Sydney Smith was warmly rebuked, for that he, a professedly consistent Whig, should have borne himself with so much hostility towards the rulers of his party. However, his correspondence on the subject during these four years was extensive, and a letter written by him to Panizzi, criticising the conduct of the Bishops, is certainly worthy of reproduction:
Various Bishops, of whom the Archbishop of Canterbury is at the head, on the Ecclesiastical Commission, combine in recommending that the revenues of their various churches should be seized, the patronage confiscated, and the numbers abridged. Now, the Archbishop, at his consecration, took a solemn oath that he would preserve the rights, revenues, and property of his Cathedral; moreover, in the debates on the Catholic question, the said Archbishop laid a great stress upon the King’s oath at his Coronation, so did the Bishop of London. I have no books here; would you do me the favour to look into the debates on that subject, and extract any short passage from the speeches of either of the _prelates_ on the _sanctity and importance_ of this oath. You will find what has been said, of course, in Hansard. I shall be much obliged to you to do this for me.
Fortunately even the power of Sydney Smith’s opposition failed to hinder the carrying out of a reform, perhaps the least revolutionary that could have been devised for the administration of the property of the Church.
In the same proportion as diversity of topics enters into a series of correspondence, will, as a rule, be the amount of amusement to be derived by the public from its perusal. But one more letter from Sydney Smith to Panizzi is in our possession, and this, so far as it goes, and in conjunction with the letter already quoted, sufficiently fulfils the above condition. It certainly treats of no grave question of ecclesiastical or other politics, but is concerned with nothing mean or unimportant, since it relates to an invitation to dinner sent by the writer to the recipient, and is eminently characteristic of its author:—
I wrote to you two or three times inviting you to dinner for the 26th. Receiving no answer, I concluded you were dead, and I invited your executors. News, however, came that you were out of town. I should as soon have thought of St. Paul’s or the Monument being out of town, but as it was positively asserted, I have filled up your place. I hope to be more fortunate on another occasion.
