that there are no homes in England from which men who have served and
adorned their country have issued forth in such prodigal numbers as
those of the clergy of our Church? What other class can produce a
list so crowded with eminent names as we can boast in the sons we have
reared and sent forth into the world? How many statesmen, soldiers,
sailors, lawyers, physicians, authors, men of science, have been the
sons of us village pastors? Naturally: for with us they receive
careful education; they acquire of necessity the simple tastes and
disciplined habits which lead to industry and perseverance; and, for
the most part, they carry with them throughout life a purer moral
code, a more systematic reverence for things and thoughts religious,
associated with their earliest images of affection and respect, than
can be expected from the sons of laymen whose parents are wholly
temporal and worldly. Sir, I maintain that this is a cogent argument,
to be considered well by the nation, not only in favour of a married
clergy,--for, on that score, a million of Roaches could not convert
public opinion in this country,--but in favour of the Church, the
Established Church, which has been so fertile a nursery of illustrious
laymen; and I have often thought that one main and undetected cause of
the lower tone of morality, public and private, of the greater
corruption of manners, of the more prevalent scorn of religion which
we see, for instance, in a country so civilized as France, is, that
its clergy can train no sons to carry into the contests of earth the
steadfast belief in accountability to Heaven."

"I thank you with a full heart," said Kenelm. "I shall ponder well
over all that you have so earnestly said. I am already disposed to
give up all lingering crotchets as to a bachelor clergy; but, as a
layman, I fear that I shall never attain to the purified philanthropy
of Mr. Decimus Roach, and, if ever I do marry, it will be very much