occasions, he will think (pounds)2000 a year little enough for such beauty
and dignity as he brings to the task. I felt that there had been
some tearing to pieces which might have been spared. But I was
altogether wrong in supposing that the two things could be combined.
Any writer in advocating a cause must do so after the fashion of
an advocate,--or his writing will be ineffective. He should take up
one side and cling to that, and then he may be powerful. There should
be no scruples of conscience. Such scruples make a man impotent for
such work. It was open to me to have described a bloated parson,
with a red nose and all other iniquities, openly neglecting every
duty required from him, and living riotously on funds purloined
from the poor,--defying as he did do so the moderate remonstrances
of a virtuous press. Or I might have painted a man as good, as sweet,
and as mild as my warden, who should also have been a hard-working,
ill-paid minister of God's word, and might have subjected him to the
rancorous venom of some daily Jupiter, who, without a leg to stand
on, without any true case, might have been induced, by personal
spite, to tear to rags the poor clergyman with poisonous, anonymous,
and ferocious leading articles. But neither of these programmes
recommended itself to my honesty. Satire, though it may exaggerate
the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that
it may be lashed. Caricature may too easily become a slander, and
satire a libel. I believed in the existence neither of the red-nosed
clerical cormorant, nor in that of the venomous assassin of the
journals. I did believe that through want of care and the natural
tendency of every class to take care of itself, money had slipped
into the pockets of certain clergymen which should have gone
elsewhere; and I believed also that through the equally natural
propensity of men to be as strong as they know how to be, certain
writers of the press had allowed themselves to use language which