and utter neglect of the education of the people;[1] the cruel discipline of prisons; the villany of the slave trade; the wild iniquity of the navy; the coarse indulgences of the army; the savage sports of the people; the common infidelity, the general drunkenness, the profane swearing; with many other enormities which could be named,—all belonged to that hideous inventory of public degradation by which the safety of all spiritual life was endangered. But all those shameful things have received a blow: they may not all be dead, but they are all now held up to public scorn; and wherever any of their progeny are discovered, an attempt is made to restrain their wickedness.
- ↑ The Quarterly Review, speaking of the corruptions of the Church, says, "It is marked plainly in the base nepotism and worldliness of the greater number of the ecclesiastics, in their miserable cringing to the minister of the day, in their occasional mendacity as to his gifts, and too frequently in what appears to have been their utter unconscious neglect of the spiritual functions of their apostolic office. For these were the days in which the custom of visiting but once in his episcopate, was established by the Bishop of Winchester; of confirming but once in his archiepiscopate, by the metropolitan of York; and of never residing in his diocese, by the Bishop of Llandaff. It is marked, as might be expected in the clergy who served under such bishops, by low tastes, low manners, and not a little of openly dissolute living among the mass of paid priests. It is marked, both among bishops and clergy, by a neglect of the people committed to their charge, which, as we now look back upon it, appears to be almost incredible. Mr. Bloomfield gives us some instances of this degraded standard of episcopal duty. The chaplain and son-in-law of Bishop North (1781-1820) examined two candidates for orders in a tent on a cricket-field, he himself being engaged as one of the players. Bishop Pelham (1807-1827) performed the same duty, on one occasion, by sending a message by his butler to the candidate to write an essay. The chaplain of Bishop Douglas (1787-1807) did it whilst shaving, and stopped the examination when the examinee had construed four words. The laxity of Bishop Bathurst, of Norwich (1805-1837), known to his Whig admirers as "The Good Bishop,"
