Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/225

Rh teacher of Piety, Religion, and Morality. The recent adjudication of the honourable Judges has involved your petitioner's little flock, in Gloucester, in expense, and exquisite distress, and your petitioner is ruined, unless your honours can interfere for his relief. He must not only satisfy the heavy penalty already forfeited, to his said opponents, and prosecutors, but he is liable to repeated forfeitures of like penalties for every marriage he has performed, since he has conceived himself the ordained minister of that people, which must involve his friends in expense, or consign him to a gaol. Nor is this all; supposing his ordination invalid, he is, by the letter of the law, liable to ignominious punishment. Now, as equity is said to be that interference of the supreme power, which alleviates, where the law, by being too comprehensive, has involved a case, to which it was not perhaps meant to extend; and as he, and his people, his council, and the world at large, supposed him ordained, as much as an Episcopalian, or any other teacher, however different the mode of ordination, he most humbly prays your honours, to indemnify him for any farther prosecution, for any marriage he may have solemnized, under his supposed right; and by this means rescue him from the persecuting power of his malignant adversaries, restore the exercise of religious rites to his oppressed, and afflicted people, establish in the Commonwealth, in which he has long had his residence, that peace which has been broken by the malice of his enemies. Your petitioner would in person have waited on such committee of your honours, as may be appointed to consider this petition, but his well grounded fears that prosecutions would be multiplied upon him, by the zeal of his religious adversaries, has necessitated him to absent himself from the country of his adoption, and his dear people, until such time as the clemency of your honours might be obtained in his behalf."

The Congregation in Gloucester, addressed the Legislature in a separate petition, and the Judges, Sullivan and Dawes, co-operated with Mr. Russell, in persevering efforts to obtain a decision. The petitions were referred to a committee of three gentlemen, of great respectability, who speedily prepared, and handed in their report, which was laid upon the speaker's table, whence it was drawn forth by the speaker of the House, James Warren, esq. accepted by a handsome majority, and sent up to the Senate for concurrence. The report was called up from the President's table, by the Honourable Mr. Dalton, when, after a debate of two hours, it passed the Senate, almost unanimously. This most acceptable result was made known to the deeply interested Gloucesterians, by a writing, of which the following is a verbatim copy:—