worst failure is, that he is utterly ignorant of all moral fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. I believe he would perform the operation for the stone-build St. Peter's-or assume (with or without ten minutes' notice) the command of the Channel fleet; and no one would discover by his manner that the patient had died-the church tumbled down-and the Channel fleet been knocked to atoms. I believe his motives are always pure, and his measures often able; but they are endless, and never done with that pedetentous pace and pedetentous mind in which it behoves the wise and virtuous improver to walk. He alarms the wise liberals; and it is impossible to sleep soundly while he has the command of the watch.*

Do not say, my dear Lord John, that I am too severe upon you. A thousand years have scarce sufficed to make our blessed England what it is; an hour may lay it in the dust: and can you, with all your talents, renovate its shattered splendour-can you recall back its virtues-can you vanquish time and fate? But, alas! you want to shake the world, and to be the thunderer of the scene!

Now what is the end of what I have written? Why every body was in a great fright; and a number of bishops, huddled together, and talking of their great sacrifices, began to destroy other people's property, and to take other people's patronage: and all the fright is over now; and all the bishops are very sorry for what they have done, and regret extremely the destruction of the cathedral dignitaries, but don't know how to get out of the foolish scrape. The whig ministry persevere to please Joseph and his brethren, and the destroyers; and the good sense of the matter is to fling out the dean and chapter bill, as it now stands, and to bring in another next yearmaking a fund out of all the non-resident prebends, annexing some of the others, and adopting many of the enactments contained in the present bill.

* Another peculiarity of the Russells is, that they never alter their opinions: they are an excellent race, but they must be trepanned before they can be convinced.

THIRD LETTER

TO

ARCHDEACON SINGLETON.

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 arguments which have been used against the impending dean and chapter bill; but it is quiet, gentlemanlike, temperate, and written in a manner which entirely becomes the high office and character which he bears.

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 performed, to suspend the clergyman and appoint a curate with a salary. Some impious persons 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 summoned,

and into that jury the defendant clergyman 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 incumbents 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 framers of the bill that they were ever admitted, and they completely justify the opposition with which the bill was received by me and by others. I add, however, with great pleasure, that when these and other objections were made, they were heard with candour, and promised to be remedied by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London and Lord John Russell.

An

I have spoken of the power to issue a commission to inquire into the well-being of any parish: a vindictive and malicious bishop might, it is true, convert this, which was intended 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. 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 commission), enabling the widow of the

deceased clergyman to retain possession of the parsonage-house for two months after the death of the incumbent. 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 unfairly and partially exercised. The first object I admit is not the provision of the clergyman, but the care of the parish; but one way of taking care of parishes is to take care that clergymen are not treated with tyranny, partiality, and injustice; and the best way of 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 parochial instruction of the people. This is a fine deceitful word, the word parochial, and eminently calculated to coax the public. If he means simply that cathedrals do not belong to parishes, that St. Paul's is not the parish church of Upper Puddicomb, and that the vicar of St. Fiddlefrid does not 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 cathedral 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 nothing? and what right has the Bishop of London to suppose that there is not as much real piety in cathedrals, as in the most roadless, postless, melancholy, sequestered hamlet preached to by the most provincial, sequestered bucolic clergyman in the queen's dominions?

A number of little children, it is true, do not repeat a cate-
VOL. III.-14

chism of which they do not comprehend a word; but it is rather rapid and wholesale 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 took place in cathedrals than prayers and sermons can afford; that lectures were read on 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, outworking them ten to one; but the commission having provided snugly for the bishops, have, by the merest accident in the world, entangled themselves in this quarrel with cathedrals.

Had the question,' says the bishop, been proposed to the religious part of the community, whether, if no other means were to be found, the effective cure of souls should be provided for by the total suppression of those ecclesiastical corporations which have no cure of souls, nor bear any part in the parochial labours of the clergy; that question, I verily believe, would have been carried in the affirmative by an immense majority 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 superstitious, and for others, such as preaching and reading prayers, which are applicable to all times; the superstitious usages are abolished, the pious usages