who would enter personally into the management
of the business:

THAT your petitioner, on these premises,
paid the sum of five thousand pounds for the
said share; and, besides his proportion of
the net profits, was to be paid a further sum
of three hundred a-year in consideration of
being an active and not a sleeping partner;
but a hitch was soon discovered, after the
transference of the said sum of five thousand
pounds, namely, that being a clergyman, with
cure of souls, your petitioner's interference
would vitiate any business transactions of the
firm, making its debts and credits alike
irrecoverable at law;—whereupon your
petitioner being threatened by the other partners
with a bill of ejectment, resigned his
managerial functions, and has not, nor ever has
had, any control over his own money since
that time:

THAT your petitioner, after waiting five
years more, coming round to the opinion of
Miss Sophia Western, now Mrs. John
Allworthy, that the new incumbent, the Reverend
Methusaleh Parr, would probably survive
him by many years, and be the last man
alive of all the generations of mankind, sold
the next presentation at a diminished price,
and resumed his rural and stall-feeding
pursuits, and, at the same time, commenced
acquaintance with the poets, historians, and
orators of his own country:

THAT your petitioner's circumstances were
now greatly improved; that his other aunt
followed her sister's excellent example, both in
dying and in leaving him her money; that his
distant cousin, also, who had been present at the
seige of Seringapatam, and was reported to
have enriched himself with the spoils of a
murdered Begum, departed this life, leaving
your petitioner his sole heir; that being at
this period thirty-three years old—possessing
four thousand five hundred a-year—married
to a charming wife—and anxious to make
himself useful to his country—your petitioner
founded schools and built a church and
subscribed to societies, and conducted himself in
all respects as befits a country gentlemen of
ample fortune and philanthropic mind:

THAT your petitioner has portions of his
estate in several parishes; that the clergymen
of the said parishes consider, each
respectively, that the whole of your
petitioner's income ought to be devoted to the
particular purposes of each individual parish;
and, furthermore, that as each of the said
clergymen holds very decided and exclusive
opinions, your petitioner has the misfortune
to be viewed in the following lights by the
said clergymen respectively:

By Dr. Dry, of Bolster-cum-Pillow, as a
revolutionary radical and an enemy to the
church;

By the Reverend Mr. Narrowpath, of
Needles, as a castaway, encumbered in filthy
rags, and blindly shutting his eyes to the
truth;

By the Reverend Reginald Fitz-All, as a
latitudinarian and a despiser of ecclesiastical
authority:

THAT your petitioner, labouring under this
amount of obloquy among the clergymen of
his own persuasion, has the misfortune to
offend in an equal degree all the dissenters
with whom he comes in contact; being
considered by them an amalgamation of all the
various sections of the church—high and
dry—narrow and weak—archaeological and
sentimental. That he is hated and distrusted
accordingly, his schools (maintained entirely
at his expense); denounced as seminaries of
revolution and retrogression—of unmitigated
orthodoxy and German neologism—for the
simple and sufficient reason, that in the said
schools neither orthodoxy nor neologism is
taught at all; but the Bible is reverently
read, and the universal precepts of the
Christian faith unfailingly inculcated:

THAT your petitioner is severely animadverted
on by each and all of the above-named
clergymen, as false to his cloth in not
devoting all his means to strictly church
purposes; and by the dissenters aforesaid as
a great deal too true to the said cloth, and
affecting a little apparent liberality for a
purpose which they can well understand:

THAT your petitioner being qualified, as he
conceives, to add some little information to
the moderate fund of that article possessed by
the members of the legislature, would have
great pleasure in devoting himself to the
service of his country in the character of a
senator, but that such a proceeding is
rendered impossible by a law which excludes
from the representation of the people any
one who has ever officiated in a church,
although he may glow with as holy a wisdom,
and as heroic a heart, as Sidney Godolphin
Osborne, be as benevolently sagacious as
Sidney Smith, and as practically instructive
as Dean Dawes of Hereford:

THAT debarred from trade and from
parliament, by law; from amusement by public
opinion; from active exertions in any sphere
of life, by professional narrowness and seclusion;
your petitioner's energies are either not
excited for the good of his fellows, or are
entirely misapprehended and thrown away:

THAT great benefit would accrue if your
Honourable House would, therefore, take
some steps to remedy this state of things,
either by ensuring active ecclesiastical
employment, with decent remuneration, to all
persons entering the church, or by enabling
them to cast aside the handle to their names,
and the white neckcloth, which impedes their
respiration; and by permitting them to
endue the plain blue coat and brass buttons,
which to them would be the passport to the
shop, the counting-house, the judicial ermine,
the benches of parliament, or the councils of
her Majesty the Queen.

And your petitioner (as a clergyman) would
never pray, &c. &c. &c.