"This solemnity of ordination, partaking somewhat of a linger. ing superstition, has acquired of late years not a little of the ludicrous, from the frequency and facility with which, beyond former times, this supposed consecrated appointment and relation is dissolved and off goes, or off is sent, the solemnly ordained minister and pastor, in quest of his fortune elsewhere.

"In saying all this, I beg you not to take me as if I were making any very grave matter of the thing—as if I fancied this little rag of hierarchy infected with the plague, and capable of infusing some mighty mischief into our religious constitution. I merely think it would better comport with good sense, and with religious simplicity as the dissenters' profession, to abandon such a ceremonial. I have acted on this opinion-or taste. In two places where in former years I have sustained the 'settled' ministerial office, I have declined, and with little difficulty or objection on the part of the people, all such formality of appoint. ment. Several within my knowledge have done the same. Mr. Hall was never ordained, nor, as I have heard, Mr. Jay of Bath.*

"But whether I be right or wrong in such an opinion, or taste, or call it caprice or prejudice-it will be evident to you and Mr. Cross after such an explanation, that it would be quite inconsistent, almost ludicrously so, in me to take any part whatever in an ordination,—and to have it said, that I even took a voyage,' 'went across the sea,' to officiate in such a transaction.

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"I am glad to find you are likely to be agreeably united with a minister. . . As to the affair of ordination, it may very probably be, that the settled state of opinions among your people may render such a ceremony indispensable to a satisfactory pastoral relation. I retain interest enough for the station in Swift's Alley (where I once so little did my duty in capacity of minister for a little while), to wish very cordially that it may at length be favored with some religious prosperity."+

In the same letter, Foster adverts to the measure of Catholic emancipation, which had just been recommended in the king's speech at the opening of parliament (Feb. 5). "All the friends

"As to the report concerning myself which Mr. F. heard, it was groundless. I was ordained, and the service was published; I only deviated a little in the article of Confession,' substituting instead an address containing only some leading and general views of the gospel. As to Mr. Hall, he never was ordained; but one day, some years ago, when asked by a brother why he was not ?-Because, sir,' said he,' I was a fool.” ”—From the Rev. W. Jay, to the Editor, August 23, 1845.

+ To John Purser, jun., Esq., Feb. 21, 1829.

of political improvement," he says, "are in sympathy with the exhilarated feelings you express in anticipation of the grand change of measures respecting Ireland. At the same time we are

still in some fear, lest the prodigious excitement in opposition, throughout this country, should have the effect of cribbing and narrowing the enactment in its passage through the legislature. The affair is now brought forward on its best and strongest ground of policy and imperious necessity-the bare dry abstract question of right, being reduced to a trifle in so portentous a crisis. The catholic claim, as matter of pure right (under the name of liberty of conscience), has always appeared to me a little dubious, considering the treacherous, and in all ways detestable, quality of popery; but it has constantly appeared to me most perverse and contemptible to stickle about this, as a competent ground of refusal, in the face of an infinitely urgent interest of national safety and improvement."

To another friend, shortly after the Relief Bill had passed, he writes, “It is a very grand thing that these people have been doing for the national welfare; and the more gratifying for having come with a surprising suddenness, and contrary to all that had been expected from the predominant movers of the exploit. It is a curious and memorable circumstance, that a measure which could not, in all probability, have been effected by a completely united ministry of whigs and liberals (had that been a possible composition of it), has been resolutely carried by a set of men avowedly opposed to liberalism, and opposed till lately to this very measure itself. One cannot but deem this a very signal interposition of the divine Providence in favor of the nation. It is a less worthy feeling, but a feeling which one cannot help thinking one's self tolerably right in indulging, to exult in the overwhelming mortification thus inflicted on the whole proud, bigoted tribe of opposers of all improvement and beneficial innovation. They are (here in Bristol pre-eminently) amazed, and stunned, and astounded, almost out of their senses, to see the thing not only done, but done with a high hand by their own set,—the high tories, their very idols, the high-church-andstate standard men,—and done in direct and cool contempt of all their loud and general remonstrances. And it is such a dashing and prodigious kick at the wisdom of our ancestors' as seems to threaten unmeasured hazard to everything else that has been under the sacred protection of that venerable and inviolable su

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perstition. Those narrow-minded evangelicals in the church have had their special share in the mortification, by seeing among the bishops, those very men on whose acquisition to the bench they have been congratulating themselves and the church, declaring for this wicked innovation-Ryder, the two Sumners, and Copleston. Within our time, and a much longer period, there has never been anything comparable to this great red-coat minister for hewing away the old venerable boundaries of prescription and exclusion. As to what he may do in the sequel, one dare not be sanguine. There are Portugal and the seat of Mahommedanism, and West India slavery, and the East India Monopoly, and the wretched mass of abuses in law, and the corn-laws, and taxation. I am afraid there is no betting on him for half of these, not to name such a thing as Parliamentary Reform, or any proceeding affecting the church property in Ireland.

"As to that same church establishment, its superstitious adherents must be liable, one thinks, to some unwelcome intrusions of feeling from the fact that now a decided, unquestionable majority of the people in the kingdom are recognized dissenters, in full possession of their civil and political rights and capacities,the papist portion of them hating that establishment, and the protestant portion of them (such as are dissenters on principle) disapproving all secular religious establishments,—and with palpable evidence that practical dissent is progressive in a continually and rapidly augmenting ratio. This cannot but appear a bad and threatening predicament for the church to have come into, with an absolute helplessness for getting out of it. This will continually lessen the value of the church to the state as a political engine, as a formerly powerful mean of influence over the people. The state will come by degrees to consider whether the diminishing service which the church can render it be worth the cost. And when that consideration comes to operate, it will be discovered that the state is no very religious animal.

"At all events, it is inexpressibly gratifying, on the ground of religion, philanthropy, and all views of improvement, to observe the prominent characteristic of our times; a mobility, a tendency to alteration, a shaking, and cracking, and breaking up of the old condition of notions and things; an exploding of the principle, that things are to be maintained because they are ancient and established. Even that venerable humbug called 'our admirable constitution' has suffered woful assault and battery by this

recent transaction. This thing, the 'constitution,' has been commonly regarded, and talked, and written of (and was so talked of by the opposition in the late debates), as if it were something almost of divine origin, as if it had been delivered like the Law from the Mount, as a thing perfect, permanent, sacred, and inviolable. But now we have it practically shown, that one of its corners may be demolished without ceremony (Holy Temple though it has been accounted), when the benefit of the community requires an innovation; and therefore so may any other corner or portion of it, when the same cause shall demand. In this special view the late measure appears to me of incalculable importance. It now becomes a principle recognized that ANY innovation may be made when justice and policy require it. It is true that great pains were taken by some of the advocates, to maintain that it was not a violation of the said thing' constitution.' But I willingly accept Mr. Peel's description of it as a breaking in upon the con stitution.'* To think of all the nauseous cant there has been about the constitution' whenever any old established evil has been proposed to be corrected or abolished!"'+

The introduction of the Reform Bill (March 1, 1831) opened a prospect of political amelioration, which Foster "had not the slightest expectation of living to see." "Are you, I wonder," he writes (before hearing the issue of the debate previous to the first reading)" as some of us are here, in fear for the result? Still I hope that there has been success thus far-by this time the great preliminary question has been decided; we shall wait (you are not waiting) with extreme anxiety to hear how; but even if it has been decided right, there is still a fearful trial further on, where one sees in firm array, and with desperately resolute aspect, the whole mass and strength of inveterate corruption and aristocratic power. With that huge combination of corruption, it is now or never;' and I shall be delightfully disappointed if its resistance do not prove substantially, though not wholly, successful. My fear is that the proud aristocracy are so besotted as

* "Mr. Peel, who is rather remarkable for groundless and unlucky concessions, owned that the late Act broke in on the Constitution of 1688; whilst in 1689, a very imposing minority of the then House of Lords, with a decisive majority in the lower House of Convocation, denounced this very Constitution of 1688, as breaking in on the English Constitution."— COLERIDGE, On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the idea of each, 3d edition, p. 18.

† To B. Stokes, Esq., April 30, 1829.

To John Easthope, Esq., March 9, 1831

not to understand the signs of the times; as not to see, that if they do not concede, they will put all to ultimate hazard—I mean, for their own interests. They have been so long accustomed, and with complete impunity, to despise the people, under the name and character of the lower orders,' 'the mob,' and so forth, and to indulge and express their scorn of anything that miserable ‘manyheaded beast' can do against them, that it is vastly difficult for them to admit any conviction or fear about the matter." "It is not for this country only, but for other nations, for Europe, that one fearfully contemplates this juncture of our affairs. Should the present ministry and projected reform fail, who shall insure us against becoming again involved in a general war for despotism against liberty,-ruining ourselves to ruin the cause of justice and the people all over the continent? The scene and the prospects are dark and portentous there. All unquiet in the gigantic republic (it is little else) of France; all perverse and ill-starred in Belgium; the despots all in a fever of rage and eagerness, if they dare, to be in action; and too probably, Warsaw by this time in a state of blood, and sack, and desolation, to be followed up by all the rigors of revenge and aggra vated tyranny over the whole people; while there is no power interfere to turn that revenge, in fire and brimstone, on the barba rian oppressor."

to

"The only consolation is, that there is a sovereign power reigning over all. That consolation, however, is mingled with the gloom of knowing that the supreme Governor has a controversy, a fearful account to settle, with all the nations for their impiety and wickedness. So that it is but too sadly probable, there are vials of wrath' to be poured out on them all, before happier times shall come, that is to say, before they are worthy or fit for such times."

The return of so vast a majority in favor of the bill at the general election in 1831, was hastily deemed by many, to be the death-blow of toryism, and even Foster indulged expectations of the triumphant progress of liberal principles, which a calm review of the state of the conflicting parties not long after, convinced him were far too sanguine. It is interesting to contrast the bright vision of political optimism which his ardent imagination created at this crisis, with the sombre views he generally entertained. "It would be doing no good," he says,* "if I could communi* To John Easthope, Esq., M.P., May 21, 1831