EXTRACTS FROM THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH'S POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATION.

Auckland Times, Volume 3, Issue 148, 8 November 1845, Page 3

EXTRACTS FROM THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH'S POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATION.

And now, dear Daniel, sit down quietly at Darrvnane and tell me, when the bodily frame is refreshed with the wine of Bordeaux, whether all this is worth while. What is the object of all government? The object of government is roast mutton, potatoes, claret, a stoi.t constable, an honest justice, a clear highway, and a free chape\ What trash to be bawling in the streets about the Green Isle, the Isle of the Ocean 1 the bold anthem, of Erin go brdgh ! A far better anthem would be Erin go bread and cheese, Erin go cabins that will keep out the rain, Eriu go pantaloons without holes in them 1 What folly to be making eternal declamations about governing yourselves ! If laws are good and well administered, is it worth while to rush into war and rebellion in order that no better laws may be made in another place t Are you an Eton boy, who has just come out, full of Plutarch's Lives* and considering in every case how Epaminondas or Philopoemen would have acted; oi are you our own dear Daniel, drilled in all the business and bustle of life? I am with you heart and soul in my detestation of all injustice done to Ireland. Your priests shall be fed and paid, the liberties of your church be scrupulously guarded, and in civil affairs the most even; justice be preserved between Cathplic and Protestant. Thus far I am a thorough rebel as well as yourself; but when you come to the perilous nonsense of Repeal, in common with every honest man who has five grains of common seuse, I take leave. Comparison of the sources of the levenue of the Protestant and Roman Catholic i Churches in Ireland :

The revenue of the Irish Boman Catholic Church is made up of half-pence, potatoes, rags, bones, and fragments of old clothes, and these, Irish, old clothes. They worship often in hovels, or in the. open air, from the want of any place of worship. Their religion is the religion of three-fourths of the population ! Not far >ff, ifi a well-windowed, and well-roofed house, is a well-paid Protestant clergyman, preaching to stools and hassocks, and crying in the wilderness; near him the clerk, near him the hini the sexton's wife furious against the errots of Popery, and willing to lay down: their lives for the great truths established at the Diet of Aughsburgh.

The recent discussion of the "Concordat" imparts an interest to the following: It appears that there is no law to prevent entering into diplomatic engagements with, the Pope. The sooner we become acquainted with a gentleman who has so much to say to eight millions of our subjects the better 1 Can any thing be so childish and absurd as a horror of communicating with the Pope, and all the hobgoblins we have imagined of premunires and outlawries for this contraband trade in piety ? Our ancestors (strange to say wiser than ourselves) have left us to do as we please, and the sooner Government do what they can do legally, the better. A thousand opportunities of doing good* in Irish affairs have been lost from our haVin» no avowed and dignified agent at the Court of Rome. If it depended upon me, I would send the Duke of Devonshire there to-mor-row, with nine chaplins and several tons of Protestant theology. I have no love of Popery, but the Pope is at all events better than the idol of Juggernaut, whose chaplains, I believe, we pay, and whose chariot, I dare say, is made in Long acre. We pay £ 10,000 a year to our ambassador at Constantinople, and are startled with the idea of communicating diplomatically withßome, deeming the Su'.tan a better Christian than the Pope.

The writer's reasons '.—For advancing these opinions 1 have no doubt I shall be assailed by Sacerdos,Vindex, Latimer, Vates, Clericus, Arusper, and be called atheis', deist, democrat, smuggler, poacher, highwayman, Unitarian, and Edinburgh Reviewer ! Still, lam in the right and what 1 say requires excuse for being trite and obvious, not for being mis» chievous and paradoxical. I write for three leasons : first, because I really wish to do good ; secondly, because if I don't write, I know uobody else will; and thirdly, because it is the nature of the animal to write, aad I cannot help it.