on the argument with some wickedness | tion, I never observed that his fame against our graver friend; he could produced the slightest alteration in his not stand it, but bolted indignantly out deportment: he was as affable to me, of the room; we flung up the sash, and, with loud peals of laughter, professed ourselves decided Scandinavians; we offered him not only the ships, but all the shot, powder, cordage, and even the biscuit, if he would come back: but nothing could turn him; he went home; and it took us a fortnight of serious behaviour before we were forgiven. Francis Horner was a very modest person, which men of great understanding seldom are. It was his habit to confirm his opinion by the opinions of others; and often to form them from the same source. and to all his old friends, as when we were debating metaphysics in a garret in Edinburgh. I don't think it was in the power of ermine, or mace, or seals, or lawn, or lace, or of any of those emblems and ornaments with which power loves to decorate itself, to have destroyed the simplicity of his character. I believe it would have defied all the corrupting appellations of human vanity: Serene, Honourable, Right Honourable, Sacred, Reverend, Right Reverend, Lord High, Earl, Marquis, Lord Mayor, Your Grace, Your Honour, and every other vocable which folly has invented and idolatry cherished, would all have been lavished on him in vain. His success in the House of Commons was decided and immediate, and went on increasing to the last day of his life. Though put into Parliament The character of his understanding by some of the Great Borough Lords, was the exercise of vigorous reasoning, every one saw that he represented his in pursuit of important and difficult own real opinions: without hereditary truth. He had no wit; nor did he wealth, and known as a writer in the condescend to that inferior variety of Edinburgh Review, his independence this electric talent which prevails was never questioned: his integrity, occasionally in the North, and which, sincerity, and moderation, were ac-under the name of Wut, is so infinitely knowledged by all sides, and respected distressing to persons of good taste: even by those impudent assassins who he had no very ardent and poetical live only to discourage honesty and imagination, but he had that innate traduce virtue. The House of Com- force, which, mons, as a near relation of mine* once observed, has more good taste than in it. Horner, from his manners, his ability, and his integrity, became a general favourite with the House; they suspended for him their habitual dislike of lawyers, of political adventurers, and of young men of conseederable taalents from the North. any man Suasit, et induxit noctes vigilare serenas demum Clara sua possit præpandere lumina menti. Your late excellent father, though a very well informed person, was not what would be called a literary man, and you will readily concede to me that none of his family would pretend to rival your brother in point of talents. Your brother was wholly without pretensions or affectation. I have lived a long time in Scotland, and have seen very few affected Scotch-I never saw more constant and high men; of those few he certainly was not one. In the ordinary course of life, he never bestowed a thought upon the effect he was producing; he trusted to his own good nature and good intentions, and left the rest to chance. principled attention to parents than in his instance; more habitual and respectful deference to their opinions and wishes. I never saw brothers and sisters, over whom he might have assumed a family sovereignty, treated Having known him well before he with more cheerful, and endearing had acquired a great London reputa-equality. I mention these things, Mr. Sydney Smith's brother, the late because men who do good things are so much more valuable than those who Robert Smith. say wise ones; because the order of human excellence is so often inverted, and great talents considered as an excuse for the absence of obscure virtues. of his motives; he had improved so quickly, and so much, that his early death was looked on as the destruction of a great statesman, who had done but a small part of the good which might be expected from him, who would infallibly have risen to the highest offices, and as infallibly have filled them to the public good. Then as he Francis Horner was always very guarded in his political opinions; guarded I mean against the excesses into which so many young men of talents were betrayed by their admira- had never lost a friend, and made so tion of the French Revolution. He few enemies, there was no friction, no was an English Whig, and no more drawback; public feeling had its free than an English Whig. He mourned course; the image of a good and great sincerely over the crimes, and madness man was broadly before the world, of France, and never for a single unsullied by any breath of hatred; there moment surrendered his understanding was nothing but pure sorrow! Youth to the novelty and nonsense which infested the world at that strange era of human affairs. I remember the death of many eminent Englishmen, but I can safely say, I never remember an impression so general as that excited by the death of Francis Horner. The public looked upon him as a powerful and a safe man, who was labouring not for himself or his party, but for them. They were, convinced of his talents, they confided in his moderation, and they were sure destroyed before its time, great talents August 26, 1812. SYDNEY SMITH, LETTERS ON RAILWAYS. "LOCKING IN" ON RAILWAYS. no recollection of any accident so To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle. shocking as that on the Paris railway -a massacre so sudden, so full of torSIR, ment-death at the moment of pleaIr falls to my lot to travel frequently sure-death aggravated by all the on the Great Western Railway, and amazement, fear, and pain which can I request permission, through the be condensed into the last moments of medium of your able and honest existence. journal, to make a complaint against the directors of that company. It is the custom on that railway to lock the passengers in on both sides a custom which, in spite of the dreadful example at Paris, I have every reason to believe they mean to continue without any relaxation. In the course of a long life I have VOL. II. Who can say that the same scene may not be acted over again on the Great Western Railroad? That in the midst of their tunnel of three miles' length the same scene of slaughter and combustion may not scatter dismay and alarm over the whole country? It seems to me perfectly monstrous that a board of ten or twelve monopoY 342 FRAGMENT ON THE IRISH ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. a Whiteboy vicar will no longer lead the be a very doubtful cure for scepticism; psalm to Whiteboy vocalists; but every- and though we have often seen the thing that is good and wholesome will tenth of the earth's produce carted remain. This, however, is not what away for the benefit of the clergymen, the anti-British faction want; they we do not remember any very lively want all the animation which piety marks of satisfaction and delight which can breathe into sedition, and all the it produced in the countenance of the fury which the priesthood can preach decimated person. I am thoroughly to diversity of faith: and this is what convinced that State payments to the they mean by a clergy losing their in- Catholic clergy would remove a thoufluence over the people! The less a sand causes of hatred between the clergyman exacts of his people, the priest and his flock, and would be as more his payments are kept out of favourable to the increase of his useful sight, the less will be the friction with authority, as it would be fatal to his which he exercises the functions of his factious influence over the people. office. A poor Catholic may respect a priest the more who marries, baptizes, and anoints; but he respects him because he associates with his name and character the performance of sacred duties, not because he exacts heavy fees for doing so. Double fees would There is, in the first place, the effect of imagination, the idea that all escape is impossible, that (let what will happen) you must sit quiet in first class No. 2, whether they are pounding you into a crumbling you into a human powder. These excellent directors, versant in wood and metal, seem to require that the imagination should be sent by some other conveyance, and that only loads of unimpassioned, unintellectual flesh and blood should be darted along on the Western rail; whereas, the female homo is a screaming, parturient, interjectional, hysterical animal, whose delicacy and timidity, monopolists (even much as it may surprise them) must be taught to consult. The female, in all probability, never would jump out; but she thinks she may jump out when she pleases; and this is intensely comfortable. But is all this, which appears so philanthropical, mere philanthropy? Does not the locking of the doors save servants and policemen? Does not economy mingle with these benevolent feelings? Is it to save a few fellow-jam, or burning you into a cinder, or creatures, or a few pounds, that the children of the West are to be hermetically sealed in the locomotives? I do not say it is so; but I say it deserves a very serious examination whether it be so or not. Great and heavy is the sin of the directors of this huge monopoly, if they repeat upon their own iron the tragedy of Paris, in order to increase their dividends a few shillings per cent. The country has (perhaps inevitably) given way to this great monopoly, Nothing can make it tolerable for a moment but the most severe and watchful jealousy of the manner in which its powers are exercised. We shall have tyrannical rules, vexatious rules, ill temper, pure folly, and meddling and impertinent paternity. It is the absolute duty of Lord Ripon and Mr. Gladstone (if the directors prove themselves to be so inadequate to the new situation in which they are placed) to restrain and direct them by law; and if these two gentlemen are afraid of the responsibility of such laws, they are deficient in the moral courage which their office requires, and the most important interests of the public are neglected. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, SYDNEY SMITH. May 21, 1842. "LOCKING IN" ON RAILWAYS. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle. SIR, SINCE the letter upon railroads, which you were good enough to insert in your paper, I have had some conversation with two gentlemen officially connected with the Great Western. Though nothing could be more courteous than their manner, nor more intelligible than their arguments, I remain unshaken as to the necessity of keeping the doors open. There are two sorts of dangers which hang over railroads. The one retail dangers, where individuals only are concerned; the other, wholesale dangers, where the whole train, or a considerable part of it, is put in jeopardy. For the first danger there is a remedy in the prudence of individuals; for the second, there is none. No man need be drunk, nor need he jump out when the carriage is in motion; but in the present state of science it is impossible to guard effectually against the fracture of the axle-tree, or the explosion of the engine; and if the safety of the one party cannot be consulted but by the danger of the other, if the foolish cannot be restrained but by the unjust incarceration of the wise, the prior consideration is due to those who have not the remedy for the evil in their own hands. If riding were a monopoly, as travel-instant-only half-roasted, or merely ling in carriages is now become, there browned, certainly not done enough for are many gentlemen whom I see riding the Great Western directors. in the Park upon such false principles, that I am sure the cantering and galloping directors would strap them, in the ardour of their affection, to the saddle, padlock them to the stirrups, or compel them to ride behind a policeman of the stable; and nothing but a motion from O'Brien, or an order from Gladstone, could release them. On Saturday morning last, the wheel of the public carriage, in which a friend of mine was travelling, began to smoke, but was pacified by several buckets of water, and proceeded. After five more miles, the whole carriage was full of smoke, the train was with difficulty stopped, and the flagrant vehicle removed. The axle was nearly in two, and in another mile would have been severed. Let the company stick up all sorts of cautions and notices within their carriages and without; but, after that, Railroad travelling is a delightful no doors locked. If one door is al- improvement of human life. Man is lowed to be locked, the other will soon become a bird; he can fly longer and be so too; there is no other security to quicker than a Solan goose. The the public than absolute prohibition of mamma rushes sixty miles in two the practice. The directors and agents hours to the aching finger of her conof the Great Western are individually jugating and declining grammar boy. excellent men; but the moment men The early Scotchman scratches himself meet in public boards, they cease to be in the morning mists of the North, and collectively excellent. The fund of has his porridge in Piccadilly before morality becomes less, as the indivi- the setting sun. The Puseyite priest, dual contributors increase in number. after a rush of 100 miles, appears with I do not accuse such respectable men his little volume of nonsense at the of any wilful violation of truth, but the breakfast of his bookseller. Everymemoirs which they are about to pre-thing is near, everything is immediate sent will be, without the scrupulous-time, distance, and delay are abocross-examination of a committee of lished. But, though charming and the House of Commons, mere waste fascinating as all this is, we must not paper. But the most absurd of all legislative enactments is this hemiplegian law an act of Parliament to protect one side of the body and not the other. If the wheel comes off on the right, the open door is uppermost, and every one is saved. If, from any sudden avalanche on the road, the carriage is prostrated to the left, the locked door is uppermost, all escape is impossible, and the railroad martyrdom begins. shut our eyes to the price we shall pay for it. There will be every three or four years some dreadful massacrewhole trains will be hurled down a precipice, and 200 or 300 persons will be killed on the spot. There will be every now and then a great combustion of human bodies, as there has been at Paris; then all the newspapers up in arms-a thousand regulations, forgot ten as soon as the directors dareloud screams of the velocity whistlemonopoly locks and bolts, as before. Leave me to escape in the best way I can, as the fire-offices very kindly The locking plea of directors is philpermit me to do. I know very well anthrophy; and I admit that to guard the danger of getting out on the off-men from the commission of moral evil side; but escape is the affair of a mo- is as philanthropical as to prevent phyment; suppose a train to have passed sical suffering. There is, I allow, a at that moment, I know I am safe from any other trains for twenty minutes or half an hour; and if I do get out on he off-side, I do not remain in the 1y of death between the two trains, 1 over to the opposite bank in an strong propensity in mankind to travel on railroads without paying; and to lock mankind in till they have completed their share of the contract is benevolent, because it guards the species from degrading and immoral |