Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/43

 at Cambridge University in 1729. He is better known as Ben Mordecai, from the production of a very clever book entitled "The Apology of Benjamin Ben Mordecai for embracing Christianity." He possessed all the family characteristics in an eminent degree. In religion he was an Arian and a Universalist, and neither menace nor persuasion could ever induce him to read the Athanasian Creed from his pulpit. He tried hard to get the Prayer Book reformed, and all but succeeded in procuring the objects for which Broad Churchmen still sigh. He denounced the game-laws, and would not turn on his heel to be introduced to royalty when it came in his way. Albeit a churchman, he was in all respects the prototype of the honorable member for Leicester,—Radical in politics as in religion, with a caustic vein of drollery, of which the following extract from a circular to the clergy, found among his papers, may serve as a specimen. It reminds one forcibly of Mr. Taylor's own very clever contribution to the "Pen and Pencil Club," styled "Realities." It is fittingly labelled "Impudent," and begins: "One hundred and fifty sermons, such as are greatly admired and are but little known, engraved in a masterly running-hand, printed on stout writing-paper, and made to resemble manuscript as nearly as possible; in length from twenty to twenty-five minutes, as pithy as possible, intelligible to every understanding, and as fit to be preached to a polite as to a country congregation," &c.

Nor is Mr. Taylor descended from a Radical stock on the paternal side alone. His maternal grandfather was George Courtauld, who travelled much on philanthropic missions in America, and was the fast friend of Dr. Priestley and Thomas Paine. The first of the Court-