THOMAS BENTLEY AND THE OCTAGON. 195 



of religious worship, was, I believe, principally composed of 

 Presbyterians, and had a liturgy specially drawn up for its 

 members. Dr. Clayton, of London, a man of great eminence 

 in his day, was engaged as minister ; but the society, after 

 Bentley's removal from Liverpool, seems rapidly to have 

 waned, and in 1776, the chapel was sold. This result was 

 very mortifying to Mr. Bentley, who thus wrote to Mr. 

 Boardman concerning it : 



"I have received a very mortifying letter on the subject of the 

 sale of the Octagon. I cannot understand the principle upon which 

 that institution has been sacrificed, but I am sure if the gentlemen 

 had not been unnecessarily precipitate, and had thought proper to 

 consult their distant friends upon the subject before they had con- 

 sented to ruin the noblest institution of the kind that has been 

 established, it need not have been given up. 



" Considering the pains I have always taken upon this matter, 

 and the many years, I may say, I have spent upon it, I ought in 

 decency to have had some intimation of the state of things before 

 so fatal a determination was made, and especially as I had neither 

 dropped my subscription nor cooled in my affections for that re- 

 spectable society. But it has been otherwise managed, and at this 

 distance I cannot be active in the matter. I can only lament the 



loss of an institution favourable to virtue and social worship 



If others who have had much greater benefit from the institution 

 than myself had felt the advantage of it as strongly as I have 

 always done, I am sure it would not have been abandoned." 



While Bentley was a resident in Liverpool he was a 

 staunch and unswerving opponent of the slave trade ; and 

 this principle, so creditable to him, but so completely at 

 variance with that of the money-making shippers and 

 merchants of those days, made him far from popular. Had 

 he sought popularity in the town of his adoption he would 

 have been in favour of the slave trade and of the part which 

 England was taking in the American war ; but he chose 

 " the better part ; " and taking the enlightened side of 

 religion and humanity, gained for himself, by his pursuits 

 and his principles, a name which is an honour to his 

 country. It is interesting, in connection with this allusion 



o 2 



