Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

February 20. 1833.

HOUSE OF COMMONS APPOINTING THE OFFICERS OF THE ARMY AND NAVY.

I was just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse's answer to Mr. Hume, I believe, upon the point of transferring the patronage of the army and navy from the Crown to the House of Commons. I think, if I had been in the House of Commons, I would have said, "that, ten or fifteen years ago, I should have considered Sir J. C. H.'s speech quite unanswerable,—it being clear constitutional law that the House of Commons has not, nor ought to have, any share, directly or indirectly, in the appointment of the officers of the army or navy. But now that the King had been reduced, by the means and procurement of the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a puppet, which, so far from having any independent will of its own, could not resist a measure which it hated and condemned, it became a matter of grave consideration whether it was not necessary to vest the appointment of such officers in a body like the House of Commons, rather than in a junta of ministers, who were obliged to make common cause with the mob and democratic press for the sake of keeping their places."

March 9. 1833.

PENAL CODE IN IRELAND.—CHURCHMEN.

The penal code in Ireland, in the beginning of the last century, was justifiable, as a temporary mean of enabling government to take breath and look about them; and if right measures had been systematically pursued in a right spirit, there can be no doubt that all, or the greater part, of Ireland would have become Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter Schools was greatly on the increase in the early part of that century, and the complaints of the Romish priests to that effect are on record. But, unfortunately, the drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine.

* * * * *

There seems to me, at present, to be a curse upon the English church, and upon the governors of all institutions connected with the orderly advancement of national piety and knowledge; it is the curse of prudence, as they miscall it—in fact, of fear.

Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their pulpits the grounds of their being Protestants. They are completely cowed by the vulgar harassings of the press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. There should be no party politics in the pulpit to be sure; but every church in England ought to resound with national politics,—I mean the sacred character of the national church, and an exposure of the base robbery from the nation itself—for so indeed it is[1]—about to be committed by these ministers, in order to have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators, who will, of course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. You cannot buy off a barbarous invader.

[Footnote 1: "That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes, which a Plato found it hard to learn, and more difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even to the unlettered they sound as common-place; this is a phenomenon which must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; this unobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, this it is, which the patriot and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price. 'It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies.'—The clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder, while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the farm-house and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness, or at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the farmers against church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at the next lease be paid to the landholder; while, as the case at present stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the reversionary property of every family that may have a member educated for the church, or a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being foreclosed and immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences who will pretend to assert?—But I have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to become either Trullibers or salaried placemen."—Church and State, p. 90.]