A E...H. 1831 LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD TENTERDEN, LORD CHIEF JUStice of the KinG'S BENCH, &c. &c. &c., A LETTER, &c. &c. MY LORD, I perceive that your Lordship is engaged in forwarding a Bill through the House of Peers-one object of which is to limit the period of legal memory, with respect to the Claims of the Church; and I, in common with every other man, on whatever side his interest may lie, rejoice most sincerely that this, or any other similar measure, is to be conducted under your Lordship's direction. You are acknowledged to be most friendly to our Church establishmentthe purity of your intentions is above all suspicionand your legal experience, and discriminating powers of mind are such as to warrant the most unbounded confidence. I wish to acknowledge one quality more, which chiefly encourages me to address you, viz., the patient candour with which, I am quite sure, your Lordship will attend to every consideration and reason-not for the sake of its Author, but of its intrinsic worth. B With regard to general approbation, I am under very little alarm. I have already, in a Letter to EARL GREY, stated my opinions and plans of improvement as to Church property and preferments in general. My object, in that Letter, was to deal liberally and fairly; and I have no doubt that such of the public as have seen it will agree with me, in the greatest part of what I have said: if, therefore, any reader should now look only on one side-if he approve of reasons, because they happen to accord with his own. pre-conceived notions; and condemn others, merely because they oppose his views or his interest, I can the better afford to incur all his hostility. The welljudging and well-intending public will, like your Lordship, treat me with candour; and I have no intention of writing a single line for the approbation of persons of an opposite description. It will not, I hope, be deemed presumptuous in me to address your Lordship on the present occasion: for although the Bill now introduced has the sanction of your Lordship's name, yet is it founded on the Reports" of Law Commissioners, which Reports, again, are manifestly founded on the answers given by certain Lawyers. And I must be allowed, with all due deference to the Bar in general, to contend, that any ordinary Clergyman has better opportunities of forming a correct judgment, on some of the points which these answers embrace, than all the learned authors of them taken together. When I thus express myself, I beg it to be understood that I have the greatest respect for the Bar as a profession, and many individuals belonging to it, as men of emi for |