immediately put my paper into my pocket, and desired that not one word more should be said that no one ought to give in charity of this kind what is wanted for necessary purposes. I have also with pleasure added, "I do not doubt that we shall get all we require, aud would by no means take it from those who cannot conveniently spare it ;" and we have parted quite as good friends as if we had stood in the relation of giver and receiver to one another. I have in many, very many, instances been gratified by the respectful and kind reception I have met with in the applications I have made. The Unitarian public at large are liberal, very liberal, often where they are not wealthy. I have seen much of this in many instances. They are zealous, too, when put to their energies, and kind when sympathy moves them. In the formation of the Fellowship Funds they have adopted a noble institution; they have created an engine of great power, and it is effective of great good; but, in general, not to the extent that it might be; while it furnishes an excuse for not giving what, if these Funds did not exist, could not well be refused. It is not always considered, as it ought to be, that this Fund is designed, not to receive the whole gratuity which rich men have it in their power to afford to objects of charity or benevolence, to the cause of Christ and of God; but rather to receive the small sums which the middling and lower classes in our societies are willing to contribute, and which are better collected in this way than in boxes held at the doors of the chapels. If the rich intend to make these Funds the medium of all that benevolence which is connected with their religious opinions, it becomes them to look back into former years, to recollect how much they have contributed on an average of one year with another, to consider the increasing spread of the principles they highly value, and the increasing calls that will, in all probability, be made on them for their support, and furnish the Fund with a sum sufficient to supply these demands. If this were done and fairly done, there would indeed be no need of any personal applications being made to them in any case of need there would be store to furnish liberally in every want. Our small funds need not then dole out their charities in twos and threes, nor our larger ones in fives and teus of pounds, nor need any of us travel abroad to ask assistance in building our chapels or in repairing them. The rich will of course insert their names as subscribers to the Funds,

:

but if they avail themselves of this pretence to withhold all other aid, our dear and excellent friend Dr. Thomson would lament, did he know it, that ever he had afforded them so plausible a pretext for lessening the amount of their charity.

Yet, Sir, it has occurred to me in several instances to be told by rich men that the Fellowship Fund was formed for the express purpose of obviating the necessity of personal applications; and, when their support of that Fund extended only to one or at most two pounds, they have pleaded it as a reason why they declined giving. I state this fact with sorrow: but let me subjoin an antidote to the pain it will inflict on your readers. In one of the towns of Devonshire, I was advised to call on some Trinitarian Calvinists and make known my want of money to build a Unitarian Chapel; and expressing my surprise at the proposal, my friend replied, "They are often coming to us for money; I don't see why we should not go to them." Accordingly, I did obtain money in that town from zealous Calvinists. Having stated to one of them why I had called on him, he at once flatly refused to give any assistance in building chapels; but when I added it was for a Unitarian Meeting - house, "Oh! a Unitarian Meeting-house; well, then, I'll give you something. Now if you had been asking for a Trinitarian Chapel, I would not have given a sixpence; they are always teazing us for money; but the Unitarians are good people; they do a deal of good, and often help us; so I'll give you something." This gentleman seut for me again and doubled the sum. said I, "I thank you: I value this more than any other sum I have received: it is an offering to liberality and Christian love."

"Sir,"

Allow me to suggest, that publishing Reports of our Funds from time to time is an object much to be desired, since it keeps the attention of the subscribers awake, shews them the value of their exertions, and gives even the poorest among them the pleasure of knowing that his mite is not despised. I have been gratified by that which was lately issued by the Committee of the Sheffield Society, in which the subject I have particularly alluded to is set forth in a proper light.

ISRAEL WORSLEY.

P. S. I should add, that the walls of the Devonport Chapel are up and the roof is on; the interior of the work, the flooring and the pews, are preparing by

about a dozen of the members of the congregation, free of charge, in their leisure hours, who are engaged in different employments in his Majesty's Dock Yard. More persons would assist them, but their services are refused because they are not esteemed the best workmen. Mr. Acton has kindly promised to assist at the opening of the Chapel, which we hope will take place soon after Christmas. The Trustees of the old Plymouth Chapel will hold this Chapel in trust.

Dr. Priestley's Works.

To the Editor.

SIR, Clapton, Dec. 17, 1828. SEVERAL of your readers must, I am persuaded, be acquainted with circumstances respecting the life and writings of Dr. Priestley not kuown generally. They would much assist me to execute the design in which, after too frequent interruptions, I am now engaged, by favouring me with any communications at their earliest convenience.

After annexing to Dr. Priestley's own Memoirs what explanatory notes my information can supply, I propose, in a continuation, to narrate the events and occupations of his latter years; adding the best account I can procure of the notices which his writings, of every description, have called forth in his own

or foreign countries, the languages into which any of them have been translated, and the testimonies of respect which have been paid to his memory. Nor should the exposure be withheld where it shall appear that the mention of his name and writings has been studiously avoided.

For Dr. Priestley's correspondence, I have been supplied by the kind attentions of several friends, especially of Mr. Belsham, with a considerable number of his letters. The same friendly assistance from other well-wishers to my design, would enable me to make some valuable additions.

My friend, Mr. Eaton, will obligingly receive, and forward any letters or packets addressed to me at No. 187, High Holborn. Any packets may be left, if more convenient, at the London Institution.

I take this opportunity of saying, that Vol. XXV. will contain, with the Indexes, the few remaining works of Dr. Priestley comprehended in my plan. Those subscribers who have not received the whole of the 23 Volumes already printed, will, I trust, from a reasonable consideration of an editor's convenience, immediately inform me, at Mr. Eaton's, as to what volumes they are deficient, and where, in London, they may be delivered to their address.

J. T. RUTT.

A BRIEF MEMOIR OF THE Life of SAMUEL SHOre, Esq.,

Of Meersbrook, near Sheffield, who died on the 16th of November, 1828, at the age of Ninety.

[From the Sheffield Independent.] WHEN We have to speak of the early years of one whose life was extended through three ages of man, we are carried back to times and circumstances and characters which may well be supposed to have never come within the knowledge of the great majority of our readers, or to have passed from their remembrance. Yet there are some among them who may still be able to recollect the father of Mr. Shore, for he, like his son, found of that heavenly Wisdom to which both were devoted, that length of days is in her right hand. He lived, in the latter part of his life, at Meersbrook, in the parish of Norton, an estate which

he had purchased; but in the early periods of his life he had been an inhabitant of this town, and here his son, the subject of this brief memoir, was born.

The elder Mr. Shore had been engaged very extensively in commercial undertakings connected with the mineral riches of this district. Some he himself originated. In others, he followed up the well-laid designs of his father, who lived till 1751, and was, in his day, one of the most enterprising and successful of our merchants. But the foundation of the fortune of the family might be said to be laid still earlier, and to be connected even with the feudal state of Sheffield; for the writer of this memoir has heard the late Mr. Shore speak of the large purchases made by his grandfather when the fine forests of Hallamshire were cut down, as having contri. buted to the advancement of the family.

In the two generations which pre

ceded the gentleman lately deceased, the heads of the family were distinguished not more by that attention to their extensive private concerns which was essential to success, than by an attention to the public interests of the place in which they resided, such as became good townsmen. They were very active members of the Town's Trust. In every public undertaking originated in their time, they were foremost, and, in particular, the improvement of the River Don Navigation, a measure which has contributed so greatly to the prosperity of Sheffield, owed much at the beginning to the skill and energy of the first Mr. Samuel Shore. To assiduity, integrity, and public spirit, there was added in them an earnest concern for religion. They were amongst those persons at Sheffield, (and they were many,) who, not willing to yield themselves to the restrictions which the Act of Uniformity imposes upon freedom of inquiry in affairs of religion and the public expression of devotional sentiment, formed themselves into a society of Protestant Dissenters. The Chapel in which they met for worship, now called the Upper Chapel, in Norfolk Street, was built in 1700, and the first Mr. Samuel Shore was one of the founders and original Trustees. The second Mr. Samuel Shore was, through life, a member of that congregation; and by the minister of that congregation, Mr. John Wadsworth, was the late Mr. Shore baptized on the 14th of February, 1738. He was born on the 5th day of that month; but to fix precisely the period of his birth, it is necessary to say the year was 1737-8. He was the second son; but the eldest, whose name was Robert Diggles, so called after the name of his grandfather, who was a merchant at Liverpool, died in his early infancy.

At a very early age, Mr. Shore was placed for education under the care of the Rev. Daniel Lowe, a Dissenting minister then lately settled at Norton. Mr. Lowe's school enjoyed, during many years, a high reputation. Most of the Dissenting youth of the better condition, in the counties of York, Nottingham, and Derby, were educated in it. Mr. Shore was his pupil for seven years, so that his earliest recollected impressions would be connected with Norton, a place with which, as we shall afterwards see, he became more closely united.

The Dissenters of England, in the early years of Mr. Shore, had made no provision for the education of their youth in the higher departments of knowledge.

Their academies were confined to the education of their ministers. Those amongst them, therefore, who regarded the ancient and splendid seats of learning and science as fenced by barriers which no Nonconformist ought to pass, were in a manner compelled to seek, at some risque, in a foreign land, the advantages which were denied at home. When sixteen, Mr. Shore was accordingly placed in a French academy in London, as a preparatory step to his being sent to Germany. In the summer of 1754, he proceeded to the Continent; and after travelling through Holland, Westphalia, Hesse - Cassel, Hanover, Brandenburgh, Silesia, and Saxony, he returned to Brunswick, and was there entered a Student of Charles College in that city, founded by Charles, Duke of Brunswick. There Mr. Shore remained` for three years; in the course of which he made excursions to the Hartz Mountains, to Hanover, and Gottingen. The amiableness of his manners, the correctness of his behaviour, and the assiduity of his attention to the duties of the College, gained him universal esteem; but the particular favour with which he was regarded by the Abbé Jerusalem, a persou of cousiderable note at that time in Germany, who, when Rector of the College of Brunswick, assisted him in the kindest manner with his counsels and instruction, was a subject ever after of grateful recollection.

Mr. Shore left Brunswick when the French army entered the place in 1757, and returned to England.

There were those who, at this period, looked forward with an earnest and assured expectation to that high and honourable course of thought and action of which the termination has only now been witnessed; and, in particular, the friends of civil and religious liberty looked to the sense and knowledge, the spirit and activity, of Mr. Shore, as marking him out as one who would take a lead in the defence of the best interests of the human race. They were not mistaken in these anticipations.

It happened to Mr. Shore, to spend nearly the whole of his long life near the place of his birth. In the year 1759, he married the elder of two daughters of Joseph Offley, Esq., a gentleman of ancient family, who had resided at Norton Hall, and had been the Lord of that Manor. Mr. Offley left two daughters and one son; but the son dying in early life, and leaving no issue, the daughters became co-heirs to considerable estates in different counties. On the partition

and encourage others in this necessary, but somewhat difficult duty. In that great crisis in the religious history of our country, when the application to Parliament by a great and respectable body of the clergy of the Church of England for some change in the required subscription to make it more congenial to the Protestant principles of liberty, of religious inquiry, and the sufficiency of Scripture, was rejected by an overwhelming majority; and when, in consequence of it, a beneficed clergy man of this county, of the highest character, gave up his preferment, withdrew himself from the church, and opened a chapel in London for public worship on Unitarian principles, Mr. Shore, and the neighbour and great friend of the family, Mr. Newton, of Norton House, were amongst the first to encourage and assist Mr. Lindsey. That truly conscientious, aud truly learned and excellent man found, indeed, his best friends amongst those who had been trained in the school of Nonconformity. In his journey from Catterick to London, a pilgrimage which will be looked upon with increasing interest as time advances, and brings forth more and more of the consequences of that event, Mr. Lindsey spent a whole week in this neighbour hood. He was, during that time, the guest of his friend, Mr. Mason, who was residing on his rectory of Aston, the biographer of Gray, and one whose taste gave beauty, and poetry celebrity, to that cheerful village.

To Dr. Priestley, a man of a still bolder and more ardent mind, Mr. Shore also extended a friendly patronage; aud Dr. Priestley has inscribed to him his History of the Christian Church, as to one "whose conduct had long proved him to be a steady friend of Christianity, and whose object it had been to preserve it as unmixed as possible with every thing that has a tendency to corrupt and debase it."

Mr. Shore was not less active in his endeavours to regain for Protestant Dissenters the rights of which they had been deprived in the reign of Charles II., and which were but imperfectly restored at the Revolution. He not only concurred in all the applications which were made to Parliament, but he exerted to the utmost that high influence which he possessed in the exalted rauks of society. He lived to witness the success of these applications; and some of his latest thoughts were directed upon this gratifying proof of the increased liberality

of the times, and this advancement in the general liberty of the subject.

Throughout life, Mr. Shore looked with solicitude to the popular parts of our well-balanced constitution, which he thought in more danger of injury than the monarchical or aristocratical portious of it. He looked with an ap prehension, in which many great and wise men agreed with him, to an increase of the influence of the Crown, too great for the safety of the people; and in his character of a citizen of this great country, he thought it his duty to support all measures which tended to maintain, or even to give an increase, correspondent to the increased influence of the Crown, to the rights and privileges of the commonalty. In his own county (Derby) he was the supporter of the house of Cavendish, because that house was a supporter of the principles which he thought essential to the maintenance of the public weal. And in the county of his birth, though not of his residence, and where he possessed great interests, he was the supporter of that public interest of which Sir George Savile might, in his day, be accounted the illustrious representative. When the principles of those who leaned to the monarchical, and of those who leaned to the popular part of the constitution, became posited on the great question of Parliamentary Reform, Mr. Shore was among the foremost of those eminent persons in the county of York who formed the Yorkshire Association of former times; and when the great Yorkshire petition for reform was agreed upon, he was one of the deputies to whom the care of it was committed. A list of the members of that Association who met at York is before me; but few are at this day living. Of the two deputies with Mr. Shore, the Rev. Christopher Wyvill, and Sir James Innes, who became afterwards Duke of Roxburgh, both are dead.

Through the period of alarm, Mr. Shore still retained his former principles. He was attached to the political party of which Mr. Fox might be regarded as at that time the representative; but it was entirely an attachment lying in community of sentiment-an attachment so truly independent, that it might be at once broken when the community of sentiment had disappeared.

In later periods, Mr. Shore has shewn the importance with which he regarded the question of the improvement of our representation, and the infusion of a greater number of really elected mem