How little favourably I was impressed, when a boy, by the lawn sleeves, wig, artificial voice and manner of the Bishop of London, I have already said: but in six years more, reading and observation had intensely confirmed my first auguries.

It was clear beyond denial, that for a century after the death of Edward VI.

the bishops were the tools of court-bigotry, and often owed their highest promotions to base subservience.

After the Revolution, the Episcopal order (on a rough and general view) might be described as a body of supine persons, known to the public only as a dead weight against all change that was distasteful to the Government.
In the last century and a half, the nation was often afflicted with sensual royalty, bloody wars, venal statesmen, corrupt constituencies, bribery and violence at elections, flagitious drunkenness pervading all ranks, and insinuating itself into Colleges and Rectories.

The prisons of the country had been in a most disgraceful state; the fairs and waits were scenes of rude debauchery, and the theatres were--still, in this nineteenth century--whispered to be haunts of the most debasing immorality.