If our stewards were to throw away their money at this rate, they would soon become bankrupt. In the Protestant Magazine for May last year, there is a letter from J. A., of York, in which he gives as account of the expenditure of the circuit stewards for a year; which he estimates at £946. 14s. 8d., and remarks upon it: "The preachers, three in number, each receives from £140. to £150. in cash, besides house rent, taxes, coals, candles, furniture, linen, servants, washing, postages of letters, stationery, horses, tolls, and other travelling expenses, wear and tear in furniture, linen, pots, glass, etc., all found them and paid for by the societies." He evidently wishes his readers to conclude that the three preachers, in cash paid them and expended upon them, share the whole receipts among them; which would average £315. 11s. 6d. for each of them. I object among the items enumerated by J. A., as forming no part of the salaries of the preachers, to postages, stationery, horses, tolls, and other travelling expenses. In the expenditure of the Protestants, there are postages £3. 2s. 41.; stationery and printing £40. 15s. 11d.; coach fares, horse hire, and travelling expenses, £96. 12s. 43d. These three items alone amount to £140. 10s. 8d. Did the persons who received these sums from the stewards consider them in the light of wages or salaries? In this way of making up salaries, it might easily be shown that a wagoner receives some thousands a year. He cannot December last, that "they are in possession of a neat and commodious chapel, unincumbered with debt." This is promoting the work of God with a witness. Yet notwithstanding the bold face put upon these things, I think I see some latent evidences of shame. When they have succeeded in rending one of our societies, the fact is stated most exultingly; but in both these instances they have omitted to mention what sect was their prey. No fish comes amiss to their net, and in troubled waters they are most successful. If your money be expended upon such missions as these, you ought to consider what sort of a reward you are likely to receive of the Lord, for thus helping forward, what is strangely called his work! do his work without a wagon and horses. Suppose he drive a stage-wagon from Leeds to London; how many sets of horses will he want on the road? and what will be the amount of expenses for turnpikes, stoppages at inns, etc.? The whole concern may cost some thousands; and yet the man who manages it may not receive more than £20. or £30. in the shape of salary. J. A. omitted to notice, upon this subject, that two horses are required for working the York circuit. The expense of these the stewards have to pay; and whatever they minister to a preacher's comfort, they certainly form no part of his salary. But suppose the York stewards had been like yours, and spent the whole of their class and ticket money upon other things, their preachers would not have had salary enough to purchase bread and water. Now then, with the exceptions noted above, I will speak to J. A.'s calculations. I have travelled twice in the York circuit, two years each time; the first time I was single, the last time I was married; and I boldly affirm that the whole cost I was at to the society during these four years, including what they paid to me and for me, did not exceed £370.; and my belief is, not so much by many pounds. In this calculation I include board, quarterage for myself, wife, and, servant, washing, rent, taxes, rates, coals, candles, medicine, and wear and tear of furniture; and I fearlessly appeal to the stewards' books in confirmation of the truth of my statement. If the friends in York, therefore, raised money enough to enable their stewards to expend upon me £315. 11s. 6d. a year, a sum which J. A. insinuates each preacher costs them, I charge the stewards with cheating me out of near £900. In the Protestant Magazine for August last, we have another of those assertions respecting the salaries of the preachers, which I find impossible to reconcile with the slightest regard to truth. "We have been informed by a very upright and intelligent man, who is well qualified to form a correct opinion on the subject, that the support of the Conference preachers, (one of whom is an unmarried man,) and their families, of the two Leeds circuits, does not cost the societies of that town less than £2,000 per annum." The writer then goes on to declaim against "seven preachers of the Conference connexion being supported at so enormous an expense." This is certainly a very handsome sum for seven men to share amongst them. As the salaries of the preachers are proportioned to their wants, the single man would cost the society comparatively little. They would merely provide for his board, quarterage, washing, postage, travelling expenses, and perhaps a trifle for books. It is supposing these allowances to have been upon the most liberal scale, if we estimate their amount at £80. The six married men, therefore, would receive in money, and money worth, just £340. each, per annum. As I am now in the Leeds west circuit, I can meet the traducer as boldly as I have encountered J. A. respecting the preachers' salaries in York. I esteem it fortunate, or rather providential, that I have travelled in two of the circuits which have been fixed upon to show the monstrous amount of the preachers' income. Now I confidently affirm, that the whole of what the Leeds society expend upon me does not amount to half this sum ! And if our stewards were not more economical than yours are in their expenses, but devoted the whole of the class and ticket money to other purposes than the maintenance of their ministers, they would not have as much left for us as would amount to jail allowance. But on what authority is the statement made, that the preachers of the two circuits cost the societies £2,000. annually? Why, we are told by an anonymous writer in the Magazine, that he has received an opinion to that effect from a person who is "very upright and intelligent; " but this very honest and sagacious informer, it seems, must remain anonymous also. It is plain enough, then, that this upright man had not seen the stewards' books; for information derived from such a source is not opinion but knowledge. He had formed his opinion, probably on such visionary calculations T T as I have already shown have no foundation in truth. It is on such statements as these you are taught to believe what vile avaricious wretches the Conference preachers are! On the cover of the Protestant Magazine for December last, it is asserted that "most of the preachers' incomes already average about £300. per annum." Your writers are most marvellous calculators. One of them comes forward in a preceding number of the Magazine, as we have seen, and cannot swell the average above £173., though it is made upon his own calculations of the income of the whole connexion, and which I have demonstrated is much higher than truth will warrant. The most stupidly ignorant cannot but know that every religious society must incur expenses which cannot be included in the salary of its minister. And the fact was before the eyes of the writer, at the time he was giving currency to these statements, that your society in Leeds, which, I presume, does not exceed a thousand members, and without a stipendiary preacher, was expending after the rate of about £300. per annum. But to raise the average so high as £173. not one penny of the receipts is devoted to incidental expenses, and the total amount is augmented £6,000, by charging that sum twice over. How then is it possible to make the average £300., when it requires £6,000 more than the whole income of the whole connexion to raise it to £173? Your guides have no doubt, reckoned on your extreme gullability; but here, surely, they have over-shot the mark! I think I know, as well as these scribblers do, what is the real amount of my income; and I think, too, that what I have to say upon the subject will have as much weight with the public as the unsupported assertions of anonymous libelers. I have travelled in the connexion thirty years last Conference; and from the best calculation I can make, (and where I was in doubt respecting the exact sum, I have made it a point to put down more instead of less than the real amount,) my income, including all the items mentioned in the inves tigation of the York case, has not averaged £110. per annum. I never complained of my salary being insufficient, nor ever expressed a wish it should be increased, or entered into any stipulation as to its amount; but always felt contented and happy, as far as related to temporals, with what was given me. I am not ashamed, however, to ask you, or any one else, whether you think the salary of an exciseman too great for a minister of the gospel, while spending the best of his days in the service of the sanctuary? And I can scarcely restrain feelings which ought not perhaps to be indulged towards even the most depraved, when I hear men, who are perpetually canting about their purity, and their zeal for the glory of God, impeaching our motives, "prating against us with malicious words," and with a scornful air teaching fools to sing,— "Money, money 's all their cry; If avarice were our ruling passion, might we not have gratified it more freely by following some other employment? When there are among our traducers some of the greatest blockheads who are saving thousands, it is not improbable, I presume, reckoning according to the ordinary course of things, that we might have found situations more lucrative, and subject to less annoyance, than the profession to which we are devoted. It will probably be objected, that my case does not afford a fair average of what the preachers generally receive; because I travelled nine years as a single man, and have never had any children. To this I answer, 1. If some have married at an earlier stage of their itinerancy, consider what numbers have died before they had been thirty years in the work. If they were not single so many years as I was, neither were they married so many years as I have been. The disproportion, therefore, between me and others, in this particular, is not so great as some imagine. 2. Though I have had |