Page:Report on the Conference upon the Rosenthal Case 1866.pdf/20

15 the laying the foundation stone of a church in his own parish. On representing the impossibility of meeting in Conference on the day suggested, we received the following letter, which furnishes a specimen of the tone and temper with which we have been met throughout:—

May 17, 1866.

Mr. Layard has just sent me a copy of a note from your Lordship, to state that the Conference must again be postponed, and that until after Whitsuntide.

In the most solemn manner I protest against it. These delays are cruel, and wholly needless. The delay on Tuesday, 15th, was, I fear, intentional. To refuse to attend the Conference, because the question of the services of a short-hand writer had been propounded, was a mere excuse. I then offered Wednesday or Thursday, but your Lordship fixed Friday, which, at great inconvenience, I accepted.

I am now told that Friday is set aside, because your ‘friends are prevented by engagements’—Allow me to say, that when gentlemen, headed by a Bishop, raking up the ashes of the dead, undertake to make charges with such fearful issues, they are in duty bound to make every thing subservient to the completion of the business.

They ought not, as honourable men, to plead any but reasons of the most cogent character, and I will not disguise my belief that a conviction of the sad and unmanly position into which your Lordship's party has been brought, is one main cause of this enforced and unwarrantable delay.

Your Lordship's obedient Servant, (Signed)        SHAFTESBURY.

The above letter caused us to send in a protest in the following terms:—

Nothing can be more unfounded than these insinuations and implied charges. The duties which prevented the attendance of the members of the Conference were not private engagements, but public and obligatory duties which could not be neglected or postponed.

The Earl of Shaftesbury's character for Christian benevolence stands too high in the estimation of his countrymen, and indeed, of Christendom, for the originators of the Conference not to be persuaded that the mind of the President of the Jews' Society must have been biassed by information from other sources than they themselves had adduced as the basis of their appeal to the Society.

Be this, however, as it may, the undersigned friends of the Jewish cause, cannot but feel pained and distressed at being compelled thus emphatically to protest against the language and general bearing which Lord Shaftesbury has been pleased to adopt, more especially in his correspondence with their