Imatges de pàgina
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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 in 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 a 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 on 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 in the science, and with a disposition to blame the very speculative and metaphysical disquisitions into which it has wandered, but with a full conviction also (which many able men of his standing are without) of the immense importance of the science to the welfare of society.

I think (though, perhaps, some of his friends may not agree with me in this opinion) that he was an acute judge of character, and of the good as well as evil in character. He was, in truth, with the appearance of distraction and of one occupied with other things, a very minute observer of human nature; and I have seen him analyze, to the very springs of the heart, men who had not the most distant suspicion of the sharpness of his vision, nor a belief that he could read any thing but books.

Sufficient justice has not been done to his political integrity. He was not rich, was from the northern part of the island, possessed great facility of temper, and had therefore every excuse for political lubricity, which that vice (more common in those days than I hope it will ever be again) could possibly require. Invited by every party, upon his arrival from India, he remained steadfast to his old friends the whigs, whose admission to office, or enjoyment of political power, would at that period have been considered as the most visionary of all human speculations; yet, during his lifetime, every body seemed more ready to have forgiven the tergiversation of which he was not guilty, than to admire the actual firmness he had displayed. With all this he never made the slightest efforts to advance his interests with his political friends, never mentioned his sacrifices nor his ser

vices, expressed no resentment at neglect, and was therefore pushed into such situations as fall to the lot of the feeble and delicate in a crowd.

A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was his real and unaffected philanthropy. He did not make the improvement of the great mass of mankind an engine of popularity, and a stepping-stone to power, but he had a genuine love of human happiness. Whatever might assuage the angry passions, and arrange the conflicting interests of nations; whatever could promote peace, increase knowledge, extend commerce, diminish crime, and encourage industry; whatever could exalt human character, and could enlarge human understanding; struck at once at the heart of your father, and roused all his faculties. I have seen him in a moment when this spirit came upon him— like a great ship of war-cut his cable, and spread his enormous canvass, and launch into a wide sea of reasoning eloquence.

But though easily warmed by great schemes of benevolence and human improvement, his manner was cold to individuals. There was an apparent want of heartiness and cordiality. It seemed as if he had more affection for the species than for the ingredients of which it was composed. He was in reality very hospitable, and so fond of company, that he was hardly happy out of it; but he did not receive his friends with that honest joy which warms more than dinner or wine.

This is the good and evil of your father which comes uppermost. If he had been arrogant and grasping; if he had been faithless and false; if he had been always eager to strangle infant genius in its cradle; always ready to betray and to blacken those with whom he sat at meat; he would have passed many men, who, in the course of his long life, have passed him ;—but, without selling his soul for pottage, if he only had had a little more prudence for the promotion of his interests, and more of angry passions for the punishment of those detractors who envied his fame and presumed upon his sweetness; if he had been more aware of his powers, and of that space which nature intended him to occupy; he would have acted a great part in life, and remained a character in history. As it is, he has left, in many of the best men in England, and of the continent, the deepest admiration of his talents, his wisdom, his knowledge and his benevolence. I remain, my dear Sir,

Very truly yours,

SYDNEY SMITH.

A LETTER

ΤΟ

LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

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, Sec. 31.-It would seem, from this section, that the repairs are to depend upon the will of the bishop, and not upon the present law of the land. A bishop enters into the house of a non-resident clergyman, and finds it neither papered, nor painted-he orders these 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, Sec. 42.-Incumbents are to answer questions transmitted by the bishop, and these are to be countersigned by the rural dean. This is another vexation to the numerous 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 a 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 is intended; but if the rural dean is to believe the as

sertion of every clergyman upon his word only, why may not the 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 5007. 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 gaol 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, Sec. 69.-There are the strongest possible objections to this clause. The living is 4107. 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, ac quired a right of thrusting a curate upon the rector at the expense of a fifth part of his whole fortune. This, I think, an

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