Page:Report on the Conference upon the Rosenthal Case 1866.pdf/35



Refutation of the Charges brought against the Bishop of Rochester by the Earl of Shaftesbury.

the Conference appointed by the London Jews' Society to consider the case of the Rosenthal family, the Earl of Shaftesbury, as President of that Society, at the special desire of the Bishop of Rochester and other members of the Conference, allowed himself to be named as a member of the Commission on the side of the Jews' Society.

Soon after the Conference began Lord Shaftesbury wrote a series of letters to the Bishop of Rochester, in which he attempted in vain to dissociate the Bishop from his colleagues, and to get him to abandon the investigation, by the Conference, into what the Bishop believed to be a case of injustice, oppression, and misrepresentation without a parallel in the history of the Missions of our Church. In these letters Lord Shaftesbury had made imputations which had deeply wounded the feelings of that prelate.

These imputations on the Bishop's principles and conduct caused his Lordship to write, on the 14th May, and submit a defence of the course he was taking, to Lord Shaftesbury. Lord Shaftesbury had, at the second sitting of Conference, introduced the name and weight of character of the late Dr. M'Caul, and urged that his never having spoken to him of Dr. Macgowan's conduct was of itself sufficient to quash and annihilate all the testimony that had been or that might be given against it; the Bishop therefore hoped that, by appealing to the principles and testimony of the late Dr. M'Caul, he should carry conviction to the mind of the noble Earl, and lead his Lordship to view the Bishop's position in a clear and true light.

This letter of the 14th May is, in fact, the basis of all that his Lordship has called “the articles exhibited against him,” and yet there is not, from the beginning to the end of the letter, a reflection against his Lordship's personal character. Nor is there, in the whole correspondence which has taken place, a single expression which imputes to Lord Shaftesbury a hostile feeling against the Rosenthals, which unwarranted imputation is nevertheless the alleged ground of the speech which his Lordship made and had reported at the Conference on the 16th June, which he submitted to the Committee of the Jews' Society on the 22d June, and which he has now thought himself justified in printing and circulating as a pamphlet.

In perusing Lord Shaftesbury's pamphlet, it will be observed pp. 15, 16, that, during his Lordship's speech, the Bishop asked whether his Lordship was “reading extracts, or entire letters?” And that his reply was, “ from the Bishop's letter of May 14th, and the other letters