Page:The Judicial Capacity of the General Convention Exemplified.djvu/7

 OF THE

GENERAL CONVENTION EXEMPLIFIED.

At the meeting of the General Convention, in Portland, in 1854, its Executive Committee, of which the President was Chairman, reported the name of the Rev. Thomas Wilks, of New York, as one of the Assistant Editors of the New Jerusalem Magazine, then issued "under the sanction, patronage and direction of the General Convention.” Up to this time Mr. Wilks had never belonged to the General Convention, and his name had never been reported in its list of officers or. members. And, I had then in my possession, evidence which satisfied me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Mr. Wilks had been guilty of a very grave misdemeanor, of which he had never, to my knowledge, exhibited any signs of repentance. The misdemeanor was one which seemed to me of so serious a character, that I thought it ought to disqualify him for the ministry, and even for church membership, unless heartily repented of. The President of the Convention knew, also, of the nature of this misdemeanor, for he had had a brief statement of the facts from my own lips not long after the trespass was committed. Rut the members of that Convention generally, as I had reason to believe, were entirely ignorant of the facts in regard to the misdemeanor of Mr. W. which had come to my knowledge.

I was not a little surprised—knowing what I had some time previous communicated to Mr. Worcester, in regard to the offence charged upon Mr. Wilks—that the name of this latter should have been reported to the Convention for one of its officers, by a Committee of which the President himself was Chairman. But having in my possession the facts and the evidence which I had, what was my duty, under the circumstances? Placing Mr. Wilks in office, was equivalent to making him a member of the Convention, though he had never joined that body in any orderly or constitutional way. Honestly believing that a man, who was capable of doing his brother so great a wrong, as the evidence in my possession showed Mr. W. to have done, was unworthy to be a member of any