Comment on the following characteristic letter would not only be

su- perfluous, but injurious. It is complete in itself, and a capital summary of doctrines elsewhere enforced by its spiritually-minded author. TO TILE EDITOR OF TILE TIMES.

Sir—As my friend Lord John Russell, leaving destroyed the Bishops, is now busy with sending the Judges to gaol, I shall be ohliged to you to insert the following protest against his demolition of Deans and Chapters, which I un- derstand is to be brought on as soon as the Queen's B(11.1 is safe in the Poultry Coen pter.

I remain yours truly, SYDNEY SMITIL

201h January 1840.

OBJECTIONS TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S DEAN AND CHAPTER BILL.

1. The public will not gain a shilling by this measure. 2. If a commission were appointed to meet this year for the first time, no man living would think of such a measure as the confiscation of Deans and

Chapters. •

3. The measure was proposed at a period of the greatest agitation, before the relative strength of Churchmen and Dissenters was tried, and when the whole establishment was thought to he in danger of immediate dissolution. 4. No blame attendees to Commissioners who were alarmed when all were alarmed, and who intended, however they may have been mistaken, to save the whole by sacrificing a part ; but a measure injurious to the Church is not to be persevered in, merely to screen the errors and consult the feelings of' any men, however pure their motives, and however exalted their station.

5. The clerical authors of this measure, after they have done all necessary to redeem their pledge and preserve their consistency, would be the first to re- joice at their owes defeat.

6. The whole profit of the proposed pillage of cathedrals would add but a misemble pittance to small livings—a pittance quite linemml to secure the benefit of a learned and rational hotly of men, who had to look to such aug- mented livings as their ultimate provision. 7. That blessing has been hitherto obtained by dividing the incomes of the clergy very unequally, by inducing in this nay men of substance and character to contend for the prizes of the Church, and by appealing to that strong price- ciple of hope which leads men to suppose that their own good fortune will be superior to that of their fellowereatures.

S. The great mass of clergy go into the Church to live by the Church. 9. The Dean and Chapter Bill, by lessening the prizes of the ecclesiastical profession, will bring a lower order of men into the Church, and in a rich and luxurious country fling an air of ridicule upon the clergy. 10. At present the ease and comfort in which the clergy live depend as much upon their private as their professional wealth ; for niece of capital are tempted into the Church by the prizes of flee Church, or guided to that pro• fession by similar views in their friends and relations. 11. In the English Church a well-educated and rational gentleman resides in each parish. Under the new system you will have men echo have not been able to afford the expense of good education ; and not only will you leave an ignorant clergy, but you incur a great risk of being overwhelmed with a Meio- tic:el clergy—a very serious diminution of daily happiness and comfort to any country. There ore very few fanatics among deans and prebendaries, or among those who hope to become so.

12. Half of the Cathedral preferments are in the hands of gentlemen who were originally curates or small incumbents, and who, in the just hope of bet- ter preferment, tinned a comfort in poverty, and a stimulus for exertion.

13. This subject has been fully before the public flir five or six years; and it does not appear that the lower clergy have any wish that the prizes of the Church should be divided equally into small pieces, and distributed to all. 14. None of the property which this bill proposes to confiscate ever belonged to the public ; it was left by various persons for certain definite purposes. The property is seized, the cy pres already established disregarded, and the purposes of the testators entirely frustrated.

15. With respect to the question of national wealth, it is utterly meimpor- tent whether a prebendal estate is in the hands of a country gentleman or a cluircbman. The actual cultivator has generally a longer term under the Church than under the esquire, looking principally to the security of his rural amusements.

16. It is not the general wealth of the Church which has been the cause of jealousy and hatred, but the partial and glaring accumulation of it in particular places—in the deanery of Durham, in the sees of London and Canterbury. Nobody envied the Canon of Salisbury his 3001. per annum, or the Prebendary of Bristol his 2501.; and yet such preferments as these are included in the general confiscation by a Commission of Bishops, who have allotted 15,0001. per annum to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and 10,0001. to the see of Lon- don, this Archbishop and this Bishop being themselves the most influential of the Commissioners.

17. There is no general wish that the recommendation of the Commissioners should be carried into effect, or that one order in the Church should be sacri- ficed to the interests and emoluments of another. If dignified preferment was limited to persons of not less than thirty years of age—if deans were limited to 2,0001. for a maximum, and prebendaries to 1,000/ , the public would he tho- roughly satisfied. 18. Nothing but extreme necessity can justify a Government in these ex- tensive inroads upon property ; it prepares a people intoxicated with the sudden increase of power for every species of change, sharpens their appetites for dan- gerous novelties, and abridges those few years which still remain to the Church and Monarchy.

19. The slowest observer must see that other ingressions are threatened against the Church ; that they arc extensive, imminent, and openly avowed; and that the destruction of di amities extorted from the limns of churchmen is. not the settlemeut of hostility, but only the beginning of the end.

SISDINES: SMIT/L.

Combo Morey, Taunton, 20th January 1840.