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so interested in it that the leisure hours of the first Sunday in the month are devoted by a knot of them to its perusal . One was affected with pity for poor Faulkner ; another with indignation at the cruelty of our penal laws ; a third with horror of the
stratagem ascribed to the clergymen ; whilst a fourth blamed Gogmagog ' s severity , which was thought to be disproportioned to the occasion ; and a fifth laughed at his credulity , declaring his conviction that ; 4 the old man had been
made to fume ( such was his expression in my hearing ) by a mere stop-gap newspaper paragraph . " I felt sympathetically , with the former class of my friends ; and reasoned as coolly as I could ( and I can sometimes affect coolmess , by which I have been told I have been considered as
insulting an opponent , holding a manifestly bad argument , ) with the latter . I vindicated the asperity of our vnknown author ' s style by shewing that the story , if true , was enough to irritate and vex a mind of sensibility ;
and by conjecturing ( in which I find myself right ) that an impassioned and perhaps somewhat intemperate letter would be most likely to draw forth an explanation from Wisbcach , the honour of which seemed , alter such a
communication , * concerned m , denying the story if possible , or at least in softening it by proper explanation . In the present pampered stale of the public mind a writer is not likely to be relished if lit- docs not make a free use
of the seasoning of acrimony .- — The charge of credulity 1 was not unxious to repel : when it was pronounced , 1 smiled at the recol-
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lection that for nearly the years of a roan ' s age , I had been branded as a sceptic . cc But what , " said I , " is the state of the Bri - tish press , if a story so minutely and circumstantially told , the scenes and actors in which are at
so smalt a distance from the metropolis , which is copied too into an Annual Register , which will be carefully placed in libraries , and preserved as long as the English language is read—if such a , story cannot under such
circumstances be believed ? " —I raised my voice as I uttered these last words , which had so much effect upon my friend that if he was not convinced , he was ( which might be as well ) silent . When I next meet him I expect he will triumph
unmercifully ; since , according to Mr . Wright , the whole story of the Clerical Farce is a fabrication . I must be in my turn silent ; and I begin to think , if such be the matter out of which books am
made , that I may wisely leave off to read as well as to talk . The Jfailaciousness of the press is a lamentable circumstance ; the springs from which the public mind draws knowledge , are poisoned at their source . I know
but of one antidote , and with that , sir , you have . kindly supplied us : I mean a liberal , impartial , and fearless periodical publication , in which the errors and follies the misrepresentations and
calumnies of our journals may be registered , and preserved for the use of posterity , in a commodious and permanent Repository . I remain , Sir , with a proper sense of Mr . Wright's civiliiy , of your indulgence , and of your reader * ' patience , COGMAGOG .
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494 « Gogmagog on the Clergy , Himself \ avd the Press .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1808, page 494, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2396/page/38/
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