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A SKETCH AND AN APPRECIATION OF
MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
FREETHINKER AND HUMANITARIAN
An Address at the Paine-Conway Memorial
Meeting of The Manhattan Liberal
Club, January 31, 1908
BY EDWIN C. WALKER
/ .
It is my conviction, that there is not one wrong, not one evil, moral
or physical, in this great nation [England] which may not be
traced to the root of a guarded superstition. That means that every
belief, defended by law, involves human sacrifices. Did not man
suffer by it, it would need no protecting law.—Conway, “Lessons
for To-day.”
PRICE, 15 CENTS
Published by Edwin C. Walker, 244 West 143rd Street,
Manhattan, New York City, May, 1908
��NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
A SKETCH AND AN APPRECIATION OF
MONCURE
CONWAY
FREETHINKER AND HUMANITARIAN
An Address at the Paine-Conway Memorial
Meeting of The Manhattan Liberal
Club, January 31, 1908
BY
EDWIN C. WALKER
We must define intellect as that which emerges out of this conven
tional mass; not indeed unrelated to it, but carrying its slumbering
powers to conscious realization and effective action through indi
vidual thought and will. Intellect must become individual that it
may be universal. Conway, ‘‘ Intellectual Suicide.”
PRICE, 15 CENTS
Published by Edwin C. Walker, 244 West 143rd Street,
Manhattan, New York City, May, 1908
�The scholar is not the retained advocate of the
party that pays best. He is not the attorney for
commerce, nor the professional casuist of those
who would combine the advantages of conven
tionality with those of simple truth. Better he
should again be a hermit than dwell in society
at the cost of honor. As yet, alas, though subtle
as the serpent, our scholarship has also its double
tongue, uttering now that which is true, next
that which is sordid. From the day when Shel
ley was banished from Oxford, no scholar has
remained under the flag of the common Chris
tianity save through a visible servility. But it
is spiritual perjury! If we demand that the
banker shall be honest in money matters, that
the soldier shall be brave, that the judge shall
be just, shall we be satisfied that he who is con
secrated to Reason shall weakly or meanly part
its sacred raiment among those who would fain
trick out their lucrative creeds or customs with
its divine sanctions?
There is needed a Scholar’s caste, removed
from the world of self-seekers; a brotherhood
of those whose verdict is the dictate of absolute
reason and rectitude; the fraternity of those who,
amid a world that weighs eternal verities in
their relation to gold and fashion, steadily say,
“Unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou
united.”—“An English Sinai,” in “The Earthward
Pilgrimage.”
�In Apology
This fragmentary and otherwise very imper
fect sketch of the life and labors of Dr. Moncure
D. Conway is offered only because there is no
money to pay for the preparation and printing
of anything more adequate. Nearly all of it ap
peared first in The Truth Seeker, and the lino
types have been held for several months in the
hope that it might be possible to bring the ad
dress out in a form more worthy of its subject
than is this in which I am at last compelled to
present it to you.
Unless one commands almost unlimited re
sources, it is practically impossible to bear the
burden of the repeated corrections and resettings
that are necessary in order to completely elimin
ate the archaic English spellings upon which the
printers insist, and work out the defective and
wrong-font matrixes which careless workmen use
over and over regardless of protests. So this
must go out with many cumbersome spellings
and numberless wrong-font letters and broken
faces. Machine composition has its economic
advantages, but its seemingly almost conscious
antipathy to the use of necessary compounds, its
often horrible division of words at the end of
lines, and the faults in casting render it very
trying to the nerves of the careful writer and the
intelligent reader.
�—4—
There is no Conway bibliography extant, so far
as I can discover. Of his works, a few are ac
cessible in the New York Public Library. The
Library of Congress has the largest collection,
supplied by Dr. Conway himself. I shall be very
glad to receive from any one who may read this,
the title, date and place of publication, name of
publisher, number of pages, style of binding, and
other items of information concerning any book
or pamphlet by Moncure D. Conway. Also, data
refering to any magazine or newspaper article
written by him.
EDWIN C. WALKER,
244 West 143d Street,
Manhattan, New York.
�Moncure Daniel Conway
Know’st thou not at the fall' of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief,
Laid on it for covering;
And how sleep seems a goodly thing,
In Autumn at the fall1 of the leaf?
And how the swift heat of the hrain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf,
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems not to suffer pain?
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf,
Bound up at last for harvesting;
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
These perfect lines, written by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, set to music by his friend Dannreuther,
and given to Dr. Conway in 1874 for incorporation
in his “The Angel of Death/’ voice the some
times mood in the closing years of‘ the life of this
tireless worker for man.
A Record of Struggles
In the preface to his “Autobiography” (1904)
Moncure Conway says:
“The wisdom or unwisdom of a new genera
tion must largely depend on its knowledge and
�interpretation of the facts and forces that operat
ed in the generations preceding, from which are
bequeathed influences that become increasingly
potent when shaped in accepted history. ... I
have been brought into personal relations with
leading minds and characters which already are
becoming quasi-classic figures to the youth
around me, and already show the usual tendency
to invest themselves with mythology. ... A
pilgrimage from pro-slavery to anti-slavery enthu
siasm, from Methodism to Freethought, implies
a career of contradictions. One who starts out
at twenty to think for himself and pursue truth
is likely to discover at seventy that one-third of
his life was given to error, another third to ex
changing it for other error, and the last third to
efforts to unsay the errors and undo the mistakes
of the other two-thirds.”
We see that Conway realized, what many radi
cals forget, that the past, present and future are
links in a chain that cannot be broken, and that
forgetfulness of this brings in its train individual
and social peril and catastrophe. The value of
memorial meetings and papers consists far less
in eulogies of dead leaders of thought and ac
tion than in summaries of their principles and pic
tures of their environment, with the record of their
struggles to inculcate those principles and modify
that environment. In a word, history before
worship.
At the outset, I must indicate what I think
is the relation of my part of this commemorative
meeting to the parts taken by the other speakers..
It was not merely the great work done by Mon-
�-7cure Conway in the rehabilitation of the fame of
Thomas Paine, important as that work was, that
made him so commanding a figure in the world
of letters and in the Freethought party. Farther
along, it will be shown that the love of justice and
the service of it were the vital elements in the
life of this friend and leader so recently dead. He
could not bear to witness the neglect of worthy
character and intellectual power; still less could
he endure the misrepresentation of that charac
ter and that mental energy. It was his love of
justice—and with Moncure Conway justice was
not simply a fair name with which men are prone
to flatter, and disguise, if they may, their ven
geance—it was this genuine love of justice that
made him the biographer and vindicator of Paine,
just as it had earlier led him to write his “Omit
ted Chapters of History,” in order to take from
the name of Edmund Randolph the stain of un
deserved obloquy; it was this loathing for un
truth and injustice that made him protest against
the slander with which, through the centuries,
the Christian world had clouded the reputation of
Mary of Magdala. With Conway, “truth” was
not an abstraction; it did not rnean'W truth,”
something mystical and divinely given; it meant
what science means by the word, the correspon
dence of statement to fact. That which Conway
did for Paine’s memory merges into and is a com
ponent of the vastly greater whole of the labor
of the nearly sixty years that followed the first
steps he took as a youth, when he entered upon
what he so aptly calls his “Earthward Pilgrim
age.” Earthward, mind you; not “earth/v” in
�—8—
the theological sense of contumely. It was an
Earthward Pilgrimage from the skies and the
gods to the earth-home and to man, closer and
closer, more and more powerfully drawn with
every year of the too-quickly speeding existence.
So my task is to say something of the immediate
antecedents of this splendid man, to follow in un
satisfactory haste that long trek from the fabled
land's of angels and demons to this home of men
and women and the children that renew them.
There are two Pilgrimages here, that of the man
whose activities objectively were concerned with
the sufferings and joys of his kind; that of the
mind that journeyed from error to partial truth,
from one partial truth to another partial truth,
until the moment when the golden bowl was
shattered on the rocks of mortality.
The “Scholar in, Politics ”
Moncure Daniel Conway was one of our few
splendid examples of the “scholar in politics,” and
by “politics” I mean the affairs of men considered
in their larger aspects, involving the rights and ac
tivities of communities, states, nations, races, and
world-embracing religious and secular federations.
In the culminating years of the slavery struggle
in America, he was intimately associated with
nearly all the leading workers for emancipation;
and with the progressive ministers and the great
writers, men and women, of the country. During
his thirty years ministry in London, he was at the
centre of the intellectual and esthetic life of the
generation, and touching hands with a multitude
of the teachers of the preceding generation who
passed off the stage in those three decades. Of
�the great men of science of that period in Eng
land, the leading statesmen, the eminent indepen
dent clergymen, the poets, essayists, Orientalists,
dramatists, tragedians, musicians, and wielders of
brush and chisel, it is possible to name but few
that he did not know well. With many, very
many, of the most famous men and women of
the age he was on terms of the closest confidence
and cooperation. He knew the surviving exiles
of ’48, the men of Germany and Italy, the French
victims of Napoleon the Little, fugitive Commun
ards, Russians who had come to London fortheir
lives, East Indians who had made a like journey
in search of the knowledge of the West, even as
later he visited Asia on his “Earthward Pilgrim
age” in search of the lore of the East.
Of William Johnstone Fox, who for forty years
had occupied the pulpit of South Place Chapel,
where Conway spoke for thirty succeeding years,
we read in Conway’s “Autobiography” (ii, 54):
“He was for nearly twenty years the most
famous orator in England; neither Bright nor
Cobden could be compared with him; but in 1864,
ten years after his public career had closed, the
people generally who had idolized him hardly
knew that he was living, and the new generation
had no knowledge of him.”
This should not be and I think will not be
Conway’s fate, for while he was keenly alive to
and untiringly active in movements for the settle
ment of the “issues of his own time,” he was by
no means limited to these in his thought and
sympathies; a large part of what he wrote is rich
in the elements of race-energy and potential
�—IO----
growth that is not circumscribed by geography
and time.
Dominating Ideals
Conway (Pilgrimage, 355) mentions the story
that when Ralph Waldo Emerson first stood be
fore the Sphinx she said to him, “You’re another.”
Emerson was not a Sphinx in the sense that his
lips were sealed, but in that they opened often
for the utterance of contrarious transcendental
isms. In the latter sense, Conway also was a
Sphinx, for his positions could not always be
harmonized, not even those of his later life. His
emotional inheritances sometimes were at war
with the conclusions of his studious and logical
brain. But our retrospect of his whole mental
existence must convince us that he never lost
sight of the great and dominating ideals of his
earlier years—peace, freedom, love, beauty, truth.
The strongest fiber in his being was the love
of peace; on its negative side, the hatred of war.
Freedom was a goal to be kept ever in view, but
it was not to be reached through bloodshed. He
grasped firmly the Freethought standard, and it
never touched the ground” in all his pilgrimage.
Reason must settle all disputes; the wrongdoer
is not to be killed', but directed from his evil
ways through the enlightening of his mind and
the quickening of his conscience. His consistent
record as an opponent of war was the most prec
ious possession of his old age, and the fear of
smirching its whiteness, even in seeming, explains
his repeated refusals to appear on a platform or
at a banquet where there was the slightest danger
that his presence might associate him in the pub-
�—II—
lie mind with any who advocate or condone the
use of force in modern reform, or are erroneously
supposed to assume that attitude. This he often
told me, but it was not until I had carefully read
his “Autobiography” and his “Pilgrimage to the
Wise Men of the East” that I fully realized how
imperative was the mandate he obeyed.
Slavery he hated because it represented vio
lence and pain; if war represented more of these,
then war was the greater evil and liberty was not
to be sought by sword and cannon. So he stood
for peaceable secession as against blood-cemented
union.
An unshrinking and uncompromising apostle of
his ideas, he was not an undiscriminating parti
san as concerned persons. Whoever it might be
from whom he must differ, whom he must criti
cise, at the same time he never failed to indicate
that person’s acceptable though^ never failed to
concede his good qualities, to explain his taking
a given attitude rather than to denounce him
for that attitude. He would not deny to any one
comradeship and opportunity because of race,
because of nationality or lesser organization. With
him, human, rights did not depend upon “belong
ing” ; as a Freethinker who knew why he was
a Freethinker, he held all badges and labels of
exclusiveness and exclusion as symbols of servi
tude and shame, as the stigmata of disgrace and
degradation.
He was tender, loving, emotional. Art in all
its forms appealed to him far more strongly than
did nature outside of man. He knew the com
posers, singers, instrumentalists, painters, play-
�---- 12----
house folk, wherever he went. The old Metho
dist hymns never lost their charm, while the bare
walls of the Protestant house of worship repelled.
We catch many glimpses of the esthetic passion
of the man. Here is one: It is a Sunday in Eng
land with some distinguished Liberal friends in
their home, and the only religious service has
been the rendering of the whole of Handel’s “Mes
siah” on the piano, without words. I quote (Auto,
ii, 156):
“It was a beautiful day; the low windows open
ed on the flower garden and the landscape dressed
in living green and blossoming trees. There we
sat, souls who had passed through an era of
storm and stress and left all prophetic and Mes
sianic beliefs, but found in the oratorio hymns of
an earth in travail.”
Growing Radicalism
So he was one from whom religious garments
dropped slowly, yet ceaselessly, bit by bit, in ap
prehension and pain. But if his advance was
gradual, still it was more swift than that of his
congregations, for ever and anon a conservative
wing would go off and start anew in the hope of
preserving some dogma threatened by his grow
ing radicalism. Wherever he was, he was a stormcentre of thought.
He could learn, even against his hot zeal and
prejudices, and continued to learn to the last hour
of his life. Emerson gave the first impetus to his
“Earthward Pilgrimage,” while the rugged Car
lyle and the lucid Francis William Newman and
Kingdon Clifford probably were next in order
of influence, Carlyle in particular cutting through
�—13
the transcendental cobwebs that impeded the freeest movement of his mind. Spencer, one of his
first friends in England; Huxley, Tyndall, Dar
win, and others of the great evolutionists of that
epoch, contributed largely to his training and
equipment.
The part that a long heredity may play in the
development of the temperament and mentality
of a man no less than in his physique is not to
be ignored. Moncure Daniel Conway was born
in Stafford County, in Northern Virginia, fifteen
miles from Falmouth, March 3, 1832. He was a
blend of the Conways, Daniels, Peytons, Mon
cures, Washingtons, Browns, Stones, and other
early Virginia and Maryland families. The first
Conways in Virginia came in 1640; the first Mon
cures, French Huguenots, by way of Scotland, in
1733. The Peytons, well known in England, in
termarried with the Washingtons. The Browns,
from Scotland, were in Maryland in 1708; the
Stones, in 1649. The Catholic proprietor of
Maryland, Lord Baltimore, made William Stone
governor, because he wanted a Protestant who
would be just as between Catholics and Protest
ants. Thomas Stone was a signer of the Declara
tion. The mother of Dr. Conway was a Daniel;
the first of the American branch were in Vir
ginia in 1634. The members of all these families
were educated men and women, severally promi
nent in the social, professional, religious, political,
judicial, and material life of the two colonies, later
states. Conway says (Auto, i, 6):
‘‘Sir Francis Galton’s works 'on ‘Heredity nut
before me in a new form the catechetical question,
�-14-
‘Who made you?’ Only when I was beginning
to turn grey was any curiosity awakened in me
to know how it was that I should carry the names
of three large families into association with re
ligious and political heresies unknown to my
contemporary Virginians except as distant hor
rors. Who, then, made me?”
Sources of Conway’s Skepticism
Then he tells how, when he was a boy of
twelve, he overheard his grandfather, John Mon
cure Conway, say to his brother-in-law, “I can
not believe that the father of mankind would send
any human being into this world knowing that
he would be damned.” Of this grandfather again:
“One Sunday when leaving his office for dinner
he saw a gentleman angrily bundled out of the
only inn in the place because he had devoted the
morning to a walk instead of going to church; he
took the ‘Sabbath-breaker’ to his house’and en
tertained him several days. The guest was A.
Bronson Alcott, the Emersonian philosopher, who
told me the story.”
And there was capacity for untraditional
thought on the other side of the house. His
mother’s uncle, Walter Daniel, left a Bible with
a marginal note in his writing beside Judges i,
19, “The Lord was with Judah; and he drave out
the inhabitants of the mountain [hill country,
Conway renders it] ; but could not drive out the
inhabitants of the valley, because they had char
iots of iron.” The comment was: “Not omnipo
tent after all!” His great-great-grandfather, John
Moncure, for twenty-six years rector of the parish
of Overwharton, one evening had his game of
�—15whist interrupted by a deputation of farmers re
questing- that he would next day pray for rain.
He said at once, “Yes, I’ll read the prayer, but it
isn’t going to rain till the moon changes” (Auto,
i, 7)Upon all of which Conway comments: “Can
I not pick my skeptical soul out of these old peo
ple?” As concerned the slavery question, he had
good precedents in his family, for his great-grand
father, Travers Daniel, presiding justice of Staf
ford county, was a strong emancipationist, and
would have freed his slaves had not the laws of
Virginia stood in the way. He imported from
England in his own ship window curtains “rep
resenting Granville Sharp striking chains from
negroes, and displayed them about his house,” to
the disturbance of mind of his neighbors.
The independent strain in the blood showed
in another way. His father, “a gay and hand
some youth of high social position,” joined the
then lowly Methodists, to the horror oihis father.
A brief estrangement ensued, and this “touch of
martyrdom” brought to the young convert’s side
three of his sisters and two of his brothers. “Thus
it was that our family became Methodist—the
first of good social position in our region belong
ing to that sect.”
Methodism of Earlier Years
In the close atmosphere of the strictest Method
ism the boy Moncure passed his early years—
two sermons on Sunday, Sunday school, only
religious reading permitted on that day, even the
fourth page of the Christian Advocate being
barred, as it was literary and scientific; two prayer
�—16—
meetings a week in the basement of his father’s
house, where his cultivated parents knelt together
with the illiterate and unkempt who made
up the membership of the new sect. “Every
Sunday an hour was found for us—white and
black children together—to be taught by my
mother the catechism and listen to careful selec
tions from the Bible. In some way this equal
treatment of slaves got out, and some officious
men came with a report that my mother was
teaching negroes to read, which was illegal. It
was not true, but it was prudent to avoid even
the suspicion of such an offense in the house of
a magistrate; so the mixed teaching ceased”
(Auto, i, 21).
His parents’ home was a headquarters for
preachers. “Two of the most pious,” he says,
“were discovered to be impostors, but the major
ity were honest, hell-fearing men.”
He attended Dickerson College, Carlisle, Pa.,
from which he was graduated when three months
past seventeen.
Once while there he and his
brother and the other Southern students had their
belongings packed to go home, their pro-slavery
sensibilities having been roughly touched, as they
thought; but the storm blew over. He started
and edited a collegiate paper, and also was “con
verted” while there. He characterizes an address
of his given at that time as a specimen of “the
eloquence of inexperience,” and adds that he felt
“the burden of youth.”
Going home, he found his father and uncle the
respective lay leaders in Virginia of the divided
Methodist church, split on the rock of slavery.
�—i7—
He joined a Southern Rights Association, wrote
for the Southern Literary Messenger, and other
Virginia papers, gave his first lecture, outside
of college, when eighteen (the subject was “Pan
theism”) and studied law. “My scrap-book of
crudities,” he calls his collection of his effusions
of this period. Just now some of Emerson’s writ
ings came in his way and added to the ferment
in his mind, as did a work of Hawthorne’s, a
series of essays by Greeley, and a volume of
Patent Office Reports. They helped to open to
him a new industrial, intellectual, and ethical
world, as did debates in Congress to which he
listened. He wrote a pamphlet on the negro
separate-origin theory, but it was not published.
To the Constitutional Convention of Virginia
(1850) he addressed a pamphlet urging free
schools and compulsory education. His uncle
printed 500 copies for him at the reduced price
of $50, a heavy strain on his literary earnings, and
he gave them away to newspapers, ministers, pro
fessors, and public men. Troubled by Greeley’s
letters from Virginia to the Tribune, he wrote
to that paper and Greeley replied editorially:
“Never will Virginia’s white children be general
ly schooled until her black ones shall cease to
be sold. Our friend may be sure of this.” This
was in Conway’s nineteenth year, and Greeley’s
prediction was stamped indelibly on his brain.
His Plunge Into the Ministry
Abandoning the law when prepared for admis
sion to the bar, and giving up excellent pros
pects of a good position in Richmond journalism,
he plunged into the Methodist ministry, preach-
�—18—
ing his first sermon when just past nineteen. Rid
ing the circuit, with Emerson, Coleridge, and
Newman beside the Bible in his saddle-bags, he
read and thought in the silence of the woods, and
the result was that while he preached with fervor,
he already was on his Earthward Pilgrimage.
After a sermon in his home town of Falmouth,
his Methodist father said with a laugh: “One
thing is certain, Monc—should the devil ever aim
at a Methodist preacher, you’ll be safe.” On
this circuit, he encountered the Quakers, and -was
deeply impressed by their high character and
the happiness of their lives. He corresponded
with Emerson, read more widely, thought more
deeply, grew more and more heretical in religion
and politics, and entered Boston, February 26,
1853, as a student at Harvard Divinity School.
He notes that at the hotel where he stopped “they
have prayers morning and night, at which a
piano with eolian addition is used.”
His father could not conscientiously support
his son at a Unitarian school, but he managed to
make his way, the pay he received for playing the
organ in the college chapel helping him a little.
“ ’Twas one of the charmed days
When the genius of God doth flow,”
he writes of May 3, 1853, when he first met
Emerson. Then commenced the intimate friend
ship which lasted to the end. Next he met Tho
reau, and after that all the Unitarian and Abo
litionist leaders, Agassiz, and the poets and prose
masters of the Golden Age of New England cul
ture. From the Rev. Jared Sparks, the historian,
he first learned that Thomas Paine was a man
�—IQ—
to be respected. In his Senior year he preached
in Boston and other cities. In September, 1854,
he went to Washington on the invitation of the
Unitarian church there, one of the most import
ant in the country, and became its pastor in his
twenty-third year, which indicates his standing
in Boston. Chief Justice Cranch of the District
of Columbia, who had held his official position
for fifty-four years, was a member of the Wash
ington church. Conway delivered the funeral
discourse and it was published by the society,
making it one of the earliest items of the Con
way bibliography.
Enthusiasm for “Leaves of Grass”
In 1855 Emerson called Conway’s attention to
“Leaves of Grass/’ then first published, and in
September Conway visited Whitman in what was
then “farther Brooklyn.” Whitman told Conway
that he was the first one who had visited him
on account of his book. 1 can not forbear to
quote a little here:
“Here too was a revelation of human realms of
which my knowledge had been mainly academic.
Even while among the humble Methodists, the
pious people I knew were apart from the world,
and since then I had moved among scholars or
persons of marked individuality.
Except the
negroes, I had known nothing of the working
masses. But Whitman—as I have known these
many years—knew as little of the working class
practically as I did. He had gone about among
them in the disguise of their own dress, and was
perfectly honest in his supposition that he had
entered into their inmost nature. The Quaker
�—20—
training tends to such illusion; it was so in the
case of Thomas Paine, who wrote transcendental
politics and labeled it ‘Common Sense.’ . . . My
enthusiasm for ‘Leaves of Grass’ . . . was a sign
and symptom that the weight of the world had
begun to roll on me. In Methodism my burden
had been metaphysical—a bundle of dogmas. The
world at large was not then mine; for its woes
and wrongs I was not at all responsible; they
were far from me, and no one ever taught me
that the world was to be healed, except at the
millennium. The only evils were particular ones:
A was a drunkard, B a thief, C a murderer, D
had a cancer, and so on. When I escaped from
the dogmatic burden, and took the pleasant ra
tionalistic Christ on my shoulders, he was light
as the babe St. Christopher undertook to carry
across the river. But the new Christ became
Jesus, was human, and all humanity came with
him—the world-woe, the temporal evil and wrong.
I was committed to deal with actual, visible, pres
ent hells instead of an invisible one in a possible
future. Such was now my contract, and to bear
the increasing load there was no divine vicar”
(Auto, i, 218).
This marks a most important step in the Earth
ward Pilgrimage.
In Behalf of Negro Education
In conjunction with Samuel M. Janney, the lead
ing Quaker of Virginia, he framed a petition to
the Virginia legislature asking for the repeal of
the law which forbade the teaching of slaves to
read: “a private reply came from a leading4 mem
ber of the legislature, declaring that no such
�—21—
petition could be read in that body.” A similar
answer came from North Carolina to Daniel
Goodloe.
During the first presidential campaign of the
Republican party, when Fremont was the stand
ard-bearer, Conway’s Washington church went
to pieces over the slavery issue and he was dis
missed by a bare majority, because he would not
be silent on that vital question.
He now accepted an invitation to the pulpit
of the First Congregational Church of Cincinnati
(1856). Buchanan had defeated Fremont; two
days after the inauguration, the Supreme Court
gave the famous Dred Scott decision. It was a
fruitful city and a momentous period for Conway.
Earnest friends of his, either within or outside
his church, were such men as Judge (later Gov
ernor) Hoadley, Judge Stallo—both historically
placed as Freethinkers—Alphonso Taft, Stanley
Matthews, and many others prominent in learn
ing and position. He threw himself with ardor
into every form of literary and artistic life, writ
ing criticisms of “the classical concerts, the pic
ture exhibitions, the operas, and plays.’’ “At Cin
cinnati, I seemed for the first time to know some
thing of all America.” Here he found remnants
of the colonies and other reminders of the work
of George Rapp, Robert Owen, and Frances
Wright. He read1 Frances Wright’s “A Few Days
in Athens” and her lectures, and “many a time,”
he says, “joined in the pilgrimages to her tomb.”
At Yellow Spring, Horace Mann had founded
Antioch College, the first to educate men and
women together. Mann was a Unitarian and
�■22—
the greatest educator ofi his time, but he was fran
tic because of Dr. T. L. Nichols’s radical com
munity called “Memnona.” He feared it would
corrupt and bring disaster to his co-educational
school. In i860, Conway reviewed in his “Dial”
Dr. Nichols’s “Esperanza—the Land of Hope: A
Work Written on the Gospel of Free Love,” and
with his ever-keen instinct for justice, took all
pains to discover the facts concerning “Memnona,”
long a thing of history only, and he wrote toler
antly of principles which were new and largely
antipathetic to him. Dr. Mann had character
ized “Memnona” as “the superfetation of diab
olism upon polygamy.” Conway pointed out
that, contrary to this prejudiced view, the asceti
cism and celibacy inaugurated there had carried
Dr. Nichols and seven other leading members
into the Roman church, one being at that time
a nun in Cuba.
Among his correspondence, Conway found a
letter from Modern Times, New York. “It seemed
to come from some place in Bunyan’s dreamland,”
he comments. Answering his inquiry, a friend in
New York city wrote that it was “a village on
Long Island founded on the principle that each
person shall mind his or her own business”; upon
which he satirically observes that “the place
seemed even more mythical than before.”
At
the first opportunity he went to Modern Times,
made the acquaintance of Josiah Warren and his
associates, and in his “Autobiography” he gives
us several pages of chatty and) kindly description
of his visit and a summary of the principles of
Warren. This was in keeping—wherever he went
�•23—
throughout his life he sought out the Divergent
no less than the Convergent, and gathered at first
hand his materials for analysis and conclusion.
In 1857 or 8, his first book, “Facts for Today,”
was published.
At Cincinnati, his opening sermon was a plea
for liberty for the slave, for reason, and for hap
piness as against Protestant asceticism. He de
manded for woman freedom and occupation; for
the unfortunate, a hospital for inebriates, and
foundling hospitals, and homes for other social
victims. “So did I confroiit the wealth and conser
vatism of my church, and they stood by me from
first to last.” In preparing for work along some
of these lines, he was in consultation with Arch
bishop Purcell of the Romani Catholic church,
who, remarks Conway, confirmed “my assertion
that it was not sensuality that led women into
vice, but that the want of lucrative occupation left
them no alternatives but physical or moral sui
cide.” He lectured for the Catholic St. Nicholas
Institution, for the Turners, the Jewish societies,
the actors, and filled evening appointments in a
vacant Methodist pulpit.
In the Western Unitarian Conference of 1858
(he was now 26), he was intrusted with the prep
aration of the manifesto on slavery, and his dec
laration was adopted, reversing the “timid reso
lution of three years before.” It caused the with
drawal of the strong St. Louis delegation. The
incident created much comment, and he was de
scribed as an “ambitious agitator.” In reply, he
said to his people that “inhumanity in man or
nation must always prove a demon of unrest.” “A
�—24—
legend on which twenty-three years later I pub
lished a volume then first arose before me as a
prophecy: ‘That fable of the Wandering Jew
shall be dread reality to the heart which know
ingly drives from its threshold the Christ who
falls there in the form of those who now bear the
cross of wrong and oppression, and toil up the
weary hills of life to their continual crucifixion’ ”
(Auto, i, 275).
“A little recrudescence of prejudice against the
Jews” carried Conway into the papers in their de
fense, and this made the Jews his friends, “and
important friends they were,” he avers; and he
speaks of Rabbis Wise and Lilienthal as able and
progressive leaders.
Emerson, Darwin, and Evolution
His literary studies were extending and his en
thusiasm therein was increasing as that decade
neared its end, while the publication of Darwin’s
“Origin of Species” freshened an interest in evo
lution that had been created by Emerson in 1853,
when the latter had spoken of “the electric word
pronounced by John Hunter a hundred years ago
—‘arrested and progressive development’—indi
cating the way upward from the invisible proto
plasm to the highest organism—gave the poetic
key to natural science—of which the theories
of Geofrey St. Hilaire, of Oken, of Goethe, of
Agassiz, and Owen and Darwin [Erasmus] in
zoology and botany, are the fruits showing unity
and perfect order in physics.”1 The suggestion of
John Flunter, which Emerson had condensed into
the phrase, “arrested and progressive develop
ment,’’ was in these words:
�—25—
“If we were capable of following the progress
of increase of number of the parts of the most
perfect animal, as they formed in succession, from
the very first to its state of full perfection, we
should probably be able to compare it to some
of the incomplete animals themselves of every
order of animals in creation, being at no stage
different from some of those inferior orders; or
in other words, if we were to take a series of
animals, from the more imperfect to the perfect,
we should probably find an imperfect animal cor
responding with some stage of the most perfect.”
When, in 1883, Conway showed this to 'Huxley
and Tyndall, they were startled that Emerson
should have discovered this very early anticipa
tion of the theory of Natural Selection. In his
Dial for October, i860, Conway points out that
“our popular Christianity has not fulfilled the law
of the higher formation. It must everywhere sum
up all the preceding formations, and lose none
of their contributions, as the animal generations
are summed up in the forehead of man.” He adds
in his “Autobiography”:
“It was to be twenty-five years before I dis
covered that the function of Human Selection
was to take the place of Natural Selection, and
develop the Calibans into beauty, but also that
it was possible for man to develop himself and
his world downward.”
It is not to be presumed that Dr. Conway
meant to be understood as saying that human
selection is not natural selection; he intended only
to distinguish human from pre-human selection.
In 1859. Conway delivered lectures against
�—26--
supernaturalism, and the orthodox idea of God that
shocked a part of his congregation and led to
the secession later of a considerable number of
the conservatives, who organized a new society.
They could endure his political and other secular
heresies, but when he laid profaning hands on
the Ark of the Covenant of their primal super
stitions, they were panic-stricken. This was an
other demonstration of the fact that, no matter
what “reforms” may interest a man, you never
can be sure of him until his brain has been cleared
of the sediment of the religious flood', for until
that hour comes he may at any moment pass back
under the dominion of the fears that, together
with wonder, lie at the foundations of all cults
of supernaturalism.
Speaking of “superstition,” I know of no better
definition than that given by Conway himself in
his book, “Republican Superstitions”—“A super
stition is any belief not based upon evidence.”
His Vindication of Paine
During the years immediately preceding the
civil war, Conway sometimes attended the Sun
day afternoon meetings of the small society of
“Infidels.” Listening from a quiet corner to the
speeches and discussions of these earnest parti
sans, Conway learned much concerning Paine,
which led to his discovery of very much more in
his further unprejudiced investigations. The
clerical fictions about Paine which had been
poured into his ears in his youth now reminded
him “that towers may be measured by the
shadow they cast.” The immediate fruit of his
researches was a sermon on Paine, January 29,
�—27—
i860. The announcement crowded the church.
He had feared that some of his congregation
might be disturbed, but instead he received a
request to publish the address. The request
was “signed by many eminent and wealthy citi
zens, some of whom did not belong to my con
gregation.” Thereafter the Freethinkers fre
quented his church, and Moreau dedicated one
of his works to Conway “as the first who had
ever uttered from a pulpit a word favorable to
Paine.” Conway’s address was printed under
the title, “Thomas Paine. A Celebration.”
From this period on there rested in Conway’s
mind the purpose sometime to place Paine in the
right light in the eyes of the world. This pur
pose he put into splendid effect when he wrote
the Life of Paine (2 vols., 1892), compiled and
edited Paine’s Works (4 vols., 1893-1896), and
prosecuted further researches in the succeeding
years, some of the results of which were made
known through the Liberal press and other pub
lications from time to time. It is quite prob
able that if there shall be posthumous publica
tion of the papers embodying the results of the
labors of the last years of Conway’s life there
will be revealed more of these treasures.
But the little group in Cincinnati did some
thing more for Conway and through him for the
world. I quote from page 305, vol. 1, of the
“Autobiography”:
“My vindication of Paine and its unexpected
success was felt by the Freethinkers in Cincin
nati as a vindication of themselves also, and 1
felt it my opportunity for grappling with what
�■28—
I considered their errors. My Theism was not
indeed of the Paine type—I had passed from all
dynamic Theism to the Theism evolved from
Pantheism by the poets—but I found that in
criticising the opinions of these Atheists I had
undertaken a difficult task. Several of them—
I remember the names of Colville, Miller, and
Pickles—were shrewd disputants and steadily
drove me to reconsider the basis of my beliefs.
I entered upon a severely logical statement of
the corollaries of Theism. In a course of dis
courses, I had rejected supernaturalism, to the
distress of a third of my congregation, this being
the first time that simple Theism had invaded
any Western pulpit.
“That, however, was less disturbing than the
sermon on ‘God,’ in which I maintained that the
creation and government of the universe by an
omnipotent and omniscient deity was inconsist
ent with any free will. I affirmed that the socalled free agency of man was a much over
rated notion. I contended that what theologians
called the Will of God was a misconception;
an all-wise and morally perfect deity could have
no freedom. There can be but one very best,
and to that he must adhere; the least deviation
from it would undeify him.”
And so another stage was traveled on the
Earthward Pilgrimage!
On the Eve of Civil War
The clouds of civil war were throwing out
their advance columns in 1859, and the land al
ready was darkening with the shadows of com
ing death. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry
�and his capture and execution well-nigh closed
all ears to the counsels of reason. In his ser
mon of October 23, Conway said that Brown
had been driven into madness by the murder of
his sons in Kansas, perverting devotion to the
principle of liberty into a morbid monomania.
He thanked God that one man could go crazy
for an idea, arraigned the nation for its crime
against the negro, and declared that the Aboli
tionists, being non-resistants, would “denounce
the methods” of Brown. He himself described
the action of Brown as “worse than a crime—a
blunder.” But he had not fully taken into ac
count the contagiousness of violence. After the
sermon, Judge Stallo took him to his home and
“argued earnestly” against his view and his “ex
treme peace principles.” And anti-slavery men
in the East—Garrison, Emerson, for examples—
also were carried off their feet. On the other
side, in Virginia, Governor Wise “raised a mole
hill into a volcano.” The pro-slavery govern
ment at Washington used the raid as an indict
ment of the abolitionists, and “the canonization
by them of Brown as a hero and martyr became
inevitable.” .Neither side realized the situation
of the other, nor could, for passion and panic
blurred all eyes. Conway confesses with shame
that “the enthusiasm and tears of [his] anti
slavery comrades” swept him from his solid an
chorage, confused the calm judgment that dic
tated the discourse of October 23; the execution
of Brown, on December 2, hurling against him
the last wild wave of reason-dethroning emo
tion. “I did not indeed retract my testimony
�•30—
against the method of bloodshed, except by im
plication.’’
Three months later came James Redpath’s
“The Public Life of Captain John Brown.” Redpath was a friend and follower of Brown, but
there was. enough in the book to set Conway
to inquiring. Part of the result of this inquiry
was given form in the novel, “Pine and Palm”
(1887), where “Captain Brown (alias Gideon)
figures in a light that could not please his ad
mirers, but it is better than I could find for him
now when, reading his career by the light of
subsequent history, I am convinced that few men
ever wrought so much evil.
John Brown’s Victims
“On either side of the grave of a largely im
aginary Brown wrathful Northerners and panicstricken Southerners were speedily drawn up
into hostile camps, and the only force was dis
armed that might have prevented the catastrophe
that followed. Up to that time the anti-slaverjr
agitation had marched on the path of peace, and
every year had brought further assurance of a
high human victory in which South and North
would equally triumph. But now we were all
Brown’s victims—even we anti-slavery men,
pledged to the methods of peace. In my sermon
already quoted on Brown’s death, I did entreat
that we should all ‘do a manly Christian part
in the development of his deed, and in control
ling it lest it pass out of the lawful realm of
the Prince of Peace,’ but the plea was lost under
my homage to the insanity of a man who had
set the example of lynching slaveholders. Too
�—3i
late I repented. For other anti-slavery men
there might be some excuse; at least it appears
to me now that there had remained in nearly
every Northern breast, however liberal, some
unconscious chord which Brown had touched,
inherited from the old Puritan spirit and faith
in the God of War. I had been brought up in
no such faith, but in the belief that evil could
be conquered only by the regeneration of the
evil-doer.”
I quote so much here because it throws a flood
of light on the psychology and exalted ethics of
Conway, and explains his attitude as the lead
ing advocate of policies antithetical to those of
the administration of Lincoln. And do I need to
suggest that there is in all this a solemn lesson
for the radicals of today who have to deal with
almost infinitely more nicely balanced and ter
rible forces, potent for peace or slaughter as a
careless breath or hand-touch shall determine?
How rapidly this clergyman was leaving be
hind him the orthodoxy of his church is indicat
ed in this paragraph of his “Autobiography,”
which immediately follows the one just quoted:
“I had, however, been influenced by my
youthful optimism to adopt the doctrine of a
deity that ‘shapes our ends, rough-hew them
how we will.’ When civil war began to threaten
the country, I did, indeed, modify my divinity.
With some satisfaction I find in the Cincinnati
Inquirer a letter signed ‘A Soldier of the Con
stitution,’ written after hearing one of my ser
mons, which says: ‘Any man professing to be
a Christian minister, who classes Jehovah, the
�Christian’s God, in the same category with Mars
and Jupiter, and Odin, the barbarous and licen
tious creations of a heathen imagination, and
says, as did Mr. Conway, that our God of Battles
is no better than these pagan deities, should be
indicted under the statute against blasphemy, if
there be one in your state laws.’ ”
The Dial and Its Contributors
The wide discussion provoked by his theo
logical and philosophical heresies had its in
evitable outcome in the establishment of a month
ly of his own, The Dial, which appeared in Jan
uary, i860, and which expired at the end of the
year, killed by the civil war. The prefatory
word was remarkably fine, I think, especially in
its symbolry of the floral dial. This is the clos
ing paragraph:
“The Dial stands before you, reader, a legiti
mation of the Spirit of the Age, which aspires
to be free—free in thought, doubt, utterance,
love, and knowledge. It is, in our minds, sym
bolized not so much by the sun-clock in the
yard, as by the floral dial of Linnaeus, which
recorded the advancing day by the opening of
some flowers and the closing of others—it would
report the Day of God as recorded in the un
folding of higher life and thought, and the clos
ing up of old superstitions and evils; it would
be a Dial measuring time by growth.”
The magazine “was well received”; “it had a
large subscription list—the Jews especially in
teresting themselves—and received good notices
from the press.” The one of these that moved
him most was in the Ohio State Journal, and he
�—33—
soon learned that it was written by a very young
man, William Dean Howells. In a few days
they met, and became lifelong friends. Emer
son, Howells, Orson Murray, Frothingham, were
among the contributors, as was our old radical
of North Carolina, Dr. M. E. Lazarus, who
usually used his second name, Edgeworth, in
writing for the press.
Almost my last communication from Dr. Con
way was the request to find for him a volume of
The Dial; which I succeeded in doing, after an
extended search. But, alas! he stopped, in his be
loved Paris, before it could reach his hand.
Idolatry of the Union
Conway heard Lincoln say in a speech in
Cincinnati in 1859 that “slavery is wrong,” and
that “the government is expressly charged with
the duty of providing ‘for the general welfare?
We believe that the spreading out and perpe
tuity of the institution of slavery impairs the
general welfare.” The words “and perpetuity”
had new and startling meaning for Conway, and
he printed them in capitals in The Dial and
voted for Lincoln. “It was the only vote I ever
did cast for a president, having in Washington
had no vote and in the later years no faith in
any of the candidates or in the office” (Auto,
i, 318).
But when Lincoln in his inaugural said he had
no objection to a proposed amendment to the
Constitution which had just passed the Con
gress, that amendment forbidding any amend
ment which would authorize the Congress to
abolish any state institution, including slavery,
�—34—
Conway and others were shocked. To him the
"idolatry of the Union” "was inconceivable ex
cept as a commercial interest.” He had no par
ticular sentiment for the South as a section. "My
enthusiasm had been for slavery, and it had
turned into an enthusiasm for humanity which
naturally sympathized with Garrison; the Union
appeared to me an altar on which human sacri
fices were offered—not merely in the millions
of negroes, but even more in the peace! and har
mony of the white nation. I hated violence more
than slavery, and, much as I disliked President
Buchanan, thought him right in declining to
coerce the seceding states.”
The idea of a Union preserved by arms with
slavery untouched was abhorrent to him and to
such jurists as Stallo, Hoadley, and Alphonso
Taft, and the anti-slavery leaders in the East,
and he says that such utterances as this, from
his first sermon after the fall of Sumter, ex
pressed their convictions no less than his: "The
American arms can win no victory nor conquer
any peace which shall not be the victory of hu
manity from the wrongs that degrade and af
flict humanity. In the Promethean games of
Greece those who ran in the races all bore light
ed torches, and he won the race who reached
the goal first with his torch still lighted. If he
reached the goal with his torch extinguished he
lost the day. It was not, therefore, the swiftest
racers who won the prize. Indeed, the swiftest
were more apt to have their torches put out
by the wind. It is thus with the contest on the
American arena. Our true prize cannot be vron
�—35—
by getting the better of the South in an appeal
to arms. What if, when we reach the goal, the
torch of Liberty intrusted to America to bear
in the van of nations be extinguished! What
if, by some dishonorable treaty with this or that
[border] state, which would be a good ally in
war, we have pledged ourselves toi continue en
slavers of men, and come to claim the prize with
the light of that sacred torch lost!” (Auto, i,
326.)
His Plan to Abolish Slavery
Conway went to Washington and found his
old church used as a depository of arms. “So
had repelled light returned as lightning.” He
talked with his old friends, Rev. Dr. Furness and
Senator Sumner, who “both trusted a good deal
in God,” he says. “I said that I had heard all
my life that God would end slavery ‘in his own
good time,’ but I had learned from history that
when reformation was left to God he brought it
about with hell-fire. That, I urged, was just our
peril, and it could be averted only by using the
natural weapon of liberty—namely, liberty itself.
I knew slavery and slaveholders well; if the
President and Congress should at once declare
every slave in America free, every Southerner
would have to stay at home and guard his slaves.
There could be no war. We could then pay all
the owners with the cost of the army for one
month. Furness and Sumner earnestly accepted
my doctrine, and Sumner begged me to devote
myself to spreading it through the North and
West” (Auto, i, 330).
This he did, and his maintenance of this
�tion in Ohio led the irreconcilable Clement L.
Vallandigham to say of him:
“It seems to us that about three months in
Fort McHenry, in a strait uniform, with fre
quent introductions to the accommodating insti
tution called the town pump, and without the
benefit of the writ of habeas corpus, would have
a tendency to improve the gentleman mentally
and, for a while, at least, rid the community of
a nuisance” (Auto, i, 338).
In a few months this “honest fanatic”—Con
way’s kindly description—was himself in prison
as a traitor.
The Republic of Hayti asked for diplomatic re
lations; Washington, by Seward, answered that
a black minister could not be received.
Con
way says:
“Then there arose before me asf if in letters of
flame—‘The stone which the builders rejected
has become the head of the corner.
“ ‘And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall
be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall it
will grind him to powder.’
His “Rejected Stone ”
“Then I set myself to write the little book en
titled, ‘The Rejected Stone; or, Insurrection vs.
Resurrection in America. By a Native of Vir
ginia.’ ”
The rejected stone was Justice.
The book had a tremendous circulation, and
was reviewed by the whole press. A large edi
tion was printed for distribution among the sol
diers, Conway gladly relinquishing his royalty
on these tens of thousands.
�General Fremont, in Missouri, had proclaimed
confiscate the property of those found in arms
against the United States, “and their slaves, if
any they have, are declared freemen.” The proc
lamation sent a thrill of joy through the North,
but the President canceled the proclamation and
soon relieved Fremont of Southern command.
A vast indignation meeting was held in Cin
cinnati, Judge Stallo presiding. Conway’s speech
at this meeting so excited the New York Herald
that it demanded his suppression by the govern
ment as a “reverend traitor.’’ The gist of the
passage in which The Herald found treason is
in these lines:
“A decree that this government ignores the
relation of slavery ends the war. There is from
that moment no army in the South, but a home
guard.”
Conway lectured in Washington early in 1862
and Sumner suggested that he call on the Presi
dent, which he did in company with W. H.
Channing, who had succeeded him; in the Wash
ington pulpit. The interview with Lincoln was
prolonged and earnest, but neither could con
vince the other.
Proceeding from Washington to Boston, the
literary men, including Emerson, Holmes, Lowell,
Whipple, Fields, gave him a grand dinner at
the Parker House. The next day, Emerson went
over with him his forthcoming lecture before
the Emancipation League. Its title was “The
Golden Hour” and it was soon brought out in
book form. Emerson adopted Conway’s idea, al
ready set forth, that slavery was the commis-
�-38sariat of the Southern army, embodied it in his
own cpming lecture, "American Civilization,”
giving due credit, and it appeared in the Atlantic
Monthly, April, 1862.
The President, so Senator Sumner miormed
him, would give him a consulate if he desired
it—“which I did not,” he says.
At the Western Unitarian Conference at De
troit, May, 1862, Conway offered this resolu
tion :
“That in this conflict the watchword of our
nation and our church and our government
should be, Mercy to the South; death to slavery.’’
It was unanimously adopted.
An Incident at the Conway Home.
It is interesting to know thaH the portrait of
the heretical and seditious son saved from des
truction the old home in Virginia. His father
was in Fredericksburg, his two brothers away in
the Confederate ranks, and the house in charge
of the slaves. As a detachment of Union soldiers
was marching by a shot was fired from a win
dow of Conway House or a corner of the yard
and a man was wounded. It was never known
who fired the shot. The soldiers were furious
and began breaking up the furniture preparatory
to destroying the house. But a youth who had
known Conway in Washington caught sight of
his portrait hanging in the mother’s bedroom
and cried to the others to stop. “The servants
were called in and were much relieved when
they found that it was to speak of my portrait.
Old Eliza cried, ‘It’s Mars’ Monc, the preacher,
as good abolitionist as any of you!’ ”
�—39—
This Conway House at Falmouth became a
hospital and here, for a time, Walt Whitman
nursed the soldiers, the second time that his
path and Conway’s had converged.
His Father’s Slaves Taken North
After much difficulty, Conway got a pass to
go down into Virginia and bring up his father’s
slaves, all within the Union lines, but before
starting he found that they had got away and
were quartered in a small house in Georgetown.
How to get them into Ohio, where he purposed
colonizing them, was a very serious problem.
But finally he triumphed over all difficulties, the
most grave being the Confederate mob in Balti
more by which they were surrounded and
menaced for three hours while waiting for a
train to the West, after being transported across
the hostile city by the help of local free negroes.
“At length, much to my relief, the ticket
agent appeared at the window. I saw that, like
the other officials, he was angry, but he was a
fine-looking Marylander. He turned into flint
as I approached; and when I asked the price
of tickets, he said sharply, ‘I can’t let those
negroes go on this road at any price.’ I knew
that he would have to let them gio, but knew
also that he could make things very uncomfort
able for us. I silently presented my military or
der to the disagreeable and handsome agent,
and he began to read it. He had read but two
or three words of it when he looked up with
astonishment, and said, ‘The paper says that
these are your father’s slaves.’ ‘ 1 hey are, I re
plied. ‘Why, Sir, they would bring a good deal
�—40—
of money in Baltimore!’ ‘Possibly,’ I replied.
Whereupon (moved, probably, by supposing that
I was making a great sacrifice) he said, ‘By God,
you shall have every car on this road if you
want it.’ ”
So the seventy negroes were taken to* Ohio
and settled at Yellow Spring, where they did
well.
In September, 1863, appeared the Boston Com
monwealth. It was financed by wealthy anti
slavery Republicans and edited by Moncure D.
Conway and Frank B. Sanborn. It was on the
best terms with Garrison’s Liberator, paid at
tention to literature, and in its columns several
young writers made their bows to the public,
among these being Louisa Alcott.
Conway rejoiced in the President's emanci
pation proclamation, limited as was its field.
“But,” he mournfully writes, “when our ecstasy
had passed, some of us perceived that while free
dom had got a paper proclamation, the cannon
ball proclamation had gone to slavery. The
anti-slavery generals were in the North; the
military posts where slaves might become free
were under military generals or governors no
toriously hostile to emancipation. The three
generals who had proclaimed freedom to the
slaves in their departments—Fremont, Phelps,
and Hunter—had all been removed, and to the
slaves these removals were pro-slavery proclama
tions which they understood, while this of the
New Year they could not read even if it were
allowed to reach them.”
Among the most effective obstructionists was
�—4i—
Stanley, an old politician of North Carolina, ap
pointed military governor of the reconquered
portion of that state. Boston sent a delegation
to talk with the President, Wendell Phillips,
Moncure Conway, and Elizur Wright being
prominent members. The interview was amica
ble but resultless. On this visit, Conway preach
ed to the Senate, having an audience of nearly
2,000 and pressing home his arguments for free
dom for all.
“Complications with England were arising;
our golden hour for ending at once both the
war and slavery had passed.” In February,
Phillips suggested that Conway go to England
to lecture for a few months and “persuade the
English that the North is right.” The proprietor
of The Commonwealth agreed to give him
$1,000 for two letters a week; Phillips, Wright,
Longfellow, and others raised $700. He started
in April, 1863, armed with a letter of introduc
tion from Emerson to Carlyle, another from Geo.
W. Curtis to Browning, several from Garrison to
the anti-slavery leaders, while from Mr. and
Mrs. George Stearns he carried a life-size bust
of John Brown for Victor Hugo. In his diary,
written on the steamship City of Washington, he
says:
“I have brought along John Stuart Mill’s new
book on ‘Liberty,’ published in Boston the day
I left. It is a book of wonderful truisms, of
startling commonplaces. In reading it one feels
that such a book should be in the course of
college study everywhere, so axiomatic are the
laws it states; and yet there is scarcely1 a state!
�—42—
on earth that would not be revolutionized by a
practical adoption of its principles. Mr. Mill’s
views of social and individual liberty are in the
direction of those stated by William von Hum
boldt in his ‘Sphere and Duties of Government.’
‘The grand, leading principle,’ says Humboldt,
‘towards which every argument unfolded in
these pages directly converges, is the absolute
and essential importance of human development
in its richest diversity.’ ”
There is not time to follow Conway to Eng
land ; to trace the footsteps of his thirty-years’
pilgrimage there. Nor can I go with him now
on his visit to the Wise Men of the East? nor
let you get a glimpse of the rich treasures stored
in such books of his as “Republican Supersti
tions,” “The Wandering Jew,” “Lessons for ToDay,” “The Earthward Pilgrimage,” “Idols and
Ideals,” “Travels in South Kensington,” and the
“Lives” of Hawthorne, Emerson, and Carlyle.
Neither can I take you with me now into a score
of other fields where I have spent so many de
lighted and instructed hours. All this must
await the pleasure of Father Time and the great
god Plutus; it is my hope to put into other
papers a small part of what I have been com
pelled to leave out of this.
An Ideal Biographer of Paine
I think that you will agree with me that Mon
cure Daniel Conway was just the man that could
have been expected to lift Thomas Paine again
into the honoring gaze of his countrymen of the
world; I think you will agree that he was a
much more important figure in the ethical and
�—47—
remorseless enough in the South—one who was
asked if he had ever been in a certain Virginia
town answered, ‘Yes, I was there three weeks
one Sunday’—but nowhere else in the world was
I ever so waylaid and plundered by! thei Sabbath
as in Honolulu.”
Again: The missionaries—“Their theology
alone might have been innocuous, for the Hawaiians could not have understood it; the moral
system, the superstition that nudity is wicked,
that gaiety and pleasure are offensive to God,
and consequent changes in their ways of life—as
Charles Darwin pointed out—these are the
things fatal to tropical tribes. Dr. Titus M.
Coan, quoted by Darwin in his ‘Descent of Man,’
says, ‘The [Hawaiian] natives have undergone
a greater change in their habits of life in fifty
years than Englishmen in a thousand years.’ ”
Speaking of the distinguished English men
and women who raised a fund to buy clothes
for the native women of Australia, Conway says:
“It was these pious prudes who killed off the
Tasmanians. It was the belief of every scientific
man I met that they all were attacked by tuber
culosis soon after they put on clothing.” Of a
group of Australian natives: “Were it not for
the filthy skins and blankets on which the Brit
ish prudes insist, they would by no means be
repulsive.”
Of Australasian federation: “Where either in
dividuals or states are fettered together, their
movements must be that of the slowest; and the
slowest is apt to be the colleague that refuses to
move at all, unless backward. The more free
�-48individuals, whether men or communities, the
more chances for those variations from which
higher forms are developed. The old shout of
‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable,’ has a
fine sound, but so has the prophecy of the lion
and the lamb lying down together. The lamb
will be inside the lion, and Liberty be devoured
by over-centralization.’’
Justice, Peace—and Farewell
I have said that the dominant note in Con
way’s message was the plea for peace, and so
I cannot do better in closing than to give to
you his latest suggestion and prayer, offered to
us all in these simple and earnest words com
posing the last paragraphs of his Autobiography:
“And now at the end of my work, I offer yet
a new plan for ending war—namely, that the
friends of peace and justice shall insist on a
demand that every declaration of war shall be
regarded as a sentence of death by one people
on another, and shall be made only after a full
and formal judicial inquiry and trial, at which
the accused people shall be fairly represented.
This was suggested to me by my old friend,
Professor Newman, who remarked that no war
in history had been preceded by a judicial trial
of the issue. The meanest prisoner can not be
executed without a trial. A declaration of war
is the most terrible of sentences—it sentences
a people to be slain and mutilated, their women
to be widowed, their children orphaned, their
cities burned, their commerce destroyed. The
real motives of every declaration of war are un
avowed and unavowable. Let them be dragged
��
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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A sketch and an appreciation of Moncure Daniel Conway, freethinker and humanitarian : an address at the Paine-Conway memorial meeting of the Manhattan Liberal Club, January 31, 1908
Creator
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Walker, Edwin C. [d.1931]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: New York
Collation: 49 p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: Inscription inside front cover: From Mrs Mildred Conway Sawyer. H.N. Bradlaugh Bonner. Sep. 22, 08. 'The writings of M.D. Conway in print at this date' available from Edwin C. Walker listed on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Edwin C. Walker
Date
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1908
Identifier
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N656
Subject
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Free thought
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A sketch and an appreciation of Moncure Daniel Conway, freethinker and humanitarian : an address at the Paine-Conway memorial meeting of the Manhattan Liberal Club, January 31, 1908), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Moncure Conway
NSS
-
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b5f1ccd3a1db28e0c2742c2e54b3f93c
PDF Text
Text
LESSONS FOR THE DAY,
Consisting of DISCOURSES delivered it South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
By MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
Published every Thursday.
HE publication of this Serial was commenced on October 5th,
1882, to meet the
the
Tdiscourses delivered onconstant applicationsat for copies of Chapel,
Sunday mornings
South Place
Finsbury, and also with the view of disseminating as widely as pos
sible the principles of Rational Religion. Of those principles Mr.
Conway is recognised as one of the most able exponents, and when
fairly examined they will be found to meet the requirements of the
modern intellect, and to have a thoroughly practical bearing on the
every-day life of the individual, the family, and the community.
It has been too much the habit to treat religion as a matter only
for the church and for one day in the week ; but “ Lessons for
the Day,” although delivered on Sunday mornings, will not be
found inappropriate to any time or place, since they deal with
matters in which all intelligent persons not only ought to be, but
are interested.
The co-operation of all who desire to see rational religion
triumph over superstition on the one hand, and selfish indifferentism on the other, is earnestly invoked, to aid in securing for this
periodical a wide circulation.
Since the publication was'Steeted there have been many expres
sions, both in the press and privately, of the high estimation in
which the “ Lessons ” are held by those under whose notice they
have come ; and it may fairly be hoped that a further continued
effort to make their existence known amongst the liberal and
earnest-minded will make the enterprise self-supporting.
A FEW OPINIONS OF TITE PRESS.
“ ‘ Lessons for the Day ’ is the title under which, from week to
week, will in future be issued the discourses of Mr. Moncure D.
Conway, at South Place, Finsbury. Mr. Conway is well known
as one of the boldest and most eloquent of the preachers who
undertake to propound on Sundays a higher religion than generally
finds expression in the orthodox churches and chapels. He is
also a well-known writer of books on secular subjects, if, indeed,
it is possible to distinguish between the secular teaching of one
who sees religion in everything, and the religious teaching of one
who finds the purest spiritual life in the honest performance of
every-day affairs. These penny ‘ Lessons of the Day,’ published
by Mr. E. W. Allen, ought to be profitable to a very large class of
pupils.”—Weekly Dispatch, Oct. 15, 1882.
“ We commend this tract (‘ Blasphemous Libels ’) to the atten
tion of the zealous, well-meaning folk who in this ancient city
are ‘ working the oracle ’ against the Affirmation Bill. We think
that a quiet perusal of the tract will show them that the less they
stir up this matter the better for the religious peace of the common
people.”—Western Times, March 27, 1883.
[P. T. O.
�“ Mr. Moncure D. Conway has now for some time published,
week by week, his Sunday morning discourses at South Place
Chapel, .Finsbury. Number 16 of these publications deals with
the subject of ‘Prayer;’ and though the views which are ex
pressed by Mr. Conway upon this matter are not those which are
cherished by most of our readers, we may say that his words are
often so suggestive, and always so pertinent, that Christian
preachers and teachers will do well to peruse them. In peaceful
hours of thought and feeling, when religious men are far off from
the battle, and the noise of things militant, Mr. Conway observes
that ‘ a very serious confusion is apt to arise in any mind that
attempts to pray. To whom are we praying ? For what are we
praying ? And why should we pray for it ? Are we praying because
of old habit, or because of a genuine conviction that prayer has a
definite place in the economy of nature, like eating and working ?’
Such questions as these arise, and may stagger the sincerest heart.
Strong thinkers and deep natures want help on such difficulties.
Any way, Mr. Conway writes like a man in earnest.”—Christian
World, Jan. 25, 1883.
“ In literary value alone they are of high merit, and the rational
thought which pervades them is well calculated to sow the seeds
of Rationalism among the thoughtful. Mr. Conway is an apt and
versatile scholar, and his discourses are well worth preservation.”
—Secular Review, Nov. 18, 1882.
The following have alre idy been published
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
1.—THIS OUR DAY.
2.—THE CELESTIAL RAILWAY.
3.—JACOB’S WELL.
4.—THE DESCENT FROM THE '
CROSS.
5.—MARY MAGDALENE’S VISION.
6—INDIVIDUAL AND SPECIES.
7.—THE
EDUCATION
OF
CHARACTER.
8.—PESSIMISM.
9.—NEW VIEWS OF NATURAL
RELIGION.
10.—SOVEREIGNTY OF THE
SUBJECT.
11.—TRUTH CRUSHED TO EARTH.
12.—THE DOUBTING DISCIPLE.
No. 13—THE BIRTH OF A GOD.
No. 14.—THE HUMANIZED UNIVERSE.
No. 15.—SACRED BOOKS.
No. 16.—PRAYER.
No. 17.—SAINTLY SOLDIERS.
No. 18.—SAINT AGNES.
No. 19.—THE FIRST PERSON.
No. 20—THE GOSPEL OF ART.
No. 21.—EVOLUTIONIST ERRORS.
No. 22.—WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH
US ?
No. 23.—THE WOUNDED CHRIST.
No. 24.—BLASPHEMOUS LIBELS.
No. 25.—WAGNER.
No. 26.—THE FREETHINKER’S VISION
BEYOND DEATH.
The Publisher, Mr. Allen, Ave Maria Lane, will supply copies free by post for 6s. 6d. per
annum, if any difficulty is four 1 in obtaining them otherwise.
USTOW
BEADY.
LESSONS FOR THE DAY, VOL. 1,
Containing the above 26 Nos. neatly bound in cloth,
PRICE THREE SHILLINGS.
Also CASES for binding the first volume, price SIXPENCE EACH.
LESSONS FOR THE DAY
May be obtained of the following Booksellers and Newsagents :—
Wade & Co., Ludgate Arcade.
J. Samuel, 41, Randolph St., Camden Town.
H. Cattell. 84, Fleet Street.
M. A. Baker, 125, Kentish Town Road.
Freethought Publishing Co., Fleet Street.
M. Austin, 12A, Grange Rd., Chalk Farm Road.
J. Simpson, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.
B. Dobell, 62, Queen’s Crescent, Haverstock
Ritchie & Co., Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.
Hill.
Fawless & Co., 1, Philpot Lane, E.C.
B. Ralph, 10, St.John’s Road. Hoxton.
Terry & Co., 6, Hatton Garden.
G. R. Hanson, in, Roman Rd., Victoria Park.
E. Truelove, 256, High Holborn.
W.Ackland, 4, BishoD’s Rd., Cambridge Heath.
T. Baker, ig, Windmill Street, Finsbury.
R. Morriss, 19, Camberwell Green.
W. Toler, 54, Praed Street. W.
Shore Bros., 33, Newington Green Road.
Dale, 50, Crawford Street, W.
B. Buckmaster. Newington Butts.
R. M. Morrell, 13, Francis Street, W.C.
St. George’s Hall, Lower Edmonton.
G. Chard, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square.
Wm. West, 4, Birkbeck Villas, Birkbeck Rd.,
G. Biddiss, 98, Euston Street.
Tottenham.
J. C. Parkinson, 39, Ossulston Street, N.W.
J. C. Ames, Lyham Road, Clapham Park.
W. Gammell, 35, High Street, Camden Town.
&c.
&c.
Additions to this list may be sent to , ■. "t. R. Wright, 44, Essex Street, W.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Lessons for the day, consisting of discourses delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, by Moncure D. Conway
Creator
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South Place Religious Society
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 1 leaf ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Date
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[1882]
Identifier
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G5715
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[s.l.]
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Lessons for the day, consisting of discourses delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, by Moncure D. Conway), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Lectures
Moncure Conway
-
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80e50f97d2f1030da48e60881b35e2f8
PDF Text
Text
REPORT
OF THE
COMM ITTE E
OF
SOUTH PLACE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY.
�SOUTH PLACE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY,
1883.
MINISTERS.
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A., Inglewood, Bedford Park, Chiswick, W.
Dr. ANDREW WILSON, F.R.S.E., no, Gilmore Place, Edinburgh.
COMMITTEE.
Miss ANDREWS
Dr. E. BERDOE
Mr. G. W. COOKE
,, A. J. CLEMENTS
„ T. DIXON
„ E. DALLOW
Mrs. I. FISHER
Miss C. FLETCHER
Mr. J. A. GOTCH
Mrs. GOFF
Mr. J. HALLAM
Mr. THOS. HEALEY
,, G. HICKSON
Mrs. SEAMER
Mr. G. E. SADD
„ H. THORNDIKE
„ J. H. K. TODD
„ C, W. THIES
„ W. D. THOMSON
,, T. R. WRIGHT
„ G. WALKER
TREASURER AND CHAIRMAN.
Mr. GEORGE HICKSON, 35, Highbury New Park, N.
SECRETARY.
Miss C. FLETCHER, 39, Spurstowe Road, Hackney, E.
AUDITORS.
Mr. J, A, LYON
I
Mr, C. H. SEYLER
TRUSTEES.
Mr.
,,
„
,,
„
W. BURR
G. HICKSON
J. A. LYON
M. E. MARSDEN
W. C. NEVITT
Mr. J. L. SHUTER
„ F. WALTERS
Sir S. H. WATERLOW,
Bart., M.P,
Mr. A. J. WATERLOW
TRUSTEES OF THE MORTGAGE REDEMPTION FUND.
Mr. M. E. MARSDEN.
Mr. R. CARTER.
Mr. T. HEALEY.
Secretary of Soiree Committee.
Miss E. PHIPSON, 5, Park Place, Upper Baker Street, N.W.
Secretary of Lectures Committee.
CONRAD W. THIES, 76, Graham Road, Hackney.
Choir Master and Organist.
J. S. SHEDLOCK, B.A., 22, Melrose Gardens, West Kensington Park, W.
�REPORT FOR 1883.
TN presenting their Annual Report for the year 1883, your
Committee have thought it desirable to give, not only a
statement of the facts immediately concerning the Society, but
also a glance at outside events, in so far as they illustrate the
work which it is the endeavour of South Place Religious Society
to carry on.
Such glance must of necessity be brief and imperfect,
but it will not be without its use, if on the one hand it tend to
quicken and strengthen amongst our own Members those feelings
of sympathy with the great human family, which are the basis of
all morality; and on the other, if it afford, as it can hardly fail to
do, an opportunity for stating, however imperfectly, the position
occupied by this Society in the world of religious thought, and
giving some general outline of the principles which serve us in
place of a creed.
Broadly speaking, it may be said that all public events ought to
be included in our survey, for all depend upon, or affect human
conduct, and the improvement of human conduct in every sphere
of life, private, social, and national, is the object aimed at by this
Society; but it being obviously impossible to attempt such a
comprehensive task, we must content ourselves with referring to
one or two of those occurrences which, though they may appear
trivial to the careless observer, are not without importance, as
helping to measure the progress made in the world of thought—
a world which all serious minds will admit, is the dominating
factor in human progress.
Perhaps the most striking event of the year, from this point of
view, was the prosecution for blasphemy, resulting in the con
demnation of three men to various terms of imprisonment, the
shortest being in excess of that frequently inflicted for crimes of
brutal violence.
Without adopting the stereotyped phrase about
�4
evil being over-ruled for good by a higher power, it may be
pointed out that, on the whole, this prosecution has done much
more good than harm to the cause of freedom, and that the
sufferings of those primarily concerned will not have been in vain.
While it is discouraging to find that such things are possible in
the boasted land of religious liberty in the last quarter of the
19th century, and still more so to see the last jot and tittle of the
cruel sentence exacted in spite of many protests, whilst other
offenders, who, in their zeal for an ancient, creed, had committed
actual outrage, had a large portion of their sentences remitted, it
was satisfactory to notice the very general outburst of indignation
which the whole proceeding evoked.
More especially, it may be
remarked, that on the second trial, the law upon the subject was
laid down by the Lord Chief Justice in a more liberal spirit than
had ever been done before; so liberally indeed, that it may be
doubted whether, if this ruling is generally accepted by the judges,
any future prosecution for blasphemy can be successful. At the
same time, as this is by no means certain, and as the result
depends so much upon the presiding judge—as was shown in
this case—no effort should be spared to so alter the law as
to make the punishment of any man for the free expression of
his opinions impossible.
This case was also useful as a kind of mental touchstone for
testing the principles and logic of liberal thinkers, several of
whom were at first disposed to approve the prosecution from
disgust at the character' of the incriminated publication. But it
should be remembered that the offence charged was blasphemy,
not obscene libel, and, therefore, to support the prosecution was
tantamount to sanctioning the punishment of a man, not for
blasphemy, but for lack of culture and literary taste, whilst
sentiments equally revolting to the religious views of the majority
might be freely published by University graduates or those of
high social position. It was somewhat amusing to find that one
of these cultured offenders, the chief apostle of sweetness and
light, had in a new edition of one of his works withdrawn a simile
between the Deity and a member of the House of Peers, out of
deference to the feelings of the latter. At the meeting of our Society,
held on the first Sunday in April, 1883, to discuss this matter, it
�5
was satisfactory to find an almost unanimous condemnation of
the prosecution and sentence. Lastly, in connection with this
subject, it may be hoped that many of those persons, who, though
supposing themselves to be orthodox, yet condemned these
proceedings, may be led to consider whether their position is
intellectually tenable ; whether, in fact, if eternal salvation depend
upon orthodoxy of belief, any one who in any way endeavours to
unsettle that belief, ought not, in the general interest, to be
punished with the utmost rigour of the law. Such an inquiry, if
honestly conducted, can hardly fail to lead to the conclusion
that conduct, not creed, is “the one thing needful.”
Whilst the year opened with this outbreak of bigotry, it closed
in a wave of excitement of a much more satisfactory character,
arising in great measure from the publication of the “ Bitter Cry
of Outcast London.”
The importance of this matter lies not so
much in the facts disclosed, which were no novelty to those
who had studied the condition of the poor, as in the interest which
a knowledge of the facts created, showing that society can no
longer placidly enjoy its luxuries, and spend its time in the
pursuit of pleasure, literature
and art,
whilst
wretchedness,
squalor, and what it deems an undue degree of poverty, prevail
in its midst. The public advocacy of socialism by a distinguished
poet, and the crowding of St. James’ Hall by well dressed
audiences to hear lectures on Land Nationalization—whatever
may be thought of the intrinsic value, propriety, or even justice
of these schemes for social improvement—are additional proofs of
the increased attention now being paid to social problems.
Horrible London was depicted many years ago, by Mr. Mayhew,
in the columns of a newspaper whose name is now almost
forgotten, quite as vividly as it has recently been by Mr. Sims
and others, but the tale was then comparatively unheeded. To
day the very same facts have evoked an amount of sympathy
which we may fairly hope will not entirely evaporate in magazine
articles, or be smothered under a deluge of religious tracts.
It is also very gratifying to note, that the efforts of the benevo
lent are not confined to supplying merely the bodily necessities
of the poor. An influential meeting was held at the Mansion
House, near the close of the year, with the object of raising a
�6
sufficient fund to provide a large building in the East End, where
lectures may be given, classes held, books and newspapers read,
pictures, flowers, plants, and good music enjoyed, throughout the
year.
The Trustees of the Beaumont Institution have offered a
large sum to start the scheme, which was advocated in a powerful
speech by Professor Huxley, and it may be cordially recom
mended to consideration and support.
Several efforts of the
same kind, but on a humbler scale, have already met with some
success in various parts of London, and in more than one instance
valuable aid has been rendered by Members of this Society.
In concluding our glance at what is going on around us, we
may refer for a moment to the series of articles in the Pall
Mall Gazette, entitled “ Centres of Spiritual Activity.”
The
fact that such articles should be deemed worthy of a prominent
place in a journal not in any way devoted to religious matters, is
in itself remarkable; but the two points specially interesting to us
are—first, that Positivism, a religion without a God, is included in
the list, and secondly, that most of the writers seem anxious to
show how liberal, comprehensive, and free from dogma their
respective communions are. This is especially noticeable in the
case of the gentleman who describes a “ Centre ” belonging to
the Wesleyan Methodist Church, though it is generally considered,
and not without reason, that this body is one of the straitest sects
of orthodoxy. When we find a minister of this orthodox per
suasion asserting in print “ we have no articles, and in the strict
sense of the term no creed,” may we not hope that the twilight
of all creeds is rapidly approaching.
The most important event in connection with our own Society,
has been the appointment of Dr. Andrew Wilson to share the
platform with Mr. Conway, which was unanimously agreed to by
a General Meeting, held on Sunday, April 15th. This arrange
ment was proposed by Mr. Conway himself, who desired to be
partially relieved from the constant pressure of his weekly
duties, and also to have the opportunity of visiting America,
Australia, and India.
He continued his work here until the
end of July, since which time, with the exception of the usual
holiday in August, Dr. Wilson has lectured every Sunday; the
character of his discourses being such as to abundantly justify the
�7
arrangement.
His previous lectures had created a very favour
able impression which a further acquaintance has strengthened, as
shown by the manner in which the attendance has kept up.
Many of our Members have read with great interest a series of
letters from Mr. Conway, descriptive of his travels, which have
appeared in the Glasgow Weekly Herald, and all no doubt are
looking forward with very pleasant anticipation to his re-appear-
ance amongst us in March, invigorated in health, and with a
store of varied experience gathered in his circuit of the globe.
The thanks of the Society are due to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and Mr. W. F. Revell, for the discourses delivered by
them early in the year.
With regard to the musical portion of the services, it is
hardly necessary to say anything, no change having been made
in the arrangements, and the members being as well able as the
Committee to judge of the results.
The old maxim, de gustibus
non est disputandum, applies pre-eminently to musical matters,
and probably that which some enjoy greatly is less appreciated
by others j but it will no doubt have been observed that, owing
to our able musical director, Mr. Shedlock, having been of late
more freely consulted in the selection of anthems, a greater
variety has been introduced, and thus it is hoped that all tastes
will in turn be gratified.
During the first two months of Mr. Conway’s journey, his
absence was, to some extent, compensated for by the weekly
publication of “Lessons for the Day,” and it was with great regret
that the Committee witnessed the cessation of that serial at the end
of September. Since its commencement more than 140,000 copies
have been distributed, and thus the teaching of South Place must
have exerted a wide-spread influence.
The Publishing Committee
having performed the function for which it was constituted, is
desirous of winding up its affairs in the manner stated in its own
report, which accompanies this, and your Committee recommend
that this course be adopted.
On referring to the Balance Sheet it will be seen that the
deficit existing last year has, in accordance with the resolution
passed at the last annual meeting, been entirely cleared off by the
liberality of the
Members.
Amongst other subscribers the
�8
Society is indebted to the generosity of Mrs. Mensbier for so
substantial a gift as to enable the Committee, in addition to the
above, to add materially to the Mortgage Redemption Fund.
The total addition to this fund during the year, partly from the
above-mentioned source and partly from the amount handed over
by the Soiree Committee, aided by other donations, etc., has
been ^104 ns. id., making a total of ^334 5s. id.
The seat rents have not realized quite so much as last year, but
the deficiency has not proved so great as was feared might be the
case.
On the other hand the lettings of the building for meetings,
&c., have increased by about ^10. During this year also the
house adjoining the Chapel has come into our possession, and
forms an additional source of income.
The collection made on Hospital Sunday, which was devoted
to Mrs. Hampson’s Home, an entirely unsectarian institution,
amounted to ^31 7s. 9d-, and that made on the last Sunday of the
year in aid of the Benevolent Fund, to >£13 4s. 3d.
This fund is
now very low, and though it is not desirable that it should ever be
made so prominent a feature as to invite applications for assistance,
such an addition to it as would enable the Committee to meet any
case of emergency is very desirable.
The Monthly Soirees from October to April, and the annual
and new year’s dances have as heretofore afforded welcome and
much appreciated opportunities for social intercourse; those who
have recently joined the Society, in particular, are on these
occasions able to make the acquaintance of their fellow members ;
their presence is especially welcome, and it is hoped that they
will avail themselves of the facilities thus offered even more
freely than they have hitherto done.
The thanks of the Society
are eminently due to the ladies and gentlemen by whose assistance
these re-unions have been made so successful.
The Tuesday Evening Lectures Committee has again done
good service by arranging for Papers and Lectures either free
or at a small charge.
Owing to the unfortunate illness of
Mr. J. Allanson Picton, his course of lectures on the English
Commonwealth, which was to have been given last spring had
to be deferred, but means were found to supply the gap very
efficiently by papers and discussions; and during the autumn
�9
Mr. Picton, having happily recovered, was able to fulfil his
to the evident satisfaction of large audiences.
Two courses of lectures, one (now in progress) on Primitive Man,
by Mr. Sidney B. J. Skertchley, F.G.S., and one on Optimism
engagement
and Pessimism, by Mr. W. C. Coupland, M.A., B.Sc., have been
arranged, and will no doubt prove very attractive, and instructive.
A further step in this direction was taken towards the close
of the year, when your Committee, on the application of three
Members, granted the use of the building on Sunday afternoons
for the delivery of free lectures intended more especially for men
and women of the working class, no collection being made.
This experiment is as yet in its infancy, but its success already
seems assured.
On Sunday evenings the building has again been occupied
by the People’s Concert Society. It is gratifying to know that
these Sunday Concerts have, so far, been the most successful of
any conducted by that Society. They are the first of the kind ever
given in England, at which no attempt has ever been made to
conciliate Sabbatarian prejudices by forbidding applause or con
fining the music to that of a so-called sacred character. A similar
series on Sunday afternoons has this year been inaugurated at
the West End, and is rapidly achieving similar popularity.
A few alterations and repairs to the building have been effected
during the year, which it is hoped will add materially to the
convenience and comfort of the members.
NOTICE.
In accordance with the Rules, seven members of the Com
mittee will retire from office at the ensuing Annual Meeting, and
are not eligible for re-election until next year. The members so
retiring are Mrs. Fisher, Miss Fletcher, Mr. J. A. Gotch, Mr. J.
Hallam, Mr. H. Thorndike, Mr. J. H. K. Todd, and Mr. G.
Walker.
In addition Mr. G. W. Cooke, Mr. T. Dixon, and
Mr. T. Healey have resigned. The Society will, therefore, have
to elect ten new members to serve on the Committee, and two
auditors. Nominations for the above offices must be forwarded
�IO
to the Secretary (in writing) on or before February ist.
Printed
forms for nominations can be obtained in the library, or will be
forwarded by the Secretary upon application.
The Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday,
February 14th, at 7 p.m. precisely.
�FORM
OF BEQUEST TO THE
MORTGAGE
REDEMPTION AND REBUILDING FUND.
The cost of the freehold land and buildings belonging to the Society was
defrayed by the founders in 1825, a sum of £2,850 being raised thereon by
mortgage for the purpose of making certain alterations and additions to the
premises. It is desirable that this indebtedness should be cancelled in order that
the Society may occupy a secure financial position, and that no obstacle of
this nature may in the future retard the erection of a building suitable to its
increasing needs.
I give and bequeath unto the Treasurer for the
time being of “ South Place Religious Society,”
the sum of
to be raised and paid by and out of such part of my
personal estate and effects as may be lawfully applied
for that purpose, such sum to be applied in the first
place towards the redemption of the mortgage upon
the land and buildings of the Society situated and
being in South Place, Finsbury, and secondly, towards
providing a fund for the re-building of the said
premises.
N.B.—Devises of land, or bequests of money
charged on land, are void by the Statute of
Mortmain.
��Statement of Accounts of South Place Religious Society, for the year i88g.
GENERAL ACCOUNT.
Dr.
ORDINARY INCOME.
To Seat Rents for 1883, viz.
j,
Received in 1882...
„
„ 1883...
To receive
Doubtful
■ £60 0 0
20 0 0
,, Collections
,, Sale of Hymn jBooks and
Pamphlets ...
Pd. to Mr. Conway' £20 8 0
,,
Publishing
Committee
96 9 IO
Owing for Dr. And. Wilson’s
Publications
..............
£ s- d.
24 18 9
560 i 0
Received by
To receive.
Treasurer.
£ s. d. £ s. d.
560
Total for
1883.
£ s. d.
o
i
584 19 9
40 0 0
624 19 9
40 o o
624 19 9
79 16 5
79 16 5
178 13 7
lió 17 10
61 15 9
61 15
9
58 7 6
,, Rent of House (now C145 instead of £70
per annum) ...
.....................................
,, Chapel Lettings ...
.........................
58
90 o o
118 14 o
910 7
To Seat Rents for 1882, viz. :—
Unpaid 31st December, 1882
Received in excess of estimate
2
36 5 o
24 15 o
xox o o
Seat Rents for 1884, received in advance ...
Rent of House unpaid 31st December, 1882
Chapel Lettings ,,
,,
,,
,,
Collection for Mrs. Hampson’s Home
(June, 1883)..............
.........................
EXTRAORDINARY INCOME.
To Subscriptions to meet last year’s
Deficit
¿101 13 3
Actual amount of Deficit on
last year’s Profit and Loss
account
.........................
Excess of Subscriptions
31
7
13
Choir
............................................................
Salaries ...
...
...
..............
Advertisements................................................
Printing, Stationery, Stamps, &c.*..............
Tuning Organ
................................................
Sundries ...
Rates, Taxes, and Insurance ...
Coals and Gas ..............
Interest on Mortgage, 4 per cent., on ,£2,850
(less Income Tax)
,, Repairs, Ordinary
Owing for Dr. And, Wilson’s publications
(contra)............................................................
500
143
46
23
28
0
3
6
7
0
To pay.
£ s. d.
0
6
0
6
2
0
3
19
0
13 IO 8
36 9 6
27 4 2
6
7
4
II
63 18
41 6
49 0 0
17 9 6
3
5
3
0
0
8
0
Total for
1883.
£ s. d.
5°°
143
46
23
28
6
20
41
38
0
6
0
6
2
O
8
2
2
0
3
6
7
0
0
13
9
4
II2 18 3
58 15 II
3
7
o
By Sundries, 1882, balance due 31st Dec.,
,, Rates
,,
,,
„
,,
,, Gas, &c. ,,
,,
,,
,,
,, Interest on Mortgage
,,
,,
„ Repairs, Ordinary
,,
,,
,, Paid over to Mrs. Hampson’s Home ...
3
£1033
3
I
9
47
6
31
1882
„
„
»
,,
Balance to be received
By Balance in Treasurer’s hands..............
SURPLUS FOR 1883, viz.
Surplus on Ordinary Income
... >£13 19
Excess of Subscriptions to meet 1882
deficit.................................................
5 10
Received in excess of estimated seat
rents due for 1882..........................
9
IOI
,,
,,
,,
,,
,,
,,
,,
,,
,,
1032 17
o
6
o
o
32
25
52
24
By Advances, 1882, repaid to Treasurer ...
,, Mr. M. D. Conway, 8 months ... £333 6 8
,, Dr. And. Wilson, 4 months
... 166 13 4
Paid by
Treasurer.
£ s. d.
no 9 8
126 5 o
143 9 o
o
o
,,
,,
,,
„
Cr.
ORDINARY EXPENDITURE.
IO
2
99 0 5
O
O
O
XX
9
45 18
o
I 19 7
4
o
5 10 9
5 10 9
C1179 o 8
xox o o 1040 x6
5
PROFIT AND LOSS ACCOUNT.
Dr.
December 31st, 1882—To Balance, Deficit for 1882
December 31st, 1883—To Balance
..............
By Deficit for 1882 paid off out of special Subscriptions
,, Surplus for 1883
.................................................
ASSETS.
Balance in Treasurer’s hands
Amounts to be received for 1883 ..
Less payments to be made for 1883
LIABILITIES.
xox o o
99 0 5
Seat Rents for 1884, carried to new year
Balance on profit and loss account—Surplus for 1883 .
25 19 6
21 x8 X
i 19 7
¿4717 7
Z47 17
7
FUND FOR THE REDEMPTION OF THE MORTGAGE DEBT OF THE CHAPEL, .£2,850.
Dr.
To Donations ...
..............
.........................
,, Collection in May, 1883.........................
■■■
,, Part of A81 12s. realised by the sale of one share in the London and
County Banking Company, Limited, presented by Mrs. Mensbier
(the remaining ¿28 15s. 3d. being devoted to the fund for the
extinction of last year’s Deficit on General Account)........................
,, Profit on Soirees..............
...
...
...
..............
..............
,,
two Annual Soirees.........................
...
.........................
April Dividend on ,£227 xs. 8d. New 3 per Cents.
.........................
¿337 is- 8d.
„
,, October
,,
.JJ
o
X
^104 IX
Cr.
By Purchase of £100 New 3 per Cents at 99J and bkge.
,, Balance in hand............................................................
99 15 O
4 x6 i
X
¿104 XX
X
MORTGAGE REDEMPTION FUND INVESTMENT ACCOUNT,
In the names of Messrs. Mark Eagles Marsden; Robert Carter; and Thomas Healey (Trustees of the Fund).
Cr.
329 9 o
••• £329 9 o
¿329
9 o
BENEVOLENT FUND.
Dr.
To Balance in hand 31st December, 1882
„ Donations.........................
,, Collection on 30th December, 1883 .,
22 6 X
I 5 o
13 4 3
O.
By Sundry payments
........................
,, Balance in hand 31st December, 1883
19 15 o
17 o 4
¿36 15 4
¿36 15 4
Ihe deficit which the accounts showed at the end of last year having been extinguished by special subscription, there is, for the year 1883, a surplus of £zi 18s. id. The Seat
Rents have declined by about C45 ; on the other hand, the rent of the house yields, under the new arrangement, an increased income which more than counterbalances this loss.
The Lettings also show an improvement of about £10.
Examined by us, this 20th January, 1884, and found correct,
J. A. LYON,
» ™
r TT
„ ,
.
.
CLARENCE H. SEYLER,
ihe value of Hymn Books and Pamphlets in Stock, belonging to this account, estimated at cost price, is about ,£88.
)
J
Auditors
auditors.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Report of the committee of South Place Religious Society 1883
Creator
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South Place Religious Society
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 10, [1] p., 1 folded leaf ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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[South Place Religious Society]
Date
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[1884]
Identifier
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G5584
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Report of the committee of South Place Religious Society 1883), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
South Place Religious Society