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spacious new foundry, on the following Thursday evening; at which one speaker gloried in the fact that he had been instrumental in keeping the overseers of Spotland, Wardleworth, and Castleton-townships favourable to the rate— from being present at the polling; and Mr. Bright said that the principle of the Tories was 'Might before Right,' and 'the first Tory we read of was Cain who killed his brother.'

The trustees for the Church had no right to surrender anything belonging to it without a struggle; after fighting for what was distinctly their legal due and winning the victory, they could not enforce the rate on account of the violence and intimidation of political Nonconformists.

MR. BRIGHT AND THE VICAR OF ROCHDALE

MR. JOHN BRIGHT'S hostility was carried on for some years with unrelenting bitterness, and in 1849 he made use of his position in Parliament to take the opportunity of making an attack upon Dr. Molesworth, which drew forth the following letter to The Times of March 1849:

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To the Editor of The Times'

SIR,-Being unconscious of having inflicted any personal injury on Mr. Bright, I can surmise no other cause for the persevering and virulent enmity,-with which from the first moment of my coming to Rochdale, he has sought every opportunity of defaming me,-than my holding and acting upon opinions, religious and political, opposed to his. If members listen to his speeches, they will perceive that, even respect to the character of a legislator with which he has been invested, cannot restrain him from these disclosures of petty spite and personal detraction. As clergymen are excluded (though dissenting preachers are not) from the House of Commons, where the presence of two or three working clergy would detect many a fallacy, and expose many a falsehood against the Church, I beg in the name of fair play the privilege of your columns to countenance the advantage of which Mr. Bright has availed himself.

In The Times of the 14th instant he is reported as saying: 'In 1840, in the last contest respecting Church rates, which took place in that town (Rochdale) the troops were called out, and the Vicar was followed through the streets by 8000 or 10,000 people, who hissed and hooted him in a manner most distressing to everyone who cared either for the Church or for Christianity.'

It is not to be denied that, in consequence of the riotous outrages of Mr. Bright's party in endeavouring to prevent voters for the rate from exercising their privilege, the troops were called out, and it was not the first time they were required. But I never was followed by any such mob. That Mr. Bright did all he could to rouse the passions of the people, and that there were many deluded by his

declamations and artifices who would have been ready to hiss and hoot, I have no doubt; but on my return from the poll for the Church Rate, to which he has alluded, I was accompanied by several of the most respectable inhabitants of the town; and, though the streets were crowded, and great excitement prevailed, I was greeted by many with expressions of respect, but by few (none that I remember) with any hissing or insult.

To me it is of little importance whether the statement of Mr. Bright be true or false; for, if true, such conduct could reflect disgrace only on the rabble themselves, or on their yet more wicked (because less ignorant) abetters and instigators.

It rather concerns the town of Rochdale, and indeed human character in general, that it should be vindicated from the shame of being able to produce 10,000 people so lost to all decency, to say nothing of good English or Christian feeling, as to insult not only a defenceless individual, but a clergyman, because he exercised his right of following the dictates of his own judgment and conscience.

If it be any gratification that I should admit that there were some in Rochdale, so brutalised as to be guilty of such conduct towards me, I will indulge in the acknowledgment that he was the mouthpiece of a misguided rabble who supported him in the Parish Church with cheers and stamping and clapping, and did interrupt me with groans and hissings, and laughter and blasphemies in the sacred edifice, which they never entered but to scoff, and in which their sin, and that of their deluders, may I pray be marked in mercy, not in judgment, by Him Whose sentence is more awful than that of man. I will admit that here Mr. Bright was triumphant, that he was conspicuously aided by his own brothers, one of whom stood upon the seat of the preacher's pew and stamped with such violence that he broke it; that several leading dissenters, and even dissenting preachers, shared with Mr. Bright the triumphs of that respectable and conscientious performance. I will admit that it was, as he says, 'distressing to everyone who cared for either the Church or Christianity,' but I cannot say I saw any symptoms of distress on the part of Mr. Bright or his coadjutors. They seemed to rejoice in these results of their policy, which then was to intimidate, and has since been to

persecute, by making a question of law and Christian duty a personal question, and to direct the evil passions of the ignorant against the Vicar for being true to his assertion that, while the payment of Church Rate was the law of the land, reason and religion claimed its observance, and that he would not be a party in either resisting or evading it...

Mr. Bright expresses himself thankful that he is not a Churchman. I cannot so far lose sight of Christian charity as to concur altogether with him in that thankfulness. I am thankful that he does not profess himself a Churchman, for his spirit and proceedings are not in my judgment creditable to any profession. Nor should I desire him to be mistaken for a specimen or a representative of Churchmen. I wish he were indeed a Churchman, for then he would cease to revile that of which he has no knowledge, but through the medium of perverted enquiries and party malevolence. If he were a Churchman indeed he would discard that bitter, and envious, and levelling spirit, which obscures and misdirects his talents, and deceives him to seek self-gratification and hollow popularity in strife and agitation-in appeals to the worst passions of mankind, and in goading one class to hate another. I wish he and others, whose delight it is to revile the Church, could pass a few Sundays in the old Parish Church of Rochdale. They would see the body of it free to the poor; they would see those humble Christians crowding it morning and afternoon, to claim their privilege of social worship in the Church of their forefathers; so that I have frequently been compelled to give up my own seat and sit at the Communion Table to accommodate others; they would see those worshippers coming, not for the preacher but the prayers, and, by their hearty joining in every part of the services, exhibiting a 'beauty of holiness,' which might put to shame, and should cause to tremble, many of the rich and learned. It is a spectacle which might soften even the bitterness of Mr. Bright, and cause him to recall the Pharisaical thanks, that he is not as other men are, or even as these poor Churchmen.

I am, sir,

Your faithful servant,

J. E. N. MOLESWORTH,
Vicar of Rochdale.

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