"CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION"--BRISTOL--COMBE FLOREY--REFORM--PROMOTION
The first quarter of the nineteenth century was now nearing its close, and
the most exciting topic in domestic politics was the emancipation of the
Roman Catholics. The movement in favour of emancipation, though checked by
the death of Pitt, had never completely collapsed, and now it was quickened
by the exertions of the "Catholic Association" in Ireland, and stimulated
by the eloquence of O'Connell and Sheil. Session after Session,
emancipating Bills were brought into Parliament, and were supported by
Castlereagh and Canning in opposition to their colleagues. The clergy of
the Church of England--fashioned, almost to a man, on the model of Abraham
Plymley--were dreadfully alarmed. Bishops charged against the proposed
concession. Clerical meetings all over the country petitioned Parliament to
defend them against insidious attacks on our national Protestantism. Before
long, the storm rolled up to Yorkshire, and a meeting of the Clergy of the
Archdeaconry of Cleveland was assembled at Thirsk on the 24th of March
1823. To this meeting a Resolution was submitted, protesting against the
emancipation of the Roman Catholics. A counter-petition was submitted by
Sydney Smith, begging for an inquiry into all laws affecting the Roman
Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland, and "expressing a hope" that only
those which were absolutely necessary to the safety of Church and State
might be suffered to remain. It is difficult to conceive a milder
proposition, but it was defeated by twenty-two votes to ten--Archdeacon
Wrangham[83] and the Rev. William Vernon,[84] son of the Archbishop of
York, voting in the minority. Sydney Smith's speech in support of his
motion recapitulated the main arguments which, as Peter Plymley, he had
adduced at an earlier stage of the same controversy. He urged that a Roman
Catholic's oath was as sacred and as binding as a Protestant's; that the
English Constitution, with great advantage to its subjects, tolerated, and
behaved generously to, all forms of religion (except Romanism); and that
all possible danger to civil order in Ireland was averted by the stringency
of the restrictions with which it was proposed to safeguard the gift of
Emancipation.--
"I defy Dr. Duigenan,[85] in the full vigour of his incapacity, in the
strongest access of that Protestant epilepsy with which he was so
often convulsed, to have added a single security to the security of
that oath. If Catholics are formidable, are not Protestant members
elected _by_ Catholics formidable? But what will the numbers of the
Catholics be? Five or six in one house, and ten or twelve in the
other; and this I state upon the printed authority of Lord Harrowby,
the tried and acknowledged friend of our Church, the amiable and
revered patron of its poorest members. The Catholics did not rebel
during the war carried on for a Catholic king, in the year 1715, nor
in 1745. The government armed the Catholics in the American war. The
last rebellion no one pretends to have been a Catholic rebellion; the
leaders were, with one exception, all Protestants. The king of
Prussia, the emperor of Russia, do not complain of their Catholic
subjects. The Swiss cantons, Catholic and Protestant, live together in
harmony and peace. Childish prophecies of danger are always made, and
always falsified. The Church of England (if you will believe some of
its members) is the most fainting, sickly, hysterical institution that
ever existed in the world. Every thing is to destroy it, every thing
to work its dissolution and decay. If money is taken for tithes, the
Church of England is to perish. If six old Catholic peers, and twelve
commoners, come into Parliament, these holy hypochondriacs tear their
hair, and beat their breast, and mourn over the ruin of their
Established Church! The Ranter is cheerful and confident. The
Presbyterian stands upon his principles. The Quaker is calm and
contented. The strongest, and wisest, and best establishment in the
world, suffers in the full vigour of manhood, all the fears and the
tremblings of extreme old age.
* * * * *
"I conclude, Sir, remarks which, upon such a subject, might be carried
to almost any extent, with presenting to you a petition to Parliament,
and recommending it for the adoption of this meeting. And upon this
petition, I beg leave to say a few words:--I am the writer of the
petition I lay before you; and I have endeavoured to make it as mild
and moderate as I possibly could. If I had consulted my own opinions
_alone_, I should have said, that the disabling laws against the
Catholics were a disgrace to the statute-book, and that every
principle of justice, prudence, and humanity, called for their
immediate repeal; but he who wishes to do any thing useful in this
world, must consult the opinions of others as well as his own. I knew
very well if I had proposed such a petition to my excellent friend,
the Archdeacon and Mr. William Vernon, it would not have suited the
mildness and moderation of their character, that they should accede to
it; and I knew very well, that without the authority of their names, I
could have done nothing. The present petition, when proposed to them
by me, met, as I expected, with their ready and cheerful compliance.
But though I propose this petition as preferable to the other, I
should infinitely prefer that we do nothing, and disperse without
coming to any resolution.
"I am sick of these little clerico-political meetings. They bring a
disgrace upon us and upon our profession, and make us hateful in the
eyes of the laity. The best thing we could have done, would have been
never to have met at all. The next best thing we can do (now we are
met), is to do nothing. The third choice is to take my petition. The
fourth, last, and worst, to adopt your own. The wisest thing I have
heard here to-day, is the proposition of Mr. Chaloner, that we should
burn both petitions, and ride home. Here we are, a set of obscure
country clergymen, at the 'Three Tuns,' at Thirsk, like flies on the
chariot-wheel; perched upon a question of which we can neither see the
diameter, nor control the motion, nor influence the moving force. What
good can such meetings do? They emanate from local conceit, advertize
local ignorance; make men, who are venerable by their profession,
ridiculous by their pretensions, and swell that mass of paper-lumber,
which, got up with infinite rural bustle, and read without being heard
in Parliament, is speedily consigned to merited contempt."[86]
So ended Sydney Smith's first political speech; and he took two years'
holiday from the labours of the platform. On the 11th of April 1825, he
returned to the charge. He had now acquired, in addition to Foston, the
Rectory of Londesborough, which he held from 1823 to 1829, as "warming-pan"
for his young friend and neighbour, William Howard.[87] As Rector of
Londesborough, he attended a meeting of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of
the East Riding, held at Beverley to protest against the Roman Catholic
claims.
The _Yorkshire Gazette_ reported the proceedings, and commented as
follows:--
"The meeting was unanimous in its determination to petition Parliament
against the claims of the Roman Catholics--one individual only
excepted, the Rector of Londesborough. This gentleman made his speech
on the occasion, enlarging on the inexpediency of refusing the Roman
Catholics their claims.... The meeting, though by no means unprepared
to hear extraordinary things from the Rector of Londesborough, as they
had reason to anticipate from the proceedings of a meeting in another
Archdeaconry about two years ago, were yet perfectly astonished to
hear him assert that the Roman Catholic religion is now changed from
what it was formerly, and that the oath of a Papist may, in all cases,
be relied upon with the same confidence as that of a Protestant.... It
is certainly due to the Rector of Londesborough to state in conclusion
that he bore his defeat with his usual good humour, and further that,
having learned previous to the meeting the intention of his curate to
attend, but that he was hesitating out of delicacy to the declared
opinions of his rector, the latter gentleman made it a particular
request to his curate that he would persevere in his original
intention."
Sydney Smith's peroration, though it failed to persuade his brother-clergy,
is so good that it deserves to be reproduced.--
"When this bill passes, it will be a signal to all the religious sects
of that unhappy country to lay aside their mutual hatred, and to live
in peace, as equal men should live under equal law--when this bill
passes, the Orange flag will fall--when this bill passes, the Green
flag of the rebel will fall--when this bill passes, no other flag will
fly in the land of Erin than that which blends the Lion with the
Harp--that flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of freedom and
of joy--the only banner in Europe which floats over a limited King and
a free people."
On this occasion the orator fared even less well than before in the matter
of votes. His "excellent and respectable curate, Mr. Milestone,"[88] voted
against him; and he was left in a minority of one. But he had the
satisfaction of being able to write to a friend--"A poor clergyman
whispered to me that he was quite of my way of thinking, but had nine
children. _I begged he would remain a Protestant._"
By this time the life of the Parliament, which had been elected on the
demise of the Crown in 1820, was running out, and both parties were making
vigorous preparations for the General Election. On the 29th January 1826,
Sydney Smith wrote to Lady Grey:--
"Terrible work in Yorkshire with the Pope! I fight with the beasts at
Ephesus every day.... This week I publish a pamphlet on the Catholic
question, with my name to it. There is such an uproar here that I
think it is gallant, and becoming a friend of Lord Grey's, to turn out
and take a part in the affray.... What a detestable subject!--stale,
threadbare, and exhausted; but ancient errors cannot be met with fresh
refutations."
Not with fresh refutations, perhaps, but with a wonderful prodigality of
fresh illustrations and conceits. _A Letter to the Electors upon the
Catholic Question_ begins with the thrice-repeated question, "Why is not a
Catholic to be believed on his oath?"
"What says the law of the land to this extravagant piece of injustice?
It is no challenge against a juryman to say he is a Catholic, he sits
in judgment upon your life and your property. Did any man ever hear it
said that such or such a person was put to death, or that he lost his
property, because a Catholic was among the jurymen? Is the question
ever put? Does it ever enter into the mind of the attorney or the
counsellor to enquire of the faith of the jury? If a man sell a horse,
or a house, or a field, does he ask if the purchaser be a Catholic?
Appeal to your own experience, and try, by that fairest of all tests,
the justice of this enormous charge.
"We are in treaty with many of the powers of Europe, because we
believe in the good faith of Catholics. Two-thirds of Europe are, in
fact, Catholics; are they all perjured? For the first fourteen
centuries all the Christian world were Catholics; did they live in a
constant state of perjury? I am sure these objections against the
Catholics are often made by very serious and honest men, but I much
doubt if Voltaire has advanced any thing against the Christian
religion so horrible as to say that two-thirds of those who profess it
are unfit for all the purposes of civil life; for who is fit to live
in society who does not respect oaths?
* * * * *
"I have lived a little in the world, but I never happened to hear a
single Catholic even suspected of getting into office by violating his
oath; the oath which they are accused of violating is an insuperable
barrier to them all. Is there a more disgraceful spectacle in the
world than that of the Duke of Norfolk hovering round the House of
Lords in the execution of his office,[89] which he cannot enter as a
peer of the realm? disgraceful to the bigotry and injustice of his
country--to his own sense of duty, honourable in the extreme: he is
the leader of a band of ancient and high-principled gentlemen, who
submit patiently to obscurity and privation rather than do violence to
their conscience. In all the fury of party, I never heard the name of
a single Catholic mentioned, who was suspected of having gained, or
aimed at, any political advantage, by violating his oath. I have never
heard so bitter a slander supported by the slightest proof. Every man
in the circle of his acquaintance has met with Catholics, and lived
with them probably as companions. If this immoral lubricity were their
characteristic, it would surely be perceived in common life. Every
man's experience would corroborate the imputation; but I can honestly
say that some of the best and most excellent men I have ever met with
have been Catholics; perfectly alive to the evil and inconvenience of
their situation, but thinking themselves bound by the law of God and
the law of honour, not to avoid persecution by falsehood and apostasy.
I remember hearing the Catholics accused from the Hustings of
disregarding oaths, and within an hour of that time I saw five
Catholic voters rejected, because they would not take the oath of
Supremacy; and these were not men of rank who tendered themselves, but
ordinary tradesmen. The accusation was received with loud huzzas, the
poor Catholics retired unobserved and in silence. No one praised the
conscientious feeling of the constituents; no one rebuked the calumny
of the candidate.
* * * * *
"I beg to remind you, that in talking of the Catholic religion, you
must talk of the Catholic religion as it is carried on in Ireland; you
have nothing to do with Spain, or France, or Italy: the religion you
are to examine is the Irish Catholic religion. You are not to consider
what it was, but what it is; not what individuals profess, but what is
generally professed; not what individuals do, but what is generally
practised. I constantly see, in advertisements from county meetings,
all these species of monstrous injustice played off against the
Catholics. The Inquisition exists in Spain and Portugal, therefore I
confound place, and vote against the Catholics of Ireland, where it
never did exist, nor was purposed to be instituted. There have been
many cruel persecutions of Protestants by Catholic governments; and,
therefore, I will confound time and place, and vote against the Irish,
who live centuries after these persecutions, and in a totally
different country. Doctor this, or Doctor that, of the Catholic Church
has written a very violent and absurd pamphlet; therefore I will
confound persons, and vote against the whole Irish Catholic Church,
which has neither sanctioned nor expressed any such opinions. I will
continue the incapacities of men of this age, because some men, in
distant ages, deserved ill of other men in distant ages. They shall
expiate the crimes committed, before they were born, in a land they
never saw; by individuals they never heard of. I will charge them with
every act of folly which they have never sanctioned and cannot
control. I will sacrifice space, time, and identity, to my zeal for
the Protestant Church. Now, in the midst of all this violence,
consider, for a moment, how you are imposed on by words, and what a
serious violation of the rights of your fellow-creatures you are
committing. Mr. Murphy lives in Limerick, and Mr. Murphy and his son
are subjected to a thousand inconveniences and disadvantages because
they are Catholics. Murphy is a wealthy, honourable, excellent man; he
ought to be in the corporation; he cannot get in because he is a
Catholic. His son ought to be King's Counsel for his talents, and his
standing at the Bar; he is prevented from reaching this dignity,
because he is a Catholic. Why, what reasons do you hear for all this?
Because Queen Mary, three hundred years before the natal day of Mr.
Murphy, murdered Protestants in Smithfield; because Louis XIV.
dragooned his Protestant subjects, when the predecessor of Murphy's
predecessor was not in being; because men are confined in prison, in
Madrid, twelve degrees more south than Murphy has ever been in his
life; all ages, all climates, are ransacked to perpetuate the slavery
of Murphy, the ill-fated victim of political anachronisms.
* * * * *
"When are mercy and justice, in fact, ever to return upon the earth,
if the sins of the elders are to be for ever visited on those who are
not even their children! Should the first act of liberated Greece be
to recommence the Trojan war? Are the French never to forget the
Sicilian Vespers; or the Americans the long war waged against their
liberties? Is any rule wise, which may set the Irish to recollect what
they have suffered?
* * * * *
"It is no part of my province to defend every error of the Catholic
Church; I believe it has many errors, though I am sure these errors
are grievously exaggerated and misrepresented.... But, if you will
take a long view instead of a confined view, and look generally to the
increase of human happiness, _the best check upon the increase of
Popery, the best security for the establishment of the Protestant
Church is, that the British empire shall be preserved in a state of
the greatest strength, union, and opulence_. My cry then is, _No
Popery_; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not join
with foreign Papists in time of war. _Church, for ever_; therefore
emancipate the Catholics, that they may not help to pull it down.
_King for ever_; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may
become his loyal subjects. _Great Britain for ever_; therefore
emancipate the Catholics, that they may not put an end to its
perpetuity. _Our Government is essentially Protestant_; therefore, by
emancipating the Catholics, give up a few circumstances which have
nothing to do with the essence. _The Catholics are disguised enemies_;
therefore, by emancipation, turn them into open friends. _They have a
double allegiance_; therefore, by emancipation, make their allegiance
to their King so grateful, that they will never confound it with the
spiritual allegiance to their Pope. It is very difficult for electors,
who are much occupied by other matters, to choose the right path amid
the rage and fury of faction: but I give you one mark, _vote for a
free altar_; give what the law compels you to give to the
Establishment; (that done,) no chains, no prisons, no bonfires for a
man's faith; and, above all, no modern chains and prisons under the
names of disqualifications and incapacities, which _are only the
cruelty and tyranny of a more civilized age_; civil offices open to
all, a Catholic or a Protestant alderman, a Moravian or a Church of
England or a Wesleyan justice, _no oppression, no tyranny in belief: a
free altar, an open road to heaven; no human insolence, no human
narrowness, hallowed by the name of God_.
* * * * *
"Our Government is called essentially Protestant; but, if it be
essentially Protestant in the distribution of office, it should be
essentially Protestant in the imposition of taxes. The Treasury is
open to all religions, Parliament only to one. The tax-gatherer is the
most indulgent and liberal of human beings; he excludes no creed,
imposes no articles; but counts Catholic cash, pockets Protestant
paper, and is candidly and impartially oppressive to every description
of the Christian world. Can anything be more base than when you want
the blood or the money of Catholics, to forget that they are
Catholics, and to remember only that they are British subjects; and,
when they ask for the benefits of the British Constitution, to
remember only that they are Catholics, and to forget that they are
British subjects?
"_No Popery_ was the cry of the great English Revolution, because the
increase and prevalence of Popery in England would, at that period,
have rendered this island tributary to France. The Irish Catholics
were, at that period, broken to pieces by the severity and military
execution of Cromwell, and by the Penal Laws. They are since become a
great and formidable people. The same dread of foreign influence makes
it now necessary that they should be restored to political rights.
Must the friends of rational liberty join in a clamour against the
Catholics now, because, in a very different state of the world, they
excited that clamour a hundred years ago? I remember a house near
Battersea Bridge which caught fire, and there was a great cry of
'Water, water!' Ten years after, the Thames rose, and the people of
the house were nearly drowned. Would it not have been rather singular
to have said to the inhabitants--'I heard you calling for water ten
years ago; why don't you call for it now?'"
* * * * *
"Mild and genteel people do not like the idea of persecution, and are
advocates for toleration; but then they think it no act of intolerance
to deprive Catholics of political power. The history of all this is,
that all men scarcely like to punish others for not being of the same
opinion with themselves, and that this sort of privation is the only
species of persecution, of which the improved feeling and advanced
cultivation of the age will admit. Fire and faggot, chains and stone
walls, have been clamoured away; nothing remains but to mortify a
man's pride, and to limit his resources, and to set a mark upon him,
by cutting him off from his fair share of political power. By this
receipt insolence is gratified, and humanity is not shocked. The
gentlest Protestant can see, with dry eyes, Lord Stourton excluded
from parliament, though he would abominate the most distant idea of
personal cruelty to Mr. Petre. This is only to say that he lives in
the nineteenth, instead of the sixteenth century, and that he is as
intolerant in religious matters as the state of manners existing in
his age will permit. Is it not the same spirit which wounds the pride
of a fellow-creature on account of his faith, or which casts his body
into the flames? Are they any thing else but degrees and modifications
of the same principle? The minds of these two men no more differ
because they differ in their degrees of punishment, than their bodies
differ because one wore a doublet in the time of Mary, and the other
wears a coat in the reign of George. I do not accuse them of
intentional cruelty and injustice: I am sure there are very many
excellent men who would be shocked if they could conceive themselves
to be guilty of any thing like cruelty; but they innocently give a
wrong name to the bad spirit which is within them, and think they are
tolerant because they are not as intolerant as they could have been in
other times, but cannot be now. _The true spirit is to search after
God and for another life with lowliness of heart; to fling down no
man's altar, to punish no man's prayer; to heap no penalties and no
pains on those solemn supplications which, in divers tongues, and in
varied forms, and in temples of a thousand shapes, but with one deep
sense of human dependence, men pour forth to God._"
At this point of his Letter, the writer turns aside to combat the
contention that, because Roman Catholics have in times past persecuted
Protestants, therefore they must now be deprived of their civil rights. If
this contention be sound, the Protestant must, by parity of reasoning, be
disfranchised.
"The first object of men who love party better than truth, is to have
it believed that the Catholics alone have been persecutors. But what
can be more flagrantly unjust than to take over notions of history
only from the conquering and triumphant party? If you think the
Catholics have not their Book of Martyrs as well as the Protestants,
take the following enumeration of some of their most learned and
careful writers. The whole number of Catholics who suffered death in
England for the exercise of the Catholic religion since the
Reformation stands thus:--
"Henry VIII., 59
Elizabeth, 204
James I., 25
Charles I., and Commonwealth, 23
Charles II., 8
------
Total, 319
"Henry VIII., with consummate impartiality, burnt three Protestants
and hanged four Catholics for different errors in religion on the same
day, and at the same place. Elizabeth burnt two Dutch Anabaptists for
some theological tenets, July 22, 1575, Fox the martyrologist vainly
pleading with the queen in their favour. In 1579, the same Protestant
queen cut off the hand of Stubbs, the author of a tract against popish
connection, of Singleton, the printer, and Page, the disperser of the
book. Camden saw it done. Warburton properly says it exceeds in
cruelty any thing done by Charles I. On the 4th of June, Mr. Elias
Thacker and Mr. John Capper, two ministers of the Brownist persuasion,
were hanged at St. Edmund's-bury, for dispersing books against the
Common Prayer. With respect to the great part of the Catholic victims,
the law was fully and literally executed: after being hanged up, they
were cut down alive, dismembered, ripped up, and their bowels burnt
before their faces; after which they were beheaded and quartered. The
time employed in this butchery was very considerable, and, in one
instance, lasted more than half an hour.
"The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the greater part of these
men were put to death for political, not for religious, crimes. That
is, a law is first passed, making it high treason for a priest to
exercise his function in England, and so, when he is caught and burnt,
this is not religious persecution, but an offence against the State.
We are, I hope, all too busy to need any answer to such childish,
uncandid reasoning as this."
And then the Letter goes on to give, with the fullest apparatus of details,
dates, and authorities, the miserable tale of religious persecution
practised, during three centuries, at home and abroad, by Anglicans on
Puritans, by Protestants on Romanists, by orthodox Protestants on heterodox
Protestants; and then, to clinch his argument and drive it home, he gives
the substance of the Penal Code under which Irish Catholics suffered so
cruelly and so long.
"With such facts as these, the cry of persecution will not do; it is
unwise to make it, because it can be so very easily, and so very
justly retorted. The business is to forget and forgive, to kiss and be
friends, and to say nothing of what has passed; which is to the credit
of neither party. There have been atrocious cruelties, and abominable
acts of injustice, on both sides. It is not worth while to contend who
shed the most blood, or whether death by fire is worse than hanging or
starving in prison. As far as England itself is concerned, the balance
may be better preserved. Cruelties exercised upon the Irish go for
nothing in English reasoning; but if it were not uncandid and
vexatious to consider Irish persecutions[90] as part of the case, I
firmly believe there have been two Catholics put to death for
religious causes in Great Britain for one Protestant who has suffered:
not that this proves much, because the Catholics have enjoyed the
sovereign power for so few years between this period and the
Reformation; and certainly it must be allowed that they were not
inactive, during that period, in the great work of pious combustion.
"It is however some extenuation of the Catholic excesses, that their
religion was the religion of the whole of Europe when the innovation
began. They were the ancient lords and masters of faith, before men
introduced the practice of thinking for themselves in these matters.
The Protestants have less excuse, who claimed the right of innovation,
and then turned round upon other Protestants who acted upon the same
principle, or upon Catholics who remained as they were, and visited
them with all the cruelties from which they had themselves so recently
escaped.
"Both sides, as they acquired power, abused it; and both learnt, from
their sufferings, the great secret of toleration and forbearance. If
you wish to do good in the times in which you live, contribute your
efforts to perfect this grand work. I have not the most distant
intention to interfere in local politics; but I advise you never to
give a vote to any man whose only title for asking it is that he means
to continue the punishments, privations, and incapacities of any human
beings, merely because they worship God in the way they think best:
the man who asks for your vote upon such a plea, is, _probably_, a
very weak man, who believes in his own bad reasoning, or a very artful
man, who is laughing at you for your credulity: at all events, he is a
man who knowingly or unknowingly exposes his country to the greatest
dangers, and hands down to posterity all the foolish opinions and all
the bad passions which prevail in those times in which he happens to
live. Such a man is so far from being that friend to the Church, which
he pretends to be, that he declares its safety cannot be reconciled
with the franchises of the people; for what worse can be said of the
Church of England than this, that wherever it is judged necessary to
give it a legal establishment, it becomes necessary to deprive the
body of the people, if they adhere to their old opinions, of their
liberties, and of all their free customs, and to reduce them to a
state of civil servitude?
"SYDNEY SMITH."
After the discharge of this tremendous missile against the tottering
fortress of bigotry, the energetic engineer sought a brief interlude of
rest and recreation. His money-matters had of late years improved. An aunt
had died and left him a legacy, and the Rectory of Londesborough was a
profitable preferment. The income thus augmented enabled him to realize a
long-cherished dream and pay his first visit to Paris, in the spring of
1826. There he met some old friends, made several new acquaintances, ate
some excellent but expensive dinners, mastered the Louvre in a quarter of
an hour, and saw Talma in tragedy and Mademoiselle Mars in "genteel
comedy." At the Opera he noticed that "the house was full of English, who
talk loud, and seem to care little for other people. This is their
characteristic, and a very brutal and barbarous distinction it is." He
keenly admired the luxury and beauty and prettiness of Paris, and
especially the profusion of glass in French drawing-rooms. "I remember
entering a room with glass all round it, and saw myself reflected on every
side. I took it for a meeting of the clergy, and was delighted of course."
He returned to England in May; on the 2nd of June Parliament was dissolved.
"We have been," he wrote, "in the horror of Elections--each party acting
and thinking as if the salvation of several planets depended upon the
adoption of Mr. Johnson and the rejection of Mr. Jackson." In July, Thomas
Babington Macaulay, a young and unsuccessful barrister, found himself on
circuit at York. He was told that Mr. Smith had come to see him, and, when
the visitor was admitted, he recognized--
"the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith, _alias_ Peter Plymley. I had
forgotten his very existence till I discerned the queer contrast
between his black coat and his snow-white head, and the equally
curious contrast between the clerical amplitude of his person, and the
most unclerical wit, whim, and petulance of his eye."
Macaulay spent the following Sunday at Foston Rectory, and thus records his
impressions:--
"I understand that S.S. is a very respectable apothecary, and most
liberal of his skill, his medicine, his soup, and his wine, among the
sick. He preached a very queer sermon--the former half too familiar,
and the latter half too florid, but not without some ingenuity of
thought and expression....
"His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once above him and
below him. Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality and bigotry
would have made him a bishop; but he could neither rise to the duties
of his order, nor stoop to its degradation."
In December Sydney wrote to a newly-elected Member of Parliament:--
"I see you have broken ice in the House of Commons. I shall be curious
to hear your account of your feelings, of what colour the human
creatures looked who surrounded you, and how the candles and Speaker
appeared.... For God's sake, open upon the Chancery. On this subject
there can be no excess of vituperation and severity. Advocate also
free trade in ale and ale-houses. Respect the Church, and believe that
the insignificant member of it who now addresses you is most truly
yours,
"SYDNEY SMITH."
At the same time he wrote as follows to a young friend--Lord John
Russell--who had lost his seat and published a book:--
"DEAR JOHN,--I have read your book on the _State of Europe since the
Peace of Utrecht_ with much pleasure--sensible, liberal, spirited,
philosophical, well-written. Go on writing History. Write a History of
Louis XIV., and put the world right about that old Beast.
"I am sorry you are not in parliament. You ought to be everywhere
where honest and bold men can do good. Health and respect. Ever yours,
"SYDNEY SMITH."
The year 1827 opened dramatically. On the 18th February Lord Liverpool, who
had been Prime Minister since the assassination of Spencer Perceval in
1812, was suddenly stricken by fatal illness. On the 10th of April King
George IV. found himself, much against his will, constrained to entrust the
formation of a Government to George Canning. Canning was avowedly
favourable to the Roman Catholic claims, and on that account some of the
most important of his former colleagues declined to serve under him. The
Ministry was reconstructed with an infusion of Whigs; and the brilliant but
unscrupulous Copley became Chancellor with the title of Lord Lyndhurst.[91]
A Ministry, containing Whigs as well as Tories and committed to the cause
of Roman Catholic emancipation, seemed likely to open the way of preferment
to Sydney Smith. Knowing that his income would soon be materially reduced
by the cessation of his tenure of Londesborough, he wrote to some of his
friends among the new Ministers and boldly stated his claims. One of these
Ministers seems to have made a rather chilly response; and the applicant
did not spare him.--
"I am much obliged by your polite letter. You appeal to my good-nature
to prevent me from considering your letter as a decent method of
putting me off. Your appeal, I assure you, is not made in vain. I do
not think you mean to put me off; because I am the most prominent, and
was for a long time the only, clerical advocate of that question, by
the proper arrangement of which you believe the happiness and safety
of the country would be materially improved. I do not believe you mean
to put me off; because, in giving me some promotion, you will teach
the clergy, from whose timidity you have everything to apprehend, and
whose influence upon the people you cannot doubt, that they may, under
your Government, obey the dictates of their consciences without
sacrificing the emoluments of their profession. I do not think you
mean to put me off; because, in the conscientious administration of
that patronage with which you are entrusted, I think it will occur to
you that something is due to a person who, instead of basely chiming
in with the bad passions of the multitude, has dedicated some talent
and some activity to soften religious hatreds, and to make men less
violent and less foolish than he found them."
In July he wrote to a friend:--
"The worst political news is that Canning is not well, and that the
Duke of Wellington has dined with the King. Canning dead, Peel is the
only man remaining alive in the House of Commons, I mean, the only man
in his senses."
On the 8th of August Canning died, and was succeeded by Lord Goderich, who
in turn made way for the Duke of Wellington in January 1828, Lord Lyndhurst
again becoming Chancellor.
On the 1st of January 1828, Sydney Smith's Second daughter, Emily, was
married to Nathaniel Hibbert, afterwards of Munden House, near Watford, Her
father wrote:--
"We were married on New Year's Day, and are _gone_! I feel as if I had
lost a limb, and were walking about with one leg--and nobody pities
this description of invalids."
Three weeks later, Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, yielding to private
friendship what the Whigs had refused to political loyalty, appointed the
Rector of Foston to a Prebendal Stall in Bristol Cathedral. This brought
him at length official station in the Church, and a permanent instead of a
terminable income. He wrote from Bristol on the 17th of February:--
"An extremely comfortable Prebendal house; seven-stall stables and
room for four carriages, so that I can hold all your _cortège_ when
you come; looks to the south, and is perfectly snug and parsonic;
masts of West-Indiamen seen from the windows... I have lived in perfect
solitude ever since I have been here, but am perfectly happy. The
novelty of this place amuses me."
From the time of his appointment to Bristol, Sydney Smith severed his
connexion with the _Edinburgh Review_, holding that anonymous journalism
was inconsistent with the position of an ecclesiastical dignitary. He had
contributed to the _Review_ for a quarter of a century; and, by a happy
accident, his last utterance, in the organ through which he had so long and
so strenuously fought for freedom, was yet one more plea for Roman Catholic
emancipation. Yet once again he urged, with all his force, the baseness of
deserting the good cause, and the danger and cruelty of delaying justice.--
"There is little new to be said; but we must not be silent, or, in
these days of baseness and tergiversation, we shall be supposed to
have deserted our friend the Pope, and they will say of us, _Prostant
venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall_. God forbid it should ever be said
of us with justice. It is pleasant to loll and roll and to
accumulate--to be a purple-and-fine-linen man, and to be called by some
of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of
accumulating upon each other;---but the best thing of all is to live
like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality,
justice, and truth.
* * * * *
"We should like to argue this matter with a regular Tory Lord, whose
members vote steadily against the Catholic question. 'I wonder that
mere fear does not make you give up the Catholic question! Do you mean
to put this fine place in danger--the venison--the pictures--the
pheasants--the cellars--the hot-house and the grapery? Should you like
to see six or seven thousand French or Americans landed in Ireland,
and aided by a universal insurrection of the Catholics? Is it worth
your while to run the risk of their success? What evil from the
possible encroachment of Catholics, by civil exertions, can equal the
danger of such a position as this? How can a man of your carriages,
and horses, and hounds, think of putting your high fortune in such a
predicament, and crying out, like a schoolboy or a chaplain, 'Oh, we
shall beat them! we shall put the rascals down!' No Popery, I admit to
your Lordship, is a very convenient cry at an election, and has
answered your end; but do not push the matter too far. To bring on a
civil war for No Popery, is a very foolish proceeding in a man who has
two courses and a remove! As you value your side-board of plate, your
broad riband, your pier-glasses--if obsequious domestics and large
rooms are dear to you--if you love ease and flattery, titles and coats
of arms--if the labour of the French cook, the dedication of the
expecting poet, can move you--if you hope for a long life of
side-dishes--if you are not insensible to the periodical arrival of
the turtle-fleets--emancipate the Catholics! Do it for your ease, do
it for your indolence, do it for your safety--emancipate and eat,
emancipate and drink--emancipate, and preserve the rent-roll and the
family estate!"
In conclusion he gives a word of warning first to his Roman Catholic
clients, imploring them to be patient as well as firm; and then to the
various sections of the "No Popery" party in England--
"_To the Base_.--Sweet children of turpitude, beware! the old
antipopery people are fast perishing away. Take heed that you are not
surprised by an emancipating king, or an emancipating administration.
Leave a _locus poenitentiæ!_--prepare a place for retreat--get ready
your equivocations and denials. The dreadful day may yet come, when
liberality may lead to place and power. We understand these matters
here. It is safest to be moderately base--to be flexible in shame, and
to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when any
thing is to be gained by virtue,"
The suggested prophecy had not long to wait for its fulfilment. In the
summer of 1828, William Vesey Fitzgerald, a great landowner in County
Clare, and one of the Members for that county, accepted office in the
Government as President of the Board of Trade, thereby vacating his seat.
Lord Beaconsfield shall tell the remainder of the story. "An Irish lawyer,
a professional agitator, himself a Roman Catholic and therefore ineligible,
announced himself as a candidate in opposition to the new minister, and on
the day of election thirty thousand peasants, setting at defiance all the
landowners of the county, returned O'Connell at the head of the poll, and
placed among not the least memorable of historical events--the Clare
Election."[92]
This election decided the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and the
cause, for which Sydney Smith had striven so heroically, was won at last.
On the 28th of August 1828 he wrote to a Roman Catholic friend:--
"Brougham thinks the Catholic question as good as carried; but I never
think myself as good as carried, till my horse brings me to my
stable-door.... What am I to do with my time, or you with yours, after
the Catholic question is carried?"
To the same friend he wrote:--
"You will be amused by hearing that I am to preach the 5th of
November[93] sermon at Bristol, and to dine at the 5th of November
dinner with the Mayor and Corporation of Bristol. All sorts of bad
theology are preached at the Cathedral on that day, and all sorts of
bad toasts drunk at the Mansion House. I will do neither the one nor
the other, nor bow the knee in the house of Rimmon."
On the 5th of November 1828, he wrote to Lord Holland:--
"To-day I have preached an honest sermon before the Mayor and
Corporation in the Cathedral--the most Protestant Corporation in
England! They stared at me with all their eyes. Several of them could
not keep the turtle on their stomachs."
The sermon[94] well deserved the epithet. It glanced, as the occasion
demanded, at the civil grievances of the Roman Catholics, and then it went
on to lay down some simple but sufficient rules by which men should
regulate their judgment on religious forms and bodies with which they do
not sympathize.--
"Our holy religion consists of some doctrines which influence
practice, and of others which are purely speculative. If religious
errors be of the former description, they may, perhaps, be fair
objects of human interference; but, if the opinion be merely
theological and speculative, there the right of human interference
seems to end, because the necessity for such interference does not
exist. Any error of this nature is between the Creator and the
creature,--between the Redeemer and the redeemed. If such opinions are
not the best opinions which can be found, God Almighty will punish the
error, if mere error seemeth to the Almighty a fit object of
punishment. Why may not a man wait if God waits? Where are we called
upon in Scripture to pursue men for errors purely speculative?--to
assist Heaven in punishing those offences which belong only to
Heaven?--in fighting unasked for what we deem to be the battles of
God,--of that patient and merciful God, who pities the frailties we do
not pity--who forgives the errors we do not forgive,--who sends rain
upon the just and the unjust, and maketh His sun to shine upon the
evil and the good.
* * * * *
"I shall conclude my sermon (extended, I am afraid, already to an
unreasonable length), by reciting to you a very short and beautiful
apologue, taken from the Rabbinical writers. It is, I believe, quoted
by Bishop Taylor in his _Holy Living and Dying_. I have not now access
to that book, but I quote it to you from memory, and should be made
truly happy if you would quote it to others from memory also.
"'As Abraham was sitting in the door of his tent, there came unto him
a wayfaring man; and Abraham gave him water for his feet, and set
bread before him. And Abraham said unto him, Let us now worship the
Lord our God before we eat of this bread. And the wayfaring man said
unto Abraham, I will not worship the Lord thy God, for thy God is not
my God; but I will worship my God, even the God of my fathers. But
Abraham was exceeding wroth; and he rose up to put the wayfaring man
forth from the door of his tent. And the voice of the Lord was heard
in the tent--Abraham, Abraham! have I borne with this man for three
score and ten years, and can'st thou not bear with him for one
hour?'"[95]
This sermon was published by request, and the preacher apologized in the
preface for "sending to the press such plain rudiments of common charity
and common sense."
The beginning of 1829 was darkened by what Sydney Smith called "the first
great misfortune of his life." On the 14th of April, his eldest son Douglas
died, after a long illness, in his twenty-fifth year. His health had always
been delicate, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, he had become Captain
of the King's Scholars at Westminster,[96] and a Student of Christ Church.
His epitaph says--"His life was blameless. His death was the first sorrow
he ever occasioned his parents, but it was deep and lasting." On the 29th
of April his father wrote--"Time and the necessary exertions of life will
restore me;" but four months later the note is changed.--
"I never suspected how children weave themselves about the heart. My
son had that quality which is longest remembered by those who remain
behind--a deep and earnest affection and respect for his parents. God
save you from similar distress!"
And again:--
"I did not know I had cared so much for anybody; but the habit of
providing for human beings, and watching over them for so many years,
generates a fund of affection, of the magnitude of which I was not
aware"
Sixteen years later, when he lay dying and half-conscious, the cry
"Douglas, Douglas!" was constantly on his lips.
The prebendal stall at Bristol carried with it the incumbency of Halberton,
near Tiverton; and Sydney Smith exchanged the living of Foston for that of
Combe Florey in Somerset, which could be held conjointly with Halberton. On
the 14th of July 1829 he wrote from the "Sacred Valley of Flowers," as he
loved to call it:--
"I am extremely pleased with Combe Florey, and pronounce it to be a
very pretty place in a very beautiful country. The house I shall make
decently convenient."
"I need not say how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the
same as all other neighbourhoods. Red wine and white, soup and fish,
commonplace dulness and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am,
after my manner, making my place perfect, and have twenty-eight people
constantly at work."
"I am going on fighting with bricklayers and carpenters, and shall
ultimately make a very pretty place and a very good house." "I
continue to be delighted with the country. My parsonage will be
perfection. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such
an enormous crop, that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so that
a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."
"Luttrell came over for a day, from whence I know not, but I thought
not from good pastures; at least, he had not his usual soup-and-pattie
look. There was a forced smile upon his countenance, which seemed to
indicate plain roast and boiled; and a sort of apple-pudding
depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman.... He was very
agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup, I took him
aside, and reasoned the matter with him, but in vain; to speak the
truth, Luttrell is not steady in his judgments on dishes. Individual
failures with him soon degenerate into generic objections, till, by
some fortunate accident, he eats himself into better opinions. A
person of more calm reflection thinks not only of what he is consuming
at that moment, but of the soups of the same kind he has met with in a
long course of dining, and which have gradually and justly elevated
the species. I am perhaps making too much of this; but the failures of
a man of sense are always painful"
One of the chief features in the restored Rectory of Combe Florey was a
library, twenty-eight feet long and eight high, ending in a bay-window
supported by pillars, and looking into a brilliant garden. This room had
been made by "throwing a pantry, a passage, and a shoe-hole together."
Three sides of it were covered with books. "No furniture so charming as
books," said Sydney, "even if you never open them, or read a single word."
He passionately loved light and colour, sunshine and flowers; and all his
books were bound in the most vivid blues and reds. "What makes a fire so
pleasant is that it is a live thing in a dead room," A visitor thus
describes him at his literary work:--
"At a large table in the bay-window, with his desk before him--on one
end of this table a case, something like a small deal music-stand,
filled with manuscript books--on the other a large deal tray, filled
with a leaden ink-stand, containing ink enough for a county; a
magnifying glass; a carpenter's rule; several large steel pens, which
it was high treason to touch; a glass bowl full of shot and water, to
clean these precious pens; and some red tape, which he called 'one of
the grammars of life'; a measuring line, and various other articles,
more useful than ornamental. At this writing establishment, unique of
its kind, he could turn his mind with equal facility, in company or
alone, to any subject, whether of business, study, politics,
instruction, or amusement, and move the minds of his hearers to
laughter or tears at his pleasure."
The daily life at Combe Florey was eminently patriarchal. He lived
surrounded by children, grandchildren, and friends; chatting with the poor,
comforting the sick, and petting the babies of the village. Old and young
alike he doctored with extraordinary vehemence and persistency, "As I don't
shoot or hunt, it is my only rural amusement." He wrote to a friend--"The
influenza to my great joy has appeared here, and I am in high medical
practice." "This is the house to be ill in," he used to say, "I take it as
a delicate compliment when my guests have a slight illness here. Come and
see my apothecary's shop." The "shop" was a room filled on one side with
drugs and on the other with groceries. "Life is a difficult thing in the
country, I assure you, and it requires a good deal of forethought to steer
the ship, when you live twelve miles from a lemon."
The church of Combe Florey was described by Francis Jeffrey as "a horrid
old barn." There the Rector performed two services a Sunday, celebrated the
Holy Communion once a month, and preached his practical sermons,
transcribed from his own execrable manuscript by a sedulous clerk. "I
like," he said, "to look down upon my congregation--to fire into them. The
common people say I am a _bould preacher_, for I like to have my arms free,
and to thump the pulpit." A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with
the words, "Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion! I really can hardly
keep my hands off you."
An anonymous correspondent kindly furnishes me with this description of the
Valley of Flowers as it was in more recent years:--
"I visited Combe Florey, with camera and vasculum, in 1893. It is one
of the loveliest spots in that district of lovely villages, lying in
the Vale of Taunton on the southern slope of the Quantocks. The
parsonage is entirely unchanged: there is Sydney's study, a
low-ceilinged room supported partly by pillars, level with the garden
and opening into it. There is the old-fashioned fireplace by which he
and his wife sate opposite each other in his last illness. 'Mrs.
Sydney has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take
something every hour, and pass the mixture from one to the other.'
Outside still grow his Conifers, a large Atlantic Cedar and a Deodara;
unchanged too are the palings over which Jack and Jill[97] peered with
antlered heads. Old villagers still talk of his medical dispensary,
and of the care with which he drove round to collect and carry into
Taunton their monthly deposits for the Savings Bank."
Meanwhile, great events were transacting themselves in the political world,
and they had an important bearing on the tranquil life of Combe Florey. On
the 4th of May 1830, Sydney Smith wrote from London to his wife in the
country:--
"The King is going downhill as before, but seems to be a long time in
the descent. All kinds of intrigues are going on about change of
Ministry, and all kinds of hopes and fears afloat. Nothing is more
improbable than that I should be made a Bishop, and, if I ever had the
opportunity, I am now, when far removed from it, decidedly of opinion
that it would be the greatest act of folly and absurdity to accept
it--to live with foolish people, to do foolish and formal things all
day, to hold my tongue, or to twist it into conversation unnatural
to me."
King George IV. died on the 26th of June. The accession of William IV., who
was supposed to have some tendencies towards Whiggism, greatly stimulated
the demand for Parliamentary Reform; and the revolution in France, which
dethroned Charles X., gave a strong impetus to the democratic forces in
England. Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July. On the 14th of
August Charles Greville wrote, "The elections are still going against the
Government, and the signs of the times are all for reform and retrenchment,
and against slavery." In writing to congratulate a young Roman Catholic who
had been elected for Carlisle, Sydney Smith said--
"I rejoice in the temple which has been reared to Toleration; and I am
proud that I worked as a bricklayer's labourer at it--without pay, and
with the enmity and abuse of those who were unfavourable to its
construction."[98]
The new Parliament met on the 26th of October. On the 2nd of November, in
the debate on the Address, the Duke of Wellington made a vehement
declaration against Reform. This was the signal for an immense outcry.
There were mobs and riots everywhere. The King's projected visit to the
City on Lord Mayor's Day was abandoned. The Tory Government were beaten on
a motion relating to the new Civil List. "Never was any Administration so
completely and so suddenly destroyed; and, I believe, entirely by the
Duke's declaration." Lord Grey[99] became Prime Minister, as the head of a
Whig administration pledged to Reform. Soon afterwards Sydney Smith wrote
to a friend--
"I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment if he stays in long
enough; but the upper parsons live vindictively, and evince their
aversion to a Whig Ministry by an improved health."
The Reform Bill was brought in on the 1st of March 1831. Sydney thought it
"a magnificent measure, as wise as it is bold." Meetings of Reformers were
held all over the country to support it. Such a meeting was held at Taunton
on the 9th of March, and the Rector of Combe Florey attended and spoke.
"This," he said, "is the greatest measure which has ever been before
Parliament in my time, and the most pregnant with good or evil to the
country; and, though I seldom meddle with political meetings, I could
not reconcile it to my conscience to be absent from this. Every year
for this half century the question of Reform has been pressing upon
us, till it has swelled up at last into this great and awful
combination; so that almost every City and every Borough in England
are at this moment assembled for the same purpose and are doing the
same thing we are doing."
A great part of the controversy turned on the disfranchisement of the
"Pocket Boroughs," and this was a subject which immediately suggested a
happy apologue--
"These very same politicians are now looking in an agony of terror at
the disfranchisement of Corporations containing twenty or thirty
persons, sold to their representatives, who are themselves perhaps
sold to the Government: and to put an end to these enormous abuses is
called _Corporation robbery_, and there are some persons wild enough
to talk of compensation. This principle of compensation you will
consider perhaps, in the following instance, to have been carried as
far as sound discretion permits. When I was a young man, the place in
England I remember as most notorious for highwaymen and their exploits
was Finchley Common, near the metropolis; but Finchley Common, in the
progress of improvement, came to be enclosed, and the highwaymen lost
by these means the opportunity of exercising their gallant vocation. I
remember a friend of mine proposed to draw up for them a petition to
the House of Commons for compensation, which ran in this manner--'We,
your loyal highwaymen of Finchley Common and its neighbourhood having,
at great expense, laid in a stock of blunderbusses, pistols, and other
instruments for plundering the public, and finding ourselves impeded
in the exercise of our calling by the said enclosure of the said
Common of Finchley, humbly petition your Honourable House will be
pleased to assign to us such compensation as your Honourable House in
its wisdom and justice may think fit.'--Gentlemen, I must leave the
application to you....
"The greater part of human improvements, I am sorry to say, are made
after war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: mankind seem to
object to every species of gratuitous happiness, and to consider every
advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased by some calamity. I
shall esteem it as a singular act of God's providence, if this great
nation, guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult
for Reform, nor trusting Reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the
people, shall amend their decayed institutions at a period when they
are ruled by a popular monarch, guided by an upright minister, and
blessed with profound peace."
On the 22nd of March the Second Reading was carried by a majority of one.
But directly afterwards the Government was defeated on an amendment in
Committee, and promptly appealed to the country. Parliament was dissolved
on the 23rd of April. "Bold King! bold Ministers!" wrote Sydney on the
25th. Popular feeling was now really roused. "The Bill, the whole Bill, and
nothing but the Bill" was the war-cry from Caithness to Cornwall. Lord John
Russell, who had brought the Bill into Parliament, was the hero of the
hour. He contested Devonshire at the General Election, and Sydney, who had
a vote for the county, met him at Exeter.--
"The people along the road were very much disappointed by his
smallness. I told them he was much larger before the Bill was thrown
out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about the people. This
brought tears into their eyes!"
At this juncture Sydney composed (and published in the name of an imaginary
Mr. Dyson), a "Speech to the Freeholders on Reform"--
"Stick to the Bill--it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede. King
John made a present to the Barons. King William has made a similar
present to you. Never mind common qualities, good in common times. If
a man does not vote for the Bill, he is unclean--the plague-spot is
upon him--push him into the lazaretto of the last century, with
Wetherell[100] and Sadler[101]--purify the air before you approach
him--bathe your hands in Chloride of Lime, if you have been
contaminated by his touch....
"The thing I cannot, and will not bear, is this;--what right has
_this_ Lord, or _that_ Marquis, to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the
shape of Boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me? And how are
these masses of power re-distributed? The eldest son of my Lord is
just come from Eton--he knows a good deal about Æneas and Dido, Apollo
and Daphne--and that is all; and to this boy his father gives a
six-hundredth part of the power of making laws, as he would give him a
horse or a double-barrelled gun. Then Vellum, the steward, is put
in--an admirable man;--he has raised the estates--watched the progress
of the family Road-and-Canal Bills--and Vellum shall help to rule over
the people of England. A neighbouring country gentleman, Mr. Plumpkin,
hunts with my Lord--opens him a gate or two, while the hounds are
running--dines with my Lord--agrees with my Lord--wishes he could
rival the South-Down sheep of my Lord--and upon Plumpkin is conferred
a portion of the government. Then there is a distant relation of the
same name, in the County Militia, with white teeth, who calls up the
carriage at the Opera, and is always wishing O'Connell was hanged,
drawn, and quartered--then a barrister, who has written an article in
the _Quarterly_, and is very likely to speak, and refute M'Culloch;
and these five people, in whose nomination I have no more agency than
I have in the nomination of the toll-keepers of the Bosphorus, are to
make laws for me and my family--to put their hands in my purse, and to
sway the future destinies of this country; and when the neighbours
step in, and beg permission to say a few words before these persons
are chosen, there is an universal cry of rain, confusion, and
destruction--'We have become a great people under Vellum and
Plumpkin--under Vellum and Plumpkin our ships have covered the
ocean--under Vellum and Plumpkin our armies have secured the strength
of the Hills--to turn out Vellum and Plumpkin is not Reform, but
Revolution.'"
It was said by the opponents of the Bill that the existing system worked
well.--
"Work well! How does it work well, when every human being in-doors and
out (with the exception of the Duke of Wellington) says it must be
made to work better, or it will soon cease to work at all? It is
little short of absolute nonsense to call a government good, which the
great mass of Englishmen would, before twenty years were elapsed, if
Reform were denied, rise up and destroy. Of what use have all the
cruel laws been of Perceval, Eldon, and Castlereagh, to extinguish
Reform? Lord John Russell, and his abettors, would have been committed
to gaol twenty years ago for half only of his present Reform; and now
relays of the people would drag them from London to Edinburgh; at
which latter city we are told, by Mr. Dundas, that there is no
eagerness for Reform. Five minutes before Moses struck the rock, this
gentleman would have said that there was no eagerness for water.
"There are two methods of making alterations: the one is to despise
the applicants, to begin with refusing every concession, then to relax
by making concessions which are always too late; by offering in 1831
what is then too late, but would have been cheerfully accepted in
1830--gradually to O'Connellize the country, till at last, after this
process has gone on for some time, the alarm becomes too great, and
every thing is conceded in hurry and confusion. In the mean time fresh
conspiracies have been hatched by the long delay, and no gratitude is
expressed for what has been extorted by fear. In this way peace was
concluded with America, and Emancipation granted to the Catholics; and
in this way the War of Complexions will be finished in the West
Indies. The other method us, to see at a distance that the thing must
be done, and to do it effectually, _and at once_; to take it out of
the hands of the common people, and to carry the measure in a manly
liberal manner, so as to satisfy the great majority. The merit of this
belongs to the administration of Lord Grey. He is the only Minister I
know of, who has begun a great measure in good time, conceded at the
beginning of twenty years what would have been extorted at the end of
it, and prevented that folly, violence, and ignorance, which emanate
from a long denial and extorted concession of justice to great masses
of human beings. I believe the question of Reform, or any dangerous
agitation of it, is set at rest for thirty or forty years; and this is
an eternity in politics.
* * * * *
"I am old and tired,--thank me for ending; but one word more before I
sit down. I am old, but I thank God I have lived to see more than my
observations on human nature taught me I had any right to expect. I
have lived to see an honest King, in whose word his ministers could
trust, I have lived to see a King with a good heart, who, surrounded
by nobles, thinks of common men; who loves the great mass of English
people, and wishes to be loved by them; and who, in spite of clamour,
interest, prejudice, and fear, has the manliness to carry these wise
changes into immediate execution. Gentlemen, farewell! Shout for the
King!"[102]
Having done his best for the good cause in the country, Sydney Smith
returned to London to watch the results. On the 6th of June Macaulay met
him at dinner, and writes thus next day:--
"Sydney Smith leaves London on the 20th--the day before Parliament
meets for business, I advised him to stay and see something of his
friends, who would be coming up to London. 'My flock!' said this good
shepherd, 'my dear sir, remember my flock!
"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,"'
"...He begged me to come and see him at Combe Florey. 'There I am,
sir, in a delightful parsonage, about which I care a great deal, and a
delightful country, about which I do not care a straw.'"
When the new House of Commons assembled, it was found to contain a great
majority of Reformers. A fresh Bill was introduced, and passed the Second
Reading, by a majority of 136, on the 8th of July. While it was ploughing
its way through Committee, the Coronation of William IV. took place on the
8th of September. The solemnity was made an occasion for public rejoicings
in the country, and loyalty was judiciously reinforced by the suggestion
that the King was, in this great controversy, on the same side as his
people. At a meeting at Taunton, Sydney Smith spoke as follows:--
"I am particularly happy to assist on this occasion, because I think
that the accession of the present King is a marked and important era
in English history. Another coronation has taken place since I have
been in the world, but I never assisted at its celebration. I saw in
it a change of masters, not a change of system. I did not understand
the joy which it occasioned. I did not feel it, and I did not
counterfeit what I did not feel.
"I think very differently of the accession of his present Majesty. I
believe I see in that accession a great probability of serious
improvement, and a great increase of public happiness. The evils which
have been long complained of by bold and intelligent men are now
universally admitted. The public feeling, which has been so often
appealed to, is now intensely excited. The remedies which have so
often been called for are now, at last, vigorously, wisely, and
faithfully applied, I admire, gentlemen, in the present King, his love
of peace--I admire in him his disposition to economy, and I admire in
him, above all, his faithful and honourable conduct to those who
happen to be his ministers. He was, I believe, quite as faithful to
the Duke of Wellington as to Lord Grey, and would, I have no doubt, be
quite as faithful to the political enemies of Lord Grey (if he thought
fit to employ them) as he is to Lord Grey himself. There is in this
reign no secret influence, no double ministry--on whomsoever he
confers the office, to him he gives that confidence without which the
office cannot be holden with honour, nor executed with effect. He is
not only a peaceful King, and an economical King, but he is an honest
King. So far, I believe, every individual of this company will go with
me.
* * * * *
"There is an argument I have often heard, and that is this--Are we to
be afraid?--is this measure to be carried by intimidation?--is the
House of Lords to be overawed? But this style of argument proceeds
from confounding together two sets of feelings which are entirely
distinct--personal fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting
against this bill, because a mob may gather about the House of
Lords--because stones may be flung at my head--because my house may be
attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public
affairs. But I may rationally be afraid of producing great public
agitation; I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret
clubs and conspiracies--I may be wisely afraid of making the
aristocracy hateful to the great body of the people. This surely has
no more to do with fear than a loose identity of name; it is in fact
prudence of the highest order; the deliberate reflection of a wise
man, who does not like what he is going to do, but likes still less
the consequences of not doing it, and who of two evils chooses the
least.
"There are some men much afraid of what is to happen; my lively hope
of good is, I confess, mingled with very little apprehension; but of
one thing I must be candid enough to say that I am much afraid, and
that is of the opinion now increasing, that the people are become
indifferent to reform; and of that opinion I am afraid, because I
believe in an evil hour it may lead some misguided members of the
Upper House of Parliament to vote against the bill. As for the opinion
itself, I hold it in the utmost contempt. The people are waiting in
virtuous patience for the completion of the bill, because they know it
is in the hands of men who do not mean to deceive them. I do not
believe they have given up one atom of reform--I do not believe that a
great people were ever before so firmly bent upon any one measure. I
put it to any man of common sense, whether he believes it possible,
after the King and Parliament have acted as they have done, that the
people will ever be content with much less than the present bill
contains. If a contrary principle be acted upon, and the bill
attempted to be got rid of altogether, I confess I tremble for the
consequences, which I believe will be of the worst and most painful
description; and this I say deliberately, after the most diligent and
extensive enquiry. Upon that diligent enquiry I repeat again my firm
conviction, that the desire of reform has increased, not diminished;
that the present repose is not indifference, but the calmness of
victory, and the tranquillity of success. When I see all the wishes
and appetites of created beings changed,--when I see an eagle, that,
after long confinement, has escaped into the air, come back to his
cage and his chain,--when I see the emancipated negro asking again for
the hoe which has broken down his strength, and the lash which has
tortured his body--I will then, and not till then, believe that the
English people will return to their ancient degradation--that they
will hold out their repentant hands for those manacles which at this
moment lie broken into links at their feet."
This fine speech was delivered at a crucial moment of the speaker's
personal fortunes. Whether he would or would not have made a good bishop,
and whether the Whigs were or wore not justly chargeable with
cowardice[103] in not having raised him to the Episcopal Bench, are
disputable points. It seems certain, from his own declarations, that in
later life he would have declined the honour; but there was a time when it
might have been offered, and would probably have been accepted. When he
feared that England might be dragged into war with France on behalf of
Spain, he composed a skit purporting to be a Protest entered on the
Journals of the Lords by the Bishop of Worcester, and signed it "Sydney
Vigorn."[104] The Bishop of Worcester[105] died on the 5th of September
1831, and Lord Grey gave the vacant mitre to a Tory.[106] Sydney's emotions
are not recorded; but on the 10th of September Lord Grey offered him a
Residentiary Canonry of St. Paul's--"a snug thing, let me tell you, being
worth full £2000 a year." It was not an overwhelming reward for such long
and such brilliant service to the causes which Lord Grey represented, but
it was a recognition--and it was enough. He was installed on the 27th of
September, and on the day of his installation he wrote to a friend--"It
puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing--never did anything shabby
to procure preferment. These are pleasing recollections."
Soon afterwards, he was presented on his appointment, and met with a
misadventure at the Palace.--
"I went to Court, and, horrible to relate, with strings to my shoes
instead of buckles--not from Jacobinism, but ignorance. I saw two or
three Tory lords looking at me with dismay, was informed by the Clerk
of the Closet of my sin, and, gathering my sacerdotal petticoats about
me (like a lady conscious of thick ankles) I escaped further
observation."
[83] Francis Wrangham (1769-1842), Archdeacon of Cleveland.
[84] William Vernon-Harcourt {1789-1871}, father of Sir William
Vernon-Harcourt, M.P.
[85] Patrick Duigenan (1735-1816), LL.D., M.P. for the City of Armagh, and
Protestant agitator.
[86] The _Yorkshire Gazette_ for April 12, 1823, contains a long
letter from "A North Riding Clergyman," protesting against the
language used by Sydney Smith. This clergyman states that the report
of the meeting at Thirsk, given by the _York Herald_ of March 29, was
"unquestionably by the Minority themselves." It "professes to be a
sketch of what was said and done at the meeting of the North Riding
Clergy. Then the public is favoured with three considerable speeches,
filling three close columns of a newspaper, on the one side; and not
with three lines, nay, not with one, of anything said on the other
side.... Surely the whole of the twenty-two clergyman who differed
from the ten were not so astounded by the eloquence and display of
their opponents as to remain absolutely speechless." It is further
said that "on the present occasion, and after assuring his learned
brethren that he was not going to inflict upon them a speech, and some
other remarks of similar accuracy, Mr. Smith immediately harangues
them in a vehement and long speech; during which, with firm resolve,
it may seem, not to possess either 'overheated mind' or body, he
nearly exhausted the 'Three Tuns' of water," For this quotation, and
for the date of the meeting, which had been erroneously stated by
previous writers, I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. J.S.R.
Phillips, editor of the _Yorkshire Post_.
[87] (1808-1889): became 8th Earl of Carlisle in 1864 The Rev. Richard
Wilton, Canon of York and Rector of Londesborough, wrote in 1895:--"My
former venerable friend, the oldest inhabitant, gave me some graphic
descriptions of Sydney Smith's visit to the parish once or twice a
year, and the interest which was felt in the village when he drove
over from Foston, his other living, to preach an occasional sermon at
Londesborough. His reading, and manner in the pulpit, were described
to me as having been 'bold and impressive.' As soon as the sermon was
over, he would hasten out of the church along with his hearers, and
chat with the farmers about their turnips, or cattle, or corn-crops,
being anxious to utilize his scant opportunities of conversing with
his parishioners.... There was until lately living in this parish an
old man aged eighty, who was proud of telling how he was invited over
to Foston to 'brew for Sydney,' as he affectionately called him."
[88] Mr. Stuart Reid gives to this curious name the more impressive form of
Mayelstone.
[89] As Earl Marshal.
[90] "Thurloe writes to Henry Cromwell to _catch_ up some thousand
Irish boys, to send to the colonies. Henry writes back he has done so;
and desires to know whether his Highness would choose as many girls to
be caught up: and he add, 'doubtless it is a business in which God
will appear.' Suppose _bloody Queen Mary_ had caught up and
transported three or four thousand Protestant boys and girls from the
three Ridings of Yorkshire!!!!!! S.S."
[91] John Singleton Copley (1772-1863).
[92] _Endymion_, vol. I. chapter vi.
[93] The special services for "Gunpowder Treason" and other State Holy Days
were discontinued by Royal Warrant in 1859.
[94] From Col. iii. 12, 13--"Put on, as the elect of God, kindness,
humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another,
and forgiving one another."
[95] This apologue (which, the preacher thought, "would make a charming and
useful placard against the bigoted") occurs in the _Liberty of
Prophesying_, and has been traced to Gentius, the Latin translator of
Saadi.
[96] "Having become a King's Scholar, the hardships and cruelties he
suffered, as a junior boy, from his fag-master, were such as at one
time very nearly forced us to remove him from the school. He was taken
home for a short period, to recover from his bruises, and restore his
eye. His first act, on becoming Captain himself, was to endeavour to
ameliorate the condition of the juniors, and to obtain additional
comforts for them from the Head Master."--_From Mrs, Sydney Smith's
Journal_.
[97] Two donkeys, which were disguised as deer for the astonishment of
visitors.
[98] The Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill had become law on the 13th of
April 1829.
[99] Charles, 2nd Earl Grey (1764-1846).
[100] Sir Charles Wetherell (1770-1846), Attorney-General, and Recorder of
Bristol.
[101] Michael Thomas Sadler (1780-1835), M.P. for Newark.
[102] This is the "Speech respecting the Reform Bill" in Sydney Smith's
Collected Works.
[103] Lord Houghton wrote in 1873--"I heard Lord Melbourne say, 'Sydney
Smith has done more for the Whigs than all the clergy put together,
and our not making him a bishop was mere cowardice."
[104] The archaic signature of the Bishops of Worcester. Mrs. Austin
transcribes it "Vigour," and puts the Protest among the letters of
1831. Sir Spencer Walpole points out that it probably belongs to the
year 1823, when Lord Ellenborough moved an Address to the Crown in
favour of intervention in Spain.
[105] Ffolliot H.-W. Cornewall (1754-1831).
[106] Robert James Carr (1774-1841). It was said that this appointment was
due to a promise made by George IV., whom Dr. Carr, formerly Vicar of
Brighton, had attended in his last illness.