Sm: 
 
 Ballet 
 
 and Third Letter to 
 
 Archdeacon Singleton
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 BALLOT. 
 
 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 
 
 £eronU inrition. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR 
 
 LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, 
 
 PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
 1839.
 
 London : 
 
 Printed by A. Spottiswoode, 
 
 New- Street- Square.
 
 
 BALLOT. 
 
 It is possible, and perhaps not very difficult, 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, without its being discovered for whom 
 they vote ; it is less easy than the rabid, and foaming 
 Radical supposes ; but I have no doubt it may be 
 accomplished. In Mr. G rote's dagger ballot box, 
 which has been carried round the country by eminent 
 patriots, you stab the card of your favourite candi- 
 date with a dagger. I have seen another, called the 
 mouse-trap ballot box, in which you poke your 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 arc 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 
 
 a <2 
 
 131 6957
 
 <b BALLOT. 
 
 think my excellent friend Mr. Babbage has as yet made 
 up his mind on the subject ; but, by some means or 
 another, I have no doubt the thing may be done. 
 
 Landed proprietors imagine they have a right to 
 the votes of their tenants ; and instances, in every 
 election, are numerous where tenants have been dis- 
 missed for voting contrary 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 solicitations of 
 their customers. There is a great deal of tyranny 
 and injustice in all this. I should no more think of 
 asking what the political opinions of a shopkeeper 
 were, than of asking whether he was tall or short, or 
 large or small : for a difference of %% per cent. I 
 would desert the most aristocratic butcher that ever 
 existed, and deal with one who 
 
 " Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece." 
 
 On the contrary, I would not adhere to the man 
 who put me in uneasy habiliments, however great his 
 veneration for trial by jury, or however ardent his
 
 BALLOT. 5 
 
 attachment to the liberty of the subject. A tenant I 
 never had ; but I firmly believe that if he had gone 
 through certain pecuniary formalities twice a year, 
 I should have thought it a gross act of tyranny to 
 have interfered either with his political, or his re- 
 ligious opinions. 
 
 All these practices are bad ; but the facts and the 
 consequences are exaggerated. 
 
 In the first place, the plough is not a political 
 machine : the loom and the steam-engine are furi- 
 ously political, but the plough is not. Nineteen 
 tenants out of twenty care nothing about their votes, 
 and pull off 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 organ pipes 
 have for what tunes they are to play. A tenant dis- 
 missed 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 
 
 a 3
 
 6 BALLOT. 
 
 vote. No candidate is willing to allow that he has 
 lost his election by his demerits ; and he seizes hold 
 of these stories, and circulates them with the great- 
 est avidity : they are stated in the House of Com- 
 mons ; John Russell 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 dis- 
 missal of tenants is, that it is always injurious to the 
 pecuniary interests of a landlord to dismiss a tenant ; 
 the property always suffers in some degree by a going 
 off' tenant ; and it is therefore always the interest of 
 a landlord not to change when the tenant does his 
 duty as an agriculturist. 
 
 To part with tenants for political reasons always 
 makes a landlord unpopular. The Constitutional, 
 price 4fd. ; the Cato, at 3±d. ; and the Lucius 
 Junius Brutus, at Qd., 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 farmers, is driven to the 
 brink of suicide, and despair. That such things are
 
 BALLOT. 
 
 done is not denied, that they are scandalous when 
 they are done is equally true ; but these are 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 materially 
 injured in their business from the votes they have 
 given ; but the facts themselves, as well as the con- 
 sequences, are grossly exaggerated. 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 him- 
 self for legislation, and that he can hold the rod of 
 empire because he has wielded the yard of men- 
 suration. I detest all inquisition into political opi- 
 nions, but 1 have very rarely seen a combination 
 against any tradesman who modestly, quietly, and 
 conscientiously took his own line in politics. But 
 Brutus and butterman, cheesemonger and Cato do 
 not harmonise well together ; good taste is offended, 
 the coxcomb loses his friends, and general disgust is 
 mistaken for combined oppression. Shopkeepers, too, 
 
 A 1-
 
 8 BALLOT. 
 
 are very apt to cry out before they are hurt ; a man 
 who sees after an election one of his customers buy- 
 ing 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 Pym. 
 
 This interference with the freedom of voting, bad 
 as it is, produces no political delibration ; 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 measures 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 ex- 
 ercised 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 dis- 
 tressingly abridged by the flood, there is no time to 
 spare, it is impossible to waste it upon such senseless 
 bigotry.
 
 BALLOT. y 
 
 If a man is sheltered from intimidation, is it at all 
 clear that he would vote from any better motive than 
 intimidation ? If you make so tremendous an ex- 
 periment, are you sure of attaining your 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 footman, or his father knew the candidate's 
 grandfather, how many thousand votes sheltered (as 
 the ballotists suppose from intimidation) would be 
 given from such silly motives as these ? how many 
 would be given from the mere discontent of in- 
 feriority ? or from that strange simious schoolboy 
 passion of giving pain to others, even when the 
 author cannot be found out ? — 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 offen- 
 sive sense, for I know many honest and excellent men 
 of this way of thinking), but the Radicals praise and 
 admit the lawful influence of wealth, and power. 
 They arc quite satisfied if a rich man of popular
 
 10 BALLOT. 
 
 manners gains the votes, and affections of his de- 
 pendants ; but why is not this as bad as intimidation ? 
 The real object is to vote for the good politician, 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 
 landlords, or the most agreeable of men ? I must 
 vote for Joseph Hume, if I think Joseph more honest 
 than the Marquis. The mere mitigated Radicals 
 may pass over this, but the real carnivorous variety 
 of these politicians should declaim as loudly against 
 the fascinations as against the threats of the great. 
 The man who possesses 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 confined to the 
 aristocracy ? Can any thing be more scandalous and 
 atrocious than the intimidation of mobs ? Did not the 
 mob of Bristol occasion more ruin, wretchedness, 
 death, and alarm than all the ejection of tenants, and 
 combinations against shopkeepers, from the begin-
 
 BALLOT. 11 
 
 ning of the century ? and did not the Scotch philo- 
 sophers tear off the clothes of the Tories in Minto- 
 shire ? or at least such clothes as the customs of the 
 country admit of being worn ? — and did not they, 
 without any reflection 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 canvass (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 be- 
 stows on his constituents, than if I had totally ne- 
 glected 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 without some 
 sacrifice ; and the admiration which virtue excites, 
 seems to proceed from the contemplation of such 
 sufferings, and of the exertions by which they are 
 endured : a tradesman suffers some loss of trade by
 
 VZ BALLOT. 
 
 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 heroes, if it was 
 not for blood and fractures ; all saints, if it were not 
 for the restrictions, and privations of sanctity j all 
 patriots, if it were not for the losses and misrepre- 
 sentations to which patriotism exposes us. The bal- 
 lotists are a set of Englishmen glowing with the 
 love of England and the love of virtue, but deter- 
 mined to hazard 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 ballot 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 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
 
 BALLOT. 13 
 
 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 shameful 
 predicament with himself ? If ballot is established, a 
 zealous voter cannot do justice to his cause, there 
 will be so many false Hampdens, 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 simulated 
 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 panegyrics 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 grey hairs of the old, every body was forced to 
 weai' powder and pomatum.
 
 li BALLOT. 
 
 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 considerable 
 consequence to the formation of opinion in this town, 
 as an example, to know how Johnson and Pelham 
 vote. It guides the affections, and directs the under- 
 standings, of the whole population, and materially 
 affects public opinion in this town ; and in an- 
 other borough, No. 2., it would be of the highest 
 importance to public opinion if it were certain how 
 Mr. Smith, the ironmonger, and Mr. Rogers, the 
 London carrier, voted ; because they are both 
 thoroughly honest men, and of excellent under- 
 standing for their condition of life. Now, the tend- 
 ency of ballot would be to destroy all the Pelhams, 
 Johnsons, Rogers', and Smiths, to sow a universal 
 mistrust, and to exterminate the natural guides, and 
 leaders of the people : political influence, founded
 
 BALLOT. 15 
 
 upon honour and ancient honesty in politics, could 
 not grow up under such a system. No man's de- 
 claration could get believed. It would be easy to 
 whisper 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 Rogers 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 ? 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 country ?" Are these fair and useful questions to 
 be veiled hereafter in impenetrable mystery ? Is 
 this sort of publicity of no good as a restraint ; is it 
 of no good as an incitement and a reward for ex- 
 ertions ? Is not public opinion formed by such 
 feelings ? and is it not a dark and demoralising sys- 
 tem to draw this veil over human actions, to say to 
 the mass, be base, and you will not be despised ; be 
 virtuous, and you will not be honoured ? h this the
 
 16 BALLOT. 
 
 way in which Mr. Grote would foster the spirit of a 
 bold, and indomitable people ? Was the liberty of 
 that people established by fraud ? Did America lie 
 herself into independence ? Was it treachery which 
 enabled Holland to shake off' the yoke of Spain ? 
 Is there any instance since the beginning of the 
 world, where human liberty has been established by 
 little systems of trumpery and trick ? These are 
 the weapons of monarch s 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 a gentleman, 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 ourselves 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 
 
 * Mr. Grote is a very worthy, honest, and able man ; and, if 
 the world were a chess-board, would be an important politician.
 
 BALLOT. 17 
 
 would recur to the accommodating convenience of 
 ballot. A member of Parliament 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 unpopularity 
 — Lord Kilwarden was murdered, Lord Mansfield 
 burnt down ; but voters, forgetting that they are 
 only trustees for those who have no vote, require 
 that they themselves should be virtuous with impu- 
 nity, and that all the penalties of austerity and Ca- 
 tonism should fall upon others. I am aware that it 
 is of the greatest consequence to the constituent that 
 he should be made acquainted with the conduct of 
 his representative ; but I maintain, that to know, 
 without the fear of mistake, what the conduct of 
 individuals has been in their fulfilment of the great 
 trust of electing members of Parliament, is also of 
 the greatest importance in the formation of public 
 opinion ; and th.it, when men acted in the dark, the 
 power of distinguishing between the bad and the 
 good would be at an end. 
 
 To institute ballot is to apply a very dangerous 
 innovation to a temporary evil ; for it is seldom,
 
 18 BALLOT. 
 
 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 pasture 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 officer 
 lets in twenty votes which he ought to have excluded, 
 and the opposite candidate is unjustly 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
 
 BALLOT. 19 
 
 justice be done if the ballot obtained, and if the 
 returning officer were careless or corrupt ? Would 
 you put all the electors upon their oath ? Would 
 it be advisable to accept any oath where detection 
 was impossible, and could any approximation to truth 
 be expected under such circumstances, from such an 
 inquisition ? 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 corruption 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 elec- 
 tion, and to proceed again de novo ; but how is this 
 just ? or what satisfaction is this to me, who have 
 unquestionably a lawful 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 ? The answer of the 
 House of Commons is, "One of you is undoubtedly 
 
 b 'J
 
 20 BALLOT. 
 
 the rightful member, but we have so framed our 
 laws of election, that it is impossible to find out which 
 that man is ; the loss and penalties ought only to 
 fall upon one, but they must fall upon both ; we put 
 the well-doer and the evil- doer precisely in the same 
 situation, there shall be no election ;" and this may 
 happen ten times running. 
 
 Purity of election, the fair choice of represent- 
 atives, must be guarded either by the coercing power 
 of the House of Commons exercised upon petitions, 
 or it must be guarded by the watchful jealousy of 
 opposite parties at the registrations ; but if (as the 
 Radicals suppose) ballot gives a power of perfect con- 
 cealment, whose interest is it to watch the registra- 
 tions ? 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 bar- 
 rister 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
 
 BALLOT. 21 
 
 scheme of registration to which these objections will 
 not apply." There is really no answering this Paulo 
 post legislation. I reason now upon registration and 
 reform 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 Ben- 
 tham 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 revolution 
 within the last ten years, — 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 plum, in happy ignorance 
 of Mr. Grote and his ballot. I long for the quiet 
 times of Log, when all the English common people 
 are making calico, and all the English gentlemen are 
 making long and short verses, with no other inter- 
 ruption of their happiness than when false quantities 
 are discovered in one or the other. 
 
 b 3
 
 c 2<2 BALLOT. 
 
 What is to become of petitions if ballot is estab- 
 lished ? 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 represent- 
 atives? Are there to be two distinct methods of 
 ascertaining the opinions of the people, and these 
 completely 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 Parliament. How, 
 under such a system, can Parliament ever ascertain 
 what the wishes of the people really are ? The re- 
 presentatives are Radicals, the petitioners eminently 
 conservative ; 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
 
 BALLOT. 23 
 
 by ballot, how are the House of Commons to deal 
 with petitions ? When it is intended particularly 
 that a petition should attract the attention of the 
 House of Commons, some member bears witness to 
 the respectability 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 representative and the 
 constituent. It is the Radical doctrine that a repre- 
 sentative is to obey the instructions of his consti- 
 tuents. He lias been elected under the ballot by a 
 large majority ; an open meeting is called, and he 
 receives instructions in direct opposition to all those 
 principles upon which he has been elected. Is this 
 the real opinion of his constituents ? and if he re- 
 ceives 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 estab- 
 lished for elections only, and all communications 
 between the constituents on one side, and Parliament 
 
 B 1
 
 24 BALLOT. 
 
 and the representatives on the other, are carried on 
 in open meetings, then are there two publics accord- 
 ing 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 
 are Parliament to know who petitions, or the member 
 to know who instructs ? 
 
 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 
 assumption. Given up ? Why should they be given 
 up ? I can give many reasons why landlords should 
 never exercise this unreasonable 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 men of 
 woods, forests, and rivers, — that they who have the 
 strength of the hills, — are to be baffled by bump-
 
 BALLOT. 25 
 
 kins thrusting a little pin into a little card in a little 
 box ? that England is to be governed by political 
 acupuncturation ? 
 
 A landlord who would otherwise be guilty of the 
 oppression will not change his purpose, because you 
 attempt to outwit him by the invention of the ballot ; 
 he will become, on the contrary, doubly vigilant, in- 
 quisitive, 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 1 should lose my 
 farm in a week." This is the real history of what 
 would take place. The single lie on the hustings 
 would not suffice ; the concealed democrat who voted 
 against his landlord, must talk with the wrong- 
 people, subscribe 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 ;
 
 26 BALLOT. 
 
 and he must do this, not only eundo, in his calm and 
 prudential state, hutredeundo from the market, warmed 
 with beer and expanded by alcohol ; and he must 
 not only carry on his seven years of dissimulation 
 before the world, but in the very bosom of his family, 
 or he must expose himself to the dangerous garrulity 
 of wife, children, and servants, from whose indis- 
 cretion 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 waive his bonnet and 
 strain his throat in furtherance of his bad faith, 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 in- 
 creasing the jealousy and irascibility of the tyrant, 
 and multiplying instead of lessening the number of 
 his victims.
 
 BALLOT. 27 
 
 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 deceiving, to all the 
 evils of mistake and misrepresentation. 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 disaffection 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 neighbour, 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 ex- 
 posed to danger would be as great as the number of 
 deceitful tenants whom it screened. 
 
 But if landlords could be prevented from in- 
 fluencing their tenants in voting, by threatening 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
 
 28 BALLOT. 
 
 with his own ? what would prevent him from 
 questioning, long before the election, and cross- 
 examining his tenant, and demanding certificates 
 of his behaviour and opinions, till he had, accord- 
 ing to all human probability, found a man who felt 
 as strongly as himself upon political subjects, and 
 who would adhere to those opinions 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, 
 of cautiously selecting tenants from their political 
 opinion, what would become of the sevenfold shield 
 of the ballot ? Not onlv is the tenant not continued 
 in the farm he already holds, but he finds, from the 
 severe inquisition into which men of property are 
 driven by the invention 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,
 
 BALLOT. 29 
 
 abusing their friends, pelting 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 abhorred. A 
 scene of wholesale bacchanalian fraud, a posse comi- 
 tatus of liars, which would disgust any man with a 
 free government, and make him sigh for the mo- 
 nocracy of Constantinople. 
 
 All the arguments which apply to suspected tenants, 
 apply to suspected shopkeepers. Thcircondition under 
 the ballot would be infinitely 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 deceit, or he would have 
 told a disgraceful falsehood in vain. The political 
 persecutors would not be baffled by the ballot : cus- 
 tomers, who think they have a right to persecute 
 tradesmen now, would do it then ; the only difference 
 would be that more would be persecuted then on 
 suspicion, than are persecuted now from a full know- 
 ledge of every man's vote. Inquisitors would be
 
 30 BALLOT. 
 
 exasperated by this attempt of their victims to be- 
 come invisible, and the search for delinquents would 
 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 protecting themselves from 
 the fury of the multitude ; 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 suffice. 
 Hypocrisy for seven years is impossible ; the multi- 
 tude 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 destroying 
 their empire by ballot. 
 
 Ballot could not prevent the disfranchisement 
 of a great number of voters. The shopkeeper, 
 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 land-
 
 BALLOT. 31 
 
 lord requested to stay away from the poll. Mr. 
 Grote has no box for this ; but a remedy for secur- 
 ing 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 method, indeed, by which 
 this might be remedied, 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 ball? 
 "Why not vote in a domino, taking off' the vizor to 
 the returning officer only ? 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 chairmen by ballot ? 
 
 What a flood of deceit and villany 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 under 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 land-
 
 32 BALLOT. 
 
 lord 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 vicious 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 
 dishonest vote ; but the ballot law opens a booth and 
 asylum for fraud, calling upon all men to lie by 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 
 will be useful. The man who performs 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
 
 BALLOT. 33 
 
 neglected, if falsehood obtains such flattering dis- 
 tinction, 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 London, whether 
 the ballot prevailed in his state 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 hypo- 
 crisy would be the consequence of ballot : we should 
 soon say on deliberation what David only asserted 
 in his haste, tic it all men were liars. 
 
 Not only would the tenant under ballot be con- 
 stantly exposed to the suspicions of the landlord, but 
 the landlord would be exposed to the constant suspi- 
 cions and the unjust misrepresentation of the tenant. 
 Every tenant who was dismissed for a fair and just 
 
 c
 
 34 BALLOT. 
 
 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 dissemin- 
 ated among classes of men on whose agreement the 
 order and happiness of England depends. 
 
 All 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 harmonise with the confessional box of 
 father O'Leary ? 
 
 I observe Lord John Russell, and some important 
 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 re- 
 medy of these evils ? Vote for it, if ballot produces 
 still greater evils than it cures ? That is (says the phy- 
 sician), if fevers increase in this alarming manner, I 
 shall be compelled to make use of some medicine 
 which will be of no use to fevers, and will at the 
 same time bring on diseases of a much more serious
 
 BALLOT. 35 
 
 nature. I shall be under the absolute necessity of 
 putting out your eyes, because I cannot prevent you 
 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 abso- 
 lute despair. This is that hovering between two 
 principles which ruins political strength by lowering 
 political character, and creates a notion that his ene- 
 mies 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 undoubtedly pos- 
 sesses. There are two beautiful words in the English 
 language, — Yes and No ; he must pronounce them 
 boldly and emphatically ; 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 Yes and No in spite 
 of Robert Peel and John Wilson, and Joseph, and 
 Daniel, and Fergus, and Stevens himself. lie must 
 do as the Russells always have done, advance his 
 
 c 2
 
 36 BALLOT. 
 
 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, 
 exercises the most incessant vigilance to detect whe- 
 ther or not he has been defrauded of it. I do not say 
 that ballot never can in any instance 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 general protection against 
 the abuses of power. 
 
 In America, ballot is nearly a dead letter ; no 
 protection is wanted : if the ballot protects any one
 
 BALLOT. 37 
 
 it is the master, not the man. Some of the states 
 have no ballot, — some have exchanged the ballot for 
 open voting. 
 
 Bribery carried on in any town now, would pro- 
 bably be carried on with equal success under the 
 ballot. The attorney (if such a system prevailed) 
 would say to the candidate, " There is my list of pro- 
 mises ; 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 either is an opposition bribery 
 list, or there is not : if there is not, the promisers, look- 
 ing only to make money by their vote, have every in- 
 ducement to keep their word. W there is an oppo- 
 site 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 
 
 c S
 
 38 HALLOT. 
 
 where a list is found, and a certain 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 
 put his name upon more lists than the votes he was 
 entitled to give, would 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 aceldama. There must be honour among 
 thieves ; the mob regularly inured to bribery under 
 the canopy of the ballot, 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 received by 
 the upper classes with the greatest possible sus- 
 picion, 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 ex-
 
 BALLOT. 39 
 
 tending the number of voters ; and so comes on 
 universal suffrage. 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 cure for the most formid- 
 able diseases ; but universal suffrage 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 men- 
 tioned by the Radicals without being coupled toge- 
 ther. Nobody ever thinks of separating them. Any 
 person who attempted to separate them at torchlight 
 or sunlight meetings would be hooted down. It is 
 professedly avowed that ballot is only wanted for 
 ulterior purposes, and no one makes a secret of what 
 those ulterior purposes are : not only would the gift 
 of ballot, if universal suffrage were refused, not be 
 received with gratitude, but it would be received 
 
 C 1
 
 40 BALLOT. 
 
 with furious indignation and contempt, and universal 
 suffrage be speedily extorted from you. 
 
 There would be this argument also for universal 
 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 inde- 
 pendence, for they would necessarily vote with their 
 principal ; but the moment the ballot is established, 
 according to the reasoning of the Grote school, one 
 man is as independent as another, because all are 
 concealed, 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 out ? or, if he did find it out, how 
 has any father, ballotically speaking, a right to con- 
 trol the votes of his family ? 
 
 It is urged that the lower order of voters, proud 
 of such a distinction, will not be anxious to extend 
 it to others ; but the lower order of voters will often
 
 BALLOT. 41 
 
 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 con- 
 quer 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 mankind, are fond of saying 
 that ballot is harmless ; that it will neither do the 
 good nor the evil that is expected from it ; and that 
 the people may fairly be indulged in such an innocent 
 piece of legislation. Never was there such folly and 
 madness as this : ballot will be the cause of inter- 
 minable hatred and jealousy among the different 
 orders of mankind ; it will familiarise the English 
 people to a long tenor 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 insisting upon
 
 42 BALLOT. 
 
 unlimited suffrage. And then it is talked of as an 
 experiment, as if men were 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 replaced 
 in the same situation as the ballot found you." Such, 
 no doubt, is the history of nations 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 an experiment. 
 
 If the ballot did succeed in enabling the lower 
 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 twenty, the most numerous
 
 BALLOT. 43 
 
 party would be in the wrong. If this is the case, 
 why give the franchise to all ; why not confine it to 
 the first division ? 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 liaving none. 
 Many agree with their superiors, and therefore feel 
 no control. Many are persuaded 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 ways, is affected by the superior influence 
 of the upper orders ; and the great mass (occasion- 
 ally and justly complaining) 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 edu- 
 
 * The 1-00 or 500 voting against the 200 arc right ahout as 
 often as juries are right in differing from judges; and that is 
 very seldom.
 
 44 BALLOT. 
 
 cation. 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 broad 
 cloth, wealth, in a long series of years, must have 
 enormous effects upon human affairs, and the strong 
 box 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 liberty and truth ? 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say anything about 
 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 esta- 
 blished 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 venture to bring these changes about.
 
 BALLOT. 45 
 
 So few nations have been free, it is so difficult to 
 guard freedom from kings, and mobs, and patriotic 
 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 penetration of political reasoners 
 who pretend to foresee all the consequences to which 
 they would give birth. When I speak of the tolerable 
 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 drivers of coaches, clerks in offices, 
 carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, and bakers, and 
 most men who do not marry upon nothing, and 
 become burthened with large families before they 
 have arrived at years of maturity. The earth is not 
 sufficiently fertile for this : 
 
 Difficilem 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 fortified 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
 
 46' BALLOT. 
 
 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 the most easily defended. The people 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 unhappy. They are the best judges 
 of their immediate gratifications, and the worst judges 
 of what would best conduce to their interests for a 
 series of years. Most earnestly and conscientiously 
 wishing their good, I say, 
 
 No Ballot. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London : 
 
 Printed by A. SpottiswoodEj 
 
 New- Street- Square.
 
 THIRD LETTER 
 
 TO 
 
 ARCHDEACON SINGLETON 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 
 
 ©econt) (ETiitiom 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS, 
 
 PATEHNOSTF.K-ROW. 
 
 1839.
 
 London : 
 
 Printed by A. Spottiswoode, 
 
 N ew- Street- Square.
 
 THIRD LETTER, 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 I hope this is the last letter you will receive 
 from me on Church matters. I am tired of the 
 subject ; so are you ; so is every body. In spite 
 of many Bishops' charges, I am unbroken ; and 
 remain entirely of the same opinion as I was 
 two or three years since, — that the mutilation 
 of Deans and Chapters is a rash, foolish, and 
 imprudent measure. 
 
 I do not think the Charge of the Bishop of 
 London successful, in combating those; argu- 
 
 ' DO 
 
 ments which have been used against the im- 
 pending Dean, and Chapter Bill ; but it is quiet, 
 gentlemanlike, temperate, and written in a man 
 ner which entirely becomes the high office, 
 and character which he bears. 
 
 a 2
 
 I agree with him in saying that the Plurality 
 and Residence Bill is, upon the whole, a very 
 good bill ; — nobody, however, knows better 
 than the Bishop of London the various changes 
 it has undergone, and the improvements it has 
 received. I could point out fourteen or fifteen 
 very material alterations for the better since it 
 came out of the hands of the Commission, and 
 all bearing materially upon the happiness and 
 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 person 
 thought it not impossible that occasionally such 
 a power might be maliciously, and vindictively 
 exercised, and that some check to it should be 
 admitted into the Bill ; accordingly, under the 
 existing act, an Ecclesiastical Jury is to be sum- 
 moned, and into that jury the defendant Clergy- 
 man may introduce a friend of his own. 
 
 If a Clergyman from illness or any other 
 overwhelming necessity, was prevented from
 
 having two services, he was exposed to an 
 information, and penalty. In answering the 
 Bishop, he was subjected to two opposite sets 
 of penalties — the one for saying Yes ; the 
 other for saying No : he was amenable to the 
 needless and impertinent scrutiny of a rural 
 Dean before he was exposed to the scrutiny of 
 the Bishop. Curates might be forced upon him 
 by subscribing parishioners, and the certainty 
 of a schism established in the parish ; a curate 
 might have been forced upon present incum- 
 bents by the Bishop without any complaint 
 made ; upon men who took, or, perhaps, bought, 
 their livings under very different laws; — all 
 these acts of injustice are done away with, but 
 it is not to the credit of the Cramers 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 
 ami other objections were made, they were heard 
 with candour, and promised to be remedied by 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop 
 of London and Lord John Russell. 
 
 a 3
 
 6 
 
 I have spoken of the power to issue a Com- 
 mission to inquire into the wellbeing of any 
 parish : a vindictive and malicious Bishop, 
 might, it is true, convert this, which was in- 
 tended for the protection, to the oppression of 
 the Clergy — afraid to dispossess a Clergyman 
 of his own authority, he might attempt to 
 do the same thing under the cover of a jury of 
 his ecclesiastical creatures. But I can hardly 
 conceive such baseness in the Prelate, or such 
 infamous subserviency in the agents. An honest 
 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 all he can to prevent it by private monition 
 and remonstrance ; and if driven to such an act 
 of power, he will of course state to the accused 
 Clergyman the subjects of accusation, the names 
 of his accusers, and give him ample time for his 
 defence. If upon anonymous accusation he 
 subjects a Clergyman to such an investigation 
 or refuses to him any advantage which the law 
 gives to every accused person, he is an infamous, 
 degraded, and scandalous tyrant : but I cannot
 
 believe there is such a man to be found upon 
 the bench. 
 
 There is in this new Bill a very humane 
 clause, (though not introduced by the Commis- 
 sion,) enabling the widow of the deceased clergy- 
 man to retain possession of the parsonage house 
 for two months after the death of the In- 
 cumbent. It ought, in fairness, to be extended 
 to the heirs, executors, and administrators of the 
 Incumbent. It is a great hardship that a family 
 settled in a parish for fifty years perhaps, should 
 be torn up by the roots in eight or ten days : and 
 the interval of two months allowing time for 
 repairs, might put to rest many questions of 
 dilapidation. 
 
 To the Bishop's power of intruding a Curate 
 without any complaint on the part of the parish 
 that the duty has been inadequately performed, 
 I retain the same objections as before. It is a 
 power which without this condition will be un- 
 fairly and partially exercised. The first object 
 I admit is not the provision of the Clergyman, 
 but the care of the parish ; but one way of 
 
 a 4
 
 8 
 
 taking care of parishes is to take care that Clergy- 
 men are not treated with tyranny, partiality, and 
 injustice : and the best way of effecting this is to 
 remember that their superiors have the 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 office bear any part in the paro- 
 chial instruction of the people. This is a fine 
 deceitful word, the word parochial, and eminent- 
 ly calculated to coax the public. If he means 
 simply that cathedrals do not belong to parishes, 
 that St. Paul's is not the parish church of Up- 
 per Puddicomb, and that the Vicar of St. Fiddle- 
 frid does not officiate in Westminster Abbey : all 
 this is true enough, but do they not in the most 
 material points instruct the people precisely in 
 the same manner as the parochial Clergy ? Are 
 not prayers and sermons the most important 
 means of spiritual instruction ? And are there
 
 not eighteen or twenty services in every Cathe- 
 dral for one which is heard in parish churches? I 
 have very often counted in the afternoon of week 
 days in St. Paul's 150 people, and on Sundays it 
 is full to suffocation. Is all this to go for no- 
 thing ? and what right has the Bishop of London 
 to suppose that there is not as much real piety 
 in Cathedrals, as in the most roadless, postless, 
 melancholy, sequestered hamlet preached to by 
 the most provincial, sequestered bucolic Clergy- 
 man in the Queen's dominions ? 
 
 A number of little children, it is true, do not 
 repeat a catechism of which they do not compre- 
 hend a word ; but it is rather rapid and whole- 
 sale to say, that the parochial Clergy are spiritual 
 instructors of the people, and that the cathedral 
 Clergy are only so in a very restricted sense. I 
 say that in the most material points and acts of 
 instruction, they are much more laborious and 
 incessant than any parochial Clergy. It might 
 really be supposed from the Bishop of London's 
 reasoning, that some other methods of instruction 
 look place in Cathedrals than prayers and ser- 
 mons can afford; that lectures were read on
 
 10 
 
 chemistry, or lessons given on dancing ; or that 
 it was a Mechanics' Institute or a vast receptacle 
 for hexameter and pentameter boys. His own 
 most respectable Chaplain, who is often there as 
 a member of the body, will tell him that the 
 prayers are strictly adhered to, according to the 
 rubric, with the difference only that the service 
 is beautifully chanted instead of being badly read; 
 that instead of the atrocious bawling of parish 
 Churches, the Anthems are sung with great taste 
 and feeling : and if the preaching is not good, 
 it is the fault of the Bishop of London, who has 
 the whole range of London preachers from whom 
 to make his selection. The real fact is, that, 
 instead of being something materially different 
 from the parochial Clergy, as the Commissioners 
 wish to make them, the cathedral Clergy are 
 fellow labourers with the parochial Clergy, out- 
 working them ten to one ; but the Commission 
 having provided snugly for the Bishops, have by 
 the merest accident in the world entangled them- 
 selves in this quarrel with Cathedrals. 
 
 " Had the question," says the Bishop, " been 
 proposed to the religious part of the community,
 
 11 
 
 Whether, if no other means were to be found, the 
 effective cure of souls should be provided for by 
 the total suppression of those Ecclesiastical Cor- 
 porations which have no cure of souls, nor bear 
 any part in the parochial labours of the Clergy ; 
 that question, I verily believe, would have been 
 carried in the affirmative by an immense major- 
 ity of suffrages." But suppose no other means 
 could be found for the effective cure of souls 
 than the suppression of Bishops, does the 
 Bishop of London imagine that the majority of 
 suffrages would have been less immense ? How 
 idle to put such cases. 
 
 A pious man leaves a large sum of money in 
 Catholic times for some purposes which are su- 
 perstitious, and for others, such as preaching 
 and reading prayers, which are applicable to all 
 times ; the superstitious usages are abolished, 
 the pious usages remain : now the Bishop must 
 admit if you take half or any part of this money 
 from Clergymen to whom it was given, and 
 divide it for similar purposes among Clergy to 
 whom it was not given, you deviate materially 
 from the intentions of the founder. These
 
 12 
 
 foundations are made in loco ; in many of them 
 the locus was perhaps the original cause of the 
 gift. A man who founds an alms-house at Ed- 
 monton does not mean that the poor of Totten- 
 ham should avail themselves of it ; and if he 
 could have anticipated such a consequence, he 
 would not have endowed any alms-house at all. 
 Such is the respect for property that the Court 
 of Chancery, when it becomes impracticable to 
 carry the will of the donor into execution, always 
 attend to the cy pres, and apply the charitable 
 fund to a purpose as germane as possible to the in- 
 tention of thefounder; buthere whenmen of Lin- 
 coln have left to Lincoln Cathedral, and men of 
 Hereford to Hereford, the Commissioners seize 
 it all, melt it into a common mass, and disperse it 
 over the kingdom. Surely the Bishop of London 
 cannot contend that this is not a greater deviation 
 from the will of the founder than if the same 
 people remaining in the same place receiving all 
 the founder gave them, and doing all things 
 not forbidden by the law, which the founder 
 ordered ; were to do something more than the 
 founder ordered, were to become the guardians 
 of education, the counsel to the Bishop, and
 
 13 
 
 the Curators of the Diocese in his old age and 
 decay. 
 
 The public are greater robbers and plunderers 
 than any one in the public ; look at the whole 
 transaction, it is a mixture of meanness and vio- 
 lence. The country choose to have an established 
 religion, and a resident parochial Clergy, but 
 they do not choose to build houses for their paro- 
 chial Clergy, or to pay them in many instances 
 more than a butler or a coachman receives. How 
 is this deficiency to be supplied? The heads of 
 the Church propose to this public to seize upon 
 estates which never belonged to the public, and 
 which were left for another purpose ; and by the 
 seizure of these estates to save that, which ought 
 to come out of the public purse. 
 
 Suppose Parliament were to seize upon all 
 the alms-houses in England, and apply them to 
 the diminution of the poor-rate, what a number 
 of ingenious arguments might be pressed into 
 the service of this robbery: "Can any thing 
 be more revolting than that the poor of Nor- 
 thumberland should be starving, while the
 
 u 
 
 poor of the suburban hamlets are dividing the 
 benefactions of the pious dead ? " We want for 
 these purposes all that we can obtain from what- 
 ever sources derived" I do not deny the right 
 of Parliament to do this, or any thing else ; 
 but I deny that it would be expedient, because 
 I think it better to make any sacrifices, and to 
 endure any evil, than to gratify this rapacious 
 spirit of plunder and confiscation. Suppose 
 these Commissioner Prelates firm and un- 
 moved, when we were all alarmed, had told 
 the public that the parochial Clergy were 
 badly provided for, and that it was the duty 
 of that public to provide a proper support for 
 their Ministers ; — suppose the Commissioners in- 
 stead of leading them on to confiscation, had 
 warned their fellow subjects against the base 
 economy, and the perilous injustice of seizing 
 on that which was not their own ; — suppose they 
 had called for water and washed their hands, and 
 said, "We call you all to witness that we are in- 
 nocent of this great ruin ; " — does the Bishop of 
 London imagine that the Prelates who made such 
 a stand would have gone down to posterity less 
 respected and less revered than those men upon
 
 15 
 
 whose tombs it must (after all the enumeration 
 of their virtues) be written, that under their 
 auspices and by their counsels the destruction 
 of the English Church began. Pity that the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury had not retained those 
 feelings, when, at the first meeting of Bishops, the 
 Bishop of London proposed this holy innovation 
 upon Cathedrals, and the head of our Church 
 declared with vehemence and indignation that 
 nothing in the earth would induce him to consent 
 
 to it. 
 
 Si mens non laeva fuisset, 
 Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres. 
 
 "But," says the Lord Bishop of London, " you 
 admit the principle of confiscation by proposing 
 the confiscation and partition of Prebends in 
 the possession of non-residents." I am thinking 
 of something else, and I see all of a sudden 
 a great blaze of light ; I behold a great num- 
 ber of gentlemen in short aprons, neat purple 
 coats, and gold buckles, rushing about with 
 torches in their hands, calling each other " my 
 lord," and setting fire to all the rooms in the house, 
 and the people below delighted with the com- 
 bustion : finding it impossible to turn them from 
 their purpose, and finding that they are all what
 
 16 
 
 they are, by divine permission ; I endeavour to 
 direct their holy innovations into another chan- 
 nel; and I say to them, "My Lords, had not 
 you better set fire to the out of door offices, to 
 the barns and tables, and spare this fine library 
 and this noble drawing-room? Yonder are 
 several cow-houses of which no use is made ; pray 
 direct your fury against them, and leave this 
 beautiful and venerable mansion as you found it." 
 If I address the divinely permitted in this 
 manner, has the Bishop of London any right to 
 call me a brother incendiary ? 
 
 Our holy innovator, the Bishop of London, 
 has drawn a very affecting picture of sheep 
 having no shepherd, and of millions who have no 
 spiritual food •• our wants, he says, are most im- 
 perious ; even if we were to tax large livings 
 we must still have the money of the Cathedrals : 
 no plea will exempt you, nothing can stop us, 
 for the formation of benefices, and the endow- 
 ment of new ones. We want (and he prints 
 it in italics) for these purposes " all that we can 
 obtain from whatever sources derived" I never 
 remember to have been more alarmed in my life
 
 17 
 
 than by this passage. I said to myself, the 
 necessities of the Church have got such complete 
 hold of the imagination of this energetic Prelate, 
 who is so captivated by the holiness of his inno- 
 vations, that all grades and orders of the Church 
 and all present and future interests will be sacri- 
 ficed to it. I immediately rushed to the acts of 
 Parliament which I always have under my pillow 
 to see at once the worst of what had happened. 
 I found present revenues of the Bishops all safe ; 
 that is some comfort, I said to myself: Canterbury, 
 24,000 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 sa- 
 crifice to sheep and shepherds* money their present 
 revenues ; the Bishop of London is less violent 
 and headstrong than I thought he would be." 
 I looked a little further and found that 1.5,000/. 
 per annum is allotted to the future Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, 10,000/. to the Bishop of London, 
 8000/. to Durham, and 8000/. each to Winchester 
 and Ely. " Nothing of sheep and shepherd in all 
 this," I exclaimed, and felt still more comforted. 
 It was not till after the Bishops were taken care 
 of, and the revenues of the Cathedrals came into 
 
 n
 
 18 
 
 full view, that I saw the perfect development of 
 the sheep and shepherd principle, the deep and 
 heartfelt compassion for spiritual labourers, and 
 that inward groaning for the destitute state of 
 the Church, and that firm purpose, printed in 
 italics, of taking for these purposes all that could 
 be obtained from whatever source derived; and 
 even in this delicious rummage of Cathedral 
 property, where all the fine church feelings of 
 the Bishop's heart 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 divided between two commissioners, the 
 Bishop of London, and the Bishop of Lincoln, 
 instead of being paid to additional labourers in 
 the Vineyard. 
 
 Has there been any difficulty, I would ask, in 
 procuring Archdeacons upon the very moderate 
 pay they now receive? Can any Clergymen 
 be more thoroughly respectable than the present 
 Archdeacons in the see of London ? but men 
 bearing such an office in the Church, it may be
 
 19 
 
 said, should be highly paid, and Archbishops 
 who could very well keep up their dignity upon 
 7000/. per annum, are to be allowed 15,000/. 1 
 make no objection to all this; but then what 
 becomes of all these heart-rending phrases of 
 sheep and shepherd, and drooping vineyards 
 and flocks without spiritual consolation^ The 
 Bishop's argument is, that the superfluous 
 must give way to the necessary ; but in 
 fighting, the Bishop should take great care that 
 his cannons are not seized, and turned against 
 himself. He has awarded to the Bishops of 
 England a superfluity as great as that which 
 he intends to take from the Cathedrals ; and then 
 when he legislates for an order to which he 
 does not belong, begins to remember the dis- 
 tresses of the lower Clergy, paints them with 
 all the colours of impassioned eloquence, and 
 informs the Cathedral institutions that he must 
 have every farthing he can lay his hand upon. 
 Is not this as if one affected powerfully by a 
 charity sermon were to put his hands in another 
 man's pocket, and cast, from what he had ex- 
 tracted, a liberal contribution into the plate ? 
 
 b 2
 
 20 
 
 I beg not to be mistaken ; I am very far from 
 considering the Bishop of London as a sordid and 
 interested person : but this is a complete in- 
 stance of how the best of men deceive them- 
 selves, where their interests are concerned. I 
 have no doubt the Bishop firmly imagined he 
 was doing his duty ; but there should have 
 been men of all grades in the Commission, some 
 one to say a word for Cathedrals and against 
 Bishops. 
 
 The Bishop says, " his antagonists 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 
 one 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 
 past over in silence in the Bishops' Charge. 
 This, in reasoning, is always the wisest and 
 most convenient plan, and which all young
 
 21 
 
 Bishops should imitate after the manner of this 
 wary polemic. I object to the confiscation 
 because it will throw a great deal more of 
 capital out of the parochial Church than it will 
 bring into it. I am very sorry to come forward 
 with so homely an argument, which shocks so 
 many Clergymen, and particularly those with 
 the largest incomes, and the best Bishoprics ; 
 but the truth is, the greater number of cler- 
 gymen go into the Church in order that they 
 may derive a comfortable income from the 
 church. Such men intend to do their duty, 
 and they do it ; but the duty is, however, not 
 the motive, but the adjunct. If I was writing 
 in gala and parade, I would not hold this lan- 
 guage ; but we are in earnest, and on business ; 
 and as very rash and hasty changes are founded 
 upon contrary suppositions of the pure dis- 
 interestedness and perfect inattention to tem- 
 porals in the Clergy, we must get down at once 
 to the solid rock without heeding how we disturb 
 the turf and the flowers above. The parochial 
 Clergy maintain their present decent appearance 
 quite as much by their own capital as by the 
 income they derive from the Church. I will
 
 22 
 
 now state the income and capital of seven Cler- 
 gymen, taken promiscuously in this neighbour- 
 hood : — No. 1. Living 200/., Capital 12,000/. ; 
 No. 2. Living 800/., Capital 15,000/. ; No. 3. Liv- 
 ing 500/., Capital 12,000/. ; No. 4. Living 150/., 
 Capital 10,000/. ; No. 5. Living 800/., Capital 
 12,000/. ; No. 6. Living 150/., Capital 1000/. ; 
 No. 7. Living 600/., Capital 16,000/. I have dili- 
 gently inquired into the circumstances of seven 
 Unitarian and Wesleyan ministers, and I ques- 
 tion much if the whole seven could make up 
 6000/. between them ; and the zeal of enthu- 
 siasm of this last division is certainly not inferior 
 to that of the former. Now here is a capital of 
 72,000/. carried into the Church, which the 
 confiscations of the Commissioners would force 
 out of it, by taking away the good things which 
 were the temptation to its introduction. So 
 that by the old plan of paying by lottery instead 
 of giving- a proper competence to each, not only 
 do you obtain a parochial Clergy upon much 
 cheaper terms ; but from the gambling propensi- 
 ties of human nature, and the irresistible tend- 
 ency to hope that they shall gain the great 
 nrizes, you tempt men into your service who
 
 23 
 
 keep up their credit and yours, not by your 
 allowance, but by their own capital, and to de- 
 stroy this wise and well-working arrangement, 
 a great number of Bishops, Marquisses, 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 Holy Inuovdtion. 
 
 I have no manner of doubt, that the immediate 
 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 deteriorated profession, 
 will turn the industry and capital of their 
 eldves 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 ec- 
 clesiastics, it always occasions terror and dismay ; 
 
 u 4
 
 24 
 
 it is like ^Eneas stepping into Charon's boat, 
 which carried only ghosts and spirits. 
 
 Gemuit sub pondere cymba 
 Sutilis. 
 
 The whole plan of the Bishop of London is 
 a ptochogony — a generation of beggars. He pur- 
 poses, 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 thou- 
 sand 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 dragging about the English 
 curse of poverty without 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 pro- 
 perty — who look forward to a College or a 
 family living — who are the sons of men of some 
 substance, and hope so to pass on to something 
 better — who exist under the delusion of being
 
 £5 
 
 hereafter Deans and Prebendaries — who are paid 
 once by money and three times by hope. Will 
 the Bishop of London promise to the progeny of 
 any of these thousand victims of the Holy In- 
 novation that, if they behave well, one of them 
 shall have his butler's place ; another take care of 
 the cedars and hyssops of his garden ? Will he take 
 their daughters for his nursery-maids ; and may 
 some of the sons of these " labourers of the vine- 
 yard ", hope one day to ride the leaders from 
 St. James's to Fulham ? Here is hope — here is 
 room for ambition — a field for genius, and a ray 
 of amelioration ! If these beautiful feelings of 
 compassion are throbbing under the cassock of 
 the Bishop, he ought, in common justice to 
 himself, to make them known. 
 ■ 
 
 If it were a scheme for giving ease and inde- 
 pendence to any large bodies of Clergymen, it 
 might be listened to ; but the revenues of the 
 English Church are such as to render this 
 wholly and entirely out of the question. If you 
 place a man in a village in the country ; require 
 that he should be of good manners and well edu- 
 cated ; that his habits and appearance should be
 
 26 
 
 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 person ought to receive 500/. per annum, 
 and be furnished with a house. There are 
 about 10,700 parishes in England and Wales, 
 whose average income is 285/. per annum. 
 Now, to provide these incumbents with decent 
 houses, to keep them in repair, and to raise 
 the income of the incumbent to 500/. per an- 
 num, would require (if all the incomes of the 
 Bishops, Deans, and Chapters of separate dig- 
 nitaries, of sinecure rectories, were confiscated, 
 and if the excess of all the livings in Eng- 
 land above 500/. per annum were added to them,) 
 a sum of two millions and a half in addition to 
 the present income of the whole church ; and 
 no power on earth could persuade the present 
 Parliament of Great Britain to grant a single 
 shilling for that purpose. Now, is it possible 
 to pay such a Church upon any other prin- 
 ciple than that of unequal division ? The
 
 27 
 
 proposed pillage of the Cathedral and College 
 Churches (omitting all consideration of the 
 separate estate of dignitaries) would amount, 
 divided among all the Benefices of England, 
 to about 51. 12.S-. b^d, per man : and this, 
 which would not stop an hiatus in a cassock, 
 and would drive out of the parochial Church 
 ten times as much as it brought into it, is the 
 panacea for pauperism recommended by Her 
 Majesty's Commissioners. 
 
 But if this plan were to drive men of capital 
 out of the Church, and to pauperise the English 
 Clergy, where would the harm be ? Could not 
 all the duties of religion be performed as well 
 by poor Clergymen as by men of good sub- 
 stance ? My great and serious apprehension is, 
 that such would not be the case. There would 
 be the greatest risk that your Clergy would be 
 fanatical, and ignorant ; that their habits would 
 be low and mean, and that they would be de- 
 spised. 
 
 Then a picture is drawn of a Clergyman with 
 130/. per annum, who combines all moral, phy-
 
 28 
 
 sical, and intellectual advantages, a learned man, 
 dedicating himself intensely to the care of his 
 parish — of charming manners and dignified de- 
 portment — six feet two inches high, beautifully 
 proportioned, with a magnificent countenance, 
 expressive of all the cardinal virtues and the 
 Ten Commandments, — and it is asked with an 
 air of triumph, if such a man as this will fall 
 into contempt on account of his poverty ? But 
 substitute for him an average, ordinary, unin- 
 teresting Minister ; obese, dumpy, neither ill- 
 natured nor good-natured ; neither learned nor 
 ignorant, striding over the stiles to church, 
 with a second-rate wife — dusty and deliquescent 
 — and four parochial children, full of catechism 
 and bread and butter : or let him be seen in 
 one of those Shem-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 pecuniary, sapo- 
 naceous, oleaginous parishioners. Can any man 
 
 * A parish which the Bishop of London has the greatest 
 desire to divide into little bits ; but which appears quite as 
 fit to preserve its integrity as St. James's, St. George's, or 
 Kensington, 'all in the patronage of the Bishop.
 
 29 
 
 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 remain behind ? Five years 
 hence he will attempt to make a stand, and 
 he will be laughed at and eaten up. In this 
 very charge the Bishop accuses the Lay Com- 
 missioners of another intended attack upon the 
 property of the Church, contrary to the clearest 
 and most explicit stipulations, (as he says,) with 
 the heads of the establishment. 
 
 Much is said of the conduct of the Com- 
 missioners, but that is of the least possible con- 
 sequence. They may have acted for the best 
 according to the then existing circumstances ;
 
 .30 
 
 they may seriously have intended to do their 
 duty to the country ; 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 distribution of the 
 funds of an ill-paid Church ? and will it not 
 force more capital out of the parochial part of 
 the Church than it brings into it ? If the bill is 
 bad, it is surely not to pass out of compliment 
 to the feelings of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 If the project is hasty, it is not to be adopted to 
 gratify the Bishop of London. The mischief to 
 the Church is surely a greater evil than the 
 stultification of the Commissioners, &e. If the 
 physician has prescribed hastily, is the medicine 
 to be taken to the death or disease of the 
 patient? If the judge has condemned impro- 
 perly is the criminal to be hung, that the wisdom 
 of the magistrate may not be impugned ? * 
 
 * " After the trouble the Commissioners have taken 
 (says Sir Robert), after] the obloquy they have incurred," 
 &c. &c. &c.
 
 31 
 
 But, why are the Commissioners to be stultified 
 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 affections of the common 
 people were lost to the establishment ; and that 
 large sacrifices must be instantly made, to avert 
 the effects of this temporary madness ; but those 
 days are gone by — and with them ought to be 
 put aside measures which might have been wise 
 in those days, but are wise no longer. 
 
 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 
 efforts of their enemies in defeating this mis- 
 ecclesiastic law. 
 
 Suppose the Commission were now be- 
 ginning to sit for the first time, will any 
 man living say that they would make such re- 
 ports as they have made ; and that they would 
 seriously propose such a tremendous revolution 
 in Church property ? And if they would not, the
 
 32 
 
 inference is irresistible, that to consult the feel- 
 ings of two or three churchmen, we are compli- 
 menting away the safety of the Church. 
 Milton asked where the nymphs were when 
 Lycidas perished ? I ask where the Bishops 
 are when the remorseless deep is closing over 
 the head of their beloved establishment ? * 
 
 You must have read an attack upon me 
 by the Bishop of Gloucester, in the course of 
 which he says, that I have not been appointed 
 to my situation as Canon of St. Paul's for 
 my piety and learning, but because I am a 
 scoffer and a jester. Is not this rather strong 
 for a Bishop, and does it not appear to you, Mr. 
 Archdeacon, as rather too close an imitation of 
 that language which is used in the apostolic 
 occupation of trafficking in fish ? Whether I 
 have been appointed for my piety or not must 
 depend upon what this poor man means by piety. 
 He means by that word, of course, a defence of 
 
 * What is the use of publishing separate charges as the 
 Bishops of Winchester, Oxford, and Rochester have done? 
 Why do not the dissentient Bishops form into a firm pha- 
 lanx to save the Church and fling out the bill?
 
 S3 
 
 all the tyrannical and oppressive abuses of the 
 Church which have been swept away within the 
 last fifteen or twenty years of my life; the Cor- 
 poration and Test Acts ; the Penal Laws against 
 the Catholics ; the Compulsory Marriages of Dis- 
 senters, and all those disabling and disqualifying 
 laws which were the disgrace of our Church, 
 and which he has always looked up to as the 
 consummation of human wisdom. If piety 
 consisted in the defence of these — if it was im- 
 pious 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 ob- 
 jection of certain cephalic animalcula 1 to the use of 
 small tooth-combs, " Finger and thumb, precipi- 
 tate powder, or any thing else you please ; but for 
 heaven's sake no small tooth-combs ! " After all, 
 I believe, Bishop Monk has been the cause of 
 much more laughter than ever I have been ; I 
 cannot account for it, but I never see him enter 
 a room without exciting ;i smile on every coun- 
 tenance within it.
 
 34 
 
 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 blameless ? 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 : feeble friends, false friends, and 
 foolish friends, all cease to look into the measure, 
 and say, Would such a measure have been re- 
 commended by such men as the Prelates of 
 Canterbury and London, if it were not for the 
 public advantage ? And in this way, the great 
 good of a religious establishment, now rendered 
 moderate and compatible with all men's liberties 
 and rights, is sacrificed to names ; and the 
 Church destroyed from good breeding and Eti- 
 quette ! the real truth is that Canterbury 
 and London have been frightened — they have 
 overlooked the effect of time and delay — they 
 have been betrayed into a fearful and ruinous
 
 35 
 
 mistake. Painful as it is to teach men who ought 
 to teach us, the legislature ought, while there is 
 yet time, to awake and read them this lesson. 
 
 It is dangerous for a Prelate to write ; and 
 whoever does it ought to be a very wise one. 
 He has speculated why I was made a Canon of 
 St. Paul's. Suppose I were to follow his example, 
 and, going through the bench of Bishops, were 
 to ask for what reason each man had been made 
 a Bishop ; suppose I were to go into the county 
 of Gloucester, &c. &c. &c. ! ! I ! ! 
 
 I was afraid the Bishop would attribute my 
 promotion to the Edinburgh Review ; but upon 
 the subject of promotion by Reviews he pre- 
 serves an impenetrable silence. If my excellent 
 patron Earl Grey had any reasons of this kind, 
 he may at least be sure that the Reviews com- 
 monly attributed to me were really written by me. 
 I should have considered myself as the lowest 
 of created beings to have disguised myself in 
 another man's wit and sense, and to have received 
 a reward to which I was not entitled.* 
 
 I understand thai tli< Bishop bursts into tears even 
 now and then, and jaj - thai I have >el him the name of Simon, 
 
 < .'
 
 36 
 
 I presume that what has drawn upon me the 
 indignation of this prelate, is the observations 
 I have from time to time made on the conduct 
 of the Commissioners ; of which he positively 
 asserts himself to have been a member : but 
 whether he was, or was not a member, I ut- 
 terly acquit him of all possible blame, and of 
 every species of imputation which may attach 
 to the conduct of the Commission. In using 
 that word, I have always meant the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and Lord 
 John Russell ; and have, honestly speaking, 
 given no more heed to the Bishop of Glou- 
 cester, than if he had been sitting in a Commis- 
 sion of Bonzes in the Court of Pekin. 
 
 To read, however, his Lordship a lesson 
 of good manners, I had prepared for him a 
 
 and that all the Bishops now call him Simon. Simon of Glou- 
 cester, however, after all is a real writer, and how could I know 
 that Dr. Monk's name was Simon? When tutor in Lord Car- 
 rington's family, he was called by the endearing though some- 
 what unmajestic name of Dick ; and if I had thought about 
 his name at all, Ishouldhavc called him Richard of Gloucester.
 
 37 
 
 chastisement which would have been echoed 
 from the Seagrave who banqueteth in the 
 castle, to the idiot who spitteth over the 
 bridge at Gloucester ; but the following ap- 
 peal struck my eye, and stopped my pen: — 
 " Since that time my inadequate qualifica- 
 tions have sustained an appalling diminution, 
 by the affection of my eyes, which have im- 
 paired 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 to me the better 
 use of the visual organs, to be employed on his 
 service ; or that he will inwardly illumine the 
 intellectual vision, with a particle of that 
 Divine ray, which his Holy Spirit can alone 
 impart." 
 
 It might have been better taste, perhaps, if a 
 mitred invalid, in describing his bodily infirmities 
 before a church full of Clergymen, whose 
 prayers he asked, had been a little more sparing 
 in the abuse of his enemies; but a good deal 
 must be forgiven to the sick. I wish that ever)
 
 38 
 
 Christian was as well aware as this poor Bishop 
 of what he needed from Divine assistance ; and 
 in his supplication for the restoration of his sight 
 and the improvement of his understanding I 
 most fervently and cordially join. 
 
 I was much amused with what old Hermann * 
 says of the Bishop of London's iEschylus. "We 
 find," he says, " a great arbitrariness of pro- 
 ceeding and much boldnessqf innovation guided by 
 no sure principle ; " here it is : qualis ab incepto. 
 He begins with iEschylus and ends with the 
 Church of England ; begins with profane and 
 ends with holy innovations — scratching out old 
 readings which every commentator had sanc- 
 tioned, abolishing ecclesiastical dignities which 
 every reformer had spared ; thrusting an ana- 
 pcest 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 
 
 * Ueber diebehandlungcler Griechischen Dichter bei den 
 Engliindern Von Gottfried Hermann. Wiemar Jahrbueher, 
 vol. liv. 1831.
 
 39 
 
 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, placable, generous, munificent, 
 very agreeable, but not to be trusted with great 
 interests where calmness and judgment are re- 
 quired ; unfortunately, my old and amiable 
 schoolfellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 has melted away before him, and sacrificed 
 that wisdom on which we all founded our se- 
 curity. 
 
 Much writing and much talking are very tire- 
 some, and above all they are so to men, who, 
 living in the world, arrive at those rapid and 
 just conclusions, which are only to be made by 
 living in the world. This bill past, every 
 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 receive our last im- 
 provement- from Dr. Wade : plunder will follow
 
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