be ineffectual, and as mere Dreams and Trifles, as the several Offices and Orders of the Clergy.

This, I hope, will be esteem'd a sufficient Confutation of your Lordship's Doctrine, by all who have any true Regard or Zeal for the Christian Religion; and only expect to be sav'd by the Methods of Divine Grace propos'd in the Gospel.

XVII

SYDNEY SMITH

[Born in 1771, ordained in 1794, Sydney Smith soon went to Edinburgh, where he started the great Review; after five years he came to London and drew great audiences to his sermons and lectures. It was here in 1807 that he wrote the Letters of Peter Plymley. After seventeen years' duty in Yorkshire and Somerset he was made in 1831 Canon of St. Paul's, though he continued to 'live in the country' part of the year till he died, 1845.

Of the Plymley Letters, Lord John Russell, who knew Smith intimately, said that they bore the greatest likeness to his conversation of anything that he wrote. 'His powers of fun were at the same time united with the strongest and most practical common sense. So that while he laughed away seriousness at one minute, he destroyed in the next some rooted prejudice which had braved for a thousand years the battle of reason and the breeze of ridicule. . . . It may be averred for certain that in this style he has never been equalled, and I do not suppose he will ever be surpassed.' The cause of Catholic Emancipation is well explained in the Letter which is here reprinted, and further explanation is given in the notes. Here it may suffice to say that, besides the Test Act of 1673, and the oppression inherited from Queen Elizabeth, various iniquitous statutes against the Romanists had been passed by William III., which were annulled by the Acts of

1778 and 1793. In Ireland their condition was still worse; their public worship was proscribed, and they were deprived of the guardianship of their children: the Act of 1791 modified their hardships, and Pitt tried in 1799, when the Act of Union was in contemplation, to admit Irish Roman Catholics to the United Parliament. George III. was however stubbornly opposed to all Catholic Relief. The Whig ministry of 1806 resigned next year because the king demanded a written promise that no further concessions would be proposed for Catholics. Thereupon a new ministry was formed under Perceval and the Duke of Portland, and Sydney Smith wrote the Letters of Peter Plymley against Perceval and his associates. Smith said afterwards of these Letters that 'they had an immense circulation at the time, and I think above 20,000 copies were sold.' The Catholic Relief Bill was finally passed in 1829 by Peel and Wellington.]

FROM

'LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CATHOLICS,

To my Brother Abraham who lives in the Country.' By Peter Plymley.

Dear Abraham,

Letter V

I never met a parson in my life who did not consider the Corporation and Test Acts as the great bulwarks of the Church; 1

1 The Corporation Act (1661) forced all officers of corporations, and the Test Act (1673) forced all holding any office of profit or trust under the Crown, to

and yet it is now just 64 years since bills of indemnity to destroy their penal effects, or, in other words, to repeal them, have been passed annually as a matter of course. These bulwarks, without which no clergyman thinks he could sleep with his accustomed soundness, have actually not been in existence since any man now living has taken holy orders. Every year the indemnity act pardons past breaches of these two laws, and prevents any fresh actions of informers from coming to a conclusion before the period for the next indemnity bill arrives; so that these penalties, by which alone the Church remains in existence, have not had one moment's operation for 64 years.You will say, the Legislature during the whole of this period, has reserved to itself the discretion of suspending, or not suspending. But had not the Legislature the right of re-enacting, if it was necessary? And now when you have kept

receive the Sacrament according to the Anglican rite, and to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. The Test Act, being primarily directed against the Romanists, added a declaration against transubstantiation. Gradually the Protestant Nonconformists began to hold office without complying with the Act at all, and from 1727 acts of indemnity were passed each year to cover such breaches of the law. The Test and Corporation Acts were not repealed till 1828.

the rod over these people (with the most scandalous abuse of all principle) for 64 years, and not found it necessary to strike once, is not that the best of all reasons why the rod should be laid aside?--You talk to me of a very valuable hedge running across your fields, which you would not part with on any account. I go down, expecting to find a limit impervious to cattle, and highly useful for the preservation of property; but to my utter astonishment, I find that the hedge was cut down half a century ago, and that every year the shoots are clipped the moment they appear above ground: it appears, upon farther inquiry, that the hedge never ought to have existed at all; that it originated in the malice of antiquated quarrels, and was cut down because it subjected you to vast inconvenience, and broke up your intercourse with a country absolutely necessary to your existence. If the remains of this hedge serve only to keep up an irritation in your neighbours, and to remind them of the feuds of former times, good nature and good sense teach you that you ought to grub it up, and cast it into the oven. This is the exact state of these two laws; and yet it is made a great argument against concession to the Catholics, that it involves their