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We have disclaimed all intention of entering minutely into the Bishop's political life; but we may be allowed to strengthen the general observations now offered, if indeed they require it, by reference to one single fact. He was of opinion, that Mr Fox's East India Bill "was pregnant with more seeds of corruption than any one which had taken place since the Revolution." He intended to have gone to town and spoken against it. But as he had been written to by the Minister to come up and vote for it, he says, "I will so far distrust the solidity of my own judgment as not to oppose a measure which has the approbation of your Grace!!!" (the Duke of Portland.) Truly, the patriotism of the Bishop seems, at convenient seasons, to have shrunk into very accommodating dimensions.
There is another subject on which we beg leave to say a very few words. The Bishop had, it seems, been sometimes accused of holding republican principles. This, when we consider the general tenour of his opinions, is an absurd accusation; yet the Bishop need not have counterfeited any surprise at its having been made; for he often indulged in a freedom of speech about the great political changes that had taken place in France, which was not altogether prudent and judicious in a churchman, and which could not but afford to men of an opposite way of thinking, a strong temptation to suspect him of republicanism. But though no republican, he might, we think, like many far greater men, have cherished a more genial and satisfied love of monarchical power than he has ever expressed; and, above all, he ought to have thought, felt, and spoken, with more respect and reverence of the monarch of his native land. There are scattered over the volume, many sneers and sarcasms against the king;—and what is worse, not a few most unfeeling and unmanly remarks respecting the Queen. We are not of the number of those who think that "divinity doth enhedge a King,"—but we do think, that personal pique should not lead an English Bishop to speak disrespectfully of his Sovereign, and that nothing can be more odious than coarse language, when its object is a woman. He has taken the pains to record a conversation which he held with his Majesty at Court, in which, he would wish us to think, that he came off victoriously, and with flying colours. "I was standing next to a Venetian Nobleman; the King was conversing with him about the republic of Venice, and hastily turning to me, said,"—There, now you hear what he says of a republic." My answer was, "Sir, I look on a republic to be one of the worst forms of government." The King gave me, as he thought, another blow about a republic. His Majesty still pursued the subject; I thought myself insulted, and firmly said, "Sir, I look upon the tyranny of any one man to be an intolerable evil, and upon the tyranny of an hundred to be an hundred times as bad. The King went off." Now, in all this, we see nothing to exalt the Bishop in our eyes. Even taking it for granted, that the King was bearing a little too hard upon him (of which there is no proof, for the Bishop has declined telling us the nature of the blow given), good manners alone should have made his Lordship observe a little more decorum towards his Sovereign in the middle of his own Court,—unless it be said, that there is no difference at all between a King and a subject. The words, we think, were insulting, and must have been grossly so, if uttered, as doubtless they were, with a loud tone and haughty demeanour. What is perhaps still worse, they are exceedingly pointless and stupid. If the Bishop felt himself insulted by his King, it would appear that the King felt himself insulted by his Bishop. Which had the best reason to be so, we leave those to determine who can distinguish between arrogance and true dignity; and who can see nothing derogatory to the rank of the highest subject of the land, in courteously sustaining, or in courteously warding off, even the undeserved sarcasm of his Sovereign. In this case, the Bishop is the hero of his own tale. But while he has thus exultingly recorded how the King fled from before him, what do the admirers of this kind of courage think would have been the behaviour of the Bishop himself, had some clever curate, at a visitation, contrived to turn the tables against his Lordship—no impossible case—about his non-residence at his diocese, or any other topic on which the Bishop was not invulnerable? No doubt, the Bishop would have thought it extreme insolence and impertinence, and perhaps instead of merely "going