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On one occasion there was a most hot debate on the voting of a church-rate, which should embrace a new pulpit. Johnny had hurt his foot with a stub of wood as he was hurrying on his men at work in thinning a plantation.
As to a church-rate to repair th' owd steeple-house, why, my advice is to pull th' owd thing down, stick and stone, and mend your roads with it. It's a capital heap o' stone in it, that one must allow, and your roads are pestilent bad. Down with the old daw-house, I say, and mend th' roads wi' 't, and set th' parson here up for a guide-post.
It was his last re-election for a borough which he had represented for thirty years. In the Church-rate debate he rose from the opposition side of the house, and lamenting his separation from his old associates, did not spare them either reproaches or hostile criticism. Another desertion from the whig camp took place during this session, but in an opposite direction.
Mr Templeton, then, had refused, as a point of conscience, to pay the church-rate when the collector went round to demand it; had been summoned before a magistrate in consequence; had suffered a default; and, proceedings being pushed from the first in all the pride of Mr Brownrigg's legality, had on this very day been visited by the churchwarden, accompanied by a broker from the neighbouring town of Addicehead, and at the very time when I was hearing of the fact was suffering distraint of his goods.
"I never heard of a church-rate." Now, before I go farther, it is necessary to explain some things. One day before I was taken ill, I had had a little talk with Mr Brownrigg about some repairs of the church which were necessary, and must be done before another winter.
And though this may seem of no consequence to one who loves the Church more than the brotherhood, it does not seem of little consequence to me who love the Church because of the brotherhood of which it is the type and the restorer. It was long before another church-rate was levied in Marshmallows.
The men of Boston strove hard to secure the repeal of these barbarous laws and the disestablishment of the Congregational church; but they were outvoted by the delegates from the rural towns. The most that could be accomplished was the provision that dissenters might escape the church-rate by supporting a church of their own.
Some of them got the great Dan O’Connell to pay the town a visit, and some of them nobly stood by old John Childs when he became famous all the world over as the Church-rate martyr. The lawyers and the doctors were mostly Tories, but the tradesmen and the merchants were not a little leavened with the leaven of Dissent. Mr. Hammond was, however, a Liberal surgeon, and as such flourished.
Therefore, however we may differ, we are in reality at no strife." "But is there not this difference, that our Lord was, as you say, a child of the Jewish Church, which was indubitably established by God? Now, if I cannot conscientiously belong to the so-called English Church, why should I have to pay church-rate or tribute?" "Shall I tell you the argument the English Church might then use?
Once more followed a silence. "If people could only meet, and look each other in the face," said Mr Templeton at length, "they might find there was not such a gulf between them as they had fancied." And so we parted. Now I do not write all this for the sake of the church-rate question. I write it to commemorate the spirit in which Mr Templeton met me.
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