--
"Prelates are fond of talking about _my_ see, _my_ clergy,
_my_ diocese, as if these things belonged to them as their pigs
and dogs belonged to them. They forget that the clergy, the diocese,
and the bishops themselves, all exist only for the public good; that
the public are a third and principal party in the whole concern. It is
not simply the tormenting bishop against the tormented curate; but the
public against the system of tormenting, as tending to bring scandal
upon religion and religious men. By the late alteration in the
laws,[80] the Labourers in the vineyard are given up to the power of
the Inspector of the vineyard. If he has the meanness and malice to do
so, an Inspector may worry and plague to death any Labourer against
whom he may have conceived an antipathy.... Men of very small incomes
have often very acute feelings, and a curate trod on feels a pang as
great as a bishop refuted."
Another of the Bishop's ways of defending himself was to boast that, in
spite of all his interrogations, he has actually excluded only two curates
from his diocese: and this boast supplies the reviewer with one of his best
apologues. "So the Emperor of Hayti boasted that he had only cut off two
persons' heads for disagreeable behaviour at his table. In spite of the
paucity of the visitors executed, the example operated as a considerable
impediment to conversation; and the intensity of the punishment was found
to be a full compensation for its rarity.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127