Sydney Smith Part 6

"The general cry in the country was, that they would not see their beloved monarch used ill in his old age, and that they would stand by him to the last drop of their blood." This ebullition of ill-judging loyalty reminds Peter of an accident which once befell the Russian Amba.s.sador in London.

His Excellency fell down in a fit when paying a morning call. A doctor was summoned, who declared that the patient must be instantly bled; and he prepared to perform the operation. "But the barbarous servants of the Emba.s.sy, when they saw the gleaming lancet, drew their swords, threw themselves into an att.i.tude of defiance, and swore they would kill the man who dared to hurt their beloved master."

Peter's own remedy for Irish disaffection was, first, to remove all civil penalties for religious faith, and then to subsidize the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy in Ireland, and pay for the maintenance of their schools and churches. He calculated that this would cost 250,000 a year. The clergy should all receive their salaries through the Bank of Ireland; the salaries were to be proportioned to the size of the congregations; and all patronage should be lodged in the hands of the Crown.--

"Now I appeal to any human being, what the disaffection of a clergy would amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the Crown; and whether Ignatius Loyola himself, if he were a living blockhead instead of a dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing from 100 a year in Sligo, to 300 in Tipperary. This is the miserable sum of money for which the merchants, and landowners, and n.o.bility of England, are exposing themselves to the tremendous peril of losing Ireland."

If all these schemes of conciliation were rejected as dangerous and impracticable, there remained of course the time-honoured remedy of Coercion. This had been demanded by Spencer Perceval, when attacking the conciliatory administration of "All the Talents," and it provoked Peter Plymley to a characteristic outburst:--

"I cannot describe the horror and disgust which I felt at hearing Mr.

Perceval call for measures of vigour in Ireland. If I lived at Hampstead[56] upon stewed meats and claret; if I walked to church every Sunday morning before eleven young gentlemen of my own begetting, with their faces washed, and their hair pleasingly combed; if the Almighty had blessed me with every earthly comfort--how awfully would I pause before I sent forth the flame and the sword over the cabins of the poor, brave, generous, open-hearted peasants of Ireland!

How easy it is to shed human blood! How easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle! How much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind!

How difficult it is to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection!"

Letter X. begins with some observations on the Law of t.i.the in Ireland. "I submit to your common sense, if it is possible to explain to an Irish peasant upon what principle of justice he is to pay every tenth potato in his little garden to a clergyman in whose religion n.o.body believes for twenty miles round him, and who has nothing to preach to but bare walls."

Let the landowner pay the t.i.the, and charge the labourer a higher rent.

This, Peter seems to think, will meet all the difficulties of the case, and yet not impoverish the Established clergy. And he is more than ever persuaded that the best way to check the predominance of the Roman Church in Ireland is to deliver the Romanists from every species of religious disability. On this theme Peter harps in a vein which, if he were a clergyman writing over his own name, would be justly described as cynical.--

"If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would belong to White's and to Brookes's; would keep race-horses; would walk up and down Pall Mall; be exonerated of his ready money and his const.i.tution; become as totally devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge, and civility, as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall; and return home with a supreme contempt for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan.... The true receipt for preserving the Roman Catholic religion is Mr.

Perceval's receipt for destroying it: it is to deprive every rich Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him from the Protestants, and to shut him up in his castle with priests and relics."

However sound this estimate of theological results may be, Abraham thinks that a period of universal war is not the proper time for innovations in the Const.i.tution. This, replies Peter, "is as much as to say that the worst time for making friends is the period when you have made many enemies; that it is the greatest of all errors to stop when you are breathless, and to lie down when you are fatigued."

Abraham, and those who think with him, hold that concession to Roman Catholics ought to be refused, if for no other reason, because King George III. dislikes it. This is an argument which Peter cannot away with. He respects the King as a good man, and holds that loyalty is one of the great instruments of English happiness.--

"But the love of the King may easily become more strong than the love of the Kingdom, and we may lose sight of the public welfare in our exaggerated admiration of him who is appointed to reign only for its promotion and support.... _G.o.d save the King_, you say, warms your heart like the sound of a trumpet. I cannot make use of so violent a metaphor; but I am delighted to hear it, when it is a cry of genuine affection: I am delighted to hear it when they hail not only the individual man, but the outward and living sign of all English blessings. These are n.o.ble feelings, and the heart of every good man must go with them; but _G.o.d save the King_, in these times, too often means--G.o.d save my pension and my place, G.o.d give my sisters an allowance out of the Privy Purse--make me Clerk of the Irons, let me survey the Meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public."

This brings us again to the "sepulchral Spencer Perceval," as he is called in another place, with his enormous emoluments from the public purse, his dream of pacifying Ireland by converting its inhabitants to Protestantism, and his fantastic policy of the Orders in Council.--

"He would bring the French to reason by keeping them without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits--but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a masterpiece of political sagacity."

And now, having exhausted the "Catholic Question" as it presents itself in England and Ireland, Peter Plymley (who has already called attention to the religious liberty established in France) cites the cases of Switzerland and Hungary as ill.u.s.trating the civil strength of nations free from the legalized animosities of religion. Did Frederick the Great ever refuse the services of a Catholic soldier? There is a Catholic Secretary of State at St. Petersburgh. There was a Greek Patriarch a.s.sociated with a Vicar-Apostolic in the government of Venice. A Catholic Emperor has entrusted the command of his guard to a Protestant Prince. But what signifies all this to Spencer Perceval? He looks at human nature from the top of Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the sphere of his own vision. And so we reach the conclusion of the whole matter.--

"I now take a final leave of this subject of Ireland. The only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance--a want of something difficult to unravel and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar: it is a prost.i.tution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man says, 'I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it,' this mode of arguing upon the Catholic Question I can well understand. But that any human being with an understanding two degrees elevated above that of an Anabaptist preacher should conscientiously contend for the expediency and propriety of leaving the Irish Catholics in their present state, and of subjecting us to such tremendous peril in the present condition of the world, it is utterly out of my power to conceive. Such a measure as the Catholic Question is entirely beyond the common game of politics. It is a measure in which all parties ought to acquiesce, in order to preserve the place where and the stake for which they play. If Ireland is gone, where are jobs? where are reversions? where is my brother, Lord Arden?[57] where are 'my dear and near relations'? The game is up, and the Speaker of the House of Commons will be sent as a present to the menagerie at Paris. We talk of waiting, as if centuries of joy and prosperity were before us. In the next ten years our fate must be decided; we shall know, long before that period, whether we can bear up against the miseries by which we are threatened, or not: and yet, in the very midst of our crisis, we are enjoined to abstain from the most certain means of increasing our strength, and advised to wait for the remedy till the disease is removed by death or health. And now, instead of the plain and manly policy of increasing unanimity at home, by equalizing rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and wicked system which has been pursued? Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a grave-digger--the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every effort which they make.... Every Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his country; the character of the country is lost for ever. It is of the utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with the greatest part of Europe, that there should be a free entry of neutrals into the enemy's ports; the neutrals who carried our manufactures we have not only excluded, but we have compelled them to declare war against us. It was our interest to make a good peace, or convince our own people that it could not be obtained; we have not made a peace, and we have convinced the people of nothing but of the arrogance of the Foreign Secretary: and all this has taken place in the short s.p.a.ce of a year, because a King's Bench barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned into Ministers of State, were determined to show country gentlemen that the late administration had no vigour. In the mean time commerce stands still, manufactures perish, Ireland is more and more irritated, India is threatened, fresh taxes are acc.u.mulated upon the wretched people, the war is carried on without it being possible to conceive any one single object which a rational being can propose to himself by its continuation; and in the midst of this unparalleled insanity we are told that the Continent is to be reconquered by the want of rhubarb and plums. A better spirit than exists in the English people never existed in any people in the world; it has been misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes in the most degrading and scandalous manner; they have been led to believe that they were benefiting the commerce of England by destroying the commerce of America, that they were defending their Sovereign by perpetuating the bigoted oppression of their fellow-subjects; their rulers and their guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of France by equalling her atrocity; and they have gone on wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, which, if husbanded by prudent and moderate counsels, might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of turning the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power to those who resemble him only in his vices; advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen to make them meanly submissive; their piety is turned into persecution, their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered because they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, so let it be; that event is in the hands of G.o.d; we must dry up our tears and submit. But, that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar-houses and hospitals; that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry; that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human beings, and I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever stoop to such degradations."

So ends this vivid argument on behalf of political justice and social equality. Lord Grenville saw the resemblance to Swift, and Lord Holland kindly reminded the anonymous satirist that "the only author to whom he could be compared in English, lost a bishopric for his wittiest performance." In later years Lord Murray[58] said, "After Pascal's _Letters_, it is the most instructive piece of wisdom in the form of Irony ever written." Macaulay declared that Sydney Smith was "universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift." Even now, after a century of publis.h.i.+ng, _Peter Plymley's Letters_ retain their preeminence. The unexpurgated edition of the _Apologia_ may rank with the _Provincial Letters_;[59] but the creator of Peter and Abraham Plymley stands alone.

[41] Abraham Rees, D.D. (1743-1825), and Andrew Kippis, D.D. (1723-1795), were Presbyterian ministers of great repute.

[42] The meeting-house in Old Jewry was built in 1701 and destroyed in 1808. It "covered 2600 square feet, and was lit with six bow windows."

Dr. Rees was its last minister.

[43] George Canning (1770-1827).

[44] Spencer Perceval (1762-1812).

[45] When it was proposed to exclude King's College from the re-const.i.tuted University of London.

[46] Spencer Perceval brought in several bills to compel non-resident inc.u.mbents to pay their curates a living wage.

[47] Spencer Perceval obtained the sinecure office of Surveyor of the Meltings and Clerk of the Irons in 1791.

[48] Spencer Perceval procured the reversion of his brother's office of Registrar to the Court of Admiralty, and burked a parliamentary inquiry into reversions generally.

[49] John Southey, 15th Lord Somerville, President of the Board of Agriculture.

[50] Spencer Perceval.

[51] Robert Bankes Jenkinson (1770-1820), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, was Lord Hawkesbury from 1796 to 1808.

[52] Lord Hawkesbury was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports at a salary of 3000 a year.

[53] "The allusion is to the Orders in Council under which Mr. Perceval endeavoured to retaliate on Napoleon's Baltic decree by regulating British trade with the Continent. Under these orders the exportation of all goods to France was prohibited which were not carried from this country and had not paid an export-duty here. But there were certain articles which the Minister decided that the Continent should have on no terms, and amongst others quinine, or Jesuit's Bark, as it was called. Sydney Smith, writing as Peter Plymley, said, 'You cannot seriously suppose the people to be so degraded as to look for their safety from a man who proposes to subdue Europe by keeping it without Jesuit's Bark.'"--SIR SPENCER WALPOLE, _Life of Lord John Russell_.

[54] In 1839 Sydney Smith p.r.o.nounced this "a very unjust imputation on Lord Castlereagh." Robert Stewart (1769-1823), Viscount Castlereagh, became Marquis of Londonderry in 1821.

[55] Henry Addington (1757-1844), created Viscount Sidmouth in 1805.

[56] Spencer Perceval had recently taken a villa on Hampstead Heath, for the benefit of his wife's health.

[57] Spencer Perceval's elder brother, Charles George Perceval (1756-1840), was created Lord Arden in 1802.

[58] John Archibald Murray (1779-1859), a Judge of the Court of Session.

[59] In October 1844 Eugene Robin, reviewing Sydney Smith in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, wrote as follows:--"Cache sous le pseudonyme de Peter Plymley il adresse ces nouvelles _provinciales_ a un reverend pasteur, qui est bien le parfait modele de la sottise protestante, la quintessence des docteurs Bowles et des archidiacres Nares."

CHAPTER IV

FOSTON--"PERSECUTING BISHOPS"--BENCH AND BAR

At the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the most serious evil which beset the Church of England was the system of Pluralities and Non-Residence. A prosperous clergyman might hold half-a-dozen separate preferments, and, as long as he paid curates to perform the irreducible minimum of public duty, he need never show his face inside his deserted parishes. The ecclesiastical literature of the time abounds in quaint ill.u.s.trations of the equanimity with which this system, and all its attendant evils, was regarded even by respectable and conscientious men. Thomas Newton, the commentator on Prophecy, was Dean of St. Paul's as well as Bishop of Bristol, and, before he became a bishop, held a living in the City, a Prebend of Westminster, the Precentors.h.i.+p of York, the Lectures.h.i.+p of St. George's, Hanover Square, and "the genteel office of Sub-Almoner." Richard Watson (who is believed never to have set foot in his diocese) was Bishop of Llandaff and Archdeacon of Ely, and drew the t.i.thes of sixteen parishes. William Van Mildert, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was Rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, and also held the living of Farningmam, near Sevenoaks, "as an agreeable retreat within a convenient distance from town." Richard Valpy was Head Master of Reading School, and Rector of Stradishall in Suffolk. George Butler, afterwards Dean of Peterborough, was Head Master of Harrow and Rector of Gayton in Northamptons.h.i.+re. Nearly every bishop had a living together with his see.

The valuable Rectory of Stanhope in Durham was held by four successive bishops. Henry Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, was Rector of St. George's, Hanover Square. George Pelham, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Suss.e.x, and Christopher Beth.e.l.l, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Yorks.h.i.+re.

When Sydney Smith was appointed to the rectory of Foston, there had been no resident Rector since the reign of Charles II. The churches of non-resident Rectors were commonly served by what were called "galloping parsons," who rattled through the services required by law, riding at full speed from parish to parish, so as to serve perhaps three churches on one Sunday. In many places the Holy Communion was celebrated only three times a year. At Alderley, before Edward Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, became Rector there, "the clerk used to go to the churchyard stile to see whether there were any more coming to church, for there were seldom enough to make a congregation. The former Rector used to boast that he had never set foot in a sick person's cottage." When the shepherds thus deserted and starved their flocks, it was only natural that the sheep betook themselves to every form of schism, irreligion, and immorality. To remedy these evils, Spencer Perceval, whose keen interest in the affairs of the Church had a curiously irritating effect on Sydney Smith, took in hand to pa.s.s the Clergy Residence Bill, and the Bill became an Act in 1803. In 1808 a new Archbishop[60] was enthroned at York. He immediately began to put the Act in force, and summoned Sydney Smith from the joys of London to the austerities of Foston-le-Clay. The choice lay between complying and resigning, for no exchange of livings seemed practicable. On the 8th of October 1808, Sydney wrote to Lady Holland--"My lot is now cast, and my heritage fixed--most probably. But you may choose to make me a bishop, and, if you do, I think I shall never do you discredit; for I believe it is out of the power of lawn and velvet, and the crisp hair of dead men fas.h.i.+oned into a wig,[61] to make me a dishonest man."

Two months later he wrote--"I have bought a book about drilling beans, and a greyhound puppy for the Malton Meeting. It is thought I shall be an eminent rural character." The expense of removing his family and furniture from London to Yorks.h.i.+re was considerable, so he published two volumes of sermons and paid for the journey with the 200 which he received for them.

The rectory-house at Foston was ruinous and uninhabitable, and it was necessary to rebuild it. Meanwhile, the Rector hired a house some way off, in the village of Heslington, and there he established himself on the 21st of June 1809, "two hundred miles," as he ruefully remarked, "from London."

Three days later he wrote to Lady Holland that he had laid down two rules for his own guidance in the country:--

"1. Not to smite the partridge; for, if I fed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth, if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the Church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting for which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau.[62]

"2. I mean to come to town once a year, though of that, I suppose, I shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing weaker and weaker, and my acquaintances gradually falling off. I shall by this time have taken myself again to shy tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as I was before) your abomination.... Mrs. Sydney is all rural bustle, impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs; I wait patiently, knowing all will come in due season."

To Jeffrey he wrote on the 3rd of September:--