Chapter VI: St. Paul's--The Parallelogram--Archdeacon Singleton--Collected Works (1)

Meanwhile the Reform Bill had passed the House of Commons and was sent up to the House of Lords. In the summer, Sydney Smith had written to Lord Grey--"You may be sure that any attempt of the Lords to throw out the Bill will be the signal for the most energetic resistance from one end of the kingdom to another." The Lords faced the risk, and threw out the Bill on the 8th of October 1831.

Sydney's prophecy was promptly justified, and the most threatening violence and disorder broke out in the great centres of industrial population. Whigs and Radicals alike rallied, as one man, to the cause of Reform. On the 11th of October a public meeting was held at Taunton to protest against the action of the Lords and express unabated confidence in the Government. It was on this occasion that Sydney Smith made the most famous of his political speeches. He deplored the collision between the two Houses of Parliament, but he was not the least alarmed about the fate of the Bill. The Lords were no match for the forces arrayed against them.--

"As for the possibility of the House of Lords preventing for long a
reform of Parliament, I hold it to be the most absurd notion that ever
entered into the human imagination. I do not mean to be disrespectful,
but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of Reform reminds me
very forcibly of the great storm at Sidmouth, and of the conduct of
the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824,
there set in a great flood upon that town--the tide rose to an
incredible height--the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything
was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and
terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at
the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop,
squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic
Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I
need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean
beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop, or a puddle, but
she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your
ease--be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington."

Fifty years later, an eye-witness thus described the scene:--"The introduction of the Partington storm was startling and unexpected. As he recounted in felicitous terms the adventures of the excellent dame, suiting the action to the word with great dramatic skill, he commenced trundling his imaginary mop and sweeping back the intrusive waves of the Atlantic with an air of resolute determination and an appearance of increasing temper. The scene was realistic in the extreme, and was too much for the gravity of the most serious. The house rose, the people cheered, and tears of superabundant laughter trickled down the cheeks of fair women and veteran reformers."[107]

This was his last public act in connexion with Parliamentary Reform; but the keenness of his interest remained unabated till the day was won. On the 12th of December 1831, the Reform Bill was brought in a third time. It again passed the House of Commons, and was again threatened with destruction in the Lords. Sydney Smith wrote thus to Lord Grey:--

"I take it for granted you are prepared to make Peers, to force the
measure if it fail again, and I would have this intention
half-officially communicated in all the great towns before the Bill
was brought in. If this is not done--I mean, if Peers are not
made--there will be a general convulsion, ending in a complete
revolution.... If you wish to be happy three months hence, create
Peers. If you wish to avoid an old age of sorrow and reproach, create
Peers."

Acting on this counsel, Lord Grey obtained the King's written consent to the creation of as many peers as were required to carry the Bill. "I am for forty," wrote Sydney, "to make things safe in Committee." But this extreme remedy was not required. When it became known that the King had given his consent, the opposition collapsed, and the Bill received the Royal Assent on the 7th of June 1832. It was, as the Duke of Wellington said, a revolution by due course of law.

Henceforward Sydney Smith appears rather as a supporter of things as they are, than as a promoter of political or ecclesiastical change. Indeed there are signs which seem to show that his stock of reforming zeal had already run low. "The New Beer Bill[108] has begun its operations. Everybody is drunk. Those who are not singing are sprawling. The Sovereign People are in a beastly state." He was now past sixty, and a spirit of amiable self-indulgence was creeping over him.--

"I love liberty, but hope it can be so managed that I shall have soft
beds, good dinners, fine linen, etc., for the rest of my life. I am
too old to fight or to suffer." "I am tired of liberty and revolution!
Where is it to end? Are all political agglutinations to be unglued?
Are we prepared for a second Heptarchy, and to see the King of Sussex
fighting with the Emperor of Essex, or marrying the Dowager Queen of
Hampshire?"

Just before the first elections under the Reform Act, he wrote to a Scotch friend:--

"What oceans of absurdity and nonsense will the new liberties of
Scotland disclose! Yet this is better than the old infamous jobbing,
and the foolocracy under which you have so long laboured."

Sydney Smith's first term of official duty at St. Paul's began on the 1st of February 1832. On the eve of the new year he wrote to his married daughter:--

"We are debating how to come up to town, and how to make a Stage Coach
compatible with Saba's aristocracy and dignity. The Coach sets off
from Taunton at four o'clock. It is then dark. I recommend her
hurrying in three minutes before the Coach departs with her face
covered up. But there is a maiden lady who knows us and who lives
opposite the Coach. I have promised to keep her in conversation whilst
Saba steps in. Once in, all chance of detection is over.

"_PS._--We think Miss Y---- has discovered us, for, upon meeting her
in Taunton, she spoke of the _Excellence of Public Conveyances_. I
said it was a fine day, and, conscious of guilt, retired."

The removal to London was safely accomplished, and on the 29th of January he wrote:--

"I drove all this morning with Lady Holland. I had refused two or
three times last week, but, as a good deal is due to old friendship, I
wrote word that, if she would accept the company of a handsome young
clergyman, I knew of one who was much at her service. She was very
ill. I preached to her, not 'of Temperance and Righteousness and
Judgement to come,' but said nothing of the two last and confined
myself to the first topic. 'Lay aside pepper, and brandy and water,
and _baume de vie_. Prevent the evil instead of curing it. A single
mutton chop, a glass of toast and water'--here she cried and I
stopped; but she began sobbing, and I was weak enough to allow two
glasses of sherry--on which she recovered."

A few days later he wrote to his old friend Lady Morley[109]:--

"I have taken possession of my preferment. The house is in Amen
Corner,--an awkward name on a card, and an awkward annunciation to the
coachman on leaving any fashionable mansion.[110] I find too (sweet
discovery!) that I give a dinner every Sunday, for three months in the
year, to six clergymen and six singing-men, at one o'clock. Do me the
favour to drop in as _Mrs._ Morley."

It soon became evident that the Whig Government, flushed with its triumph over Toryism, intended to lay reforming hands upon the Church,[111] and the newly-fledged dignitary was alarmed. On the 22nd of December 1832 he wrote--

"I see Lord Grey, the Chancellor, and the Archbishop of Canterbury
have had a meeting, which I suppose has decided the fate of the
Church." "Do you want a butler or respectable-looking groom of the
chambers? I shall be happy to serve you in either capacity; it is time
for the clergy to look out. I have also a cassock and stock of sermons
to dispose of, dry and fit for use." "I am for no more movements: they
are not relished by Canons of St. Paul's. When I say, 'no more
movements,' however, I except the case of the Universities; which, I
think, ought to be immediately invaded with Enquirers and
Commissioners. They are a crying evil." "Do not imagine I am going to
rat. I am a thoroughly honest, and, I will say, liberal person, but
have never given way to that puritanical feeling of the Whigs against
dining with Tories.

"'Tory and Whig in turns shall be my host,
I taste no politics in boil'd and roast.'"

In declining an invitation to dinner he wrote:--

"On one day of the year, the Canons of St. Paul's divide a little
money--an inadequate recompense for all the troubles and anxieties
they undergo. This day is, unfortunately for me, that on which you
have asked me (the 25th of March), when we all dine together,
endeavouring to forget for a few moments, by the aid of meat and wine,
the sorrows and persecutions of the Church."

Of Sydney Smith's official relations with St. Paul's abundant traces are still to be found. He took a leading part in the business of the Chapter. Dean Milman[112] wrote:--"I find traces of him in every particular of Chapter affairs: and, on every occasion where his hand appears, I find stronger reasons for respecting his sound judgment, knowledge of business, and activity of mind; above all the perfect fidelity of his stewardship.... His management of the affairs of St. Paul's (for at one time he seems to have been _the_ manager) only commenced too late and terminated too soon."

A Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1841 to inquire into the condition of National Monuments. One fragment of Sydney Smith's evidence is quaint enough to be recalled.--

"I hope I leave the Committee with this very decided impression, that,
in such an immense town as this, free admission into the Cathedral
would very soon inflict upon that Cathedral the infamy of being a
notorious resort for all bad characters; it would cease to be
frequented as a place of worship, and the whole purpose for which it
exists destroyed; and that to this the payment operates as a decided
check."

When examined before the same Committee, the Surveyor to the Cathedral testified that there "had been no superintendence at all comparable to that of Mr. Sydney Smith"; that he had warmed the Library and rebound the books; that he had insured the fabric against fire; and had "brought the New River into the Cathedral by mains." The Verger testified that the monuments had fallen into a dreadful state of decay and disfigurement, and that there were "twenty thousand names scratched on the font"; but that now by Mr. Smith's orders everything had been repaired, cleaned, and set in order.

As regards Sydney Smith's preaching, testimony is equally explicit. He said of himself, in a letter stating his claims to ecclesiastical preferment, "I am distinguished as a preacher," and this seems to have been no more than the truth. George Ticknor, writing in 1835, said that he had heard from Sydney "by far the best sermon that I have heard in England." Charles Greville wrote;--"He is very good; manner impressive, voice sonorous and agreeable: rather familiar, but not offensively so." Mrs, Austin,[113] who afterwards edited his Letters, writes:--"The choir[114] was densely filled.... The moment he appeared in the pulpit, all the weight of his duty, all the authority of his office, were written on his countenance; and, without a particle of affectation, his whole demeanour bespoke the gravity of his purpose."

This exactly corresponds with the impression of a listener to his famous sermon on Toleration, in Bristol Cathedral. "Never did anybody to my mind look more like a High Churchman, as he walked up the aisle to the altar--there was an air of so much proud dignity in his appearance."

Perhaps this account of Sydney Smith's relations with St. Paul's Cathedral cannot be better concluded than with some extracts from the noble sermon which he preached there on the occasion of Queen Victoria's accession. It is a remarkably fine instance of his rhetorical manner. It reveals an ardent and sagacious patriotism. It breathes a spirit of fatherly interest which excellently becomes a minister of religion, glancing, from the close of a long life spent in public affairs, at the possibilities, at once awful and splendid, which lay before the Girl-Queen.

The preacher, in his opening paragraphs, briefly announces his theme. His starting-point is the death of the King.--

"From the throne to the tomb--wealth, splendour, flattery, all gone!
The look of favour--the voice of power, no more;--the deserted
palace--the wretched monarch on his funeral bier--the mourners
ready--the dismal march of death prepared. Who are we, and what are
we? and for what has God made us? and why are we doomed to thus frail
and unquiet existence? Who does not feel all this? in whose heart does
it not provoke appeal to, and dependence on, God? before whose eyes
does it not bring the folly and the nothingness of all things human?"

He pauses to pay a tribute to the honesty and patriotism of William IV., and then proceeds:--

"But the world passes on, and a new order of things arises. Let us
take a short view of those duties which devolve upon the young Queen,
whom Providence has placed over us: what ideas she ought to form of
her duties; and on what points she should endeavour to place the
glories of her reign.

"First and foremost, I think the new Queen should bend her mind to the
very serious consideration of educating her people. Of the importance
of this I think no reasonable doubt can exist; it does not in its
effects keep pace with the exaggerated expectations of its injudicious
advocates; but it presents the best chance of national improvement.

"Reading and writing are mere increase of power. They may be turned, I
admit, to a good or a bad purpose; but for several years of his life
the child is in your hands, and you may give to that power what bias
you please. Thou shalt not kill--Thou shalt not steal--Thou shalt not
bear false witness:--by how many fables, by how much poetry, by how
many beautiful aids of imagination, may not the fine morality of the
Sacred Scriptures be engraven on the minds of the young? I believe the
arm of the assassin may be often stayed by the lessons of his early
life. When I see the village school, and the tattered scholars, and
the aged master or mistress teaching the mechanical art of reading or
writing, and thinking that they are teaching that alone, I feel that
the aged instructor is protecting life, insuring property, fencing the
altar, guarding the throne, giving space and liberty to all the fine
powers of man, and lifting him up to his own place in the order of
Creation.

"There are, I am sorry to say, many countries in Europe which have
taken the lead of England in the great business of education, and it
is a thoroughly commendable and legitimate object of ambition in a
Sovereign to overtake them. The names, too, of malefactors, and the
nature of their crimes, are subjected to the Sovereign;--how is it
possible that a Sovereign, with the fine feelings of youth, and with
all the gentleness of her sex, should not ask herself, whether the
human being whom she dooms to death, or at least does not rescue from
death, has been properly warned in early youth of the horrors of that
crime, for which his life is forfeited--'Did he ever receive any
education at all?--did a father and a mother watch over him?--was he
brought to places of worship?--was the Word of God explained to
him?--was the Book of Knowledge opened to him?--Or am I, the fountain
of mercy, the nursing-mother of my people, to send a forsaken wretch
from the streets to the scaffold, and to punish by unprincipled
cruelty the evils of unprincipled neglect?'"

From zeal for education, we go on to love of Peace.--

"A second great object, which I hope will be impressed upon the mind
of this Royal Lady, is a rooted horror of war--an earnest and
passionate desire to keep her people in a state of profound peace. The
greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war.
All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace--all that is
spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless
extravagance, of nations--are mere trifles compared with the gigantic
evils which stalk over the world in a state of war. God is forgotten
in war--every principle of Christian charity trampled upon--human
labour destroyed--human industry extinguished--you see the son, and
the husband, and the brother, dying miserably in distant lands--you
see the waste of human affections--you see the breaking of human
hearts--you hear the shrieks of widows and children after the
battle--and you walk over the mangled bodies of the wounded calling
for death. I would say to that Royal child, Worship God by loving
peace--it is not _your_ humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food
or raiment--_I_ can do that; that is the charity of the humble and the
unknown--widen you your heart for the more expanded miseries of
mankind--pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn
away from their families--pity your poor subjects crowded into
hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country
and their young Queen--pity the stupid, frantic folly of human beings
who are always ready to tear each other to pieces, and to deluge the
earth with each other's blood; this is your extended humanity--and
this the great field of your compassion. Extinguish in your heart the
fiendish love of military glory, from which your sex does not
necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may
urge you. Say upon your death-bed, 'I have made few orphans in my
reign--I have made few widows--my object has been peace. I have used
all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to
check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts
of honest industry. This has been the Christianity of my throne, and
this the Gospel of my sceptre. In this way I have strove to worship my
Redeemer and my Judge.'"

True to his lifelong conviction, the preacher urges the sacredness of religious freedom.--

"I hope the Queen will love the National Church, and protect it; but
it must be impressed upon her mind that every sect of Christians have
as perfect a right to the free exercise of their worship as the Church
itself--that there must be no invasion of the privileges of the other
sects, and no contemptuous disrespect of their feelings--that the
Altar is the very ark and citadel of Freedom.

* * * * *

"Though I deprecate the bad effects of fanaticism, I earnestly pray
that our young Sovereign may evince herself to be a person of deep
religious feeling: what other cure has she for all the arrogance and
vanity which her exalted position must engender? for all the flattery
and falsehood with which she must be surrounded? for all the
soul-corrupting homage with which she is met at every moment of her
existence? what other cure than to cast herself down in darkness and
solitude before God--to say that she is dust and ashes--and to call
down the pity of the Almighty upon her difficult and dangerous life.
This is the antidote of kings against the slavery and the baseness
which surround them; they should think often of death--and the folly
and nothingness of the world, and they should humble their souls
before the Master of masters, and the King of kings; praying to Heaven
for wisdom and calm reflection, and for that spirit of Christian
gentleness which exalts command into an empire of justice, and turns
obedience into a service of love."

Thus he recapitulates and concludes:--

"A young Queen, at that period of life which is commonly given up to
frivolous amusement, sees at once the great principles by which she
should be guided, and steps at once into the great duties of her
station. The importance of educating the lower orders of the people is
never absent from her mind; she takes up this principle at the
beginning of her life, and in all the change of servants, and in all
the struggle of parties, looks to it as a source of permanent
improvement. A great object of her affections, is the preservation of
peace; she regards a state of war as the greatest of all human evils;
thinks that the lust of conquest is not a glory, but a bad crime;
despises the folly and miscalculations of war, and is willing to
sacrifice every thing to peace but the clear honour of her land.

"The patriot Queen, whom I am painting, reverences the National
Church--frequents its worship, and regulates her faith by its
precepts; but she withstands the encroachments, and keeps down the
ambition natural to establishments, and, by rendering the privileges
of the Church compatible with the civil freedom of all sects, confers
strength upon, and adds duration to, that wise and magnificent
institution. And then this youthful Monarch, profoundly but wisely
religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the childish follies of
false piety, casts herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel of His
blessed Son a path for her steps, and a comfort for her soul. Here is
a picture which warms every English heart, and would bring all this
congregation upon their bended knees before Almighty God to pray it
may be realized. What limits to the glory and happiness of our native
land, if the Creator should in His mercy have placed in the heart of
this Royal Woman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy; and if, giving
them time to expand, and to bless our children's children with her
goodness, He should grant to her a long sojourning upon earth, and
leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken in years? What
glory! what happiness! what joy! what bounty of God! I of course can
only expect to see the beginning of such a splendid period: but, when
I do see it, I shall exclaim with the pious Simeon, 'Lord, now lettest
Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation.'"

We turn now from ecclesiastical to social life. Though Sydney Smith still retained his beautiful Rectory of Combe Florey, and lived there a good deal in the summer, he spent more and more of his year in London, He held that the parallelogram between Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Hyde Park, "enclosed more intelligence and ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than the world had ever collected in such a space before." He frankly admitted that the summer and the country had no charms for him. His sentiments on this head found poetical expression in a parody of _Paradise Lost_. He felt

"As one who, long in rural hamlets pent,
(Where squires and parsons deep potations make,
With lengthen'd tale of fox, or timid hare,
Or antler'd stag, sore vext by hound and horn),
Forth issuing on a winter's morn, to reach
In chaise or coach the London Babylon
Remote, from each thing met conceives delight;--
Or cab, or car, or evening muffin-bell,
Or lamps--each city-sight, each city-sound"

"I do all I can to love the country, and endeavour to believe those
poetical lies which I read in Rogers and others, on the subject; which
said deviations from truth were, by Rogers, all written in St. James's
Place." "I look forward anxiously to the return of the bad weather,
coal fires, and good society in a crowded city." "The country is bad
enough in summer, but in winter it is a fit residence only for beings
doomed to such misery for misdeeds in another state of existence."
"You may depend upon it, all lives lived out of London are mistakes,
more or less grievous--but mistakes." "I shall not be sorry to be in
town. I am rather tired of simple pleasures, bad reasoning, and worse
cookery."

His life in London, free from these kindred evils, was full of enjoyment. He dined out as often as he liked, and entertained his friends at breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. He admits that he "sometimes talked a little," and "liked a hearty laugher,"

"I talk only the nonsense of the moment from the good humour of the
moment, and nothing remains behind."

"I like a little noise and nature, and a large party, very merry and
happy."

Here are some of his invitations:--

"Will you come to a philosophical breakfast on Saturday?--ten o'clock
precisely? Nothing taken for granted! Everything (except the
Thirty-Nine Articles) called in question."

"I have a breakfast of philosophers to-morrow at ten punctually;
muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction. Will you come?"

"Pray come and see me. I will give you very good mutton chops for
luncheon,[115] seasoned with affectionate regard and respect."

"I give two dinners next week to the following persons, whom I
enumerate, as I know Lady Georgiana loves a little gossip. First
dinner--Lady Holland, Eastlake, Lord and Lady Monteagle, Luttrell,
Lord Auckland, Lord Campbell, Lady Stratheden, Lady Dunstanville,
Baring Wall, and Mr. Hope. Second dinner--Lady Charlemont, Lord
Glenelg, Lord and Lady Denman, Lord and Lady Cottenham, Lord and Lady
Langdale, Sir Charles Lemon, Mr. Hibbert, Landseer, and Lord
Clarendon."

This period is marked by one domestic incident which caused the Smiths lasting happiness. In the spring of 1834 their elder daughter, Saba, was married to Dr., afterwards Sir Henry, Holland. Sydney thus expressed his joy:--

"The blessing of God be upon you both, dear children; and be assured
that it makes my old age much happier to have placed my daughter in
the hands of so honourable and amiable a son."

A few years later he wrote from Combe Florey:--

"We expect Saba and Dr. Holland the end of this month. I am in great
hopes we shall have some 'cases': I am keeping three or four simmering
for him. It is enough to break one's heart to see him in the country."

In November 1834, the King dismissed the Whig Government, and sent for Sir Robert Peel. A General Election took place at Christmas. In the spring of 1835 Peel's Government was displaced by a vote of the House of Commons, and a Whig Government was formed again under Lord Melbourne. Henry Labouchere,[116] M.P. for Taunton, accepted office, and thereby vacated his seat. On seeking re-election, he was opposed, unsuccessfully, by Benjamin Disraeli. "The Jew spoke for an hour The boys called out 'Old Clothes' as he came into the town, and offered to sell him sealing-wax and slippers."[117]

As soon as the Election was over, the country relapsed into its normal calm. On the 3rd of June Sydney wrote:--

"We are going through our usual course of jokes and dinners. One
advantage of the country is that a joke once established is good for
ever; it is like the stuff which is denominated _everlasting_, and
used as pantaloons by careful parents for their children."

In the following autumn the Smiths paid a flying visit to France, The crossing from Dover was terrific; but Sydney comforted himself with the reflection that, "as I had so little life to lose, it was of little consequence whether I was drowned, or died, like a resident clergyman, from indigestion."

France gave him the same pleasure as it had always given him.--

"Paris is very full. I look at it with some attention, as I am not
sure I may not end my days in it. I suspect the fifth act of life
should be in great cities: it is there, in the long death of old age,
that a man most forgets himself and his infirmities."

"I care very little about dinners, but I shall not easily forget a
_matelote_ at the Rochers de Cancale, an almond tart at Montreuil, or
a _poulet à la Tartare_ at Grignon's, These are impressions which no
changes in future life can obliterate."

Before the year ended, he was established in London. The remaining ten years of his life saw him, in spite of some bodily infirmities, at the summit of his social fame. An immense proportion of the anecdotes relating to his conversation belong to this period. "It was," wrote Mr. Gladstone in 1879, "in the year 1835 that I met Mr. Sydney Smith for the first time at the table of Mr. Hallam. After dinner Mr. Smith was good enough to converse with me, and he spoke, not of any general changes in the prevailing tone of doctrine, but of the improvement which had then begun to be remarkable in the conduct and character of the clergy. He went back upon what they had been, and said, in his vivid and pointed way of illustration, 'Whenever you meet a clergyman of my age, you may be quite sure he is a bad clergyman.'"[118]

In 1836 the Ecclesiastical Commission was established by Act of Parliament as a permanent institution for the management of business relating to the Church. Its constitution and recommendations were very distasteful to Sydney Smith; and, as time went on, he found it impossible to restrain himself from public criticism. At the beginning of the Session of 1837, he published his "First Letter to Archdeacon Singleton."[119] The Letter begins with an attack on the constitution of the Commission. It was stuffed with Bishops. Deans and Canons and Rectors and Vicars and Curates had no place upon it. The result was that all interests, not episcopal, had been completely overlooked, and that the reforms, though perhaps theoretically sound, were practically unworkable. Further, the reforms had been far too extensive. The plan of making a Central Fund from the proceeds of confiscated Prebends,[120] and enriching the smaller livings with it, was chimerical. The whole income of the Church, equally divided among all its clergy, would only give each man the wages of a nobleman's butler. The true method in all professions was the method of Blanks and Prizes. But for the chance of those Prizes, men of good birth and education would not "go into the Church"; and an uneducated clergy would inevitably become fanatical.--

"You will have a set of ranting, raving Pastors, who will wage-war
against all the innocent pleasures of life; vie with each other in
extravagance of zeal; and plague your heart out with their nonsense
and absurdity. Cribbage must be played in caverns, and sixpenny whist
take refuge in the howling wilderness. In this way low men, doomed to
hopeless poverty and galled by contempt, will endeavour to force
themselves into station and significance."

Then again there was the difficulty of oaths. The property of Cathedrals could only be confiscated at the expense of violated vows.--

"The Archbishop of Canterbury, at his enthronement, takes a solemn
oath that he will maintain the rights and liberties of the Church of
Canterbury; as Chairman, however, of the New Commission, he seizes the
patronage of that Church, takes two thirds of its Revenues, and
abolishes two thirds of its Members. That there is an answer to this I
am very willing to believe, but I cannot at present find out what it
is; and this attack upon the Revenues and Members of Canterbury is not
obedience to an Act of Parliament, but the very Act of Parliament,
which takes away, is recommended, drawn up, and signed by the person
who has sworn he will never take away; and this little apparent
inconsistency is not confined to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but is
shared equally by all the Bishop-Commissioners, who have all (unless I
am grievously mistaken) taken similar oaths for the preservation of
their respective Chapters. It would be more easy to see our way out of
this little embarrassment, if some of the embarrassed had not
unfortunately, in the parliamentary debates on the Catholic Question,
laid the greatest stress upon the King's oath, applauded the sanctity
of the monarch to the skies, rejected all comments, called for the
oath in its plain meaning, and attributed the safety of the English
Church to the solemn vow made by the King at the altar to the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

* * * * *

"Nothing can be more ill-natured among politicians, than to look back
into Hansard's Debates, to see what has been said by particular men
upon particular occasions, and to contrast such speeches with present
opinions--and therefore I forbear to introduce some inviting passages
upon taking oaths in their plain and obvious sense, both in debates on
the Catholic Question and upon that fatal and Mezentian oath which
binds the Irish to the English Church."

The gist of all these reforms, actual and projected, was that the Bishops were enormously increasing their own power and patronage at the expense of the Deans and Chapters. Sydney Smith, as a member of a Chapter, protested, and then the friends of the Bishops cried out that all such protests were indecent, and even perilous.--

"We are told that if we agitate these questions among ourselves, we
shall have the democratic Philistines come down upon us, and sweep us
all away together. Be it so; I am quite ready to be swept away when
the time comes. Everybody has his favourite death: some delight in
apoplexy, and others prefer marasmus. ... I would infinitely rather be
crushed by democrats than, under the plea of the public good, be
mildly and blandly absorbed by Bishops."

With Bishops as a body, and allowing for some notable exceptions, Sydney Smith seems to have had only an imperfect sympathy. He held that they could not be trusted to deal fairly and reasonably with men, subject to their jurisdiction, who dared to maintain independence in thought and action.--

"A good and honest Bishop (I thank God there are many who deserve that
character!) ought to suspect himself, and carefully to watch his own
heart. He is all of a sudden elevated from being a tutor, dining at an
early hour with his pupil (and occasionally, it is believed, on cold
meat), to be a spiritual Lord; he is dressed in a magnificent dress,
decorated with a title, flattered by Chaplains, and surrounded by
little people looking up for the things which he has to give away; and
this often happens to a man who has had no opportunities of seeing the
world, whose parents were in very humble life, and who has given up
all his thoughts to the Frogs of Aristophanes and the Targum of
Onkelos. How is it possible that such a man should not lose his head?
that he should not swell? that lie should not be guilty of a thousand
follies, and worry and tease to death (before he recovers his common
sense) a hundred men as good, and as wise, and as able as himself?"

On all accounts, therefore, both public and private, it was very good for Bishops to hear the voice of candid criticism, and their opportunities of enjoying that advantage were all too rare.--

"Bishops live in high places with high people, or with little people
who depend upon them. They walk delicately, like Agag. They hear only
one sort of conversation, and avoid bold reckless men, as a lady veils
herself from rough breezes."

And for the Whig Government, which was consenting to all these attacks on the Church and the Chapters, Sydney had his parting word of reminiscent rebuke.--

"I neither wish to offend them nor any body else. I consider myself to
be as good a Whig as any amongst them. I was a Whig before many of
them were born--and while some of them were Tories and Waverers.[121]
I have always turned out to fight their battles, and when I saw no
other Clergyman turn out but myself--and this in times before
liberality was well recompensed, and therefore in fashion, and when
the smallest appearance of it seemed to condemn a Churchman to the
grossest obloquy, and the most hopeless poverty. It may suit the
purpose of the Ministers to flatter the Bench; it does not suit mine.
I do not choose in my old age to be tossed as a prey to the Bishops; I
have not deserved this of my Whig friends."

It is perhaps not surprising that the Whig Ministers should have remained impervious to arguments thus enforced. On the 10th of February, Sydney Smith wrote to Lord John Russell (whom he addressed as "My dear John"):--

"You say you are not convinced by my pamphlet I am afraid that I am a
very arrogant person; but I do assure you that, in the fondest moments
of self-conceit, the idea of convincing a Russell that he was wrong
never came across my mind. Euclid would have had a bad chance with you
if you had happened to have formed an opinion that the interior angles
of a triangle were not equal to two right angles. The more poor Euclid
demonstrated, the more you would not have been convinced."

In 1838 Sydney Smith published a second Letter to the same Archdeacon:--

"It is a long time since you heard from me, and in the mean time the
poor Church of England has been trembling from the Bishop who sitteth
upon the throne, to the Curate who rideth upon the hackney horse. I
began writing on the subject in order to avoid bursting from
indignation; and, as it is not my habit to recede, I will go on till
the Church of England is either up or down--semianimous on its back or
vigorous on its legs.... If what I write is liked, so much the better;
but, liked or not liked, sold or not sold, Wilson Crokered or not
Wilson Crokered, I will write."[122]

He now returns to the "Prebends" which the Commissioners propose to confiscate. Some of these, he says, are properties of great value. He instances one which will soon be worth between £40,000 and £60,000 a year. Some of them are held by non-residentiary Prebendaries, who never come near the Cathedral, and who have no duty except to enjoy their incomes. Those prebends Sydney Smith, as a real though temperate reformer, would now surrender, and make from them a fund to enrich poor livings. But for the prebends of the Residentiaries, who perform the daily duties of the Cathedral, he will fight to the death. With splendid courage he asserts that these great estates, held for life by ecclesiastical officers, are as well managed, and as profitably employed, with a view to the general interests of the community, as the lands of any peer or squire.--

"Take, for instance, the Cathedral of Bristol, the whole estates of
which are about equal to keeping a pack of foxhounds. If this had been
in the hands of a country gentleman; instead of Precentor, Succentor,
Bean, and Canons, and Sexton, you would have had huntsman,
whippers-in, dog-feeders, and stoppers of earths; the old squire, full
of foolish opinions and fermented liquids, and a young gentleman, of
gloves, waistcoats, and pantaloons: and how many generations might it
be before the fortuitous concourse of noodles would produce such a man
as Professor Lee,[123] one of the Prebendaries of Bristol, and by far
the most eminent Oriental scholar in Europe."

Then he reverts to his familiar argument that the abolition of these ecclesiastical prizes would lower the social character of the clergy as a body.--

"To get a stall, and to be preceded by men with silver rods, is the
bait which the ambitious squire is perpetually holding out to his
second son.... If such sort of preferments are extinguished, a very
serious evil (as I have often said before) is done to the Church--the
service becomes unpopular, further spoliation is dreaded, the whole
system is considered to be altered and degraded, capital is withdrawn
from the Church, and no one enters into the profession but the sons of
farmers and little tradesmen, who would be footmen if they were not
vicars--or figure on the coach-box if they were not lecturing from the
pulpit.

* * * * *

"If you were to gather a Parliament of Curates on the hottest Sunday
in the year, after all the services, sermons, burials, and baptisms of
the day, were over, and to offer them such increase of salary as would
be produced by the confiscation of the Cathedral property, I am
convinced they would reject the measure, and prefer splendid hope, and
the expectation of good fortune in advanced life, to the trifling
improvement of poverty which such a fund, could afford. Charles James,
of London, was a Curate; the Bishop of Winchester[124] was a Curate;
almost every rose-and-shovel man has been a Curate in his time. All
Curates hope to draw great prizes.

* * * * *

"One of the most foolish circumstances attending this destruction of
Cathedral property is the great sacrifice of the patronage of the
Crown: the Crown gives up eight Prebends of Westminster, two at
Worcester, £1500 per annum at St. Paul's, two Prebends at Bristol, and
a great deal of other preferment all over the kingdom: and this at a
moment when such extraordinary power has been suddenly conferred upon
the people, and when every atom of power and patronage ought to be
husbanded for the Crown. A Prebend of Westminster for my second son
would soften the Catos of Cornhill, and lull the Gracchi of the
Metropolitan Boroughs. Lives there a man so absurd, as to suppose that
Government can be carried on without those gentle allurements? You may
as well attempt to poultice off the humps of a camel's back as to cure
mankind of these little corruptions.

"I am terribly alarmed by a committee of Cathedrals now sitting in
London, and planning a petition to the Legislature to be heard by
counsel. They will take such high ground, and talk a language so
utterly at variance with the feelings of the age about Church
Property, that I am much afraid they will do more harm than good. In
the time of Lord George Gordon's riots, the Guards said they did not
care for the mob, if the Gentlemen Volunteers behind would be so good
as not to hold their muskets in such a dangerous manner. I don't care
for popular clamour, and think it might now be defied; but I confess
the Gentleman Volunteers alarm me. They have unfortunately, too,
collected their addresses, and published them in a single
volume!!!"[125]

And now he returns to one of the prominent topics of his first Letter, and reminds the Archbishop of Canterbury that he has sworn to protect the rights and possessions of the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury.--

"A friend of mine has suggested to me that his Grace has perhaps
forgotten the oath; but this cannot be, for the first Protestant in
Europe of course makes a memorandum in his pocket-book of all the
oaths he takes to do, or to abstain. The oath, however, may be less
present to the Archbishop's memory, from the fact of his not having
taken the oath in person, but by the medium of a gentleman sent down
by the coach to take it for him--a practice which, though I believe it
to have been long established in the Church, surprised me, I confess,
not a little. A proxy to vote, if you please--a proxy to consent to
arrangements of estates if wanted; but a proxy sent down in the
Canterbury Ply, to take the Creator to witness that the Archbishop,
detained in town by business or pleasure, will never violate that
foundation of piety over which he presides--all this seems to me an
act of the most extraordinary indolence ever recorded in history. If
an Ecclesiastic, not a Bishop, may express any opinion on the reforms
of the Church, I recommend that Archbishops and Bishops should take no
more oaths by proxy; but, as they do not wait upon the Sovereign or
the Prime Minister, or even any of the Cabinet, by proxy, that they
should also perform all religious acts in their own person ... I have
been informed, though I will not answer for the accuracy of the
information, that this vicarious oath is likely to produce, a scene
which would have puzzled the _Dudor Dubitantiim._ The attorney who
took the oath for the Archbishop is, they say, seized with religious
horrors at the approaching confiscation of Canterbury property, and
has in vain tendered back his 6s. 8d. for taking the oath. The
Archbishop refuses to accept it; and feeling himself light and
disencumbered, wisely keeps the saddle upon the back of the writhing
and agonized scrivener. I have talked it over with several Clergymen,
and the general opinion is, that the scrivener will suffer."

And next lie turns his attention to a foolish Bishop who has argued in a pamphlet that, if a fund for the improvement of poor benefices was to be created, it must be drawn from the property of the Cathedrals, because the Bishops' incomes had already been pruned.

"This is very good Episcopal reasoning; but is it true? The Bishops
and Commissioners wanted a fund to endow small Livings; they did not
touch a farthing of their own incomes, only distributed them a little
more equally; and proceeded lustily at once to confiscate Cathedral
Property. But why was it necessary, if the fund for small Livings was
such a paramount consideration, that the future Archbishops of
Canterbury should be left with two palaces, and £15,000 per annum? Why
is every future Bishop of London to have a palace in Fulham, a house
in St. James's Square, and £10,000 a year? Could not all the Episcopal
functions be carried on well and effectually with the half of these
incomes? Is it necessary that the Archbishop of Canterbury should give
feasts to Aristocratic London; and that the domestics of the Prelacy
should stand with swords and bag-wigs round pig, and turkey, and
venison, to defend, as it were, the Orthodox gastronome from the
fierce Unitarian, the fell Baptist, and all the famished children of
Dissent? I don't object to all this; because I am sure that the method
of prizes and blanks is the best method of supporting a Church which
must be considered as very slenderly endowed, if the whole were
equally divided among the parishes; but if my opinion were
different--if I thought the important improvement was to equalize
preferment in the English Church--that such a measure was not the one
thing foolish, but the one thing needful--I should take care, as a
mitred Commissioner, to reduce my own species of preferment to the
narrowest limits, before I proceeded to confiscate the property of any
other grade of the Church.... Frequently did Lord John meet the
destroying Bishops; much did he commend their daily heap of ruins;
sweetly did they smile on each other, and much charming talk was there
of meteorology and catarrh, and the particular Cathedral they were
pulling down at each period; till one fine day the Home
Secretary,[126] with a voice more bland, and a look more ardently
affectionate, than that which the masculine mouse bestows on his
nibbling female, informed them that the Government meant to take all
the Church property into their own hands, to pay the rates out of it
and deliver the residue to the rightful possessors. Such an effect,
they say, was never before produced by a _coup de théâtre_. The
Commission was separated in an instant, London clenched his fist.
Canterbury was hurried out by his chaplains, and put into a warm bed.
A solemn vacancy spread itself over the face of Gloucester. Lincoln
was taken out in strong hysterics. What a noble scene Serjeant
Talfourd[127] would have made of all this? Why are such talents wasted
on _Ion_ and _The Athenian Captive_?"

And then Sydney Smith went on to a stricture on his friend Lord John Russell, which has been quoted in a thousand forms from that day to this. It is only fair both to the critic and to the criticized that this stricture should be read in connexion with its history.

When, in November 1834, Lord Althorp's removal to the House of Lords vacated the Leadership of the House of Commons, Lord Melbourne and the rest of the Cabinet decided that Lord John must take it. He doubted his fitness for the post, but said that even if he were called to take command of the Channel Fleet, he supposed he must obey the call and do his best, Sydney Smith heard of this modest and patriotic saying, and wove it into his most celebrated passage,--

"There is not a better man in England than Lord John Russell; but his
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."

Once again, in 1839, Sydney Smith returned to the same subject through the same medium. He rejoiced in great improvements which had been introduced into the measures of the Commissioners, claimed some credit for these improvements, and pointed out that they materially affected the well-being of the parochial clergy. But, as regards the dealings of the Commission with Chapters and Cathedrals, he remains convinced that they were rash, foolish, and dangerous to the Church, "Milton asked where the nymphs were when Lycidas perished? I ask where the Bishops are when the remorseless deep is closing over the head of their beloved Establishment."

One of the Bishops had emerged from silence and security to rebuke the correspondent of Archdeacon Singleton, and now he had his reward.--

"You must have read an attack upon me by the Bishop of
Gloucester,[128] in the course of which he says that I have not been
appointed to my situation as Canon of St. Paul's for my piety and
learning but because I am a scoffer and a jester. Is not this rather
strong for a Bishop, and does it not appear to you, Mr. Archdeacon, as
rather too close an imitation of that language which is used in the
apostolic occupation of trafficking in fish? Whether I have been
appointed for my piety or not, must depend upon what this poor man
means by piety. He means by that word, of course, a defence of all the
tyrannical and oppressive abuses of the Church which have been swept
away within the last fifteen or twenty years of my life; the
Corporation and Test Acts; the Penal Laws against the Catholics; the
Compulsory Marriages of Dissenters, and all those disabling and
disqualifying laws which were the disgrace of our Church, and which he
has always looked up to as the consummation of human wisdom. If piety
consisted in the defence of these--if it was impious to struggle for
their abrogation, I have indeed led an ungodly life.... To read,
however, his Lordship a lesson of good manners, I had prepared for him
a chastisement which would have been echoed from the _Segrave_ who
banqueteth in the castle,[129] to the idiot who spitteth over the
bridge at Gloucester."

But the Bishop had made a rather misplaced appeal for compassion, on account of his failing eyesight; and Sydney, flinging him contemptuously on one side, passed on to the more formidable Bishop of London.--