ning to sit for the first time, will any man living say that they would make such reports as they have made? and that they would seriously propose such a tremendous revolution in Church property? And if they would not, the inference is irresistible, that to consult the feelings of two or three churchmen, we are complimenting away the safety of the Church. Milton asked where the nymphs were when Lycidas perished? I ask where the Bishops are when the remorseless deep is closing over the head of their beloved Establishment?

*

You must have read an attack upon me by the Bishop of Gloucester, in the course of which he says that I have not been 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 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 Corporation and Test Acts; the Penal Laws against the Catholics; the Compulsory Marriages of Dissenters, and all those disabling and disqualifying laws which were the disgrace of our Church, and which he has always looked up to as the consummation of human wisdom. If piety consisted in the defence of these if it was impious to struggle for their abrogation, I have indeed led an ungodly life.

There is nothing pompous gentlemen are so much afraid of as a little humour. It is like the objection of certain cephalic animalcula to the use of small-tooth combs,

* What is the use of publishing separate charges,

"Finger and thumb, precipitate powder, at 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 a smile on every countenance within it.

Dr. Monk is furious at my attacking the heads of the Church; but how can I help it? If the heads of the Church are at the head of the Mob; if I find the best of men doing that, which has in all times drawn upon the worst enemies of the buman race the bitterest curses of History, am I to step 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, al cease to look into the measure, and say, Would such a measure have been reconmended 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 Etiquette! the real truth is, that Canterbury and London have been frightened they have overlooked the i effect of time and delay- they have been) betrayed into a fearful and ruinous 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.

one.

have done? Why do not the dissentient Bishops form into a firm phalanx to save the Church and fling out the Bill?

Gloucester, &c. &c. &c. !!!!!

I was afraid the Bishop would attribute my promotion to the Edinburgh Review;

but upon the subject of Promotion by Reviews he preserves an impenetrable silence. If my excellent patron Earl Grey had any reasons of this kind, he may at least be sure that the Reviews commonly attributed to me were really written by me. I should have considered myself as the lowest of created beings to have disguised myself in another man's wit, and to have received a reward to which I was not entitled.*

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 utterly 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 Gloucester, than if he had been sitting in a Commission of Bonzes in the Court of Pekin.

To read, however, his Lordship a lesson of good manners, I had prepared for him a 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 appeal struck my eye, and stopped my pen: :- "Since that time my inadequate qualifications have sustained an appalling diminution by the affection of my eyes, which have impaired my vision, and the progress of which threatens to consign me to darkness; I beg the benefit of your prayers to the Father of all mercies, that

* I understand that the Bishop bursts into tears every now and then, and says that I have set him the name of Simon, and that all the Bishops now call him Simon. Simon of Gloucester, however, after all, is a real writer, and how could I know that Dr. Monk's name was Simon? When tutor in Lord Carrington's family, he was called by the endearing though somewhat unmajestic name of Dick; and if I had thought about his name at all, I should have called him Richard of Gloucester.

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 every Christian was as well aware as this poor Bishop of what he needed from Divine assistance; and in the supplication for the restoration of his sight and the 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 Eschylus. "We find," he says, แ a great arbitrariness of proceeding, and much boldness of innovation, guided by no sure principle;" here it is: qualis ab incepto. He begins with Eschylus, and ends with the Church of England; begins with profane, and ends with holy innovations-scratching out old readings which every commentator had sanctioned; abolishing ecclesiastical dignities which every reformer had spared; thrusting an anapæst into a verse, which will not bear it; and intruding a Canon into a Cathedral, which does not want it; and this is the Prelate by whom the proposed reform of the Church has been principally planned, and to whose practical wisdom the Legislature is called upon to defer. The Bishop of London is a man of very great ability, humane, placable, generous, munificent; very agreeable, but not to be trusted with great interests where calmness and judgment are required: unfortunately, my old and amiable school-fellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has melted away before him, and sacrificed that wisdom on which we all founded our security.

* Ueber die Behandlung der Griechischen Dichter bei den Engländern. Von Gottfried Hermann. Wiemar Jahrbucher, vol. liv. 1831.

Much writing and much talking are very tiresome; and, above all, they are so to men who, living in the world, arrive at those rapid and just conclusions which are only to be made by living in the world. This bill 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 improvements from Dr. Wade; plunder will follow after plunder, degradation after degradation. The Church is gone, and what remains is not life, but sickness, spasm, and struggle.

Whatever happens, I am not to blame; I have fought my fight.—Farewell.

SYDNEY SMITH.

A

MY LORD,

THOUGH, upon the whole, your Residence and Plurality Bill is a good Bill, and although I think it (thanks to your kind attention to the suggestions of various Clergymen) a much better Bill than that of last year, there are still some important defects in it, which deserve amendment and correction.

Page 13. Sect. 31.—It would seem, from this Section, that the repairs are to depend upon the will of the Bishop and not upon the present law of the land. A Bishop enters into the house of a non-resident Clergyman, and finds it neither papered, nor painted-he orders these decorative repairs. In the mean time the Court of Queen's Bench have decided that substantial repairs only, and not decorative repairs, can be recovered by an Incumbent from his predecessor the following words should be added:- "Provided always, that no other repairs shall be required by the Bishop, than such as any Incumbent could recover as dilapidations from the person preceding him in the said Benefice."

Page 19. Sect. 42.-Incumbents are to answer questions transmitted by the Bishop, and these are to be countersigned by the

rural Dean. This is another vexation to the numerous catalogue of vexations entailed upon the rural Clergy. Is every man to go before the rural Dean, twenty or thirty miles off, perhaps? Is he to go through cross-examination by the rural Dean, as to the minute circumstances of twenty or thirty questions, to enter into reasonings upon them, and to produce witnesses? This is a most ¦ degrading and vexatious enactment, if all this be intended; but if the rural Dean is to believe the assertion of every Clergyman upon his word only, why may not a Bishop do so? and what is gained by the enactment? But the Commissioners seem to have been a set of Noblemen and Gentlemen, who met once a week to see how they could harass the working Clergy, and how they could make every thing smooth and pleasing to the Bishops.

The clause for holding two Livings, at the interval of ten miles, is perfectly ridiculous. If you are to abolish Pluralities, do it at once, or leave a man only in possession of such Benefices as he can serve himself; and then the distance should be two miles, and not a yard more.

But common justice requires that there

should be exceptions to your rules. For two hundred years Pluralities, within certain distances, have been allowed: acting under the faith of these laws, Livings have been bought and bequeathed to Clergymen, tenable with other preferments in their possession-upon faith in these laws, men and women have married-educated their children- laid down a certain plan of life, and adopted a certain rate of expense, and ruin comes upon them in a moment from this thoughtless inattention to existing interests. I know a man whose father dedicated all he had saved in a long life of retail trade, to purchase the next presentation to a living of 8007. per annum, tenable under the old law, with another of 500l. given to the son by his college. The whole of this Clergyman's life and prospects (and he has an immense family of children) are cut to pieces by your Bill. It is a wrong thing, you will say, to hold two Livings; I think it is, but why did not you, the Legislature, find this out fifty years ago? Why did you entice this man into the purchase of Pluralities, by a venerable laxity of two hundred years, and then clap him into jail from the new virtue of yesterday? Such reforms as these make wisdom and carefulness useless, and turn human life into a mere scramble.

Page 32. Sect. 69.-There are the strongest possible objections to this clause. The Living is 410l. per annum, the population above 2000-perhaps, as is often the case, one third of them Dissenters. A clergyman does his duty in the most exemplary manner -dedicates his life to his parish, from whence he derives his whole support-there is not the shadow of a complaint against him. The Bishop has, by this clause, acquired a right of thrusting a Curate upon the Rector at the expense of a fifth part of his whole fortune. This I think an abominable piece of tyranny; and it will turn out to be an inexhaustible source of favouritism and malice. In the Bishops' Bill I have in vain looked for a similar clause," That if the population is above 800,000 and the income amounts to 10,000l., an Assistant to the Bishop may be appointed by the Commis

sioners, and a salary of 2000l. per annum allotted to him." This would have been honest and manly, to have begun with the great people.

But mere tyranny and episcopal malice is not the only evil of this clause, nor the greatest evil. Every body knows the extreme activity of that part of the English Church which is denominated Evangelical, and their industry in bringing over every body to their habits of thinking and acting; now see what will happen from the following clause: — "And whenever the population of any Benefice shall amount to 2000, and it shall be made appear to the satisfaction of the Bishop, that a stipend can be provided for the payment of a Curate, by voluntary contribution or otherwise, without charge to the Incumbent, it shall be lawful for the Bishop to require the spiritual person holding the same to nominate a fit person to be licensed as such Curate, whatever may be the annual value of such Benefice; and if in either of the said cases, a fit person shall not be nominated to the Bishop within two months after his requisition for that purpose shall have been delivered to the Incumbent, it shall be lawful for the Bishop to appoint and license a Curate." A clause worthy of the Vicar of Wrexhill himself. Now what will happen? The Bishop is a Calvinistic Bishop; wife, children, chaplains, Calvinized up to the teeth. The serious people of the parish meet together, and agree to give a hundred pounds per annum, if Mr. Wilkinson is appointed. It requires very little knowledge of human nature to predict, that at the expiration of two months Mr. Wilkinson will be the man; and then the whole parish is torn to pieces with jealousies, quarrels, and comparisons, between the Rector and the delightful Wilkinson. The same scene is acted (mutatis mutandis) where the Bishop sets his face against Calvinistic principles. The absurdity consists in suffering the appointment of a Curate by private subscription; in other words, one Clergyman in a parish by nomination, the other by election; and, in this way, religion is brought into contempt by their

jealousies and quarrels. Little do you know, my dear Lord, of the state of that country you govern, if you suppose this will not happen. I have now a diocese in my eye where I am positively certain, that in less than six months after the passing of this Bill, there will not be a single parish of 2000 persons, in which you will not find a Subscription Curate, of Evangelical habits, canting and crowing over the regular and established Clergyman of the parish.

In the draft of the Fifth Report, upon which I presume your Dean and Chapter Bill is to be founded, I see the rights of patronage are to be conceded to present incumbents. This is very high, and honourable conduct in the Commissioners, and such as deserves the warmest thanks of the Clergy; it is always difficult to retract, much more difficult to retract to inferiors; but it is very virtuous to do so when there can be no motive for it but a love of justice.

Your whole Bill is to be one of retrenchment, and amputation; why add fresh Canons to St. Paul's and Lincoln? Nobody wants them; the Cathedrals go on perfectly well without them, they take away each of them 1500l. to 1600l. per annum, from the fund for the improvement of small Livings; they give, to be sure, a considerable piece of patronage to the Bishops of London and Lincoln, who are Commissioners, and they preserve a childish and pattern-like uniformity in Cathedrals. But the first of these motives is corrupt, and the last silly; and therefore they cannot be your motives.

You cannot plead the recommendation of the Commission for the creation of these new Canons, for you have flung the Commission overboard; and the Reformers of the Church are no longer Archbishops and Bishops, but Lord John Russell;-not those persons to whom the Crown has entrusted the task, but Lord Martin Luther, bred and born in our own island, and nourished by the Woburn spoils and confiscations of the Church. The Church is not without friends, but those friends have said there can be no danger of measures which are sanctioned by

the highest Prelates of the Church; but you have chased away the bearers, and taken the Ark into your own possession. Do not forget, however, if you have deviated from the plan of your brother Commissioners, that you have given to them a perfect right to oppose you.

This unfair and wasteful creation of new, Canons produces a great and scandalous injustice to St. Paul's and Lincoln, in the distribution of their patronage. The old members of all other Cathedrals will enjoy the benefit of survivorship, till they subside into the magic number of four: up to that, point, then, every fresh death will add to the patronage of the remaining old members; ¦ but in the Churches of Lincoln and St. Paul's, the old members will immediately have one fifth of their patronage taken away by the creation of a fifth canon to share it. injustice and partiality is so monstrous, that the two Prelates in question will see that it is necessary to their own character to apply a remedy. Nothing is more easy than to do so. Let the Bishop's Canon have no share in the distribution of the patronage, till after the death of all those who were Residentiaries at the passing of the Bill.*

This

Your Dean and Chapter Bill will, I am afraid, cut down the great preferments of the Church too much.

Take for your fund only the Non-Resident Prebends, and leave the number of Resident Prebends as they are, annexing some of them to poor Livings with large populations. I am sure this is all (besides the abolition of Pluralities) which ought to be done, and all that would be done, if the Commissioners were to begin de novo from this period, when Bishops have recovered from their fright, Dissenters shrunk into their just dimensions, and the foolish and exaggerated expectations from Reform have vanished away. The great prizes of the Church induce men to carry, and fathers and uncles to send into the Church considerable capitals, and in this way, enable the

*All objected to in this paragraph has been granted.