138 MINISTRY AT WARRINGTON. [Chap. IV. 



" FAIR PLAY. 



" To the People of Warrington. 



" My Friends, — Those who expected you to vote for giving 

 up a footpath have been disappointed, and will not again 

 attempt the same course. You confirmed your rights, but you 

 also confirmed the opinion of those who think that working 

 people will not listen to argument. When you would not hear 

 Alderman McMinnies on one side of the question, I would not 

 speak on the other, though the Mayor courteously gave me the 

 opportunity. Your noise last night was not drunken clamour — 

 it was earnest feeling; but noise is not argument." 



He reminds them that they had much still to do : they 

 would have to meet against Sunday drinking, for Ragged 

 Schools,* and perhaps for a new Museum ; and concludes, " Let 

 us conquer our own bad passions, as well as those who oppose 

 us." When, a few months afterwards, he sent some of his 

 papers to Mrs. H. Martineau, she replied that she had read 

 them with strong interest and sympathy. It was something to 

 know that no less than eleven footpaths in the neighbourhood 

 of one town had been lost or threatened. It showed the 

 magnitude of the evil. There was nothing in the packet that 

 she liked better than his handbill — about the working-men not 

 listening to adversary's arguments. 



When the war with Russia was exciting popular enthusiasm, 

 Philip delivered a series of lectures in the chapel (November 

 and December, 1854), which were soon after repeated in a 

 condensed form at the Teutonic Hall, Liverpool, on week-night 

 evenings, followed by free public discussion. They were then 

 printed at his Oberlin Press, and published in compliance with 

 the request of the Liverpool Peace Society, under whose 

 auspices they had been repeated : — " Words in the War ; being 

 Lectures on ' Life and Death in the hands of God and Man/ by 

 a Christian Teacher." The subjects of the lectures are very 



* At this time, active steps were being taken to establish a Ragged 

 School at Warrington ; but owing to the sudden repeal of the Minute of 

 Privy Council (1856) which gave aid to such schools, nothing effective was 

 done. 



