thor deserved the Star Chamber, if it still existed."

During the summer of 1807, the Smiths lived in a hired house at Sonning on
the Thames; and one of their neighbours was the great civilian Sir William
Scott,[36] afterwards Lord Stowell (who deserves to be honoured for having
coined the phrase--"The elegant simplicity of the Three per cents"). The
old judge took a fancy to the young clergyman, and pointed out, in a
friendly spirit, how much he had lost by his devotion to Whiggism. In later
life, Sydney Smith wrote to Lord John Russell[37]--"I remember with
pleasure, thirty years ago, old Lord Stowell saying to me, 'Mr. Smith, you
would have been a much richer man if you had joined us.'"

But the Tory table-talk of Earley[38] was powerless to seduce this staunch
partisan from his political allegiance; and, just at this period, he was
meditating the most skilful and the most resounding blow which he ever
struck for freedom and justice.

It was a critical time. The besotted resistance of the King to the
slightest concession in favour of his Roman Catholic subjects had driven
the ministry of "All the Talents" out of office in the spring. The High
Tories succeeded them, and the General Election which ensued on the change
of government gave a strong majority for "No Popery" and reaction.
Meanwhile the greatest genius that the world has ever seen was wading
through slaughter to a universal throne, and no effective resistance had as
yet been offered to a progress which menaced the freedom of Europe and the
existence of its states. At such a juncture it seemed to Sydney Smith that
England could not spare a single soldier or sailor, nor afford to alienate
the loyalty of a single citizen. "Buonaparte," he wrote, "is as rapid and
as terrible as the lightning of God; would he were as transient." It was
nothing short of national suicide to reject men desirous of serving in the
army and navy on account of their beliefs, to madden English Romanists by
defrauding them of their civil rights, and to outrage the whole people of
Ireland by affixing a legal stigma to their religion.

His musings on this pregnant theme took shape in--

A LETTER
ON
THE SUBJECT
OF
THE CATHOLICS
TO
MY BROTHER ABRAHAM
WHO
LIVES IN THE COUNTRY
BY PETER PLYMLEY.

This Letter was published in the summer of 1807, and "its effect was like a
spark on a heap of gunpowder," It was followed by nine more, bearing the
same title, four of w