Sydney Smith Part 11

"Our holy religion consists of some doctrines which influence practice, and of others which are purely speculative. If religious errors be of the former description, they may, perhaps, be fair objects of human interference; but, if the opinion be merely theological and speculative, there the right of human interference seems to end, because the necessity for such interference does not exist. Any error of this nature is between the Creator and the creature,--between the Redeemer and the redeemed. If such opinions are not the best opinions which can be found, G.o.d Almighty will punish the error, if mere error seemeth to the Almighty a fit object of punishment. Why may not a man wait if G.o.d waits? Where are we called upon in Scripture to pursue men for errors purely speculative?--to a.s.sist Heaven in punishing those offences which belong only to Heaven?--in fighting unasked for what we deem to be the battles of G.o.d,--of that patient and merciful G.o.d, who pities the frailties we do not pity--who forgives the errors we do not forgive,--who sends rain upon the just and the unjust, and maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and the good.

"I shall conclude my sermon (extended, I am afraid, already to an unreasonable length), by reciting to you a very short and beautiful apologue, taken from the Rabbinical writers. It is, I believe, quoted by Bishop Taylor in his _Holy Living and Dying_. I have not now access to that book, but I quote it to you from memory, and should be made truly happy if you would quote it to others from memory also.

"'As Abraham was sitting in the door of his tent, there came unto him a wayfaring man; and Abraham gave him water for his feet, and set bread before him. And Abraham said unto him, Let us now worship the Lord our G.o.d before we eat of this bread. And the wayfaring man said unto Abraham, I will not worship the Lord thy G.o.d, for thy G.o.d is not my G.o.d; but I will worship my G.o.d, even the G.o.d of my fathers. But Abraham was exceeding wroth; and he rose up to put the wayfaring man forth from the door of his tent. And the voice of the Lord was heard in the tent--Abraham, Abraham! have I borne with this man for three score and ten years, and can'st thou not bear with him for one hour?'"[95]

This sermon was published by request, and the preacher apologized in the preface for "sending to the press such plain rudiments of common charity and common sense."

The beginning of 1829 was darkened by what Sydney Smith called "the first great misfortune of his life." On the 14th of April, his eldest son Douglas died, after a long illness, in his twenty-fifth year. His health had always been delicate, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, he had become Captain of the King's Scholars at Westminster,[96] and a Student of Christ Church.

His epitaph says--"His life was blameless. His death was the first sorrow he ever occasioned his parents, but it was deep and lasting." On the 29th of April his father wrote--"Time and the necessary exertions of life will restore me;" but four months later the note is changed.--

"I never suspected how children weave themselves about the heart. My son had that quality which is longest remembered by those who remain behind--a deep and earnest affection and respect for his parents. G.o.d save you from similar distress!"

And again:--

"I did not know I had cared so much for anybody; but the habit of providing for human beings, and watching over them for so many years, generates a fund of affection, of the magnitude of which I was not aware"

Sixteen years later, when he lay dying and half-conscious, the cry "Douglas, Douglas!" was constantly on his lips.

The prebendal stall at Bristol carried with it the inc.u.mbency of Halberton, near Tiverton; and Sydney Smith exchanged the living of Foston for that of Combe Florey in Somerset, which could be held conjointly with Halberton. On the 14th of July 1829 he wrote from the "Sacred Valley of Flowers," as he loved to call it:--

"I am extremely pleased with Combe Florey, and p.r.o.nounce it to be a very pretty place in a very beautiful country. The house I shall make decently convenient."

"I need not say how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the same as all other neighbourhoods. Red wine and white, soup and fish, commonplace dulness and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am, after my manner, making my place perfect, and have twenty-eight people constantly at work."

"I am going on fighting with bricklayers and carpenters, and shall ultimately make a very pretty place and a very good house." "I continue to be delighted with the country. My parsonage will be perfection. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop, that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so that a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."

"Luttrell came over for a day, from whence I know not, but I thought not from good pastures; at least, he had not his usual soup-and-pattie look. There was a forced smile upon his countenance, which seemed to indicate plain roast and boiled; and a sort of apple-pudding depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman.... He was very agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup, I took him aside, and reasoned the matter with him, but in vain; to speak the truth, Luttrell is not steady in his judgments on dishes. Individual failures with him soon degenerate into generic objections, till, by some fortunate accident, he eats himself into better opinions. A person of more calm reflection thinks not only of what he is consuming at that moment, but of the soups of the same kind he has met with in a long course of dining, and which have gradually and justly elevated the species. I am perhaps making too much of this; but the failures of a man of sense are always painful"

One of the chief features in the restored Rectory of Combe Florey was a library, twenty-eight feet long and eight high, ending in a bay-window supported by pillars, and looking into a brilliant garden. This room had been made by "throwing a pantry, a pa.s.sage, and a shoe-hole together."

Three sides of it were covered with books. "No furniture so charming as books," said Sydney, "even if you never open them, or read a single word."

He pa.s.sionately loved light and colour, sunshine and flowers; and all his books were bound in the most vivid blues and reds. "What makes a fire so pleasant is that it is a live thing in a dead room," A visitor thus describes him at his literary work:--

"At a large table in the bay-window, with his desk before him--on one end of this table a case, something like a small deal music-stand, filled with ma.n.u.script books--on the other a large deal tray, filled with a leaden ink-stand, containing ink enough for a county; a magnifying gla.s.s; a carpenter's rule; several large steel pens, which it was high treason to touch; a gla.s.s bowl full of shot and water, to clean these precious pens; and some red tape, which he called 'one of the grammars of life'; a measuring line, and various other articles, more useful than ornamental. At this writing establishment, unique of its kind, he could turn his mind with equal facility, in company or alone, to any subject, whether of business, study, politics, instruction, or amus.e.m.e.nt, and move the minds of his hearers to laughter or tears at his pleasure."

The daily life at Combe Florey was eminently patriarchal. He lived surrounded by children, grandchildren, and friends; chatting with the poor, comforting the sick, and petting the babies of the village. Old and young alike he doctored with extraordinary vehemence and persistency, "As I don't shoot or hunt, it is my only rural amus.e.m.e.nt." He wrote to a friend--"The influenza to my great joy has appeared here, and I am in high medical practice." "This is the house to be ill in," he used to say, "I take it as a delicate compliment when my guests have a slight illness here. Come and see my apothecary's shop." The "shop" was a room filled on one side with drugs and on the other with groceries. "Life is a difficult thing in the country, I a.s.sure you, and it requires a good deal of forethought to steer the ship, when you live twelve miles from a lemon."

The church of Combe Florey was described by Francis Jeffrey as "a horrid old barn." There the Rector performed two services a Sunday, celebrated the Holy Communion once a month, and preached his practical sermons, transcribed from his own execrable ma.n.u.script by a sedulous clerk. "I like," he said, "to look down upon my congregation--to fire into them. The common people say I am a _bould preacher_, for I like to have my arms free, and to thump the pulpit." A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with the words, "Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion! I really can hardly keep my hands off you."

An anonymous correspondent kindly furnishes me with this description of the Valley of Flowers as it was in more recent years:--

"I visited Combe Florey, with camera and vasculum, in 1893. It is one of the loveliest spots in that district of lovely villages, lying in the Vale of Taunton on the southern slope of the Quantocks. The parsonage is entirely unchanged: there is Sydney's study, a low-ceilinged room supported partly by pillars, level with the garden and opening into it. There is the old-fashioned fireplace by which he and his wife sate opposite each other in his last illness. 'Mrs.

Sydney has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take something every hour, and pa.s.s the mixture from one to the other.'

Outside still grow his Conifers, a large Atlantic Cedar and a Deodara; unchanged too are the palings over which Jack and Jill[97] peered with antlered heads. Old villagers still talk of his medical dispensary, and of the care with which he drove round to collect and carry into Taunton their monthly deposits for the Savings Bank."

Meanwhile, great events were transacting themselves in the political world, and they had an important bearing on the tranquil life of Combe Florey. On the 4th of May 1830, Sydney Smith wrote from London to his wife in the country:--

"The King is going downhill as before, but seems to be a long time in the descent. All kinds of intrigues are going on about change of Ministry, and all kinds of hopes and fears afloat. Nothing is more improbable than that I should be made a Bishop, and, if I ever had the opportunity, I am now, when far removed from it, decidedly of opinion that it would be the greatest act of folly and absurdity to accept it--to live with foolish people, to do foolish and formal things all day, to hold my tongue, or to twist it into conversation unnatural to me."

King George IV. died on the 26th of June. The accession of William IV., who was supposed to have some tendencies towards Whiggism, greatly stimulated the demand for Parliamentary Reform; and the revolution in France, which dethroned Charles X., gave a strong impetus to the democratic forces in England. Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July. On the 14th of August Charles Greville wrote, "The elections are still going against the Government, and the signs of the times are all for reform and retrenchment, and against slavery." In writing to congratulate a young Roman Catholic who had been elected for Carlisle, Sydney Smith said--

"I rejoice in the temple which has been reared to Toleration; and I am proud that I worked as a bricklayer's labourer at it--without pay, and with the enmity and abuse of those who were unfavourable to its construction."[98]

The new Parliament met on the 26th of October. On the 2nd of November, in the debate on the Address, the Duke of Wellington made a vehement declaration against Reform. This was the signal for an immense outcry.

There were mobs and riots everywhere. The King's projected visit to the City on Lord Mayor's Day was abandoned. The Tory Government were beaten on a motion relating to the new Civil List. "Never was any Administration so completely and so suddenly destroyed; and, I believe, entirely by the Duke's declaration." Lord Grey[99] became Prime Minister, as the head of a Whig administration pledged to Reform. Soon afterwards Sydney Smith wrote to a friend--

"I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment if he stays in long enough; but the upper parsons live vindictively, and evince their aversion to a Whig Ministry by an improved health."

The Reform Bill was brought in on the 1st of March 1831. Sydney thought it "a magnificent measure, as wise as it is bold." Meetings of Reformers were held all over the country to support it. Such a meeting was held at Taunton on the 9th of March, and the Rector of Combe Florey attended and spoke.

"This," he said, "is the greatest measure which has ever been before Parliament in my time, and the most pregnant with good or evil to the country; and, though I seldom meddle with political meetings, I could not reconcile it to my conscience to be absent from this. Every year for this half century the question of Reform has been pressing upon us, till it has swelled up at last into this great and awful combination; so that almost every City and every Borough in England are at this moment a.s.sembled for the same purpose and are doing the same thing we are doing."

A great part of the controversy turned on the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the "Pocket Boroughs," and this was a subject which immediately suggested a happy apologue--

"These very same politicians are now looking in an agony of terror at the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Corporations containing twenty or thirty persons, sold to their representatives, who are themselves perhaps sold to the Government: and to put an end to these enormous abuses is called _Corporation robbery_, and there are some persons wild enough to talk of compensation. This principle of compensation you will consider perhaps, in the following instance, to have been carried as far as sound discretion permits. When I was a young man, the place in England I remember as most notorious for highwaymen and their exploits was Finchley Common, near the metropolis; but Finchley Common, in the progress of improvement, came to be enclosed, and the highwaymen lost by these means the opportunity of exercising their gallant vocation. I remember a friend of mine proposed to draw up for them a pet.i.tion to the House of Commons for compensation, which ran in this manner--'We, your loyal highwaymen of Finchley Common and its neighbourhood having, at great expense, laid in a stock of blunderbusses, pistols, and other instruments for plundering the public, and finding ourselves impeded in the exercise of our calling by the said enclosure of the said Common of Finchley, humbly pet.i.tion your Honourable House will be pleased to a.s.sign to us such compensation as your Honourable House in its wisdom and justice may think fit.'--Gentlemen, I must leave the application to you....

"The greater part of human improvements, I am sorry to say, are made after war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: mankind seem to object to every species of gratuitous happiness, and to consider every advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased by some calamity. I shall esteem it as a singular act of G.o.d's providence, if this great nation, guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult for Reform, nor trusting Reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the people, shall amend their decayed inst.i.tutions at a period when they are ruled by a popular monarch, guided by an upright minister, and blessed with profound peace."

On the 22nd of March the Second Reading was carried by a majority of one.

But directly afterwards the Government was defeated on an amendment in Committee, and promptly appealed to the country. Parliament was dissolved on the 23rd of April. "Bold King! bold Ministers!" wrote Sydney on the 25th. Popular feeling was now really roused. "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill" was the war-cry from Caithness to Cornwall. Lord John Russell, who had brought the Bill into Parliament, was the hero of the hour. He contested Devonshire at the General Election, and Sydney, who had a vote for the county, met him at Exeter.--

"The people along the road were very much disappointed by his smallness. I told them he was much larger before the Bill was thrown out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about the people. This brought tears into their eyes!"

At this juncture Sydney composed (and published in the name of an imaginary Mr. Dyson), a "Speech to the Freeholders on Reform"--

"Stick to the Bill--it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede. King John made a present to the Barons. King William has made a similar present to you. Never mind common qualities, good in common times. If a man does not vote for the Bill, he is unclean--the plague-spot is upon him--push him into the lazaretto of the last century, with Wetherell[100] and Sadler[101]--purify the air before you approach him--bathe your hands in Chloride of Lime, if you have been contaminated by his touch....

"The thing I cannot, and will not bear, is this;--what right has _this_ Lord, or _that_ Marquis, to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the shape of Boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me? And how are these ma.s.ses of power re-distributed? The eldest son of my Lord is just come from Eton--he knows a good deal about aeneas and Dido, Apollo and Daphne--and that is all; and to this boy his father gives a six-hundredth part of the power of making laws, as he would give him a horse or a double-barrelled gun. Then Vellum, the steward, is put in--an admirable man;--he has raised the estates--watched the progress of the family Road-and-Ca.n.a.l Bills--and Vellum shall help to rule over the people of England. A neighbouring country gentleman, Mr. Plumpkin, hunts with my Lord--opens him a gate or two, while the hounds are running--dines with my Lord--agrees with my Lord--wishes he could rival the South-Down sheep of my Lord--and upon Plumpkin is conferred a portion of the government. Then there is a distant relation of the same name, in the County Militia, with white teeth, who calls up the carriage at the Opera, and is always wishing O'Connell was hanged, drawn, and quartered--then a barrister, who has written an article in the _Quarterly_, and is very likely to speak, and refute M'Culloch; and these five people, in whose nomination I have no more agency than I have in the nomination of the toll-keepers of the Bosphorus, are to make laws for me and my family--to put their hands in my purse, and to sway the future destinies of this country; and when the neighbours step in, and beg permission to say a few words before these persons are chosen, there is an universal cry of rain, confusion, and destruction--'We have become a great people under Vellum and Plumpkin--under Vellum and Plumpkin our ships have covered the ocean--under Vellum and Plumpkin our armies have secured the strength of the Hills--to turn out Vellum and Plumpkin is not Reform, but Revolution.'"

It was said by the opponents of the Bill that the existing system worked well.--

"Work well! How does it work well, when every human being in-doors and out (with the exception of the Duke of Wellington) says it must be made to work better, or it will soon cease to work at all? It is little short of absolute nonsense to call a government good, which the great ma.s.s of Englishmen would, before twenty years were elapsed, if Reform were denied, rise up and destroy. Of what use have all the cruel laws been of Perceval, Eldon, and Castlereagh, to extinguish Reform? Lord John Russell, and his abettors, would have been committed to gaol twenty years ago for half only of his present Reform; and now relays of the people would drag them from London to Edinburgh; at which latter city we are told, by Mr. Dundas, that there is no eagerness for Reform. Five minutes before Moses struck the rock, this gentleman would have said that there was no eagerness for water.

"There are two methods of making alterations: the one is to despise the applicants, to begin with refusing every concession, then to relax by making concessions which are always too late; by offering in 1831 what is then too late, but would have been cheerfully accepted in 1830--gradually to O'Connellize the country, till at last, after this process has gone on for some time, the alarm becomes too great, and every thing is conceded in hurry and confusion. In the mean time fresh conspiracies have been hatched by the long delay, and no grat.i.tude is expressed for what has been extorted by fear. In this way peace was concluded with America, and Emanc.i.p.ation granted to the Catholics; and in this way the War of Complexions will be finished in the West Indies. The other method us, to see at a distance that the thing must be done, and to do it effectually, _and at once_; to take it out of the hands of the common people, and to carry the measure in a manly liberal manner, so as to satisfy the great majority. The merit of this belongs to the administration of Lord Grey. He is the only Minister I know of, who has begun a great measure in good time, conceded at the beginning of twenty years what would have been extorted at the end of it, and prevented that folly, violence, and ignorance, which emanate from a long denial and extorted concession of justice to great ma.s.ses of human beings. I believe the question of Reform, or any dangerous agitation of it, is set at rest for thirty or forty years; and this is an eternity in politics.

"I am old and tired,--thank me for ending; but one word more before I sit down. I am old, but I thank G.o.d I have lived to see more than my observations on human nature taught me I had any right to expect. I have lived to see an honest King, in whose word his ministers could trust, I have lived to see a King with a good heart, who, surrounded by n.o.bles, thinks of common men; who loves the great ma.s.s of English people, and wishes to be loved by them; and who, in spite of clamour, interest, prejudice, and fear, has the manliness to carry these wise changes into immediate execution. Gentlemen, farewell! Shout for the King!"[102]

Having done his best for the good cause in the country, Sydney Smith returned to London to watch the results. On the 6th of June Macaulay met him at dinner, and writes thus next day:--

"Sydney Smith leaves London on the 20th--the day before Parliament meets for business, I advised him to stay and see something of his friends, who would be coming up to London. 'My flock!' said this good shepherd, 'my dear sir, remember my flock!

"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,"'

"...He begged me to come and see him at Combe Florey. 'There I am, sir, in a delightful parsonage, about which I care a great deal, and a delightful country, about which I do not care a straw.'"

When the new House of Commons a.s.sembled, it was found to contain a great majority of Reformers. A fresh Bill was introduced, and pa.s.sed the Second Reading, by a majority of 136, on the 8th of July. While it was ploughing its way through Committee, the Coronation of William IV. took place on the 8th of September. The solemnity was made an occasion for public rejoicings in the country, and loyalty was judiciously reinforced by the suggestion that the King was, in this great controversy, on the same side as his people. At a meeting at Taunton, Sydney Smith spoke as follows:--