"
From the time of his appointment to Bristol, Sydney Smith severed his
connexion with the _Edinburgh Review_, holding that anonymous journalism
was inconsistent with the position of an ecclesiastical dignitary. He had
contributed to the _Review_ for a quarter of a century; and, by a happy
accident, his last utterance, in the organ through which he had so long and
so strenuously fought for freedom, was yet one more plea for Roman Catholic
emancipation. Yet once again he urged, with all his force, the baseness of
deserting the good cause, and the danger and cruelty of delaying justice.--
"There is little new to be said; but we must not be silent, or, in
these days of baseness and tergiversation, we shall be supposed to
have deserted our friend the Pope, and they will say of us, _Prostant
venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall_. God forbid it should ever be said
of us with justice. It is pleasant to loll and roll and to
accumulate--to be a purple-and-fine-linen man, and to be called by some
of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of
accumulating upon each other;---but the best thing of all is to live
like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality,
justice, and truth.
* * * * *
"We should like to argue this matter with a regular Tory Lord, whose
members vote steadily against the Catholic question.
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