Government can be carried on without those gentle allurements? You may
as well attempt to poultice off the humps of a camel's back as to cure
mankind of these little corruptions.

"I am terribly alarmed by a committee of Cathedrals now sitting in
London, and planning a petition to the Legislature to be heard by
counsel. They will take such high ground, and talk a language so
utterly at variance with the feelings of the age about Church
Property, that I am much afraid they will do more harm than good. In
the time of Lord George Gordon's riots, the Guards said they did not
care for the mob, if the Gentlemen Volunteers behind would be so good
as not to hold their muskets in such a dangerous manner. I don't care
for popular clamour, and think it might now be defied; but I confess
the Gentleman Volunteers alarm me. They have unfortunately, too,
collected their addresses, and published them in a single
volume!!!"[125]

And now he returns to one of the prominent topics of his first Letter, and
reminds the Archbishop of Canterbury that he has sworn to protect the
rights and possessions of the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury.--

"A friend of mine has suggested to me that his Grace has perhaps
forgotten the oath; but this cannot be, for the first Protestant in
Europe of course makes a memorandum in his pocket-book of all the
oaths he takes to do, or to abstain. The oath, however, may be less
present to the Archbishop's memory, from the fact of his not having
taken the oath in person, but by the medium of a gentleman sent down
by the coach to take it for him--a practice which, though I believe it
to have been long established in the Church, surprised me, I confess,
not a little. A proxy to vote, if you please--a proxy to consent to
arrangements of estates if wanted; but a proxy sent down in the
Canterbury Ply, to take the Creator to witness that the Archbishop,
detained in town by business or pleasure, will never violate that
foundation of piety over which he presides--all this seems to me an
act of the most extraordinary indolence ever recorded in history. If
an Ecclesiastic, not a Bishop, may express any opinion on the reforms
of the Church, I recommend that Archbishops and Bishops should take no
more oaths by proxy; but, as they do not wait upon the Sovereign or
the Prime Minister, or even an