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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1842
Sydney Smith to Sir George Philips, 10 August 1842
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Author's Preface
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Index
Editor’s Preface
Letters 1801
Letters 1802
Letters 1803
Letters 1804
Letters 1805
Letters 1806
Letters 1807
Letters 1808
Letters 1809
Letters 1810
Letters 1811
Letters 1812
Letters 1813
Letters 1814
Letters 1815
Letters 1816
Letters 1817
Letters 1818
Letters 1819
Letters 1820
Letters 1821
Letters 1822
Letters 1823
Letters 1824
Letters 1825
Letters 1826
Letters 1827
Letters 1828
Letters 1829
Letters 1830
Letters 1831
Letters 1832
Letters 1833
Letters 1834
Letters 1835
Letters 1836
Letters 1837
Letters 1838
Letters 1839
Letters 1840
Letters 1841
Letters 1842
Letters 1843
Letters 1844
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Combe Florey, Aug. 10th, 1842.
My dear Philips,

I am extremely glad to hear that Lady Philips and you are so well. Mrs. Sydney and I are resolved to follow your example, and have been imitating you in this particular for some time. The only point in which our practice differs is, that Mrs. Sydney and I get larger and larger, as we get older; you and Lady Philips become less and less. You will die of smallness,—we shall perish from diameter. There has certainly been some serious mistake about this summer. It was intended for the tropics; and some hot country is cursed with our cold rainy summer, losing all its cloves and nutmegs, scarcely able to ripen a pineapple out of doors, or to squeeze a hogshead of sugar from the cane.

I agree in all you say about the Income Tax. Never was there such an obscure piece of penmanship! It must have been drawn up by some one as ignorant of law language as Dr. —— is of medicine. What dreadful blunders that poor Medico will make! Dreadful
MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.467
will be the confusion between the schedules; worse than the confusion of phials by that nasty little boy, Robert Rhubarb, in his shop, whom he has taken as his apprentice, at a pound a year and his breeches.

I am a good deal alarmed at the slow return of prosperity to the manufacturers, but still do not give up my opinion of amelioration. I should like very much to see a dispassionate examination of the present state of trade and manufactures. But who is dispassionate on such a subject? The writer has either lost or gained, or is a violent Whig or a violent Tory.

There seems to be some appearance as if Lord Ashburton had effected his object. He writes home that he may be expected any day, and that they are to write no more; and the papers say that the heads of the treaty are agreed upon. If he have completed his object, it is one of the cleverest and most brilliant things done in my time, and he has honestly won his earldom. I never had much belief in his success, because I did not imagine that the Americans ever really intended to give up a cause of quarrel, which might hereafter be so subservient to their ambition and extension. God bless you, my dear old friend!

Sydney Smith.