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    amount ( so far as it can be represented by numbers ) of religion in America that there is in England . The number of preachers , as compared with the population , ( and not reckoning pulpits temporarily vacant , ) is about one to every 1 , 200 souls . This result , which we have derived from the tables before us , in the American Almanac for 1833 , exactly corresponds ( as to the proportion of preachers ) with that arrived at , twelve years ago , by the author of the * Remarks on the Consumption of Public Wealth by the

    Clergy ; ' so that the supply of ministers has been kept up , while the population has been adding one-third to its total amount . The Bishop sneers at the qualifications of many of these preachers . There is one security for their not being contemptible . With few exceptions , they preach to a population much better educated than that of England . Of that education , at least , they have

    partaken in common with others ; and , as there are about thirty theological seminaries , besides other colleges , it is but fair to suppose they have made such acquirements as the peculiarities of their vocation demanded . The Bishop ' s objection to their doctrines we leave uncontroverted . He does not allege that they preach impiety or immorality .

    By along note ( p . 50 ) we find that the Bishop was taken to task , for his language in the sermon , by an American , gentleman , (who hoard it delivered . The defence makes the matter worse . The first part of it consists of extracts from Mr . Flint ' s History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley . ' He says of the constitutions of the Western Countries : — ' In none of the enactments

    are there any provisions lor the support of any form of worship whatever . \\ ut ii' it be inferred from this , that religion occupies little * or no place in the thoughts of the people , that there are no forms of worship , and few ministers of the gospel , no inference can be wider from the fact . ' Mr . Flint then xL , \ scribe 3 the itinerating system , which seems admirabl y adapt&Dto those newlysettled , and as yet . thinly-peopled localities . Those who engage in it appear , incidentally , to be chiefly men who have had the advantages of some or other of the theological seminaries . Some

    paltry attempts are made in these quotations , by the use of italics , to give a false or undue omphasis . What his lordship is capable of in this way may be judged by his complacent citation of the following anecdote from 4 Men and Manners in America : '' Some of them ( the American clergy ) seem to have changed their tenets as they do their coats . One told me that he had commenced his clerical life as a Calvinist ; lie then became a Baptist ; then a Universalist ; and was , when I met him , a Unitarian ! ' Now , whether this person had changed his opinion four or forty times is of little consequence ; only mark the juggle-The design is to convey the idea of a succession of tenets ; the one displaced to make way for the other , like an old coat thrown off periodically to put on a new one . But the fact is , that Bap-

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    854 On the Bishop of London !*

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 254, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/22/