[131] (1794-1871), Banker, Historian, and Politician.
[132] William, Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848).
[133] "Have you read Sydney Smith's Life? There is a strange mixture in his character of earnest common-sense and fun. On the whole, I think he will be thought more highly of in consequence of the publication of the Life, though it may be doubted whether his religion was not injured by his strong sense of the ludicrous. I cannot forgive him for his anti-missionary articles in the Edinburgh Review."—Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. I. chapter xiii.
What seems to be his later and juster judgment on missionary work is given, without date, by Lady Holland. "Some one, speaking of Missions, ridiculed them as inefficient. He dissented, saying, that though all was not done that was projected, or even boasted of, yet that much good resulted; and that wherever Christianity was taught, it brought with it the additional good of civilization in its train, and men became better carpenters, better cultivators, better everything."
[134] "It is immaterial whether Mr. Shufflebottom preaches at Bungay, and Mr. Ringletub at Ipswich; or whether an artful vicissitude is adopted, and the order of insane predication reversed."
[135] William Carey (1761-1834), Shoemaker, Orientalist, and Missionary.
[136] (1765-1832), Historian and Philosopher.
[137] Charles Waterton (1782-1865), Naturalist.
[138] (1748-1820.)
[139] It is possible that the argument about the Wisdom of our Ancestors in "Noodle's Oration" may have been suggested by the following extract from the Parliamentary Debates for May 26, 1797. On Mr. Grey's Motion for a Reform of Parliament, Sir Gregory Page-Turner, M.P., spoke as follows—"He craved the indulgence of the House for a few observations which he had to make. When he got up in the morning and when he lay down at night, he always felt for the Constitution. On this question he had never had but one opinion. When he came first into Parliament, he remembered that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a Reform, but he saw it was wrong, and he opposed it. Would it not be madness to change what had been handed, sound and entire, down from the days of their fathers?"