“I defy X to quote a single passage in my writing contrary to the doctrines of the Church of England; for I have always avoided speculative, and preached practical, religion. I defy him to mention a single action in my life which he can call immoral. . . . I am distinguished as a preacher, and sedulous as a parochial clergyman. His real charge is, that I am a high-spirited, honest, uncompromising man, whom all the bench of bishops could not turn, and who would set them all at defiance upon great and vital questions. . . . I am thoroughly sincere in saying I would not take any bishopric whatever, and to this I pledge my honour and character as a gentleman.”
It came to Sydney’s turn to appoint to the valuable living of Edmonton: he was allowed to take it himself, but he gave it to the son of the late parson, Tate. Sydney said to Tate junior, that by an odd coincidence the new vicar was called Tate, and by a more singular chance Thomas Tate, “in short . . . you are vicar of Edmonton.” They all burst into tears, and “I wept and groaned for a long time. Then I rose, and said I thought it was very likely to end in their keeping a buggy, at which we all laughed as violently. . . . The charitable physician wept too” (i., p. 343). He wrote to:—
Mrs Grote, 3rd Jan. 1844.—“You have seen
more than enough of my giving the living of Edmonton to a curate. The first thing the unscriptural curate does, is to turn out his fellow curate, the son of him who was vicar before his father. . . . The Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and I have in vain expostulated; he perseveres in his harshness and cruelty.”
Towards the end of 1843 he made his well-known attack on the scandal of the State of Pennsylvania not paying interest to English investors—he being one. He declares them to be “men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light” (i., p. 352).
Sydney Smith died 22nd February 1845 from disease of the heart. He was buried at Kensal Green “as privately as possible.”
Macaulay [185] wrote in 1847 to Mrs Sydney: “He is universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift.” Mrs Sydney adds in a note that there is not a line in his writing “unfit for the eye of a woman,” a great contrast to Swift.
2. LETTERS.
In 1807–8 appeared anonymously Sydney Smith’s Letters on the Subject of the Catholics to my brother Abraham who lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley.
Abraham is said to be a “kind of holy vegetable” and to be a type of people who were exclaiming:—“For God’s sake, don’t think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland! . . . They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner to what we do!”