Sydney Smith Part 10

At this point of his Letter, the writer turns aside to combat the contention that, because Roman Catholics have in times past persecuted Protestants, therefore they must now be deprived of their civil rights. If this contention be sound, the Protestant must, by parity of reasoning, be disfranchised.

"The first object of men who love party better than truth, is to have it believed that the Catholics alone have been persecutors. But what can be more flagrantly unjust than to take over notions of history only from the conquering and triumphant party? If you think the Catholics have not their Book of Martyrs as well as the Protestants, take the following enumeration of some of their most learned and careful writers. The whole number of Catholics who suffered death in England for the exercise of the Catholic religion since the Reformation stands thus:--

"Henry VIII., 59 Elizabeth, 204 James I., 25 Charles I., and Commonwealth, 23 Charles II., 8 ------ Total, 319

"Henry VIII., with consummate impartiality, burnt three Protestants and hanged four Catholics for different errors in religion on the same day, and at the same place. Elizabeth burnt two Dutch Anabaptists for some theological tenets, July 22, 1575, Fox the martyrologist vainly pleading with the queen in their favour. In 1579, the same Protestant queen cut off the hand of Stubbs, the author of a tract against popish connection, of Singleton, the printer, and Page, the disperser of the book. Camden saw it done. Warburton properly says it exceeds in cruelty any thing done by Charles I. On the 4th of June, Mr. Elias Thacker and Mr. John Capper, two ministers of the Brownist persuasion, were hanged at St. Edmund's-bury, for dispersing books against the Common Prayer. With respect to the great part of the Catholic victims, the law was fully and literally executed: after being hanged up, they were cut down alive, dismembered, ripped up, and their bowels burnt before their faces; after which they were beheaded and quartered. The time employed in this butchery was very considerable, and, in one instance, lasted more than half an hour.

"The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the greater part of these men were put to death for political, not for religious, crimes. That is, a law is first pa.s.sed, making it high treason for a priest to exercise his function in England, and so, when he is caught and burnt, this is not religious persecution, but an offence against the State.

We are, I hope, all too busy to need any answer to such childish, uncandid reasoning as this."

And then the Letter goes on to give, with the fullest apparatus of details, dates, and authorities, the miserable tale of religious persecution practised, during three centuries, at home and abroad, by Anglicans on Puritans, by Protestants on Romanists, by orthodox Protestants on heterodox Protestants; and then, to clinch his argument and drive it home, he gives the substance of the Penal Code under which Irish Catholics suffered so cruelly and so long.

"With such facts as these, the cry of persecution will not do; it is unwise to make it, because it can be so very easily, and so very justly retorted. The business is to forget and forgive, to kiss and be friends, and to say nothing of what has pa.s.sed; which is to the credit of neither party. There have been atrocious cruelties, and abominable acts of injustice, on both sides. It is not worth while to contend who shed the most blood, or whether death by fire is worse than hanging or starving in prison. As far as England itself is concerned, the balance may be better preserved. Cruelties exercised upon the Irish go for nothing in English reasoning; but if it were not uncandid and vexatious to consider Irish persecutions[90] as part of the case, I firmly believe there have been two Catholics put to death for religious causes in Great Britain for one Protestant who has suffered: not that this proves much, because the Catholics have enjoyed the sovereign power for so few years between this period and the Reformation; and certainly it must be allowed that they were not inactive, during that period, in the great work of pious combustion.

"It is however some extenuation of the Catholic excesses, that their religion was the religion of the whole of Europe when the innovation began. They were the ancient lords and masters of faith, before men introduced the practice of thinking for themselves in these matters.

The Protestants have less excuse, who claimed the right of innovation, and then turned round upon other Protestants who acted upon the same principle, or upon Catholics who remained as they were, and visited them with all the cruelties from which they had themselves so recently escaped.

"Both sides, as they acquired power, abused it; and both learnt, from their sufferings, the great secret of toleration and forbearance. If you wish to do good in the times in which you live, contribute your efforts to perfect this grand work. I have not the most distant intention to interfere in local politics; but I advise you never to give a vote to any man whose only t.i.tle for asking it is that he means to continue the punishments, privations, and incapacities of any human beings, merely because they worship G.o.d in the way they think best: the man who asks for your vote upon such a plea, is, _probably_, a very weak man, who believes in his own bad reasoning, or a very artful man, who is laughing at you for your credulity: at all events, he is a man who knowingly or unknowingly exposes his country to the greatest dangers, and hands down to posterity all the foolish opinions and all the bad pa.s.sions which prevail in those times in which he happens to live. Such a man is so far from being that friend to the Church, which he pretends to be, that he declares its safety cannot be reconciled with the franchises of the people; for what worse can be said of the Church of England than this, that wherever it is judged necessary to give it a legal establishment, it becomes necessary to deprive the body of the people, if they adhere to their old opinions, of their liberties, and of all their free customs, and to reduce them to a state of civil servitude?

"SYDNEY SMITH."

After the discharge of this tremendous missile against the tottering fortress of bigotry, the energetic engineer sought a brief interlude of rest and recreation. His money-matters had of late years improved. An aunt had died and left him a legacy, and the Rectory of Londesborough was a profitable preferment. The income thus augmented enabled him to realize a long-cherished dream and pay his first visit to Paris, in the spring of 1826. There he met some old friends, made several new acquaintances, ate some excellent but expensive dinners, mastered the Louvre in a quarter of an hour, and saw Talma in tragedy and Mademoiselle Mars in "genteel comedy." At the Opera he noticed that "the house was full of English, who talk loud, and seem to care little for other people. This is their characteristic, and a very brutal and barbarous distinction it is." He keenly admired the luxury and beauty and prettiness of Paris, and especially the profusion of gla.s.s in French drawing-rooms. "I remember entering a room with gla.s.s all round it, and saw myself reflected on every side. I took it for a meeting of the clergy, and was delighted of course."

He returned to England in May; on the 2nd of June Parliament was dissolved.

"We have been," he wrote, "in the horror of Elections--each party acting and thinking as if the salvation of several planets depended upon the adoption of Mr. Johnson and the rejection of Mr. Jackson." In July, Thomas Babington Macaulay, a young and unsuccessful barrister, found himself on circuit at York. He was told that Mr. Smith had come to see him, and, when the visitor was admitted, he recognized--

"the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith, _alias_ Peter Plymley. I had forgotten his very existence till I discerned the queer contrast between his black coat and his snow-white head, and the equally curious contrast between the clerical amplitude of his person, and the most unclerical wit, whim, and petulance of his eye."

Macaulay spent the following Sunday at Foston Rectory, and thus records his impressions:--

"I understand that S.S. is a very respectable apothecary, and most liberal of his skill, his medicine, his soup, and his wine, among the sick. He preached a very queer sermon--the former half too familiar, and the latter half too florid, but not without some ingenuity of thought and expression....

"His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once above him and below him. Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality and bigotry would have made him a bishop; but he could neither rise to the duties of his order, nor stoop to its degradation."

In December Sydney wrote to a newly-elected Member of Parliament:--

"I see you have broken ice in the House of Commons. I shall be curious to hear your account of your feelings, of what colour the human creatures looked who surrounded you, and how the candles and Speaker appeared.... For G.o.d's sake, open upon the Chancery. On this subject there can be no excess of vituperation and severity. Advocate also free trade in ale and ale-houses. Respect the Church, and believe that the insignificant member of it who now addresses you is most truly yours,

"SYDNEY SMITH."

At the same time he wrote as follows to a young friend--Lord John Russell--who had lost his seat and published a book:--

"DEAR JOHN,--I have read your book on the _State of Europe since the Peace of Utrecht_ with much pleasure--sensible, liberal, spirited, philosophical, well-written. Go on writing History. Write a History of Louis XIV., and put the world right about that old Beast.

"I am sorry you are not in parliament. You ought to be everywhere where honest and bold men can do good. Health and respect. Ever yours,

"SYDNEY SMITH."

The year 1827 opened dramatically. On the 18th February Lord Liverpool, who had been Prime Minister since the a.s.sa.s.sination of Spencer Perceval in 1812, was suddenly stricken by fatal illness. On the 10th of April King George IV. found himself, much against his will, constrained to entrust the formation of a Government to George Canning. Canning was avowedly favourable to the Roman Catholic claims, and on that account some of the most important of his former colleagues declined to serve under him. The Ministry was reconstructed with an infusion of Whigs; and the brilliant but unscrupulous Copley became Chancellor with the t.i.tle of Lord Lyndhurst.[91]

A Ministry, containing Whigs as well as Tories and committed to the cause of Roman Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, seemed likely to open the way of preferment to Sydney Smith. Knowing that his income would soon be materially reduced by the cessation of his tenure of Londesborough, he wrote to some of his friends among the new Ministers and boldly stated his claims. One of these Ministers seems to have made a rather chilly response; and the applicant did not spare him.--

"I am much obliged by your polite letter. You appeal to my good-nature to prevent me from considering your letter as a decent method of putting me off. Your appeal, I a.s.sure you, is not made in vain. I do not think you mean to put me off; because I am the most prominent, and was for a long time the only, clerical advocate of that question, by the proper arrangement of which you believe the happiness and safety of the country would be materially improved. I do not believe you mean to put me off; because, in giving me some promotion, you will teach the clergy, from whose timidity you have everything to apprehend, and whose influence upon the people you cannot doubt, that they may, under your Government, obey the dictates of their consciences without sacrificing the emoluments of their profession. I do not think you mean to put me off; because, in the conscientious administration of that patronage with which you are entrusted, I think it will occur to you that something is due to a person who, instead of basely chiming in with the bad pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude, has dedicated some talent and some activity to soften religious hatreds, and to make men less violent and less foolish than he found them."

In July he wrote to a friend:--

"The worst political news is that Canning is not well, and that the Duke of Wellington has dined with the King. Canning dead, Peel is the only man remaining alive in the House of Commons, I mean, the only man in his senses."

On the 8th of August Canning died, and was succeeded by Lord G.o.derich, who in turn made way for the Duke of Wellington in January 1828, Lord Lyndhurst again becoming Chancellor.

On the 1st of January 1828, Sydney Smith's Second daughter, Emily, was married to Nathaniel Hibbert, afterwards of Munden House, near Watford, Her father wrote:--

"We were married on New Year's Day, and are _gone_! I feel as if I had lost a limb, and were walking about with one leg--and n.o.body pities this description of invalids."

Three weeks later, Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, yielding to private friendship what the Whigs had refused to political loyalty, appointed the Rector of Foston to a Prebendal Stall in Bristol Cathedral. This brought him at length official station in the Church, and a permanent instead of a terminable income. He wrote from Bristol on the 17th of February:--

"An extremely comfortable Prebendal house; seven-stall stables and room for four carriages, so that I can hold all your _cortege_ when you come; looks to the south, and is perfectly snug and parsonic; masts of West-Indiamen seen from the windows... I have lived in perfect solitude ever since I have been here, but am perfectly happy. The novelty of this place amuses me."

From the time of his appointment to Bristol, Sydney Smith severed his connexion with the _Edinburgh Review_, holding that anonymous journalism was inconsistent with the position of an ecclesiastical dignitary. He had contributed to the _Review_ for a quarter of a century; and, by a happy accident, his last utterance, in the organ through which he had so long and so strenuously fought for freedom, was yet one more plea for Roman Catholic emanc.i.p.ation. Yet once again he urged, with all his force, the baseness of deserting the good cause, and the danger and cruelty of delaying justice.--

"There is little new to be said; but we must not be silent, or, in these days of baseness and tergiversation, we shall be supposed to have deserted our friend the Pope, and they will say of us, _Prostant venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall_. G.o.d forbid it should ever be said of us with justice. It is pleasant to loll and roll and to acc.u.mulate--to be a purple-and-fine-linen man, and to be called by some of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of acc.u.mulating upon each other;---but the best thing of all is to live like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality, justice, and truth.

"We should like to argue this matter with a regular Tory Lord, whose members vote steadily against the Catholic question. 'I wonder that mere fear does not make you give up the Catholic question! Do you mean to put this fine place in danger--the venison--the pictures--the pheasants--the cellars--the hot-house and the grapery? Should you like to see six or seven thousand French or Americans landed in Ireland, and aided by a universal insurrection of the Catholics? Is it worth your while to run the risk of their success? What evil from the possible encroachment of Catholics, by civil exertions, can equal the danger of such a position as this? How can a man of your carriages, and horses, and hounds, think of putting your high fortune in such a predicament, and crying out, like a schoolboy or a chaplain, 'Oh, we shall beat them! we shall put the rascals down!' No Popery, I admit to your Lordship, is a very convenient cry at an election, and has answered your end; but do not push the matter too far. To bring on a civil war for No Popery, is a very foolish proceeding in a man who has two courses and a remove! As you value your side-board of plate, your broad riband, your pier-gla.s.ses--if obsequious domestics and large rooms are dear to you--if you love ease and flattery, t.i.tles and coats of arms--if the labour of the French cook, the dedication of the expecting poet, can move you--if you hope for a long life of side-dishes--if you are not insensible to the periodical arrival of the turtle-fleets--emanc.i.p.ate the Catholics! Do it for your ease, do it for your indolence, do it for your safety--emanc.i.p.ate and eat, emanc.i.p.ate and drink--emanc.i.p.ate, and preserve the rent-roll and the family estate!"

In conclusion he gives a word of warning first to his Roman Catholic clients, imploring them to be patient as well as firm; and then to the various sections of the "No Popery" party in England--

"_To the Base_.--Sweet children of turpitude, beware! the old antipopery people are fast perishing away. Take heed that you are not surprised by an emanc.i.p.ating king, or an emanc.i.p.ating administration.

Leave a _locus poenitentiae!_--prepare a place for retreat--get ready your equivocations and denials. The dreadful day may yet come, when liberality may lead to place and power. We understand these matters here. It is safest to be moderately base--to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when any thing is to be gained by virtue,"

The suggested prophecy had not long to wait for its fulfilment. In the summer of 1828, William Vesey Fitzgerald, a great landowner in County Clare, and one of the Members for that county, accepted office in the Government as President of the Board of Trade, thereby vacating his seat.

Lord Beaconsfield shall tell the remainder of the story. "An Irish lawyer, a professional agitator, himself a Roman Catholic and therefore ineligible, announced himself as a candidate in opposition to the new minister, and on the day of election thirty thousand peasants, setting at defiance all the landowners of the county, returned O'Connell at the head of the poll, and placed among not the least memorable of historical events--the Clare Election."[92]

This election decided the emanc.i.p.ation of the Roman Catholics, and the cause, for which Sydney Smith had striven so heroically, was won at last.

On the 28th of August 1828 he wrote to a Roman Catholic friend:--

"Brougham thinks the Catholic question as good as carried; but I never think myself as good as carried, till my horse brings me to my stable-door.... What am I to do with my time, or you with yours, after the Catholic question is carried?"

To the same friend he wrote:--

"You will be amused by hearing that I am to preach the 5th of November[93] sermon at Bristol, and to dine at the 5th of November dinner with the Mayor and Corporation of Bristol. All sorts of bad theology are preached at the Cathedral on that day, and all sorts of bad toasts drunk at the Mansion House. I will do neither the one nor the other, nor bow the knee in the house of Rimmon."

On the 5th of November 1828, he wrote to Lord Holland:--

"To-day I have preached an honest sermon before the Mayor and Corporation in the Cathedral--the most Protestant Corporation in England! They stared at me with all their eyes. Several of them could not keep the turtle on their stomachs."

The sermon[94] well deserved the epithet. It glanced, as the occasion demanded, at the civil grievances of the Roman Catholics, and then it went on to lay down some simple but sufficient rules by which men should regulate their judgment on religious forms and bodies with which they do not sympathize.--