258 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



Nor can I conceive of any thing so likely to strangle a church 

 as to be hung with exclusive privileges from the state. For what 

 are these ? Bribes for the profession of doctrines and the accept- 

 ance of rules of debatable expediency ; giving encouragement, so 

 far as they have any influence (that they would not have if the 

 church were independent of the power of the state), to insincerity 

 and the unearnest formation of opinions to unreality, which is 

 deadness in a church. 



That the constant practice of perjury and the most miserably 

 Jesuitical notions of truth and falsehood, and that weakness and 

 imbecility of both Church and State, is the direct and inevitable 

 result at the present day of such a connection as is attempted to 

 be sustained between them in England, is as obvious and certain 

 to me as any thing can be, that such great and good men as the 

 divines and statesmen of England have different opinions with 

 regard to. 



There is a large green, close planted with trees, about the 

 cathedral, and facing upon it are the official residences of the 

 regiment of clergy, high priests and low, that under some form or 

 other are provided with livings in connection with it. In front 

 of one of the barracks was planted a bomb-mortar with what 

 signification ? 



There is another public promenade in Hereford, upon the site 

 of an old castle which was demolished by Cromwell. The ram- 

 parts are grassed over, and there are fine trees, ponds, gravel- 

 walks, an obelisk in honor of Nelson, some graceful irregularities 

 of surface, and a broad, purling stream of clear water flowing by 

 it all. Here, before noon, we found a considerable company, of 

 varied character: ladies walking briskly and talking animatedly; 

 invalids, wrapped up and supported, loitering in the sun ; cripples, 

 moving about in wheel-chairs ; students or novel-readers in the 



