics, soon learns to think and act and talk as they do — he is not proof against the eternal panegyric which he hears of Father G'Leary. His Protestantism is rubbed away; and he goes at last, after some little re- sistance, to the chapel, where he sees every body else going. These eight Catholics not only hate the ninth man, the Protestant of the Establishment, for the unjust privileges he enjoys — not only remem- ber that the lands of their fathers were given to his father — but they find themselves forced to pay for the support of his religion. In the wretched state of poverty in which the lower orders of Irish are plunged, it is not without considerable effort that they can pay the few shillings necessary for the suppcfrt of their Ca- tholic priest; and when this is effected, a tenth of the potatoes in the garden is to be set out for the support of a persuasion, the introduction of which into Ireland they consider as the great cause of their political inferiority, and all their manifold wretchedness. In England, a labourer can procure constant employment — or he can, at the worst, obtain relief from his parish. Whether lithe operates as a tax upon him. is known only to the political ecoiiomist: if he does pay it. he does not know that he pays it; and the burthen of supporting the clergy is at least kept out of his view. But, in Ireland, the only method in which a poor man lives, is by taking a small portion of land, in which he can grow potatoes: seven or eight months out of twelve, in many parts of Ireland, there is no constant employment of the poor: and the po- tato farm is all that shelters them from absolute famine. If the pope were to come in person, and seize upon every tenth potato, the poor peasant would scarcely endure it. With what patience then, can he see it tossed into the cart of the heretic rector who has a church without a con- gregation, and a revenue without duties? We do not say whether these things are right or wrong — whether they want a remedy at all — or what remedy they want ; but we paint them in those colours in which they appear to the eye of poverty and ignorance, without saying whe- I iher those colours are false or true. Nor is tho 144 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. case at all comparable to that of Dissenters pay- ing tithe in England; which case is precisely the reverse of what happens in Ireland, for it is the contribution of a very small minority to the religion of a very lar^e majority; and the num- bers on either side make all the difference in the argument. To exasperate the poor Catholic still more, the rich grazier of the parish — or the squire in his parish — pay no tithe at all for their grass land. Agistment tithe is abolished in Ireland; and the burthen of supporting two churches seems to devolve upon the poorer Catholics, struggling with plough and spade in small scraps of dearly-rented land. Tithes seem to be collected in a more harsh manner than they are collected in England. The minute sub- divisions of land in Ireland — the little connection which the Protestant clergyman commonly has with the Catholic population of his parish, have made the introduction of tithe proctors very general — sometimes as the agent of the clergy- man — sometimes as the lessee or middleman between the clergyman and the cultivator of the land: but, in either case, practised, dexter- ous estimators of tithe. The English clergymen in general, are far from exacting the whole of what is due to them, but sacrifice a little to the love of popularity or to the dread of odium. A system of tithe-proctors established all over England (as it is in Ireland,) would produce general disgust and alienation from the Esta- blished Church. " During the administration of Lord Halifax," says Mr. Hardy, in quoting the opinion of Lord Charlemont upon tithes paid by Catholics, " Ire- land was dangerously disturbed in its south- ern and northern regions. In the south princi- pally, in the counties of Kilkenny, Limerick, Cork and Tipperary, the White Boys now made their first appearance; those White Boys, who have ever since occasionally disturbed the pub- lic tranquillity, without any rational method having been as yet pursued to eradicate this disgraceful evil. When we consider that the very same district has been for the long space of seven-and-lwenty years liable to frequent returns of the same disorder into which it has continuallj' relapsed, in spite of all the violent remedies from time to time administered by our political quacks, we cannot doubt but that some real, peculiar and topical cause must exist; and yet, neither the removal nor even the investiga- tion of this cause has ever once been seriously attempted. Laws of the most sanguinary and unconstitutional nature have been enacted; the country has been disgraced and exasperated by frequent and bloody executions; and the gibbet, that perpetual resource of weak and cpjel legislators, has groaned under the multi- tude of starving criminals ; yet, while the cause is suffered to exist, the eflects will ever follow. The amputation of limbs will never eradicate a prurient humour, which must be sought in its source, and there remedied." "I wish," continues Mr. Wakefield, "for the sake of humanity, and for the honour of the Irish character, that the gentlemen of that coun- try would take this matter into their serious consideration. Let them only for a moment place themselves in the situation of the half- famished cotter, surrounded by a wretched fami- ly, clamorous for food ; and judge what his feel- ings must be, when he sees the tenth part of the produce of his potato garden exposed at harvest time to public cuni; or, if he have given a pro- missory note for the payment of a certain sum of money, to compensate for such tithe when it becomes due, to hear the heart-rending cries of his offspring clinging round him, and lamenting for the milk of which they are deprived, by the cows being driven to the pound, to be sold to dis- charge the debt. Such accounts are not the creation of fancy; the facts do exist, and are but too common in Ireland. Were one of them transferred to canvas by the hand of genius, and exhibited to English humanity, that heart must be callous, indeed, that could refuse its sympathy. I have seen the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears and the imprecations of a whole fami- ly, who were paddling after, through wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of this their only friend and benefactor, at the pound gate. I have heard with emotions which I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village as the cavalcade pro- ceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the domain walls of the opulent grazier, whose numerous herds were cropping the most luxu- riant pastures, while he M-as secure from any demand for the tithe of their food, looking on with the most unfeeling indifference." — Wake- field, p. 486. In Munster, where tithe of potatoes is exact- ed, risings against the system have constantly occurred during the last forty years. In Ulster, where no such tithe is required, these insurrec- tions are unknown. The double church which Ireland supports, and that painful visible con- tribution towards it which the poor Irishman is compelled to make from his miserable pittance, is one great cause of those never-ending in- surrections, burnings, murders and robberies, which have laid waste that ill-fated country for so many years. The unfortunate consequence of the civil disabilities, and the church payments under which the Catholics labour, is a rooted antipathy to this country. They hate the Eng- lish government from historical recollection, actual sufferings and disappointed hope ; and till they are better treated, they will continue to hate it. At this moment, in a period of the most profound peace, there are twenty-five thousand of the best disciplined and best ap- pointed troops in the world in Ireland, with bayonets fixed, presented arms, and in the atti- tude of present war: nor is there a man too much — nor would Ireland be tenable without them. When it was necessary last year (or thought necessary) to put down the children of reform, we were forced to make a new levy of troops in this country — not a man could be spared from Ireland. The moment they had embarked, Peep-of-day Boys, Heart-of-Oak Boys, Twelve-o'clock Boys,Heart-of-Flint Boys, and all the bloody boyhood of the Bog of Allen, would have proceeded to the ancient work of riot, rapine and disaffection. Ireland, in short, till her wrongs are redressed, and a more liberal policy is adopted towards her, will always be a cause of anxiety and suspicion to this country; and, in some moment of our weakness and de- WOKKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. U pression, will forcibly extort what she woukl now receive with gratitude and exultation. Ireland is situated close to another island of greater size, speaking the same language, very superior in civilization, and the seat of govern- ment. The consequence of this is the emigra- tion of the richest and most powerful part of the community — a vast drain of wealth — and the absence of all that wholesome influence which the representatives of ancient families residing upon their estates, produce upon their tenantry and dependents. Can any man imagine that the scenes which have been acted in Ireland within these last twenty years, would have taken place, if such vast proprietors as the Uuke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Earl Fitzwilliam, and many other men of equal wealth, had been in the constant habit of residmgupon their Irish, as they are upon their English estates'? Is it of no consequence to the order and the civilization of a large district, whether the great mansion is inhabited by an insignificant, perhaps a mis- chievous, attorney, in the shape of agent, or whether the first and greatest men of the United Kingdoms, after the business of Parliament is over, come with their friends and families, to exercise hospitality, to spend large revenues, to diffuse information and to improve manners! This evil is a very serious one to Ireland; and, as far as we see, incurable. For if the present large estates were, by the dilapidation of fami- lies, to be broken to pieces and sold, others equally great would, in the free circulation of property, speedily accumulate; and the moment any possessor arrived at a certain pitch of tor- tune, he would probably choose to reside in the better country,— near the Parliament or the court. This absence of great proprietors in Ireland necessarily brings with it, or if not necessarily, has actually brought with it, the employment of middlemen, which forms one other standing and regular Irish grievance. We are well aware of all that can be said in defence of middle- men ; that they stand between the little farmer and the great proprietor, as the shop-keeper does between the manufacturer and consumer; and, in fact, by their intervention, save time, and therefore expense. This may be true enough in the abstract; but the particularnatureof land must be attended to. The object of the man who makes cloth is to sell his cloth at the present market, for as high a price as he can obtain. If that price is too high, it soon falls; but no injury is done to his machinery by the superior price he has enjoyed for a season — he is just as able to produce cloth with it, as if the profits he en- joyed had always been equally moderate ; he has no fear, therefore, of the middlemen, or of any species of moral machinery which may help to obtain for him the greatest present prices. The same would be the feeling of any one who let out a steam-engine, or any other machine, for the purposes of manufacture ; he would natu- rally take the highest price he could get: for he might either let his machine for a price propor- tionate to the work it did, or the repairs, estima- ble with the greatest precision, might be thrown upon the tenant; in short, he could hardly ask any rent too higti for his machine which a re- 19 sponsible person would give; dilapidation would be so visible, and so calculable in such in- stances, that any secondary lease, or subletting, would be rather an increase of security than a source of alarm. Any evil from such a practice would be improbable, measurable and reme- diable. In land, on the contrary, the object is not to get the highest prices absolutely, but to get the highest prices which will not injure the machine. One tenant may offer and pay double the rent of another, and in a few years leave the land in a state which will effectually bar all fu- ture offers of tenancy. It is of no use to fill a lease full of clauses and covenants; a tenant who pays more than he ought to pay, or who pays even to the last farthing which he ought to pay, will rob the land, and injure the machine, in spite of all the attorneys in England. He will rob it even if he means to remain upon it — driven on by present distress, and anxious to put oflT the day of defalcation and arrear. The damage is often difficult of detection — not easily calculated, not easily to be proved; such for which juries (themselves, perhaps, farmers) would not willingly give sntlicient compensa- tion. And if this is true in England, it is much more strikingly true in Ireland, where it is ex- tremely difficult to obtain verdicts for breaches of covenant in leases. The only method then of guarding the machine from real injury is, by giving to the actual oc- cupier such advantage in his contract, that he is unwilling to give it up — that he has a real interest in retaining it, and is not driven by the distresses of the present moment to destroy the future productiveness of the soil. Any rent which the landlord accepts more than this, or any system by which more rent than this is ob- tained, is to borrow money upon the most usu- rious and profligate interest — to increase the revenue of the present day by the absolute ruin of the property. Such is the effect produced by a middleman : he gives high prices that he may obtain higher from the occupier; more is paid by the actual occupier than is consistent with the safely and preservation of the machine; the land is runout, and in the end, that maximum of rent we have described is not obtained: and not only is the property injured by such a system, but in Ireland the most shocking consequences ensue from it. There is little manufacture in Ireland ; the price of labour is low, the demand for labour irregular. If a poor man is driven, by distress of rent, from his potato garden, he has no other resource — all is lost: he will do the impossible (as the French say) to retain it: and subscribe any bond, and promise any rent. The middleman has no character to lose; and he knew, when he took up the occupation, that it was one with which pity had nothing to do. On he drives; and backward the poor peasant re- cedes, losing something at every step, till he comes to the very brink of despair; and then he recoils and murders his oppressor, and is a White boij or a Right boy : — the soldier shoots him, and the judge hangs him. In the debate which took place in the Irisn House of Commons, upon the bill for preventing tumultuous risings and assemblies, on the 3isl of January, 1787,the attorney-general submitted to the House the following narrative of facts. N 146 WOKKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. "The commencement," said he, "was in one or two parishes in the countv of Kerr\'; and they proceeded thus. The people assembled m a Catholic chapel, and then took an oalh to obey the laws of Captain Right, and to starve the clergy. They then proceeded to the next pa- rishes, on the following Sunday, and there swore the people in the same manner; with this addi- tion, that they (the people last sworn) should, on the ensuing Sunday, proceed to the chapels of their next neighbouring parishes, and swear the inhabitants of those parishes in like manner. Proceeding in this manner they very soon went through the province of Munster. The first object was the refornudion of tithes. They swore not to give more than a certain price per acre; not to assist, or allow them to be assisted, in drawing the tithe, and to permit no proctor. They next took upon them to prevent the collec- tion of parish cesses; next to nominate parish clerks, and in some cases curates: to say what church should or should not be repaired; and in one case to threaten that they would burn a nev.i church, if the old one were not given for a mass-house. At last, they proceeded to regulate the price of lands; to raise the price of labour; and to oppose the collection of the hearth money, and other taxes. Bodies of 5000 of them have been seen to march through the country un- armed, and if met by any magistrate, they never offered the smallest rudeness or offence,- on the contrary, they had allov.-ed persons charged with crimes to be taken from amongst them by the magistrate ahme, unaided by any force." "The attorney-general said he was well ac- quainted with the province of Munster, and that it was impossible for human wretchedness to exceed that of the peasantry of that province. The unhappy tenantry were ground to powder by relentless landlords; that^ far from being able to give the clergy their just dues, they had net food nor raiment I'or themselves — the land- lord grasped the whole; and sorry was he to add, that, not satisfied with the present extortion, some landlords had been so base as to instigate the insurgents to rob the clergy of their tithes, not in order to alleviate the distresses of the tenantry, but that they might add the clergy's .share to the cruel rack-rents they already paid. The poor people of Munster lived in a more ab- ject state of poverty than human nature could be supposed equal to bear." — Grattan's Speeches, vol. i. 292. We are not, of course, in such a discussion, to be governed by names. A middleman might be tied up by the strongest legal restriction, as to the price he was to exact from the under- tenants, and then he would be no more perni- cious to the estate than a steward. A steward might be protected in exactions as severe as the most rapacious middleman; and then, of course, it would be the same thing under another name. The practice to which we object is, the too common method in Ireland of extorting the last farthing which the tenant is willing to give for land, rather than quit it: and the machinery by which such practice is carried into effect, is that of the middleman. It is not 'only that it ruins the land; it ruins the people also. They are made so poor — brought so near the ground -that they can sink no lower; and burst out at last into all the acts of desperation and revenge for which Ireland is so notorious. Men who have money in their pockets, and find that they are improving in their circumstances, don't do these things. Opulence, or the hope of opulence or coinfort, is the parent of decency, order and submission to the laws. A landlord in Ireland understands the luxury of carriages and horses; but has no relish for the greater luxury of sur- rounding himself with a moral and grateful tenantry. The absent proprietor looks only to revenue, and cares nothing for the disorder and degradation of a country which he never means to visit. There are very honourable exceptions to this charge: but there are too many living in- stances that it is just. The rapacity of the Irish landlord induces him to allow of the extreme division of his lands. When the daughter mar- ries, a little portion of the little farm is brolceii oflT— another corner for Patrick, and another lor Dermot — till the land is broken into sections, upon one of which an English cow could not stand. Twenty mansions of misery are thus reared instead of one. A louder cry of oppres- sion is lifted up to Heaven; and fresh enemies to the English name and power are multiplied on the earth. The Irish gentlemen, too, ex- tremely desirous of political influence, multiply freeholds and split votes ; and this propensity tends of course to increase the miserable re- dundance of living beings, under which Ireland is groaning. Among the manifold wretchedness to which the poor Irish tenant is liable, we must not pass over the practice of driving for rent. A lets land to B, who lets it to C, who lets it again to D. D pays C his rent, and C j pays B. But if B fails to pay A, he cattle of B, C, D are all driven to the pound, and after . the interval of a few days, sold by auction. A I general driving of this kind very frequently I leads to a bloody insurrection. It may be ranked among the classical grievances of Ire- ' land. I Potatoes enter for a great deal into the pre- I sent condition of Ireland. They are much 1 cheaper than wheat; and it is so easy to rear a ! family upon them, that there is no check to population from the difiiculty of procuring food. The population, therefore, goes on with a ra- pidity approaching almost to that of new coun- tries, and in a much greater ratio than the j improving agriculture and manufactures of the 1 country can find employment for it. All degrees [ of all nations begin with living in pig-styes. The king or the priest first gets out of them; j then the noble, then the pauper, in proportion as each class becomes more and more opulent. Better tastes arise from better circumstances; and the luxury of one period is the wretched- ness and poverty of another. English peasants, in the time of Henry the Seventh, were lodged as badly as Irish peasants now are; but the population was limited by the difiiculty of pro- curing a corn subsistence. The improvements of this kingdom vrere more rapid; the price of labour rose; and, with it, the luxury and com- fort of the peasant, who is now decently lodged and clothed, and who would think himself in the last stage of wretchedness, if he had nothing but an iron pot in a turf house, and plenty of potatoes in it. The use of the potato was intro- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 147 duced into Ireland when the wrelched accommo- dation of her own peasantry bore some propor- tion to the state of those accommodations all over Europe. But they have increased their population so fast, and, in conjunction with the oppressive government of Ireland retarding im- provement, have kept the price of labour so low, that the Irish poor have never been able to emerge from their mud cabins, or to acquire any taste for cleanliness and decency of appear- ance. Mr. Curwen has the following descrip- tion of Irish cottages. "These mansions of miserable existence, for so they may truly be described, conformably to our general estimation of those indispensable comforts requisite to constitute the happiness of rational beings, are most commonly composed of two rooms on the ground floor, a most ap- propriate term, for they are literary on the earth ; the surface of which is not unfrequently reduced a foot or more, to save the expense of so much outward walling. The one is a refec- tory, the other the dormitory. The furniture of the former, if the owner ranks in the upper part of the scale of scantiness, will con.'~ist of a kitchen dresser, well provided and highly deco- rated wilh crockery — not less apparently the pride of the husband than the result of female vanity in the wife : which, wilh a table, a chest, a few stools and an iron pot, complete the calo- logue of conveniences generally found as be- longing to the cabin; while a spinning-wheel, furnished by the Linen Board, and a loom, or- nament vacant spaces, that otherwise would remain unfurnished. In fitting up the latter, which cannot, on any occasion, or by any dis- play, add a feather to the weight or importance expected to be excited by the appearance of the former, the inventory is limited to one, and sometimes two beds, serving for the repose of the whole family ! However downy these may be to limbs impatient for rest, their coverings appeared to be very slight; and the whole of the apartment created reflections of a very pain- ful nature. Under such privations, with a wet mud floor, and a roof in tatters, how idle the search for comforts!*' — Curwen, I. 112, 113. To this extract we shall add one more on the same subject. "The gigantic figure, bare-headed before me, had a beard that would not have disgraced an ancient Israelite — he was without shoes or stockings — and almost a sans-culotte — with a coat or rather a jacket, that appeared as if the first blast of wind would tear it to tatters. Though his garb was thus tattered he had a manly commanding countenance. I asked per- mission to see the inside of his cabin, to which I received his most courteous assent. On stooping to enter at the door I was stopped and found that permission from another was neces- sary before I could be admitted. A pig, which was fastened to a stake driven into the floor, with length of rope sufficient to permit him the enjoyment of sun and air, demanded some cour- tesy, which I showed him, and was suffered to enter. The wife was engaged in boiling thread; and by her side, near the fire, a lovely infant was sleeping, without any covering, on a bare board. Whether the fire gave additional glow to the countenance of the babe, or that Nature impressed on its unconscious cheek ablush that the lot of man should be exposed to such pri- vations, I will not decide : but if the cause be referable to the latter, it was in perfect unison with my own feelings. Two or three other children crowded round the mother: on their rosy countenances health seemed established in spile of filth and ragged garments. The dress of the poor woman was barely sufficient to sa- tisfy decenc}'. Her countenance bore the im- pression of a set melancholy, tinctured with an appearance of ill health. The hovel, which did not exceed twelve or fifteen feet in length and ten in breadth, was half obscured by smoke — chimney or window I saw none; the door served the various purposes of an inlet to light, and the outlet to smoke. The furniture consist- ed of two stools, an iron pot and a spinning- wheel — while a sack stuffed with straw, and a single blanket laid on planks, served as a bed for the repose of the whole family. Need I attempt to describe my sensations'? The state- ment alone cannot fail of conveying, to a mind like yours, an adequate idea of them — I could not long remain a witness to this acme of hu- man misery. As I left the deplorable habita- tion, the mistress followed me to repeat her thanks for the trifle I had bestowed. This gave me an opportunity of observing her person more particularly. She was a tall figure, her countenance composed of interesting features, and with every appearance of having once been handsome. "Unwilling to quit the village without first satisfying myself whether what I had seen was a solitary instance, or a sample of its general state; or whether the extremity of poverty I had just beheld had arisen from peculiar improvi- dence and want of management in one wretch- ed family; I went into an adjoining habitation, where I found a poor old woman of eighty, whose miserable existence was painfully con- tinued by the maintenance of her granddaugh- ter. Their condition, if possible, was more de- plorable."— C»mw, I. 181. 183. This wretchedness, of which all strangers who visit Ireland are so sensible, proceeds certainly, in great measure, from their accidental use of a food sochcap, that it encourages population to an extraordinary degree, lowers the price of labour, and leaves the multitudes which it calls into existence almost destitute of every thing but food. Many more live in consequence of the introduction of potatoes ; but all live in greater wretchedness. In the progress of population, the potato must, of course, become at last as dif- ficult to be procured as any other food ; and then let the political economist calculate what the immensity and wretchedness of a people must be where the farther progress of population is checked by the difficulty of procuring potatoes. The consequence of the long mismanagement and oppression of Ireland, and of the singular circumstances in which it is placed, is, that it is a semi-barbarous country: — more shame to those who have thus ill treated a fine country, and a fine people; but it is part of the present case of Ireland. The barbarism of Ireland is evinced by the frequency and ferocity of duels, — the he- reditary clannish feuds of the common people, — and "the fights to which they give birth, — the 148 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. atrocious cruelties practised in the insurrections of the common people — and their proneness to insurrection. The lower Irish live in a state of greater wretchedness than any other people in Europe, inhabiting so fine a soil and climate. It is difficult, often impossible, to execute the processes of law. In cases where gentlemen are concerned, it is often not even attempted. The conduct of under-sheriffs is often very cor- rupt.* We are afraid the magistracy of Ireland is very inferior to that of this country; the spirit of jobbing and bribery is very widely diffused, and upon occasions when the utmost purity pre- vails in the sister kingdom. Military force is necessary all over the country, and often for the most common and just operations of govern- ment. The behaviour of the higher to the lower orders is much less gentle and decent than in England. Blows from superiors to inferiors are more frequent, and the punishment for such aggression more doubtful. The word gentleman seems, in Ireland, to put an end to most pro- cesses of law. Arrest a gentleman !!!! — take out a warrant against a gentleman — are modes of operation not very common in the adminis- tration of Irish justice. If a man strikes the meanest peasant in England, he is either knock- ed down in his turn, or immediately taken before a masiistrate. It is impossible to live in Ireland ■without perceiving the various points in which it i.s inferior in civilization. Want of unity in feeling and interest among the people, — irrita- bility, violence and revenge, — want of comfort and cleanliness in the lower orders, — habitual disobedience to the law, — want of confidence m magistrates, — corruption, venality, the per- petual necessity of recurring to military force, — all carry hack the observer to that remote and early condition of mankind, which an English- man can learn only in the pages of the antiquary or the historian. We do not draw this picture for censure but for truth. We admire the Irish, — feel the most sincere pity for the state of Ire- land, and think the conduct of the English to that country to have been a system of atrocious cruelty and contemptible meanness. With such a climate, such a soil and such a people, the in- feriority of Ireland to the rest of Europe is di- rectly chargeable to the long wickedness of the English government. A direct consequence of the present uncivi- lized state of Ireland, is that very liltle English capital travels there. The man who deals in steam-engines and warps and woofs, is naturally alarmed by Peep-of-Day Boys, and nocturnal Carders; his object is to buy and sell as quicklly and quietly as he can; and he will naturally bear hi;j;h taxes and rivalry in England, or emi- grate to any part of the Continent, orto America, rather than plunge into the tutnult of Irish poli- tics and passions. There is nothing which Ire- land wants more than large manufacturing towns to take off its superfluous population. But in- ternal peace must come first, and then the arts of peace will lollow. The foreign manufac- turer will hardly think of embarking his capital ■where he cannot be sure that his existence is safe. Anoihercheck to the manufacturing great- ness of Ireland, is the scarcity — not of coal — ' Tlie difficulty often is to catcli the slieriff. but of good coal, cheaply raised ; an article in which (in spile of papers in the Irish Transac- tions) they are lamentably inferior to the Eng- lish. Another consequence from some of the causes we have stated, is the extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dan- dle, stare, gape, and do any thing but strive and wrestle with the task belbre them. The most ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman ploughing. — A gigantic figure — a seven foot machine for turning potatoes into human na- ture, wrapt up in an immense great coat, and urging on two starved ponies, with dreadful im- precations, and uplifted shillala. The Irish crow discerns a coming perquisite, and is not inatten- tive to the proceedings of the steeds. The fur- row which is to be the depository of the future crop, is not unlike, either in depth or regularity, to those domestic furrows which the nails of tlie meek and much-injured wife plough, in some family quarrel, upon the cheeks of the deserv- edly punished husband. The weeds seem to fall contentedly, knowing that they have ful- filled their destiny, and left behind them, for the resurrection of the ensuing spring, an abundant and healthy progeny. The whole is a scene of idleness, laziness and poverty, of which it is impossible, in this active and enterprising coun- try, to form the most distant conception ; but strongly indicative of habits, ■whether second- ary or original, which will long present a pow- erful impediment to the improvement of Ireland. The Irish character contributes something to retard *he improvements of that country. The Irishman has many good qualities: he is brave witty, generous, eloquent, hospitable and open hearted ; but he is vain, ostentatious, extrava- gati., and fond of display— light in counsel — deficient in perseverance — without skill in pri- vate or public economy — an enjoyer, not an acquirer — one who despises the slow and patient virtues — who wants the superstructure without the loundation — the result without the previous operation — the oak without the acorn and the three hundred years of expectation. The Irish are irascible, prone to debt and to fight, and very impatient of the restraints of law. Such a people are not likely to keep their eyes steadily upon the main chance, like the Scotch or the Dutch. England strove very hard, at one period, to compel the Scotch to pay a double church; — but Sawney took his pen and ink; and finding what a sum it amounted to, became furious, and drew his sword. God for- bid the Irishman should do the same! the re- medy, now, would be worse than the disease; but if the oppressions of England had been more steadily resisted a century ago, Ireland would not have been the scene of poverty, misery and distress which it now is. The Catholic religion, among other causes, contributes to the backwardness and barbarism of Ireland. Its debasing superstition, childish ceremonies, and the profound submission to the priesthood which it teaches, all tend to darken men's minds, to impede the progress of know- ledge and inquiry, and to prevent Ireland from becoming as free, as powerful, and as rich as WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 149 the sister kingdom. Though sincere friends to Catholic emancipation, we are no advocates for the Catholic religion. We should be very glad to see a general conversion to Protestantism among the Irish; but we do not think that vio- lence, privations and incapacities are the pro- per methods of making proselytes. Such, then, is Ireland, at this period,— a land more barbarous than the rest of Europe, because it has been worse treated and more cruelly op- pressed. Many of the incapacities and priva- tions to which the Catholics were exposed, have been removed by law; but, in such instances, they are still incapacitated and deprived by cus- tom. Many cruel and oppressive laws are still enforced against them. A ninth part of the population engrosses all the honours of the country; the other nine pay a tenth of the pro- duct of the earth for the support of a religion in which they do not believe. There is little capi- tal in the country. The great and rich men are called by business, or allured by pleasure, into England; their estates are given up to fac- tors, and the utmost farthing of rent extorted from the poor, who, if they give up the land, cannot get employment in manufactures, or regular employment in husbandry. The com- mon people use a sort of food so very cheap, that they can rear families, who cannot procure employment, and who have little more of the comforts of life than food. The Irish are light- minded — want of employment has made them idle — they are irritable and brave — have a keen remembrance of the past wrongs they have suffered, and the present wrongs they are suf- fering from England. The consequence of all this is, eternal riot and insurrection, a whole army of soldiers in time of profou!id peace, and general rebellion whenever England is busy with other enemies, or off her guard! And thus it will be while the same causes continue to operate, for ages to come, — and worse and worse as the rapidly increasing population of the Catholics becomes more and more nume- rous. The remedies are, time and justice; and that justice consists in repealing all laws which make any distinction between the two religions; in placing over the government of Ireland, not the stupid, amiable, and insignificant noblemen who have too often been sent there, but men who feel deeply the wrongs of Ireland, and who have an ardent wish to heal them; who will take care that Catholics, when eligible, shall be elected;* who will share the patronage of Ire- land proportionally among the two parties, and give to just and liberal laws the same vigour of execution which has hitherto been reserved only for decrees of tyranny, and the enactments of oppression. The injustice and hardship of sup- porting two churches must be put out of sight, if it cannot or ought not to be cured. The po- litical economist, the moralist and the satirist, must combine to teach moderation and superin- tendence to the great Irish proprietors. Public talk and clamour may do something for the poor Irish, as it did for the slaves in the West Indies. Ireland will become more quiet under such * Great merit is due to the Whigs for the patronage be- stowed oil Catholics. treatment, and then more rich, more comfortable, and more civilized; and the horrid spectacle of folly and tyranny which it at present exhibits, may in time be removed from the eyes of Europe. There are two eminent Irishmen now in the House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning, who will subscribe to the justness of every syllable we have said upon this subject; and who have it in their power, by making it the condition of their remaining in office, to liberate their native country and raise it to its just rank among the nations of the earth. Yet the court buys them over, year after year, by the pomp and perquisites of ofhce, and year after year they come into the House of Com- mons, feeling deeply and describing powerfully, the injuries of five millions of theircountrymen, — and continue members of a government that inflicts those evils, under the pitiful delusion that it is not a cabinet question, — as if the scratchings and quarrellings of kings and queens could alone cement politicians together in indissoluble unity, while the fate and fortune of one-third of the empire might be compliment- ed away from one minister to another, without the smallest breach in their cabinet alliance. Politicians, at least honest politicians, should be very flexible and accommodating in little things, very rigid and inflexible in great things. And is this not a great thing] Who has painted it in finer and more commanding eloquence thaa Mr. Canning? Who has taken a more sensible and statesmanlike view of our miserable and cruel policy than Lord Castlereagh] You would think, to hear them, that the same planet could not contain them and the oppressors of their country, — perhaps not the same solar system. Yet for money, claret and patronage, they lend their countenance, assistance and friendship, to the ministers who are the stern and inflexible enemies to the emancipation of Ireland! Thank God that all is not profligacy and cor- ruption in the history of that devoted people — and that the name of Irishman does not always carry with it the idea of the oppressor or the oppressed — the plunderer or the plundered — the tyrant or the slave. Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time. What Irishman does not feel proud that he has lived in the days of Grattan] who has not turned to him for comfort, from the false friends and open enemies of Ireland] who did not re- member him in the days of its burnings and wastings and murders] No government ever dismayed him — the world could not bribe him — he thought only of Ireland — lived for no other object — dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence. He was so born and so gifted, that poetry, foreiisic skill, elegant literature and all the highest at- tainments of human genius, were within his reach; but he thought the noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free; and in that straight line he went on for «d sf 2 150 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Irishman would not be more proud, than of the I the annual deserters and betrayers of their na- •whole political existence of his countrymen — | tive land. SPRING-GUNS.* [EDixBunoH Review, 1821.] When- Lord Dacre (then Mr. Brand) brought into the House of Commons his bill for the amendment of the game laws, a system of greater mercy and humanity was in vain re- commended 10 that popular branch of the legis- lature. The interests of humanity, and the inte- rests of the lord of the manor, were not, however, opposed to each other; nor any attempt made to deny the superior importance of the last. No such bold or alarming topics were agitated ; but it was contended that, if laws were less ferocious, there would be more partridges — if the lower orders of mankind were not torn from their families and banished to Botany Bay, hares and pheasants would be increased in number, or, at least, not diminished. It is not, however, till after long experience that mankind ever think of recurring to humane expedients for elfecting their objects. The rulers who ride the people never think of coaxing and petting till they have worn out the lashes of their whips, and broken the rowels of their spurs. The legislators of the trigger replied, that two laws had lately passed which would answer their purpose of preserving game: the one, an act for transport- ing men found with arms in their hands for the purposes of killing, game in the night; the other, an act for rendering the buyers of the game equally guilty with the seller, and for involving both in the same penalty. Three seasons have elapsed since the last of these laws was passed ; and we appeal to the experience of all the great towns in England, whether the ditticulty of pro- curing game is m the slightest degree increased 1 — whether hares, partridges and pheasants are not purchased with as much facility as before the passing this act? — whether the price of such unlawful commodities is even in the slightest degree increased? Let the Assize and Sessions' calendars bear witness, whether the law for transporting poachers has not had the most direct tendency to encourage brutal assaults and ferocious murders. There is hardly now a jail- delivery in which some gamekeeper has not murdered a poacher — or some poacher a game- keeper. If the question conceined the payment of tive pounds, a poacher would hardly risk his life rather than be taken ; but when he is to go to Botany Bay for seven years, he summons together his brother poachers— they get brave from rum, numbers and despair— and a bloody battle ensues. Another method by which it is attempted to * The Shooter's Guide. By J. B. Johnson. 12mo. Ed- Urards and Kiiibb, ISIU. defeat the depredations of the poacher, is by set- ting spring-guns to murder any person who comes within their reach ; and it is to this last new feature in the supposed game laws, to which, on the present occasion, we intend principally to confine our notice. We utterly disclaim all hostility to the game laws in general. Game ought to belong to those who feed it. All the landowners in England are fairly entitled to all the game in England. These laws are constructed upon a basis of substantial justice; but there is a great deal of absurdity and tyranny mingled with them, and a perpetual and vehement desire on the part of the country gentlemen to push the provisions of these laws up to the highest point of tyrannical severity. " Is it lawful to put to death by a spring-gun, or any other machine, an unqualified person trespassing upon your woods or fields in pursuit of game, and who has received due notice of your intention, and of the risk to which he is exposed?" This, we think, is stating the ques- tion as fairly as can be stated. We purposely exclude gardens, orchards and all contiguity to the dwelling-house. We exclude, also, all fe- lonious intention on the part of the deceased. The object of his expedition shall be proved to be game ; and the notice he received of his dan- ger shall be allowed to be as complete as pos- sible. It must also be part of the case, that the spring-gun was placed there for the express purpose of defending the game, by killing or wounding the poacher, or spreading terror, or doing any thing that a reasonable man ought to know would happen from such a proceeding. Suppose any gentleman were to give notice that all other persons must abstain from his manors; that he himself and his servants pa- raded the woods and fields with loaded pistols and blunderbusses, and would shoot any body who fired at a partridge ; and suppose he were to keep his word, and shoot through the head some rash trespasser who defied this bravado, and was determined to have his sport : — Is there any doubt that he would be guilty of murder? We suppose no resistance on the part of the trespasser; but that, the moment he passes the line of demarcation with his dogs and gun, he is shot dead by the proprietor of the land from behind a tree. If this is not murder, what is murder ? We will make the case a little better for the homicide squire. It shall be night; the poacher, an unqualified person, steps over the line of demarcation with his nets and snares, and is instantly shot through the head by the WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 151' pislol of the proprietor. We have no doubt that this would be murder — that it ought to be considered as murder, and punished as murder. We think this so clear that it would be a waste of time 10 argue it. There is no kind of resist- ance on the part of the deceased ; no attempt to run away; he is not even challenged: but in- stantly shot dead by the proprietor of the wood, for no other crime than the intention of killing game unlawfully. We do not suppose that any man, possessed of the elements of law and com- mon sense, would deny this to be a case of murder, let the previous notice to the deceased have been as perfect as it could be. It is true, a trespasser in a park may be killed ; but then il is when he will not render himself to the keepers, upon a hue and cry to stand to the king's peace. But deer are property, game is not; and this power of slaymg deer-stealers is by the 21st Edward I., r/e Makfadoribus in Parcis, and by 3d and 4th William & Mary, c. 10. So rioters may be killed, house-burners, ravishers, felons refusing to be arrested, felons escaping, felons breaking jail, men resisting a civil pro- cess—may all be put to death. All these cases of justifiable homicide are laid down and ad- mitted in our books. But who ever heard that to pistol a poacher was justifiable homicide 1 It has long been decided that it is unlawful to kill a dog who is pursuing game in a manor. "To decide the contrary," says Lord Ellenborough, "would outrage reason and sense." (Vere «;. Lord Cawdor and King, 11 East, 3GS.) Pointers have always been treated by the legislature with great delicacy and consideration. To " ivish to be a dog and to bai/ the vioon" is not quite so mad a wish as the poet thought il. If these things are so, what is the difference between the act of firing yourself, and placing an engine which does the same thing"! In the one case your hand pulls the trigger; in the other, it places the wire which communicates with the trigger, and causes the death of the trespasser. There is the same intention of slay- ing in both cases — there is precisely the same human agency in both cases ; only the steps are rather more numerous in the latter case. As to the bad efl^ects of allowing proprietors of game to put trespassers to death at once, or to set guns that will do it, we can have no hesitation in saying, that the first method, of giving the power of life and death to esquires, would be by far the most humane. For, as we have ob- served in a previous Essay on the Game Laws, a live armigeral spring-gun would distinguish an accidental trespasser from a real poacher — a woman or a boy from a man — perhaps might spare a friend or an acquaintance — or a father of a family with ten children — or a small free- holder who voted for administration. But this new rural artillery must destroy, without mercy and selection, every one who approaches it. In the case of Hot i-ersus Wilks, Esq., the four judges. Abbot, Bailey, Holroyd and Best, gave their opinions serw/Zffz on points connected with this question. In this case, as reported in Chet- wynd's edition of Burn's Justice, 1820, vol. ii. p. 500, Abbot, C. J. observes as follows : — "I cannot say that repeated and increasing acts of aggression may not reasonably call for increased means of defence and protection. I believe that many of the persons who cause en- gines of this description to be placed in their grounds, do not do so with an intention to injure any person, but really believe that the publica- tion of notices will prevent any person from sustaining an injury ; and that no person having the notice given him, will be weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous conse- quences of his trespass. Many persons who place such engines in their grounds, do so for the purpose of preventing, by means of terror, injury to their property, rather than from any motive of doing malicious injury." " Increased means of defence and protection," but increased (his lordship should remember) from the payment of five pounds to instant death — and instant death inflicted, not by the arm of law, but by the arm of the proprietor; — could the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in- tend to say, that the impossibility of putting an end to poaching by other means would justify the infliction of death upon the ofi^enderl Is he so ignorant of the philosophy of punishing, as to imagine he has nothing to do but to give ten stripes instead of two, an hundred instead of ten, and a thousand, if an hundred will not do 7 to substitute the prison for pecuniary fines, and the gallows instead of the jail ! It is impossible so enlightened a judge can forget, that the sym- pathies of mankind must be consulted; that it would be wrong to break a person upon the wheel for stealing a penny loaf, and that grada- tions in punishments must be carefully accom- modated to gradations in crime; that if poaching is punished more than manlcind in general think it ought to be punished, the fault will either es- cape with impunity, or the delinquent be driven to desperation ; that if poaching and murder are punished equally, every poacher will be an as- sassin. Besides, too, if the principle is right in the unlimited and unqualified manner in which the chief justice puts il — if defence goes on in- creasing with aggression, the legislature at least must determine upon their equal pace. If an act of Parliament made it a capital ofi^ence to poach upon a manor, as it is to commit a bur- glary in a d^-elling-house, it might then be as lawful to shoot a person for trespassing upon your manor as it is to kill a thief for breaking into your house. But the real question is — and so in sound reasoning his ka-dship should have put it — "If the law at this moment determines the aggression to be in such a state that it merits only a pecuniary fine after summons and proof, has any sporadic squire the right to say, that it shall be punished with death, before any sum- mons and without any proof?" It appears to us, too, very singular to say that many persons who cause engines of this description to be placed in their ground, do not do so with an intention of injuring any person, but really believe that the publication of notices will prevent any person from sustaining an injury, and that no person, having the notice given him, will he weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous consequences of his trespass. But if this is the real belief of the engineer — if he thinks the mere notice wi:l keep people awa}- — then he must think it a mere inutility that" the guns should be placed at ail; if he thinks that many will be deterred, 152 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. and a few come, then he must mean to shoot those few. He who believes his gun will never be called upon to do its duty, need set no gun, and trust to rumour of their being set, or being loaded for his protection. Against the gun and the powder we have no complaint; they are perfectly fair and admissible: our quarrel is with the bullets. He who sets a loaded gun, means that it should go off if it is touched. But what signifies the mere empty wish that there may be no mischief, when I perform an action which my common sense tells me may produce the worst mischief] If I hear a great noise in the street, and fire a bullet to keep people quiet, I may not, perhaps, have intended to kill; I may have wished to have produced quiet by mere terror, and I may have expressed a strong hope that my object has been effected without the destruction of human life. Still I have done that which every man of sound in- tellect knows is likely to kill; and if any one falls from . my act, I am guilty of murder. — "Further," (says Lord Coke,) "if there be an evil intent, though that intent extendeth not to death, it is murder. Thus, if a man, knowing that many people are in the street, throw a stone over the wall, intending only to frighten ihem, or to give them a little hurt, and there- upon one is killed — this is murder — for he had an ill intent; though that intent extended not to death, and though he knew not the party slain." (3 Inst. fi~i.) If a man is not mad, he must be presumed to foresee common consequences if he puts a bullet into a spring gun — he may be supposed to foresee that it will kill any poacher who touches the wire — and to that consequence he must stand. We do not suppose all pre- servers of game to be so bloodily inclined that they would prefer the death of a poacher to his staying away. Their object is to preserve game ; they have no objection to preserve the Jives of their fellow-creatures, also, if both can exist at the same time; if not, the least worthy of God's creatures must fall — the rustic without a soul — not the Christian partridge — not the immortal pheasant — not the rational woodcock, or the accountable hare. The chief justice quotes the instance of glass and spikes fixed upon walls. He cannot mean to infer from this, because the la^v con- nives at the infliction of such small punish- ments for the protection of property, that it does allow, or ought to allow, proprietors to proceed to the punishment of death. Small means of annoying trespassers may be con- sistently admitted by the law, though more severe ones are forbidden, and ought to be for- bidden; unless it follows, that what is good in any degree, is good in the highest degree. You may correct a servant boy with a switch; but if you bruise him sorely, you are to be indicted — if you kill him, you are hanged. A black- smith corrected his servant with a bar of iron ; the boy died, and the blacksmith was executed. (Grey's Case, Kel. 64, 65.) A woman kicked and stamped on the belly of her child — she was found guilty of murder. (1 Eud, P. C. 261.) Si inunnderate suo jure utaiur, tunc reus homkidii sit. There is, besides, this additional difference in the two cases put by the chief justice, that no publication of notices can be so plain, in the case of the guns, as the sight of the glass or the spikes; fur a trespasser may not believe in the notice which he receives, or he may think he shall see a gun, and so avoid it, or that he may have the good luck to avoid it, if he does not see it; whereas, of the pre- sence of the glass or the spikes he can have no doubt; and he has no hope of placing his hand in any spot where they are not. In the one case, he cuts his fingers upon full and perfect notice, the notice of his own senses ; in the other case, he loses his life after a notice which he may disbelieve, and by an engine which he may hope to escape. Mr. Justice Bailey observes, in the same case, that it is not an indictable oflence to set spring- guns: perhaps not. It is not an indictable offence to go about with a loaded pistol, intending to shoot any body who grins at you; but if you do it, you are hanged; many inchoate acts are innocent, the consummation of which is a capital offence. This is not a case where the motto applies of Vvlcnti nun fd injuria. The man does not will to be hurt, but he wills to get the game; and, with that rash confidence natural to many I characters, believes he shall avoid the evil and Igain the good. On the contrary, it is a case ' which exactly arranges itself under the maxim, I Quando aliquid prohibetur ex direcio, pro/iibelur I et per obliquurn. Give what notice he may, the j proprietor cannot lawfully shoot a trespasser (who neither runs nor resists) with a loaded pistol; — he cannot do it ex diredo,- — how then j can he do \iper obliquum, by arranging on the ' ground the pistol which commits the murder? j Mr. Justice Best delivers the following opin- ,ion. His lordship concluded as follows: — I " This case has been discussed at the bar, as j if these engines were exclusively resorted to jfor the protection of game; but I consider them las lawfully applicable to the protection of every species of property against unlawful trespass- ; ers. But if even they might not lawfully bs used for the protection of game, I, for one, j should be extremely glad to adopt such means, I if they were found suflScient for that purpose; because I think it a great object that gentlemen should have a temptation to reside in the coun- j try, amongst their neighbours and tenantry, whose interests must be materially advanced by such a circumstance. The links of society are thereby better preserved, and the mutual advan- tage and dependence of the higher and lower classes of society, existing between each other, more beneficially maintained. We have seen, in a neighbouring country, the baneful conse- quences of the non-residence of the landed gentry; and in an ingenious work, lately pub- lished by a foreigner, we learn the fatal effects of a like system on the Continent. By preserv- ing game, gentlemen are tempted to reside in the country; and, considering that the diversion of the field is the only one of which they can partake on the estates, I am of opinion that, for the purpose I have stated, it is of essential im- portance that this species of properly should be inviolably protected." If this speech of Mr. Justice Best is correctly reported, it follows, that a man may put his fel- low-creatures to death for any infringement of his property — for picking the s'-oes and black- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 153 berries off his hedges — for breaking a few dead sticks out of them by night or by day— with re- sistance or without resistance — with warning or without warning; — a strange method this of keeping up the links of society, and maintain- ing the dependence of the lower upon the higher classes. It certainly is of importance that gen- tlemen should reside on their estates in the country ; but not that gentlemen with such opin- ions as these should reside. The more they are absent from the country, the less strain will there be upon those links to which the learned judge alludes— the more firm that dependence upon which he places so just a value. In the case of Dean versus Clayton, Bart., the Court of Common Pleas were equally divided upon the lawfulness of killing a dog coursing an hare by means of a concealed dog-spear. We confess that we cannot see the least diSerence between transfixing with a spear, or placing a spear so that it will transfix; and, therefore, if Vere ver- sus Lord Cawdor and King is good law, the ac- tion could have been maintained in Dean versus Clayton; but the solemn consideration concern- ing the life of the pointer is highly creditable to all the judges. They none of them say that it is lawful to put a trespassing pointer to death under any circumstances, or that they them- I selves wo'uld be glad to do it; they all seem j duly impressed with the recollection that they , are deciding the fate of an animal faithfully | ministerial to the pleasures of the upper classes of society; there is an awful desire to do their duty, and a dread of any rash and intemperate decision. Seriously speaking, we can hardly believe this report of Mr. Justice Best's speech to be correct; yet we take it from a book which guides the practice of nine-tenths of all the magistrates in England. Does a judge, — a cool, calm man, in whose hands are the issues of life and death — from whom so many miserable, trembling human beings await their destiny — does he tell us, and tell us in a court of justice, that he places such little value on the life of man, that he himself would plot the destruction of his fellow-creatures for the preservation of a kw hares and partridges] " Nothing which falls from me" (says Mr. Justice Bailey) "shall have a tendency to encourage the practice." — " I consider them" (says Mr. Justice Best) " as lawfully applicable to the protection of every species of property; but even if they might not lawfully be used for the protection of game, / for one should be extremely glad to adopt them, if they were found sufficient for that purpose." Can any man doubt to which of these two ma- gistrates he would rather entrust a decision on his life, his liberty and h'is possessions? We should be very sorry to misrepresent Mr. Jus- tice Best, and will give to his disavowal of such sentiments, if he does disavow them, all the publicity in our power; but we have cited his very words conscientiously and correctly, as they are given in the Law Report. We have no doubt he meant to do his duty; we blame not his motives, but his feelings and his reason- ing. Let it be observed that, in the whole of this case, we have put every circumstance in favour of the murder. We have supposed it to be in the night time; but a man may be shot in the 20 day* by a spring-gun. We have supposed the deceased to be a poacher; but he may be a very innocent man, who has missed his way — an unfortunate botanist, or a lover. We have sup- posed notice; but it is a very possible event that the dead man may have been utterly igno- rant of the notice. This instrument, so highly approved of by Mr. Justice Best — this knitter together of the difl'erent orders of society — is levelled promiscuously against the guilty or the innocent, the ignorant and the informed. No man who sets such an infernal machine, believes that it can reason or discriminate ; it is made to murder all alike, and it does murder all alike. Blackstone says, that the law of England, like that of every other well-regulated commu- nity, is tender of the public peace, and careful of the lives of the subjects; "that it will not sufl^er with impunity any crime to be prevented by death, U7ikss the same, if committed, would also be punished bi/ death." {Commentaries, vol. iv. 182.) "The law sets so high a value upon the life of a man, that it always intends some misbehaviour in the person who takes it away, unless by the cominand, or express permission of the law." — "And as to the necessity which excuses a man who kills another se defendendo. Lord Bacon calls even that necessitas culpabilis." {Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 187.) So far this luminary of the law. — But the very amusements I of the rich are, in the estimation of Mr. Justice ■ Best, of so great importance, that the poor are to be exposed to sudden death who interfere with them. There are other persons of the same opinion with this magistrate respecting the pleasures of the rich. In the last session of Parliament a bill was passed, entitled " An act for the summary punishment, in certain cases, of persons wilfully or maliciously damag- ing, or committing trespasses on public or pri- vate property." Anno prima — (a bad specimen of what is to happen) — Georgii IV. Regis, cap. 56. In this act it is provided, that "if any per- son shall wilfully, or maliciously, commit any damage, injury, or spoil, upon any building, fence, hedge, gate, stile, guide-post, milestone, tree, wood, underwood, orchard, garden, nursery- ground, crops, vegetables, plants, land, or other matter or thing growing or being therein, or to or upon real or personal property of any nature or kind soever, he may be immediately seized by any bod}', without a warrant, taken before a magistrate, and fined (according to the mischief he has done) to the extent of .5/.; or, in default of payment, may be committed to tlie jail for three months." And at the end comes a clause, exempting from the operation of this act all mischief done in hunting, and by shooters who are qualified. This is surely the most impudent piece of legislation that ever crept into the sta- tute-book; and, coupled with Mr. Justice Best's declaration, constitutes the followingaflectionate relation between the different orders of society. Says the higher link to the lower, "If you meddle with my game, I will immediately murder you; — if you commit the slightest injury upon my real or personal property, I will take you before a magistrate, and fine you five pounds. I am in * Large damages have been given for wounds inflicted by spring-guns set in a garden in the day-lime, where the party wouiided had no notice 154 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Parliament, and )'ou are not; and I have just brought in an act of Parliament for that purpose. Bat so important is it to you that my pleasures should not be interrupted, that I have exempted myself and friends from the operation of this act; and we claim the right (without allowing you any sucli summary remedy) of riding over your fences, hedges, gates, stiles, guide-posts, milestones, woods, underwoods, orchards, gar- dens, nursery-grounds, crops, vegetables, plants, lands or other matters or things growing or being thereupon — including your children and yourselves, if you do not get out of the way." Is there, upon earth, such a mockery of justice as an act of Parliament, pretending to protect property, sending a poor hedge-breaker to jail, and specially exempting from its operation the accusing and the judging squire, who, at the tail of the hounds, have that morning, perhaps, ruined as much wheat and seeds as would pur- chase fuel a whole year for a whole village? It cannot be urged, in extenuation of such a murder as we have described, that the artificer of death had no particular malice against the deceased; that his object was general, and his indignation leveled against offenders in the aggregate. Every body knows that there is a malice by implication of law. "In general, any formal design of doing mis- chief may be called malice; and therefore, not such killing only as proceeds from premeditated hatred and revenge against the person killed, but also, in many other cases, such as is ac- companied with those circumstances that show the heart to be; perversely wicked, is adjudged to be of malice prepense." — 2 Haw. c 31. "For where the law makes use of the term, malice aforethought, as descriptive of the crime of murder, it is not to be understood in that narrow restrained sense in which the modern use of the word inalicc is apt to lead one, agDrin- ciple of malevolence to particulars; for the law, by the term malice, malilia, in this instance, meaneth, that the fact hath been attended with such circumstances as are the ordinary symp- toms of a wicked heart, regardless of social duty, and fatally bent upon mischief." — Fast. 25fi, 257. Ferocity is the natural weapon of the com- mon people. If gentlemen of education and property contend with them at this sort of war- fare, ihey will probably be defeated in the end. If spring-guns are generally set — if the common people are murdered by them, and the legisla- ture does not interfere, the posts of gamekeeper and lord of the manor will soon be posts of honour and danger. The greatest curse under heaven (witness Ireland) is a peasantry demo- ralized by the barbarity and injustice of their rulers. It is expected by some persons, that the se- vere operation of these engines Avill put an end to the trade of a poacher. This has always been predicated of every fresh operation of se- verity, that it was to put an end to poaching. But if this argument is good for one thing, it is good for another. Let the first pickpocket who is taken be hung alive by the ribs, and let him be a fortnight in wasting to death. Let us seize a little grammar boy, who is robbing orchards, tie his arms and legs, throw over him a delicate puff paste, and bake him in a bun-pan in aa oven. If poaching can be extirpated by inten- sity of punishment, why not all other crimes? If racks and gibbets and tenter-hooks are the best method of bringing back the golden age, why do we refrain from so easy a receipt for abolishing every species of wickedness? The best way of answering a bad argument is not to stop It, but to let it go on in its course till it leaps over the boundaries of common sense. There is a little book called Beccaria on Crimea and Puni'shme7its, which we strongly recom- mend to the attention of Mr. Justice Best. He who has not read it, is neither fit to make laws, nor to administer them when made. As to the idea of abolishing poaching altoge- ther, we will believe that poaching is abolished when it is found impossible to buy game; or when they have risen so greatly in price, that none but people of fortune can buy them. But we are convinced this never can, and never will happen. All the traps and guns in the world will never prevent the wealth of the mer- chant and manufacturer from commanding the game of the landed gentleman. You may, in the pursuit of this visionary purpose, render the common people savage, ferocious and vin- dictive; you may disgrace your laws by enor- mous punishments, and the national diaracter by these new secret assassinations; but you will never separate the wealthy glutton from his pheasant. The best way is, to take what you want, and sell the rest fairly and openl)^ This is the real spring-gun and steel trap which will annihilate, not the unlawful trader, but the unlawful trade. There is a sort of horror in thinking of a whole land filled with lurking engines of death — machinations against human life under every green tree — traps and guns in every dusky defl and bosky bourn — iheferse imluru, the lords of manors eyeing their peasantry as so many butts and marks, and panting to hear the click of the trap, and to see the flash of the gun. How any human being, educated in liberal knowledge and Christian feeling, can doom to certain de- struction a poor wretch tempted by the sight of animals that naturally appear to him to be- long to one person as well as another, we are at a loss to conceive. We cannot imagine how he could live in the same village, and see the widow and orphans of the man whose blood he had shed for such a trifle. We consider a per- son who could do this, to be deficient in the very- elements of morals — to want that sacred regard to human life which is one of the corner stones of civil society. If he sacrifices the life of man for his mere pleasures, he would do so, if he dared, for the lowest and least of his passions. He may be defended, perhaps, by the abomi- nable injustice of the game laws — though we think and hope he is not. But there rests upon his head, and there is marked in his account, the deep and indelible sin of blood-guiltiness. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. P E I S N S .* [Edi:sburgh Review, 1821.] There are, in every county in England, large j public schools, maintained at the expense of ] the county, for the encouragement of profligacy and vice, and for providing a proper succession of house-breakers, profligates and thieves. They ! are schools, too, conducted without the smallest ' degree of partiality or favour; there being no man (however mean his birth, or obscure his situation,) who may not easily procure admis- sion to them. The moment any young person evinces the slightest propensity for these pur- suits, he is provided with food, clothing and lodging, and put to his studies under the most accomplished thieves and cut-throats the county can supply. There is not, to be sure, a formal arrangement of lectures, after the manner of our universities; but the petty larcenous stripling, being left destitute of every species of employ- ment and locked up with acconijjlished villains as idle as himself, listens to their pleasant nar- rative of successful crimes, and pants for the hour of freedom, that he may begin the same bold and interesting career. This is a perfectly true picture of the prison establishments of many counties in England, and was so, till very lately, of almost all; and the eflects so completely answered the design, that, in the year 1818, there were committed to the jails of the United Kingdom more than one hundred and seven thousand persons If a num- ber supposed to be greater than that of all the commitments in the other kingdoms of Europe put together. The bodily treatment of prisoners has been greatly improved since the time of Howard. There is still, however, much to do; and the attention of good and humane people has been lately called to their state of moral discipline. It is inconceivable to what a spirit of party this has given birth; — all the fat and sleek peo- ple, — the enjoyers, — the mumpsimus, and " well as we are" people, are perfectly outrageous at Leing compelled to do their duty, and'to sacri- fice time and money to the lower orders of man- kind. Their first resource was, to deny all the facts which were brought forward for the pur- poses of amendment; and the alderman's sar- casm of the Turkey carpet in jails was bandied from one hard-hearted and fat-witted gentleman * 1. Thoughtton the Criminal Frisons of this Country. oc- rnsioned by the Bill now in the House of Cmmnons^for Con- solidating: ami amending tlie Laws relating to Prisons; ivilli lome Kemarksnn the Practice nfloolcingto the Taslc-Mastirof thePrisonralhtr than tn the Ciiaplainfor tlte Reformation if Offenders; and if purchasing the Work of those w/wm t/ie Lav) has condemned to Hard Labour as a Funislnnent, by allowing tlitm to spend a Portion of their Earnings during tiieir hnprisonment. By George Hollbrd, Esq. M. P. Riv- iiigtoii. lf-21. 2. Gurney on Prisons. Constable and Co. 1S19. 3. Report of Society for bettering the Condition of Prisons. Bensley. 1&20. t Report of Trison Society, xiv. to another : but the advocates of prison improve- ment are men in earnest — not playing at reli- gion, but of deep feeling, and of indefatigable industry in charitable pursuits. Mr. Buxton went in companj' with men of the most irre- proachable veracity; and found, in the heart of the metropolis, and in a prison of which the very Turkey carpet alderman was an official visitor, scenes of horror, filth and cruelty, which would have disgraced even the interior of a slave-ship. This dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, cant- ing hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm. It pro- ceeds, also, from a stupid and indiscriminate horror of change, whether of evil for good, or good for evil. There is also much party spirit in these matters. A good deal of these hurnane projects and institutions originates from Dis- senters. The plunderers of the public, the job- bers, and those who sell themselves to some great man, who sells himself to a greater, all scent from afar the danger of political change — are sensible that the correction of one abuse may lead to that of another — leel uneasy at any visi- ble operation of public spirit and justice — hate and tremble at a man who exposes and rectifies abuses from a sense of duty — and think, if such things are suflered to be, that their candle-ends and cheese-parings are no longer safe : and these sagacious persons, it must be said for them, are not very wrong in this feeling. Providence, which has denied to them all that is great and good, has given them a fine tact for the pre- servation of their plunder: their real enemy is the spirit of inquiry — the dislike of wrong — the love of right — and the courage and diligence which are the concomitants of these virtues. When once this spirit is up, it may be as well directed to one abuse as another. To say you must not torture a prisoner with bad air and bad food, and to say you must not tax me with out my consent or that of my representative, are both emanations of the same principle, occur ring to the samesortof understanding, congenial to the same disposition, published, protected and enforced by the saiue qualities. This it is that really excites the horror against Mrs. Fry, Mr. Gurney, Mr. Bennet, and I\Ir. Buxton. Alarmists such as we have described have no particular wish that prisons should be dirty, jailers cruel, or prisoners wretched; they care little about such matters either way ; but all their malice and meanness are called up into action when they see secrets brought to light, and abuses giving way before the difi'usion of intel ligence, and the aroused feelings of justice and compassion. As for us, we have neither love of change, nor fear of it; but a love of what is just and wise, as far as we are able to find it out. In this spirit we shall offer a few observa- 156 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. tfons upon prisons, and upon the publications before us. The new law should keep up the distinction between jails and houses of correction. One of each should exist in every country, either at a disiance from each other, or in such a state of juxtaposition that they mij^ht be under the same governor. To the jail should be committed all persons accused of capital offences, whose trials would come on at the assizes ; to the house of correction, all offenders whose cases would be cognizable at the Quarter Sessions. Sen- tence of imprisonment in the house of cor- rection, after trial, should carry with it hard labour; sentence of imprisonment in the jail, after trial, should imply an exemption from compulsory labour. There should be no com- pulsory labour in jails — only in houses of cor- rection. In using the term.s Jail and House of Correction, we shall always attend to these dis- tinctions. Prisoners for trial should not only not be compelled to labour, but they should have every indulgence shown to them compatible ■with safety. No chains — much better diet than they commonly have — all possible access to their friends and relations — and means of earn- ing money if they choose it. The broad and obvious distinction between prisoners before and after trial should constantly be attended to; to violate it is gross tyranny and cruelty. The jails for men and women should be so far separated, that nothing could be seen or heard from one to the other. The men should be divided into two classes: Is/, those v^'ho are not yet tried; 2d, those who are tried and con- victed. The first class should be divided into those who are accused as misdemeanants and as felons; and each of these into first raisde- meanants and second misdemeanants, men of better and worse character; and the same with felons. The second class should be divided into. Is/, persons condemned to death; 2t//(/, per- sons condemned for transportation; 3(//y, first class of confined, or men of the best character under sentence of confinement; Ath/i/, second cutifined, or men of worse character under sen- tence of confinement. To these are to be added separate places for king's evidence, boys, luna- tics, and places for the first reception of prison- ers, before they can be examined and classed: — a chapel, hospital, yards and workshops for such as are willing to work. The classifications in jails will then be as follows: — Men before Trial. Men after Trial. \sf Misdemeanants. Sentenced to death. 2f/ Ditto. Ditto transportation. Is/ Felons. Is/ Confined. 2t? Ditto. 2fi? Confined. Other Divisions in a Jail. King's Evidence. Criminal Lunatics. Boys. Prisoners on their first reception. And the same divisions for Women. But there is a division still more important than any of these; and that is, a division into much smaller numbers than ai-e gathered to- gether in prisons: — 40, 50 and even 70 and 80 felons, are often placed together in one yard and live together for months previous to their trial. Any classification of offences, while there is such a multitude living together of one class, is perfectly nugatory and ridiculous ; no character can escape from corruption and extreme vice in such a school. The law ought to be peremp- tory against the confinement of more than fifteen persons together of the same class. Unless some measure of this kind is resorted to, all re- formation in prisons is impossible.* A very great, and a very neglected object in prisons, is diet. There should be, in every jail and house of correction, four sorts of diet; — Is/, Bread and water; 2dly, Common prison diet, to be settled by the magistrates ; 3rf/y, Best prison diet, to be settled by ditto; 4//;/y, Free diet, from which spirituous liquors altogether and fer- mented liquors in excess, are excluded. All prisoners, before trial, should be allowed best prison diet and be upon free diet if they could afford it. Every sentence for imprisonment should expressly mention to which diet the pri- soner is confined; and no other diet should be, on any account, allowed to such prisoner after his sentence. Nothing can be so preposterous and criminally careless as the way in which per- sons confined upon sentence are suffered to live in prison. Misdemeanants, who have money in their pockets, may be seen in many of our prisons with fish, buttered veal, rump steaks and every other kind of luxury; and as the practice prevails of allowing them to purchase a pint of ale each, the rich prisoner purchases many pints of ale in the name of his poorer brethren and drinks them himself. A jail should be a place of punishment, from which men re- coil with horror — a place of real suffering, pain- ful to the memory, terrible to the imagination; but if men can live idly, and live luxuriously, in a clean, well-aired, well-warmed, spac'ous habitation, is it any wonder that they set the law at defiance, and brave that magistrate who restores them to their former luxury and ease"? There are a set of men well known to jailers, called Familymen, who are constantly returning to jail, and vvho may be said to spend the greater part of their life there, — up to the time when they are hanged. Miiiutes of Evidence taken before Select Com' mittee on Gaols "Mr. William Beeby, Keeper of the Neve Clerkenwell Prison. — Have you many prisoners that return to you on re-commitmenti A vast number; some of them are frequently dis- charged in the morning and I have them back again in the evening; or they have been dis- charged in the evening, and I have had them back in the morning." — Evidence before the Conv mittee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 278. "FnANcis CossT, Esq., Chairman of the Mid' dlesex Quarter-sessions. — Has that opinion been confirmed by any conduct you have observed in prisoners that have come before you for trial ? I only judge from the opposite thing, that, going into a place where they can be idle, and well protected from any inconveniences of the weather and other things that poverty is open *We should much prefer solitary imprisonment; but are at present speaking of the regulations in jails where tliat system is excluded. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 157 to, they are not amended at all ; they laugh at it frequently, and desire to go to the house of cor- rection. Once or twice, in the early part of the winter, upon sending a prisoner for two months, he has asked whether he could not stay longer, or words to that effect. It is an insulting way of saying they like it." —Evidence before f he Com- niittee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 28.5. The fact is, that a thief is a very dainty gen- tleman. Mule parta cito dilabuntur. He does not rob to lead a life of mortification and self- denial. The difficulty of controlling his appe- tites, in ail probability, first led him to expenses, which made him a thief to support them. Hav- ing lost character and become desperate, he orders crab and lobster and veal cutlets at a public house, while a poor labourer is refresh- ing himself with bread and cheese. The most vulnerable part of a thief is his belly; and there is nothing he feels more bitterly in confinement than a long course of water-gruel and flour- puddings. It is a mere mockery of punishment to say, that such a man shall spend his money in luxurious viands, and sit down to dinner with fetters on his feet, and fried pork in his stomach. Restriction to diet in prisons is still more necessary, when it is remembered that it is im- possible to avoid making a prison, in some respects, more eligible than the home of a cul- prit. It is almost always more spacious, cleaner, better ventilated, better warmed. All these ad- vantages are inevitable on the side of the prison. The means, therefore, that remain of making a prison a disagreeable place, are not to be ne- glected; and of these, none are more powerful than the regulation of diet. If this is neglected, the meaning of sentencing a man to prison will be this — and it had better be put in these words — " Prisoner at the bar, you are fairly convicted, by a jury of your country, of having feloniously stolen two pigs, the property of Stephen Muck, farmer. The court having taken into conside- ration the frequency and enormity of this of- fence, and the necessity of restraining it with the utmost severity of punishment, do order and adjudge that yon be confined for six months in a house larger, better aired, and warmer than 5'our own, in company with 20 or 30 young per- sons in as good health and spirits as yourself. You need do no work, and you may have any thing for breakfast, dinner and supper, you can buy. In passing this sentence, the court hope that your example will be a warning to others; and that eviUdisposed persons will perceive, from your suffering, that the laws of their country are not to be broken with impunity." As the diet, according to our plan, is always to be a part of the sentence, a judge will, of course, consider the nature of the offence for which the prisoner is committed, as well as the quality of the prisoner: and we have before stated, that all prisoners, before trial, should be upon the best prison diet, and unrestricted as to what they could purchase, always avoiding in- temperance. 'J'hese gradations of diet being fixed in all prisons, and these definitions of Jail and House of Correction being adhered to, the punishment of imprisonment may be apportioned with the gieatest nicety, either by the statute, or at the discretion of the judge, if the law chooses to give him that discretion. There will be — Imprisonment for diflTsrent degrees of time. Imprisonment solitary, or in company, or in darkness. In jails without labour. In houses of correction with labour. Imprisonment with diet on bread and water. Imprisonment with common prison diet. Imprisonment with best prison diet. Imprisonment with free diet. Every sentence of the judge should state diet, as well as light or darlcness, time, place, solitude, society, labour or ease; and we are strongly of opinion, that the punishment in prisons should be sharp and short. We would, in most cases, give as much of solitary confinement as would not injure men's minds, and as much of bread and water diet as would not injure their bodies. A return tb prison should be contemplated with horror — horror, not excited by the ancient filth, disease and extortion of jails; but by calm, well-regulated, well-watched austerity — by the gloom and sadness wisely and intentionally thrown over such an abode. Six weeks of such sort of imprisonment would be much more efficacious than as many months of jolly company and veal cutlets. It appears, by the Times newspaper of the 24lh of June, 1821, that two persons, a man and his wife, were committed at the Surrey Sessions for three years. If this county jail is bad, to three years of idleness and good living — if it is a manufacturing jail, to three years of regular labour, moderate living and accumulated gains. They are committed principally for a warning to others, partly for their own good. Would not these ends have been much more effectually answered, if they had been committed for nine months, to solitary cells upon bread and water; the first and last month in dark cellsl If this is too severe, then lessen the duration still more, and give them more light days and fewer dark ones; but we are convinced the whole good sought may be better obtained in much shorter periods than are now resorted to. For the purpose of making jails disagreeable, the prisoners should remain perfectly alone all night, if it is not thought proper to render their confinement entirely solitary during the whole period of their imprisonment. Prisoners dis- like this — and therefore it should be done; it would make their residence in jails more dis- agreeable, and render them unwilling to return there. At present, eight or ten women sleep in a room with a good fire, pass the night in sound sleep or pleasant conversation ; and this is called confinement in a prison. A prison is a place where men, alter trial and sentence, should be made unhappy by public lawful enact- ments, not so severe as to injure the soundness of mind or body. If this is not done, prisons are a mere invitation to the lower classes to wade through felony and larceny to belter ac- commodations than they can procure at home. And here, as it appears to us, is the mistake of the many excellent men who busy themselves (and wisely and humanely busy thcmselvesj about prisons. Their first object seems to be the reformation of the prisoners, not the refor- mation of the public; whereas the first object O 158 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. should be, the discomfort and discontent of their prisoners; that they should become a warnins:, feel unhapp5^, and resolve never to act so again as to put themselves in the same predicament; and then as much reformation as is compatible with this the belter. If a man says to himself, this prison is a comfortable place, while he says to the chaplain or the visitor that he will come there no more, we confess we have no great confidence in his public declaration; but if he says "this is a place of misery and sorrow, )-ou shall not catch me here again," there is much reason to believe he will be as good as his word; and he then becomes (which is of much more consequence than his own reformation) a warning to others. Hence it is we object to that spectacle of order and decorum — carpen- ters in one shop, tailors in another, weavers in A third, sitting down to a meal by ring of bell, and receiving a regular portion of their earnings. We are afraid it is better than real life on the other side of the wall, or so very little worse that nobody will have any fear to encounter it. In Bury jail, which is considered as a pattern jail, the prisoners under a sentence of contine- ment are allowed to spend their weekly earnings (two, three, and four shillings per week) in fish, tobacco and vegetables ; so states the jailer in his examination before the House of Commons — and we have no doubt it is well meant; but is it punishment 1 We were most struck, in reading the evidence of the jail committee be- fore the House of Commons, with the opinions ofthe jailer of the Devizes jail, and with the prac- tice of the magistrates who superintend it.* "Mr. T. BnuTToy, Governor of the Gaol at Devizes. — Does this confinement in solitude make prisoners more averse to return to pri- son! I think it docs. — Does it make a strong impression upon them? I have no doubt of it. — Does it make them more obedient and orderly while in gaoH I have no doubt it does. — Do you consider it the most effectual punishment you can make use of] I do. — Do you think it has a greater effect upon the minds of prisoners than any apprehensions of personal punishment] I have no doubt of it.— Ha ve you any dark cells for the punishmentof refractory prisoners] I have. — Do you find it necessary occasionally to use them] Very seldom. — Have you, in any in- stance, been obliged to use the dark cell, in the case of the same prisoner twice ] Only on one occasion, I think. — What length of time is it necessary tc confine a refractory prisoner to bring him to his senses] Less than one daj'. — Do you think it essential, for the purpose of keeping up the discipline of the prison, that you should have it in your power to have recourse to the punishment of dark cells] I do; I con- sider punishment in a dark cell for one day, has a greater effect upon a prisoner than to keep him on bread and water for a month." — Evi- dence before the Committee of the House of Com- mons in 1819, p. 359. The evidence of the governor of Gloucester jail is to ihe same effect. " Mr. Tuo-nAs Cpx>-ingha>i, Keeper of Glouces- ter Gaol. — Do you attribute the want of those * The Winchester and Devizes jails seem to us to be conducted upon better principles than any other, though BVF;a thtse arc liy no m^ans -tvliat jails should he certificates entirely to the neglect of enforcing the means of solitary confinement] I do most certainly. Soinetimes, -where a certificate has not been granted, and a prisoner has brought a certificate of good behaviour for one year, Sir George and the committee ordered one pound or a guinea from the charity. — Does that arise from your apprehension that the prisoners have not been equally reformed, or only from the want of the means of ascertaining such refor- mation? It is for want of not knowing; and we cannot ascertain it, from their working iu numbers. — They may be reformed] Yes, but we have not the means of ascertaining it. There is one thing I do which is not provided for by the rules, and which is the only thing in which I deviate from the rules. When a man is com- mitted for a month, I never give him any work; he sits in solitude, and walks in the yard by him- self for air; he has no other food but his bread and water, except twice a week a pint of peas soup. I never knew an instance of a inan com- ing in a second time who had been committed for a month. I have done that for these seventeen or eighteen years. — What has been the result 1 They dread so much coming in again. If a man is committed for six weeks we give him work. Do you appi-ehend that solitary confinement for a month, without einployment, is the most bene- ficial means of working reform ] I conceive it is. — Can it operate as the means of reform, any more than it operates as a system of punish- ment ] It is only for small offences they com- mit for a month. — Would not the same eifect be produced by corporeal punishment] Corporeal punishment may be absolutely necessary some- times; but I do not think corporeal punishment would reform them so much as solitary confine- ment. — Would not severe corporeal punishment have the same effect] No, it would harden them more than any thing else. — Do you think benefit is derived from the opportunity of reflec- tion afforded by solitary confinement] Yes. — And very low diet also] Yes." — Evidence be- fore (he Committee of the House of Commons in "1819, p. 391. We must quote, also, the evidence of the go- vernor of Horsley jail. "Mr. William Stokes, Governor of the House of Correction at Horslei/.—Bo you observe any difference in the conduct of prisoners who are employed, and those who have no employment! Yes, a good deal; I look upon it, from what judg- ment I can form, and I have been a long while in it, that to take a prisoner and discipline him according to the rules as the law allows, and if he -have no work, that that man goes through tnore punishment in one month than a man who is employed and receives a portion of his labour three months; but still I should like to have em- ployment, because a great number of limes I took men away, who have been in the habit of earning sixpence a week to buy a loaf, and put them in solitary confinement; and the punish- ment is a great deal more without work. — Which of the prisoners, those that have been employed, or those unemployed, do you think would go out of the prison the better men ! I think, that let me have a prisoner, and I never treat any one with severity, any further than that they should be obedient, and to let them see that I will do WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. my duty, I have reason to believe, that, if a pri- soner is committed under my care, or any other man's care, to a house of correction, and he has to go under the discipline of the law, if he is in for the value of a month or six weeks, that man is in a great deal better state than though he stays for six months ; he gets hardened by being in so long, from one month to another. — You are speaking now of solitude without labour; do you think he would go out better, if he had been em- ployed during the month you speak ofl No, nor half; because I never task those people, in order that they should not say I force them to do more than they are able, that they should not slight it; for if they perform any thing in the hounds of reason, I never find fault with them. The prisoner who is employed, his time passes smooth and comfortable, and he has a propor- tion of his earnings, and he can buy additional diet; but if he has no labour, and kept under the discipline of the prison, it is a tight piece of punishment to go through. — Which of the two should you think most likely to return immedi- ately to habits of labour on their own account? The dispositions of all men are not alike; but my opinion is this, if they are kept and disci- plined according to the rules of the prison, and have no labour, that one month will do more than six; I am certain, that a man who is kept there without labour once, will not be very ready JO come there again." — Evidence hffore the Cuni- mitfee of the House of Commons, pp. 398, 399. Mr. Gurney and Mr. Buxton both lay a great stress upon the quiet and content of prisoners, upon their subordination and the absence of all plans of escape; but, where the happiness of prisoners is so much consulted, we should be much more apprehensive of a conspiracy to break into, than to break out of, prison. The mob outside may, indeed, envy the wicked ones within ; but the felon who has left, perhaps, a scolding wife, a battered cottage, and six starving children, has no disposition to escape from regularity, sufficient food, employment which saves him money, warmth, ventilation, cleanliness and civil treatment. These symp- toms, upon which these respectable and excel- lent men lay so much stress, ai-e by no means proofs to us that prisons are placed upon the best possible footing. The governor of Bury jail, as well as Mr. Gurney, insist much upon the iew prisoners who return to the jail a second time, the manu- facturing skill which they acquire there, and the complete reformation of manners for which the prisoner has afterwards thanked him the go- vernor. But this is not the real criterion of the excellence of a jail, nor the principal reason why jails were instituted. The great point is, not the average recurrence of the same prison- ers, but the paucity or frequency of commit- ments, upon the whole. You may make a jail such an admirable place of education, that it may cease to be infamous to go there. Mr. Holford tells us (and a very curious anecdote it is,) that parents actually accuse their children falsely of crimes, in order to get them into the Philanthropic C'harity ! and that it is conse- quently a rule with tiie governors of that cha- rity never to receive a child upon the accusa- tion of the parents alone. But it is quite obvious what the next step will be, if the parents cannot get their children in by fibbing. They will take good care that the child is really qualified for the Philanthropic, by impelling him to those crimes which are the passport to so good an education. " If on the contrary, the offender is to be pun- ished simply by being placed in a prison, where he is to be well lodged, well clothed, and well fed, to be instructed in reading and writing, to receive a moral and religious education, and to be brought up to a trade ; and if this prison is to be within the reach of the parents, so that they may occasionally visit their child, and have tlie satisi"aciion of knowing, from time to time, that all these advantages are conferred upon him, and that he-is exposed to nohardships, although the confinement and the discipline of the prison may be irksome to the boy ; yet the parents may be apt 10 congratulate themselves on having got him off their hands into such a good berth, and maybe considered by other pai-ents as hav- ing drawn a prize in the lottery of huinan life by their son's conviction. This reasoning is not theoretical, but is founded in some degree upon experience. Those who have been in the habit of attending the committee of the Philanthropic Society know, that parents have often accused their children of crimes falsely, or have exag- gerated their real offences, for the sake of induc- ing that society to take them; and so frequent has been this practice, that it is a rule with those who manage that institution, never to receive an object upon the representation of its parents, unless supported by other strong testi- mony." — Hoford, pp. 44, 45. It is quite obvious that, if men were to appear a,gain, six months after they were hanged, hand- somer, richer, and more plump than before exe- cution, the gallows would cease to be an object of terror. But here are men who come out of jail, and say, 'Look at us, — we can read and write, we can make baskets and shoes, and we went in ignorant of every thing: and we have learnt to do without strong liquors, and have no longer any objection to work; and we did work in the jail, and have saved mone}', and here it is." What is thereof terror and detriment in all this] and how are crimes to be lessened if they are thus rewarded'! Of schools there cannot be too man)'. Penitentiaries, in the hands of wise men, may be rendered excellent institutions ; but a prison must be a prison — a place of sor- row and wailing; which should be entered with horror, and quitted with earnest resolution never to return to such misery; with that deep impres- sion, in short, of the evil which breaks out into perpetual warning and exhortation to others. This great point effected, all other reformation must do the greatest good. There are some very sensible observations upon this point in Mr. Holford's book, who upon the whole has, we think, best treated the sub- ject of prisons, and best understands them. "In former times, men were deterred from pursuing the road that led to a prison, by the ap- prehension of encountering there disease and hunger, of being loaded with heavy irons, and of remaining without clothes to cover them, or abed to lie on; we have done no more than what justice required in relieving the inmates of a prison from these hardships ; but there is 160 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. no reason ihat they should be freed from the fear of all other sufferings and privations. And I hope that those whose duty it is to take up the consideration of these subjects, will see, that in penitentiaries, offenders should be subjected to separate confinement, accompanied by such work as may be found consistent with that sys- tem of imprisonment ; that in jails or houses of correction, they should perform that kind of la- bour which the law has enjoined; and that in prisons of both descriptions, instead of being allowed to cater for themselves, they should be sustained by such food as the rules and regula- tions of the establishment should have provided for them; in short, that prisons should be con- sidered as places of punishment, and not as scenes of cheerful industry, where a compro- mise must be made with the prisoner's appetite to make him do the common workof a journey- man or manufacturer, and the labours of the spinning-wheel and the loom must be alleviated by indulgence."* Tnis is good sound sense; and it is a pity that it is preceded by the usual nonsense about " Ihe tide of Hasp hem }^ and sedition." If Mr. Hol- ford is an observer of tides and currents, whence comes it that he observes only those which set one way^ Whence comes it that he says no- thing of the tides of canting and hypocrisy which are flowing with such rapidity? — of abject political baseness and sycophancy — of the dis- position so prevalent among Englishmen, to sell their conscience and their country to the Mar- quis of Londonderry for a living for the second * " Tliat I am guilty of no exaggeration in thus describ- ing a prison conducted upon the principles now coining into fashion, will be evident to any person who will turn to the latter part of the article, ' I'enitentiary, JVIillbank," in Mr. Buxton's Book on Prisons. He there states what passed in conversation between himself and the gover- nor of Bury jail, (whic)ijail, by the bye, he praises as one tif the three best prisons he has ever seen, and strongly recommends to our imitation at Millbank.) Having ob- served that the governor of Bury jail had mentioned his liaving counted .34 spinning-wheels in full activity when lie lett that jail at 5 o'clock in the morning on the preced- ing day, iMr. Buxton proceeds as follows : — ' After'he had seen tlie Millbank Penitentiary, I asked him what would be tlie consequence, if the regulations there used were adopted by him V ' The consequence would be,' he replied, ' that every wheel would l>e slopped.' Mr. l^uxton then adds, 'I would not be considered as supposing that the l)risoners will altogether refuse to work at Millbank — they will work during the stated hours ; but the present incentive being wanting, the laboiHT will, I apprehend, be languid and desultory.' I shall not, on my part, under- take to say that they will do as much work as will be done in those prisons in which work is the primary ob- ject; but, besides the encouragement of the portion of earnings laid up for them, they know that diligence is among the qualities that will recommend them to the mer- cy of the crown, and that thewantof it is, by the rules and regulations of the prison, an offence to be punislied. The governor of Bury jail, wlio is a very intelligent man, must have spoken hastily, in his eagerness to support his i)W\\ system, and did not, I conceive, give himself credit lor as much power and authority in liis prison as he really possesses. It is not to lie wondered at, that the keepers of prisons should like the new system: there is less trouble in the care of a manufactory than in that of a jail ; but 1 am surprised to find that so much reliance is placed in argument on the declaration of some of these officers, that the prisoners are quieter where their work is encouraged, by allowing them to spend a portion of their earnings. It may naturally be expected, that offenders will be least discontented, and consequently least turbulent, where their punishment is lightest, or where, to use Mr. Buxton's own words, 'by making labour productive of comiort or convenience, you do much towards rendering it agreeable ;' but I must be per- mitted to doubt, whether these are the prisons of which men will live inmost dread." — Holford, pp. tS — 60. son — or a silk gown for the nephew — or for a frigate for my brother the captain I How comes our loyal careerist to forget all these sorts of tides T There is a great confusion, as the law now stands, in the government of jails. The justices are empowered, by several statutes, to make subordinate regulations for the government of the jails ; and the sheriff supersedes those regu- lations. Their respective jurisdictions and powers should be clearly arranged. The female prisoners should be under the care of a matron, with proper assistants. Where this is not the case, the female part of the prison is often a mere brothel for the turnkeys. Can any thing be so repugnant to all ideas of re- formation, as a male turnkey visiting a solitary female prisoner "? Surely, women can take care of women as effectually as men can take care of men ; or, at least, women can do so properly assisted by men. This want of a matron is a very scandalous and immoral neglect in any prison system. The presence of female visitors, and instruc- tors for the women, is so obviously advantageous and proper, that the offer of forming such an institution must be gladly and thankfully re- ceived by any body of magistrates. That they should feel any jealousy of such interference is too absurd a supposition to be made or agreed upon. Such interference may not effect all that » zealous people suppose it will effect; but, if it does any good, it had better be. Irons should never be put upon prisoners before trial; after trial, we cannot object to the humiliation and disgrace which irons and a parti-coloured prison dress occasion. Let them be a part of solitary confinement, and let the words "Solitary Confinement," in the sentence, imply permission to use them. The judge then knows what he inflicts. We object to the office of prison inspector, for reasons so very obvious, that it is scarcely neces- sary to enumerate them. The prison inspector would, of course, have a good salary; that, in England, is never omitted. It is equally matter of course that he would be taken from among treasury retainers ; and that he never would look at a prison. Every sort of attention should be paid to the religious instruction of these unhappy people; but the poor chaplain should be paid a little better; — every possible duty is expected from him — and he has one hundred per annum. Whatever money is given to prisoners, shoukl be lodged with the governor for their benefit, to be applied as the visiting magistrates point out — no other donations should be allowed or ac- cepted. If voluntary work before trial, or compulsory work after trial, is the system of a prison, there shotrld be a task-master; and it should be re- membered, that the principal object is not profit. Wardsmen, selected in each yard among the best of the prisoners, are very serviceable. If prisoners work, they should work in silence. At all times, the restrictions upon seeing friends should be very severe; and no food should be sent from friends. Our general system then is — that a prison should be a place of real punishment; but of known, enacted, measurable and mear.ure WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, 161 punishment. A prisoner (not for assault, or refusing to pay parish dues, but a bad felonious prisoner), should pass a part of his three months in complete darkness ; the rest in complete soli- tude, perhaps in complete idleness, (for solitary idleness leads to repentance, idleness in com- pany to vice.) He should be exempted from cold, be kept perfectly clean, have sufficient food to prevent hunger or illness, wear the prison dress and moderate irons, have no com- munication with any body but the officers of the prison and the magistrates, and remain otherwise in the most perfect solitude. We strongly suspect this is the way in which a bad man is to be made afraid of pnsons ; nor do we think that he would be less inclined to receive moral and religious instruction than any one of seven or eight carpenters in jail, working at a common bench, receiving a part of their earn- ings, and allowed to purchase with them the delicacies of the season. If this system is not resorted to, the next best system is severe work, ordinary diet, no indulgences, and as much seclusion and solitude as are compatible with work; — always remarking, that perfect sanity of mind and body are to be preserved. To this system of severity in jails there is but one objection. The present duration of punishments was calculated for prisons con- ducted upon very different principles; — and if the discipline of prisons was rendered more strict, ■we are not sure that the duration of imprison- ment would be practically shortened; and the punishments would then be quite atrocious and disproportioned. There is a very great disposi- tion, both in judges and magistrates, to increase the duration of imprisonment; and, if that is done, it will be dreadful cruelty to increase the bitternegs as well as the time. We should think, for instance, six months' solitary imprisonment to be a punishment of dreadful severity; but we find, from the House of Commons' report, that prisoners are sometimes committed by county magistrates for two years* of solitary confinement. And so it may be doubted, whe- ther it is not better to wrap up the rod in flannel, and make it a plaything, as it really now is, than to show how it may be wielded with effectual severity. For the pupil, instead of giving one or two stripes, will whip his patient to death. — But if this abuse were guarded against, the real way to improve would be, now we have made prisons healthy and airy, to make them odious and austere — engines of punishment and ob- jects of terror. In this age of charity and of prison improve- ment, there is one aid to prisoners which appears * House of Commons' Report, 353. to be wholly overlooked; and that is, the means of regulating their defence, and providing them witnesses for their trial. A man is tried for murder, or for house-breaking or robbery with- out a single shilling in his pocket. The non- sensical and capricious institutions of the Eng- lish law prevent him from engaging counsel to speak in his defence, if he had the wealth of Croesus; but he has no money to employ even an attorney, or to procure a single witness, or to take out a subpcena. The judge, we are told, is his counsel; — this is sufficiently absurd; but it is not pretended that the judge is his witness. He solemnly declares that he has three or four witnesses who could give a completely different colour to the transaction ; — but they are sixty or seventy miles distant, working for their daily bread, and have no money for such a journey, nor for the expense of a residence of some days in an assize town. They do not know even the time of the assize, nor the modes of tendering their evidence if they could come. When every thing is so well marshaled against him on the opposite side, it would be singular if an inno- cent man, with such an absence of all means of defending himself, should not occasionally be hanged or transported : and accordingly we believe that such things have happened.* Let any man, immediately previous to the assizes, visit the prisoners for trial, and see the many wretches who are to answer to the most serious accusations, without one penny to defend them- selves. If it appeared probable, upon inquiry, that these poor creatures had important evidence which they could not bring into court for want of money, would it not be a wise application of compassionate funds, to give them this fair chance of establishing their innocence? — It seems to us no bad finale of the pious labours of those who guard the poor from ill-treatment during their imprisonnoent, to take care that they are not unjustly hanged at the expiration of the term. I * From the Clonmell Advertiser it appears, that John Brien, alias Captain Wheeler, was fountl guilty of murder at the late assizes for the county of AVaterford. Previous to his execution he made the following eont'ession : — "I now again most solemnly aver, in the presence of that God by whom I will soon be judged, and who sees the secrets of my heart, that only three, viz , Morgan Brien, Patrick Brien and my unfortunate self, committed the horrible crimes of murder and burning at Bally- garron, and that the four unlbrtunate men who have be- fore suifered for them, were not m the smallest- degree accessary to them. I have been the cause for whic^h they have innocently suffered death. I have contracted a death of justice with them — and the only and least re- stitution I can make them, is thus publicly, solemidy, and with death before my eyes, to acquit their memory of any guilt in the crimes for which I shall deservedly suffer: 1 '»• —Philanthropist, No. 6. 208. Ptreunt et imputantur. 162 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. PEISONS.* [Edinbckoh Review, 1822.] Tnr.RE never was a society calculated, upon the whole, to do more good than the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline; and, hitherto, it has been conducted with equal en- ergy and prudence. If now, or hereafter, there- fore, we make any criticisms on their proceed- ings, these must not be ascribed to any defi- ciency of good will or respect. We may differ from the- society in the means — our ends, we are proud to say, are the same. In the improvement of prisons, they consider the small number of recommitments as the great lest of amelioration. Upon this subject we liave ventured to differ from them in a late number; and we see no reason to alter our opinion. It is a mistake, and a very serious and fundamental mistake, to suppose that the principal object in jails is the reformation of the offender. The principal object undoubtedly is, to prevent the repetition of the offence by the punishment of the offender; and, therefore, it is quite possible to conceive that the offender himself may be so kindly, gently and agreeably led to reformation, by the efforts of good and amiable persons, that the effect of the punish- ment may be destroyed, at the same time that the punished may be improved. A prison may lose its terror and discredit, though the prisoner may return from it a better scholar, a better artificer, and a better man. The real and only test, in short, of a good prison system is, the diminution of offences by the terror of the pun- ishment. If it can be shown, that in propor- tion as attention and expense have been era- ployed upon the improvement of prisons, the number of commitments has been diminished, this indeed would be a convincing proof that such care and attention were well employed. But the very reverse is the case; the number of commitments within these last ten years having nearly doubled all over England. The following are stated to be the committals in Norfolk county jail. From 1796 to 1815, the number averaged about 80. In 1816 it was 134 1817 - 142 1818 • 159 1819 - 161 1820 - 223.— iJejoor/, p. 57. In Stafford'^hire. the commitments have gradu- ally increased from 195 to 1815, to 443 in 1820 — though the jail has been built since How- ard's time, at an expense of 30,000/. — {Report, p. 67.) In Wiltshire, in a prison which has * 1. The Third Kej,ort of the CommilKe nf the Society for i)ie Improvement of Prooji Discipline, and for the Reforma- tion of Juvenile Offenders. London, lt'21. 2. Remarks upon Prison Discipline, ^c Sfc, in a Letter addressed to the Lord- Lieutenant and Magistrates of tlie County of Essex. By C. C. Western, Esq. M P. -Loudon, 1621. cost the county 40,000/., the commitments have increased from 207 in 1817 to 504 in 1821. Within this perriod, to the eternal scandal and disgrace of our laws, 378 persons have been committed for game offences — constituting a sixth part of all the persons committed; — so much for what our old friend, Mr. Justice Best, would term the unspeakable advantages of country gentlemen residing upon their own property ! When the committee was appointed in the county of Essex, in the year 1818, to take into consideration the state of the jail and houses of correction, they found that the number of prisoners annually committed had increased, wiihin the ten preceding years, from 559 to 1993; and there is little doubt (adds Mr. West- ern) of this proportion being a tolerable speci- men of the whole kingdom. We are far fi'om attributing this increase solel}'^ to the imper- fection of prison discipline. Increase of popu- lation, new statutes, the extension of the breed of pheasants, landed and mercantile distress, are very operative causes. But the increase of commitments is a stronger proof against the present state of prison discipline, than the de- crease of recommitments is in its favour. — We may, possibly, have made some progress in the art of teaching him who has done wrong to do so no more; but there is no proof that we have learnt the more important art of de- terring those from doing wrong who are doubt- ing whether they shall do it or not, and who, of course, will be principally guided in their de- cision by the sutTerings of those who have pre- viously yielded to temptation. There are some assertions in the report of the society, to which we can hardly give credit, — not that we have the slightest sus- picion of any intentional misrepresentation, but that we believe there must be some uninten- tional error. "The Ladies' Committees visiting Newgate and the Borough Compter, have ccmtinued to devote themselves to the improvement of the female prisoners, in a spirit worthy of their enlightened zeal and Christian charity. The beneficial effects of their exertions have been evinced by the progressive decrease in the number of female prisoners recommitted, which has diminished, since the visits of the ladies to Newgate, no less than 40 per cent." That is, that Mrs. Fry and her friends have reclaimed forty women out of every hundred, who, but for them, would have reappeared in jails. Nobody admires and respects .Mrs. Fry more than we do; but this fact is scarcely cre- dible; and, if accurate, ought, in justice to the reputation of the society and its real interests, to have been thoroughly substantiated by names and documents. The ladies certainly lay claim WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 163 to no such extraordinary success in their own report quoted in the Appendix : but speak with becoming modesty and moderation of the result of their labours. The enemies of all these reforms accuse the reformers of enthu- siasm and exaggeration. It is of the greatest possible consequence, therefore, that their state- ments should be correct, and their views prac- tical; and that all strong assertions should be supported by strong documents. The English are a calm, reflecting people; they will give time and money when they are convinced; but they love dates, names and certificates. In the midst of the most heart-rending narratives, Bull requires the day of the month, the year of our Lord, the name of the parish and the countersign of three or four respectable house- holders. After these affecting circumstances, he can no longer hold out; but gives way to the kindness of his nature — puffs, blubbers and subscribes i A case is stated in the Hertford house of correction, which so much more resembles the sudden conversions of the Methodist Maga- zine, than the slow and uncertain process by which repentance is produced in real life, that we are a little surprised the society should have inserted it. "Two notorious poachers, as well as bad men, were committed for three months, for not pay- ing the penalty after conviction, but who, in consequence of extreme contrition and good conduct, were, at the intercession of the clergy- men of their parish, released before the expira- tion of their term of punishment. Upon leaving the house of correction, they declared that they had been completely brought to their senses — spoke with gratitude of the benefit they had derived from the advice of the chaplain, and promised, upon their return to their parish, that they would go to their minister, express their thanks for his interceding for them; and more- over that they would, for the future, attend their duty regularly at church. It is pleasing to add, that these promises have been faithfully fulfil- led."— J/?/), io Third Report, pp. 29,30. Such statements prove nothing, but that the clergyman who makes them is an amiable man, and probably a college tutor. Their introduction however, in the report of a society depending upon public opinion for success, is very detri- mental. It is not fair to state the recommitments of one prison, and compare them with those of another, perhaps very differently circumstanced, —the recommitments, for instance, of a county jail, where offences are generally of serious magnitude, with those of a borough, where the most trifling faults are punished. The import- ant thing would be, to give a table of recom- mitments, in the same prison, for a series of years, — the average of recommitments, for ex- ample, every five years in each prison for twen- ty years past. If the society can obtain this, it wiilbe a document of some importance, (though of less, perhaps, than they would consider it to be.) At present they tell us, that the average of recommitments in certain prisons is 3 per cent.: in certain other prisons 5 per cent.: but what were they twenty years ago in the same prison 1 — what wer^i they five years ago? If recommitments are to be the test, we must know whether these are becoming, m any given pri- son, more or less frequent, before we can deter- mine whether that prison is better or worse governed than former!}'. Recommitments will of course be more numerous where prisoners are received from large towns, and from the resorts of soldiers and sailors ; because it is in these situations that we may expect the most hardened offenders. The different nature of the two soils which grow the crimes, must be con- sidered before the produce gathered into prisons can be justly compared. The quadruple column of the state of prisons for each year, is a very useful and important document; and we hope, in time, the society will give us a general and particular table of commitments and recommitments carried back for twenty or thirty years; so that the table may contain (of Gloucester jail, for instance,) 1st, the greatest number it can contain; 2dly, the greatest num.ber it did contain at anyone period in each year; 3dl3-, its classification; 4thly, the greatest number committed in any given year; Sthl}', four averages of five years each, taken from the twenty years preceding, and stating the greatest number of commitments; 6thly, the greatest number of recommitments in the year under view; and four averages of recommit- ments, made in the same manner as the average of the commitments; and then totals at the bot- tom of the columns. Tables so constructed would throw great light upon the nature and efficacy of imprisonment. We wish the society would pay a little more attention to the question of solitary imprison- ment, both in darkness and in light; and to the extent to which it may be carried. Mr. West- ern has upon this subject some ingenious ideas. "It appears to me, that if relieved from these impediments, and likewise from any idea of the necessity of making the labour of prisoners profitable, the detail of corrective prison discip- line would not be difficult for any body to chalk out. 1 would first premise, that the only pun- ishment for refractory conduct, or any misbe- haviour in the gaol, should, in my opinion, be solitary confinement; and that, instead of being in a dark hole, it should be in some part of the house where they could fully see the light of the day; and I am not sure that it might not be desirable, in some cases, if possible, that they should see the surrounding country and mov ing objects at a distance, and every thing that man delights in, removed, at the same time, from any intercourse or word or look with any human being, and quite out of the reach of being themselves seen. I consider such confinement would be a punishment very severe, and calcu- lated to produce a far better effect than dark- ness. All the feelings that are good in men would be much more likely to be kept alive; the loss of liberty, and all the blessings of life which honesty will insure, more deeply to be felt. There would not be so much danger of any de- linquent sinking into that state of sullen, insen- sible condition, of incorrigible obstinacy, which sometimes occurs. If he does, under those circumstances, we have a right to keep him out of the way of mischief, and let him there remain. But I believe such solitary confinement as I 164 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. have described, with scanty fare, would very rarely fail of its effect." — Western's Eemarks^Tpp. 59, 60. There is a good deal in this; it is we\l worth the trial; and we hope the society will notice it in their next report. It is very difficult to hit upon degrees ; but we cannot help thinking the society lean too much to a system of indulgence and education in jails. We shall be very glad to see them more stern and Spartan in their discipline. They recom- mend work, and even hard work; but they do not insist upon it, tliat the only work done in jails by felons should be hard, dull and uninte- resting; they do not protest against the conver- sion of jails into schools and manufactories. I-ook, for example, to " Preston House of Cor- rection." " Preston House of Correction is justly distin- guished by the industry which prevails. Here an idle hand is rarely to be found. There were lately 150 looms in full employ, from each of which the average weekly earnings are 5s. About 150 pieces of cotton goods are worked ofTper week. A considerable proportion of the looms are of the prisoners' own manufacture. In one month, an inexperienced workman will he able to earn the cost of his gaol allowance of food. Weaving has these advantages over other prison labour: the noise of the shuttle prevents conversation, and the progress of the work constantly requires the eye. The ac- counts of this prison contained in the Appen- dix, deserve particular attention, as there ap- pears to be a balance of clear profit to the county, from the labour of the prisoners, in the year, of 1398/. 9s. Id. This sum was earned by weaving and cleaning cotton only; the prison- ers being besides employed in tailoring, white- washing, flagging, slating, painting, carpenter- ing and labourers' work, the earnings of which are not included in the above account." — Third Report, pp. 21, 22. "At Worcester county gaol, the system of employment is admirable. Every article of dress worn by the prisoners is made from the raw material; sacking and bags are the only articles made for sale." — lb. p. 23. "In many prisons, the instruction of the pri- soners in reading and writing has been attend- ed with excellent eflecls. Schools have been formed at Bedford, Durham, Chelmsford, Win- chester, Hereford, Maidstone, Leicester house of correction, Shrewsbury, Warwick, Worces- ter, &c. Much valuable assistance has been derived in this department from the labours of respectable individuals, especially females, act- ing under the sanction of the magistrates, and direction of the chaplain." — lb. pp. 30, 31. We again enter our decided protest against these modes of occupation in prisons; they are certainly better than mere idleness spent in so- ciety; but they are not ihe kind of occupations which render prisons terrible. We would ban- ish all the looms of Preston jail, and substitute nothing but the tread-wheel, or the capstan, or some species of labour where the labourer could not see the results of his toil, — where it was as monotonous, irksome and dull as pos- sible, — pulling and pushing, instead of reading and writing, — no share of the profits — not a sin- gle shilling. There should be no tea and sugar, — no assemblage of female felons round the washing-tub, — Nothing but beating hemp, and pulling oakum, and pounding bricks, — no work but what was tedious, unusual and unfeminine. Man, woman, boy and girl, should all leave the jail, unimpaired, indeed, in health, but heartily wearied of their residence; and taught, by sad experience, to consider it as the greatest misfor- tune of their lives to return to it. We have the strongest belief that the present lenity of jails, the education carried on there — the cheerful assemblage of workmen — the indulgence in diet — the shares of earnings enjoyed by prison- ers, are one great cause of the astonishingly rapid increase of commitments. Mr. Western, who entirely agrees with us upon these points, has the following judicious observations upon the severe system: — "It may be imagined by some persons, that the rules here prescribed are too severe; but such treatment is, in my opinion, the tenderest mercy, compared with that indulgence which is so much in practice, and which directly tends to ruin, instead of saving, its unfortunate vic- tim. This severity it is which in truth forms the sole effective means which imprisonment gives; only one mitigation, therefore, if such it may be termed, can be admissible, and that is, simply to shorten the duration of the imprison- ment. The sooner the prisoner comes out the better, if fully impressed with dread of what he has suffered, and communicates information to his friends what they may expect if they get there. It appears to me, indeed, that one great and primary object we ought to have in view is, generally, to shorten the duration of impri- sonment, at the same time that we make it such a punishment as is likely to deter, correct and reform; shorten the duration of imprisonment before trial, which we are called upon, by every principle of moral and political justice, to do; shorten also the duration of imprisonment after trial, by the means here described; and I am satisfied our prisons would soon lose, or rather would never see, half the number of their pre- sent inhabitants. The long duration of impri- sonment, where the discipline is less severe, renders it perfectly familiar, and, in conse- quence, not only destitute of any useful influ- ence, but obviously productive of the worst eflects ; yet this is the present practice; and I think, indeed, criminals are now sentenced to a longer period of confinement than formerly. "The deprivation of liberty certainly is a punishment under any circumstances; but the system generally pursued in our gaols might rather be considered as a palliative of that pun- ishment, than to make it effectual to any good purpose. An idle life, society unrestrained, with associates of similar character and habits, better fare and lodgings in many cases, and in few, if any, worse than falls to the lot of the hard-working and industrious peasant; and very often much better than the prisoners were in the enjoyment of before they were appre- hended. " I do not know what could be devised more agreeable to all the different classes of offenders than this sort of treatment: the old hardened sinner, the juvenile offender, or the idle vaga- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 165 bond, who runs away and leaves a sick wife and family to be provided for by his parish, alike have little or no apprehension, at present, of any imprisonment to which they may be sen- tenced; and thus are the most effective means we possess to correct and reform rendered totally unavailable, and even perverted, to the more certain ruin of those who might be restored to society good and valuable members of it. "There are, it is true, various occupations now introduced into many prisons, but which, I confess, I think of very little use ; drawing and preparing straws, platting, knitting, heading pins, &c., weaving and working at a trade even, as it is generally carried on — prisoners coaxed to the performance of it, the task easy, the re- ward immediate — afford rather the means of passing away the time agreeabl}'. These occu- pations are, indeed, better than absolute idleness, notwithstanding that imprisonment may be ren- dered less irksome thereby. I am far from denying the advantage, still less would I be sup- posed to derogate from the merits of those who, with every feeling of humanity, and with inde- fatigable pains, in many instances, have esta- blished such means of employment; and some of them for women, with washing, &c., amount to hard labour; but I contend that, for men, they are applicable only to a house of industry and by no means suited to the corrective discipline which should be found in a prison. Individuals are sent here to be punished and for that sole purpose; in many cases for crimes which have induced the forfeiture of life: they are not sent to be educated, or apprenticed to a trade. The horrors of dungeon imprisonment, to the credit of the age, no longer exist. But, if no cause of dread is substituted, by what indication of com- mon sense is it that we send criminals there at all? If prisons are to be made into places in which persons of both sexes and all ages may be well fed, clothed, lodged, educated and taught a trade, where they may find pleasant society, and are required not to take heed for the mor- rov.r, the present inhabitants should be turned out, and the most deserving and industrious of our poorest fellow-subjects should be invited to take their place, which I have no doubt they would be eager to do." — Western, pp. 13-17. In these sentiments we most cordially agree. They are well worth the most serious attention of the society. The following is a sketch from Mr. Western's book of what a prison life should be. It is im- possible to write with more good sense, and a more thorough knowledge of the subject. "The operations of the day should begin with the greatest punctuality at a given hour; and as soon as the prisoners have risen from their beds, they should be, according to their several classes, marched to the workhouses, where they should be kept to hard labour two hours at least; from thence they should be taken back to wash, shave, comb and clean themselves; thence to the chapel to hear a short prayer, or the go- vernor or deputy should read to them in their respective day-rooms; and then their breakfast, •which may, altogether, occupy an hour and a half or more. I have stated, in a former part of my letter, that the hours of meals and leisure should be in solitude, in the sleeping cells of the prison ; but I presume, for the moment, this may not always be practicable. I will, therefore, consider the case as if the classes assembled at meal-times in the different day-rooms. After breakfast they should return to hard labour for three or four hours, and then take another hour for dinner; labour after dinner two or three hours, and their supper given them to eat in solitude in their sleeping cells. "This marching backwards and forwards to chapel and mill-house, &c., may appear objec- tionable, but it has not been so represented to me in the prisons where it actually now takes place; and it is, to ray apprehension, materially useful in many respects. The object is to keep the prisoners in a state of constant motion, so that there shall be no lounging time or loitering, which is always favourable to mischief or cabal. For the same reason it is I propose two hours' labour the moment they are up, and before washing, &c., that there may be no time lost, and that they may begin the day by a portion of labour, which will tend to keep them quiet and obedient the remainder of it. Each interval for meal, thus occurring between labour hours, has also a tendency to render the mischief of in- tercourse less probable, and at the same time the evening association, which is most to be appre- hended in this respect, is entirely cut off. The frequent moving of the prisoners from place to place keeps the governor and sub-ofiicers of the prison in a similar state of activity and atten- tion, which is likewise of advantage, though their numbers should be such as to prevent their duty becoming too arduous or irksome. Their situation is not pleasant and theiriespon- sibility is great. An able and attentive governor, who executes all his arduous duties with unre- mitting zeal and fidelity, is a most valuable public servant and entitled to the greatest re- spect. He must be a man of no ordinary capa- city, with a liberal and comprehensive mind, possessing a control over his own passions, firm and undaunted, a character that commands from those under him, instinctively, as it were, respect and regard. In vain are our buildings, and rules, and regulations, if the choice of a governor is not made an object of primary and most solicitous attention and consideration. "It does not appear to me necessary for the prisoners to have more than three hours' leisure, inclusive of meal-times; and I am convinced the close of the day must be in solitude. Eight or ten hours will have passed in company with their fellow-prisoners of the same class (for I am presuming that a separate compartment of the workhouse will be allotted to each) where, though they cannot associate to enjoy society as they would wish, no gloom of solitude can oppress them : there is more danger even then of too close an intercourse and conversation, though a ready cure is in that case to be found by a wheel put in motion, the noise of which speedily overcomes the voice. Some time after Saturday night should be allowed to them, more particularly to cleanse themselves and their clothes, and they should have a bath, cold or warm, if necessary; and on the Sunday they should te dressed in their best clothes, and the day should be spent wholly in the chapel, the ceil, and the airing-ground ; the latter in presence 166 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. of a day-watchman, as I have described to be in practice at Warwick. I say nothing about teaching to read, write, work, &c. &c.; any pro- portion of time necessary for any useful pur- pose may be spared from the hours of labour or of rest, according to circumstances ; but I do not place any reliance upon improvement in any branch of education: they would not, indeed, be there long enough. All I want them to learn is, that there exists the means of punishment for crime, and be fully impressed with dread of re- petition of what they have undergone ; and a short time will suffice for that purpose. Now, if each successive day was spent in this manner, can it be doubted that the frequent commission of crime would be checked, and more done to deter, correct and reform than could be accom- plished by any other punishment 1 A period of such discipline, longer or shorter, according to the nature of the otience, would surely be suffi- cient for any violation of the law short of mur- der, or that description of outrage which is likely to lead on to the perpetration of it. This sort of treati:nent is not to be overcome: it cannot be braved, or laughed at, or disregarded, by any force of animal spirits, however strong or vigo- rous of mind or body the individual may be. The dull, unvarying course of hard labour, with hard fare and seclusion, must in time become so painfully irksome, and so wear and distress him, that he will inevitably, in the end, be sub- dued." — Western, pp. 61-69. There is nothing in the Report of the Prison Society so good as this. The society very properly observe upon the badness of town jails, and the necessity for their suppression. Most towns cannot spare the funds necessary for building a good jail. Shop- keepers cannot spare the time for its superin- icndence; and hence it happens that town jails are almost always in a disgraceful state. The society frequently allude to the diffusion of tracts. If education is to be continued in jails, and tracts are to be dispersed, we cannot help lamenting that the tracts, though full of good principles, are so intolerably stupid — and all apparently constructed upon the supposition, that a thief or a peccant ploughman is inferior in common sense to a boy of five years old. The story generally is, that a labourer with six chil- dren has nothing to live upon but mouldy bread and dirty water; yet nothing can exceed his cheerfulness and content — no murmurs — no discontent: of mutton he has scarcely heard — of bacon he never dreams: furfurous bread and the water of the pool constitute his food, establish his felicity, and excite his warmest gratitude. The squire or parson of the parish always happens to be walking by and overhears him praying for the king and the members for the county, and for all in authority ; and it gene- rally ends with their offering him a shilling, ■which this excellent man declares he does not ■want, and will not accept! These are the pamphlets which Goodies and Noodles are dis- persing with unwearied diligence. It would be a great blessing if some genius would arise who had a talent of writing for the poor. He would be of more value than many poets living upon the banks of lakes — or even (though we think highly of ourselves) of greater value than many reviewing men living in the garrets of the north. The society offer some comments upon the prison bill now pending, and which unfortu- nately* for the cause of prison improvement, has been so long pending in the legislature. In the copy of this bill, as it stands at present, nothing is said of the limitation of numbers in any particular class. We have seen forty felons of one class in one yard belbre trial. If this is to continue, all prison improvement is a mere mockery. Separate sleeping cells should be enacted positively, and not in words, which leave this improvement optional. If any visit- ing justice dissents from the majority ,f it should be lawful for him to give a separate report upon the state of the prison and prisoners to the judge or the quarter sessions. All such reports of any visiting magistrate or magistrates, not ex- ceeding a certain length, should be pulblished in the county papers. The chairman's report to the secretary of state should be published in the same manner. The great panacea is pub- licity; it is this which secures compliance with wise and just laws, more than all the penalties they contain for their own preservation. We object to the reading and writing clause. A poor man, who is lucky enough to have his son committed for a felony, educates him, under such a system, for nothing ; while the virtuous simpleton on the other side of the wall is pay- ing by the quarter for these attainments. He sees clergymen and ladies busy with the larce- nous pupil ; while the poor lad, who respects the eighth commandment, is consigned, in some dark alley, to the frowns and blows of a ragged pedagogue. It would be the safest way, where a prisoner is kept upon bread and water alone, to enact that the allowance of bread should not be less than a pound and a half for men, and a pound for women and boys. We strongly re- commend, as mentioned in a previous number, that four sorts of diet should be enacted for every prison; 1st, Bread and water; 2d, Better prison diet; 3d, Best prison diet; 4th, Free diet — the second and third to be defined by the visiting magistrates. All sentences of impri- sonment should state to which of these diets the prisoner is to be confined; and all deviation from it on the part of the prison officers should be punished with very severe penalties. The regulation of prison diet in a prison is a point of the very highest importance ; and to ask of visiting magistrates that they should doom to bread and water a prisoner whom the law has left at liberty to purchase whatever he has the money to procure, is a degree of severity which it is hardly fair to expect from country gentle- men, and, if expected, those expectations will not be fulfilled. The whole system of diet, one of the main-springs of all prison discipline, will get out of order, if its arrangement is left to the interference of magistrates and not to the sen- tence of the judge. Free diet and bread diet need no interpretation : and the jailer will take care to furnish the judge with the definitions of county of York, with a prison under presentment, n waiting nearly three years for this bill, in order tias been waiting nearly three years tor this bill, in order to proceed upon the improvement of their county jail. fit would be an entertainbig change in human affairs to determine every thing by miTwritiis. They are almost always 'n the right. M'OEKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 167 >etfer prison diet and test prison diet A know- ledge of the diet-prescribed in a jail is absolntely necessary for the justice of the case. Diet dif- fers so much in different prisons, that six weeks in one prison is as severe apunishment as three months in another. If any country gentleman, engaged in legislation for prisons, is inclined to undervalue the importance of these regulations, let him appeal to his own experience, and re- member, in the vacuity of the country, how often he thinks of his dinner, and of what there will be for dinner ; and how much his amenity and courtesy for the evening depend upon the successful execution of this meal. But there is nobody so gluttonous and sensual as a thief; and he will feel much more bitterly fetters on his mouth than his heels. It sometimes hap- pens that a gentleman is sentenced to imprison- ment for manslaughter in a duel, or for a libel. Are visiting justices to dcom such a prisoner to bread and water, or are they to make an invidi- ous distinction between him and the other pri- soners? The diet should be ordered by the judge, or it never will be well ordered — or ordered at all: The most extraordinary clause in the bill is the following — " And be it further enacted, that in case any criminal prisoner shall be guilty of any repeated ofTence against the rules of the prison, or shall he guilty of any greater offence which the jailer or keeper is not by this act empowered to pun- ish, the said jailer or keeper shall report the same to the visiting justices, or one of them, for the time being; and such justices, or one of them, shall have power to inquire upon oath, and determine concerning any such offence so reported to him or them, and shall order the offender to be punished, either by moderate •whipping, repeated whippings, or by close con- finement, for any term not exceeding .' — Act, p. 21. Upon this clause, any one justice may order repeated whippings for any ofl'ence greater than that which the jailer may punish. Our respect for the committee will only allow us to say, that we hope this clause will be reconsidered. We beg leave to add, that there should be a return to the principal secretary of^state of recommit- ments as well as commitments. It is no mean pleasure to see this attention to jail-discipline travelling from' England to the detestable and despotic governments of the con- tinent, — to see the health and life of captives admitted to be of any importance, — to perceive that human creatures in dungeons are of more consequence than rats and black beetles. All this is new — is some little gained upon ty- ranny; and for it we are indebted to the labours of the Prison Society. Still the state of prisons, on many parts of the continent, is shocking be- yond all description. It is a most inconceivable piece of cruelty and absurdity in the English law, that the prisoner's counsel, when he is tried for any capital felony, is not allowed to speak for him; and this we hope the new prison bill will correct. Nothing can be more ridiculous in point of reasoning, or more atrociously cruel and unjust in point of fact. Any number of counsel maybe employed to take away the poor man's life. They are at full liberty to talk as long as they like; but not a syllable is to be uttered in his defence — not a sentence to show why the prisoner is not to be hung. This practice is so utterly ridiculous to any body but lawyers (to whom nothing that is customary is ridiculous), that men not versant with courts of justice will not believe it. It is, indeed, so utterly inconsistent with the common cant of the humanity of the English law. that it is often considered to be the mistake of the nar- rator, rather than the imperfection of the sys- tem. We must take this opportunity, therefore, of making a few observations on this very strange and anomalous practice. The common argument used in its defence is that the judge is counsel fur the prisoner. But the defenders of this piece of cruel and barbar- ous nonsense must first mak'e their election, whether they consider the prisoner to be, by this arrangement, in a better, a worse or an equally good situation as if his counsel were allowed to plead for him. If he is in a worse situation, why is he so placed 1 Why is a man, in a solemn issue of life or death, deprived of any fair advantage which any j-uitor in any court of justice possesses'' This is a plea of guilty to the charge we make against the prac- tice; and its advocates, by such concession, are put out of court. But, if it is an advantage, or no disadvantage, whence comes it that the choice of this advantage, in the greatest of all human concerns, is not left to the party or to his friends] If the question concerns a foot- path — or a fat ox — every m^n may tell his own story, or employ a barrister to tell it for him. The law leaves the litigant to decide on the method most conducive to his own interest. But, when the question is whether he is to Hve or die, it is at once decided for him that his counsel are to be dumb! And yet, so ignorant are men of their own interests, that there is not a single man tried who would not think it a great privilege if counsel were allowed to speak in his favour, and who would not be supremely happy to lay aside the fancied advantage of their silence. And this is true not merely of ignorant men; but there is not an Old Bailey barrister who would not rather employ another Old Bailey barrister to speak for him, than en- joy the advantage (as the phrase is) of having the judge for his counsel. But in what sense, after all, is the judge counsel for the prisoner? He states, in his summing up, facts as they have been delivered in evidence; and he tells the jury upon what points they are to decide: he mentions what facts are in favour of the prisoner, and what bear against him; and he leaves the decision to the jury. Does he do more than this in favour of the prisoner? Does he misstate? does he mislead? does he bring forward arguments on one side of the question, and omit equally important arguments on the other? If so, he is indeed counsel for the pri- soner; but then who is judge? who takes care of the interests of the public? But the truth is, he does no such thing; he does merely what we have stated him to do; and would he do less, could he do less, if the prisoner's counsel spoke for him? If an argument was just, or an in- ference legitimate, he would not omit the one, or refute the other, because they had been put or 168 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. drawn in the speech of the prisoner's counsel. He would be no more prejudiced against the defendant in a criminal than in a civil suit. He would select from the speeches of both counsel all that could be fairly urged for or against the defendant, and he would reply to their fallacious reasonings. The pure administration of justice requires of him, in either case, the same con- duct. Whether the whole bar spoke for the prisoner, or whether he was left to defend him- self, what can the judge do, or what ought he to do, but to state to the jury the facts as they are given in evidence, and the impression these facts have made upon his own mind? In the mean time, while the prisoner's counsel have been compelled to be silent, the accuser's, the opposite party, have enjoyed an immense ad- vantage. In considering what bears against the prisoner, the judge has heard, not only the suggestions of his own understanding, but he has been exposed to the able and artful reason- ing of a practised advocate, who has been pre- viously instructed in the case of which the judge never heard a syllable before he came into court. Suppose it to be a case depending upon circumstantial evidence; in how many new points of view may a man of genius have placed those circumstances, which would not have occurred to the judge himself! How many inferences may he have drawn, which would have been unnoticed but for the efforts of a man whose bread and fame depend upon his exertions, and who has purposely, and on contract, flung the whole force of his under- standing into one scale! In the mean time, the priscmer can say nothing, for he has not the gift of learned speech; his counsel can say nothing, though he has communicated with the prisoner, and could place the whole circumstances, per- haps, in the fairest and clearest point of view for the accused party. By the courtesy of Eng- land this is called /u6/(ce — we in the north can- not admit of the correctness of the appellation. It seems utterly to be forgotten, in estimating this practice, that two understandings are better than one. The judge must inevitably receive many new views against the prisoner by the speech of one counsel, and lose many views in favour of the prisoner by the silence of the other. We are not to suppose (like ladies going into court in an assize town) that the judge would have thought of every thing which the counsel against the prisoner has said, and which the counsel for the prisoner would have said. The judge, wigged and robed as he is, is often very inferior *jn aculeness to either of the persons who are pleading under him — a cold, slow, parchment and precedent man, without passions or prse- cordia, — perhaps a sturdy brawler for church and king, — or a quiet man of ordinary abilities, steadily, though perhaps conscientiously, fol- lowing those in power through thick and thin — through right and wrong. Whence comes it that the method of getting at truth, which is so excellent on all common occasions, should be considered as so improper on the greatest of all occasions, where the life of a man is concerned] If an acre of land is to be lost or won, one man says all that can be said on one side of the ques- tion — another on the other; and the jury, aided by the impartiality of the judge, decide. The I wit of man can devise no better method of disen- tangling ditficulty, exposing falsehood, and de- lecting truth. ''Tell me why I am hurried away to a premature death, and no man suffered to speak in my defence, V)hen at this very moment, and in my hearing, all the eloquence of the bar, on the other side of your justice hall, is employed in defending a path or a hedge? Is a foot of land dearer to any man than my life is to vie? The civil plaintiff has not trusted the smallest part of his fate or for- tune to his own efforts,- and will you grant me no assistance of superior wisdom, who have suffered a long famine to purchase it — who am broken by prison — broken by chains — and so shamed by this dress of guilt, and abashed by the presence of my superiors, that I have no words which you could hear without derision — that I could not give way fur a moment to the fulness and agitation of my rude heart without moving your contempt?" Su spoke a wretched creature to a judge in our hearing! and what answer could be given but "Jailer, take him awayl" We are well aware that a great decency of language is observed by the counsel employed against the prisoner, in consequence of the silence imposed upon the opposite counsel; but then, though there is a decency as far as con- cerns impassioned declamation, yet there is no restraint, and there can be no restraint, upon the reasoning powers of a counsellor. He may put together the circumstances of an imputed crime in the most able, artful and ingenious manner, without the slightest vehemence or passion. We have no objection to this, if any counter statement were permitted. We want only fair play. Speech for both sides, or speech for none. The first would be the wiser system ; but the second would be clear from the intolera- ble cruelty of the present. We see no harm that would ensue, if both advocates were to fol- low their own plan without restraint. But, if the feelings are to be excluded in all causes of this nature (which seems very absurd), then let the same restraint be exacted from both sides. It might very soon be established, as the eti- quette of the bar, that the pleadings on both sides were expected to be calm, and to consist of reasoning upon the facts. In high treason, where the partiality of the judge and power of the court are suspected, this absurd incapacity of being heard by counsel is removed. No body pretends to say, in such cases, that the judge would be counsellor the prisoner; and yet, how many thousand cases are there in a free country which have nothing to do with high treason, and where the spirit of party, unknown to himself, may get possession of a judge? Suppose any trial for murder to have taken place in the Manchester riots, — will any man say that the conduct of many judges on such a question ought not to have been watched with the most jealous circumspection ] Would any prisoner — would any fair mediator between the prisoner and the public — be satisfied at such a period with the axiom that the judge is counsel for the prisoner? We are notsaying that there is no judge who might not be so trusted, but that all judges are not, at all times, to be so intrusted. We are not saying that any judge would wil- fully do wrong; but that many nright be led to do wrong by passions and prejudices of which . V u WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 169 they were unconscious ; and that the real safe- guard to the prisoner, the best, the only safe- guard, is full liberty of speech for the counsel he has employed. What would be the discipline of that hospi- tal where medical assistance was allowed in all trifling complaints, and withheld in every case of real danger? where Bailey and Halford were lavished upon stomach-aches and refused in typhus fever? where the dying patient beheld the greatest skill employed upon trifling evils of others, and was told, because his was a case of life and death, that the cook or the nurse was to be his physician? Suppose so intolerable an abuse (as the at- torney and solicitor-general would term it) had been established, and that a law for its correc- tion was now first proposed, entitled an Ad to prevent the Counsel fur Prisoners from being heard in their Defence ! ! ! What evil would result from allowing counsel to be heard in defence of prisoners ? Would too many people be hung from losing that valu- able counsellor, the judge ? or would too few people be hung? or would things remain much as they are at present? We never could get the admirers of this practice to inform us what the results would be of deviating from it; and we are the more particularly curious upon this point, because our practice is decidedly the re- verse, and we find no other results from it than a fair administration of criminal justice. In all criminal cases that require the intervention of a jury in Scotland, a prisoner must have, 1st, a copy of the indictment, which must contain a minute specification of the ofl^ence charged ; 2dly, a list of witnesses; 3dly, a list of the as- size; and, 4thly, in every question that occurs, and in all addresses to the jury, the prisoner's counsel has the last word. Where is the boasted mercy of the English law after this ? The truth is, it proceeds from the error which, in all dark ages, pervades all codes of laws, of confounding the accused with the guilty. In the early part of our state trials, the prisoners were not allowed to bring evidence against the wit- nesses of the crown. For a long period after this, the witnesses of the prisoner were not suf- fered to be examined upon oath. One piece of cruelty and folly has given way after another. Each has been defended by the attorney and solicitor-general for the time, as absolutely necessary to the existence of the state, and the most perfect performance of our illustrious an- cestors. The last grand hope of every foolish person is the silence of the prisoner's counsel. In the defence of this, it will be seen what stu- pidity driven to despair can achieve. We beg pardon for this digression; but flesh and blood cannot endure the nonsense of lawyers upon this subject. The society have some very proper remarks upon the religious instructions of the chaplain — an appointment of vast importance and utility; unfortunately very ill paid, and devolving en- tirely upon the lower clergy. It is said that the present Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Ryder, goes into jails and busies himself with the temporal ■wretchedness and the eternal welfare of the prisoners. If this is so, it does him great honour, and is a noble example to all ranks of 2? clergy who are subject to him. Above all, do not let us omit the following beautiful anecdote, while we are talking of good and pious men. "The committee cannot refrain from extract- ing from the report of the Paris Society, the interesting anecdote of the excellent P6re Jous- sony, who being sent, by the Consul at Algiers, to minister to the slaves, fixed his residence in their prison; and, during a period of thirty years, never quitted his post. Being compelled to repair to France, for a short period, he re- turned again to the prison, and at length resign- ed his breath in the midst of those for whose interests he had laboured, and who were dearer to him than life." — Report, p. 30. It seems to be a very necessary part of the prison system, that any poor person, when ac- quitted, should be passed to his parish ; and that all who are acquitted should be immediately liberated. At present, a prisoner, after acquit- tal, is not liberated till the grand jury are dis- missed,* in case (as it is said) any more bills should be preferred against him. This is really a considerable hardship; and we do not see, upon the same principle, why the prisoner may not be detained for another assize. To justify such a practice, notice should, at all events. Be given to the jailer of intention to prefer other charges against him. To detain a man who is acquitted of all of which he has been accused, and who is accused of nothing more, merely because he may he accused of something more, seems to be a great perversion of justice. The greatest of all prison improvements, however, would be the delivery of jails four times in the year. It would save expense; render justice more terrible, by rendering it more prompt; facilitate classification, by lessening numbers ; keep constantly alive, in the minds of wicked men, the dread of the law; and diminish the unjust sufferings of those who, after long im- prisonment, are found innocent. " From documents," says Mr. Western, "upon the table of the House of Commons in 1819, 1 drew out an account, which I have already ad- verted to in part, but which I shall restate here, as it places, in a strong point of view, the ex- tent of injustice, and inconsistency, too, arising out of the present system. It appeared that, at the Maidstone Lent Assizes of that year there were one hundred and seventy-seven prisoners for trial; of these, seventeen were in prison be- fore the 1st of October, eighty-three before the 1st of January, the shortest period of confine- ment before trial being six months of the former, three months of the latter. Nothing can show us more plainly the injustice of such confine- ment than the known fact of six months' impri- sonment being considered a suflicient punish- ment for half the felonies that are committed* but the case is stronger, when we consider the number acquitted; seventeenof the twenty-seven first mentioned were acquitted, nine of the seven teen were discharged, not being prosecuted, or having no bill found against them. On the other side it appeared, that twenty-five con victed felons were sentenced to six months' im prisonment, or under, the longest period of whose confinement did not, therefore, exceed ' Tliis has since lieen clone away with. 170 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. the shortest of the seventeen acquitted, or that of the nine, against whom no charge was ad- duced; there were ihree, who, after being about seven months in prison, were then discharged, whilst various convicted felons suffered six- sevenths only of the punishment, including the time before trial as well as after condemnation. By the returns from the Lent Assizes at Chelms- ford, the same year, the cases were not less striking than those of Maidstone: the total num- ber was one hundred and sixty-six; of these, twenty-five were in prison before the 1st of Oc- tober, of whom eleven were acquitted, and of these eleven, six were discharged without any indictment preferred; two were in prison eight months; three, seven months and fifteen days. three, six months and fifteen days. On the other hand, sixteen convicted of felony, were consi- dered to be sufl^iciently punished by imprisonment >inder six months. Upon the whole, it appeared that four hundred and five persons had been in gaol before the 1st of October, whilst eight hun- dred convicted felons were sentenced to a lighter punishment, to a shorter duration of imprison- ment, than these four hundred and five had ac- tually undergone. "It is a curious fact, that, upon an average, more than one-third of the total number com- mitted for trial are acquitted. In the seven years ending 1819, seventy-two thousand two hundred and sixteen persons were committed ; I of these, fourteen thousand two hundred and | ninety-one were acquitted on trial, eleven thou- 1 sand two hundred and seventy-four were dis- charged, there being no prosecutions, or no bills found against them. This large proportion of acquittals aggravates the evil and injustice of long confinement before trial; but were it other- wise, what possible right can we have to detain a man in custody six months, upon any charge exhibited against him, before he is brought to trial 1 What excuse or palliation can be found for so barbarous a violation of all the principles of justice and humanity] How contemptible it is, by way of defence, to talk of the inexpe- diency of increasing the number of the judges, the expense, inconvenience, trouble, &c.! It is wrong to contend with such arguments against the unanswerable claims of justice, as it is only to admit they are entitled to weight. The fact is, we are so completely under the influence of habitual respect for established practice, that ■we do not stop to question the possibility of the existence of any serious defects in the adminis- tration of the law that can be capable of remedy. The public attention has never been earnestly and steadily fixed and devoted to the attainment of a better system." — Wester?!, pp. 80—83. The public cannot be too grateful to Mr. Western for his labours on this subject. We strongly recommend his tract for general cir- culation. It is full of stout good sense, without one particle of nonsense or fanaticism: — good English stuff, of the most improved and best sort. Lord Londonderry has assented to the measure; and his assent does him and the government very great credit. It is a measure of first-rate importance. The multiplicity of imprisonments is truly awful. Within the distance of ten miles round Lon- don, thirty-one fairs are annually held, which continue eighty days within the space of seven months. The" effect of these fairs, in filling the prisons of the metropolis, it is easy to ima- gine; and the topic is very wisely and properly- brought forward by the society. Nothing can be so absurd as the reasoning used about Jlask houses. They are suffered to exist, it seems, because it is easy to the officers of justice to find, in such places, the prisoners of whom they are in search! But the very place where the thief is found is most probably the place which made him a thief. If it facili- tates the search, it creates the necessity for searching, and multiplies guilt while it pro- motes detection. Wherever thieves are known to haunt, that place should be instantly purged of thieves. We have pushed this article to a length which will prevent us from dwelling upon that part of the plan of the Prison Society which embraces the reformation of juvenile delin- quents, of whom it is calculated there are not less than 8000 in London who gain their livelihood by thieving. To this subject we may, perhaps, refer in some future number. We must content ourselves at present with a glimpse at the youthful criminals of the metro- polis. "Upon a late occasion (in company with Mr. Samuel Hoare, the chairman of the Society for the Reform of Juvenile Delinquents), I visited, about midnight, many of those receptacles of thieves which abound in this metropolis. We selected the night of that day in which an exe- cution had taken place; and our object was, to ascertain whether that terrible demonstration of rigour could operate even a short suspen^ sion of iniquity, and keep for a single nigh the votaries of crime from their accustomed orgies. In one room, I recollect, we found a large number of children of both sexes, the oldest under eighteen years of age, and in the centre of these a man who had been described to me by the police as one of the largest sellers of forged bank-notes. At another part, we were shown a number of buildings, into which only children were allowed to enter, and in which, if you could obtain admission, which you can- not, you would see scenes of the most flagrant, the most public, and the most shocking de- bauchery. Have I not, then, a right to say, that you are growing crimes at a terrible rate, and producing those miscreants who are to dis- turb the public peace, plunder the public pro- perty, and to become the scourge and the dis- grace of the country?" — Dux/on, pp. 66, 67. Houses dedicated to the debauchery of chil- dren, where it is impossible to enter ! ! ! Whence comes this impossibility 7 To show that their labours are not needlessly continued, the society make the following state- ment of the present state of prisons: — " But although these considerations are highly encouraging, there is yet much to accomplish in this work of national improvement. So ex- tensive are the defects of classification, that in thirty gaols, constructed for the confinement of 2985 persons, there were, at one time in the last year, no fewer than 5837 prisoners; and the whole number imprisoned ii those gaols, dur. ing that period, amounted to 2o,703 There are WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 171 yet prisons where idleness and its attendant evils reign unrestrained — where the sexes are not separated— where all distinctions of crime are confounded — where few can enter, if uncor- rupted, without pollution; and, if guilty, with- out incurring deeper stains of criminality. — There are yet prisons which receive not the pious visits of a Christian minister — which the light of knowledge never enters— and where the truths and consolations of the Gospel are never heard. — There are yet prisons where, for the security of the prisoners, measures are re- sorted to as revolting to British feeling as they are repugnant to the spirit and letter of English law." — Report, pp. 6.3, 64. With this statement we take our leave of the subject of prisons, thoroughly convinced that, since the days of their cleanliness and salu- brity, they have been so managed as to become the great school for crimes and wretchedness ; and that the public, though beginning to awake, are not yet sufficiently aware of this fact, and sufficiently alarmed at it. Mrs. Fry is an ami- able, excellent woman, and ten thousand times belter than the infamous neglect that preceded her; but hers is not the method to stop crimes. In prisons, which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil doers, there must be no sharing of profits — no visiting of friends — no education but religious education — no freedom of diet — no weavers' looms or carpenters' benches. There must be a great deal of solitude; coarse food; a dress of shame; hard, incessant, irksome, eternal la- bour; a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort. 172 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. PEESECUTING BISHOPS. [Edinburgh Review, 1822.] It is a great, point in any question to clear 1 away encumbrances, and to make a naked circle about the object in dispute, so that there may be a clear view of it on every side. In pursuance of this disencumbering process, we shall first acquit the bishop of all wrong inten- tions. He has a very bad opinion of the prac- tical effects of high Calvinistic doctrines upon the common peOple ; and he thinks it his duty to exclude those clergymen who profess them from his diocese. There is no moral wrong in this. He has accordingly devised no fewer than eighty-seven interrogatories, by which he thinks he can detect the smallest taint of Cal- vinism that may lurk in the creed of the can- didate ; and in this also, whatever Ave may think of his reasoning, we suppose his pur- pose to be blameless. He believes, finally, that he has legally the power so to in- terrogate and exclude ; and in this perhaps he is not mistaken. His intentions, then, are good, and his conduct, perhaps, not amenable to the law. All this we admit in his favour: but against him we must maintain, that his conduct upon the points in dispute has been singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and, in its effects (though not in its intentions), very oppressive and vexatious to the clergy. We have no sort of intention to avail our- selves of an anonymous publication to say unkind, uncivil, or disrespectful things to a man of rank, learning, and character — we hope to be guilty of no such impropriety; but we cannot believe 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. It is a strong presumption that a man is wrong, when all his friends, whose habits na- * 1. j9ff Appeal to the Legislature and Public ; or, the Le- iralitn of the Eiirhtii-secen Qticstinns prupnseil bit Dr. Her- bert Mirsh, the Bi-hup vf reterhnrovgh, to Candidates for Hiilii Order.--, and for I.i'-ni.'i\<. irithin that Diocese, consi- dered. 2.1 FiUtioii. LcitulMii, S.M-ly, 1821. 2. A Speech, delivered in tite Iloune of Lords, on Friday, June 7, 1822, bij Herbert, Lord Bishop of Peterborotigrh, on the Presentation of a Petition a/rainst his Examination Questions : with Explanatory J\rotes, a Supplement, and a Copy of the Qaestions. Lontlnn, Rivington. 1822. 3. The IVrongs of the Clergy of the Diocese of Peterbo- rough stated and illustrated. Ry the Rev. T. S. Grim- SHAWR, M. A., Rector of Burton, Northamptonshire ; and Vicar of Biddenham, Bedfordshire. London, Seely, 1822. 4. Episcop'l Innovation : or, the Test of Modern Ortho- doxy, in Eighty-seven Questions, imposed, as Articles of Faith, upon Candidates for Licenses and for Holy Orders, in the Diocese of Peterborough ; with a distinct Answer to each Question, and General Reflections Relative to their II- leir-al Structure and Pernicious Tendency. London, Seely, 1§'20. 5. Official Correspondence between the Right Rev. Her- bert, Lord Bishop of Peterborough, and the Rev. John Oreen, respecting his JVomination to the Curacy of Bla- therwycke, in the Diocese of Peterborough, and County of J^orthampton : Also, between His Grace Charles, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Rev. Henry H'iUiam J^evile, M. A., Rector of Blatherwvcke, and of Cottesmore in the County of Rutland. 182L turally lead them to coincide with him, think him wrong. If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the apothecary, the drug- gist, and the physician, all called upon him to abandon his philo-cathartic propensities — if he were to gratify his convivial habits till the landlord demurred and the waiter shook his head — we should naturally imagine that ad- vice so wholly disinterested was not given be- fore it was wanted, and that it merited some little attention and respect. Now, though the Bench of Bishops certainly love power, and love the church, as well as the Bishop of Peterborough, yet not one defended him — not one rose to say, " I have done, or I would do the same thing." It was impossible to be pi'e- sent at the last debate on this question, without perceiving that his lordship stood alone — and this in a very gregarious profession, that ha- bitually combines and butts against an oppo- nent with a very extended front. If a lawyer is wounded, the rest of the profession pursue him, and put him to death. If a churchman is hurt, the others gather i-ound for his protection, stamp with their feet, push with their horns, and demolish the dissenter who did the mis- chief. The bishop has at least done a very un- usual thing in his Eighty-seven Questions. The two archbishops, and we believe every other bishop, and all the Irish hierarchy, ad- mit curates into their dioceses without any such precautions. The necessity of such se- vere and scrupulous inquisition, in short, has been apparent to nobody but the Bishop of Peterborough ; and the authorities by which he seeks to justify it are any thing but satisfac- tory. His lordship states^ that forty years ago, he was himself examined by written inter- rogatories, and that he is not the only bishop who has done it ; but he mentions no names ; and it was hardly worth while to state such extremely slight precedents for so strong a de- viation from the common practice of the church. The bishop who rejects a curate upon the Eighty-seven Questions is necessarily and in- evitably opposed to the bishop who ordained him. The Bishop of Gloucester ordains a young man of twenty-three years of age, not thinking it necessary to put to him these inter- rogatories, or putting them perhaps, and ap- proving of answers diametrically opposite to those that are required by the Bishop of Peter- borough. The young clergyman then comes to the last-mentioned bishop, and the bishop, after puHing him to the question, says, "You are unfit for a clergyman,"— though, ten days before, the Bishop of Gloucester has made him one ! It is bad enough for ladies to pull caps, but still worse for bishops to pull mitres. Nothing can be more mischievous or indecent WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 173 than such scenes; and no man of common prudence, or knowledge of the -world, but must see that they ought immediately to be put a stop to. 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 con- sidered as equal to the same office in the North Seas. The sixth commandment is sus- pended, by one medical diploma, from the north of England to the south. But, by this new system of interrogation, a man may be admitted into orders at Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, re-admitted at Brogden, kicked out as a Calvinist at Witham Common, and hail- ed as an ardent Arminian on his arrival at York. It matters nothing to say that sacred things must not be compared with profane. In their importance, we allow, they cannot; but in their order and discipline they may be so far com- pared as to say, that the discrepancy and con- tention which would be disgraceful and per- nicious in worldly affairs, should, in common prudence, be avoided in the affairs of religion. Mr. Greenough has made a map of England, according to its geological varieties; — blue for the chalk, green for the cla^', red for the sand, and so forth. Under this system of Bishop Marsh, we must petition for the assistance of the geologist in the fabrication of an ecclesias- tical map. All the Arminian districts must be purple. Green for one theological extre- mity — sky-blue for another — as many colours as there are bishops — as many shades of these colours as there are archdeacons — a tailor's pattern card — the picture of vanity, fashion, and caprice ! The bishop seems surprised at the resist- ance he meets with ; and yet, to what purpose has he read ecclesiastical history, if he expects to meet with any thing but the most determined opposition 1 Does he think that every stm-dy su- pralapsarian 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 airl His lordship has undertaken a task of which he little knows the labour or the end. We know these men fully as well as the bishop; he has not a chance of success against them. If one motion in Par- liament will not do, they will have twenty. They will ravage, roar, and rush, till the very chaplains, and the masters and Misses Peter- borough request his lordship to desist. He is raising up 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. The longer we live, the more we are con- vinced of the justice of the old saying, that an ounce of mother ivit is worth apotmd of clergy ; that discretion, gentle manners, common sense, and good nature, are, in men of high ecclesias- tical station, of far greater importance than the greatest skill in discriminating between sublapsarian and supi'alapsarian doctrines. Bishop Marsh should remember, that all men wearing the mitre work by character, as well as doctrine ; that a tender regard to men's rights and feelings, a desire to avoid sacred squabbles, a fondness for quiet, and an ardent wish to make everybody happy, would be of far more value to the Church of England than all his learning and vigilance of inquisition. The Irish tithes will probably fall next session of Parliament; the common people are regu- larly receding from the Church of England — baptizing, burying, and confirming for them- selves. Under such circumstances, what would the worst enemy of the English church require ] — a bitter, bustling, theological bishop, accused by his clergy of tyranny and oppres- sion — the cause of daily petitions and daily debates in the House of Commons — the idoue- ous vehicle of abuse against the Establish- ment — a stalking-horse to bad men for the introduction of revolutionary opinions, mis- chievous ridicule, and irreligious feelings. Such will be the advantages which Bishop Marsh Avill secure for the EL%lish Establish- ment in the ensuing session. It is inconceiv- able how such a prelate shakes all the upper works of the church, and ripens it for dissolu- tion and decay. Six such bishops, multiplied by eighty-seven, and working with five hun- dred and twent3'-two questions, would fetch every thing to the ground in less than six months. But what if it pleased Divine Provi- dence to afflict every prelate with the spirit of putting eight)'-seven queries, and the two archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man Avith the spirit of putting only fort^'-three queries ! — there would then be a grand total of two thou- sand three hundred and thirt)--five interroga- tions flying about the English church ; and sorely vexed would the land be with Question and Answer. We will suppose this learned prelate, with- out meanness or undue regard to his worldly interests, to fee! that fair desire of rising in his profession, which any man, in any profession, may feel without disgrace. Does he forget that his character in the ministerial circles will soon become that of a violent, impracticable man — whom it is impossible to place in the highest situations — who has been trusted with too much alreadj', and must be trusted with no more 1 Ministers have something else to do with their time, and with the time of Parlia- ment, than to waste them in debating squabbles between bishops and their clergy. They natu- rally wish, and, on the whole, reasonably expect, that every thing should go on silently and quietly in the church. They have no ob- jection to a learned bishop ; but they deprecate one atom more of learning than is compatible with moderation, good sense, and the soundest discretion. It must be the grossest ignorance of the world to suppose, that the cabinet has any pleasure in watching Calvinists. The bishop not only puts the question, but he actually assigns the limits within which they are to be answered. Spaces are left in the paper of interrogations, to which limits tb/* f 2 174 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. an:v'sr is to be confined; — two inches to ori- ginal sin; an inch and a half to justification; three quarters to predestination ; and to free will only a quarter of an inch. But if his lord- ship gives them an inch they will take an ell. His lordship is himself a theological writer, and by no means remarkable for his concise- ness. To deny space to his brother theologians, who are writing on the most difficult subjects, not from choice, but necessity; not for fame, but for bread; and to award rejection as the penalty of prolixity, does appear to us no slight deviation from Christian gentleness. The tyranny of calling for such short answers is very strikingly pointed out in a letter from Mr. Thurtell to the Bishop of Peterborough; the style of which pleads, we think, very power- fully in favour of the writer. " Beccles, Suffolk, August 28.' A, 1821. " My Lord — I ought, in the first place, to apologise for delaying so long to answer your lordship's letter: but the difficulty in which I was involved, by receiving another copy of your lordship's Questions, with positive direc- tions to give short answers, may be sufficient to account for that delay. "It is my sincere desire to meet your lord- ship's wishes, and to obey your lordship's di- rections in every particular; and I would therefore immediately have returned answers, without any 'restrictions or modifications,' to the Questions which your lordship has thought fit to send me, if, in so doing, I could have dis- charged the obligations of my conscience, by showing what my opinions really arc. But it appears to me, that the Questions proposed to me by your lordship are so constructed as to elicit only two sets of opinions ; and that by answering them in so concise a manner, I should be representing myself to your lordship as one who believes in either of two particular creeds, to neither of which I do rea//;/ subscribe. For instance, to answer Question I. chap, li., in the manner your lordship desires, I am reduced to the alternative of declaring, either that ' man- kind are a mass of mere corruption,' which expresses more than I intend, or of leaving room for the inference, that they are only par- tially corrupt, which is opposed to the plainest declarations of the Homilies; such as these, 'Man is altogether spotted and defiled' (Horn. on Nat.), ' without a spark of goodness in him' (Serm. on Mis. of Man, &c.). "Again, bv answering the Quest'ors com- prised in tiic chapter on 'Free Will,' according to your lordship's directions, I am compelled to acknowledge either that man has such a share m the work of his own salvation as to exclude the sole agency of God, or that he has no share whatever; when the Homilies for Ro- gation Week and Whitsunday positively de- clare, that God is the 'only Worker,' or, in other words, sole Agent ; and at the same time assign to man a certain share in the work of his own salvation. In short, I could, with your lordship's permission, point out twenty Ques- tion;., involving doctrines of the utmost im- portance, which I am unable to answer, so as to convey my real sentiments, without more room for explanation than the printed sheet affords. I "In this view of the subject, therefore, and j in the most deliberate exercise of my judgment, I deem it indispensable to my acting with that candour and truth with which it is my wish and duty to act, and with which I cannot but believe your lordship desires I should act, to state my opinions in that language which ex- presses them most fully, plainly, and unre- servedly. This I have endeavoured to do in the answers now in the possession of your lordship. If any further explanation be re- quired, I am most willing to give it, even to a minuteness of opinion beyond what the Arti- cles require. At the same time, I would humbly and respectfully appeal to your lordship's can- dour, whether it is not hard to demand my decided opinion upon points irhich have been the themes of volumes : upon xchich the most pious and learned men of the church have conscientiously differed; and upon which the Articles in the judgment of Bishop Burnet have pronounced no definite sentence. To those Articles, my lord, I have already sub- scribed; and I am willing again to subscribe to every one of them, 'in its literal and gram- matical sense,' according to his majesty's decla- ration prefixed to them. " I hope, therefore, in consideration of the above statement, that your lordship will not compel me, by the conciseness of my answers, to assent to the doctrines which I do not be- lieve, or to expose myself to inferences which do not fairly and legitimately follow from my opinions. " I am, my Lord, &c. &c." We are not much acquainted with the prac- tices of courts of justice; but, if we remember right, when a man is going to be hanged, the judge lets him make his defence in his own way, without complaining of its length. We should think a Christian bishop might be equally indulgent to a man who is going to be ruined. The answers are required to be clear, concise, and correct — short, plain, and positive. In other words, a poor curate, extremely agitated at the idea of losing his livelihood, is required to write with brevity and perspicuity on the fol- lowing subjects; — Redemption by Jesus Christ — Original Sin — FreeW'ill — Justification — Jus- tificatioQ in reference to its causes — Justifica- tion in reference to the time when it takes place — Everlasting Salvation — Predestination — Regeneration on the 'Se.w Birth — Renova- tion, and the Holy Trinity. As a specimen of these questions, the answer to which is required to be so brief and clear, we shall insert the fol- lowing quotation: — " Section II. — Of Justification in reference to its cause. " 1. Does not the eleventh Article declare, that we are 'justified by Faith only?' " 2. Does not the expression ' Faith only' deri /e additional strength from the negative ex- pression in the same Article 'and not for our own works V "3. Does not therefore the eleventh Article ex- clude good works from all share in the office of Justifying? Or can we so construe the term 'Faith' in that Article, as to make it include good works 1 "4. Do not the twelfth and thirteenth Articles further exclude them,- the one by asserting WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 175 that good works follow afier Justification, the other by maintaining that they cannot precede if? "5. Can that, which never precedes an effect, be reckoned among the causes of that effect 1 "6. Can we then, consistently with our Articles, reckon the performance of good works among the causes of Justification, whatever qualilying epithet be used with the term cause ?" We entirely deny that the Calvinistical clergy are bad members of their profession. We maintain that as many instances of good, serious, and pious men — of persons zealously interesting themselves in the temporal and spiritual welfare of their parishioners are to be found among them, as among the clergy who put an opposite interpretation on the Articles. The Articles of Religion are older than Arminianism, eo nomine. The early re- formers leant to Calvinism ; and would, to a man, have answered the bishop's questions in a way which would have induced him to refuse them ordination and curacies; and those who drew up the Thirty-nine Articles, if they had not prudently avoided all precise interpretation of their creed on free-will, necessity, absolute decrees, original sin, reprobation, and election, would have, in all probability, given an inter- pretation of them like that which the bishop considers as a disqualification for holy orders. Laud's Lambeth Articles were illegal, mis- chievous, and are generally condemned. The Irish clergy in 1641 drew up one hundred and four articles as the creed of their church ; and these are Calvinistic, and not Arminian. They were approved and signed by Usher, and never abjured by him ; though dropped as a test or qualification. Usher was promoted (even in the days of Arminianism) to bishoprics and archbishoprics — so little did a Calvinistic inter- pretation of the Articles in a man's own breast, or even an avowal of Calvinism, beyond what was required by the Articles, operate even then as a disqualification for the cure of souls, or of any other office in the church. Throughout Charles II. and William III.'s time, the best men and greatest names of the church not only allowed latitude in interpreting the Articles, but thought it would he wise to diiriinish their number, and render them more lax than they are; and be it observed, that these latitudina- rians leant to Arminianism rather than to high Calvinism ; and thought, consequently, that the Articles, if objectionable at all, were exposed to the censure of being "too Calvinistic," rather than too Arminian. How preposterous, therefore, to twist them, and the subscription to them required by law, by the machinery of a long string of explanatory questions, into a barrier against Calvinists, and to give the Arminians a monopoly in the church ! Archbishop Wake, in 1710, after consulting all the bishops then attending Parliament, thought it incumbent on him "to employ the authority which the ecclesiastical laws then in force, and the custom and laws of the realm, vested in him," and taking care that "no unworthy person might hereafter be admitted into the sacred ministry of the church " and he drew up twelve recommenda- tions to the bishops of England, in which he earnestly exhorts them not to ordain persons of bad conduct or character, or incompetent learning; but he does not require from the candidates for holy orders or preferment, any explanation whatever of the Articles which they had signed. The correspondence of the same eminent prelate with Professor Turretin in 1718, and with Mr. Le Clerc and the pastors and profes- sors of Geneva in 1719, printed in London, 1782, recommends union among Protestants, and the omission of controverted points in confessions of faith, as a means of obtaining that union; and a constant reference to the practice of the Church of England is made in elucidation of the charily and wisdom of such policy. Speaking of men who act upon a contrary principle he says, quaulum poLu'a insana cfi^^vm ! These passages, we think, are conclusive evidence of the practice of the church till 1719. For Wake was not only at the lime Archbishop of Canterbury, but both in his circular recommendations to the bishops of England, and in his correspondence with fo- reign churches, was acting in the capacity of metropolitan of the Anglican church. He, a man of prudence and learning, publicly boasts to Protestant Europe, that his church does not exact, and that he de facto has never avowed, and never will, his opinions on those very points upon which Bishop Marsh obliges every poor curate to be explicit, upon pain of expul- sion from the church. It is clear, then, the practice was, to extract subscription and nothing else, as the test of orthodoxy — to that Wake is an evidence. As far as he is authority on a point of opinion, it is his conviction that his practice was whole- some, wise, and intended to preserve peace in the church; that it would be wrong at least, if not illegal, to do otherwise ; and that the ob- servance of this forbearance is the only method of preventing schism. The Bishop of Peter- borough, however, is of a different opinion; he is so thoroughly convinced of the pernicious effects of Calvinistic doctrines, that he does what no^other bishop does, or ever did do, for their exclusion. This may be either wise or injudicious, but it is at least zealous and bold; it is to encounter rebuke, and opposition, from a sense of dtity. It is impossible to deny this merit to his lordship. And we have no doubt, that, in pursuance of the 'same theological gallantry, he is preparing a set of interroga- tories for those clergymen who are presented to benefices in his diocese. The patron will have his action of Quare impedit, it is true; and the judge and jury will decide whether the bishop has the right of interrogation at all ; and whether Calvinistical answers to his inter- rogatories disqualify any man from holding preferment in the Church of England. It' either of these points are given against the Bishop of Peterborough, he is in honour and conscience bound to give up his examination of curates. If Calvinistic ministers are, in the estimation of the bishops, so dangerous as curates, they are of course m nch more dangerous as rectors and vicars. He has as much right to examine one as the other. Why then does he 176 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. pass over the greater danger, and guard against the lessl Wh}^ does he not show his zeal when he would run some risk, and where the excluded person (if excluded unjustly) could appeal to the laws of his country 1 If his con- duct is just and right, has he any thing to fear from that appeal 1 What should we say of a police officer who acted in all cases of petty larceny, where no opposition was made, and let off all persons guilty of felony who threat- ened to knock him down ] If the bishop values his own character, he is bound to do less, — or to do more. God send his choice may be right ! The law, as it stands at present, certainly af- fords very unequal protection to rector and to curate ; but if the bishop will not act so as to improve the law, the law must be so changed as to improve the bishop ; an action of Quare impedit must be given to the curate also — and then the fury of interrogation will be calmed. We are aware that the Bishop of Peterbo- rough, in his speech, disclaims the object of excluding the Calvinists by this system of in- terrogation. We shall take no other notice of his disavowal, than expressing our sincere regret that he ever made it; but the question is not at all altered by the intention of the inter- rogator. Whether he aims at the Calvinists only, or includes them with other heterodox respondents — the fact is, they are included in the proscription, and excluded from the church. The practical effect of the practice being, that men are driven out of the church, who have as much right to exercise the duties of cler- gymen as the bishop himself. If heterodox opinions are the great objects of the bishop's apprehensions, he has his ecclesiastical courts, where regular process may bring the offender to punishment, and from whence there is no ap- peal to higher courts. This woiald be the fair thing to do. The curate and the bishop would be brought into the light of day. and subjected to the wholesome restraint of public opinion. His lordship boasts that he has excluded only two curates. 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 impe- diment to conversation; and the intensity of the punishment was found to be a full compen- sation for its rarity. How many persons have been deprived of curacies which they might have enjoyed, but for the tenour of these in- terrogatories 1 How many respectable cler- gymen have been deprived of the assistance of curates connected with them by blood, friend- ship, or doctrine, and compelled to choose per- sons, for no other qualification than that they could pass through the eye of the bishop's needle 1 Violent measures are not to be judged of merely by the number of times they have been resorted to, but by the terror, mise- ry, and restraint which the severity is likely to have produced. We never met with any style so entirely clear of all redundant and vicious ornament, as that which the ecclesiastical Lord of Peter- borough has adopted towards his clergy. It, in fact, may be all reduced to these few words — " Reverend Sir, I shall do what I please. Peterborough." — Even in the House of Lords, he speaks what we must call very plain language. Among other things, he says, that the allegations of the petitions are false. Now, as every bishop is, besides his other qualities, a gentleman ; and as the word false is used only by laymen, who mean to hazard their lives by the expression ; and as it cannot be supposed that foul language is ever used because it can be used with personal impunity, his lordship must, therefore, be intended to mean not fulse, but mislaken — not a wilful de- viation from truth, but an accidental and un- intended departure from it. His lordship talks of the drudgery of wading through ten pages of answers to his eighty- seven questions. Who has occasioned this drudgery, but the person who means to be so much more active, useful, and important, than all other bishops, by proposing questions which nobody has thought to be necessary but himself] But to be intolerably strict and harsh to a poor curate, who is trying to earn a morsel of hard bread, and then to complain of the drudgery of reading his answers, is much like knocking a man down with a bludgeon, and then abusing him for splashing you with his blood, and pestering you with his groans. It is quite monstrous, that a man who inflicts eighty-seven new questions in theology upon his fellow-creatures, should talk of the drudgery of reading their answers. A curate — there is something which excites compassion in the very name of a curate ! ! ! How any man of purple, palaces, and prefer- ment, can let himself loose against this poor workman of God, we are at a loss, to conceive, — a learned man in a hovel, with sermons and saucepans, lexicons and bacon, Hebrew books and ragged children — good and patient — a com- forter and a preacher — the first and purest pauper in the hamlet, and yet showing, that, in the midst of his worldly miser}-, he has the heart of a gentleman, and the spirit of a Chris- tian, and the kindness of a pastor ; and this man, though he has exercised the duties of a clergyman for twenty years — though he has most ample testimonies of conduct from cler- gymen as respectable as any bishop — though an archbishop add his name to the list of wit- nesses, is not good enough for Bishop Marsh ; but is pushed out in the street, with his wife and children, and his little furniture, to sur- render his honour, his faith, his conscience, and his learning — or to starve 1 An obvious objection to these innovations is, that there can be no end to them. If eight)'- seven questions are assumed to be necessary by one bishop, eight hundred may be con- sidered 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 of Peterborough is positive, that the Arminian interpretation of the articles is the right interpretation, and that Calvinists should be excluded from it; but the country gentlemen who are to hear these matters de- bated in the Lower House, are to leraember, that other bishops have written upon these WORKS OF THE KEY. SYDNEY SMITH. 177 points before the Bishop of Peterborough, and have arrived at conclusions diametrically op- posite. When curates are excluded because their answers are Calvinistical, a careless lay- man might imagine that this interpretation of the Articles had never been heard of before in the church — that it was a gross and palpable perversion of their sense, which had been scouted by all writers on church matters, from the day the Articles were promulgated, to this hour — that such an unheard-of molester as a Calvinistical curate had never leapt over the pale before, and been detected browsing in the sacred pastures. The following is the testimony of Bishop Sherlock : — " ' The church has left a latitude of sense to prevent schisms and breaches upon every ditferent opinion. It is evident the Church of England has so done in some articles, ^^hich are most liable to the hottest disputes; which yet are penned with that temper as to be will- ingly subscribed by men of ditferent apprehen- sions in those matters.' — Sherlock's Dcfeyiceof Stilling fleet's UnreasonahltJUss of Separation" Bishop Cleaver, describing the difficulties attending so great an undertaking as the for- mation of a national creed, observes : — "'These difficulties, however, do not seem to have discouraged the great leaders in this work from forming a design as wise as it was liberal, that of framing a confession, which, in the enumeration and method of its several articles, should meet the approbation, and en- gage the consent, of the whole reformed world. " ' If, upon trial, it was found that a compre- hension so extensive could not be reduced to practice, still as large a comprehension as could be contrived, within the narrower limits of the kingdom, became, for the same reasons which first suggested the idea, at once an ob- ject of prudence and duty, in the formation and government of the English church.' "After dwelling on the means necessary to accomplish this object, the bishop proceeds to remark: — 'Such evidently appears to have been the origin, and such the actual complexion of the confession comprised in the Articles of our church; the true scope and design of which will not, I conceive, be correctly apprehended in any other view than that of one drawn up and adjusted with an intention to comprehend the as- sent of all, rather than to exclude that of any who concurred in the necessity of a reforniation. "'The means of comprehension intended were, not any general ambiguity or equivoca- tion of terms, hut a prudent forbearance in all parties not to insist on the full extent of their opinions in matters not essential or fundamental ,- and 171 all cases to wave, as much as possible, tenets which might divide, where they wish to unite.' — Remarks on the Design and Formation of the Articles of the Church of England, by William, Lord Bishop of Bangor, ISO'2." — pp. 23—25. We will finish with Bishop Horsley. " It has been the fashion of late to talk about Arminianism as the system of the Church of England, and of Calvinism as something opposite to it, to which the church 23 is hostile. That I may not be misunderstood in what I have stated, or may have occasion further to say upon this subject, I must here declare, that I use the words Arminianism and Calvinism in that restricted sense in which they are now generally taken, to denote the doctrinal part of each system, as unconnected with the principles either of Arminians or Calvinisis upon church discipline and church government. This being premised, I assert, what I often have before asserted, and by God's grace I will persist in the assertion to my dying day, that so far is it from the truth that the Church of England is decidedly Ar- minian, and hostile to Calvinism, that the truth is this, that upon the principal points in dispute between the Arminians and the Caluinists upon all the points of doctrine characteristic of the two sects, the Church of England maintains aii ab- solute neutrality ; her articles explicitly assert nothing but what is believed both by Arminians and by Calvinists. The Calvinists indeed hold some opinions relative to the same points, which the Church of England has not gone the length of asserting in her Articles; but neither has she gone the length of explicitly contradicting those opinions ; insomuch that there is nothing to hinder the Arrninian and the highest suprulapsarian Calvinists from walking together in the Cliurch of England and Ireland as friends and brothers, f they both apprfjve the discipline of the church, uyid both are willing to submit to it. Her discipline has been approved ; it has been submitted to; it has been in former times most ably and zealously defended by the highest supralapsarian Calvinists. Such was the great Usher; such was Whitgift ; such were many more, burning and shining lights of our church in her early days (when first she shook off the Papal tyranny), long since gone to the resting place of the spirits of the just. — Bishop HoBSLEv's Charges, p. 216." — pp. 25, 26. So that these unhappy curates are turned out of their bread for an exposition of the Ar- ticles which such men as Sherlock, Cleaver, and Horsley think may be fairly given of their meaning. We do not quote their authority to show that the right interpretation is decided, but that it is doubtful — that there is a balance of authorities — that the opinion which Bishop Marsh has punished with poverty and degra- dation, has been considered to be legitimate, by men at least as wise and learned as him- self. In fact, it is to us perfectly clear, that the Articles were originally framed to prevent the very practices which Bishop Marsh has used for their protection — they were purpose- ly so worded, that Arminians and Calvinists could sign them without blame. They were intended to combine both these descriptions of Protestants, and were meant principally for a bulwark against Catholics. " Thus," says Bishop Burnet, "was the doc- trine of the church cast into a short and plain form ; in which they took care both to esta- blish the positive articles of religion, and to cut off the errors formerly introduced in the time of popery, or of late broached by the Anabaptists and enthusiasts of Germany; 178 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. avoiding ilie niceties of schoolmen, or the peremp- ioriness of the ivriters of controversy ,• leaving, in matters that are more justly controvertible, a liberty to divines to follow their private opinions, without thereby disturbing the peace of the church." — History of the Reformation, Book I. part ii. p. 168, folio edition. The next authorit)- is that of Fuller. "In the convocation now sittinsj, wherein Alexander Nowel, Dean of St. Paul's, was pro- locutor, the nine-and-thirty Articles were com- posed. For the main they agree with those set forth in the reign of King Edward the Sixth, though in some particulars allowing more liberty to dissenting judgments. For instance, in this King's Articles it is said, that it is to be believed that Christ went down to hell (to preach to the spirits there) ; which last clause is left out in these Articles, and men left to a latitude concerning the cause, time, and manner of his descent. "Hence some have unjustly taxed the com- posers for too much favour extended in their large expressions, clean through the contex- ture of these Articles, which should have tied men's consciences up closer, in more strict and particularizing propositions, which indeed proceeded from their commendable 7noderation. Children's clothes ought to be made of the biggest, because after«-ards their bodies vrill grow up to their garments. Thus the Articles of this English Protestant Church, in the in- fancy thereof, they thought good to draw up in general terms, foreseeing that posterity would grow up to fill the same : I mean these holv men did prudently prediscover, that ditlerence's in judgments would unavoidably happen m the church, a/id were loath to unchurch any, and drive them off from an ecclesiastical communion, for such petty difference^!, which made them pen the Articles in comprehensive words, to take in all who, differing in the branches, meet in the root of the same religion. "Indeed most of them had formerly been sufferers themselves, and cannot be said, in compiling these Articles, (an acceptable ser- vice, no doubt,) to offer to God what cost them nothing, some having paid imprisonment, others exile, all losses in their estates, for this their experimental knowledge in religion, which made them the more mercful and tender in stating those points, seeing such who them- selves have been most patient in bearing, will be most pitiful in burdening the consciences of others." — See Filler's Church History, book ix. p. 72, folio edit. But this generous and pacific spirit gives no room for the display of zeal and theologi- cal learning. The gate of admission has been left too widely open. I may as well be without power at all, if I cannot force my opinions upon other people. What was purposely left indefinite, I must make definite and exclusive. Questions of contention and difference must be laid before the servants of the church, and nothing like neutrality in theological metaphj^- sics allowed to the ministers of the Gospel. I come not to bring peace, &c. The bishop, however, seems to be quite sa- tisfied with himself, when he states, that he. has a right to do what he has done — ^just as if a man's character with his fellow-creatures depended upon legal rights alone, and not upon a discreet exercise of those rights. 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 pelt him as he passes. It must be presumed, that all men whom the law has invested with rights, nature has in- vested with common sense, to use those rights. For these reasons, children have no rights till they have gained common sense, and old men have no rights after they lose their common sense. All men are at all times accountable to their fellow-creatures for the discreet exer- cise of every right they possess. Prelates are fond of talking of my see, my clergy, my diocese, as if these things belonged to them, as their pigs and dogs belonged to them. They forget that the clergy, the dio- cese, and the bishops themselves, all exist only for the public good ; that the public are a third, and principal party in the whole con- cern. It is not simply the tormenting Bishop versus 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, the labourers in the vineyard are given up to th^ power of the inspectors 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. As often as such cases are de- tected, we believe they will meet, in either House of Parliament, with the severest repre- hension. The noblemen and gentlemen of England will never allow their parish clergy to be treated with cruelty, injustice, and ca- price, by men who were parish clergymen themselves yesterday, and who were trusted with power for veri' different puqjoses. The Bishop of Peterborough complains o* the insolence of the answers made to him. This is certainly not true of Mr. Grimshawe, Mr. Neville, or of the author of the Appeal. They have answered his lordship with great force, great manlines|| but with perfect re- spect. Does the bishop expect that humble men, as learned as himself, are to be driven from their houses and homes by his new the- ology, and then to send him letters of thanks for the kicks and cuffs he has bestowed upon them 1 Men of very small incomes, be it known unto his lordship, have ver}' often verv acute feelings ; and a curate trod on feels a pang as great as when a bishop is refuted. We shall now give a specimen of some an- swers, which, we believe, would exclude a curate from the diocese of Peterborough, and contrast these answers with the articles of the church to which they refer. The 9th Article of the Church of England is upon Original Sin. Upon this point his lordship puts the following question : — "Did the Fall of Adam produce such an effect on his posterity, that mankind became thereby a mass of mere corruption, or of abso- lute and entire depravity ? Or is the effect only such, that we are very far gone from or;- WORKS* OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. ginal righteousness, and of our own nature inclined to evil f Excluding Answer. The Mntk Article. " The fall of " Original Sin standeth not in the Adam produced following of Adam (as the Pela- snch an effect on gians do vainly talk) ; but it is the his posterity, that fault or corruption of the nature of mankind became every man, that naturally is engen- thereby a mass of dered of the offspring of Adam, mere corruption, whereby man is very far gone from or of absolute and original righteousness, and is of his entire depravity." own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit ; and therefore, in every person born into the world, it de- serveth God's wrath and damna- tion." The 9th Question, Cap. 3d, on Free Will, is as follows: — Is it not contrary to Scripture to say, that man has no share in the work of his salvation ] Excluding Answer. Tenth Article. " It is quite " The condition of man after the agreeable to Scrip- fall of Adam is such, that he cannot ture to say, that turn and prepare himself, by his man has no share own natural strength and good in the work of his works, to faith, and calling upon own salvation." God. Wherefore, we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will." On Redemption, his lordship has the follow- ing question, Cap. 1st, Question 1st: — Did Christ die for all men, or did he die only for a chosen few] Excluding Answer. Part of Article Seventeenth. " Christ did not " Predestination to life is the ever- liie for all men, lasting purpose ofGod, whereby (be- but only for a cho- fore the foundations of the world sen few." were laid) he hath constantlydecreed by his counsel, secret to us, to deli- ver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ unto everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour." Now, whether these answers are right' or wrong, we do not presume to decide; but we cannot help saying, there appears to be some little colour in the language of the Articles for the errors of the respondent. It does not ap- pear at first sight to be such a deviation from the plain, literal, and grammatical sense of the Articles, as to merit rapid and ignomi- nious ejectment from the bosom of the church. Now we have done with the Bishop. We give him all he asks as to his legal right; and only contend, that he is acting a very indis- creet and injudicious part — fatal to his quiet — fata! to his reputation as a man of sense — blamed by ministers— blamed by all the Bench of Bishops — vexatious to the clergy, and highly injurious to the church. We mean no personal disrespect to the Bishop; we are as Ignorant of him as of his victims. We should have been heartily glad if the debate in Parlia- ment had put an end to ■ these blameable ex- cesses; and our only object, in meddling with the question, is to restrain the arm of power withm 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 eiforts. BOTANY BAY; [Edinburgh Review, 1823.] Mr. Bigge's Report is somewhat long, and a little clumsy; but it is altogether the pro- duction of an honest, sensible, and respectable man, who has done his duty to the public, and justified the expense of his mission to the fifth or pickpocket quarter of the globe. What manner of man is Governor Mac- quarrie ?— Is all that Mr. Bennet says of him in the House of Commons true'? These are the questions which Lord Bathurst sent Mr. Bigge, and very properly sent him, 28,000 miles to answer. The answer is, that Go- vernor Macquarrie is not a dishonest man, nor a jobber; but arbitrary, in many things scandalously negligent, very often wrong- headed, and, upon the whole, very defi- cient in that good sense, and vigorous under- standing, which his new and arduous situation so manifestly requires. * 1. Letter to Earl Bathurst, By the Honourable II. Grev Bennet, M. P. 2. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the state ef the Colony of J\rew South Wales. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, IQth June, 1822. Ornamental architecture in Botany Bay! how it could enter into the head of any human being to adorn pirblic buildings at the Bay, or to aim at any other architectural purpose but the exclusion of wind and rain, we are utterly at a loss to conceive. Such an expense is not only lamentable for the waste of property it makes in the particular instance, but because it destroys that guarantee of sound sense which the government at home must require in those who preside over distant colonies \ man who thinks of pillars and pilasters, when half the colony are wet through for want of any covering at all, cannot be a wise or pru dent person. He seems to be ignorant, thai the prevention of rheumatism in all young colonies is a much more important object than the gratification of taste, or the display of skill. "I suggested to Governor Macqliarrie the ex pediency of stopping all work then in progress that was merely of an ornamental nature, and of postponing its execution till other more im- 180 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. portant buildings were finished. With this view it was, that I recommended to the go- vernor to stop the progress of a large church, the foundation of which had been laid pre- vious to my arrival, and which, by the esti- mate of Mr. Greenway the architect, would have required six years to complete. By a change that I recommended, and which the governor adopted, in the destination of the new court-house at Sydney, the accommodation of a new church is probably by this time secured. As I conceived that considerable advantage had been gained by inducing Go- vernor Macquarrie to suspend the progress of the larger church, I did not deem it necessary to make any pointed objection to the addition of these ornamental parts of the smaller one; though I regretted to observe in this instance, as well as in those of the new stables at Syd- ney, the turnpike-gate house and the new fountain there, as well as in the repairs of an old church at Paramatta, how much more the embellishment of these places had been consi- dered by the governor than the real and press- ing wants of the colony. The buildings that I had recommended to his early attention in Sydney were, a new gaol, a school-house, and a market-house. The defects of the first of these buildings will be more particularly pointed out when I come to describe the build- ings that have been erected in New South Wales. It is sufficient for me now to observe, that they were striking, and of a nature not to be remedied by additions or repairs. The other two were in a state of absolute ruin; they were also of undeniable importance and necessity. Having left Sydney in the month of November, 1820, with these impressions, and with a belief that the suggestions I had made to Governor Macquarrie respecting them had been partly acted upon, and would con- tinue to be so during my absence in Van Die- men's Land, it was not without much surpi'ise and regret that I learnt, during my residence in that settlement, the resumption of the work at the large church in Sydney, and the steady continuation of the others that I had objected to, especially the governor's stables at Sydney. I felt the greater surprise in receiving the in- formation respecting this last-mentioned struc- ture, during my absence in Van Diemen's Land, as the governor himself had, upon many occasions, expressed to me his own regret at having ever sanctioned it, and his consciousness of its extravagant dimensions and ostentatious character." — Report, pp. 51, Ji2. One of the great difficulties in Botany Bay is to find proper employment for the great mass of convicts M-ho are sent out. Governor Macquarrie selects all the best artisans, of every description, for the use of government; and puts the poets, attorneys, and politicians, up to auction. Tlie evil consequences of this are manifold. In the first place, from possess- ing so many of the best artificers, the gover- nor is necessarily turned into a builder; and immense drafts are drawn upon the treasury at home, for buildings better adapted for Re- gent street than the Bay. In the next place, the poor settler, finding that the convict attor- ney is very awkward at cutting timber, or catching kangaroos, soon returns him upon the hands of government, in a much worse plight than that in which he was received. Not only are governors thus debauched into useless and expensive builders, but the colo- nists, who are scheming and planning with all the activity of new settlers, cannot find work- men to execute their designs. What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia? — what event more aw- fully important to an English colony than the erection of its first brewhouse 1 — and yet it required, in Van Diemen's land, the greatest solicitation to the government, and all the in- fluence of Mr. Bigge, to get it effijcted. The government, having obtained possession of the best workmen, keep them ; their manu- mission is much more infrequent than that of the useless and unprofitable convicts; in other words, one man is punished for his skill, and another rewarded for his inutility. Guilty of being a locksmith — guilty of stone-masonry, or brick-making; — these are the second ver- dicts brought in, in New South Wales ; and upon them is regulated the duration or miti- gation of punishment awarded in the mother country. At the very period when the gover- nor assured Lord Bathurst, in his despatches, that he kept and employed so numerous a gang of workmen, only because the inhabit- ants could not employ them, Mr. Bigge in- forms us, that their services would have been most acceptable to the colonists. Most of the settlers, at the time of Mr. Bigge's arrival, from repeated refusals and disappointments, had been so convinced of the impossibility of obtaining workmen, that they had ceased to make application to the governor. Is it to be believed that a governor, placed over a land of convicts, and capable of guarding his limbs from any sudden collision with odometrous stones, or vertical posts of direction, should make no distinction between the simple con- vict and the double and treble convict — the man of three juries, who has three times ap- peared at the Bailey, trilarcenous — three times driven over the seas ? " I think it necessary to notice the want of attention that has prevailed, until a very late period, at Sydney, to the circumstances of those convicts who have been transported a second and a third time. Although the know- ledge of these facts is transmitted to the hulk- lists, or acquired witlu)ut difficulty during the passage, it never has occurred to Governor Macquarrie or to the superintendent of con- victs, to make any difference in the condition of these men, not even to disappoint the views that they may be supposed to have indulged by the success of a criminal enterprise in Eng- land, and by transferring the fruits of it to New South Wales. "To accomplish this very simple but im- portant object, nothing more is necessary than to consign these men to any situation rather than that which their friends had selected for them, and distinctly to declare in the presence of their comrades at the first muster on their arrival, that no consideration or favour woub' be shown to those who had violated the law a WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 181 second time, and that the mitigation of their sentences must be indefinitely postponed." Report, p. 19. We were not a little amused at Governor Macquarrie's laureate — a regular Mr. Southey — who, upon the king's birth-day, sings the praises of Governor Macquarrie.* The case of this votary of Apollo and Mercury was a case for life ; the offence a menacing epistle, or, as low people call it, a ihreatening kiter. He has been pardoned, however — bursting his shackles, like Orpheus of old, with song and metre, and is well spoken of by Mr. Bigge, but no specimen of his poetry given. Oneof the best and most enlightened men in the set- tlement appears to be Mr. Marsden, a clergy- man at Paramatta. Mr. Bennet represents him as a gentleman of great feeling, Avhose life is embittered by the scenes of horror and vice it is his lot to witness at Paramatta. In- deed, he says of himself, that, in consequence of these things, " he does not enjoy one happy moment from the beginning to the end of the week !" This letter, at the time, produced a very considerable sensation in this countr}'. The idea of a man of refinement and feeling wearing away his life in the midst of scenes of crime and debauchery to which he can apply no corrective, is certainly a very me- lancholy and aftecting picture ; but there is no story, however elegant and eloquent, which does not require, for the purposes of justice, to be turned to the other side, and viewed in reverse. The Rev. Mr. Marsden (says Mr. Bigge), ht'mg himself accustomed to traffic in spirits, must necessarily feel displeased at having so many public houses licensed in the neighbourhood. — (p. 14.) "As to Mr. Marsden's troubles of mind (says the governor), and pathetic display of sensibility and humanity, they must be so deeply seated, and so far removed from the surface, as to escape all possible observation. His habits are those of a man for ever en- gaged in some active, animated pursuit. No man travels more from town to town, or from house to house. His deportment is at all times that of a person the most gay and happy. When I was honoured with his society, he was by far the most cheerful person I met in the colony. Where his hours of sorrow were spent, it is hard to divine ; for the variety of his pursuits, both in his own concerns, and in those of others, is so extensive, in farming, grazing, manufactories, transactions, that, with his clerical duties, he seems, to use a common phrase, to have his hands full of work. And the particular subject to which he imputes this extreme depression of mind, is, besides, one for which few people here will give him much credit."— Macquarrie's Letter to Lord Sid- mouth, p. 18. There is certainly a wide difference between a man of so much feeling that he has not a moment's happiness from the beginning to the end of the week, and a little, merry, bustling clergyman, largely concerned in the sale of rum, and brisk at a bargain for barley. Mr. Bigge's evidence, however, is very much in f^ide Report, p. 146. favour of Mr. Marsden. He seems to think him a man of highly respectable character and superior understanding, and that he has been dismissed from the magistracy by Gover- nor Macquarrie, in a very rash, unjustifiable, and even tyrannical manner; and in tliese opinions, we must say, the facts seem to bear out the report of the commissioner. Colonel Macquarrie not only dismisses ho- nest and irreproachable men in a country where their existence is scarce, and their ser- vices inestimable, but he advances convicts to the situation and dignity of magistrates. Mr. Bennet lays great stress upon this, and makes it one of his strongest charges against the governor; and the commissioner also takes part against it. But we confess we have great doubts on the subject; and are by no means satisfied that the system of the go- vernor was not, upon the whole, the wisest and best adapted to the situation of the colony. Men are governed by words ; and by the infa- mous word convict are comprehended crimes of the most different degrees and species of guilt. One man is transported for stealing three hams and a pot of sausages ; and in the next berth to him on board the transport is a young surgeon, who has been engaged in the mutiny at the Nore ; the third man is for ex- torting money ; the fourth was in a respecta- ble situation of life at the time of the Irish rebellion, and was so ill read in history as to imagine that Ireland had been ill-treated by England, and so bad a reasoner as to suppose that nine Catholics ought not to pay tithes to one Protestant. Then comes a man who set his house on fire, to cheat the Phosnix office ; and, lastly, the mo3t glaring of all human vil- lains, a poacher, driven from Europe, wife and child, by thirty lords of manors, at the Quarter Sessions, for killing a partridge. Now, all these are crimes no doubt — particularly the last ; but they are surely crimes of very dif- ferent degrees of intensity, to which different degrees of contempt and horror are attached — and from which those who have committed them may, by subsequent morality, emanci- pate themselves, with different degrees of diffi- culty, and with more or less of success. A warrant granted by a reformed bacon stealer wcAild be absurd ; but there is hardly any rea- son why a foolish, hot-brained young block- head, who chose to favour the mutineers at the Nore, when he was sixteen years of age, may not make a very loyal subject, and a ve'ry respectable and respected magistrate when he is forty years of age, and has cast his Jacobin teeth, and fallen into the practical jobbing and loyal baseness which so commonly developes itself about that period of life. Therefore, to say that a man must be placed in no situation of trust or elevation, as a magistrate, merely because he is a convict, is to govern mankind with a dictionary, and to surrender sense and usefulness to sound. Take the following case, for instance, from Mr. Bigge : — " The next person, from the same class, that was so distinguished by Governor Macquarrie, was the Rev. Mr. Fulton. He was transported by the sentence of a court martial in Ireland, during the Rebellion ; and on his arrival in Q WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. New South Wales in the year 1800, was sent to Norfolk Island to ofliciate as chaplain. He returned to New South Wales in the year 1804, and performed the duties of chaplain at Sydney and Paramatta. " In the divisions that prevailed in the colo- ny previous to the arrest of Governor Bligh, Mr. Fulton took no part; but, happening to form one of his family when the person of the governor was menaced with violence, he cou- rageously opposed himself to the military party that entered the house, and gave an ex- ample of courage and devotion to the authority of Governor Bligh, which, if partaken either by the officer or his few adherents, would have spared him the humiliation of a personal arrest, and rescued his authority from the dis- grace of open and violent suspension." — Re- port, pp. 83, 84. The particular nature of the place, too, must be remembered. It is seldom, we suspect, that absolute dunces go to the Bay, but com- monly men of active minds, and considerable talents in their various lines — who have not learnt, indeed, the art of self-discipline and control, but who are sent to learn it in the bitter school of adversity. And when this medicine produces its proper effect — when sufficient time has been given to show a tho- rough change in character and disposition — a young colony really cannot afford to dispense with the services of any person of superior talents. Activity, resolution, and acuteness, are of such immense importance in the hard circumstances of a new state, that they must be eagerly caught at, and employed as soon as they are discovered. Though all may not be quite so unobjectionable as could be wished — " Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri"— as Colonel Macquarrie probably quoted to Mr. Commissioner Bigge. As for the conduct of those extra-moralists, who come to settle in a land of crime, and refuse to associate with a convict legally pardoned, however light his original offence, however perfect his subse- quent conduct — we have no toleration for such folly and foppery. To sit down to dinner Avith men who have not been tried for their lives is a luxury which cannot be enjoyed in such a country. It is entirely out of the question ; and persons so dainty, and so truly admira,ble, had better settle at Clapham Common than at Botany Bay. Our trade in Australasia is to turn scoundrels into hone n men. If 3'ou come among us, and bring with you a good charac- ter, and will lend us your society, as a stimu- lus and reward to men recovering from degra- dation, you will confer the greatest possible Ijenefit upon the colony ; but if you turn up your nose at repentance, insult those unhappy people with your character, and fiercely stand up as a moral bully, and a virtuous braggado- cio, it would have been far better for us if Providence had directed yo.u to any other part of the globe than to Botany Bay — which was colonized, not to gratify the insolence of Pha- risees, but to heal the contrite spirit of repent- ant sinners. Mr. Marsden, who has no hap- piness from six o'clock Monday morning, till the same hour the week following, will not meet pardoned convicts in society. We have no doubt Mr. Marsden is a very respectable clergyman ; but is there not something very different from this in the Gospel 1 The most resolute and inflexible persons in the rejection of pardoned convicts were some of the march- ing regiments stationed at Botany Bay — men, of course, who had uniformly shunned, in the Old World, the society of gamesters, prosti- tutes, drunkards, and blasphemers — who had ruined no tailors, corrupted no wives, and had entitled themselves, by a long course of so- lemnity and decorum, to indulge in all the in- solence of purity and virtue. In this point, then, of restoring convicts to society, we side, as far as the principle goes, with the governor; but we are far from under- taking to say that his application of the prin- ciple has been on all occasions prudent and judicious. Upon the absurdity of his con- duct in attempting to force the society of the pardoned convicts upon the undetected part of the colony, there can be no doubt. These are points upon which eveiy body must be allowed to judge for themselves. The great- est monarchs of Europe cannot control opinion upon those points — sovereigns far exceeding Colonel Lachlan Macquarrie, in the antiquity of their dynasty, and the extent, wealth, and importance of their empire. " It was in vain to assemble them" (the par- doned convicts), " even on public occasions, at Government House, or to point them out to the especial notice and favour of strangers, or to favour them with particular marks of his own attention upon these occasions, if they still continued to be shunned, or disregarded by the rest of the company. " With the exception of the Reverend Mr. Fulton, and, on some occasions, of Mr. Red- fern, I never observed that the other persons of this class participated in the general atten- tions of the company; and the evidence of Mr. Judge-Advocate Wylde and Major Bell both prove the embarrassment in which they were left on occasions that came within their notice. " Nor has the distinction that has been con- ferred upon them by Governor Macquarrie produced any effect in subduing the prejudices or objections of the class of free inhabitants to associate with them. One instance only has occurred, in which the wife of a respecta- ble individual, and a magistrate, has been visited by the wives of the officers of the gar- rison, and by a few of the married ladies of the colony. It is an instance that reflects equal credit upon the individual herself, as upon the feelings and motives of those by whom she has been so noticed; but the cir- cumstances of her case were very peculiar, and those that led to her introduction to society jrere very much of a personal kind. It has 'generally been thought, that such instances would have been more numerous if Governor Macquarrie had allowed every person to have followed the dictates of their own judgment upon a subject, on which, of all others, men are least disposed to be dictated to, and most disposed to judge for themselves. WORKS OF THE RE\". SYDNEY SMITH. 183 " Although the emancipated convicts, whom j he has selected from their class, are persons who generally bear a good character in New South Wales, j^et that opinion of them is by no means universal. Those, however, who entertained a good opinion of them would have proved it by their notice, as Mr. M'Arthur has been in the habit of doing, by the kind and marked notice that he took of Mr. Fitzgerald ; and those who entertained a different opinion, would not have contracted an aversion to the principle of their introduction, from being obliged to witness what they considered to be an indiscreet and erroneous application of it." — Report, p. 150. We do not think Mr. Bigge exactly seizes the sense of Colonel Macquarrie's phrase, when the colonel speaks of restoring men to the rank of society they have lost. Men may either be classed by wealth and education, or by character. All honest men, M'hether counts or cobblers, are of the same rank, if classed by moral distinctions. It is a common phrase to say that such a man can no longer be ranked among honest men; that he has been degraded from the class of respectable per- sons ; and, therefore, by restoring a convict to the rank he has lost, the governor may very fairly be supposed to mean the moral rank. In discussing the question of granting offices of trust to convicts, the importance of the Scekrafi must not be overlooked. Their num- bers are very considerable. They have one- eighth of all the granted land in the colony ; and there are among them individuals of very large fortune. Mr. Redfern has 2600 acres, Mr. Lord 4365 acres, and Mr. Samuel Terry 19,000 acres. As this man's history is a spe- cimen of the mud and dirt out of which great families often arise, let the Terry Filii, the future warriors, legislators, and nobility of the Bay, learn from what, and whom, they sprang. " The first of these individuals, Samuel Terry, was transported to the colony when young. He was placed in a gang of stone- masons at Paramatta, and assisted in the building of the gaol. Mr. Marsden states, that during this period he was brought before him for neglect of duty, and punished ; but, by his industry in other ways, he was enabled to set up a small retail shop, in which he continued till the expiration of his term of service. He then repaired to Sydney, where he extended his business, and, by marriage, increased his capital. He for many years kept a public house and retail shop, to which the smaller settlers resorted from the country, and where, after intoxicating themselves with spirits, they signed obligations and powers of attorney to confess judgment, which were always kept ready for execution. By these means, and by an active use of the common arts of over- reaching ignorant and worthless men, Samuel Terry has been able to accumulate a consider- able capital, and a quantity of land in New South Wales, inferior only to that which is held by Mr. D'Arcy Wentworth. He ceased, at the late regulations introduced by the ma- gistrates at Sydney, in February, 1820, to sell spirituous liquors, and he is now become one of the principal speculators in the purchase of investments at Sydney, and lately esta- blished a water-mill in the swampy plains be- tween that town and Botany Bay, which did not succeed. Out of the 19,000 acres of land held by Samuel Terr)^ 140 only are said to be cleared; but he possesses 1450 head of horned cattle, and 3800 sheep." — Report, p. 141. Upon,. the subject of the New South Wales Bank, Mr. Bigge observes, — "Upon the first of these occasions, it became an object both with Governor Macquarrie and Mr. Judge-Advocate Wyld, who took an active part in the establishment of the bank, to unite m its favour the support and contributions of the individuals of all classes of the colony. Governor Macquarrie felt assured that, without such co-operation, the bank could not be esta- blished; for he was convinced that the eman- cipated convicts were the most opulent mem- bers of the community. A committee was formed for the purpose of drawing up the rules and i-egulations of the establishment, in which are to be found the names of George Howe, the printer of the Sydney Gazette, who was also a retail dealer; Mr. Simon Lord, and Mr. Edward Eager, all emancipated convicts, and the last only conditionally. " Governor Macquarrie had always under- stood, and strongly wished, that in asking for the co-operation of all classes of the commu- nity in the formation of the bank, a share in its direction and management should also be communicated to them." — Report, p. 150. In the discussion of this question, we be- came acquainted with a piece of military etiquette, of which we were previously igno- rant. An officer, invited to dinner by the governor, cannot refuse, unless in case of sickness. This is the most complete tyranny we ever heard of. If the officer comes out to his duty at the proper minute, with his proper number of buttons and epaulettes, what mat- ters it to the governor or any body else, where he dines 1 He may as well be ordered what to eat, as where to dine — be confined to the upper or under side of the meat — be denied grav}', or refused melted butter. But there is no end to the small tyranny and puerile vexa- tions of a military life. The mode of employing convicts upon their arrival appears to us very objectionable. If a man is skilful as a mechanic, he is added to the government gangs ; and in proportion to his skill and diligence, his chance of manu- mission, or of remission of labour, is lessened. If he is not skilful, or not skilful in any trade wanted by government, he is applied for by some settler, to whom he pays from 5s. to 10s. a Aveek; and is then left at liberty to go where, and work for whomsoever, he pleases. In the same manner, a convict who is rich is applied for, and obtains his weekly liberty and idle- ness by the purchased permission of the per- son to whom he is consigned. The greatest possible inattention or igno- rance appears to have prevailed in manumit- ting convicts for labour — and for such labour! not for cleansing Augean stables, or drain'rg 184 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Pontine marshes, or clamming out a vast length of the Adriatic, but for working five weeks with a single horse and cart in making the road to Bathurst Plains. Was such labour worth five pounds'? And is it to be under- stood, that liberty is to be restored to any man who will do five pounds' worth of work in Australasia] Is this comment upon trans- portation to be circulated in the cells of New- gate, or in the haunts of those persons who are doomed to inhabit them ] "Another principle by which Governor Macquarrie has been guided in bestowing pardons and indulgences, is that of considering them as rewards for any particular labour or enterprise. It was upon this principle, that the men who were emplo3'ed in working upon the Bathurst road, in the year 1815, and those who contributed to that operation by the loan of their own carts and horses, or of those that they procured, obtained pardons, emancipa- tions, and tickets of leave. To 39 men who were employed as labourers in this work, three free pardons were given, one ticket of leave, and 35 emancipations ; and two of them only had held tickets of leave before they com- menced their labour. Seven convicts received emancipations for supplying horses and carts for the carriage of provisions and stores as the party was proceeding; six out of this number having previously held tickets of leave. "Eight other convicts (four of whom held tickets of leave) received emancipations for assisting with carts, and one horse to each, in the transport of provisions and baggage for the use of Governor Macquarrie and his suite, on their journey from the river Nepean to Bathurst, in the year 1816; a service that did not extend beyond the period of five weeks, and was attended with no risk, and very little exertion. "Between the months of Januar\% 1816, and June, 1818, nine convicts, of whom six held tic-iets of leave, obtained emancipations for sending carts and horses to convey provisions and baggage from Paramatta to Bathurst, for the use of Mr. Oxley, the surveyor-general, in his *\vo expeditions into the interior of the couiitry. And in the same period, 23 convict labourers and mechanics obtained emancipa- tions for labour and service performed at Bathurst. "The nature of the services performed by these convicts, and the manner in which some of them were recommended, excited much surprise in the colony, as Avell as great suspi- cion of the purity of the channels through which the recommendations passed." — Report, pp. 122, 123. If we are to judge from the number of jobs detected by Mr. Bigge, Botany Bay seems very likely to do justice to the mother-country from whence it sprang. Mr. Redfern, surgeon, seems to use the public i-hubarb for his pri- vate practice. Mr. Hutchinson, superintend- ent, makes a very comfortable thing of the assignment of convicts. Major Druit was lound selling their own cabbages to goveru- mcnt in a very profitable manner; and many comfortable little practices of this nature are noticed by Mr. Bigge. Among other sources of profit, the superin- tendent of convicts was the banker ; two occupations wliich seem to be eminently com- patible with each other, inasmuch as they afford to the superintendent the opportunity of evincing his impartiality and loading with equal labour every convict, without reference to their banking accounts, to the profit they afford, or the trouble they create. It appears, however (very strangely), from the report, that the money of convicts was not always recovered with the same readiness it was received. , Mr. Richard Fitzgerald, in September, 1819, was comptroller of provisions in Emu Plains, storekeeper at Windsor, and superintendent of government works at the saine place. He was also a proprietor of land and stock in the neighbourhood, and kept a public house in Windsor, of which an emancipated Jew was the ostensible manager, upon whom Fitzgerald gave orders for goods and spirits in payment for labour on the public works. These two places are fifteen miles distant from each other, and convicts are to be watched and managed at both. It cannot be imagined that the convicts are slow in observing or follow- ing these laudable examples; and their con- duct will add another instance of the vigilance of Macquarrie's government. "The stores and materials used in the dif- ferent buildings at Sydney are kept in a ma- gazine in the lumber yard, and are distributed according to the written requisitions of the different overseers that are made during the day, and that are addressed to the storekeeper in "the lumber yard. They are conveyed from thence to the buildings by the convict mecha- nics; and no account of the expenditure or employment of the stores is kept by the over- seers, or rendered to the storekeeper. It was only in the early part of the year 1820 that an account was opened by him of the different materials used in each work or building; and in February, 1821, this account was consider- ably in arrear. The temptation, therefore, that is afforded to the convict mechanics who work in the lumber yard, in secreting tools, stores, and implements, and to those who work at the different buildings, is very great, and the loss to government is considerable. The tools, moreover, have not latterly been mus- tered as they used to be once a month, except where one of the convicts is removed from Sydney to another station." — Report, pp. 36, 37. If it was right to build fine houses in a new colony, common sense seems to point out a control upon the expenditure, with such a de- scription of workmen. What luust become of that country where the buildings are use- less, the governor not wise, the public the paymaster, the accounts not in existence, and all the artisans thieves 1 An horrid practice prevailed, of the convicts accepting a sum of money from the captain, in their voyage out, in lieu of their regular WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 185 ration of provisions. This ought to be re- strained by the severest penalties. What is it that can be urged for Governor Macquarrie, after the following picture of the hospital at Paramatta? It not only justifies his recall, but seems to require (if there are means of reaching such neglect) his severe punishment. " The women, who had become most pro- fligate and hardened by habit, were associated in" their daily tasks with those who had very lately arrived, to whom the customs and practices of the colony were yet unknown, and who might have escaped the consequences of such pernicious lessons, if a little care, and a small portion of expense, had been spared in providing them with a separate apartment during the hours of labour. As a place of employment, the factory of Paramatta was not only very defective, but very prejudicial. The insufficient accommodation that it afibrded to those females who might be well disposed presented an early incitement, if not an ex- cuse, for their resorting to indiscriminate prostitiition ; and on the evening of their arrival at Paramatta, those who were not deploring their state of abandonment and dis- tress, were traversing the streets in search of the guilty means of future support. The state in which the place itself was kept, and the state of disgusting filth in which I found it, both on an early visit after my arrival, and on one preceding my departure ; the disordered, unruly, and licentious appearance of the women, manifested the little degree of control in which the female convicts were kept, and the little attention that was paid to any thing beyond the mere performance of a certain portion of labour." — Report, p. 70. It might naturally be supposed, that any man sent across the globe with a good salary, for the express purpose of governing, and, if possible, of reforming convicts, would have preferred the morals of his convicts to the accommodation of his horses. Let Mr. Bigge, a very discreet and moderate man, be heard upon these points. "Having observed, in Governor Macquarrie's answer to Mr. Marsden, that he justified the delay that occurred, and was still to take place, in the construction of a proper place of recep- tion for the female convicts, by the vv'ant of any specific instructions from your lordship to undertake such a building, and which he states that he solicited at an early period of nis government, and considered indispensable, I felt it to be my duty to call to the recollection of Governor Macquarrie, that he had under- taken several buildings of much less urgent necessity than the factory at Paramatta, with- out waiting for any such indispensable author- ity: and I now find that the construction of it was announced by him to your lordship in the year 1817, as then in his contemplation, with- out making any specific allusion to the evils which the want of it had so long occasioned; that the contract for building it was announced to the public on the 21st May, 1818, and that your lordship's approval of it was not signified until the 24th August, 1818, and could not 34 have reached Governor Macquarrie's hands until nearly a year after the work had been undertaken. It appears, therefore, that if want of authority had been the sole cause of the delay in building the factory at Paramatta, that cause would not only have operated in the month of March, 1818, but it would have con- tinued to operate until the want of authority had been formally supplied. Governor Mac- quarrie, however, must be conscious, that after he had stated to Mr. Marsden in the year 1815, and with an appearance of regret, that the want of authority prevented him from under- taking the construction of a building of such undeniable necessity and importance as the factory at Paramatta, he had undertaken sev- eral buildings, which, though useful in them- selves, were of less comparative importance; and had commenced, in the month of August, 1817, the laborious and expensive construction nf his own stables at Sydney, to which I have already alluded, without any previous commu- nication to your lordship, and in direct oppo- sition to an instruction that must have then reached him, and that forcibly warned him of the consequences." — Report, p. 71. It is the fashion very much among the tories of the House of Commons, and all those who love the efiects of public liberty, without know- ing or caring how it is preserved, to attack every person who complains of abuses, and to accuse him of gross exaggeration. No sooner is the name of any public thief, or of any tor- mentor, or oppressor, mentioned in that hon- ourable house, than out bursts the spirit of jobbing eulogium, and there is not a virtue under heaven which is not ascribed to the de- linquent in question, and vouched for by the most irrefragable testimony. If Mr. Bennet or Sir Francis Burdett had attacked them, and they had now been living, how many honour- able members would have vouched for the honesty of Dudley and Empson, the gentleness of Jeff'ries, or the genius of Blackmore ] What human virtue did not Aris and the governor of Ilchester gaol possess 1 Who was not ready to come forward to vouch for the attentive humanity of Governor Macquarrie 1 What scorn and wit would it have produced from the treasury bench, if Mr. Bennet had stated the superior advantages of the horses over the convicts'! — and all the horrors and immorali- ties, the filth and wretchedness, of the female prison of Paramatta 1 Such a case, proved as this now is beyond the power of contradic- tion, ought to convince the most hardy and profligate scoffers, that there is really a great deal of occasional neglect and oppression in the conduct of public servants; and that in spite of all the official praise, which is ever ready for the perpetrators of crime, there is a great deal of real malversation which should be dragged to the light of day, by the exertions of bold and virtuous men. If we had found, from the report of Mr. Bigge, that the charges of Mr. Bennet were without any, or without adequate foundation, it would have given us great pleasure to have vindicated the governor; but Mr. Bennet has proved his indictment. It is impossible to read the foregoing quotation, 186 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. and not to perceive that the conduct and pro- 1 ceedings of Governor Macquarrie imperiously required the exposure tliey have received ; and | that it -n-ould have been much to the credit of i government if he had been removed long ago ; from a situation -n-hich, but for the exertions of Mr. Bennet, we believe he would have held to this day. The sick, from Mr. Bigge's report, appear to have fared as badly as the sinful. Good water was scarce, proper persons to wait upon the patients could not be obtained; and so nu- merous were the complaints from this quarter, that the governor makes an order for tlie ex- clusion of all hospital grievances and com- plaints, except on one day in the month — dropsy swelling, however, fever burning, and ague shaking, in the mean lime, without waiting for the arrangements of Governor Macquarrie, or consulting the Mollia tempora fandi. In permitting individuals to distil their own grain, the government of Botany Bay appears to us to be quite right. It is impossible, in such a colony, to prevent unlawful distillation to a considerable extent; and it is as well to raise upon spirits (as something must be taxed) that slight duty which renders the con- traband trade not worth following. Distilla- tion, too, always insures a magazine against famine, by which IS'ew South Wales has more than once been severely visited. It opens a market for grain where markets are very dis- tant, and where redundance and famine seem very often to succeed each other. The cheap- ness of spirits, to such working people as know how to use them with moderation, is a great blessing; and we doubt whether that modera- tion, after the first burst of ebriet}-, is not just as likely to be learnt in plenty as in scarcitA'. We were a little surprised at the scanty limits allowed to convicts for sleeping on board the transports. Mr. Bigge (of whose sense and humanity we really have not the slightest doubt) states eighteen inches to be quite sutR- cient — twice the length of a small sheet of letter-paper. The printer's devil, who carries our works to the press, informs us, that the allowance to the demons of the type is double foolscap length, or twenty-four inches. The great cit}- upholsterers generally consider six feet as barely sufficient for a person just rising in business, and assisting occasionally at offi- cial banquets. Mrs. Fry's* system is well spoken of by Mr. Bigge ; and its useful effect in promotin? order and decency among floating convicts fully ad- mitted. * We are sorry it should have been imasined, from some of our late observations on prison discipline, that we meant to disparage the exertions of Mrs. Fry. For prisoners before trial, it is perfect ; but where imprison- ment is intended for punishment, and not for detention, it requires, as we have endeavoured to show, a very different system. The Prison Society (an excellent, ho- nourable, and most useful institution of some of the best men in England) have certainly, in their first numbers, fallen into the common mistake of supposing that the re- formation of the culprit, and not the prevention of the crime, was the main object of imprisonment ; and have, in consequence, taken some false views of the method of treating prisoners— the exposition of which, after the usual manner of flesh and blood, makes them a little angry. But, in objects of so high a nature, what matters vho is right— the only question is, what is right f In a voyage to Botan) Ba} by Mr. Read, he states that, winle the convict vessel lay at anchor, about to sail, a boat from shore reached the ship, and from it stepped a clerk of the Bank of England. The convicts felicitated themselves upon the acquisition of so gentle- man-like a companion; but it soon turned out that the visitant had no intention of making so long a voyage. Finding that thej* were not to have the pleasure of his compan)-, the convicts very naturally thought of picking his pockets ; the necessity of which professional measure was prevented by a speedy distribution of their contents. Forth from his hill-case, this votary of Plutus drew his nitid Newlaads ; all the forgers and utterers were mustered on deck; and to each of them was well and truly paid into his hand a five pound note ; less accepta- ble, perhaps, than if privately removed from the person, but still joyfully received. This was well intended on the part of the directors: but the consequences it is scarcely necessary to enumerate; a large stock of mm was im- mediately laid in from the circumamtjieni slop boats; and the materials of constant intoxica- tion secured for the rest of the voyage. The following account of pastoral convicts is striking and picturesque : — "I obserA-ed that a great many of the con victs in Van Diemen's Land wore jackets ana trowsers of the kangaroo skin, and sometimes caps of the same material, which they obtain from the stock-keepers who are emplov-ed in the interior of the countrj-. The labour of se- veral of them diffisrs, in this respect, from that of the convicts in New South Wales, and is rather pastoral than agricultural. Permission having been given, for the last five years, to the settlers to avail themselves of the ranges of open plains and valleys that he on eitlier side of the road leading from Austin's Ferry to Launceston, a distance of 120 miles, their flocks and herds have been committed to the care of convict shepherds and stock-keepers, who are sent to these cattle ranges, distant sometimes thirty or forty miles from their mas- ters' estates. "The boundaries of these tracts are de- scribed in the tickets of occupation by which they are held, and which are made renewable every year, on payment of a fee to the lieute- nant governor's clerk. One or more convicts are stationed on them, to attend to the flocks and cattle, and are supplied with wheat, tea, and sugar, at the monthly visits of the owner. They are allowed the use of a musket and a few cartridges to defend themselves against the natives ; and they have also dogs, with which they hunt the kangaroos, whose flesh they eat, and dispose of their skins to persons passing from Hobart Town to Launceston, in exchange for tea and sugar. They thus obtain a plentiful supply of food, and sometimes suc- ceed in cultivating a ie^ vegetables. Their habitations are made of turf and thatched, as the bark of the dwarf eucahTJtus, or gum-trees of the plains ; and the interior, in Van Die- men's Land, is not of sufficient expanse to form covering or shelter." — Report, pp. 107, 108. A London thief, clothed in kangaroo's skins, WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 187 lodged under the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, I and keeping sheep, fourteen thousand miles from Piccadilly, with a crook bent into the shape of a picklock, is not an uninteresting I picture ; and an engraving of it might have a very salutary effect — provided no engraving were made of his convict master, to whom the sheep belong. Tlie Maroon Indians were hunted by dogs — the fugitive convicts are recovered by the natives. "The native blacks that inhabit the neigh- bourhood of Port Hunter and Port Stephens have become very active in retaking the fugi- tive convicts. They accompany the soldiers who are sent in pursuit, and, by the extraordi- nary strength of sight they possess, improved by their daily exercise of it in pursuit of kan- garoos and opossums, they can trace to a great distance, and with wonderful accuracy, the impressions of the human foot. Nor are they afraid of meeting the fugitive convicts in the woods, when sent in their pursuit, without the soldiers ; by their skill in throwing their long and pointed wooden darts, they wound and disable them, strip them of their clothes, and bring them back as prisoners, by un- known roads and paths, to the Coal river. "They are rewarded for these enterprizes by presents of maize and blankets ; and, not- withstanding the apprehensions of revenge from the convicts whom they bring back, they continue to live in Newcastle and its neigh- bourhood ; but are observed to prefer the so- ciety of the soldiers to that of the convicts." — Report, p. 117. Of the convicts in New South Wales, Mr. Bigge found about eight or nine in an hundred to be persons of respectable character and conduct, though the evidence respecting them is not quite satisfactory. But the most strik- ing and consolatory passage in the whole re- port is the following : — " The marriages of the native-born youths with female convicts are very rare ; a circum- stance that is attributable to the general disin- clination to early marriage that is observable amongst them, and partly to the abandoned and dissolute habits of the female convicts; but chiefly to a sense of pride in the native- born youths, approaching to contempt for the vices and depravity of the convicts, even when manifested in the persons of their own pa- rents." — Report, p. 105. Every thing is to be expected from these feelings. They convey to the mother-country the first proof that the foundations of a mighty empire are laid. We were somewhat surprised to find Go- vernor Macquarrie contending with Mr. Bigge, that it was no part of his, the governor's duty, to select and separate the useless from the useful convicts, or to determine, except in par- ticular cases, to whom they are to be assigned. In other words, he wishes to effect the cus- tomary separation of salary and duty — the grand principle which appears to pervade all human institutions, and to be the most invin- cible of all human abuses. Not only are church, king, and state, allured by this prin- ciple of vicarious labour, but the pot-boy has a lower pot-boy, who, for a small portion of the small gains of his principal, arranges, with inexhaustible sedulity, the subdivided portions of drink, and, intensely perspiring, disperses, in bright pewter, the frothy elements of joy. There is a very awkward story of a severe flogging inflicted upon three freemen by Go- vernor Macquarrie, without complaint to, or intervention of, any magistrate ; a fact not de- nied by the governor, and for which no ade- quate apology, nor any thing approaching to an adequate apology, is offered. These Asiatic and Satrapical proceedings, however, we have reason to think, are exceedingly disrelished by London juries. The profits of having been unjustly flogged at Botany Bay (Scarlett for the plaintiff ) is good property, and would fetch a very considerable sum at the auction mart. The governor, in many instances, appears to have confounded diversity of opinion upon particular measures, with systematic opposi- tion to his government, and to have treated as disaffected persons those whom, in favourite measures, he could not persuade by his argu- ments, nor influence by his example, and on points where every man has a right to judge for himself, and where authority has no legi- timate right to interfere, much less to dictate. To the charges confirmed by the statement of Mr. Bigge, Mr. Bennet adds, from the evidence collected by the gaol committee, that the fees in the governor's court, collected by the au- thority "of the governor, are most exorbitant and oppressive; and that illegal taxes are col- lected under the sole authority of the governor. It has been made, by colonial regulations, a capital offence to steal the wild cattle ; and, in 1816, three persons were convicted of stealing a wild bull, the property of our sovereign lord the king. Now our sovereign lord the king (whatever be his other merits or demerits) is certainly a very good-natured man, and would be the first to lament that an unhappy convict was sentenced to death for killing one of his wild bulls on the other side of the world. The cases of Mr. Moore and of William Stewart, as quoted by Mr. Bennet, are very strong. If they are answerable, they should be answered. The concluding letter to'Mr. Stewart is, to us, the most decisive proof of the unfitness of Colonel Macquarrie for the situation in which he was placed. The ministry at home, after the authenticity of the letter was proved, should have seized upon the first decent pretext of recalling the governor, of thanking him, in the name of his sovereign, for his valuable ser- vices (not omitting his care of the wild bulls), and of dismissing him to lialf pay — and in- significance. As to the trial by jur3% we cannot agree with Mr. Bennet, that it would be right to introduce it at present, for reasons we have given in a previous article, and which we see no reason for altering. The time of course will come when it would be in the highest degree unjust and absurd to refuse to that settlement the be- nefit of popular institutions. But they are too young, too few, and too deficient for such civi- lized machinery at present. " I cannot come to WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. serve upon the jnry — the waters of the Hawks- bury are out, and I have a mile to swim— the kan- garoos will break into my corn — the convicts have robbed me — my little boy has been bitten by an ornithorynchus paradoxus — I have sent a man fifty miles with a sack of flour to buy a pair of breeches for the assizes, and he is not returned." These are the excuses which, in new colonies, always prevent trial by jury ; and make it desirable for the first half century of their existence, that they should live under the simplicity and convenience of despotism — such modified despotism (we mean) as a Bri- tish House of Commons (always containins; men as bold and honest as the member for Shrewsbury) will permit, in the governors of their distant colonies. Such are the opinions formed of the conduct of Governor Macquarrie by Mr. Bigge. Not the slightest insinuation is made against the integrity of his character. Though almost every body else has a job, we do not perceive that any is imputed to this gentleman ; but he is negligent, expensive, arbitrary, ignorant, and clearly deficient in abilities for the task committed to his charge. It is our decided opinion, therefore, that Mr. Bennet has ren- dered a valuable service to the public, in at- tacking and exposing his conduct. As a gen- tleman and an honest man, there is not the smallest charge against the governor; but a gentleman, and a very honest man, may very easily ruin a very fine colony. The colony itself, disencumbered of Colonel Lachlan Mac- quarrie, will probably become a very fine em- pire ; but we can scarcely believe it is of any present utility as a place of punishment. The liistory of emancipated convicts, who have made a great deal of money by their industry and their speculations, necessarily reaches this countrj^ and prevents men who are goad- ed by want, and hovering between vice and virtue, from looking upon it as a place of suf- fering — perhaps leads them to consider it as the land of hope and refuge, to them unattain- able, except by the commission of crime. And so they lift up their heads at the bar, hoping to be transported, — "Stahant orantes primi transmittere cursum Tendebanlque inaiius, ripse ullerioris amore." It is not possible, in the present state of the law, that these enticing histories of convict prosperity should be prevented, by one uniform system of severity exercised in New South Wales, upon all transported persons. Such dilTerent degrees of guilt are included under the term of convict, that it AvouJd violate every feeling of humanity, and eveiy principle of justice, to deal out one measure of punish- ment to all. We strongly suspect that this is the root of the evil. We want new gradations of guilt to be established by law — new names for those gradations — and a difierent measure of good and evil treatment attached to those denominations. In this manner, the mere convict, the rogue and convict, and the incorrigi- ble convict, would expect, upon their landing, to be treated with very difierent degrees of se- verity. The first might be merely detained in New South Wales without labour or coercion ; the second compelled, at all events, to work out two-thirds of his time, without the possi- bility of remission; and the third be destined at once for the Coal River.* If these conse- quences steadily followed these gradations of conviction, they would soon be understood by the felonious world at home. At present, the prosperity of the best convicts is considered to be attainable by all ; and transportation to another hemisphere is looked upon as the re- novation of fallen fortunes, and the passport to wealth and power. Another circumstance, which destroys all idea of punishment in transportation to New South Wales, is the enormous expense which that settlement would occasion, if it really was made a place of punishment. A little wicked tailor arrives,, of no use to the ar- chitectural projects of the governor. He is turned over to a settler, who leases this sarto- rial Borgia his liberty for five shillings per week, and allows him to steal and snip, what, when, and where he can. The excuse for all this mockery of law and justice is, that the expense of his maintenance is saved to the government at home. But the expense is not saved to the country at large. The nefarious needleman writes home, that he is as com- fortable as a finger in a thimble ! that though a fraction only of humanity, he has several wives, and is filled every day with rum and kangaroo. This, of course, is not lost upon the shop-board ; and, for the saving of fifteen pence per day, the foundation of many crimi- nal tailors is laid. What is true of tailors, is true of tinkers and all other trades. The chances of escape from labour, and of manu- mission in the Bay, we may depend upon it, are accurately reported, and perfectly under- stood in the flash-houses of St. Giles ; and, while Earl Bathurst is full of jokes and joy, public morals are thus sapped to their foun- dation. 'This practice is now resorted to. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 189 GAME LAWS.' [Edinburgh Review, 1823. About the time of the publication of this | Poachers who go out at night cannot, of little pamphlet of Mr. Herbert, a committee of l course, like regular tradesmen, proportion the the House of Commons published a Report on supply to the demand, but having once made a the Game Laws, containing a great deal of | contract, they kill all they can ; and hence it very curious information respecting the sale of [ happens that the game market is sometimes game, an epitome of which we shall now lay i very much overstocked, and great quantities before our readers. The country higglers who of game either thrown away, or disposed of collect poultry, gather up the ganie from the j by Irish hawkers to the common people at very depots of the poachers, and transmit it in the | inferior prices, same manr ages, to the L,onaon poulterers, uy wuuiu u is | (q dispose ot poultry distributed to the public; and this traffic is car- | you are obliged to dispose of game 1 It de- ried on (as far as game is concerned) even | pends upon the weather; often, when there is from the distance of Scotland. The same bu- a considerable quantity on hand, and owing to siness is carried on by the porters of stage the weather, it will not keep till the following coaches ; and a great deal of game is sold clan- [ (Jay, I am obliged to take any price that is destinely by lords of manors, or by game- j o(feped; but wecan always turn either poultry- keepers, without the knowledge of lords of j qj- game into some price or other; and if it iner as poultry, and in the same pack- i « Does it ever happen to you to be obliged le London poulterers, by whom it is \ tQ dispose of poultry at the same low prices manors ; and principally, as the evidence states. from Norfolk and Suffolk, the great schools of Jmndreds of heads of game would be spoiled Steel traps and spring guns. The supply of game, too, is proved to be quite as regular as the supply of poultry ; the number of hares and partridges supplied rather exceeds that of pheasants; but any description of game may be had to any amount. Here is a part of the evidence. " Can you at any time procure any quantity of game 1 I have no doubt of it. — If you were to receive almost an unlimited order, could you execute it] Yes, 1 would supply the whole city of London, any fixed day once a week, all the year through, so that every individual in- habitant should have game for his table. — Do you think you could procure a thousand phea- sants 1 Yes ; I would be bound to produce ten thousand a week. — You would be bound to pro- vide every family in London with a dish of game 1 Yes ; a partridge, or a pheasant, or a hare, or a grouse, or something or other. — How would you set about doing it 1 I should, of course, request the persons with whom I am in the habit of dealing, to use their influence to bring me what they could by a certain day ; I should speak to the dealers and the mail-guards, and coachmen, to produce a quantity ; and I .should send to my own connections in one or two manors where I have the privilege of sel- ling for those gentlemen : and should send to Scotland to say, that every week the largest quantity they could produce was to be sent. — teing but a petty salesman, I sell a very small quantity; but I have had about 4000 head direct from one man. — Can you state the quantity of game which has been sent to you during the yearl No ; I may say, perhaps, 10,000 head ; mine is a limited trade; I speak comparatively to that of others; I only supply private fa- milies." — Report, p. 20. was not for the Irish hawkers, hundreds and * Ji Letter to theCltairman of the Committee of the House of Comvions, on the Game Laics. By tlie Hon. and Rev. William Herbert. Ridgway, 1923. and thrown away. It is out of the power of ■ any person to conceive for one moment the quantity of game that is hawked in the streets. I have had opportunity more than other per- sons of knowing this; for I have sold, I may say, more game than any other person in the city; and we serve hawkers indiscriminately, persons who come and purchase probably six fowls or turkeys and geese, and they will buy heads of game with them." — Report, p. 22. Live birds are sent up as well as dead; eggs as well as birds. The price of pheasants' eggs last year was 8s. per dozen ; of partridges' eggs, 2?. The price of hares was from 3s. to 5s. Gil. ; of partridges, from l.«. Gd. to 2s. Gd. ; of pheasants, from 5s. to 5s. 6(/. each, and some- times as low as Is. 6d. " What have you given for game this year? It is very low indeed; I am sick of it; I do not think I shall ever deal again. We have got game this season as low as half-a-crown a brace (birds), and pheasants as low as 7s. a brace. It is so plentiful there has been no end to spoiling it this season. It is so plentiful, it is of no use. In war time it was worth hav- ing; then they fetched 7s. and 8s. a brace."— Report, p. 33. All the poulterers, too, even the most re- spectable, state that it is absolutely necessary they should carry on this illegal traffic in the present state of the game laws; because their regular customers for poultry would infallibly leave any poulterer's shop from whence they could not be supplied with game. "I have no doubt that it is the general wish at present of the trade not to deal in the article ; but they are all, of course, compelled from their connections. If they cannot get game from one person, they can from another. " Do you believe that poulterers are not to Je found who would take out licenses, and 190 WOEKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. would deal with thage very persons, for the purposes of obtaining a greater profit than they would have dealing as you would dol I think the. poulterers in general are a respectable set of men, and would not countenance such a thing; they feel now that they are driven into a corner; that there maybe men who would countenance irregular proceedings, I have no doubt. — Would it be their interest to do so, considering the penalty] No, I think not. The poulterers are perfectly well aware that they are committing a breach of the law at present. — Do you suppose that those persons, respecta- ble as they are, who are now committing a breach of the law, would not equally commit that breach if the law were altered 1 No, cer- tainly not; at present it is so connected with their business that they cannot help it. — You said just now, that they were driven into a corner; what did you mean by that 1 We are obliged to aid and abet those men who commit those depredations, because of the constant demand for game, from different customers whom we supply with poultry. — Could you carry on your business as a poulterer, if you refused to supply game? By no means; be- cause some of the first people in the land re- quire it of me." — Report, p. 15. When that worthy errorist, Mr. Bankes, brought in his bill of additional severities against poachers, there was no man of sense and reflection who did not anticipate the fol- lowing consequences of the measure. " Do you find that less game has been sold in consequence of the bill rendering it penal to sell game 1 Upon my word, it did not make the slightest difference in the world. — Not im- mediately after it was made] No; I do not think it made the slightest difference. — It did not make the slightest sensation ] No, I never sold a bird less. — Was not there a resolution of the poulterers not to sell game ] I was sec- retary to that committee. — What was the con- sequence of that resolution ] A great deal of ill blood in the trade. One gentleman who just left the room did not come into my ideas. I never had a head of game in my house ; all my neighbours sold it; and as we had people on the watch, who were ready to watch it into the houses, it came to this, we were prepared to bring our actions against certain individuals, after sitting, perhaps from three to fourmonths, every week, which we did at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, but we did not proceed with our actions, to prevent ill blood in the trade. We regularly met, and, as we con- ceived at the time, formed a committee of the most respectable of the trade. I was secretary of that committee. The game was sold in the city, in the vicinity of the Royal Exchange, cheaper than ever was known, because the people at our end of the town were afraid. I, as a point of honour, never had it in my house. I never had a head of game in my house that season. — What was the consequence] — I lost my trade, and gave oflTence to gentlemen ; a nobleman's steward, or butler, or cook, treated it as contumely ; 'Good God, what is the use of your running your head against the wall ]' — You were obliged to begin the trade again ] Yes, and sold more than ever." — Repor', p. 18. These consequences are confirmed by the evidence of every person before the committee. All the evidence is very strong as to the fact, that dealing in game is not discreditable; that there are a great number of respectable per- sons, and, among the rest, the first poulterers in London, who buy game knowing it to have been illegally procured, but who would never dream of purchasing any other article procured by dishonesty. " Are there not, to your knowledge, a great many people in this town who deal in game, by buying or selling it, that would not on any account buy or sell stolen property ] Cer- tainly ; there are many capital tradesmen, poul- terers, who deal in game, that would have nothing to do with stolen property ; and yet I do not think there is a poulterer's shop in Lon- don where they could not get game, if they wanted it. — Do you think any discredit attaches to any man in this town for buying or selling game ] I think none at all : and I do not think that the men to whom I have just referred would have any thing to do with stolen goods. Would it not, in the opinion of the inhabitants of London, be considered a very different thing dealing in stolen game, or stolen poultry ] Certainly. — The one would be considered dis- graceful, and the other not ] Certainly ; they think nothing of dealing in game; and the farmers in the country will not give informa- tion ; they will have a hare or two of the very men who work for them, and they are afraid to give us information." — Report, p. 3L The evidence of Daniel Bishop, one of the Bow Street officers, who has been a good deal employed in the apprehension of poachers, is curious and important, as it shows the enor- mous extent of the evil, and the ferocious spirit which the game laws engender in the common people. " The poachers," he says, " came 16 miles. The whole of the village from which they were taken were poachers ; the constable of the village, and the shoemaker, and other inhabitants of the village. I fetched one man 22 miles. There was the son of a respectable gardener; one of these was a sawyer, and an- other a baker, who kept a good shop there. If the village had been alarmed, we should have' had some mischief; but we were all prepared with fire-arm.s. If poachers have a spite with the gamekeeper, that would induce them to go out in numbers to resist him. This party I speak of had something in their hats to distin- guish them. They take a delight in setting to with the gamekeepers ; and talk it over after- wards how they served so and so. They fought with the butt-ends of their guns at Lord Howe's; they beat the gamekeepers shocking- ly." — "Does it occur to you (Bishop is asked) to have had more applications, and to have de- tected more persons this season than in any former one ] Yes ; I think within four months there have been twenty-one transported that I have been at the taking of, and through one man turning evidence in each case, and without that they could not have been identified ; the gamekeepers could not, or would not, identify them. The poachers go to the public house and spend their money; if they have a good night's work, they will go and get drunk with WORKS 01 TRt: eeV. SYDNEY SMITH. 191 the money. The gangs are connected together at different public houses, just like a club at a public house ; they are all sworn together. If the keeper took one of them, they would go and attack him for so doing." Mr. Stafford, chief clerk of Bow Street, says, "All the offences against the game laws which are of an atrocious description I think are gen- erally reported to the public orRce in Bow Street, more especially in cases where the keepers have either been killed, or dangerously. woundeJ,and the assistance of an officer from Bow Street is required. The applications have been much more numerous of late years* than they were formerly. Some of them have been cases of murder ; but I do not think many have amounted to murder. There are many in- stances in which keepers have been very ill treated — they have been wounded, skulls have been fractured, and bones broken ; and they have been shot at. A man takes an hare, or a pheasant, with a very different feeling from that with which he would take a pigeon or a fowl out of a farm-yard. The number of per- sons that assemble together is more for the purpose of protecting themselves against those that may apprehend them, than from any idea that they are actually committing depredation upon the property of another person ; they do not consider it as property. I think there is a sense of morality and a distinction of crime ex- isting in the men's minds, although they are mistaken about it. Men feel that if they go in a great body together, to break into a house, or to rob a person, or to steal his poultry, or his sheep, they are committing a crime against that man's property; but I think with respect to the game, they do not feel that they are doing any thing which is wrong ; but think they have committed no crime when they have done the thing, and their only anxiety is to escape detec- tion." In addition, Mr. Stafford states that he remembers not one single conviction under Mr. Bankcs's Jet against buying game ; and not one conviction for buying or selling game Avithin the last year has been made at Bow Street. The inferences from these facts are exactly as we predicted, and as every man of common sense must have predicted — that to prevent the sale of game is absolutely impossible. If game is plentiful, and cannot be obtained at any law- ful market, an illicit trade will be established, which it is utterly impossible to prevent by any increased severity of the laws. There never was a more striking illustration of the necessity of attending to public opinion in all penal enact- ments. Mr. Bankes (a perfect representative of all the ordinary notions about forcing man- kind by pains and penalties) took the floor. To buy a partridge (though still considered as in- ferior to murder) was visited with the very heaviest infliction of the law ; and yet, though game is sold as openly in London as apples and oranges, though three years have elapsed * It is only of late years that men have been trans- ported for shooting at night. There are instances of men who have been transported at the Sessions for night poaching, who made no resistance at all when taken ; but then their characters as old poachers weighed against them— characters estimated probably hy the very lords of manors who had lost their game. This disgraceful law is the occasion of all the murders committed fur game. f ''nee this legislative mistake, the oflicers of thi police can hardly recollect a single instance where ^he information has been laid, or the penalty lev-ed • and why 1 because every man's feelings and "very man's understanding tell him, that it is a moFt absurd and ridiculous tyranny to prevent one man, who has more game than he wants, from exchanging it with another man, who has more money than he wants — because magistrates will not (if they can avoid it) inflict such absurd penalties — be- cause even common informers know enough of the honest indignation of mankind, and are too well aware of the coldness of pump and pond to act under the bill of the Lycurgus of Corfe Castle. The plan now proposed is, to undersell the poacher, which may be successful or unsuc- cessful ; but the threat is, if you attempt this plan there will be no game — and if there, is no gam^ there will be no country gentlemen. We deny every part of this enthymeme — the last proposition as well as the first. We really cannot believe that all our rural mansions would be deserted, although no game was to be found in their neighbourhood. Some come into the country for health, some for quiet, for agricul- ture, for economy, from attachment to family estates, from love of retirement, from the neces- sity of keeping up provincial interests, and from a vast variety of causes. Partridges and pheasants, though they form nine-tenths of human motives, still leave a sinall residue, which may be classed under some other head. Neither is a great proportion of those whom the love of shooting brings into the country of the smallest value or importance to the country. A colonel of the Guards, the second son just entered at Oxford, three diners out from Pic- cadilly — Major Rock, Lord John, Lord Charles, the colonel of the regiment quartered at the neighbouring town, two Irish peers, and a Ger- man baron; — if all this honourable company proceed with fustian jackets, dog-whistles, and chemical inventions, to a solemn destruction of pheasants, how is the country benefited by their presence 1 or how would earth, air, or sea, be injured by their annihilation? There are certainly many valuable men brought into the country by a love of shooting, who, coming there for that purpose, are useful for many bet- ter purposes ; but a vast multitude of shooters are of no more service to the country than the ramrod which condenses the charge, or the barrel which contains it. We do not deny that the annihilation of the game laws would thin the aristocratical population of the country ; but it would not thin that population so much as is contended^; and the loss of many of the persons so banished would be a good rather than a misfortune. At all events, we cannot at all comprehend the policy of alluring the better classes of society into the country, by the temptation of petty tyranny and injustice, or of monopoly in sports. How absurd it would be to offer to the higher orders the exclusive use of peaches, nectarines, and apricots, as the pre- mium of rustication — to put vast quantities of men into prison as apricot eaters, apricot bu}- ers, and apricot sellers — to appoint a regular day for beginning to eat, and another for lea v< 192 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. ingoff— to have a lord of the manor for green gages — and to rage with a penalty of five pounds against the unqualified eater of the gage ! And yet the privilege of shooting a set of wild poultry is stated to be the bonus for the residence of country gentlemen. As far as this immense advantage can be obtained with- out the sacrifice of justice and reason, well and good — but we would not oppress any order of Society, or violate right and wrong, to obtain any population of squires, however dense. If is the grossest of all absurdities to say the present state of the law is absurd and unjust; but it must not be altered, because the alteration would drive gentlemen out of the country ! If gentlemen cannot breathe fresh air without in- justice, let them putrefy in Cranborne Alley. Make just laws, and let squires live and die where they please. The evidence collected in the House of Com- mons respecting the game laws is so striking and so decisive against the gentlemen of the trigger, that their only resource is to represent it as not worthy of belief. But why not worthv of belief] It is not stated what part of it is incredible. Is it the plenty of game in London for sale? the unfrequency of convictions 1 the occasional but frequent excess of supply above demand in an article supplied by stealing? or its destruction when the sale is not without risk, and the price extremely low ? or the readi- ness of grandees to turn the excess of their game into fish or poultry ? All these circum- stances appear to us so natural and so likely, that we should, without any evidence, have but little doubt of their existence. There are a few absurdities in the evidence of one of the poulterers ; but, with this exception, we see no reason whatever for impugning the credibility and exactness of the mass of testimony pre- pared by the committee. It is utterly impossible to teach the common people to respect property in animals bred the possessor knows not where — which he cannot recognize by any mirk, which may leave him the next moment, which are kept, not for his profit, but for his amusement. Opinion never will be in favour cf such property; if the animus fnrandi exists, the propensitj' will be gratified by poaching. It is in vain to increase the severity of the protecting laws. They make the case weaker, instead of stronger ; and are more resisted and worse executed, exactly in proportion as they are contrary to public opi- nion : — the case of the game laws is a memo- rable lesson upon the philosophy of legisla- tion. If a certain degree of punishment does not cure the offence, it is supposed, by the Bankes School, that there is nothing to be done but to multiply this punishment by two, and then again and as^ain, till the object is ac- complished. The effici-mt maximum of pun- ishment, however, is not what the legislature chooses to enact, bid what the great mass of man- kind think the maximum ouaht to be. The moment the punishment passes this Rubicon, it becomes less and less, instead of greater and greater. Juries and magistrates will not commit — in- formers* are afraid of public indignation — * There is a rem:irknlile instance of this in the new Turnpike Act. The penally for taking more than the poachers will not submit to be sent to Botany Bay without a battle — blood is shed for phea- sants — the public attention is called to this pre- posterous state of the law — and even ministers — (whom nothing pesters so much as the in- terests of humanity) are at least compelled to come forward and do what is right. Apply this to the game laws. It was before penal to sell game : within these few years it has been made penal to buy it. From the scandalous cruelty of the law, night poachers are trans- ported for seven years. And yet, never was so much game sold, or such a spirit of ferocious resistance excited to the laws. One-fourth of all the commitments in Great Britain are for offences against the game laws. There is a general feeling that some alteration must take place — -a feeling not only among Reviewers, who never see nor eat game, but among the double-barreled, shot-belted members of the House of Commons, who are either alarmed or disgusted by the vice and misery which their cruel laws and childish passion for amusement are spreading among the lower orders of mankind. It is said, "In spite of all the game sold, there is game enough left ; let the laws there- fore remain as they are ;" and so it was said formerly, " There is sugar enough ; let the slave trade remain as it is." But at what ex- pense of human happiness is this quantity of game or of sugar, and this state of poacher law and slave law, to remain ! The first object of a good government is, not that rich men should have their pleasures in perfection, but that all orders of men should be good and happy; and if crowded covies and chuckling cock-pheasants are only to be procured by encouraging the common people in vice, and leading them into cruel and disproportionate punishment, it is the duty of the government to restrain the cruelties which the country members, in reward for their assiduous loyalty, have been allowed to introduce into the game laws. The plan of the new bill (long since antici- pated, in all its provisions, by the acute author of the pamphlet before us,) is, that the public at large should be supplied by persons licensed by magistrates, and that all qualified persons should be permitted to sell their game to these licensed distributors ; and there seems a fair chance that such a plan would succeed. The questions are. Would sufficient game come into the hands of the licensed salesman? Would the licensed salesinan confine himself to the purchase of game froiu qualified persons ? — Would buyers of game purchase elsewhere than from the licensed salesman ? Would the poacher be under-sold by the honest dealer? — Would game remain in the same plenty as be- fore ? It is understood that the game laws are to remain as they are; with this only differ- lesral number of outside passengers is ten pounds per head, if the cnachnian is in part or wholly the owner. This will rarely be levied ; because it is too much. A penalty of 100/. would produce perfect impunity. The ma.ximum of practical severity would have been about five pounds. Any magistrate would cheerfully levy thi.s sum ; while douhlin? it will produce reluctance in the judge, resistance in the oulprit, and unwillingness in the informer. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 193 ence, that the qualified man can sell to the licensed man, and the licentiate to the public. It seems probable to us, that vast quantities of game would, after a little time, find their way into the hands of licensed poulterers. Great people are very often half eaten up by their es- lablisments. The quantity of game killed in a large shooting party is very great; to eat it is impossible, and to dispose of it in presents very troublesome. The preservation of game is verv expensive ; and, when it could be bought, it would be no more a compliment to send it as a present than it would be to send geese and fowls. If game were sold, very large shooting establishments might be made to pay their own expenses. The shame is made by the law ; there is a disgrace in being detected and fined. If that barrier were removed, superfluous par- tridges would go to the poulterers as readily as superfluous venison does to the venison butcher — or as a gentleman sells the corn and mutton off" his farm which he cannot consume. For these reasons, we do not doubt that the shops of licensed poulterers would be full of game in the season ; and this part of the argu- ment, we thinic, the arch-enemy. Sir John Shel- ley, himself would concede to us. The next question is, From whence they would procure it 1 A. license for selling game, granted by country magistrates, would, from their jealousy upon these subjects, be granted only to persons of some respectability and pro- perty. The purchase of game from unqualified persons would, of course, be guarded against by very heavy penalties, both personal and pe- cuniary ; and these penalties would be inflicted, because opinion would go with them. " Here is a respectable tradesman," it would be said, « who might have bought as much game as he pleased in a lawful manner, but who, in order to increase his profits by buying it a little cheaper, has encouraged a poacher to steal it." Public opinion, therefore, would certainly be in favour of a very strong punishment ; and a licensed vender ol" game, who exposed himself to these risks, would expose himself to the loss of liberty, property, character, and license.— The persons interested to put a stop to such a practice, would not be the paid agents of gov- ernment, as in cases of smuggling ; but all the gentlemen of the country, the customers of the tradesman for fish, poultry, or whatever else he dealt in, would have an interest in putting down the practice. In all probability, the practice would become disreputable, like the purchase of stolen poultry ; and this would be a stronger barrier than the strongest laws. There would, of course, be some exceptions to this statement. A few shabby people would, for the chance of gaining sixpence, incur the risk of ruin and dis- grace ; but it is probable that the general prac- tice would be otherwise. For the same reasons, the consumers of game would rather give a little more for it to a licensed poulterer, than expose themselves to severe penalties by purchasing from poachers. The great mass of London consumers are sup- plied now, not from shabby people, in whom they can have no confidence — not from hawk- ers and porters, but from respectable trades- men, in whose probitv they have the most per- ' 25 feet confidence. Men will brave the law for pheasants, but not for sixpence or a shilling; and the law itself is much more diflicult to be braved, when it allows pheasants to be bought at some price, than when it endeavours to ren- der them utterly inaccessible to wealth. All the licensed salesmen, too, would have a direct interest in stopping the contraband trade of game. They would lose no character in doing so ; their informations would be reasonable and respectable. If all this is true, the poacher would have to compete with a great mass of game fairly and honestly poured into the market. He would be selling with a rope about his neck, to a person who bought with a rope about his neck; his description of customers would be much the same as the customers for stolen poultry, and his profits would be very materi- ally abridged. At present, the poacher is in the same situation as the smuggler would be, if rum and brandy could not be purchased of any fair trader. The great check to the profits of the smuggler are, that if you want his com- modities, and will pay an higher price, you may have them elsewhere without risk or dis- grace. But forbid the purchase of these luxu- ries at any price. Shut up the shop of the brandy merchant, and you render the trade of the smuggler of incalculable value. The ob- ject of the intended bill is, to raise up precisely the same competition to the trade of the poach- er, by giving the public an opportunity of buy- ing lawfully and honestly the tempting articles in which he now deals exclusively. Such an improveinent would not, perhaps, altogether annihilate his trade; but it would, in all proba- bility, act as a very material check upon it. The predominant argument against all this is, that the existing prohibition against buying game, though partially violated, does deter many persons from coming into the market; that if this prohibition were removed, the demand for game would be increased, the legal supplv would be insufficient, and the residue would, and must be, supplied by the poacher, whose trade would, for these reasons, be as lucrative and flourishing as before. But it is only a few years since the purchase of game has been made illegal : and the market does not appear to have been at all narrowed by the prohibition ; not one head of game the less has been sold by the poulterers; and scarcely one single con- viction has taken place under that law. How. then, would the removal of the prohibition, and the alteration of the law, extend the market and increase the demand, when the enactment of the prohibition has had no eflect in narrow- ing it 1 But if the demand increases, why not the legal supply also? Game is increased upon an estate "by feeding them in winter, by making some abatement to the tenants for guarding against depradations, by a large ap- paratus of gamekeepers and spies — In short by expense. But if this pleasure of shooting, so natural to country gentlemen, is made to pay its own expenses, by sending superfluous game to market, more men, it is reasonable to sup- pose, will thus preserve and augment their game. The love of pleasure and amusement will produce in the owners of game that desire R 194 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. to multiply game, which the love of gain does in the farmer to multiply poultry. Many gen- tlemen of small fortune will remember, that they cannot enjoy to any extent this pleasure without this resource; that the legal sale of poultry will discountenance poaching; and Ihey will open an account with the poulterer, not to get richer, but to enjoy a great pleasure without an expense, in which, upon other terms, they could not honourably and conscientiously indulge. If country gentlemen of moderate fortune will do this (and we think after a little time they will do it), game may be multiplied and legally supplied to any extent. Another keeper, and another bean-stack, will produce their proportional supply of pheasants. The only reason why the great lord has more game per acre than the little squire is, that he spends more money per acre to preserve it. For these reasons, we think the experiment of legalizing the sale of game ought to be tried. The game laws have been carried to a pitch of oppression which is a disgrace to the coun- try. The prisons are half filled with peasants, shut up for the irregular slaughter of rabbits and birds — a sufficient reason for killing a weasel, but not for imprisoning a man. Some- thing should be done; it is disgraceful to a government to stand by, and see such enormous evils without interference. It is true, they are not connected with the struggles of party; but still, the happiness of the common people, what- ever gentlemen may say, ought every now and then to be considered. WORKS OF THE EEV. SYDNEY SMITH. 195 CHUEL TREATMENT OE UNTRIED PRISONEES. [Edinburgh Review, 1824/ It has been the practice, all over England, for these last fifty years,f not to compel prison- ers to work before guilt was proved. Within these last three or four years, however, the magistrates of the North Riding of Yorkshire, considering it improper to support any idle person at the county expense, have resolved, that prisoners committed to the house of cor- rection for trial, and requiring county sujjport, should work for their livelihood ; and no sooner was the treadmill brought into fashion, than that machine was adopted in the North Riding as the species of labour by which such prison- ers were to earn their maintenance. If these magistrates did not consider themselves em- powered to burden the county rates for the support of prisoners before trial, who would not contribute to support themselves, it does not appear, from the publication of the reve- rend chairman of the sessions, that any opi- nions of counsel were taken as to the legality of so putting prisoners to work, or of refusing them maintenance if they choose to be idle; but the magistrates themselves decided that such was the law of the land. Thirty miles off, however, the law of the land was differently interpreted; and in the Castle of York large sums were annually expended in the mainte- nance of idle prisoners before trial, and paid by the different Ridings, without remonstrance or resistance.t Such was the state of affairs in the county of York before the enactment of the recent prison bill. After that period, enlargements and alterations were necessary in the county jail; and it was necessary also for these ar- rangements, that the magistrates should know whether or not they were authorized to main- tain such prisoners at the expense of the county, as, being accounted able and unwilling to work, still claimed the county allowance. To questions proposed upon these points to three barristers, the following answers were returned : — " 2dly, I am of opinion, that the magistrates are empowered, and are compelled to main- tain, at the expense of the county, such prison- ers befure trial as are able to work, unable to maintain themselves, and not willing to work; and that they have not the power of compell- * \.A Letter to the Right Honourable Robert Peel, one of His Majesty's Prhieipal Secretaries of State, ^c. ^-c. ^-c. on Prison Labour. By John Headlam, M. A., Chairiii;in of the Quarter Sessions for the North Ridine of the County of York. London. Hatchard and Son, 1823. 2. Information and Observations, respecting the proposed Improvements at York Castle. Printed by°Order of the Committee of Magistrates. September, 1823. f Headlam, p. 6. t We mention the case of the North Riding, to convince our readers that the practice of condemning prisoners to work before trial has existed in some parts of Eneland ; for in questions like this we have always found it more difficuh to prove the existence of the facts, than to prove that they were mlBchievous and unjust. ing such prisoners to work, either at the tread- mill, or any other species of labour. "J. Gurnet. "Lincoln s Inn Fields, 2d September, 1823." "I think the magistrates are empowered, under the tenth section (explained by the 37th and 38th), to maintain prisoners before trial. who are able to work, unable to maintain themselves by their own means, or by employ- ment which they themselves can procure, and not willing to work ; and I think also, that the words " shall be lawful," in that section, do not leave them a discretion on the subject, but are compulsory. Such prisoners can only be employed in prison labour with their own consent; and it cannot be intended that the justices may force such consent, by withhold- ing from them the necessaries of life, if they do not give it. Even those who are convicted cannot be employed at the treadmill, which I consider as a species of severe labour. " September Uh, 1823." "J.Parke. "2dly, As to the point of compelling prison- ers confined on criminal charges, and receiv- ing relief from the magistrates, to reasonable labour ; to that of the treadmill for instance, in which, when properlj^ conducted, there is nothing severe or unreasonable ; had the ques- tion arisen prior to the late act, I should with confidence have said, I thought the magistrates had a compulsory power in this respect. Those who cannot live without relief in a jail, cannot live without labour out of it. Labour then is their avocation. Nothing is so injuri- ous to the morals and habits of the prisoner as the indolence prevalent in prisons; nothing so injurious to good order in the prison. The analogy between this and other cases of public support is exceedingly strong; one may almost consider it a general principle, that those who live at the charge of the community shall, as far as they are able, give the community a compensation through their labour. But the question does not depend on mere abstract reasoning. The stat. 19 Ch. 2, c. 4, sec. 1, en- titled, 'An Act for Relief of poor Prisoners, and setting them on work,' speaks of persons committed for felony and other misdemeanours to the common jail, who many times perish before trial,- and then proceeds as to setting poor prisoners on work. Then stat. 31 G. 3, c. 46, sec. 13, orders money to be raised for such prisoners of every description, as, being confined within the said jails, or other places of confinement, are not able to work. A late stat. (52 G. 3, c. 160) orders parish relief to such debtors on mesne process in jails, not county jails, as are not able to support them- selves ; but says nothing of finding or com- pelling work. Could it be doubted, that if the justices were to provide work, and the prisoner refused it, such debtors might, like any other 196 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDIVEY SMITH. parish paupers, be refused the relief mentioned by the statute 1 In all the above cases, the authority to insist on the prisoner's labour, as the condition and consideration of relief grant- ed him, is, I think, either expressed, or neces- sarily implied; and thus viewing the subject, I think it was in the power of magistrates, prior to the late statute, to compel prisoners, subsisting in all or in part on public relief, to work at the treadmill. The objection com- monly made is, that prisoners, prior to trial, are to be accounted innocent, and to be de- tained, merely that they may be secured for trial ; to this the ansvv'cr is obvious, that the labour is neither meant as a punishment or a disgrace, but simply as a compensation for the relief, at their own request, afforded them. Under the present statute, I, however, have no doubt, that poor prisoners are entitled to public support, and that there can be no compulsory labour prior to trial. The two statutes advert- ed to (19 Ch. 2, c. 4, and 31 G. 3) are, as far as this subject is concerned, expressly re- pealed. The legislature then had in contem- plation the existing power of magistrates to order labour before trial, and having it in con- templation, repeals it; substituting (sec. 38) a power of setting to labour only sentenced per- sons. The 13th rule, too (p. 177), speaks of labour as connected with convicted prisoners, and sec. 37 speaks in general terms of persons committed for trial, as labouring with their own consent. In opposition to these clauses, I think it impossible to speak of implied power, or power founded on general reasoning or analogy. So strong, however, are the argu- ments in favour of a more extended authority in justices of the peace, that it is scarcely to be doubted, that Parliament, on a calm revision of the subject, would be willing to restore, in a more distinct manner than it has hitherto been enacted, a general discretion on the sub- ject. Were this done, there is one observation I will venture to make, which is, that should some unfortunate association of ideas render the treadmill a matter of ignominy to common feelings, an enlightened magistracy would scarcely compel an untried prisoner to a spe- cies of labour which would disgrace him in his own mind, and in that of the public. " S. W. NlCOLL. "Ybr/c, August 21th, 1823." In consequence, we believe, of these opinions, the North Riding magistrates, on the 13th of October (the new bill commencing on the 1st of September), passed the following resolu- tion : — "That persons committed for trial, who are able to work, and have the means of em- ployment offered them by the visiting magis- trates, by which they may earn their support, but who obstinately refuse to work, shall be allowed bread and water only." By this resolution they admit, of course, that the counsel are right in their interpreta- tion of the present law; and that magistrates are forced to maintain prisoners before trial who do not choose to work. The magistrates say, however, by their resolution, that the food shall be of the plainest and humblest kind, bread and water; meaning, of course, that such prisoners should have a sufficient quantity of bread and water, or otherwise the evasion of the law would be in the highest degree mean and reprehensible. But it is impossible to suppose any such thing to be intended by gentlemen so highly respectable. Their inten- tion is not that idle persons before trial shall starve, but that they shall have barely enough of the plainest food for the supportof life and health. Mr. Headlam has written a pamphlet to show that the old law was very reasonable and proper ; that it is quite right that prisoners before trial, who are able to support them- selves, but unwilling to work, should be com- pelled to work, and at the treadmill, or that all support should be refused them. We are en- tirely of an opposite opinion ; and maintain that it is neither-legal nor expedient to compel prisoners before trial to work at the treadmill, or at any species of labour, and that those who refuse to work should be supported upon a plain, healthy diet. We impute no sort of blame to the magistrates of the North Riding, or to Mr. Headlam, their chairman. We have no doubt but that they thought their measures the wisest and the best for correcting evil, and that they adopted them in pursuance of what they thought to be their duty. Nor do we enter into any discussion with Mr. Headlam, as chairman of a Quarter Sessions, but as the writer of a pamphlet. It is only in his capa- city of author that we have any thing to do with him. In answering the arguments of Mr. Headlam, we shall notice, at the same time, a few other observations commonly re- sorted to in defence of a system which we be- lieve to be extremely pernicious, and pregnant with the worst consequences ; and so thinking, we contend against it, and in support of the law as it now stands. We will not dispute with Mr. Headlam, whether his exposition of the old law is right or wrong: because time cannot be more un- profitably employed than in hearing gentlemen who are not lawyers discuss points of law. We dare to say Mr. Headlam knows as much of the laws of his country as magistrates iu general do ; but he will pardon us for believ- ing, that for the moderate sum of three guineas a much better opinion of what the law is now, or was then, can be purchased, than it is in the power of Mr. Headlam, or any other county magistrate, to give for nothing — Cuilibet in arte sua credendum est. It is concerning the expe- diency of such laws, and upon that point alone, that we are at issue with Mr. Headlam; and do not let this gentleman suppose it to be ' any answer to our remarks to state Avhat is done in the prison in which he is concerned, now the law is altered. The question is, whether he is right or wrong in his reasoning upon what the law ought to be ; we wish to ' hold out such reasoning to public notice, and think it important it should be refuted — doubly ■ important, when it comes from an author, the ■ leader of the quorum, who may say with the pious iEneas, — Uiueque ipse miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui. ; If, in this discussion, we are forced to insist I upon the plainest and most elementary truths, j WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 197 the fault is not with us, but with those who forget them ; and who refuse to be any longer restrained by those principles which have hith- erto been held to be as clear as they are im- portant to human happiness. To begin, then, with the nominative case and the verb — we must remind those advo- cates for the treadmill, a parte ante (for which the millers a parte post we have no quarrel), that it is one of the oldest maxims of common sense, common humanity, and common law, to consider every man as innocent till he is proved to be guilty ; and not only to consider him to be innocent, but to treat him as if he was so ; to exercise upon his case not merely a barren speculation, but one which produces practical effects, and which secures to a pri- soner the treatment of an honest, unpunished man. Now, to compel prisoners before trial to work at the treadmill, as the condition of their support, must, in a great number of in- stances, operate as a very severe punishment. A prisoner may be a tailor, a watchmaker, a bookbinder, a printer, totally unaccustomed to any such species of labour. Such a man may be cast into jail at the end of August,* and not tried till the March following; is it no punish- ment to such a man to walk up hill like a turn- spit dog, in an infamous machine, for six months ? and yet there are gentlemen who suppose that the common people do not con- sider this as punishment ! — that the gayest and most joyous of human beings is a treader, untried by a jury of his countrymen, in the fifth month of lifting up the leg, and striving against the law of gravity, supported by the glorious information which he receives from the turnkey, that he has all the time been grinding flour on the other side of the wall! If this sort of exercise, necessarily painful to sedentary persons, is agreeable to persons ac- customed to labour, then make it voluntary — give the prisoners their choice — give more money and more diet to those who can and will labour at the treadmill, if the treadmill (now so dear to magistrates) is a proper pun- ishment for untried prisoners. The position we are contending against is, that all poor prisoners who are able to work should be put to worlrupon the treadmill, the inevitable con- sequence of which practice is, a repetition of gross injustice by the infliction of undeserved punishment; for punishment, and severe pun- ishment, to such persons as we have enume- rated, we must consider it to be. But punishments are not merely to be esti- mated by pain to the limbs, but by the feelings of the mind. Gentlemen punishers are some- times apt to forget that the common people have any mental feelings at all, and think, if body and belly are attended to, that persons under a certain income have no right to likes and dislikes. The labour of the treadmill is irksome, dull, monotonous, and disgusting to the last degree. A man does not see his work. f Mr. Headlam, as we understand him. would extend this labour to all poor prisoners before trial in jails whicli are delivered twice a year at the assizes, as well as to houses of correction delivered four times a year at the SeKsions ; t. e not to extend the labour, but to refuse all does not know what he is doing, what progress he is making; there is no room for art, con- trivance, ingenuity, and superior skill — all which are the cheering circumstances of hu- man labour. The husbandman sees the field gradually subdued by the plough ;' the smith beats the rude mass of iron by degrees into its meditated shape, and gives it a meditated utility ; the tailor accommodates his parallelo- gram of cloth to the lumps and bumps of the human body, and, holding it up, exclaims, " This will contain the lower moiety of an hu- man being." But the treader does nothing but tread; he sees no change of objects, admires no new relation of parts, imparts no new qua- lities to matter, and gives to it no new ar- rangements and positions ; or, if he does, he sees and knows it not, but is turned at once from a rational being, by a justice of peace, into a prhnum mobile, and put upon a level with a rush of water or a puff of steam. It is impossible to get gentlemen to attend to the distinction between raw and roasted prisoners, without which all discussion on prisoners is perfectly ridiculous. Nothing can be more excellent than this kind of labour for persons to whom you mean to make labour as irksome as possible ; but for this very reason, it is the labour to which an untried prisoner ought not to be put. It is extremely uncandid to say that a man is obstinately and incorrigibly idle, because he will not submit to such tiresome and de- testable labour as that of the treadmill. It is an old feeling among Englishmen that there is a difference betvv^een tried and untried per- sons, between accused and convicted persons. These old opinions were in fashion before this new magistrate's plaything was invented ; and we are convinced that many industrious per- sons, feeling that they have not had their trial, and disgusted with the nature r f the labour, would refuse to work at the treadmill, who would not be averse to join in any common and fair occupation. Mr. Headlam says, that labour may be a privilege as well as a punish- ment. So may taking physic be a privilege, in cases where it is asked for as a charitable relief, but not if it is stutfed down a man's throat whether he say yea or nay. Certainly labour is not necessarily a punishment: no- body has said it is so ; but Mr. Headlam's la- bour is a punishment, because it is irksome, infamous, unasked for, and undeserved. This gentleman, however, observes, that committed persons have offended the laws ,- and the senti- ment expressed in these words is the true key to his pamphlet and his system — a perpetual tendency to confound the convicted and the accused. "With respect to those sentenced to labour as a punishment, I apprehend there is no dif- ference of opinion. All are agreed that it is a great defect in any prison where such con- victs are unemployed. But as to all other pri- soners, whether debtors, persmis committed for trial, or convicts not sentenced to hard labour, if they have no means of subsisting them- selves, and must, if discharged, "ither labour for their livelihood or apply for parochial re- lief, it seems unfair to society at large, an<1 b2 198 WOEKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. especially to those who maintain themselves by honest industr)', that those who, by offend- ing the laws, have subjected themselves to impri- sonment, should be lodged, and clothed, and fed, without being called upon for the same exertions, which others have to use to obtain such advantages." — Headlam, pp. 23, 24. Now nothing can be more unfair than to sav that such men have offended the laws. Thai is the very question to be tried, whether they have offended the laws or not 1 It is merely because this little circumstance is taken for granted, that we have any quarrel at all with Mr. Headlam and his school. "I can make," says Mr. Headlam, "every delicate consideration for the rare case of a person perfectly innocent being committed to jail on suspicion of crime. Such person is deservedly an object of compassion, for hav- ing fallen under circumstances which subject him to be charged with crime, and, conse- quently, to be deprived of his liberty : but if he has been in the habit of labouring for his bread before his commitment, there does not appear to be any addition tq his misfortune in being called upon to work for his subsistence in prison." — Headlam, p. 24. And yet Mr. Headlam describes this very punishment, which does not add to the mis- fortunes of an innocent man, to be generally disagreeable, to be dull, irksome, to excite a strong dislike, to be a dull, monotonous labour, to be a contrivance which connects the idea of discomfm-t with a jail. (p. 36.) So that Mr. Headlam looks upon it to be no increase of an innocent man's misfortunes, to be constantly employed upon a dull, irksome, monotonous labour, which ex- cites a strong dislike, and connects the idea of discomfort Avith a jail. We cannot stop, or stoop to consider, whether beating hemp is more or less dignified than working in a mill. The siinple rule is this, — whatever felons do, men not yet proved to be felons should not be compelled to do. It is of no use to look into laws become obsolete by alteration of man- ners. For these fifty years past, and before the invention of treadmills, untried men were not put upon felons' work ; but with the mill came in the mischief Mr. Headlam asks. How can men be employed upon the ancient trades in a prison? — certainly they cannot; but are human occupations so few, and is the ingenuity of magistrates and jailers so limited, that no occupations can be found for innocent men, but those which are shameful and odious 1 Does Mr. Headlam really believe, that grown up and baptized persons are to be satisfied M'ith such arguments, or repelled by such dif- ficulties 1 It is some compensation to an acquitted per- son, that the labour he has gone through un- justly in jail has taught hmi some trade, given him an insight into some species of labour in which he may hereafter improve himself; but Mr. Headlam's prisoner, after a verdict of ac- quittal, has learnt no other art than of walking op hill; he has nothing to remember or re- compense him but three months of undeserved and unprofitable torment. The verdict of the 'ury ha« pronounced him steady in his morals ; the conduct of the justices has made him stiff in his joints. But it is next contended by some persons, that the poor prisoner is not compelled to work, because he has the alternative of starv- ing, if he refuses to work. You take up a poor man upon suspicion, deprive him of all his usual methods of getting his livelihood, and then giving him the first view of the tread- mill, he of the quorum thus addresses him: — "My amiable friend, we use no compulsion with untried prisoners. You are free as air till you are found guilty ; only it is my duty to inform you, as you have no money of your own, that the disposition to eat and drink which you have allowed you sometimes feel, and upon which I do not mean to cast any degree of censure, cannot possibly be grati- fied but by constant grinding in this machine. It has its inconveniences, I admit ; but balance them against the total want of meat and drink, and decide for yourself. You are perfectly at liberty to make your choice, and I by no means wish to influence your judgment." But Mr. NicoU has a curious remedy for all this mise- rable tyranny; he says it is not meant as a punishment. But if I am conscious that I never have committed the offence, certain that I have never been found guilty of it, and find myself tossed into the middle of an infernal machine, by the folly of those who do not know how to use the power entrusted to them, is it any consolation to me to be told, that it is not intended as a punishment, that it is a lucu- bration of justices, a new theory of prison dis- cipline, a valuable county experiment going on at the expense of my arms, legs, back, feelings, character, and rights ? We must tie those prsegustant punishers down by one question. Do you mean to inflict any degree of punishment upon persons merely for being suspected] — or at least any other degree of punishment than that without which criminal justice cannot exist, detention! If you do, why let any one out upon bail ? For the ques- tion between us is not, how suspected persons are to be treated, and whether or not they are to be punished; but how suspected poor per- sons are to be treated, who want county sup- port in prison. If to be suspected is deserving of punishment, then no man ought to be let out upon bail, but evei-y one should be kept grinding from accusation to trial; and so ought all prisoners to be treated for offences not bail- able, and who do not want the county allov/- ance. And yet no grinding philosopher con- tends, that all suspected persons should be put in the mill — but only those who are too poor to find bail, or buy provisions. If there are, according to the doctrines of the millers, to be two punishments, the first for being suspected of committing the ofl'ence, and the second for committing it, there should be two trials as well as two punishments. Is the man really suspected, or do his accusers only pretend to suspect him! Are the sus- pecting of better character than the suspected 1 Is it a light suspicion which may be atoned for b}' grmding a peck a day ! Is it a bushel easel or is it one deeplj^ criminal, which re- quires the flour to be ground fine enough for WORKS OF THE RE\^ SYDNEY SMITH. 199 French rolls ? But we must put an end to such absurdities. It is very untruly stated, that a prisoner, be- fore trial, not compelled to work, and kept upon a plain diet, merely sufficient to main- tain him in health, is better off than he was previous to his accusation; and it is asked, with a triumphant leer, whether the situation of any man ought to be improved, merely be- cause he has become an object of suspicion to his fellow-creatures 1 This happy and for- tunate man, however, is separated from his wife and family; his liberty is taken away; he is confined within four walls ; he has the reflection that his family are existing upon a precarious parish support, that his little trade and property are wasting, that his character has become infamous, that he has incurred ruin by the malice of others, or by his own crimes, that in a {evr weeks he is to forfeit his life, or be banished from every thing he loves upon earth. This is the improved situation, and the redundant happiness which requires the penal circumvolutions of the justice's mill to cut off so unjust a balance of gratifi- cation, and bring him a little nearer to what he was before imprisonment and accusation. It would be just as reasonable to say, that an idle man in a fever is better off than a healthy man who is well and earns his bread. He may be better off if you look to the idleness alone, though that is doubtful; but is he better (iff if all the aches, agonies, disturbances, de- liriums, and the nearness to death, are added to the lotl Mr. Headlam's panacea for all prisoners be- fore trial is the treadmill : we beg his pardon — for all poor prisoners ; bat a man who is about tn be tried for his life, often wants all his leisure time to reflect upon his defence. The exertions of every man within the walls of a prison are necessarily crippled and impaired. What can a prisoner answer who is taken hot and reeking from the treadmill, and asked what he has to say in his defence ; his answer naturally is — "I have been grinding corn instead of thinking of my defence, and have never been allowed the proper leisure to think of protecting my character and my life." This is a very strong feature of cruelty and tyranny in the mill. We ought to be sure that every man has had the fullest leisure to prepare for his defence, that his mind and body have not been harassed by vexations and compulsory employment. The public purchase, at a great price, legal accu- racy, and legal talent, to accuse a man who has not, perhaps, one shilling to spend upon his defence. It is atrocious cruelly not to leave him full leisure to write his scarcely legible letters to his witnesses, and to use all the melancholy and feeble means which suspected poverty can employ for its defence against the long and heavy arm of power. A prisoner, upon the system recommended by Mr. Headlam, is committed, perhaps at the end of August, and brought to trial the March following; and, after all, the bill is either thrown out by the grand jury, or the prisoner is fully acquitted ; and it has been found, we believe, by actual returns, that, of committed prisoners, about a half are actually acquitted, or their ac- cusations dismissed by the grand jury. This may be very true, say the advocates of this system, but we know that many men who are acquitted are guilty. They escape through some mistaken lenity of the law, or some cor- ruption of evidence ; and as they have not had their deserved punishment after trial, we are not sorry they had it before. The English law says, better many guilty escape, than that one innocent man perish; but the humane notions of the mill are bottomed upon the principle, that all had better be punished lest any escape. They evince a total mistrust in the jurispru- dence of the country, and say the results of trial are so uncertain, that it is better to punish all the prisoners before they come into court. Mr. Headlam forgets that general rules are not beneficial in each individual instance, but beneficial upon the whole; that they are pre- served because they do much more good than harm, though in some particular instances they do more harm than good ; yet no respectable man violates them on that account, but holds them sacred for the great balance of advantage they confer upon mankind. It is one of the greatest crimes, for instance, to take away the life of a man ; yet there are many men whose death would be a good to society, rather than an evil. Every good man respects the pro- perty of others ; yet to take from a worthless miser, and to give it to a virtuous man in dis- tress, would be an advantage. Sensible men are never staggered when they see the excep- tion. They know the importance of the rule, and protect it most eagerly at the very moment when it is doing more harm than good. The plain rule of justice is, that no man should be punished till he is found guilty; but because Mr. Headlam occasionally sees a bad man acquitted under this rule, and sent out unpun- ished upon the world, he forgets all the general good and safety of the principle are debauched by the exception, and applauds and advocates a system of prison discipline which renders injustice certain, in order to prevent it from being occasional. The meaning of all preliminary imprison- ment is, that the accused person should be forthcoming at the time of trial. It was never intended as a punishment. Bail is a far better invention than imprisonment, in cases where the heavy punishment of the offence would not induce the accused person to run away from any bail. Now, let us see the enormous dif- ference this new style of punishment makes between two men, whose only difference is, that one is poor and the other rich. A and B are accused of some bailable offence. A has no bail to offer, and no money to support himself in prison, anu takes, therefore, his four or five months in the treadmill. B gives bail, appears at his trial, and both are sentenced to two months' imprisonment. In this case, the one suffers three times as much as the other for the same offence : but suppose A is acquitted and B found guilt}', — the innocent man has then laboured in the treadmill five months because he was poor, and the guilty man labours two months because he was rich. We are aware that there must be, even without the treadmiJl, a great and an inevitable difference between 200 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. men (in pari delicto), some of whom can give bail, and some not ; but that difference becomes infinitely more bitter and objectionable, in pro- portion as detention before trial assumes the character of severe and deo^rading punishment. If motion in the treadmill was otherwise as fascinating as millers describe it to be, still the mere degradation of the punishment is enough to revolt every feeling of an untried person. It is a punishment consecrated to convicted felons — and it has every character that such punishment ought to have. An untried person feels at once, in getting into the mill, that he is put to the labour of the guilty ; that a mode of employment has been selected for him, which renders him infamous before a single fact or argument has been advanced to establish his guilt. If men are put into the treadmill before trial, it is literally of no sort of consequence whether they are acquitted or not. Acquittal does not shelter them from punishment, for they have already been punished. It does not screen them from infamy, for they have already been treated as if they were infamous; and the association of the treadmill and crimes is not to be got over. This machine flings all the power of juries into the hands of the magis- trates, and makes every simple commitment more terrible than a conviction ; for, in a con- viction, the magistrate considers whether the offence has been committed or not ; and does not send the prisoner to jail unless he thinks him guilty; but in a simple commitment, n man is not sent to jail because the magistrate is convinced of his guilt, but because he thinks a fair question may be made to a jury whether the accused person is guilty or not. Still, how- ever, the convicted and the suspected both go to the same mill; and he who is there upon the doubt, grinds as much flour as the other whose guilt is established by a full examination of conflicting evidence. Where is the necessity for such a violation "f common sense and common justice? No- l)ody asks for the idle prisoner before trial more than a very plain and moderate diet. Offer him. if you please, some labour M'hich is less irk- :;ome, and less infamous than the treadmill, — bribe him by improved diet, and a share of the earnings ; there will not be three men out of an hundred v/ho would refuse such an invitation, and spurn at such an improvement of their condition. A little humane attention and per- suasion, among men who ought, upon every principle of justice, to be considered as inno- cent, we should have thought much more con- sonant to English justice, and to the feelings of English magistrates, than the rack and wheel of Cubilt.* Prison discipline is an object of considerable importance; but the common rights of mankind, iind the common principles of justice, and hu- manity, and liberty, are of greater consequence even than prison discipline. Right and wrong, innocence and guilt, must not be confounded, that a prison-fancying justice may bring his friend into the prison and say, "Look what a *It is singular enough, that we use these observations tn reviewing the pamphlet and system of a gentleman remarkable for the urbanity of his manners, and the mild- liesB and liumanity of his disposition. I spectacle of order, silence, and decornm we have established here! no idleness, all grind- ing ! — we produce a penny roll every second — our prison is supposed to be the best regulated prison in England, — Cubitt is making us a new- wheel of forty felon power, — look how white the flour is, all done by untried prisoners — as innocent as lambs !" If prison discipline is to supersede every other consideration, why are pennyless prisoners alone to be put into the mill before trial 1 If idleness in jails is so pernicious, why not put all prisoners in the treadmill, the rich as well as those who are unable to support themselves "? Why are the debtors left out 1 If fixed principles are to be given up, and prisons turned into a plaything for magistrates, nothing can be more unpictu- resque than to see one-half of the prisoners looking on, talking, gaping, and idling, while their poorer brethren are grinding for dinners and suppers. It is a very weak argument to talk of the prisoners earning their support, and the ex- pense to a county of maintaining prisoners before trial, — as if any rational man could ever expect to gain a farthing by an expensive mill, where felons are the moving power, and jus- tices the superintendents, or as if such a trade must not necessarily be carried on at a great loss. If it were just and proper that prisoners, before trial, shoujd be condemned to the mill, it would be of no consequence whether the county gained or lost by the trade. But the in- justice of the practice can never be defended by its economy ; and the fact is, that it increases expenditure, while it violates principle. We are aware, that by leaving out repairs, altera- tions, and first costs, and a number of little particulars, a very neat account, si2;ned by a jailer, may be made up. which shall make the mill a miraculous combination of mercantile speculation and moral improvement; but we are too old for all this. We accuse nobody of intentional misrepresentation. This is quite out of the question with persons so highly re- spectable; but men are constantly misled by the spirit of system, and egregiously deceive themselves — even very good and sensible men. Mr. Headlam compares the case of a pri- soner before trial, claiming support, to that of a pauper claiming relief from his parish. But it seems to us thaf no two cases can be more dissimilar. The prisoner was no pauper be- fore you took him up, and deprived him of his customers, tools, and market. It is by your act and deed that he is fallen into a state of pauperism ; and nothing can be more prepos- terous, than first to make a man a pauper, and then to punish him for being so. It is true, that the apprehension and detention of the pri soner were necessary for the purposes of criminal justice ; but the consequences arising from this necessary act cannot be imputed io the prisoner. He has brought it upon him- self, it will be urged; but that remains to be seen, and will not be known till he is tried; and till it is known you have no right to take it for granted, and to punish him as if it were proved. There seems to be in the minds of some WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 201 gentlemen a notion, that when once a person is in prison, it is of little consequence how he is treated afterwards. The tyranny which pre- vailed, of putting a person in a particular dress before trial, now abolished by act of Par- liament, was justified by this train of reason- ing: — The man has been rendered infamous by imprisonment. He cannot be rendered more so, dress him as you will. His character is not rendered worse by the treadmill, than it is by being sent to the place where the tread- mill is at work. The substance of this way of thinking is, that when a fellow-creature is in the frying-pan, there is no harm in pushing him into the fire; that a little more misery — a little more infamy — a few more links, are of no sort of consequence in a prison-life. If this monstrous style of reasoning extended to hos- pitals as well as prisons, there would be no harm in breaking the small bone of a man's leg, because the large one was fractured, or in peppering with small shot a person who was wounded with a cannon-ball. The principle is, because a man is very wretched, there is no harm in making him a little more so. The steady answer to all this is, that a man is im- prisoned before trial, solely for the purpose of securing his appearance at his trial ; and that no punishment nor privation, not clearly and candidly necessary for that purpose, should be inflicted upon him. I keep you in prison, because criminal justice would be defeated by your flight, if I did not: but criminal justice can go on very well without degrading you to hard and infamous labour, or denying you any reasonable gratification. For these reasons, the first of those acts is just, the rest are mere tyranny. Mr. NicoU, in his opinion, tells us, that he has no doubt Parliament would amend the bill, if the omission was stated to them. We, on the contrary, have no manner of doubt that Parliament would treat such a petition with the contempt it deserved. Mr. Peel is too much enlightened and sensible to give any counte- nance to such a great and glaring error. In this case, — and we wish it were a more fre- quent one — the wisdom comes from within, and the error from without the walls of Par- liament. A prisoner before trial who can support him- self, ought to be allowed every fair and rational enjoyment which he can purchase, not incom- patible with prison discipline. He should be allowed to buy ale or wine in moderation, — to use tobacco, or any thing else he can pay for within the above-mentioned limits. If he can- not support himself, and declines work, then he should be supported upon a very plain, but still a plentiful diet (something better, we think, than bread and water); and all prisoners be- fore trial should be allowed to work. By a liberal share of earnings (or rather by rewards, for there would be no earnings), and also by 26 an improved diet, and in the hands of humane magistrates,* there would soon appear to be no necessity for appealing to the treadmill till trial was over. This treadmill, after trial, is certainly a very excellent method of punishment, as far as we are yet acquainted with its effects. We think, at present, however, it is a little abused; and hereafter it is our intention to express our opinion upon the limits to which it ought to be confined. Upon this point, however, we do not much differ from Mr. Headlam ; although, in his remarks on the treatment of prisoners before trial, we think he has made a very serious mistake, and has attempted (without knowing what lie was doing, and meaning, we are persuaded, nothing but what was honest and just) to pluck up one of the ancient land- marks of human justice.j- * AH masistrntes should remember, that nothing is more easy to a person entrusted with power than to con- vince iiirasi'lf it is his duly to tr(^at liis fellow-creatures with severity and rigour. — and th"=n to persuade him- self that he is doing it very reluctantly, and contrary to his real I'eelini:. ■{■ We hope this article will conciliate our old friend Mr. Roscoe ; who is very an^ry with us for some of our former lucubrations on prison discipline,-^and, above all, because we are not grave enough for hint. T!ie difTer- ence is thus stated : — Six ducks are stolen. Mr Roscoe would commit the man to prison for six weeks, perhaps, — reason with him. nr^uc with him, give him tracts, send clerirynien to lijni. work him gently at some useful trade, and try to turn him from the habit of stealin;; poultry. fFe would keep him hard at work twelve hours every "day at the treadmill, feed him only so as not to impair his health, and then give him as much of Mr. Roscoe's system as was compatible with our own; and we think our method would diminish the number of duck-stealers more etlectually than that of the historian of Leo X. The primary duck-steal. t would, we think, he as effectually deterred from repeatiiiix the ort'ence by the terror (if our iuijirisoiiment, as bv the e.vcel'.ence of Mr. P.I.St i,.-'s ■■iliicatidn— :!ii(l, what i,<'of iiiiiriil"! v sreatrT cons-ciui'i;r... iiiiiiiiiii'rable dnrk-stealers would be pre- it IS tolly (.1 say it dt by the cleverness of the boys. "They have been employed in learning Latin, French, ■ind latterly Italian ; and yes- terday they were examined by several distin- guished individuals, among whom we recog- nized John Smith, Esq. IVL P.; G. Smith, Esq. M. P.; Mr. J. Mill, the historian of British India; Major Camac; Major Thompson ; Mr. Cowell, &c. (Sec. They first read dilTerent portions of the Gospefof St. John in Latin, and of Cfesar's Commentaries, selected by the visitors. The translation was executed with an ease which it would be in vain to expect in any of the boys who attend our common schools, ( ven in' their third or fourth year ; and proved, that the principle of exciting the attention of l)oys to the utmost, during the process by which the meaning of the Avords is fixed in their memory, had given them a great familiarity with so much of the language as is contained in the books above alluded to. Their knowledge of the parts of speech was respect- able, but not so remarkable; as the Hamilto- nian system follows the natural mode of acquiring language, and only employs the boys in analyzing, when they have already attained a certain familiarity with any lan- guage. ■'The same experiments were repeated in French and Italian with the same success, and, upon the whole, we cannot but think the success has been complete. It is impossible to conceive a moi'e impartial mode of putting an/ system to the test, than to make such an e-Tperiment on the children of our peasantry." Into the truth of this statement we have rersonally inquired, and it seems to us to have fallen short of the facts, from the laud- able fear of overstating them. The lads selected for the experiment were parish boys of the most ordinary description, reading Eng- lish worse than Cumberland curates, and totally ignorant of the rudiments of any other language. They were purposely selected for the experiment "by a gentleman who defrayed its expense, and who had the strongest desire to put strictly to the test the efficacy of the Hamiltonian system. The experiment was begun the middle of May, 1825, and concluded on the day of November in the same year mentioned in the extract, exactly six months after. The Latin books set before them were the Gospel of St. John, and parts of Ctesar's Commentaries ; some Italian book or bocks (what we know not), and a selection of French histories. The visitors put the boys on where they pleased, and the translation was (as the reporter says) executed with an ease which il would be vain to expect in any of the boys who attend our common schools, even in their third or fourth year.* From experiments and observations which have fallen under our own notice, we do not scruple to make the following assertions. If there were keys to the four Gospels, as there is to that of St." John, any boy or girl of ihirt'i-en years of age, and of moderate capacity, study- ing four hours a day, and beginning with an utter ignorance even of the Greek character, would learn to construe the four Gospels with the most perfect and scrupulous accuracy, in six weeks. Some children, utterly ignorant of French or Italian, would learn to construe the four Gospels, in either of these languages, in three weeks ; the Latin in four weeks ; the German in five weeks. We believe they would do it in a class; but not to run any risks, we will presume a master to attend upon one student alone for these periods. We assign a master principally, because the ap- plication of a solitar} boy at that age could not be depended upon; but if the sedulity of the child were certain, he would do it nearly as well alone. A greater time is allowed for German and Greek, on account of the novelty of the character. A person of mature habits, eager and energetic in his pursuits, and read- ing seven or eight hours per day, might, though utterly ignorant of a letter of Greek, learn to construe the four Gospels, with the most punctilious accuracy in three weeks, by the key alone. These assertions we make, not of "the Gospels alone, but of any tolerably easy book of the same extent. We mean to be very accurate ; but suppose we are wrong —add 10, 20, 30 per cent, to the time, an average boy of thirteen, in an average school, cannot construe the lour Gospels in two years from the time of his beginning the language. All persons would be glad to read a foreign language, but all persons do not want the same scrupulous and comprehensive knowledge of grammar which a great Latin scholar pos- sesses. Many persons may, and do derive great pleasure and instruction from French, German, and Italian books, who can neither speak nor M-rite these languages — who know that certain terminations, when they see them, signify present or past time, but who, if they wished to signify present or past time, could not recall these terminations. For many pur- poses and objects, therefore, very little gram- mar is wanting. The HamiUonian method begins with what all persons want, a facility of construing, and leaves every scholar to become afterwards * We h^ve left with the bookseller the names of two ffentlemen who have verified this account to us, and who were present at the experiment. Their names will at once put an end to all scepticism as to the fact. T^vo more candid and enlightened judges could not be found. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 241 as profound in grammar as he (or those who educate him) may choose ; whereas the old method aims at making all more profound grammarians than three-fourths wish to be, or than nineteen-tM'entieths can be. One of the enormous follies of the enormously foolish education in England, is, that all young men — dukes, fox-hunters, and merchants — are educated as if they were to keep a school, and serve a curacy; while scarcely an hour in the Hamiltonian education is lost for any variety of life. A grocer may learn enough of Latin to taste the sweets of Virgil; a cavalry officer may read and understand Homer, without knowing that (««( comes from soi with a smooth breathing, and that it is formed by an impro- per reduplication. In the mean time, there is nothing in that education which prevents a scholar from knowing (if he wishes to know) what Greek compounds draw back their accents. He may trace verbs in Ifxi from polysyllables in la, or derive endless glory from marking down derivatives in TTTce, changing the i of their primitives into iota. Thus in the Hamiltonian method, a good deal of grammar necessarily impresses itself upon the mind {chemin faisant), as it does in the vernacular tongue, without any rule at all, and merely by habit. How is it possible to read many Latin keys, for instance, without remarking, willingly or unwillingly, that the first person of verbs end in o, the second in s, the third in t ? — that the same adjective ends in us or a, accordingly as the connected sub- stantive is masculine or feminine, and other such gross and common rules 1 An English- man who means to say, / will go to London, does not say, I could go to London. He never read a word of grammar in his life ; but he has learnt by habit, that the word go, signifies to proceed or set forth, and by the same habit he learns that future intentions are expressed by Iwlll,- and by the same habit the Hamil- tonian pupil, reading over, and comprehending twenty times more words and phrases than the pupil of the ancient system, insensibly but infallibly fixes upon his mind many rules of grammar. We are far from meaning to say, that the grammar thus acquired will be suffi- ciently accurate for a first-rate Latin and Greek scholar ; but there is no reason why a young person arriving at this distinction, and educated in the Hamiltonian system, may not carry the study of grammar to any degree of minuteness and accurac}'. The only difference is, that he begins grammar as a study, after he has made a considerable progress in the lan- guage, and not before — a very important feature in the Hamiltonian system, and a very great improvement in the education of chil- dren. The imperfections of the old system proceed in a great measure from a bad and improvi- dent accumulation of difficulties, which must all, perhaps, though in a less degree, at one time or another be encountered, but which may be, and in the Hamiltonian system are, much more wisely distributed. A boy who sits down to Greek with lexicon and grammar, has to 31 master an unknown character of an unknown language — to look out words in a lexicon, in the use of which he is inexpert — to guess, by many trials, in which of the numerous senses detailed in the lexicon he is to use the word — to attend to the inflexions of cases and tense — to become acquainted with the syntax of the language — and to become acquainted with these inflexions and this syntax from books written in foreign languages, and full of the most absurd and barbarous terms, and this at the tenderest age, when the mind is utterly un- fit to grapple with any great difficulty; and the boy, who revolts at all this folly and ab- surdity, is set down for a dunce, and must go into a marching regiment, or on board a man of war ! The Hamiltonian pupil has his word looked out for him, its proper sense ascer- tained, the case of the substantive, the inflex- ions of the verb pointed out, and the syntaxical arrangement placed before his eyes. Where, then, is he to encounter these difficulties T Does he hope to escape them entirely! Cer- tainly not, if it is his purpose to become a great scholar; but he will enter upon them when the character is familiar to his eye- when a great number of Greek words are fa miliar to his eye and ear — when he has practi- cally mastered a great deal of grammar — • when the terminations of verbs convey to him difl^erent modifications of time, the termina- tions of substantives different varieties of circumstance — when the rules of grammar, in short, are a confirmation of previous observa- tion, not an irksome multitude of directions, heaped up without any opportunity of imme- diate application. The real way of learning a dead language, is to imitate, as much as possible, the method in which a living language is naturally learnt. When do we ever find a well-educated Eng- lishman or Frenchman embarrassed by an ignorance of the grammar of their respective languages 1 They first learn it practically and unerringly; and then, if they choose to look back and sinile at the idea of having proceeded by a number of rules without know- ing one of them by heart, or being conscious that they had any rule at all, this is a philoso- phical amusement: but whoever thinks of learning the grammar of their own tongue before they are very good grammarians ? Let us hear what Mr. Locke says upon this sub- ject : — " If grammar ought to be taught at any time, it must be to one that can speak the language already; how else can he be taught the grammar of it] This at least is evident, from the practice of the wise and learned na- tions amongst the ancients. They made it a part of education to cultivate their own, not foreign languages. The Greeks counted all other nations barbarous, and had a contempt for their languages. And though the Greek learning grew in credit amongst the Romans towards the end of their commonwealth, yet it was the Roman tongue that was made the study of their youth : their own language they were to make use of, and therefore it was their own language they were instructed and exercised in. 242 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. " But, more particularly, to determine the proper season for grammar, I do not see how it can reasonably be made any one's study, but as an introduction to rhetoric. When it is thought time to put any one upon the care of polishing his tongue, and of speaking better than the illiterate, then is the time for him to be instructed in the rules of grammar, and not before. For grammar being to teach men not to speak, but to speak correctly, and according to the exact rules of the tongue, which is one part of elegancy, there is little use of the one to him that has no need of the other. Where I'hetoric is not necessary, grammar may be spared. I know not why any one should waste his time, and beat his head about the Latin grammar, who does not intend to be a critic, or make speeches, and write despatches in it. When any one finds in himself a necessity or disposition to study any foreign language to the bottom, and to be nicely exact in the know- ledge of it, it will be time enough to take a grammatical survey of it. If his use of it be only to understand some books Avrit in it, without a critical knowledge of the tongue itself, reading alone, as I have said, will attain (hat end, without charging the mind with the multiplied rules and intricacies of grammar." — Locke 071 Education, p. 78, folio. In the Eton Grammar, the following very plain and elementary information is conveyed to young gentlemen utterly ignorant of every syllable of the language :— "Nomina anomaia quae contrahuntur sunt, 'OKCTTxQyi, qu;E contrahuntur m omnibus, ut >o« yio;, &c. Ohi-^crxBii, qua? in paucioribus casibus contrahuntur, ut substantiva Barytonia in Jg. Imparyliatria in ov^," &c. t. DoyU's Letter lo Lord Liverpool, 113. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 261 cabinet. Those who use such arguments know the answer to them as well as we do. The real evil they dread is the destruction of the church of Ireland, and, through that, of the Church of England. To which we reply, that such danger must proceed from the regular proceedings of Parliament, or be effected by insurrection and rebellion. The Catholics, re- stored to civil functions, would, we believe, be more likely to cling to the church than to Dis- senters. If not, both Catholics and Dissenters *must be utterly powerless against the over- whelming English interests and feelings in the house. Men are less inclined to run into rebel- lion, in proportion as they have less to com- plain of; and, of all other dangers, the greatest to the Irish and English church establishments, and to the Protestant faith throughout Europe, is to leave Ireland ni its present state of discontent. If the intention is to wait to the last, before concession is made, till the French or Ameri- cans have landed, and the holy standard has been unfurled, we ought to be sure of the terms which can be obtained at such a crisis. This game was plaj^ed in America. Commissioners were sent in one year to offer and to press what would have been most thankfully received the year before; but they were always loo late. The rapid concessions of England were out- stripped by the more rapid exactions of the colonies ; and the commissioners returned with the melancholy history, that they had humbled themrelves before the rebels in vain. If you ever mean to concede at all, do it when every concession will be received as a favour. To wait till you are forced to treat, is as fliean in principle as it is dangerous in effect. Then, how many thousand Protestant Dis- senters are there who pay a double allegiance to the king, and to the head of their church, who is not the king! Is not Mr. William Smith, member for Norwich, the head of the Unitarian Church 1 Is not Mr. Wilberforce the head of the Clapham Church! Are there not twenty preachers at Leeds, who regulate all the proceedings of the Methodists ! The gentle- men we have mentioned are eminent, and most excellent men ; but if any thing at all is to be apprehended from this divided allegiance, we should be infinitely more afraid of some Jaco- binical fanatic at the head of Protestant vota- ries — some man of such character as Lord George Gordon — thau we should of all the efforts of the Pope. As so much evil is supposed to proceed from not obeying the king as head of the church, it might be supposed to be a very active office — that the king was perpetually interfering with the affairs of the church — and that orders were in a course of emanation from the throne which regulated the fervour, and arranged the devotion, of all the members of the Church of England. But we really do not know what orders are ever given by the king to the church, except the appointment of a fast- day once in three or four years ; — nor can we conceive (for appointment to bishoprics is out of the question) what duties there would be to perform, if this allegiance were paid, instead of being withholJen. Supremacy appears to us to be a mere name, without ex- ercise of power — and allegiance to he a duty without any performance annexed. If any one will say what ought to be done, which is not done, on account of this divided allegiance, we shall belter understand the magnitude of the evil. Till then, we shall consider it as a lucky Protestant phrase, good to look at, like the mottos and ornaments on cake, but not fit to be eaten. Nothing can be more unfair than to expect, in an ancient church like that of the Catholics, the same uniformity as in churches which have not existed for more than two or three centuries. The coats and waistcoats of the reign of Henry VIII. bear some resemblance to the same garments of the present day ; but, as you recede, you get to the skins of wild beasts, or the fleeces of sheep, for the garments of savages. In the same way, it is extremely difficult for a church, which has to do with the counsels of barbarous ages, not to be detected in some discrepancy of opinion ; while in younger churches, every thing is fair and fresh, and of modern date and figure; and it is not the custom among theologians to own their church in the wrong. " No religion can stand, if men, without regard to their God, and with regard only to controversy, shall rake out of the rubbish of antiquity the obsolete and quaint follies of the sectarians, and affront the majesty of the Almighty, with the impudent catalogue of their devices ; and it is a strong argument against the proscriplive system, that it helps to continue this shocking contest. Theologian against theologian, polemic against polemic, until the two madmen defame their common parent, and expose their common religion." — Grattan's Speech on the Catholic Question, 1805. A good-natured and well-conditioned person has pleasure in keeping and distributing any thing that is good. If he detects any thing with, superior flavour, he presses and invites, and is not easy till others participate ; — and so it is with political and religious freedom. It is a pleasure to possess it, and a pleasure to com- municate it to others. There is something shocking in the greedy, growling, guzzling mo- nopoly of such a blessing. France is no longer a nation of atheists ; and therefore, a great cause of offence to the Irish Roman Catholic clergy is removed. Naviga- tion by steam renders all shores more accessi- ble. The union among Catholics is consoli- dated ; all the dangers of Ireland are redoubled ; every thing seems tending to an event fatal to England — fatal (whatever Catholics may fool- ishly imagine) to Ireland — and which will subject them both to the dominion of France. Formerly a poor man might be removed from a parish if there was the slightest danger of his becoming chargeable; a hole in his coat or breeches excited suspicion. The church- wardens said, "He has cosl us nothing, but he may cost us something; and we must not live even in the apprehension of evil." All this is changed ; and the law now says, " Wait till you are hurt ; time enough to meet the evil when it comes; you have no right to do a certain evil to others, to prevent an uncertaia evil to yr ur- selves." The Catholics, however, are told that what they do ask is objected to, from the feat WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. of what they may ask ; that they must do with- out that which is reasonable, for fear they should ask what is unreasoyiable. " I would give you a penny (says the miser to the beggar), if I was quite sure you would not ask me for half a crown." " Nothing, I am told, is now so common on the continent as to hear our Irish policy dis- cussed. Till of late the extent of the disabili- ties was but little understood, and less regarded, partly because, having less liberty themselves, foreigners could not appreciate the deprivations, and partly because the pre-eminence of Eng- land was not so decided as to draw the eyes of the world on all parts of our system. It was scarcely credited that England, that knight- errant abroad, should play the exclusionist at nome ; that every where else she should declaim against oppression, but contemplate it without emotion at her doors. That her armies should march, and her orators philippize, and her poets sing against continental tyranny, and yet that laws should remain extant, and principles be operative within our gates, which are a bitter satire on our philanthropy, and a melancholy negation of our professions. Our sentiments have been so lofty, our deportment to foreigners so haughty, we have set up such liberty and such morals, that no one could suppose that we were hypocrites. Still less could it be foreseen that a great moralist, called Joseph Surface, kept a ' little milliner' behind the scenes, we too should be found out at length in taking the diversion of private tyranny after the most approved models for that amusement." — Letter to Lord Milton, pp. 50, 51. We sincerely hope — we firmly believe — it never will happen ; but if it were to happen, why cannot England be just as happy with Ireland being Catholic, as it is with Scotland being Presbyterian 1 Has not the Church of England lived side by side with the Kirk, with- out crossing or jostling, for these last hundred years 1 Have the Presbyterian members enter- ed into any conspiracy for mincing bishoprics and deaneries into synods and presbyteries? And is not the Church of England tenfold more rich and more strong than when the separation took place ? But however th'is may be, the real danger, even to the church of Ireland, as we have before often remarked, is the refusal of Catholic emancipation. It would seem, from the phrenzy of many worthy Protestants, whenever the name of Ca- tholic is mentioned, that the greatest possible diversity of religious opinions existed between the Catholic and the Protestant — that they were as different as fish and flesh — as alkali and acid — as cow and cart-horse ; whereas it is quite clear, that there are many Protestant sects whose difference from each other is much more marked, both in church discipline and in tenets of faith, than that of Protestants and Catholics. We maintain that Lambeth, in these two points, is quite as near to the Vatican as it is to the Kirk — if not much nearer. Instead of lamenting the power of the priests over the lower orders of the Irish, we ought to congratulate ourselves that any influence can affect or control them. Is the tiger less formi- dable in the forest than when he has been caught and taught to obey a voice, and tremble at an handl But we overrate the power of the priest, if we suppose that the upper orders are to encounter all the dangers of treason and rebellion, to confer the revenues of the Protest- ant church upon the Catholic clergy. If the influence of the Catholic clergy upon men of rank and education is so unbounded, why can- not the French and Italian clergy recover their possessions, or acquire an equivalent for them 1 They are starving in the full enjoyment of an influence which places (as we think) all the wealth and power of the country at their feet — an influence which, in our opinion, overpowers avarice, fear, ambition, and is the master of every passion which brings on change and movement in the Protestant world. We conclude with a few words of advice to the different opponents of the Catholic ques- tion. To the No-Popery Fool. You are made use of by men who laugh at you, and despise you for your folly and igno- rance ; and who, the moment it suits their purpose, will consent to emancipation of the Catholics, and leave you to roar and bellow No Popery ! to vacancy and the moon. To the No-Popery Rogue. A shameful and scandalous game, to sport with the serious interests of the country, in order to gain some increase of public power ! To the Honest No-Popery People. We respect you very sincerely — out are astonished at your existence. To the Base. Sweet children of turpitude, beware ! the old anti-popery people are fast perishing away. Take heed that you are not surprised by an emancipating king, or an emancipating admin- istration. Leave a locus panitenttce .' — prepare a place for retreat — get ready your equivoca- tions and denials. The dreadful day may yet come, when liberality may lead to place and power. We understand these matters here. It is the 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. To the Catholics. Wait. Do not add to your miseries by a mad and desperate rebellion. Persevere in civil exertions, and concede all you can concede. All great alterations in human affairs are pro- duced by compromise. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. NECKAE'S LAST YIEWS. [Edinburgh Review, 1803.] If power could be measured by territory, or counted by population, the inveteracy, and the disproportion which exists between France and England, must occasion to every friend of the latter country the most serious and well-found- ed apprehensions. Fortunately however for us, the question of power is not only what is the amount of population 1 but, how is that population governed 1 How far is a confidence in the s/aAi/iYy of political institutions establish- ed by an experience of their wisdom ? Are the various interests of society adjusted and pro- tected by a system of laws thoroughly tried, gradually ameliorated, and purely administer- ed ? What is the degree of general prosperity evinced by that most perfect of all criteria, ge- neral credit 1 These are the considerations to which an enlightened politician, who speculates on the future destinyjof nations, will direct his attention, more than to the august and impos- ing exterior of territorial dominion, or to those brilliant moments, when a nation, under the influence of great passions, rises above its neighbours, and above itself, in military re- nown. If it be visionary to suppose the grandeur and safety of the two nations as compatible and co-existent, we have the important (though the cruel) consolation of reflecting, that the French have yet to put together the very ele- ments of a civil and political constitution ; that they have to experience all the danger and all the inconvenience which result from the rash- ness and the imperfect views of legislators, who have every thing to conjecture, and every thing to create ; that they must submit to the confusion of repeated change, or the greater evil of obstinate perseverance in error; that they must live for a century in that state of perilous uncertainty in which every revolution- ized nation remains, before rational liberty be- comes feeling and habit, as well as law, and is written in the hearts of men as plainly as in the letter of the statute ; and that the opportu- nity of beginning this immense edifice of hu- man happiness is so far from being presented to them at present, that it is extremely problem- atical whether or not they are to be bandied from one vulgar usurper to another, and remain for a century subjugated to the rigour of a military government, at once the scorn and the scourge of Europe.-j- To the more pleasing supposition, that the First Consul will make use of his power to give his country a free constitution, we are in- debted for the work of M. Neckar now before us, a work of which good temper is the charac- teristic excellence : it every where preserves * Derniires Vvesde Pvlitiques, etde Finance. Par M. Necllmost resolved to adhere to their duty, it had the very natural and probable effect of unitmg them all in opposition to government. To impose a test, or trial of opinions, is at all times an unpopular species of inquisition ; and at a period when men were hesitating whether they should obey or not, was certainly a very dangerous and rash measure. It could be no security ; for men who would otherwise rebel against their government, certainly would not be restrained by any verbal barriers of this kind ; and, at the same time that it promised no effectual security, it appeared to increase the danger of irritated combination. This very rash measure immediately produced the strongest representations and remonstrances from king's officers of the most unquestionable loyalty. " Lieutenant-Colonel Vesey, commanding at Palamcotah, apprehends the most fatal conse- quences to the tranquillity of the southern pro- vinces, if Colonel Wilkinson makes any hos- tile movements from Trichinopoly. In different letters he states, that such a step must inevi- tably throw the company's troops into open revolt. He has ventured to write in the strongest terms to Colonel Wilkinson, entreat- ing him not to march against the southern troops, and pointing out the ruinous conse- quences which may be expected from such a measure. " Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart in Travancore, and Colonel Forbes in Malabar, have written, that they are under no apprehension for the tranquillity of those provinces, or for the fide- lity of the company's troops, if government does not insist on enforcing the orders for the signature of the test ; but that, if this is at- tempted, the security of the country will be imminently endangered. These orders are to be enforced ; and I tremble for the conse- quences." — Statement of Facts, pp. 53, 54. The following letter from the Honourable Colonel Stuart, commanding a king's regi- ment, was soon after received by Sir George Barlow : — "The late measures of government, as car- ried into effect at the Presidency and Trichi- nopoly, have created a most violent ferment among the corps here. At those places where the European force was so far superior in number to the native, the measure probably was executed without difficulty; but here, where there are seven battalions of sepoys, and a company and a half of artillery, to our one regiment, I found it totally impossible to carry the business to the same length, parti- cularly as any tumult among our own corps would certainly bring the people of Travan- core upon us. " It is in vain, therefore, for me, with the small force I can depend upon, to attempt to stem the torrent here by any acts of violence. "Most sincerely and anxiously do I wish that the present tumult may subside, without fatal consequences; which, if the present vio- lent measures are continued, I much fear will not be the case. If blood is once spilt in the cause, there is no knowing where it may end; and the probable consequences will be, that India will be lost for ever. So many officers WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 309 discontents -were confined almost exclusively to the southern division of the army ; that the troops composing the subsidiary force, those in the ceded districts, in the centre, and a part of the northern division, were all untainted by those principles which had misled the rest of the army." — Statement of Facts, pp. 27, 28. All those violent measures, then, the spirit and wisdom of which have been so much ex- tolled, were not measures of the consequences of which their author had the most distant suspicion. They were not the acts of a man who knew that he must unavoidably, in the discharge of his duty, irritate, but that he could ultimately overcome that irritation. They appear, on the contrary, to have pro- ceeded from a most gross and scandalous ignorance of the opinions of the army. He expected passive submission, and met with universal revolt. So far, then, his want of intelligence and sagacity are unquestionably proved. He did not proceed with useful mea- sures, and run the risk of a revolt, for which he was fully prepared; but he carried these measures into execution, firmly convinced that they would occasion no revolt at all.* The fatal nature of this mistake is best ex- emplified by the means recurred to for its correction. The grand expedient relied upon was to instigate the natives, men and officers, to disobey their European commanders ; an expedient by which present safety was secured at the expense of every principle upon which the permanence of our Indian empire rests. There never was in the world a more singular spectacle than to see a few thousand Europeans governing so despotically fifty or sixty mil- lions of people, of different climate, religion, and habits — forming them into large and well- disciplined armies — and leading them out to the further subjugation of the native powers of India. But can any words be strong enough to paint the rashness of provoking a mutiny, which could only be got under by teaching these armies to act against their Eu- ropean commanders, and to use their actual strength in overpowering their officers'? — or, is any man entitled to the praise of firmness and sagacity, who gets rid of a present danger by encouraging a principle which renders that danger more frequent and more violent ? We will venture to assert, that a more unwise or a more unstatesmanlike action was never committed by any man in any country; and we are grievously mistaken, if any length of time elapse before the evil consequences of it are felt and deplored by every man who deems the welfare of our Indian colonies of any im portance to the prosperity of the mother coun try. We cannot help contrasting the manage- ment of the discontent of the Madras army, with the manner in which the same difficulty was got over with the army at Bengal. A little increase of attention and emolument to the head of that army, under the management of a man of rank and talents, dissipated ap of the army have gone to such lengths, that, unless a general amnesty is granted, tranquil- lity can never be restored. "The honourable the governor in council will not, I trust, impute to me any other mo- tives for having thus given my opinion. I am actuated solely by anxiety for the public good and the benefit of my country ; and I think it my duty, holding the responsible situation I now do, to express my sentiments at so awful a period. " Where there are any prospects of success, it might be right to persevere; but, where every day's experience proves, that the more coercive the measures adopted, the more vio- lent are the consequences, a different and more conciliatory line of conduct ought to be adopted. I have the honour, &c." — Statement of Fads, pp. 55, 56. "A letter from Colonel Forbes, commanding in Malabar, states, that to prevent a revolt in the province, and the probable march of the company's troops towards Seringapatam, he had accepted of a modification in the test, to be signed by the officers on their parole, to make no hostile movements until the pleasure of the government was known. — Disapproved by government, and ordered to enforce the former orders." — Statement of Facts, p. GI. It can scarcely be credited, that in spite of these repeated remonstrances from officers, whose loyalty and whose knowledge of the sub- ject could not be suspected, this test was or- dered to be enforced, and the severest rebukes inflicted upon those who had presumed to doubt of its propriety, or suspend its operation. Nor let any man say that the opinionative person who persevered in this measure saw more clearly and deeply into the consequence of his own measures than those who were about him; for unless Mr. Petrie has been guilty, and repeatedly guilty, of a most down- right and wilful falsehood, Sir George Barlow had not the most distant conception, during all these measures, that the army would ever venture upon revolt. " Government, or rather the head of the go- vernment, was never correctly informed of the actual state of the army, or I think he would have acted otherwise; he was told, and he was willing to believe, that the discontents were confined to a small part of the troops ; that a great majority disapproved of their proceedings, and were firmly and unalterably attached to government." — Statement of Facts, pp. 23, 24. In a conversation which Mr. Petrie had with Sir George Barlow upon the subject of the army — and in the course of which he recom- mends to that gentleman more lenient mea- sures, and warns him of the increasing disaf- fection of the troops — he gives us the following account of Sir George Barlow's notions of the then state of the army: — " Sir G. Barlow assured me I was greatly misinformed ; that he could rely upon his in- _ _ _ telligence; and would produce to council the Georee Barlow, junior, churchwarden of St G^'-ge^^^^ ° .' J ' . , f e Hanover Square, — an office so nobly filled by uiblet and must satisfactory and unequivocal prools ot j^g^^g . j, ^^^ ^^ j^u^e affliction to see so incapable a the fidelity of nine-tenths of the army ; that I man at the head of the Indian empire. We should have been alarmed to have 310 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. pearances which the sceptred pomp of a mer- chant's clerk would have blown up into a rebellion in three weeks ; and yet the Bengal army is at this moment in as good a state of discipline, as the English fleet to which Lord Howe made such abject concessions — and in a state to be much more permanently depended upon than the army which has been so effec- tually ruined by the inconveniently great soul of the present governor of Madras. Sir George Barlow's agent, though faithful to his employment of calumniating those who were in any degree opposed to his principal, seldom loses sight of sound discretion, and confines his invectives to whole bodies of men, except where the dead are concerned. Against Colonel Capper, General Macdowall, and Mr. Roebuck, who are now no longer alive to answer for themselves, he is intrepidly severe; in all these instances he gives a full loose to his sense of duty, and inflicts upon them the severest chastisement. In his attack upon the civilians, he is particularly careful to keep to generals ; and so rigidly does he adhere to this principle, that he does not support his asser- tion, that the civil service was disaffected as well as the military, by one single name, one single fact, or by any other means whatever, than his o*n affirmation of the fact. The truth (as might be supposed to be the case from such sort of evidence) is diametrically opposite. Nothing could be more exemplary, during the whole of the rebellion, than the con- duct of the civil servants ; and though the courts of justice were interfered with,— though the most respectable servants of the company were punished for the verdicts they had given as jurymen, — though many were dismissed for the slightest opposition to the pleasure of go- vernment, even in the discharge of official duties, where remonstrance was absolutely ne- cessary, — though the greatest provocation was given, and the greatest opportunity afforded to the civil servants for revolt, — there is not a single instance in which the shadow of disaf- fection has been proved against any civil ser- vant. This we say, from an accurate exami- nation of all the papers which have been published on the subject; and we do not hesi- tate to affirm, that there never was a more unjust, unfounded, and profligate charge made against any body of men; nor have we often witnessed a more complete scene of folly and violence, than the conduct of the Madras government to its civil servants, exhibited during the whole period of the mutiny. Upon the whole, it appears to us, that the Indian army was ultimately driven into revolt by the indiscretion and violence of the Madras government; and that every evil which has happened might, with the greatest possible fa- cility, have been avoided. We have no sort of doubt that the governor always meant well; but, we are equally certain that he almost always acted ill ; and where in- capacity rises to a certain height, for all prac- tical purposes the motive is of very little con- sequence. That the late Gen. Macdowall was ji weak man, is unquestionable. He was also iiTitated (and not without reason), because he was deprived of a seat in council, which the commanders before him had commonly en- joyed. A little attention, however, on the part of the government — the compliment of con- sulting him upon subjects connected with his profession — any of those little arts which are taught, not by a consummate political skill, but dictated by common good nature, and by the habit of mingling with the world, would have produced the effects of conciliation, and em- ployed the force of General Macdo wall's au- thority in bringing the army into a better temper of mind. Instead of this, it appears to have been almost the object, and if not the object, certainly the practice of the Madras government, to neglect and insult this officer. Changes of the greatest importance wtere made without his advice, and even without any com- munication with him ; and it was too visible to those whom he was to command, that he himself possessed no sort of credit with his superiors. As to the tour which General Mac- dowall is supposed to have made for the pur- pose of spreading disaffection among the troops, and the part which he is represented by the agents to have taken in the quarrels of the civilians with the government, we utterly discredit these imputations. They are unsup- ported by any kind of evidence ; and we believe them to be mere inventions, circulated by the friends of the Madras government. General Macdowall appears to us to have been a weak, pompous man ; extremely out of humour ; of- fended with the slights he had experienced; and whom any man of common address might have managed with the greatest ease : but we do not see, in any part of his conduct, the shadow of disloyalty and disaffection ; and we are persuaded that the assertion would never have been made, if he himself had been alive to prove its injustice. Besides the contemptuous treatment of Gen. Macdowall, we have great doubts whether the Madras government ought not to have suffered Colonel Munro to be put upon his trial ; and to punish the officers who solicited that trial for the purgation of their own characters, appears to us (whatever the intention was) to have been an act of mere tyranny. We think, too, that General Macdowall was very hastily and unadvisedly removed from his situation ■, and upon the unjust treatment of Colonel Capper and Major Boles there can scarcely be two opinions. In the progress of the mutiny, instead of discovering in the Madras govern- ment any appearances of temper and wisdom, they appear to us to have been quite as much irritated and heated as the army, and to have been betrayed into excesses nearly as criminal, and infinitely more contemptible and puerile. The head of a great kingdom bickering with his officers about invitations to dinner — the commander-in-chief of the forces negotiating that the dinner should be loyally eaten — the obstinate absurdity of the test — the total want of selection in the objects of punishment — and the wickedness, or the insanity, of teaching the Sepoy to rise against his European officer — the contempt of the decision of juries in civil cases — and the punishment of the juries them- selves ; such a system of conduct as this would WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. 311 infallibly doom any individual to punishment, if it did not, fortunately for him, display pre- cisely that contempt of men's feelings, and that passion for insulting multitudes, which is so congenial to our present government at home, and which passes now so currently for wisdom and courage. By these means, the liberties of great nations are frequently destroyed — and destroyed with impunity to the perpetrators of the crime. In distant colonies, however, go- vernors who attempt the same system of tyranny are in no little danger from the indig- nation of their subjects; for though men will often yield up iheir happiness to kings who have been always kings, they are not inclined to show the same deference to men who have been merchants' clerks yesterday, and are kings to-day. From a danger of this kind, the governor of Madras appears to us to have very narrowly escaped. We sincerely hope that he is grateful for his good luck; and that he will now awake from his gorgeous dreams of mercantile monarchy, to good nature, modera- tion, and common sense. BISHOP OF LINCOLN^S* CHARGE.t [Edinburgh Review, 1813.] R is a melancholy thing to see a man, clothed in soft raiment, lodged in a public palace, endowed with a rich portion of the product of other 7nen's industry, using all the hrfluence of his splendid situation, how- ever conscientiously, to deepen the ignorance, and inflame the fu7-y, of his fellow-creatures. These are the miserable results of that policy which has been so frequently pursued for these fifty years past, of placing men of mean, or middling abilities, in high ecclesiastical stations. In ordinary times, it is of less importance who fills them ; but when the bitter period arrives, in ivhich the people must give up some of their darling absurdities; — when the senseless clamour, which has been carefully handed doionfrom father fool to son fool, can be no longer indulged ; — ■when it is of incalculable importance to turn the people to a better way of thinking ; the greatest im- pediments to all amelioration are too often found among those to ii'hose coxmcils, at such periods, the country ought to look for ivisdom and peace. We will suppress, however, the feelings of indig- nation which such productions, from such men, naturally occasion. We will give the Bishop of Lincoln credit for being perfectly sincere ; — we will suppose, that every argu- ment he uses has not been used and refuted ten thousand times before; and we will sit down as patiently to defend the religious liber- ties of mankind, as the reverend prelate has done to abridge them. We must begin with denying the main posi- tion upon which the Bishop of Lincoln has built his reasoning — The Catholic religion is not tolerated in England. No man can be fairly said to be permitted to enjoy his own worship •who is punished for exercising that worship. His lordship seems to have no other idea of punishment, than lodging a man in the Poultry compter, or flogging him at the cart's tail, or fining him a sum of money ; — just as if inca- pacitating a man from enjoying the dignities and emoluments to which men of similar con- * ^ Charge delivered to the Clerinj of the Diocese of Lin- eoln, at the Triennial Visitation of that Diocese in May, June, and Jiilii, 1812. By George Tomline, D.D., F.R.S'., I.nrrt Bishop (if Lincoln. London. Cadell and Co. 4to. fit is impossible to conceive the mischief which this mean aud cunning prelate did at this period. I dition, and other faith, may fairly aspire, was not frequently the most severe and galling of all punishments. This limited idea of the nature of punishments is the more extraordi- nary, as incapacitation is actually one of the most common punishments in some branches of our law. The sentence of a court-martial frequently purports, that a man is rendered for ever incapable of serving his majesty, &c. &c. ; and a person not in holy orders, who performs the functions of a clergyman, is rendered for ever incapable of holding any preferment in the church. There are, indeed, many species of offence for which no punishment more appo- site and judicious could be devised. It would be rather extraordinary, however, if the court, in passing such a sentence, were to assure the culprit, " that such incapac.tation was not by them considered as a punishment ; that it was only exercising a right inherent in all govern- ments, of determining who should be eligible for office and who ineligible." His lordship thinks the toleration complete, because he sees a permission in the statutes for the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship. He sees the per- mission — but he does not choose to see the consequences to which they are exposed who avail themselves of this permission. It is the liberality of a father who says to a son, " Do as you please, my dear boy; follow your own in- clination. Judge for yourself; you are free as air. But remember, if you marry that lady, I will cut you off with a shilling." We have scarcely ever read a more solemn and frivolous statement than the Bishop of Lincoln's anti- thetical distinction between persecution and the denial of political power. " It is sometimes said, that Papists, being excluded from power, are consequently perse- cuted; as if exclusion from power and reli- gious persecution were convertible terms. But surely this is to confound things totally distinct in their nature. Persecution inflicts positive punishment upon persons who hold certain religious tenets, and endeavours to accomplish the renunciation and extinction of those tenets by forcible means : exclusion from power is entirely negative in its operation — it only de- 312 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Clares that those wlio hold certain opinions shall not fill certain situations ; but it acknowledges men to be perfectly free to hold those opinions. Persecution compels men toadopt a prescribed faith, or to suffer the loss of liberty, property, or even life : exclusion from power prescribes no faith ; it allows men to think and believe as they please, without molestation or interfer- ence. Persecution requires men to worship God in one and in no other way : exclusion from power neither commands nor forbids any mode of divine worship — it leaves the busi- ness of religion, where it ought to be left, to every man's judgment and conscience. Per- secution proceeds from a bigoted and sangui- nary spirit of intolerance; exclusion from power is founded in the natural and rational principle of self-protection and self-preserva- tion, equally applicable to nation?^ and to indi- viduals. History informs us of tlie mischiev- ous and fatal effects of the one, and proves the expediency and necessity of the other." — fpp. 16, ir.) We will venture to say, there is no one sen- tence in this extract which does not contain either a contradiction, or a misstatement. For how can that law acknowledge men to be per- fectly free to hold an opinion, which excludes from desirable situations all who do hold that opinion 1 How can that law be said neither to molest, nor interfere, which meets a man in every branch of industry and occupation, to institute an inquisition into his religious opi- nions 1 And how is the business of religion left to every man's judgment and conscience, where so powerful a bonus is given to one set of religious opinions, and such a mark of in- famy and degradation fixed upon all other modes of belief? But this is comparatively a very idle part of the question. Whether the present condition of the Catholics is or is not to be denominated a perfect state of toleration, is more a controversy of words than things. That they are subject to some restraints, the bishop will admit : the important question is, whether or not these restraints are necessary 1 For his lordship will, of course, allow, that every restraint upon human liberty is an evil in itself; and can only be justified by the su- perior good which it can be shown to produce. My lord's fears upon the subject of Catholic emancipation are conveyed in the following paragraph : — « It is a principle of our constitution, that the king should have advisers in the discharge of every part of his royal functions— and is it to be imagined that Papists would advise mea- sures in support of the cause of Protestantism 1 A similar observation may be applied to the two Houses of Parliament: would popish peers or popish members of the House of Commons, enact laws for the security of the Protestant government] Would they not rather repeal the whole Protestant code, and make Popery again the established religion of the country'" -(p. 14.) And these are the apprehensions which the clergy of the diocese have prayed my lord to make public. Kind Providence never sends an evil without a remedy : — and arithmetic is the natural cure for the passion of fear. If a coward can be made to count his enemies, his terrors may be reasoned with, and he may think of ways and means of counteraction. Now, might it not have been expedient that the reverend prelate, before he had alarmed his country clergy with the idea of so large a measure as the repeal of Protestantism, should have counted up the probable number of Catholics who would be seated in both houses of Parliament] Does he believe that there would be ten Catholic peers, and thirty Catholic commoners ] But, admit double that number (and more, Dr. Duigenan -himself would not ask), — will the Bishop of Lincoln seriously assert, that he thinks the Whole Protestant code in danger of repeal from such an admixture of Catholic legislators as this 1 Does he forget, amid the innumerable answers which may be made to such sort of apprehensions, what a picture he is drawing of the weakness and versatility of Protestant principles 1 — that an handful of Catholics, in the bosom of a Protestant legis- lature, is to overpower the ancient jealousies, the fixed opinions, the inveterate habits of twelve millions of people 1 — that the king is to apostatize, the clergy to be silent, and the Par- liament be taken by surprise 1 — that the nation is to go to bed over night, and to see the Pope walking arm in arm with Lord Castlereagh the next morning] — One would really suppose, from the bishop's fears, that the civil defences of mankind were, like their military bulwarks transferred, by superior skill and courage, in a few hours, from the vanquished to the victoi — that the destruction of a church was like the blowing up of a mine, — deans, prebendaries, churchwardens and overseers, all up in the air in an instant. Does his lordship really ima- gine, when the mere, dread of the Catholics becoming legislators has induced him to charge his clergy, and his agonized clergy, to extort from their prelate the publication of the charge, that the full and mature danger will produce less alarm than the distant suspi- cion of it has done in the present instance ] — that the Protestant writers, whose pens are now up to the feather in ink, will, at any future period, yield up their church, without passion, pamphlet, or pugnacity ] We do not blame the Bishop of Lincoln for being afraid; but we blame him for not rendering his fears in- telligible and tangible — for not circumscribing and particularizing them by some individual case — for not showing us how it is possible that the Catholics (granting their intentions to be as bad as possible) should ever be able to ruin the Church of England. His lordship appears to be in a fog; and, as daylight breaks in upon him, he will be rather disposed to dis- own his panic. The noise he hears is not roaring, — but braying; the teeth and the mane are all imaginary; there is nothing but ears. It is not a lion that stops the way, but an ass. One method his lordship takes, in handling this question, is by pointing out dangers that are barely possible, and then treating of them as if they deserved the active and present atten- tion of serious men. But if no measure is to WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 313 be carried into execution, and if no provision is safe in which the minute inspection of an ingenious man cannot find the possibility of danger, then all human action is impeded, and no human institution is safe or commendable. The king has the power of pardoning, — and so every species ofgulitmay remain unpunished: he has a negative upon legislative acts, and so no law may pass. None but Presbyterians may be returned to the House of Commons, — and so the Church of England may be voted down. The Scottish and Irish members may join together in both houses, and dissolve both unions. If probability is put out of sight, — and if, in the enumeration of dangers, it is sufficient to state any which, by remote con- tingency, may happen, then is it time that we should begin to provide against all the host of perils which we have just enumerated, and which are many of them as likely to happen, as those which the reverend prelate has stated in his charge. His lordship forgets that the Catholics are not asking for election but for eligibility — not to be admitted into the cabinet, but not to be excluded from it. A century may elapse before any Catholic actually becomes a member of the cabinet; and no event can be more utterly destitute of probability, than that they should gain an ascendency there, and direct that ascendency against the Protestant interest. If the bishop really wishes to know upon what our security is founded; it is vpon the prodigious and decided superiority of the Pro- testant interest in the British nation, and in the United Parliament. No Protestant king would select such a cabinet, or countenance such measures ; no man would be mad enough to attempt them; the English Parliament and the English people would not endure it for a mo- ment. No man, indeed, but under the sanctity of the mitre, would have ventured such an ex- travagant opinion. — Wo to him, if he had been only a dean. But, in spite of his venerable office, we must express our decided belief, that his lordship (by no means averse to a good bargain) would not pay down five pounds, to receive fifty millions for his posterity, when- ever the majority of the cabinet should be (Catholic emancipation carried) members of the Catholic religion. And yet, upon such terrors as these, which, when put singly to him, his better senses would laugh at, he has thought fit to excite his clergy to petition, and done all in his power to increase the mass of hatred against the Catholics. It is true enough, as his lordship remarks, that events do not depend upon laws alone, but upon the wishes and intentions of those who administer these laws. But then his lordship totally puts out of sight two considerations — the improbability of Catholics ever reaching the highest offices of the state— and those fixed Protestant opinions of the country, which would render any attack upon the established church so hopeless, and therefore, so impro- bable. Admit a supposition (to us perfectly j ludicrous, but still necessary to the bishop's [ argument), that the cabinet council consisted | entirely of Catholics, we should even then have | no more fear of their making the English i 40 people Catholics, than we should have of a cabi- net of butchers making the Hindoos eat beef. The bishop has not stated the true and great security for any course of human actions. It is not the word of the law, nor the spirit of the government, but the general way of think- ing among the people, especially when that way of thinking is ancient, exercised upon high interests, and connected with striking passages in history. The Protestant church does not rest upon the little narrow founda- tions where the Bishop of Lincoln supposes it to be placed : if it did, it would not be worth saving. It rests upon the general opinion en- tertained by a free and reflecting people, that the doctrines of the church are true, her pre- tensions moderate, and her exhortations useful. It is accepted by a people who have, from good taste, an abhorrence of sacerdotal mummery; and from good sense, a dread of sacerdotal ambition. Those feelings, so generally diffused, and so clearly pronounced on all occasions, are our real bulwarks against the Catholic re- ligion, and the real cause which makes it so safe for the best friends of the church to di- minish (by abolishing the test laws) so very fertile a source of hatred to the state. In the 15th page of his lordship's charge, there is an argument of a very curious nature. "Let us suppose," (says the Bishop of Lin- coln), "that there had been no test laws, no disabling statutes, in the year 1745, when an attempt was made to overthrow the Protestant government, and to place a popish sovereign upon the throne of these kingdoms ; and let us suppose, that the leading men in the houses of Parliament, that the ministers of state, and the commanders of our armies, had then been Papists. Will any one contend, that that for- midable rebellion, supported as it was by a foreign enemy, would have been resisted with the same zeal, and suppressed with the same facility, as when all the measures were planned and executed by sincere Protestants 1" (p. 15.) And so his lordship means to infer, that it would be foolish to abolish the laws against the Catholics note, because it would have been foolish to have abolished them at some other period ; — that a measure must be bad, because there was formerly a combination of circum- stances, when it would have been bad. His lordship might, with almost equal propriety, debate what ought to be done if Julius Cassar were about to make a descent upon our coasts ; or lament the impropriety of emancipating the Catholics, because the Spanish Armada was putting to sea. The fact is that Julius Caesar is dead — the Spanish Armada was de- feated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth — for half a century there has been no disputed suc- cession — the situation of the world is changed — and, because it is changed, we can do now what we could not do then. And nothing can be more lamentable than to see this respecta- ble prelate wasting his resources in putting imaginary and inapplicable cases, and reason- ing upon their solution, as if they had any- thing to do with present affairs. '2D 314 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. These remarks entirely put an end to the common mode of arguing a GuUelmo. What did King William do 1 — what would King William say 1 &c. King William was in a veiy difierent situation from that in which we are placed. The whole world was in a very different situation. The great and glorious authors of the Revolution (as they are com- monly denominated) acquired their greatness and their glory, not by a superstitious reverence for inapplicable precedents, but by taking hold of present circumstances to lay a deep founda- tion for libert}'; and then using old names for new things, they left the Bishop of Lmcoln, and other good men, to suppose that they had been thinking all the time about ancestors. Another species of false reasoning, which pervades the Bishop of Lincoln's charge, is this : He states what the interests of men are, and then takes it for granted that they will eagerly and actively pursue them ; laying totally out of the question the probability or im- probability of their effecting their object, and the influence which this balance of chances must produce upon their actions. For instance, it is the interest of the Catholics that our church should be subservient to theirs. Therefore, says his lordship, the Catholics will enter into a conspiracy against the English church. But, is it not also the decided interest of his lord- ship's butler that he should be bishop, and the bishop his butler 1 That the crozier and the corkscrew should change hands, — and the washer of the bottles which they had emptied become the diocesan of learned divines 1 What has prevented this change, so beneficial to the upper domestic, but the extreme improbability of success, if the attempt were made ; an im- probability so great that we will venture to say, the very notion of it has scarcely once entered into the understanding of the good man. Why, then, is the reverend prelate, who lives on so safely and contentedly with John, so dreadfully alarmed at the Catholics 1 And why does he so completely forget, in their in- stance alone, that men do not merely strive to obtain a thing because it is good, but always mingle with the excellence of the object a con- sideration of the chance of gaining if? The Bishop of Lincoln (p. 19) states it as an argument against concession to the Catho- lics, that we have enjoyed " internal peace and entire freedom from all religious animosities and feuds since the Revolution." The fact, however, is not more certain than conclusive against his view of the question. For, since that period, the worship of the church of Eng- land has been abolished in Scotland — the cor- poration and test acts repealed in Ireland — and the whole of this king's reign has been one series of concessions to the Catholics. Relaxation, then (and we wish this had been remembered at the charge), of penal laws, on subjects of religious opinion, is perfectly com- patible with internal peace and exemption from religious animosity. But the bishop is always fond of lurking in generals, and cautiously avoids coming to any specific instance of the dangers which he fears. •' It is declared in one of the 39 Articles, that the king is head of our church, without being subject to any foreign power; and it is expressly said that the Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction within these realms. On the con- trary. Papists assert, that the pope is supreme head of the whole Christian church, and that allegiance is due to him from every individual member, in all spiritual matters. This direct opposition to one of the fundamental princi- ples of the ecclesiastical part of our constitu- tion, is alone sufficient to justify the exclusion of Papists from all situations of authority. They acknowledge, indeed, that obedience in civil matters is due to the king. But cases must arise, in which civil and religious duties will clash ; and he knows but little of the influ- ence of the Popish religion over the mind of its votaries, who doubts which of these duties would be sacrificed to the other. Moreover, the most subtle casuistry cannot always dis- criminate between temporal and spiritual things ; and in truth, the concerns of this life not unfrequently partake of both characters." — (pp. 21, 22.) We deny entirely that any case can occur, where the fexposition of a doctrine purely spe- culative, or the arrangement of a mere point of church discipline, can interfere with civil duties. The Roman Catholics are Irish and English citizens at this moment ; but no such case has occurred. There is no instance in which obedience to the civil magistrate has been prevented, by an acknowledgment of the spiritual supremacy of the pope. The Catho- lics have given (in an oath which we suspect the bishop never to have read) the most solemn pledge, that their submission to their spiritual ruler should never interfere with their civil obedience. The hypothesis of the Bishop of Lincoln is, that it must very often do so. The fact is, that it has never done so. His lordship is extremely angry with the Catholics for refusing to the crown a veto upon the appointment of their bishops. He forgets, that in those countries of Europe where the crown interferes with the appointment of bish- ops, the reigning monarch is a Catholic, — which makes all the difference. We sincerely wish that the Catholics would concede this point; but we cannot be astonished at their reluctance to admit the interference of a Pro- testant prince with their bishops. What would his lordship say to the interference of any Catholic power with the appointment of the English sees? Next comes the stale and thousand times re- futed charge against the Catholics, that they think the pope has the power of dethroning heretical kings ; and that it is the duty of every Catholic to use every possible means to root out and destroy heretics, &c. To all of which may be returned this one conclusive answer, that the Catholics are ready to deny these doc- trines upon oath. And as the whole contro- versy is, whether the Catholic shall, by means of oaths, be excluded from certain offices in the state ; — those who contend that the con- tinuation of these excluding oaths is essential to the public safety, must admit, that oaths are binding upon Catholics, and a security to the state that what they swear to is true. It is right to keep these things in view — and WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 315 to omit no opportunity of exposing and coun- teracting that spirit of intolerant zeal or intol- erable time-serving, which has so long dis- graced and endangered this country. But the truth is, that we look upon this cause as already gained;— and while we warmly congratulate the nation on the mighty step it has recently made towards increased power and entire security, it is impossible to avoid saying a ■word upon the humiliating and disgusting, but at the same time most edifying spectacle, which has lately been exhibited by the anti- Catholic addressers. That so great a number of persons should have been found with such a proclivity to servitude (for honest bigotry had but little to do with the matter), as to rush forward with clamours in favour of intolerance, upon a mere surmise that this would be ac- counted as acceptable service by the present possessors of patronage and power, affords a more humiliating and discouraging picture of the present spirit of the country, than any thing else that has occurred in our re- membrance. The edifying part of the spec- tacle is the contempt with which their officious devotions have been received by those whose favour they were intended to purchase, — and the universal scorn and derision with which they were regarded by independent men of all parties and persuasions. The catastrophe, we think, teaches two lessons ; — one to the time- servers themselves, not to obtrude their servi- lity on the government, till they have reason- able ground to think it is wanted; — and the other to the nation at large, not to imagine that a base and interested clamour in favour of what is supposed to be agreeable to govern- ment, however loudly and extensively sounded, affords any indication at all, either of the ge- neral sense of the country, or even of what is actually contemplated by those in the adminis- tration of its affairs. The real sense of the country has been proved, on this occasion, to be directly against those who presumptuously held themselves out as its organs; — and even the ministers have made a respectable figure, compared with those who assumed the charac- ter of their champions. MADAME D'EPINAY.* [Edinburgh Review, 1818.] There used to be in Paris, under the ancient regime, a few women of brilliant talents, who violated all the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers. Among these supped and sinned Madame d'Epinay — the friend and companion of Rousseau, Dide- rot, Grimm, Holbach, and many other literary persons of distinction of that period. Her principal lover was Grimm ; with whom was deposited, written in feigned names, the history of her life. Grimm died — his secretary sold the history — the feigned names have been ex- changed for the real ones — and her works now appear abridged in three volumes octavo. Madame d'Epinay, though far from an im- maculate character, has something to say in palliation of her irregularities. Her husband behaved abominably; and alienated, by a series of the most brutal injuries, an attachment •which seems to have been very ardent and sincere, and which, with better treatment, would probably have been lasting. For, in all her aberrations. Mad. d'Epinay seems to have had a tendency to be constant. Though ex- tremely young when separated from her hus- band, she indulged herself with but two lovers for the rest of her life; — to the first of whom she seems to have been perfectly faithful, till he left her at the end often or twelve years ; — and to Grimm, by whom he was succeeded, she appears to have given no rival till the day of her death. The account of the life she led, both with her husband and her lovers, brings * Memoires et Correspondence de Madame d'Epinay. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1818. upon the scene a great variety of French cha- racters, and lays open very completely the interior of French life and manners. But there are some letters and passages which ought not to have been published ; which a sense of common decency and morality ought to have suppressed ; and which, we feel as- sured, would never have seen the light in this country. A French woman seems almost always to have wanted the flavour of prohibition, as a ne- cessary condiment to human life. The provided husband was rejected, and the forbidden hus- band introduced in ambiguous light, through posterns and secret partitions. It was not the union to one man that was objected to — for they dedicated themselves with a constancy which the most household and parturient wo- man in England could not exceed ; — but the thing wanted was the wrong man, the gentle- man without the ring — the master unsworn to at the altar — Ihe person unconsecrated by priests — " Oh! let me taste thee unexcisetl by kings." The following strikes us as a very lively picture of the ruin and extravagance of a fash- ionable hoiise in a great metropolis. "M. d'Epinay a complete son domestique. II a trois laquais, et moi deux ; je n'en ai pas voulu davantage. II a un valet de chambre; et il vouloit aussi que je prisse une seconde femme, mais comme je n'en ai que faire, j'ai tenu bon. Enfin les ofRciers, les femmes, les valets se montent au nombre de seize. Quoique la vie que je mene soit asiez uniforme, j'espere WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. n'ptre pas obligee d'en changer. Celle de M. d'Epiiiay est differente. Lorsqu'il est leve, son valet de chambre se met en devoir de I'accom- moder. Deux laquais sent debout a attendre ordres. Le premier secretaire vient avec I'intenlion de lui rendre compte des lettres qu'il a rejues de son departement, et qu'il est charge d'ouvrir; il doit lire les reponses et les faire signer; mais il est interrompu deux cents fois dans cette occupation par toutes sortes d'especes imaginables. C'est un maquignon qui a des chevaux uniques a vendre, mais qui sont retenus par un seigneur; ainsi il estvenu pour ne pas manquer a sa parole; car on lui en donneroit le double, qu'on ne pourroit faire affaire. II en fait une description seduisante, on demande le prix. Le seigneur un tel en offre soixante louis. — Je I'ous en donne cent. — Cela est inutile, a moins qu'il ne se dedise. Cependant Ton conclut a cent louis sans les avoir vus, car le lendemain le seigneur ne manque pas de se dedire : voila ce que j'ai vu et entendu la semaine derniere. "Ensuite c'est un polisson qui vient brailler un air, et a qui on accorde sa protection pour le faire entrer a I'Opera, apres lui avoir donne quelques lecons de bon goiit, et lui avoir appris ce que c'est que la proprete du chant fran§ois ; c'est une demoiselle qu'on fait attendre pour savoir si je suis encore la. Je me leve et je m'en vais; les deux laquais ouvrent les deux battans pour me laisser sortir, moi qui passe- rois alors par le trou d'une aiguille; et les deux estafiers crient dans I'anti-chambre : Ma- dame, messieurs, voila. madame. Tout le monde se range en hale, et ces messieurs sont des marchands d'etoffes, des marchands d'in- strumens, des bijoutiers, des colporteurs, des laquais, des decroteurs, des creanciers ; enfin tout ce que vous pouvez imaginer de plus ridi- cule et de plus affligeant. Midi ou une heure Sonne avant que cette toilette soit achevee, et le secretaire, qui, sans doute, salt par experi- ence I'inipossibilite de rendre un compte de- taille des affaires, a un petit bordereau qu'il remet entre les mains de son maitre pour I'in- struire de ce qu'il doit dire a I'assemblee. Une autre fois il sort a pied ou en fiacre, rentre a deux heures, fait comme un bruleur de maison, dine tete a tete avec moi, ou admet en tiers son premier secretaire qui lui parle de la necessite de fixer chaque article de depense, de donner des delegations pour tel ou tel objet. La seule reponse est: Nous verrons cela. Ensuite il court le monde et les spectacles; et il soupe en ville quand il n'a personne a souper chez lui. Je vois que mon temps de repos est fini."— I. pp. 308—310. A very prominent person among the early friends of Madame d'Epinay is Mademoiselle d'Ette, a woman of great French respectabi- lity, and circulating in the best society; and, as we are painting French manners, we shall make no apology to the serious part of our English readers, for inserting this sketch of her history and character by her own hand. * Je connois, me dit-elle ensuite, votre fran- chise et votre discretion : dites-moi naturelle- irient quelle opinion on a de moi dans le monde. La meilleure, lui dis-je, et telle que vous ne pourriez la conserver si vous pratiquiez la morale que vous venez de me precher. Voila. oil je vous attendois, me dit-elle. Depuis dix ans que j'ai perdu ma mere, je fus seduite par le chevalier de Valory qui m'avoit vu, pour ainsi dire, elever; mon extreme jeunesse et la confiance que j'avois en lui ne me permirent pas d'abord de me defier de ses veus. Je fus longtemps a m'en apercevoir, et lorsque je m'en aperpus, j'avois pris tant de goiit pour lui, que je n'eus pas la force de lui resister. II me vint des scrupules ; il les leva, en me promettant de m'epouser. II y travailla en effet ; mais voyant I'opposition que sa familie y apportoit, a cause de la disproportion d'age et de mon peu de fortune; et me trouvant, d'ailleurs, heureuse comme j'etois, je fus la premiere a etouffer mes scrupules, d'autant plus qu'il est assez pauvre. II commengoit a faire des reflexions, je lui proposai de con- tinuer a vivre comme nous etions; il I'accepta. Je quittai ma province, et je le suivis a Paris ; vous voyez comme j'y vis. Quatre fois la se- maine il passe sa journee chez moi; le reste du temps nous nous contenlons reciproque- ment d'apprendre de nos nouvelles, a moins que le hasard ne nous fasse rencontrer. Nous vivons heureux, contens; peut-etre ne le se- rions nous pas tant si nous etions maries." — L pp. Ill, 112. This seems a very spirited, unincumbered way of passing through life; and it is some comfort, therefore, to a matrimonial English reader, to find Mademoiselle d'Ette kicking the chevalier out of doors towards the end of the second volume. As it is a scene very edifying to rakes, and those who decry the happiness of the married state, we shall give it in the words of Madame d'Epinay. "Une nuit, dont elle avoit passe la plus grande partie dans I'inquietude, elle entre chez le chevalier: il dormoit; elle le reveille, s'as- sied sur son lit, et entame une explication avec toute la violence et la fureur qui I'ani- moient. Le chevalier, apres avoir employe vainement, pour le calmer, tous les moyens que sa bonte naturelle lui suggera, lui signifia enfin tres-precisement qu'il alloit se separer d'elle pour toujours, et fuir un enfer auquel il ne pouvoit plus tenir. Cette confidence, qui n'etoit pas faite pour I'appaiser, redoubla sa rage. Puis-qu'il est ainsi, dit-elle, sortez tout a I'heure de chez moi; vous deviez partir dans quatre jours, c'est vous rendre service de vous faire partir dans I'instant. Tout ce qui est ici m'appartient; le bail est en mon nom: il ne me convient plus de vous souffrir chez moi : levez-vous, monsieur, et songez a ne rien em- porter sans ma permission." — IL pp. 193, 194. Our English method of asking leave to sepa- rate from Sir William Scott and Sir John Nicol is surely better than this. Any one who provides good dinners for clever people, and remembers what they say, cannot fail to write entertaining Memoires. Among the early friends of Madame d'Epinay was Jean Jacques Rousseau, — she lived with him in considerable intimacy; and no small part of her book is taken up with accounts of his eccentricity, insanity, and vice. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 317 « Nous avons debute par V Engagement teme- la solitude a deja agite f 3- bi e. II se pla nt de rafr., comedie nou^ellejde M. Rousseau, ami | tout le monde. ^^^^erot ^"^^ . 3^^^^^ deFrancueilqui nous I'a presente._ L'auteur ne va jamais e voir MG mm e^^^^^^^^ a joue un role dans sa piece. Quoique ce ne soit qu'une comedie de societe, elle a eu un grand succes. Je doute cependant qu'elle put reussir au theatre ; mais c'est I'ouvrage d'^un homme de beaucoup d'esprit, et peut-etre d'un homme singulier. Je ne sais pas trop cepen- dant si c'est ce que j'ai vu de l'auteur ou de la piece qui me fait juger ainsi. II est com- plimenteur sans etre poli, ou au moins sans en avoir I'air. II paroit ignorer les usages du monde -, mais il est aise de voir qu'il a infini- ment d'esprit. II a le teint brun : et des yeux pleins de feu animent sa physionomie. ^ Lors- qu'il a parle et qu'on le regarde, il paroit joli ; mais lorsqu'on se le rappelle, c'est toujours en laid. On dit qu'il est d'une mauvaise sante, el qu'il a des souffrances qu'il cache avec soin, par je ne sais quel principe de vanite ; c'est apparemment ce qui lui donne, de temps en temps, I'air farouche. M. de Bellegarde, avec qui il a cause long-temps, ce matin, en est en- chante, et I'a engage a nous venir voir sou- vent. J'en suis bien aise ; je me promets de profiler beaucoup de sa conversation." — I. pp. 175, 176. Their friendship so formed, proceeded to a great degree of intimacy. Madame d'Epinay admired his genius, and provided him with hats and coats ; and, at last, was so far de- luded by his declamations about the country, as to fit him up a little hermit cottage, where there were a great many birds, and a great many plants and flowers — and Avhere Rous- seau was, as might have been expected, su- premely miserable. His friends from Paris did not come to see him. The postman, the butcher, and the baker, hate romantic scenery; duchesses and marchionesses were no longer found to scramble for him. Among the real inhabitants of the country, the reputation of reading and thinking is fatal to character; and Jean Jacques cursed his own successful elo- quence which had sent him from the suppers and flattery of Paris to smell to daffodils, watch sparrows, or project idle saliva into the passing stream. Very few men who have gratified, and are gratifying their vanity in a great metropolis, are qualified to quit it. Few have the plain sense to perceive that they must soon inevitably be forgotten, — or the for- titude to bear it when they are. They repre- sent to themselves imaginary scenes of de- ploring friends and dispirited companies, — but the ocean might as well regret the drops exhaled by the sunbeams. Life goes on ; and whether the absent have retired into a cottage or a grave, is much the same thing. — In Lon- don, as in law, de non apparentibus, el non exist- entibns cadcm est ratio. This is the account Madame d'Epinay gives of Rousseau soon after he had retired into the hermitage. "J'ai ete il y a deux jours a la Chevrette, pour terminer quelques affaires avant de m'y etablir avec mes enfans. J'avois fait prevenir Rousseau de mon voyage : il est yenu me voir. Je crois qu'il a besoin de ma presence, et que le Baron d'Holbach I'oublie; Gauffecourt et moi seulement avons encore des egards^ pour lui, dit-il ; j'ai voulu les justifier ; cela n'a pas reussi. J'espere qu'il sera beaucoup plus a la Chevrette qu'a I'Hermitage. Je suis persuadee qu'il n'y a que fa§on de prendre cet homme pour le rendre heureux; c'est de feindre de ne pas prendre garde a lui, et s'en occuper sans cesse; c'est pour cela que je n'insistai point pour le retenir, lorsqu'il m'eut dit qu'il^vouloit s'en retourner a I'Hermitage, quoiqu'il fut tard et malgre le mauvais temps."— II. pp. 253, 254. Jean Jacques Rousseau seems, as the reward of genius and fine writing, to have claimed an exemption from all moral duties. He borrowed and begged, and never paid ;— put his children in a poor-house— betrayed his friends— insulted his benefactors— and was guilty of every spe- cies of meanness and mischief. His vanity was so great, that it was almost impossible to keep pace with it by any activity of attention ; and his suspicion of all mankind amounted nearly, if not altogether, to insanity. The fol- lowing anecdote, however, is totally clear of any symptom of derangement, and carries only the most rooted and disgusting selfishness. " Rousseau vous a done dit qu'il n'avoit pas porte son ouvrage a Paris 1 II en a menti, car il n'a fait son voyage que pour cela. J'ai regu hier une lettre de Diderot, qui peint votre her- mite comme si je le voyois. II a fait ces deux lieues a pied, est venu s'etablir chez Diderot sans I'avoir prevenu, le tout pour faire avec lui la revision de son ouvrage. Au point ou ils en etoient ensemble, vous conviendrez que cela est assez etrange. Je vois, par certains mots echappes a mon ami dans sa lettre, qu'il y a quelque sujet de discussion entre eux ; mais comme il ne s'explique point, je n'y comprends rien. Rousseau I'a tenu impitoyablement a I'ouvrage depuis le Samedi dix heures du matin jusqu'au Lundi onze heures du soir, sans lui donner a peine le temps de boire ni manger. La revision finie, Diderot cause avec lui d'un plan qu'il a dans la tete, et prie Rousseau de I'aider a arranger un incident qui n'est pas en- core trouve a sa fantaisie. Cela est trop diffi- cile, repond froidement Thermite, il est tard, je ne suis point accoutume ■ — ■"— ■»"" veiller. Bon soir, je pars demain a six heures du matin, il est temps de dormir. II se leve, va se coucher, et laisse Diderot petrifie de son precede. Voila cet homme que vous croyez si pen^tre de vos legons. Ajoutez a cette reflexion un propos singulier de la femme de Diderot, dont je vous prie de faire votre profit. Cette femme n'est qu'une bonne femme, mais elle a la tact juste. Voyant son mari desole le jour du depart de Rousseau, elle lui en demande la raison ; il la lui dit : C'est le manque de delicatesse de eel homme, ajoute-t-il, qui m'afflige; il me fait travailler comme un manceuvre, je^ne ra'en serois, je crois, pas aper(;u, s'il ne m'avoit re fuse aussi sechement de s'occuper pourmoi un quart-d'heure . . . Vous etes etonne de cela, lui repond sa femme, vous ne le connoissez done pasi II est devors d'envie ; il enrage quani 2d3 318 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. il paroit quelque chose de beau qui n'est pas de lui. On lui verra faire un jaur quelques grands forfaits plutot que de se laisser ignorer. TeneZ, je ne jurerois pas qu'il ne se rangeat du parti des Jesuites, et qu'il n'enterprit leur apologie."— II. pp. 60, 61. The horror which Diderot ultimately con- ceived for him, is strongly expressed in the following letter to Grimm, — written after an interview which compelled him, with many pangs, to renounce all intercourse with a man who had, for years, been the object of his ten- derest and most partial feelings. " Get homme est un forcene. Je I'ai vu, je lui ai reproche, avec toute la force que donne I'honnetete et une sorte d'interet qui reste au fond du cceur d'un ami qui lui est devoue de- puis long-temps, I'enormite de sa conduite ; les pleurs verses aux pieds de Madame d'Epinay, dans le moment meme oil il la chargeoit pres de moi des accusations les plus graves ; cette odieuse apologie qu'il vous a envoyee, et oii il n'y pas une seule des raisons qu'il avoit a dire ; cette lettre projectee pour Saint-Lambert, qui devoit le tranquilliser sur des sentimens qu'il se reprochoit, et ou, loin d'avouer une passion nee dans son cceur son malgre lui, il s'ex- cuse d'avoir alarme Madame d'Houdetot sur la sienne. Que sais-je encore ? Je ne suis point content de ses responses ; je n'ai pas eu le courage de le lui temoigner j'ai mieux aime lui laisser la miserable consolation de croire qu'il m'a trompe. Qu'il vive! II a mis dans sa defense un emportement froid qui m'a afSige. J'ai peur qu'il ne soit endurci. "Adieu, mon ami; soyons et continuous d'etre honnetes gens : I'etat de ceux qui ont cesse a I'etre me fait peur. Adieu, mon ami ; je vous embrasse bien tendrement Je ne jette dans vos bras comme un homme effraye ; je tiiche en vain de faire de la poesie, mais cet homme me revient tout a travers mon travail ; j1 me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avois a cote de moi un damne ; il est damne, cela est silr. Adieu, mon ami Grimm, viola Teffet que je ferois sur vous, si je devenois jamais im mechant: en verite,j'aimerois mieux etre mort. II n'y a peut-etre pas le sens commun dans tout ce que je vous ecris, mais je vous avoue que je n'a- jamais eprouve un trouble d'ame si terribk que cela que j'ai. " Oh ! mon ami, quel spectacle que celui d'un homme mechant et bourrele ! Brulez, dechirez ce papier, qu'il ne retombe plus sous vos yeux; que je ne revoie plus cet homme U, il me feroit croire aux diables et a I'enfer. Si je suis jamais force de retourner chez lui, je suis sur que je fremirai tout le long du che- min: j'avois la fievre en revenant. Je suis fache de ne lui avoir pas laisse voir I'horreur qu'il m'inspiroit, et je ne me reconcilie avec moi qu'en pensant, que vous, avec toute votre fermete, vous ne I'aiiriez pas pu a ma place ; je ne sais pas s'il ne m'auroit pas tue. On entendoit ses cris jusqu'au bout du jardin; et je le voyois ! Adieu, mon ami, j'irai domain vous voir; j'irai chercher un homme de bien, au})res duquel je m'asseyc, qui me rassure, et qui chasse de mon ame je ne sais quoi d'in- fernal qui la tourmente et qui s'y est attache. Les poe'.es ont bien fait de mettre un inter- valle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En verite, la main rae tremble." — III. pp. 148, 149. Madame d'Epinay lived, as we before ob- served, with many persons of great celebrity. We could not help smiling, among many others, at this anecdote of our countryman, David Hume. At the beginning of his splen- did career of fame and fashion at Paris, the historian was persuaded to appear in the cha- racter of a sultan ; and was placed on a sofa between two of the most beautiful women of Paris, who acted for that evening the part of inexorables, whose favour he was supposed to be soliciting. The absurdity of this scene can easily be conceived. " Le celebre David Hume, grand et gros his- toriographe d'Angleterre, connu et estime par ses ecrits, n'a pas autant de talens pour ce genre d'amusemens auquel toutes nos jolies femmes I'avoient decide propre. II fit son debut chez Madame de T * * * ; on lui avoit destine le role d'un sultan assis entre deux esclaves, employant toute son eloquence pour s'en faire aimer; les trouvant inexorables, il devoit chercher le sujet de leurs peines et de leur re- sistance : on le place sur un sopha entre les deux plus jolies femmes de Paris, il les regarde attentivement, il se frappe le ventre et les ge- noux a plusieurs reprises, et ne trouve jamais autre chose a leur dire que . Eh bien ! mes de- moiselles .... Eh bien ! vous voild done .... Ek bien! vous voild .... vous voild id? .... Cette phrase dura un quart-d"heure,sans qu'il put en sortir. Une d'elles se leva d'impatience : Ah! dit-clle, je m'en etois bien doutee, cet homme n'est bon qu'a manger du veau ! Dupuis ce temps il est relegue au role de spectateur, et n'en est pas moins fete et cajole. C'est en ve- rite une chose plaisante que le role qu'il joue ici ; malheureusement pour lui, ou plutot pour la dignitephilosophique, car, pour lui, il paroit s'accommoder fort de ce train de vie ; il n'y avoit aucune manie dominante dans ce pays lorsqu'il y est arrive ; on I'a regarde comme une trouvaille dans cette circonstance, et I'ef- fervescence de nos jeunes tetes s'est tournee de son cote. Toutes les jolies femmes s'en sont emparees ; il est de tons les soupers fins, et il n'est point de bonne fete sans lui : en un mot, il est pour nos agreables ce que les Genevois sont pour moi." — III. pp. 284, 285. There is always some man, of whom the human viscera stand in greater dread than of any other person, who is supposed, for the time being, to be the only person who can dart his pill into their inmost recesses ; and bind them over, in medical recognisance, to assimilate and digest. In the Trojan war, Podalirius and Machaon were what Dr. Baillie and Sir Henry Halford now are — they had the fashionable practice of the Greek camp; and, in all pro- bability, received many a guinea from Aga- memnon dear to Jove, and Nestor the tamer of horses. In the time of Madame d'Epinay, Dr. Tronchin, of Geneva, was in vogue, and no lady of fashion could recover without writing to him, or seeing him in person. To the Esculapius of this very small and irritable republic, Madame d'Epinay repaired; and, after a struggle between life and death, and Dr. Tronchin, recovered her health. During WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 319 her residence at Geneva, she became acquaint- ed with Voltaire, of whom she has left the following admirable and original account — the truth, talent, and simplicity of which, are not a little enhanced by the tone of adulation or abuse which has been so generally employed in speaking of this celebrated person. "Eh bien ! mon ami, je n'aimerois pas a vivre de suite avec lui; il n'anul principe ar- rete, il compte trop sur sa memoire, et il en abuse souvent ; je trouve qu'elle fait tort quel- qucfois a sa conversation ; il redit plus qu'il ne dit, et ne laisse jamais rien a faire aux autres. II ne sait point causer, et il humilie I'amour-propre ; il dit le pour et le centre, tant qu'on veut, toujours avec de nouvelles graces a la verite, et neanmoins il a toujours I'air de se moquer de tout, jusqu'a lui-meme. II n'a nulle philosophic dans la tete ; il est tout he- risse de petits prejuges d'enfans ; on les lui passeroit peut-etre en faveur de ses graces, du brilliant de son esprit et de son originalite, s'il ne s'affichoit pas pour les secouer tous. II a des inconsequences plaisantes, et il est au milieu de tout cela tres-amusant a voir. Mais je n'aime point les gens qui ne font que m'amuser. Pour madame sa niece, elle est tout-a-fait comique. " II paroit ici depuis quelques jours un livre qui a vivement echauffe les t^tes, et qui cause des discussions fort interessantes entre differ- entes personnes de ce pays, parce que Ton pretend que la constitution de leur gouverne- ment y est interessee : Voltaire s'y trouve mele pour des propos assez vifs qu'il a tenu a ce sujet contre les pretres. La grosse niece trouve fort mauvais que tous les magistrats n'ayent pas pris fait et cause pour son oncle. Elle jette tour a tour ses grosses mains et ses petits bras par dessus sa tete, maudissant avec des cris inhumains les lois, les republiques, et surtout ces polissons de republicains qui vont a pied, qui sont obliges de souffrir les criail- leries de leurs pretres, et qui se croient libres. Cela est tout-a-fait bon a entendre et a voir." III. pp. 196, 197. Madame D'Epinay was certainly a woman of very considerable talent. Rousseau accuses her of writing bad plays and romances. This may be ; but her epistolary style is excellent — her remarks on passing events lively, acute, and solid — and her delineation of character admirable. As a proof of this, we shall give her portrait of the Marquis de Croisniare, one of the friends of Diderot and the Baron d'Hol- bach. "Je lui crois bien soixante ans; il ne les paroit pourtant pas. II est d'une taille mddiocre, sa figure a du etre tres-agreable : elle se dis- tingue encore par un air de noblesse et d'ais- ance, qui repand de la grace sur tout sa personne. Sa physionomie a de la finesse. Ses gestes, ses attitudes ne sont jamais recherches ; mais ils sont si bien d'accord avec la tournure de son esprit, qu'ils semblent ajouter a son originalite. II parle des choses les plus serieuses et les plus importantes d'un ton si gai, qu'on est souvent tente de ne rien croire de ce qu'il dit. On n'a presque jamais rien a citer de ce qu'on lui entcnd dire ; mais lorsqu'il parle, on ne veut rien perdre de ce qu'il dit ; s'il se tait, on desire qu'il parle encore. Sa prodigieuse vivacite, et une sin- guliere aptitude a toutes sortes de talens et de connoissances, I'ont porte a tout voir et a tout connoitre; au moyen de quoi vous comprenez qu'il est fort instruit. II a bien lu, bien vu, et n'a retenu que ce qui valoit la peine de I'etre. Son esprit annonce d'abord plus d'agrement que de solidite, mais je crois que quiconque le jugeroit frivole lui feroit tort. Je le soup- conne de renfermer dans son cabinet les epines des roses qu'il distribue dans la societe : assez constamment gai dans le monde, seul je le crois melancolique. On dit qu'il a I'ame aussi tendre qu'honnete ; qu'il sent vivement et qu'il se livre avec impetuosite a ce qui trouve le chemin de son coeur. Tout le monde ne lui plait pas ; il faul pour cela de I'originalite, ou des vertus distinguees, ou de certains vices qu'il appelle passions ; neanmoins dans le courant de la vie, il s'accommode de tout. Beaucoup de curiosite et de la facilite dans le caractere (ce qui va jusqu'a la foiblesse) I'entrainent souvent a negliger ses meilleurs amis et a les perdre de \'\ie, pour se livrer a des gouts factices et passagers : il en rit avec eux ; mais on voit si clairement qu'il en rougit avec lui-meme, qu'on ne pent lui savoir mauvais gre de ses disparates." — III. pp. 324 —326. The portrait of Grimm, the French Boswell, voL iii. p. 97, is equally good, if not superior; but we have already extracted enough to show the nature of the work, and the talents of the author. It is a lively, entertaining book, — relating in an agreeable manner the opinions and habits of many remarkable men — mingled with some very scandalous and improper pas- sages, Avhich degrade the whole work. But if all the decencies and delicacies of life were in one scale, and five francs in the other, what French bookseller would feel a single momeni of doubt in making his selection ' WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. rOOR-LAWS.' [Edinburgh Review, 1820.] Oun readers, we fear, will require some apology for being asked to look at anything upon the poor-laws. No subject, we adi can be more disagreeable, or more trite. But, unfortunately, it is the most important of all the important subjects which the distressed state of the country is now crowding upon our notice. A pamphlet on the poor-laws generally con- tains some little piece of favourite nonsense, by which we are gravely told this enormous evil may be perfectly cured. The first gentle- man recommends little gardens ; the second cows; the third a village shop; the fourth a spade ; the fifth Dr. Bell, and so forth. Every man rushes to the press with his small morsel of imbecility; and is not easy till he sees his impertinence stitched in blue covers. In this list of absurdities, we must not forget the pro- ject of supporting the poor from national funds, or, in other words, of immediately doubling the expenditure, and introducing every possible abuse into the administration of it. Then there are worthy men, who call upon gentlemen of fortune and education to become overseers — meaning, we suppose, that the pre- sent overseers are to perform the higher duties of men of fortune. Then merit is set up as the test of relief; and their worships are to enter into a long examination of the life and character of each applicant, assisted, as they doubtless would be, by candid overseers, and neighboars divested of every feeling of malice and partiality. The children are next to be taken from their parents, and lodged in im- mense pedagogueries of several acres each, where they are to be carefully secluded from those fathers and mothers they are commanded to obey and honour, and are to be brought up in virtue by the churchwardens. — And this is gravely intended as a corrective of the poor- laws ; as if (to pass over the many other ob- jections which might be made to it,) it would not set mankind populating faster than carpen- ters and bricklayers could cover in their child- ren, or separate twigs to be bound into rods foi: their flagellation. An extension of the poor- laws to personal property is also talked of. We should be very glad to see any species of property exempted from these laws, but have no wish that any which is now exempted should be subjected to their influence. The case would infallibly be like that of the income-tax, — the more easily the tax was raised, the more * 1. Safe Method far rendering' Income arising from Per- sonal Property arailable to the Poor-Laws. Longman &Co. 1819. 2. Summary Revieic of the Report and Eridence relative to the Poor-Laws. By S. W. Njool. York. 3. Essajt on the Prorticabilily of modifying the Poor-Laws. Sherwood. 1819. 4. Consideration.': on the Poor-Latcs. By John Davison, A. M. Oxford. I profligate would be the expenditure. It is pro- posed also that alehouses should be diminished, and that the children of the poor should be catechized publicly in the church, — both very respectable and proper suggestions but of them- selves hardly strong enough for the evil. We have every wish that the poor should accus- tom themselves to habits of sobriety; but we cannot help reflecting, sometimes, that an ale- house is the only place where a poor tired creature, haunted with every species of wretch- edness, can purchase three or four times a year three pennyworth of ale — a liquor upon M'hich wine-drinking moralists are always ex- tremely severe. We must not forget, among other nostrums, the eulogy of small farms — in other words, of small capital, and profound ig- norance in the arts of agriculture ; — and the evil is also thought to be curable by periodical contributions from men who have nothing, and can earn nothing without charity. To one of these plans, and perhaps the most plausible, Mr. Nicol has stated, in the following passage, objections that are applicable to almost all the rest. "The district school would no doubt be well superintended and well regulated; magistrates and country gentlemen would be its visitors. The more excellent the establishment, the greater the mischief; because the greater the expense. We may talk what we will of econ- omy, but where the care of the poor is taken exclusively into the hands of the rich, compa- rative extravagance is the necessary conse- quence: to say that the gentleman, or even the overseer, would never permit the poor to live at the district school, as they live at home, is saying far too little. English humanity M^ill never see the poor in any thing like Avant, when that want is palpably and visibly brought be- fore it : first, it will give necessaries, next com- forts ; until its fostering care rather pampers, than merely relieves. The humanity itself is highly laudable; but if practised on an exten- sive scale, its consequences must entail an al- most unlimited expenditure. " Mr. Locke computes that the labour of a child from 3 to 14, being set against its nourish- ment and teaching, the result would be exone- ration of the parish from expense. Nothing could prove more decisively the incompetency of the board of trade to advise on this question. Of the productive labour of the workhouse, I shall have to speak hereafter; I will only ob- serve in this place, that after the greatest care and attention bestowed on the subject, after ex- pensive looms purchased, &c., the 50 boys of the blue coat school earned in the year 181G, 59/. \Qs. 3(/.; the 40 girls earned, in the same time, 40/. 7.*. Qd. The ages of these children are from 8 to 16. They earn about one pound in the year, and cost about twenty. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 321 "The greater the call for labour in public institutions, be they prisons, workhouses, or schools, the more difficult to be procured that labour must be. There will thence be both much less of it for the comparative numbers, and it will afford a much less price ; to get any- labour at all, one school must underbid an- other. " It has just been observed, that ' the child of a poor cottager, half clothed, half fed, with the enjoyment of home and liberty, is not only happier but better than the little automaton of a parish workhouse:' and this I believe is ac- curately true. I scarcely know a more cheer- ing sight, though certainly many more elegant ones, than the youthful gambols of a village green. They call to mind the description given by Paley of the shoals of the fry of fish : ' They are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves ; their attitude, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it, all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess.' "Though politeness may be banished from the cottage, and though the anxious mother may sometimes chide a little too sharply, yet here both maternal endearments and social affection exist in perhaps their greatest vigour: the at- tachments of lower life, where independent of attachment there is so little to enjoy, far out- strip the divided if not exhausted sensibility of the rich and great ; and in depriving the poor of these attachments, we may be said to rob them of their little all. " But it is not to happiness only I here refer ; it is to morals. I listen with great reserve to that system of moral instruction, which has not social affection for its basis, or the feelings of the heart for its ally. It is not to be con- cealed, that every thing may be taught, yet no- thing learned, that systems planned with care, and executed with attention, may evaporate into unmeaning forms, where the imagination is not roused, or the sensibility impressed. "Let us suppose the children of the 'district school,' nurtured with that superabundant care which such institutions, when supposed to be well conducted, are wont to exhibit ; they rise with the dawn ; after attending to the calls of cleanliness, prayers follow ; then a lesson ; then breakfast ; then work, till noon liberates them, for perhaps an hour, from the walls of their prison to the walls of their prison court. Dinner follows ; and then, in course, work, les- sons, supper, prayers ; at length, after a day dreary and dull, the counterpart of every day which has preceded, and of all that are to fol- low, the children are dismissed to bed. — This system may construct a machine, but it will not form a man. Of what does it consist 7 of prayers parroted without one sentiment in ac- cord with the words uttered : of moral lectures which the understanding does not comprehend, or the heart feel ; of endless bodily constraint, intolerable to youthful vivacity, and injurious to the perfection of the human frame. — The cottage day may not present so imposing a scene; no decent uniform; no well trimmed locks; no glossy skin; no united response of hundreds of conjoined voices; no lengthened procession, misnamed exercise ; but if it has 41 less to strike the eye, it has far more to engage the heart. A trifle in the way of cleanliness must suffice ; the prayer is not forgot ; it is per- haps imperfectly repeated, and confusedly un- derstood ; but it is not muttered as a vain sound ; it is an earthly parent that tells of a heavenly one ; duty, love, obedience, are not words without meaning, when repeated by a mother to her child : to God, the great unknown Being that made all things, all thanks, all praise, all adoration is due. The young religionist may be in some measure bewildered by all this; his notions may be obscure, but his feel- ings will be roused, and the foundation at least of true piety will be laid. "Of moral instruction, the child may be taught less at home than at school, but he will be taught better; that is, whatever he is taught he will feel : he will not have abstract proposi- tions of duty coldly presented to his mind ; but precept and practice will be conjoined; what he is told it is right to do will be instantly done. Sometimes the operative principle on the child's mind will be love, sometimes fear, sometimes habitual sense of obedience ; it is always some- thing that will impress, always something that will be remembered." There are two points which we consider as now admitted by all men of sense, — Is', That the poor-laws must be abolished ; 2rf/y, That they must be very gradually abolished.* We hardly think it worth while to throw away pen and ink upon any one who is still inclined to dispute either of these propositions. With respect to the gradual abolition, it must be observed, that the present redundant popu- lation of the country has been entirely produced by the poor-laws : and nothing could be so grossly unjust as to encourage people to such a vicious multiplication, and then, when you happen to discover your folly, immediately to starve them into annihilation. You have been calling upon your population for two hundred years to beget more children — furnished them with clothes, food, and houses — taught them to lay up nothing for matrimony, nothing for children, nothing for age — but to depend upon justices of the peace for every human want. The folly is now detected; but the people, who are the fruit of it, remain. It was madness to call them in this manner into existence; but it would be the height of cold-blooded cruelty to get rid of them by any other than the most gentle and gradual means ; and not only would it be cruel, but extremely dangerous, to make the attempt. Insurrections of the most san- guinary and ferocious nature would be the immediate consequence of any very sudden change in the system of the poor-laws; not partial, like those which proceeded from an impeded or decaying state of manufactures, but as universal as the poor-laws themselves^ * I am not quite so wrong in this as I seem to be, nor after all our experience am I satisfied that there has not been a good deal of rashness and precipitation in the conduct of this admirable measure. You have not been able to carry the law into manufacturing countries. Parliament will compel you to soften some of the more severe clauses. It has been the nucleus of general in- surrection and chartism. The Duke of Wellington wisely recommended that the experiment should be- first tried in a few counties round the metropolis. 322 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMTH. and as ferocious as insurrections always are ■which are led on by hunger and despair. These observations may serve as an answer to those angry and impatient gentlemen, who are always crying out, What has the committee of the House of Commons done? — What have they to show for their labours? — Are the rates lessened I — Are the evils removed 1 The com- mittee of the House of Commons would have shown themselves to be a set of the most con- temptible charlatans, if they had proceeded with any such indecent and perilous haste, or paid the slightest regard to the ignorant folly which required it at their hands. They have very properly begun, by collecting all possible information upon the subject; by consulting speculative and practical men ; by leaving time for the press to contribute whatever it could of thought or knowledge to the subject; and by introducing measures, the effects of which will be, and are intended to be, gradual. The lords seemed at first to have been surprised that the poor-laws v/ere not abolished before the end of the first session of Parliament ; and accordingly set up a little rival committee of their own, which did little or nothing, and will not, we believe, be renewed. We are so much less sanguine than those noble legislators, that we shall think the improvement immense, and a subject of very general congratulation, if the poor-rates are perceptibly diminished, and if the system of pauperism is clearly going down in twenty or thirty years hence. We thmk, upon the whole, that government has been fortunate in the selection of the gen- tleman who is placed at the head of the com- mittee for the revision of the poor-laws; or rather, we should say, (for he is a gentleman of very independent fortune), who has consented that he should be placed there. Mr. Sturges Bourne is undoubtedly a man of business, and of very good sense : he has made some mis- takes ; but, upon the whole, sees the subject as a philosopher and a statesman ought to do. Above all, we are pleased with his good nature and good sense in adhering to his undertaking, after the Parliament has flung out two or three of his favourite bills. Many men would have .surrendered so unthankful and laborious an undertaking in disgust; but Mr. Bourne knows better what appertains to his honour and cha- racter, and, above all, what he owes to his country. It is a great subject; and such as will secure to him the gratitude and favour of pos- terity, if he brings it to a successful issue. We have stated our opinion that all remedies, without gradual abolition, are of little impor- Jance. W'ith a foundation laid for such gradual abolition, every auxiliary improvement of the poor-laws (while they do remain) is worthy the attention of Parliament: and, in suggesting a few alterations as fit to be immediately adopted, we wish it to be understood, that we have in view the gradual destruction of the system, as well as its amendment while it continues to operate. It seems to us, then, that one of the first and greatest improvements of this unhappy system would be a complete revision of the law of set- tlement. Since Mr. East's act for preventing the removal of the poor till they are actually chargeable, any man may live where he pleases, until he becomes a beggar, and asks alms of the place where he resides. To gain a settle- ment, then, is nothing more than to gain a right of begging: it is not, as it used to be before Mr. East's act, a power of residing where, in the judgment of the resident, his industry and exer- tion will be best rewarded; but a power of tax- ing the industry and exertions of other persons in the place where his settlement falls. This privilege produces all the evil complained of in the poor-laws ; and instead, therefore, of being conferred with the liberality and profusion which it is at present, it should be made of very difficult attainment, and liable to the fewest possible changes. The constant policy of our courts of justice has been, to make settlements easily obtained. Since the period we have be- fore alluded to, this has certainly been a very mistaken policy. It would be a far wiser course to abolish all other means of settlement than those of birth, parentage, and marriage — not for the limited reason slated in the com- mittee, that it would diminish the law expenses, (though that, too, is of importance,) but because it would invest fewer residents with the fatal privilege of turning beggars, exempt a greater number of labourers from the moral corruption of the poor-laws, and stimulate them to exertion, and economy, by the fear of removal if they are extravagant and idle. Of ten men who leave the place of their birth, four, probably, get a settlement by yearly hiring, and four others by renting a small tenement; while two or three may return to the place of their nativity, and settle there. Now, under the present system, here are eight men setded where they have a right to beg without being removed. The pro- bability is, that they will all beg; and that their virtue will give way to the incessant temptation of the poor-laws : but if these men had felt from the very beginning, that removal from the place where they wished most to live would be the sure consequence of their idleness and extrava- gance, the probability is, that they would have escaped the contagion of pauperism, and been much more useful members of society than they now are. The best labourers in a village are commonly those who are living where they are legally settled, and have therefore no right to ask charity— for the plain reason, that they have nothing to depend upon but their own exertions: in short, for them the poor-laws hardly exist; and they are such as the great mass of English peasantry would be, if we had escaped the curse of these laws altogether. It is incorrect to say, that no labourer would settle out of the place of his birth, if the means of acquiring a settlement were so limited. Many men begin the world with strong hope and much confidence in their own fortune, and without any intention of subsisting by charity; but they see others subsisting in greater ease, without their foil — and their spirit gradually sinks to the meanness of mendicity. An affecting picture is sometimes drawn of a man falling into want in the decline of life, and compelled to remove from the place where he has spent the greatest part of his days. These things are certainly painful enough to him who has the misfortune to witness them. But they WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 323 must be taken upon a large scale; and the whole good and evil which they produce dili- gently weighed and considered. The question then will be, whether any thing can be more really humane, than to restrain a system which relaxes the sinews of industry, and places the dependence of laborious men upon any thing but themselves. We must not think only of the wretched sufferer who is removed, and, at the sight of his misfortunes, call out for fresh facilities to beg. We must remember the in- dustry, the vigour, and the care which the dread of removal has excited, and ihe number of per- sons who owe their happiness and their wealth to that salutary feeling. The very person, who, in the decline of life, is removed from the spot where he has spent so great a part of his time, would, perhaps, have been a pauper half a cen- tury before, if he had been afflicted with the right of asking alms in the place where he lived. It has been objected, that this plan of abolish- ing all settlements but those of birth, would send a man, the labour of whose youth had benefited some other parish, to pass the useless part of his life in a place for which he existed only as a burden. Supposing that this were the case, it would be quite sufficient to answer, that any given parish would probably send away as many useless old men as it received; and, after all, little inequalities must be borne for the general good. But, in truth, it is rather ridiculous to talk of a parish not having bene- fited by the labour of the man who is returned upon their hands in his old age. If such parish resembles niostof those in England, the absence of a man for thirty or forty years has been a great good instead of an evil ; they have had many more labourers than they could employ ; and the very man whom they are complaining of supporting for his few last years, would, in all probability, have been a beggar forty years before, if he had remained among them ; or, by pushing him out of work, would have made some other man a beggar. Are the benefits de- rived from prosperous manufactures limited to the parishes which contain them 1 The indus- try of Halifax, Huddersfield, or Leeds, is felt across the kmgdom as far as the Eastern Sea. The prices of meat and corn at the markets of York and Malion are instantly affected by any increase of demand and rise of wages in the manufacturing districts to the west. They have benefited these distant places, and found labour for their superfluous hands by the pros- perity of their raanufaciures. Where, then, would be the injustice, if the manufacturers, in the time of stagnation and poverty, were re- turned to their birth settlements 7 But as the law now stands, population tumors, of the most dangerous nature, may spring up in a parish : — a manufacturer, concealing his intention, may settle there, take 200 or 300 apprentices, fail, and half ruin the parish which has been the scene of his operations. For these reasons, ■we strongly recommend to Mr. Bourne to nar- row as much as possible, in all his future bills, the means of acquiring seitlements,* and to re- duce them ultimately to parentage, birth and ' Tbis has been done. marriage — convinced that, in so doing, he will, in furtherance of the great object of abolishing the poor-laws, be only limiting the right of beg- ging, and preventing the resident and almsman from being (as they now commonly are) one and the same person. But, before we dismiss this part of the subject, we must say a few words upon the methods by which settlements are now gained. In the settlement by hiring it is held, that a man has a claim upon the parish for support where he has laboured for a year; and yet another, who has laboured there for twenty years by short hirings, gains no settlement at all. When a man was not allowed to live where he was not settled, it was wise to lay hold of any plan for extending settlements. But the whole question is now completely changed; and the only point which remains is, to find out what mode of conferring settlements produces the least possible mischief. We are convinced it is by throwing every possible difficulty in the way of acquiring them. If a settlement here- after should not be obtained in that parish in which labourers have worked for many years, it will be because it contributes materially to their happiness that they should not gain a settlement there ; and this is a full answer to the apparent injustice. Then, upon what plea of common sense should a man gain a power of taxing a parish to keep him, because he has'rented a tenement often pounds a year there? or, because he has served the office of clerk, or sexton, or hog- ringer, or bought an estate of thirty pounds value? However good these various pleas might be for conferring settlements, if it was desirable to increase the facility of obtaining them, they are totally inefficacious if it can be shown that the means of gaining new settle- ments should be confined to the limits of the strictest necessity. These observations (if they have the honour of attracting his attention) will show Mr. Bourne our opinion of his bill for giving the privilege of settlement only to a certain length of resi- dence. In the Jirst place, such a bill would be the cause of endless vexation to the poor, from the certainty of their being turned out of their cottages, before they pushed their legal taproot into the parish ; and, secondly, it would rapidly extend all the evils of the poor laws, by identi- fying, much more than they are at present identified, the resident and the settled man — the very opposite of the policy which ought to be pursued. Let us suppose, then, that we have got rid of all the means of gaining a settlement, or right to become a beggar, except by birth, parentage, and marriage ; (or the wife, of course, must fall into the settlement of the husband; and the children, till emancipated, must be removed, if their parents are removed. This point gained, the task of regulating the law expenses of the poor-laws would be nearly accomplished: for the most fertile causes of dispute would be removed. Every first settlement is an inex- haustible source of litigation and expense to the miserable rustics. Upon the simple fact, for example, of a farmer hiring a ploughman for a year, arise the following afflicting (.ties- 324 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. lions : — Was it an expressed contract 1 Was it an implied contract 1 M'as it an implied hiring of the ploughman, rebutted by circumstances? Was the ploughman's contract for a year's prospective service 1 Was it a customary hir- ing of the ploughman 1 Was it a retrospective hiring of the ploughman ! Was it a condi- tional hiring 1 Was it a general hiring "? Was it a special, or a special yearly hiring, or a special hiring with wages reserved weekly 1 — Did the farmer make it a special conditional hiring with warning, or an exceptive hiring? Was the service of the ploughman actual or contractive 1 Was there any dispensation ex- pressed or implied 1 — or was there a dissolution implied 1 — by new agreement 1 — or mutual con- sent? — or by justices ? — or by any other of the ten thousand means which the ingenuity of lawyers has created ? Can any one be sur- prised, after this, to learn, that the amount of appeals for removals, in the four quarter ses- sions ending Mid-summer, 1817, were four thousand seven hundred y* Can any man doubt that it is necessary to reduce the hydra to as few heads as possible ? or can any other objec- tion be slated to such reduction, than the number of attorneys and provincial counsel, whom it will bring into the poor-house ? Mr. Nicol says, that the greater number of modes of settlement do not increase litigation. He may just as well say, that the number of the streets in the Seven Dials does not increase the difficulty of finding the way. The modes of settlement we leave, are by far the simplest, and the evidence is assisted by registers. Under the head of law expenses, we are convinced a great deal may be done, by making some slight alteration in the law of removals. At present, removals are made without any warning to the parties to whom the pauper is removed; and the first intimation which the defendant parish receives of the projected in- crease of their population is, by the arrival of the father, mother, and eight or nine children at the overseer's door — where they are tumbled out, with the justice's order about their necks, and left as a spectacle to the assembled and indignant parishioners. No sooner have the poor wretches become a little familiarized to their new parish, than the order is appealed against, and they are recarted with the same precipitate indecency — Quo fata trahunt, retra- hunlque. No removal should ever take place without due notice to the parish to which the pauper is to be removed, nor till the time in which it may be appealed against is passed by. Notice to be according to the distance — either by letter, or personally; and the decision should be made by the justices at their petty sessions, with as much care and attention as if there were no appeal from their decision. An absurd notion prevails among magistrates, that they need not take much trouble in the investigation of re- movals, because their errors may be corrected by a superior court; whereas, it is an object of great importance, by a fair and diligent inves- tigation in the nearest and cheapest court, to convince the country people which party is ♦ Commons' Report, 1817 right and which is wrong : and in this manner to prevent them from becoming the prey of law vermin. We are convinced that this subject of the removal of poor is well worthy a short and separate bill. Mr. Bourne thinks it would be very difficult to draw up such a bill. We are quite satisfied we could draw up one in ten minutes that would completely answer the end proposed, and cure the evil complained of. We proceed to a number of small details, which are well worth the attention of the legis- lature. Overseers' accounts should be given in quarterly, and passed by the justices, as they now are, annually. The office of overseer should be triennial. The accounts which have nothing to do with the poor, such as the con- stable's account, should be kept and passed separately from them ; and the vestry should have the power of ordering a certain portion of the superfluous poor upon the roads. But we beseech all speculators in poor-laws to re- member, that the machinery they must work with is of a very coarse description. An over- seer must always be a limited, uneducated person, but little interested in what he is about, and with much business of his own on his hands. The extensive interference of gentle- men with those matters is quite visionary and impossible. If gentlemen were tide-waiters, the custom-house would be better served ; if gen- tlemen would become petty constables, the police would be improved; if bridges were made of gold, instead of iron, they would not rust. But there are not enough of these arti- cles for such purposes. A great part of the evils of the poor-laws, has been occasioned by the large powers in- trusted to individual justices. Every body is full of humanity and good-nature when he can relieve misfortune by putting his hand — in his neighbour's pocket. Who can bear to see a fellow-creature suffering pain and poverty, when he can order other fellow-creatures to relieve him ? Is it in human nature, that A should see B in tears and misery, and not order C to assist him ? Such a power must, of course, be liable to every degree of abuse ; and the sooner the power of ordering relief can be taken out of the hands of magistrates, the sooner shall we begin to experience some mitigation of the evils of the poor-laws. The special-vestry bill is good for this purpose, as far as it goes ; but it goes a very little way ; and we much doubt if it will operate as any sort of abridgment to the power of magistrates granting relief. A single magistrate must not act under this bill but in cases of special emergency. But every case of distress is a case of special emergen- cy: and the double magistrates, holding their petty sessions at some little alehouse, and over- whelmed with all the monthly business of the hundred, cannot possibly give to the pleadirigs of the overseer and pauper half the attention they would be able to aflford them at their own houses. The common people have been so much accustomed to resort to magistrates for relief, that it is certainly a delicate business to vvean them from this bad habit; but it is essential to the great objects which the poor-committee have in view, that the power of magistrates of WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 325 ordering relief should be gradually taken When this is once done, half the difficulties of the abolition are accomplished. We will sug- gest a few hints as to the means by which this desirable end may be promoted. A poor man now comes to a magistrate any day in the week, and any hour in any day, to complain of the overseers, or of the select committee. Suppose he were to be made to wait a little, and to feel for a short time the bit- terness of that poverty which, by idleness, ex- travagance, and hasty marriage, he has proba- bly brought upon himself. To effect this object, we would prohibit all orders for relief, by jus- tices, between the 1st and 10th of the month; and leave the poor entirely in the hands of the overseers, or of the select vestry, for that period. Here is a beginning — a gradual aboli- tion of one of the first features of the poor- Jaws. And it is without risk of tumult ; for no one will run the risk of breaking the laws for an evil to which he anticipates so speedy a termination. This Decameron of overseers' despotism, and paupers' suffering, is the very thing wanted. It will teach the parishes to administer their own charity responsiblj% and to depend upon their own judgment. It will teach the poor the miseries of pauperism and dependence ; and will be a warning to unmar- ried young men not hastily and rashly to place themselves, their wives and children, in the same miserable situation ; and it will effect all these objects gradually, and without danger. It would of course be the same thing on prin- ciple, if relief were confined to three days be- tween the 1st and the 10th of each month; three between the 10th and the 20th ; three between the 20th and the end of the month ; — or in any other manner that would gradually* crumble away the power, and check the gratui- tous munificence of justices, — give authority over their own affairs to the heads of the parish, and teach the poor, by little and little, that they must suffer if they are imprudent. It is under- stood in all these observations, that the over- seers are bound to support their poor without any order of justices ; and that death arising from absolute want should expose those oflicers to very severe punishments, if it could be traced to their inhumanity and neglect. The time must come when we must do without this ; but we are not got so far yet — and are at present only getting rid of justices, not of overseers. Mr. Davison seems to think that the plea of old age stands upon a different footing, with respect to the poor-laws, from all oiher pleas. But why should this plea be more favoured than that of sickness 1 why more than losses in trade, incurred by no imprudence 1 In reality, this plea is less entitled to indulgence. Every man knows he is exposed to the help- lessness of age; but sickness and sudden ruin are very often escaped — comparatively seldom happen. Why is a man exclusively to be pro- tected against that evil which he must have foreseen longer than any other, and has had the lor.gest time to guard against 1 Mr. Davi- son's objections to a limited expenditure are * All gradation and caution have been banished since the reform bill — rapid high-prissure wisdom is the only iigent in public affairs. much more satisfactory. These we shall lay before our readers ; and we recommend them to the attention of the committee. " I shall advert next to the plan of a limitation upon the amount of rates to be assessed in fu- ture. This limitation, as it is a pledge of some protection to the property now subjected to the maintenance of the poor against the indefinite encroachment which otherwise threatens it, is, in that light, certainly a benefit ; and supposing it were rigorously adhered to, the very know- ledge, among the parish expectants, that there was some limit to their range of expectation, some barrier which they could not pass, might incline them to turn their thoughts homeward again to the care of themselves. But it is an expedient, at the best, far from being satisfac- tory. In the first place, there is much reason to fear that such a limitation would not eventu- ally be maintained, after the example of a simi- lar one having failed before, and considering that the urgency of the applicants as long as they retain the principle of dependence upon the parish unqualified in any one of its main articles, would probably overbear a mere bar- rier of figures in the parish account. Then there would be much real difficulty in the pro- ceedings, to be governed by such a limiting rule. For the use of the limitation would be chiefly, or solely, in cases where there is some struggle between the ordinary supplies of the parish rates, and the exigencies of the poor, or a kind of run and pressure upon the parish by a mass of indigence: and in circumstances of this kind, it would be hard to know how to dis- tribute the supplies under a fair proportion to the applicants, known or expected ; hard to know how much might be granted for the pre- sent, and how much should be kept in reserve for the remainder of the year's service. The real intricacy in such a distribution of account would show itself in disproportions and ine- qualities of allowance, impossible to be avoid- ed; and the applicants would have one pretext more for discontent. "The limitation itself in many places would be only in words and figures. It would be set, I presume, by an average of certain preceding years. But the average taken upon the preced- ing years might be a sum exceeding in its real value the highest amount of the assessments of any of the averaged years, under the great change which has taken place in the value of money itself. A given rate, or assessment nominally the same, or lower, might in this way be a greater real money value than it was some time before. In many of the most distressed districts, where the parochial rates have nearly equalled the rents, a nominal average would, therefore, be no effectual benefit ; and yet it is in those districts that the alleviation of the bur- then is the most wanted. "It is manifest also that a peremptory re- striction of the whole amount of money appli- cable to the parochial service, though abun- dantly justified in many districts by their par- ticular condition being so impoverished as to make the measure, for them, almost a measure of necessity, if nothing can be substituted for it; and where the same extreme necessity doei» I not exist, still justified by the prudence of pre-. 2E 326 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. venting in some way the interminable increase of the parochial burthens ; still, that such a re- striction is an ill-adjusted measure in itself, and would, in many instances, operate very inequi- tably. It would fall unfairly in some parishes, where the relative state of the poor and the parish might render an increase of the relief as just and reasonable as it is possible for any thing to be under the poor-laws at all. It would deny to many possible fair claimants the whole, or a part, of that degree of relief commonly granted elsewhere to persons in their condition, on this or that account of claim. Leaving the reason of the present demands wholly unim- peached, and unexplained; directing no distinct warning or remonstrance to the parties, in the line of their affairs, by putting a check to their expectations upon positive matters implicated in their conduct; which would be speaking to them in a definite sense, and a sense applicable to all: this plan of limitation would nurture the whole mass of the claim in its origin, and deny the allowance of it to thousands, on account of reasons properly affecting a distant quarter, of which they know nothing. The want of a clear method, and of a good priiwiple at the bottom of it, in this direct compulsory restriction, ren- ders it, I think, wholly unacceptable, unless it be the only possible plan that can be devised for accomplishing the same end. If a parish had to keep its account with a single dependant, the plan would be much more useful in that case. For the ascertained fact of the total amount of his expectations might set his mind to rest, and put him on a decided course of pro- ■viding for himself. But, in the limitation pro- posed to be made, the ascertained fact is of a general amount only, not of each man's share in it. Consequently, each man has his indefi- nite expectations left to him, and every separate specific ground of expectation remaining as before." Mr. Davison talks of the propriety of refusing to find labour for able labourers after the lapse often years, as if it was some ordinary bill he was proposing, unaccompanied by the slightest risk. It is very easy to make such laws, and to propose them ; but it would be of immense difficulty to carry them into execution. Done it must be, every body knows that ; but the real merit will consist in discovering the gradual and gentle means by which the difficulties of getting pai-ish labour may be increased, and the life of a parish pauper be rendered a life of salutary and deterring hardship. A law that rendered such request for labour perfectly law- ful for ten years longer, and then suddenly abolished it, would merely bespeak a certain, general, and violent insurrection for the year 1830. The legislator, thank God, is in his nature a more cunning and gradual animal. Before we drop Mr. Davison, who writes like a very sensible man, we wish to say a few words about his style. If he would think less about it, he would write much better. It is always as plethoric and full-dressed as if he were writing a treatise ikfinibus bonorurn et ma- lorum. He is sometimes obscure ; and is occa- sionally apt to dress up common-sized thoughts in big clothes, and to dwell a little too long in proving what every man of sense knows and admits. We hope we shall not offend Mr. Da- vison by these remarks ; and we have really no intention of doing so. His views upon the poor-laws are, generally speaking, very correct and philosophical; he writes like a gentleman, a scholar, and a man capable of eloquence ; and we hope he will be a bishop. If his mitred productions are as enlightened and liberal as this, we are sure he will confer as much honour on the bench as he receives from it. There is a good deal, however, in Mr. Davison's book about the "virtuous marriages of the poor." To have really the charge of a family as a hus- band and father, we are told — to have the privi- lege of laying out his life in their service, is the poor man's boast, — " his home is the school of his sentiments," &c. &c. This is viewing human life through a Claude Lorraine glass, and decorating it with colours which do not belong to it. A ploughman marries a plough- woman because she is plump ; generally uses her ill ; thinks his children an incumbrance ; very often flogs them; and, for sentiment, has nothing more nearly approaching to it, than the ideas of broiled bacon and mashed potatoes. This is the state of the lower orders of mankind — deplorable, but true — and yet rendered much worse by the poor-laws. The system of roundsmen is much com- plained of; as well as that by which the labour of paupers is paid, partly by the rate, partly by the master — and a long string of Sussex juS' tices send up a petition on the subject. But the evil we are suffering under is an excess of population. There are ten men applying for work, when five only are wanted ; of course, such a redundance of labouring persons must depress the rate of their labour far beyond what is sufficient for the support of their fami- lies. And how is that deficiency to be made up but from the parish rates, unless it is meant suddenly and immediately to abolish the whole system of the poor-laws'? To state that the rate of labour is lower than a man can live by, is merely to state that we have had, and have, poor-laws — of which this practice is at length the inevitable consequence ; and nothing could be more absurd than to attempt to prevent, by acts of Parliament, the natural depreciation of an article which exists in much greater abun- dance than it is wanted. Nor can any thing be more unjust than the complaint, that rounds- men are paid by iheir employers at an inferior rate, and that the difference is made up by the parish funds. A roundsman is commonly an inferior description of labourer who cannot get regularly hired ; — he comes upon his parish for labour commonly at those periods when there is the least to do ; — he is not a servant of the farmer's choice, and probably does not suit him ; — he goes off to any other labour at a mo- ment's warning, when he finds it more profit- able ; — and the farmer is forced to keep nearly the same number of labourers as if there were no roundsmen at all. Is it just, then, that a labourer, combining every species of imper- fection, should receive the same wages as a chosen, regular, stationary person, who is always ready at hand, and Avhom the farmer has selected for his dexterity and character? Those persons who do not, and cannot em WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 337 ploy labourers, have no kind of right to com- plain of the third or fourth part of the wages being paid by the rates ; for if the fanners did not agree among themselves to take such occa- sional labourers, the whole of their support must be paid by the rates, instead of one-third. The order is, that the pauper shall be paid such a sum as will support himself and family; and if this agreement to take roundsmen was not enter- ed into by the farmers, they must be paid, by the ratesj the whole of the amount of the order, for doing nothing. If a circulating labourer, there- fore, with three children, to whom the justices would order 12.';. per week, receives 8s. from his employer, and is. from the rates, the parish is not burdened by this system to the amount of 4s., but relieved to the amount of 8s. A parish manufacture, conducted by overseers, is infinitely more burdensome to the rates than any system of roundsmen. There are undoubt- edly a few instances to the contrary. Zeal and talents will cure the original defects of any system ; but to suppose that average men can do what extraordinary men hav^e done, is the cause of many silly projects and extravagant blunders. Mr. Owen may give his whole heart and soul to the improvement of one of his parochial parallelograms ; but who is to suc- ceed to Mr. Owen's enthusiasm 1 Before we have quite done with the subject of roundsmen, we cannot help noticing a strange assertion of Mr. Nicol, that the low rate of wages paid by the master is an injustice to the pauper — that he is cheated, forsooth, out of 8s. or 10s. per week by this arrangement. Nothing, however, can possibly be more absurd than such an alle- gation. The whole country is open to him. Can he gain more anywhere else 1 If not, this is the market price of his labour; and what right has he to complain 1 or how can he say he is defrauded 1 A combination among far- mers to lower the price of labour would be impossible, if labour did not exist in much greater quantities than was wanted. All such things, whether labour, or worsted stocking, or broadcloth, are, of course, always regulated by the proportion between the supply and demand. Mr. Nicol cites an instance of a parish in Suf- folk, where the labourer receives sixpence from the farmers, and the rest is made up by the rates; and for this he reprobates the conduct of the farmers. But why are they not to take labour as cheap as they can get itl Why are they not to avail themselves of the market price of this, as of any other commodity 1 The rates are a separate consideration ; let them supply what is wanting; but the farmer is right to get his iron, his wood, and his labour, as cheap as he can. It would, we admit, come nearly to the same thing, if lOOl. were paid in wages rather than 25/. in wages, and 751. by rate ; but then, if the farmers were to agree to give wages above the market price, and suffi- cient for the support of the labourers without, any rate, such an agreement could never be adhered to. The base and the crafty would make their labourers take less, and fling hea- vier rates upon those who adhered to the con- tract; whereas, the agreement, founded upon giving as little as can be given, is pretty sure of being adhered to; and he who breaks it, lessens the rate to his neighbour, and does not increase it. The problem to be solved is this : If you have ten or twenty labourers who say they can get no work, and you cannot dispute this, and the poor-laws remain, what better scheme can be devised, than that the farmers of the parish should employ them in their turns'?— and what more absurd than to sup- pose that farmers so employing them should give one farthing more than the market price for their labour ? It is contended, that the statute of Elizabeth, rightly interpreted, only compels the overseer to assist the sick and old, and not to find labour for strong and healthy men. This is true enough ; and it would have been eminently useful to have attended to it a century past: but to find employment fur all who apply, is now, by long use, become a practical part of the poor-laws, and will require the same care and dexterity for its abolition as any other part of that pernicious system. It would not be altogether prudent suddenly to tell a million of stout men, with spades and hoes in their hands, that the 43d of Elizabeth had been miscon- strued, and that no more employment would be found for them. It requires twenty or thirty years to state such truths to such numbers. We think, then, that the diminution of the claims of settlement, and of the authority of justices, coupled with the other subordinate improvements we have stated, will be the best steps for beginning the abolition of the poor- laws. When these have been taken, the de- scription of persons entitled to relief may be narrowed by degrees. But let no man hope t9 get rid of these laws, even in the gentlest and wisest method, without a great deal of misery, and some risk of tumult. If Mr. Bourne thinks only of avoiding risk, he will do nothing. Some risk must be incurred : but the secret is gra- dation ; and the true reason for abolishing these laws is, not that they make the rich poor, but that they make the poor poorer.* The boldness of modern lejislatinn lias thrown all my caution into the background. Was it wise lo en- counter such a Tiskf Is the dancer overl Can the vital parts of the bill be maintained? WORKS OF THE KEY. SYDNEY SMITH. PUBLIC CHAEACTEES OE 1801, 1801* [Edinburgh Review, 1602.] The design of this book appeared to us so extremely reprehensible, and so capable, even in the hands of a blockhead, of giving pain to families and individuals, that we considered it as a fair object of literary police, and had pre- pared for it a very severe chastisement. Upon the perusal of the book, hoTvever, we were en- tirely disarmed. It appears to be written by some very innocent scribbler, who feels him- self under the necessity of dining, and who preserves, throughout the whole of the work, that degree of good humour, which the terror of indictment by our lord the king is so well calculated to inspire. It is of some import- ance, too, that grown-up country gentlemen should be habituated to read printed books ; and such may read a story book about their living friends, who would read nothing else. * Public Characters of 1801—1802. Richard Pliillips, Bt. Paul's. 1 vol. 8vo. We suppose the booksellers have authors at two difierent prices. Those who do write grammatically, and those w^ho do not ; and that they have not thought fit to put any of their best hands upon this work. Whether or not there may be any improvement on this point in the next volume, we request the biographer will at least give us some means of ascertain- ing when he is comical, and when serious. In the life of Dr. Rennell, we find this pas- sage : — " Dr. Rennell might well look forward to the highest dignities in the establishment; but, if our information be right, and we have no rea- son to question it, this is what he by no means either expects or courts. There is a primitive simplicity in this excellent man, which much resembles that of the first prelates of the Chris- tian church, who were with great difficulty pre- vailed upon to undertake the episcopal office.** WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 329 ANASTASIUS. [Edinburgh Review, 1821.] AxASTAsius is a sort of oriental Gil Bias, ■who is tossed about from one state of life to another, — sometimes a beggar in the streets of Constantinople, and, at others, an officer of the highest distinction under an Egyptian Bey, — with that mixture of good and evil, of loose principles and popular qualities, which, against our moral feelings and better judgment, ren- der a novel pleasing, and an hero popular. Anastasius is a greater villain than Gil Bias, merely because he acts in a worse country, and under a worse government. Turkey is a country in the last stage of Castkreagh-ery and Vansitlartism ; it is in that condition to which we are steadily approaching — a political _^«is/i; —the sure result of just and necessary wars, interminable burthens upon aflectionate peo- ple, green bags, strangled sultanas, and mur- dered mobs. There are, in the world, all shades and gradations of tyranny. The' Turk- ish, or last, puts the pistol and stiletto in ac- tion. Anastasius, therefore, among his other pranks, makes nothing of two or three mur- ders ; but they are committed in character, and are suitable enough to the temper and disposition of a lawless Turkish soldier; and this is the justification of the book, which is called wicked but for no other reason than be- cause it accurately paints the manners of a people become wicked from the long and un- corrected abuses of their government. One cardinal fault which pervades this work is, that it is too long; — in spite of the numerous fine passages with which it abounds, there is too much of it ; — and it is a relief, not a disappointment, to get to the end. Mr. Hope, too, should avoid humour, in which he certain- ly does not excel. His attempts of that nature are among the most serious parts of the book. With all these objections, (and we only men- tion them in case Mr. Hope writes again,) there are few books in the English language which contain passages of greater power, feel- ing, and eloquence than this novel, — which de- lineate frailty and vice with more energy and acuteness, or describe historical scenes with such bold imagery, and such glowing language. Mr. Hope will excuse us, — but we could not help exclaiming, in reading it. Is this Mr. Thomas Hope? — Is this the man of chairs and tables — the gentleman of sphinxes — the CEdipus of coal-boxes — he who meditated on muffineers and planned pokers 1 — Where has he hidden all this eloquence and poetry up to this hour ] — How is it that he has, all of a sudden, burst out into descriptions which would not disgrace the pen of Tacitus — and displayed a depth of feeling and a vigour of imagination which Lord Byron could not * Anastasius ; or. Memoirs of a Oreek, written in the .18th Century. London. Murray. 3 vols. 8vo. 42 excel ? We do not shrink from one syllable of this eulogium. The work now before us places him at once in the highest list of elo- quent writers, and of superior men. Anastasius, the hero of the tale, is a native of Chios, the son of the drogueman to the French consul. The drogueman, instead of bringing him up to make Latin verses, sufier- ed him to run wild about the streets of Chios, where he lives for some time a lubberly boy, and then a profligate youth. His first exploit is to debauch the daughter of his acquaintance, from whom (leaving her in a state of preg- nancy) he runs away, and enters as a cabin boy in a Venetian brig. The brig is taken by Maynote pirates : the pirates by a Turkish frigate, by which he is landed at Nauplia, and marched away to Argos, where the captain, Hassan Pacha, was encamped with his army. " I had never seen an encampment : and the novel and striking sight absorbed all my fa- culties in astonishment and awe. There seemed to me to be forces sufficient to subdue the whole world: and I knew not which most to admire, the endless clusters of tents, the enormous piles of armour, and the rows of threatening cannon, which I met at every step, or the troops of well mounted spahees, who, like dazzling meteors, darted by us on every side, amid clouds of stifling dust. The very dirt with which the nearer horsemen bespat- tered our humble troop, was, as I thought, im- posing; and every thing upon which I cast my eyes gave me a feeling of nothingness, which made me shrink within myself like a snail in its cell. I envied not only those who were destined to share in all the glory and success of the expedition, but even the meanest fol- lower of the camp, as a being of a superior order to myself; and, when suddenly there arose a loud flourish of trumpets, which, end- ing a concert of cymbals and other warlike instruments, re-echoed in long peals from all the surrounding mountains, the clank shook every nerve in my body, thrilled me to the very soul, and infused in all my veins a species of martial ardour so resistless, that it made me struggle with my fetters, and try to tear them asunder. Proud as I was by nature, I would have knelt to whoever had offered to liberate my limbs, and to arm my hands with a sword or a battleaxe."— (I. 36, 37.) From his captive state he passes into the service of Mavroyeni, Hassan's drogueman, with whom he ingratiates himself, and becomes a person of consequence. In the service of this person, he receives from old Demo, a brother domestic, the following admirable lecture on masters : — " ' liisten, young man,' said he, ' whether you like it or not. For my own part, I have always 2e2 330 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. had too much indolence, not to make it my study throughout life rather to secure ease than to labour for distinction. It has, there- fore, been my rule to avoid cherishing in my patron any outrageous admiration of my capa- city, which would have increased my depend- ence while it lasted, and expose me to perse- cution on wearing out: — but you, I see, are of a different mettle : I therefore may point out to you the surest way to that more perilous height, short of which your ambition, I doubt, will not rest satisfied. When you have com- passed it, you may remember old Demo, if _ you please. " ' Know first that all masters, even the least lovable, like to be loved. All wisti to be served from affection rather than dut}-. It flatters their pride, and it gratifies their selfishness. They expect from this personal motive a greater devotion to their interest, and a more unlimited obedience to their commands. A master looks upon mere fidelity in his sen-ant as his due — as a thing scarce worth his thanks : but at- tachment he considers as a compliment to his merit, and if at all generous, he will reward it with liberality. Mavroyeni is more open than any body to this species of flatter)-. Spare it not, therefore. If he speak to you kindly, let your face brighten up. If he talk to \'ou of his own affairs, though it should only be to dispel the tedium of conveying all day long other men's thoughts, listen with the greatest eager- ness. A single yawn, and you are undone! Yet let not curiosity appear your motive, but the delight only of being honoured with his confidence. The more you appear grateful for the least kindness, the often er you will re- ceive important favours. Our ostentatious drogueman will feel a pleasure in raising your astonishment. His vanity knows no bounds. Give it scope, therefore. When he comes home choking with its suppressed ebullitions, be their ready and patient receptacle : — do more ; discreetly help him on in venting his conceit ; provide him with a cue ; hint what j-ou heard certain people, not knowing you to be so near, sa)" of his capacity, his merit, and his influence. He wishes to persuade the world that he completely rules the pasha. Tell him not flatly he does, but assume it as a thing of general notoriety. Be neither too candid in )-our remarks, nor too fulsome in your flat- tery. Too palpable deviations from fact might appear a satire on 3'our master's understand- ing. Should some disappointment evidently ruflie his temper, appear not to conceive the possibility of his vanity having received a mortification. Preserve the exact^ medium between too cold a respect, and too presump- tuous a forwardness. However much Ma- vro3-eni may caress you in private, never seem quite at ease with him in public. A master still likes to remain master, or, at least, to appear so to others. Should you get into some scrape, wait not to confess your impru- dence, until concealment becomes impossible; nor try to excuse the offence. Rather than that you should, by so doing, appear to make light of your guilt, exaggerate your self-up- braidings, and throw yourself entirely upon the drogueman's mercy. On aU occasions take care how you appear cleverer than your lord, even in the splitting of a pen ; or, if you cannot avoid excelling him in some trifle, give his own tuition all the credit of your profi- ciency. Many things he will dislike, only because they come not from himself. Vindi- cate not your innocence when unjustly re- buked: rather submit for the moment; and trust that, though Mavroyeni never will ex- pressly acknowledge his error, he will in due time pay you for your forbearance.' " — (I. 43 -45-) In the course of his service with Mavroyeni, he bears arms against the Arnools, under the Captain Hassan Pacha; and a very animated description is given of his first combat. "I undressed the dead man completely. — When, however, the business which engaged all my attention was entirely achieved, and that human body, of which, in the eagerness for its spoil, I had only thus far noticed the separate limbs one by one, as I stripped them, all at once struck my sight in its full dimen- sions, as it lay naked before me ; — when I con- templated that fine athletic frame, but a moment before full of life and vigour unto its fingers' ends, now rendered an insensible corpse by the random shot of a raw youth whom in close combat its little finger might have crushed, I could not help feeling, mixed with my exulta- tion, a sort of shame, as if for a cowardly ad- vantage obtained over a superior being; and, in order to make a kind of atonement to the shade of an Epirote — of a kinsman — I ex- claimed with outstretched hands, 'Cursed be the paltry dust which turns the warrior's arm into a mere engine, and, striking from afar an invisible blow, carries death no one knows whence to no one knows whom ; levels the strong with the weak, the brave with the das- tardly ; and, enabling the feeblest hand to wield its fatal lightning, makes the conqueror sla}' without anger, and the conqueror die without glory.' "—(I. 54, 55.) The campaign ended, he proceeds to Constan- tinople with the drogueman, where his many intrigues and debaucheries end with the drogue- man's turning him out of doors. He lives for some time at Constantinople in great miserj'; and is driven, among other expedients, to the trade of quack-doctor. "One evening, as we were returning from the Blacquemes, an old woman threw herself in our wa3% and, taking hold of my master's garments, dragged him almost by main force after her into a mean-looking habitation just by, where lay on a couch, apparently at the last gasp, a man of foreign features. 'I have brought a physician,' said the female to the patient, ' who, perhaps, may relieve \'ou.' ' Why will you' — answered he faintly — 'still persist to feed idle hopes ! I have lived an outcast: suffer me at least to die in peace; nor disturb my last moments by vain illusions. My soul pants to rejoin the Supreme Spirit ; arrest not its flight ; it would only be delaying my eternal bliss!' " As the stranger spoke these words — which struck even Yacoob sufficiently to make him suspend his professional grimace — the last WORKS OF THE KEV. SYDNEY SMITH. 331 beams of the selling sun darted across the casement of the window upon his pale yet swarthy features. Thus visited, he seemed for a moment to revive. 'I have always,' said he, 'considered my fate as connected with the great luminary that rules the creation. I have always paid it due worship, and firmly believed I could not breathe my last while its rays shone upon me. Carry me, therefore, out, that I may take my last farewell of the heavenly ruler of my earthly destinies !' "We all rushed forward to obey the man- date; but the stairs being too narrow, the woman only opened the window, and placed the dying man before it, so as to enjoy the full view of the glorious orb, just in the act of dropping beneath the horizon. He remained a few moments in silent adoration; and me- chanically we all joined him in fixing our eyes on the object of his worship. It set in all its splendour; and when its golden disk had en tirely disappeared, we looked round at the Parsee. He, too, had sunk into everlasting rest."— (I. 103, 104.) From the dispensation of chalk and water, he is then ushered into a Turkish jail, the de- scription of which, and of the plague with which it is visited, are very finely written ; and we strongly recommend them to the attention of our readers. "Every day a capital, fertile in crimes, pours new offenders into this dread receptacle ; and its high walls- and deep recesses resound every instant with imprecations and curses, uttered in all the various idioms of the Ottoman empire. Deep moans and dismal yells leave not its frightful echoes a moment's repose. From morning till night, and from night till morning, the ear is stunned with the clang of chains, which the galley-slaves wear while confined in their cells, and which they still drag about when toiling at their tasks. Linked together two and two for life, should they sink under their sufferings, they still continue un- severed after death ; and the man doomed to live on, drags after him the corpse of his dead companion. In no direction can the eye es- cape the spectacle of atrocious punishments and of indescribable agonies. Here, perhaps, you see a wretch whose stiliened limbs refuse their office, stop suddenly short in the midst of his labour, and as if already impassible, defy the stripes that lay open his flesh, and wait in total immobility the last merciful blow that is to end his misery; while there, you view his companion foaming with rage and madness, turn against his own person his desperate hands, tear his clotted hair, rend his bleeding bosom, and strike his skull, until it burst, against the wall of hisdungeon."->-(I. 110, 111.) A few survived. " I was among these scanty relics. I who, indifferent to life, had never stooped to avoid the shafts of death, even when they flew thickest around me, had more than once laid my finger on the livid wound they inflicted, had probed it as it festered ; I yet remained un- hurt: for sometimes the plague is a magnani- mous enemy, and, while it seldom spares the pusillanimous victim whose blood, running cold ere it is tainted, lacks the energy neces- sary to repel the infection when at hand, it will pass him by who dares its utmost fury, and advances undaunted to meet its raised dart." — (I. 121.) In this miserable receptacle of guilty and unhappy beings, Anastasius forms and cements the strongest friendship with a young Greek, of the name of Anagnosti. On leaving the prison, he vows to make every exertion for the liberation of his friend — vows that are for- gotten as soon as he is clear from the prison walls. After being nearly perished with hunger, and after being saved by the charity of an hospital, he gets into an intrigue with a rich Jewess — is detected — pursued — and, to save his life, turns Mussulman. This exploit performed, he suddenly meets his friend Anag- nosti — treats him with disdain — and, in a quar- rel which ensues between them, stabs him to the heart. " 'Life,' says the dying Anagnosti, 'has long been bitterness: death is a welcome guest: I rejoin those that love me, and in a better place. Already, methinks, watching my flight, they stretch out their arms from heaven to their dying Anagnosti. Thou, — if there be in thy breast one spark of pity left for him thou once namedst thy brother ; for him to whom a holy tie, a sacred vow Ah! suffer not the starv- ing hounds in the street See a little hal- lowed earth thrown over my wretched corpse.' These words were his last." — (I. 209.) The description of the murderer's remorse is among the finest passages in the work. "From an obscure aisle in the church I beheld the solemn service ; saw on the field of death the pale stiff corpse lowered into its narrow cell, and hoping to exhaust sorrow's bitter cup, at night, when all mankind hushed its griefs, went back to my friend's final rest- ing-place, lay down upon his silent grave, and watered with my tears the fresh-raised hollow mound. " In vain ! Nor my tears nor my sorrows could avail. No offerings nor penance could purchase me repose. Wherever I went, the beginning of our friendship and its issue still alike rose in view; the fatal spot of blood still danced before my steps, and the reeking dagger hovered before my aching eyes. In the silent darkness of the night I saw the pale phantom of my friend stalk round my watchful couch, covered with gore and dust: and even during the unavailing riots of the day, I still beheld the spectre rise over the festive board, glare on me with piteous look, and hand me whatever I attempted to reach. But whatever it presented seemed blasted by its touch. To my wine it gave the taste of blood, and to my bread the rank flavour of death !"— (L 212, 213.) We question whether there is in the English language a finer description than this. We request our readers to look at the very beauti- ful and affecting picture of remorse, pp. 214, 215, vol. i. Equally good, but in another way, is the de- scription of the opium coflTee-house. "In this tchartchee might be seen any day a numerous collection of those whom private 332 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. sorrows have driven to a public exhibition of insanity. There each reeling idiot might take his neighbour by the hand, and say, 'Brother, and what ailed thee, to seek so dire a cure V There did I, with the rest of its familiars, now take my habitual station in my solitary niche, like an insensible, motionless idol, sitting with sightless eyeballs staring on vacuity. "One day, as I lay in less entire absence than usual under the purple vines of the porch, admiring the gold-tipped domes of the majestic Sulimanye, the appearance of an old man with a snow-white beard, reclining on the couch beside me, caught my attention. Half plunged in stupor, he every now and then burst out into a wild laugh, occasioned by the grotesque phantasms which the ample dose of madjoon he had just swallowed was sending up to his brain. I sat contemplating him with mixed curiosity and dismay, when, as if for a moment roused from his torpor, he took me by the hand, and fixing on my countenance his dim, vacant eyes, said, in an impressive tone, 'Young man, thy days are yet few; take the advice of one who, alas ! has counted many. Lose no lime ; hie thee hence, nor cast behind one lingering look : but if thou hast not the strength, why tarry even here 1 Thy journey is but half achieved. At once go on to that large mansion before thee. It is thy ultimate destination : and by thus beginning where thou must end at last, thou mayest at least save both thy time and thy money.'" — (I. 215, 216.) Lingering in the streets of Constantinople, Anastasius hears that his mother is dead, and proceeds to claim that heritage which, by the Turkish law in favour of proselytes, had de- volved upon him. "How often," he exclaims (after seeing his father in the extremity of old age) — " how often does it happen in life, that the most blissful moments of our return to a long-left home are those only that just precede the instant of our arrival ; those during which the imagination still is allowed to paint in its own unblended colours the promised sweets of our reception ! How often, after this glowing picture of the phantasy, does the reality which follows appear cold and dreary ! How often do even those who grieved to see us depart, grieve more to see us return ! and how often do we ourselves encounter nothing but sorrow, on again behold- ing the once happy, joyous promoters of our own hilarity, now mournful, disappointed, and themselves needing what consolation we may bring!"— (I. 239, 240.) During his visit to Chios, he traces and de- scribes the dying misery of Helena, whom he had deserted, and then debauches her friend Agnes. From thence he sails to Rhodes, the remnants of which produce a great deal of eloquence and admirable description. — (pp. 275, 276, vol. i.) From Rhodes he sails to Egypt; and chap. 16 contains a short and very well written history of the origin and progress of the Mameluke government. The flight of Mourad, and the pursuit of this chief in the streets of Cairo (p. 325, vol. i.), would be considered as very fine passages in the best histories of antiquity. Our limits prevent us from quoting them. Anastasius then becomes a Mameluke ; marries his master's daughter, and is made a kiashef. In the numerous skirmishes into which he falls in his new military life, it falls to his lot to shoot, from an ambush, Assad, his inveterate enemy. "Assad, though weltering in his blood, was still alive: but already the angel of death flapped his dark wings over the traitor's brow. Hearing footsteps advance, he made an effort to raise his head, probably in hopes of ap- proaching succour: but beholding, but recog- nising only me, he felt that no hopes remained, and gave a groan of despair. Life Avas flow- ing out so fast, that I had only to stand still — my arms folded in each other, — and with a steadfast eye to watch its departure. One in- stant I saw my vanquished foe, agitated by a convulsive tremor, open his eyes and dart at me a glance of impotent rage; but soon he averted them again, then gnashed his teeth, clenched his fist, and expired." — (II. 92.) We quote this, and such passages as these, to show the great power of description which Mr. Hope possesses. The vindictive man standing with his arms folded, and watching the blood flowing from the wound of his enemy, is very new and very striking. After the death of his wafe, he collects his property, quits Egypt, and visits Mekkah, and acquires the title and prerogatives of an Hadjee. After this he returns to the Turkish capital, renews his acquaintance with Spiri- dion, the friend of his youth, who in vain labours to reclaim him, and whom he at last drives away, disgusted with the vices and passions of Anastasius. We then find our .oriental profligate fighting as a Turkish cap- tain in Egypt, against his old friends the Mamelukes ; and afterwards employed in Wallachia, under his old friend Mavroyeni, against the Russians and Austrians. In this part of the work, w-e strongly recommend to our readers to look at the Mussulmans in a pastry-cook's shop during the Rhamadam, vol. ii. p. i 64 ; the village of beggars, vol. ii. p. 266 ; the death of the Hungarian officer, vol. ii. p. 327; and, in the last days of Mavroyeni, vol. ii. p. 356 ; — not forgetting the walk over a field of battle, vol. ii. p. 252. The character of Mavroyeni is extremely well kept up through the whole of the book ; and his decline and death are drawn in a very spirited and masterly manner. The Spiridion part of the novel we are not so much struck M'ith ; we entirely ap- prove of Spiridion, and ought to take more interest in him ; but we cannot disguise the melancholy truth that he is occasionally a little long and tiresome. The next characters as- sumed by Anastasius are, a Smyrna debauchee, a robber of the desert, and a Wahabee. After serving some time with these sectaries, he re- turns to Smyrna, — finds his child missing whom he had left there, — traces the little boy to Egypt, — recovers him, — then loses him by sickness, — and wearied of life, retires to end his days in a cottage in Carinthia. For strik- ing passages in this part of the novel, we refer our readers to the description of the burial- places near Constantinople, vol. iii. 11—1.3; WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 333 the account of Djezzar Pacha's retirement to his harem during the revolt, — equal to any- thing in Tacitus ; and, above all, to the land- ing of Anastasius with his sick child, and the death of the infant. It is impossible not to see that this last picture is faithfully drawn from a sad and cruel reality. The account of the Wahabees is very interesting, vol. iii. 128; and nothing is more so than the story of Eu- phrosyne. Anastasius had gained the affec- tions of Euphrosyne, and ruined her reputa- tion; he then wishes to cast her off, and to remove her from his house. "'Ah no!' now cried Euphrosyne, convul- sively clasping my knees, ' be not so barba- rous ! Shut not )rour own door against her against whom you have barred every once friendly door. Do not deny her whom you have dishonoured the only asylum she has left. If I cannot be your wife, let me be your slave, your drudge. No service, however mean, shall I recoil from when you command. At least before you I shall not have to blush. In your eyes I shall not be what I must seem in those of others ; I shall not from you in- cur the contempt which I must expect from my former companions; and my diligence to execute the lowest offices you may require, will earn for me, not only as a bare alms at your hands, that support which, however scanty, I can elsewhere only receive as an unmerited indulgence. Since I did a few days please your eye, I may still please it a few days longer: — perhaps a few days longer, therefore, I may still wish to live ; and when that last blessing, your love, is gone by, — when my cheek, faded with grief, has lost the last attraction that could arrest your favour, then speak, then tell me so, that, burthening vou no longer, I may retire — and die !' " — (III. 64, 65.) Her silent despair, and patient misery, when she finds that she has not only ruined herself with the world, but lost his affections also, have the beauty of the deepest tragedy. " Nothing but the most unremitting tender- ness on my part could in some degree have revived her drooping spirits. — But when, after my excursion, and the act of justice on Sophia, in which it ended, I reappeared before the still trembling Euphrosyne, she saw too soon that that cordial of the heart must not be ex- pected. One look she cast upon my counte- nance, as I sat down in silence, sufficed to inform her of my total change of sentiments ; — and the responsive look by which it was met, tore for ever from her breast the last seeds of hope and confidence. Like the wounded snail, she shrunk within herself, and thenceforth, cloaked in unceasing sadness, never more ex- panded to the sunshine of joy. With her buoyancy of spirits she seemed even to lose all her quickness of intellect, nay, all her readiness of speech : so that, not only fearing to embark with her in serious conversation, but even finding no response in her mind to lighter topics, I at last began to nauseate her seeming torpor and dulness, and to roam abroad even more frequently than before a partner of my fate remained at home, to count the tedious hours of my absence; while she, poor, miserable creature, dreading the sneers of an unfeeling world, passed her time under my roof in dismal and heart-breaking solitude. — Had the most patient endurance of the most intemperate sallies been able to soothe my disappointment and to soften my hardiness, Euphrosyne';; angelic sweetness must at last have conquered: but, in my jaundiced eye, her resignation only tended to strengthen the conviction of her shame ; and I saw in her forbearance nothing but the consequence of her debasemxcnt, and the consciousness of her guilt. 'Did her heart,' thought I, 'bear wit- ness to a purity on which my audacity dared first to cast a blemish, she could not remain thus tame, thus spiritless, under such an ag- gravation of my wrongs ; and either she would be the first to quit my merciless roof, or, at least, she would not so fearfully avoid giving me even the most unfounded pretence for denying her its shelter. — She must merit her sufferings, to bear them so meekly !' — Hence, even when moved to real pity by gentleness so enduring, I seldom relented in my apparent sternness." — (III. 72 — 74.) With this, we end our extracts from Anasta- sius. We consider it as a work in which great and extraordinary talent is evinced. It abounds in eloquent and sublime passages, — in sense, — in knowledge of history, — and in knowledge of human character; — but not in wit. It is too long; and if this novel perishes, and is forgotten, it will be solely on that account. If it is the picture of vice, so is Clarissa Har- lowe, and so is Tom Jones. There are no sensual and glowing descriptions in Anasta- sius, — nothing which corrupts the morals by inflaming the imagination of youth ; and we are quite certain that every reader ends this novel with a greater disgust at vice, and a more thorough conviction of the necessity of subjugating passion, than he feels from read- ing either of the celebrated works we have just mentioned. The sum of our eulogium is, that Mr. Hope, without being very successful in his story, or remarkably skilful in the delineation of character, has written a novel, which all clever people of a certain age should read, because it is full of marvellously fine things. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. SCAMETT^S POOE BILL* [Edinburgh Review, 1821.] We are friendly to the main principle of Mr. Scarlett's bill ; but are rather surprised at the unworkmanlike manner in which he has set about it. To fix a maximum for the poor-rates, we should conceive to be an operation of suffi- cient difficulty and novelty for any one bill. There was no need to provoke more prejudice, to rouse more hostility, and create more alarm, than such a bill would naturally do. But Mr. Scarlett is a very strong man ; and before he works his battering-ram, he chooses to have the wall made of a thickness worthy of his blow — capable of evincing, by the enormity of its ruins, the superfluity of his vigour, and the certainty of his aim. Accordingly, he has in- troduced into his bill a number of provisions, which have no necessary, and, indeed, no near connection with his great and main object ; but which are sure to draw upon his back all the Sir Johns and Sir Thomases in the House of Commons. It may be right, or it may be wrong, that the chargeable poor should be re- moved; but why introduce such a controverted point into a bill framed for a much more im- portant object, and of itself calculated to pro- duce so much difTerence of opinion ! , Mr. Scarlett appears to us to have beeu not only indiscreet in the introduction of such hetero- geneous matter, but very much mistaken in the enactments which that matter contains. "And be it further enacted, that from and after the passing of this act, it shall not be lawful for any justice of peace or other per- son to remove, or cause to be removed, any poor person or persons from any parish, township or place, to any other, by reason of such person or persons being chargeable to such parish, township or place, or being unable to maintain him or themselves, or under colour of such person or persons being settled in any other parish, township or place, any law or statute to the contrary notwithstanding : Pro- vided always, that nothing in this act shall in any wise be deemed to alter any law now in force for the punishment of vagrants, or for removing poor persons to Scotland, Ireland, or the Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, and Man. — And be it further enacted, that in all cases w^here any poor person, at the time of the passing of this act, shall be resident in any parish, town- ship or place, where he is not legally settled, * 1. Letter to James Scarlett, Esq., .V. P., on his Bill relativa- to the Poor-Laws. By a Surrey Magistrate. London, 1821. 2. An J^ddress to the Imperial Parliament, vpon the Prai-ti/.al Means of erndually Jiholishing the Poor-Laus, and f ducatina the Poor Syslematicollv. Illustrated by an Jlccou-nt of the Colonies of Fredericks- Oord in Holland, X7!d of the Common .Mountain in the Sovth of Ireland. H'i'h General Observations. Third Kdition. By Wil- Z.IAM Hfhbert Saunders, Ksq. London, 1821. 3. Cn Povperism and the Poor-Laics. H'ith a Supple- ment. London, 182L and shall be receiving relief from the over- seers, guardians, or directors of the poor of the place of his legal settlement, the said over- seers, guardians, or directors, are hereby required to continue such relief, in the same manner, and by the same means, as the same is now administered, until one of his majesty's justices of the peace, in or near the place of residence of such poor person, shall, upon ap- plication to him, either by such poor person, or any other person on his behalf, for the con- tinuance thereof, or by the said overseers, guardians, or directors of the poor, paying such relief, for the discharge thereof, certify that the same is no longer necessaiy." — BUI, pp. .3, 4.) Now, here is a gentleman, so thoroughly and so justly sensible of the evils of the poor- laws, that he introduces into the House of Commons a very plain, and very bold measure to restrain them ; and yet, in the very same bill, he abrogates the few impediments that remain to universal mendicity. The present law says, " Before you can turn beggar in the place of your residence, you must have been born there, or you must have rented a farm there, or served an office ;" but Mr. Scarlett says, " You may beg anywhere where you happen to be. I will have no obstacles to your turning beggar ; I will give every facility and every allurement to the destruction of your independence." We are quite confident that the direct tendency of Mr. Scarlett's en- actments is to produce these effects. Labourers living in one place, and settled in another, are uniformly the best and most independent cha- racters in the place. Alarmed at the idea of being removed from the situation of their choice, and knowing they have nothing to de- pend upon but themselves, they are alone exempted from the degrading influence of the poor-laws, and frequently arrive at independ- ence by their exclusion from that baneful pri- vilege which is offered to them by the incon- sistent benevolence of this bill. If some are removed, after long residence in parishes where they are not settled, these examples only insure the beneficial effects of which we have been speaking. Others see them, dread the same fate, quit the mug, and grasp the flail. Our policy, as we have explained in a previous article, is directly the reverse of that of Mr. Scarlett. Considering that a poor man, since Mr. East's bill, if he asks no charity, has a right to live where he pleases, and that a settlement is now nothing more than a beggar's ticket, we would gradually abolish all means of gaining a settlement, but those of birth, parentage, or marriage ; and this method would destroy litigation as efijectually as the method proposed by Mr. Scarlett.* • Tbia has since been done. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 335 Mr. Scarlett's plan, too, we are firmly per- suaded, would completely defeat his own intentions ; and would inflict a greater injury upon the poor than this very bill, intended to prevent their capricious removal. If his bill had passed, he could not have passed. His post-chaise on the northern circuit would have been impeded by the crowds of houseless vil- lagers, driven from their cottages by landlords rendered merciless by the bill. In the mud — all in the mud (for such cases made and pro- vided) would they have rolled this most excel- lent counsellor. Instigated by the devil and their own malicious purposes, his Avig they would have polluted, and tossed to a thousand winds the paichment bickerings of Doe and Roe. Mr. Scarlett's bill is so powerful a mo- tive to proprietors for the depopulation of a village — for preventing the poor from living where they wish to live, — that nothing but the conviction that such a bill would never be suffered to pass, has prevented those effects from already taking place. Landlords would, in the contemplation of such a bill, pull down all the cottages of persons not belonging to the parish, and eject the tenants ; tt\e most vigor- ous measures would be taken to prevent any one from remaining or coming who was not absolutely necessary to the lord of the soil. At present, cottages are let to anybody: be- cause, if they are burthensome to the parish, the tenants can be removed. But the impos- sibility of doing this would cause the imme- diate demolition of cottages ; prevent the erection of fresh ones where they are really wanted ; and chain a poor man for ever to the place of his birth, without the possibility of moving. If everybody who passed over Mr. Scarlett's threshold were to gain a settlement for life in his house, he would take good care never to be at home. We all boldly let our frieirds in, because we know we can easily get them out. So it is witli the residence of the poor. Their present power of living where they please, and going where they please, entirely depends upon the possibility of their removal when they become chargeable. If any mistaken friend were to take from them this protection, the whole power and jealousy of property would be turned against their locomotive liberty ; they would become ad- scripli glebce, no more capable of going out of the parish than a tree is of proceeding, with its roots and branches, to a neighbouring wood. The remedy here proposed for these evils is really one of the most extraordinary we ever remember to have been introduced into any act of Parliament. " And whereas it may happen, that in seve- ral parishes or townships now burdened with the maintenance of the poor settled and re- siding therein, the owners of lands or inha- bitants may, in order to remove the residence of the labouring jioor from such parishes or places, destroy the cottages and habitations therein, now occupied by the labourers and their families: And whereas, also, it may happen, that certain towns and villages, maintaining their own poor, may, by the residence therein of labourers employed and working in other parishes or townships lying near the said towns and villages, be charged with the burden of maintaining those who do not work, and before the passing of this act were not settled therein : For remedy thereof, be it enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that, in either of the above cases, it shall be lawful for the justices, at any quarter-sessions of the peace held for the county in which such places shall be, upon the complaint of the overseers of the poor of any parish, town or place, that by reason of either of the causes aforesaid, the rates for the relief of the poor of such parish, town, or place, have been materially increased, whilst those of any other parish or place have been diminished, to hear and fully to inquire into the matter of such complaint; and in case they shall be satisfied of the truth thereof, then to make an order upon the overseers of the poor of the parish or township, whose rates have been diminished by the causes aforesaid, to pay to the complainants such sum or sums, from'time to time,, as the said justices shall adjudge reasonable, not exceeding, in any case, together with the existing rates, the amount limited by this act, as a contribution towards the relief of the poor of the parish, town, or place, whose rates have been in- creased by the causes aforesaid ; which order shall continue in force until the same shall be discharged by some future order of ses- sions, upon the application of the overseers paying the same, and proof that the occasion for it no longer exists: Provided, always, that no such order shall be made, without proof of notice in writing of such intended application, and of the grounds thereof, having been served upon the overseers of the poor of the parish or place, upon whom such order is prayed, four- teen days at the least before the first day of the quarter-sessions, nor unless the justices making such order shall be satisfied that no money has been improperly or unnecessarily expended by the overseers of the poor praying for such order; and that a separate and distinct account has been kept by them of the addi- tional burden which has been thrown upon their rates by the causes alleged." — (^Bill, pp. 4, 5.) Now this clause, we cannot help saying, ap- pears to us to be a receipt for universal and interminable litigation all over England— a perfect law-hurricane — a conversion of all flesh into plaintiffs and defendants. The parish A. has pulled down houses, and burthened the parish B.; B. has demolished to the misery of C; which has again misbehaved itself in the same manner to the oppression of other letters of the alphabet. All run into parchment, and pant for revenge and exoneration. Though the fact may be certain enough, the causes which gave rise to it may be very uncertain ; and assuredly will not be admitted to have been those against which the statute has de- nounced these penalties. It will be alleged, therefore, that the houses were not pulled down to get rid of the poor, but because they were not worth repair — because they obstruct- ed the squire's view— because rent was not paid. All these motives must go before the sessions, the last resource of legislators — the unhappy quarter-sessions pushed to the ei 336 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. tremity of their wit by the plump contradictions of parish perjury. Another of the many sources of litigation, in this clause, is as follows : — A certain number of workmen live in a parish M., not being settled in it, and not working in it before the passing of this act. After the passing of this act, they become chargeable to M., whose poor- rates are increased. M. is to find out the parishes relieved from the burthen of these men, and to prosecute at the quarter-sessions for relief. But suppose the burthened parish to be in Yorkshire, and the relieved parish in Cornwall, are the quarter-sessions in Yorkshire to make an order of annual payment upon a parish in Cornwall'? and Cornwall, in turn, upon Yorkshire] How is the money to be transmitted'? What is the easy and cheap remedy, if neglected to be paid ■? And if all this could be effected, what is it, after all, but the present system of removal rendered ten times more intricate, confi'sed and expensive! Perhaps Mr. Scarlett means, that the parishes where these men worked, and which may hap- pen to be within the jurisdiction of the justices, are to be taxed in aid of the parish M., in pro- portion to the benefit they have received from the labour of men whose distresses they do not relieve. We must have, then, a detailed ac- count of how much a certain carpenter work- ed in one parish, how much in another; and enter into a species of evidence absolutely interminable. We hope Mr. Scarlett will not be angry with us : we entertain for his abilities and character the highest possible respect ; but great lawyers have not leisure for these trifling details. It is very fortunate that a clause so erroneous in its view should be so inaccurate in its construction. If it were easy to comprehend it, and possible to execute it, it would he necessary to repeal it. The shortest way, however, of mending all this, will be entirely to omit this part of the bill. We earnestly, but with very little hopes of success, exhort Mr. Scarlett not to endanger the really important part of his project, by the introduction of a measure which has little to do with it, and which any quarter-session country squire can do as well or better than himself. The real question introduced by his bill is, whether or not a limit shall be put to the poor- laws ; and not only this, but whether their amount shall be gradually diminished. To this better and higher part of the law, we shall now address ourselves. In this, however, as well as in the former part of his bill, Mr. Scarlett becomes frighten- ed at his own enactments, and repeals himself. Parishes are first to relieve every person ac- tually resident within them. This is no sooner enacted than a provision is introduced to relieve them from this expense, tenfold more burthensome and expensive than the present cystem of removal. In the same manner, a maximum is very wisely and bravely enacted; and in the following clause is immediately repealed. "Provided, also, and be it further enacted, that if, by reason of any unusual scarcity of provisions, epidemic disease, or any other cause of a temporary or local nature, it shall be deemed expedient by the overseers of the poor, or other persons having, by virtue of any local act of Parliament, the authority of over- seers of the poor of any parish, township, or place, to make any addition to the sum assessed for the relief of the poor, beyond the amount limited by this act, it shall be lawful for the said overseers, or such other persons, to give public notice in the several churches, and other places of worship, within the same pa- rish, township, or place, and if there be no church or chapel within such place, then in the parish church or chapel next adjoining the same, of the place and time of a general meet- ing to be held by the inhabitants paying to the relief of the poor within such parish, town- ship, or place, for the purpose of considering the occasion and the amount of the proposed addition ; and, if it shall appear to the majority of the persons assembled at such meeting, that such addition shall be necessary, then it shall be lawful to the overseers, or other persons having power to make assessments, to increase the assessment by the additional sum proposed and allowed, at such meeting, and for the jus- tices, by whom such rate is to be allowed, upon due proof upon oath to be made before them, of the resolution of such meeting, and that the same was held after sufficient public notice to allow such rate with the proposed addition, specifying the exact amount thereof, with the reasons for allowing the same, upon the face of the rate."— (B?7/, p. 3.) It would really seem, from these and other qualifying provisions, as if Mr. Scarlett had never reflected upon the consequences of his leadingenactments tillhehad penned them; and that he then set about finding how he could prevent himself from doing what he meant to do. To what purpose enact a maximum, if that maximum may at any time be repealed by the majority of the parishioners ? How will the compassion and charity which the poor-laws have set to sleep be awakened, when such' a remedy is at hand as the repeal of the maxi- mum by a vote of the parish 1 Will ardent and amiable men form themselves into volun- tary associations to meet any sudden exigency of famine and epidemic disease, when this sleepy and sluggish method of overcoming the evil can be had recourse to? As soon as it becomes really impossible to increase the poor fund by law — when there is but little, and there can be no more, that little will be administered with the utmost caution; claims will be mi- nutely inspected ; idle manhood will not receive the scraps and crumbs which belong to failing old age; distress will make the poor provident and cautious ; and all the good expected from the abolition of the poor-laws will begin to appear. But these expectations will be entirely frustrated, and every advantage of Mr. Scar- lett's bill destroyed,' by this fatal facility of eluding and repealing it. The danger of insurrection is a circumstance worthy of the most serious consideration, in discussing the propriety of a maximum. Mr. Scarlett's bill is an infallible receipt for tumult and agitation, whenever corn is a little dearer WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 537 than common.' "Repeal the maximum," will be the clamour in every village; and woe be to those members of the village vestry who should oppose the measure. Whether it was really a year of scarcity, and whether it was a proper season for expanding the bounty of the law, would be a question constantly and fierce- ly agitated between the farmers and the poor. If the maximum is to be quietly submitted to, its repeal must be rendered impossible but to the legislature. " Burn your ships, Mr. Scar- lett. You are doing a wise and necessar3' thing; don't be afraid of yourself. Respect your own nest. Don't let clause A repeal clause B. Be stout. Take care that the rat lawyers on the treasury bench do not take the oysters out of your bill, and leave you the shell. Do not yield one particle of the wisdom and philosophy of your measure to the country gentlemen of the earth." We object to a maximum which is not ren- dered a decreasing maximum. If definite sums were fixed for each village, which they could not exceed, that sum would, in a very few years, become a minimum, and an esta- blished claim. If 80s. were the sum allotted for a particular hamlet, the poor would very soon come to imagine that they were entitled to that precise sum, and the farmers that they were compelled to give it. Any maximum established should be a decreasing, but a very slowly decreasing maximum, — perhaps it should not decrease at a greater rate than lOs. per cent, per annum. It may be doubtful also, whether the first bill should aim at repealing more than 20 per cent, of the present amount of the poor-rates. This would be eff'ected in forty years. Long before that time, the good or bad effects of the measure would be fairly estimated; if it is wise that it should proceed, let posterity do the rest. It is by no means necessary to destroy, in one moment, upon paper, a payment which cannot, without violating every principle of justice, and every consideration of safety and humanity, be extinguished in less than two centuries. It is important for Mr. Scarlett to consider whether he will make the operation of his bill immediate, or interpose two or three years between its enactment and first operation. We entirely object to the following clause ; the whole of which ought to be expunged: — "And be it further enacted, that it shall not be lawful for any churchwarden, overseer, or guardian of the poor, or any other person having authority to administer relief to the poor, to allow or give, or for any justice of the peace to order, any relief to any person whatsoever, who shall be married after the passing of this act, for himself, herself, or any part of his or her family, unless such poor person shall be actually, at the time of asking such relief, by reason of age, sickness, or bodily infirmity, unable to obtain a livelihood, and to support his or her family by work: Provided, always, that nothing in this clause contained shall be construed so as to authorize the granting relief, or making any order for relief, in cases where the same was not lawful before the passing of this act." 43 Nothing in the whole bill will occasion so much abuse and misrepresentation as this clause. It is upon this that the radicals will first fasten. It will, of course, be explained into a prohibition of marriage to the poor ; and will, in fact, create a marked distinction be- tween two classes of paupers, and become a rallying point for insurrection. In fact, it is wholly unnecessary. As the funds for the re- lief of pauperism decrease, under the opera- tion of a diminishing maximum, the first to whom relief is refused will be the young and the strong; in other words, the most absurd and extravagant consequences of the present poor-laws will be the first cured. Such, then, is our conception of the bill which ought to be brought into Parliament — a maximum regulated by the greatest amount of poor-rates ever paid, and annually diminishing at the rate of 10*. per cent, till they are reduced 20 per cent, of their present value ; with such a preamble to the bill as will make it fair and consistent for any future Parliament to con- tinue the reduction. If Mr. Scarlett will bring in a short and simple bill to this effect, and not mingle with it any other parochial improve- ments, and will persevere in such a bill for two or three years, we believe he will carry it; and we are certain he will confer, by such a measure, a lasting benefit upon his country — and upon none more than upon its labouring poor. We presume there are very few persons who will imagine such a measure to be deficient fn vigour. That the poor-laws should be stopped in their fatal encroachment upon property, and unhappy multiplication of the human species, — and not only this, but that the evil should be put in a state of diminution, would be an improvement of our condition almost beyond hope. The tendency of fears and objections will all lie the other way; and a bill of this nature will not be accused of inertness, but of rashness, cruelty, and innovation. We can- not now enter into the question of the poor- laAvs, of all others that which has undergone the most frequent and earnest discussion. Our whole reasoning is founded upon the assump- tion, that no system of laws was ever so com- pletely calculated to destroy industry, foresight, and economy in the poor; to extinguish com- passion in the rich; and, by destroying th; balance between the demand for, and supply of, labour, to spread a degraded population over a ruined land. Not to attempt the cure of this evil, Avould be criminal indolence ; not to cure it gradually and compassionately, would be very wicked. To Mr. Scarlett belongs the real merit of introducing the bill. He will forgive us the freedom, perhaps the severity, of some of our remarks. We arc sometimes not quite so smooth as we ought to be; but we hold Mr. Scarlett in very high honour and estimation. He is the greatest advocate, perhaps, of his time; and without the slightest symptom of tail or whiskers- dccorations, it is reported, now as character istic of the English bar as wigs and gowns in days of old — he has never carried his soul to the treasury, and said. What will you give me for thisl — he has never sold the Trarmifeelings 2F WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. ami honourable motives of his youth and man- hood for an annual sum of money and an office — he has never taken a price for public liberty and public happiness — he has never touched the political Aceldama, and signed the devil's bond for cursing to-morrow what he has blessed to-day. Living in the midst of men who have disgraced it. he has cast honour upon his honourable profession; and has sought dignity, not from the ermine and the mace, but from a straight path and a spotless life. MEMOmS OF CAPTAIN EOCK. [Edinburgh Review, li This agreeable and wilty book is generally supposed to have been written by Mr. Thomas Moore, a gentleman of small stature, but full of genius, and a steady friend of all that is honourable and just. He has here borrowed the name of a celebrated Irish leader, to typify that spirit of violence and insurrection which is necessarily generated by systematic oppres- sion, and rudely avenges its crimes ; and the picture he has drawn of its prevalence in that unhappy country is at once piteous and fright- ful. Its effect in exciting our horror and in- dignation is in the long run increased, we think, — though at first it may seem counter- acted, by the tone of levity, and even jocularity, under which he has chosen to veil the deep sarcasm and substantial terrors of his story. We smile at first, and are amused — and won- der, as we proceed, that the humorous narra- tive should produce conviction and pity — shame, abhorrence, and despair ! England seems to have treated Ireland much in the same way as Mrs. Brownrigg treated her apprentice — for which Mrs. Brownrigg is hanged in the first volume of the Newgate Calendar. Upon the whole, we think the ap- prentice is better off than the Irishman : as Mrs. Brownrigg merely starves and beats her, without any attempt to prohibit her from going to any shop, or praying at any church, appren- tice might select; and once or twice, if we remember rightly, Brownrigg appears to have felt some compassion. Not so Old England, who indulges rather in a steady baseness, uni- form brutality, and unrelenting oppression. Let us select from this entertaining little book a short history of dear Ireland, such as even some profligate idle member of the House of Commons, voting as his master bids him, may perchance throw his eye upon, and reflect for a moment upon the iniquity to which he 'ends his support. For some centuries after the reign of Henry l!. the Irish were killed like ?ame, by persons qualified or unqualified. Whether dogs were ased does not appear quite certain, though it is probable they were, spaniels as well as pointers; and that, after a regular point by Basto, well backed bv Ponto and Caesar, Mr. O'Donnel or Mr. O'Leary bolted from the .hicket, and were bagged by the English sports- Memoirs of Captain Roek, the celebrated Irish Chief- Min; with some Account of his JIncesturs. Written by ■" Fourth Edition. 12mo. London, 1824. man. With Henry II. came in tithes, to which, in all probability, about one million of lives may have been sacrificed in Ireland. In the reign of Edward I., the Irish who were settled near the English requested that the benefit of the English laws might be extended to them ; but the remonstrance of the barons with the hesitating king was in substance this: — "You have made us a present of these wild gentle- men, and we particularly request that no mea- sures may be adopted to check us in that full range of tyranny and oppression in which we consider the value of such a gift to consist. You might as well give us sheep, and prevent us from shearing the wool, or roasting the meat." This reasoning prevailed, and the Irish were kept to their barbarism, and the barons preserved their live-stock. " Read ' Orange faction' (says Captain Rock) here, and you have the wisdom of our rulers, at the end of near six centuries, in statu qvo. — The grand periodic year of the stoics, at the close of which every thing was to begin again, and the same events to be all reacted in the same order, is, on a miniature scale, repre- sented in the history of the English govern- ment in Ireland — every succeeding century being but a renewed revolution of the same follies, the same crimes, and the same turbu- lence that disgraced the former. But ' Vive I'ennemi !' say I : whoever miay suffer by such measures. Captain Rock, at least, will prosper. "And such was the result at the period of which I am speaking. The rejection of a pe- tition, so humble and so reasonable, was fol- lowed, as a matter of course, by one of those daring rebellions into which the revenge of an insulted people naturally breaks forth. The M'Cartys, the O'Briens, and all the other Macs and O's, who have been kept on the alert by similar causes ever since, flew to arms under the command of a chieftain of my family ; and. as the proffered handle of the sword had been rejected, made their inexorable masters at least feel its edge." — (pp. 23 — 25.) Fifty years afterwards the same request was renewed and refused. Up again rose Mac and O. — a just and necessary war ensued; and after the usual murders, the usual chains were replaced upon the Irishry. All Irishmen were excluded from every species of office. It was high treason to marry with the Irish blood, and highly penal to receive the Irish into religious houses. War was waged also against their WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Thomas Moores, Samuel Rogerses, and Walter Scotts, who went about the country harping and singing against English oppression. No such turbulent guests were to be received. The plan of making them poets-laureate, or converting them to loyalty by pensions of 100/. per annum, had not then been thought of. They debarred the Irish even from the plea- sure of running away, and fixed them to the soil like negroes. "I have thus selected," says the historian of Rock, " cursorily and at random a few fea- tures of the reigns preceding the Reformation, in order to show what good use was made of those three or four hundred years in attaching the Irish people to their English governors ; and by what a gentle course of alternatives they were prepared for the inoculation of a new religion, which was now about to be at- tempted upon them by the same skilful and friendly hands. " Henry the Seventh appears to have been the first monarch to whom it occurred, that matters were not managed exactly as they ought in this part of his dominions ; and we find him — with a simplicity which is still fresh and youthful among our rulers — expressing his surprise that ' his subjects of this land should be so prone to faction and rebellion, and that so little advantage had been hitherto derived from the acquisitions of his predeces- sors, notwithstanding the fruitfulness and na- tural advantages of Ireland.' — Surprising, in- deed, that a policy, such as we have been describing, should not have converted the whole country into a perfect Atalantis of hap- piness — should not have made it like the ima- ginary island of Sir Thomas More, where 'tola insula velut una familia est T — most stub- born, truly, and ungrateful must that people be, upon whom, up to the very hour in which I write, such a long and unvarying course of penal laws, confiscations, and insurrection acts has been tried, without making them in the least degree in love with their rulers. "Heloise tells her tutor Abelard, that the correction which he inflicted upon her only served to increase the ardour of her affection for him; but bayonets and hemp are no such ' amoris stinmlij — One more characteristic anecdote of those times, and I have done. At the battle of Knocktow, in the reign of Henry VII., when that remarkable man, the Earl of Kildare, assisted by the great O'Neal and other Irish chiefs, gained a victory over Clan- ricard of Connaught, most important to the English government. Lord Gormanstown, after the battle, in the first insolence of success, said, turning to the Earl of Kildare, 'We have now slaughtered our enemies, but to complete the good deed, we must proceed yet further, and — cut the throats of those Irish of our own party !'* Who can wonder that the Rock family were active in those times ?" — (pp. 33 — 35.) Henry VIII. persisted in all these outrages, and aggravated them by insulting the prejudices of the people. Englmd is almost the only country in the world (even at present), where * Lpland givsjs Ibis anecdote on the authority of an Ei'frlishm-.in. \ there is not some favourite religious spot, where absurd lies, httle bits of cloth, feathers, rusty nails, splinters, and other invaluable relics, are treasured up, and in defence of which the whole population are willing to turn out and perish as one man. Such was the shrine of St. Kieran, the whole treasures of which the satellites of that corpulent tyrant turned out into the street, pillaged the sacred church of Clonmacnoise, scattered the holy nonsense of the priests to the winds, and burnt the real and venerable crosier of St. Patrick, fresh from the silversmith's shop, and formed of the most costly materials. Modern princes change the uniform of regiments ; Hen- ry changed the religion of kingdoms, and was determined that the belief of the Irish should undergo a radical and Protestant conversion. With what success this attempt was made, the present state of Ireland is sufficient evi- dence. " Be not dismayed," said Elizabeth, on hear- ing that O'Neal meditated some designs against her government ; " tell my friends, if he arise, it will turn to their advantage — ihcre ivill be estates for those who tcant." Soon after this pro- phetic speech, Munster was destroyed by fa- mine and the sword, and near 600,000 acres forfeited to the crown, and distributed among Englishmen. Sir Walter Raleigh (the vir- tuous and good) butchered the garrison of Limerick in cold blood, after Lord Deputy Gray had selected 700 to be hanged. There were, during the reign of Elizabeth, three in- vasions of Ireland by the Spaniards, produced principally by the absurd measures of this princess for the reformation of its religion. The Catholic clergy, in consequence of these measures, abandoned their cures, the churches fell to ruin, and the people were left without any means of instruction. Add to these cir- cumstances the murder of M'Mahon, the im- prisonment of M'Toole* and O'Dogherty, and the kidnapping of O'Donnel — all truly Anglo- Hibernian proceedings. The execution of the laws was rendered detestable and intolerable by the queen's officers of justice. The spirit raised by these transactions, besides innume- rable smaller insurrections, gave rise to the great wars of Desmond and Hugh O'Neal; which, after they had worn out the ablest generals, discomfited the choicest troops, ex- hausted the treasure, and embarrassed the operations of Elizabeth, were terminated by the destruction of these two ancient families, and by the confiscation of more than half the territorial surface of the island. The two laist years of O'Neal's wars cost Elizabeth 140,000/. per annum, though the whole revenue ol' England at that period fell considerably short of 500,000/. Essex, after the destruction of Norris, led into Ireland an army of above 20,000 men, which was totally bafiled and dc- * Thfre are not a few of the best and most humane Enslishmen of the present day, who, when under thn sense might be expected to compose; and narratives like these we must not despise. To military men we have been, and must be, in- debted for our first acquaintance with the inte- rior of many countries. Conquest has explored more than ever curiosity has done ; and the path for science has been commonly opened by the sword. We shall proceed to give a very summary abstract of the principal conlenls of Mr. Per- cival's book. The immense accessions of territory which the English have acquired in the East Indies since the American war, rendered it absolutely necessary, that some effort should be made to obtain possession of a station where ships might remain in safety during the violent storms in- cidental to that climate. As the whole of that large tract which we possess alor.-g the Coro- mandel coast presents nothing but open roads, all vessels are obliged, on the approach of the monsoons, to stand out in the open seas ; and there are many parts of the coast that can be approached only during a few months of the year. As the harbour of Trincomalee, which is equally secure at all seasons, afforded the means of obviating these disadvantages, it is evident that, on the first rupture with the Dutch, our countrymen would attempt to gain posses- sion of it. A body of troops was, in conse- quence, detached in the year 1795, for the conquest of Ceylon, which (in consequence of the indiscipline which political dissension had introduced among the Dutch troops) was effected almost without opposition. Ceylon is now inhabited by the English ; the remains of the Dutch, and Portuguese, the Cinglese or natives, subject to the dominion of the Europeans ; the Candians, subject to the king of their own name ; and the Vaddahs, or wild men, subject to no power. A Ceylonese Dutchman is a course, grotesque species of animal, whose native apathy and phlegm is animated only by the insolence of a colonial tyrant: his principal amusement appears to consist in smoking; but his pipe, according to Mr. Percival's account, is so seldom out of his mouth, that his smoking appears to be almost as much a necessary function of animal life as his breathing. His day is eked out with gin, ceremonious visits, and prodigious quantities of gross food, dripping with oil and butter; his mind, just able to reach from one meal to another, is incapable of farther exertion ; and, after the pant- ing and deglutition of a long protracted dinner, reposes on the sweet expectation that, in a few hours, the carnivorous toil will be renewed. He lives only to digest, and, while the organs of gluttony perform their office, he has not a wish beyond ; and is the happy man which Horace describes: — ■ in seipso totus, tots, aiqvt rotundus. The descendants of the Portuguese differ materially from the Moors, Malabars, and other Mahometans. Their great object is to show the world they are Europeans and Christians. Unfortunately, their ideas of Christianity are so imperfect, that the only mode they can hit upon of displaying their faith, is by wearing hats and breeches, and by these habiliments they con- sider themselves as showing a proper degree of contempt, on various parts of the body, to- wards Mahomet and Buddha. They are lazy, treacherous, effeminate, and passionate to ex- cess ; and are, in fact, a locomotive and ani- mated farrago of the bad qualities of all tongues, people, and nations, on the face of the earth. The Malays, whom we forgot before to enu- merate, form a very considerable portion of the inhabitants of Ceylon. Their original em- pire lies in the peninsula of Malacca, from whence they have extended themselves over Java, Sumatra, the Moluccas, and a vast num- ber of other islands in the peninsula of India. It has been many years customary for the Dutch to bring them to Ceylon, for the purpose of carrying on various branches of trade and ' manufacture, and in order also to employ them as soldiers and servants. The Malays are the most vindictive and ferocious of living beings. They set little or no value on their own exist- ence, in the prosecution of their odious pas- sions; and having thus broken the great tie which renders man a being capable of being governed, and fit for society, they are a constant source of terror to all those who have any kind of connection or relation with them. A Malay servant, from the apprehension excited by his vindictive disposition, often bec,omes the master of his master. It is as dangerous to dismiss him as to punish him; and the rightful despot, in order to avoid assassination, is almost compelled to exchange characters with his slave. It is singular, however, that the Malay, incapable of submission on any other occasion, and ever ready to avenge in- I suit with death, submits to the severest military I discipline with the utmost resignation and meekness. The truth is, obedience to his offi- cers forms part of his religious creed; and the same man who would repay the most in- significant insult with death, will submit to be lacerated at the halbert with the patience of a martyr. This is truly a tremendous people ! When assassins and blood-hounds will fall into rank and file, and the most furious savages submit (with no diminution of their ferocity) to the science and discipline of war, they only want a Malay Bonaparte to lead them to the conquest of the world. Our curiosity has al- ways been very highly excited by the accounts of this singular people; and we cannot help ' thinking, that, one day or another, when they j are more full of opium than usual, they tcill run a mvck from Cape Comorin to the Caspian. Mr. Percival does not consider the Ceylonese as descended from the continentals of the peninsula, but rather from the inhabitants of the Maldive Islands, whom they very much resemble in complexion, features, language, and manners. "The Ceylonese (says Mr. Percival) are courteous and polite in their demeanour, evcD to a degree far exceeding their civilization. In several qualities they are greatly superior lo WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 351 all other Indians who have fallen within the sphere of my observation. I have already ex- empted them from the censure of stealing and lying, which seem to be almost inherent in the nature of an Indian. They are mild, and by no means captious or passionate in their in- tercourse with each other; though, when once their anger is roused, it is proportionably fu- rious and lasting. Their hatred is indeed mortal, and they will frequently destroy them- selves to obtain the destruction of the detested object. One instance will serve to show the extent to which this passion is carried. If a Ceylonese cannot obtain money due to him by another, he goes to his debtor, and threatens to kill himself if he is not instantly paid. This threat, which is sometimes put in execution, reduces the debtor, if it be in his power, to immediate compliance with the demand : as, by their law, if any man causes the loss of another man's life, his own is the forfeit. ' An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' is a pro- verbial expression continually in their mouths. This is, on other occasions, a very common mode of revenge among them; and a Cey- lonese has often been known to contrive to kill himself in the company of his enemy, that the latter might suiter for it. "This dreadful spirit of revenge, so incon- sistent with the usually mild and humane sen- timents of the Ceylonese, and much more con- genial to the bloody temper of a Malay, still continues to be fostered by the sacred cus- toms of the Candians. Among the Cinglese, however, it has been greatly mitigated by their intercourse with Europeans. The despe- rate mode of obtaining revenge which I have just described, has been given up, from having been disappointed of its object ; as, in all those parts under our dominion, the European modes of investigating and punishing crimes are en- forced. A case of this nature occurred at Caltura in 1799. A Cinglese peasant hap- pening to have a suit or controversy with an- other, watched an opportunity of going to bathe in company with him, and drowned himself, with the view of having his adversary put to death. The latter was upon this taken up, and sent to Columbo to take his trial for making away with the deceased, upon the principle of having been the last seen in his company. There was, however, nothing more than pre- sumptive proof against the culprit, and he was of course acquitted. This decision, however, did not by any means tally with the sentiments of the Cinglese, who are as much inclined to continue their ancient barbarous practice, as their brethren the Candians, although they are deprived of the power." — (pp. 70 — 72.) The warlike habits of the Candians make them look with contempt on the Cinglese, who are almost entirely unacquainted with the management of arms. They have the habit und character of mountaineers — warlike, hardy, enterprising, and obstinate. They have, at various times, proved themselves very formi- dable enemies to the Dutch ; and in that kind of desultory warfare, which is the only one their rugged country will admit of, have cut off large parties of the troops of both these nations. The King of Candia, as we have be- fore mentioned, possesses only the middle of the island, which nature, and his Candian ma- jesty, have rendered as inaccessible as possi- ble. It is traversable only by narrow wood- paths, known to nobody but the natives, strictly watched in peace and war, and where the best troops in the world might be shot in any quantities by the Candian marksmen, without the smallest possibility of resisting their enemies ; because there would not be the smallest possibility of finding them. The King of Candia is of course despotic ; and the his- tory of his life and reign presents the same monotonous ostentation, and baby-like caprice, which characterize oriental governments. In public audiences he appears like a great fool, squatting on his hams; far surpassing ginger bread in splendour; and, after asking some such idiotical question, as whether Europe is in Asia or Africa, retires with a flourish of trumpets very much out of tune. For his pri- vate amusements, he rides on the nose of an elephant, plays with his jewels, sprinkles his courtiers with rose-water, and feeds his gold and silver fish. If his tea is not sweet enough, he impales his footman ; and smites off the heads of half a dozen of his noblemen, if he has a pain in his own. — la-jng yjig (says Aristotle) TEXJoiflsy fiix-rta-Tov rav y^ilgt r' irn ,r,- \ f.,^ r Will of erePk' YoU i i.'civ u.:i av>i be ^vo I.^ul.sh a.iJ - rreet as to pirt with the pains in y mach?** — Why, what would be the an . . ri : the rustic to this nonsensical monition ? - \fr.. . «<> contcnird wiih this reluni*. J'-ruap* not, .'ter of rhubarb! (he would say) I am not ric -sir: I never hope to content men whose paroe inconsequence of the pains in r- r-r«T to be con'" ■■ ' ' •' ih-y arc not but in spite of the pains in my - --d. I am sui 'tit will then y ,K„';H hir- V"*! !**i tirTT-s r "-Tivlr b* cir'*. I am IhH Iu liic t\-\Mi^r f -"■ '-It and hononraWe member^ v. ... contained within its walls. I .•: l-vy. Th-y tell you of the few men of na- character who have sat for borouijhs; ' thing is said of those m<«an w^ men who are sent down ererr dav by ihei: rraiir masifr-- • > '•■'.•..,, ... ,. i !«ary wars, t '■\ It !>iich a III 1 .'" IS the repcnl i ! ;- ;, lie of the srniii'.,-!'?r; I be carried on faintly, and 1 would snon feel that your r ihey would .T rh"nf«* is ainne, there "n would let ' -- -^r mar- . ; who not a •uffer, from ih-- arrijfnulai.on <.f ba ! men. Bit, Mr. BaififT, if this ,< it really wer»» a tjrcnt pohtinl i:.. cities o'f lOO.ftOO men shouM have no «entatives, b»'cau<'» xYin^f r>'pf«**<'nr.Tii v 1 for political ditrhf - ' ■ • il parks: that t';- • :\n\ sold like av . ! merchant n and bnv ' • twenty m ^ ; •. ■: can such a'^^'-vri'i,):)-. • before ih* people? M'i*e nr -sanf with human aflTairj. may • "jch theori'^s to each oth^r in rf^'irem- can the people crer be tanpht that i; thev should be boniht and sold ! Ca- hemenrr of rloqurnt d<*mocrats be r «nrh arguments and theories! V,-\^ '\ ■ of honest and limifd men be r- gam'")t« and th''or»es? The r: Kivcnmcn! s looked at by all t . l»-it- It is impowibfe lo explain, dei'e.- ■. irnl sj we tnu 1 ,'h)-*ever r), proceed i > m:il.-e laws . ;:;... we are sure, will not be Jet r^-»-- j alone. I c'e I We raieht really ima?ine. from the objec- wksA ,b, ; . Confer, and the sSeiuV ani re-.(w-otai>!e '.• gentlemen, who will probnbly have ■ ^-^-ive;— it may be true of the trades- L'sfH-T. it may b« just of the coun- n of frz — it is any thinj but true • pie. The English are a ^. money-loving. money-?et- ■. mt to be qniel— and wmuI i qu.c: ;:' -.hey -.rcre not surroanded by erila WORKS OP THE REV. roXET SMITH. 4/1 .f ,_.V _-_ ■mxtaU. be b*s«»e55 — - ppose lo ib«tt the be a lack o: ~ to be C031- XTi cai ID ibese esMsmoas -7-irabm^ raMcry, aad dMie ie»o^ lotilkorecMk- ■■XTpie of cospcBsaikm laT^s in the folfo-riag i>- r^—rH 25 fir *s s?«rf :>?$t of all taleats, geadc. : oar afliir^ 'h---!y. *-:- re, aboaad as moc'. :i. I : JUS- thus orranirM. will eipress more £*. The C(: h- t;. i. and . rv>us leciing o: ctttj ii- ;o coafott&vi of W ai one . of ihf irs, «nr no of all reasons, that r it Thr:lv cC tem^r .. ment of corjvir.i'ions co . thirtv i»ersons, s^lii lo ihe r TTr-r^v^t-i ^i » t >. who are ihea-iflves perhaps scM to xJie gorern- i r are niio.i br a popniar ;n npris*j: micisi^r, anj cace. 372 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. SPEECH AT TAUNTON. Mr. CttAmjiATf, — 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 histor)'. Another coronation has taken place since I have been iQ the world, but I never assisted at its celebra- tion. 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 dilTerently of the accession of his present majesty. I believe I see in that acces- sion 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 oftenappealedto, is now intensely excited. The remedies which have so often been called for are now at last vigorously, wisely and faith- fully applied. I admire, gentlemen, in the pre- sent king, his love of peace — I admire in him his disposition to economy, and I admire in him, above all, his failhtlil and honorable con- duct 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 politi- cal 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 otfice, to him he gives that confidence with- out which the office cannot be holden with honour, nor executed with efl"ect. 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 another topic of eulogiura, on which, before I sit down, I should like to say a few words — I mean the willingness of our present king to investigate abuses and to re- form them. If this subject is not unpleasant, I -will offer upon it a very few observations — a few, because the siibject is exhausted, and be- cause, if it were not, I have no right, from my standing or my situation in this countjs to de- tain you long upon that or any other subject. In criticising this great question of reform, I think there is some injustice done to its authors. Men seem to suppose that a minister can sit down and make a plan of reform with as much ease and as much exactness, and with as com- plete a gratification of his own will, as an architect can do in building or altering a house. But a minister of state (it should be in justice observed), works in the midst of hatred, injus- tice, violence, and the worst of human passions — his works are not the works of calm and unembarrassed wisdom — they are not the best that a dreamer of dreams can imagine. It is enough if they are the best plans which the passions, parties, and prejudices of the times in which he acts will permit. In passing are- form bill, the minister overthrows the long and deep interest which powerful men have in existing abuses — he subjects himself to the deepest hatred, and encounters the bitterest op- position. Auxiliaries he must have, and auxili- aries he can only find among the people — not the mob — but the great mass of those who have opinions worth hearing, and property worth de- fending — a greater mass, I am happy to say, in this country than exists in any other country on the face of the earth. Now, before the mid- dling orders will come forward with one great impulse, they must see that something is of- fered them worth the price of contention ; they must see that the object is great and the gain serious. If you call them in at all, it must not be to displace one faction at the expense of another, but to put down all factions — to sub- stitute purity and principle for corruption — to give to the many that political power which the few have unjustly taken to themselves — to get rid of evils so ancient and so vast that any other arm than the public arm would be lifted up against them in vain. This, then, I say, is one of the reasons why ministers have been compelled to make their measures a little more vigorous and decisive than a speculative phi- losoper, sitting in his closet, might approve of. They had a mass of opposition to contend with which could be encountered only by a general exertion of public spirit — they had a long-suf- fering and an often deceived public to appeal to, who were determined to suffer no longer, and to be deceived no more. The alternative was to continue the ancient abuses, or to do what they have done — and most firmly do I be- lieve that you and I, and the latest posterity of us all, will rejoice in the decision they have made. Gradation has been called for in re- form : we might, it is said, have taken thirty or forty years to have accomplished what we have done in one year. 'It is not so much the mag- nitude of what you are doing we object to, as the suddenness.' But was not gradation ten- dered 1 Was it not said by the friends of re- form — 'Give us Birmingham and Manchester, and M'e will be satisfied]' and what was the answer 1 'No Manchester, no Birmingham, no reform in any degree — all abuses as they are — all perversions as we found them — the corruptions which our fathers bequeathed us we will hand down unimpaired and unpurified to our children.' But I would say to the gra- duate philosopher, — ' How often does a reform- ing minister occur?' and if such are so com., mon that you can command them when you please, how often does a reforming monarch occur 1 and how often does the conjunction occur 1 Are }^ou sure that a people, bursting into new knowledge, and speculating on every public event, will wait for your protracted re- form 7 Strike while the iron is hot — up with the arm, and down with the hammer, and up again with the arm, and down again with the hammer. The iron is hot — the opportunity exists now — if you neglect it, it may not return for an hundred years to come. There is an argument I have often heard, and WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. that is this — Are we to be afraid 1 — is this mea- sure to be carried by intimidation 1 — is the House of Lords to be overau^ed 1 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 — be- cause 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 pro- ducing great public agitation — I may be honour- ably 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 delibe- rate reflection of a wise man who does not like M'hat he is going to do, but likes still less the consequence 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 con- fess, 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 in- different 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 possi- ble, 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 is 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 inquiry. — Upon that diligent inquiry I repeat again my firm conviction, that the desire of reform has increased, not diminished ; that the present re- pose 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 chains, — 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 lay broken into links at their feet. SPEECH AT TAUNTON. [From the " Taunton Courier" of October 12th, 1831.] The RETEUENn Stdnet Smith rose and said: — Mr. Bailiff, I have spoken so often on this subject, that I am sure both you and the gen- tlemen here present will be obliged to me for saying but little, and that favour I am as will- ing to confer, as you can be to receive it. I feel most deeply the event which has taken place, because, by putting the two houses of Parliament in collision with each other, it will impede the public business, and diminish the public prosperity. I feel it as a churchman, because I cannot but blush to see so many dig- nitaries of the church arrayed against the wishes and happiness of the people. "I feel it more than all, because I believe it will sow the seeds of deadly hatred between the aristocracy and the great mass of the people. The loss of the bill I do not feel, and for the best of all possible reasons — because I have not the slightest idea that it is lost. I have no more doubt, before the expiration of the winter, that this bill will pass, than I have that the annual tax bills -nill pass, and greater certainty than this no man can have, for Franklin tells us, there are but two things certain in this world — death and taxes. As for the possibility of the House of Lords preventing ere long a reform of Parliament, I hold it to be the most absurd notion that ever entered into human imagination. I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of reform, reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Part- ington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town — the tide rose to an incredible height — the waves rushed in upon the houses, and ever}'- thing was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Part- ington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Part- ington's spirit was up ; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excel- lent at a slop, or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease — be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington. They tell you, gentlemen, in the debates by which we have been latelj^ occupied, that the bill is not justified by experience. T do net 2 I 374 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. think this true, but if it were true, nations are sometimes compelled to act without experience for their guide, and to trust to their own saga- city for the anticipation of consequences. The instances where this countr)' has been compel- led thus to act ha\re been so eminently success- ful, that I see no cause for fear, even if we were acting in the manner imputed to us by our enemies. What precedents and what experi- ence were there at the Reformation, when the country, M'ith one unanimous effon, pushed out the pope, and his grasping and ambitious cler- gy ? — What experience, when, at the Revolu- tion, we drove away our ancient race of kings, and chose another family more congenial to our free principles? — And yet to those two events, contrary to experience, and unguided by precedents, we owe all our domestic happi- ness, and civil and religious freedom — and having got rid of corrupt priests and despotic kings, by our sense and our courage, are we now to be intimidated by the awful danger of extinguishing boroughmongers, and shaking from our necks the ignominious yoke which their baseness has imposed upon us 1 Go on, they say, as you have done for these hundred years last past. I answer, it is impossible — five hundred people now write and read where one hundred wrote and read fifty years ago. The iniquities and enormities of the borough system are now known to the meanest of the people. You have a different sort of men to deal with — you must change because the beings whom you govern are changed. After all, and to be short, I must say that it has always ap- peared to me to be the most absolute nonsense that we cannot be a great, or a rich and happy nation, without suffering ourselves to be bought and sold every five years like a pack of negro slaves. I hope I am not a very rash man, but I would launch boldly into this experiment without any fear of consequences, and I believe there is not a man here present who would not cheerfully embark with me. As to the enemies of the bill, who pretend to be reformers, I know them, I believe, better than you do, and I ear- nestly caution you against them. You will have no more of reform than they arc compelled to grant — you will have no reform at all, if they can avoid it — you will be hurried into a war to turn your attention from reform. They do not understand you — they will not believe in the improvement you have made — they think the English of the present day are as the English of the times of Queen Anne or George the First. They know no more of the present state of their own country, than of the state of the Esquimaux Indians. Gentlemen, I view the ignorance of the present state of the country with the most serious concern, and I believe they will one day or another waken into conviction with horror and dismay. I will omit no means of rousing them to a sense of their danger; for this object I cheerfully sign the petition proposed by Dr. Kinglake, which I consider to be the wisest and most moderate of the two. SPEECH BY THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH Stick to the bill — it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede. King John made a pre- sent 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 and Saddler ; purify the air before you approach him ; bathe your hands in chloride of lime, if you have been contaminated by his touch. So far from its being a merely theoretical improvement, I put it to any man, who is him- self embarked in a profession, or has sons in the same situation, if the unfair influence of boroughmongers has not perpetually thwarted him in his lawful career of ambition, and pro- fessional emolument 1 " I have been in three general engagements at sea," said an old sailor — "have been twice wounded; — I commanded the boats when the French frigate, the Astho- XABE, was cut out so gallantly." "Then you are made a post captain 1" " No. I was very near it ; but — Lieutenant Thomson cut me out, as I cut out the French frigate ; his father is town clerk of the borough of which Lord F is member, and there my chance was finished." In the same manner, all over England, you will find great scholars rotting on curacies — brave captains starving in garrets — profound lawyers decayed and mouldering in the inns of court, because the parsons, warriors, and advocates of boroughmoneers must be crammed to saturation, before there is a morsel of bread for the man who does not sell his votes, and put his country up to auction ; and though this is of every day occurrence, the borough system, we are told, is no practical evil. Who can bear to walk through a slaughter- house 1 blood, garbage, stomachs, entrails, legs, tails, kidneys, horrors — I often walk a mile about to avoid it. What a scene of disgust and horror is an election — the base and infamous traffic of principles — a candidate of high cha- racter reduced to such means — the perjury and evasion of agents — the detestable rapacity of voters — the ten days' dominion of mammon and Belial. The bill lessens it — begins the destruction of such practices — affords soma chance, and some means of turning public opinion against bribery, and of rendering it iw famous. But the thing I cannot, and will not bear, i! this; — what right has this lord, cr that marquis to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the shape of boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me 1 And how are these masses of power re-distri- buted 1 The eldest son of my lord is just come from Eton — he knows a good deal about .-Eneas, and Dido, Apollo, and Daphne— and that is all; WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 375 and to this b03',his father gives a six hundredth part of the power of making laws, as he would give him a horse, or a double-barreled gun. Then Vellum, the steward, is put in — an admi- rable man; — he has raised tbe estates — watched the progress of the family road, and canal bills — and Vellum shall help to rule over the people of Israel. 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 Southdown sheep of ray lord — and upon Plumpkin is conferred a portion of the government. Then there is a distant relation of the same name, in the coun- ty 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 the Quarterly, 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 per- mission to say a few words before these persons are chosen, there is an universal cry of ruin, 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 Plump- kin our armies have secured the strength of the hills — to turn out Vellum and Plumpkin is not reform, but revolution. Was there ever such a ministry 1 Was there ever before a real ministry of the people ] Look at the condition of the country when it was placed in their hands : the state of the house when the incoming tenant took possession: windows broken, chimneys on fire, mobs round the house threatening to pull it down, roof tum- bling, rain pouring in. Ii was courage to occu- py it; it was a miracle to save it; it will be the glory of glories to enlarge and expand it, and to make itthe eternal palace of wise and temperate freedom. Proper examples have been made among the unhappy and misguided disciples of Swing: a rope hail been carried round O'Connell's legs, and a ring inserted in Cobbett's nose. Then the game laws ! ! ! Was ever conduct so shabby as that of the two or three governments Avhich preceded that of Lord Grey ! The cruelties and enormities of this code had been thoroughly exposed; and a general conviction existed of the necessity of a change. Bills were brought in by various gentlemen, containing some tri- fling alteration in this abominable code, and even these were sacrificed to the tricks and manoeuvres of some noble Nimrod, who availed himself of the emptiness of tlie town in July, and flung out the bill. Government never stirred a step. The fulness of the prisons, the wretchedness and demoralization of the poor, never came across them. The humane and considerate Peel never once oifered to extend his aegis over them. It had nothing to do with the state of party; and some of their double- barreled voters might be offended. In the mean time, for every ten pheasants which fluttered in the wood, one English peasant was rotting in jail. No sooner is Lord Althorp chancellor of the exchequer, than he turns out of the house a trumpery and (perhaps) an insidious bill for the improvement of die game laws; and in an instant offers the assistance of government for the abolition of the whole code. Then look at the gigantic Brougham, sworn in at 12 o'clock, and before G, has a bill on the table abolishing the abuses of a court which has been the curse of the people of England for centuries. For twenty-five long years did Lord Eldon sit in that court, surrounded with misery and sorrow, which he never held up a finger to alleviate. The widow and the orphan cried to him as vainly as the town crier cries when he oflers a small reward for a full purse ; the bankrupt of the court became the lunatic of the court; estates mouldered away, and man- sions fell down ; but the fees came in, and all was well. But in an instant the iron mace of Brougham shivered to atoms this house of fraud and of delay; and this is the man who will help to govern you; who bottoms his repu- tation on doing good to you ; who knows, that to reform abuses is the safest basis of fame and the surest instrument of power; who uses the highest gifts of reason, and the most splendid eflbrts of genius, to rectify those abuses, which all the genius and talent of the profession* have hitherto been employed to justify, and to pro- tect. Look to Brougham, and turn you to that side where he waves his long and lean finger ; and mark well that lace which nature has mark- ed so forcibly — which dissolves pensions — turns jobbers into honest men — scares away the plunderer of the public — and is a terror to him who doeth evil to the people. But, above all, look to the northern earl, victim, before this honest and manly reign, of the spitefulness of the court. You may now, for the first time, learn to trust in the professions of a minister; you are directed by a man who prefers charac- ter to place, and who has given such unequivo- cal proofs of honesty and patriotism, that his image ought to be amongst your household gods, and his name to be lisped by your chil- dren ; two thousand years hence it will be a le- gend like the fable of Perseus and Andromeda; Britannia changed to a mountain — two hundred rotten animals menacing her destruction, till a tall earl, armed with schedule A., and followed by his page Russell, drives them into the deep, and delivers over Britannia in safety to crowds of ten-pound renters, who deafen the air Avith their acclamations. Forthwith, Latin verses upon this — school exercises — boys whipt, and all the usual absurdities of education. Don't part with an administration composed of Lord Grey and Lord Brougham; and not only these, but look at them all — the mild wisdom of Lans- downe — the genius and extensive knowledge of Holland, in whose bold and honest life there is no varying or shadow of change — the unexpect- ed and exemplary activity of Lord Melbourne — and the rising parliamentary talents of Stan le}\ You are ignorant of your best interests, * Lord Lyndhurst is an exception ; I firmly believe hft had MO wish to perpetuate the abuses of the Court lif, Chancery. 376 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. if every vote you can bestow is not given to such a ministry as this. You will soon find an alteration of behaviour in the upper orders when elections become real. You will find that you are raised to the importance to which you ought to be raised. The merciless ejector, the rural tyrant, will be restrained within the limits of decency and hu- manity, and will improve their own characters, at the same time that they better your condition. It is not the power of aristocracy that will be destroyed by these measures, but the unfair power. If the Duke of Newcastle is kind and obliging to liis neighbours, he will probably lead his neighbours ; if he is a man of sense, he will lead them more certainly, and to a better purpose. All this is as it should be ; but the Duke of Newcastle, at present, by buying cer- tain old houses, could govern his neighbours, and legislate for them, even if he had not five grains of understanding, and if he were the most churlish and brutal man under heaven. The present state of things renders unnecessary all those important virtues, which rich and well- born men, under a better system, would exer- cise for the public good. The Duke of New- castle (I mention him only as an instance,) Lord Exeter will do as well, but either of those noblemen, depending not upon walls, arches, and abutments, for their power — but upon mer- cy, charity, forbearance, indulgence, and exam- ple — would pay this price, and lead the people by their affections ; one would be the god of Stamford, and the other of Newark. This union of the great with the many is the real healthy state of a country; such a country is strong to invincibility — and this strength the borough system entirely destroys. Cant words creep in, and affect quarrels ; the changes are rung between revolution and re- form ; but, first settle whether a wise govern- ment ought to attempt the measure — whether any thing is wanted — whether less would do — and, having settled this, mere nomenclature becomes of very little consequence. But, after all, if it is revolution, and not reform, it will only induce me to receive an old political toast, in a twofold meaning, and with twofold pleasure. When King William and the great and glorious "''levolution are given, I shall think not only of escape from bigotry, but exemption from cor- ruption ; and I shall thank Providence, which has given us a second King William for the destruction of vice, as the other, of that name, was given us for the conservation of freedom. All formal political changes, proposed by these very men, it is said, were mild and gentle, compared to this ; true, but are you on Satur- day night to seize your apothecary by the throat, and to say to him, " Subtle compounder, frau- dulent posologistjdidnot you order me a drachm of this medicine on Monday morning, and now you declare that nothing short of an ounce can do me any good V " True enough," would he of the phials reply, "bul you did not take the drarhm iin Monday morning — that makes all the differ- ence, my dear sir ; if you had done as I advised you at first, the small quantity of medicine would have sufficed; and instead of being in a night-gown and slippers up stairs, you would have been walking vigorously in Piccadilly. Do as you please — and die if you please ; but don't blame me because you despised my advice, and by your own ignorance and obstinacy have en- tailed upon yourself tenfold rhubarb, and unli- mited infusion of senna." Now see the consequences of having a manly leader, and a manly cabinet. Suppose they had come out with a little ill-fashoned seven months' reform ; what would have been the con- sequence ? The same opposition from the to- ries — that would have been quite certain — and not a single reformer in England satisfied with the measure. You have now a real reform, and a fair share of power delegated to the people. The anti-reformers cite the increased power of the press — this is the very reason why I want an increased power in the House of Commons. The Times, Herald, Advertiser, Globe, Sun, Courier, and Chronicle, are an heptarchy, which govern this country, and govern it be- cause the people are so badly represented. I am perfectly satisfied, that with a fair and ho- nest House of Commons the power of the press would diminish — and that the greatest authority would centre in the highest place. Is it possible for a gentleman to get into Parliament, at present, without doing things he is utterly ashamed of — without mixing himself up with the lowest and basest of mankind? Hands, accustomed to the scented lubricity of soap, are defiled with pitch, and contaminated with filth. Is there not some inherent vice in a government, which cannot be carried on but with such abominable wickedness, in which no gentleman can mingle without moral degrada- tion ; and the practice of crimes, the very im- putation of which, on other occasions, he would repel at the hazard of his life? "What signifies a small majority in the house ? The miracle is, that there should have been any majority at all ; that there was not an im- mense majority on the other side. It was a very long period before the courts of justice in Jersey could put down smuggling; and why 7 The judges, counsel, attorneys, crier of the court, grand and petty jurymen, were all smug- glers, and the high sheriff and the constable were running goods every moonlight night. How are you to do without a government? And what other government, if this bill is ulti- mately lost, could possibly be found? How could any country defray the ruinous expense of protecting with troops and constables, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, who literally would not be able to walk from the Horse Guards to Grosvenor Square, without two or three regiments of foot to screen them from the mob; and in these hol!o\v squares the hero of Waterloo would have to spend his po- litical life. By the whole exercise of his splen- did military talents, by strong batteries at Bootle's, and White's, he might, on nights of creat debate, reach the House of Lords; but Sir Robert would probably be cut off", and nothing could save his Twist and Lewis. The great majority of persons returned by the new boroughs would either be men of high reputation for talents, or persons of fortune known in the neighborhood; they have pro- perly and character to lose. Why are they .to plunge into mad and revolutionary projects of WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 377 pillaging the public creditor"? It is not the in- terest of any such man to do it ; he would lose more by the destruction of public credit than what he would gain by a remission of what he paid for the interest of the public debt. And if it is not the interest of any one to act in this manner, it is not the interest of the mass. How man}^, also, of these new legislators would there be, who were not themselves creditors of the state ] Is it the interest of such men to create a revolution, by destroying the constitutional power of the House of Lords, or of the king"? Does there exist in persons of that class, any disposition for such changes 1 Are not all feelings, and opinions, and prejudices, on the opposite side 1 The majority of the new mem- bers will be landed gentlemen : their genus is utterly distinct from the revolutionary tribe; they have molar teeth; they are destitute of the carnivorous and incisive jaws of political ad- venturers. There will be mistakes at first, as there are in all changes. All young ladies will imagine (as soon as this bill is carried) that they will be instantly married. Schoolboys believe that gerunds and supines will be abolished, and that currant tarts must ultimately come down in price ; the corporal and sergeant are sure of double pay; bad poets will expect a demand for their epics ; fools will be disappointed, as they always are ; reasonable men, who know what to expect, will find that a very serious good has been obtained. What good to the hewer of wood and the drawer of water 1 How is he benefited, if Old Sarum is abolished, and Birmingham members created ^ But if you ask this question of reform, you must ask it of a great numberof other mea- sures. How is he benefited b}^ Catholic emanci- pation, by the repeal of the Corporation and Test Act, by the Revolution of 168S, by any great po- litical change! by a good government 1 In the firstplace, if many are benefited, and the lower orders are not injured, this alone is reason enough for th« change. But the hewer of wood and the drawer of water arc benefited by reform. Reform will produce economy and investiga- tion ; there will be fewer jobs, and a less lavish expenditure ; wars will not be persevered in for years after the people are tired of them ; taxes will be taken off the poor and laid upon the rich : democratic habits will be more common in a country where the rich are forced to court the poor for political power; cruel and oppressive punishments (such as those lor night poaching), will be abolished. If you steal a pheasant, you will be punished as you ought to be, but not sent away from your wife and children for seven years. Tobacco will be 2f/. per lb. cheaper. Can- dles will fall in price. These last results of an improved government will be felt. We do not pretend to abolish poverty or to prevent wretch- edness ; but if peace, economy, and justice are the results of reform, a number of small bene- fits, or rather of benefits which appear small to us but not to them, will accrue to millions of people; and the connection between the exis- tence of John Russell, and the reduced price of bread and cheese, will be as clear as it has been the object of his honest, wise, and useful life to make it. 48 Don't be led away by such nonsense ; all things are dearer under a bad government, and cheaper under a good one. The real question they ask you is. What difference can any change of government make to youl They want to keep the bees from buzzing and sting- ing, in order that they may rob the hive in peace. Work well ! How does it work well, when every human being in doors and out (except 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 1 Lord John Russell and his abettors, would have been committed to jail twenty years ago for half only of his present reform ; and nov/ 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 altera- tions: the one is to despise the applicants, to begin with refusing every concession, then to relax by making concessions w^hich are always too late ; by offering in 1831 what is then too late, but would have been cheerfully accepted in 18.30 — 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 complexion will be finished in the West Indies. The other method is, 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, -fiolence, and ignorance, which emanate from a long de- nial 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. Boroughs are not the power proceeding from wealth. Many men, who have no boroughs, are infinitely richer than those who have — but it is the artifice of wealth in seizing hold of certain localities. The boroughmonger is like rheuma- tism, which ow§s its power not so much to the intensity of the pain as to its peculiar position ; a little higher up, or a little lower down, the same pain would be trifling ; but it fixes in the joints, and gets into the head-quarters of 2i2 378 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. motion and activity. The boroiighmonger knows the importance of arthritic positions; he disdains muscle, gets into the joints, and lords it over the whole machine by felicity of place. Other men are as rich — but those riches are not fixed in the critical spot. I live a good deal with all ranks and descrip- tions of people; I am thoroughly convinced that the parly of democrats and republicans is very small and contemptible; that the English love their institutions — that they love not only this king, (who would not love himi) but the kingly office — that they have no hatred to the aristocracy. I am not airaid of trusting Eng- lish happiness to English gentlemen. I believe that the half million of new voters will choose much better for the public than the twenty or thirty peers, to whose usurped power they suc- ceed. If any man doubts the power of reform, let him take these two memorable proofs of its omnipotence. First, but for the declaration against it, I believe the Duke of Wellington might this day have been in office; and, se- condly, in the whole course of the debates at county meetings, and in Parliament, there are not twenty men who have declared against re- form. Some advance an inch, some a foot, some a yard — but nobody stands still — nobody says. We ought to remain just where we were — every body discovers that he is a reformer, and has long been so — and appears infinitely delighted with this new view of himself. No- body appears without the cockade — bigger or less — but always the cockade. An exact and elaborate census is called for — vast information should have been laid upon the table of the House — great time should have been given for deliberation. All these objec- tions, being turned into English, simply mean, that the chances of another year should have been given for defeating the bill. In that time the Poles maybe crushed, the Belgians organ- ized, Louis Philip dethroned; war may rage all over Europe — the popular spirit may be diverted to other objects. It is certainly pro- voking that the ministry foresaw all these pos- sibilities, and determined to model the iron while it was red and glowing. It is not enough that a political institution works well practically: it must be defensible; it must be such as will bear discussion, and not excite ridicule and contempt. It might work well for aught I know, if, like the savages of Onelashka, we sent out to catch a king: but who could defend a coronation by chase? who can defend the payment of 40,000/. for the three-hundredth part of the power of Parlia- ment, and the re -sale of this power to govern- ment for places to the Lord Williams, and Lord Charles's, and others of the Anglophagil Teach a million of the common people to read — and such a government (work it ever so well) must perish in twenty years. It is im- possible to persuade the mass of mankind, that there are not other and better methods of go- verning a country. It is so complicated, so wicked, such envy and hatred accumulate against the gentlemen who have fixed them- selves on the joints, that it cannot fail to perish, and to be driven as it is driven from the coun- try, by a general burst of hatred and detesta- tion. I meant, gentlemen, to have spoken for another half-hour, but I am old and tired. Thank me for ending — but, gentlemen, bear with me fur another moment ; one word before I end. 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 can trust; who disdains to deceive those men whom he has called to the public service, but makes common cause with them for the common good ; and exercises the highest powers of a ruler for the dearest interests of the state. 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 ; who knows that his real power, as he feels that his happiness, is found- ed on their affection. I have lived to see a king, who, without pretending to the pomp of superior intellect, has the wisdom to see, that the decayed institutions of human policy require amendment; and who, in spite of cla- mor, interest, prejudice, and fear, has the man- liness to carry these Avise changes into imme- diate execution. Gentlemen, farewell: shout for the king. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 379 EALLOT. j It is possible, and perhaps not very difficult, I to invent a machine, by the aid of which electors may vote for a candidate, or for two ; or three candidates, out of a greater number, I without its being discovered for whom they i vote ; it is less easy than the rabid and foam- ! ing radical supposes; but I have no doubt it { may be accomplished. In Mr. Grote's dagger I ballot box, which has been carried round the I country by eminent patriots, you stab the card of your favourite candidate with a dagger. I have seen another, called the mouse-trap ballot box, in which you poke 3'our finger into the trap of the member you prefer, and are caught and detained till the trap-clerk below (who knows by means of a wire when you are caught) marks your vote, pulls the liberator, and releases you. Which may be the most eligible of these two methods I do not pretend to determine, nor do I think my excellent friend Mr. Babbage has as yet made up his mind on the subject; but, by some means or other, I have no doubt the thing may be done. Landed proprietors imagine they have a right to the votes of their tenants; and in- stances, in every election, are numerous where tenants have been dismissed for voting con- trary to the wishes of their landlords. In the same manner strong combinations are made against tradesmen who have chosen to think and act for themselves in political matters, rather than yield their opinions to the solici- tations of their customers. There is a great deal of tyranny and injustice in all this. I should no more think of asking what the po- litical opinions of a shopkeeper were, than of asking whether he was tall or short, or large or small : for a difference of 2^ per cent., I would desert the most aristocratic butcher that ever existed, and deal with one who " Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece." On the contrary, I would not adhere to the man who put me in uneasy habiliments, how- ever great his veneration for trial by jury, or however ardent his attachment to the liberty of the subject. A tenant I never had; but I firmly believe that if he had gone through cer- tain pecuniary formalities twice a year, I should have thought it a gross act of tyranny to have interfered either with his political or his religious opinions. I distinctly admit that every man has a right to do what he pleases with his own. I cannot, by law, prevent any one from discharging his tenants and changing his tradesmen for po- litical reasons ; but I may judge whether that man exercises his right to the public detri- ment, or for the public advantage. A man has a right to refuse dealing with any tradesman who is not five feet eleven inches high ; but if he acts upon this rulq, he is either a madman or a fool. He has a right to lay waste his own estate, and to make it utterly barren ; but I have also a right to point him out as one who exercises his right in a manner very in- jurious to society. He may set up a religious or a political test for his tradesmen ; but ad- mitting his right, and deprecating all inter- ference of law, I must tell him he is making the aristocracy odious to the great mass, and that he is sowing the seeds of revolution. His purse may be full, and his fields may be wide ; but the moralist will still huld the rod of public opinion over his head, and tell the money- bloated blockhead that he is shaking those laws of property which it has taken ages to extort from the wretchedness and rapacity of mankind; and that what he calls his own will not long be his own, if he tramples too heavily upon human patience. All these practices are bad; but the facts and the consequences are exaggerated. In the first place, the plough is not a politi- cal machine : the loom and the steam-engine are furiously political, but the plough is not. Nineteen tenants out of twenty care nothing about their votes, and pull olf their opinions as easily to their landlords as they do their hats. As far as the great majority of tenants are concerned, these histories of persecution are mere declamatory nonsense ; they have no more predilection for whom they vote than the organ pipes have for w'hat tunes they are to play. A tenant dismissed for a fair and just cause often attributes his dismissal to political motives, and endeavours to make himself a martyr with the public : a man who ploughs badly, or who pays badly, says he is dismissed for his vote. No candidate is willing to allow that he has lost his 'election by his demerits ; and he seizes hold of these stories, and circu- lates them with the'greatest avidity : they are stated in the House of Commons ; John Rus- sel and Spring Rice fall a-crying : there is lamentation of liberals in the land; and many groans for the territorial tyrants. A standing reason against the frequency of dismissal of tenants is, that it is always inju- rious to the pecuniary interests of a landlord to dismiss a tenant; the properly always suf- fers in some degree by a going off tenant ; and it is therefore always the interest of a land- lord not to change when the tenant does his duty as an agriculturalist. To part with tenants for political reasons always makes a landlord unpopular. The Con- stitutional, price 4(/.; the Cato, at 3Ar/. ; and the Lucius Junius Brutus, at 2d., all set upon the unhappy scutiger ; and the squire, unused to be pointed at, and thinking that all Europe and part of Asia are thinking of him and his farm- ers, is driven to the brink of suicide and de- spair. That such things are done is not denied . that they are scandalous when they are done is equally true; but these an. reasons why such acts are less frequent than they are com- monly represented to be. In the same manner, there are instances of shopkeepers being ma- terially injured in their business from the 380 WORKS OF THE RFV. SYDNEY SMITH. votes the}'- have ^iven ; but the facts themselves, as v.'ell as the consequences, are grossly ex- aggerated. If shopkeepers lose tory, they gain whig customers ; and it is not always the vote ■which does the mischief, but the low, vulgar impertinence and the unbridled scurrility of a man who thinks that, by dividing to mankind their rations of butter and of cheese, he has qualified himself for legislation, and that he can hold the rod of empire because he has wielded the 3'ard of mensuration. I detest all inquisition into political opinions, but I have very rarely seen a combination against any tradesman who modestly, quietly, and con- scientiously took his own line in politics. But Brutus and butteruun, cheesemonger and Cato, do not harmonize well together; good taste is offended, the coxcomb loses his friends, and general disgust is mistaken for combined op- pression. Shopkeepers, too, are very apt to cry out before they are hurt : a man who sees, after an election, one of his customers buying a pair of gloves on the opposite side of the way, roars out that his honesty will make him a bankrupt, and the county papers are filled with letters from Brutus, Publicola, Hampden, and Pyra. This interference with the freedom of voting, bad as it is, produces no political deliberation ; it does not make the tories stronger than the whigs, nor the whigs than the tories, for both are equally guilty of this species of tyranny; and any particular system of measure fails or prevails, much as if no such practice existed. The practice had better not be at all, but if a certain quantity of the evil does exist, it is better that it should be equally divided among both parties, than that it should be exercised by one for the depression of the other. There are politicians always at a white heat, who suppose that there are landed tyrants only on one side of the question; but human life has been distressingly abridged by the flood: there is no time to spare; it is impossible to waste it upon such senseless bigotry. If a man is sheltered from intimidation, is it at all clear that he Avould vote from any better motive than intimidation"? If you make so tremendous an experiment, are you sure of at- taining )-our object? The landlord has perhaps said a cross word to the tenant ; the candidate for whom the tenant votes in opposition to his landlord has taken his second son for a foot- man, or his father knew the candidate's grand- father: how many thousand votes, sheltered (as the ballotists suppose) from intimidation, would be given from such silly motives as these T how many would be given from the mere discontent of inferiority? or from that strange simious schoolboy passion of giving pain to others, even when the author cannot be lound oat? — motives as pernicious as any which could proceed from intimidation. So that all voters screened by ballot would not be screened for any public good. The radicals, (I do not use this word in any offensive sense, for I know many honest and excellent men of this way of thinking), — but the radicals praise and admit the lawful influ- f-nce of wealth and power. They are quite •sati:jfied L' a rich man of popular manners gains the votes and affections of nis oependants ; but why is this not as bad as intimidation ? The real object is to vote for the good politi- cian, not for the kind-hearted or agreeable man ; the mischief is just the same to the country whether I am smiled into a corrupt choice or frowned into a corrupt choice, — what is it to me whether my landlord is the best of land- lords, or the most agreeable of men ? I must vote for Joseph Hume, if I think Joseph more honest than the marquis. The more mitigated radical may pass over this, but the real carni- vorous variety of the animal should declaim as loudly against the fascinations as against the threats of the great. The man who pos- sesses the land should never speak to the man who tills it. The intercourse between landlord and tenant should be as strictly guarded as that of the sexes in Turkey. A funded duenna should be placed over every landed grandee. — And then intimidation ! Is intimidation con- fined to the aristocracy? Can any thing be more scandalous and atrocious than the in- timidation of mobs ? Did not the mob of Bris- tol occasion more ruin, wretchedness, death, and alarm, than all the ejection of tenants, and combinations against shopkeepers, from the beginning of the century ? and did not the Scotch philosophers tear off the clothes of the tories in Mintoshire ? or at least such clothes as the customs of the country admit of being worn ? — and did not they, without any reflec- tion at all upon the customs of the country, wash the tory voters in the river? Some sanguine advocates of the ballot contend that it would put an end to all canvassing: why should it do so? Under the ballot, I can- vass (it is true) a person who may secretly deceive me. I cannot be sure he will not do so — but I am sure it is much less likely he will vote against me, when I have paid him all the deference and attention which a representative bestows on his constituents, than if I had total- ly neglected him: to any other objections he may have against me, at least I will not add that of personal incivility. Scarcely is any great virtue practised with- out some sacrifice; and the admiration which virtue excites seems to proceed from the con- . templation of such sufferings, and of the exer- tions by which they are endured : a tradesman suffers some loss of trade by voting for his country; is he not to vote? he might suffer some loss of blood in fighting for his country; is he not to fight? Every one would be a good Samaritan, if he was quite sure his compassion would cost him nothing. We should all be he- roes, if it was not for blood and fractures ; all saints, if it were not for the restrictions and priva- tions of sanctity ; all patriots, if it were not for the losses and misrepresentations to which pa- triotism exposes us. The ballotists are a set of Englishmen glowing with the love of England and the love of virtue, but determined to ha- zard the most dangerous experiments in politics, rather than run the risk of losing a penny in defence of their exalted feelings. An abominable tyranny exercised by the bal- lot is, that it compels those persons to conceal • their votes, who hate all concealment, and who glory in the cause they support. If you are WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 381 afraid to go in at the front door, and to say in a clear voice what you have to say, go in at the back door, and say it in a whisper — but this is not enough for you ; you make me, who am bold and honest, sneak in at the back door as well as yourself: because you are afraid of selling a dozen or two of gloves less than usual, ■you compel me, who have no gloves to sell, or who would dare and despise the loss,if I had, to hide the best feelings of my heart, and to lower myself down to your mean morals. It is as if a few cowards, who could only fight behind walls and houses, were to prevent the whole regiment from showing a bold front in the field : what right has the coward to degrade me who am no coward, and put me in the same shame- ful predicament with himself] If ballot is es- tablished, a zealous voter cannot do justice to his cause ; there will be so many false Hamp- dens, and spurious Catos, that all men's actions and motives will be mistrusted. It is in the power of any man to tell me that my colours are false, that I declaim with stimulated warmth, and canvass with fallacious zeal ; that I am a tory, though I call Russell for ever, or a whig, in spite of my obstreperous pane- gyrics of Peel. It is really a curious condition that all men must imitate the defects of a few, in order that it may not be known who have the natural imperfection, and who put it on from conformity. In this way, in former days, to hide the gray hairs of the old, every body was forced to wear powder and pomatum. It must not be forgotten that, in the ballot, concealment must be absolutely conipulsory. It would never do to let one man vote openly, and another secretly. You may go to the edge of the box, and say, " I vote for A.," but who knows that your ball is not put in for B.] There must be a clear, plain opportunity for telling an undiscoverable lie, or the whole in- vention is at an end. How beautiful is the progress of man ! — printing has abolished ignorance — gas put an end to darkness — steam has conquered time and distance — it remained for Grote and his box to remove the incumbrance of truth from human transac- tions. May we not look now for more little machines to abolish the other cardinal virtues. But if all men are suspected; if things are so contrived that it is impossible to know what men really think, a serious impediment is created to the formation of good public opinion in the multitude. There is a town (No. 1.) in which live two very clever and respectable men, Johnson and Pelham, small tradesmen, men always willing to run some risk for the public good, and to be less rich, and more honest than their neighbours. It is of con- siderable consequence to the formation of opi- nion in this town, as an example, to know how Johnson and Pelham vote. It guides the af- fections, and directs the understandings, of the whole population, and materially affects public opinion in this town ; and in another borough. No. 2, it would be of the highest importance to public opinion if it were certain how Mr. Smith, the ironmonger, and Mr. Rnlcrers, the London carrier, voted; because th'^v are both thoroughly honest men, and of excel lent under- standing for their condition of life. Now, the tendency of ballot would be to destroy all the Pelhams, Johnsons, Rodgers's, and Smiths, to sow a universal mistrust, and to exterminate the natural guides and leaders of the people: political influence, founded upon honour and ancient honesty in politics, could not grow up under such a system. No man's declarations could get believed. It would be easy to whis per away the character of the best men ; and to assert, that in spite of all his declarations, which are nothing but a blind, the romantic Rodgers has voted on the other side, and is in secret league with our enemies. " Who brought that mischievous profligate villain into Parliament] Let us see the names of his real supporters. Who stood out against the strong and uplifted arm of power 1 Who discovered this excellent and hitherto unknown person] Who opposed the man whom we all know to be one of the first, men in the coun- try]" Are these fair and useful questions to be veiled hereafter in impenetrable mystery ] Is this sort of publicity of no good as a re- straint] is it of no good as an incitement to and a reward for exertions ] Is not public opinion formed by such feelings ] and is it not a dark and demoralizing system to draw this veil over human actions; to say to the mass, be base, and you will not be despised ; be vir- tuous, and you will not be honoured] Is this the way in which Mr. Grote would foster the spirit of a bold and indomitable people ] Was the liberty of that people established by fraud J Did America lie herself into independence] Was it treachery which enabled Holland to shake off the yoke of Spain ] Is there any in- stance since the beginning of the world M-here human liberty has been established by little systems of trumpery and trick] These are the weapons of monarchs against the people, not of the people against monarchs. With their own right hand, and with their mighty arm, have the people gotten to themselves the victory, and upon them may they ever depend ; and then comes Mr. Grote, a scholar and gen- tleman, and knowing all the histories of public courage, preaches cowardice and treachery to England ; tells us that the bold cannot be free, and bids us seek for liberty by clothing our- selves in the mask of falsehood, and trampling on the cross of truth.* If this shrinking from the performance of duties is to be tolerated, voters are not the only persons who would recur to the accommodat- ing convenience of ballot. A member of Par- liament, who votes against government, can get nothing in the army, navy, or church, or at the bar, for his children or himself; they are placed on the north wall, and starved for their honesty. Judges, too, suffer for their un- popularity — Lord Kilwarden was murdereci, Lord Mansfield burnt down ; but voters, for- getting that they are only trustees for those who have no vote, require that they themselves should be virtuous with impunity, and that all the penalties of austerity and Catonism should fall upon others. I am awaic »hat it is of the greatest consequence to the constituent that * Mr. Grote is a very worthy, honost, and able man ; and, if the world were a chess-board, would i)e an im- portant politician. 382 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. he should be made acquainted with the con- duct of his representative ; hut I maintain, that to know, without the fear of mistake, what the conduct of individuals has been in their fulfil- ment of the great trust of electing members of Parliament, is also of the greatest importance in the formation of public opinion; and that, when men acted in the dark, the power of dis- tinguishing between the bad and the good would be at an end. To institute ballot, is to apply a very dan- gerous innovation to a temporary evil ; for it is seldom, but in very excited times, that these acts of power are complained of which the ballot is intended to remedy. There never was an instance in this country where parties were so nearly balanced ; but all this will pass away, and, in a very few years, either Peel will swallow Lord John, or Lord John will pas- ture upon Peel; parties will coalesce, the Duke of Wellington and Viscount Melbourne meet at the same board, and the lion lie down with the lamb. In the mean time a serious and dangerous political change is resorted to for the cure of a temporary evil, and we may be cursed with ballot when we do not want it, and cannot get rid of it. If there is ballot there can be no scrutiny, the controlling power of Parliament is lost, and the members are entirely in the hands of returning officers. An election is hard run — the returning offi- cer lets in twenty votes which he ought to'have excluded, and the opposite candidate is un- justly returned. I petition, and as the law now stands, the return would be amended, and I, who had the legitimate majority, should be seated in Parliament. But how could justice be done if the ballot obtained, and if the re- turning officer were careless or corrupt] Would you put all the electors upon their oathl Would it be advisable to accept any oath where detection was impossible 1 and could any approximation to truth be expected under such circumstances, from such an in- quisition ? It is true, the present committees of the House of Commons are a very unfair tribunal, but that tribunal may and will be amended; and bad as that tribunal is, nobody can be insane enough to propose that we are to take refuge in the blunders or the corruptions of 600 returning officers, 100 of whom are Irish. It is certainly in the power of a committee, when incapacity or villany of the returning officer has produced an unfair return, to annul the whole election, and to proceed again dc novo : but how is this justi or what satisfaction is this to me, who have unquestionably a law- ful majority, and who ask of the House of Commons to examine the votes, and to place in their house the man who has combined the greatest number of suffrages 1 The answer of the House of Commons is, " One of you is un- doubtedly the rightful member, but we have so framed our laws of election, that it is impos- sible to find out which that man is; the loss and penalties ought only to fall upon one, but Ihey must fall upon both; we put the well- doer and the evij-dner precisely in the same situation ; there shall be no election ;" and this rna}' happen ten times running. Purity of election, the fair choice of repre- sentatives, must be guarded either by the co- ercing power of the House of Gammons exer- cised upon petitions, or it must be guarded by the watchful jealousy of opposite parties at the registrations; but if (as the radicals sup- pose) "ballot gives a power of perfect conceal- ment, whose interest is it to watch the regis- trations 1 If I despair of distinguishing my friends from my foes, why should I take any trouble about registrations? Why not leave every thing to that great primum mobile of all human affairs, the barrister of six years' standing? The answer of the excellent Benthamites to all this is, " What you say may be true enough in the present state of registrations, but we have another scheme of registration to which these objections Avill not apply." There is . really no answering this paulo-post legisla- tion. I reason now upon registration and re- form which are in existence, which I have seen at work for several years. What new improvements are in the womb of time, or (if time has no womb) in the more capacious pockets of the followers of Bentham, I know not: when I see them tried, I will reason upon them. There is no end to these eternal changes ; we have made an enormous revolu- tion within the last ten 3-ears, — let us stop a little and secure it, and prevent it from being turned into ruin ; I do not say the reform bill is final, but I want a little time for breathing; and if there are to be any more changes, let them be carried into execution hereafter by those little legislators who are now receiving every day after dinner a cake or a plumb, in happy ig- norance of Mr. Grote and his ballot. I long for the quiet times of Log, Avhen all' the English common people are making calico, and all the English gentlemen are making long and short verses, with no other interruption of their happiness than when false quantities are discovered in one or the other. What is to become of petitions if ballot is established 1 Are they to be open as they now are, or are they to be conducted by ballot ! Are the radical shopkeepers and the radical tenant to be exposed (as they say) to all the fury of incensed wealth and power, and is that protection to be denied to them in petitions, which is so loudly demanded in the choice, of representatives 1 Are there to be two distinct methods of ascertaining the opinions of the people, and these completel}' opposed to each other] A member is chosen this week by a large majority of voters who vote in the dark, and the next week, when men vote in the light of day, some petition is carried totally opposite to all those principles for which the member with invisible votes was returned to Parlia- ment. How, under such a system, can Parlia- ment ever ascertain what the wishes of the people really arel The representatives are radicals, the petitioners eminently conserva- tive ; the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And if the same protection is adopted for petitions as is given in elections, and if both . are conducted by ballot, how is the House of Commons to deal with petitions ] When it is WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 383 intended particularly that a petition should attract the attention of the House of Commons, some member bears witness to the respecta- bility or the futility of the signatures ; and how IS it possible, without some guides of this kind, that the House could form any idea of the value and importance of the petition"? These observations apply with equal force to the communications between the represen- tative and the constituent. It is the radical doctrine that a representative is to obey the instructions of his constituents. He has been elected under the ballot by a large majority; an open meeting is called, and he receives in- structions in direct opposition to all those principles upon which he has been elected. Is this the real opinion of his constituents ] and if he receives his instructions for a ballot meeting, who are his instructors "? The lowest men in the town, or the wisest and the best ? — But if ballot is established for elections only, and all communications between the constituents on one side, and Parliament and the represen- tatives on the other, are carried on in open meet- ings, then are there two publics according to the radical doctrines, essentially different from each other; the one acting under the influence of the rich and powerful, the other free ; and if all political petitions are to be carried on by ballot, how is Parliament to know who peti- tions, or the member to know who instructs 1 I have hitherto spoken of ballot, as if it were, as the radicals suppose it to be, a mean of secrecy ; their very cardinal position is, that landlords, after the ballot is established, will give up in despair all hopes of commanding the votes of their tenants. I scarcely ever heard a more foolish and gratuitous as- sumption. Given up 1 Why should they be given up"? I can give many reasons why landlords should never exercise this unrea- sonable power, but I can give no possible reason why a man determined to do so should be baffled by the ballot. When two great parties in the empire are combating for the supreme power, does Mr. Grote imagine, that the man of woods, forests, and rivers, — that they who have the strength of the hills, — are to be baffled by bumpkins thrusting a little pin into a little card in a little box 1 that England is to be governed by political acupunctura- tion"? A landlord who would otherwise be guilty of the oppression will not change his purpose, because you attempt to outwit him by the in- vention of the ballot; he will become, on the contrar}^, doubly vigilant, inquisitive, and severe. " I am a professed radical," said the tenant of a great duke to a friend of mine, *' and the duke knows it ; but if I vote for his candidates, he lets me talk as I please, live with whom I please, and does not care if I dine at a radical dinner every day in the week. If there was a ballot, nothing could persuade the duke, or the duke's master, the steward, that I was not deceiving them, and I should lose my farm in a wf>ek." This is the real history of what would take place. The single lie on the hustings would not suffice ; the con- cealed democrat who voted against his land- lord must talk with the wrong people, sub- ' scribe to the wrong club, huzza at the wrong ' dinner, break the wrong head, lead (if he wished to escape from the watchful jealousy of his landlord) a long life of lies between every election ; and he must do this, not only eundo, in his calm and prudential state, but re- deimdo from the market, warmed with beer and expanded by alcohol ; and he must not only carry on his seven years of dissimulation be- fore the world, but in the very bosom of his family, or he must expose himself to the dan- gerous garrulity of wife, children, and ser- vants, from whose indiscretion every kind of evil report would be carried to the ears of the watchful steward. And when once the ballot is established, mere gentle, quiet lying will not do to hide the tenant who secretly votes against his landlord; the quiet passive liar will be suspected, and he will find, if he does not wave his bonnet and strain his throat in fur- therance of his bad faith, and lie loudly, that he has put in a false ball in the dark to very little purpose. I consider a long concealment of political opinion from the landlord to be nearly impossible for the tenant; and if you conceal from the landlord the only proof he can have of his tenant's sincerity, you are taking from the tenant the only means he has of living quietly upon his farm. You are increasing the jea- lousy and irascibility of the tyrant, and mul- tiplying instead of lessening the number of his victims. Not only you do not protect the tenant who wishes to deceive his landlord, by promising one way and voting another, but you expose all the other tenants who have no intention of de- ceiving, to all the evils of mistake and misre- presentation. The steward hates a tenant, and a rival wants his farm : they begin to whisper him out of favour, and to propagate rumours of his disaflection to the blue or the yellow cause; as matters now stand he can refer to the poll-book, and show how he has voted. Under the ballot his security is gone, and he is exposed, in common with his deceitful neigh- bour, to that suspicion from which none can be exempt when all vote in secret. If ballot then answered the purpose for which it was intended, the number of honest tenants whom it exposed to danger would be as great as the number of deceitful tenants whom it screened. But if landlords could fee prevented from influencing their tenants in voting, by threat- ening them with the loss of farms ; — if public opinion were too strong to allow of such threats, what would prevent a landlord from refusing to take, as a tenant, a man whose political opinion did not agree with his ov/nT what would prevent him from questioning, long before the election, and cross-examining his tenant, and demanding certificates of his be- haviour and opinions, till he had, according to all human probability, found a man who felt as strongly as himself upon political sub jects, and who would adhere to those opinion? with as much firmness and tenacity"? What would prevent, for instance an Orange landlord from filling his farms with Orange tenants, and from cautiously rejecting every Catholic tenant who presented himself plough in hand? But if this practice were to obtain generally, nf 384 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. cautiously selecting tenants from their politi- cal opinion, what would become of the seven- fold shield of the ballot 1 Not only this tenant is not continued in the farm he already holds, but he finds, from the severe inquisition into which men of property are driven by the in- vention of ballot, that it is extremely difficult for a man whose principles are opposed to those of his landlord, to get any farm at all. The noise and jollity of a ballot mob must be such as the very devils would look on with delight. A set of deceitful wretches, wearing the wrong colours, abusing their friends, pelt- ing the man for whom they voted, drinking their enemies' punch, knocking down persons with whom they entirely agreed, and roaring out eternal duration to principles they abhor- red. A scene of wholesale bacchanalian fraud, a posse comiialus of liars, which would disgust any man with a free government, and make him sigh for the monocracy of Constantinople. All the arguments which apply to suspected tenants apply to suspected shopkeepers. Their condition under the ballot would be infinite!}' worse than under the present system ; the veracious shopkeeper would be suspected, perhaps without having his vote to appeal to for his protection, and the shopkeeper who meant to deceive must prop up his fraud, by accommodating his whole life to the first de- ceit, or he would have told a disgraceful false- hood in vain. The political persecutors would not be baffled by the ballot ; customers, who think they have a right to persecute tradesmen now, would do it then; the only diflerence would be that more would be persecuted then on suspicion, than are persecuted now from a full knowledge of every man's vote. Inquisi- tors would be exasperated by this attempt of their victims to become invisible, and the search for delinquents M"ould be more sharp and incessant. A state of things may (to be sure) occur where the aristocratic part of the voters may be desirous, by concealing their votes, of pro- tecting themselves from the fury of the multi- tude; but precisely the same objection obtains against ballot, whoever may be the oppressor or the oppressed. It is no defence; the single falsehood at the hustings will not suflice. Hy- pocrisy for seven years is impossible; the multitude will be just as jealous of preserving the power of intimidation, as aristocrats are of preserving the power of property, and will in the same way redouble their vicious activity from the attempt at destro^'ing their empire by ballot. Ballot could not prevent the disfranchise- ment of a great number of voters. The shop- keeper, harassed by men of both parties, equally consuming the articles in which he dealt, would seek security in not voting at all, and of course, the ballot could not screen the disobedient tenant whom the landlord re- quested to stay away from the poll. Mr. Grote has no box for this ; but a remedy for securing the freedom of election, which has no power to prevent the voter from losing the exercise of his franchise altogether, can scarcely be considered as a remedy at all. There is a uiethod, indeed, by which this might be reme- died, if the great soul of Mr. Grote will stoop to adopt it. Why are the acts of concealment to be confined to putting in a balll Why not vote in a domino, taking off the vizor to the returning oflicer only 1 or as tenant Jenkins or tenant Hodge might be detected by their stature, why not poll in sedan chairs with the curtains closely drawn, choosing the chairman by ballot 1 What a flood of deceit andvillany comes in with ballot ! I admit there are great moral faults under the present system. It is a serious violation of duty to vote for A. when you think B. the more worthy representative ; but the open voter, acting luider the influence of his landlord, commits only this one fault, great as it is ; — if he vote for his candidate, the land- lord is satisfied, and asks no other sacrifice of truth and opinion ; but if the tenant votes against his landlord under the ballot, he is practising every day some fraud to conceal his first deviation from truth. The present method may produce a vicious act, but the ballot establishes a A'icious habit ; and then it is of some consequence, that the law should not range itself on the side of vice. In the open voting, the law leaves you fairly to choose between the dangers of giving an honest, or the convenience of giving a dis- honest vote ; but the ballot law opens a booth and asylum for fraud, calling upon all men to lie b)^ beat of drum, forbidding open honesty, promising impunity for the most scandalous deceit, and encouraging men to take no other view of virtue than whether it pays or does not pay ; for it must always be remembered and often repeated, and said and sung to Mr. Grote, that it is to the degraded liar only that the box Avill be useful. The man who per- forms what he promises needs no box. The man who refuses to do what he is asked to do despises the box. The liar, who says he will do what he never means to do, is the only man to whom the box is useful, and for whom this leaf out of the Punic pandects is to be inserted in our statute book; the other vices will begin to look up, and to think themselves neglected, if falsehood obtains such flattering distinction, and is thus defended by the solemn enact- ments of law. Old John Randolph, the American orator, was asked one day at a dinner party in Lon- don, v.-hether the ballot prevailed in his st^te of Virginia — " I scarcely believe," he said, " we have such a fool in all Virginia, as to ' mention even the vote by ballot ; and I do not hesitate to say that the adoption of the ballot would make any nation a nation of scoundrels, if it did not find them so." John Randolph was right; he felt that it was not necessary that a people should be false in order to be free ; universal hypocrisy would be the conse- quence of ballot : we should soon say on deliberation what David only asserted in his haste, that all 7nen were liars. This exclamation of old Randolph applied to the method of popular elections, which I believe has always been by open voice in Virginia; but the assemblies voted, and the judges were chosen by ballot; and in the j^ear 1830, upon a solemn review of their institu- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 385 tions, ballot was entirely abolished in every instance throughout the slate, and open voting substituted in its place. Not only would the tenant under ballot be constantly exposed to the suspicions of the landlord, but the landlord would be exposed to the constant suspicions and the unjust misre- presentation of the tenant. Every tenant who was dismissed for a fair and a just cause, would presume he was suspected, would attri- bute his dismissal to political motives, and endeavour to make himself a martyr with the public ; and in this way violent hatred would be by the ballot disseminated among classes of men on whose agreement the order and happiness of England depend. AH objections to ballot which are important in England apply with much greater force to Ireland, a country of intense agitation, fierce passions, and quick movements. Then how would the ballot box of Mr. Grote harmonize with the confessional box of Father O'Leary 1 I observe Lord John Russell, and some im- portant men as well as him, saying, "We hate ballot, but if these practices continue, we shall be compelled to vote for it." What ! vote for it, if ballot is no remedy of these evils 1 Vote for it, if ballot produces still greater evils than it cures 1 That is (says the physician), if fevers increase in this alarming manner, I shall be compelled to make use of some medi- cine which will be of no use to fevers, and will at the same time bring on diseases of a much more serious nature. I shall be under the absolute necessity of putting out your eyes, because I cannot prevent j^ou from being lame. In fact, this sort of language is utterly unworthy of the sense and courage of Lord John ; he gives hopes where he ought to create absolute despair. This is that hovering be- tween two principles which ruins political strength by lowering political character, and creates a notion that his enemies need not fear such a man, and that his friends cannot trust him. No opinion could be more unjust as applied to Lord John ; but such an opinion will grow if he begins to value himself more "Upon his dexterity and finesse, than upon those fine, manly, historico-Russell qualities he most imdoubtedly possesses. There are two beauti- ful words in the English language, — yes and no; he must pronounce them boldly and em- ph'atically ; stick to yes and no to the death ; for yes and no lay his head down upon the ■ scaffold, where his ancestors have laid their heads before, and cling to his j'es and no in spite of Robert Peel and John Wilson, and Joseph, and Daniel, and Fergus, and Stevens himself. He must do as the Russells always have done, advance his firm foot on the field of honour, plant it on the line marked out by justice, and determine in that cause to perish or to prevail. In clubs, ballot preserves secrecy ; but in clubs, after the barrister has blackballed the colonel, he most likely never hears of the colonel again : he does not live among people who are calling out for seven years the colonel for ever ; nor is there any one who, thinking he has a right to the barrister's suffrage, ex- ercises the most incessant vigili^nce to detect 49 whether or not he has been defrauded of it. I do not say that ballot can never in any in- stance be made a mean of secrecy and safety, but that it cannot be so in popular elections. Even in elections, a consummate hypocrite who was unmarried, and drank water, might perhaps exercise his timid patriotism with impunity; but the instances would be so rare, as to render ballot utterly inefficient as a ge- neral protection against the abuses of power. In America, ballot is nearly a dead letter; no protection is wanted : if the ballot protects any one, it is the master, not the man. Some of the states have no ballot, — some have ex- changed the ballot for open voting. Bribery carried on in any town now would probably be carried on with equal success under the ballot. The attorney (if such a sys- tem prevailed) would say to the candidate, " There is my list of promises ; if you come in I will have 5000/., and if you do not, you shall pay me nothing." To this list, to which I suppose all the venal rabble of the town to have put their names, there efther is an oppo- sition briber)' list, or there is not : if there is not, the promisers, looking only to make money by their vote, have every inducement to keep their word. If there is an opposite list, the only trick which a promiser can play is to put down his name upon both lists: but this trick would be so easily detected, so much watched and suspected, and would even in the vote market render a man so infamous, that it never would be attempted to any great extent. At present, if a man promises his vote to A., and votes for B., because he can get more money by it, he does not become infamous among the bribed, because they lose no money by him ; but where a list is found, and a cer- tain sum of money is to be divided among that list, every interloper lessens the receipts of all the rest ; it becomes their interest to guard against fraudulent intrusion ; and a man who puts his name upon more lists than the votes he was entitled to give, Avould soon be hunted down by those he had robbed. Of course there would be no pay till after the election, and the man who having one vote had put himself down on two lists, or having two votes had put himself down on three lists, could hardly fail to be detected, and would, of course, lose his political accldama. There must be honour among thieves ; the mob regularly inured to bribery under the canopy of the bal- lot, would for their own sake soon introduce rules for the distribution of the plunder, and infuse, with their customary energy, the morality of not being sold more than once at every election. If ballot were established, it would be re- ceived by the upper classes with the greatest possible suspicion, and every effort would be made to counteract it and to get rid of it. Against those attacks the inferior orders would naturally wish to strengthen themselves, and the obvious means would be by extending the number of voters; and so comes on universal sufirage. The ballot would fail : it would be found neither to prevent intimidation nor bribery. Universal suffrage would cure both, as a teaspoonful of prussic acid is a certain 2 K 386 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. cure for the most formidable diseases ; but universal suifrage would in all probability be the next step. "The 200 richest voters of Bridport shall not beat the 400 poorest voters. Every body who has a house shall vote, or every body who is twenty-one shall vote, and then the people will be sure to have their way — we will blackball every member standing for Bridgewater who does not promise to vote for universal suffrage." The ballot and universal suffrage are never mentioned by the radicals without being coupled together. Nobody ever thinks of separating them. Any person who attempted to separate them at torchlight or sunlight meetings would be hooted down. It is pro- fessedly avowed that ballot is only wanted for ulterior purposes, and no one makes a secret of what those ulterior purposes are: not only Avould the gift of ballot, if universal suffrage were refused, not be received with gratitude, but it would be received with furious indigna- tion and conteijipt, and universal suffrage be speedily extorted from you. There would be this argument also for uni- versal suffrage, to which I do not think it very easy to find an answer. The son of a man who rents a house of ten pounds a year is often a much cleverer man than his father ; the wife more intelligent than the husband. Under the system of open voting, these persons are not excluded from want of intellect, but for want of independence, for they v/ould neces- sarily vote with their principal; but the mo- ment the ballot is established, according to the reasoning of the Grote school, one man is as independent as another, because all are con- cealed, and so all are equally entitled to offer their suffrages. This cannot sow dissensions in families; for how, ballotically reasoning, can the father find it outi or, if he did find it out, how has any father, ballotically speaking, a right to control the votes of his family ? I have often drawn a picture in my own mind of a Balloto-Grotical family voting and promising under the new system. There is one vacancy, and three candidates, tory, whig, and radical. Walter Wiggins, a small artificer of shoes, for the moderate gratuity of five pounds promises his own vote, and that of the chaste Arabella his wife, to the tory candidate; he, Walter AViggins, having also sold, for one .sovereign, the vote of the before-named Ara- bella to the whigs. Mr. John Wiggins, a tailor, the male progeny of Walter and Arabella, at the solicitation of his master, promises his vote to the whigs, and persuades his sister Honoria to make a similar promise in the same cause. Arabella, the wife, yields implicitly to the wishes of her husband. In this way, be- fore the election, stand committed the highly moral family of Mr. Wiggins. The period for lying arrives, and the mendacity machine is exhibited to the view of the Wigginses. What happens? Arabella, who has in the interim been chastised by her drunken husband, votes secretly for the rifdicals, having been sold both to whig and tory. Mr. John Wiggins, pledged beyond redemption to whigs, votes for the Tory; and Honoria, extrinsically furious in the cause of whigs, is persuaded by her lover to vote for the radical member. The following table exhibits the state of this moral family before and after the election : — Walter Wissins sells himself once and his wife twice. Arabella Wiggins, sold to tory and whig, votes for rad- ical. John Wiseins. promised to whig, votes for tory. Honoria Wiggins, promised to whig, voteB for radical. In this way the families of the poor, under the legislation of Mr. Grote, Avill become schools for good faith, openness, and truth. What are Chrysippus and Grantor, and all the moralists of the whole world, compared to Mr. Grote 1 It is urged that the lower order of voters, proud of such adistinction, will not be anxious to extend it to others ; but the lower order of voters will often find that they possess this distinction in vain — that wealth and education are too strong for them; and they will call in the multitude as auxiliaries, firmly believing that they can curb their inferiors and conquer their superiors. Ballot is a mere illusion, but universal suffrage is not an illusion. The common people will get nothing by the one, but they will gain every thing, and ruin every thing, by the last. Some members of Parliament who mean to vote for ballot, in the fear of losing their seats, and who are desirous of reconciling to their conscience such an act of disloyalty to man- , kind, are fond of saying that ballot is harm- less ; that it will neither do the good nor the evil that i^ expected from it ; and that the peo- ple may fairly be indulged in such an innocent piece of legislation. Never was such folly and madness as this ; ballot will be the cause of interminable hatred and jealousy among the different orders of mankind; it will familiarize the English people to a long tenour of deceit; it will not answer its purpose of protecting the independent voter; and the people, exasperated and disappointed by the failure, will indemnify themselves by insistingupon unlimited suffrage. And then it is talked of as an experiment, as if men Avere talking of acids and alkalies, and the galvanic pile ; as if Lord John could get on the hustings and say, "Gentlemen, you see this ballot does not answer; do me the favour to give it up, and to allow yourselves to be re- placed in the same situation as the ballot found you." Such, no doubt, is the history of na- tions and the march of human affairs; and, in this way, the error of a sudden and foolish largess of power to the people might, no doubt, be easily retrieved. The most unpleasant of all bodily feelings is a cold sweat; nothing brings it on so surely as perilous nonsense in politics. I lose all warmth from the bodily frame when I hear the ballot talked of as aa e.rperiment. I cannot at all understand what is meant by this indolent opinion. Votes are coerced now ; if votes are free, will the elected be the samel if not, will the difference of the elected be un- important? Will not the ballot stimulate the upper orders to fresh exertions? and are their increased jealousy and interference of no im- portance ? If ballot, after all, is found to hold out a real protection to the voter, is universal lying of no importance? I can understand what is meant by calling ballot a great good. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. or a great evil ; but, in the mighty contention for power which is raging in this country, to call it indifferent appears to me extremely foolish in all those in whom it is not extremely dishonest. If the ballot did succeed in enabling the fewer order of voters to conquer their betters, so much the worse. In a town consisting of 700 voters, the 300 most opulent and powerful (and therefore probably the best instructed) would make a much better choice than the remaining 400 ; and the ballot would, in that case, do more harm than good. In nineteen cases out of twent}^ the most numerous party would be in the wrong. If this is the case, why give the franchise to all 1 why not con- fine it to the first division 1 because even with all the abuses which occur, and in spite of them, the great mass of the people are much more satisfied with having a vote occasionally controlled than with having none. Man}' agree with their superiors, and therefore feel no control. Many are per- suaded by their superiors, and not controlled. Some are indifferent which way they exercise the power, though they would not like to be utterly deprived of it. Some guzzle away their vote, some sell it, some brave their superiors, a few are threatened and controlled. The election, in different wa3's, is affected by the superior influence of the upper orders; and the great mass (occasionally and justly com- plaining) are, beyond all doubt, better pleased than if they had no votes at all. The lower orders always have it in their power to rebel against their superiors ; and occasionally they will do so, and have done so, and occasionally and justly carried elections* against gold, and birth, and education.. But it is madness to make laws of society which attempt to shake off the great laws of nature. As long as men love bread, and mutton, and broadcloth, wealth, in a long series of years, must have enormous effects upon human affairs, and the strongbox will beat the ballot box. Mr. Grote has both, but he miscalculates their respective powers. Mr. Grote knows the relative values of gold and silver ; but by what moral rate of exchange is he able to tell us the relative values of li- berty and truth ? It is hardly necessary to say any thing about ♦ The 400 or SOO VJfirg I'jain?! life 200 are right about as often as ji'ri'?s are right in differing from judges ; and tbat is vary seldom. universal suffrage, as there is no act of folly or madness which it may not in the beginning produce. There would be the greatest risk that the monarchy, as at present constituted, the funded debt, the established church, titles, and hereditary peerage, would give way before it. Many really honest men may wish for these changes; I know, or at least believe, that wheat and barley would grow if there was no Archbishop of Canterbury, and domestic fowls would breed if our Viscount Melbourne was again called Mr. Lamb; but they have stronger nerves than I have who would ven- ture to bring these changes about. So few nations have been free, it is so difficult to guard freedom from kings, and mobs, and pa- triotic gentlemen ; and we are in such a very tolerable state of happiness in England, that I think such changes would be very rash ; and I have an utter mistrust in the sagacity and pene- tration of political reasoners who pretend to foresee all the consequences to which they would give birth. When I speak of the toler- able state of happiness in which we live in England, I do not speak merely of nobles, squires, and canons of St. Paul's, but of dri- vers of coaches, clerks in offices, carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, and bakers, and most men who do not marry upon nothing, and become burdened with large families before they have arrived at years of maturity. The earth is not sufficiently fertile for this: Difflcilem victum fundit durissima tellus. After all, the great art in politics and war is to choose a good position for making a stand. The Duke of Wellington examined and forti- fied the lines of Torres Vedras a year before he had any occasion to make use of them, and he had previously marked out Waterloo as the probable scene of some future exploit. The people seem to be hurrying on through all the well-known steps to anarchy; they must be stopped at some pass or another: the first is the best and most easily defended. The peo- ple have a right to ballot or to any thing else which will make them happy; and they have a right to nothing which will make them un- happy. They are the best judges of their im- mediate gratifications, and the worst judges of what would best conduce to their interests for a series of years. Most earnestly and consci- entiously wishing their good, I say, No Ballot. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. FIEST LETTER TO ARCHDEACON SINGLETON, ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION. Mt deah Sir, As you do me the honour to ask my opinion respecting the constitution and proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission, and of their con- duct to the dignitaries of the church, I shall write to you without any reserve upon this subject. The first thing which excited my surprise, was the constitution of the commission. As the reform was to comprehend every branch of churchmen, bishops, dignitaries, and paro- chial clergymen, I cannot but think it would have been much more advisable to have added to the commission some members of the two lower orders of the church — they would have supplied that partial knowledge which appears in so many of the proceedings of the commis- sioners to have been wanting — they would have attended to those interests (not episcopal) which appear to have been so completely over- looked — and they would have screened the commission from those charges of injustice and partiality which are now so generally brought against it. Theie can be no charm in the name of bishop — the man who was a cu- rate yesterday is a bishop to-day. There are many prebendaries, many rectors, and many vicars, who would have come to the reform of the church with as much integrity, wisdom, and vigour as any bishop on the bench ; and I 1 elieve, with a much stronger recollection thrt all the orders of the church were not to be sacrificed to the highest ; and that to make their work respectable, and lasting, it should in all (even in its minutest provisions), be founded upon justice. All the interests of the church in the com- mutation of tithes are entrusted to one paro- chial clergyman ;* and I have no doubt, from what I hear of him, that they will be well pro- tected. Why could not one or two such men have been added to the commission, and a ge- neral impression been created, that government in this momentous change had a parental feel- ing for all orders of men whose interests might be aff"ected by if? A ministry may laugh at this, and think if they cultivate bishops, that Ihey may treat the other orders of the church with contempt and neglect ; but I say, that to create a general impression of justice, if it be not what common honesty requires from any ministry, is what common sense points out to them. It is strength and duration — it is the * The Rev. Mr. Jones is the commissioner appointed by the Archliisliop of Canterbury to watch over the in- terests of the church. only power which is worth having — in the struggle of parties it gives victory, and is re- membered, and goes down to other times. A mixture of difli'erent orders of clergy in the commission would at least have secured a de- cent attention to the representations of all ; for of seven communications made to the com- mission by cathedrals, and involving very se- rious representations respecting high interests, six were totally disregarded, and the receipt of the papers not even acknowledged. I cannot help thinking that the commission- ers have done a great deal too much. Reform of the church was absolutely necessar}- — it cannot be avoided, and ought not to be post- poned ; but I would have found out Avhat really gave off"ence, have applied a remedy, removed the nuisance, and done no more. I would not have operated so largely on an old, and (I fear) a decaying building. I would not, in days of such strong political excitement, and amidst such a disposition to universal change, have done one thing more than was absolutely necessary to remove the odium against the establishment, the only sensible reason for is- suing any commission at all ; and the means which I took to efiect this, should have agreed, as much as possible, with institutions already established. For instance, the public were disgusted w' ith the spectacle of rich prebenda- ries enjoying large incomes, and doing little or nothing for them. The real remedy for this would have been to have combined wealth and labour ; and as each of the present preben- daries fell off", to have annexed the stall to some large and populous parish. A preben- dary of Canterbury or of St. Paul's, in his pre- sent state, may make the church unpopular; but place him as rector of a parish, with 8000 or 9000 people, and in a benefice of little or no value, he Avorks for his wealth, and the odium is removed. In like manner the pre- bends, which are not the property of the resi- dentiaries, might have been annexed to the ' smallest livings of the neighbourhood where the prebendal estate was situated. The inter- val which has elapsed since the first furious demand for reform, would have enabled the commissioners to adopt a scheme of much greater moderation than might perhaps have been possible at the first outbreak of popular indignation against the church; and this sort of distribution would have given much more general satisfaction than the plan adopted by commissioners; for though money, in the es- timation of philosophers, has no ear-mark, it WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. has a very deep one in the opinion of the mul- titude. The riches of the church of Durham were most hated in the neighbourhood of Dur- ham ; and there such changes as I have pointed out would have been most gladly received, and would have conciliated the greatest favour to the church. The people of Kent cannot see why their Kentish estates, given to the ca- thedral of Canterbury, are to augment livings in Cornwall. The citizens of London see some of their ministers starving in the city, and the profits of the extinguished prebends sent into Northumberland. These feelings may be very unphilosophical, but they are the feelings of the mass; and to the feelings of the mass the reforms of the church ought to be directed. In this way the evil would have been corrected where it was most seen and noticed. All patronage would have been left as it was. One order of the church would not have plundered the other. Nor would all the cathedrals in England have been subjected to the unconciliating empire, and unwearied en- ergy of- one man. Instead of this quiet and cautious mode of proceeding, all is change, fusion and confu- sion. New bishops, new dioceses, confiscated prebends — clergymen changing bishops, and bishops clergymen — mitres in Manchester, Gloucester turned into Bristol. Such a scene of revolution and commutation as has not been seen since the days of Ireton and Cromwell ! and the singularity is, that all this has been effected by men selected from their age, their dignity, and their known principles, and from whom the considerate part of the community ex- pected all the caution and calmness which these high requisites seemed to promise, and ought to have secured. The plea of making a fund is utterly unte nable — the great object was not to make a fund ; and there is the mistake into which the com- mission have fallen : the object was not to add 10/. or 20/. per annum to a thousand small liv- ings, and to diminish inequalities in a ratio so trifling that the public will hardly notice it ; a very proper thing to do if higher interests were not sacrificed to it; but the great object was to remove the causes of hatred from the church, by lessening such incomes as those of Canter- bury, Durham, and London, exorbitantly and absurdly great — by making idleness work — and by these means to lessen the envy of laymen. It is impossible to make a fund which will raise the smaller livings of the church into any thing like a decent support for those who possess them. The whole income of the church, epis- copal, prebendal, and parochial, divided among the clergy, would not give to each clergyman an income equal to that which is enjoyed by the upper domestic of a great nobleman. The method in which the church has been paid, and must continue to be paid, is by unequal divi- sions. All the enormous changes which the commission is making will produce a very tri- fling difference in the inequality, while it will accustom more and more those enemies of the church, who are studying under their right rev. masters, to the boldest revolutions in ec- clesiastical affairs. Out of 10,478 benefices, there are 297 of about 40/. per annum value, 1,629 at about 75/. and 1,602 at about 125/.; to raise all these benefices lo200/. per annum,would require an annual sum of 371,29.3/.; and upon 2,878 of those benefices there are no houses ; and uponl,728 no houses fit for residence. Whatdif- ference in the apparent inequality of the church would this sum of 371,293/. produce, if it could be raised 1 or in what degree would it lessen the odium which that inequality creates ! The case is utterly hopeless ; and yet with all their confiscations the commissioners are so far from being able to raise the annual sum of 371,000/., that the utmost they expect to gain is 130,000/. per annum. It seems a paradoxical statement, but the fact is, that the respectability of the church, as well as of the bar, is almost entirely preserved by the unequal division of their revenues. A bar of one hundred lawyers travel the northern circuit, enlightening provincial ignorance, cur- ing local partialities, diffusing knowledge, and dispensing justice in their route : it is quite certain that all they gain is not equal to all that they spend; if the profits were equally divided there would not be six and eight-pence for each person, and there would be no bar at all. At present, the success of the leader animates them all — each man hopes to be a Scarlett or a Brougham — and takes out his ticket in a lot- tery by which the mass must infallibly lose, trusting (as mankind are so apt to do) to his good fortune, and believing that the prize is re- served for him, disappointment and defeat for others. So it is with the clergy ; the whole in- come of the church, if equally divided, would be about 250/. for each minister. Who would go into the church and spend 1,200/. or 1,500/. upon his education, if such were the highest remuneration he could ever look to? At pre- sent, men are tempted into the church by the prizes of the church, and bring into that church a great deal of capital, which enables them to live in decency, supporting themselves, not with the money of the public, but with their own money, which, but for this temptation, would have been .carried into some retail trade. The officers of the church would then fall down to men little less coarse and ignorant than agricultural labourers — the clergyman of the parish would soon be seen in the squire's kitchen ; and all this would take place in a country where poverty is infamous. In fact, nothing can be more unjust and idle than the reasoning of many laymen upon church matters. You choose to have an es- tablishment — God forbid you should choose otherwise! and you wish to have men of de- cent manners, and good education, as the min- isters of that establishment; all this is very right: but are you willing to pay them as such men ought to be paid] Are you willing to pay to each clergyman, confining himself to one spot, and giving up all his time to the care of one parish, a salary of 500/. per annum 1 To do this would require three millions to be added to the present revenues of the church; and such an expenditure is impossible! What then remains, if you will have a clergy and will not pay them equitably and separately, than to pay them unequally and by lottery? and yet this very inequality, which secures to 2k2 390 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. you a respectable clerofy upon the most eco- nomical terms, is considered by laymen as a gross abuse. It is an abuse, however, ■which they have not the spirit to extinguish by in- creased munificence to their clergy, nor jus- tice to consider as the only other method by ■which all the advantages of a respectable es- tablishment can be procured; but they use it at the same time as a topic for sarcasm, and a source of economy. This, it -tt'iU be said, is a mammonish vie^w of the subject; it is so, but those -who make this objection, forget the immense efliect ivhich mammon produces upon religion itself. Shall the Gospel be preached by men paid by the state ■? shall these men be taken from the lo^wer orders and be meanly paid ? shall they he men of learning and education 1 and shall there be some magnificent endowments to allure such men into the church ? Which of these methods is the best for diffusing the rational doctrines of Christianity? not in the age of the apostles, not in the abstract, timeless, nameless, place- less land of the philosophers, but in the year 1837, in the porter-brewing, cotton-spinning, tallow-melting kingdom of Great Britain, burst- ing with opulence, and flying from poverty as the greatest of human evils. Many diflferent answers may be given to these questions, but they are questions which, not ending in mam- mon, have a powerful bearing on religion, and deserve the deepest consideration from its disciples and friends. Let the comforts of the clergy go for nothing. Consider their state only as religion is afl^ected by it. If upon this principle I am forced to allot to some an opu- lence which my clever friend the Examiner would pronounce to be apostolical, I cannot help it; I must take this people with all their follies, and prejudices, and circumstances, and carve out an establishment best suited for them, however unfit for early Christianity in barren and conquered Judea. Not only will this measure of the commis- f^ion bring into the church a lower and worse educated set of men, but it will have a ten- dency to make the clergy fanatical. You will have a set of ranting, raving pastors, who will wage war against all the innocent plea- sures of life, vie with each other in extrava- gance of zeal, and plague j^our heart out with their nonsense and absurdity : cribbage must be played in caverns, and sixpenny whist take refuge in the howling wilderness. In this way low men doomed to hopeless poverty, and galled by contempt, will endeavour to force themselves into station and significance. There is an awkward passage in the memo- rial of the church of Canterbury, ■which deserves some consideration from him to whom it is directed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, at his consecration, takes a solemn oath that he will maintain the rights and liberties of the church of Canterbury ; as chairman, however, of the ne-\^' commission, he seizes the patron- age of that church, takes two-thirds of its revenues, and abolishes two-thirds of its mem- bers. That there is an answer to this I am very willing to believe, but I cannot at present find out what it is ; and this attack upon the levenues and members of Canterbury, is not obedience to an act of Parliament, but the very act of Parliament, which takes away, is recom- mended, drawn up, and signed by the person who has sworn he will never take away; and this little apparent inconsistency is not con- fined to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but is shared equally by all the bishop commission- ers, who have all (unless I am grie%^ously mistaken) taken similar oaths for the preser- vation of their respective chapters. It would be more easy to see our way out of this little embarrassment, if some of the embarrassed had not, unfortunately, in the parliamentary debates on the Catholic question, laid the greatest stress upon the king's oath, applauded the sanctity of the monarch to the skies, reject' ed all comments, called for the oath in its plain meaning, and attributed the safety of the Eng- lish church to the solemn vow made by the king at the altar to the Archbishops of Canter- bury and York, and the other bishops. I should be very sorry if this were not placed on a clear footing, as fools will be imputing to our church the^m et rcUgiosa CuUiditas, which is so commonly brought against the Catholics. TTrbem quam dicunt Romam, MelibtEe, piitavi Stultus ego huic nostrs siniilem. The words of Henry VIII., in endowing the cathedral of Canterbury, are thus given in the translation. " We, therefore, dedicating the aforesaid close, site, circle, and precinct to the honour and glory of the Holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have decreed that a certain Cathedral and Metro- politan Church, with one Dean, Presbyter, and twelve Prebendaries Presbyters ; these verily and for ever to serve Almighty God shall be created, set up, settled, and established; and the same aforesaid Cathedral and Metropolitan Church, with one Dean, Presbyter, and twelve Prebendaries Presbyters, with other Ministers necessary for divine worship, by the tenor of these presents in realit)% and plenitude of force, we do create, set up, settle, and establish, and do command to be established and to be in perpetuity, and inviolably maintained and upheld by these presents." And this is the church, the rights and liberties of which the archbishop at his consecration sivears to main- tain. Nothing can be more ill-natured among politicians, than to look back into Hansard's Debates, to see what has been said by par- ticular men upon particular occasions, and to contrast such speeches with present opi- nions — and therefore I forbear to introduce some inviting passages upon taking oaths in their plain and obvious sense, both in debates on the Catholic question and upon that fatal and Mezentian oath which binds the Irish to the English church. It is quite absurd to see how all the cathe- drals are to be trimmed to an exact Procrustes pattern ; — quiela movere is the motto of the com- mission : — there is to be everywhere a dean, and four residentiaries ; but St. Paul's and Lincoln have at present only three residentia- ries, and a dean, who officiates in his turn as a canon : — a fourth must be added to each. Whyl nobody wants more prebendaries; St. Paul's and Lincoln go on very well as they are. It is not for the lack of prebendaries, it WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 391 is for idleness, that the Church of England is unpopular ; but in the lust of reforming, the commission cut and patch property as they would cut figures in pasteboard. This little piece of wanton change, however, gives to two of the bishops, who are commissioners as well as bishops, patronage of a thousand a year each ; and though I am willing not to consider this as the cause of the recommendation, yet I must observe it is not very common that the same persons should bring in the verdict and receive the profits of the suit. No other arch- deacons are paid in such a manner, and no other bishops out of the commission have re- ceived such a bonus.* I must express my surprise that nothing in this commission of bishops, either in the bill which has passed, or in the report which pre- ceded it, is said of the duties of bishops. A bishop is not now forced by law to be in his diocese or to attend his duty in Parliament — he may be entirely absent from both ; nor are there wanting instances within these six years where such has been the case. It would have been very easy to have placed the repairs of episcopal palaces (as the concurrent leases of bishops are placed) under the superintendence of deans and chapters ; but though the bishops' bill was accompanied by another bill, contain- ing the strictest enactments for the residence of the clergy, and some very arbitrary and unjust rules for the repair of their houses, it did not appear upon the face of the law that the bishops had any such duties to perform ; and j^et I remember the case of a bishop, dead not six years ago, who was scarcely ever seen in the House of Lords, or in his diocese ; and I remember well also the indignation with which the inhabitants of a great cathedral town spoke of the conduct of another bishop (now also deceased), who not only never entered his palace, but turned his horses into the garden. When I mention these instances, I am not setting myself up as the satirist of bishops. I think, upon the M^hole, they do their duty in a very exemplary manner, but they are not, as the late bills Avould have us to suppose, impeccable. The church commis- sioners should not have suffered their reports and recommendations to paint the other branches of the church as such slippery trans- gredient mortals, and to leave the world to ima- gine that bishops may be safely trusted to their own goodness without enactment or control. This squabble about patronage is said to be disgraceful. Those who mean to be idle, and insolent, because they are at peace, may look out of the window and say, " This is a dis- graceful squabble between bishops and chap- ters ;" but those who mean to be just, should ask, Who begins? the real disgrace of the squab- ble is in the attack, and not in the defence. If any man puts his hand into my pocket to take my property, am I disgraced if I prevent him? Churchmen are ready enough to be submissive to their superiors ; but were they to submit to a spoliation so gross, acconi- * This extravagant pay of archdeacons is taken, re- ni-imber, from that fund for the ausmentation of small Sivines, for the establishment of which all the divisions aiid coiiliscations have been made. panied with ignominy and degradation, and to bear all this in submissive silence ; — to be ac- cused of nepotism by nepotists, who were praising themselves indirectly by the accusa- tion, and benefiting themselves directly by the confiscation founded on it; — the real disgrace would have been to have submitted to this: and men are to be honoured, not disgraced, who come forth, contrary to their usual habits, to oppose those masters whom, in common seasons, they would willingly obey ; but who, in this matter, have tarnished their dignity, and forgotten what they owe to themselves and to us. It is a very singular thing that the law al- ways suspects judges, and never suspects bishops. If there is any way in which the partialities of the judge may injure laymen, the subject is fenced round with all sorts of jealousies, and enactments, and prohibitions — all partialities are guarded against, and all propensities watched. Where bishops are concerned, acts of Parliament are drawn up for beings who can never possibly be polluted by pride, prejudice, passion, or interest. Not otherwise would be the case with judges, if they, like the heads of the church, legislated for themselves. Then comes the question of patronage ; can any thing be more flagrantly unjust, than that the patronage of cathedrals should be taken away and conferred upon the bishops 1 I do not want to go into a long and tiresome history of episcopal nepotism, but it is notorious to all, that bishops confer their patronage upon their sons, and sons-in-law, and all their rela- tions ; and it is really quite monstrous in the face of the world, who see this every day, and every hour, to turn round upon deans and chapters, and to say to them, " We are credibly informed that there are instances in your chapters where preferment has not been given to the most learned men you can find, but to the sons and brothers of some of the prebend- aries. These things must not be — we must take these benefices into our own keeping;" and this is the language of men swarming themselves with sons and daughters, and who, in enumerating the advantages of their sta- tions, have always spoken of the opportuni- ties of providing for their families as the greatest and most important. It is, I admit, the duty of every man, and of every body, to present the best man that can be found to any living of which he is the patron ; but if this duty has been neglected, it has been neglected by bishops quite as much as by chapters ; and no man can open the " Clerical Guide" and read two pages of it, without seeing that the bench of bishops are the last persons from whom any remedy of this evil is to be ex- pected. The legislature has not always taken the same view of the comparative trust-worthiness of bishops and chapters as is taken by the commission. Bishops' leases for years are for twentj'-one years, renewable every seven When seven years are expired, if the present tenant will not renew, the bishop may grant a concurrent lease. How does his lordship act on such occasions ] He generally asks two •J92 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNIIY SMITH. years' income for the renewal, when chapters, not having the privilege of granting such con- curring leases, ask only a year and a half; and if the bishop's price is not given, he puts a son, or a daughter, or a trustee, into the estate, and the price of the lease deferred is money saved for his family. But unfair and exorbi- tant terms may be asked by his lordship, and the tenant may be unfairly dispossessed — therefore, the legislature enacts that all those concurrent leases must be countersigned by the dean and chapter of the diocese — making them the safeguards against episcopal rapa- city ; and, as I hear from others, not making them so in vain. These sorts of laws do not exactly correspond with the relative views taken of both parties by the ecclesiastical commission. This view of chapters is of course overlooked by a commission of bishops, just as all mention of bridles would be omitted in a meeting of horses ; but in this view, chapters might be made eminently useful. In what profession, too, are there no gradations'! Why is the Church of England to be nothing but a collection of beggars and bishops — the Right Reverend Dives in the palace, and Laza- rus in orders at the gate, doctored by dogs, and comforted with crumbs 1 But to take away the patronage of existing prebendaries is objectionable for another class of reasons. If it is right to take away the pa- tronage of my cathedral and to give it to the bishop, it is at least unjust to do so with my share of it during my life. Society have a right to improve, or to do what they think an improvement, but then they have no right to do so suddenly and hastily, to my prejudice ! After securing to me certain possessions by one hundred statutes passed in six hundred years — after having clothed me in fine garments, and conferred upon me pompous names, they have no right to turn round upon me all of a sud- den to say. You are not a dean nor a canon- residentiary, but a vagabond and an outcast, and a morbid excrescence upon society. This would not be a reform, but the grossest tyran- ny and oppression. If a man cannot live under the canopy of ancient law, where is he safe 1 how can he see his way, or lay out his plan of life ] "Dubitant homines serere atqiie impendere curas." You tolerated, for a century, the wicked traffic in slaves, legislated for that species of property, encouraged it by premiums, defended it in your courts of justice — West Indians bought and sold, trusting (as Englishmen al- ways ought to trust) in parliaments. Women ■went to the altar, promised that they should be supported by that property; and children were born to it, and young men were educated with it: but God touched the hearts of the English people, and they would have no slaves. The scales fell from their eyes, and they saw the monstrous wickedness of the trafhc; but then they said, and said magnificently, to the West Indians, "We mean to become wiser and better, but not at your expense; the loss shall be ours, and we will not involve you in ruin, because we are ashamed of our fornmr cruelties, and have learnt a belter lesson of humanity and wisdom." And this is the way in which improving nations ought to act, and this is the distinction between reform and revolution. Justice is not changed by the magnitude or minuteness of the subject. The old cathedrals have enjoyed their patronage for seven hun- dred years, and the new ones since the time of Henry VIII.; which latter period even gives a much longer possession than ninety- nine out of a hundred of the legislators, who are called upon to plunder us, can boast for their own estates. And these rights, thus sanctioned, and hallowed by time, are torn from their present possessors without the least warning, or preparation, in the midst of all that fever of change which has seized upon the people, and which frightens men to the core of their hearts ; and this spoliation is made, not by low men rashing into the plunder of the church and state, but by men of admi- rable and unimpeached character in all the relations of life — not by rash men of new- politics, but by the ancient conservators of ancient law — by the archbishops and bishops of the land, high official men, invented and cre- ated, and put in palaces to curb the lawless changes, and the mutations, and the madness of mankind ; and to crown the whole, the lu- dicrous is added to the unjust, and what they take from the other branches of the church they confer upon themselves. Never dreaming of such sudden revolutions as these, a prebendar}^ brings up his son to the church, and spends a large sum of money in his education, which, perhaps, he can ill afford. His hope is (wicked wretch !) that, according to the established custom of the body to which he (immoral man !) belongs, the chapter will (when his turn arrives), if his son be of fair attainments and good cha- racter, attend to his nefarious recommenda- tion, and confer the living upon the 3'oung man; and in an instant all his hopes are de- stroyed, and he finds his preferment seized upon, under the plea of public good, by a stronger churchman than himself. I can call this by no other name than that of tyranny and oppression. I know veiy well that this is not the theory of patronage ; but who does bet- ter T — do individual patrons 1 — do colleges who give in succession! — and as for bishops, lives there the man so weak and foolish, so little observant of the past, as to believe (when this tempest of purity and perfection has blown over) that the name of Bloomfield will not figure in those benefices from which the names of Copleston, Blomberg, Taite, and Smith, have been so virtuously excluded 1 I have no desire to make odious comparisons between the purity of one set of patrons and another, but they are forced upon me by the injustice of the commissioners. I must either make such comparisons or yield up, without remonstrance, those rights to which I am fairly entitled. It may be said that the bishops will do bet- ter in future ; that now the public eye is upon them, they will be ashamed into a more lof^y and anti-nepotic spirit; but, if the argument of past superiority is given up, and the hope WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 393 of future amendment resorted to, why may we not improve as well as our masters 1 but the commission says, " These excellent men (meaning themselves) have promised to do better, and we have an implicit confidence in their word : we must have the patronage of the cathedrals." In the mean time we are ready to promise as well as the bishops. With regard to that common newspaper phrase, the public eye — there's nothing (as the bench well know) more wandering and slip- pery than the public eye. In five years hence, the public eye will no more see what descrip- tion of men are promoted by bishops, than it will see what doctors of law are promoted by the Turkish Ulhema; and at the end of this period (such is the example set by the com- mission), the public eye, turned in every direc- tion, may not be able to see any bishops at all. In many instances, chapters are better pa- trons than bishops, because their preferment is not given exclusively to one species of in- cumbents. I have a diocese now in my pri- vate eye which has undergone the following changes. The first of three bishops whom I remember was a man of careless, easy temper, and how patronage went in those early days maybe conjectured by the following letters; which are not his, but serve to illustrate a system : THE BISHOP TO LOHD A . My dear Lord, I have noticed with great pleasure the be- haviour of your lordship's second son, and am most happy to have it in my power to offer to him the living of * * *. He will find it of considerable value ; and there is, I understand, a very good house upon it, &c. &c. This is to confer a living upon a man of real merit out of the family; into which family, apparently sacrificed to the public good, the living is brought back by the second letter: — THE SAME TO THE SAME, A TEAR AFTEH. My dear Lord, Will you excuse the liberty I take in soli- citing promotion for my grandson ] He is an officer of great skill and gallantry, and can bring the most ample testimonials from some of the best men in the profession : the Arethusa frigate is, I understand, about to be commis- sioned ; and if, &c. &c. Now I am not saying that hundreds of pre- bendaries have not committed such enormities and stupendous crimes as this (a declaration which will fill the whig cabinet with horror) ; all that I mean to contend for is, that such is the practice of bishops quite as much as it is of inferior patrons. The second bishop was a decided enemy of Calvinistical doctrines, and no clergyman so tainted had the slightest chance of preferment in his diocese. The third bishop could endure no man whose principles were not strictly Calvinistic, and who did not give to the articles that kind of interpretation. Now here were a great mass of clergy naturally alive to the emolu- ments of their profession, and not knowing 50 which way to look or stir, because they de- pended so entirely upon the will of one person. Not otherwise is it with a very whig bishop, or a very tory bishop ; but the worst case is that of a superannuated bishop ; here the pre- ferment is given away, and must be given away by wives and daughters, or by sons, or by butlers, perhaps, and valets, and the poor dying patron's paralytic hand is guided to the signature of papers, the contents of which he is utterly unable to comprehend. In all such cases as these, the superiority of bishops as patrons will not assist that violence which the commissioners have committed upon the pa- tronage of cathedrals. I never heard that cathedrals had sold the patronage of their preferment; such a prac- tice, however, is not quite unknown among the higher orders of the church. When the Archbishop of Canterbury consecrates an in- ferior bishop, he marks some piece of prefer- ment in the gift of the bishop as his own. This is denominated an option; and when the preferment falls, it is not only in the gift of the archbishop, if he is alive, but in the gift of his representatives if he is not. It is an absolute chattel, which, like any other chattel, is part of the archbishop's assets ; and if he died in debt, might be taken and sold for the benefit of his creditors — and wnhin the memory of man such options have been publicly sold by auction — and if the present Archbishop of Canterbury were to die in debt to-morrow, such might be the fate of his options. What Arch- bishop Moore did with his options I do not know, but the late Archbishop Sutton very handsomely and properly left them to the pre- sent — a bequest, however, which would not have prevented such options from coming to the hammer, if Archbishop Sutton had not cleared off, before his death, those incum- brances which, at one period of his life, sat so heavily upon him. What the present archbishop means to do with them, I am not informed. They are not alluded to in the church returns, though they must be worth some thousand pounds. The commissioners do not seem to know of their existence — at least they are profoundly silent on the subject; and the bill which passed through Parliament in the summer for the regulation of the emoluments of bishops, does not make the most distant allusion to them. When a parallel was drawn between two spe- cies of patrons — which ended in the confisca- tion of the patronage of cathedrals — when two archbishops helped to draw the parallel, and profited by the parallel, I have a perfect right to state this corrupt and unabolished practice of their own sees — a practice which I never heard charged against deans and chapters.* I do not mean to imply, in the most remote degree, that either of the present archbishops have sold their options, or ever thought of it. Purer and more high-minded gentlemen do not exist, nor men more utterly incapable of doing any thing unworthy of their high station ; and * Can any thins be more shnbby in a government iesis- lating upon church abuses, than to pass over such scan- dals as these existing in high places? Two years ha vo passed, and they are unnoticed 394 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. I am convinced the Archbishop of Canterbury* will imitate or exceed the munificence of his predecessor: but when twenty-four public bodies are to be despoiled of their patronage, we must look not only to present men, but historically, to see how it has been adminis- tered in times of old, and«in times also recently past; and to remember, that at this moment, when bishops are set up as the most admirable lispensers of patronage — as the only persons fit to be intrusted with it — as marvels, for whom law and justice and ancient possessions ought to be set aside, that this patronage (very valuabh because selected from the whole diocese) of the two heads of the church is liable to all the accidents of succession — that it may fall into the hands of a superannuated wife, of a prolligate son, of a weak daughter, or a rapacious creditor — that it may be brought to the hammer, and publicly bid for at an auction, like all the other chattels of the palace; and that such have been the indignities to which this optional patronage has been ex- posed, from the earliest days of the church to this moment. Truly, men who live in houses of glass (especially where the panes are $o large) ought not to fling stones ; or if they do, they should be specially careful at whose head they are flung. And then the patronage which is not seized — the patronage which the chapter is allowed to present to its own body — may be divided without their consent. Can any thing be more thoroughly lawless, or unjust than this — that my patronage during my life shall be divided without my consent] How do my rights during my life differ from those of a lay patron, who is tenant for life 1 and upon what principle of justice or common sense is his patronage protected from the commissioners' dividing power to which mine is subjected] That one can sell, and the other cannot sell, the next presentation, would be bad reasoning if it were good law ; but it is not law, for an ecclesiasti- cal corporation, aggregate or sole, can sell a next presentation as legally as a lay life-tenant can do. They have the same power of selling as laymen, but they never do so; that is, they dispense their patronage with greater propriety and delicacy, which, in the estimate of the commissioners, seems to make their right weaker, and the reasons for taking it away more powerful. Not only are laymen guarded by the same act which gives the power of dividing livings to the commissioners, but bishops are also guarded. The commissioners may divide the livings of chapters without their consent ; but before they can touch the living of a bishop, his consent must be obtained. It seems, after a few of those examples, to become a little clearer, and more intelligible, why the appoint- ment of any other ecclesiastics than bishops was so disagreeable to the bench. ♦ The options of the Archbishop of York are compara- tively trifling. I never heard, at any period, tliat they have been sold ; but they remain, like those of Canter- bury, in the absolute possession of the archbishop's re- presentatives after his death. I will answer for it that I he present archbishop will do every thina; with them which becomes his high station and high character. They ought to be abolished by act of Parliament. The reasoning, then, is this : If a good living is vacant in the patronage of a chapter, they will only think of conferring it on one of their body or their friends. If such a living falls to the gift of a bishop, he will totally overlook the interests of his sons and daughters, and divide the living into small portions for the good of the public; and with these sort of anilities, whig leaders, whose interest it is to lull the bishops into a reform, pretend to be satisfied; and upon this intolerable nonsense they are not ashamed to justify spoliation.* A division is set up between public and pri- vate patronage, and it is pretended that one is holden in trust for the public, the other is pri- vate property. This is mere theory — a slight film thrown over convenient injustice. Henry VIII. gave to the Duke of Bedford much of his patronage. Roger de Hoveden gave to the church of St. Paul's much of his patronage before the Russells were in existence. The duke has the legal power to give his prefer- ment to whom he pleases — so have we. We are both under the same moral and religious restraint to administer that patronage properly — the trust is precisely the same to both ; and if the public good requires it, the power of dividing livings without the consent of patrons should be given in all instances, and not con- fined as a mark of infamy to cathedrals alone. This is not the real reason of the difference : bishops are the active members of the com- mission — they do not choose that their own patronage should be meddled with, and they know that the laity would not alloAv for a mo- ment that their livings should be pulled to pieces by bishops ; and that if such a proposal were made, there would be more danger of the bishop being pulled to pieces than the living. The real distinction is, between the weak and the strong — between those who have power to resist encroachment, and those who have not. This is the reason Avhy we are selected for experiment, and so it is with all the bill from beginning to end. There is purple and fine linen in every line of it. Another strong objection to the dividing power of the commission is this : according to the printed bill brought forward last ses- sion, if the living is not taken by some mem- bers of the body, it lapses to the bishop. Sup- pose, then, the same person to be bishop and commissioner, he breaks the living into little pieces as a commissioner, and after it is re- jected in its impoverished state by the chapter, he gives it away as bishop of the diocese. The only answer that is given to such objec- tions is, the impeccability of bishops : and upon this principle the whole bill has been con- structed, and here is the great mistake about bishops. They are, upon the whole, very good and worthy men; but they are not (as many ancient ladies suppose) wholly exempt from human infirmities; they have their malice, hatred, uncharitableness, persecution and interest like other men; and an administra- tion who did not think it more magnificent to laugh at the lower clergy, than to protect them, * These reasonings have had their effect, and many early acts of injustice of the commission have beeu subsequently corrected. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 395 should suffer no ecclesiastical bill to pass through Parliament without seriously consi- 1 dering how its provisions may affect the hap- piness of poor clergymen pushed into living tombs, and pining in solitude — Vates procul atqiie in sola relegant Pascua, post montem oppositum, et trans flumina lata. There is a practice among some bishops, which may as well be mentioned here as any- where else, but which, I think, cannot be too severely reprobated. They send for a clergy- man, and insist upon his giving evidence re- specting the character and conduct of his neighbour. Does he hunt! Does he shoot 1 Is he in debtl Is he temperate] Does he attend to his parish ] &c. &c. Now what is this, but to destroy for all clergymen the very elements of social life— to put an end to all confidence between man and man — and to dis- seminate among gentlemen, who are bound to live in concord, every feeling of resentment, hatred and suspicion ] But the very essence of tyranny is to act as if the finer feelings, like the finer dishes, were delicacies only for the rich and great, and that little people have no taste for them and no right to them. A good and honest bishop (I thank God there are many who deserve that character!) ought to suspect himself, and carefully to watch his own heart. He is all of a sudden elevated from being a tutor, dining at an early hour with his pupil (and occasionally, it is believed, on cold meat), to be a spiritual lord; he is dressed in a magnificent dress, decorated with a title, flattered by chaplains, and surrounded by little people looking up for the things which he has to give away ; and this often happens to a man who has had no opportunities of seeing the world, whose parents were in very humble life, and who has given up all his thoughts to the Frogs of Aristophanes and the Targum of Onkelos. How is it possible that such a man should not lose his head1 that he should not swell 1 that he should not be guilty of a thousand follies, and worry and tease to death (before he recovers his common sense) an hundred men as good and as wise and as able as himself 1* The history of the division of Edmonton has, I understand, been repeatedly stated in the commission — and told, as it has been, by a decided advocate, and with no sort of evi- dence called for on the other side of the ques- tion, has produced an unfair impression against chapters. The history is shortly this : — Be sides the mother church of Edmonton, there are two chapels — Southgate and Winchmore Hill chapel. Winchmore Hill chapel was built by the society for building churches upon the same plan as the portions of Mary- lebone are arranged; the clergyman was to be remunerated by the lease of the pews, and if curates with talents for preaching had been placed there, they might have gained 200/. per annum. Though men of perfectly respectable and honourable character, they were not endov^'ed with this sort of talent, and they gained no more than 90/. to 100/. per annum. The Bishop of London applied to the cathedral of St. Paul's, to consent to 250/. per annum in addition to the proceeds from the letting of the pews, or that proportion of the whole of the value of the living, should be allotted to the chapel of Winchmore ; and at the same time we received an application from the chapel at Southgate, that another considerable portion, I forget what, but believe it to have been rather less (perhaps 200/.), should be allotted to them, and the whole living severed into three parishes. Now the living of Edmonton is about 1,350/. annum, besides surplice fees; but this * Since writine this, and after declining the living for myself, 1 have had the pleasure of seeing it presented in an undivided state to my amiable and excellent friend, Mr. Taite, wlio, after a long life of moods and tenses, has acquired (as he has deserved) ease and opulence in bis old age. per 1,350/. depends upon a corn rent of lOs. 3d. per bushel, present valuation, which, at the next valuation would, in the opinion of emi- nent land surveyors whom we consulted, be reduced to about 6s. per bushel, so that the living, considering the reduction also of all voluntary offerings to the church, Avould be reduced one half, and this half Avas to b<; divided into three, and one or two curates (two curates by the present bill) to be kept by the vicar of the old church ; and thus three clerical beggars were, by the activity of the Bishop of London, to be established in a dis- trict where the extreme dearness of all provi- sions is the plea for making the see of London double in value to that of any bishopric in the country. To this we declined to agree ; and this, heard only on one side, with the total omission of the'changing value of the benefice from the price of corn, has most probably been the parent of the clause in question. The right cure for this and all similar cases would be to give the bishop a power of allot- ting to such chapels as high a salary as to any other curate in the diocese, taking, as part of that salary, whatever was received from the lease of the pews, and to this no reasonable man could or would object: hut this is not enough — all must bow to one man — "Chapters must be taught submission. No pamphlets, no meeting of independent prebendaries, to remonstrate against the proceedings of their superiors — no opulence and ease but mine." Some effect was produced also upon the commission, by the evidence of a prelate, who is both dean and bishop,* and who gave it as his opinion that the patronage of bishops was given upon better principles than that of chap- ters, which, translated into fair EngUsh, is no more than this — that the said witness, not meaning to mislead, but himself deceived, has his own way entirely in his diocest, and can only have it partially in his chapter. There is a rumour that these reasorings, with which they were assailed from so many quarters in the last session of Parliameni, have not been without their effect, and that Jt is the intention of the commissioners only t.» take away the patronage from the cathedrals exactly in proportion as the numbers of their members are reduced. Such may be the inten- tion of the commissioners ; but as that inten- * This prelate stated it as his opinion to the comrnix- sion, that in future all prelates ought to declare thai thflv held their patronage in trust for the public. 396 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. tion has not been publicly notified, it depends only upon report; and the commissioners have changed their minds so often, that they may alter their intentions twenty times again before the meeting of Parliament. The whole of my observations in this letter are grounded upon their bills nf last year — which I-ord John Rus- sell stated his intention of re-introducing at the beginning of this session. If they have any new plans, they ought to have published them three months ago — and to have given to the clergy an ample opportunity of consider- ing them : but this they take the greatest care never to do. The policy of the government and of the commissioners is to hurry their bills through with such rapidity, that veiy little time is given to those who suffer by them for consideration and remonstrance, and we must be prepared for the worst beforehand. You are cashiered and confiscated before you can look about you — if you leave home for six weeks, in these times, you find a commissioner in possession of your house and ofiice. A report has reached my ears, that though all other cathedrals are to retain patronage exactly equal to their reduced numbers, a separate measure of justice is to be used for St. Paul's; that our numbers are to be aug- mented by a fifth ; and our patronage reduced by a third; and this immediately on the passing of the bill. That the Bishop of Exeter, for instance, is to receive his augmentation of patronage only in proportion as the prebend- aries die off, and the prebendaries themselves will, as long as they live, remain in the same proportional state as to patronage ; and that when they are reduced to four (their stationary number), they will retain one-third of all the patronage the twelve now possess. Whether this is wise or not, is a separate question, but at least it is just; the four who remain cannot with any colour of justice complain that they do not re ain all the patronage which was divided a nong twelve; but at St. Paul's not only are our numbers to be augmented by a fifth, bi c the patronage of fifteen of our best livings is to be instantly conferred upon the Bishop of London. This little epuodc of plunder involves three separate acts of gross injustice : in the first place, if only our numbers had been augmented by a fifth (in itself a mere bonus to commissioners), our patronage would have been reduced one-fifth in value. Secondly, e trepanned before they can be convinced. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 409 comfort of the parochial clergy. I will mention only a few: — the bill, as originally introduced, gave the bishop a power, when he considered the duties of the parish to be improperly per- formed, to suspend the clergyman and appoint a curate with a salary. Some impious per- sons thought it not impossible that occasionally such a power might be maliciously and vin- dictively exercised, and that some check to it should be admitted into the bill ; accordingly, under the existing act, an ecclesiastical jury is to be summoned, and into that jury the de- fendant clergyman may introduce a friend of his own. If a clerg)^man, from illness or any other overwhelming necessity, was prevented from having two services, he was exposed to an information and penalty. In answering the bishop, he was subjected to two opposite sets of penalties — the one for saying yes ; the other for saying no : he was amenable to the need- less and impertinent scrutiny of a rural dean before he was exposed to the scrutiny of the bishop. Curates might be forced upon him by subscribing parishioners, and the certainty of a schism established in the parish ; a curate might have been forced upon present incum- bents by the bishop without any complaint made ; upon men who took, or, perhaps, bought their livings under very different laws ; all these acts of injustice are done away M-ith, but it is not to the credit of the framers of the bill that they were ever admitted, and they com- pletely justify the opposition with which the bill was received by me and by others. I add, however, with great pleasure, that when these and other objections were made, they were heard with candour, and promised to be reme- died by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London and Lord John Russell. I have spoken of the power to issue a com- mission to inquire into the well-being of any parish: a vindictive and malicious bishop might, it is true, convert this, which was in- tended for the protection, to the oppression of the clergy — afraid to dispossess a clergyman of his own authority, he might attempt to do the same thing under the cover of a jury of his ecclesiastical creatures. But I can hardly conceive such baseness in the prelate, or such infamous subserviency in the agents. An honest and respectable bishop will remember that the very issue of such a commission is a serious slur upon the character of a clergyman ; he will do ail he can to prevent it by. private monition and remonstrance; and if driven to such an act of power, he- will, of course, state to the accused clergyman the subjects of ac- cusation, the names of his accusers, and give him ample time for his defence. If, upon anonymous accusation, he subjects a clergy- man to such an investigation, or refuses to him any advantage which the law gives to every accused person, he is an infamous, de- graded, and scandalous t3Tant: but I cannot believe there is such a man to be found upon the bench. There is in this new bill a very humane clause, (though not introduced by the commis- sion), enabling the widow of the deceased clergynjan to retain possession of the parson- 52 age-house for two months after the death of the incumbent. It ought, in fairness, to be extended to the heirs, executors, and adminis- trators of the incumbent. It is a great hard- ship that a family settled in a parish for fifty years, perhaps, should be torn up by the roots in eight or ten days ; and the interval of two months, allowing time for repairs, might put to rest many questions of dilapidation. To the bishop's power of intruding a curate, without any complaint on the part of the parish that the duty has been inadequately performed, I retain the same objections as before. It is a power which, without this condition, will be unfairly and partially exercised. The first object I admit is not the provision of the clergyman, but the care of the parish ; but one way of taking care of parishes is to take care that clergymen are not treated with tyranny, partiality, and injustice ; and the best way of eff'ecting this is to remember that their supe- riors have the same human passions as other people, and not to trust them with a power which may be so grossly abused, and which (incredible as the Bishop of London may deem it) has been, in some instances, grossly abused. I cannot imagine what the bishop means by saying, that the members of cathedrals do not, in virtue of their oiTice, bear any part in the parochial instruction of the people. This is a fine deceitful word, the word parochial, and eminently calculated to coax the public. If he means simply that cathedrals do not belong to parishes, that St. Paul's is not the parish church of Upper Puddicomb, and that the vicar of St. Fiddlefrid does not oificiate in Westminster Abbey : all this is true enough, but do they not in the most material points instruct the people precisely in the same man- ner as the parochial clergy? Are not prayers and sermons the most important means of spiritual instruction! And are there not eighteen or twenty services in every cathedral for one which is heard in parish churches 1 I have very often counted in the afternoon of week days in St. Paul's 150 people, and on Sundays it is full to suffocation. Is all this to go for nothing ] and what right has the Bishop of London to suppose that there is not as much real piety in cathedrals, as in the most road- less, postless, melancholy, sequestered hamlet preached to by the most provincial, seques- tered, bucolic clergyman in the queen's domi- nions? A number of little children, it is true, do not repeat a catechism of which they do not com- prehend a word; but it is rather rapid and wholesale to say, that the parochial clergy an; spiritual instructors of the people, and that thi; cathedral clergy are only so in a very restrict- ed sense. I say that in the most material points and acts of instruction, they are much more laborious and incessant than any paro- chial clergy. It might really be supposed, from the Bishop of London's reasoning, that some other methods of instruction took place in cathedrals than prayers and sermons can affcrd; that lectures were read on chemistry, or essons given on dancing; or that it was a Me-'hanics' Institute, or a vast receptacle for 2M 410 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. hexameter and pentameter boys. His own most respectable chaplain, who is often there as a member of the body, will tell him that the prayers are strictly adhered to, according to the rubric, with the diiference only that the service is beautifully chanted instead of being badly read; that instead of the atrocious bawl- ing of parish churches, the anthems are sung with great taste and feeling : and if the preach- ing is not good, it is the fault of the Bishop of London, who has the whole range of London preachers from whom to make his selection. The real fact is, that, instead of being some- thing materially different from the parochial clergy, as the commissioners wish to make them, the cathedral clergy are fellow-labourers with the parochial clergy, outworking them ten to one ; but the commission having pro- vided snugly for the bishops, have, by the merest accident in the world, entangled themselves in this quarrel with cathedrals. "Had the question," says the bishop, "been proposed to the religious part of the commu- nity, whether, if no other means were to be found, the effective cure of souls should be provided for by the total suppression of those ecclesiastical corporations which have no cure of souls, nor bear any part in the paro- chial labours of the clergy ; that question, I verily believe, would have been carried in the affirmative by an immense majority of suf- frages." But suppose no other means could be found for the effective cure of souls than the suppression of bishops, does the Bishop of London imagine that the majority of suffrages would have been less immense 1 How idle to put such cases. A pious man leaves a large sum of money in Catholic times for some purposes which are superstitious, and for others, such as preaching and reading prayers, which are ap- plicable to all times ; the superstitious usages are abolished, the pious usages remain : now the bishop must admit, if you take half or any part of this money from clergymen to whom it was given, and divide it for similar purposes among clergy to whom it was not given, you deviate materially from the intentions of the founder. These foundations are made in loco: in many of them the locus was, perhaps, the original cause of the gift. A man who founds an almshouse at Edmonton does not mean that the poor of Tottenham should avail them- selves of it; and if he could have anticipated such a consequence, he would not have en- dowed any almshouse at all. Such is the respect for property, that the Court of Chan- cery, when it becomes impracticable to carry the will of the donor into execution, always attend to the cy pres, and apply the charitable fund to a purpose as germane as possible to the intention of the founder; but here, when men of Lincoln have left to Lincoln cathedral, and men of Hereford to Hereford, the com- missioners seize it all, melt it into a common mass, and disperse it over the kingdom. Surely the Bishop of London cannot contend that this is not a greater deviation from the will of the founder than if the same people, remaining in the same place, receiving all the founder gave them, and doing all things not forbidden by the law, which the founder order- ed, were to do something more than the founder ordered, were to become the guardians of education, the counsel to the bishop, and the curators of the diocese in his old age and decay. The public are greater robbers and plunder- ers than any one in the public ; look at the whole transaction ; it is a mixture of meanness and violence. The country choose to have an established religion, and a resident parochial clergy, but they do not choose to build houses for their parochial clergy, or to pay them in many instances more than a butler or a coach- man receives. How is this deficiency to be supplied 1 The heads of the church propose to this public to seize upon estates which never belonged to the public, and which were left for another purpose; and by the seizure of these estates to save that which ought to come out of the public purse. Suppose Parliament were to seize upon all the almshouses in England, and apply them to the diminution of the poor-rate, what a num- ber of ingenious arguments might be pressed into the service of this robbery: "Can any thing be more revolting than that the poor of Northumberland should be starving while the poor of the suburban hamlets are dividing the benefactions of the pious dead] 'We want for these purposes all that loe can obtain from whatever soxirces derived,^" I do not deny the right of parliament to do this, or any thing else; but I deny that it would be expedient, because I think it better to make any sacrifices, and to endure any evil, than to gratify this ra- pacious spirit of plunder and confiscation- Suppose these commissioner prelates firm and unmoved, when we were all alarmed, had told the public that the parochial clergy were badly provided for, and that it was the duty of that public to provide a proper support for their ministers ; — suppose the commission- ers, instead of leading them on to confisca- tions, had warned their fellow subjects against the base economy, and the perilous injustice of seizing on that which was not their OAvn ; — suppose they had called for water and Avashed their hands, and said, " We call you all to wit- ness that we are innocent of this great ruin ;" — does the Bishop of London imagine that the prelates who made such a stand would have gone down to posterity less respected and less revered than those men upon whose tombs it must (after all the enumerations of their virtues) be written, that under their au- spices and by their counsels the destruction of the Ens:Ush church began ? Pity that the Archbishop of Canterbury had not retained those feelings, when, at the first meeting of bishops, the Bishop of London proposed this holy innovation upon cathedrals, and the head of our church declared, with vehemence and indignation, that nothing in the earth would induce him to consent to it. Si mens non leva fuisset, Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres. "But," says the Lord Bishop of London, "you admit the principle of confiscation by proposing the confiscation and partition of prebends in the possession of non-residents." WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 411 I am thinking of something else, and I see all of a sudden a great blaze of light; I behold a great number of gentlemen in short aprons, neat purple coats, and gold buckles, rushing about with torches in their hands, calling each other " my lord," and setting fire to all the rooms in the house, and the people below de- lighted with the combustion; finding it impos- sible to turn them from their purpose, and finding that they are all what they are, by di- vine permission; I endeavour to direct their holy innovations into another channel ; and I say to them, " my lords, had not you better set fire to the out of door offices, to the barns and stables, and spare this fine library and this noble drawing-room "? Yonder are several cow-houses of which no use is made ; pray direct your fury against them, and leave this beautiful and venerable mansion as you found it." If I address the divinely permitted in this manner, has the Bishop of London any right to call me a brother i»cendiary 1 Our holij innovator, the Bishop of London, has drawn a very atfecting picture of sheep having no shepherd, and of millions who have no spiritual food; our wants, he says, are most imperious ; even if we were to tax large livings, we must still have the money of the cathedrals : no plea will exempt you, nothing can Slop us, for the formation of benefices, and the endowment of new ones. We want (and he prints it in italics) for these purposes " all that we can obtain from tvhatevcr sovrces de- rived." I never remember to have been more alarmed in my life than by this passage. I said to myself, the necessities of the church have got such complete hold of the imagina- tion of this energetic prelate, who is so capti- vated by the holiness of his innovations, that all grades and orders of the church and all present and future interests will be sacrificed to it. I immediately rushed to the acts of Par- liament, which I always have under my pil- low, to see at once the worst of what had hap- pened. I found present revenues of the bishops all safe ; that is some comfort, I said to myself; Canterbury, 24,000Z. or 25,000/. per annum ; London, 18,000/. or 20,000/. I began to feel some comfort : " things are not so bad ; the bishops do not mean to sacrifice to sheep and shepherds' money their present revenues ; the Bishop of London is less violent and head- strong than I thought he would be." I looked a little further, and found that 15,000/. per an- num is allotted to the future Archbishop of Canterbury, 10,000/. to the Bishop of London, 8000/. to Durham, and 8000/. each to Winches- ter and Ely. "Nothing of sheep and shepherd in all this," I exclaimed, and felt still more comforted. It was not till after the bishops were taken care of, and the revenues of the cathedrals came into full view, that I saw the perfect development of the sheep and shepherd principle, the deep and heartfelt compassion for spiritual labourers, and that inward groan- ing for the destitute state of the church, and that firm purpose, printed in italics, of taking for these purposes all that could he obtained from whatever sonree derived ; and even in this deli- cious rummage of cathedral property, where all the fine church feelings of the bishop's heart could be indulged without costing the poor sufferer a penny, stalls for archdeacons in Lincoln and St. Paul's are, to the amount of 2000/. per annum, taken from the sheep and shepherd fund, and the patronage of them di- vided between two commissioners, the Bishop of London, and the Bishop of Lincoln, instead of being paid to additional labourers in the vine- yard. Has there been any difficulty, I would ask, in procuring archdeacons upon the very mode- rate pay they now receive 1 Can any clergy- man be more thoroughly respectable than the present archdeacons in the see of London T but men bearing such an office in the church, it may be said, should be highly paid, and archbishops, who could very well keep up their dignity upon 7000/. per annum, are to be allowed 15,000/. I make no objection to all this ; but then what becomes of all these heart-rending phrases of sheep and shepherd, and drooping vineyards, and flocks without spiritual con- solation / The bishop's argument is, that the superfluous must give way to the necessary; but in fighting, the bishop should take great care that his cannons are not seized, and turned against himself. He has awarded to the bishops of England a superfluity as great as that which he intends to take from the cathedrals ; and then, when he legislates for an order to which he does not belong, begins to remember the distresses of the lower clergy, paints them with all the colours of impassioned eloquence, and informs the cathedral institu- tions that he must have every farthing he can lay his hand upon. Is not this as if one, afl^ected powerfully by a charity sermon, were to put his hands into another man's pocket, and cast, from what he had extracted, a liberal contri- bution into the plate ] I beg not to be mistaken ; I am very far from considering the Bishop of London as a sordid and interested person ; but this is a complete instance of how the best of men de- ceive themselves, where their interests are concerned. I have no doubt the bishop firmly imagined he was doing his duty; but there should have been men of all grades in the commission, some one to say a word for cathe- drals and against bishops. The bishop says " his antagonists have al- lowed three canons to be sufficient for St. Paul's, and, therefore, four must be sufficient for other cathedrals." Sufficient to read the prayers and preach the sermons, certainly, and so would o»tc be; but not sufficient to excite, by the hope of increased rank and wealth, eleven thousand parochial clergy. The most important and cogent arguments against the dean and chapter confiscations are passed over in silence in the bishop's charge. This, in reasoning, is ahvays the wisest and most convenient plan, and which all young bishops should imitate after the manner of this wary polemic. I object to the confiscation be- cause it will throw a great deal more of capital out of the parochicd church than it will bring into it, i am very sorry to come forward with so homely an argument, which shocks so many clergymen, and particularly those with the largest incomes, and the best bishoprics; bui 412 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. the truth is, the greater number of clergymen go into the church in order that thej^ may de- rive a comfortable income from the church. Such men intend to do their duty, and they do it; but the duty is, however, not the motive, but the adjunct. If I was writing in gala and parade, I would not hold this language; but we are in earnest, and on business; and as very rash and hasty changes are founded upon contrary suppositions of the pure disinterested- ness and perfect inattention to temporals in the cleigy, we must get down at once to the solid rock without heeding how we disturb the turf and the flowers above. The parochial clergy maintain their present decent appear- ance quite as much by their own capital as by the income they derive from the church. I will now state the income and capital of seven clergymen, taken promiscuously in this neighbourhood: — No. 1. Living 200/., capital 12,0007.; No. 2. Living 8007., capital 15,000.'.; No. 3. Living 500/., capital 12,000/. ; No. 4. Liv- ing 150/., capital 10,000/.; No. 5. Living 800/., capital 12,000/.; No. 6. Living 150/., capital 1000/.; No. 7. Living 600/., capital 16,000/. I have diligently inquired into the circumstances of seven Unitarian and Wesleyan ministers, and I question much if the whole seven could make up 6000/. between them; and the zeal of enthusiasm of this last division is certainly not inferior to that of the former. Now here is a capital of 72,000/. carried into the church, which the confiscations of the commissioners Avould force out of it, by taking away the good things which were tlie temptation to its intro- duction. So that, by the old plan of paying by lottery, instead of giving a proper compe- tence to each, not only do you obtain a paro- chial clergy upon much cheaper terms ; but, from the gambling propensities of human na- ture, and the irresistible tendency to hope that they shall gain the great prizes, you tempt men into your service who keep up their credit and yours, not by 5'our allowance, bat by their own capital; and to destroy this wise and well- working arrangement, a great number of bishops, marquises, and .John Russells, are huddled into a chamber, and, after proposing a scheme which will turn the English church into a collection of consecrated beggars, we are informed by the Bishop of London that it is an Jioly innnvation, I have no manner of doubt, that the imme- diate effect of passing the dean and chapter bill will be, that a great number of fathers and uncles, judging, and properly judging, that the church is a very altered and deterioriated pro- fession, will turn the industry and capital of their eUvcs into another channel. My friend, Robert Eden, says " this is of the earth earthy:" be it so; I cannot help it, I paint mankind as I find them, and am not answerable for their defects. When an argument, taken from real life, and the actual condition of the world, is brought among the shadowy discussions of ecclesiastics, it always occasions terror and dismay ; it is like J^iUeas stepping into Cha- ron's boat, which carried only ghosts and spirits. Gerauit sub pondere cymba Butilis, The whole plan of the Bishop of London is a ptochogony — a generation of beggars. He purposes, out of the spoils of the cathedral, to create a thousand livings, and to give to the thousand clergymen 130/. per annum each; a Christian bishop proposing, in cold blood, to create a thousand livings of 130/. per annum each ; — to call into existence a thousand of the most unhappy men on the face of the earth, — the sons of the poor, without hope, without the assistance of private fortune, chained to the soil, ashamed to live with their inferiors, unfit for the society of the better classes, and drag- ging about the English curse of poverty, with- out the smallest hope that they can ever shake it off. At present, such livings are filled by young men who have better hopes — who have reason to expect good property — who look for- ward to a college or a family living — who are the sons of men of some substance, and hope so to pass on to something better — who exist under the delusion of being hereafter deans and prebendaries — who are paid once by money, and three times by hope. Will the Bishop of London promise to the progeny of any of these thousand victims of the holy hi- novat'ion that, if they behave well, one of them shall have his butler's place; another take care of the cedars and hyssops of his garden ? Will he take their daughters for his nursery- maids ? and may some of the sons of these " labourers of the vineyard" hope one day to ride the leadei-^ from St. James's to Fulham ? Here is hope — here is room for ambition — a field for genius, and a ray of amelioratiori ! If these beautiful feelings of compassion are throbbing under the cassock of the bishop, he ought, in common justice to himself, to make them known. If it were a scheme for giving ease and in- dependence to any large bodies of clergymen, it might be listened to; but the revenues of the English church are such as to render this wholly and entirely out of the question. If you place a man in a village in the country, require that he should be of good manners and well educated ; that his habits and appearance should be above those of the farmers to whom he preaches, if he has nothing else to expect (as would be the case in a church of equal division) ; and if, upon his village income, he is to support a wife and educate a family, without any power of making himself known in a remote and solitary situation, such a per- son ought to receive 500/. per annum, and be furnished with a house. There are about 10,700 parishes in England and Wales, whose average income is 285/. per annum. Now, to provide these incumbents with decent houses, to keep them in repair, and to raise the income of the incumbent to 500/. per annum, would require (if all the incomes of the bishops, deans and chapters of separate dignitaries, of sine- cure rectories, were confiscated, and if the excess of all the livings in England above 500/. per annum were added to them,) a sura of two millions and a half in addition to the present income of the whole church; and no power on earth could persuade the present Parliament of Great Britain to grant a single shilling for that purpose. Now, is it possible WOEKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 413 to pay such a church upon any other principle than that of unequal division 1 The proposed pillage of the cathedral and college churches (omitting all consideration of the separate estate ofdignitaries) would amount, divided among all the benefices in England, to about 51. l'2s. 6^rf. per man : and this, which would not stop an hiatus in a cassock, and would drive out of the paro- chial church ten times as much as it brought into it, is the panacea for pauperism recom- mended by her majesty's commissioners. But if this plan were to drive men of capital out of the church, and to pauperize the English clergy, where would the harm be 1 Could not all the duties of religion be performed as well by poor clergymen as by men of good sub- stance ? My great and serious apprehension is, that such would not be the case. There would be the greatest risk that your clergy would be fanatical, and ignorant; that their habits would be low and mean, and that they would be despised. Then a picture is drawn of a clergyman with 130/. per annum, who combines all moral, physical, arid intellectua,l advantages, a learned man, dedicating himself intensely to the care of his parish — of charming manners and dig- nified deportment — six feet two inches high, beautifully proportioned, with a magnificent countenance, expressive of all the cardinal virtues and the Ten Commandments, — and it is asked, with an air of triumph, if such a man as this will fall into contempt on account of his poverty 1 But substitute for him an ave- rage, ordinary, uninteresting minister; obese, dumpy, neither ill-natured nor good-natured; neither learned nor ignorant, striding over the stiles to church, with a second-rate wife — dusty and deliquescent — and four parochial children, full of catechism and bread and butter; or let him be seen in one of those Shem-Ham-and- Japhet buggies — made on Mount Ararat soon after the subsidence of the waters, driving in the High Street of Edmonton ;* — among all his pe- cuniary, saponaceous, oleaginous parishioners. Can any man of common sense say that all these outward circumstances of the ministers of religion have no bearing on religion itself] I ask the Bishop of London, a man of honour and conscience as he is, if he thinks five years will elapse before a second attack is made upon deans and chapters] Does he think, after reformers have tasted the flesh of the church, that they will put up with any other diet ? Does he forget that deans and chapters are but mock turtle — that more delicious delicacies re- main behind 1 Five years hence he v>'ill at- tempt to make a stand, and he will be laughed at and eaten up. In this very charge the bishop accuses the lay commissioners of an- other intended attack upon the property of the church, contrary to the clearest and most ex- plicit stipulations (as he says) with the heads of the establishment. Much is said of the conduct of the commis- sioners, but that is of the least possible conse- quence. They may have acted for the best, * \ pnristi wliicli tlie Bishop of London has the greatest desire to divide into little Iiits ; l)Ut which appears (jiiite as fit to preserve its intecrity as St. James's, St. George's, or Kensington, all in tlie patronage of the bishop. according to the then existing circumstances; they may seriously have intended to do their duty to the contrary ; and I am far from saying or thinking they did not ; but without the least reference to the commissioners, the question is. Is it wise to pass this bill, and to justify such an open and tremendous sacrifice of church property] Does public opinion now call for any such measure ] is it a wise distri- bution of the funds of an ill-paid church] and will it not force more capital out of the paro- chial part of the church than it brings into it] If the bill is bad, it is surely not to pass out of compliment to the feelings of the Archbishop of Canterbury. If the project is hasty, it is not to be adopted to gratify the Bishop of Lon- don. The mischief to the church is surely a greater evil than the stultification of the com- missioners, &c. If the physician has pre- scribed hastily, is the medicine to be taken to the death or disease of the patient] If the judge has condemned improperly, is the crimi- nal to be hung, that the wisdom of the magis- trate may not be impugned]* But why are the commissioners to be stulti- fied by the rejection of the measure] The measure may have been very good when it was recommended, and very objectionable now. I thought, and many men thought, that the church was going to pieces — that the afl^ections of the common people were lost to the esta- blishment; and that large sacrifices must be instantly made, to avert the effects of this tem- porary madness ; but those days are gone by — and with them ought to be put aside mea- sures, which might have been wise in those daj's, but are wise no longer. After all, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London are good and placable men; and will ere long forget and forgive the successful eflbrts of their enemies in defeating this mis-ecclesiastic law. Suppose the commission were now begin- ning to sit for the first time, will any man living say that they would make such reports as they have made] and that they would seri- ously propose such a tremendous revolution in church property ] And if they would not, the inference is irresistible, that, to consult the feelings of two or three churchmen, we are complimenting away the safety of the church. Milton asked where the nymphs were when Lycidas perished ] I ask where the bishops are when the remorseless deep is closing over the head of their beloved establishment ]-(- You must have read an attack upon me by the Bishop of Gloucester, in the course of which he says that I have not been appointtd to my situation as canon of St. Paul's for my piety and learning, but because I am a scofler and a jester. Is not this rather strong for a bishop, and does it not appear to you, Mr. Archdeacon, as rather too close an imitation of that language which is used in the apostolic * "Ader the trouble the commissioners have taken (says Sir Roljert), after the oljloquy they have incurred," &e. &c. &c. t What is the use of pulilisliin? separate chnrjes, as the Bishops of Winchester, Oxford, and Rochester have done? Why do not the dissentient lii^hops form into a firm phalan.Y to save Ihe churdi and f.ing out the bin 1 2 TH 2 414 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. occupation of trafficking in fish ? Whether I have been appointed for my piety or not, must depend upon what this poor man means by piety. He means by that word, of course, a defence of all the tyrannical and oppressive abuses of the church which have been swept away within the last fifteen or twenty years of mj' life ; the corporation and test acts ; the penal laws against the Catholics ; the com- pulsory marriages of dissenters, and all those disabling and disqualifying laws which were the disgrace of our church, and which he has always looked up to as the consummation of human wisdom. If piety consisted in the de- fence of these — if it was impious to struggle for their abrogation, I have, indeed, led an ungodly life. There is nothing pompous gentlemen are so much afraid of as a little humour. It is like the objection of certain cephalic animalcule to the use of small-tooth combs, — " Finger and thumb, precipitate powder, or any thing else you please ; but for Heaven's sake no small- tooth combs !" After all, I believe, Bishop Monk has been the cause of much more laughter than ever I have been; I cannot ac- count for it, but I never see him enter a room without exciting a smile on every countenance within it. Dr. Monk is furious at my attacking the heads of the church ; but how can I help it? If the heads of the church are at the head of the mob; if I find the best of men doing that which has in all times drawn upon the worst enemies of the human race the bitterest curses of history, am I to stop because the motives of these men are pure, and their lives blame- less ? I wish I could find a blot in their lives, or a vice in their motives. The whole power of the motion is in the character of the movers: i'eeble friends, false friends, and foolish friends, all cease to look upon the measure, and say, Would such a measure have been recom- mended by such men as the prelates of Can- terbury and London, if it were not for the public advantage 1 And in this way, the great good of a religious establishment, nov/ ren- dered moderate and compatible with all men's liberties and rights, is sacrificed to names ; ond the church destroyed from good breeding and etiquette ! the real truth is, that Canter- bury and London have been frightened — they have overlooked the eflect of time and delay — they have been betrayed into a fearful and ruinous mistake. Painful as it is to teach men who ougnt, to teach us, the legislature ought, while there is yet time, to awake and read them this lesson. It is dangerous for a prelate to write; and whoever does it ought to be a very wise one. He has speculated why I v/as made a canon of St. Paul's. Suppose I were to follow his example, and, going through the bench of bishops, were to ask for what reason each man had been made a bishop ; suppose I were to go into the county of Gloucester, &c. &c. &c.!!!! 1 was afraid the bishop would attribute my promotion to the Edinburgh Review ; but upon the subject of promotion by reviews, he pre- serves an im.penetrabic silence. If my excel- lent patron Earl Grey had any reasons of this kind, he may at least be sure that the reviews commonly attributed to me were really written by me. I should have considered myself as the lowest of created beings to have disguised myself in another man's wit, and to have received a reward to which I was not en- titled.* I presume that what has drawn ;ipon me the indignation of this prelate, is the observations I have from time to time made on the conduct of the commissioners ; of which he positivel}' asserts himself to have been a member; but whether he was, or was not a member, I utterly acquit him of all possible blame, and of every species of imputation which may attach to the conduct of the commissioner. In using that word, I have always meant the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Lon- don, and Lord John Russell ; and have, honestly speaking, given no more heed to the Bishop of Gloucester than if he had been sitting in a commission of Bonzes in the court of Pekin. To read, however, his lordship a lesson of g:ood manners, I had prepared for him a chas- tisement which would have been echoed from the Sca^rave, who banqueteth in the castle, to the idiot who spitteth over the bridge at Glou- cester; but the following appeal struck my eye, and stopped my pen: — "Since that time, my inadequate qualifications have sustained an appalling diminution, by the afi^ection of my eyes, which have impaired my vision, and the progress of which threatens to consign me to darkness ; I beg the benefit of your prayers to the Father of all mercies, that he will restore me to better use of the visual organs, to be employed on his service ; or that he will in- wardly illumine the intellectual vision, with a particle of that divine ray, which his Holy Spirit can alone impart." It might have been better taste, perhaps, if a mitred invalid, in describing his bodily in- firmities before a church full of clergymen, whose prayers he asked, had been a little more sparing in the abuse of his enemies; but a good deal must be forgiven to the sick. I wish that every Christian was as well aware as this poor bishop of what he needed from divine assistance; and in the supplication for the restoration of his sight and the improve- ment of his understanding, I must fervently and cordially join. I was much amused with what old Her- mannf says of the Bishop of London's ^schy- lus. " We find," he says, "a great arbdrariness of proceeding, and inuch boldness of innovation, guided by no svre principle ;" here it is : (jiialis at> incepto. He begins with jEschylus, and ends with the Church of England ; begins with pro- fane, and ends with holy innovations — scratch- * I understand that the bishop bursts into fears every now and then, and says that T have set him the name of Simon, and that all the bishops now call him finion. Simon of Gloucester, however, after all, is a real writer, and how could I know that Dr. Monk's name was Si- mon'? When tutor in Lord Corrington's family, he was called by the endearinc, though somewhat unmnjeslic name of Dirk ; and if I had thought about his name at all. I shotild have caPed him Richard of Gloucester + Ueber die behandlunsr der Griechischen Dichler bei den Efielundern, Von Gottfried Hermann. Wieniar Jahrbucher, vol. liv. 1831. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 415 ing out old readings which everj^ commentator had sanctioned, abolishing ecclesiastical dig- nities which every reformer had spared; thrusting an anapest into a verse which will not bear it; and intruding a canon into a cathedral which does not want it; and this is the prelate by whom the proposed reform of the church has been principally planned, and to whose practical wisdom the legislature is called upon to defer. The Bishop of London is a man of very great ability, humane, pla- cable, generous, munificent, very agreeable, hut not to be trusted with great interests where calmness and judgment are required; unfor- tunately, my old and amiable school-fellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has melted away before him, and sacrificed that wisdom on which we all founded our security. Much writing and much talking are very tiresome ; and, above all, they are so to men who, living in the world, arrive at those rapid and just conclusions which are only to be made by living in the world. This bill passed, every man of sense acquainted with human affairs must see, that, as far as the church is concerned, the thing is at an end. From Lord John Russell, the present improver of the church, we shall descend to Hume, from Hume to Roebuck, and after Roebuck we shall re- ceive our last improvements from Dr. Wade : plunder will follow after plunder, degradation after degradation. The church is gone, and what remains is not life, but sickness, spasm, and struggle. Whatever happens, I am not to blame; I have fought my fight. — Farewell. Sydney Smith. 416 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDINEY SMITH. LETTER CHARACTER OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. My VT.kn Sir, Yiiu ask for some of your late father's letters : I am sorry to say I have none to send you. Upon principle, I keep no letters except those on business. I have not a single letter from him, nor from any human being in my posses- sion. The impression which the great talents and amiable qualities of your father made upon me, will remain as long as I remain. When I turn from living spectacles of stupidit}-, ignorance, and malice, and wish to think better of the world — I remember my great and benevolent friend Mackintosh. The first points of character which every body noticed in him were the total absence of envy, hatred, malice, and unclxiritableness. He could not hate — he did not know how to set about it. The gall-bladder was omitted in his composition, and if he could have been per- suaded into any scheme of revenging himself upon an enemy, I am sure (unless he had been narrowly watched) it would have ended in pro- claiming the good qualities, and promoting the interests of his adversary. Truth had so much more power over him than anger, that (what- ever might be the provocation) he could not misrepresent, nor exaggerate. In questions of passion and party, he stated facts as they were, and reasoned fairly upon them, placing his happiness and pride in equitable discrimi- nation. Very fond of talking, he heard patient- ly, and, not averse to intellectual display, did not forget that others might have the same in- j clination as himself. | Till subdued by age and illness, his conver- 1 sation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with. His memory (vast and prodigious as it was) he so managed as to make it a source of pleasure and instruc- tion, rather than that dreadful engine of colloqui- al oppression into which it is sometimes erected. He remembered things, words, thoughts, dates, and every thing that was wanted. His lan- guage was beautiful, and might have gone from the fireside to the press; but though his ideas M'ere always clothed in beautiful language, the clothes were sometimes too big for the body, and common thoughts were dressed in better and larger apparel than they deserved. He ceriHinlv had this fault, but it was not one of frequent commission. He had a method of putting things so mildly and interrogatively, that he always procured the readiest reception for his opinions. Ad- dicted to reasoning in the company of able men, he had two valuable habits, which are rarely met with in great reasoners — he never broke in upon his opponent, and always avoided strong and vehement assertions. His reasoning com- monly carried conviction, for he was cautious in his positions, accurate in his deductions, aimed only at truih. The ingenious side was commonly taken by some one else ; the inter- ests of truth were protected by Mackintosh. His good-nature and candour betrayed him into a morbid habit of eulogizing every body — • a habit which destroyed the value of commen- dations, that might have been to the young (if more sparingly distributed) a reward of virtue and a motive to exertion. Occasionally he took fits of an opposite nature; and I have seen him abating and dissolving pompous gentlemen with the most successful ridicule. He certainly had a good deal of humour; and I remember, amongst many other examples of it, that he kept us for two or three hours in a roar of laughter, at a dinner-party at his own house, playing upon the simplicity of a Scotch cousin, who had mistaken me for my gallant synonym, the hero of Acre. I never saw a more perfect comedy, nor heard ridicule so long and so well sustained. Sir James had not only humour, but he had wit also ; at least, new and sudden relations of ideas flashed across his mind in reasoning, and produced the same efl^ect as wit, and would have been called wit, if a sense of their utility and importance had not often over- powered the admiration of novelty, and entitled them to the higher name of wisdom. Then the great thoughts and fine sayings of the great men of all ages were intimately present to his recollection, and came out dazzling and delight- ing in his conversation. Justness of thinking was a strong feature in his understanding; he had a head in which nonsense and error could hardly vegelate: it was a soil utterly unfit for them. If his display in conversation had been only in maintaining splendid paradoxes, he would soon have wearied those he lived with ; but no man could live long and intimately with your father without finding that he was gaining upon doubt, correcting error, enlarging the boundaries, and strengthening the foundations of truth. It was worth while to listen to a master, whom not himself, but nature had ap- pointed to the office, and who taught what it was not easy to forget, by methods which it was not easy to resist. Curran, the master of the rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, "You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red^ape, and tie up your bills and papers." This was the fault or misfortune of your excel- lent father; he nev^er knew the use of red tape, WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 417 and was utterly unfit for the common business of life. That a guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter for a quan- tity of cloth, he was well aware; but the accu- rate number of the baser coin, or the just mea- surement of the manufactured article, to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of the an- cient and melancholy struggle of genius, with the difficulties of existence. I have often heard Sir James Mackintosh say of himself, that he was born to be the pro- fessor of an university. Happy, and for ages celebrated, would have been the university, which had so possessed him, but in this view he was unjust to himself. Still, however, his style of speaking in Parliament was certainly more academic than forensic; it was not sufficiently short and quick for a busy and impatient as- sembly. He often spoke over the heads of his hearers — was loo much in advance of feeling for their sympathies, and of reasoning for their comprehension. He began too much at the beginning, and went too much to the right and left of the question, making rather a lecture or a dissertation than a speech. His voice was bad and nasal; and though nobody was in re- ality more sincere, he seemed not only not to feel, but hardly to think what he was saying. Your father had very little science, and no great knowledge of physics. His notions of his early pursuit — the study of medicine — were imperfect and antiquated, and he was but an indifferent classical scholar, for the Greek lan- guage has never crossed the Tweed in any great force. In history the whole stream of time was open before him ; he had looked into every moral and metaphysical question from Plato to Paley, and had waded through morasses of in- ternational law, where the step of no living man could follow him. Political economy is of modern invention; I am old enough to recol- lect when every judge on the bench (Lord El- don and Serjeant Runnington excepted,) in their charges to the grand juries, attributed the then high prices of corn to the scandalous combina- tion of farmers. Sir James knew what is com- monly agreed upon by political economists, without taking much pleasure in the science, and with a disposition to blame the very specu- lative and metaphysical disquisitions into which it has wandered, but with a full conviction also (which many able men of his standing are without) of the immense importance of the sci- ence to the welfare of society. I think (though, perhaps, some of his friends may not agree with me in this opinion) that he was an acute judge of character, and of the good as well as evil in character. He was, in truth, with the appearance of distraction and of one occupied with other things, a very minute observer of human nature; audi have seen him analyze, to the very springs of the heart, men who had not the most distant suspicion of the sharpness of his vision, nor a belief that he could read any thing but books. Sufficient justice has not been done to his po- litical integrity. He was not rich, was from the northern part of the island, possessed great fa- cility of temper, and had therefore every excuse 53 for political lubricity, which that vice (more common in those days than I hope it will ever be again) could possibly require. Invited by every party, upon his arrival from India, he re- mained steadf^ast to his old friends the whigs, whose admission to office, or enjoyment of po- litical power, would at that period have been considered as the most visionary of all human speculations; yet, during his lifetime, every body seemed more ready to have forgiven the ter- giversation of which he was not guilty, than to admire the actual firmness he had displayed. With all this he never made the slightest efforts to advance his interests with his political friends, never mentioned his sacrifices nor his services, expressed no resentment at neglect, and was therefore pushed into such situations as fall to the lot of the feeble and delicate in a crowd. A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was his real and unalfected philanthropy. He did not make the improvement of the great mass of mankind an engine of popularity, and a step- ping stone to power, but he had a genuine love of human happiness. Whatever might assuage the angry passions, and arrange the conflicting interests of nations; -whatever could promote peace, increase knowledge, extend commerce, diminish crime, and encourage industry; what- ever could exalt human character, and could enlarge human understanding ; struck at once at the heart of your father, and roused all his faculties. I have seen him in a moment when this spirit came upon him — like a great ship of war — cut his cable, and spread his enormous canvass, and launch into a wide sea of reason- ing eloquence. But though easily warmed by great schemes of benevolence and human improvement, his manner was cold to individuals. There was an apparent want of heartiness and cordiality. It seemed as if he had more affection for the species than for the ingredients of which it was composed. He was in reality very hospitable, and so fond of company, that he was hardly happy out of it; but he did not receive his friends with that honest joy which warms more than dinner or wine. This is the good and evil of your father which comes uppermost. If he had been arro- gant and grasping; if he had been faithless and false; if he had always been eager to strangle infant genius in its cradle ; always ready to be- tray and to blacken those with whom he sat at meat; he would have passed many men, who, in the course of his long life, have passed him ; but, without selling his soul for pottage, if he only had had a little more prudence for the pro- motion of his interests, and more of angry pas- sions for the punishment of those detractors who envied his fame and presumed upon his sweetness; if he had been more aware of his powers, and of that space which nature intended him to occup)' : he would have acted a greas part in life, and remained a character in his- tory. As it is, he has left, in many of the bes; men in England, and of the continent, the deep- est admiration of his talents, his wisdom, his knowledge and his benevolence. I remain, my dear Sir, Very truly vours, SYDNEY SMITIi. 418 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. A LETTER LORD JOHN RUSSELL. Mr Lord, Though, upon the whole, your residence and plurality bill is a good bill, and although I think it (thanks to your kind attention to the sugges- tions of various clergymen) a much belter bill than that of last year, ihere are still some important defects in it, which deserve amend- ment and correction. Page 13, Sec. 31. — It would seem, from this section, that the repairs are to depend upon the will of the bishop, and not upon the present law of the land. A bishop enters into the house of a non-resident clergyman, and finds it neither papered, nor painted — he orders these decora- tive repairs. In the mean time the court of Queen's Bench have decided that substantial repairs, only, and not decorative repairs, can be recovered by an incumbent from his prede- cessor ; the following words should be added ; — • Provided, always, that no other repairs shall be required by the bishop, than such as any incum- bent could recover as dilapidations from the person preceding him in the said benefice. Page 19, Sec. 42. — Incumbents are to answer questions transmitted by the bishop, and these are to be countersigned by the rural dean. — This is another vexation to the numerous cata- logue of vexations entailed upon the rural clergy. Is every man to go before the rural dean, twenty or thirty miles off, perhaps ] Is he to go through a cross examination b}' the rural dean, as to the minute circumstance of twenty or thirty questions, to enter into reason- ings upon them, and to produce witnesses ? This is a most degrading and vexatious enact- ment, if all this is intended; but if the rural dean is to believe the assertion of every clerg}'- man upon his word only, why may not the bishop do so : and what is gained by the enact- ment] But the commissioners seem to have been a set of noblemen and gentlemen, who met once a-week, to see how they could harass the working clergy, and how they could make every thing smooth and pleasing to the bishops. The clause for holding two livings, at the in- terval of ten miles, is perfectly ridiculous. If you are to abolish pluralities, do it at once, or leave a man only in possession of such bene- fices as he can serve himself; and then the dis- tance should be two miles, and not a yard more. But common justice requires that there should be exceptions to your rules. For two hundred years pluralities within certain distan- ces have been allowed ; acting under the faith of these laws, livings have been bought and be- queathed to clergymen, tenable with other pre- ferments in their possession — upon faith in these laws, men and women have married — educated their children — laid down a certain plan of life, and adopted a certain rate of ex- pense, and ruin comes upon them in a moment from this thoughtless inattention to existing interests. I know a man whose father dedicated all he had saved in a long life of retail trade, to purchase the next presentation to a living of 800/. per annum, tenable under the old law, with another of 500/. given to the son by his college. The whole of this clergyman's life and pros- pects (and he has an immense family of chil- dren) are cut to pieces by your bill. It is a wrong thing, you will say, to hold two livings ; I think it is, but why did not you, the legisla- ture, find this out fifty years ago 1 Why did you entice this man into the purchase of plu- ralities, by a venerable laxity of two hundred years, and then clap him into gaol from the new virtue of yesterday 1 Such reforms as these make wisdom and carefulness useless, and turn human life into a mere scramble. Page 32, Sec. 69.— There are the strongest possible objections to this clause. The living is 410/. per annum, the population above 2000 — perhaps, as is often the case, one third of them dissenters. A clergyman does his duty in the most exemplary manner — dedicates his life to his parish, from whence he derives his whole support — there is not the shadow of a complaint against him. The bishop has, by this clause, acquired a right of thrusting a curate upon the rector at the expense of a fifth part of his whole fortune. This, I think, an abomi. nable piece of tyranny; and it will turn out to be an inexhaustible source of favouritism and malice. In the bishop's bill I have in vain looked for a similar clause, — "That if the population is above 800,000, and the income amounts to 10,000/., an assistant to the bishop may be appointed by the commissioners, and a salary of 2000/. per annum allotted to him." This would have been honest and manly, to have begun with the great people. But mere tyranny and episcopal malice are not the only evils of this clause, nor the greatest evils. Everybody knows the extreme activity of that part of the English church which is denominated evangelical, and their industry in bringing over every body to their habits of thinking and acting; now see what will hap- pen from the following clause: " And when- ever the population of any benefice shall amount to 2000, and it shall be made appear to the satisfaction of the bishop, that a stipend can be provided for the payment of a curate, by voluntary contribution or otherwise, without charge to the incumbent, it shall be lawful for the bishop to require the spiritual person, hold- ing the same, to nominate a fit person to be licensed as such curate, whatever may be the WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 419 annual value of such benefice ; and if, in either of the said cases, a fit person shall not be nomi- nated to the bishop within two months after his requisition for that purpose shall have been de- livered to the incumbent, it shall be lawful for the bishop to appoint and license a curate." A clause worthy of the Vicar of Wrexhill himself. Now what will happen ] The bishop is a Calvi- nistic bishop ; wife, children, chaplains, Calvin- ized up to the teeth. The serious people of the parish meet together, and agree to give an hun- dred pounds per annum, if Mr. Wilkinson is ap- pointed. It requires very little knowledge of human nature to predict, that at the expiration of two months Mr. Wilkinson will be the man ; and then the whole parish is torn to pieces with jealousies, quarrels, and comparisons between the rector and the delightful Wilkinson. The same scene is acted (muiatis mutandis), where the bishop sets his face against Calvinistic prin- ciples. The absurdity consists in suffering the appointment of a curate by private subscrip- tion ; iu other w^ords, one clergyman in a parish by nomination, the other by election; and, in this way, religion is brought into contempt by their jealousies and quarrels. Little do you know, my dear lord, of the state of that country you govern, if you suppose this will not happen. I have now a diocese in my eye, where, I am posi- tively certain, that in less than six months after the passing of this bill, there will not be a sin- gle parish of 2000 persons, in which you will not find a subscription curate, of evangelical habits, canting and crowing over the regular and established clergyman of the parish. In the draft of the fifth report, upon which, I presume your dean and chapter bill is to be founded, I see the rights of patronage are to be conceded to present incumbents. This is very high and honourable conduct in the commis- sioners, and such as deserves the warmest thanks of the clergy ; it is always difficult to re- tract, much more dilhcult to retract to inferiors; but it is very virtuous to do so when there can be no motive for it but a love of justice. Your whole bill is to be one of retrenchment, and amputation; why add fresh canons to St. Paul's and Lincoln ! Nobody w^anls them ; the cathedrals go on perfectly well without them; they take away each of them 1500/. or 1600/. per annum, from the fund for the improvement of small livings ; they give, to be sure, a consi- derable piece of patronage to the Bishops of London and Lincoln, who are commissioners, and they preserve a childish and pattern-like uniformity in cathedrals. But the first of these motives is corrupt, and the last silly : and, there- fore, they cannot be your motives. You cannot plead the recommendation of the commission for the creation of these new canons, for you have flung the commission overboard ; and the reformers of the church are no longer archbishops and bishops, but Lord John Russell — not those persons to whom the crown has entrusted the task, but Lord Martin Luther, bred and born in our own island, and nourished by the Woburn spoils and confisca- tions of the church. The church is not with- out friends, but those friends have said there can be no danger of measures which are sanc- tioned by the highest prelates of the church ; but 3'ou have chased away the bearers, and taken the ark into your own possession. Do not forget, however, if you have deviated from the plan of your brother commissioners, that you have given to them a perfect right to op- pose you. This unfair and wasteful creation of new canons, produces a great and scandalous injus- tice to St. Paul's and Lincoln, in the distribu- tion of their patronage. The old members of all other cathedrals will enjoy the benefit of survivorship, till they subside into the magic number of four; up to that point, then, every fresh death will add to the patronage of the re- maining old members ; but in the churches of Lincoln and St. Paul's, the old members will immediately have one-fifth of their patronage taken away by the creation of a fifth canon to share it. This injustice and. partiality are so monstrous, that the two prelates in question will see that it is necessary to their own cha- racter to apply a remedy. Nothing is more easy than to do so. Let the bishop's canon have no share in the distribution of the patronage, til' after the death of all those who were residentia- ries at the passing of the bill. Your dean and chapter bill will, I am afraid, cut down the great preferments of the church too much. Take for your fund only the non-resident prebends, and leave the number of resident prebends as they are, annexing some of them to poor livings with large populations. I am sure this is all (besides the abolition of plurali- ties), which ought to be done, and all that would be done, if the commissioners were to begin tie novo from this period, when bishops have reco- vered from their fright, dissenters shrunk into their just dimensions, and the foolish and exaggerated expectations from reform have vanished away. The great prizes of the church induce men to carry, and fathers and uncles to send into the church considerable capitals, and in this way, enable the clergy to associate with gentlemen, and to command that respect which, in all countries, and above all in this, depends so much on appearances. Your bill, abolishing pluralities, and taking away, at the same time. so many dignities, leaves the Church of Eng- land so destitute of great prizes, that, as far as mere emolument has any influence, it will be better to dispense cheese and butter in small quantities to the public, than to enter into the church. There are admirable men, whose honest and beautiful zeal carries them into the church without a moment's thought of its emoluments. Such a man, combining the manners of a gen- tleman with the acquirements of a scholar, and the zeal of an apostle, would overawe mer- cantile grossness, and extort respect from inso- lent opulence; but I am talking of average vicars, mixed natures, and eleven thousand parish priests. If you divide the great emolu- ments of the church into little portions, suth as butlers and head game-keepers receive, you very soon degrade materially the style andcha racter of the English clergy. If I were dictator of the church, as Lord Durham is to be of Canada, I would preserve the resident, and abo- lish, for the purposes of a fund, the non-resident 420 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. prebends. This is tlie principal and most im- portant alteration in your dean and chapter bill, which it is not too late to make, and for which every temperate and rational man ought to strive. You will, of course, consider me as a defender of abuses. I have all my life been just the con- trary, and I remember, with pleasure, thirty years ago, old Lord Stowell saying to me, " Mr. Smith, you would have been a much richer man if you had joined us." I like, my dear lord, the road you are travelling, but I don't like the pace you are driving ; too similar to that of the son ofNimshi. I always feel inclined to cry out, Gently, John, gently down hill. Put on the drag. We shall be over if you go so quick — you'll do us a mischief. Remember, as a philosopher, that the Church of England now is a very ditferent institution from what it was twenty years ago. It then op- pressed every sect ; they are now all free — all exempt from the tyranny of an establishment; and the only real cause of complaint for dissen- ters is, that they can no longer find a grievance and enjoy the distinction of being persecuted. I have always tried to reduce them to this state, and I do not pity them. You have expressed your intention of going beyond the fifth report, and limiting deans to 2000/. per annum, and canons to 1000/. This is, I presume, in conformity with the treatment of the bishops, who are limited to from 4500/., to 5000/. per annum; and it wears a fine appear- ance of impartial justice ; but for the dean and canon the sum is a maximum — in bishops it is a maximum and minimum too; a bishop cannot have less than 4500/., a canon may have as little as the poverty of his church dooms him to, but he cannot have more than 1 000/. ; but there may be canonries of 500/., or 600/., or 700/. per annum, and a few only of 1000/.; many deaneries of from 1000/. to 1500/. per annum; and only a very few above 2000/. If you mean to make the world believe that you are legislating for men without votes, as benevolently as you did for those who have votes in Parliament, you should make tip the allowance of every canon to 1000/., and every dean to 2000/. per annum, or leave them to the present lottery of blanks and prizes. Besides, too, do I not recollect some remarkable instances, in your bishop's act, of deviation from this rigid standard of episcopal wealth 1 Are not the archbishops to have the enormous sums of 15,000/. and 12,000/. per an- num ? is not the Bishop of London to have 10,000/. per annum 1 Are not all these three prelates commissioners 1 And is not the rea- son alleged for the enormous income of the Bishop of Tjondon, that everything is so expen- sive in the metropolis 1 Do not the deans of St. Paul's and Westminster, then, live in Lon- don alsol And can the Bishop of London sit in his place iai the House of Lords, and not urge for those dignitaries the same reasons which were so successful in securing such ample emoluments for his own seel My old friend, the Bishop of Durham, has 8000/. per annum se- cured to him. I am heartily glad of it ; what pos- sible reason can there be for giving him more than other bishops, and not giving the Dean of Durham more than other deans 1 that is, of leav- ing to him one half of his present income. It is impossible this can be a clap-trap for Joseph Hume, or a set-off against the disasters of Cana- da ; you are too honest and elevated for this. I cannot comprehend what is meant by such gross partiality and injustice. Why are the economists' so eagerly in the field ] The public do not contribute one half- penny to the support of deans and chapters ; it is not proposed by any one to confiscate the revenues of the church ; the whole is a question of distribution, in what way the revenues of the church can be best administered for the public good. But whatever may bethe respective shares of Peter or Paul, the public will never be richer or poorer by one shilling. When your dean and chapter bill is printed, I shall take the liberty of addressing you again. The clergy naturally look with the greatest anxiety to these two bills; they think that you will avail yourself of this opportunity to punish them for their opposition to your government in the last elections. They are afraid that your object is not so much to do good as to gratify your vanity, by obtaining the character of a great reformer, and that (now the bishops are provided for) you will varnish over your politi- cal mistakes by increased severity against the church, or, apparently struggling for their good, see with inexpressible delight the clergy deli- vered over to the tender mercies of the radicals. These are the terrors of the clergy. I judge you with a very different judgment. You are a re- ligious man, not unfriendly to the church ; and but for that most foolish and fatal error of the church rates (into which you were led by a man who knows no more of England than of Meso- potamia), I believe you would have gone on well with the church to the last. There is a genius in action, as well as diction ; and be- cause you see political evils clearly, and attack them bravely, and cure them wisely, you are a man of real genius, and are most deservedly looked up to as the leader of the whig party in this kingdom. I wish, I must confess, you were rather less afraid of Joseph and Daniel; but God has given you a fine understanding, and a fine character ; and I have so much con- fidence in your spirit and honour, that I am sure you would rather abandon your bills altogether, than suffer the enemies of the church to convert them into an engine of spoil and oppression. I am, &c. SYDNEY SMITH. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 481 SERMON DUTIES OF THE QUEEN. Daniel, iv. 31. ■ OH KING, THY KINGDOM IS DEPARTED FROM THEE. I DO not think I am getting out of tVie fair line of duly of a minister of the gospel, if, at the beginning of a new reign, I take a short review of the moral and religious state of the country ; and to point out what those topics are which deserve the most serious considera- tion of a wise and a Christian people. The death of a king is always an awful les- son to mankind; and it produces a more solemn pause, and creates more profound re- flection than the best lessons of the best teach- ers. From the throne to the tomb — wealth, splen- dour, flattery, all gone! The look of favour — the voice of power, no more; — the deserted palace — the wretched monarch on his funeral bier — the mourners ready — the dismal march of death prepared. Who are we, and what are •we ■? and for what has God made us 1 and why are we doomed to this frail and unquiet exist- ence 1 Who does not feel all this 1 in whose heart does it not provoke appeal to and depend- ence on God 1 before whose eyes does it not bring the folly and nothingness of all things human 1 But a good king must not go to his grave •without that reverence from the people which his virtues deserved. And I will state to you what those virtues were, state it to you honestly and fairly; for I should heartily despise my- : self, if from this chair of truth I would utter ' one word of panegyric of the great men of the t earth, which I could not aver before the throne s; of God. The late monarch, whose loss we have to deplore, was sincere and honest in his political • relations ; he put his trust really Avhere he put his trust ostensibly — and did not attempt to un- dermine, by secret means, those to whom he trusted publicly the conduct of affairs ; and I must beg to remind you that no vice and no virtue are indifferent in a monarch; human beings are very imitative ; there is a fashion in the higher qualities of our minds, as there is in the lesse;- considerations of life. It is by no means indifferent to the morals of the people at large, whether a tricking perfidious king is placed on the throne of these realms, or whether the sceptre is swayed by one of plain and manly character, walking ever in a straight line, on the firm ground of truth, under the searching eye of God. The late king was of a sweet and Christian disposition ; he did not treasure up little ani- mosities, and indulge in vindictive feelings; he had no enemies but the enemies of the coun- try ; he did not make the memory of a king a fountain of wrath; the feelings of the indivi- dual (where they required any control) were in perfect subjection to the just conception he had formed of his high duties ; and every one near him found it was a government of principle, and not of temper; not of caprice, not of ma- lice couching in high places, and watching an opportunity of springing on its victim. Our late monarch had the good nature of Christianity; he loved the happiness of all the individuals about him, and never lost an op- portunity of promoting it ; and where the heart is good, and the mind active, and the means ample, this makes a luminous and beautiful life, which gladdens the nations, and leads them, and turns men to the exercise of virtue, and the great work of salvation. We may honestly say of our late sovereign that he loved his country, and was sensibly alive to its glory and its happiness. When he entered into his palaces he did not say, "All this is my birthright; I am entitled to it — it is my due — how can I gain more splendour? how can I increase all the pleasures of the senses V but he looked upon it all as a memorial that he was to repay by example, by attention, and by watchfulness over the public interests, the affectionate and lavish expenditure of his sub- jects ; and this was not a decision of reason, but a feeling, which hurried him away. When- ever it was pointed out to him that England could be made more rich, or more happy, or rise higher in the scale of nations, or be better guided in ihe straight path of the Christian faith, on all such occasions he rose above him- self; there was a warmth, and a truth, and an honesty, which it was impossible to mistake; the gates of his heart were flung open, and that heart throbbed and beat for the land which his ancestors had rescued from slavery, and go- verned with justice : — but he is gone — and let fools praise conqueroi's, and say the great ISa- poleon pulled down this kingdom and destroyed that army, we will thank God tor a king who has derived his quiet glory from the peace of his realm, and who has founded his own hap- piness upon the happiness of his people. 2N 423 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. But the world passes on, and a new order of things arises. liet lis take a short view of those duties which devolve upon the young queen, whom Providence has placed over us — what ideas she ought to form of her duties — and on what points she should endeavour to place the glories of her reign. First and foremost, I think, the new queen should bend her mind to the very serious con- sideration of educating the people. Of the importance of this, I think no reasonable doubt can exist; it does not, in its effects, keep pace Avith the exaggerated expectations of its inju- dicious advocates, but it presents the best chance of national improvement. Reading and writing are mere increase of power. They may be turned, I admit, to a good, or a bad purpose; but for several years of his life the child is in your hands, and you may give to that power what bias you please : thou shalt not kill — thou shalt not steal — thou shalt not bear false witness; — by how many fables, by how much poetry, by how many beautiful aids of imagination, may not the fine morality of the Sacred Scriptures be engraven on the minds of the young"? I believe the arm of the assassin may be often stayed by the les- sons of his early life. When I see the village school, and the tattered scholars, and the aged master or mistress teaching the mechanical art of reading or writing, and thinking that they are teaching that alone, I feel that the aged in- structor is protecting life, insuring property, fencing the altar, guarding the throne, giving space and liberty to all the fine powers of man, and lifting him up to his own place in the order of creation. There are, I am sorry to sa}-, many countries in Europe, which have taken the lead of Eng- land in the great business of education, and it is a thoroughly commendable, and legitimate object of ambition in a sovereign to overtake them. The names too, of malefactors, and the nature of their crimes are subjected to the sove- reign ; — how is it jiossible that a sovereign, with the fine feelings of youth, and with all the gentle- ness of her sex, should not ask herself, whether the human being whom she dooms to death, or at least does not rescue from death, has been properly warned in early youth of the horrors of that crime for which his life is forfeited ? "Did he ever receive any education at all? — — did a father and mother watch over him ? — was he brought to places of worship 1 — was the Word of God explained to him ? — was the book of knowledge opened to him 1 — Or am I, the fountain of mercy, the nursing-mother of my people, to send a forsaken wretch from the streets to the scaffold, and to prevent, by un- principled cruelty, the evils of unprincipled ne- glect!" Many of the objections found against the general education of the people are utterly un- tenable ; where all are educated, education can- not be a source of distinction and a subject for pride. The great source of labour is want; and as long as the necessities of life call for labour — labour is sure to be supplied. All these fears are foolish and imaginary ; the great use and the great importance of education pro- perly conducted are, that it creates a great bias in favour of virtue and religion, at a period of life when the mind is open to all the impres- sions which superior wisdom may choose to affix upon it ; the sum and mass of these ten- dencies and inclinations make a good and vir- tuous people, and draw down upon us the bless- ing and protection of Almighty God. A second great object which I hope will be impressed upon the mind of this royal lady is, a rooted horror of war — an earnest and pas- sionate desire to keep her people in a state of profound peace. The greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace — all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war — every principle of Christian charity trampled upon — human labour destroyed — human industry ex- tinguished; — you see the son and the husband and the brother dying miserably in distant lands — you see the waste of human aflfections — you see the breaking of human hearts — yon hear the shrieks of widows and children after the battle — and you walk over the mangled bodies of the wounded calling for death. I would say to that royal child, worship God, by loving peace — it is not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or raiment — / can do that; that is the charity of the humble, and the un- known — widen you your heart for the more ex- panded miseries of mankind — pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn away from their families — pity your poor subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country and their young queen — pity the stupid, frantic folly of human beings who are always ready to tear each other to pieces, and to deluge the earth with each other's blood ; this is your extended humanity — and this the great field of your com- passion. Extinguish in your heart the fiendish love of military glory, from which your sex does not necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, "I have made few orphans in my reign — I have made hvf widows — my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest industry: this has been the Christianity of my throne, and this the Gospel of my sceptre ; in this way I have strove to worship my Redeemer and my Judge." I would add (if any addition were wanted as a part of the lesson to youthful royalty), the utter folly of all wars of ambition, where the object sought for — if attained at all — is com- monly attained at manifold its real value, and often wrested, after short enjoyment, from its possessor, by the combined indignation and just vengeance of the other nations of the world. It is all misery, and folly, and impiety, and cru- elty. The atrocities, and horrors, and disgusts of war, have never been half enough insisted upon by the teachers of the people; but the worst of evils and the greatest of follies, have been varnished over with specious names, and WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 423 the gigantic robbers and murderers of the world have been hoiden up, for their imitation, to the weak eyes of youth. May honest counsellors keep this poison from the mind of the young queen. May she love what God bids, and do ■what makes men happy! I hope the queen willlove the national church, and protect it ; but it must be inapressed upon her mind, that every sect of Christians have as perfect a right to, the free exercise of their wor- ship as the church itself — that there must be no invasion of the privileges of other sects, and no contemptuous disrespect of their feelings — that the altar is the very ark and citadel of freedom. Some persons represent old age as miserable, because it brings with it the pains and infirmi- ties of the body ; but what gratification to the mind may not old age bring with it in this country of wise and rational improvement ] I have lived to see the immense improvements of the Church of England; all its powers of persecution destroyed— its monopoly of civil offices expunged from the book of the law, and ail its unjust and exclusive immunities leveled to the ground. The Church of England is now a rational object of love and admiration — it is perfectly compatible with civil freedom — it is an institution for worshipping God, and not a cover for gratifying secular insolence, and minister- ing to secular ambition. It will be the duty of those to whom the sacred trust of instructing our youthful queen is entrusted, to lead her at- tention to these great improvements in our reli- gious establishments ; and to show to her how possible, and how wise it is, to render the solid advantages of a national church compatible with the civil rights of those who cannot assent to its doctrines. Then again, our youthful ruler must be very slow to believe all the exaggerated and violent abuse v^hich religious sects indulge in against each other. She will find, for instance, that the Catholics, the great object of our horror and aversion, have (mistaken as they are) a great deal more to say in defence of their tenets than those imagine who indulge more in the luxury of invective than in the labour of inquiry — she will find in that sect, men as enlightened, talents as splendid, and probity as firm, as in our own church ; and she will soon learn to ap- preciate, at its just value, that exaggerated hatred of sects which paints the Catholic faith (the religion of two-thirds of Europe) as utterly incompatible with the safety, peace and order of the world. It will be a sad vexation to all loyal hearts and to all rationally pious minds, if our sove- reign should fall into the common error of mis- taken fanaticism for religion: and in this way fling an air of discredit upon real devotion. It is, I am afraid, unquestionably the fault of the age; her youth and her sex do not make it more improbable, and the warmest efforts of that description of persons will not be wanting to gain over a convert so illustrious, and so important. Should this take place, the conse- quences will be serious and distressing — the land will be inundated with hypocrisy — absurd- ity will be heaped upon absurdity — there will be a race of folly and extravagance for royal lavour, and he who is farthest removed from reason will make the nearest approach to dis- tinction ; and then follow the usual conse- quences ; a weariness and disgust of religion itself, and the foundation laid for an age of im- piety and infidelity. Those, then, to whom these matters are delegated, will watch care- fully over every sign of this excess, and guard from the mischievous intemperance of enthu- siasm those feelings and that understanding, the healthy state of which bears so strongly and intimately upon the happiness of a whole people. Though I deprecate the bad effects of fanati- cism, I earnestly pray that our young sovereign may evince herself to be a person of deep re- ligious feeling : what other cure has she for all the arrogance and vanity which her exalted position must engender 1 for all the flattery and falsehood with which she must be surrounded 1 for all the soul-corrupting homage with which she is met at every moment of her existence 1 what other cure than to cast herself down in darkness and solitude before God — to say that she is dust and ashes — and to call down the pity of the Almighty upon her difficult and dangerous life] This is the antidote of kings against the slavery and the baseness which surround them — they should think often of death — and the foll}'^ and nothingness of the world, and they should humble their souls be- fore the Master of masters, and the King of kings ; praying to Heaven for wisdom and calm reflection, and for that spirit of Christian gentleness which exalts command into an em- pire of justice, and turns obedience into a ser- vice of love. A wise man struggling with adversity is said by some heathen writer to be a spectacle on which the gods might look down with pleasure — but where is there a finer moral and religious picture, or one more deserving of divine fa- vour, than that of which, perhaps, we are now beginning to enjoy the blessed reality 1 A young queen, ^t that period of life which is commonly given up to frivolous amusement, sees at once the great principles by which she should be guided, and steps at once into the great duties of her station. The importance of educating the lower orders of the people is never absent from her mind; she takes up this principle at the beginning of her life, and in all the change of servants, and in all the strug- gle of parties, looks to it as a source of per- manent improvement. A great object of her affections is the preservation of peace; she regards a state of war as the greatest of all human evils, thinks that the lust of conquest is not a glory but a bad crime; despises the folly and miscalculations of war, and is will- ing to sacrifice every thing to peace, but the clear honour of her land. The patriot queen, whom I am painting, re- verences the national church — frequents its worship, and regulates her faith by its precepts ; but she withstands the encroachments, and keeps down the ambition natural to establish- ments, and, by rendering the privileges of the church compatible with the civil freedom of all sects, confers strength upon, and adds duration to, that wise and magnificent institution. And then this youthful monarch, profoundly but 424 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. wisely religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the childish follies of false piety, casts herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel of his blessed Son a path for her steps and a comfort for her soul. Here is a picture which warms every English heart, and would bring all this congregation upon their bended knees before Almighty God to pray it may be realized. What limits to the glory and happiness of our native land, if the Creator should in his mercy have placed in the heart of this royal woman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy ; and if, giving them time to expand, and to bless our children's children with her goodness. He should grant to her a long sojourning upon earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken in years? What glory! what happiness! what joy! what bounty of God ! I of course can only expect to see the begin- ning of such a splendid period; but when I do see it, I shall exclaim with the Psalmist, — " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." THE LAWYER THAT TEMPTED CHUIST. A SERMON PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH AT ST. PETER, YORK, BEFORE THE HON. SIR JOHN BAYLEY, KNT., ONE OF HIS MAJESTy's JUSTICES OF THE COURT OF king's bench, and the HON. SIR JOHN HULLOCK, KNT., ONE OF HIS MAJESTY's BARONS OF THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER. AUG. 1, l824. LcKE X. 25. "Jnd, behold, a certain Jatvycr stood up, and tempted him, saying, blaster, ichat shall I do to inherit eternal life?" This lawyer, who is thus represented to have tempted our blessed Saviour, does not seem to have been very much in earnest in the ques- tion which he asked : his object does not ap- pear to have been the acquisition of religious knowledge, but the display of human talent. He did not say to himself, I will now draw near to this august being; I will inform myself from the fountain of truth, and frnm the very lips of Christ; I will learn a lesson of salvation ; but it occurred to him, that in such a gathering to- gether of the Jews, in such a moment of public agitation, the opportunity of display' was not to be neglected : full of that internal confidence •which men of talents so ready, and so exercised, are sometimes apt to feel, he approaches our Saviour with all the apparent modesty of inter- rogation, and, saluting him with the appellation of Master, prepares, with all professional acute- ness, for his humiliation and defeat. Talking humanly, and we must talk humanly, for our Saviour was then acting an human part, the experiment ended as all must wish an ex- periment to end, where levity and bad faith are on one side, and piety, simplicity, and goodness on the other : the objector was silenced, and one of the brightest lessons of the Gospel elicited, for the eternal improvement of mankind. Still, though we wish the motive for the question had been better, we must not forget the question, and we must not forget who asked the question, and we must not forget who an- swered it, and what that answer was. The question was the wisest and best that ever came from the mouth of man ; the man who asked it was the very person who ought to have asked it ; a man overwhelmed, probably. I with the intrigues, the bustle, and business of life, and, therefore, most likely to forget the in- , terests of another world : the answerer was our I blessed Saviour, through whose mediation, you, I and I, and all of us, hope to live again ; and the j answer, remember, was plain and practical : j not flowery, not metaphysical, not doctrinal ; but it said to the man of the law, if you wish to live eternally, do your duty to God and man ; live in this world as you ought to live; make yourself fit for eternity; and then, and then only, God will grant to you eternal life. 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 shallldotoinherit eternal life?" I shall, therefore, direct to them some observations on the particular duties they owe to society, be- cause I think it suitable to this particular sea- son, 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 general- ly ; 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 iheir lives in great cities, amidst severe and incessant occupation, requiring all the fa- culties, 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 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEiT SMITH. 425 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 V what leisure for the altar, what time for God 1 I appeal to the experience of men engaged in this profession, whether religious feelings and religious practices are not, without any specu- lative 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, totally incompatible with habits of devotion 1 Is not the taste for devotion lessened? Is not the time for devo- tion abridged "! Are you not more and more conquered against your warnings and against your will, not, perhaps, without pain and com- punction, by the mammon of life? and what is the cure for this great evil to which your pro- fession 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 farther ;" 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 suit- able 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 ques- tion really, which the tempter of Christ only pre- tended 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, fail down at the feet of Jesus, and say, " Master, whatshall I do to inherit eternal life 1" The genuine and unaffected piety of a lawyer is, in one respect, of great advantage to the general interests of religion ; inasmuch as to the highest member of that profession a great .share of church patronage is entrusted, and to him we are accustomed to look up in the sen- ate, for the defence of our venerable establish- ment; and great and momentous would be the loss to this nation, if any one, called to so high and honourable an office, were found deficient in this ancient, pious, and useful zeal for the established church. In talking to men of your active lives and habits, it is not possible to an- ticipate the splendid and exalted stations for which any one of you may be destined. Fifty years ago, the person at the head of his pro- fession, the greatest lawyer now in England, perhaps in the world, stood in this church, on such occasions as the present, as obscure, as unknown, and as much doubting of his future prospects, as the humblest individual of the profession here present. If Providence reserve such honours for any one who may now chance to hear me, let him remember that there is re- quired at his hands a zeal for the established church, but a zeal tempered by discretion, com- patible with Christian charity, and tolerant of Christian freedom. All human establishments are liable to err, and are capable of improve- ment : to act as if you denied this, to perpetuate any infringement upon the freedom of other 54 sects, however vexatious that infringement, and however safe its removal, is not to defend an establishment, but to expose it to unmerited obloquy and reproach. Never think it neces- sary to be weak and childish in the highest concerns of life ; the career of the law opens to you many great and glorious opportunities of promoting the Gospel of Christ, and of doing good to your fellow-creatures ; there is no situ- ation of that profession in which you can be more great and more glorious than when, in the fulness of years, and the fulness of honours, you are found defending that church which first taught you to distinguish between good and evil, and breathed into you the elements of religious life ; but when you defend that church, defend it with enlarged wisdom, and with the spirit of magnanimity; praise its great excel- lencies ; do not perpetuate its little defects ; be its liberal defender, be its wise patron, be its real friend. If you can be great and bold in humaa affairs, do not think it necessary to be narrow and timid in spiritual concerns ; bind yourself up with the real and important interests of the church, and hold yourself accountable to God for its safety; but yield up trifles to the altered state of the world. Fear no change which les- sens the enemies of that establishment, fear no change which increases the activity of that es- tablishment, fear no change which draws down upon it the more abundant pra3^ers and bless- ings of the human race. Justice is found, experimentally, to be most effectually promoted by the opposite eflx)rts of practised and ingenious men, presenting to the selection of an impartial judge the best argu- ments for the establishment and explanation of truth. It becomes, then, under such an arrange- ment, 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. How- ever useful this practice may be for the promo- tion of public justice, it is not without danger to the individual whose practice it becomes. It is apt to produce a profligate indifl^erence 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 mo- tives. It is astonishing what unworthy and in- adequate notions men are apt to form of the Christian faith. Christianity does not insist upon duties to an individual, and forget the du- ties which are owing to the great mass of indi- viduals, 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 con- gregation 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 dictalesof conscience, and to ba 2n2 426 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. as faithful to the interests of the great mass of 5'our fellow-creatures, as you would be to the interests of any individual of that mass. Why, then, if there is 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 1 If these temptations come across you, then remember the memorable words of the text, "What shall I do to inherit eternal lifel" not this— don't do this ; it is no title to eternity to suffer deserved shame among men ; endure any thing rather than the loss of character, cling to character as your best possession, do not envy men who pass you in life, onU' because they are under less moral and religious restraint than yourself. Your object is not fame, but honourable fame ; your object is not wealth, but wealth worthily obtained ; your object is not power, but power gained fairly and exercised virtuously. Long- suffering is a great and important lesson in human life ; in no part of human life is it more necessary than in your arduous profession. The greatest men it has produced have been at some period of their professional lives ready to faint at the long and apparently fruitless journey; and if you look at those lives, you will find they have been supported by a con- fidence (under God) in the general effects of character and industry. They have withstood the allurement of pleasure, which is the first and most common cause of failure; they have disdained the little arts and meannesses which carry base men a certain way, and no further ; they have sternly rejected, also, the sudden means of growing basely rich and dishonoura- bly great, with which every man is at one time or another sure to be assailed; and then they have broken out into light and glory at the last, exhibiting to mankind the splendid spectacle of great talents long exercised by difficulties, and high principles never tainted with guilt. After all, remember that your profession is a lottery, in which you may lose as well as win ; and you must take it as a lottery, in which, after every eflbrt of your own, it is impossible to command success ; for this you are not ac- countable, but you are accountable for your purity: you are accountable for the preserva- tion of your character. It is not in every man's power to say, I will be a great and successful lawyer, but it is in every man's power to say, that he will (with God's assistance) be a good Christian, and an honest man. Whatever is moral and religious is in your own power. If fortune deserts you, do not desert yourself; do not undervalue inward consolation ; con- nect God with your labour ; remember you are Christ's servant; be seeking always for the in- heritance of immortal life. I must urge you by another motive, and hind you by another obligation, against the sacrifice of public principle. A proud man suffered degradation ; he may hide it by in- creased zeal and violence, or varnish it over by simulated gaiety ; he may silence the world, but he cannot always silence himself. If this is only a beginning, and you mean, hence- forward, to trample all principle under foot, that is another thing; but a man of fine parts and nice feelings is trying a very dangerous experiment with his happiness, who means to preserve his general character, and indulge in one act of baseness. Such a man is not made to endure scorn and self-reproach ; it is far from being certain that he will be satisfied with that unscriptural bargain in which he has gained the honours of the world, and lost the purity of his soul. It is impossible in the profession of the law but that many opportunities must occur for the exertion of charity and benevolence. I do not mean the charity of money, but the charity of time, labour and attention ; the protection of those whose resources are feeble, and the in- formation of those whose knowledge is small. In the hands of bad men, the law is sometimes an artifice to mislead, and sometimes an engine to oppress. In j-our hands it may be, from time to time, a buckler to shield, and a sanctua- ry to save; you may lift up oppressed humility, listen patiently to the injuries of the wretched, vindicate their just claims, maintain their fair rights, and show, that in the hurry of business and the struggles of ambition, you have not forgotten the duties of a Christian, and the feelings of a man. It is in j'our power, above all other Christians, to combine the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove, and to fulfil, with greater acuteness and more perfect efl"ect than other men can pretend to, the love, the lessons and the law of Christ. I should caution the 3'ounger part of this profession (who are commonly selected for it on account of their superior tatents) to culti- vate a little more diffidence of their own pow- ers, and a little less contempt for received opinions, than is commonly exhibited at the beginning of their career ; mistrust of this na- ture" teaches moderation in the formation of opinions, and prevents the painful necessity of inconsistency and recantation in future life. It is not possible that the ablest young men, at the beginning of their intellectual existence, can anticipate all those reasons, and dive into all those motives, which induce mankind to act as they do act, and make the world such as we find it to be ; and though there is, doubt- less, much to alter, and much to improve in human aflfairs, yet you will find mankind not quite so wrong as, in the first ardour of youth, you supposed them to be; and)'ou will find, as you advance in life, many new lights to open upon you, which nothing but advancing in life could ever enable you to observe. I say this, not to check originality and vigour of mind, which are the best chattels and possessions of the world, but to check that eagerness which ar- rives at conclusions without sufficient pre- mises ; to prevent that violence which is not un- i when he has obtained the reward, and accepted 1 commonly atoned for in after-life by the sacri- the wages of baseness, enters into a severe ac- j fice of all principle and all opinions ; to lessen count with himself, and feels clearly that he has I that contempt which prevents a young man WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 427 from improving his own understanding, by making a proper and prudent use of the un- derstandings of his fellow-creatures. There is another unchristian fault which must be guarded against in the profession of the law, and that is, raisanthrop)', an exaggerated opinion of the faults and follies of mankind. It is naturally the worst part of mankind who are seen in courts of justice, and with whom the professors of the law are most conversant. The perpetual recurrence of crime and guilt insensibly connects itself with the recollections of the human race: mankind are always painted in the attitude of sutfering and in- flicting. It seems as if men were bound to- gether by the relations of fraud and crime ; but laws are not made for the quiet, the good, and the just ; you see and know little of them in your profession, and, therefore you forget them ; you see the oppressor, and you let loose your eloquence against him ; but you do not see the man of silent charity, who is alwa)'s seeking out objects of compassion : the faith- ful guardian does not come into a court of jus- tice, nor the good wife, nor the just servant, nor the dutiful son ; you punish the robbers who ill-treated the wayfaring man, but you know nothingof the good Samaritan who bound up his wounds. The lawyer who tempted his Master, had heard, perhaps, of the sins of the woman at the feast, without knowing that she had poured her store of precious ointment on the feet of Jesus. 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 occa- sions which try a man's inward heart, and se- parate 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 nat one atom to violence, suffer not the slightest encroachments of in- justice, 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 defend- ing ; it is not so much a matter of conse- quence 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 de- fender, to take care that the sacred rights be- longing to that character are not destroyed, that that best privilege of your profession, which so much secures our regard, and so much re- dounds to your credit, is never soothed by flat- ; tcry, 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 the praises of mankind are sweet, if it is 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. These are the Christian excellencies which t?ie members of the profession of the law have, above all, an opportunity of cultivating; this is )-our tribute to the happiness of your fellow- creatures, and these your preparations for eternal life. 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 subtilty ; 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 yo\ir 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 enable you to find the right w^ay of doing the right thing; because a thorough knowledge of legal art and legal form is, in your hands, not an instrument of chi- canery, but the plainest, easiest and shortest way to the end of strife. Impress upon your- selves the importance of your profession ; con- sider that some of the greatest and most im- portant interests of the M'orld are committed to your care ; that you are our protectors against the encroachments of power; that you are the preservers of freedom, the defenders of weak- ness, the unravellers of cunning, the investi- gators of artifice, the humblers of pride and the scourges of oppression; when you are silent, the sword leaps from its scabbard, and nations are given up to the madness of eternal strife. In all the civil difiiculties of life, men depend upon your exercised faculties, and your spotless integrity; and they require of you an elevation above all that is mean, and a spirit which will never yield when it ought not to yield. As long as your profession retains its character for learning, the rights of mankind 428 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. will be well arranged ; as long as it retains its character for virtuous boldness, those rights will be well defended; as long as it preserves itself pure and incorruptible on other occasions not connected with your professions, those talents will never be used to the public injury which were intended and nurtured for the pub- lic good. I hope you will weigh these obser- vations, and apply them to the business of the ensuing week, and beyond that, in the common occupations of your professions; always bear- ing in your minds the emphatic words of the tex;t. 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 1" THE JUDGE THAT SMITES CONTRARY TO THE LAW. A SERMON PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OP SAINT PETER, VORK, BEFORE THE HON. SIR JOHN BAYLEY, KNT., AND THE HON. SIR GEORGE SOWLEY HOLROYD, KNT., JUSTICES OF THE COURT OF KINg's BENCH, MARCH 28, 1824. Acts xxiii. 3. " SiHcst thou here to judge me after the law, and commandcst thou me to be smitten, contrary to the law? With these bold words St. Paul repressed the unjust violence of that ruler who would have silenced his arguments and extinguished his zeal for the Christian faith. Knowing well the misfortunes which awaited him, prepared for deep and various calamity, not ignorant of the violence of the Jewish multitude, not un- used to suffer, not unwilling to die, he had not prepared himself for the monstrous spectacle of perverted justice ; but loosing that spirit to whose fire and firmness we owe the very exist- ence of the Christian faith, he burst into that bold rebuke which brought back the extrava- gance of power under the control of law, and branded it with the feelings of shame: "Sittest thou here to judge me after the law, and com- mandcst thou me to be smitten, contrary to the lawT" I would observe that, in the Gospels, and the various parts of the New Testament, the words of our Saviour and of St. Paul, when they contain any opinion, are always to be looked upon as lessons of wisdom to us, however in- cidentally they may have been delivered, and however shortly they may have been expressed. As their words were to be recorded by inspired writers, and to go down to future ages, nothing can have been said without reflection and de- sign. Nothing is to be lost, every thing is to be studied: a great moral lesson is often con- veyed in a few words. Read slowly, think deeply, let every word enter into your soul, for it was intended for your soul. [ take these words of St. Paul as a con- demnation of that man who smites contrary to the law; as a praise of that man \vho 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 so- lemn public duties of the past and the ensuing week, over which some here present will pre- side, at which many here present will assist, and which almost all here present will witness. I will discuss, then, the importance of judg- ing, according to the law, or, in other words, of the due administration of justice upon the character and happiness of nations. And in so doing, I will begin with stating a few of those circumstances which may mislead even good and conscientious men, and subject them to the unchristian sin of smiting contrary to the law. I will state how that justice is puri- fied and perfected by which the happiness and character of nations are affected to a good purpose. I do this with less fear of being misunder- stood, because I am speaking before two great magistrates, who have lived much among us ; and whom — because they have lived much among us — we have all learned to respect and regard, and to whom no man fears to consider himself as accountable, because all men see that they, in the administration of their high office, consider themselves as deeply and daily accountable to God. And let no man say, "Why teach such things 1 do you think they must not have oc- curred to those to whom they are a concern V I answer to this, that no man preaches novel- ties and discoveries ; the object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what man- kind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions, to recall mankind from the by-paths where they turn, into that broad path of salvation which all know, but few tread. These plain lessons the humblest ministers of the Gospel may teach, if they are honest, and the most powerful Christians will ponder, if they are wise. No man, whether he bear the sword of the law, or whether he bear that sceptre which the sword of the law cannot reach, can answer for his WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. own heart to-morrow, and can say to the teach- er, — " Thou warnest me, thou teachest me, in vain." A Christian judge, in a free land, should, with the most scrupulous exactness, guard him- self from the influence of those party feelings, upon which, perhaps, the preservation of poli- tical liberty depends, but by which the better reason of individuals is often blinded and the tranquillity of the public disturbed. I am not talking of the ostentatious display of such feel- ings ; I am hardly talking of any gratification of which the individual himself is conscious, but I am raising up a wise and useful jealousy of the encroachment of those feelings, which, when they do encroach, lessen the value of the most valuable, and lower the importance of the most important men in the country. I admit it to be extremely difficult to live amidst the agi- tations, contests, and discussions of a free peo- ple, and to remain in that state of cool, pas- sionless, Christian candour which society expect from their great magistrates; but it is the pledge that magistrate has given, it is the life he has taken up, it is the class of qualities which he has promised us, and for which he has rendered himself responsible; it is the same fault in him which want of courage would be in some men, and want of moral re- gularity in others. It runs counter to those very purposes, and sins against those utilities for which the very office was created; without these qualities, he who ought to be cool, is heated ; he who ought to be neutral, is partial ; the ermine of justice is spotted ; the balance of justice is unpoised; tlie fillet of justice is torn off; and he who sits to judge after the law, smites contrary to the law. And if the preservation of calmness amidst the strong feelings by which a judge is sur- rounded be difficult, is it not also honourable"! and would it be honourable if it were not diffi- cult ] Why do men quit their homes, and give up their common occupations, and repair to the tribunal of justice! Why this bustle and business, why this decoration and display, and why are we all eager to pay our homage to the dispensers of justice! Because we all feel that there must be, somewhere or other, a check to human passions; because we all know the immense value and importance of men in whose placid equity and mediating wisdom we can trust in the worst of times ; because we cannot cherish too strongly and express too plainly that reverence we feel for men who can rise up in the ship of the state, and rebuke the storms of the mind, and bid its angry passions be still. A Christian judge, in a free land, should not only keep his mind clear from the violence of party feelings, but he should be very careful to preserve his independence, by seeking no pro- motion, and asking no favours from those who govern; or at least, to be (which is an experi- ment not without danger to his salvation) so thoroughly confident of his motives and his conduct, that he is certain the hope of favour to come, or gratitude for favour past, will never cause him to swerve from the strict line of duty. It is often the lot of a judge to be placed, not only between the accuser and the accused, not only between the complainant and him against whom it is complained, but between the govern- ors and the governed, between the people and those whose lawful commands the people are bound to obey. In these sort of contests it un- fortunately happens that the rulers are some- times as angry as the ruled ; the whole eyes of a nation are fixed upon one man, and upon his character and conduct the stability and happiness of the times seem to depend. The best and firmest magistrates cannot tell how they may act under such circumstances, but every man may prepare himself for acting well under such circumstances, by cherishing that quiet feeling of independence, which re- moves one temptation to act ill. Every man may avoid putting himself in a situation where his hopes of advantage are on one side, and his sense of duty on the other; such a temp- tation may be viithstood, but it is better it should not be encountered. Far better that feeling which says, " I have vowed a vow before God ; I have put on the robe of justice ; farewell ava- rice, farewell ambition; pass me who will, slight me who will, I live henceforward only for the great duties of life ; my business is on earth, my hope and my reward are in 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 1 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 1 Far worse is he who ruins the moral edifices of the world, which lime and toil, and many prayers to God, and many suf- ferings 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 com- pass in the calm, and looks to his compass in the storm, and never keeps his eyes ofl'his com- pass, 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 mo- tives of life ; which no hope of favour can influ ence, which no effort of power can coniinl. A Christian judge in a free country should respect, on every occasion, those popular in- stitutions of justice which were intended for his control, and for our security; to see hum- ble men collected accidentally from the neigh- bourhood, treated with tenderness and cour- tesy by supreme magistrates of deep learning and practised understanding, from whose views they are, perhaps, at that moment dif- 430 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. fering and whose directions they do not choose to follow ; to see at such times eveiy disposi- tion to warmth restrained, and every tendency to contemptuous feeling kept back ; to witness this 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 English- men, 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. May I add the great importance in a judge of courtesy to all men, and that he should, on all occasions, abstain from unnecessary bit- terness and asperity of speech. A judge al- ways speaks with impunitjs and always speaks with effect. His words should be weighed, because they entail no evil upon himself, and much evil upon others. The language of pas- sion, the language of sarcasm, the language of satire, is not, on such occasions, Christian language ; it is not the language of a judge. There is a propriety of rebuke and condemna- tion, the justice of which is felt even by him who suffers under it; but when magistrates, under the mask of law, aim at the offender more than the offence, and are more studious of inflicting pain than repressing error or crime, the office suffers as much as the judge ; the respect for justice is lessened; and the school of pure reason becomes the hated thea- tre of mischievous passion. 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. The topics of mercy are the smallness of the offence — the infrequency of the ofience; the temptations to the culprit,- the moral weak- ness of the culprit, the severity of the law, the error of the law, the different state of society, the altered state of feeling, and, above all, the distressing doubt whether a human being in the lowest abyss of poverty and ignorance has not done injustice to himself, and is not perishing away from the want of knowledge, the want of fortune, and the want of friends. AH magistrates feel these things in the early exercise of their judicial power, but the Christian judge always feels them, is 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. These, then, are those faults which expose a man to the danger of smiting contrary to the law ; a judge must be clear from the spirit of party, independent of all favour, well in- clined to the popular institutions of his coun- try; firm in applying the rule, merciful in making the exception; patient, guarded in his speech, gentle and courteous to all. Add his learning, his labour, his experience, his pro- bity, his practised and acute faculties, and this man is the light of the world, who adorns hu- man life, and gives security to that life which he adorns. Now we see the consequence of that state of justice which this character implies, and the explanation of all that deserved honour we confer on the preservation of such a charac- ter, and all the wise jealousy we feel at the slightest injury or deterioration it may experience. Tlie most obvious and important use of this perfect justice is, that it makes nations safe : under common circumstances, the institutions of justice seem to have little or no bearing upon the safety and security of a country, but in periods of real danger, when a nation, sur- rounded by foreign enemies, contends not for the boundaries of empire, but for the very be- ing and existence of empire, then it is that the advantages of just institutions are disco- vered. Every man feels that he has a country, that he has something worth preserving, and worth contending for. Instances are remem- bered where the weak prevailed over the strong ; one man recalls to mind when a just and upright judge protected him from unlaw- ful violence, gave him back his vineyard, re- buked his oppressor, restored him to his rights, published, condemned, and rectified the wrong. This is what is called country. Equal rights to unequal possessions, equal justice to the rich and poor ; this is what men come out to fight for, and to defend. Such a country has no legal injuries to remember, no legal mur- ders to revenge, no legal robbery to redress ; it is strong in its justice ; it is then that the use and object of all this assemblage of gen- tlemen and arrangement of juries, and the de- served veneration in which we hold the cha- J racter of English judges, are understood in all their bearings, and in their fullest effects : men die for such things — they cannot be sub- dued by foreign force where such just prac- tices prevail. The sword of ambition is shivered to pieces against such a bulwark. Nations fall where judges are unjust, because there is nothing Avhich the multitude think worth defending ; but nations do not fall which are treated as we are treated, but they rise as we have risen, and they shine as we have shone, and die as we have died, too much used to justice, and too much used to freedom, to care for that life which is not just and free. I call you all to witness if there is any exag- gerated picture in this ; the sword is just sheathed, the flag is just furled, the last sound of the trumpet has just died away. You all remember what a spectacle this country ex- hibited: one heart, one voice — one weapon, one purpose. And why? Because this coun- tr}' is a country of the law ; because the judge is a judge for the peasant as well as for the palace; because every man's happiness is guarded by fixed rules from tyranny and ca- price. This town, this week, the business of the few next days, would explain to any en- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 431 lightened European why other nations did fall in the storms of the world, and why we did iwt fall. The Christian patience you may witness, the impartiality of the judgment-seat, the disrespect of persons, the disregard of consequences. These attributes of justice do not end with arranging )'Our conflicting rights, and mine ; they give strength to the English people, duration to the English name; they turn the animal courage of this people into moral and religious courage, and present to the lowest of mankind plain reasons and strong motives why they should resist aggression from without, and bend themselves a living rampart round the land of their birth. There is another reason why every wise man is so scrupulously jealous of the charac- ter of English justice. It puts an end to civil dissension. What other countries obtain by bloody wars, is here obtained by the decisions of our own tribunals; unchristian passions are laid to rest by these tribunals ; brothers are brothers again ; the Gospel resumes its empire, and because all confide in the pre- siding magistrate, and because a few plain men are allowed to decide upon their own conscientious impression of facts, civil dis- cord, years of convulsion, endless crimes are spared ; the storm is laid, and those who came in clamouring for revenge, go back together in peace from the hall of judgment to the loom and the plough, to the senate and the church. The whole tone and tenourof public morals are 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 cen- tre 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 pas- sions. 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 govern- ment) 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 afrairs, let him strive for spotless, incorruptible jus- tice ; — praising, honouring, and loving tht just judge, and abhorring, as the worst ene/iiy of mankind, him who is placed there to " judge after the law, and who smitcb conlrur_, to the law." 432 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. A LETTEE TO THE ELECTOES, THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. Why is not a Catholic to be believed on his oath? What says the law of the land to this extra- vagant piece of injustice 1 It is no challenge against a juryman to say he is a Catholic ; he sits in judgment upon your life and your pro- perty. 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 Avas among the jurymen? Is the question ever puti Does it ever enter into the mind of the attorney or the counsellor to inquire of the faith of the jury ? If a man sell a horse, or a house, or a field, does he ask if the purchaser is a Catholic] Appeal to your own experi- ence, and try by that fairest of all tests, the justice of this enormous charge. We are in tre'aty 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 con- stant state of perjury 1 I am sure these objec- tions 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 1 But if this imputation be true, what folly to agitate such questions as the civil emancipation of the Catholics. If they are always ready to support falsehood by an appeal to God, why are they suff"ered to breathe the air of England, or to drink of the waters of England] Why are they not driven into the howling wilderness] But now they pos- sess, and bequeath, and witness, and decide civil rights ; and save life as physicians, and defend property as lawyers, and judge property as jurymen ; and you pass laws, enabling them to command all your fleets and armies,* and then you turn round upon the very man whom j'ou have made the master of the European seas, and the arbiter of nations, and tell him he is not to be believed on his oath. I have lived a little in the world, but I never happened to hear a single Cathohc even sus- pected of getting into ofiice 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 * There is no law lo prevent a Catholic from having the coinmand of a British fleet or a British army. the world than that of the Duke of Norfolk hovering round the House of Lords in the execution of his office, 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 vio- lence 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 ad- vantage, 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 Avith Catholics, and lived Avith them probably as companions. If this immoral lubricity Avere their characteristic, it Avould surely be perceived in common life. Every man's experience Avould 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 ; per- fectly alive to the evil and inconvenience of their situation, but thinking themselves bound by the law of God and the laAV of honour, not to avoid persecution by falsehood and apos- tasy. But why (as has been asked ten thou- sand times before) do you lay such a stress upon these oaths of exclusion, if the Catholics do not respect oaths ] You compel me, a Catholic, to make a declaration against tran- substantiation, for AA'hat purpose but to keep me out of Parliament] Why, then, I respect oaths and declarations, or else I should perjure myself, and get into Parliament; and if I do not respect oaths, of Avhat use is it to enact them in order to keep me out ] A farmer has some sheep, Avhich he chooses to keep from a certain field, and to effect this object, he builds a Avail : there are tAvo objections to his pro- ceeding ; the first is, that it is for the good of the farm that the sheep should come into the field ; and so the wall is not only useless, but pernicious. The second is, that he himself thoroughly believes at the time of building the wall, that all the sheep are in the constant habit of leaping over such walls. His first intention Avith respect to the sheep is absurd, his means more absurd, and his error is perfect in all its parts. He tries to do that Avhich, if he succeeds, Avill be very foolish, and tries to do it by means which he himself, at the time of using them, admits to be inade- quate to the purpose ; but I hope this objection WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 433 to the oaths of Catholics is disappearing; I believe neither Lord Liverpool nor Mr. Peel (a very candid and honourable man), nor the archbishops (who are both gentlemen), nor Lord Eldon, nor Lord Stowell (whose Protest- antism nobody calls in question), would make such a charge. It is confined to provincial violence, and to the politicians of the second table. I remember hearing the Catholics from the hustings of an election accused of disre- garding oaths, and within an hour from that time, I saw five Catholic voters rejected, be- cause they would not take the oath of supre- macy; and these were not men of rank who tendered themselves, but ordinary tradesmen. The accusation was received with loud huz- zas ; the poor Catholics retired unobserved and in silence. No one praised the conscien- tious feelings of the constituents ; no one rebuked the calumny of the candidate. This is precisely the way in which the Catholics are treated; the very same man Mho encou- rages among his partisans the doctrine that Catholics are not to be believed upon their oaths, directs his agents upon the hustings to be very watchful that all Catholics should be prevented from voting, by tendering to them the oath of supremacy, which he is certain not one of them will take. If this is not calumny and injustice, I know not what human conduct can deserve the name. If you believe the oath of a Catholic, see what he will swear, and what he will not swear; read the oaths he already takes, and say whether, in common candour or in com- mon sense, you can require more security than he otfers you. Before the year 1793, the Catholic was subject to many more vexatious laws than he now is; in that year an act passed in his favour, but before the Catholic could exempt himself from his ancient pains and penalties, it was necessary to take an oath. This oath was, I believe, drawn up by Dr. Duigenan, the bitter and implacable enemy of the sect ; and it is so important an oath, so little known and read in England, that I can- not, in spite of my wish to be brief, abstain from quoting it. I deny your right to call no Popery, till you are master of its contents. "I do swear, that I do abjure, condemn, and detest, as unchristian and impious, the prin- ciple, that it is lawful to murder, destroy, or any ways injure, any person whatsoever, for or under the pretext of being a heretic; and I do declare solemnly, before God, that I believe no act, in itself unjust, immoral, or wicked, can ever be justified or excused by or under pretence or colour, that it was done either for the good of the church, or in obedience to any ecclesiastical power whatsoever. I also de- clare that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither am I thereby required to believe or profess, that the pope is infallible; or that I am bound to obey any order, in its own na- ture immoral, though the pope, or any ecclesi- astical power, should issue or direct such order; but, on the contrary, I hold that it M'ould be sinful in me to pay any respect or obedience thereto. I further declare, that I do not believe that any sin whatsoever committed by me, can be forgiven at the mere will of any 55 pope or any priest, or of any persons whatso- ever ; but that sincere sorrow for past sins, a firm and sincere resolution to avoid future guilt, and to atone to God, are previous and indispensable requisites to establish a well- founded expectation of forgiveness ; and that any person who receives absolution, without these previous requisites, so far from obtaining thereby any remission of his sins, incurs the additional guilt of violating a sacrament; and I do swear, that I will defend, to the utmost of my power, the settlement and arrangement of property in this country, as established by the laws now in being. — I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present church establishment, for the purpose of substituting a Catholic esta- blishment in its stead; and I do solemnly swear, that I will not exercise any privilege to which I am or may become entitled, to disturb and weaken the Protestant religion, and Pro- testant government in this kingdom. So help me God." This oath is taken by every Catholic in Ireland, and a similar oath, allowing for the difi"erence of circumstances of the two coun- tries, is taken in England. It appears from the evidence taken before the two houses and lately printed, that if Catholic emancipation were carried, there would be little or no ditiiculty in obtaining from the pope an agreement, that the nomina- tion of the Irish Catholic bishops should be made at home constitutionally by the Catho- lics, as it is now in fact,* and in practice, and that the Irish prelates would go a great way, in arranging a system of general education, if the spirit of proselytism, v.'hich now ren- ders such a union impossible, were laid aside. This great measure carried, the Irish Catholics would give up all their endowments abroad, if they receive for them an equivalent at home ; for now Irish priests are fast resorting to the continent for education, allured by the endowments which the French government are cunninglj' restoring and augmenting. The intercourse with the see of Rome might and would, after Catholic emancipation, be so managed, that it should be open, upon grave occasions, or, if thought proper, on every occasion, to the inspection of commissioners. There is no security compatible idth the safety of their faith, which the Catholics are not will- ing to give. But what is Catholic emancipa- tion as far as England is concerned? not an equal right to office with the member of the Church of England, but a participation in the same pains and penalties as those, to which the Protestant dissenter is subjected by the corporation and test acts. If the utility of these last-mentioned laws is to be measured by the horror and perturbation their repeal would excite, they are laws of the utmost im- portance to the defence of the English Church ; but if it be of importance to the church that pains and penalties should be thus kept sus- pended over men's heads, then these bills ar«s * The Catholic bishops, since the death of the Pretender, are recommended either by the chapters or the parochial clergy, to the pope ; and there is uo instance of hit deviating from their choice. 2 434 WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. an effectual security against Catholics as well as Protestants ; and the manacles so much confided in are not taken off, but loosened, and the prayer of a Catholic is this : — " I cannot now become an alderman without perjury. I pray of you to improve my condition so far, that if I become an alderman I may be only exposed to a penalty of 500/." There are two common errors upon the subject of Catholic emancipation ; the one, that the emancipated Catholic is to be put on a better footing than the Protestant dissenter, whereas he will be put precisely on the same footing; the other, that he is to be admitted to civil offices, without any guard, exception, or reserve ; whereas, in the various bills which have been from time to lime brought forward, the legal wit of man lias been exhausted to provide against every surmise, suspicion, and whisper of the most remote danger to the Protestant church. The Catholic question is not an English question, but an Irish one ; or rather it is no otherwise an English question than as it is an Irish one. As for the handful of Catholics that are in England, no one, I presume, can be so extravagant as to contend, if they were the only Catholics we had to do with, that it would be of the slightest possible consequence to what offices of the state they were admitted. It Avould be quite as necessary to exclude the Sandemanians, who are sixteen in number, or to make a test act against the followers of Joanna Southcote, who amount to one hundred and twenty persons. A little chalk on the wall, and a profound ignorance of the subject, soon raise a cry of no Popery; but I question if the danger of admitting five popish peers and two commoners to the benefits of the constitution could raise a mob in any market-town in Eng- land. Whatever good may accrue to England from the emancipation, or evil may befall this country for withholding emancipation, will reach us only througli the medium of Ireland. 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 : ihe religion you are to examine is the Irish Catholic religion. You are not to consider what it was, but what it is ; not what individu- vith our prophetical spirit, because it is said by the advocates of the Ca- tholic question that the thing must come to pass; that it is inevitable: our prophecy, how- ever, is founded, upon experience and common sense, and is nothing more than the application of the past to the future. In a few years' time, when the madness and wretchedness of war are forgotten, when the greater part of those who have lost in war, legs and arms, health and sons, have gone to their graves, the same scenes will be acted over again in the world. France, Spain, Russia, and America, will be upon us. The Catholics will watch their opportunity, and soon settle the question of Catholic emancipation. To suppose that any nation can go on in the midst of foreign wars, denying common justice to seven mil- lions of men, in the heart of the empire, awa- kened to their situation, and watching for the critical moment of redress, does, I confess, ap- pear to me to be the height of extravagance. To foretell the consequence of such causes, in my humble apprehension, demands no more of shrewdness than to point out the probable re- sults of leaving a lighted candle stuck up in an open barrel of gunpowder. It is very difficult to make the mass of man- kind believe that the state of things is ever to be otherwise than they have been accustomed to see it. I have very often heard old persons describe the impossibility of making any one believe that the American colonies could ever be separated from this country. It was always considered as an idle dream of discontented politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of a speech, but which no practical man, devoid of the spirit of party, considered to be within thfl limits of possibility. There was a period when the slightest concession would have satisfied the Americans ; but all the world was in heroics ; one set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, and ano- ther at the Lion: blood and treasure men, breath- ing war, vengeance, and contempt ; and in eight years afterwards, an awkward-looking gentle- man in plain clothes walked up to the drawing- room of St. James's, in the midst of the gentlemen of the Lion and Lamb, and was introduced as the ambassador from the United States of America, You must forgive me if I draw illustrations from common things — but in seeing swine driven, I have often thought of the Catholic question and of the diflferent methods of govern- ing mankind. The object, one day, Avas to drive some of these animals along a path, to a field where they had not been before. The man could by no means succeed ; instead of turning their faces to the north, and proceeding quietly along, they made for the east and west, rushed back to the south, and positively refused to advance ; a reinforcement of rustics was called for; maids, children, neighbours, all helped; a general rushing, screaming, and roaring ensued ; but the main object was not in the slightest degree advanced; after a long delay, we resolved (though an hour before we should have disdained such a compromise) to have recourse to Catholic emancipation ; a little boy was sent before them with a handful of barley : a few grains were scattered in the path, and the bristly herd were speedily and safely conducted to the place of their destina- tion. If, instead of putting Lord Stowell out of WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 439 breath Avith driving, compelling the Duke of York to swear, and the chancellor to strike at them with the mace, Lord Liverpool would condescend, in his graceful manner, to walk before the Catholic doctors with a basket of barley, what a deal of ink and blood would be saved to mankind. Because the Catholics are intolerant we ivill be iniokrant ; but did any body ever hear before that a government is to imitate the vices of its subjects? If the Irish were a rash, violent, and intemperate race, are they to be treated with rashness, violence, and intemperance 1 If they were addicted to fraud and falsehood, are they to be treated by those who rule them with fraud and falsehood] Are there to be perpetual races in error and vice between the people and the lords of the people 1 Is the su- preme power always to find virtues among the people; never to teach them by example, or improve them by laws and institutions ? Make all sects free, and let them learn the value of the blessing to others, by their own enjoyment of it; but if not, let them learn it by your vigi- lance and firm resistance to every thing intole- rant. Toleration will then become a habit and a practice, ingrafted upon the manners of a people, when they find the law too strong for them, and that there is no use in being intole- ranu It is very true that the Catholics have a double allegiance,* but it is equally true that their second or spiritual allegiance has nothing to do with civil policy, and does not, in the most distant manner, interfere with their alle- giance to the crown. What is meant by alle- giance to the crown, is, I presume, obedience to acts of Parliament, and a resistance lo those who are constitutionally proclaimed to be the enemies of the country. I have seen and heard of no instance, for this century and a half last past, where the spiritual sovereign has pre- sumed to meddle with the affairs of the tempo- ral sovereign. The Catholics deny him such power by the most solemn oaths which the wit of man can devise. In every war, the army and navy are full of Catholic officers and sol- diers ; and if their allegiance in temporal mat- ters is unimpeachable and unimpeached, what matters to whom they choose to pay spiritual obedience, and to adopt as their guide in genu- flexion and psalmody] Suppose these same Catholics were foolish enough to be governed by a set of Chinese moralists in their diet, this would be a third allegiance ; and if they were regula-ted by Brahmins in their dress, this would be a fourth allegiance ; and if they re- ceived the directions of the Patriarch of the Greek Church, in educating their children, here is another allegiance: and as long as they fought, and paid taxes, and kept clear of the quarter sessions and assizes, what matters how many fanciful supremacies and frivolous allegiances they choose to manufacture or ac- cumulate for themselves ] A great deal of time would be spared, if gen- tlemen, before they ordered their post-chaises * The same doiihle allegiance exists in every Catholic country in Europe. The spiritual heart of the country asnona French, Spanish, and Austrian Catholics, is the pope ; the political head, the king or emperor. for a no-Popery meeting, would read the most elementary defence of these people, and inform themselves even of the rudiments of the ques- tion. If the Catholics meditate the resumption of the Catholic property, why do they purchase that which they know (if the fondest object of their political life succeed) must be taken away from them ? Why is not an attempt made to purchase a quietus from the rebel who is watching the blessed revolutionary moment for regaining his possessions, and revelling in the unbounded sensuality of mealy and waxy enjoyments 1 But after all, who are the de- scendants of the rightful possessors ] The estate belonged to the O'Rourkes, who were hanged, drawn and quartered in the time of Cromwell: true, but before that, it belonged to the O'Connors, who were hanged, drawn and quartered in the time of Henry VII. The O'SuUivans have a still earlier plea of suspen- sion, evisceration and division. Who is the rightful possessor of the estate 7 We forget that Catholic Ireland has been murdered three times over by its Protestant masters. Mild and genteel people do not like the idea of persecution, and are advocates for tolera- tion ; but then they think it no act of intole- rance to deprive Catholics of political power. The history of all this is, that all men secretly 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 fagot, chains and stone walls, have been cla- moured 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 humani- ty 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 T Are they any thing else but degrees and modi- fications of the same principle 1 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 tole- rant, 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; tii 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 440 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. longues, and in varied forms, and in temples of a thousand shapes, but with one deep sense of human dependence, men pour forth to God. It is completely untrue that the Catholic re- ligion is what it was three centuries ago, or that it is unchangeable and unchanged. These are mere words, without the shadow of truth to support them. If the pope were to address a bull to the kingdom of Ireland, excommunicat- ing the Duke of York, and cutting him off from the succession, for his Protestant effusion in the House of Lords, he would be laughed at as a lunatic in all the Catholic chapels in Dublin. The Catholics would not now burn Protestants as heretics. In many parts of Europe, Catholics and Protestants worship in one church — Catho- lics at eleven, Protestants at one; they sit in the same Parliament, are elected to the same office, live together without hatred or friction, under equal laws. Who can see and know these things, and say that the Catholic religion is unchangeable and unchanged 1 I have often endeavoured to reflect upon the causes which, from time to time, raised such a clamour against the Catholics, and I think the following are among the most conspicuous : 1. Historical recollections of the cruelties inflicted upon the Protestants. 2. Theological differences. 3. A belief that the Catholics are unfriendly to liberty. 4. That their morality is not good. 5. That they meditate the destruction of the Protestant Church. 6. An unprincipled clamour by men who have no sort of belief in the danger of emanci- pation, but who make use of no Popery as a political engine. 7. A mean and selfish spirit of denying to others the advantages we ourselves enjoy. 8. A vindictive spirit or love of punishing others, who offend our self-love by presuming, on important points, to entertain opinions op- posite to our own. 9. Stupid compliance with the opinions of the majority. 10. To these I must, in justice and candour, add, as a tenth cause, a real apprehension on the part of honest and reasonable men, that it is dangerous to grant farther concessions to the Catholics. To these various causes I shall make a short reply, in the order in which I have placed them. 1. Mere historical recollections are very miserable reasons for the continuation of penal and incapacitating laws, and one side has as much to recollect as the other. 2. The state has nothing to do with questions purely theological. 3. It is ill to say this in a country whose free institutions were founded by Catholics, and it is often said by men who care nothing about free institutions. 4. It is not true. o. Make their situation so comfortable, that it will not be worth their while to attempt an riiterprise so desperate. 6. This is an unfair political trick, because it is too dangerous ; it is spoiling the table in order to win the game. The 7th and 8th causes exercise a great share of influence in every act of intolerance. The 9th must, of course, comprehend the greatest number. 10. Of the existence of such a class of no Poperists as this, it would be the height of in- justice to doubt, but I confess it excites in me a very great degree of astonishment. Suppose, after a severe struggle, you put the Irish down, if they are mad and foolish enough to recur to open violence ; j'et are the retarded industr}', and the misapplied energies of so many millions of men to go for nothing ? Is it possible to forget all the wealth, peace and happiness which are to be sacrificed for twenty- years to come, to these pestilential and dis- graceful squabbles 1 Is there no horror in looking forward to a long period in which men, instead of ploughing and spinning, will curse and hate, and burn and murder 1 There seems to me a sort of injustice and impropriety in our deciding at all upon the Catholic question. It should be left to those Irish Protestants whose shutters are bullet- proof; whose dinner-table is regularly spread with knife, fork, and cocked pistol ; salt cellar and powder-flask. Let the opinion of those persons be resorted to, who sleep in sheet-iron night-crtps ; who have fought so often and so nobly before their scullery door, and defended the parlour passage as bravely as Leonidas de- fended the pass of Thermopylas. The Irish Protestant members see and know the state of their own country. Let their votes decide* the case. We are quiet and at peace ; our homes may be defended with a feather, and our doors fastened with a pin ; and as ignorant of what armed and insulted Popery is, as we are of the state of New Zealand, we pretend to regulate by our clamours the religious factions of Ireland. It is a very pleasant thing to trample upon Catholics, and it is also a very pleasant thing to have an immense number of pheasants run- ning about your woods ; but there come thirty or forty poachers in the night, and fight with thirty or forty game preservers; some are killed, some fractured, some scalped, some maimed for life. Poachers are caught up and hanged ; a vast body of hatred and revenge accumulates in the neighbourhood of the great man ; and he says " the sport is not worth the candle. The preservation of game is a very agreeable thing, but I will not sacrifice the happiness of my life to it. This amusement, like any other, may be purchased too dearly." So it is with the Irish Protestants; they are finding out that Catholic exclusion may be purchased too dearly. Maimed cattle, fired ricks, threatening letters, barricadoed houses, to endure all this, is to purchase superiority at too dear a rate, and this is the inevitable state of two parties, the one of whom are unwilling to relinquish their ancient monopoly of power, Avhile the other party have, at length, disco- vered their strength, and are determined to be free. Gentlemen (with the best intentions, I am A ereat majority of Irish •neinbers voted for Catholic emancipation. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 441 sure) meet together in a county town, and enter into resolutions that no farther conces- sions are to be made to the Catholics; but if you will not let them into Parliament, why not allow them to be king's counsel, or Serjeants at law 1 Why are they excluded by law from some corporations in Ireland, and admissible, though not admitted, to others? I think, before such general resolutions of exclusion are adopted, and the rights and happiness of so many millions of people disposed of, it would be decent and proper to obtain some tolerable information of what the present state of the Irish Catholics is, and of the vast number of insignificant offices from which they are ex- cluded. Keep them from Parliament, if you think it right, but do not, therefore, exclude them from any thing else, to which you think Catholics may be fairly admitted without danger; and as to their content or discontent, there can be no sort of reason why discontent should not be lessened, though it cannot be removed. You are shocked by the present violence and abuse used by the Irish Association; by whom are they driven to it 1 and whom are you to thank for it? Is there a hope left to them? Is any term of endurance alluded to ] any scope or boundary to their patience 1 Is the minister •waiting for opportunities 1 Have they reason to believe that they are wished well to by the greatest of the great? Have they brighter hopes in another reign? Is there one clear spot in the horizon? any thing that you have left to them, but that disgust, hatred and despair, which, breaking out into wild elo- quence, and acting upon a wild people, are preparing every day a mass of treason and dis- afiection, which may shake this empire to its very centre ? and j'ou may laugh at Daniel O'Connell, and treat him with contempt, and turn his metaphors into ridicule ; but Daniel has, after all, a great deal of real and powerful eloquence; and a strange sort of misgiving sometimes comes across me, that Daniel and the doctor are not quite so great fools as many most respectable country clergymen believe them to be. You talk of their abuse of the Reformation, but is there any end to the obloquy and abuse with which the Catholics are upon every point, and from every quarter, assailed? Is there any one folly, vice, or crime, ivhich the blind fury of Protestants does not lavish upon them? and do you suppose all this is to be heard in silence, and without retaliation? Abuse as much as you please, if you are going to eman- cipate, but if you intend to do nothing for the Catholics but to call them names, you must not be put out of temper if you receive a few ugly appellations in return. The great object of men who love party bet- ter than truth, is to have it believed that the Catholics alone have been persecutors ; but what can be more flagrantly unjust than to take our notions of history only from the con- quering 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 have sufiered death in England for the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion since the Reforma- tion : Henry VIII., ... 59 Elizabeth, ... 204 James I., ... 25 Charles I., and ') Commonwealth, 3 Charles II., 23 Total, ... 319 Henry VIII., with consummate impartial- ity, burnt three Protestants and hanged four Catholics for different errors in religion on the same day, and the same place. Elizabeth burnt two Dutch Anabaptists for some theo- logical tenets, .luly 22, 1575, Fox the martyro- logist 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 Th acker and Mr. John Capper, two ministers of the Brownist persuasion, were hanged at St. Edmundsbury, 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 butch- ery was very considerable, and, in one in- stance, 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 oflence against the state. We are, I hope, all too busy to need any answer to such childish, uncandid reason- ing as this. The total number of those who suffered capi- tally in the reign of Elizabeth, is stated by Dodd, in his Church History,* to be one hun- dred and ninety-nine; further inquiries made their number to be two hundred and four: fifteen of these were condemned for denying the queen's supremacy; one hundred and twenty-six for the exercise of priestly functions; and the others for being reconciled to the Catholic faith, or for aiding and assisting priests. In this list, no person is included who was executed for any plot, real or imaginary, except eleven, who suffered for the pretended plot of Rheims; a plot, which Dr. Milner justly observes, was so daring a forgery, that even Camden allows the sufferers to have been po- * The total number of sufferers in the reisn of Queen Mary, varies, I believe, from 200 in the Catholic to 280 in the Protestant accounts. I recommend all young men who wish to form some notion of what answer the Catholics have to make, to read Milner's "Letters to a Prebendary," and to follow the line of reading to which his references lead. They will then learn the imporlanco of that sacred maxim, jiudi alteram partem. 442 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. litical victims. Besides these, mention is made in the same work of ninety Catholic priests, or laymen, who died in prison in the same reign. "About the same time," he says, "I find fiity gentlemen lying prisoners in York Castle ; must of llicrn perished there, of vermin, famine, hunger, thirst, dirt, damp, fever, whip- ping, and broken hearts, the inseparable cir- cumstances of prisons in those days. These were every week, for a twelve-month together, dragged by main force to hear the established service performed in the castle chapel." The Catholics were frequently, during the reign of Elizabeth, tortured in the most dreadful man- ner. In order to extort answers from Father Campian, he was laid on the rack, and his Hmbs stretched a little, to show him, as the executioner termed it, what the rack was. He persisted in his refusal; then for several days successively, the torture was increased, and on the last two occasions he was so cruelly rent and torn, that he expected to expire under the torment. While under the rack, he called continually upon God. In the reign of the Protestant Edward VI., Joan Knell was burnt to death, and the year after, George Parry was burnt also. In 1575, two Protestants, Peterson and Turwort, (as before stated,) were burnt to death by Elizabeth. In 1589, under the same queen, Lewes, a Protestant, was burnt to death at Norwich, where Francis Kett was also burnt for religious opinions in 1589, under the same great queen, who, in 1591, hanged the Protest- ant Hacket for heresy, in Cheapside, and put to death Greenwood, Barrow, and Penry, for being Browitists. Southwell, a Catholic, was racked ten times during the reign of this sister of bloody Queen Mary. In 1592, Mrs. Ward was hanged, drawn and quartered, for assisting a Catholic priest to escape in a box. Mrs. Lyne suffered the same punishment for har- bouring a priest; and in 1586, Mrs. Clitheroe, who was accused of relieving a priest, and re- fused to plead, was pressed to death in York Castle ; a sharp stone being placed underneath her back. Have not Protestants persecuted both Catho- lics and their fellow Protestants in Germany, Switzerland, Geneva, France, Holland, Sweden, and England 1 Look to the atrocious punish- ment of Leigh ton under Laud, for writing against prelacy; first, his ear was cut off, then his nose slit; then the other ear cut ofl', then whipped again. Look to the horrible cruelties exercised by the Protestant Episcopalians on the Scottish Presbyterians, in the reign of Charles II., of whom 8000 are said to have perished in that persecution. Persecutions of Protestants by Protestants, are amply detailed by Chandler, in his History of Persecution ; by Neale, in his History of the Pui-itans ; by Laing, in his History of Scotland; by Penn, in his Life of Fox ; and in Brandt's History of the Reformation in the Low Countries; which furnishes many very terrible cases of the suf- ferings of the Anabaptists and Remonstrants. In 1560, the Parliament of Scotland decreed, at one and the same time, the establishment of Calvinism, and the punishment of death against the ancient religion : " With such indecent haste (^ays Robertson) did the very persons who had just escaped ecclesiastical tyranny, proceed to imitate their example." Nothing can be so absurd as to suppose, that in barbarous ages, the excesses were all committed by one religious party, and none by the other. The Huguenots of France burnt churches, and hung priests, wherever they found them. Froumenteau, one of their own writers, confesses, that in the single province of Dauphiny, they killed two hundred and twenty priests, and one hundred and twelve friars. In the Low Countries, wherever Vandemcrk and Sonoi, lieutenants of the Prince of Orange, carried their arms, they uniformly put to death, and in cold blood, all the priests and religious they could lay their hands on. The Protestant Servetus was put to death by the Protestants of Geneva, for denying the doctrine of the Trinity, as the Protestant Gentilis was, on the same score, by those of Berne ; add to these, Felix Mans, Rot- man, and Barnevald. Of Servetus, Melancthon, the mildest of men, declared that he deserved' to have his bowels pulled out, and his body torn to pieces. The last fires of persecution which were lighted in England, were by Pro- testants. Bartholomew Legate, an Arian, was burnt by order of King James in Smithfield, on the 18th of March, 1612; on the 11th of April, in the same year, Edward Weightman was burnt at Litchfield, by order of the Pro- testant Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry ; and this man was, / believe, the last person who was burnt in England for heresy. There was another condemned to the fire for the same heresy, but as pity was excited by the con- stancy of these sufferers, it was thought better to allow him to linger on a miserable life in Newgate. Fuller, who wrote in the reign of Charles II., and was a zealous Church of Eng- land man, speaking of the burnings in qtiestion, says, " It may appear that God was well pleased with them." There are, however, grievous faults on both sides : and as there are a set of men, who, not content with retaliating upon Protestants, deny the persecuting spirit of the Catholics, I would ask them what they think of the following code, drawn up by the French Catholics against the French Protestants, and carried into execution for one hundred years, and as late as the year 1765, and not repealed till 17821 "Any Protestant clergyman remaining in France three days, without coming to the Catholic worship, to be punished with death. If a Protestant sends his son to a Protestant schoolmaster for education, he is to forfeit 250 livres a month, and the schoolmaster who re- ceives him, 50 livres. If they sent their child- ren to any seminary abroad, they were to forfeit 2000 livres, and the child so sent, became in- capable of possessing property in France. To celebrate Protestant worship, exposed the clergyman to a fine of 2800 livres. The fine to a Protestant for hearing it, was 1300 livres. If any Protestant denied the authority of the pope in France, his goods were seized for the first offence, and- he was hanged for the second. If any Comjnon Prayer-book, or book of Pro- testant worship be found in the possession of any Protestant, he shall forfeit 20 livres for the first offence, 40 livres for the second, and shall WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 443 be imprisoned at pleasure for the third. Any person bringing from beyond sea, or selling any Protestant books of worship, to forfeit 100 livres. Any magistrates may search Protestant houses for such articles. Any person, required by a magistrate to take an oath against the Protestant religion, and refusing, to be com- mitted to prison, and if he afterwards refuse again, to sutler forfeiture of goods. Any person, sending any money over sea to the support of a Protestant seminary, to forfeit his goods, and be imprisoned at the king's pleasure. Any person going over sea, for Protestant edu- cation, to forfeit goods and lands for life. The vessel to be forfeited which conveyed any Protestant woman or child over sea, without the king's license. Any person converting another to the Protestant religion, to be put to death. Death to any Protestant priest to come into France ; death to the person who receives him ; forfeiture of goods and imprisonment to send money for the relief of any Protestant clergyman : large rewards for discovering a Protestant parson. Every Protestant shall cause his child, within one month after birth, to be baptized by a Catholic priest, under a penalty of 2000 livres. Protestants were fined 4000 livres a-month for being absent from Catholic worship, were disabled from holding offices and employments, from keeping arms in their houses, from maintaining suits at law, from being guardians, from practising in law or physic, and from holding offices, civil or military. They were forbidden (bravo, Louis XIV.!) to travel more than five miles from home without license, under pain of forfeiting all their goods, and they might not come to court under pain of 2000 livres. A married Protestant woman when convicted of being of that persuasion was liable to forfeit two-thirds of her jointure; she could not be executrix to her husband, nor have any part of his goods ; and during her marriage, she might be kept in prison, unless her husband redeemed her at the rate of 200 livres a-month, or the third part of his lands. Protestants convicted of being such, were, within three months after their conviction, either to submit, and renounce their religion, or, if required by four magistrates, to abjure the realm, and if they did not depart, or departing returned, were to sutfer death. All Protestants were required, under the most tre- mendous penalties, to swear that they con- sidered the pope as the head of the church. If they refused to take this oath, which might be tendered at pleasure by any two magistrates, they could not act as advocates, procureurs, or notaries public. Any Protestant taking any office, civil or military, was compelled to abjure the Protestant religion ; to declare his belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and to take the Roman Catholic sacrament within six months, under the penalty of 10,000 livres. Any person professing the Protestant religion, and educated in the same, was required, in six months after the age of sixteen, to declare the pope to be the head of the church ; to declare his belief in transubstantiation, and that the invocation of saints was according to the doc- trine of the Christian religion ; failing this, he could not hold, possess, or inherit landed pro- perty; his lands were given to the nearest Catholic relation. Many taxes were doubled upon Protestants. Protestants keeping schools were imprisoned for life, and all Protestants were forbidden to come within ten miles of Paris or Versailles. If any Protestant had a horse worth more than 100 livres, any Catholic magistrate might take it away, and search the house of the said Protestant for arms." Is not this a monstrous code of persecution ? Is it any wonder, after reading such a spirit of tyranny as is here exhibited, that the tendencies of the Catholic religion should be suspected, and that the cry of no Popery should be a rallying sign to every Protestant nation in Europe 1 Forgive, gentle reader, and gentle elector, the trifling deception I have practised upon you. This code is not a code made by French Catholics against French Protestants, but by English and Irish Protest- ants against English and Irish Catholics ; I have given it to you, for the most part, as it is set forth in Burns' "Justice" of 1780: it was acted upon in the beginning of the last king's reign, and was notorious through the whole of Europe, as the most cruel and atrocious system of persecution ever instituted by one religious persuasion against another. Of this code, Mr. Burke says, that " it is a truly barbarous system; where all the parts are an outrage on the laws of humanity, and the rights of nature ; it is a system of elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, imprisonment, and degra- dation of a people, and the debasement of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." It is in vain to say that these cruelties were laws of politi- cal safety ; such has always been the plea for all religious cruelties; by such arguments the Catholics defended the massacre of St. Bartholo- mew, and the burnings of Mary. With such facts as these, the cry of persecu- tion 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 past, which is to the credit of neither part}'. 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 (as Dj-. Sturgess objects to Dr. Milner) death by fire is v.'orse 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* 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 suff'ered; not that this proves much, be- cause the Catholics have enjoyed the sovereign power for so few years between this period Thurloe writes to Henry Cromwell to catch up some thousand Irish bovs, 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 adds, "doubtless it is a business, in which God will appear." Suppose Moody Qneen Mary had caught up and transported three or four thousand Protestant boys and girls from the three ridings of Vorkshire 1 ! I ! ! ! 444 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. a.id the Reformation, and certainly it must be allowed that they were not inactive, during that period, in the great work of pious com- bustion. It is, however, some extenuation of the Catholic excesses, that their religion was the religion of the whole of Europe, when the in- novation 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 in- tention 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 be- cause 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 l)ad 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 establish- ment, 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 ] Sidney Smith. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. US A SERMON ON THOSE RULES OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY BY WHICH OUR OPINIONS OF OTHER SECTS SHOULD BE FORMED: PREACHED BEFORE THE MAYOR AND CORPORATION, IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF BRISTOL, ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 183S. I pcBiisn this sermon (or rather allow others to publish it), because many persons, who know the city of Bristol better than I do, have earnestly solicited me to do so, and are con- vinced it will do good. It is not without reluctance (as far as I myself am concerned) that I send to the press such plain rudiments of common charity and common sense. SxDjfET Smith. Nov. 8, 1828. Col. III. 12, 13. Put on, as the elect of God, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-svffering, forbearing otu another, and forgiving one another," The Church of England, in its wisdom and piety, has very properly ordained that a day of thanksgiving should be set apart, in which we may return thanks to Almighty God for the mercies vouchsafed to this nation in their escape from the dreadful plot planned for the destruction of the sovereign and his Parlia- ment, — the forerunner, no doubt, of such san- guinary scenes as were suited to the manners of that age, and must have proved the inevit- able consequence of such enormous wicked- ness and cruelty. Such an escape is a fair and lawful foundation for national piety. And it is a comely and Christian sight to see the magistrates and high authorities of the land obedient to the ordinances of the church, and holding forth to their fellow-subjects a wise example of national gratitude and serious de- votion. This use of this day is deserving of every commendation. The idea that Almighty God does sometimes exercise a special provi- dence for the preservation of a whole people is justified by Scripture, is not repugnant to reason, and can produce nothing but feelings and opinions favourable to virtue and religion. Another wise and lawful use of this day is an honest self-congratulation that we have burst through those bands which the Roman Catholic priesthood would impose upon human judgment ; that the Protestant Church not only permits, but exhorts, every man to appeal from human authority to the Scriptures; that it makes of the clergy guides and advisers, not masters and oracles ; that it discourages vain and idle ceremonies, unmeaning observances, and hypocritical pomp ; and encourages free- dom in thinking upon religion, and simplicity in religious forms. It is impossible that any candid man should not observe the marked superiority of the Protestants over the Catholic faith in these particulars; and difficult that any pious man should not feel grateful to Almighty Providence for escape from danger which would have plunged this country afresh into so many errors and so many absurdities. I hope, in this condemnation of the Catholic religion (in which I most sincerely join its bitterest enemies), I shall not be so far mis- taken as to have it supposed that I would con- vey the slightest approbation of any laws which disqualify or incapacitate any class of men from civil offices on account of religious opinions. I regard all such laws as fatal and lamentable mistakes in legislation ; they, are mistakes of troubled times, and half-barbarous ages. All Europe is gradually emerging from their influence. This country has lately, with the entire consent of its prelates, made a noble and successful eflbrt, by the abolition of some of the most obnoxious laws of this class. In proportion as such example is followed, the enemies of church and state will be diminish- ed, and the foundation of peace, order, and happiness be strengthened. These are my opinions, which I mention, not to convert you, but to guard myself from misrepresentation. It is my duty, — it is my wish, — it is the sub- ject of this "day to point out those evils of the Catholic religion from which we have escaped; but I should be to the last degree concerned, if a condemnation of theological errors were to be construed into an approbation of laws which I cannot but consider as deeply marked by a spirit of intolerance. Therefore, I beg 446 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 3'ou to remember that I record these opinions not for the purpose of converting any one to them, which would be an abuse of the privi- lege of addressing you from the pulpit; not that I attach the slightest degree of importance to them because they are mine ; but merely to guard myself from misrepresentation upon a point on which all men's passions are, at this moment, so powerfully excited. I have said that, at this moment, all men's passions are powerfully excited on this sub- ject. If this is true, it points out to me my line of duty. I must use my endeavours to guard against the abuse of this day; to take care that the principles of sound reason are not lost sight of; and that such excitement, instead of rising into dangerous vehemence, is calmed into active and useful investigation of the subject. I shall, therefore, on the present occasion, not investigate generally the duties of charity and forbearance, but of charity and forbearance in religious matters ; of that Christian meek- ness and humility which prevent the intrusion of bad passions into religious concerns, and keep calm and pure the mind intent upon eternity. And remember, I beg of you, that the rules I shall offer you for the observation of Christian charity are general, and of uni- Tersal application. What j'ou choose to do, and which way you incline upon any particu- lar question, are, and can be, no concern of mine. It would be the height of arrogance and presumption in me, or in any other minis- ter of God's word, to interfere on such points; I only endeavour to teach thdt spirit of forbear- ance and charity, which (though it cannot alwa)'S prevent differences upon religious points) will ensure that these differences are carried on with Christian gentleness. I have endeavoured to lay down these rules for differ- ence with care and moderation ; and, if you will attend to them patiently, I think you will agree with me, that, however the practice of them may be forgotten, the propriety of them cannot be denied. It would always be easier to fall in with hu- man passions than to resist them ; but the ministers of God must do their duty through evil report, and through good report; neither prevented nor excited by the interests of the present day. They must teach those general truths which the Christian religion has com- mitted to their care, and upon which the hap- piness and peace of the world depend. In pressing upon you the great duty of reli- gious charity, the inutility of the opposite de- fect of religious violence first offers itself to, and, indeed, obtrudes itself upon my notice. The evil of difference of opinion must exist; it admits of no cure. The wildest visionary does not now hope he can bring his fellow- creatures to one standard of faith. If history has taught us any one thing, it is that man- kind, on such sort of subjects, will form their own opinions. Therefore, to want charity in religious matters is at least useless ; it hardens error and provokes recrimination ; but it does not enlighten those whom we wish to reclaim, nor docs it extend doctrines which to us ap- pear so clear and indisputable. But to do wrong, and to gain nothing by it, are surely to add folly to fault, and to proclaim an under- standing not led by the mle of reason, as well as a disposition unregulated by the Christian faith. Religious charity requires that we should not judge any sect of Christians by the repre- sentations of their enemies alone, without hearing and reading what they have to say in their own defence ; it requires only, of course, to state such a rule to procure for it general admission. No man can pretend to say that such a rule is not founded upon the plainest principles of justice — upon those plain princi- ples of justice which no one thinks of violating in the ordinary concerns of life ; and yet I fear that rule is not always very strictly adhered to in religious animosities. Religious hatred is often founded on tradition, often on hearsay, often on the misrepresentations of notorious enemies ; without inquiry, without the slightest examination of opposite reasons and authori- ties, or consideration of that which the accused party has to offer for defence or explanation. It is impossible, I admit, to examine every thing ; man}' have not talents, many have not leisure, for such pursuits ; many must be contented with the faith in which they have been brought up, and must think it the best modification of the Christian faith, because they are told it is so. But this imperfect acquaintance with re- ligious controversy, though not blameable when it proceeds from want of power, and want of opportunity, can be no possible justi- fication of violent and acrimonious opinions. I would say to the ignorant man, "It is not your ignorance I blame ; you have had no means, perhaps, of acquiring knowledge: the circumstances of your life have not led to it — may have prevented it; but then I must tell you, if you have not had leisure to inquire, you have no right to accuse. If you are unacquaint- ed Avith the opposite arguments, — or, knowing, cannot balance them, it is not upon you the task devolves of exposing the errors, and im- pugning the opinions of other sects." If cha- rity is ever necessary, it is in those who know accurately neither the accusation nor the de- fence. If invective, — if rooted antipathy, in religious opinions, is ever a breach of Chris- tian rules, it is so in those who, not being able to become Avise, are not willing to become charitable and modest. Any candid man, acquainted with religious controversy, will, I think, admit that he has frequently, in the course of his studies, been astonished by the force of argiiments with which that cause has been defended, which he at first thought to be incapable of any defence at all. Some accusations he has found to be utterly groundless ; in others the facts and arguments have been mis-stated ; in other in- stances the accusation has been retorted ; in many cases the tenets have been defended by strong arguments and honest appeal to Scrip- ture; in many with consummate acuteness and deep learning. So that religious studies often teach to opponents a greater respect for each other's talents, motives, and acquire- ments; exhibit the real difficulties of the sub< ject ; lessen the surprise and anger which are WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 447 apt to he excited by opposition ; and, by these means, promote that forgiving one another, and forbearing one another, which are so powerfully recommended by the words of my text. A great deal of mischief is done by not at- tending to the limits of interference with each other's religious opinions, — by not leaving to the power and wisdom of God that which be- longs to God alone. Our holy religion con- sists of some doctrines which influence prac- tice, and of others which are purely specula- tive. If religious errors are of the former description, they may, perhaps, be fair objects of human interference ; but, if the opinion is merely theological and speculative, there the right of human interference seems to end, be- cause the necessity for such interference does not exist. Any error of this nature is between the Creator and the creature, — be- tween the Redeemer and the redeemed. If buch 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 man wait if God waits 1 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 i-ain upon the just and the unjust, and maketh his sun to shine upon the evil and the good 1 Another canon of religious charity is to re- vise, at long intervals, the bad opinions we have been compelled, or rather our forefathers have been compelled, to form of other Christian sects; to see whether the different bias of the age, the more general diffusion of intelligence, do not render those tenets less pernicious : that which might prove a very great evil under other circumstances, and in other times, may, perhaps, however weak and erroneous, be harmless in these times, and under these cir- cumstances. We must be aware, too, that we do not mistalce recollections for apprehen- sions, and confound together what has passed with what is to come, — history with futurity. For instance, it would be the most enormous abuse of this religious institution to imagine that such dreadful scenes of wickedness are to be apprehended from the Catholics of the present day, because the annals of this coun- try were disgraced by such an event two hun- dred years ago. It would be an enormous abuse of this day to extend the crimes of a few desperate wretches to a Vv^hole sect; to fix the passions of dark ages upon times of refinement and civilization. All these are mistakes and abuses of this day, which vio- late every principle of Christian charity, en- danger the peace of society, and give life and perpetuity to hatreds, which must perish at one time or another, and had better, for the pea,ce of society, perish now. It would be religiously charitable, also, to consider whether the objectionable tenets, which different sects profess, are in their hearts as well as in their books. There is, unfortunateh^, so much pride where there ought to be so much humility, that it is diffi- cult, if not almost impossible, to make religious sects abjure or recant the doctrines they have once professed. It is not in this .paanner, I fear, that the best and purest churches are ever reformed. But the doctrine gradually be- comes obsolete ; and, though not disowned, ceases in fact to be a distinguishing charac- teristic of the sect which professes it. These modes of reformation, — this silent antiquation of doctrines, — this real improvement, which the pfrties themselves are too wise not to feel, though not wise enough to own, must, I am afraid, be generally conceded to human in- firmity. They are indulgences not unneces- sarj' to many sects of Christians. The more generous method would be to admit error where error exists, to say these were the tenets and interpretations of dark and igno- rant ages; Avider inquiry, fresh discussion, superior intelligence have convinced us we are wrong ; we will act in future upon better and wiser principles. This is what men do in laws, arts, and sciences ; and happy for them would it be if they used the same modest do- cility in the highest of all concerns. But it is, I fear, more than experience will allow us to expect ; and therefore the kindest and most charitable method is to allow religious sects silently to improve without reminding them of, and taunting them with, the improvement ; without bringing them to the humiliation of former disavowal, or the still more pernicious practice of defending what they know to be indefensible. The triumphs which proceed from the neglect of these principles are not (what they pretend to be) the triumphs of re- ligion, but the triumphs of personal vanity. The object is not to extinguish the dangerous errors with as little pain and degradation as possible to him who has fallen into the error, but the object is to exalt ourselves, and to de- preciate our theological opponents, as much as possible, at an}'^ expense to God's service, and to the real interests of truth and religion. There is another practice not less common than this, and equally uncharitable ; and that is to represent the opinions of the most violent and eager persons who can be met with, as the common and received opinions of the whole sect. There are, in everj^ denomination of Christians, individuals, by whose opinion or by whose conduct the great body would very reluctantly be judged. Some men aim at attracting notice by singularity; some are de- ficient in temper; some in learning; some push every principle to the extreme ; distort, overstate, pervert; fill every one to whom' their cause is dear with concern that it should have been committed to such rash and intem- perate advocates. If you wish to gain a vic- tory over your antagonists, these are the men whose writings you should study, whose opi- nions you should dwell on, and should care- fully bring forward to notice ; but if you wish, as the elect of God, to put on kindness and humbleness, meekness and long-suffering, — if you wish to forbear and to forgive, it will then occur to you that you should seek the tni-? WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. opinions of any sect from those only who are approved of, and reverenced by that sect ; to Avhose authority that sect defer, and by whose arguments they consider their tenets to be properly defended. This may not suit your purpose, -if you are combating for victory; but it is your duty if you are combating for truth; it is the safe, honest, and splendid conduct of him who never writes nor speaks on religious subjects, but that he may ditluse the real bless- ings of religion among his fellow-creatures, and restrain the bitterness of controversy by the feelings of Christian charity and forbear- ance. Let us also ask ourselves, when we are sit- ting in severe judgment upon the faults, follies, and errors of other Christian sects, M'hether it is not barely possible that we have fallen into some mistakes and misrepresentations! Let us ask ourselves, honestly and fairly, whether we are wholly exempt from prejudice, from pride, from obstinate adhesion to what candour calls upon us to alter, and to yield 1 Are there no violent and mistaken members of our own community, by whose conduct we should be loath to be guided, — by whose tenets we should not choose our faith should be judged] Has time, that improves all, found nothing in us to change for the bet- ter? Amid all the manifold divisions of the Christian world, are we the only Christians who, without having any thing to learn from the knowledge and civilization of the last three centuries, have started up, without infancy, and without error, into consummate wisdom and spotless perfection 1 To listen to enemies as well as friends is a rule which not only increases sense in com- mon life, but is highly favourable to the in- crease of religious candour. You find that you are not so free froin faults as your friends suppose, nor so full of faults as your enemies suppose. You begin to think it not impossi- ble that you may be as unjust to others as they are to you ; and that the wisest and most Christian scheme is that of mutual indulgence; that it is better to put on, as the elect of God, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long- suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another. Some men cannot understand how they are to be zealous if they are candid in religious matters ; how the energy necessary for the one virtue is compatible with the calmness which the other requires. But remember that the Scriptures carefully distinguish betAveen laud- able zeal and indiscreet zeal; that the apostles and epistolary writers knew they had as much to fear from the over-excitement of some men as from the supineness of others ; and in nothing have they laboured more than in preventing religion from arming human passions instead of allaying them, and rendering those princi- ples a source of mutual jealousy and hatred which were intended for universal peace. I admit that indifference sometimes puts on the appearance of candour; but, though there is d. counterfeit, 3'et there is a reality; and the imitation proves the value of the original, be- cause men only attempt to multiply the appear- ances of useful and important things. The | object is to be at the same time pious to Go^ and charitable to man ; to render your own faith as pure and perfect as possible, not only without hatred of those who differ from you, but with a constant recollection that it is possi- ble, in spite of thought and study, that you may have been mistaken, — that other sects may be right, and that a zeal in his service, which God does not want, is a very bad excuse for those bad passions which his sacred word condemns. Lastly, I would suggest that many differences between sects are of less importance than the furious zeal of many men would make them. Are the tenets of any sect of such a description, that we believe they will be saved under the Christian faith 1 Do they fulfil the common duties of life 1 Do they respect pro- perty 1 Are they obedient to the laws 1 Do they speak the truth 1 If all these things are right, the violence of hostility may surely sub- mit to some little softness and relaxation ; honest difference of opinion cannot call for such entire separation and complete antipathy ; such zeal as this, if it be zeal, and not some- thing worse, is not surely zeal according to discretion. The arguments, then, which I have adduced in support of the great principles of religious charity are, that violence upon such subjects is rarely or ever found to be useful; but gene- rally to produce effects opposite to those which are intended. I have observed that religious sects are not to be judged from the represen- tations of their enemies ; but that they are to be heard for themselves, in the pleadings of their best writers, not in the representations of those whose intemperate zeal is a misfor- tune to the sect to which they belong. If you will study the principles of your religious opponents, you will often find your contempt and hatred lessened in proportion as you are better acquainted with what you despise. Many religious opinions, which are purely specu- lative, are without the limits of human inter- ference. In the numerous sects of Christianity, interpreting our religion in very opposite manners, all cannot be right. Imitate the for- bearance and long-suffering of God, who throws the mantle of his mercy over all, and who will probably save, on the last day, the piously right and the piously wrong, seeking Jesus in humbleness of mind. Do not drive religious sects to the disgrace (or to what they foolishly think the disgrace) of formally disa- vowing tenets the)' once professed, but concede something to human weakness ; and, when the tenet is virtually given up. treat it as if it were actually given up ; and alv/ays consider it to be very possible that you yourself may have made mistakes, and fallen into erroneous opinions, as well as any other sect to which you are opposed. If you put on these dispo- sitions, and this tenor of mind, you cannot be guilty of any religious fault, take what part you will in the religious disputes which ap- pear to be coming on the world. If you choose to perpetuate the restrictions upon your fellow- creatures, no one has a right to call you bigoted ; if you choose to do them away, no one has any right to call you lax and indifferent ; you have WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 449 done your utmost to do right, and, -u'hether you err, or do not err, in your mode of interpreting the Christian religion, you show at least that you have caught its heavenly spirit, — that you have put on, as the elect of God, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another. I have thus endeavoured to lay before you the uses and abuses of this day; and, having stated the great mercy of God's interference, and tite blessings this country has secured to itself in resisting the errors, and follies, and superstitions of the Catholic Church, I have endeavoured that this just sense of our own superiority should not militate against the sacred principles of Christian charity. That charity which I ask for others, I ask also for myself. I am sure I am preaching before those who will think (whether they agree with me or not) that I have spoken consci- entiously, and from good motives, and from honest feelings, on a very dilTicult subject, — not sought for by me, but devolving upon me in the course of duty ; — in which I should have been heartily ashamed of myself (as you would have been ashamed of me), if I had thought only how to flatter and please, or thought of any thing but what I hope I always do think of in the pulpit, — that I am placed here by God to tell the truth, and to do good. I shall conclude my sermon, (pushed, I am afraid, already to an unreasonable length,) by reciting to you a very short and beautiful apo- logue, taken from the rabbinical writers. It is, I believe, quoted by Bishop Taylor in his " Holy 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 Avayfaring 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 wayfar- ing man said unto Abraham, ''I will not wor- ship 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 Avas heard in the tent, — Abra- ham, Abraham ! have I borne with this man for threescore and ten years, and canst not thou bear with him for one hour 1" LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT OE THE CATHOLICS, TO MY BROTHER ABRAH^UI, WHO LRTIS IN THE COUNTRY. BY PETER PLYMLEY. LETTER L Dear Abraham, A WORTHIER and better inan than yourself does not exist ; but I have always told )'ou, from the time of our boyhood, that you Avere a bit of a goose. Your parochial affairs are go- verned Avith exemplary order and regularity ; you are as powerful in the vestry as Mr. Per- ceval is in the House of Commons, — and, I must say, Avith much more reason ; nor do I know any church where the faces and smock- frocks of the congregation are so clean, or their eyes so uniformly directed to the preacher. There is another point upon which I Avill do you ample justice ; and that is, that the eyes so directed towards you are wide open ; for the rustic has, in general, good principles, though he cannot control his animal habits ; and, however loud he may snore, his face is perpetually turned towards the fountain of orthodoxy. Having done you this act of justice, I shall proceed, according to our ancient intimacy and familiarity, to explain to you my opinions about the Catholics, and to reply to vours. 57 In the first place, my sweet Abraham, the pope is not landed — nor are there any curates sent out after him — nor has he been hid at St. Alban's by the DoAvager Lady Spencer — nor dined privately at Holland House — nor been seen near Dropmore. If these fears exist (which I do not believe), they exist only in the mind of the chancellor of the exchequer; they emanate from his zeal for the Protostant inte- rest; and, though they reflect the highest honour upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must certainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and \"igour of his understanding. By this time, however, the best informed clergy in the neighbourhood of the metropolis are convinced tliat the rumour is without foundation ; and, though the pope is probably hovering about our coast in a fishing smack, it is most likely he will fall a prey to the vigilance of our cruisers ; and it is certair. he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil. Exactly in the same manner, the story of the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the Foreign Oflice, turns out td be without the shadow of a foundation ; m- 2r 2 450 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. stead of the angels and archangels, mentioned by the informer, nothing was discovered but a -wooden image of Lord Mulgrave, going down to Chatham, as a head-piece for the Spanker gnn-vessel; it was an exact resemblance of his lordship in his military uniform ; and there- fore as little like a god as can well be imagined. Having set your fears at rest as to the extent of the conspiracy formed against the Protestant religion, I will now come to the argument itself. You say these men interpret the Scriptures in an orthodox manner ; and that they eat their God. — Very likely. All this may seem very important to you, who live fourteen miles from a market-town, and, from long residence upon your living, are become a kind of holy ve- getable ; and. in a theological sense, it is highly important. Bi^t I want soldiers and sailors for Ihe state ; I want to make a greater use than I now can do of a poor country full of men ; I want to render the military service popular among the Irish; to check the power of France ; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe, which in twenty years' time will be nothing but a mass of French slaves; and then you, and ten thousand other such boobies as you, call out — "For God's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and in- fantry in Ireland! .... They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do! ... . They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they call their God!" .... I wish to my soul they ^-ould eat you, and such reasoners as you are. What ! when Turk, Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protest- ant, are all combined against this country; when men of every religious persuasion, and no religious persuasion ; v.'hen the population of half the globe is up in arms against us ; are ■we to stand examining our generals and armies as a bishop examines a candidate for holy or- ders 1 and to suffer no one to bleed for Eng- land who does not agree v/ith you about the 2d of Timothy 1 You talk about "the Catholics! If you and your brotherhood have been able to persuade the country into a continuation of this grossest of all absurdities, you have ten times the power which the Catholic clergy ever had in their best days. Louis XIV., when he revoked the Edict of Nanles, never thought of preventing the Protestants from fighting his battles; and gained accordingly some of his most splendid victories by the talents of his Protestant generals. No powder in Europe, but yourselves, has ever thought, for these hundred years past, of asking whether a bayonet is Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran; but whether it is sharp and well-tempered. A bigot delights in jimiblic ridicule ; for he begins to think he is a martyr. I can promise }-ou the full enjoyment of this pleasure, from one ex- tremity of Europe to the other. lam as disgu-^trd with the nonsense of the Ro- man Catholic religion as you can be; and no man who talks such nonsense shall ever tithe Ihe product of the earth, nor meddle with the ecclesiastical establishment in any shape; — but what have I to do with the speculative nonsense of his theology, wlien the object is , to elect the mayor of a counir}' tcvv-n, or to appoint a colonel of a marching regiment? Will a man discharge the solemn imperti- nences of the one office Avith the less zeal, or shrink from the bloody boldness of the other with greater timidity, because the blockhead be- lieves in all the Catholic nonsense of the real presence. I am sorry there should be such impious folly in the world, but I should be ten times a greater fool than he is, if I refused, in consequence of his folly, to lead him out against the enemies of the state. Your^-hole argument is MTong; the state has ntwhing whatever to do with theological errors which do not violate the common rules of morality, and militate against the fair power of the ruler : it leaves all these errors to you, and to such as you. You have every tenth porker in your parish for refuting them ; and take care that you are vigilant and logical in the task. I love the church as well as you do ; but you totally mistake the nature of an establishment, when you contend that it ought to be connected with the military and civil career of every in- dividual in the state. It is quite right that there should be one clergym.an to eveiy parish interpreting the Scriptures after a particular manner, ruled by a regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of haycocks and wheat- sheafs. When I have laid this foundation for a rational religion in the state — when I have placed ten thousand v.-ell-educated men in dif- ferent parts of the kingdom to preach it up, and compelled every body to pay them, whether they hear them or not — I havre taken such measures as I know must always procure an immense majority in favour of the established church ; but I can go no farther. I cannot set up a civil inquisition, and say to one, you shall not be a butcher, because you are not or- thodox; and prohibit another from brewing, and a third from administering the law, and a fourth from defending the country. If com- mon justice did not prohibit me from such a conduct, common sense would. The advan- tage to be gained by quitting. the heresy v.ould make it shameful to abandon it ; and men who had once left the cluirch would continue in such a state of alienation from a point of honour, and transmit that spirit to the latest posterity. This is just the effect your disqtiali- fying laws have produced. They have fed Dr. Rees and Dr. Kippis ; crowded the congrega- tion of the Old Jewry to suffocation ; and ena- bled every sublapsarian, and supralapsarian, and semipelagian clergyman, to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live with some distant resemblance to the state of a gentleman. You say the king's coronation oath will not allow him to consent to any relaxation of the Catholic laws — Why not relax the Catholic lavi's as well as the laws against Protestant dissenters 7 If one is contrary to his oath, the other must be so too; for the spirit of the oath is, to defend the church establishment ; which the Quaker and the Presbyterian differ from as much or more than the Catholic; and yet his majesty has repealed the Corporation and Test Act in Ireland, and done more for the Catholics of both kingdoms than had been done for them since the Reformation. In 1778 the ministers said nothing about the roya con WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 451 science; in 1793* no conscience; in 1804 no conscience; the common feeling of humanity and justice then seem to have had their fullest influence upon the advisers of the crown; but in 1807 — a year, I suppose, eminently fruitful in moral and religious scruples, (as some j-ears are fruitful in apples, some in hops, — it is con- tended by the well-paid Jp,hn Bowles, and by Mr. Perceval (who tried to be well paid), that that is now perjury which we had hitherto called policy and benevolence! Religious liberty has never made such a stride as under the reign of his present majesty; nor is there any instance in the annals of our history, where so many infamous and damnable laws have been repealed as those against the Ca- tholics, which have been put an end to by him; and then, at the close of this useful po- licy, his advisers discover that the very mea- sures of concession and indulgence, or (to use my own language), the measures of justice, which he has been pursuing through the v.-hole of his rei'^n, are contrary to the oath he takes at its crmmencement! That oath binds his majesty not to consent to any measure con- trary to the interests of the established church ; but who is to judge of the tendency of each particular measure? Not the king alone; it can never be the intention of this law that the king, who listens to the advice of his Parlia- ment upon a road bill, should reject it upon the most important of all measures. What- ever be his own private judgment of the ten- dency of any ecclesiastical bill, he complies most strictly with his oath, if he is guided in that particular point by the advice of his Par- liament, who may be presumed to understand its tendency better than the king, or any other individual. You say, if Parliament had been ijnanimous in their opinion of the absolute necessity for Lord Howick's bill, and the king had thought it pernicious, he would have been perjured if he had not rejected it. I sajs on the contrary, his majesty would have acted in the most conscientious manner, and have com- plied most scrupulously with his oath,. if he had sacrificed his own opinion to the opinion of the great council of the nation; because the probability was that such opinion was better than his own ; and upon the same principle, in common lifQ, you give up your opinion to your physician, your lawyer, and your builder. You admit this bill did not compel the king to elect Catholic officers, but only gave him the option of doing so if he pleased; but you add, that the king was right In not trusting such dangerous power to himself or his suc- cessors. Now, you are either to suppose that the king, for the time being, has a zeal for the Catholic establishment, or that he has not. If he has not, where is the danger of giving such an option? If you suppose that he may be influenced by such an admiration of the Ca- tholic religion, M'hy did his present majesty, in the year 1804, consent to that bill which empowered the crown to station ten thousand Catholic soldiers in any part of the kingdom, and placed them absolutely at the disposal of *TIieeQ feelincs of hurmnity and justice were at some ferinds a little quickened liy the representations of <(),0C0 armed volunteers. the crown 1 If the King of England for the time being is a good Protestant, there can be no danger in making the Catholic eligible to any thing ; if he is not, no power can possibly be so dangerous as that conveyed by the bill last quoted ; to which, in point of peril. Lord Howick's bill is a mere joke. But the real fact is, one bill opened a door to his majesty's advisers for trick, jobbing, and intrigue; the other did not. - Besides, what folly to talk to me of an oath, which, under all possible circumstances, is to prevent the relaxation of the Catholic laws I for such a solemn appeal to God sets all con- ditions and contingencies at defiance. Sup- pose Bonaparte was to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to suc- ceed, after repeated trials, in making an im- pression upon Ireland, do you think we should hear any thing of the impediment of a coro- nation oath 1 or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour such ministers, and such ttnheard-of nonsense, if the most distant pros- pect existed of conciliating the Catholics by every species even of the most abject conces- sion ? And yet, if your argument is good for any thing, the coronation oath ought to reject, at such a moment, every tendency to concilia- tion, and to bind Ireland forever to the crowa of France. I found in your letter the usual remarks about fire, fagot, and bloody Mary. Are you aware, my dear priest, that there were as many persons put to death tor religious opinions under the mild Elizabeth as under the bloody Maryl The reign of the former was, to be sure, ten times as long; but I only mention the fact, merely to show you that something de- pends upon the age in which men live, as well as on their religious opinions. Three hundred years ago, men burnt and hanged each other for these opinions. Time has softened Catholic as well as Protestant; they both re- quired it; though each perceives only his owni improvement, and is blind to that of the other. We are all the creatures of circumstances. I know not a kinder and better man than your- self; but you (if you had lived in those times) would certainly have roasted your Catholic; and I promise you, if- the first exciter of this religious mob had been as powerful then as he is now, you would soon have been elevated to the mitre. I do not go the length of saying that the world has suffered as much from Pro- testant as from Catholic persecution ; far from it: but you should remember the Catholics had all the power, when the idea first started up in the world that there could be two modes of faith; and that it was much more natural they should attempt to crush this diversity of opinion by great and cruel efforts, than that the Protestants should rage against those wno differed from them, when the very basis of their system was complete freedom in all spirit- ual matters. I cannot extend my letter any further at present, but you shall soon hear from me again. You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my counir\' in the hands of a pert London joker and a se- cond-rate lawyer. Of the first, no other good 452 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses; the second seems to me to have the head of a country parson, and the tongue of an Old Bailey lawyer. If I could see good measures pursued, I care not a farthing who is in power; but I have a passionate love for common justice, and for common sense, and I abhor and despise every man who builds up his political fortune upon their ruin. God bless you, reverend Abraham, and de- fend you from the pope, and all of us from that administration who seek power by oppos- ing a measure which Burke, Pitt, and Fox all considered as absolutely necessary to the exist- ence of the country. LETTER IL Dear Abraham, The Catholic not respect an oath! why not? What upon earth has kept him out of Parlia- ment, or excluded him from all the- offices whence he is excluded, but his respect for oaths 1 There is no law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be no such law; because it is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of any man's mind. Suppose it were in contemplation to exclude all men from certain offices who con- tended for the legality of taking tithes : the only mode of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess would be to tender you an oath "against that damna- ble doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, abstract, appropriate, subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pi- geon, duck," &c., &c., &c., and every other ani- mal that ever existed, which of course the lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now this oath I am sure you would rather die than take; and so the Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of his reli- gion I The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is, that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths 7 The oaths keep him out of Parliament ; why then he respects them. Turn which way .you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by reli- gious obligations as j'ou are ; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit any thing in favour of a dissenter. I will not dispute with you whether the pope be or be not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. I hope it is not so; because I am afraid it will induce his majesty's chancellor of the exche- quer to introduce several severe bills against Popery, if that is the case ; and though he will have the decency to appoint a previous com- mittee of inquiry as to the fact, the committee will be garbled, and the report infiaramatory. Leaving this to be settled as he pleases to settle it, I wish to inform you, that previously lo the bill last passed in favour of the Catho- lics, at the suggestion of Mr. Pitt, and for his satisfaction, the opinions of six of the most celebrated of the foreign Catholic universities were taken as to the right of the pope to inter- fere in the temporal concerns of any country. The answer cannot possibly leave the shadow of a doubt, even in the mind of Baron Ma- seres ; and Dr. Rennel would be compelled to admit it, if three bishops lay dead at the very moment the question were put to him. To this answer might be added also the solemn declaration and signature of all the Catholics in Great Britain. I should perfectly agree with you, if the Catholics admitted such a dangerous dispens- ing power in the hands of the pope ; but they all deny it, and laugh at it, and are ready to abjure it in the most decided manner you can devise. They obey the pope as the spiritual head of their church ; but are you really so foolish as to be imposed upon by mere names ? — What matters it the seven-thousandth part of a farthing who is the spiritual head of any church 1 Is not ?vlr. Wilberforce at the head of the church of Clapham 1 Is not Dr. Letsom at the head of the Quaker church I Is not the general assembly at the head of the church of Scotland 1 How is the government disturbed by these many-headed churches ] or in what way is the power of the crown augmented by this almost nominal dignity 1 The king appoints a fast-day once a year, and he makes the bishops ; and if the govern- ment would take half the pams to keep the Catholics out of the arms of France that it does to widen Temple Bar, or improve Snow Hill, the king would get into his hands the appointments of the titular bishops of Ireland. — Both Mr. C 's sisters enjoy pensions more than sufficient to place the two greatest dignitaries of the Irish Catholic Church entirely at the disposal of the crown. — Every body who knows Ireland knows perfectly well, that nothing would be easier, with the expenditure of a little money, than to preseiwe enough of the ostensible appointment in the hands of the pope to satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination remained with the crown. But, as I have before said, the mo- ment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and to common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, and the fatuity of idiots. Whatever j-our opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth and intelligence, who, if firmly united with this countr}', would set at defiance the power of France, and if once wrested from their alliance with England, would in three years render its existence as an independent nation absolutely impossible. You speak of danger to the establishment: I request to.knoAV when the establishment was ever so much in danger as when Hoche was in Bantry Bay, and whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts of the Jesuits, were half so terrible 1 Mr. Per- ceval and his parsons forgot all this, in their horror lest twelve or fourteen old women may WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 453 be converted to holy water, and Catholic non- sense. They never see that, while they are saving these venerable ladies from perdition, Ireland may be lost, England broken down, and the Protestant Church, with all its deans, prebendaries, Percevals and Rennels, be swept into the vortex of oblivion. Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me again the name of Dr. Duigenan. I have been in every corner of Ireland, and have studied its present strength and condition with no common labour. Be assured Ireland does not contain at this moment less than five millions of people. There were returned in the year 1791 to the hearth tax 701,000 houses, and there is no kind of question that there were about 50,000 houses omitted in that return. Taking, however, only the number returned for the tax, and allowing the average of six to a house (a very small average for a potato-fed people), this brings the population to 4,200,000 people in the year 1751 ; and it can be shown from the clearest evidence, (and Mr. Newen- ham in his book shows it,) that Ireland for the last fifty years has increased in its population at the rate of 50 or 60,000 per annum ; which leaves the present population of Ireland at about five millions, after every possible deduc- tion for cx/s'uis: circumsta7ucs,jnst and necessary tt'flrs, monstrous and nnnatural rebcUions, and all other sources of human destruction. Of this population, two' out often are Protestants ; and* the half of^ the Protestant population are dis- senters, and as inimical to the church as the Catholics themselves. In this state of things, thumb-screws and whipping — admirable en- gines of polic3% as they must be considered to be — will not ultimately avail. The Catholics will hang over you ; they will watch for the moment; and compel you hereafter to give them ten times as much, against your will, as they would now be contented with, if it was voluntarily surrendered. Remember what hap- pened in the American war: when Ireland compelled you to give her every thing she asked, and to renounce, in the most explicit manner, your claim of sovereignty over her. God Almighty grant the folly of these present men may not bring on such another crisis of public affairs ! What are your dangers which threaten the establishment! — Reduce this declamation to a point, and let us understand what you mean. The most ample allowance does not calculate that there would be more than twenty mem- bers who were Roman Catholics in one house, and ten in the other, if the Catholic emancipa- tion were carried into eifect. Do you mean that these thirty members would bring in a bill to take away the tithes from the Protestant, and to pay them to the Catholic clergy! Do you mean that a Catholic general would march ills army into the House of Commons and purge it of Mr. Perceval and Mr. Duigenan 1 or, that the theological writers would become all of a sudden more acute and more learned, if the present civil incapacities were removed 1 Do you fear for your tithes, or your doctrines, or your person, or the English constitution] Every fear, taken separately, is so glaringly absurd, that no man has fh<3 folly or the bold- ness to state it. Every one conceals his igno- rance, or his baseness, in a stupid general panic, whi«h, when called on, he is utterly incapable of explaining. Whatever you think of the Catholics, there they are— you cannot get rid of them ; your alternative is, to give them a lawful place for stating their griev- ances, or an unlawful one : if you do not admit them to the House of Commons, they will hold their Parliament in Potato-place, Dublin, and be ten times as violent and inflammatory as they would be in Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea of security, as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parlia- ment, looked upon by all the Catholics as the' fair and proper organ of their party. I should have thought it the height of good fortune that such a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of madness and ignorance to reject it. Can you murder the Catholics "! — Can you neglect them! They are too numerous for both these expedients. What remains to be done is obvious to every human being — but to that man who, instead of being a Methodist preacher, is, for the curse of us, and our children, and for the ruin of Troy, and the miserv of good old Priam and his sons, become a legislator and a politician. A distinction, I perceive, is taken, by one of the most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation of political power ; whereas, there is no more distinction between these two things than there is between him who makes the distinc- tion and a booby. If I strip off the relic-co- vered jacket of a Catholic, and give him twenty stripes .... I persecute ; if I say, every bodv in the town where you live shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable offices, but you who are a Catholic .... I do not per- secute ! — What barbarous nonsense is this ! as if degradation was not as great an evil as bodily pain, or as severe poverty; as if I could not be as great a tyrant by saying. You shall not enjoy — as by saying. You shall sufl^er. The English, I believe, are as truly religious as any nation in Europe ; I know no greater blessing ; but it carries with it this evil in its train, that any villain who will bawl out " The church is in danger .'" may get a place, and a good pension; and that any administration who will do the same thing may bring a set ol men into power who, at a moment of stationary and passive piety, would be hooted by the very boys in the streets. But it is not all religion; it is, in great part, that narrow and exclusive spirit which delights to keep the common blessings of sun, and air, and freedom from other human beings. "Your religion ha;s always been degraded; you are in the dust, and I will take care you never rise again. I should enjoy less the possession of an earthly good, by every additional person to whom it was extended." You may not be aware of it yourself, most reverend Abraham, but you deny their freedom to the Catholics upon the same principle that Sarah your wife refuses to give the receipt for a ham oi a gooseberry dumpling ; she values her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavoui, cut be- cause they remind her that her neighbours 454 WORKS OF THE KEV. SYDNEY SMITH. want it : — a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest ; venial when it withholds the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and exe- crable when it narrows the boon of religious freedom. You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the present prime-minister. Grant you all that you write ; I say, I fear he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy de- structive to the true interest of his country; and then you tell me, he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals ! These are, undoubtedly, the first qualifications to be looked to in a time of the most serious public danger; but somehow or another (if public and private virtues must always be in- compatible), I should prefer that he destroyed the domestic happiness of Wood or Cockell, owed for the veal of the preceding year, whip- ped his boys, and saved his country. The late administration did not do right; they did not build their measures upon the solid basis of facts. They should have caused several Catholics to have been dissected after death by surgeons of either religion ; and the report to have been published with accompa- nying plates. If the viscera, and other organs of life, had been found to be the same as in Protestant bodies ; if the provision of nerves, arteries, cerebrum, and cerebellum, had been the same as we are provided with, or as the dissenters are now known to possess; then, indeed, they might have met Mr. Perceval upon a proud eminence, and convinced the country at large of the strong probability that the Catholics are really human creatures, en- dowed with the feelings of men, and entitled to all their rights. But instead of this wise and prudent measure. Lord Howick, with his usual precipitation, brings forward a bill in their favour, without ofiering the slightest proof to the country that they were any thing more than horses and oxen. The person Avho shows the lama at the corner of Piccadilly has the pre- caution to write up — flowed by Sir Joseph Banks to be a real quadruped: so his lordship might have said — Allowed by the Bench of Bishops to he real human creatures .-. . . I could write you twenty letters upon this subject : but I am tired, and so I suppose are you. Our friendship is now of forty years' standing; you know me to be a truly religious man ; but I shudder to see religion treated like a cockade, or a pint of beer, and made the instrument of a party. I love the king, but I love the people as well as the king; and if I am sorry to see his old age molested, I am much more sorry to see four millions of Catholics baffled in their just ex- pectations. If I love Lord Grenville, and Lord Howick, it is because they love their country; if I abhor ******, it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the e-normous folly and cre- dulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester, of Avhom it is your misfortune (O think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, '.hat this political Killigrew, just before the >n-eaking-up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place ; and if they Ijad survived tv.'entj'-four hours longer, he would have been now declaiming against the cry of No Popery ! instead of inflaming it. — With this practical comment on the baseness of human nature, I bid you adieu ! LETTER III. All that I have so often told you, Mr. Abra- ham Plymley, is now come to pass. The Scythians, in whom you and the neighbouring country gentlemen placed such confidence, are smitten hip and thigh ; their Bennmgsen put to open shame; their magazines of train oil intercepted, and we are waking from our dis- graceful drunkenness to all the horrors of Mr. Perceval and Mr. Canning .... We shall now see if a nation is to be saved by school- boy jokes and doggerel rhymes, by afi'ronting petulance, and by the tones and gesticulations of Mr. Pitt. But these are not all the auxilia- ries on which we have to depend; to these his colleague will add the strictest attention to the smaller parts of ecclesiastical government, to hassocks, to psalters, and to surplices; in the last agonies of England, he will bring in a bill to regulate Easter-oflerings ; and he will adjust the stipends of curates,* when the flag of France is unfurled on the hills of Kent. What- ever can be done by very mistaken notions of tfie piety of a Christian, and by very wretched imitation of the eloquence of Mr. Pitt, will be done by these two gentlemen. After all, if they both really were what they both either wish to be or wish to be thought; if the one were an enlightened Christian, who drev/ from the Gospel the toleration, the charity, and the sweetness which it contains; and if the other really possessed any portion of the great un- derstanding of his Nisus who guarded him from the weapons of the whigs, I should still doubt if they could save us. But I am sure we are not to be saved by religious hatred, and by re- ligious trifling; by any psalmody, however sweet; or by any persecutio'n, however sharp: I am certain the sounds of Mr. Pitt's voice, and the measure of his tones, and the movement of his arms, will do nothing for us ; when these tones, and movements, and voice bring us always declamation without sense or know- ledge, and ridicule without good humour or conciliation. Oh, Mr. Plymle}% Mr. Plymley, this never will do. Mrs. iVbraham Plymley, my sister, will be led away captive by an amorous Gaul ; and Joel Plymley, your first- born, will be a French drummer. Out of sight, out of mind, seems to be a pro- verb which applies to enemies as well as friends. Because the French army was no longer seen from the cliffs of Dover ; because the sound of cannon was no longer heard by the debauched London bathers on the Sussex coast; because the Morning Post no longer fixed the invasion sometimes for Monday, sometimes for Tuesday, sometimes (positively for the last time of invading) on Saturday; because all these causes of terror were suspended, you *The reverend the chancellor of the exchequer has. since this was written, found time, in the heat of the .ses- sion, to write a book on the stipends of curates. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 4.'>5 conceived the power of Bonaparte to be at an end, and were setting off for Paris, with Lord Ilawkesbury the conqueror. — This is precisely the method in which the English have acted during the whole of the revolutionary war. If Austria or Prussia armed, doctors of divinity immediately printed those passages, out of Habakkuk, in which the destruction of the usurper by General Mack, and the Duke of Brunswick, are so clearly predicted. If Bona- parte halted, there was a mutiny, or a dysen- ter}^. If any one of his generals were eaten up by the light troops of Russia, and picked (as their manner is) to the bone, the sanguine spirit of this country displayed itself in all its glory. What scenes of infamy did the Society for the Suppression of Vice lay open to our astonished eyes : tradesmen's daughters danc- ing; pots of beer carried out between the first and second lesson ; and dark and distant ru- mours of indecent prints. Clouds of Mr. Canning's cousins arrived by the waggon ; all the contractors left their cards with Mr. Rose; and every plunderer of the public crawled out of his hole, like slugs and grubs, and worms, after a shower of rain. If my voice could have been heard at the late changes, I should have said, "Gently; patience ; stop a little ; the time is not yet come ; the mud of Poland will harden, and the bowels of the French grenadiers will recover (heir tone. When honest}^ good sense, and liberality have extricated you out of your pre- sent embarrassment, then dismiss them as a matter of course; but you cannot spare them just now; don't be in too great a hurry, or there will be no monarch to flatter, and no country to pillage ; only submit for a little time to be respected abroad ; overlook the painful absence of the tax-gatherer for a few years ; bear up nobly under the increase of freedom and of liberal policy for a little time, and I promise you, at the expiration of that period, you shall be plundered, insulted, disgraced, and restrained to your heart's content. Do not imagine I have any intention of putting servility and canting hj^pocrisy permanently out of place, or of filling up with courage and sense those offices which naturally devolve upon decorous imbecility and inflexible cun- ning: give us only a little time to keep ofi'the hussars of France, and then the jobbers and jesters shall return to their birth-right, and public virtue be calle,d by its old name of fanaticism."* Such is the advice I would have offered to my infatuated countrymen ; but it rained very hard in November, Brother Abra- ham, and the bowels of our enemies were loosened, and we put our trust in white fluxes, and wet mud ; and there is nothing now to oppose to the conqueror of the world, but a * This isMr. Cannini^'s tprm for the detection ofpuhlic abuses ; a term invented by him, and adopted by that simious parasite who is always grinning at his heels. — Nature descends down to infinite smallness. Mr. Can- ning has his parasites ; an4 if you take a large buzzing blue-liottle fly, and loolt at it in a microscope, you may see 20 or 30 little ugly insects crawling about it, which doubtless think their fly to be the bluest, grandest, mer- riest, most important animal in the universe, and are convii ced the world would be at an end if it ceased to tiiizz. small table wit, and the sallow surveyor of the meltings. You ask me, if I think it possible fon this country to survive the recent misfortunes of Europe? — I answer you without the slightest degree of hesitation,, that, if Bonaparte lives, and a great deal is not immediately done for the conciliation of the Catholics, it does seem to me absolutely impossible but that we must perish ; and take this with you, that we shall perish without exciting the slightest feeling of present or future compassion, but fall amidst the hootings and revilings of Europe, as a na- tion of blockheads, Methodists, and old women. If there were any great scenery, any heroic feelings, any blaze of ancient virtue, any exalt- ed death, any termination of England that would be ever remembered, ever honoured ia that western world, where liberty is now retir- ing, conquest would be more tolerable, and ruin more sweet; but it is doubly miserable to become slaves abroad, because we would be tyrants at home; to persecute, when we are contending against persecution ; and to perish, because we have raised up worse enemies within, from our own bigotry, than we are ex- posed to without from the unprincipled ambi- tion of France. It is, indeed, a most silly and afllicting spectacle to rage at such a moment against our ov/n kindred and our own blood; to tell them they cannot be honourable in war, because they are conscientious in religion; to stipulate (at the very moment when we should buy their hearts and swords at any price) that they must hold up the right hand in prayer, and not the left; and adore one common God, by turning to the east rather than to the west. What is it the Catholics ask of you ? Do not exclude us from the honours and emolu- ments of the stale, because we worship God ia one way, and you worship him in another, — in a period of the deepest peace, and the fattest pros- perity, this would be a fair request ; it should be granted, if Lord Hawkesbury had reached Paris, if Mr. Canning's interpreter had threat- ened the Senate in an opening speech, or Mr. Perceval explained to them the improvements he meant to introduce into the Catholic reli- gion ; but to deny the -Irish this justice now, in the present state of Europe, and in the sum- mer months, just as the season for destroying kingdoms is coming on, is (beloved Abraham), whatever you may think of it, little short of positive insanity. Here is a frigate attacked by a corsair of im- mense strength and size, rigging cut, masts ia danger of coming by the board, four foot water in the hold, men dropping off very fast; in this dreadful situation how do you think the captaia acts (whose name shall be Perceval) ? He calls all hands upon deck ; talks to them of king, country, glory, sweethearts, gin, French prison, wooden shoes, old England, and hearts of oak; they give three cheers, rush to their guns, and, after a tremendous conflict, succeed in beating off the enemy. Not a .syllable of all this ; this is not the manner in which the hon- ourable commander goes to work; the first thing he does is to secure 20 or 30 of his prime sailors who happen to be Catholics, to clap 456 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. them in irons, ana set over them a guard of as many Protestants : having taken this admirable method of defending himself against his infidel opponents, he goes upon deck, reminds the sail- ors, in a very hitler harangue, that they are of different religions ; exhorts the Episcopal gun- ner not to trust to the Presbyterian quarter-mas- ter; issues positive orders that the Catholics should he fired at upon the first appearance of discontent ; rushes through blood and brains, ex- amining his men in the catechism and 39 Arti- cles, and positively forbids every one to spunge or ram who has not taken the sacrament ac- cording to the Church of England. Was it right to take out a captain made of excellent British stuff, and to put in such a man as this 7 Is not he more like a parson, or a talking law- yer, than a thorough-bred seaman] And built as she is of heart of oak, and admirably manned, is it possible, with such a captain, to save this ship from going to the bottom 1 You have an argument, I perceive, in com- mon with many others, against the Catholics, that their demands complied with would only lead to farther exactions, and that it is better to resist them now, before any thing is conceded, than hereafter, when it is found that all conces- sions are in vain. I wish the chancellor of the exchequer, who uses this reasoning to exclude others from their just rights, had tried its effica- cy, not by his understanding, but by (what are full of much better things) his pockets. Sup- pose the person to whom he applied for the meltings had withstood every plea of wife and fourteen children, no business, and good cha- racter, and refused him this paltry little office, because he might hereafter attempt to get hold of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster for life; would not Mr. Perceval have contended eagerly against the injustice of refusing mode- rate requests, because immoderate ones may hereafter be made? Would he not have said, (and said truly,) leave such exorbitant attempts as these to the general indignation of the Com- mons, who will take care to defeat them when they do occur; but do not refuse me the irons, and the meltings now, because I may totally Jose sight of all moderation hereafter. Leave hereafter to the spirit and the wisdom of here- after; and do not be niggardly now, from the apprehension that men as wise as you should be profuse in times to come. You forget, Brother Abraham, that it is a vast art (where quarrels cannot be avoided) to turn the public opinion in your favour and to the prejudice of your enemy; a vast privilege to feel that you are in the right, and to make him feel that he is in the wrong: a privilege which makes you more than a man, and your antagonist less; and often secures victory, by convincing him who contends, that he must submit to injustice if he submits to defeat. Open every rank in the army and navy to the Catholic; let him purchase at the same price as the Protestant (if either Catholic or Protest- ant can purchase such refined pleasures) the privilege of hearing Lord Castlereagh speak for three hours; keep his clergy from starving, soften some of the most odious powers of the tith- ii g-man, and you will for ever lay this formi- dable question to rest. But if I am wrong, and you must quarrel at last, quarrel upon just rather than unjust grounds; divide the Catholic, and unite the Protestant ; be just, and your own ex- ertions will be more formidable and their exer- tions less formidable; be just, and you will take away from their party all the best and wisest understandings of both persuasions, and knit them firmly to your own cause. " Thrice is he armed who has his quarrel just;" and ten times as much may he be taxed. In the begin- ning of any war, however destitute of common sense, every mob will roar, and every lord of the bedchamber address; but if you are en- gaged in a war that is to last for years, and to require important sacrifices, take care to make the justice of your case so clear and so obvious, that it cannot be mistaken by the most illiterate country gentleman who rides the earth. No- thing, in fact, can be so grossly absurd as the argument which says, I will deny justice to you now, because I suspect future injustice from you. At this rate, you may lock a man up in your stable, and refuse to let him out be- cause you suspect that he has an intention, at some future period, of robbing your hen-roost. You may horsewhip him at Lady-day, because you believe he will affront you at Midsummer. You may commit a greater evil, to guard against a less, which is merely contingent, and may never happen. You may do what you have done a century ago in Ireland, made the Catholics worse than Helots, because you sus- pected that they might hereafter aspire to be more than fellow-citizens ; rendering their suf- ferings certain from your jealousy, while yours were only doubtful from their ambition; an am- bition sure to be excited by the very measures which were taken to prevent it. The physical strength of the Catholics will not be greater because you give them a share of political power. You may, by these means, turn rebels into friends ; but I do not see how you make rebels more formidable. If they taste of the honey of lawful power, they will love the hive from whence they procure it ; if they will struggle with us like men in the same state for civil influence, we are safe. All that I dread is, the physical strength of four millions of men combined with an invading French army. If you are to quarrel at last with this enormous population, still put it off as long as you can; you must gain, and cannot lose, by the delay. The state of Europe cannot be worse ; the conviction which the Catholics entertain of your tyranny and injustice cannot be more alarming, nor the opinions of your own people more divided. Time, which pro- duces such effect upon brass and marble, may inspire one minister with modest}', and another with compassion; every circumstance may be better; some certainly will be so, none can be worse ; and, after all, the evil may neverhappen. You have got hold, I perceive, of all the vul- gar English stories respecting the hereditary transmission of forfeited property, and serious- ly believe that every Catholic beggar wears the terriers of his father's land next his skin, and is only waiting for better times to cut the throat of the Protestant professor, and get drunk in the hall of his ancestors. There is one irresistible answer to this mistake, and WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 457 that is, that the forfeitef" lands are purchased indiscriminately by Catholic and Protestant, and that the Catholic purchaser never objects to such a title. Now the land (so purchased by a Catholic) is either his own family estate, or it is not. If it is, you suppose him so desi- rous of coming into possession, that he resorts to the double method of rebellion and purchase ; if it is not his own family estate of which he becomes the purchaser, 3'ou suppose him first to purchase, then to rebel, in order to defeat the purchase. These things may happen in Ire- land; but it is totally impossible they can hap- pen anywhere else. In fact, what land can any man of any sect purchase in Ireland, but for- feited property 1 In all other oppressed coun- tries which 1 have ever heard of, the rapacity of the conqueror was bounded by the territorial limits in which the objects of his avarice were contained; but Ireland has been actually con- fiscated twice over, as a cat is twice killed by a wicked parish-boy. I admit there is a vast luxury in selecting a particular set of Christians, and in worrying them as a boy worries a puppy dog ; it is an amusement in which all the young English are brought up from their earliest days. I like the idea of saying to men who use a different hassock from me, that till they change their has50ck, they shall never be colonels, alder- men, or Parliament-men. While I am gratify- ing my personal insolence respecting religious forms, I fondle myself into an idea that I am religious, and that I am doing my duty in the most exemplary (as I certainly am in the most easy) way. But then, my good Abraham, this sport, admirable as it is, is become, with re- spect to the Catholics, a little dangerous ; and if we are not extremely careful in taking the aihusement, we shall tumble into the holy w^ater, and be drowned. As it seems neces- sary to your idea of an established church to have somebody to worry and torment, suppose we were to select for this purpose William Wilberforce, Esq., and the patent Christians of Clapham. We shall by this expedient en- joy the same opportunity for cruelty and in- justice, without being exposed to the same risks; we will compel them to abjure vital clergymen by a public test, to deny that the said William Wilberforce has any power of working miracles, touching for barrenness or any other infirmity, or thg,t he is endowed with any preternatural gift whatever. We will swear them to the doctrine of good works, compel them to preach common sense, and to hear it ; to frequent bishops, deans, and other high churchmen ; and to appear (once in the quarter at the least) at some melodrame, opera, pantomime, or other light scenical representa- tion; in short, we will gratify the love of inso- lence and power; we will enjoy the old orthodox sport of witnessing the impotent anger of men compelled to submit to civil degradation, or to sacrifice their notions of truth to ours. And all this we may do without the slightest risk, because their numbers are (as yet) not very considerable. Cruelty and injustice must, of course, exist ; but why connect them with danger? Why torture a bull-dog when you can get a frog or a rabbit 1 I am sure my 58 proposal will meet with the most universal approbation. Do not be apprehensive of any opposition from ministers. If it is a case of hatred, we are sure that one man will defend it by the Gospel ; if it abridges human free- dom, we know that another will find precedents for it in theRevolufion. In the name of Heaven, what are we to gain by suffering Ireland to be rode b'y that factioa which now predominates over if! Why are we to endanger our own church and state, not for 500,000 Episcopalians, but for ten or twelve great Orange families, who have been sucking the blood of that country for these hundred years last pasti and the folly of the Orange- men* in playing this game themselves, is almost as absurd as ours in plajang it for them. They ought to have the sense to see that their business now is to keep quietl^^ the lands and beeves of which the fathers of the Catholics were robbed in days of yore ; they must give to their descendants the sop of political power; by contending with them for names, they will lose realities, and be com- pelled to beg their potatoes in a foreign land, abhorred equally by the English, who have witnessed their oppression, and by the Catho- lic Irish, who have smarted under them. LETTER IV. Then comes Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown (the gentleman who dancedf so badly at the court of Naples), and asks, if it is not an anomaly to educate men in another religion than your own! It certainly is our duty to get rid of error, and above all, of religious error; but this is not to be done per saltum, or the mea- sure will miscarry, like the queen. It may be very easy to dance away the royal embryo of a great kingdom ; but Mr. Hawkins Brown must look before he leaps, when his object is to crush an opposite sect in religion ; false Sjteps aid the one effect as much as they are latal to the other; it will require not only the lapse of Mr. Hawkins Brown, but the lapse of centuries, before the absurdities of the Catho- lic religion are larughed at as much as they deserve to be ; but surely, in the mean time, the Catholic religion is better than none ; foui millions of Catholics are better than four mil- lions of wild beasts; two hundred priests, educated by our own government, are better than the same number educated by the man who means to destroy us. The whole sum now appropriated by govern- ment to the religious education of four millions of Christians is 13,000/.; a sum about one * Tliis remark bpsiiis to be sensibly felt in Ireland. The Protestants in Ireland are ftist coming over to the Catholic cause. + In the third year of his present majesty, and in the 30th of his own ape, Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown, then upon his travels, danced one evenine at the court of Naples. His dress was a volcanic silk with lava buttons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing under St. Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known; but Mr. Brown danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigour, that he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of laugh- ter, which terminated in a miscarriage, and changed ihu dynasty of the Neapulitan throne. 2Q 458 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDJs^EY SMITH. hundred times as large being appropriated in the same country to about one-eighth part of til's number of Protestants. When it was proposed to raise this grant from 8,000Z. to 13,000/., its present amount, this sum was objected to by that most indulgent of Chris- tians, Mr. Spencer Perceval, as enormous; he himself having secured for his ov,'n eating and drinking, and the eating and drinking of the Master and Miss Percevals, the reversionary sum of 21,000/. a year of the public money, and having just failed in a desperate and rapa- cious attempt to secure to himself for life the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster ; and the best of it is, that this minister, after abusing his predecessors for their impious bounty to the Catholics, has found himself compelled, from the apprehension of immediate danger, to grant the sum in question ; thus dissolving his pearl* in vinegar, and destroying all the value of the gift by the virulence and reluc- tance with which it was granted. I hear from some persons in Parliament, and from others in the sixpenny societies for debate, a great deal about unalterable laws passed at the Revolution. When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool. A law passed when there were Germany, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, and Turkey; when there was a disputed succession ; when four or five hundred acres were won and lost after ten )'ears' hard fighting; when armies were com- manded by the sons of kings, and campaigns passed in an interchange of civil letters and ripe fruit ; and for these laws, when the whole state of the world is completely changed, we are now, according to my Lord Hawkesbury, to hold ourselves ready to perish. It is no mean misfortune, in times like these, to be forced to say any thing about such men as Lord Hawkesbury, and to be reminded that we are governed by them; but as I am driven to it, I must take the liberty of observing, that the wisdom and liberality of my Lord Hawkes- bury are of that complexion which alwa3-s shrinks from the present exercise of these virtues, by praising the splendid examples of them in ages past. If he had lived at such periods, he would have opposed the Revolution by praising the Reformation, and the Reforma- tion by speaking handsomely of the crusades. He gratifies his natural antipathy to great and courageous measures, by playing off the wis- dom and courage which have ceased to influ- ence human affairs against that wisdom and courage which living men would employ for present happiness. Besides, it happens un- fortunately for the warden of the Cinque Ports, that to the principal incapacities under which the Irish suffer, they were subjected after that great and glorious revolution, to which we are indebted for so many blessings, and his lordship for the termination of so many periods. The Catholics were not ex- cluded from the Irish House of Commons, or }nilitary commands, before the 3d and 4th of * Perfectly ready at the same time to follow the other half of Cleopatra's'example, and to swallow the solution kiiuself. William and Mary, and the 1st and 2d of Queen Anne. If the great mass of the people, environed as they are on every side with Jenkinsons, Percevals, Melvilles, and other perils, were to pray for divine illumination and aid, what more could Providence in its mercy do than send them the example of Scotland ? For what a length of years was it attempted to compel the Scotch to change their religion : horse, foot, artillery, and armed prebendaries, v>ere sent out after the Presbyterian parsons and their congregations. The Percevals of those days called for blood; this call is never made in vain, and blood M-as shed; but, to the astonishment and horror of the Percevals of those days, they could not introduce the Book of Common Prayer, nor prevent that meta- physical people from going to heaven their true way, instead of our true way. With a little oatmeal for food, and a little sulphur for friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with the one hand, and holding his Calvinistical creed in the other, Sawney ran away to his flinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy of the tallest thistles. But Sawney brought up his itnbreeched offspring in a cordial hatred of his oppressors ; and Scotland was as much a part of the weakness of England then as Ireland is at this moment. The true and the only remedy was applied ; the Scotch, were sufiered to worship God after their own tire- some manner, without pain, penalty, and pri- vation. No lightnings descended from hea- ven ; the country was not ruined ; the world is not yet come to an end ; the dignitaries, who foretold all these consequences, are utterly forgotten ; and Scotland has ever since been an increasing source of strength to Great Britain. In the six hundredth 3'ear of our empire over Ireland, we are making laws to transport a man, if he is found out of his house after eight o'clock at night. That this is necessary, I know too well; but tell me why it is necessary 1 It is not necessary in Greece, where the Turks are masters. Are you aware, that there is at this moment an universal clamour throughout the whole of Ireland against the union] It is now one month since I returned from that country ; I have never seen so extraordinary, so alarming, and so rapid a change in the sentiments of any people. Those who disliked the union before are quite furious against it now ; those who doubted doubt no more ; those who were friend- ly to it have exchanged that friendship for the most rooted aversion ; in the midst of all this (which is by far the most alarming symptom), there is the strongest disposition on the part of the northern dissenters to unite with the Catholics, irritated by the faithless injustice with which they have been treated. If this combination does take place (mark what I say to you), you will have meetings all over Ire- land for the cry of No Union; that cry will spread like wild-fire, and blaze over every op- position ; and if this is the case, there is no use in mincing the matter, Ireland is gone, and the death-blow of England is struck ; and this WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. event may happen instantly — before Mr. Can- ning and Mr. Hookham Frere" have turned Lord Howick's last speech into doggerel rhyme ; before " tlic near and dear relations" have received another quarter of their pen- sion, or Mr. Perceval conducted the curates' salary bill safely to a third reading. — If the mind of the English people, cursed as they now are with that madness of religious dis- sension which has been breathed into them for the purpose of private ambition, can be alarm- ed by any remembrances, and wained by any events, they should never forget how nearly Ireland was lost to this country during the American war; that it was saved merely by the jealousy of the Protestant Irish towards tlie Catholics, then a much more insignificant and powerless body than they now are. The Catholic and the dissenter have since com- bined together against you. Last war, the winds, those ancient and unsnbsidized allies of England ; the winds, upon which English ministers depend as much for saving king-* doms as washerwomen do for drying clothes ; the winds stood your friends ; the French could only get into Ireland in small numbers, and the rebels were defeated. Since then, all the remaining kingdoms of Europe have been destroyed; and the Irish see that their national independence is gone, without having received any single one of those advantages which they were taught to expect from the sacrifice. All good things were to flow from the union ; they have none of them gained any thing. Every man's pride is wounded by it ; no man's interest is promoted. In the seventh year of that union, four million Catholics, lured by all kinds of promises to jdeld up the separate dignity and sovereignty of their country, are forced to squabble with such a man as Mr. Spencer Perceval for five thousand pounds with which to educate their children in tlieir own mode of worship ; he, the same Mr. Spen- cer, having secured to his own Protestant self a reversionary portion of the public mo- ney amounting to four times that sum.., A senior proctor of the University of Oxford, the head of a house, or the examining chap- lain to a bishop, may believe these things can last; but every man of the world, whose im- derstanding has been exercised in the business of life, must see (and see with a breaking heart) that they will soon come to a fearful termination. Our conduct to Ireland, during the whole of this war, has been that of a man who sub- scribes to hospitals, weeps at charity sermons, carries out broth and blankets to beggars, and then comes home and beats his wife and children. We had compassion for the victims of all other oppression and injustice, except our own. If Switzerland was threatened, aAvay went a treasury clerk with a hundred thousand pounds for Switzerland ; large bags of money were kept constantly under sailing orders; upon the slightest demonstration to- wards Naples, down went Sir William Hamil- ton upon his knees, and begged for the love of St. Januarius they would help us off with a little money; all the arts of Machiavel were resorted to, to persuade Europe to borrow; troops were sent off in all directions to save the Catholic and Protestant world ; the pope himself was guarded by a regiment of English dragoons ; if the Grand I-ama had been at hand, he would have ha,d another; every Catholic clergyman, who had the good fortune to be neither Engfish nor Irish, was immediately provided with lodgings, soup, crucifix, missal, chapel-beads, relics, and holy water ; if Turks had landed, Turks would have received an order from the treasury for coffee, opium, ko- rans, and seraglios. In the midst of all this fury of saving and defending, this crusade for conscience and Christianity, there was an uni- versal agreement among all descriptions of people to continue every species of internal persecution ; to deny at home every just right that had been denied before; to pummel poor Dr. Abraham Rees and his dissenters ; and to treat the unhappy Catholics of Ireland as if their tongues were mule, their heels cloven, their nature brutal, and designedly subjected by Providence to their Orange masters. How would my admirable brother, the Rev. Abraham Plymley, like to be marched to a Catholic chapel, to be sprinkled with the sanc- tified contents of a pump, to hear a number of false quantities in the Latin tongue, and to see a number of persons occupied in making right angles upon the breast and foreheads And if all this would give you so much pain, what right have you to march Catholic sol diers to a place of worship where there is no aspersion, no rectangular gestures, and where they understand every word they hear, having first, in order to get him to enlist, made a so- lemn promise to the contrary ? Can you won- der, after this, that the Catholic priest stops the recruiting in Ireland, as he is now doing to a most alarming degree ] The late question concerning military rank did not individually affect the lowest persons of the Catholic persuasion; but do you ima- gine that tliey do not sympathize with he honour and disgrace of their superiors'? Do you think that satisfaction and dissatisfaction do not travel down from Lord Fingal to the most potatoless Catholic in Ireland, and that the glory or shame of the sect is not felt by many more than these conditions personally and corporally affect 1 Do you suppose that the detection of Sir H. M., and the disappoint- ment of Mr. Perceval in the matter of the Duchy of Lancaster, did not affect every dabbler in public property 1 Depend upon it these thingf were felt through all the gradations of small plunderers, down to him who filches a pound of tobacco from the king's warehouses; while, on the contrary, the acquittal of any noble and official thief would not fail to diffuse the most heartfelt satisfaction over the larcenous and burglarious world. Observe, I do not say be- cause the lower Catholics are affected by what concerns their superiors, that they are not af- fected by what concerns themselves. There is no disguising the horrid truth ; there must he some relaxation ivith respect to tithe: this is the cruel and heart-rending price which must be paid for national preservation. I feel how- little existence will be worth having, if anv alteration, however slight, is made in the pro- 460 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. perty of Irish rectors ; I am conscious how much such changes must atTect the daily and hourly comforts of every'Englishman ; I shall feel too happy if they leave Europe untouched, and are not ultimately fatal to the destinies of America; but lam madly bent upon keeping foreign enemies out of the Britisn empire, and my limited understanding presents me with no other means of effecting my object. You talk of waiting till another reign* before any alteration is made ; a proposal full of good sense and good nature, if the measure in question were to pull down St. James's Pa- lace, or to alter Kew Gardens. Will Bona- parte agree to put off his intrigues, and his in- ^rasion of Ireland 1 If so, I will overlook the question of justice, and finding the danger sus- pended, agree to the delay. I sincerely hope this reign may last many years, yet the delay of a single session of Parliament may be fa- tal ; but if another year elapses without some serious concession made to the Catholics, I believe, before God, that all future pledges and concessions will be made in vain. I do not think that peace will do you any good under such circumstances; if IBonaparte gives you a res- pite, it will only be to get ready the gallows on which he means to hang you. The Catholic and the dissenter can unite in peace as well as war. If the)r do, the gallows is ready ; and your executioner, in spite of the most solemn promises, will turn you off the next hour. With every disposition to please (where to please within fair and rational limits is an high duty), it is impossible for public men to be long silent about the Catholics: pressing evils are not got rid of because they are not talked of. A man may command his family to say nothing more about the stone, and surgical operations ; but the ponderous malice still lies upon the nerve, and gets so big, that the patient breaks his own law of silence, clamours for the knife, and expires under its late operation. Believe me, you talk foil}', when you talk of suppressing the Catholic question. I wish to God the case admitted of such a remedy: bad as it s, it does not admit of it. If the wants of the Catholics are not heard in the manly tones of Lord Grenville, or the servile drawl of Lord Citstlereagh, they will be heard ere long in the madness of mobs, and the conliicts of armed men. I observe, it is now universally the fashion to speak of the first personage in the state as the great obstacle to the measure. In the first place, I am not bound to believe such rumours because I hear them ; and in the next place, I object to such language as unconstitutional. Whoever retains his situation in the ministry', while the incapacities of the Catholics remain, is the advocate for those incapacities ; and to him, and to him only, am I to look for respon- sibility. But waive this question of the Catho- lics, and put a general case : How is a minister of this country to act when the conscientious scruples of his sovereign prevent the execution of a measure deemed by him absolutely neces- sary to the safety of the country 1 His conduct is quite clear — he should resign. But what is his successor to do 7 — Resign. But is the king Ic he left without ministers, and is he in this I manner to be compelled to act against his own conscience? Uefore I answer this, pray tell me, in my turn, what better defence is there against the machinations of a wicked, or the errors of a weak monarch, than the impossi- bility of finding a minister who will lend him- self to vice and folly 1 Every English monarch, in such a predicament, woitld sacrifice his opinions and views to such a clear expression of the public will ; and it is one method in which the constitution aims at bringing about such a sacrifice. You may say, if you please, the ruler of a state is forced to give up his object, when the natural love of place and power will tempt no one to assist him in its attainment. This may be force; but it is force without injury, and therefore without blame. I am not to be beat out of these obvious rea- sonings, and ancient constitutional provisions, by the term conscience. There is no fantasy, however wild, that a man may not persuade himself that he cherishes from motives of t^onscience; eternal war against impious France, or rebellious America, or Catholic Spain, may in times to come be scruples of conscience. One English monarch may, from scruples of conscience, wish to abolish every trait of religious persecution ; another monarch may deem it his absolute and indispensable duty to make a slight provision for dissenters out of the revenues of the Church of England. So that j'ou see, Brother Abraham, there are cases where it would be the duty of the best and most loyal subjects to oppose the consci- entious scruples of their sovereign, still taking care that their actions were constitutional, and their modes respectful. Then you come upon me with personal questions, and say, that no such dangers are to be apprehended now under our present gracious sovereign, of whose good qualities we must be all so well convinced. All these sorts of discussions I beg leave to decline; what I have said upon constitutional topics, I mean of course for general, not for particular application. I agree with you in all the good you have said of the powers that be, and I avail myself of the opportunity of point- ing out general dangers to the constitution, at a moment when we are so completely exempted from their present influence. I cannot finish this letter without expressing my surprise and pleasure at your abuse of the servile addresses poured in upon the throne; nor can I conceive a greater disgust to a monarch, with a true English heart, than to see such a question as that of Catholic emancipation argued, not with a reference to its justice or its importance, but universally considered to be of no farther con- sequence than as it aflects his own private feelings. That these sentiments should be mine, is not wonderful ; but how they come to be yours, does, I confess, fill me with surprise. Are you moved by the arrival of the Irish brigade at Antwerp, and the amorous violence which awaits Mrs. Plymleyl LETTER V. Dear Abhahawc, I NEVKH met a parson in my life who did not consider the Corporation and Test Acts as the WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 461 great bulwarks of the chitrch ; and 3^et it is now just sixt3'-lbur years since bills of' indemnity to destroy their penal etlects, or, in other words, to repeal them, have been passed annually as a matter of course. Heti vatum ignara mcntes. These bulwarks, without which no clergyman thinks he could sleep with his accustomed soundness, have actually not been in existence since any man now living has taken holy orders. Every year the indemnity act pardons past breaches of these two laws, and prevents any fresh actions of informers from coming to a conclusion before the period for the next indemnity bill arrives; so that these penalties, by which alone the church remains in existence, have not had one moment's operation for sixty- four years. You will say the legislature, during the whole of this period, has reserved to itself thediscretionof suspending, or not suspending. But had not the legislature the right of re- enacting, if it was necessary 1 And now, when you have kept the rod over these people (with the most scandalous Abuse of all principle) for sixt)'-four years, and not found it necessary to strike once, is not that the best of all reasons why the rod should be laid aside 1 You talk to me of a very valuable hedge running across your fields which you would not part with on any account. I go down, expecting to find a limit impervious to cattle, and highly useful for the preservation of property; but, to my utter astonishment, I find that the hedge was cut down half a century ago, and that every year the shoots are clipped the moment they appear above ground: it appears, upon farther inquiry, that the hedge never ought to have existed at all ; that it originated in the malice of antiquated quarrels, and was cut down be- cause it subjected you to vast inconvenience, and broke up your intercourse with a country absolutely necessary to your existence. If the remains of this hedge serve only to keep up an irritation in your neighbours, and to remind them of the feuds of former times, good nature and good sense teach you that you ought to grub it up, and cast it into the oven. This is the exact state of these two laws ; and yet it is made a great argument against concession to the Catholics, that it involves their repeal ; which is to say. Do not make me relinquish a folly that will lead to my ruin ; because, if you do, I must give up other follies ten times greater than this. I confess, with all our bulwarks and hedges, it mortifies me to the very quick, to contrast with our matchless stupidity and inimitable folly, the conduct of Bonaparte upon the subject of religious persecution. At the moment when we are tearing the crucifixes from the necks of the Catholics, and washing pious mud from the foreheads of the Hindoos; at that moment this man is assembling the very Jews at Paris, and endeavouring to give them stability and import- 1 ance. I shall never be reconciled to mending shoes in America; but I see it must be my lot, and I will then take a dreadful revenge upon Mr. Perceval, if I catch him preaching within ten miles of me. I cannot for the soul of me conceive Avhence this man has gained his notions of Christianity; he has the most evan- gelical charity for errors in arithmetic, and the most inveterate malice against errors in con- science. While he rages against those whom, in the true spirit of the Gospel, he ought to in- dulge, he forgets the only instance of severity which that Gospel contains, and leaves the jobbers, and contractors, and money-changers at their seats, without a single stripe. You cannot imagine, you say, that England will ever be ruined and conquered; and for no other reason that I can find, but because it seems so very odd it should be ruined and conquered. Alas ! so reasoned, in their time, the Austrian, Russian and Prussian Plymleys. But the English are brave; so were all these nations. You might get together an hundred thousand men individually brave; but without generals capable of commanding such a ma- chine, it would be as useless as a first-rate man-of-war manned by Oxford clergymen, or Parisian shopkeepers. I do not say this to the disparagement of English othcers; they have had no means of acquiring experience; but I do say it to create alarm ; for we do not appear to me to be half alarmed enough, or to entertain that sense of our danger which leads to the most obvious means of self-defence. As for the spirit of the peasantry, in making a gallant defence behind hedge-rows, and through plate- racks and hen-coops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with panic as the English ; and this from their total unacquaintance with the science of war. Old wheat and beans blazing for twenty miles round; cart mares shot; sows of Lord Somerville's breed running wild over the country; the minister of the parish wounded solely in his hinder parts; Mrs. Plymley in fits; all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian has seen three or four times over; but it is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in a fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled, or a clergyman's wife been subjected to any other proposals of love than the connubial endearments of her sleek and orthodox mate. The old edition of Plutarch's Lives, which lies in the corner of your parlour window, has contributed to work you up to the most romantic expectations of our Roman behaviour. You are persuaded that Lord Amherst will defend Kew Bridge like Codes; that some maid of honour will break away from her captivity, and swim over the Thames ; that the Duke of York will burn his capitulating hand; and little Mr. Sturges Bourne* give forty years' purchase for Moulsham Hall, while the French are encamped upon it. I hope we shall witness all this, if the French do come ; but in the mean time I am so enchanted with the ordinai-y English behaviour of these invaluable persons that I earnestly pray no opportunity may be given them for Roman valour, and for those very un-Roman pensions which they would all, of course, take especial care to claim in * There is nothins more ohjpctionahle in Plymley'a I,etters than tlie abuse of Mr. Stiirses Bourne, who is an hoiiouralile, able, anil excellent person ; but such are the malevolent effects of party spirit. 2 a 3 462 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. consequence. But whatever was our conduct, if every ploughman was as great a hero as he who was called from his oxen to save Rome from her enemies, I should still say, that at such a crisis you want the affections of all your subjects in both islands ; there is no spirit ■which you must alienate, no heart you must avert; every man must feel he has a countrj^, and that there is an urgent and pressing cause why he should expose himself to death. The effects of penal laws, in matters of reli- gion, are never confined to those limits in v/hich the legislature intended they should be placed; it is not only that I am excluded from certain offices and dignities because I am a Catholic, but the exclusion carries with it a certain stigma, which degrades me in the eyes of the monopolizing sect, and the very name of my religion becomes odious. These effects are so very striking in England, that I solemnly believe blue and red baboons to be more popu- lar here than Catholics and Presbyterians ; they are more understood, and there is a greater dis- position to do something for them. When a country squire hears of an ape, his first feeling is to give it nuts and apples; when he hears of a dissenter, his immediate impulse is to commit it to the county jail, to shave its head, lo alter its customary food, and to have it privately whipped. This is no caricature, but an accurate picture of national feelings, as they degrade and endanger us at this very moment. The Irish Catholic gentleman would bear his legal disabilities with greater temper, if these were all he had to bear — if they did not enable every Protestant cheesemonger and tidewaiter to treat him with contempt. He is branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, and treated like a spiritual felon, because, in the highest of all considerations, he is led by the noblest of all guides, his own disinterested conscience. Why are nonsense and cruelty a bit the better because they are enacted? If Providence, which gives wine and oil, had blessed us with that tolerant spirit which makes the counte- nance more pleasant and the heart more glad than these can do; if our statute book had never been defiled with such infamous laws, the sepulchral Spencer Perceval would have been hauled through the dirtiest horse-pond in Hampstead, had he ventured to propose them. But now persecution is good, because it exists ; every law which originated in ignorance and rnalice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, we call the wisdom of our ancestors ; when such laws are repealed, they will be cruelty and madness; till they are repealed, they are policy and caution. I was somewhat amused with the imputation brought against the Catholics by the University of Oxford, that they are enemies to liberty. I immediately turned to my history of England, and marked as an historical error that passage in which it is recorded that, in the reign of Queen Anne, the famous decree of the Univer- sity of Oxford, respecting passive obedience, was ordered, by the House of Lords, to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman, as contrary to the liberty of the subject, and the law of the land. Nevertheless, I wish, whatever be the modesty of those who impute, that the imputation was a little more true; the Catholic cause would not be quite so desperate with the present administration, I fear, how- ever, that the hatred to liberty in these poor devoted wretches may ere long appear more doubtful than it is at present to the vice-chan- cellor and his clergy, inflamed, as they doubt- less are, with classical examples of republican virtue, and panting, as they always have been, to reduce the power of the crown within nar- rower and safer limits. What mistaken zeal to attempt to connect one religion with free- dom, and another with slavery ! M^'ho laid the foundations of English liberty 1 What was the mixed religion of Switzerland 1 What has the Protestant religion done for liberty in Den- mark, in Sweden, throughout the north of Ger- many, and in Prussia] The purest religion in the world, in my humble opinion, is the religion of the Church of England ; for its preservation (so far as it is exercised without intruding upon the liberties of others), I am ready at this mo- ment to venture my present life, and but through that religion I have no hopes of any other ; yet I am not forced to be silly because I am pious ; nor will I ever join in eulogiums on my faith, which every man of common reading and common sense can so easily refute. You have either done too much for the Catholics (worthy Abraham), or too little; if you had intended to refuse them political power, you should have refused them civil rights. After you had enabled them to acquire property, after you had conceded to them all that you did concede in 78 and 93, the rest is wholly out of your power; you may choose whether you will give the rest in an honour- able or a disgraceful mode, but it is utterly out of your power to withhold it. In the last year, land to the amount of eight humhcil thousnnd pounds was purchased by the Catholics in Ireland. Do you think it possible to be-Perceval, and be-Canning, and be-Castle- reagh such a body of men as this out of their common rights and their sense? Mr. George Canning may laugh and joke at the idea of Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, under the 9ih clause of the sunset bill ; but if some better remedy is not applied to the dis- tractions of Ireland than the jocularity of Mr. Canning, they will soon put an end to his pen- sion, and to the pension of those "near and dear relatives," for whose eating, drinking, washing, and clothing, every man in the United Kingdoms now pays his two-pence or three- pence a year. You may call these observa- tions coarse, if you please; but I have no idea that the Sophias and Carolines of any man breathing are to eat national veal, to drink public tea, to wear treasury ribands, and then that we are to he told that it is coarse to animadvert upon this pitiful and eleemosynary splendour. If this is right, why not me-ition it? If it is wrong, why should not he who enjoys the ease of supporting his sisters in this manner bear the shame of it? Every body seems hitherto to have spared a man who never spares any body. As for the enormous wax candles, and super- stitious mummeries, and painted jackets of the Catholic priests, I fear them not. Tell me that WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 463 the world will return again under the influence of the small-pox; that Lord Castlereagh will hereafter oppose the power of the court; that Lord Howick and Mr. G rattan will do each of them a mean and dishonourable action ; that any bodjwho has heard Lord Redesdale speak once will knowingly and willingly hear him again ; that Lord Eldon has assented to the fact of two and two making four, 'without shedding tears, or expressing the smallest doubt or scruple; tell me any other thing absurd or incredible, but, for the love of com- mon sense, let me hear no more of the danger to be apprehended from the general diffusion of Popery. It is too absurd ta' be reasoned upon ; every man feels it is nonsense when he hears it stated, and so does every man while he is stating it. I cannot imagine why the friends to the church establishment should entertain such an horror of seeing the doors of Parliament flung open to the Catholics, and view so passively the enjoyment of that right by the Presbyte- rians, and by every other species of dissenter. In their tenets, in their church government, in the nature of their endowments, the dissenters are infinitely more distant from the Church of England than the Catholics are ; yet the dis- senters have never been excluded from Parlia- ment. There are 45 members in one house and 16 in the other, who always are dissenters. There is no law which would prevent every member of the Lords and Commons from being di:3enters. The Catholiae could not bring into Parliament half the number of the Scotch members; and yet one exclusion is of such immense importance, because it has taken place ; and the other no human being thinks of, because no one is accustomed to it. I have often thought, if the luisdom of our ancestors had excluded all persons with red hair from the House of Commons, of the throes and convul- sions it would occasion to restore them to their natural rights. What mobs and riots would it produce ? To what infinite abuse and obloquy would the capillary patriot be exposed ? what •wormwood would distil from Mr. Perceval, what froth would drop from Mr. Canning ; how (I will not say my, but our Lord Hawke&bury, for he belongs to us all), how our Lord Hawkes- bury would work away about the hair of King William and Lord Somers, and the authors of the great and glorious Revolution; how Lord Elton would appeal to the Deity and his own virtues, and to the hair of his children: some would say that red-haired men were supersti- tious; some would prove they were atheists; they would be petitioned against as the friends of slavery, and the advocates for revolt; in short, such a corrupter of the heart and the un- derstanding is the spirit of persecution, and these unfortunate people (conspired against by their fellow-subjects of every complexion), if they did not emigrate to countries where hair of another colour was persecuted, would be driven to the falsehood of perukes, or the hy- pocrisy of the Tricosian fluid. As for the dangers of tl»e church (in spite of the staggering events which have lately taken place), I have not yet entirely lost my confi- dence in the power of common sense, and I believe the church to be in no danger at all ; but if it is, that danger is not from the Catho- lies, but from the Methodists, and from that patent Christianity which has been for some time manufacturing at Clapham, to the preju- dice of the old and admirable article prepared by the church. I would counsel fuy lords the bishops to keep their eyes upon that holy vil- lage, and its hallowed vicinity; they will find there a zeal in making converts far superior to any thing which exists among the Catholics ; a contempt for the great mass of English clergy much more rooted and profound; and a regular fund to purchase livings for those groaning and garrulous gentlemen, whom they denominate (by a standing sarcasm against the regular church) gospel preachers, and vital clergymen. I am too firm a believer in the general propriety and respectability of the English clergy, to believe they have much to fear either from old nonsense, or from new ; but if the church must be supposed to be in danger, I prefer that nonsense which is grown half venerable from time, the force of which I have already tried and baffled, which at least has some excuse in the dark and ignorant ages in which it originatei^ The religious enthusiasm manufactured by living men before my own eyes disgusts my understanding as much, influences my imagination not at all, and excites my apprehensions much more. I may have seemed to you to treat the situa- tion of public aflairs with some degree of levity; but I feel it deeply, and with nightly and daily anguish; because I know Ireland; I have known it all my life ; I love it, and I fore- see the crisis to which it will soon be exposed. Who can doubt but that Ireland will experience ultimately from France a treatment to which the conduct they have experienced from Eng- land is the love of a parent, or a brother! Who can doubt but that five years after he has got hold of the country, Ireland will be tossed away by Bonaparte as a present to some one of his ruflian generals, who will knock the head of Mr. Keogh against the head of Cardi- nal Troy, shoot twenty of the most noisy block- heads of the Roman persuasion, wash his pug-dogs in holy water, and confiscate the salt butter of the Milesian republic to the last tub? Hut what matters this ] or who is wise enough in Ireland to heed if! or v.-hen had common sense mucli influence with my poor dear Irish? Mr. Perceval does not know the Irish ; but I know them, and I know that at every rash and mad hazard, they will break the union, revenge their wounded pride and their insulted religion, and fling themselves into the open arms of France, sure of dying in the embrace. And now, what means have you of guarding against this coming evil, upon which the future happi- ness or misery of every Englishman depends! Have you a single ally in the whole world T Is there a vulnerable point in the French em- pire where the astonishing resources oi tnai people can be attracted and employed ] Have you a ministry wise enough to comprehend the danger, manly enough to believe unplea- sant intelligence, honest enough to state their apprehensions at the peril of their places 1 la there anywhere the slightest disposition to joitt 464 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. any measure of love, or conciliation, or ha|)e, with that dreadful bill which the distractions of Ireland have rendered necessary 1 At the very moment that the last monarchy in Europe has fallen, are we not governed by a man of pleasantry, and a man of theology 1 In the six hundredth year of our empire over Ireland, have we any memorial of ancient kindness to refer to I any people, any zeal, any country on which we can depend I Have we any hope, but in the winds of heaven, and the tides of the sea? any prayer to prefer to the Irish, but that they should forget and forgive their op- pressors, who, in the very moment that they are calling upon them for their exertions, solemnly assure them that the oppression shall still remain 1 Abraham, farewell ! If I have tired you, remember how often you have tired me and others. I do not think we really differ in politics so much as you suppose ; or at least, if we do, that difference is in the means, and not in the end. We both love the constitution, respect the king, and abhor the French. But though you love the constitution, you would perpetuate the abuses which have been en- grafted upon it;4^hough you respect the king, you would confirm his scruples against the Catholics ; though you abhor the French, you would open to them the conquest of Ireland. My metiiod of respecting my sovereign is by protecting his honour, his empire, and his last- ing happiness ; I evince my love of the consti- tution, by making it the guardian of all men's rights and the source of their freedom; and I prove my abhorrence of the French, by uniting against them the disciples of every church in the only remaining nation in Europe. As for the men of whom I have been compelled, in this age of mediocrity, to say so much, they cannot of themselves be worth a moment's consideration to you, to me, or to any body. In a year after their death, they will be forgotten as completely as if they had never been ; and are now of no farther importance than as they are the mere vehicles of carrying into effect the common-place and mischievous prejudices of the times in which they live. LETTER VI. Dear Atiraham, What amuses me the most is, to hear of the induls:enccs which the Catholics have received, and their exorbitance in not being satisfied with those indulgences: now if you complain to me that a man is obtrusive and shameless in his requests, and that it is impossible to bring liim to reason, I must first of all hear the whole cf your conduct towards him; for you may have taken from him so much in the first ill stance, that, in spite of a long series of restifiit n, a vast latitude foR petition may still remain liehind. There is a village (no matter where) in which the inhabitants, on one day in the year, sit down to a dinner prepared at the common expense; by an extraordinary piece of tyranny (which Lord Hawkesbury would call the wis- 'lom of the village ancestors), the inhabitants of three of the streets, about an hundred years ago, seized upon the inhabitants of the fourth street, bound them hand and foot, laid them upon their backs, and compelled them to look on while the rest were stuffing themselves with beef and beer; the next year, the inhabit- ants of the persecuted street (though they contributed an equal quota of the expense) were treated precisely in the same manner. The tyranny grew into a custom ; and (as the manner of our nature is) it was considered as the most sacred of all duties to keep these poor fellows without their annual dinner; the village was so tenacious of this practice, that nothing coulli induce them to resign it; every enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in Divine Providence, and any nefarious churchwarden who wished to succeed in his election had nothing to do but to represent his antagonist as an abolitionist, in order to frus- trate his ambition, endanger his life, and throw the village into a state of the most dreadful commotion. By degrees, however, the ob- noxious street grew to be so well peopled, and its inhabitants so firmly united, that their op- pressors, more afraid of injustice, were more disposed to be just. At the next dinner they are unbound, the year after allowed to sit up- right, then a bit of bread and a glass of water; till at last, after a long series of concessions, they are emboldened to ask, in pretty plain terms, that they may be allowed to sit down at the bottom of the table, and to fill their bellies as well as the rest. Forthwith a general cry of shame and scandal: "Ten years ago, were you not laid upon your backs 1 Don't you I reineraber what a great thing you thought it to get a piece of bread 1 How thankful you were for cheese parings 1 Have you forgotten that memorable era, when the lord of the manor interfered to obtain for you a slice of the public pudding] And now with an audacity only equalled by your ingratitude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, and to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that you may sit down to table with the rest, and be indulged even with beef and beer: there are not more than half a dozen dishes which we have reserved for ourselves; the rest has been thrown open to you in the utmost profu- sion; you have potatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the pan, and delicious toast and Avater, in incredible quantities. Beef, mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours; and if you were not the most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, you would never think of aspiring to enjoy them." Is not this, my dainty Abraham, the very nonsense and the very insult which is talked to and practised upon the Catholics 1 You are surprised that men who have tasted of partial justice should ask for perfect justice; that he who has been robbed of coat and cloak will not be contented with the restitution of one of his garments. He would be a very lazy block- head if he were content, and I (who, though an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, thank God, some swise of justice) most earn- estly counsel these half-fed claimants to per- severe in their just demands, till they are ad- mitted to a more complete share of a dinner WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 4G5 for which they pay as much as the others ; and if they see a little attenuated lawyer squabbling at the head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding, which he has filched from the public feast, to carry home to his wife and children. You parade a great deal upon the vast con- cessions made by this country to the Irish be- fore the union. I deny that any voluntary concession was ever made by England to Ire- land. — What did Ireland ever ask that was granted 1 What did she ever demand that was refused 1 How did she get her mutiny bill — a limited Parliament — a repeal of Poyning's law — a constitution ? Not by the concessions of England, but by her fears. When Ireland asked for all these things upon her knees, her petitions were rejected with Percevalism and contempt : when she demanded them with the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were granted with every mark of consternation and dismay. Ask of Lord Auckland the fatal consequences of trifling with such a people as the Irish. He himself was the organ of these refusals. — As secretary to the lord-lieutenant, the inso- lence and tyranny of this country passed through his hands. Ask him if he remembers the consequences. Ask him if he has forgotten that memorable evening, when he came down booted and mantled to the House of Commons, when he told the House he was about to set otffor Ireland that night, and declared, before God, if he did not carry with him a compliance with all their demands, Ireland Avas for ever lost to this country. The present generation have forgotten this ; but I have not forgotten it; and I know, hasty and undignified as the submission of England then was, that Lord Auckland was right, that the delay of a single day might very probably have separated the two people for ever. The terms submission and fear are galling terms, when applied from the lesser nation to the greater; but it is the plain historical truth, it is the natural conse- quence of injustice, it is the predicament in which every country places itself which leaves such a mass of hatred and discontent by its side. No empire is powerful enough to endure it; it would exhaust the strength of China, and sink it with all its mandarins and tea-kettles to the bottom of the deep. By refusing them justice now, when you are strong enough to refuse them any thing more than justice, you will act over again, with the Catholics, the same scene of mean and precipitate submission which disgraced you before America, and be- fore the volunteers of Ireland. We shall live to hear the Hampstead Protestant pronouncing such extravagant panegyrics upon holy water, and paying such fulsome compliments to the thumbs and offals of departed saints, thatparties will change sentiments, and Lord Henry Petty and Sam Whitbread take a spell at No-Popery. The wisdom of Mr. Fox was alike employed in teaching his country justice when Ireland was weak, and dignity when Ireland was strong. We are fast pacing round the same miserable circle ofruin and imbecility. Alas! where is our guide? You say that Ireland is a millstone about our necks ; that it would be better for us if Ire- 59 land were sunk at the bottom of the sea ; that the Irish are a nation of irreclaimable savages and barbarians. How often have I heard these sentiments fall from the plump and thoughtless squire, and from the thriving Eng- lish shopkeeper, who has never felt the rod of an Orange master upon his back. Ireland a millstone about your neck! Why is it not a stone of Ajax in )'our hand? I agree with you most cordially, that, governed as Ireland now is, it would be avast accession of strength if the waves of the sea were to rise and ingulf her to-morrow. At this moment, opposed as we are to all the world, the annihilation of one of the most fertile islands on the face of the globe, containing five millions of human crea- tures, would be one of the most solid advan- tages which could happen to this country. I doubt very much, in spite of all the just abuse which has been lavished upon Bonaparte, whether there is any one of his conquered countries the blotting out of which would be as beneficial to him as the destruction of Ire- land would be to us : of countries, I speak, differing in language from ihe French, little habituated to their intercourse, and inflamed with all the resentments of a recently conquered people. Why will j^ou attribute the turbulence of our people to any cause but the right — to i any cause but your oAvn scandalous oppres- sion 1 If you tie your horse up to a gate, and beat him cruelfy, is he vicious because he kicks youl If you have plagued and worried a mastiff dog for years, is he mad because he flies at you whenever he sees you ? Hatred is an active, troublesome passion. Depend upon it, whole nations have always some reason for their hatred. Before you refer the turbulence of the Irish to indurable defects in their cha- racter, tell me if you have treated them as friends and equals 1 Have you protected their commerce 1 Have you respected their reli- gion 1 Have you been as anxious for their freedom as your own? Nothing of all this. What then'' — Why, you have confiscated the territorial surface of the country twice over; 3'ou have massacred and exported her inhabit- ants ; you have deprived four-fifths of them of every civil privilege ; you have at every period made her commerce and manufactures slavishly subordinate to your own ; and yet the hatred which the Irish bear to you is the result of an original turbulence of character, and of a primitive, obdurate wildness, utterly incapable of civilization. The embroidered inanities and the sixth-form eflusions of Mr. Canning, are really not powerful enough to make me believe this ; nor is there any autho- rity on earth (always excepting the Dean of Christ-Church) which could make it credible to me. I am sick of Mr. Canning. There is not a ha'p'orth of bread to all this sugar and sack. I love not the cretaceous and incredible counte nance of his colleague. The only opinion in which I agree with these two gentlemen, is that which they entertain of each other; I am sure that the insolence of Mr. Pitt, and the unbalanced accounts of Melville, were far better than Ihn perils of this new ignorance : — Nonne fuit satins tristes Amaryllidis iras Atque superba pati tastidia— nonne Menalcani, Quamvis ille niffer ? 466 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. In the midst of the most profound peace, the secret articles of the treaty of Tilsit, in which the destruction of Ireland is resolved upon, in- «luce you to rob the Danes of their fleet. — After the expedition sailed comes the treaty of Tilsit, containing no article,* public or private, allud- ing to Ireland. The state of the world, you tell me, justified us in doing this. — Just God ! do we think only of the state of the world when there is an opportunity for robbery, for mur- der, and for plunder; and do we forget the state of the world when we are called upon to be wise, and good, and just! Does the state of the world never remind us, that we have four millions of subjects whose injuries we ought to atone for, and whose affections we ought to conciliate 1 Does the state of the world never warn us to lay aside our infernal bigotry, and to arm every man who acknow- ledges a God and can grasp a sword? Did it never occur to this administration, that they might virtuously get hold of a force ten times greater than the force of the Danish fleet ? Was there no other way of protecting Ireland, but by bringing eternal shame upon Great Britain, and by making the earth a den of robbers? See what the men whom you have supplanted would have done. They would have rendered the invasion of Ireland impossible, by restoring to the Catholics their long-lost rights ; they would have acted in such a manner ;hat the French would neither have wished for invasion, nor dared to attempt it ; they would have increased the permanent strength of the country while they preserved its reputation unsullied. No- thing of this kind your fiiends have done, be- cause they are solem.nly pledged to do nothing of this kind ; because to tolerate all religions, and to equalize civil rights to all sects, is to oppose some of the worst passions of our na- ture — to plunder and to oppress is to gratify them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, and they have for ever blasted the fame of England to obtain them. Were the fleets of Holland, France, and Spain, destroyed by lar- ceny? You resisted the power of 150 sail of the line by sheer courage, and violated every principle of morals from the dread of 15 hulks, while the expedition itself cost you three times more than the value of the larcenous matter brought away. The French trample upon the )aws of God and man, not for old cordage, but for kingdoms, and always take care to be well paid for their crimes. We contrive, under the present administration, to unite moral with in- tellectual deficiency, and to grow weaker and worse by the same action. If they had any evidence of the intended hostility of the Danes, why was it not produced? Why have the na- tions of Europe been allowed to feel an indig- nation against this country beyond the reach of all subsequent information ? Are these limes, do you imagine, when we can trifle with a year of universal hatred, dally with the curses of Europe, and then regain a lost character at pleasure, by the parliamentary perspiration*; of the foreign secretary, or the solemn asseve- rations o." the pecuniary Rose ? Believe me, Abraham, it is not under such ministers as ♦ This is now ccnipletely confessed to be tlie case by ministers. these that the dexterity of honest Englishmen will ever equal the dexterity of French knaves; it is not in their presence that the serpent of Moses will ever swallow up the serpents of the magicians. Lord Hawkesbury says, that nothing is to be granted to the Catholics from fear. What! not even justice? Why not? There are four millions of disaffected people within twenty miles of your own coast. I fairly confess, that the dread which I have of their physical power, is with me a very strong motive for listening to their claims. To talk of not acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant. From what motive but fear, I should be glad to know, have all the improvements in our constitution proceeded? I question if any justice has ever been done to large masses of mankind from any other motive. By what other motives can the plunderers of the Baltic suppose nati.ons to be governed in their inter- course with each other? If I say, Give this people what they ask because it is just, do you think I should get ten people to listen to me ? Would not the lesser of the two Jenkin- sons be the first to treat me with contempt? The only true way to make the mass of man- kind see the beauty of justice, is by showing to them in pretty plain terms the consequences of injustice. If any body of French troops land in Ireland, the whole population of that country will rise against you to a man, and you could not possibly survive such an event three years. Such, from the bottom of my soul, do I believe to be the present state of that country; and so far does it appear to me to be impolitic and unstatesmanlike to concede any thing to such a danger, that if the Catholics, in addition to their present just demands, were to petition for the perpetual removal of the said Lord Hawkesbury from his majesty's coun- cils, I think, whatever might be the effect upon the destinies of Europe, and however it might retard our own individual destruction, that the prayer of the petition should be instantly com- plied with. Canning's crocodile tears shovild not move me ; the hoops of the maids of honour should not hide him. I would tear him from the banisters of the back stairs, and plunge him in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque Ports. LETTER VIL Dear Abrahajt, Ix the correspondence which is passing be- tween us, you are perpetually alluding to the foreign secretary ; and in answer to the dan- gers of Ireland, which I am pressing upon your notice, you have nothing to urge but the confidence which you repose in the discretion and sound sense of this gentleman.* I can * The attack upon virtue and morals in the debate upon Copenhagen is brought forward with great ostenta- tion by this gentleman's friends. But is Harlequin less Harleq\iin because he acts well f I was present : he leaped about, touched facts with his wand, turned yea inio no, and no into yes; it was a pantomime well played, but a pantomime; Harlequin deserves hightT wages ihan he did two years ago ; is he therefore fit lor serious parte ? WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 467 only saj', that I have listened to him long and often, with the greatest attention; I have used every exertion in my power to take a fair measure of him, and it appears to me impos- sible to hear him upon any arduous topic without perceiving that he is eminently defi- cient in those solid and serious qualities upon which, and upon which alone, the confidence of a great country can properly repose. He sweats, and labours, and works for sense, and Mr. Ellis seems always to think it is coming, but it does not come ; the machine can't draw up what is not to be found in the spring; Providence has made him a light, jesting, paragraph-writing man, and that he will re- main to his dj'ing day. When he is jocular he is strong, when he is serious he is like Samson in a wig; any ordinary person is a match for him; a song, an ironical letter, a burlesque ode, an attack in the newspaper upon Nicoll's eye, a smart speech of twenty minutes, full of gross misrepresentations and clever turns, excellent langurfge, a spirited manner, lucky quotation, success in provoking dull men, some half information picked up in Pall Mall in the morning ; these are your friend's natural weapons; all these things he can do ; here I allow him to be truly great ; nay, I will be just, and go still farther, if he would confine himself to these things, and consider the facetc and the playful to be the basis of his character, he would, for that spe- cies of man, be universally regarded as a person of a very good understanding; call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he is an extraor- dinary writer of small poetry, and a diner out of the highest lustre, I do most readily admit. After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for this half cen- tury. The foreign secretary is a gentleman, a respectable as well as an highly agreeable man in private life; but you may as well feed me with decayed potatoes as console me for the miseries of Ireland by the resources of his sense and his disae'wn. It is only the public situation which this gentleman holds which entitles me or induces me to say so much about him. He is a fly in amber; nobody car's about the fly: the only question is, How the devil did it get there 1 Nor do I attack him from the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province. The friends of the Catholic question are, I observe, extremely embarrassed in arguing when they come to the loyalty of the Irish Catholics. As for me, I shall go straight for- ward to my object, and state what I have no manner of doubt, from an intimate knowledge of Ireland, to be the plain truth. Of the great Roman Catholic proprietors, and of the Ca- tholic prelates, there may be a few, and but a few, who would follow the fortunes of England at all events; there is another set of men who, thoroughly detesting this country, have too much properly and too much character to lose, not to wait for some very favourable event before they shov/ ihemselves; but the great mass of Catholic population, upon the slightest appearance of a French force in that country, would rise upon you to a man. It is the most mistaken policy to conceal the plain truth. There is no loyalty among the Catho- lics ; they detest you as their worst oppressors, and they will continue to detest you till you remove the cause of their hatred. It is in your power in six months' time to produce a total revolution of opinions among this people ; and in some future letter I will show you that this is clearly the case. At present, see what a dreadful state Ireland is in. The common toast among the low Irish is, the feast of the passoj-cr. Some allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately acted at Dublin, produced thunders of applause from the pit and the galleries; and a politician should not be inattentive to the public feelings expressed in theatres. Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish; he has no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his own public emolu- ments. An Irish* peasant fills the barrel of his gun full of tow dipped in oil, butters up the lock, buries it in a bog, and allows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at pleasure. Be just and kind to the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them : rescue them from the degraded servitude in which they are held by an handful of their own countrymen, and you will add four millions of brave and aff'ectionate men to your strength. Nightly visits, Protestant inspectors, licenses to pos- sess a pistol or a knife ami fork, the odious vigour of the evangelicul Perceval — acts of Parliament, drawn up by some English attor- ney, to save you from the hatred of four mil- lion people — the guarding yourselves from universal disaffection by a police ; a confidence in the little cunning of Bow Street, when you might rest your security upon the eternal basis of the best feelings ; this is the meanness and madness to which nations are reduced when they lose sight of the first elements of justice, without which a country can be no more se- cure than it can be healthy without air. I sicken at such policy and such men. The fact is, the ministers know nothing about the present state of Ireland ; Mr. Perceval sees a few clergymen, Lord Castlereagh a few gene- ral officers, who take care, of course, to report what is pleasant rather than what is true. As for the joyous and lepid consul, he jokes upon neutral flags and feuds, jokes upon Irish re- bels, jokes upon northern, and western, and southern foes, and gives himself no trouble upon any subject; nor is the mediocrity of the idolatrous deputy of the slightest use. Dis- solved in grins, he reads no memorials upon the state of Ireland, listens to no reports, asks no questions, and is the "Bourn from whom no traveller returns." The danger of an immediate insurrection is now, / bel!eve,-\ blown over. You have so strong * No man who is not intimately acqaainted with the Ir'sh, can tell to what a curious extent this concealment of arms is carriiid. I have stated the exact mode in which it is done. 1 1 know too miich, however, of the state of 'reland not to speak tremblingly aScut this. I hope to God I am right. WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. an army in Ireland, and the Irish are become so much more cunning from the last insurrec- tion, that you may perhaps be tolerably secure just at present from that evil: but are you se- cure from the efforts which the French may make to throw a body of troops into Ireland ! and do you consider that event to be difficult and improbable'? From Brest Harbour to Cape Si. Vincent, you have above three thou- sand miles of hostile sea-coast, and twelve or fourteen harbours quite capable of contain- ing a sufficient force for the powerful invasion of Ireland. The nearest of these harbours is not two days' sail from the southern coast of Ireland, with a fair leading wind; and the farthest not ten. Five ships of the line, for so very short a passage, might carry five or six thousand troops with cannd»i and ammunition ; and Ireland presents to their attack a southern coast of more than 500 miles, abounding in deep bays, admirable harbours, and disaffected inhabitants. Your blockading ships may be forced to come home for provisions and repairs, or they may be blown ofl'in a gale of wind and compelled to bear away for their own coast ; — and you will observe, that the very same wind •which locks you up in the British Channel, ■when you are got there, is evidently favourable for the invasion of Ireland. And yet this is called government, and the people huzza Mr. Perceval for continuing to expose his country day after day to such tremendous perils as these; cursing tlie men who would have given up a question in theology to have saved us from such a risk. The British empire at this moment is in the state of a peach-blossom — if the wind blows gently from one quarter, it sur- vives; if furiously from the othei', it perishes. A stiff breeze may set in from the north, the Rochefort squadron will be taken, and the minister will be the most holy of men ; if it comes from some other point, Ireland is gone, we curse ourselves as a set of monastic mad- men, and call out for the unavailing satisfac- tion of Mr. Perceval's head. Such a state of political existence is scarcely credible; it is the action of a mad young fool standing upon one foot, and peeping down the crater of Mount jEtna, not the conduct of a wise and sober people deciding upon their best and dearest interests: and in the name, the much injured name, of Heaven, what is it all for that we expose ourselves to these dangers] Is it that ■we may sell more muslin? Is it that we may acquire more territory 1 Is it that we may strengthen what we have already acquired 1 No: nothing of all this; but that one set of Irishmen may torture another set of Irishmen — that Sir Phelim O'Callagan may continue to whip Sir Toby M'Tackle, his next-door neigh- bour, and continue to ravish his Catholic daughters; and these are the measures which the honest and consistent secretary supports ; and this is the secretary whos-e genius, in the estimation of Brother Abraham, is to extin- guish ihe genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliath smitten by a stripling, Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman ; tremble, thou j^reat Gaul, from whose head an armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of danger; tremble, thou scourge of God, a pleasant man is come out against thee, and thou shall be laid low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk against thee, and thou shalt be no more! You tell me, in spite of all this parade of sea-coast, Bonaparte has neither ships nor sailors : but this is a mistake. He has not ships and sailors to contest the empire of the seas with Great Britain, but there remains quite sufficient of the navies of France, Spain, Holland, and Denmark, for these short excur- sions and invasions. Do you think, too, that Bonaparte does not add to his navy every year] Do you suppose, with all Europe at his feet, that he can find any difficulty in obtaining timber, and that money will not procure for him any quantity of naval stores he may want 1 The mere machine, the empty ship, he can build as well, and as quickly, as you can ; and though he may not find enough of practised sailors to man large fighting fleets— it is not possible to conceive ihat^e can want sailors for such sort of purposes as I have stated? He is at pre- sent the despotic monarch of above twenty thousand miles of sea-coast, and yet you sup- pose he cannot procure sailors for the invasion of Ireland. Believe, if you please, that such a fleet met at sea by any number of our ships at all comparable to them in point of force, would be immediately taken; let it be so; I count nothing upon their power of resistance, only upon their power of escaping unobserved. If experience has taught us any thing, it is the impossibility of perpetual blockades. The in- stances are innumerable, during the course of this war, where whole fleets have sailed in and out of harbour in spite of every vigilance uSed to prevent it. I shall only mention those cases where Ireland is concerned. In Decembe.-, 1796, seven ships of the line, and ten trans- ports, reached Bantry Bay from Brest,' with- out having seen an English ship in their pas- sage. It blew a storm when they were off shore, and therefore England still continues to be an independent kingdom. You will observe that at the very time the French fleet sailed out of Brest harbour. Admiral Colpoys was cruis- ing off there with a powerful squadron, and still, from the particular circumstances of the weather, found it impossible to prevent the French from coming out. During the time that Admiral Colpoys was cruising off Brest, Ad- miral Richery,with six ships of the line, passed him, and got safe into the harbour. At the very moment when the French squadron was lying in Bantry Ba3% Lord Bridport with his fleet was locked up by a foul wind in the Channel, and for several days could not stir to the assistance of Ireland. Admiral Colpoys, totally unable to find the French fleet, came home. Lord Bridport, at the change of the wind, cruised for them in vain, and they got safe back to Brest, without having seen a single one of these floating bulwarks, the pos- session of which ■we believe will enable us with impunity to set justice and common sense at defiance. Such is the miserable and preca- rious state of an anemocracy, of a people who put their trust in hurricanes, and are governed by wind. In August, 1798, three forty-gun frigates landed 1100 men under Humbert, mak- WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. ing the passage from Rochelle to Killala with- out seeing any English ship. In October of the same year, four French frigates anchored in Killala Bay with 2000 troops; and though they did not land their troops, they returned to France in safety. In the same month, a line of battle ship, eight stout frigates, and a brig, all full of troops and stores, reached the coast of Ireland, and were fortunately, in sight of land, destroyed, after an obstinate engagement, by Sir John Warren. If you despise the little troop which, in these numerous experiments, did make good its land- ing, take with you, if you please, this precis of its exploits: eleven hundred men, commanded by a soldier raised from the ranks, put to rout a select army of 6000 men, commanded by General Lake, seized their ordinance, ammuni- tion, and stores, advanced 150 miles into a country containing an armed force of 150,000 men, and at last surrendered to the viceroy, an experienced general, gravely and cautiously advancing at the head of all his chivalry and of an immense army to oppose him. You must excuse these details about Ireland, but it appears to me to be of all other subjects the most important. If we conciliate Ireland, we can do nothing amiss ; if we do not, we can do nothing well. If Ireland was friendly, we might equally set at defiance the talents of Bonaparte and the blunders of his rival, Mr. Canning; we could then support the ruinous and silly bustle of our useless expeditions, and the almost in- credible ignorance of our commercial orders in council. Let the present administration give up but this one point, and there is nothing which I would not consent to grant them. Mr. Perceval shall have full liberty to insult the tomb of Mr. Fox, and to torment every eminent dissenter in Great Britain ; Lord Camden shall have large boxes of plums; Mr. Rose receive permission to prefix to his name the appella- tive of virtuous; and to the Viscount Castle- reagh* a round sum of ready money shall be well and truly paid into his hand. Lastly, what remains to Mr. George Canning, but that he rides up and down Pall Mall glorious upon a white horse, and that they cry out before him, Thus shall it be done to the statesman who hath written "The Needy Knife-Grinder," and the German playl Adieu only for the present; you shall soon hear from me again ; it is a sub- ject upon which I cannot long be silent. LETTER Vin. Nothing can be more erroneous than to sup- pose that Ireland is not bigger than the Isle of Wight, or of more consequence than Guernsey or Jersey ; and yet I am almost inclined to be- lieve, from ttie general supineness which pre- vails here respecting the dangerous state of that country, that such is the rank which it holds in our statistical tables. I have been writing to you a great deal about Ireland, and perhaps it may be of some use to state to you concisely the nature and resources of the country which has been the subject of our long • Tliis is a very unjust imputation on Lord Castlereagh- and strange correspondence. There were re- turned, as I have before observed, to the hearth tax, in 1791, 701,132* houses, which Mr. New- enham shows from unquestionable documents to be nearly 80,000 below the real number of houses in that country. There are 27,457 square English miles in Ireland,f and more than five millions of people. By the last survey, it appears that the inha- bited houses in England and Wales amount to 1,574,902, and the population to 9,343,578, which gives an average of 5^ to each house, in a country where the density of population is certainly less considerable than in Ireland. It is commonly supposed that two-fifihs of the army and navy are Irishmen, at pet-iods when political disaffection does not avert the Catho- lics from the service. The current value of Irish exports in 1807 was 9,314,854/. 175. 7d.; a state of commerce about equal to the com- merce of England in the middle of the reign of George II. The tonnage of ships entered in- ward and cleared outward in the trade of Ire- land, in 1807, amounted to 1,567,430 tons. The quantity of home spirits exported amounted to 10,284 gallons in 1796, and to 930,800 gallons in 1804. Of the exports, which I have stated,' provisions amounted to four millions, and linen to about four millions and a half. There was exported from Ireland, upon an average of two years ending in January, 1804, 591,274 barrels of barley, oats, and wheat; and by weight 910,848 cw.ts. of flour, oatmeal, barley, oats and wheat. The amount of butter exported in 1804, from Ireland, was worth, in money, 1,704,680/. sterling. The importation of ale and beer from the immense manufactures now carrying on of these articles, was diminished to 3209 barrels, in the year 1804, from 111,920 barrels, which was the average importation per annum, taking from three years ending in 1792; and at present there is an export trade of porter. On an average of the three years, ending March, 1783, there were imported into Ireland, of cotton wool, 3326 cwts., of cotton yarn, 5405 lbs. ; but on an average of three years, ending January, 1803, there were im- ported, of the first article, 13,153 cwts., and of the latter, 628,406 lbs. It is impossible to con- ceive any manufacture more flourishing. The export of linen has increased in Ireland from 17,776,862 yards, the average in 1770, to 43,534,971 yards, the amount in 1805. The tillage of Ireland has more then trebled within the last twenty-one years. The importation of coals has increased from 230,000 tons in 1783, to 417,030 in 1804; of tobacco, from 3,459,861 lbs. in 1783, to 6,611,543 in 1804; of tea, from 1,703,855 lbs. in 1783, to 3,358,256, in 1804; of sugar, from 143,117 cwts. in 1782, to 309,076, in 1804. Ireland now supports a funded debt of above 64 millions, and it is computed that more than three millions of money are annually remitted to Irish absentees resident in this country. In Mr. Foster's re- * The cliecks to population were very trifling from th« rebellion. It lasted two months : of his mnjesty's Irish forces, there perished about 1600; of the rebels, 11,000 were killed in the field, and 2000 hanged or exported ; 400 loyal persons were assassinated. + In England 49,450. 2R 470 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. port, of 100 folio pages, presented to the House of Commons in the year 1806, the total expen- diture of Ireland is stated at 9,760,013/. Ire- land has increased about two-thirds in its population within twenty-five years, and yet, and in about the same space of time, its ex- ports of beef, bullocks, cows, pork, swine, but- ter, wheat, barley, and oats, collectively taken, have doubled; and this in spite of two years' famine, and the presence of an immense army, that is always at hand to guard the most valu- able appanage of cur empire from joining our most inveterate enemies. Ireland has the greatest possible facilities for carrying on com- merce with the whole of Europe. It contains, "within a circuit of 750 miles, 66 secure har- bours, and presents a western frontier against Great Britain, reaching from the Frith of Clyde north to the Bristol Channel south, and vary- ing in distance from 20 to 100 miles; so that the subjugation of Ireland would compel us to guard with ships and soldiers a new line of coast, certainl)^ amounting, with all its sinuosi- ties, to more than 700 miles — an addition of po- lemics, in our present state of hostility with all the world, which must highly gratify the vigor- ists, and give them an ample opportunity of displaying that foolish energy upon Avhich their claims to distinction are founded. Such is the country which the right reverend the chancellor of the exchequer would drive into the arms of France, and for the conciliation of which we are requested to wait, a^ if it were one of those sinecure places which were given to Mr. Perceval snarling at the breast, and which cannot be abolished till his decease. How sincerely and fervently have I often wished that the Emperor of the French had thought as Mr. Spencer Perceval does upon the subject of government ; that he had entertained doubts and scruples upon the propriety of ad- mitting the Protestants to an equality of rights with the Catholics, and that he had left in the middle of his empire these vigorous seeds of hatred and disafiection : but the world was never yet conquered by a blockhead. One of the very first measures we saw him recurring to was the complete establishment of religious liberty ; if his subjects fought and paid as he pleased, he allowed them to believe as they pleased; the moment I saw this, ray best hopes were lost. I perceived in a moment the kind of man we had to do with. I was well aware of the miserable ignorance and foU}^ of this country upon the subject of toleration; and ever}"^ year has been adding to the success of that game which it was clear he had the will and the ability to play against us. You say Bonaparte is not in earnest upon the subject of religion, and that this is the cause of his tolerant spirit ; but is it possible you can intend to give us such dreadful and unamiable notions of religion 1 Are we to understand that the moment a man is sincere he is narrow- minded ; that persecution is the child of belief; and that a desire to leave all men in the quiet and unpunished exercise of their own creed can only exist in the mind of an infidel T Thank God! I know many men whose prin- ciples are as firm as they are expanded, who cling tenaciously to their own modification of the Christian faith, without the slightest dispo- sition to force that modification upon other people. If Bonaparte is liberal in subjects of religion because he has no religion, is this a reason why we should be illiberal because we areChristians ] If heowes this excellentquality to a vice, is that any reason why we may not owe it to a virtue 1 Toleration is a great good, and a good to be imitated, let it come from whom it will. If a sceptic is tolerant, it only shows that he is not foolish in practice as well as erroneous in theory. If a religious man is tolerant, it evinces that he is religious from thought and inquir)', because he exhibits in his conduct one of the most beautiful and import- ant consequences of a religious mind, — an in- violable charity to all the honest varieties of human opinion. Lord Sidmouth, and all the anti-Catholic people, little foresee that they will hereafter be the sport of the antiquary ; that their prophe- cies of ruin and destruction from Catholic emancipation will be clapped into the notes of some quaint history, and be matter of plea- santry even to the sedulous housewife and the rural dean. There is always a copious sup- ply of Lord Sidmouths in the world: nor is there one single source of human happiness against which they have not uttered the most lugubrious predictions. Turnpike roads, navi- gable canals, inoculation, hops, tobacco, the Reformation, the Revolution — there are always a set of worthy and moderately-gifted men, who bawl out death and ruin upon every valu- able change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires. I have often thought that it would be extremely useful to make a collection of the hatred and abuse that all those changes have experienced, which are now admitted to be marked improve- ments in our condition. Such an history might make folly a little more modest, and suspicious of its own decisions. Ireland, you say, since the union, is to be considered as a part of the whole kingdom; and therefore, however Catholics may predo- minate in that particular spot, yet, taking the whole empire together, they are to be consi- dered as a much more insignificant quota of the population. Consider them in what light you please, as part of the whole, or by them- selves, or in what manner may be most con- sentaneous to the devices of your holy mind — I say in a very few words, if you do not relieve these people from the civil incapacities to which they are exposed, you will lose them ; or you must employ great strength and much treasure in watching over them. In the pre- sent state of the world, you can afl^ord to do neither the one nor the other. Having stated this, I shall leave you to be ruined, PufTendorf in hand, (as Mr. Secretary Canning says,) and to lose Ireland, just as you have found out what proportion the aggrieved people should bear to the whole population, before their calamities meet with redress. As for your parallel cases, I am no more afraid of deciding upon them than I am upon their prototype. If ever any one heresy should so far spread itself over the prin- cipality of Wales that the established church were left in a minority of one to four; if you WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 471 had subjected these heretics to very severe civil privations; if the consequence of such privations were an universal state of disaffec- tion among that caseous and wrathful people; and if, at the same time, you were at war with all the world, how can you doubt for a moment that I would instantly restore them to a state of the most complete civil liberty 1 What matters it under what name you put the same case? Common sense is not changed by appellations. I have said how I would act to Ireland, and I would act so to all the world. I admit that, to a certain degree, the govern- ment will lose the affections of the Orangemen by emancipating the Catholics ; much less, however, at present, than three years past. The few men, who have ill-treated the whole crew, live in constant terror that the oppressed people will rise upon them and carry the ship into Brest : — they begin to find that it is a very tiresome thing to sleep every night with cocked pistols under their pillows, and to breakfast, dine, and sup with drawn hangers. They suspect that the privilege of beating and kick- ing the rest of the sailors is hardly worth all this anxiety, and that if the ship does ever fall into the hands of the disaffected, all the cruel- ties which they have experienced will be tho- roughly remembered and amply repaid. To a short period of disaffection among the Orange- men, I confess I should not much object: my love of poetical justice does carry me as far as that; one summer's whipping, only one : the thumb-screw for a short season; a little light, easy torturing between Lady-day and Michaelmas; a short specimen of Mr. Perce- val's rigour. I have malice enough to ask this slight atonement for the groans and shrieks of the poor Catholics, unheard by any human tribunal, but registered by the angel of God against their Protestant and enlightened op- pressors. Besides, if you who count ten so often can count five, you must perceive that it is better to have four friends and one enemy than four enemies and one friend; and the more violent the hatred of the Orangemen, the more certain the reconciliation of the Catholics. The dis- affection of the Orangemen will be the Irish rainbow; when I see it, I shall be sure that the storm is over. If those incapacities, from which the Ca- tholics ask to be relieved, were to the mass of them only a mere feeling of pride, and if the question were respecting the attainment of privileges which could be of importance only to the highest of the sect, I should still say, that the pride of the mass was very naturally wounded by the degradation of their superiors. Indignity to George Rose would be felt by the smallest nummary gentleman in the king's employ; and Mr. John Bannister could not be indifferent to any thing which happened to Mr. Canning. But the truth is, it is a most egregious mistake to suppose that the Catholics are contending merely for the fringes and fea- thers of their chiefs. I will give you a list, in my next letter, of those privations which are represented to be of no consequence to any body but Lord Fingal, and some twenty or thirty of the principal persons of their sect. In the mean time, adieu, and be wise. LETTER IX. Dear Abraham, No catholic can be chief governor or go- vernor of this kingdom, chancellor or keeper of the great seal, lord high-treasurer, chief of any of the courts of justice, chancellor of the exchequer, puisne judge, judge in the admi- ralty, master of the rolls, secretary of state, keeper of the privy seal, vice-treasurer or his deputy, teller or cashier of exchequer, auditor or general, governor or custos rotulorum of counties, chief governor's secretary, privy councillor, king's counsel, serjeant, attorney, solicitor-general, master in chancery, provost or fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, post- master-general, master and lieutenant-general of ordnance, commander-in-chief, general on the staff, sheriir, sub-sheriff, mayor, bailiff, recorder, burgess, or any other officer in a cit}-, or a corporation. No Catholic can be guardian to a Protestant, and no priest guar- dian at all ; no Catholic can be a gamekeeper, or have for sale, or otherwise, any arms or warlike stores ; no Catholic can present to a living, unless he chooses to turn Jew in order to obtain that privilege; the pecuniary quali- fication of Catholic jurors is made higher than that of Protestants, and no relaxation of the ancient rigorous code is permitted, unless to those who shall take an oath prescribed by 13 & 14 Geo. III. Now if this is not picking the plums out of the pudding, and leaving the mere batter to the Catholics, I know not what is. If it were merely the privy council, it would be (I allow) nothing but a point of honour for which the mass of Catholics were contending, the honour of being chief mourn- ers or pall-bearers to the country; but surely no man will contend that every barrister may not speculate upon the possibility of being a puisne judge ; and that every shopkeeper must not feel himself injured by his exclusion from borough offices. One of the greatest practical evils which the Catholics sufler in Ireland, is their exclusion from the offices of sherilf and deputy sheriff. Nobody who is unacquainted with Ireland can conceive the obstacles which this opposes to the fair administration of justice. The for- mation of juries is now entirely in the hands of the Protestants: the lives, liberties, and properties of the Catholics in the hands of the juries ; and this is the arrangement for the ad- ministration of justice in a country where re- ligious prejudices are inflamed to the greatest degree of animosity ! In this country, if a man is a foreigner, if he sells slippers, and sealing wax and artificial flowers, we are so tender of human life, that we take care half the number of persons who are to decide upon his fate should be men of similar prejudices and feel- ings with himself: but a poor Catholic in Ire- land may be tried- by twelve Percevals, and destroyed according to the manner of that gen- tleman in the name of the Lord, and with all the insulting forms of justice. I do not go the length of saying that deliberate and wilful in- justice is done. I have no doubt that the Orange deputy-sheriff thinks it wottld be a most unpardonable breach of his duty if he did not summon a Protestant paneL I can 472 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. easily believe that the Protestant panel may conduct themselves very conscientiously in hanging the gentleman of the crucifix; but I blame the law which does not guard the Ca- tholic against the probable tenour of those feelings which must unconsciously influence the judgments of mankind. I detest that state of society which extends unequal degrees of protection to different creeds and persuasions; and I cannot describe to you the contempt I feel for a man who, calling himself a states- man, defends a system which fills the heart of every Irishman with treason,, and makes his allegiance prudence, not choice. I request to know if the vestry taxes, in Ireland, are a mere matter of romantic feeling, which can affect only the Earl of FingaH In a parish where there are four thousand Catho- lics and fifty Protestants, the Protestants may meet together in a vestry meeting, at which no Catholic has the right to vote, and tax all the lands in the paris>h Is. 6d. per acre, or in the pound, I forget which, lor the repairs of the church — and how has the necessity of these repairs been ascertained 1 A Protestant plumber has discovered that it wants new leading; a Protestant carpenter is convinced the timbers are not sound, and a glazier, who hates holy water, (as an accoucher hates celi- bacy because he gets nothing by it,) is em- ployed to put in new sashes. The grand juries in Ireland are the great scene of jobbing. They have a power of making a county rate to a considerable extent for roads, bridges, and other objects of general accommodation "You sufl^er the road to be brought through my park, and I will have the Dridge constructed in a situation where it "unll make a beautiful object to your house. You do my job, and I ■will do yours." These are the sweet and interesting subjects which occa- sionally occupy Milesian gentlemen while they are attendant upon this grand inquest of jus- tice. But there is a religion, it seems, even in jobs ; and it will be highly gratifying to Mr. Perceval to learn that no man in Ireland who believes in seven sacraments can carry a public road, or bridge, one yard out of the direction most beneficial to the public, and that nobody can cheat that public who does not expound the Scriptures in the purest and most orthodox manner. This will give plea- sure to Mr. Perceval : but, from his unfairness upon these topics, I appeal to the justice and proper feelings of Mr. Huskisson. I ask him if the human mind can experience a more dreadful sensation than to see its own jobs refused, and the jobs of another religion per- petually succeeding? I ask him his opinion of a jobless faith, of a creed which dooms a man through life to a lean and plunderless in- tegrity. He knows that human nature cannot and will not bear it; and if we were to paint a political Tartarus, it would be an endless series of snug expectations and cruel disappoint- ments. These are a few of many dreadful inconveniences which the Catholics of all ranks suffer from the lav.-s by which they are at present oppressed. Besides, look at human nature : — what is the history of all professions? Joel is to be brought up to the bar: has Mrs. Plymley the slightest doubt of his being chan- cellor] Do not his two shrivelled aunts live in the certainty of seeing him in that situa- tion, and of cutting out with their own hands his equity habiliments 1 And I could name a certain minister of the Gospel who does not, in the bottom of his heart, much differ from these opinions. Do you think that the fathers and mothers of the holy Catholic Church are not as absurd as Protestant papas and ma- mas ? The probability I admit to be, in each particular case, that the sweet little blockhead will in fact never get a brief; — but I will ven- ture to say, there is not a parent from the Giant's causeway to Bantr}^ Bay who does not conceive that his child is the unfortunate vic- tim of the exclusion, and that nothing short of positive law could prevent his own dear pre- eminent Paddy from rising to the highest ho- nours of the state. So with the army, and Parliament; in fact, few are excluded; but, in imagination, all : you keep twenty or thirty Catholics out, and you lose the affections of four millions ; and, let me tell you, that recent circumstances have by no means tended to diminish in the minds of men that hope of elevation bej-ond their own rank which is so congenial to our nature; from pleading for John Roe to taxing John Bull, from jesting for Mr. Pitt and writing in the Anti-Jacobin, to managing the affairs of Europe — these are leaps which seem to justify the fondest dreams of mothers and aunts. I do not say that the disabilities to which the Catholics are exposed amount to such in- tolerable grievances, that the strength and in- dustry of a nation are overwhelmed by them; the increasing prosperity of Ireland fully de- monstrates the contrary. But I repeat again, what I have often stated in the course of our correspondence, that your laws against the Catholic are exactly in that state in which you have neither the benefits of rigour nor of liberality ; every law which prevented the Catholics from gaining strength and wealth is repealed; every law which can irritate re- mains; if you were determined to insult the Catholics, you should have kept them weak ; if you resolved to give them sti-ength, you should have ceased to insult them : — at present your conduct is pure, unadulterated folly. Lord Hawkesbury says, we heard nothing about the Catholics till we began to mitigate the laws against them ; when we relieved them in part from this oppression they began to be disaffected. This is very true; but it proves just what I have said, that you have either done too much, or too little; and as there lives not, I hope, upon earth, so depraved a courtier that he would load the Catholics with their ancient chains, Avhat absurdity it is then not to render their dispositions friendl}', when you leave their arms and legs free ! You know, and many Englishmen know, what passes in China; but nobody knows or cares what passes in Ireland. At the begin- ning of the present reign, no Catholic could realize property, or carry on any business ; they were absolutely annihilated, and had no more agency in the country than so many trees. They were like Lord Mulgrave's elo WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 473 quence, and Lord Camden's wit; the legisla- tive bodies did not know of their existence. For these twenty-five years last past, the Ca- tholics have been engaged in commerce ; within that period the commerce of Ireland has doubled : — there are four Catholics at work for one Protestant, and eight Catholics at work for one Episcopalian ; of course the propor- tion Avhich Catholic wealth bears to Protestant wealth is every year altering rapidly in favour of the Catholics. I have already told you what their purchases of land were the last year ; since that period, I have been at some pains to find out the actual state of the Catholic wealth ; it is impossible, upon such a subject, to arrive at complete accuracy; but I have good reason to believe that there are at pre- sent 2000 Catholics in Ireland, possessing an income from 500/. upwards, many of these with incomes of one, two, three, and four thousand, and some amounting to fifteen and twenty thousand per annum: — and this is the kingdom, and these the people, for whose con- ciliation we are to wait Heaven knows when, and Lord Hawkesbury why! As for me, I never think of the situation of Ireland, v/ith- out feeling the same necessity for immediate interference as I should do if I saw blood flowing from a great artery. I rush to- wards it with the instinctive rapidity of a man desirous of preventing death, and have no other feeling but that in a few seconds the patient may be no more. I could not help smiling, in the times of No- Popery, to witness the loyal indignation of man/ persons at the attempt made by the last ministry to do something for the rehef of Ire- land. The general cry in the country was, that they would not see their beloved monarch used ill in his old age, and that they would stand by him to the last drop of their blood. I respect good feelings, however erroneous be the occasions on which they display them- .selves ; and, therefore, I saw in all this as much to admire as to blame. It was a species of aflfection, however, which reminded me very forcibly of the attachment displayed by the servants of the Russian ambassador, at the beginning of the last century. His excel- lency happened to fall down in a kind of apo- plectic fit, when he was paying a morning visit in the house of an acquaintance. The confusion was of course very great, and mes- sengers were despatched, in every direction, to find a surgeon, who, upon his arrival, de- . clared that his excellency must be immediately blooded, and prepared himself forthwith to perform the operation ; the barbarous servants of the embassy, who were there in great num- bers, no sooner saw the surgeon prepared to wound the arm of their master with a sharp shining instrument, than they drew their swords, put themselves in an attitude of de- fence, and swore in pure Sclavonic, " that they would murder any man who attempted to do him the slightest injury; he had been a very good master to them, and they would not desert him in his misfortunes, or sutfer his blood to be shed while he was off his guard, and incapable of defending himself." By good fortune, the secretary arrived about this period of the dispute, and his excellency, relieved from superfluous blood and perilous affection, was, after much difficulty, restored to life. There is an argument brought forward with some appearance of plausibility in the House of Commons, which certainly merits an an- swer. You know that the Catholics now vote for members of Parliament in Ireland, and that they outnumber the Protestants in a very great proportion ; if j^ou allow Catholics to sit in Parliament, religion will be found to influ- ence votes more than propert}^, and the greater part of the 100 Irish members who are return- ed to Parliament will be Catholics. Add to these the Catholic members who are returned in England, and you will have' a phalanx of heretical strength which every minister will be compelled to respect, and occasionally to conciliate by concessions incompatible with the interests of the Protestant Church. The fact is, however, that you are at this moment subjected to every danger of this kind which you can possibly apprehend hereafter. If the spiritual interests of the voters are more pow- erful than their temporal interests, they can bind down their representatives to support any measures favourable to the Catholic religion, and they can change the objects of their choice till they have found Protestant members (as they easily may do) perfectly obedient to their wishes. If the superior possessions of the Protestants prevent the Catholics from uniting for a common political object, then the danger you fear cannot exist; if zeal, on the contrary, gets the better of acres, then the danger at present exists, from the right of voting already given to the Catholics, and it will not be increased by allowing them to sit in Parliament. There are, as nearly as I can recollect, thirty seats in Ireland for cities and counties, where the Protestants are the most numerous, and where the members returned must of course be Protestants. In the otlier seventy representations, the wealth of the Pro- testants is opposed to the number of the Ca- tholics ; and if all the seventy members re- turned were of the Catholic persuasion, they must still plot the destruction of our religion in the midst of 588 Protestants. Such terrors would disgrace a cook-maid, or a toothless aunt — when they fall from the lips of bearded and senatorial men, they are nauseous, anti- peristaltic, and emetical. How can you for a moment doubt of the rapid effects which would be produced by the emancipation 1 — In the first place, to my cer- tain knowledge, the Catholics have long since expressed to his majesty's ministers their per- fect readiness to vest in his majesty, either with, the consent of the pope, or unthout it, if it cannot he obtained, the nomination of the Catholic prelacy. The Catholic prelacy in Ireland consists of twenty-six bishops and the warden of Galway, a dignitary enjoying Catholic jurisdiction. The number of Roman Catholic priests in Ireland exceeds one thousand. The expenses of his peculiar worship, are, to a substantial farmer or mechanic, five shillings per annum; to a labourer (where he is not entirely ex- cused), one shilling per annum ; this includes the contribution of the whole family, and for 2b2 474 WORKS OP THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. this the priest is bound to attend them when sick, and to conless them when they apply to hiin; he is also to keep his chapel in order, to celebrate divine service, and to preach on Sundays and holydays. In the northern dis- trict a priest gains from 30/. to 50/.; in the other parts of Ireland from 60/. to 90/. per an- num. The best paid Catholic bishops receive about 400/. per ann.; the others from 300/. to 350/. My plan is very simple ; I would have .'300 Catholic parishes at 100/. per ann., 300 at 200/. per ann., and 400 at 300/. per ann.; this, for the whole thousand parishes, would amount to 190,000/. To the prelacy I would allot 20,000/. in unequal proportions, from 1000/. to .000/.; and I would appropriate 40,000/. more for the support of Catholic schools, and the repairs of Catholic churches : the whole amount of which sums is 250,000/., about the expense of three days of one of our genuine, good, English, just and necessary wars. The clergy should all receive their salaries at the Bank of Ireland, and I would place the whole patronage in the hands of the crown. Now, I appeal to any human being, except Spencer Perceval, Esq., of the parish of Hampstead, what the disaffection of a clergy would amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the crown, and whether Ignatius Loyola himself, if he were a living blockhead instead of a dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bounc- ing from 100/. a year in Sligo, to 300/. in Tip- peraryl This is the miserable sum of money for which the merchants, and land-owners, and nobilitj' of England are exposing them- selves to the tremendous peril of losing Ire- land. The sinecure places of the Roses and the Percevals, and the "dear and near rela- tions," put up to auction at thirty years' pur- chase, would almost amount to the money persons. Of what Protestants there are in Ireland, the greatest part are gathered together in Ulster, or they live in towns. In the coun- try of the other three provinces the Catholics see no other religion but their own, and are at the least as fifteen to one Protestant. In the diocese of Tuam, they are sixty to one; in the parish of St. MullinS, diocese of Leghlin, there are four thousand Catholics and one Protestant ; in the town of Grasgenamaua, in the county of Kilkenny, there are between four and five hundred Catholic houses, and three Protestant houses. In th? parish of Allen, county Kildare, there is no Protestant, though it is very popu- lous. In the parish of Arlesin, Queen's county, the proportion is one hundred to one. In the whole county of Kilkenny, by actual enumera- tion, it is seventeen to one; in the diocese of Kilmacduagh, province of Connaught, fifty-two to one, by ditto. These I give you as a few specimens of the present state of Ireland; — and yet there are men impudent and ignorant enough to contend that such evils require no remedy, and that mild family man who dwell- eth in Hampstead can find none but the cau- tery and the knife, omiie per ignem Excoquitur vitium. I cannot describe the horror and disgust which I felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call upon the then ministry for measures of vigour in Ireland. If I lived at Hampstead upon stewed meats and claret; if I walked to church every Sunday before eleven young gentlemen of my own begetting, with their faces washed, and their hair pleasingly combed ; if the Almighty had blessed me with every earthly comfort, — how awfully would I pause before I sent forth the flame and the sword over the cabins of the I admit that nothing can be more reasonable | poor, brave, generous, open-hearted peasants than to expect that a Catholic priest should starve to death, genteelly and pleasantly, for the good of the Protestant religion; but is it equally reasonable to expect that he should do so for the Protestant pews, and Protestant brick and mortar 1 On an Irish Sabbath, the bell of a neat parish church often summons to church only the parson and an occasionally conforming clerK; while, two hundred yards off", a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and pelted by all the storms of heaven. Can any thing be more distressing than to see a venerable man pour- ing forth sublime truths in tattered breeches, and depending for his food upon the little olTal he gets from his parishioners ? I venerate a human being who starves for his principles, let them be what they may ; but starving for any thing is not at all to the taste of the hon- ourable flagellants; strict principles, and good pay, is the motto of Mr. Perceval ; the one he keeps in great measure for the faults of his enemies, the other for himself. There are parishes in Connaught in which a Protestant was ncA-er settled, nor even seen ; in that province, in Munster, and in parts of Leinster, the entire peasantry for sixty miles are Catholics; in these tracts, the churches are frequently shut for want of a congregation, or opened to an assemblage of from six to twenty of Ireland ! How easy it is to shed human blood — how easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so — and that the de- cision has cost us a severe struggle — how much, in all ages, have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind — how difl^cult and how noble it is to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection ! — But what do men call vigour 1 To let loose hussars and to bring up artillerj', to govern with lighted matches, and to cut, and push, and prime — I call this, not ■vigour, but the slolh of cruelty and ignorance. The vigour I love consists in finding out wherein subjects are aggrieved, in relieving them, in studying the temper and genius of a people, in consulting their prejudices, in se- lecting proper persons to lead and manage them, in the laborious, watchful, and difficult task of increasing public happiness by alla)'- ing each particular discontent. In this way Hoche pacified La Yendc>e — and in this way only will Ireland ever be subdued. But this, in the eyes of Mr. Perceval, is imbecility and meanness ; houses are not broken open — wo- men are not insulted — the people seem all to be happy ; they are not rode over by horses, and cut by whips. Do you call this vigour ! — Is this government 1 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 475 LETTER X. AND LAST. You must observe that all I have said of the effects whieh will be produced by giving sala- ries to the Catholic clergy, only proceeds upon the supposition that the emancipation of the laity is effected : — without that, I am sure there is not a clergyman in Ireland who would re- ceive a shilling from government; he could not do so, without an entire loss of credit among the members of his own persuasion. What you say of the moderation of the Irish Protestant clergy in collecting tithes, is, I be- lieve, strictly true. Instead of collecting what the law enables them to collect, I believe they seldom or ever collect more than two-thirds ; and I entirely agree with you, that the abolition of agistment tithe in Ireland by a vote of the Irish House of Commons, and without any remuneration to the church, was a most scan- dalous and Jacobinical measure. I do not blame the Irish clergy; but I submit to your common sense, if it is possible to explain to an Irish peasant upon what principle of justice, or common sense, he is to pay every tenth potato in his little garden to a clergyman in whose religion nobody believes for twenty miles around him, and who has nothing to preach to but bare walls. It is true, if the tithes are bought up, the cottager must pay more rent to his landlord; but the same thing, done in the shape of rent, is less odious than when it is done in the shape of tithe; I do not want to take a shilling out of the pockets of the clergy, but to leave the substance of things, and to change their names. I cannot see the slightest reason why the Irish labourer is to be relieved from the real onus, or from anything else but the name of tithe. At present, he rents only nine-tenths of the produce of the land, which is all that belongs to the owner; this he has at the market pi'lce ; if the land- owner purchase the other tenth of the church, of course he has a right to make a correspond- ent advance upon his tenant. I very much doubt, if you were to laj^ open all civil offices to the Catholics, and to grant salaries to their clergy, in the manner I have stated, if the Catholic laity would give them- selves much trouble about the advance of their church ; for they would pay the same tithes tinder one system that they do under another. If you were to bring the Catholics into the daylight of the world, to the high situations of the army, the navy, and the bar, numbers of them would come over to the established church, and do as other people do ; instead of that you set a mark of infamy upon them, rouse every passion of our nature in favour of their creed, and then wonder that men are blind to the follies of the Catholic religion. There are hardly any instances of old and rich families among the Protestant dissenters ; when a man keeps a coach, and lives in good company, he comes to church, and gets ashamed of the meeting-house ; if this is not the case with the father, it is almost always the case with the son. These things would never be so, if the dissenters were in -practice as much excluded from all the concerns of civil life, as the Catholics are. If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would belong to White's and to Brooke's, would keep race-horses, would Avalk up and down Pall Mall, be exonerated of his ready money and his constitution, become as totally devoid of morality, honesty, know- ledge, and civility, as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall, and return home with a supreme contempt for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan. lam astonished at the madness of the Catholic clergy, in not perceiving that Catholic emancipation is Catholic infidelity; that to entangle their people in the intrigues of a Protestant Parliament, and a Protestant court, is to insure the loss of every man of fashion and consequence in their community. The true receipt for preserving their religion is Mr. Perceval's receipt for destroying it ; it is to deprive every rich Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him from the Protestant, and to shut him up in his castle, with priests and relics. We are told, in answer to all our arguments, that this is not a fit period, — that a period of universal war is not the proper time for dan- gerous innovations in the constitution; this is as much as to say, that the worst time for making friends is the period when you have made many enemies ; that it is the greatest of all errors to stop when you are breathless, and to lie down when you are fatigued. Of one thing I am quite certain: if the safety of Europe is once completely restored, the Ca- tholics may for ever bid adieu to the slightest probability of effecting their object. Such men as hang about a court not only are deaf to the suggestions of mere justice, but they despise justice; they -detest the word right; the only word which rouses them is peril; where they can oppress with impunit}^, they oppress for ever, and call it loyalty and wisdom. I am so far from conceiving the legitimate strength of the crown would be diminished by these abolitions of civil incapacities in conse- quence of religious opinions, that my only ob- jection to the increase of religious freedom is, that it would operate ac a diminution of po- litical freedom; the power of the crown is so overbearing at this period, that almost the only steady opposers of its fatal influence are men disgusted by religious intolerance. Our esta- blishments are so enormous, and so utterly disproportioned to our population, that every second or third man 3'ou meet in society gains something from the public ; my brother the commissioner, — my nephew the police justice, — purveyor of small beer to the army in Ire- land, — clerk of the mouth, — yeoman to the left hand, — these are the obstacles which common sense and justice have now to overcome. Add to this, that the king, old and infirm, excites a principle of very amiable generosity in his fa- vour ; that he has led a good, moral, and reli- gious life, equally removed from profligacy and methodistical h}^pocrisy; that he has been a good husband, a good father, and- a good master; that he dresses plain, loves hunting and farming, hates the French, and is, in all his opinions and habits, quite English ; — these feelings are heightened by the present situa- tion of^ the world, and the yet unexploded cla- mour of Jacobinism. In short, from the various 476 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. sources of interest, personal regard, and na- tional taste, such a tempest of lo3ralty has set in upon the people, that the 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics ; and, there- fore, if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science aS much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypothenusc. Such is the history of Eng- lish parties at this moment; you cannot seri- ousl}^ suppose that the people care for such men as Lord Hawkesbury, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Perceval, on their own account ; you can- not really believe them to be so degraded as to look to their safety from a man who proposes to subdue Europe b}- keeping it without Jesu- it's bark. The people, at present, have one passion, and but one — A Jove principium, Jovis omnia plena. They care no more for the ministers I have mentioned, than they do for those sturdy royal- ists who, for 60/. per annum, stand behind his majesty's carriage, arrayed in scarlet and in gold. If the present ministers -opposed the court instead of flattering it, they would not command twenty votes. Do not imagine by these observations, that I am not loj^al ; without joining in the common cant of the best of kings, I respect the king most sincerely as a good man. His religion is better than the religion of Mr. Perceval, his old morality very superior to the old morality of Mr. Canning, and I am quite certain he has a safer understanding than both of them put together. Loyalty, within the bounds of reason and moderation, is one of the great instruments of English happiness ; but the love of the king may easilj^ become more strong than the love of the 'kingdom, and we ma)' lose sight of the public welfare in our exaggerated admiration of him who is appointed to reign only for its promotion and support. I detest Jacobinism ; and if I am doomed to be a slave at all, I would rather be the slave of a king than a cobler. God save the king, you say, warms your heart like the sound of a trumpet. I can- not make use of so violent a metaphor; but I am delighted to hear it, when it is the cry of genuine affection; I am delighted to hear it, when they hail not only the individual man, but the outward and living sign of all English blessings. These are noble feelings, and the heart of every good man must go with them; but God save the king, in these times, too often means God save my pension and my place. God give my sisters an allowance out of the privy purse, — make me clerk of the irons, let me survey the meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public. What is it possible to say to such a man as the gemleman of Hampstead, who really be- lieves it feasible to convert the four million Irish Catholics to the Protestant religion, and considers this as the best remedy for the dis- turbed state of Ireland 1 It is not possible to answer such a man with arguments; we must «nme out against him with beads, and a cowl, and push him into an hermitage. It is really such trash, that it is an abuse of the privilege of reasoning to reply to it. Such a project is well worthy the statesman who would bring the French to reason by keeping them without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium ; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, deli- rious from smallness of profits ; but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a masterpiece of political sagacity. What a sublime thought, that no purge can now be taken between the Weser and the Garonne; that the bustling pestle is still, the canorous mortar mute, and the bowels of mankind locked up for fourteen degrees of latitude ! When, I should be curious to know, were all the powers of crudity and flatulence fully explained to his majesty's ministers ] At what period was this great plan of conquest and constipation fully developed ? In whose mind was the idea of destroying the pride and the plasters of France first engendered 1 AVithout castor oil they might, for some months, to be sure, have car- ried on a lingering war; but can they do with- out bark 1 Will the people live under a go- vernment where antimonial powders cannot be procured] Will they bear the loss of mercurj'1 " There's the rub." Depend upon it, the ab- sence of materia medica will soon bring them to their senses, and, the cry of Bourbon and bolus burst forth from the Baltic to the Mediter- ranean. You ask me for any precedent in our history wliere the oath of supremacy has been dis- ])ensed with. It was dispensed with to the Catholics of Canada, in 1774. They are only required to take a simple oath of allegiance. The same, I believe, was the case in Corsica. The reason of such exemption was obvious ; you could not possibly have retained either of these countries without it. And what did it signify, whether you retained them or not ? In cases where you might have been foolish with- out peril, j'ou were wise ; when nonsense and bigotry threaten you with destruction, it is im- possible to bring you back to the alphabet of justice and common sense; if men are to be fools, I would rather they were fools in little matters than in great; dulness turned up with temeritj-, is a livery all the worse for the facings ; and the most tremendous of all things is the magnanimity of a dunce. It is not by any means necessarj', as 3'ou contend, to repeal the Test Act if you give re- lief to the Catholic ; what the Catholics ask for is to be put on a footing with the Protestant dissenters, which would be done by repealing that part of the law which compels them to take the oath of supremacy and to make the declaration against transubstantiation ; they would then come into Parliament as all other dissenters are allowed to do, and the penal laws to which they were exposed for taking ofl!ice would be suspended every year, as they have been for this half century past toM'ards Protestant dissenters. Perhaps, after all, this WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 477 is tHe best method, — to continue the persecut- 1 ing law, and to suspend it every year, — a met ihod which, while- it effectually destroys the persecution itself, leaves to the great mass of mankind the exquisite gratification of suppos- ing that they are enjoying some advantage from which a particular class of their fellow- creatures are excluded. We manage the Cor- poration and Test Acts at present much in the same manner as if we were to persuade parish boys, who had been in the habit of beating an ass, to spare the animal, and beat the skin of an ass stuffed with straw ; this would preserve the semblance of tormenting without the re- ality, and keep boy and beast m good humour. How can you imagine that a provision for the Catholic clergy affects the 5th article of the Union 1 Surely I am* preserving the Pro- testant church in Ireland, if I put it in a better condition than that in which it now is. A tithe proctor in Ireland collects his^tithes with a blunderbuss, and carries his tenth hay-cock by storm, sword in hand ; to give him equal value in a more specific shape, cannot, I should ima- gine, be considered as injurious to the church of Ireland; and what right has that church to complain, if Parliament chooses to fix upon the empire the burthen of supporting a double ecclesiastical establishment ■? Are the reve- nues of the Irish Protestant clergy in the slightest degree injured by such provision 1 On the contrary, is it possible to confer a more serious benefit upon thatchurch, than by quiet- ing and contenting those who are at work for its destruction! It is impossible to think of the affairs of Ireland without being forcibly struck with the parallel of Hungary. Of her seven millions of inhabitants, one-half were Protestants, Cal- vinists, and Lutherans, many of the Greek Church, and many Jews; such was the state of their religious dissensions, that Mahomet had often been called in to the aid of Calvin, and the crescent often glittered on the walls of B.uda and of Presburg. At last, in 1791, during the most violent crisis of disturbance, a diet was called, and by a great majority of voices a decree was passed, which secured to all the contending sects the fullest and freest exercise of religious worship and education; ordained (let it be heard in Hampstead) that churciies and chapels should be erected for all on the most p_erfectly equal terms, that the Protestants of both confessions should depend upon their spiritual superiors alone, liberated them from swearing by the usual oath, " the holy Virgin Mary, the saints, and chosen of God ;" and then, the decree adds, " that public offices and horwurs, ' high or lore, great or sinall, shall be given to natural born Hungariatts who dcso-vc icell of their country, and possess the other <]ualiJications, let their religion be whaf it may." Such was the line of policy pursued in a diet consisting of four hundred members, in a state whose form of government approaches nearer to our own than any other, having a Roman Catholic establishment of great wealth and power, and under the influence of one of the most bigoted Catholic courts in Europe. This measure has now the experience of eighteen j^ears in its favour; it has under- gone a trial of fourteen years of revolution, such as the world never witnessed, and more than equal to a century less convulsed. What have been its effects 1 When the French advanced like a torrent within a few days' march of Vienna, the Hungarians rose in a mass ; they formed what they called the sacred insurrection, to defend their sovereign, their rights and liberties, now common to all ; and the apprehension of their approach dictated to the reluctant Bonaparte the immediate signa- ture of the treaty of Leobcn: the Romish hie- rarchy of Hungary exists in all its former splendour and opulence ; never has the slightest attempt been made to diminish it; and those revolutionary principles, to which so large a portion of civilized Europe has been sacrificed, have here failed in making the smallest suc- cessful inroad. The whole history of this proceeding of the Hungarian diet is so extraordinary, and such an admirable comment upon the Protestantism of Mr. Spencer Perceval, that I must compel you to read a few short extracts from the law itself: — "The Protestants of both confessions shall, in religious matters, depend upon their own spiritual superiors alone. The Protestants may likewise retain their trivial and grammar schools. The church dues which the Pro- testants have hitherto paid to the Catholic parish priests, schoolmasters, or other such otRcers, either in mone)^ productions, or labour, shall in future entirely cease, and after three months from the publishing of this law, be no more anywhere demanded. In the building or repairing of churches, parsonage-houses, and schools, the Protestants are not obliged to assist the Catholics with labour, nor the Catholics the Protestants. The pious foundations and dona- tions of the Protestants which already exi^t, or which in future may be made for their churches, ministers, schools and students, hospitals, orphan-houses and poor, cannot be taken from them under any pretext, nor yet the care of them; but rather the unimpede I administration shall be entrusted to those from among them to whom it legally belongs, and those foundations which may have been taken from them under the last government, shall be returned to them without delay; all affairs of marriage of the Protestants are left to their own consistories; all landlords and masters of families, under the penalty of public prose- cution, are ordered not to prevent their sub- jects and servants, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, from the observance of the festivals and ceremonies of their religion," &c. &c. «Scc. — By what strange chances are mankind influenced! A little Catholic barrister of Vienna might have raised the crv of no Protestantism, and Hungary would have panted for the arrival of a French army as much as Ireland does at this moment; arms would have been searched for; Lutheran and Calvinist houses entered in the dead of the night; and the strength of Austria exhausted in guarding a country from M-hich, under the present liberal system, she may expect, in a moment of danger the most powerful aid; and let it be remem .bered, that this memorable example of political wisdom took place ai a period when many great monarchies were yet unconquered iu 478 WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. Europe; m ^'country where the two religious parlies were equal in number; and where it is impossible to suppose indifference in the party which relinquished its exclusive privileges. Under all these circumstances, the measure w-as carried in the Hungarian diet by a ma- jority of 280 to 120. In a few weeks, we shall see every concession denied to the Catholics by a much larger majority of Protestants, at a moment M'hen evciy other power is subjugated but ourselves, and in a country where the oppressed are four times as numerous as their oppressors. So much foi' the wisdom of our ancestors — so much for the nineteenth century — so much for the superiority of the English over all the nations of the continent! Are you not sensible, let me ask 3'ou, of the absurdity of trusting the lowest Catholics with offices correspondent to their situation in life, and of denying snch privilege to the higher 1 A Catholic may serve in the militia, but a Catholic cannot come into Pailiament; in the latter case you suspect combination, and in the former case you suspect no combination ; you deliberately arm ten or twenty thousand of the lowest of the Catholic people; — and the moment you come to a class of men whose education, honour, and talents, seem to render all mischief less probable, then you see the danger of employing a Catholic, and cling to your investigating tests and disabling laws. If you tell me you have enough of members of Parliament, and not enough of militia, without the Catholics, I beg leave to remind you, that, by employing the physical force of any sect, at the same time when you leave them in a state of utter disaffection, you are not adding strength to your armies, but weakness and ruin : — if you want the vigour of their common people, you must not disgrace their nobility, and insult their priesthood. I thought that the terror of the pope had been confined to the limits of the nursery, and merely employed as a means to induce j'oung master to enter into his small clothes with greater speed, and to cat his breakfast with greater attention to decorum. For these pur- poses, the name of the pope is admirable ; but why push it beyond? Why not leave to Lord Hawkesbury all farther enumeration of the pope's pov/ers ? For a whole century, j'ou have been exposed to the enmity of France, and your succession was disputed in two rebellions; what could the pope do at the period when there was a serious struggle, whether England should be Protestant or Ca- tholic, and when the issue was completel}' doubtful ? Could the pop.e induce the Irish tu rise in 1715? Could he induce them to rise in 1745? You had no Catholic enemy when half this island was in arms; and what did tlic pope attempt in the last rebellion in Ire- land? But if he had as much power over the minds of the Irish as Mr. Wilberforce has over the mind of a young Methodist, converted the preceding quarter, is this a reason why we are to disgust men, who may be acted upon in such a manner by a foreign power? or is it not an additional reason why we should raise up every barrier of affection and kindness against the mischief of foreign influence ? But the 1 true answer is, the mischief does not exist ^Jog and Magog have produced as much in- fluence upon human affairs as the pope has .done for this half century past; and by spoil- ing him of his possessions, and degrading him in the eyes of all Europe, Bonaparte has not taken quite the proper method of increasing his influence. But why not a Catholic king, as well as a Catholic member of Parliam.ent, or of the cabinet? — Because it is probable that the one would be mischievous, and the other not. A Catholic king might struggle against the Pro- testantism of the country, and if the struggle Avas not successful, it would at least be dan- gerous; but the efforts of any other Catholic would be quite insignificant, and his hope of success so small, that it is quite improbable the effort would ever be made; my argument is, that in so Protestant a country as Great Britain, the character of her Parliaments and her cabinet could not be changed by the few Catholics who would ever find their way to the one or the other. But. the power of the crown is immeasurably greater than the power which the Catholics could' obtain from any other species of authority in the state; and it does not follow, because the lesser degree of power is innocent, that the greater should be so too. As for the stress you lay upon the danger of a Catholic chancellor, I have not the least hesitation in saying, that his appointment would not do a ten-thousandth part of the mis- chief to the English church that might be done by a methodistical chancellor of the true Clap- ham breed; and I request to know, if it is really so very necessary that a chancellor should be of the religion of the Church of England, how many chancellors j'ou have had within the last century who have been bred up in the Presbyterian religion ? — And again, how many you have had who notoriously have 1 een without any religion at all? Why are you to suppose that eligibility and election are the same thing, and that all the cabinet will be Catholics, whenever all the cabinet may be Catholics ? You have a right, you say, to suppose an extreme case, and to argue ugon it — so have I: and I will suppose that the hundred Irish members will one day come down in a body, and pass a law com- pelling the king to reside in Dublin. I will suppose that the Scotch members, by a similar stratagem, will lay England under a large contribution of meal and sulphur; no measure is without objection, if you sweep the whole horizon for danger; it is not sufficient to tell * me of what may happen, but you must show me a rational probability that it will happen : after all, I might, contrary to my real opinion, admit all your dangers to exist; it is enough for me to contend that all other dangers taken together are not equal to the danger of losing Ireland from disaffection and invasion. I am astonished to see you, and many good and well-meaning clergymen beside you, paini- ng the Catholics in such detestable colours; two-thirds, at least, of Europe are Cntholics, — they are Christinns, though mistaken Chris- tians; how can I possibly admit that any sect of Christians, and above all, that the oldes* and WOEKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, 479 the most numerous sect of Christians, are inca- pable of fulfilling the common duties and rela- tions of life : though I do differ from them in many particulars, God forbid I should give such a handle to infidelity, and subscribe to such blasphemy against our common religion! Do you think mankind never change their opinions without formally expressing and con- fessing that change] When you quote the decisions of ancient Catholic councils, are you prepared to defend all the decrees of English convocations and universities since the reign of Queen Elizabeth? I could soon make you sick of your uncandid industry against the Catholics, and bring you to allow that it is better to forget times past, and to judge and be judged by present opinions and present practice. I must beg to be excused from explaining and refuting all the mistakes about the Catho- lics made by my Lord Redesdale ; and I must do that nobleman the justice to say, that he has been treated with great disrespect. Could any thing be more indecent than to make it a morning lounge in Dublin to call upon his lordship, and to cram him with Arabian-night stories about ihe Catholics 1 Is this proper behaviour to the representative of majesty, the child of Themis, and the keeper of the con-. science in West Britain 1 Whoever reads the I letters of the Catholic bishops, in the appendix I to Sir John Hippesly's very sensible book, will I see to what an excess this practice must have | been carried with the pleasing and Protestant j nobleman whose name I have mentioned, and I from thence I wish you to receive your answer | about excommunication, and all the trash j which is talked against the Catholics. A sort of notion has, by some means or another, crept into the world, that difference of religion would render men unfit to perform together the offices of common and civil life; that Brother Wood and Brother Grose could not travel together the same circuit if they dif- fered in creed, nor Cockell and ]\Iingay be en- gaged in the same cause if Cockell was a Catholic and Mingay a Muggletonian. It is supposed that Huskisson and Sir Harry Engle- field would squabble behind the speaker's chair about the Council of Lateran,and many a turn- pike bill miscarry by the sarcastical contro- versies of Mr. Hawkins Brown and Sir John Throckmorton upon the real presence. I wish I could see some of these symptoms of earnest- ness upon the subject of religion ; but it reall}' seems to me, that, in the present state of so- ciety, men no more think about inquiring con- cerning each other's faith than they do concern- ing the colour of each other's skins. There may have been times in England when the quarter sessions would have been disturbed by the theological polemics; but now, after a Catholic justice had once been seen on the bench, and it had been clearly ascertained that he spoke English, had no tail, only a single row of teeth, and that he loved port-wine, — after all' the scandalous and infamous reports of his physical conformation had been clearly proved 10 be false, — he would be reckoned a jolly fel- low, and very superior in flavour to a sly Pres- byterian. Nothing, in f^ict, can be more un- candid and unphilosophical* than to say that a man has a tail, because you cannot agree with him upon religious subjects; it appears to be ludicrous, but I am convinced it has don6 infi- nite mischief to the Catholics, and made a very serious impression upon the minds of many gentlemen of large landed property. In talking of the impossibility of Catholics and Protestants living together with equal pri- vilege under the same government, do you forget the cantons of Switzerland] You might have seen there a Protestant congregation going into a church which had jusi been quitted by a Catholic congregation ; and Twill venture to say that the Swiss Catholics were more bigoted to their religion than any people in the whole world. Did the kings of Prussia ever refuse to employ a Catholic ] Would Frede- rick the Great have rejected an able man on this account] We have seen Prince Czarto- rinski, a Catholic secretary of state in Russia; in former times, a Greek patriarch and an apostolic vicar acted together in the most per- fect harmony in Venice; and we have seen the Emperor of Gennany in modern times entrust- ing the care of his person and the command of his guard to a Protestant prince, Ferdinand of Wirtembcrg. But what are all these things to Mr. Perceval] He has looked at human nature from the top of Ilampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the little sphere of his own vision. " The snail," say the Hindoos, "sees nothing but its own shell, and thinks it the grandest palace in the universe." I now take a final leave of this subject of Ireland ; the only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance, a -want of something difficult to unravel, and something dark to illumine; to agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar ; it is a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man says I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it, this mode of arguing upon the Catholic question I can well understand; but that any human be- ing with an understanding two degrees elevated above that of an Anabaptist preacher, should conscientiously contend for the expediency and propriety of leaving the Irish Catholics in their present state, and of subjecting us to such tremendous peril in the present condition of the world, it is utterly out of my power to con- ceive. Such a measure as the Catholic ques- tion is entirely beyond the common game of politics; it is a measure in which all parties ought to acquiesce, in order to preserve the place where, and the stake for which they play. If Ireland is gone, where are jobs ] where are reversions ] where is my brother, Lord Ardeni where are my dear and near relations ? The game is up, and the speaker of the House of Commons will be sent as a present to the menagerie at Paris. We talk of waiting from particular considerations, as if centuries of joy and prosperity were before us ; in the next ten years our fate must be decided; we shall know, long before that period, whether we can ♦ Vide Lord Bacon, Loclte, and Duscartes. 480 WORKS OP THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. bear up against the miseries by which we are threatened, or not; and yet, in the very midst of our crisis, we are enjoined to abstain from the most certain means of increasing our strength, and advised to wait for the remedy till the disease is removed by death or health. And now, instead of the plain and manly policy of increasing unanimity at home, by equalizing rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and wicked system which has been pursued 1 Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a grave-digger, — the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every efiort which they make. There is nothing which it is worth while either to take or to re- tain, and a constant train of ruinous expedi- tionj has been kept up. Every Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his country ; the character of the country is lost for ever. It is of the utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with the greatest part of Europe, that there should be a free entry of neutrals into the enemy's ports ; the neutrals who car- rii;d our manufactures we have not only ex- claded, but we have compelled them to declare war against us. It was our interest to make a good peace, or convince our own people that it could not be obtained; we have not made a peace, and we have convinced the people of nothing but of the arrogance of the foreign secretary; and all this has taken place in the short space of a year, because a King's Bench barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned into ministers of state, were determined to show country gentlemen that the late administration had no vigour. In the mean time commerce iitands still, manufactures perish, Ireland is jnore and more irritated, India is threatened, fresh taxes are accumulated upon the wretched people, the war is carried on without it being possible to conceive any one single object which a rational being can propose to himself by its continuation; and in the midst of this unparalleled insanity we are told that the conti- nent is to be reconqu&red by the want of rhu- barb and plums.* A better spirit than exists in the English people never existed in any people in the world ; it has been misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes in the most degrading and scandalous manner; they have been led to believe that they were bene- , fiting the commerce of England by destroying the commerce of America, that they were de- fending their sovereign by perpetuating the bigoted oppression of their fellow-subject; their rulers and their guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of France by equalling her atrocity; and they have gone ou wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, which, if husbanded by prudent and moderate counsels, might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of turning the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power to those who resemble him only in his vices ; advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen, to make them meanly submissive ; their piety is turned into persecution, their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered be- cause they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because they are full of vir- tuous patience. If England must perish at last, so let it be ; that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our tears and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar-houses, and hospitals ; that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigot- ry ; that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another ; these events are within the power of human beings, and I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever stoop to such de- gradations. Longum vale ! PETER PLYMLEY. * Even Allen Park (accustomed as he has always been to be delighied by all administrations) says it is too bad; and Hall and Morris are said to have actually blushed in one of the divisions. THE END. >''^W!f.7«-,T«!f*^|R. LOAN W'HJCH BORRoVfo ^^mediate ''^^]t^^ mm^ jf ij>?^ :^;s ^^- 1 '#?H ■ •^ '»»M' y M ■-^ :.>T: '^>1P 1^