Sydney Smith Part 8

The reviewer begins by giving the Bishop credit for good intentions; but maintains that his conduct has been--

"singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and in its effects (though not in its intentions) very oppressive and vexatious to the clergy....

We cannot believe that we are doing wrong in ranging ourselves on the weaker side, in the cause of propriety and justice. The Mitre protects its wearer from indignity; but it does not secure impunity."

After this preface Sydney Smith goes on to develop his argument against the Bishop, and he starts with the highly reasonable proposition that a man is presumably wrong when all his friends, whose habits and interests would naturally lead them to side with him, think him wrong.--

"If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the apothecary, the druggist, and the physician all called upon him to abandon his philocathartic propensities--if he were to gratify his convivial habits till the landlord demurred and the waiter shook his head--we should naturally imagine that advice so disinterested was not given before it was wanted."

The Bishop of Peterborough has all his brother-bishops against him, though they certainly love power as well as he. Not one will defend him in debate; not one will allege that he has acted or would act as Peterborough has acted.

Then, again, the bishop who refuses to license a curate unless he satisfactorily answers Eighty-Seven Questions, thereby puts himself in opposition to the bishop who ordained the curate. One standard of orthodoxy is established in one diocese; another in another. The theological system of the Church becomes local and arbitrary instead of national and fixed.--

"If a man is a captain in the army in one part of England, he is a captain in all. The general who commands north of the Tweed does not say, 'You shall never appear in my district, or exercise the functions of an officer, if you do not answer eighty-seven questions on the art of war, according to my notions.' The same officer who commands a ship of the line in the Mediterranean is considered as equal to the same office in the North Seas. _The Sixth Commandment is suspended by one medical diploma from the North of England to the South_.[79] But, by the new system of interrogation, a man may be admitted into Orders at Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, readmitted at Buckden, kicked out as a Calvinist at Witham Common, and hailed as an ardent Arminian on his arrival at York."

The Bishop's reply to the charges brought against him evinces surprise that any one should have the hardihood to criticize or to resist him; and yet, the reviewer asks, to what purpose has he read his ecclesiastical history, if he expects anything except the most strenuous opposition to his tyranny?--

"Does he think that every st.u.r.dy Supralapsarian bullock whom he tries to sacrifice to the Genius of Orthodoxy will not kick, and push, and toss; that he will not, if he can, shake the axe from his neck, and hurl his mitred butcher into the air? We know these men fully as well as the Bishop; he has not a chance of success against them. They will ravage, roar, and rush till the very chaplains, and the Masters and Misses Peterborough, request his lordship to desist. He is raising a storm in the English Church of which he has not the slightest conception, and which will end, as it ought to end, in his lordship's disgrace and defeat."

Then the reviewer goes on to urge that discretion and common sense, good nature and good manners, are qualities far more valuable in bishops than any "vigilance of inquisition." Prelates of the type of Bishop Marsh are the most dangerous enemies of the Establishment which they profess to serve.--

"Six such Bishops, multiplied by eighty-seven, and working with five hundred and twenty-two questions, would fetch everything to the ground in six months. But what if it pleased Divine Providence to afflict every prelate with the spirit of putting eighty-seven questions, and the two Archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man with the spirit of putting forty-three questions? There would then be a grand total of two thousand three hundred and thirty-five interrogations flying about the English Church, and sorely vexed would be the land with Question and Answer.... If eighty-seven questions are a.s.sumed to be necessary by one bishop, eight hundred may be considered as the minimum of interrogation by another. When once the ancient faith-marks of the Church are lost sight of and despised, any misled theologian may launch out on the boundless sea of polemical vexation."

The Bishop's main line of defence, when challenged in the House of Lords, was that he had a legal right to do what he had done. This was not disputed. "A man may persevere in doing what he has a right to do till the Chancellor shuts him up in Bedlam, or till the mob pelts him as he pa.s.ses."

But the reviewer reminds him that he has no similar right as against clergymen presented to benefices in his diocese. They are protected by the patron's action of _Quare Impedit_; and all considerations of honour, decency, and common sense should restrain the Bishop from "letting himself loose against the working man of G.o.d," and enforcing against the curate a system of inquisition which he dare not apply to the inc.u.mbent.--

"Prelates are fond of talking about _my_ see, _my_ clergy, _my_ diocese, as if these things belonged to them as their pigs and dogs belonged to them. They forget that the clergy, the diocese, and the bishops themselves, all exist only for the public good; that the public are a third and princ.i.p.al party in the whole concern. It is not simply the tormenting bishop against the tormented curate; but the public against the system of tormenting, as tending to bring scandal upon religion and religious men. By the late alteration in the laws,[80] the Labourers in the vineyard are given up to the power of the Inspector of the vineyard. If he has the meanness and malice to do so, an Inspector may worry and plague to death any Labourer against whom he may have conceived an antipathy.... Men of very small incomes have often very acute feelings, and a curate trod on feels a pang as great as a bishop refuted."

Another of the Bishop's ways of defending himself was to boast that, in spite of all his interrogations, he has actually excluded only two curates from his diocese: and this boast supplies the reviewer with one of his best apologues. "So the Emperor of Hayti boasted that he had only cut off two persons' heads for disagreeable behaviour at his table. In spite of the paucity of the visitors executed, the example operated as a considerable impediment to conversation; and the intensity of the punishment was found to be a full compensation for its rarity."

In conclusion, the reviewer says:--"Now we have done with the Bishop....

Our only object in meddling with the question is to restrain the arm of Power within the limits of moderation and justice--one of the great objects which first led to the establishment of this journal, and which, we hope, will always continue to characterize its efforts."

To this period also belong two splendid discourses on the principles of Christian Justice, which Sydney Smith, as Chaplain to the High Sheriff, preached in York Minster at the Spring and Summer a.s.sizes of 1824. The first is styled "The Judge that smites contrary to the Law."[81]

At the outset, the preacher thus defines his ground:--

"I take these words of St. Paul as a condemnation of that man who smites contrary to the law; as a praise of that man who judges according to the law; as a religious theme upon the importance of human Justice to the happiness of mankind: and, if it be that theme, it is appropriate to this place, and to the solemn public duties of the past and the ensuing week, over which some here present will preside, at which many here present will a.s.sist, and which almost all here present will witness."

A Christian Judge in a free land must sedulously guard himself against the entanglements of Party. He must be careful to maintain his independence by seeking no promotion and asking no favours from those who govern. It may often be his duty to stand between the governors and the governed, and in that case his hopes of advantage may be found on one side, and his sense of duty on another. At such a crisis he is trebly armed, if he is able from his heart to say--"I have vowed a vow before G.o.d. I have put on the robe of justice. Farewell avarice, farewell ambition. Pa.s.s me who will, slight me who will, I will live henceforward only for the great duties of life. My business is on earth. My hope and my reward are with G.o.d."

"He who takes the office of a Judge as it now exists in this country, takes in his hands a splendid gem, good and glorious, perfect and pure. Shall he give it up mutilated, shall he mar it, shall he darken it, shall it emit no light, shall it be valued at no price, shall it excite no wonder? Shall he find it a diamond, shall he leave it a stone? What shall we say to the man who would wilfully destroy with fire the magnificent temple of G.o.d, in which I am now preaching? Far worse is he who ruins the moral edifices of the world, which time and toil, and many prayers to G.o.d, and many sufferings of men, have reared; who puts out the light of the times in which he lives, and leaves us to wander amid the darkness of corruption and the desolation of sin. There may be, there probably is, in this church, some young man who may hereafter fill the office of an English Judge, when the greater part of those who hear me are dead, and mingled with the dust of the grave. Let him remember my words, and let them form and fashion his spirit: he cannot tell in what dangerous and awful times he may be placed; but as a mariner looks to his compa.s.s in the calm, and looks to his compa.s.s in the storm, and never keeps his eyes off his compa.s.s, so in every vicissitude of a judicial life, deciding for the people, deciding against the people, protecting the just rights of kings, or restraining their unlawful ambition, let him ever cling to that pure, exalted, and Christian independence, which towers over the little motives of life; which no hope of favour can influence, which no effort of power can control.

"A Christian Judge in a free country should respect, on every occasion, those popular inst.i.tutions of Justice, which were intended for his control, and for our security. To see humble men collected accidentally from the neighbourhood, treated with tenderness and courtesy by supreme magistrates of deep learning and practised understanding, from whose views they are perhaps at that moment differing, and whose directions they do not choose to follow; to see at such times every disposition to warmth restrained, and every tendency to contemptuous feeling kept back; to witness the submission of the great and wise, not when it is extorted by necessity, but when it is practised with willingness and grace, is a spectacle which is very grateful to Englishmen, which no other country sees, which, above all things, shows that a Judge has a pure, gentle, and Christian heart, and that he never wishes to smite contrary to the law.

"A Christian Judge who means to be just must not fear to smite according to the law; he must remember that he beareth not the sword in vain. Under his protection we live, under his protection we acquire, under his protection we enjoy. Without him, no man would defend his character, no man would preserve his substance. Proper pride, just gains, valuable exertions, all depend upon his firm wisdom. If he shrink from the severe duties of his office, he saps the foundation of social life, betrays the highest interests of the world, and sits not to judge according to the law."

But Justice, if it is to be truly just, must be tempered by mercy, and must have a scrupulous regard to the strength of temptation, the moral weakness of the subject, the degrading power of ignorance and poverty.--

"All magistrates feel these things in the early exercise of their judicial power; but the Christian Judge always feels them, is always youthful, always tender, when he is going to shed human blood; retires from the business of men, communes with his own heart, ponders on the work of death, and prays to that Saviour who redeemed him that he may not shed the blood of man in vain."

A pure, secure, and even-handed administration of Justice is the strongest safeguard of national stability and happiness.--

"The whole tone and tenor of public morals is affected by the state of supreme Justice; it extinguishes revenge, it communicates a spirit of purity and uprightness to inferior magistrates; it makes the great good, by taking away impunity; it banishes fraud, obliquity, and solicitation, and teaches men that the law is their right. Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion; safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest emanation of the Gospel, it is the greatest attribute of G.o.d: it is that centre round which human motives and pa.s.sions turn: and Justice, sitting on high, sees Genius and Power, and Wealth and Birth, revolving round her throne; and teaches their paths and marks out their orbits, and warns with a loud voice, and rules with a strong arm, and carries order and discipline into a world, which but for her would only be a wild waste of pa.s.sions. Look what we are, and what just laws have done for us:--a land of piety and charity;--a land of churches, and hospitals, and altars;--a nation of good Samaritans;--a people of universal compa.s.sion. All lands, all seas, have heard we are brave. We have just sheathed that sword which defended the world; we have just laid down that buckler which covered the nations of the earth. G.o.d blesses the soil with fertility; English looms labour for every climate. All the waters of the globe are covered with English ships. We are softened by fine arts, civilized by humane literature, instructed by deep science; and every people, as they break their feudal chains, look to the founders and fathers of freedom for examples which may animate, and rules which may guide. If ever a nation was happy, if ever a nation was visibly blessed by G.o.d--if ever a nation was honoured abroad, and left at home under a government (which we can now conscientiously call a liberal government) to the full career of talent, industry, and vigour, we are at this moment that people--and this is our happy lot.--First the Gospel has done it, and then Justice has done it; and he who thinks it his duty to labour that this happy condition of existence may remain, must guard the piety of these times, and he must watch over the spirit of Justice which exists in these times. First, he must take care that the altars of G.o.d are not polluted, that the Christian faith is retained in purity and in perfection: and then turning to human affairs, let him strive for spotless, incorruptible Justice;--praising, honouring, and loving the just Judge, and abhorring, as the worst enemy of mankind, him who is placed there to 'judge after the law, and who smites contrary to the law.'"

The second of these sermons is called "The Lawyer that tempted Christ."[82]

The preacher begins by pointing out that the Lawyer who, in the hope of entangling the new Teacher, asked what he should do to inherit eternal life, received a very plain answer--"not flowery, not metaphysical, not doctrinal." The answer was, in effect, thus: "If you wish to live eternally, do your duty to G.o.d and man." Whereas the earlier sermon was addressed to the Bench, this is addressed, very directly indeed, to the Bar.

"There are probably in this church many persons of the profession of the law, who have often asked before, with better faith than their brother, and who do now ask this great question, 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?' I shall, therefore, direct to them some observations on the particular duties they owe to society, because I think it suitable to this particular season, because it is of much more importance to tell men how they are to be Christians in detail, than to exhort them to be Christians generally; because it is of the highest utility to avail ourselves of these occasions, to show to cla.s.ses of mankind what those virtues are, which they have more frequent and valuable opportunities of practising, and what those faults and vices are, to which they are more particularly exposed.

"It falls to the lot of those who are engaged in the active and arduous profession of the law to pa.s.s their lives in great cities, amidst severe and incessant occupation, requiring all the faculties, and calling forth, from time to time, many of the strongest pa.s.sions of our nature. In the midst of all this, rivals are to be watched, superiors are to be cultivated, connections cherished; some portion of life must be given to society, and some little to relaxation and amus.e.m.e.nt. When, then, is the question to be asked, 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?' what leisure for the altar, what time for G.o.d? I appeal to the experience of men engaged in this profession, whether religious feelings and religious practices are not, without any speculative disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to the business of the world? Are not the habits of devotion gradually displaced by other habits of solicitude, hurry, and care? Is not the taste for devotion lessened? Is not the time for devotion abridged? Are you not more and more conquered against your warnings and against your will; not, perhaps, without pain and compunction, by the Mammon of life? And what is the cure for this great evil to which your profession exposes you?

The cure is, to keep a sacred place in your heart, where Almighty G.o.d is enshrined, and where nothing human can enter; to say to the world, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no further'; to remember you are a lawyer, without forgetting you are a Christian; to wish for no more wealth than ought to be possessed by an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven; to covet no more honour than is suitable to a child of G.o.d; boldly and bravely to set yourself limits, and to show to others you have limits, and that no professional eagerness, and no professional activity, shall ever induce you to infringe upon the rules and practices of religion: remember the text; put the great question really, which the tempter of Christ only pretended to put. In the midst of your highest success, in the most perfect gratification of your vanity, in the most ample increase of your wealth, fall down at the feet of Jesus, and say, 'Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?'"

The advocate's duty to his client, with its resulting risk to the advocate's own conscience, is thus set forth:--

"Justice is found, experimentally, to be most effectually promoted by the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious men presenting to the selection of an impartial judge the best arguments for the establishment and explanation of truth. It becomes, then, under such an arrangement, the decided duty of an advocate to use all the arguments in his power to defend the cause he has adopted, and to leave the effects of those arguments to the judgment of others.

However useful this practice may be for the promotion of public justice, it is not without danger to the individual whose practice it becomes. It is apt to produce a profligate indifference to truth in higher occasions of life, where truth cannot for a moment be trifled with, much less callously trampled on, much less suddenly and totally yielded up to the basest of human motives. It is astonishing what unworthy and inadequate notions men are apt to form of the Christian faith. Christianity does not insist upon duties to an individual, and forget the duties which are owing to the great ma.s.s of individuals, which we call our country; it does not teach you how to benefit your neighbour, and leave you to inflict the most serious injuries upon all whose interest is bound up with you in the same land. I need not say to this congregation that there is a wrong and a right in public affairs, as there is a wrong and a right in private affairs. I need not prove that in any vote, in any line of conduct which affects the public interest, every Christian is bound, most solemnly and most religiously, to follow the dictates of his conscience. Let it be for, let it be against, let it please, let it displease, no matter with whom it sides, or what it thwarts, it is a solemn duty, on such occasions, to act from the pure dictates of conscience, and to be as faithful to the interests of the great ma.s.s of your fellow-creatures, as you would be to the interests of any individual of that ma.s.s. Why, then, if there be any truth in these observations, can that man be pure and innocent before G.o.d, can he be quite harmless and respectable before men, who in mature age, at a moment's notice, sacrifices to wealth and power all the fixed and firm opinions of his life; who puts his moral principles to sale, and barters his dignity and his soul for the baubles of the world? If these temptations come across you, then remember the memorable words of the text, 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?'"

After warning the younger barristers against their characteristic faults of self-sufficiency and affected pessimism, the preacher turns to another aspect of the advocate's duty towards his client.--

"Upon those who are engaged in studying the laws of their country devolves the honourable and Christian task of defending the accused: a sacred duty never to be yielded up, never to be influenced by any vehemence, nor intensity of public opinion. In these times of profound peace and unexampled prosperity, there is little danger in executing this duty, and little temptation to violate it; but human affairs change like the clouds of heaven; another year may find us, or may leave us, in all the perils and bitterness of internal dissension; and upon one of you may devolve the defence of some accused person, the object of men's hopes and fears, the single point on which the eyes of a whole people are bent. These are the occasions which try a man's inward heart, and separate the dross of human nature from the gold of human nature. On these occasions, never mind being mixed up for a moment with the criminal, and the crime; fling yourself back upon great principles, fling yourself back upon G.o.d; yield not one atom to violence; suffer not the slightest encroachments of injustice; retire not one step before the frowns of power; tremble not, for a single instant, at the dread of misrepresentation. The great interests of mankind are placed in your hands; it is not so much the individual you are defending; it is not so much a matter of consequence whether this, or that, is proved to be a crime; but on such occasions, you are often called upon to defend the occupation of a defender, to take care that the sacred rights belonging to that character are not destroyed; that that best privilege of your profession, which so much secures our regard, and so much redounds to your credit, is never soothed by flattery, never corrupted by favour, never chilled by fear. You may practise this wickedness secretly, as you may any other wickedness; you may suppress a topic of defence, or soften an attack upon opponents, or weaken your own argument and sacrifice the man who has put his trust in you, rather than provoke the powerful by the triumphant establishment of unwelcome innocence: but if you do this, you are a guilty man before G.o.d. It is better to keep within the pale of honour, it is better to be pure in Christ, and to feel that you are pure in Christ: and if ever the praises of mankind are sweet, if it be ever allowable to a Christian to breathe the incense of popular favour, and to say it is grateful and good, it is when the honest, temperate, unyielding advocate, who has protected innocence from the grasp of power, is followed from the hall of judgment by the prayers and blessings of a grateful people."

And then comes an admonition about private duty.--

"Do not lose G.o.d in the fervour and business of the world; remember that the churches of Christ are more solemn, and more sacred, than your tribunals: bend not before the judges of the king, and forget the Judge of Judges; search not other men's hearts without heeding that your own hearts will be searched; be innocent in the midst of subtility; do not carry the lawful arts of your profession beyond your profession; but when the robe of the advocate is laid aside, so live that no man shall dare to suppose your opinions venal, or that your talents and energy may be bought for a price: do not heap scorn and contempt upon your declining years by precipitate ardour for success in your profession; but set out with a firm determination to be unknown, rather than ill-known; and to rise honestly, if you rise at all. Let the world see that you have risen, because the natural probity of your heart leads you to truth; because the precision and extent of your legal knowledge enables you to find the right way of doing the right thing; because a thorough knowledge of legal art and legal form is, in your hands, not an instrument of chicanery, but the plainest, easiest and shortest way to the end of strife.... I hope you will weigh these observations, and apply them to the business of the ensuing week, and beyond that, in the common occupations of your profession: always bearing in your minds the emphatic words of the text, and often in the hurry of your busy, active lives, honestly, humbly, heartily exclaiming to the Son of G.o.d, 'Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?'"

[60] Edward Vernon, afterwards Harcourt (1757-1847).

[61] Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), Bishop of London, was the first bishop to discard the episcopal wig; and John Bird Sumner (1780-1862), Archbishop of Canterbury, the last to wear it.

[62] In later life he said:--"If you shoot, the squire and the poacher both consider you as their natural enemies, and I thought it more clerical to be at peace with both."

[63] Sir Henry Halford, Bart., M.D. (1766-1844).

[64] His eldest son.

[65] Compare--"The Sixth Commandment in suspended, by one medical diploma, from the North of England to the South."--Essay on "Persecuting Bishops."

[66] Addressed to Mrs. Henry Howard.

[67] John Allen (1771-1843) was Warden of Dulwich College.

[68] Macaulay called it "the very neatest, most commodious, and most appropriate rectory that I ever saw."

[69] In 1818 he writes to Lady Mary Bennet:--"I am glad you liked what I said of Mrs. Fry. She is very unpopular with the clergy: examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose, and give birth to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive."

[70] Macaulay describes Foston Church as "a miserable little hovel with a wooden belfry."