COUNSEL FOU THE CLERGY. 357 



We say, therefore, again, away with it ! Let churchmen assume that 

 forwardness, we had almost said impudence, which is so proverbi- 

 ally foreign to their nature. Let the virtues which have so long 

 flourished in the shade, be dragged by their own hands into the sun- 

 shine. Let the mitre no longer be satisfied with its own immaculate 

 purity; but let it come forth with all its train of evangelical graces and 

 excellences, and amaze the country by the revelation of its long con- 

 cealed title to universal love and homage. But we mean to be more 

 particular. 



In thejirst place, as this is a calculating, fact-loving age, we would 

 suggest the propriety of preparing returns from the journals of the 

 House of Lords, exhibiting those large majorities of the right reverend 

 bench, which (say for the last century) have uniformly supported every 

 liberal and patriotic measure. The prevalent notion is that the bishops 

 have, generally speaking, opposed all measures of that character ; and 

 there is no other way to remove it, but the production of the docu- 

 mentary evidence we allude to. Let lists, therefore, be immediately 

 made out of those numerous majorities of the lords spiritual which 

 voted in favour of the Catholic Question in all stages of its progress ; 

 which supported Romilly, and the benevolent reformers who fol- 

 lowed him, in their endeavours to infuse the spirit of rnercy into our 

 laws, by abolishing, as far as possible, the use of capital punish- 

 ments ; which under the mild influence of Christian charity, and full of 

 zeal for that freedom of opinion, which is the genius and soul of true 

 Protestantism, followed up the liberation of the Catholics from the 

 penal laws by the emancipation of the Dissenters from the Test Acts ; 

 which evinced their hatred of fraud and corruption by the alacrity and 

 steadiness with which they assisted every effort for the purification of 

 Parliament, from the disfranchisement of Grampound down to the com- 

 pletion of the great measure of the present cabinet. It is a foul libel 

 on the bishops to say that on any one of those great questions they 

 were not upon the side of liberty, humanity, and justice ; but how is 

 the attack to be repelled, if they or their friends will not take the 

 trouble to meet it by a bold reference to recorded facts ? There is no 

 other way to meet it. Assertion without proof, will not answer ; even 

 could churchman be brought to resort to such a procedure. 



Secondly, as the public is at present in total ignorance of the occasions, 

 which must of course be innumerable, on which the bishops have 

 strained all their Parliamentary influence to prevent waste of public 

 money, to restrain ministerial peculation, to oppose encroachments upon 

 liberty, to aid the cause of the poor against the rich, to promote other 

 objects of the like nature, let another set of returns be immediately 

 prepared and circulated through the country, specifying those occasions, 

 at least the principal of them, and giving, by way of appendix, copious 

 extracts from the speeches of those prelates who were most intrepid in 

 denouncing a corrupt minister, diligent in asserting the rights of the 

 people, or eloquent in defending the lowly and anathematizing the 

 pride, insolence, and oppression of the great. 



Thirdly, (if the work would not be too voluminous) we would pro- 

 pose a collection of all the sermons arid pamphlets that have been 

 preached or written during the last century, having for their object the 

 defence of popular and englightened principles, the conquest of bigoted 

 prejudices, the promotion of concord and good- will amongst men of all 



