“I don’t like writing to the Bishop of London:  it is making a fuss, and looks as if I regretted the part I had taken on Church Reform, which I certainly do not—­but I should be much annoyed if the Bishop were to consider me as a perpetual grumbler against him and his measures—­I really am not:  I like the Bishop and like his conversation—­the battle is ended, and I have no other quarrel with him and the Archbishop but that they neither of them ever ask me to dinner.  You see a good deal of the Bishop, and as you have always exhorted me to be a good boy, take an opportunity to set him right as to my real dispositions towards him, and exhort him, as he has gained the victory, to forgive a few hard knocks.”

In the summer of 1839 Courtenay Smith died suddenly, and left no will.[130] He had accumulated wealth in India, and a third part of it now passed to his brother Sydney.  Referring to these circumstances four years later, Sydney wrote:—­

    “This put me at my ease for my few remaining years.  After buying into
    the Consols and the Reduced, I read Seneca On the Contempt of
    Wealth.  What intolerable nonsense!

    “I have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and have borne it
    as well, I believe, as most people, but I can safely say that I have
    been happier every guinea I have gained.”

His novel opulence did not paralyse his pen.  In 1839 he published a vehement attack upon the Ballot, from which he foresaw no better results than the enfranchisement of every one, including women, universal corruption, systematic lying, and a victory for the “lower order of voters” over their “betters.”  Of the great advocate of the Ballot, George Grote,[131] he says—­“Mr. Grote knows the relative values of gold and silver; but by what moral rate of exchange is he able to tell us the relative values of Liberty and Truth?”

The paper on the Ballot was included in a collection of reprints, mainly from the Edinburgh Review, which he published in 1839.  The book sold so well that in 1840 he published an enlarged edition.  The articles reprinted from the Edinburgh amount to sixty-five, and a memorandum by his daughter shows that twelve more were omitted from the reproduction, “probably because their subjects are already treated of in the extracted articles, or because they applied only to the period in which they were written,” The complete list will be found in Appendix A.

In the preface to these collected pieces, which are styled The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, the author said, after recounting the circumstances under which the Edinburgh Review was founded:—­