Joseph Cotton Wigram

“ The least disquietude produced terrible fits of sickness, agonising and pitiable to witness; and so my father was obliged to forego the satisfaction of taking leave of his beloved friend, and entreating him to re-establish the Jewish cause, in which, and for which, he had spent his life, upon a more satisfactory basis. He had once regarded the Jewish Mission, especially at Jerusalem, as one of the surest pledges of blessedness to the Church of England. He had the pain of leaving it in a position which he contemplated with grief, as a cause of dishonour rather than of blessedness and strength. ”

“ To this proposal Lord Shaftesbury and his friends, after a short deliberation, returned for answer—
“Having heard the paper read by the Lord Bishop of Rochester, and having deliberated on its contents, we come to the conclusion to accept the proposition. But we are disposed to think that the ends of justice will be better attained by the constitution of an entirely new tribunal, on which neither functionaries of the Society nor parties connected with the Rosenthal affair should be allowed to sit. ”

“ I hope, for the sake of the cause we have at heart and the Society itself, it may be possible to form a fresh tribunal of several persons, as proposed by yourselves and assented to by us, and I will take this opportunity of stating my conviction that there is no other way of preventing what is most undesirable, if it can be avoided,—the placing before the public of questions and differences which must tell injuriously upon the interests of the Society. ”

“ M'Caul became my Chaplain; they are competent to act for themselves; and I am not aware that, by discharging a particular service in respect of my candidates for orders (which his residence in London makes most convenient for such candidates) , Mr. M'Caul is debarred from freedom of opinion or action in matters with which I, as Bishop, have no direct connexion whatever. It has been as a friend of the cause of Israel, and not as a Bishop, that I was led into communication with your Lordship, and Mr. M'Caul has acted in his private and individual capacity in what he has done. ”

“ With, therefore, a prayerful desire to ascertain the whole truth, to do what is wise and just, to re-establish the confidence of those whose allegiance to the Society has been disturbed, to pave the way to a removal of many causes of dissatisfaction and to increase the prosperity of the Society, we request the President and Committee of the Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews to appoint four or five gentlemen, members of their Committee, to meet an equal number in Conference. ”

“ Attention is called to the manner in which they have been met, and the way in which, by misrepresentations, personalities, the introduction of irrelevant matters, and, finally, by their departure from their own arrangement, the Managers of the Society have evaded the prosecution of this inquiry into the case of Mr. Rosenthal and its bearings upon their own conduct and that of their officials. ”

“ It is generally acknowledged that men will do in their corporate capacity what they would hesitate to do individually; but surely it must be most damaging to a religious Society to refuse redress for a proved wrong, or to shrink from inquiry lest it should be inconvenient.
22. It is most desirable, if possible, in order to prevent these matters coming again before the public to the prejudice of the Society, to have a Conference of the friends of Israel, of those who are fully acquainted with the facts, and of those who shall represent the Society itself. ”

“ Macgowan, formerly head of the Society's mission at Jerusalem, has been dead some years, and many offensive remarks have been made as to our attacking the character of one who could not defend himself. We are therefore obliged to point out that a use has been made of our reference to that individual, which is not only unwarranted, but disingenuous and unfair. Whatever mention of him was made by us, was made to his friends and supporters in a strictly private and confidential Conference. ”

“ The absence of the President of our Society, Lord Shaftesbury, in communication with whom every step in the matter has been taken, has prevented my writing to your Lordship sooner. Much of the matter in the statement received from your Lordship, as I believe I have before remarked, was quite new to our Committee. It was indispensable that we should communicate with some of the persons who may yet be living, as to the circumstances stated in the document, before we could hold any conference with the parties from whom that document originated. ”

“ No evidence whatever was produced at the Conference on the opposite side in defence of the Jerusalem Mission, or of the late Dr. Macgowan, while those questions had nothing to do with the subject of the Earl of Shaftesbury's statement, but which you and your colleagues persevere to urge as “a violation of the understanding upon which the Conference was constituted,” and consider, by your letter of the 21st ult. sufficient to justify Mr. M'Caul's letter to the “Standard” of the 19th, condemnatory of Dr. Macgowan and the Society. ”

“ The Earl of Shaftesbury's character for Christian benevolence stands too high in the estimation of his countrymen, and indeed, of Christendom, for the originators of the Conference not to be persuaded that the mind of the President of the Jews' Society must have been biassed by information from other sources than they themselves had adduced as the basis of their appeal to the Society. ”

“ But we are compelled to state, that not only have we hitherto failed in bringing the members of the Conference, who were acting for the Society, to consider the real question at issue, but we have been met in so hostile a spirit, and subjected to such unworthy insinuations, that nothing but a stern conviction that we were bound to bring forward the facts with which we were acquainted, and to exhaust all means to obtain redress for the Rosenthals, could have induced us to persevere as we have. ”

“ I think it a mistake that the colleagues of Lord Shaftesbury in Conference should have been those only who were members of the Jerusalem section, officers of the Society, and a legal gentleman, appointed to meet me and my friends—one or two officers might have been fairly introduced, but some independent persons might have been introduced also. ”

“ We accept this as confirmation of the justice of our remonstrances, and we will remind the Committee that Lord Shaftesbury peremptorily insisted in forcing it upon us, and demanded the presence of a short-hand writer in order to give it publicity. It is much to be regretted that the representatives of the Society only now, for the first time, make the acknowledgment that they left us alone to protest against the introduction of “a personal matter in no way affecting the questions under inquiry.” ”

“ This Resolution has been submitted to Lord Shaftesbury, and he entirely concurs in it. Your Lordship will see that the Resolution adopts at once the requirement made by your Lordship and your colleagues, that the ultimate appeal should be to a single individual, if needed.
I remain your Lordship's very truly,
C. J. Goodhart. The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Rochester.
At a Meeting of the Committee, held at the Society's House, 16, Lincoln's Inn Fields, July 4th, 1866. ”

“ And they had hoped, by their conciliatory tone, and by confining themselves strictly to the simple matter in hand, they might have succeeded in eliciting, by sound evidence on both sides, the real merits of the case at issue. ”

“ Now, you know that the conditions which were finally agreed to, respecting the re-formed Conference, were taken down and copies exchanged on either side by the members of the old Conference ; you know also, that by the mention of an eminent individual for reference, if the re-formed Conference under a proper Chairman could not come to a friendly decision, never could have meant “a legal man who should hear evidence and give judgment;” ”

“ J. B. M'Caul, so directly counter to Mr. Money's desire, expressed in his letter, of avoiding publicity, and giving so unfair and inaccurate a representation of what actually occurred at the Conference,—compels this Committee to state, with much reluctance, that they must decline a Conference as proposed to be renewed; and that they feel that there is no other alternative than to leave each side to pursue its own course in the matter.
H. L. Layard,
Secretary. The Right Rev. the Bishop of Rochester. ”

“ Nicolayson, and of their present extreme difficulties, that £ be appropriated out of the Jerusalem Fund as a commencement of the contemplated subscription, and towards enabling Mrs. Rosenthal to establish herself in some business by which she may maintain her disabled husband and two afflicted sons. The Committee hope that by this step the subscription, which the Bishop and other friends have in view, may be raised to a satisfactory amount, and accomplish the desired object. ”

“ Money had to be present at the laying the foundation stone of a church in his own parish. On representing the impossibility of meeting in Conference on the day suggested, we received the following letter, which furnishes a specimen of the tone and temper with which we have been met throughout:—
May 17, 1866. My Lord, Mr. Layard has just sent me a copy of a note from your Lordship, to state that the Conference must again be postponed, and that until after Whitsuntide. ”

“ If, however, the statement above made with regard to the treatment of the Rosenthals cannot be disproved, what is the painful conclusion forced upon the friends and supporters of the Society viz. that the Committee have acted unjustly and oppressively, through their agents, towards those who had every claim to their sympathy, counsel, and support; that they accepted and acted upon unproved charges ”

“ Graham's connexion with the Society ceased, Mr. Rosenthal continued to be employed in connexion with the Mission at Jerusalem either as superintendent or dragoman, on a salary of 40l. per annum, while at the same time he was employed by Mr. Consul Finn as his official dragoman. On Mr. Nicolayson resuming the office of Secretary, as well as that of the head of the Mission, in July, 1856, having, from his knowledge of the native languages, no need of the services of a dragoman or interpreter, no provision was made for it in the estimates, and Mr. ”

“ S. Rosenthal are satisfactory, I feel bound to declare that Mr. S. Rosenthal is acquitted of the said charges, and cleared of the imputations which may have been cast on his character thereby.”
6. From the above statement, it appears that Dr. Macgowan, in 1853, admitted he had never taken the trouble to read the defence offered by the man against whom he had made very serious charges, although that defence had been made four years before. That Mr. Rosenthal was condemned by the Society at home unheard, and forbidden to receive any employment from any connected with them ”

“ In corroboration of this fact, it may be stated, that Mr. Nicolayson, early in 1853, helped in drawing up a compromise by which Dr. Macgowan was to give Mr. Rosenthal 150l. as compensation, and the Rev. H. Crawford approved the compromise and carried it to Dr. Macgowan, who refused to accede to the proposal, which included a full public examination.
5. On the 7th of November, however, in that year, Dr. Macgowan, in the prospect of legal proceedings, withdrew the charges he had made in the following terms:– “Having read, for the first time, Mr. ”