e too honest to sell them for the ermine
of the judge or the lawn of the prelate--a long and hopeless career in your
profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, the sarcastic leer of the
genuine political rogue--prebendaries, deans, and bishops made over your
head--reverend renegadoes advanced to the highest dignities of the Church,
for helping to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestant dissenters, and
no more chance of a Whig administration than of a thaw in Zembla."

But this gloomy period of oppression and exclusion was broken by a
transient gleam. Pitt died on the 23rd of January 1806, and Lord
Grenville[34] succeeded him, at the head of the ministry of "All the
Talents." In this place, perhaps, may be not unsuitably inserted the
epitaph which Sydney Smith suggested for Pitt's statue in Hanover Square.

To the Right Honourable William Pitt
Whose errors in foreign policy
And lavish expenditure of our Resources at home
Have laid the foundation of National Bankruptcy
And scattered the seeds of Revolution,
This Monument was erected
By many weak men, who mistook his eloquence for wisdom
And his insolence for magnanimity,
By many unworthy men whom he had ennobled,
And by many base men, whom he had enriched at the Public
Expense.
But for Englishmen
This Statue raised from such motives
Has not been erected in vain.
They learn from it those dreadful abuses
Which exist under the mockery
Of a free Representation,
And feel the deep necessity
Of a great and efficient Reform.

In Lord Grenville's ministry Lord Erskine became Lord Chancellor, and Lord
Holland Lord Privy Seal. In the autumn of 1806 the living of
Foston-le-Clay, eight miles from York, fell vacant. It was in the
Chancellor's gift; the Lord Privy Seal said a word to his colleague; the
Chancellor cordially accepted "the nominee of Lord and Lady Holland"; and
that nominee was Sydney Smith. Foston was worth L500 a year, and Dr.
Markham, Archbishop of York, allowed the new Rector to be non-resident,
accepting his duties at the Foundling Hospital as a sufficient
justification for absence from his parish. Early in 1807 he preached at the
Temple Church, and published by request, a sermon on Toleration, which drew
this testimony from a scandalized peer:[35]--

"Sydney Smith preached yesterday a sermon on the Catholic question....
It would have made an admirable party speech in Parliament, but as a
sermon, the au