don't care for popular clamour, and think it might now | taken to preserve the rights and property of the church be defied; but I confess the gentlemen volunteers of Canterbury: I am quite sure so truly good a man, alarm me. They have unfortunately, too, collected their addresses, and published them in a single volume !!!

I should like to know how many of our institutions at this moment, besides the cathedrals, are under notice of destruction. I will, before I finish my letter, endeavour to procure a list; in the mean time I will give you the bill of fare with which the last session opened, and I think that of 1838 will not be less copious. But at the opening of the session of 1837, when I addressed my first letter to you, this was the state of our intended changes :-The law of copyright was to be recreated by Serjeant Talfourd; church-rates abolished by Lord John Russell, and imprisonment for debt by the attorney-general; the Archbishop of Canterbury kindly undertook to destroy all the cathedrals, and Mr. Grote was to arrange our voting by ballot; the septennial act was to be repealed by Mr. Williams-corn-laws abolished by Mr. Clay-and the House of Lords reformed by Mr. Ward; Mr. Hume remodelled country-rates-Mr. Ewart put an end to primogeniture, and Mr. Tooke took away the exclusive privileges of Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge; Thomas Duncombe was to put an end to the proxies of the lords, and Sergeant Prime to turn the universities topsy-turvy. Well may it be said that

'Man never continueth in one stay.'

See how men accustom themselves to large and perilous changes. Ten years ago, if a cassock or a hassock had been taken from the establishment, the current of human affairs would have been stopped till restitution had been made. In a fortnight's time, Lord John Russell is to take possession of, and to repartition all the cathedrals in England; and what a prelude for the young queen's coronation! what a medal for the august ceremony!-the fallen Gothic buildings on one side of the gold, the young Protestant queen on the other:

"Victoria Ecclesiæ Victrix.'

And then, when she is full of noble devices, and of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and amid the solemn swell of music, when heart beats happily, and her eyes look majesty, she turns them on the degraded ministers of the Gospel, and shudders to see she is stalking to the throne of her Protestant ancestors over the broken altars of God.

Now, remember, I hate to overstate my case. I do not say that the destruction of cathedrals will put an end to railroads: I believe that good mustard and cress, sown after Lord John's bill is passed, will, if duly watered, continue to grow. I do not say that the country has no right, after the death of individual incumbents, to do what they propose to do ;-I merely say that it is inexpedient, uncalled for, and mischievous, that the lower clergy, for whose sake it is proposed to be done, do not desire it, that the bishop commissioners, who proposed it, would be heartily glad if it was put an end to,-that it will lower the character of those who enter into the church, and accustom the English people to large and dangerous confiscations: and I would not have gentlemen of the money-bags, and of wheat and bean land, forget that the church means many other things than Thirty-nine Articles, and a discourse of five-and-twenty minutes' duration on the Sabbath. It means a check to the conceited rashness of experimental reasoners-an adhesion to old moral landmarks-an attachment to the happiness we have gained from tried institutions, greater than the expectation of that which is promised by novelty and change. The loud cry of ten thousand teachers of justice and worship-that cry which masters the Borgias and Catalines of the world, and guards

from devastation the best works of God

Magnâ testantur voce per orbem Discite justitiam moniti et non temnere divos. In spite of his uplifted chess-board, I cannot let my old school-fellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury, off, without harping a little upon his oath, which he has

as from the bottom of my heart I believe him to be,
has some line of argument. by which he defends him-
self; but till I know it, I cannot of course say I am
convinced by it. The common defence for breaking
oaths is, that they are contracts made with another
party, which the Creator is called to witness, and from
which the swearer is absolved, if those for whom the
oath is taken choose to release him from his obligation.
With whom, then, is the contract made by the arch-
bishop? Is it with the community at large? If so,
nothing but an act of Parliament (as the community
at large have no other organ) could absolve him from
his oath; but three years before any act is passed, he
puts his name to a plan for taking away two-thirds of
the property of the church of Canterbury. If the con-
tract is not made with the community at large, but with
the church of Canterbury, every member of it is in de-
cided hostility to his scheme. O'Connell takes an oath
that he will not injure nor destroy the Protestant
church; but in promoting the destruction of some of
the Irish bishoprics, he may plead that he is sacrificing
a part to preserve the whole, and benefiting, not injur
ing, the Protestant establishment. But the archbishop
does not swear to a general truth, where the principle
may be preserved, though there is an apparent devia-
tion from the words; but he swears to a very narrow
and limited oath, that he will not alienate the posses-
sions of the church of Canterbury. A friend of mine
has suggested to me that his grace has, perhaps, for-
gotten the oath; but this cannot be, for the first Pro-
testant in Europe of course makes a memorandum in
his pocket-book of all the oaths he takes to do, or to
abstain. The oath, however, may be less present to
the archbishop's memory, from the fact of his not
having taken the oath in person, but by the medium
of a gentleman sent down by the coach to take it for
him-a practice which, though I believe it to have
been long established in the church, surprised me,
confess, not a little. A proxy to vote, if you please-
a proxy to consent to arrangements of estates, if want-
ed; but a proxy sent down in the Canterbury fly, to
take the Creator to witness that the archbishop, de-
tained in town by business or pleasure, will never vio-
late that foundation of piety over which he presides
all this seems to me an act of the most extraordinary
indolence ever recorded in history. If an ecclesiastic,
not a bishop, may express any opinion on the reforms
of the church, I recommend that archbishops and
bishops should take no more oaths by proxy; but, as
they do not wait upon the sovereign or the prime min-
ister, or even any of the cabinet, by proxy, that they
should also perform all religious acts in their own per-
son. This practice would have been abolished in Lord
John's first bill, if other grades of churchmen as well
as bishops had been made commissioners. But the
motto was-

'Peace to the palaces-war to the manses.'

I

I have been informed, though I will not answer for the accuracy of the information, that this vicarious oath is likely to produce a scene which would have puzzled the Ductor Dubitantium. The attorney, who took the oath for the archbishop, is, they say, seized with religious horrors at the approaching confiscation of Canterbury property, and has in vain tendered back his 6s. 8d. for taking the oath. The archbishop refu ses to accept it; and feeling himself light and disencumbered, wisely keeps the saddle upon the back of the writhing and agonizing scrivener. I have talked it over with several clergymen, and the general opinion is, that the scrivener will suffer.

I cannot help thinking that a great opportunity opens itself for improving the discipline of the church, by means of those chapters which Lord John Russell* is

* I only mention Lord John Russell's name so often, because the management of the church measures devolves upCon him. He is, beyond all comparison, the ablest man in the whole administration, and to such a degree is he superior, that the government could not exist a moment without him. If the foreign secretary were to retire, we should no longer be nibbling ourselves into disgrace on the coast of

so anxious to destroy; divide the diocese among the members of the chapter, and make them responsible for the superintendence and inspection of the clergy in their various divisions under the supreme control of the bishop; by a few additions they might be made the bishops' council for the trial of delinquent clergymen. They might be made a kind of college for the general care of education in the diocese, and applied to a thousand useful purposes, which would have occurred to the commissioners, if they had not been so dreadfully frightened, and to the government, if their object had been, not to please the dissenters, but to improve the church.

The plan of taxation, therefore,' says the bishop, 'being abandoned, it was evident that the funds for the augmentation of poor livings, and for the supply of the spiritual wants of populous districts, must be drawn from the episcopal and cathedral revenues; that is, from the revenues from which the legislature seems to have a peculiar right to draw the funds for the general supply of the religious wants of the people; because they arise from benefices, of which the patronage is either actually in the crown, or is derivative from the crown. In the case of the episcopal revenues, the commissioners had already carried the principle of redistribution as far as they thought that it could, with due allowance for the various demands upon the incomes of the bishops, be carried. The only remaining source, therefore, was to be found in the cathedral revenues: and the commissioners proceeded, in the execution of the duties prescribed to them, to consider in what manner those revenues might be rendered conducive to the efficiency of the established church.'

This is very good episcopal reasoning; but is it true? The bishops and commissioners wanted a fund to endow small livings; they did not touch a farthing of their own incomes, only distributed them a little more equally; and proceeded lustily at once to confiscate -that, of seven chapter memorials addressed to the board. the receipt of one was only acknowledged.

The Bishop of Lincoln has lately published a pamphlet on the church question. His lordship is certainly not a man full of felicities and facilities, imitating none, and inimitable of any; nor does he work with infinite agitation of wit. His creation has blood with. out heat, bones without marrow, eyes without speculation. He has the art of saying nothing in many words beyond any man that ever existed; and when he seems to have made a proposition, he is so dreadfully frightened at it, that he proceeds as quickly as possible, in the ensuing sentence, to disconnect the subject and the predicate, and to avert the dangers he has incurred:-but as he is a bishop, and will be therefore more read than I am, I cannot pass him over. His lordship tells us, that it was at one time under consideration of the commissioners whether they should not tax all benefices above a certain value, in It is strictly within my province to acknowledge comorder to raise a fund for the improvement of smaller directly or through me; and it is part of their general inmunications made to the commissioners as a body, either livings; and his lordship adds, with the greatest inno-structions to me that I should do so in all cases. cence, that the considerations which principally weighed with the commissioners in inducing them not to adopt the plan of taxation, was that they understood the clergy in general to be decidedly averse to it; so that the plan of the commission was, that the greater benefices should pay to the little, while the bishops themselves-the Archbishop of Canterbury with his 15,000. a year, and the Bishop of London with his 10,000l. a year-were not to subscribe a single farth-pect. ing for that purpose. Why does John, Bishop of Lincoln, mention these distressing schemes of the commission, which we are certain would have been met with a general yell of indignation from one end of the kingdom to another? Surely it must have occurred to this excellent prelate that the bishops would have been compelled, by mere shame, to have contributed to the fund which they were about to put upon the backs of the more opulent parochial clergy; surely a moment's reflection must have taught them that the safer method by far was to confiscate cathedral pro-ret domus intus." It is now clear how the commission has perty.

The idea of abandoning this taxation, because it was displeasing to the clergy at large, is not unentertaining as applied to a commission who treated the clergy with the greatest contempt, and did not even notice the communications from cathedral bodies upon the subject of the most serious and extensive confiscations.*

Spain. If the amiable Lord Glenelg were to leave us, we should feel secure in our colonial possessions. If Mr. Spring Rice were to go into holy orders, great would be the Joy of the three per cents. A decent good-looking head of the government might easily enough be found in lieu of Viscount Melbourne; but in five minutes after the departure of Lord John, the whole whig government would be dissolved into sparks of liberality and splinters of reform. There are six remarkable men, who, in different methods and in different degrees, are now affecting the interests of this country-the Duke of Wellington, Lord John Russell, Lord Brougham, Lord Lyndhurst, Sir Robert Peel, and O'Connell. Greater powers than all these are the phlegm of the English people the great mass of good sense and intelligence diffused among them-and the number of those who have something to lose, and have not the slightest intention of losing it.

* Upon this subject I think it right to introduce the following letters, the first of which was published January 23, 1838:

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. Sir, I feel it to be consistent with my duty, as secretary to the church commissioners, to notice a statement emanating from a quarter which would seem to give it authenticity

'To whatever extent, therefore, the statement may be true, or whatever may be its value, it is clear that it cannot attach to the commissioners, but that I alone am responsible.

the midst of my other duties, to conduct an extensive corIn the execution of my office, I have endeavoured, in respondence in accordance to what I knew to be the feelings and wishes of the commissioners, and to treat every party in communication with them with attention and res

If, at some period of more than usual pressure, any accidental omission may have occurred, or may hereafter occur, involving an appearance of discourtesy, it is for me to offer, as I now do, explanation and apology.

'I am, sir, your obedient humble servant,
'C. K. Murray.”

'Whitehall Place, Jan. 21.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir. A more indiscreet and extraordinary communica-

tion than that which appears in your own paper of the 23d
instant, signed by Mr. C. K. Murray, I never read... Appa-

been worked. Where communications from the oldest ec

clesiastical bodies, upon the most important of all subjects to them and to the kingdom, were received by the greatest prelates and noblemen of the land, acting under the king's commission, I should have thought that answers suitable to the occasion would, in each case, have been dictated by the commission; that such answers would have been entered on the minutes, and read on the board-day next ensuing.

Is Mr. C K. Murray quite sure that this, which is done at all boards on the most trifling subjects, was not done at his board, in the most awful confiscation ever known in England? Is he certain that spoliation was in no instance sweetened by civility, and injustice never varnished by forms? Were all the decencies and proprieties, which ought to regulate the course of such great bodies, left without a single inquiry from the commissioner, to a gentleman who seems to have been seized with six distinct fits of oblivion on six separate occasions, any one of which required all that attention to decorum and that accuracy of memory for which secretaries are selected and paid?

According to Mr. C. K. Murray's account, the only order he received from the board was, "If any prependary calls, or any cathedral writes, desiring not to be destroyed, just say the communication has been received;" and even this, Mr. Murray tells us, he has not done, and that no one of the king's commissioners-archbishops, bishops, marquises, earls-ever asked him whether he had done it or not-though any one of these great people would have swooned away at the idea of not answering the most trifling communication from any other of these great people.

"Whatever else these commissioners do, they had better not bring their secretary forward again. They may feel wind-bound by public opinion, but they must choose, as a sacrifice, a better Iphigenia than Mr. C. K. Murray.

SYDNEY SMITH."

ed with the greatest sharpness and accuracy, they may squeeze 1-8th per cent. out of the Turkey Compa ny; Spring Rice would become director of the Hydroimpervious Association, and clear a few hundreds for the treasury. The British Roasted Apple Society is notoriously mismanaged, and Lord John and Brother Lister, by a careful selection of fruit, and a judicious management of fuel, would soon get it up to par.

I think, however, I have heard at the Political Economy Club, where I have sometimes had the honour of being a guest, that no trades should be carried on by governments. That they have enough to do of their own, without undertaking other persons' business. If any savings in the mode of managing ecclesiastical leases could be made, great deduction from these savings must be allowed for the jobbing and Gaspillage of general boards, and all the old servants of the church, displaced by this measure, must receive compensation.

The whig government, they will be vexed to hear, would find a great deal of patronage forced upon them by this measure. Their favourite human animal, the barrister of six years' standing, would be called into action. The whole earth is, in fact, in commission, and the human race, saved from the flood, are delivered over to barristers of six years' standing. The onus probandi now lies upon any man who says he is not a commissioner; the only doubt on seeing a new man among the whigs is, not whether he is a commissioner or not, but whether it is tithes, poor-laws, boundaries of boroughs, church leases, charities, or any of the thousand human concerns which are now worked by commissioners, to the infinite comfort and satisfaction of mankind, who seem in these days to have found out the real secret of life-the one thing wanting to sublunary happiness-the great principle of commission, and six years' barristration.

cathedral property. But why was it necessary, if the fund for small livings was such a paramount consideration, that the future archbishops of Canterbury should be left with two palaces, and 15,000l. per annum? Why is every future bishop of London to have a palace in Fulham, a house in St. James's Square, and 10,000l. a-year? Could not all the episcopal functions be carried on well and effectually with the half of these incomes? Is it necessary that the Archbishop of Canterbury should give feasts to aristocratic London; and that the domestics of the prelacy should stand with swords and bag-wigs round pig, and turkey, and venison, to defend, as it were, the orthodox gastronome from the fierce Unitarian, the fell Baptist, and all the famished children of dissent? I don't object to all this; because I am sure that the method of prizes and blanks is the best method of supporting a church, which must be considered as very slenderly endowed, if the whole were equally divided among the parishes: but if my opinion were different—if I thought the important improvement was to equalize preferment in the English church-that such a measure was not the one thing foolish, but the one thing needful-I should take care, as a mitred commissioner, to reduce my own species of preferment to the narrowest limits, before I proceeded to confiscate the property of any other grade of the church. I could not as a conscientious man, leave the Archbishop of Canterbury with 15,000l. a-year, and make a fund by annihilating residentiaries at Bristol of 500%. This comes of calling a meeting of one species of cattle only. The horned cattle say, If you want any meat, kill the sheep; don't meddle with us, there is no beef to spare.' They said this, however, to the lion; and the cunning animal, after he had gained all the information necessary for the destruction of the muttons, and learnt how well and widely they pastured, and how they could be most conveniently eaten' Then, if there is a better method of working ecclesiup, turns round and informs the cattle, who took him astical estates-if any thing can be gained for the for their best and tenderest friend, that he means to church-why is not the church to have it? why is it eat them up also. Frequently did Lord John meet the not applied to church purposes? what right has the destroying bishops; much did he commend their daily state to seize it? If I give you an estate, I give it you heaps of ruins; sweetly did they smile on each other, not only in its present state, but I give to you all the and much charming talk was there of meteorology improvements which can be made upon it-all that and catarrh, and the particular cathedral they were mechanical, botanical, and chemical knowledge may do pulling down at each period ;* till one fine day, the hereafter for its improvement-all the ameliorations home secretary, with a voice more bland, and a look which care and experience can suggest, in setting, immore ardently affectionate, than that which the mas- proving, and collecting your rents. Can there be such culine mouse bestows on his nibbling female, informed miserable equivocation as to say-I leave you your them that the government meant to take all the property, but I do not leave to you all the improvechurch property into their own hands, to pay the rates ments which your own wisdom, or the wisdom of out of it, and deliver the residue to the rightful posses- fellow-creatures, will enable you to make of your prosors. Such an effect, they say, was never before pro-perty? How utterly unworthy of a whig government duced by a coup de theatre. The commission was sepa- is such a distinction as this! rated in an instant: London clinched his fist; Canterbury was hurried out by his chaplains, and put into a warm bed; a solemn vacancy spread itself over the face of Gloucester; Lincoln was taken out in strong hysterics. What a noble scene Serjeant Talfourd would have made of this! Why are such talents wasted on Ion and the Athenian Captive?

But, after all, what a proposition! 'You don't make the most of your money: I will take your property into my hands, and see if I cannot squeeze a penny out of it: you shall be regularly paid all you now receive, only if any thing more can be made of it, that we will put into our own pockets. Just pull off your neckcloth, and lay your head under the guillotine, and I will promise not to do you any harm: just get ready for confiscation; give up the management of all your property; make us the ostensible managers of every thing; let us be informed of the most minute value of all, and depend upon it, we will never injure you to the extent of a single farthing.'-'Let me get my arms about you,' says the bear; I have not the smallest intention of squeezing you.' Trust your finger in my mouth,' says the mastiff; 'I will not fetch

blood.'

your

Suppose the same sort of plan had been adopted in the reign of Henry VIII., and the legislature had said,-You shall enjoy all you now have, but every farthing of improved revenue, after this period, shall go into the pocket of the state-it would have been impossible by this time that the church could have existed at all: and why may not such a measure be as fatal hereafter to the existence of a church, as it would have been to the present generation, if it had been brought forward at the time of the Reformation?

There is some safety in dignity. A church is in danger when it is degraded. It costs mankind much less to destroy it when an institution is associated with mean, and not with elevated ideas. I should like to see the subject in the hands of H. B. I would entitle the print

"The Bishops' Saturday Night; or, Lord John Russell at the Pay-Table.'

The bishops should be standing before the pay-table, and receiving their weekly allowance; Lord John and Spring Rice counting, ringing, and biting the sovereigns, and the Bishop of Exeter insisting that the Where is this to end? If government are to take chancellor of the exchequer had given him one which into their own hands all property which is not manag-kle, should be standing, with his hat on, and his back was not weight. Viscount Melbourne, in high chuc

*What cathedral are we pulling down to day?' was the standing question at the commission.

to the fire, delighted with the contest; and the deans and canons should be in the back-ground, waiting till

their turn came, and the bishops were paid; and among them a canon, of large composition, urging them on not to give way too much to the bench. Perhaps I should add the president of the board of trade, recommending the truck principle to the bishops, and offering to pay them in hassocks, cassocks, aprons, shovel-hats, sermon-cases, and such like ecclesiastical gear.

But the madness and folly of such a measure are in the revolutionary feeling which it excites. A government taking into its hands such an immense value of property! What a lesson of violence and change to the mass of mankind! Do you want to accustom Englishmen to lose all confidence in the permanence of their institutions-to inure them to great acts of plunder-and to draw forth all the latent villanies of human nature? The whig leaders are honest men, and cannot mean this, but these foolish and inconsistent measures are the horn-book and infantile lessons of revolution; and remember, it requires no great time to teach mankind to rob and murder on a great scale.

I am astonished that these ministers neglect the common precaution of a foolometer, with which no public man should be unprovided: I mean, the acquaintance and society of three or four regular British fools as a test of public opinion. Every cabinet minister should judge of all his measures by his foolometer, as a navigator crowds or shortens sail by the barometer in his cabin. I have a very valuable instrument of that kind myself which I have used for many years; and I would be bound to predict, with the utmost nicety, by the help of this machine, the precise effect which any measure would produce upon public opinion. Certainly, I never saw any thing so decided as the effects produced upon my machine by the rate bill. No man who had been accustomed in the smallest degree to handle philosophical instruments could have doubted of the storm which was coming on, or of the thoroughly un-English scheme in which the ministry had so rashly engaged themselves.

places, utterly useless and uncalled for, take 30007. from the charity fund to pay them, and they give the patronage of these places to themselves. Is there a single epithet in the language of invective which would not have been levelled at lay commissioners who had attempted the same thing? If it is necessary to do so much for archdeacons, why might not one of the residentiaries be archdeacon in virtue of his prebend? If government make bishops, they may surely be trusted to make archdeacons. I am very willing to ascribe good motives to these commissioners, who are really worthy and very sensible men, but I am perfectly astonished that they were not deterred from such a measure by appearances, and by the motives which, whether rightly or wrongly, would be imputed to them. In not acting so as to be suspected, the Bishop of London should resemble Cæsar's wife. In other respects, this excellent prelate would not have exactly suited for the partner of that great and self-willed man; and an idea strikes me, that it is not impossible he might have been in the senate-house instead of Cæsar.

Lord John Russell gives himself great credit for not having confiscated church property, but merely remodelled and redivided it. I accuse him not of plunder, but I accuse him of taking the Church of England, rolling it about as a cook does a piece of dough, with a rolling pin, cutting a hundred different shapes with all the plastic fertility of a confectioner, and without the most distant suspicion that he can ever be wrong, or ever be mistaken: with a certainty that he can anticipate the consequences of every possible change in human affairs. There is not a better man in Eng. land than Lord John Russell; but his worst failure is, that he is utterly ignorant of all moral fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. I believe he would perform the operation for the stone-build St. Peter's or assume (with or without ten minutes notice) the command of the channel fleet; and no one would discover by his manner that the patient had died-the church tumbled down-and the channel fleet been knocked to atoms. I believe his motives are always pure, and his measures often able; but they are endless, and never done with that pedetenous pace and pedetenous mind in which it behoves the wise and virtuous improver to walk. He alarms the wise liberals; and it is impossible to sleep soundly while he has the command of the watch.*

I think, also, that it is a very sound argument against this measure of church rates, that estates have been brought liable to these payments, and that they have been deducted from the purchase-money. And, what also, if a dissenter were a republican as well as a dissenter—a case which has sometimes happened; and what if our anti-monarchial dissenter were to object to the expenses of the kingly govern- Do not say, my dear Lord John, that I am too sement? Are his scruples to be respected, and his tax-vere upon you. A thousand years have scarce suffices diminished, and the queen's privy purse to be sub-ed to make our blessed England what it is; an hour jected and exposed to the intervening and economical may lay it in the dust; and can you, with all your tasqueeze of government commissioners? lents, renovate its shattered splendour-can you recall But these lucubrations upon church rates are an epi-back its virtues-can you vanquish time and fate? sode; I must go back to John, Bishop of Lincoln. All But, alas! you want to shake the world, and to be other cathedrals are fixed at four prebendaries; St. the thunderer of the scene! Paul's and Lincoln having only three, are increased to the regulation pattern of four. I call this useless and childish. The Bishop of Lincoln says, there were more residentiaries before the reformation; but if for three hundred years three residentiaries have been found to be sufficient, what a strangely feeble excuse it is for adding another, and diverting 3000l. per annum from the small living fund, to say, that there were more residentiaries three hundred years ago.

Now what is the end of what I have written? Why every body was in a great fright; and a number of bishops, huddled together, and talking of their great sacrifices, began to destroy other people's property, and to take other people's patronage: and all the fright is over now; and all the bishops are very sorry for what they have done, and regret extremely the destruction of the cathedral dignitaries, but don't know how to get out of the foolish scrape. The whig Must every thing be good and right that is done by ministry persevere to please Joseph his brethren, bishops? Is there one rule of right for them and ano-and the destroyers; and the good sense of the matter ther for the rest of the world. Now here are two commissioners, whose express object is to constitute, out of the large emoluments of the dignitaries, a fund for the poorer parochial clergy; and in the very heat and fervour of confiscation, they build up two new

*Mr. Fox very often used to say, 'I wonder what Lord B. will think of this.' Lord B. happened to be a very stupid person, and the curiosity of Mr. Fox's friends was naturally excited to know why he attached such importance to the opinion of such an ordinary commonplace person. His opinion,' said Mr. Fox, 'is of much more importance than you are aware of. He is an exact representative of all common-place English prejudices, and what Lord B. thinks of any measure, the great majority of English people will think of it.' It would be a good thing if every cabinet of philosophers had a Lord B. among them.

is to fling out the dean and chapter bill, as it now stands, and to bring in another next year-making a fund out of all the non-resident prebends, annexing some of the others, and adopting many of the enactments contained in the present bill.

* Another peculiarity of the Russells is, that they never alter their opinions; they are an excellent race, but they must be trepanned before they can be convinced.

THIRD LETTER TO ARCHDEACON SINGLE-
TON.

MY DEAR SIR,

I HOPE this is the last letter you will receive from me on church matters. I am tired of the subject; so is every body. In spite of many bishops' charges, I am unbroken; and remain entirely of the same opinion as I was two or three years since that the mutilation of deans and chapters is a rash, foolish, and imprudent measure.

I do not think the charge of the Bishop of London successful, in combating those arguments which have been used against the impending dean and chapter bill; but it is quiet, gentlemanlike, temperate, and written in a manner which entirely becomes the high office and character which he bears.

I agree with him in saying that the plurality and residence bill is, upon the whole, a very good bill; nobody, however, knows better than the Bishop of London the various changes it has undergone, and the improvements it has received. I could point out fourteen or fifteen material alterations for the better, since it came out of the hands of the commission, and all bearing materially upon the happiness and comfort of the parochial clergy. I will mention only a few :-the bill, as originally introduced, gave the bishop a power, when he considered the duties of the parish to be improperly performed, to suspend the clergyman and appoint a curate with a salary. Some impious persons thought it not impossible that occasionally such a power might be maliciously and vindictively exercised, and that some check to it should be admitted into the bill; accordingly, under the existing act, an ecclesiastical jury is to be summoned, and into that jury the defendant clergyman may introduce a friend of his own.

There is in this new bill a very humane clause, (though not introduced by the commission), enabling the widow of the deceased clergyman to retain pos session of the parsonage-house for two months after the death of the incumbent. It ought, in fairness, to be extended to the heirs, executors, and administrators of the incumbent. It is a great hardship that a family settled in a parish for fifty years, perhaps, should be torn up by the roots in eight or ten days; and the interval of two months, allowing time for repairs, might put to rest many questions of dilapidation.

To the bishop's power of intruding a curate, without any complaint on the part of the parish that the duty has been inadequately performed, I retain the same objections as before. It is a power which, without this condition, will be unfairly and partially exercised. The first object I admit is not the provision of the clergyman, but the cure of the parish; but one way of taking care of parishes is to take care that clergymen are not treated with tyranny, partiality, and injustice; and the best way of effecting this is to remember that their superiors have the same human passions as other people, and not to trust them with a power which may be so grossly abused, and which (incredible as the Bishop of London may deem it), has been, in some instances, grossly abused.

I cannot imagine what the bishop means by saying, that the members of cathedrals do not, in virtue of their office, bear any part in the parochial instruction of the people. This is a fine deceitful word, the word parochial, and eminently calculated to coax the public. If he means simply that cathedrals do not belong to parishes, that St. Paul's is not the parish church of Upper Puddicomb, and that the vicar of St. Fiddlefrid does not officiate in Westminster Abbey: all this is true enough, but do they not in the most material If a clergyman, from illness or any other overwhelm- points instruct the people precisely in the same maning necessity, was prevented from having two ser- ner as the parochial clergy? Are not prayers and vices, he was exposed to an information and penalty. sermons the most important means of spiritual instrucIn answering the bishop, he was subjected to two op- tion? And are there not eighteen or twenty services posite sets of penalties-the one for saying yes; the in every cathedral for one which is heard in parish other for saying no: he was amenable to the needless churches? I have very often counted in the afterand impertinent scrutiny of a rural dean before he was noon of week days in St. Paul's 150 people, and on exposed to the scrutiny of the bishop. Curates might Sundays it is full to suffocation. Is all this to go for be forced upon him by subscribing parishioners, and nothing? and what right has the Bishop of London to the certainty of a schism established in the parish; a suppose that there is not as much real piety in cathecurate might have been forced upon present incum-drals, as in the most roadless, postless, melancholy, bents by the bishop without any complaint made; sequestered hamlet preached to by the most provin upon men who took, or, perhaps, bought their livings cial, sequestered bucolic clergyman in the queen's under very different laws; all these acts of injustice dominions? are done away with, but it is not to the credit of the A number of little children, it is true, do not repeat framers of the bill that they were ever admitted, and a catechism of which they do not comprehend a word; they completely justify the opposition with which the but it is rather rapid and wholesale to say, that the bill was received by me and by others. I add, how-parochial clergy are spiritual instructors of the people, ever, with great pleasure, that when these and other objections were made, they were heard with candour, and promised to be remedied by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London and Lord John

Russell.

I have spoken of the power to issue a commission to inquire into the well-being of any parish: a vindictive and malicious bishop might, it is true, convert this, which was intended for the protection, to the oppression of the clergy-afraid to dispossess a clergyman of his own authority, he might attempt to do the same thing under the cover of a jury of his ecclesiastical creatures. But I can hardly conceive such base ness in the prelate, or such infamous subserviency in the agents. An honest and respectable bishop will remember that the very issue of such a commission is a serious slur upon the character of a clergyman; he will do all he can to prevent it by private monition and remonstrance; and if driven to such an act of power, he will, of course, state to the accused clergyman the subjects of accusation, the names of his accusers, and give him ample time for his defence. If, upon anonymous accusation, he subjects a clergyman to such an investigation, or refuses to him any advantage which the law gives to every accused person, he is an infamous, degraded, and scandalous tyrant: but I cannot believe there is such a man to be found upon

the bench.

and that the cathedral clergy are only so in a very restricted sense. I say that in the most material points and acts of instruction, they are much more laborious and incessant than any parochial clergy. It might really be supposed, from the Bishop of London's reasoning, that some other methods of instruction took place in cathedrals than prayers and sermons can afford; that lectures were read on chemistry, or les sons given on dancing; or that it was a Mechanics' Institute, or a vast receptacle for hexameter and pentameter boys. His own most respectable chaplain, who is often there as a member of the body, will tell him that the prayers are strictly adhered to, according to the rubric, with the difference only that the service is beautifully chanted instead of being badly read; that instead of the atrocious bawling of parish churches, the anthems are sung with great taste and feeling; and if the preaching is not good, it is the fault of the Bishop of Loudon, who has the whole range of London preachers from whom to make his selection. The real fact is, that, instead of being something materially different from the parochial clergy, as the commissioners wish to make them, the cathedral clergy are fellow-labourers with the parochial clergy, outworking them ten to one; but the commission having provided snugly for the bishops, have, by the merest accident in the world, entangled themselves in this quarrel with cathedrals.