they paralyse
the church. Of the living prelacy we do not speak: but it is impossible
to look upon the list of archbishops and bishops (a few excepted) during
the last century, without surprise that the inferior clergy have done so
much, rather than that they have done so little. Where there was no
encouragement for literary exertion, ability naturally relaxed its
efforts; where preferment was lavished on heads "that could not teach,
and would not learn," disgust extinguished diligence; and where
character for intelligence, practical capacity, and public effect, were
evidently overlooked in the calculation of professional claims, it is
only in the natural course of things that their exercise should be
abandoned, in fastidiousness or in contempt, in disgust or in despair.
The church was never in a more ineffective condition than at the close
of the last century; and if the sin was to be laid at the right
threshold, it must have been laid at the door of Whitehall.

Addington certainly deserves the credit of having formed a just estimate
of the French Revolution from the beginning. In a letter to his brother
he inserts this stanza,--

"France shall perish, write that word
In the blood that she has spilt;
Perish hopeless and abhorr'd,
Deep in ruin as in guilt."

He, however, fell into the common error of the time, and looked upon her
overthrow as certain in the first campaign.

It was on the second reading of the Alien Bill that the dagger scene, of
which so much was said at the time, occurred in the House of
Commons--thus described by the Speaker: "Burke, after a few preliminary
remarks, the house being totally unprepared, fumbled in his bosom, and
suddenly drew out the dagger, and threw it on the floor. His extravagant
gesture excited a general disposition to smile, by which most men would
have been disconcerted; but he suddenly collected himself, and by a few
brilliant sentences recalled the seriousness of the house. 'Let us,'
said he, 'keep French principles from our heads and French daggers from
our hearts; let us preserve all our blandishments in life, and all our
consolations in death; all the blessings of time, and all the hopes of
eternity.'"

As all partisanship hated Burke, who had trampled it in the mire, this
dagger scene was sneered at as a stage trick; but Burke was above all
pantomime. The dagger was one which had been sent from France to a
Birmingham manufacturer, with an order for a