50 The Ruins of the Church Establishment. 



army and navy, our savage ancestors, it will be urged, although they no 

 longer painted blue, indulged to the most revolting extent their barbarous 

 taste for human blood and suffering; and they displayed a similar fero- 

 city in the administration of their colonies, and even in the government 

 of Ireland. It appears to have been for many years the favourite study 

 of British statesmen to devise new modes of tormenting the miserable Irish. 

 They constructed a rack, called the penal code, which all accounts agree 

 in describing as a " chef-d'o3uvre" in its way ; and a monster of the name 

 of Castlereagh obtained the appellation of Deny-down- triangle, from 

 instrument of torture of which he was the inventor, and for which he not 

 only obtained a patent, but was rewarded with every honour the country 

 could heap upon him. The supporters of this theory will be encountered 

 with one objection, which will go near overturning it altogether, viz. that 

 so far from the mitre having been a crown of martyrdom, the persons 

 wearing it, who were called bishops, are described as having been the 

 fattest, rosiest, jolliest fellows of their time ; like any thing else in the 

 universe rather than criminals under the hands of an executioner. This 

 objection having real weight, the antiquarians of a century hence will 

 probably deal with it, as antiquarians in our own days are wont to do in 

 like cases, by coolly observing that it is beneath their notice. 



In support of the second hypothesis that the mitre was designed to 

 represent the head of some ravenous animal which was worshipped by the 

 people of these islands during the dim twilight of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, a great deal of equally plausible reasoning will probably be 

 advanced ; and we should not be surprised if that opinion were to obtain 

 very extensive countenance ; but as to the fools-cap theory, we cannot 

 imagine upon what grounds the future antiquarian will attempt to 

 establish it. "Why put a fools-cap on a bishop? What single quality 

 of a fool can be found in a bishop, fatness alone excepted ? These are 

 the questions which posterity will expect to have answered before they 

 accept this hypothesis on the mere " ipse dixit" of any virtuoso. All 

 ancient records and authorities are unanimous that the bishops were 

 as roguish a set of fellows as ever " trod on neat's leather," to use a 

 homely but Shakespearian phrase; they were much more akin, it will 

 be urged, to the fox than the goose. The few remains of their speeches, 

 and the accounts transmitted by historians of their lives and actions, 

 prove beyond a question that they were the accomplices and confede- 

 rates of a desperate band of freebooters, which then infested England, 

 and issuing out of certain dens and fastnesses called " close boroughs,' 7 

 just as the predatory clans in the Highlands of Scotland are said to have 

 done in remoter times, carried terror and spoliation wherever they came. 



Let imagination now waft us down the stream of time a century 

 farther, and we come to a period when the very word bishop may be sup- 

 posed to be so enveloped in the dust of antiquity, as to be a subject of 

 philological disquisition. The Antiquarian Societies of 2032, will per- 

 haps offer medals for the most successful attempts to throw light upon 

 its original meaning. A host of scholars will enter the lists. One will 

 inform the learned world that the bishop was a species of wild beast, now 

 happily extinct, and unknown to modern zoologists; but which infested and 

 ravaged England long after the extirpation of the wolves, and was a 

 much more rapacious and formidable animal. This opinion will be sup- 

 ported by numerous extracts from writers of the most venerable antiquity, 

 illustrative of the fierce and voracious habits of the bishop ; the upper 

 shelves of the public libraries will be ransacked ; all the literature of 



