Page:Report on the Conference upon the Rosenthal Case 1866.pdf/45

40 aggeration of Loud Shaftesbury's words) to find that Lord Shaftesbury was altogether inaccessible to those views of Jerusalem troubles which he believed to be the true ones.”

No question was at issue as to personal respect or esteem, but as to policy in the conduct of the Jewish Society's affairs.

The natural conclusion and statement of Dr. M'Caul after such an interview would be of this kind:—

“I did everything in my power to bring Lord Shaftesbury to my view of this policy which is essential for our success. I selected the most important of all the matters at issue; I took the case of Bishop Gobat. I urged this case with a vehemence which I never used towards Lord Shaftesbury before.

“I might as well have uttered my words about it to the winds. His manner was kind as ever, but he was regardless of my reasonings and urging. I will never go to him again on such affairs.”

The gist of the matter is unmistakeable. [Lord Shaftesbury, interrupting the Bishop, “This is pure imagination. Did Mr. M'Caul say those words?" To which the Bishop replied : “No, they represent the substance of what he said, and give the enlargement for which your Lordship asked me, or rather demanded of me.”

It was not a lack of confidence in Lord Shaftesbury, as a Christian man, but as a leader and guide of those most weighty interests of Israel. It is only by some great fallacy that Lord Shaftesbury can have been led to think that any slur or suspicion was cast on his friendship or his character by what has been stated as the opinions of Dr. M'Caul.

To enter on a discussion as to how far Dr. M'Caul held his purpose, and did not go again on these affairs, or on other Jewish affairs, to Lord Shaftesbury, would be fruitless. It is clear, by Lord Shaftesbury's statement, that Dr. M'Caul was afterwards sent for when his presence was desired.

P. 24. Lord Shaftesbury says: “When Dr. M'Caul was not pleased with what I said, my words were rather in the nature of a gentle remonstrance than of a presumptuous rebuke.”

Here his Lordship's entire mistake of the matter at issue appears clearly. It was not the measure of rebuke which produced the idea of coolness in Dr. M'Caul's mind; the only question he really cared for was, the line of policy towards Israel which the President of the Jews' Society would adopt or follow. When he knew that the modern policy of Bishop Gobat, and those then in power, would be upheld, he retired hurt and disappointed in the extreme, but his feelings of Christian friendship and esteem were no more disturbed then, than a man's feelings are in Parliament, when as a member, he finds himself out-voted on a great constitutional question, and out-voted by the very men whom he loves best.

P. 25. “My dear friend did not resent it,” says Lord Shaftesbury. No, not it the least, then or afterwards; but he felt their difference of opinion intensely because the cause of God and of Israel, as he believed, would suffer in consequence of the ſailure of this his attempt on their behalf.

Hence it is obvious such expressions as these used by Lord Shaftesbury: pp. 30–35, “I am held up as a person of this character, that he (Dr. M'Caul) shrank from intercourse with me,”—“On his death-bed he could not forget the treatment he had received from me,”—“His feelings at that time were feelings of alienation and mistrust,”—“He trembled to see me,”—are simply so many fresh examples of the exaggerated language and mistaken views, which have unhappily characterized the proceedings of Lord Shaftesbury throughout this matter.