administration of just laws; such as they have in general experienced under the Whig government: and this system steadily persevered in will, after a lapse of time, and O'Connell quiet, conciliate and civilise that long-injured and irritable people. I have printed in this Collection the Letters of Peter Plymley. The Government of that day took great pains to find out the author; all that they could find was, that they were brought to Mr. Budd, the publisher, by the Earl of Lauderdale. Somehow or another, it came to be conjectured that I was that author: I have always denied it; but finding that I deny it in vain, I have thought it might be as well to include the Letters in this Collection: they had an immense circulation at the time, and I think above 20,000 copies were sold. From the beginning of the century (about which time the Review began) to the death of Lord Liverpool, was an awful period for those who had the misfortune to entertain liberal opinions, and who were too honest to sell them for the ermine of the judge, or the lawn of the prelate : a long and hopeless career in your profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, the sarcastic leer of the genuine political rogue — prebendaries, deans, and bishops made over your headreverend renegadoes advanced to the highest dignities of the Church for helping to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestant Dissenters, and no more chance of a Whig administration than of a thaw in Zembla— these were the penalties exacted for liberality of opinion at that period; and not only was there no pay, but there were many stripes. It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects; and in addition he was sure at that time to be assailed with all the Billingsgate of the French Revolution-Jacobin, Leveller, Atheist, Deist, Socinian, Incendiary, Regicide, were the gentlest appellations used: and the man who breathed a syllable against the senseless bigotry of the two Georges, or hinted at the abominable tyranny and persecution exercised upon Catholic Ireland, was shunned as unfit for the relations of social life. Not a murmur against any abuse was permitted; to say a word against the suitorcide delays of the Court of Chancery, or the cruel punishments of the Game Laws, or against any abuse which a rich man inflicted, or a poor man suffered, was treason against the Plousiocracy, and was bitterly and steadily resented. Lord Grey had not then taken off the bearingrein from the English people, as Sir Francis Head has now done from horses. To set on foot such a Journal in such times, to contribute towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused, and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract. and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think to be extremely fortunate. Strange and ludicrous are the changes in human affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and the well-paid Whigs are riding in chariots: with many faces, however, looking out of the windows, (including that of our Prime Minister,) which I never remember to have seen in the days of the poverty and depression of Whiggism. Liberality is now a lucrative business. Whoever has any institution to destroy, may consider himself as a commissioner, and his fortune as made; and, to my utter and never-ending astonishment, I, an old Edinburgh Reviewer, find myself fighting, in the year 1839, against the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, for the existence of the National Church. June, 1839. SYDNEY SMITH. ARTICLES ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. DR. PARR.* (E. REVIEW, 1802.) Spital Sermon, preached at Christ Church upon Easter-Tuesday, April 15, 1800. To which are added, Notes by Samuel Parr, LL.D. Printed for J. Mawman in the Poultry. 1801. WHOEVER has had the good fortune to see Dr. Parr's wig, must have observed, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes, in the anterior parts, it scorns even Episcopal limits behind, and swells out into boundless convexity of frizz, the μeya Savua of barbers, and the terror of the literary world. After the manner of his wig, the Doctor has constructed his sermon, giving us a discourse of no common length, and subjoining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man since the beginning of the world. For his text, Dr. Parr has chosen Gal, vi. 10. selfish system, and the modern one of universal benevolence, he divides his sermon into two parts: in the first examining how far, by the constitution of human nature, and the circumstances of human life, the principles of par. ticular and universal benevolence are compatible: in the last, commenting on the nature of the charitable institution for which he is preaching. The former part is levelled against the doctrines of Mr. Godwin; and, here, Dr. Parr exposes, very strongly and happily, the folly of making universal benevolence the immediate motive of our actions. As we consider this, though of no very difficult execution, to be by far the best part of the sermon, we shall very willingly make some extracts from it. into romantic adventures, by their excessive "To me it appears, that the modern advocates for universal philanthropy have fallen into the error charged upon those who are fascinated by a violent and extraAs we have therefore op-ordinary fondness for what a celebrated portunity, let us do good to all men, author calls 'some moral species.' Some especially to those who are of the house-men, it has been remarked, are hurried hold of faith. After a short preliminary comparison between the dangers of the A great scholar, as rude and violent as most Greek scholars are, unless they happen to be Bishops. He has left nothing behind him worth leaving: he was rather fitted for the law than the church, and would have been a more considerable man, if he had been more knocked about among his equals. He lived with country gentlemen and clergymen, who flattered and feared him. VOL. I admiration of fortitude. Others are actu ated by a headstrong zeal for disseminating the true religion. Hence, while the only properties, for which fortitude or zeal can be esteemed, are scarcely discernible, from the enormous bulkiness to which they are swollen, the ends, to which alone they can be directed usefully, are overlooked or defeated; the public good is impaired rather than increased: and the claims that other virtues equally obligatory have to our B |