FOSTON--"PERSECUTING BISHOPS"--BENCH AND BAR
At the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth,
the most serious evil which beset the Church of England was the system of
Pluralities and Non-Residence. A prosperous clergyman might hold
half-a-dozen separate preferments, and, as long as he paid curates to
perform the irreducible minimum of public duty, he need never show his face
inside his deserted parishes. The ecclesiastical literature of the time
abounds in quaint illustrations of the equanimity with which this system,
and all its attendant evils, was regarded even by respectable and
conscientious men. Thomas Newton, the commentator on Prophecy, was Dean of
St. Paul's as well as Bishop of Bristol, and, before he became a bishop,
held a living in the City, a Prebend of Westminster, the Precentorship of
York, the Lectureship of St. George's, Hanover Square, and "the genteel
office of Sub-Almoner." Richard Watson (who is believed never to have set
foot in his diocese) was Bishop of Llandaff and Archdeacon of Ely, and drew
the tithes of sixteen parishes. William Van Mildert, afterwards Bishop of
Durham, was Rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, and also held the living
of Farningmam, near Sevenoaks, "as an agreeable retreat within a convenient
distance from town." Richard Valpy was Head Master of Reading School, and
Rector of Stradishall in Suffolk. George Butler, afterwards Dean of
Peterborough, was Head Master of Harrow and Rector of Gayton in
Northamptonshire. Nearly every bishop had a living together with his see.
The valuable Rectory of Stanhope in Durham was held by four successive
bishops. Henry Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, was Rector of St. George's,
Hanover Square. George Pelham, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Sussex,
and Christopher Bethell, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Yorkshire.
When Sydney Smith was appointed to the rectory of Foston, there had been no
resident Rector since the reign of Charles II. The churches of non-resident
Rectors were commonly served by what were called "galloping parsons," who
rattled through the services required by law, riding at full speed from
parish to parish, so as to serve perhaps three churches on one Sunday. In
many places the Holy Communion was celebrated only three times a year. At
Alderley, before Edward Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, became
Rector there, "the clerk used to go to the churchyard stile to see whether
there were any more coming to church, for there were seldom enough to make
a congregation. The former Rector used to boast that he had never set foot
in a sick person's cottage." When the shepherds thus deserted and starved
their flocks, it was only natural that the sheep betook themselves to every
form of schism, irreligion, and immorality. To remedy these evils, Spencer
Perceval, whose keen interest in the affairs of the Church had a curiously
irritating effect on Sydney Smith, took in hand to pass the Clergy
Residence Bill, and the Bill became an Act in 1803. In 1808 a new
Archbishop[60] was enthroned at York. He immediately began to put the Act
in force, and summoned Sydney Smith from the joys of London to the
austerities of Foston-le-Clay. The choice lay between complying and
resigning, for no exchange of livings seemed practicable. On the 8th of
October 1808, Sydney wrote to Lady Holland--"My lot is now cast, and my
heritage fixed--most probably. But you may choose to make me a bishop, and,
if you do, I think I shall never do you discredit; for I believe it is out
of the power of lawn and velvet, and the crisp hair of dead men fashioned
into a wig,[61] to make me a dishonest man."
Two months later he wrote--"I have bought a book about drilling beans, and
a greyhound puppy for the Malton Meeting. It is thought I shall be an
eminent rural character." The expense of removing his family and furniture
from London to Yorkshire was considerable, so he published two volumes of
sermons and paid for the journey with the £200 which he received for them.
The rectory-house at Foston was ruinous and uninhabitable, and it was
necessary to rebuild it. Meanwhile, the Rector hired a house some way off,
in the village of Heslington, and there he established himself on the 21st
of June 1809, "two hundred miles," as he ruefully remarked, "from London."
Three days later he wrote to Lady Holland that he had laid down two rules
for his own guidance in the country:--
"1. Not to smite the partridge; for, if I fed the poor, and comforted
the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth,
if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the Church, it
will be the strong propensity to shooting for which the clergy are
remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more
harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and
Rousseau.[62]
"2. I mean to come to town once a year, though of that, I suppose, I
shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing weaker and weaker, and my
acquaintances gradually falling off. I shall by this time have taken
myself again to shy tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as
I was before) your abomination.... Mrs. Sydney is all rural bustle,
impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs; I wait patiently,
knowing all will come in due season."
To Jeffrey he wrote on the 3rd of September:--
"Instead of being unamused by trifles, I am, as I well knew I should
be, amused by them a great deal too much. I feel an ungovernable
interest about my horses, my pigs, and my plants. I am forced, and
always was forced, to task myself up into an interest for any higher
objects."
Six days later he wrote to Lady Holland:--
"I hear you laugh at me for being happy in the country, and upon this
I have a few words to say. In the first place, whether one lives or
dies I hold, and have always held, to be of infinitely less moment
than is generally supposed. But, if life is to be, then it is common
sense to amuse yourself with the best you can find where you happen to
be placed. I am not leading precisely the life I should choose, but
that which (all things considered, as well as I could consider them)
appeared to me to be the most eligible. I am resolved, therefore, to
like it, and to reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to
feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post, of being
thrown away, and being desolate, and such-like trash. I am prepared,
therefore, either way. If the chances of life ever enable me to
emerge, I will show you that I have not been wholly occupied by small
and sordid pursuits. If (as the greater probability) I am come to the
end of my career, I give myself quietly up to horticulture, etc. In
short, if it be my lot to crawl, I will crawl contentedly; if to fly,
I will fly with alacrity; but, as long as I can possibly avoid it, I
will never be unhappy. If, with a pleasant wife, three children, and
many friends who wish me well, I cannot be happy, I am a very silly,
foolish fellow, and what becomes of me is of very little consequence."
If ample occupation be, as some strenuous moralists assert, the true secret
of happiness, Sydney Smith had plenty to make him happy during the early
years of his life in Yorkshire. Here is his own account of his
translation:--
"A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, I was suddenly caught up
by the Archbishop of York, and transported to my living in Yorkshire,
where there had not been a resident clergyman for a hundred and fifty
years. Fresh from London, and not knowing a turnip from a carrot, I
was compelled to farm three hundred acres, and without capital to
build a Parsonage House."
He was his own architect, his own builder, and his own clerk of the works.
The cost of building a house, with borrowed money, made him a very poor man
for several years.
"I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford to
send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate my
girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer, as I could
not let my land.... Added to all these domestic cares, I was village
parson, village doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and
Edinburgh Reviewer; so you see I had not much time on my hands to
regret London."
Every one has heard of "Bunch," the "little garden-girl, shaped like a
milestone," who "became the best butler in the county"; of the gaunt
riding-horse "Calamity," which "flung me over his head into a neighbouring
parish, as if I had been a shuttlecock, and I felt grateful that it was not
into a neighbouring planet"; and of the ancient carriage called "the
Immortal," which was so well known on the road that "the village-boys
cheered it and the village-dogs barked at it"--and surely remembrance
should be made, amid this goodly caravan, of the four draught-oxen, Tug and
Lug, Haul and Crawl, even though "Tug and Lug took to fainting, and
required buckets of salvolatile, and Haul and Crawl to lie down in the
mud."
When Sydney Smith says that he was "village doctor," he reminds us of his
lifelong fancy for dabbling in medicine. When his daughter, not six months
old, was attacked by croup, he gave her in twenty-four hours "32 grains of
calomel, besides bleeding, blistering, and emetics." When he was called to
baptize a sick baby, he seized the opportunity of giving it a dose of
castor oil. One day he writes--
"I am performing miracles in my parish with garlic for
whooping-cough."
Another:--
"We conquered the whooping-cough here with a pennyworth of salt of
tartar, after having filled them with the expensive poisons of
Halford.[63] What an odd thing that such a specific should not be more
known!"
"I attended two of my children through a good stout fever of the
typhus kind without ever calling in an apothecary, but for one day. I
depended upon blessed antimony, and watched anxiously for the time of
giving bark."
"Douglas[64] alarmed us the other night with the Croup. I darted into
him all the mineral and vegetable resources of my shop, cravatted his
throat with blisters and fringed it with leeches, and set him in five
or six hours to playing marbles, breathing gently and inaudibly."
After an unhealthy winter he writes:--
"Our evils have been want of water, and scarlet-fever in our village;
where, in three quarters of a year, we have buried fifteen, instead of
one per annum. You will naturally suppose I have killed all these
people by doctoring them; but scarlet-fever awes me, and is above my
aim. I leave it to the professional and graduated homicides."[65]
In this connexion it is natural to cite the lines on "The Poetical Medicine
Chest,"[66] which Mr. Stuart Reid has printed. They contain some excellent
advice about the drugs which a mother should provide for the use of a young
family, and end, majestically, thus:--
"Spare not in Eastern blasts, when babies die,
The wholesome rigour of the Spanish Fly.
From timely torture seek thy infant's rest,
And spread the poison on his labouring breast.
And so, fair lady, when in evil hour
Less prudent mothers mourn some faded flower,
Six Howards valiant, and six Howards fair
Shall live, and love thee, and reward thy care."
But parochial and domestic concerns could not altogether divert Sydney
Smith's mind from the strife of politics. He watched the turmoil from afar.
On the 1st of January 1813, he wrote to his friend John Allen, who was more
sanguine than himself about the prospects of the Whigs:--
"Everything is fast setting in for arbitrary power. The Court will
grow bolder and bolder, a struggle will commence, and, if it ends as I
wish, there will be Whigs again.... But when these things come to
pass, you will no longer be a Warden,[67] but a brown and impalpable
powder in the tombs of Dulwich. In the meantime, enough of liberty
will remain to make our old-age tolerably comfortable; and to your
last gasp you will remain in the perennial and pleasing delusion that
the Whigs are coming in, and will expire mistaking the officiating
clergyman for a King's Messenger."
While the new Rectory House at Foston was building, the Rector was wholly
engrossed in the work. "I live," he wrote, "trowel in hand. My whole soul
is filled up by lath and plaster." He laid the foundation-stone in June
1813, and took possession of the completed edifice in March 1814. "My house
was considered the ugliest in the county, but all admitted that it was one
of the most comfortable."[68] It remains to the present day pretty much as
Sydney Smith left it. A room on the ground-floor, next to the drawing-room,
served the threefold purposes of study, dispensary, and justice-room. As a
rule, he wrote his sermons and his articles for the _Edinburgh_ in the
drawing-room, not heeding the conversation of family and visitors; but in
the "study" he dosed his parishioners; and here, having been made a Justice
of the Peace, he administered mercy to poachers. He hated the Game-Laws as
they stood, and it stirred his honest wrath to reflect that "for every ten
pheasants which fluttered in the wood, one English peasant was rotting in
gaol." So strong was his belief in the contaminating effects of a
prisoner's life that he never, if he could help it, would commit a boy or
girl to gaol. He sought permission to accompany Mrs. Fry on one of her
visits to Newgate, and spoke of her ministry there as "the most solemn, the
most Christian, the most affecting, which any human eye ever
witnessed."[69] A pleasing trait of his incumbency at Foston was the
creation of allotment-gardens for the poor. He divided several acres of the
glebe into sixteenths, and let them, at a low rent, to the villagers. Each
allotment was just big enough to supply a cottage with potatoes, and to
support a pig. Cheap food for the poor was another of his excellent
hobbies. His Common-Place Book contains receipts for nourishing soups made
of rice and peas and flavoured with ox-cheek. He notes that more than
thirty people were comfortably fed with these concoctions at a penny a
head. After a bad harvest he and his family lived, like the labourers round
them, on unleavened cakes made from the damaged flour of the sprouted
wheat. His daughter writes--"The luxury of returning to bread again can
hardly be imagined by those who have never been deprived of it."
But, in spite of occasional difficulties of this description, which were
always faced and overcome with invincible good-humour, Sydney Smith's
fifteen years at Foston were happily and profitably spent. He was in the
fulness of his physical and intellectual vigour. He said of himself, "I am
a rough writer of Sermons," but his energy in delivering them awoke the
admiration of his sturdy flock.--
"When I began to thump the cushion of my pulpit, on first coming to
Foston, as is my wont when I preach, the accumulated dust of a hundred
and fifty years made such a cloud, that for some minutes I lost sight
of my congregation."[70]
His Bible-class for boys was affectionately remembered sixty years
afterwards.[71] By his constant contributions to the _Edinburgh_, he
was both helping forward the great causes in which he most earnestly
believed, and establishing his own fame. Good health, cheerfulness, and
contentment reigned in the Rectory, which might well have been called "A
Temple of Industrious Peace."[72]
In spite of some small irregularities and oddities in the furniture of the
house and the arrangements of the establishment--all of which the Rector
habitually and humorously exaggerated--the Rectory was an extremely
comfortable home. It was so constructed as to be full of air, light, and
warmth. The Rector said of it:--
"We are about equal to a second-rate inn, as Mrs. Sydney says; but I
think myself we are equal to any inn on the North Road, except
Ferrybridge."
The larder of this "second-rate inn" was pleasantly supplied by the
kindness of faithful friends.
"I am very much obliged to you for sending me the pheasants. One of my
numerous infirmities is a love of eating pheasants."--"Many thanks for
two fine Gallicia hams; but, as for boiling them in _wine_, I am
not as yet high enough in the Church for that; so they must do the
best they can in water."--"Lord Tankerville has sent me a whole buck;
this necessarily takes up a good deal of my time. Venison is an
interesting subject, which is deemed among the clergy a professional
one."--"Your grouse are not come by this day's mail, but I suppose
they will come to-morrow. Even the rumour of grouse is
agreeable."--"Lord Lauderdale has sent me two hundred and thirty
pounds of salt fish."--"You have no idea what a number of handsome
things were said of you when your six partridges were consumed to-day.
Wit, literature, and polished manners were ascribed to you--some good
quality for each bird."--"What is real piety? What is true attachment
to the Church? How are these fine feelings best evinced? The answer is
plain--by sending strawberries to a clergyman. Many thanks."
To the hostelry, thus well victualled, and called by its owner "The
Rector's Head," many interesting visitors found their way. Lord and Lady
Holland, Miss Fox, Miss Vernon, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Humphry Davy,
Samuel Rogers, Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, and Francis Jeffrey were among the
earliest guests. "Mrs. Sydney was dreadfully alarmed about her side-dishes
the first time Luttrell[73] paid us a visit, and grew pale as the covers
were lifted; but they stood the test. Luttrell tasted and praised."
The neighbours of whom the Smiths saw most were Lord and Lady Carlisle,[74]
who drove over from Castle Howard[75] in a coach-and-four with outriders,
and were upset in a ploughed field; their son and daughter-in-law, Lord and
Lady Georgiana Morpeth, who with their children made "no mean part of the
population of Yorkshire"; and the Archbishop of York, who became one of the
Smiths' kindest and most faithful friends. Every year Sydney paid a visit
to London, receiving the warmest of welcomes from all his old associates.
In 1821 he revisited his friends at Edinburgh, and going or coming he
visited Lord Grey at Howick, Lord Tankerville at Chillingham, Lord
Lauderdale at Dunbar, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards Lord Durham, at Lambton.
At Chillingham he duly admired the beef supplied by the famous herd of wild
cattle, but he admired still more the magnificent novelty of gas at
Lambton.--
"What use of wealth so luxurious and delightful as to light your house
with gas? What folly to have a diamond necklace or a Correggio, and
not to light your house with gas! The splendour and glory of Lambton
Hall make all other houses mean. How pitiful to submit to a
farthing-candle existence, when science puts such intense
gratification within your reach! Dear lady, spend all your fortune in
a gas-apparatus. Better to eat dry bread by the splendour of gas, than
to dine on wild beef with wax candles!"
Another friend whom the Smiths visited regularly was Mr., afterwards Sir
George, Philips, an opulent cotton-spinner of Manchester. Once, when
staying with Philips, Sydney undertook to preach a Charity Sermon in
Prestwich Church, and with reference to this he wrote in the previous week;
"I desire to make three or four hundred weavers cry, which it is impossible
to do since the late rise in cottons."
Writing from Philips's house in 1820 he says:--
"Philips doubles his capital twice a week. We talk much of cotton,
more of the fine arts, as he has lately returned from Italy, and
purchased some pictures which were sent out from Piccadilly on purpose
to intercept him."
His daughter tells us that, during these years of small income and large
expenses, her father never bought any books. He had brought a small but
serviceable library with him from London, and his friends made additions to
it from time to time. He wrote to a friend in 1810:--
"I have read, since I saw you, Burke's works, some books of Homer,
Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, Godwin's
_Enquirer_, and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have scarcely
looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry."
Here are some of the plans which, year by year, he laid down for the
regulation of his studies:--
"Translate every day ten lines of the _De Officiis_, and
re-translate into Latin. Five chapters of Greek Testament. Theological
studies. Plato's _Apology for Socrates_; Horace's _Epodes, Epistles,
Satires_, and _Ars Poetica_."
"Write sermons and reviews, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Read,
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Write ten lines of Latin on writing days.
Read five chapters of Greek Testament on reading days. For morning
reading, either Polybius, or Diodorus Siculus, or some tracts of
Xenophon or Plato; and for Latin, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius.
"Monday: write, morning; read Tasso, evening. Tuesday: Latin or Greek,
morning; evening, theology. Wednesday, same as Monday. Friday, ditto.
Thursday and Saturday, same as Tuesday. Read every day a chapter in
Greek Testament, and translate ten lines of Latin. Good books to
read:--Terrasson's _History of Roman Jurisprudence_; Bishop of
Chester's _Records of the Creation_."
His daughter says that he read with great rapidity. "He galloped through
the pages so rapidly that we often laughed at him when he shut up a thick
quarto as his morning's work. 'Cross-examine me, then,' he said; and we
generally found that he knew all that was worth knowing in it." Here,
obviously, is the stuff out of which reviewers are made, and this was the
very zenith of Sydney Smith's power and usefulness in the _Edinburgh
Review_.
He wrote as quickly as he read. When once he had amassed the necessary
facts, he sate down amid all the distracting sights and sounds of a
drawing-room crowded with femininity, and wrote at full speed, without
deliberations, embellishments, or erasures; only betraying by the movements
of his expressive face his amusement and interest "as fresh images came
clustering round his pen." As soon as the essay was finished, he would
throw it on the table, saying to his wife, "There, Kate, just look it
over--dot the _i_'s and cross the _t_'s;" and went out for his walk. It
should be added that his writing was singularly difficult to read, that he
was very infirm about spelling proper names, and that he was exceptionally
careless in correcting his proofs.
Of those essays which he subsequently reprinted, as judging them most
worthy of preservation, I see that by 1821 he had written fifty. Among
these were such masterpieces of humour and argument as "Edgeworth on
Bulls," "Methodism," "Indian Missions," "Hannah More," "Public Schools,"
"America," "Game-Laws" and "Botany Bay." On the 19th of May 1820, he wrote,
"I found in London both my articles very popular--upon the Poor-Laws and
America. The passage on Taxation had great success."[76] Some of these
papers will be considered separately, when we come to discuss his style and
his opinions; but space must here be found for an unrivalled specimen of
his controversial method, which belongs to the year 1822. It is called
"Persecuting Bishops." "Is _Bishops_ in that title a nominative or an
accusative?" grimly inquired a living prelate, when the present writer was
extolling the essay so named. It is a nominative; and perhaps the exacter
title would have been "A Persecuting Bishop."
Herbert Marsh[77] was Second Wrangler in 1779, Fellow of St. John's
College, Cambridge, Margaret Professor of Divinity, Bishop of Llandaff from
1816 to 1819, and of Peterborough from 1819 till his death. He was a "High
Churchman of the old school"--perhaps the most unpleasant type of
theologian in Christendom. We know, from the Life of Father "Ignatius"
Spencer,[78] that Bishop Marsh played whist with his candidates for Orders
on the eve of the ordination, and all that we read about him beautifully
illustrates that tone of "quiet worldliness" which Dean Church described as
the characteristic of the English clergy in the earlier part of the
nineteenth century. But what he lacked in personal devotion he made up (as
some have done since his day) by furious hostility to spiritual and
religious enthusiasm in others. He opposed the civil claims alike of Roman
Catholics and of Dissenters. He attacked the Bible Society. He denounced
Charles Simeon. He insulted Isaac Milner; and he determined to purge his
diocese of Evangelicalism (which, oddly enough, he seems to have identified
with Calvinism). His manly resolve to stifle religious earnestness
culminated in the year 1820, when he drew up a set of eighty-seven
questions, which he proposed to every candidate for Orders, and to every
clergyman who sought his license to officiate. Failure to answer these
questions to the Bishop's satisfaction was to be punished by exclusion from
the diocese of Peterborough. Happily, the Evangelical clergy of that period
was very little disposed to sit down under Episcopal tyranny. The Bishop's
set of questions was met by a hailstorm of pamphlets. Petitions for redress
were poured into the House of Lords. The Bishop was forced into the open,
and constrained to make the best defence he could in a published speech. In
November 1822, Sydney Smith, in the _Edinburgh Review_, came to the
assistance of his brother-clergy against the high-handed tyranny of the
Persecuting Bishop.
The reviewer begins by giving the Bishop credit for good intentions; but
maintains that his conduct has been--
"singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and in its effects (though
not in its intentions) very oppressive and vexatious to the clergy....
We cannot believe that we are doing wrong in ranging ourselves on the
weaker side, in the cause of propriety and justice. The Mitre protects
its wearer from indignity; but it does not secure impunity."
After this preface Sydney Smith goes on to develop his argument against the
Bishop, and he starts with the highly reasonable proposition that a man is
presumably wrong when all his friends, whose habits and interests would
naturally lead them to side with him, think him wrong.--
"If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the apothecary, the
druggist, and the physician all called upon him to abandon his
philocathartic propensities--if he were to gratify his convivial
habits till the landlord demurred and the waiter shook his head--we
should naturally imagine that advice so disinterested was not given
before it was wanted."
The Bishop of Peterborough has all his brother-bishops against him, though
they certainly love power as well as he. Not one will defend him in debate;
not one will allege that he has acted or would act as Peterborough has
acted.
Then, again, the bishop who refuses to license a curate unless he
satisfactorily answers Eighty-Seven Questions, thereby puts himself in
opposition to the bishop who ordained the curate. One standard of orthodoxy
is established in one diocese; another in another. The theological system
of the Church becomes local and arbitrary instead of national and fixed.--
"If a man is a captain in the army in one part of England, he is a
captain in all. The general who commands north of the Tweed does not
say, 'You shall never appear in my district, or exercise the functions
of an officer, if you do not answer eighty-seven questions on the art
of war, according to my notions.' The same officer who commands a ship
of the line in the Mediterranean is considered as equal to the same
office in the North Seas. _The Sixth Commandment is suspended by one
medical diploma from the North of England to the South_.[79] But,
by the new system of interrogation, a man may be admitted into Orders
at Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, readmitted at Buckden, kicked out as
a Calvinist at Witham Common, and hailed as an ardent Arminian on his
arrival at York."
The Bishop's reply to the charges brought against him evinces surprise that
any one should have the hardihood to criticize or to resist him; and yet,
the reviewer asks, to what purpose has he read his ecclesiastical history,
if he expects anything except the most strenuous opposition to his
tyranny?--
"Does he think that every sturdy Supralapsarian bullock whom he tries
to sacrifice to the Genius of Orthodoxy will not kick, and push, and
toss; that he will not, if he can, shake the axe from his neck, and
hurl his mitred butcher into the air? We know these men fully as well
as the Bishop; he has not a chance of success against them. They will
ravage, roar, and rush till the very chaplains, and the Masters and
Misses Peterborough, request his lordship to desist. He is raising a
storm in the English Church of which he has not the slightest
conception, and which will end, as it ought to end, in his lordship's
disgrace and defeat."
Then the reviewer goes on to urge that discretion and common sense, good
nature and good manners, are qualities far more valuable in bishops than
any "vigilance of inquisition." Prelates of the type of Bishop Marsh are
the most dangerous enemies of the Establishment which they profess to
serve.--
"Six such Bishops, multiplied by eighty-seven, and working with five
hundred and twenty-two questions, would fetch everything to the ground
in six months. But what if it pleased Divine Providence to afflict
every prelate with the spirit of putting eighty-seven questions, and
the two Archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, and the
Bishop of Sodor and Man with the spirit of putting forty-three
questions? There would then be a grand total of two thousand three
hundred and thirty-five interrogations flying about the English
Church, and sorely vexed would be the land with Question and
Answer.... If eighty-seven questions are assumed to be necessary by
one bishop, eight hundred may be considered as the minimum of
interrogation by another. When once the ancient faith-marks of the
Church are lost sight of and despised, any misled theologian may
launch out on the boundless sea of polemical vexation."
The Bishop's main line of defence, when challenged in the House of Lords,
was that he had a legal right to do what he had done. This was not
disputed. "A man may persevere in doing what he has a right to do till the
Chancellor shuts him up in Bedlam, or till the mob pelts him as he passes."
But the reviewer reminds him that he has no similar right as against
clergymen presented to benefices in his diocese. They are protected by the
patron's action of _Quare Impedit_; and all considerations of honour,
decency, and common sense should restrain the Bishop from "letting himself
loose against the working man of God," and enforcing against the curate a
system of inquisition which he dare not apply to the incumbent.--
"Prelates are fond of talking about _my_ see, _my_ clergy,
_my_ diocese, as if these things belonged to them as their pigs
and dogs belonged to them. They forget that the clergy, the diocese,
and the bishops themselves, all exist only for the public good; that
the public are a third and principal party in the whole concern. It is
not simply the tormenting bishop against the tormented curate; but the
public against the system of tormenting, as tending to bring scandal
upon religion and religious men. By the late alteration in the
laws,[80] the Labourers in the vineyard are given up to the power of
the Inspector of the vineyard. If he has the meanness and malice to do
so, an Inspector may worry and plague to death any Labourer against
whom he may have conceived an antipathy.... Men of very small incomes
have often very acute feelings, and a curate trod on feels a pang as
great as a bishop refuted."
Another of the Bishop's ways of defending himself was to boast that, in
spite of all his interrogations, he has actually excluded only two curates
from his diocese: and this boast supplies the reviewer with one of his best
apologues. "So the Emperor of Hayti boasted that he had only cut off two
persons' heads for disagreeable behaviour at his table. In spite of the
paucity of the visitors executed, the example operated as a considerable
impediment to conversation; and the intensity of the punishment was found
to be a full compensation for its rarity."
In conclusion, the reviewer says:--"Now we have done with the Bishop....
Our only object in meddling with the question is to restrain the arm of
Power within the limits of moderation and justice--one of the great objects
which first led to the establishment of this journal, and which, we hope,
will always continue to characterize its efforts."
To this period also belong two splendid discourses on the principles of
Christian Justice, which Sydney Smith, as Chaplain to the High Sheriff,
preached in York Minster at the Spring and Summer Assizes of 1824. The
first is styled "The Judge that smites contrary to the Law."[81]
At the outset, the preacher thus defines his ground:--
"I take these words of St. Paul as a condemnation of that man who
smites contrary to the law; as a praise of that man who judges
according to the law; as a religious theme upon the importance of
human Justice to the happiness of mankind: and, if it be that theme,
it is appropriate to this place, and to the solemn public duties of
the past and the ensuing week, over which some here present will
preside, at which many here present will assist, and which almost all
here present will witness."
A Christian Judge in a free land must sedulously guard himself against the
entanglements of Party. He must be careful to maintain his independence by
seeking no promotion and asking no favours from those who govern. It may
often be his duty to stand between the governors and the governed, and in
that case his hopes of advantage may be found on one side, and his sense of
duty on another. At such a crisis he is trebly armed, if he is able from
his heart to say--"I have vowed a vow before God. I have put on the robe of
justice. Farewell avarice, farewell ambition. Pass me who will, slight me
who will, I will live henceforward only for the great duties of life. My
business is on earth. My hope and my reward are with God."
"He who takes the office of a Judge as it now exists in this country,
takes in his hands a splendid gem, good and glorious, perfect and
pure. Shall he give it up mutilated, shall he mar it, shall he darken
it, shall it emit no light, shall it be valued at no price, shall it
excite no wonder? Shall he find it a diamond, shall he leave it a
stone? What shall we say to the man who would wilfully destroy with
fire the magnificent temple of God, in which I am now preaching? Far
worse is he who ruins the moral edifices of the world, which time and
toil, and many prayers to God, and many sufferings of men, have
reared; who puts out the light of the times in which he lives, and
leaves us to wander amid the darkness of corruption and the desolation
of sin. There may be, there probably is, in this church, some young
man who may hereafter fill the office of an English Judge, when the
greater part of those who hear me are dead, and mingled with the dust
of the grave. Let him remember my words, and let them form and fashion
his spirit: he cannot tell in what dangerous and awful times he may be
placed; but as a mariner looks to his compass in the calm, and looks
to his compass in the storm, and never keeps his eyes off his compass,
so in every vicissitude of a judicial life, deciding for the people,
deciding against the people, protecting the just rights of kings, or
restraining their unlawful ambition, let him ever cling to that pure,
exalted, and Christian independence, which towers over the little
motives of life; which no hope of favour can influence, which no
effort of power can control.
"A Christian Judge in a free country should respect, on every
occasion, those popular institutions of Justice, which were intended
for his control, and for our security. To see humble men collected
accidentally from the neighbourhood, treated with tenderness and
courtesy by supreme magistrates of deep learning and practised
understanding, from whose views they are perhaps at that moment
differing, and whose directions they do not choose to follow; to see
at such times every disposition to warmth restrained, and every
tendency to contemptuous feeling kept back; to witness the submission
of the great and wise, not when it is extorted by necessity, but when
it is practised with willingness and grace, is a spectacle which is
very grateful to Englishmen, which no other country sees, which, above
all things, shows that a Judge has a pure, gentle, and Christian
heart, and that he never wishes to smite contrary to the law.
"A Christian Judge who means to be just must not fear to smite
according to the law; he must remember that he beareth not the sword
in vain. Under his protection we live, under his protection we
acquire, under his protection we enjoy. Without him, no man would
defend his character, no man would preserve his substance. Proper
pride, just gains, valuable exertions, all depend upon his firm
wisdom. If he shrink from the severe duties of his office, he saps the
foundation of social life, betrays the highest interests of the world,
and sits not to judge according to the law."
But Justice, if it is to be truly just, must be tempered by mercy, and must
have a scrupulous regard to the strength of temptation, the moral weakness
of the subject, the degrading power of ignorance and poverty.--
"All magistrates feel these things in the early exercise of their
judicial power; but the Christian Judge always feels them, is always
youthful, always tender, when he is going to shed human blood; retires
from the business of men, communes with his own heart, ponders on the
work of death, and prays to that Saviour who redeemed him that he may
not shed the blood of man in vain."
A pure, secure, and even-handed administration of Justice is the strongest
safeguard of national stability and happiness.--
"The whole tone and tenor of public morals is affected by the state of
supreme Justice; it extinguishes revenge, it communicates a spirit of
purity and uprightness to inferior magistrates; it makes the great
good, by taking away impunity; it banishes fraud, obliquity, and
solicitation, and teaches men that the law is their right. Truth is
its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion; safety
walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest
emanation of the Gospel, it is the greatest attribute of God: it is
that centre round which human motives and passions turn: and Justice,
sitting on high, sees Genius and Power, and Wealth and Birth,
revolving round her throne; and teaches their paths and marks out
their orbits, and warns with a loud voice, and rules with a strong
arm, and carries order and discipline into a world, which but for her
would only be a wild waste of passions. Look what we are, and what
just laws have done for us:--a land of piety and charity;--a land of
churches, and hospitals, and altars;--a nation of good Samaritans;--a
people of universal compassion. All lands, all seas, have heard we are
brave. We have just sheathed that sword which defended the world; we
have just laid down that buckler which covered the nations of the
earth. God blesses the soil with fertility; English looms labour for
every climate. All the waters of the globe are covered with English
ships. We are softened by fine arts, civilized by humane literature,
instructed by deep science; and every people, as they break their
feudal chains, look to the founders and fathers of freedom for
examples which may animate, and rules which may guide. If ever a
nation was happy, if ever a nation was visibly blessed by God--if ever
a nation was honoured abroad, and left at home under a government
(which we can now conscientiously call a liberal government) to the
full career of talent, industry, and vigour, we are at this moment
that people--and this is our happy lot.--First the Gospel has done it,
and then Justice has done it; and he who thinks it his duty to labour
that this happy condition of existence may remain, must guard the
piety of these times, and he must watch over the spirit of Justice
which exists in these times. First, he must take care that the altars
of God are not polluted, that the Christian faith is retained in
purity and in perfection: and then turning to human affairs, let him
strive for spotless, incorruptible Justice;--praising, honouring, and
loving the just Judge, and abhorring, as the worst enemy of mankind,
him who is placed there to 'judge after the law, and who smites
contrary to the law.'"
The second of these sermons is called "The Lawyer that tempted Christ."[82]
The preacher begins by pointing out that the Lawyer who, in the hope of
entangling the new Teacher, asked what he should do to inherit eternal
life, received a very plain answer--"not flowery, not metaphysical, not
doctrinal." The answer was, in effect, thus: "If you wish to live
eternally, do your duty to God and man." Whereas the earlier sermon was
addressed to the Bench, this is addressed, very directly indeed, to the
Bar.
"There are probably in this church many persons of the profession of
the law, who have often asked before, with better faith than their
brother, and who do now ask this great question, 'What shall I do to
inherit eternal life?' I shall, therefore, direct to them some
observations on the particular duties they owe to society, because I
think it suitable to this particular season, because it is of much
more importance to tell men how they are to be Christians in detail,
than to exhort them to be Christians generally; because it is of the
highest utility to avail ourselves of these occasions, to show to
classes of mankind what those virtues are, which they have more
frequent and valuable opportunities of practising, and what those
faults and vices are, to which they are more particularly exposed.
"It falls to the lot of those who are engaged in the active and
arduous profession of the law to pass their lives in great cities,
amidst severe and incessant occupation, requiring all the faculties,
and calling forth, from time to time, many of the strongest passions
of our nature. In the midst of all this, rivals are to be watched,
superiors are to be cultivated, connections cherished; some portion of
life must be given to society, and some little to relaxation and
amusement. When, then, is the question to be asked, 'What shall I do
to inherit eternal life?' what leisure for the altar, what time for
God? I appeal to the experience of men engaged in this profession,
whether religious feelings and religious practices are not, without
any speculative disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to the business of
the world? Are not the habits of devotion gradually displaced by other
habits of solicitude, hurry, and care? Is not the taste for devotion
lessened? Is not the time for devotion abridged? Are you not more and
more conquered against your warnings and against your will; not,
perhaps, without pain and compunction, by the Mammon of life? And what
is the cure for this great evil to which your profession exposes you?
The cure is, to keep a sacred place in your heart, where Almighty God
is enshrined, and where nothing human can enter; to say to the world,
'Thus far shalt thou go, and no further'; to remember you are a
lawyer, without forgetting you are a Christian; to wish for no more
wealth than ought to be possessed by an inheritor of the Kingdom of
Heaven; to covet no more honour than is suitable to a child of God;
boldly and bravely to set yourself limits, and to show to others you
have limits, and that no professional eagerness, and no professional
activity, shall ever induce you to infringe upon the rules and
practices of religion: remember the text; put the great question
really, which the tempter of Christ only pretended to put. In the
midst of your highest success, in the most perfect gratification of
your vanity, in the most ample increase of your wealth, fall down at
the feet of Jesus, and say, 'Master, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life?'"
The advocate's duty to his client, with its resulting risk to the
advocate's own conscience, is thus set forth:--
"Justice is found, experimentally, to be most effectually promoted by
the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious men presenting to the
selection of an impartial judge the best arguments for the
establishment and explanation of truth. It becomes, then, under such
an arrangement, the decided duty of an advocate to use all the
arguments in his power to defend the cause he has adopted, and to
leave the effects of those arguments to the judgment of others.
However useful this practice may be for the promotion of public
justice, it is not without danger to the individual whose practice it
becomes. It is apt to produce a profligate indifference to truth in
higher occasions of life, where truth cannot for a moment be trifled
with, much less callously trampled on, much less suddenly and totally
yielded up to the basest of human motives. It is astonishing what
unworthy and inadequate notions men are apt to form of the Christian
faith. Christianity does not insist upon duties to an individual, and
forget the duties which are owing to the great mass of individuals,
which we call our country; it does not teach you how to benefit your
neighbour, and leave you to inflict the most serious injuries upon all
whose interest is bound up with you in the same land. I need not say
to this congregation that there is a wrong and a right in public
affairs, as there is a wrong and a right in private affairs. I need
not prove that in any vote, in any line of conduct which affects the
public interest, every Christian is bound, most solemnly and most
religiously, to follow the dictates of his conscience. Let it be for,
let it be against, let it please, let it displease, no matter with
whom it sides, or what it thwarts, it is a solemn duty, on such
occasions, to act from the pure dictates of conscience, and to be as
faithful to the interests of the great mass of your fellow-creatures,
as you would be to the interests of any individual of that mass. Why,
then, if there be any truth in these observations, can that man be
pure and innocent before God, can he be quite harmless and respectable
before men, who in mature age, at a moment's notice, sacrifices to
wealth and power all the fixed and firm opinions of his life; who puts
his moral principles to sale, and barters his dignity and his soul for
the baubles of the world? If these temptations come across you, then
remember the memorable words of the text, 'What shall I do to inherit
eternal life?'"
After warning the younger barristers against their characteristic faults of
self-sufficiency and affected pessimism, the preacher turns to another
aspect of the advocate's duty towards his client.--
"Upon those who are engaged in studying the laws of their country
devolves the honourable and Christian task of defending the accused: a
sacred duty never to be yielded up, never to be influenced by any
vehemence, nor intensity of public opinion. In these times of profound
peace and unexampled prosperity, there is little danger in executing
this duty, and little temptation to violate it; but human affairs
change like the clouds of heaven; another year may find us, or may
leave us, in all the perils and bitterness of internal dissension; and
upon one of you may devolve the defence of some accused person, the
object of men's hopes and fears, the single point on which the eyes of
a whole people are bent. These are the occasions which try a man's
inward heart, and separate the dross of human nature from the gold of
human nature. On these occasions, never mind being mixed up for a
moment with the criminal, and the crime; fling yourself back upon
great principles, fling yourself back upon God; yield not one atom to
violence; suffer not the slightest encroachments of injustice; retire
not one step before the frowns of power; tremble not, for a single
instant, at the dread of misrepresentation. The great interests of
mankind are placed in your hands; it is not so much the individual you
are defending; it is not so much a matter of consequence whether this,
or that, is proved to be a crime; but on such occasions, you are often
called upon to defend the occupation of a defender, to take care that
the sacred rights belonging to that character are not destroyed; that
that best privilege of your profession, which so much secures our
regard, and so much redounds to your credit, is never soothed by
flattery, never corrupted by favour, never chilled by fear. You may
practise this wickedness secretly, as you may any other wickedness;
you may suppress a topic of defence, or soften an attack upon
opponents, or weaken your own argument and sacrifice the man who has
put his trust in you, rather than provoke the powerful by the
triumphant establishment of unwelcome innocence: but if you do this,
you are a guilty man before God. It is better to keep within the pale
of honour, it is better to be pure in Christ, and to feel that you are
pure in Christ: and if ever the praises of mankind are sweet, if it be
ever allowable to a Christian to breathe the incense of popular
favour, and to say it is grateful and good, it is when the honest,
temperate, unyielding advocate, who has protected innocence from the
grasp of power, is followed from the hall of judgment by the prayers
and blessings of a grateful people."
And then comes an admonition about private duty.--
"Do not lose God in the fervour and business of the world; remember
that the churches of Christ are more solemn, and more sacred, than
your tribunals: bend not before the judges of the king, and forget the
Judge of Judges; search not other men's hearts without heeding that
your own hearts will be searched; be innocent in the midst of
subtility; do not carry the lawful arts of your profession beyond your
profession; but when the robe of the advocate is laid aside, so live
that no man shall dare to suppose your opinions venal, or that your
talents and energy may be bought for a price: do not heap scorn and
contempt upon your declining years by precipitate ardour for success
in your profession; but set out with a firm determination to be
unknown, rather than ill-known; and to rise honestly, if you rise at
all. Let the world see that you have risen, because the natural
probity of your heart leads you to truth; because the precision and
extent of your legal knowledge enables you to find the right way of
doing the right thing; because a thorough knowledge of legal art and
legal form is, in your hands, not an instrument of chicanery, but the
plainest, easiest and shortest way to the end of strife.... I hope you
will weigh these observations, and apply them to the business of the
ensuing week, and beyond that, in the common occupations of your
profession: always bearing in your minds the emphatic words of the
text, and often in the hurry of your busy, active lives, honestly,
humbly, heartily exclaiming to the Son of God, 'Master, what shall I
do to inherit eternal life?'"
[60] Edward Vernon, afterwards Harcourt (1757-1847).
[61] Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), Bishop of London, was the first
bishop to discard the episcopal wig; and John Bird Sumner (1780-1862),
Archbishop of Canterbury, the last to wear it.
[62] In later life he said:--"If you shoot, the squire and the poacher both
consider you as their natural enemies, and I thought it more clerical
to be at peace with both."
[63] Sir Henry Halford, Bart., M.D. (1766-1844).
[64] His eldest son.
[65] Compare--"The Sixth Commandment in suspended, by one medical diploma,
from the North of England to the South."--Essay on "Persecuting
Bishops."
[66] Addressed to Mrs. Henry Howard.
[67] John Allen (1771-1843) was Warden of Dulwich College.
[68] Macaulay called it "the very neatest, most commodious, and most
appropriate rectory that I ever saw."
[69] In 1818 he writes to Lady Mary Bennet:--"I am glad you liked what I
said of Mrs. Fry. She is very unpopular with the clergy: examples of
living, active virtue disturb our repose, and give birth to
distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive."
[70] Macaulay describes Foston Church as "a miserable little hovel with a
wooden belfry."
[71] As testified by Mr. Stuart Reid.
[72] Carlyle's description of Dr. Arnold's house at Rugby.
[73] Henry Luttrell (1765-1835), wit and epicure.
[74] Frederick, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825) married Lady Margaret
Caroline Leveson-Gower.
[75] In old age Sydney Smith wrote--"Castle Howard befriended me when I
wanted friends: I shall never forget it till I forget all."
[76] _See_ Appendix B.
[77] (1757-1839).
[78] The Hon. and Rev. George Spencer (1799-1864).
[79] _See_ p. 83.
[80] The Residence Act, 1817.
[81] Acts xxiii. 3.
[82] St. Luke x. 25.