3 #30.] on Affairs in General. 699 



chooses them ; for there can be no doubt, that among the British clergy, 

 able, learned, and virtuous men are to be found for all the higher situations. 

 But let us suppose that a bishopric placed the disposal of 100,0()0/. a 

 year in the hands of an able and virtuous man, would it be a worse dis- 

 tribution for the public than if it were placed in the hands of some 

 booby squire ? In the former case, we are nearly sure that some portion 

 of it will be turned to the public good ; that orphans will feel it in their 

 education, widows and the helpless in their support; morals in their 

 countenance by such an authority; and learning, not simply in its direct 

 patronage, but in its still more ample and honourable excitement by the 

 mere proof that it is capable of rising to such estimation and public 

 power. But what is this money in the hands of a squire, or any of those 

 to whom property falls by inheritance? On those men there is no 

 necessity for spending a shilling with a view to character. The 

 1 00,000if. goes loose through the common and unclean conduits of fool- 

 ish expenditure. Yet no one blames the prodigal. We see no upturned 

 eyes against one noble lord who lives behind the scenes of the Opera- 

 house ; nor against another, who idles away his years, and scatters his 

 money abroad in the vices and absurdities of continental life. Who 

 inquires into the empty fooleries, for instance, of a noble lord who trans- 

 ports himself and his forty thousand a year to Rome, and lavishes upon 

 the worn-out mummery of the place the money that should be spent in 

 generous hospitality among his English neighbours, or in encouraging 

 the honest tenantry by whom this empty fellow is kept above the 

 necessity of working for his daily bread ? But the noble Lord wears 

 a blue coat, and does not wear a wig; and therefore no man will say 

 that the noble Lord is doing what it should disgrace the possessor of 

 property to do : an J as he has come to his possessions by the accident 

 of being the nephew of an old lord as useless and empty as himself, and 

 not by being known for any one accomplishment or attainment, science 

 or manly and intellectual distinction under the sun, therefore every body 

 must ackno'syledge that he has the most perfect moral right to honour 

 and distinction. Far be it from us to doubt all this, or to believe that 

 there should be any human way to opulence or rank in society but by 

 the accident of being the son or nephew of some old cumberer of the 

 ground ; or that absenteeism, or prodigality, or brute superstition, or 

 lumpish idiotism, are not all praiseworthy where they are to be found in 

 a blue coat without a wig, and uncoupled with a pretence to serve the 

 public in any way whatsoever. 



The ministry of the King's Theatre is, like the ministry of the King's 

 Cabinet, at this moment over head and ears in perplexity. Consultations 

 and couriers succeed each other with an alarming rapidity, and every 

 post letter dropt at the stage-door produces a general despatch of sum- 

 monses to all the grand functionaries of the menus plaisirs for fifty miles 

 round London. 



" It is said that Taglioni, Montessu, and Paul will be restrained from 

 selling their pedefaclures of pas and pirouettes in England this year ; and 

 it is even feared that Coulon and Varennes may be recalled. Laporte 

 intends in the first instance to petition the Comte de la Rochefoucault 

 against the issuing of so harsh an injunction; and, should he fail of 

 success in that quarter, he will move the Court (as the lawyers say) to 

 have it dissolved. This will inieed be a test of the sincerity of princes, 



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