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MINISTRY AT STAND. [Chap. III. 



legislature told them, respectfully, that we should not obey what 

 we should regard as a wicked law. We rejoiced that we were 

 in a country where we might speak our mind, no one making 

 us afraid. . . . The cause of peace must go on. Your 

 H. C. Wright* and the Hutchinson family, with whom we 

 became friends immediately, and our J. Sturge and C. Dickens, 

 and, last but not least, Punch, are doing a vast amount of good. 

 The Free Trade movement, too, has worked a miracle in politics 

 and in humanity. This manufacturing district is full of life 

 and energy. Even the agriculturists have been stirred up 

 by the League. Persons are beginning to see that Christianity 

 is a practical religion. The sects are making abortive efforts 

 after Christian union, which, being based on the principles 

 of sectarianism, must fail and give birth to something better. 

 Education, teetotalism, peace, anti-capital punishment, prison 

 discipline, sanitary reform, short hours, and hosts of good 

 movements, are getting on so fast that persons can't be quiet, 

 wish they it ever so much." 



The following extract from a letter to the Rev. R. C. 

 Waterston, of Boston, U.S., relates to an effort to bring the 

 Peace question before the Easter gathering (1846) of Sunday 

 school teachers in Lancashire and Cheshire :■■ — " We have 

 been much pleased with the answer to the Dukinfield Peace 

 Address. It was F. Howorth's proposition to me at a pre- 

 vious meeting at Bury. I stirred him up to it, and we were 

 deputed (he as representative of sixty Bury teachers, and 

 I of forty Stand ones) to bring it forward. We had some 

 difficulty. The chairman and some of the committee would 



and are determined, at all hazards, neither to fight themselves, nor to hire 

 substitutes for so doing. 



"Your Petitioners, therefore, beg your Honourable House on no 

 account to give sanction to any measure of the kind proposed ; but to pass 

 such laws, and to adopt such policy, as may, with the Divine blessing, 

 effectually prevent the causes of war, and spread the blessings of peace, 

 commerce, and prosperity among all the nations which compose the 

 great brotherhood of man. 



' ' And your Petitioners will ever pray." 



* The author of "A Kiss for a Blow," etc., a zealous Abolitionist, had 

 spent some years in this country, and was one of Philip's most intimate 

 friends. 



