If Your Honour had taken the trouble to look beyond the commencement of the Catalogue of Books which you quoted, you would have seen that it is a list of 149 publications. You would have observed in this list the names of authors, who are regarded by all who have studied their sentiments and characters as the pride and ornament of Unitarianism, of Christianity, of Great Britain, and of human nature. But although no society in Europe, literary, scientific, political, or religious, can exhibit in the list of its members, or in the list of books which it may happen to circulate, more splendid and more honoured names than these, yet I think that our Committee does right in placing the "Improved Version" at the head of the Catalogue, because no book which is designed only to explain and enforce the doctrines of Scripture can be so important as the Scripture itself.

In the preceding remarks I have not attempted to shield the Officers and Committee of our Association by shifting the blame from them upon others, or by pretending that they did not know the contents of the book which they circulated, or that they are not responsible both for the competency, and for the fair dealing and honesty of its authors. Nor would any of our subscribers attempt to screen themselves by any subterfuge from the responsibility which belongs to them. I have no doubt that Mr. Wellbeloved, Mr. Kenrick, and Mr. Shore, agree with us in thinking that the "Improved Version," which never pretended to be a perfect or faultless version, is nevertheless a valuable addition to our Catalogue of Books. From motives of private friendship, as well as for the purpose of obviating Your Honour's imputations on the character of those gentlemen, I am induced to add a few observations relating to each of them individually.

Mr. Shore was High-Sheriff for the county of Derby in 1832. The Judges of Assize represented him to the King in Council as a fit man to be entrusted with authority in his own shire inferior only to that of the Sovereign at the very time when, according to Your Honour's late exhibition of him in a Court of Equity, he was joining in an act, which would have made him the object of reproach in any society of honourable men. I know of no man in England better fitted than Mr. Shore, by his birth and connexions, his station in society, his moral and religious habits and

principles, and his consistency as a Protestant Dissenter, to be the representative of Lady Hewley in the present day, and to administer her charities according to her expressed intentions. The Dissenters of every Denomination, with the exception of the gloomy and morose, will, I apprehend, regard his exclusion from the trust with feelings rather of shame than of exultation.

When I began this letter I was not aware (see above, p. 4.) of the grounds on which Your Honour cited the name of Mr. Kenrick as a subscriber to the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. In consequence of the appearance of a letter from Mr. Tottie, the defendants' solicitor, in the Leeds Mercury, I have since learnt that Mr. Kenrick was one of Lady Hewley's second set of trustees, who had the management of her alms-house. Mr. Kenrick's family have been Presbyterian Dissenters from the passing of the Act of Toleration to the present day. During the life-time of Lady Hewley they were as prominently such at Wrexham as she herself was at York. Of Mr. Kenrick's father honourable mention is made in the Introduction to the "Improved Version." He was one of the successors of James Peirce, of Exeter, whose tombstone was rejected in 1726 by the rector of his parish, because in a Latin inscription it attributed learning and virtues to a heretic. In the period of my youth, Mr. Kenrick and I, being excluded as Dissenters from Oxford and Cambridge, resorted together to the University of Glasgow, where he obtained every literary honour and distinction which his Alma Mater could confer. On leaving the University, he was immediately appointed the classical tutor in Manchester College at York. His predecessor was an orthodox Presbyterian of the Church of Scotland. Mr. Kenrick was chosen, neither because he was a Presbyterian, nor because he was a Unitarian, but for the same reason, for which the Bishop of London lately entrusted to him the revision and editing of Matthiæ's Greek Grammar, viz. because he was the fittest person that could be obtained to fulfil the office. Yet because, in consistency with the liberty of judgment assumed by all English Presbyterians, he differs from Lady Hewley upon some disputed points of Christian doctrine, and aids by his subscription the publication of a particular version of the New Testament, he is declared by Your Honour in

capable of appointing a few poor women to an alms-house. Could such a decision have been made known to Lady Hewley, she would probably have said, that it might suit the narrow conceptions of a strict Episcopalian, but that the notions of a Presbyterian about faith and charity are as much more expansive, as York Minster exceeds St. Saviourgate Chapel in external grandeur and dimensions.

Mr. Wellbeloved's abilities and attainments as a lecturer on Biblical Criticism are so superior, that if, under any new appointment, Lady Hewley's trustees determine to bring up young men for the ministry with those means of studying the Scriptures in the original languages, and with those habits of investigation which had become in her time, and have been ever since, the most distinctive features of English Presbyterianism, they will be almost obliged to send them to Manchester College at York. I believe that few books have contributed more to cherish the spirit of piety in young persons than Mr. Wellbeloved's "Devotional Exercises," a work marked No. 141, in that Catalogue of Books which Your Honour produced as evidence against him.* Allow me also to mention the great service rendered to religion by the work upon which Mr. Wellbeloved is now engaged, of a new translation of the Bible. Suppose an English reader to be occupied in the serious and diligent study of the Scriptures; that he wishes, for example, to comprehend the design of the book of Job, and to be furnished with an improved version, which may enable him to connect together the several parts of the poem, so as to view them as one consistent

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* Among other books of devotion which are contained in the same Catalogue is one (No. 68) by the Rev. Joseph Hutton, a Presbyterian Minister at Dublin. Many of the prayers in this excellent manual are taken from the Liturgy of the Church of England. In others of them I find such expressions as the following: "thy be"loved Son, Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Redeemer," p. 28; "the Lord Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate," p. 78; "through the mediation of thy beloved Son, our dear Redeemer," p. 85; our Divine Redeemer," p. 120; "in grateful remembrance "of my dear Redeemer," p. 143; "of loving and serving thee, and thy blessed Son, my Saviour," p. 144. These expressions are almost identical with some of those phrases in Lady Hewley's will on which the greatest stress was laid, in order to prove that her religious opinions were diametrically opposite to Mr. Wellbeloved's; and yet the fact of his subscribing to the society which circulates this book is brought to prove that his opinions are diametrically opposite to hers.

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whole. Without wishing to detract from the merit of the metrical version published in 1771 by another Minister of the Presbyterian Denomination, Mr. Thomas Scott, or of the translation lately produced by Dr. Boothroyd, a learned Minister among the Independents,* I think that such a person cannot possibly do better than employ the translation published by Mr. Wellbeloved in 1828. Having attended Mr. Wellbeloved's ministry, and been his pupil during two sessions of nine months, and having heard all the evidence that has been produced respecting the character and principles of Lady Hewley, I think it extremely probable that if her life could have been prolonged to the present day, and if she had continued a Dissenter, she would have thought Mr. Wellbeloved a fit and worthy successor to her friend Dr. Colton, and would have esteemed a portion of her income well applied in enabling him to complete his translation of the Bible, and to enjoy a share of that honourable ease and independence to which a man of his literary, scientific, and theological attainments seems to be entitled.

On approaching the close of my letter, I am reminded also of the termination of the hearing. Sir Edward Sugden mentioned to Your Honour that he had been reading the Life of John Biddle, a Unitarian, who was imprisoned and otherwise punished for his opinions in the time of Oliver Cromwell. If Sir Edward Sugden had gone a little further back, he might have stated, that Unitarians

* Dr. Boothroyd is the author of a work in three volumes quarto with the following title: "A new Family Bible and Improved Ver"sion, from corrected Texts of the Originals, with Notes," &c. Huddersfield, 1824.

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What an alarming fact! And to make the matter worse, he has had the presumption to dedicate his New Bible to the King-to his late Majesty George IV.! He spares not his censures on the “ thorized version," and thinks it greatly inferior to the Geneva version, which was published before it! He professes to "improve" not only the New Testament, but the Old! He extols the "good sense" and learning of Archbishop Newcome! Let all men shun the Independents! They have a Bible of their own!

If the Unitarians had any disposition to mar the designs, and injure the reputation of those who oppose them, by working upon the prejudices of the ignorant vulgar, how easily might they have done it here! But, instead of this, we are, I trust, desirous of paying all due respect to the learning and talents of Dr. Boothroyd, and to his efforts to advance the study of the Scriptures.

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had in this county been sentenced to death for their profession, and burnt by Protestants at the stake. He might have added, that their opponents cannot now go further than to assail their reputation; and if he could have anticipated what Your Honour was about to say, he might have forewarned you that it little becomes an English Judge to prefer a serious moral charge against individuals without an absolute necessity; and that it still less becomes a rational being to deal about his blows without knowing on whom they will fall.

With the greatest respect for Your Honour's official situation, and for all the tribunals and public institutions of my country,

I remain,

Your Honour's most obedient humble Servant,

JAMES YATES.

January 25th, 1834.

Office of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association,

3, Walbrook Buildings, London.

P. S. To save trouble, I add, that I shall not take notice of any remarks upon this letter, unless they be authenticated with the name and address of the writer.

THE END.