Page:Report on the Conference upon the Rosenthal Case 1866.pdf/41

36 there, and elsewhere in positious of responsibility, prior to that which I now hold. I have witnessed strife and ebullition of strong feeling between men of ardent minds, but I never witnessed so unseemly an outbreak as that with which our friendly Conference was opened. It has been remarked on by my colleagues in their remonstrance to Lord Shaftesbury. The terms “heinous,” “beastly,” “offensive,” and “disgusting accusations,” applied to the course which we were pursuing, and that before a syllable had been said by any one else, are the expressions I refer to, and are those which his Lordship says, in his reply, he shall not withdraw, and, it has never been intimated to me before that I was untruthful, or that I had the meanness to give a false excuse for evading a meeting because I was afraid of the consequences. Lord Shaftesbury also is the first gentleman who ever has signified to me, during the six years of my episcopate, that I was acting unworthily of the high office I am permitted to hold in the Church. This he has done in writing more than once. The introduction of the name and opinions of Dr. M'Caul by me, was owing to these charges, but it was not I or my colleagues who first introduced Dr. M'Caul's name.

Such charges are difficult to bear. My colleagues were ready to protest instantly. But it was felt that these were not matters for the Conference. It was clear that we had better bear with them then, till such a tide of angry feeling might turn,–we passed them by, and yielded, as we have on many other reasonable grounds of complaint. Not so the President of the London Jews' Society. Having disturbed the intended course of our proceeding by urgently demanding that the charges against Dr. Macgowan should be sifted first, and not in the order in which our statement would have brought them, so soon as by inference and through inadventure or a hasty mistake he had inferred that a reflection was implied on his conduct as President of the Jews' Society, he arrested the proceedings on account of this. On assurance that nothing of the kind he supposed had been intended, or as far as I know expressed, and that the subject was not one to be dealt with by the Conference, he pressed for an explanation and a comment on the words used, and stopped the progress of business just after an adjustment had been made as to the manner in which it might be pursued with satisfaction to his Lordship's feelings.

A chief part in Lord Shaftesbury's assumptions is that the name and testimony of Dr. M'Caul has been unnecessarily introduced. Lord Shaftesbury himself first introduced Dr. M'Caul's name when, at the second Conference, he tried to upset and annihilate all the evidence to prove that Dr. Macgowan was liable to commit acts of intemperance, as to drink and conduct towards other persons, by alleging the supreme importance of Dr. M'Caul's character and testimony on such matters, his own conviction that Dr. M'Caul would have reported such things to him (Lord Shaftesbury), and Dr. M'Caul's constant silence about such evils through the whole of his continuous and intimate personal communications with Lord Shaftesbury in the latter part of his life.

Dr. M'Caul's testimony and name, therefore, were not first referred to by me or my friends, and they were not introduced unnecessarily, since they were worth, as I fully believe, all that Lord Shaftesbury had said in their favour.

It was in answer to charges against my veracity, &c., as above stated, that I appealed to Dr. M'Caul's witness and his opinions, and stated at length the position which I held, justifying the same by the position which Dr. M'Caul had held. It seemed to me hopeful that this mode of acting might find acceptance with Lord Shaftesbury, and make the progress of our