The reviewer begins by giving the Bishop credit for good intentions; but maintains that his conduct has been-- "singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and in its effects (though not in its intentions) very oppressive and vexatious to the clergy.... We cannot believe that we are doing wrong in ranging ourselves on the weaker side, in the cause of propriety and justice. The Mitre protects its wearer from indignity; but it does not secure impunity." After this preface Sydney Smith goes on to develop his argument against the Bishop, and he starts with the highly reasonable proposition that a man is presumably wrong when all his friends, whose habits and interests would naturally lead them to side with him, think him wrong.-- "If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the apothecary, the druggist, and the physician all called upon him to abandon his philocathartic propensities--if he were to gratify his convivial habits till the landlord demurred and the waiter shook his head--we should naturally imagine that advice so disinterested was not given before it was wanted." The Bishop of Peterborough has all his brother-bishops against him, though they certainly love power as well as he. Not one will defend him in debate; not one will allege that he has acted or would act as Peterborough has acted. Then, again, the bishop who refuses to license a curate unless he satisfactorily answers Eighty-Seven Questions, thereby puts himself in opposition to the bishop who ordained the curate. One standard of orthodoxy is established in one diocese; another in another. The theological system of the Church becomes local and arbitrary instead of national and fixed.-- "If a man is a captain in the army in one part of England, he is a captain in all. The general who commands north of the Tweed does not say, 'You shall never appear in my district, or exercise the functions of an officer, if you do not answer eighty-seven questions on the art of war, according to my notions.' The same officer who commands a ship of the line in the Mediterranean is considered as equal to the same office in the North Seas. _The Sixth Commandment is suspended by one medical diploma from the North of England to the South_.[79] But, by the new system of interrogation, a man may be admitted into Orders at Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, readmitted at Buckden, kicked out as a Calvinist at Witham Common, and hailed as an ardent Arminian on his arrival at York." The Bishop's reply to the charges brought against him evinces surprise that any one should have the hardihood to criticize or to resist him; and yet, the reviewer asks, to what purpose has he read his ecclesiastical history, if he expects anything except the most strenuous opposition to his tyranny?--