Clergy to associate with gentlemen, and to command that respect which, in all countries, and above all in this, depends so much on appearances. Your Bill, abolishing Pluralities, and taking away, at the same time, so many dignities, leaves the Church of England so destitute of great prizes, that, as far as mere emolument has any influence, it will be better to dispense cheese and butter in small quantities to the public, than to enter into the Church.

There are admirable men, whose honest and beautiful zeal carries them into the Church without a moment's thought of its emoluments. Such a man combining the manners of a gentleman with the acquirements of a scholar, and the zeal of an Apostle, would overawe mercantile grossness, and extort respect from insolent opulence; but I am talking of average Vicars, mixed natures, and eleven thousand parish Priests. If you divide the great emoluments of the Church into little portions, such as butlers and head game-keepers receive, you will very soon degrade materially the style and character of the English Clergy. If I were dictator of the Church, as Lord Durham is to be of Canada, I would preserve the Resident, and abolish, for the purposes of a fund, the Non-Resident Prebends. This is the principal and most important alteration in your Dean and Chapter Bill, which it is not too late to make, and for which every temperate and rational man ought to strive.

You will, of course, consider me as a defender of abuses. I have all my life been just the contrary, and I remember, with pleasure, thirty years ago, old Lord Stowell saying to me, "Mr. Smith, you would have been a much richer man if you had joined us." I like, my dear Lord, the road you are travelling, but I don't like the pace you are driving too similar to that of the son of Nimshi. I always feel myself inclined to cry out, Gently, John, gently down hill. Put on the drag. We shall be over, if you go so quick-you'll do us a mischief.

Remember, as a philosopher, that the Church of England now is a very different Institution from what it was twenty years

|

ago. It then oppressed every sect, they are now all free-all exempt from the tyranny of an Establishment; and the only real cause of complaint for Dissenters is, that they can no longer find a grievance, and enjoy the distinction of being persecuted. I have always tried to reduce them to this state, | and I do not pity them.

You have expressed your intention of going beyond the Fifth Report, and limiting Deans to 2000l. per annum, Canons to 1000l. This is, I presume, in conformity with the treatment of the Bishops, who are limited to from 4500l., to 5000l. per annum; and it wears a fine appearance of impartial justice: but for the Dean and Canon the sum is a maximum-in Bishops it is a maximum and minimum too; a Bishop cannot have less than 4500l., a Canon may have as little as the poverty of his Church dooms him to, but he cannot have more than 1000l.; but there are many Canonries of 500l., or 600l., or 700l. per annum, and a few only of 1000l.; many Deaneries of from 1000l. to 1500l. per annum, and only a very few above 20001. If you mean to make the world believe that you are legislating for men without votes, as benevolently as you did for those who have votes in Parliament, you should make up the allowance of every Canon to 10007., and of every Dean to 2000l. per annum, or leave them to the present lottery of blanks and prizes. Besides, too, do I not recollect some remarkable instances, in your Bishops' Act, of deviation from this rigid standard of episcopal wealth? Are not the Archbishops to have the enormous sums of 15,000l. and 12,000l. per annum? is not the Bishop of London to have 10,000l. per annum? Are not all these three Prelates Commissioners? And is not the reason alleged for the enormous income of the Bishop of London, that every thing is so expensive in the metropolis? Do not the Deans of St. Paul's and Westminster, then, live in London also? And can the Bishop of London sit in his place in the House of Lords, and not urge for those dignitaries the same reasons which were so successful in securing such ample

emoluments for his own See? My old friend the Bishop of Durham has 8000l. per annum secured to him. I am heartily glad of it; what possible reason can there be for giving him more than other Bishops, and not giving to the Dean of Durham more than other Deans? that is, of leaving to him one half of his present income. It is impossible this can be a clap-trap for Joseph Hume, or a set-off against the disasters of Canada; you are too honest and elevated for this. I cannot comprehend what is meant by such gross partiality and injustice.

Why are the economists so eagerly in the field? The public do not contribute one halfpenny to the support of Deans and Chapters; it is not proposed by any one to confiscate the revenues of the Church; the whole is a question of distribution, in what way the revenues of the Church can be best administered for the public good. But whatever may be the respective shares of Peter or Paul, the public will never be richer or poorer by one shilling.

When your Dean and Chapter Bill is printed, I shall take the liberty of addressing you again. The Clergy naturally look with the greatest anxiety to these two Bills; they think that you will avail yourself of this opportunity to punish them for their opposition to your government in the last Elections. They are afraid that your object is not so much to do good as to gratify your

vanity, by obtaining the character of a great reformer, and that (now the Bishops are provided for) you will varnish over your political mistakes by increased severity against the Church, or apparently struggling for their good, see with inexpressible delight the Clergy delivered over to the tender mercies of the Radicals. These are the terrors of the Clergy. I judge you with a very different judgment. You are a religious man, ■ } unfriendly to the Church; and but for th most foolish and fatal error of the Church Rates (into which you were led by a man who knows no more of England than of Mesopotamia), I believe you would have gone on well with the Church to the last. There is a genius in action as well as diction; and because you see political evils clearly, and attack them bravely, and cure them wisely, you are a man of real genius, and are most deservedly looked up to as the leader of the Whig party in this Kingdom. I wish, I must confess, you were rather less afraid of Joseph and Daniel; but God has given you a fine understanding, and a fine character; and I have so much confidence in your spirit and honour, that I am sure you would rather abandon your Bills altogether, than suffer the enemies of the Church to convert them into an engine of spoil, and oppression. I am, &c.

SYDNEY SMITH.

The impression which the great talents and amiable qualities of your father made upon me, will remain as long as I remain. When I turn from living spectacles of stupidity, ignorance, and malice, and wish to think better of the world- I remember my great and benevolent friend Mackintosh.

The first points of character which everybody noticed in him were the total absence of envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitable

ness.

He could not hate-he did not know how to set about it. The gall-bladder was omitted in his composition, and if he could have been persuaded into any scheme of revenging himself upon an enemy, I am sure (unless he had been narrowly watched) it would have ended in proclaiming the good qualities, and promoting the interests of his adversary. Truth had so much more power over him than anger, that (whatever might be the provocation) he could not misrepresent, nor exaggerate. In questions of passion and party he stated facts as they were, and reasoned fairly upon them, placing his happiness and pride in equitable discrimination. Very fond of talking, he heard patiently, and, not averse to intellectual display, did not forget that others might have the same inclination as himself.

Till subdued by age and illness, his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the

good fortune to be acquainted with. His memory (vast and prodigious as it was) he so managed as to make it a source of pleasure and instruction, rather than that dreadful engine of colloquial oppression into which it is sometimes erected. He remembered things, words, thoughts, dates, and every thing that was wanted. His language was beautiful, and might have gone from the fireside to the press; but though his ideas were always clothed in beautiful language, the clothes were sometimes too big for the body, and common thoughts were dressed in better and larger apparel than they deserved. He certainly had this fault, but it was not one of frequent commission.

He had a method of putting things so mildly and interrogatively, that he always procured the readiest reception for his opinions. Addicted to reasoning in the company of able men, he had two valuable habits which are rarely met with in great reasoners - he never broke in upon his opponent, and always avoided strong and vehement assertions. His reasoning commonly carried conviction, for he was cautious in his positions, accurate in his deductions, aimed only at truth. The ingenious side was commonly taken by some one else; the interests of truth were protected by Mackintosh.

His good-nature and candour betrayed him into a morbid habit of eulogising everybody a habit which destroyed the value of commendations, that might have been to the young (if more sparingly distributed) a reward of virtue and a motive to exertion. Occasionally he took fits of an opposite nature; and I have seen him abating and

dissolving pompous gentlemen with the most successful ridicule. He certainly had a good deal of humour; and I remember, amongst many other examples of it, that he kept us for two or three hours in a roar of laughter at a dinner-party at his own house, playing upon the simplicity of a Scotch cousin, who had mistaken me for my gallant synonym, the hero of Acre. I never saw a more perfect comedy, nor heard ridicule so long and so well sustained. Sir James had not only humour, but he had wit also; at least, new and sudden relations of ideas flashed across his mind in reasoning, and produced the same effect as wit, and would have been called wit, if a sense of their utility and im- | portance had not often overpowered the admiration of novelty, and entitled them to the higher name of wisdom. Then the great thoughts and fine sayings of the great men of all ages were intimately present to his recollection, and came out dazzling and delighting in his conversation. Justness of thinking was a strong feature of his understanding; he had a head in which nonsense and error could hardly vegetate; it was a soil utterly unfit for them. If his display in conversation had been only in maintaining splendid paradoxes, he would soon have wearied those he lived with; but no man could live long and intimately with your father without finding that he was gaining upon doubt, correcting error, enlarging the boundaries, and strengthening the foundations of truth. It was worth while to listen to a master, whom not himself but nature had appointed to the office, and who taught what it was not easy to forget, by methods which it was not easy to resist.

Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Mr. Grattan," You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers." This was the fault or the misfortune of your excellent father; he never knew the use of red tape, and was utterly unfit for the common business of life. That a guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter for a quantity of cloth, he was well aware; but

the accurate number of the baser coin, or the just measurement of the manufactured article, to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of the ancient and melancholy struggle of genius with the difficulties of existence.

I have often heard Sir James Mackintosh say of himself, that he was born to be the Professor of an University. Happy, and for ages celebrated, would have been the University, which had so possessed him; but in this view he was unjust to himself. Still, however, his style of speaking in parliament was certainly more academic than forensic; it was not sufficiently short and quick for a busy and impatient assembly. He often spoke over the heads of his hearers -was too much in advance of feeling for their sympathies, and of reasoning for their comprehension. He began too much at the beginning, and went too much to the right and left of the question, making rather a lecture or dissertation than a speech. His voice was bad and nasal; and though nobody was in reality more sincere, he seemed not only not to feel, but hardly to think what he was saying.

Your father had very little science, and no great knowledge of physics. His notions of his early pursuit—the study of medicine -were imperfect and antiquated, and he was but an indifferent classical scholar, for the Greek language has never crossed the Tweed in any great force. In history, the whole stream of time was open before him; he had looked into every moral and metaphysical question from Plato to Paley, and had waded through morasses of international law, where the step of no living man could follow him. Political economy is of modern invention. I am old enough to recollect when every judge of the bench (Lord Eldon and Serjeant Runnington excepted), in their charges to the grand juries, attributed the then high prices of corn to the scandalous combination of farmers. Sir James knew what is commonly agreed upon by political economists, without taking much pleasure