"Both sides, as they acquired power, abused it; and both learnt, from their sufferings, the great secret of toleration and forbearance. If you wish to do good in the times in which you live, contribute your efforts to perfect this grand work. I have not the most distant intention to interfere in local politics; but I advise you never to give a vote to any man whose only title for asking it is that he means to continue the punishments, privations, and incapacities of any human beings, merely because they worship God in the way they think best: the man who asks for your vote upon such a plea, is, probably, a very weak man, who believes in his own bad reasoning, or a very artful man, who is laughing at you for your credulity: at all events, he is a man who knowingly or unknowingly exposes his country to the greatest dangers, and hands down to posterity all the foolish opinions and all the bad passions which prevail in those times in which he happens to live. Such a man is so far from being that friend to the Church, which he pretends to be, that he declares its safety cannot be reconciled with the franchises of the people; for what worse can be said of the Church of England than this, that wherever it is judged necessary to give it a legal establishment, it becomes necessary to deprive the body of the people, if they adhere to their old opinions, of their liberties, and of all their free customs, and to reduce them to a state of civil servitude?
"SYDNEY SMITH."
After the discharge of this tremendous missile against the tottering fortress of bigotry, the energetic engineer sought a brief interlude of rest and recreation. His money-matters had of late years improved. An aunt had died and left him a legacy, and the Rectory of Londesborough was a profitable preferment. The income thus augmented enabled him to realize a long-cherished dream and pay his first visit to Paris, in the spring of 1826. There he met some old friends, made several new acquaintances, ate some excellent but expensive dinners, mastered the Louvre in a quarter of an hour, and saw Talma in tragedy and Mademoiselle Mars in "genteel comedy." At the Opera he noticed that "the house was full of English, who talk loud, and seem to care little for other people. This is their characteristic, and a very brutal and barbarous distinction it is." He keenly admired the luxury and beauty and prettiness of Paris, and especially the profusion of glass in French drawing-rooms. "I remember entering a room with glass all round it, and saw myself reflected on every side. I took it for a meeting of the clergy, and was delighted of course." He returned to England in May; on the 2nd of June Parliament was dissolved. "We have been," he wrote, "in the horror of Elections—each party acting and thinking as if the salvation of several planets depended upon the adoption of Mr. Johnson and the rejection of Mr. Jackson." In July, Thomas Babington Macaulay, a young and unsuccessful barrister, found himself on circuit at York. He was told that Mr. Smith had come to see him, and, when the visitor was admitted, he recognized—
"the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith, alias Peter Plymley. I had forgotten his very existence till I discerned the queer contrast between his black coat and his snow-white head, and the equally curious contrast between the clerical amplitude of his person, and the most unclerical wit, whim, and petulance of his eye."
Macaulay spent the following Sunday at Foston Rectory, and thus records his impressions:—
"I understand that S.S. is a very respectable apothecary, and most liberal of his skill, his medicine, his soup, and his wine, among the sick. He preached a very queer sermon—the former half too familiar, and the latter half too florid, but not without some ingenuity of thought and expression….
"His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once above him and below him. Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality and bigotry would have made him a bishop; but he could neither rise to the duties of his order, nor stoop to its degradation."
In December Sydney wrote to a newly-elected Member of Parliament:—
"I see you have broken ice in the House of Commons. I shall be curious to hear your account of your feelings, of what colour the human creatures looked who surrounded you, and how the candles and Speaker appeared…. For God's sake, open upon the Chancery. On this subject there can be no excess of vituperation and severity. Advocate also free trade in ale and ale-houses. Respect the Church, and believe that the insignificant member of it who now addresses you is most truly yours,