In the preface to these collected pieces, which are styled _The Works of
the Rev. Sydney Smith_, the author said, after recounting the circumstances
under which the _Edinburgh Review_ was founded:--
"To set on foot such a Journal in such times, to contribute towards it
for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it
caused, and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and
no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of
life which I must think to be extremely fortunate. Strange and
ludicrous are the changes in human affairs. The Tories are now on the
treadmill, and the well-paid Whigs are riding in chariots: with many
faces, however, looking out of the windows (including that of our
Prime Minister[132]), which I never remember to have seen in the days
of the poverty and depression of Whiggism. Liberality is now a
lucrative business. Whoever has any institution to destroy, may
consider himself as a Commissioner, and his fortune as made; and, to
my utter and never-ending astonishment, I, an old Edinburgh Reviewer,
find myself fighting, in the year 1839, against the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Bishop of London, for the existence of the National
Church."
Some of the reprinted articles would be fairly ranked in the present day
under the derogatory title of "Pot-boilers"; but others are among the most
effective and entertaining pieces which the author ever penned.
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