138 legally, the better. CABINET DINNERS. A thousand opportunities of doing good in Irish affairs have been lost, from our having no avowed and dignified agent at the Court of Rome. If it depended upon me, I would send the Duke of Devonshire there to-morrow, with nine chaplains and several tons of Protestant theology. I have no love of popery, but the Pope is at all events better than the idol of Juggernaut, whose chaplains I believe we pay, and whose chariot I dare say is made in Long Acre. We pay 10,000l. a year to our ambassador at Constantinople, and are startled with the idea of communicating diplomatically with Rome, deeming the Sultan a better Christian than the Pope! - [Letter on Irish Clergy.] CABINET DINNERS. Ir I were a member of the Cabinet, and met my colleagues once a week to eat birds and beasts, and to talk over the state of the world, I should begin upon Ireland before the soup was finished, go on through fish, turkey, and saddle of mutton, and never end till the last thimbleful of claret had passed down the throat of the incredulous Haddington: but there they sit, week after week; there they come, week after week; the Piccadilly Mars, the Scotch Neptune, Themis Lyndhurst, the Tamworth Baronet, dear Goody, and dearer Gladdy, and think no more of paying the Catholic clergy, than a man of real fashion does of paying his tailor! - [Letters on Irish Clergy.] EPISCOPAL CONTRASTS. If I were a Bishop, living beautifully in a state of serene plenitude, I don't think I could endure the thought of so many honest, pious, and laborious clergy LOVE OF TYRANNY. 139 men of another faith, placed in such disgraceful circumstances! I could not get into my carriage with jelly-springs, or see my two courses every day, without remembering the buggy and the bacon of some poor old Catholic Bishop, ten times as laborious, and with much more, perhaps, of theological learning than myself, often distressed for a few pounds! and burthened with duties utterly disproportioned to his age and strength. [Letters on Irish Clergy.] LOVE OF TYRANNY. HUMAN beings cling to their delicious tyrannies, and to their exquisite nonsense, like a drunkard to his bottle, and go on till death stares them in the face. [Letters on Irish Clergy.] BEEF FOR HINDOOS. I HAVE always compared the Protestant church in Ireland (and I believe my friend Thomas Moore stole the simile from me) to the institution of butchers' shops in all the villages of our Indian empire. "We will have a butcher's shop in every village, and you, Hindoos, shall pay for it. We know that many of you do not eat meat at all, and that the sight of beefsteaks is particularly offensive to you; but still, a stray European may pass through your village, and want a steak or a chop: the shop shall be established; and you shall pay for it." This is English Legislation for Ireland!![Letters on Irish Clergy.] EFFECTS OF PAYMENT OF CATHOLIC CLERGY. I AM thoroughly convinced that State payments to the Catholic clergy would remove a thousand causes of 140 INTERROGATION OF CURATES. hatred between the priest and his flock, and would be as favourable to the increase of his useful authority, as it would be fatal to his factious influence over the people. - [Letters on Irish Clergy.] GORED TO DEATH. Ir a lawyer is wounded, the rest of the profession pursue him, and put him to death. If a churchman is hurt, the others gather round for his protection, stamp with their feet, push with their horns, and demolish the dissenter who did the mischief. —[E. R. 1822.] INTERROGATION OF CURATES. Ir 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. But, by this new system of interrogation, a man may be admitted into orders at Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, readmitted at Brogden, kicked out as a Calvinist at Witham Common, and hailed as an ardent Arminian on his arrival at York.—[E. R. 1822.] VARIETIES OF BELIEF. MR. GREENOUGH has made a map of England, according to its geological varieties;—blue for the chalk, green COMMON SENSE.-BITTER BISHOPS. 141 for the clay, red for the sand, and so forth. Under the system of Bishop Marsh, we must petition for the assistance of the geologist in the fabrication of an ecclesiastical map. All the Arminian districts must be purple. Green for one theological extremity-sky-blue for anotheras many colours as there are bishops-as many shades of these colours as there are Archdeacons-a tailor's pattern card-the picture of vanity, fashion, and caprice.— [E. R. 1822.] COMMON SENSE. THE longer we live, the more we are convinced of the justice of the old saying, that an ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy; that discretion, gentle manners, common sense, and good nature, are, in men of high ecclesiastical station, of far greater importance than the greatest skill in discriminating between sublapsarian and supralapsarian doctrines.—[E. R. 1822.] BITTER BISHOPS. WHAT Would the worst enemy of the English Church require?—a bitter, bustling, theological Bishop, accused by his clergy of tyranny and oppression-the cause of daily petitions and daily debates in the House of Commons—the idoneous vehicle of abuse against the Establishment—a stalking-horse to bad men for the introduction of revolutionary opinions, mischievous ridicule, and irreligious feelings. It is inconceivable how such a prelate shakes all the upper works of the Church, and ripens it for dissolution and decay. Six such Bishops, multiplied by eightyseven, and working with five hundred and twenty-two 142 THE STANDARD OF FAITH. questions, would fetch every thing to the ground in less than six months. But what if it pleased Divine Providence to afflict every prelate with the spirit of putting eighty-seven queries, and the two Archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man with the spirit of putting only forty-three queries?-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 the land be with Question and Answer.-[E. R. 1822.] THE STANDARD OF FAITH. THE Bishop not only puts the questions, but he actually assigns the limits within which they are to be answered. Spaces are left in the paper of interrogations, to which limits the answer is to be confined;-two inches to original sin; an inch and a half to justification; three quarters to predestination; and to free will only a quarter of an inch. But if his Lordship gives them an inch, they will take an ell.-[E. R. 1822.] curates. MODERATE PUNISHMENT. His Lordship boasts, that he has excluded only two So the Emperor of Hayti boasted that he had only cut off two persons' heads for disagreeable behaviour at his table.-[E. R. 1822.] EPISCOPAL BREVITY. WE never met with any style so entirely clear of all redundant and vicious ornament, as that which the |