475 

 PARTIES AND PROSPECTS IN PARIS. 



Paris, Oct. 20^. 



Of the new ministry anon ; it is a wearysome subject. 



You are aware what theorists the French are well the affairs of 

 Ireland, and the Birmingham refusal to pay church-rate, have set the 

 Parisian world chattering about religion, about different cultes, their 

 nature, and the rise and fall of them. 



Your journalists, with the exception of Dr. Black perhaps, and one or 

 two others, have in England no theory whatever. You write on, as if 

 there was no such thing as ethics at all, or as man's moral nature. And 

 ye argue the merits and the fortunes of the Church of England and the 

 Church of Rome, just as you would those of an individual that is, is 

 he well-behaved ? is he well-endowed ? without ever considering his tern- 

 perament, his peculiarities, and their influence upon his acts and fate. 



The French, on the contrary, philosophize every thing, sometimes 

 with pedant no doubt, but sometimes to the establishment of a truth, 

 and the opening of a general view. The press in Paris is the school of 

 Athens, where fifty philosophic creeds jostle and struggle to show them- 

 selves. The Catholics have numerous gazettes, Protestantism has the 

 " Semeur," St. Simonism has its organ ; and a very clever sophistical 

 dispute they all carry on. 



Now how do you think they view the religious affairs of Ireland and 

 of Birmingham ? I will tell you by transcribing the conversation of a 

 salon last night ; and don't be incredulous if I assert that ladies were 

 the profoundest disputants. But I can only give you the sums. And 

 this was, that the Church of England was the exclusive religion of the 

 aristocracy. The Catholic religion had this good at least in it, that it 

 provided for the spiritual wants and weaknesses, and united itself to the 

 sympathies of both rich and poor. That if it was gorgeous and pow- 

 erful, it was also humble in certain respects, courted the poor, took a 

 great portion of its clergy from the lowest ranks, and left them in that 

 low station, which gave them fraternity with the poor. 



The Church of England does none of all this. Its clergy are all 

 well born, university-bred, gentlemen, of the upper castes in society, or 

 affecting to be so men who necessarily look down on the larger and 

 poorer numbers of their flock, who can know no sympathy or have no 

 veneration for them. 



The existence of such a religion for the aristocracy, necessitates 

 another for the middle classes, since the spirit of the English Church, 

 not its dogmas, necessarily disgusts the latter. The religion of the 

 middle and lower classes is to be found then in dissent. 



Now the Dissenters are rapidly gaining ground in England; the 

 number of their congregations has doubled since 1812. This, the French 

 say, (and I believe them) is not owing to any thing peculiar in their 

 doctrines, but merely to the humble zeal with which they work, and to 

 their addressing principally the middle classes. Dissent is the religion 

 most congenial to these classes, and hence its gradual gaining of ground 

 upon the Church of England is a proof, that the middle classes are 

 gaming ground upon the aristocracy. Whether the premises of this 



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