of disloyalty to mankind, are fond of saying that bal. lot is harmless; that it will neither do the good nor the evil that is expected from it; and that the people may fairly be indulged in such an innocent piece of legislation. Never was such folly and madness as this; bal lot will be the cause of interminable hatred and jealousy among the different orders of mankind; it will familarize the English people to a long tenour of deceit; it will not answer its purpose of protecting the independent voter, and the people, exasperated and disappointed by the failure, will indemnify themselves by insisting upon unlimited suffrage. And then it is talked of as an experiment, as if men were talking of acids and alkalies, and the galvanic pile; as if Lord John could get on the hustings and say, 'Gentlemen, you see this ballot does not answer; do me the favour to give it up, and to allow yourselves to be replaced in the same situation as the ballot found you.' Such, no doubt, is the history of nations and the march of human affairs; and, in this way, the error of a sudden and foolish largess of power to the people might, no doubt, be easily retrieved. The most unpleasant of all bodily feelings is a cold sweat; nothing brings it on so surely as perilous nonsense in politics. I lose all warmth from the bodily frame when I hear the ballot talked of as an experiment. sal suffrage, as there is no act of folly or madness which it may not in the beginning produce. There would be the greatest risk that the monarchy, as at present constituted, the funded debt, the established church, titles, and hereditary peerage, would give way before it. Many really honest men may wish for these changes; I know, or at least believe, that wheat and barley would grow if there was no Archbishop of Canterbury, and domestic fowls would breed if our Vis count Melbourne was again called Mr. Lamb; but they have stronger nerves than I have who would venture to bring these changes about. So few nations have been free, it is so difficult to guard freedom from kings, aud mobs, and patriotic gentlemen; and we are in such a very tolerable state of happiness in England, that I think such changes would be very rash; and I have an utter mistrust in the sagacity and penetration of political reasoners who pretend to foresee all the consequences to which they would give birth. When I speak of the tolerable state of happiness in which we live in England, I do not speak merely of nobles, squires, and canons of St. Pauls, but of drivers of coaches, clerks in offices, carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, and bakers, and most men who do not marry upon nothing, and become burdened with large famí lies before they arrive at years of maturity. The Difficilem victum fundit durissima tellus. I cannot at all understand what is meant by this in-earth is not sufficiently fertile for this: dolent opinion. Votes are coerced now; if votes are free, will the elected be the same? if not, will the difference of the elected be unimportant? Will not the ballot stimulate the upper orders to fresh exertions? and are their increased jealousy and interference of no importance? If ballot, after all, is found to hold out a real protection to the voter, is universal lying of no importance? I can understand what is meant by calling ballot a great good, or a great evil; but, in the mighty contention for power which is raging in this country, to call it indifferent appears to me extremely foolish in all those in whom it is not extremely dis honest. If the ballot did succeed in enabling the lower order of voters to conquer their betters, so much the worse. In a town consisting of 700 voters, the 300 most opulent and powerful (and therefore probably the best instructed) would make a much better choice than the remaining 400; and the ballot would, in that case, do more harm than good. In nineteen cases out of twenty, the most numerous party would be in the wrong. If this is the case, why give the franchize to all? why not confine it to the first division? because even with all the abuses which occur, and in spite of them, the great mass of the people are much more satisfied with having a vote occasionally controlled than with having none. Many agree with their superiors, and therefore feel no control. Many are persuaded by their superiors, and not controlled. Some are indifferent which way they exercise the power, though they would not like to be utterly deprived of it. Some guzzle away their vote, some sell it, some brave their superiors, a few are threatened and controlled. The election, in different ways, is affected by the superior influence of the upper orders; and the great mass (occasionally and just ly complaining) are, beyond all doubt, better pleased than if they had no votes at all. The lower orders always have it in their power to rebel against their superiors; and occasionally they will do so, and have done so, and occasionally and justly carried elections against gold, and birth, and education. But it is madness to make laws of society which attempt to shake off the great laws of nature. As long as men love bread, and mutton, and broadcloth, wealth, in a long series of years, must have enormous effects upon human affairs, and the strong box will beat the ballot box. Mr. Grote has both, but he miscalculates their respective powers. Mr. Grote knows the relative values of gold and silver; but by what moral rate of exchange is he able to tell us the relative values of liberty and truth? It is hardly necessary to say any thing about univer. *The 400 or 500 voting against the 200, are right about as often as juries are right in differing from judges; and that is very seldom. After all, the great art in politics and war is to choose a good position for making a stand. The Duke of Wellington examined and fortified the lines of Torres Vedras a year before he had any occasion to make use of them, and he had previously marked out Waterloo as the probable scene of some future exploit.The people seem to be hurrying on through all the well-known steps to anarchy; they must be stopped at some pass or another; the first is the best and most easily defended. The people have a right to ballot or to any thing else which will make them happy; and they have a right to nothing which will make them unhappy. They are the best judges of their immedi ate gratifications, and the worst judges of what would best conduce to their interests for a series of years.Most earnestly and conscientiously wishing their good, I say, NO BALLOT. FIRST LETTER TO ARCHDEACON SINGLETON, ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION. MY DEAR SIR, As you do me the honour to ask my opinion respect. ing the constitution and proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission, and of their conduct to the dignita. ries of the church, I shall write to you without any reserve upon this subject. constitution of the commission. As the reform was The first thing which excited my surprise, was the to comprehend every branch of churchmen, bishops, dignitaries, and parochial clergymen, I cannot but think it would have been much more advisable to have added to the commission some members of the two lower orders of the church-they would have supplied that partial knowledge which appears in so many of the proceedings of the commissioners to have been wanting-they would have attended to those interests (not episcopal) which appear to have been so completely overlooked-and they would have screened the commission from those charges of injustice and partiality which are now so generally brought against it. There can be no charm in the name of bishop-the man who many prebendaries, many rectors, and many vicars, was a curate yesterday is a bishop to-day. There are who would have come to the reform of the church with as much integrity, wisdom, and vigour as any bishop on the bench; and I believe, with a much stron ger recollection that all the orders of the church were not to be sacrificed to the highest; and that to make their work respectable, and lasting, it should in all (even in its minutest provisions), be founded upon justice. All the interests of the church in the commutation of tithes are entrusted to one parochial clergyman; and I have no doubt, from what I hear of him, that they will be well protected. Why could not one or two such men have been added to the commission, and a general impression been created, that government in this momentous change had a parental feeling for all orders of men whose interests might be affected by it? A ministry may laugh at this, and think if they cultivate bishops, that they may treat the other orders of the church with contempt and neglect; but I say, that to create a general impression of justice, if it be not what common honesty requires from any ministry, is what common sense points out to them. It is strength and duration-it is the only power which is worth having-in the struggle of parties it gives victory, and is remembered, and goes down to other times. A mixture of different orders of clergy in the commission would at least have secured a decent attention to the representations of all; for of seven communications made to the commission by cathedrals, and involving very serious representations respecting high interests, six were totally disregarded, and the receipt of the papers not even acknowledged." I cannot help thinking that the commissioners have done a great deal too much. Reform of the church was absolutely necessary-it cannot be avoided, and ought not to be postponed; but I would have found out what really gave offence, have applied a remedy, removed the nuisance, and done no more. I would not have operated so largely on an old, and (I fear) a decaying building. I would not, in days of such strong political excitement, and amidst such a disposition to universal change, have done one thing more than was absolutely necessary to remove the odium against the establishment, the only sensible reasou for issuing any commission at all; and the means which I took to effect this, should have agreed as much as possible with institutions already established. For instance, the public were disgusted with the spectacle of rich prebendaries enjoying large incomes, and doing little or nothing for them. The real remedy for this would have been to have combined wealth and labour; and as each of the present prebendaries fell off, to have annexed the stall to some large and populous parish. A prebendary of Canterbury or of St. Paul's, in his present state, may make the church unpopular; but place him as rector of a parish, with 8000 or 9000 people, and in a benefice of little or no value, he works for his wealth, and the odium is removed. In like manner the prebends, which are not the property of the residentiaries, might have been annexed to the smallest livings of the neighbourhood where the prebendal estate was situated The interval which has elapsed since the first furious demand for reform, would have enabled the commissioners to adopt a scheme of much greater moderation than might perhaps have been possible at the first outbreak of popuar indignation against the church; and this sort of istribution would have given much more general satsfaction than the plan adopted by commissioners; for nough money, in the estimation of philosophers, has no ear mark, it has a very deep one in the opinion of the multitude. The riches of the church of Durham were most hated in the neighbourhood of Durham; and there such changes as I have pointed out would have been most gladly received, and would have conciliated the greatest favour to the church. The people of Kent cannot see why their Kentish estates, giv. en to the cathedral of Canterbury, are to augment livings in Cornwall. The citizens of London see some of their ministers starving in the city, and the profits of the extinguished prebends sent into Northumberland. These feelings may be very unphilosophical, but they are the feelings of the mass; and to the feel. ings of the mass the reforms of the church ought to be directed. In this way the evil would have been corrected where it was most seen and noticed. All patronage would have been left as it was. One order of the church would not have plundered the other. Nor The Rev. Mr. Jones is the commissioner appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, to watch over the interests of the church of one man. would all the cathedrals in England have been subject. ed to the unconciliating empire, and wear.ed energy Instead of this quiet and cautious mode of proceeding, all is change, fusion and confusion. New bishops, new dioceses, confiscated prebends-clergymen chang. ing bishops, and bishops clergymen-mitres in Man. chester, Gloucester turned into Bristol. Such a scene of revolution and commutation as has not been seen since the days of Ireton and Cromwell! and the singularity is, that all this has been effected by men se lected from their age, their dignity, and their known principles, and from whom the considerate part of the community expected all the the caution and calmness which these high requisites seemed to promise, and ought to have secured. The plea of making a fund is utterly untenable-the great object was not to make a fund; and there is the mistake into which the commission have fallen: the object was not to add 101. or 201. per annum to a thousand small livings, and to diminish inequalities in a ratio so trifling that the public will hardly notice it; a very proper thing to do if higher interests were not sacrificed to it, but the great object was to remove the causes of hatred from the church, by lessening such incomes as those of Canterbury, Durham, and London, exorbitantly and absurdly great-by making idleness work-and by these means to lessen the envy of lay men. It is imposssible to make a fund which will raise the smaller livings of the church into any thing like a decent support for those who possess them The whole income of the church, episcopal, prebendal, and parochial, divided among the clergy, would not give to each clergyman an income equal to that which is enjoyed by the upper domestic of a great nobleman. The method in which the church has been paid, and must continue to be paid, is by unequal divisions. All the enormous changes which the commission is making will produce a very trifling difference in the inequality, while it will accustom more and more those enemies of the church, who are studying under their right rev. masters, to the boldest revolutions in ecclesiastical affairs. Out of 10,478 benefices, there are 297 of about 401. per annum value, 1,629 at about 757., and 1,602 at about 1257.; to raise all these benefices to 2001. per annum, would require an annual sum of 371 2937.; and upon 2,878 of those benefices there are no houses; and upon 1,728 no houses fit for residence. What differ ence in the apparent inequality of the church would this sum of 371,2931. produce, if it could be raised ? or in what degree would it lessen the odium which that inequality creates? The case is utterly hopeless; and yet with all their confiscations the commissioners are so far from being able to raise the annual sum of 371,000l., that the utmost they expect to gain is 150,0001. per annum. It seems a paradoxical statement, but the act is, that the respectability of the church, as well as of the bar, is almost entirely preserved by the unequal division of their revenues. A bar of one hundred lawyers travel the northern circuit, enlightening provincial ig norance, curing local partialities, diffusing knowledge, and dispensing justice in their route: it is quite certain that all they gain is not equal to all that they spend; if the profits were equally divided, there would not be six and eight-pence for each person, and there would be no bar at all. At present, the success of the leader animates them all-each man hopes to be a Scarlett or a Brougham-and takes out his ticket in a lottery by which the mass must infallibly lose, trusting (as man. kind are so apt to do) to his good fortune, and believ ing that the prize is reserved for him, disappointment and defeat for others. So it is with the clergy; the whole income of the church, if equally divided, w uld be about 2501. for each minister. Who would go into the church and spend 1,2007. or 1,5007. upon his education, if such were the highest remuneration he could ever look to? At present, men are tempted into the church by the prizes of the church, and bring into that church a great deal of capital, which enables them to live in decency, supporting themselves, not with the money of the public, but with their own money, which, but for this temptation, would have been cerried into In fact, nothing can be more unjust and idle than the reasoning of many laymen upon church matters. You choose to have an establishment-God forbid you should choose otherwise! and you wish to have men of decent manners, and good education, as the minis. ters of that establishment; all this is very right: but are you willing to pay them as such men ought to be paid? Are you willing to pay to each clergyman, confining himself to one spot, and giving up all his time to the care of one parish, a salary of 500l. per annum? To do this would require three millions to be added to the present revenues of the church; and such an expenditure is impossible! What then remains, if you will have a clergy and will not pay them equitably and separately, than to pay them unequally and by lottery and yet this very inequality, which secures to you a respectable clergy upon the most economical terms, is considered by laymen as a gross abuse. It is an abuse, however, which they have not the spirit to exInguish by increased munificence to their clergy, nor justice to consider as the only other method by which all the advantages of a respectable establishment can be procured; but they use it at the same time as a topic for sarcasm, and a source of economy. This, it will be said, is a mammonish view of the subject; it is so, but those who make this objection, forget the immense effect which mammon produces upon religion itself. Shall the Gospel be preached by men paid by the state? shall these men be taken from the lower orders and be meanly paid? shall they be men of learning and education? and shall there be some magnificent endowments to allure such men into the church? Which of these methods is the best for diffusing the rational doctrines of Christianity? not in the age of the apostles, not in the abstract, timeless, nameless, placeless land of the philosophers, but in the year 1837, in the porter-brewing, cotton-spinning, tallow-melting kingdom of Great Britain, bursting with opulence, and flying from poverty as the greatest of human evils. Many different answers may be given to these questions, but they are questions which, not ending in mammon, have a powerful bearing on real religion, and deserve the deepest consideration from its disciples and friends. Let the comforts of the clergy go for nothing. Consider their state only as religion is affected by it. If upon this principle I am forced to allot to some an opulence which my clever friend the Examiner would pronounce to be apostolical, I cannot help it; I must take this people with all their follies, and prejudices, and circumstances, and carve out an establishment best suited for them, however unfit for early Christianity in barren and conquered Judea. dience to an act of Parliament, but the very act of The words of Henry VIII., in endowing the cathedral of Canterbury, are thus given in the translation. We, therefore, dedicating the aforesaid close, site, circle, and precinct to the honour and glory of the Holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have decreed that a certain Cathedral and Metropolitan Church, with one Dean, Presbyter, and twelve Prebendaries Presbyters; these verily and for ever to serve Almighty God shall be created, set up, settled, and established; and the same aforesaid Cathedral and Metropolitan Church, with one Dean, Presbyter, and twelve Prebendaries Presbyters, with other Ministers necessary for divine worship, by the tenour of these presents in reality, and plentitude of force, we do create, set up, settle, and establish, and do command to be etablished and to be in perpetuity, and inviolably maintained and upheld by these presents.' And this is the church, the rights and liberties of which the archbishop at his consecration swears to maintain. Nothing can be more ill-natured among politicians, than to look back into Hansard's Debates, to see what has been said by particular men upon particular occasions, and to contrast such speeches with present opinions-and therefore I forbear to introduce some inviting passages upon taking oaths in their plain and obvious sense, both in debates on the Catholic question and upon that fatal and Mezentian oath which binds the Irish to the English church. It is quite absurd to see how all the cathedrals are to be trimmed to an exact Procrustes pattern ;-quieta movere is the motto of the commission:-there is to be everywhere a dean, and four residentiaries; but St. Paul's and Lincoln have at present only three residentiaries, and a dean, who officiates in his turn Not only will this measure of the commission bring as a canon-a fourth must be added to each. Why? into the church a lower and worse educated set of nobody wants prebendaries; St. Paul's and Lincoln go men, but it will have a tendency to make the clergy on very well as they are. It is not for the lack of fanatical. You will have a set of ranting, raving pas- prebendaries, it is for idleness, that the Church of tors, who will wage war against all the innocent plea- England is unpopular; but in the lust of reforming sures of life, vie with each other in extravagance of the commission cut and patch property as they would zeal, and plague your heart out with their nonsense cut figures in pasteboard. This little piece of wanton and absurdity: cribbage must be played in caverns, change, however, gives to two of the bishops, who are and sixpenny whist take refuge in the wilderness. In commissioners as well as bishops, patronage of a this way low men doomed to hopeless poverty, and thousand a year each; and though I am willing to galled by contempt, will endeavour to force them- consider this as the cause of the recommendation, selves into station and significance. yet I must observe it is not very common that the There is an awkward passage in the memorial of same persons should bring in the verdict and receive the church of Canterbury, which deserves some consi- the profits of the suit. No other archdeacons are paid deration from him to whom it is directed. The Arch-in such a manner, and no other bishops out of the bishop of Canterbury, at his consecration, takes a so- commission have received such a bonus.* lemn oath that he will maintain the rights and liber- I must express my surprise that nothing in this ties of the church of Canterbury; as chairman, how-commission of bishops, either in the bill which has ever, of the new commissiou, he seizes the patronage passed, or in the report which preceded it, is said of of that church, takes two-thirds of its revenues, and abolishes two-thirds of its members. That there is an answer to this I am willing to believe, but I cannot at present find out what it is; and this attack upon the revenues and members of Canterbury, is not obe *This extravagant pay of archdeacons is taken, rememher, from that fund for the augmentation of small livings for the establishment of which all the divisions and confiscations have been made. 270 WORKS OF THE REV. SIDNEY SMITH. concurrent the duties of bishops. A bishop is now forced by law | who, in enumerating the advantages of their stations, to be in his diocese or to attend his duty in Pail ament have always spoken of the opportunities of providing -he may be entirely absent from both; nor are there for their families as the greatest and mot important. wanting instances within these six years where such It is, I admit, the duty of every man, and of every It would have been very easy body, to present the best man that can be has been the case. to have placed the repairs of episcopal palaces any living of which he is the patron; but I the only (as the concurrent leases of bishops are placed) has been neglected, it has been neglected by biziejs under the superintendence of deans and chapters; quite as much as by chapters; and no in can ejen but though the bishops' bill was accompanied by the Clerical Guide and read two pages of it, wiLLe another bill, containing the strictest enactments for out seeing that the bench of bishops are the last per the residence of the clergy, and some very arbitra- sons from whom any remedy of this evil is to be eaThe legislature has not always taken the same view ry and unjust rules for the repair of their houses, it pected. did not appear upon the face of the law that the bishops had any such duties to perform; and yet I remem of the trust-worthiness of bishops and chapters as is for twenty-one years, renewable every seven. ber the case of a bishop, dead not six years ago, who taken by the commission. Bishops' leases for years was scarcely ever seen in the House of Lords, or in are his diocese; and I remember well also the indigna. When seven years are expired, if the present tenant tion with which the inhabitants of the great cathe- will not renew, the bishop may grant a dral town spoke of the conduct of another bishop lease. How does his lordship act on such occasions? (now also deceased) who not only never entered his He generally asks two years' income for the renewal, palace, but turned his horses into the garden. When when chapters, not having the privilege of granting mention these instances, I am not setting myself such concurring leases, ask only a year and a half up as the satirist of bishops. I think, upon the whole, and if the bishop's price is not given, he puts a son, or they do their duty in a very exemplary manner, but a daughter, or a trustee, into the estate, and the they are not, as the late bills would have us to sup- price of the lease deferred is money saved for his pose, impeccable. The church commissioners should family. But unfair and exorbitant terms may be ask. not have suffered their reports and recommendations ed by his lordship, and the tenant may be unfairly to paint the other branches of the church as such slip- dispossessed-therefore, the legislature enacts that all pery transgredient mortals, and to leave the world to those concurrent leases must be countersigned by the safeguards against episcopal rapacity; and, as I hear imagine that bishops may be safely trusted to their dean and chapter of the diocese, making them the own goodness without enactment or control. from others, not making them so in vain. These sorts of laws do not exactly correspond with the relative views taken of both parties by the ecclesiastical commission. This view of chapters is of course overlooked by a commission of bishops, just as all mention of bridles would be omitted in a meeting of horses; but in this view, chapters might be made eminently useful. In what profession, too, are there no gradations? Why is the Church of England to be nothing but a collection of beggars and bishops-the Right Reverend Dives in the palace, and Lazarus in orders at the gate, doctored by dogs, and comforted with crumbs ? This squabble about patronage is said to be disgraceful. Those who mean to be idle, and insolent, because they are at peace, may look out of the window and say,This is a disgraceful squabble between bishops and chapters; but those who mean to be just, should ask, 'Who begins? the real disgrace of the squabble is in the attack, and not in the defence. If any man puts his hand into my pocket to take my property, am I disgraced if I prevent him? Churchmen are ready enough to be submissive to their superiors; but were they to submit to a spoliation so gross, accompanied with ignominy and degradation, and to bear all this in submissive silence ;-to be accused of nepotism by nepotists, who were praising themselves indirectly by the accusation, and benefit. ing themselves directly by the confiscation founded on it-the real disgrace would have been to have submitted to this: and men are to be honoured, not disgraced, who come forth contrary to their usual habits, to oppose those masters whom, in common seasons, they would willingly obey; but who, in this matter, have tarnished their dignity, and forgotten what they owe to themselves and to us. But to take away the patronage of existing prebendaries is objectionable for another class of reasons. during my life. Society If it is right to take away the patronage of my cathedral and to give it to the bishop, it is at least unjust to do so with my share of have a right to improve, or to do what they think an improvement, but then they have no right to do so suddenly, and hastily to my prejudice! After securing to me certain possessions by one hundred statutes in fine garments, and conferred upon me pompous passed in six hundred years after having clothed me It is a very singular thing that the law always sus- names, they have no right to turn round upon me all pects judges, and never suspects bishops. If there is of a sudden and to say, You are not a dean nor a any way in which the partialities of the judge may in-canon-residentiary, but a vagabond and an outcast, jure layinen, the subject is fenced round with all sorts and a morbid excressence upon society. This would of jealousies, and enactments, and prohibitions-all not be a reform, but the grossest tyranny and oppres partialities are guarded against, and all propensities sion. If a man cannot live under the canopy of ancient watched. Where bishops are concerned, acts of Par- law, where he is safe, how can he see his way, or lay liament are drawn up for beings who can never possi-out his plan of life? bly be polluted by pride, prejudice, passion, or inter est. Not otherwise would be the case with judges, if they, like the heads of the church, legislated for themselves. Then comes the question of patronage; can any thing be more flagrantly unjust, than that the patronage of cathedrals should be taken away and conferred upon the bishops? I do not want to go into a loug and tiresome history of episcopal nepotism, but it is notorious to all, that bishops confer their patronage upon their sons, and sons-in-law, and all their relations; and it is really quite monstrous in the face of the world, who see this every day, and every hour, to turn round upon deans and chapters and to say to them: We are credibly informed, that there are instances in your chapters where preferment has not been given to the most learned men you can find, but to the sons and brothers of some of the prebendaries. These things must not be-we must take these benefices into our own keeeping;' and this is the language of men swarming themselves with sons and daughters, and 'Dubitant homines serere atque impendere curas.' You tolerated, for a century, the wicked traffic in slaves, legislated for that species of property, encouraged it by premiums, defended it in your courts of justice-West Indians bought and sold, trusting (as Englishmen always ought to trust) in parliaments. Women went to the altar-promised that they should be supported by that property, and children were bom to it, and young men were educated with it, but God touched the hearts of the English people, and they would have no slaves. The scales fell from their eyes, and they saw the monstrous wickedness of the traffic; but then they said, and said magnificently, to the West Indians, We mean to become wiser and better, but not at your expense; the loss shall be ours, and we will not involve you in ruin, because we are ashamed of our former cruelties, and have learnt a better lesson of humanity and wisdom.' And this is the way in which improving nations ought to act, and this is the distinction between reform and revolution. Justice is not changed by the magnitude or minuteness of the subject. The old cathedrals have enjoyed their patronage for seven hundred years, and the new ones since the time of Henry VIII.; which latter period even gives a much longer possession than ninetynine out of a hundred of the legislators, who are called upon to plunder us, can boast for their own estates. And these rights, thus sanctioned, and hallowed by time. are torn from their present possessors without the least warning, or preparation, in the midst of all that fever of change which has seized upon the people, and which frightens men to the core of their hearts; and this spoliation is made, not by low men rushing into the plunder of the church and state, but by men of admirable and unimpeached character in all the relations of life-not by rash men of new politics, but by the ancient conservators of ancient law-by the archbishops and bishops of the land, high official men, invented and created, and put in palaces to curb the lawless changes, and the mutations, and the madness of mankind; and to crown the whole, the ludicrous is added to the unjust, and what they take from the other branches of the church they confer upon themselves. Never dreaming of such sudden revolutions as these, a prebendary brings up his son to the church, and spends a large sum of money in his education, which, perhaps, he can ill afford. His hope is (wicked wretch!) that, according to the established custom of the body to which he (immoral man!) belongs, the chapter will (when his turn arrives), if his son be of fair attainments and good character, attend to his nefarious recommendation, and confer the living upon the young man; and in an instant all is hopes are destroyed, and he finds his preferment seized upon, under the plea of public good, by a stronger churchman than himself. I can call this by no other name than that of tyranny and oppression. I know very well that this is not the theory of patronage; but who does better? do individual patrons? do colleges who give in succession? and as for bishops, lives there the man so weak and foolish, so little observant of the past, as to believe (when this tempest of purity and perfection has blown over) that the name of Bloomfield will not figure in those benefices from which the names of Copleston, Blomberg, Taite, and Smith, have been so virtuously excluded? I have no desire to make odious comparisons between the purity of one set of patrons and another, but they are forced upon me by the injustice of the commissioners. I must either make such comparisons or yield up, without remonstrance, those rights to which I am fairly entitled. It may be said that the bishops will do better n future; that now the public eye is upon them, they will be shamed into a more lofty and anti-nepotic spirit; but, if the argument of past superiority is given up, and the hope of future amendment resorted to, why may we not improve as well as our masters? but the commission says, These excellent men (meaning themselves) have promised to do better, and we have an implicit confidence in their word: we must have the patronage of the cathedrals. In the mean time we are ready to promise as well as the bishops. With regard to that common newspaper phrase the public eye, there's nothing (as the bench well know) more wandering and slippery than the public eye. In five years hence, the public eye will no more see what description of men are promoted by bishops, than it will see what doctors of law are promoted by the Tursh Ublema; and at the end of this period, (such is the example set by the commission,) the public eye. turned in every direction, may not be able to see any bishops at all. In many instances, chapters are better patrons than bishops, because their preferment is not given exclusively to one species of incumbents. I have a diocese now in my private eye which has undergone the following changes. The first of three bishops whom I remember was a man of careless easy temper, and how patronage went in those early days may be conjectured by the following letters-which are not his, but serve to illustrate a system: THE BISHOP TO LORD A My Dear Lord, I have noticed with great pleasure the behaviour of your lordship's second son, and am most happy to have it in my power to offer to him the living of* **. He will find it of considerable value; and there is, I understand, a very good house upon it, &c. &c. This is to confer a living upon a man of real merit out of the family; into which family, apparently sa crificed to the public good, the living is brought back by the second letter: TO THE SAME A YEAR AFTER. My dear Lord, Will yor excuse the liberty I take in soliciting promotion for my grandson? He is an officer of great skill and gallantry, and can bring the most ample testimonials from is, I understand, about to be commissioned; and if, &c. &c. some of the best men in the profession: the Arethu a frigate Now I am not saying that hundreds of prebendiaries have not committed such enormities and stupendous crimes as this (a declaration which will fill the whig cabinet with horror); all that I mean to contend for is, that such is the practice of bishops quite as much as it is of inferior patrons. The second bishop was a decided enemy of Calvinistical doctrines, and no clergyman so tainted had the slightest chance of preferment in his diocese. The third bishop could endure no man whose prin. ciples were not strictly Calvinistic, and who did not give to the articles that kind of interpretation. Now here were a great mass of clergy naturally alive to the emoluments of their profession, and not knowing which way to look or stir, because they depended so entirely upon the will of one person. Not otherwise is it with a very whig bishop, or a very tory bishop; but the worst case is that of a superannuated bishop; here the preferment is given away, and must be given away by wives and daughters, or by sons, or by butlers, perhaps, and valets, and the poor dying patron's paralytic hand is guided to the signatures of papers, the contents of which he is utterly unable to comprehend. In all such cases as these, the superiority of bishops as patrons will not assist that violence which the commissioners have committed upon the patronage of cathedrals. I never heard that cathedrals had sold the patronage of their preferment; such a practice, however, is not quite unknown among the higher orders of the church. When the Archbishop of Canterbury consecrates an inferior bishop, he marks some piece of preferment in the gift of the bishop as his own. This is denomi nated an option; and when the preferment falls, it is not only in the gift of the archbishop, if he is alive, but in the gift of his representative if he is not. It is an absolute chattel, which, like any other chattel, is part of the archbishop's assets; and if he died in debt, might be taken and sold for the benefit of his credi tors-and within the memory of man such options have been publicly sold by auction-and if the present Archbishop of Canterbury were to die in debt to-mor row, such might be the fate of his options. What Archhishop Moore did with his options I do not know, but the late Archbishop Sutton very handsomely and properly left them to the present-a bequest, however, which would not have prevented such options from coming to the hammer, if Archbishop Sutton had not cleared off, before his death, those incumbrances which, at one period of his life, sat so heavily upon him. What the present archbishop means to do with them, I am not informed. They are not alluded to in the church returns, though they must be worth some thousand pounds. The commissioners do not seem to know of their existence-at least they are profoundly silent on the subject; and the bill which passed through Parliament in the summer for the regulation of the emoluments of bishops, does not make the most distant allusion to them. When a parallel was drawn between two species of patrons-which ended in the confiscation of the patronage of cathedrals-when two archbishops helped to draw the parallel, and profited |