THE RESULT OF THE POLL.

107

the poll was then closed; that consequently in those townships the ratepayers were unable to obtain voting tickets, that certificates could be got from three townships only, whose overseers were in the National School, and that the whole proceedings would be rendered illegal. The Vicar, upon learning this, ordered the doors to be closed, asking those present who had not yet voted to do so. Mr. J. Bright, with a large placard in his hand, called attention to its contents, which stated the hours at which the poll was to commence and terminate, and he protested against the action of the Vicar in prolonging the poll. He said he had another observation to make before the result of the poll was made known by the Vicar. He objected to the votes recorded by persons in Wuerdle and Wardle, Blatchinworth and Calderbrook, and Butterworth, who had not paid their rates, but who had simply received certificates or other helps from the overseers of those townships. That afternoon some hundreds had voted who had never paid one penny of their rates, and it was contrary to the spirit of the law to give certificates of rates being paid, when in fact only some persons had promised to pay them. Dr. Molesworth read a list showing the final result of the poll as follows:-In favour of the rate, 6,694; against, 6,581. Majority in favour of the rate, 113. The anti-rate party disputed the correctness of this return, and claimed that they had a majority of seven. Mr. Royds, with the police, conducted Dr. Molesworth home, amid the hisses, hooting, and cheering of the crowds. "Red" and "blue" bands played through the streets during the evening, in celebration of the victory which each party claimed to have won. On the following Monday night a large meeting was held at the "Roebuck," and a subscription set on foot to defend any person who should be prosecuted for non-payment of the rate.

On the following Wednesday evening a public meeting was held in Mr. Petrie's new foundry, and although the building was sixtysix yards in length and seventeen yards broad, it was crowded. Mr. John Howard, chief constable, was in the chair. The Rev. David Hewitt moved the first resolution, censuring Dr. Molesworth and the wardens for again agitating the parish for a Church Rate, which had been refused a few days before. The Rev. John Kershaw seconded the

motion. Mr. Barton moved the next resolution, charging the Vicar with partiality and injustice in his decisions as chairman, and as an instance mentioned the case of a boy twelve or fourteen years of age, named Healey, who was brought up and allowed to vote as partner in a cotton concern at Smallbridge, although his vote was strongly objected to. Mr. Whitworth seconded the motion. Mr. Bright next moved a resolution to the effect that the present Church Rate was illegal, and that it was the duty of the opponents of the rate to use every legal means to resist it. He made a long and eloquent speech, which was listened to with the greatest attention. He gave a striking picture of the injury done to the morals of the people by the drunkenness, bribery, and intimidation which he said had been resorted to by persons who favoured the rate, and that the struggle had been the means of creating envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, amongst the peaceable parishioners, by fomenting family broils, setting brother against brother, and father against son. What would a savage think of the religion of the English people if he had seen one of its ministers on the previous Saturday night conducted through the streets by a civil magistrate and the police, amidst the shouts and yells, the hissing and hooting of the people? The very man that should have been the minister of peace, and that should have inculcated good-will towards men, embroiled this extensive parish in almost civil war. There was one thing he thought it was his duty to tell them; namely, that one of their townsmen had written to the directors of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, expressing his astonishment that some of the workmen on the line had been permitted to vote against the rate. He would name the man he was no other than Mr. John Roby, calumniator of the Queen. He informed the meeting that about three hundred navvies, who were employed at the Summit tunnel, voted for the rate, and between twelve and twenty railway employés who worked near the Rochdale station had voted against it. The former were strangers, and had been placed upon the rate-books for some few dozen sod huts; the latter were occupiers of houses in or near the borough. These resolutions were all carried, and a determined spirit not to pay the rate prevailed.

DR. MOLESWORTH'S ADDRESS.

109

Dr. Molesworth issued an address, and Mr. Bright thus commented upon it :

"The Address next alludes to the religious Dissenters who, 'not tempted by the desire of pocketing, under the plea of conscience, what the law has appropriated to another,' voted for the rate. Ay, there's the rub'; when Tetzel was selling indulgences, he closed his sermons with 'Bring money! bring money! as soon as the sound of each coin is heard in that chest, the soul now suffering in Purgatory is wafted to Heaven!' The same trick is tried now, Vote for the rate, enrich the Church, and you will be religious Dissenters!' The man who would write about 'pocketing under the plea of conscience, &c,' is truly in small danger of being troubled with scruples, and when it is recollected that he is absorbing something like £2,000 per annum of national property for the performance of duties which the curates have undertaken for years for little more than one-tenth of the sum, it does appear somewhat indiscreet,' as one of his brother clergymen would say, to speak of pocketing,' and to sneer at the 'plea of conscience.' It has been said that-

and

'They laugh at scars who never felt a wound,'

may it not be said with equal force,

'They sneer at conscience who disown its law.'

:

The elegant writer of the Address speaks of mistaken Dissenters, with Socialists, Chartists, Jacobins, Infidels, and Atheists, as opposed to his endeavours to uphold law and religion. Why are the Socinians omitted in this list? Did he recollect that some of them voted for the rate? Is the support of Church Rates a virtue, which, like charity, 'covereth a multitude of sins?' But how stands the Church with respect to the spread of infidelity? Let Churchmen and Bishops answer. Bishop Lavington, speaking of the moral preaching' in the Church, says:— 'We have long been attempting the reformation of the nation by discourses of this kind. With what success? None at all. On the contrary, we have dexterously preached the people into downright infidelity.' An Under-Secretary of State, and a friend of the Church, in 'Observations on the Liturgy,' speaking of the Athanasian Creed, says I really believe that Creed has made more Deists than all the writings of the opposers of Christianity, since it was first unfortunately adopted in our Liturgy.' Bishop Warton, the only Bishop who opposed the French war, and who for his honesty received no promotion, speaks thus of the Church :-'A motley monster of bigotry and superstition, a scarecrow of shreds and patches, dressed up of old by philosophers and Popes, to amuse the speculative and to affright the ignorant: now,' says the Bishop, a butt of scorn, against which every unfledged witling of the age essays his wanton efforts, and before he has learned his catechism, is fixed an infidel for life!' Whence come the infidels, and Atheists, and Socialists? Wilberforce says:-'improving in every other branch of knowledge, we have become less and less acquainted with Christianity.' And the Quarterly Review, in 1816, said: Two-thirds of the lower order of people in London are as errant and unconverted Pagans as if they had existed in the wildest parts of Africa, and the case is the same in Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, and all the large towns; the greatest part of the manufacturing populace, of the miners and colliers are in the same condition; and if they are not universally so, it is more owing to the zeal of the Methodists than to any other cause.' What have the clergy been doing? Have they been absorbing the immense national funds entrusted to their care, whilst their duties have been in great part neglected? Or have they allowed rates to be uncollected, and the impost of tithes to be forgotten? No, the fleece has had its full share of attention, whatever has become of the flock.

“The Vicar endeavours to draw a parallel between his case and that of the prophet Elijah! Does he not perceive the ludicrous error into which he has fallen? Elijah was a reformer; he

opposed the state priesthood of his day, and dared to disobey the commands of Ahab, who, with the priests of Baal, charged him with troubling Israel.'

"He (the Vicar) says further:- The principal performer in that farce of false accusation is known in Rochdale, and so am I. Let the people believe him whose character they think best entitles him to credit.' In answer to this, it may be enough to state that the individual (W. W. Barton) to whom he evidently alludes, is known in Rochdale,' that he has lived in Rochdale twenty-six years, that he has maintained himself and his family by honest industry, that during that time he has walked 6,000 miles to preach the Gospel to the poor, and that he has, doubtless, been in more sick chambers in that period than the whole corps of clergymen connected with the parish church. This is not stated as a boast, and I may have said more than will be agreeable to the individual in question, but I would show that great zeal may exist without the inducement of a great income."

On the 18th of January, 1841, nine persons-John Petrie, ironfounder and engineer, Edward Taylor, druggist, Robert Heape, wholesale grocer, Thomas Southworth, draper, Joseph Butterworth, gentleman, Edward Briggs, one of the Society of Friends, Wm. Driver, gardener, and John Whitaker and James Gibson, dyers-were summoned for refusing to pay the Church Rate. The charges were heard at the Flying Horse, in Packer Street, before Messrs. Clement Royds (chairman), John Fenton, Wm. Chadwick, Henry Kelsall, and other magistrates. The court-room and streets were crowded by partisans of both sides. The majority of the magistrates considering that the summonses were incorrectly drawn, invalidated the claim, and dismissed them. Although further proceedings were taken, the rate was never collected. The Vicar and his friends in time grew tired of the vigorous opposition that met them on every hand, and the Church Rates ultimately became things of the past.

The feeling between the two sects has since then undergone considerable change, for we find in the month of June, 1883, the Vicar of Rochdale, the Rev. Canon Maclure, inviting any minister of the United Methodist Free Church coming to the annual Conference of that body to become a guest at the Vicarage during his stay. Further, we witnessed the Vicar taking part in the funeral service at the Dissenters' Chapel at the Rochdale Cemetery, over the remains of the late Mayor of the town, who was a Dissenter, and the Rev. Canon W. N. Molesworth, the son of the late Vicar, pronouncing the benediction at the graveside.

CHAPTER X.

AS A LITERARY CHARACTER.

The Commencement of Church and Dissenting Magazines-Conflict between Them The Clergy and the Corn Laws-Vicars - contrasted-A Munificent Gift to the League Funds The End of the Magazines-On Grammar-Kind Deeds.

M

R. BRIGHT is next seen as a literary character. In 1842 the Rev. Dr. Molesworth and the Rev. W. N. Molesworth, published a magazine entitled "Common Sense, or Everybody's Magazine "-with the motto, "Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense "-in support of the Established Church, and advocating the continuance of Church Rates. Mr. Edward Taylor and Mr. John Coates (Surgeon) issued a prospectus announcing the appearance of another monthly magazine, in favour of the separation of Church and State and voluntaryism in religion, to which they gave the significant title of "The Vicar's Lantern," with the motto "Alere Flammam" beneath a very neat illustration of a human hand exhibiting a burning lamp, close to the handle of which a grave-looking owl appears to be serenely contemplating the brilliant light. Mr. Bright, Mr. Oliver Ormerod, and Mr. Thomas Booth joined the promoters of this magazine, and it was arranged that Mr. E. Taylor should attend to the editorial department, and that the other four gentlemen should contribute the articles. Once a month they met at the Old Market Place (Mr. Taylor's residence) to arrange the subjects each should undertake, and Mr. Bright's production usually occupied the first place in each number. As it will no doubt be interesting to give a few extracts from Mr. Bright's papers, we proceed to do so.

The first article, as well as four others, bears the title of Common Sense," and is a review of the articles that appeared in the magazine brought out by Dr. Molesworth and his friends. "When corn is high in price," so wrote Mr. Bright, "tithes are increased in amount, and