Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/194

 "I am very sensible," says Swift, in his "Argument to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity might be attended by some Inconveniences," "how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight of so many daggled-tail parsons who happen to fall in their way and offend their eyes; but, at the same time, these wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt in order to exercise and improve their talents and divert their spleen from falling on each other or on themselves. &hellip; We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us; and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topic we have left?" Well, if there are any such great wits about who have a desire to exercise their talents in this particular way, I should strongly recommend them to go down to Birmingham, and break a lance with the minister of Carr's-lane Chapel. He is a man of the people, and will give them a kindly welcome. If they do not find him at home in his formidably equipped stud}', deep in the production of some systematic theological treatise on the Atonement or the Ten Commandments, they will be pretty sure to discover him either at a Liberal ward committee, at the Liberal Association Rooms in consultation with the taciturn strategist Schnadhorst, or haranguing an obstreperous multitude of electors in the Town Hall. When he is disengaged, he will be at their service; and, if they get much amusement at his expense, I wonder.

A happier, heartier man than Mr. Dale—he disclaims the "Rev." as a rag of priestcraft—I never met, combining as he does in no ordinary measure