An immense proportion of the anecdotes relating
to his conversation belong to this period. "It was," wrote Mr. Gladstone in
1879, "in the year 1835 that I met Mr. Sydney Smith for the first time at
the table of Mr. Hallam. After dinner Mr. Smith was good enough to converse
with me, and he spoke, not of any general changes in the prevailing tone of
doctrine, but of the improvement which had then begun to be remarkable in
the conduct and character of the clergy. He went back upon what they had
been, and said, in his vivid and pointed way of illustration, 'Whenever you
meet a clergyman of my age, you may be quite sure he is a bad
clergyman.'"[118]
In 1836 the Ecclesiastical Commission was established by Act of Parliament
as a permanent institution for the management of business relating to the
Church. Its constitution and recommendations were very distasteful to
Sydney Smith; and, as time went on, he found it impossible to restrain
himself from public criticism. At the beginning of the Session of 1837, he
published his "First Letter to Archdeacon Singleton."[119] The Letter
begins with an attack on the constitution of the Commission. It was stuffed
with Bishops. Deans and Canons and Rectors and Vicars and Curates had no
place upon it. The result was that all interests, not episcopal, had been
completely overlooked, and that the reforms, though perhaps theoretically
sound, were practically unworkable.
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