write to a friend--"A poor clergyman
whispered to me that he was quite of my way of thinking, but had nine
children. _I begged he would remain a Protestant._"

By this time the life of the Parliament, which had been elected on the
demise of the Crown in 1820, was running out, and both parties were making
vigorous preparations for the General Election. On the 29th January 1826,
Sydney Smith wrote to Lady Grey:--

"Terrible work in Yorkshire with the Pope! I fight with the beasts at
Ephesus every day.... This week I publish a pamphlet on the Catholic
question, with my name to it. There is such an uproar here that I
think it is gallant, and becoming a friend of Lord Grey's, to turn out
and take a part in the affray.... What a detestable subject!--stale,
threadbare, and exhausted; but ancient errors cannot be met with fresh
refutations."

Not with fresh refutations, perhaps, but with a wonderful prodigality of
fresh illustrations and conceits. _A Letter to the Electors upon the
Catholic Question_ begins with the thrice-repeated question, "Why is not a
Catholic to be believed on his oath?"

"What says the law of the land to this extravagant piece of injustice?
It is no challenge against a juryman to say he is a Catholic, he sits
in judgment upon your life and your property. Did any man ever hear it
said that such or such a person was put to death, or that he lost his
property, because a Catholic was among the jurymen? Is the question
ever put? Does it ever enter into the mind of the attorney or the
counsellor to enquire of the faith of the jury? If a man sell a horse,
or a house, or a field, does he ask if the purchaser be a Catholic?
Appeal to your own experience, and try, by that fairest of all tests,
the justice of this enormous charge.

"We are in treaty with many of the powers of Europe, because we
believe in the good faith of Catholics. Two-thirds of Europe are, in
fact, Catholics; are they all perjured? For the first fourteen
centuries all the Christian world were Catholics; did they live in a
constant state of perjury? I am sure these objections against the
Catholics are often made by very serious and honest men, but I much
doubt if Voltaire has advanced any thing against the Christian
religion so horrible as to say that two-thirds of those who profess it
are unfit for all the purposes of civil life; for who i