Page:The Judicial Capacity of the General Convention Exemplified.djvu/6

4 sufficient by the Committees at Boston, and at Philadelphia, to destroy the united testimony of Mr. Miller, and Mr. Waldo, and to prove his own innocence;—evidence which I have repeatedly asked to be favored with, but hitherto without success. Several persons besides myself are in doubt about the adequacy of the evidence referred to, and it is due to Mr. Wilks, therefore, that he should have a good occasion for making that evidence public.

3. Then I believe, from conversation had with some of my Convention Brethren, that a very large portion of them labor still under a great mistake in regard to this whole affair;—some having been misled by the reports which have been privately circulated, and others quite as much by the published reports of the Convention. I think it is alike injurious to those brethren and to myself, that they should remain under the mistaken impression which they have imbibed, and which a plain statement of the facts, I think, would remove.

4. In the fourth place, this printed statement seems especially due to those excellent brethren, whose testimony in this case the verdict of the General Convention has pronounced worthless, and one of whom it has in substance adjudged guilty of perjury. So grave an offence as this, perpetrated by an organized body of men against private individuals of unblemished character, ought not, as it seems to me, to be passed over in silence. And having in my possession such evidence as I here present, I should not feel that I did right to allow it to slumber, and so let the Convention’s wrong go unredressed.

5. Then the history of this affair, and the course pursued from the outset in relation to it, by those who hold the reins of government in the Convention, and thus shape all the proceedings of that Body, may possibly open the eyes of some persons to the mischief and dangers of such a hierarchy. It may show them something of its injustice and intolerance towards those who dissent from its policy, and its readiness to excuse or conceal the gravest misdemeanors in those who bow to its supremacy.

6. But should this pamphlet accomplish nothing else, I think it can hardly fail to convince every one who reads it of the utter incapacity of the General Convention to exercise the judicial function, and the utter folly of appealing to that body to settle a difficulty between brethren. Thus it may save others some perplexity, and perhaps disappointment, and will certainly secure the Convention against the possibility of ever again being troubled with a case of this sort. Such a verdict, when the testimony is duly considered, will, I feel sure, satisfy every sane man as to the judicial capacity of the General Convention. And the peremptory refusal of the Convention to allow me to tell to it the offence of one of its members, when respectfully solicited to do so, ought to make even its leaders see the glaring inconsistency between one of their acknowledged and fundamental rules of discipline, (Matt, xviii. 15-17,) and their practice in this instance. And for its own credit’s sake, it is to be hoped that the Convention will hereafter abolish a rule of discipline, which it has itself so emphatically repudiated the first time its fidelity was put to the test.

27th, 1857.