in his declaration that if the Dissenters are excluded, they shall want fit and able persons to serve the office. But, my Lords, if I were to deliver my own suspicion, it would be that they do not so much wish for their services as their fines. "My Lords, Dissenters have been appointed to this office, one who was blind, another who was bedridden, not, I suppose, on account of their being fit and able to serve the office. No, they were disabled both by nature and by law. My Lords, we had a case lately in the courts below of a person chosen Mayor of a Corporation while he was beyond the seas with his Majesty's troops in America, and they knew him to be so. Did they want him to serve the office? No, it was impossible; but they had a mind to continue the former mayor a year longer, and to have a pretence for setting aside him who was now chosen on all future occasions, as having been elected before. And, my Lords, in the case before your Lordships, the defendant was by law incapable at the time of his pretended election; and it is my firm opinion that he was chosen because he was incapable. If he had been capable, he had not been chosen, for they did not want him to serve the office; they chose him that he might fall under the penalty of their bye-law, made to serve a particular purpose, in opposition to which, and to avoid the fine thereby imposed, he hath pleaded a legal disability grounded on two Acts of Parliament; and as I am of opinion that his plea is good, I conclude with moving your Lordships that the judgment be affirmed." The judgment was immediately affirmed nemine contradicente; and entered on the journals in the following words : "Mercurii, 4th of February, 1767.-It is ordered and adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, that the judgment given by the Commissioners' Delegates appointed to hear the errors in a judgment given in the Sheriffs' Court, London, and affirmed by the Court of Hustings, reversing the judgment of the said Sheriffs' Court and Court of Hustings, be and the same is hereby affirmed, and that the record be remitted.” * * Dr. Furneaux, for taking down the judgment of Lord Mansfield in full, was presented by the Deputies with a pipe of wine. Priestley at To return to the academy at Warrington. Priestley, who, while at Nantwich, had visited London, and made the acquaintance of Dr. Warrington. Price, Dr. Watson, the physician, and Dr. Franklin, was led to attend to the subject of experimental philosophy, being furnished by Franklin with books necessary for the purpose. The fame of his progress in natural science attracting the attention. of the constituents of the academy, he was invited to become one of the professors, and, though afflicted with an incurable impediment in his speech, he was appointed the Teacher of Elocution. "In the whole of my being at Warrington," he says, “I was singularly happy in the society of my fellow-students (tutors), and of Mr. Seddon, minister of the place. We were all Arians, and the only subject of much consequence on which we differed was respecting the Atonement, concerning which Dr. Aikin held some obscure notions. Accordingly, this was the topic of our friendly conversations." Discipline was maintained in the academy during the time in which Priestley was tutor, but gradually the institution deteriorated. Dr. Enfield, one of his successors, tells us "an idle waste of time, a coarse and vulgar familiarity, a disposition towards riot and mischief, intemperance, in some instances gaming, profaneness, and licentious manners, found their way into the seminary." Some of the parents indulged the curious notion that study was ungentlemanly. "I. Wilding' writes to Seddon from Derby, Jan. 17, '66:— "SIR,-I took the opportunity of returning by Master Compton the MSS. you lent me. Along with them, I have sent half-a-dozen of my own. But I don't know whether you will Letter of Wilding. think proper to make any use of those I send you. However, I determined to send them, if for no other reason, that I might at least with a better grace be entitled to some of yours; for you must give me leave to tell you that I find more satisfaction in delivering yours (as well likewise as I know they please our congregation better) than any I can pretend to make of myself. I shall, therefore, thank you for as many of your MSS. as you choose to spare me. "I have the pleasure to inform you that Master Compton expresses perfect satisfaction with his situation at Warrington. He is well pleased with Dr. Priestley's family, and with the treatment he receives at the academy. He will succeed to a very plentiful fortune. He seems to be a youth of ingenuous disposition, and from the improvement at Warrington will, I hope, enter into life with just and liberal notions of things, and support his character with dignity and reputation. There is some foolish opinion taken up by our fashionable folks here, and which is impossible to drive out of their heads-that study is not necessary for a gentleman. This is perpetually buzz'd into his head at home, and whenever he takes a book to read, he is called away by his fond mamma, for fear of hurting his health, or, as the phrase is, spoiling his eyes. I wish, therefore, his situation may continue to be agreeable and entertaining to him, for it is on this circumstance that the time of his stay at Warrington will entirely depend. But I promise myself a good deal from the goodness of his disposition." Stapp. At the retirement of Orton from the co-pastorate of the Church at Shrewsbury, Benjamin Stapp, one of the students at Warrington, was invited Benjamin to become assistant to Mr. Fownes, who still remained. Orton inclined to support the candidature of Robert Gentleman. The majority of the Church was in his favour; but the major part of the trustees, with a section of the congregation, were resolved to elect Mr. Stapp. These contentions * Seddon Papers. troubled Orton exceedingly. In a letter to his wife, dated Salop, Oct. 8, 1766, he writes: "My neglects and failings in my ministry humble and shame me, especially as I see so bad a spirit prevailing among my people. I am ashamed to see anyone who hath read Troubles at the Memoirs, as methinks they secretly say, 'Strange Shrewsbury. that the author who knew his subject so well should not have been more zealous and patient!' These thoughts often occur to my mind, especially this day, when it is just twenty years since I entered the ministry. May God pity and forgive me!" To Mrs. Doddridge he writes (Salop, Oct. 8, 1766) : "The distractions in the congregation hurt me. Here is like to be a separation. These things hurt me not a little. My God is humbling me, and I desire to submit to His will under every disappointment and affliction. But my faith is weak, my strength small, and even my hope of His final acceptance wavering. I much desire and need the prayers of my friends, that God would support me, and lift upon me the light of His countenance, or enable me, when I walk in darkness, to stay upon Him. I see so many neglects and defects, so much pollution and corruption, in what I have been, done, and am, that I am often ready to meditate terror, but I desire to live and die at the foot of the Cross, for I have no other refuge." The majority of the Church withdrew, forming themselves into a distinct society, and erected the chapel at Swan Hill. On a stone tablet in front of the building is the following inscription: "This building was erected in the year 1767 for the public worship of God, in defence of the rights of majorities in Protestant congregations to choose their own ministers." The spirit of the movement in favour of the * Mr. Joshua Wilson's MSS. Warrington candidate is indicated in the letters of Cheney Hart to Seddon : "SALOP, March 2, 1767. "The seceders, bigoted and narrow-minded with their desertion, have caused the death of Mr. Stapp" (from fever). 66 'SALOP, March 7, 1767. Cheney "If I said in my last I should probably leave the society, 'tis what I am still determined upon if we cannot meet with another more likely to do us honour than any one the seceders are like to consent to, beaded as they are by (Orton) their spiritual doctor at Kidderminster. But if I go I shall not go alone, but take with me the most, if not all, the principal supporters of the society, as it was before or was like to have; yet we will never abandon the cause of truth and liberty. The dictator at present remains inflexible, for any other person to be chosen here than Gentleman, a boy whom three years ago we all saw an apprentice beyond a counter in town, but possest of a spirit of Methodism and pride to be the mouth of a worshipping society cloaked under the cant term of desire of saving souls. He got released from his indentures, and was sent to Daintree Academy, though he could not then read his grammar; and in two years he had the assurance to set up for a divinity quack, and thought himself worthy to preach. By the twang of words and bandying about a few gospel phrases he pleases the vulgar and illiterate, while the sensible and unprejudiced are aware of his emptiness, and entirely disapprove both of his matter and manner. Yet this is the man our bigots have modestly offered to impose upon us; for him they secede still from us and from all their engagements to Mr. Fownes, and are attempting to erect a new tabernacle here for their part of a society, in the whole not too numerous to fill the old place. They threaten us with law for the settled estates and funds of the society, which must entirely belong to us, as settled on our specific place; and we are the majority of trustees and subscribers in possession of the whole. That Mr. Orton has acted so unwarrantable a part, and herein proves himself an enemy to that good cause of which before we esteemed him a zealous friend, I attribute wholly to the disorders |