It may suit the
purpose of the Ministers to flatter the Bench; it does not suit mine.
I do not choose in my old age to be tossed as a prey to the Bishops; I
have not deserved this of my Whig friends."
It is perhaps not surprising that the Whig Ministers should have remained
impervious to arguments thus enforced. On the 10th of February, Sydney
Smith wrote to Lord John Russell (whom he addressed as "My dear John"):--
"You say you are not convinced by my pamphlet I am afraid that I am a
very arrogant person; but I do assure you that, in the fondest moments
of self-conceit, the idea of convincing a Russell that he was wrong
never came across my mind. Euclid would have had a bad chance with you
if you had happened to have formed an opinion that the interior angles
of a triangle were not equal to two right angles. The more poor Euclid
demonstrated, the more you would not have been convinced."
In 1838 Sydney Smith published a second Letter to the same Archdeacon:--
"It is a long time since you heard from me, and in the mean time the
poor Church of England has been trembling from the Bishop who sitteth
upon the throne, to the Curate who rideth upon the hackney horse. I
began writing on the subject in order to avoid bursting from
indignation; and, as it is not my habit to recede, I will go on till
the Church of England is either up or down--semianimous on its back or
vigorous on its legs.
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