"The Archbishop of Canterbury, at his enthronement, takes a solemn oath that he will maintain the rights and liberties of the Church of Canterbury; as Chairman, however, of the New Commission, he seizes the patronage of that Church, takes two thirds of its Revenues, and abolishes two thirds of its Members. That there is an answer to this I am very willing to believe, but I cannot at present find out what it is; and this attack upon the Revenues and Members of Canterbury is not obedience to an Act of Parliament, but the very Act of Parliament, which takes away, is recommended, drawn up, and signed by the person who has sworn he will never take away; and this little apparent inconsistency is not confined to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but is shared equally by all the Bishop-Commissioners, who have all (unless I am grievously mistaken) taken similar oaths for the preservation of their respective Chapters. It would be more easy to see our way out of this little embarrassment, if some of the embarrassed had not unfortunately, in the parliamentary debates on the Catholic Question, laid the greatest stress upon the King's oath, applauded the sanctity of the monarch to the skies, rejected all comments, called for the oath in its plain meaning, and attributed the safety of the English Church to the solemn vow made by the King at the altar to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. * * * * * "Nothing can be more ill-natured among politicians, than to look back into Hansard's Debates, to see what has been said by particular men upon particular occasions, and to contrast such speeches with present opinions--and therefore I forbear to introduce some inviting passages upon taking oaths in their plain and obvious sense, both in debates on the Catholic Question and upon that fatal and Mezentian oath which binds the Irish to the English Church." The gist of all these reforms, actual and projected, was that the Bishops were enormously increasing their own power and patronage at the expense of the Deans and Chapters. Sydney Smith, as a member of a Chapter, protested, and then the friends of the Bishops cried out that all such protests were indecent, and even perilous.-- "We are told that if we agitate these questions among ourselves, we shall have the democratic Philistines come down upon us, and sweep us all away together. Be it so; I am quite ready to be swept away when the time comes. Everybody has his favourite death: some delight in apoplexy, and others prefer marasmus. ... I would infinitely rather be crushed by democrats than, under the plea of the public good, be mildly and blandly absorbed by Bishops."