TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LONDONDERRY'S IDEA.
LORD LONDONDERRY' is the Summar» of the Upper House, and nothing but good-natured jocularity ought to be associated with his name. Sometimes, however, your half-witlings " deviate into senses" much too significant (whether they know it or not) to be -passed by without a comment, and one has to pay the same atten- tion to them as if they were actually reasonhva A person usually guiltless of meaning may, by force of circumstances, come to have an idea, and even, in a blundering way, to express that idea ; and that idea may be, in all probability will be, an erroneous idea—even a mischievous one; and it may become the painful duty of other persons, who usually let that person escape the lash on the score of his having no ideas, to lay on that lash. By force of eircum- stances—by pressure, at least, of one-and-thirty parsons, which must be allowed to have Ibrcc—LoNnoadnEuRY bath conceived and borne an idea ; and that idea is, that the true Church may be a true Church, but is certainly a very impertinent Church, and quite oversteps its duty when it presumes to animadvert upon his actions, forgetting what is due to rank, wealth, and military greatness, he being a soldier, a gentleman, a marquis, and moreover "every inch a King" of the Tournament. 'his, then, is clearly an idea ; this is a downright ease of thinking—an undeniable delivery of the Lon- donderrian mind ; and one-and-thirty parsons have to answer for
it—are, in a manner, " fathers to the thourrht." Well for them, if •
it come not on their parish in some retributive shape !
The reader will see elsewhere the instructive correspondence in which this great idea is bodied forth in language—a correspondence relating to a certain " going out" which took place, it may be re- membered, some time ago, between the noble Marquis and Mr. Hzaatic GRATTAN. The tidily-one spiritual remonstrants have, it must be confessed, written his Lordship a very thin-spoken, rea- sonable sort of letter, perfectly in accordance with the spirit of their vocation and the doctrines they are required to teach, and such as only two classes of reasoners could consistently dispute. Their conclusions might be disputed by, first, the conscientious dissenter from their doctrines: secondly, the man who is of opinion that religion is a convenient formula—to be upheld, in a general way, for certain political purposes, but in itself a mere joke, and who thinks that to apply its principles to soldiers and "gentlemen" is " carrying the joke too far." in which of these classes will the
.Marquia take his place ? Is his Lordship a Di: se? ? Yea, most plainly and unequivocally—a bold, controverei:,1 Dissenter, at issue with all the theology of Ripon ! Woo him, ye Unitarians— ye Freethinkers, besiege him—claim him for your own, catch him and hold him ; a lord is not to be had every day in the year. Behold he bath departed from the bosom of the Church ! in a vital matter be bath signified his lamentable secession from the true faith! he disputeth like an unhappy man with thirty-and-one doc- tors of divinity, authorized interpreters of the gospel, ministers of our established religien ! Verily his soul's health is not worth two days' purchase. Away with Min, Dissenters, to the meeting- house, or the Popish chapel ; for into the church, at least, can he no longer pass lie is expressly told by that Church that the " duello" is a forbid,len pleasure—a thing as plainly contrary to the Christian law as it' it had been written in so many words, "'Thom shalt not go out.'" The thirty-and-one regret " that he should have given the sanction of his high rank and station to a practice which so grievously violates the laws of God and the spirit of Christianity, no less than the interests of the community ;" and having duly expounded the Scriptures to the sinful nobleman, they conclude " with the earnest prayer" . . . . " that you may 1); endued with the grace, wisdom, and understanding, which shall enable you to see and to repair your error ; and that it [their said Scriptural exposition] may he so blessed by God, that it may be subservient to your Lordship's good, and through your instrumentality to that of society, and to the ascendancy' of those holy tool blessed principles which your Lordship has been counselled so fearfully to violate, and by which alone as a Christian people we ought to be guided and governed."
How does the bold Dissenter meet this pious representation of the Established Church—" that Church," as the writers signifi- cantly remark, " for whose excellencies and privileges your Lord- ship is is strenuous edvocate." He tells them flatly—they may go about their business ; which is not to lecture lords, but " to admi- nister consolation to the repentant sinner;" (his Lordship himself is not repentant ;) but as for " the British soldier"—to him they " must leave the unfettered right of being the best judge and arbi- ter of his own honour !" Soldiers, in fact, are not sinners, nor lords penitents; and with one or the other Mother Church has no con- cern.
But that which the King of the Tournament chiefly looks to in this business, is the aflidr of being kicked,—if be did not go out, he says, GRATTAN would kick print; and "allow me to observe, Sir," he continues, "to your cloth this may pass over—civil action may redress; but to ours this can never be risked." We wish the noble Dissenter from the Established Church had explained himself more distinctly on this point ; for as he speaks a good deal about cloth and clothes in his letter, and we know his Lordship to be not less punctilious in affairs of dress than in affairs of honour, we are at a loss to tell exactly what is intended figuratively and what literally. We certainly gather that this nobleman would do any thing to avoid being kicked ; indeed, if we understand him rightly, he tells the Church of England, that rather than be kicked in this life, he would risk eternal roasting in the next : but the text of his letter leaves it uncertain how much of this antipathy to shoe-leather is in the flesh and how much in the inexpressibles—in other words, how far be considers the abstract unpleasantness of being kicked, and how far he has regard to the integrity of his regimental small-clothes—certain to be much soiled, especially in foul weather, if not torn, by any angry inveterate boot impinging upon them under those circumstances with force and frequency. Thus his Lordship, after calling the attention of the Ripon clergy to the filet that the Christian religion. is destructive of all honourable feeling—or, in the words of Catesby, "beneath a soldier's notice"—and might, if not happily suffered to remain a dead letter, "in all probability en- tail personal chastisement and insult," proceeds to remark- " While you, as clergymen, are compelled to view this transaction as uu.• sanct holed and unauthorized by God, we as soldiers arc bound to tight to up. hold the utter end throne when attacked; and for this high duty our :garments must be unsullhd as penis."
What may be the exact meaning, however, intended to be con- veyed in this or similar passages, we will not rashly hope to deter- mine. The general Londonderrian conception is the thing to be con- sidered—the one great unique, unigenital idea, begotten in amaze- ment of an unfruitful mother-wit by unexpected confliction with thirty-and-one doctors of divinity. The passage just quoted em- bodies, beyond a question, the clinching argument. They, for their parts, are compelled, he knows, to denounce the deed in question, as hieing sinful and ungodly ; and he, for his part, is compelled to do the deed : both are right—they in forbidding, he in doing. The force of logic can no further go. Why should we ?
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