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silver Medal to the Rev . R ; Aspland , on behalf of the Author of " The Returning Prodigal /' &c ; , as a token of the Society ' s gratitude for the excellent Tracts she
had written for it ; and availed himself of that opportunity to speak in terms of high commendation of that Lady and of the other Ladies whose literary contributions had been made to the Society .
• Mr . Aspland returned thanks —and expressed-the pleasure he felt in receiving this token of the Society ' s approbation and gratitude towards one so nearly allied and so deservedly dear to him .
Me described the surprise and pleasure he had felt on receiving and reading the first Tract from the pen of Mrs * Hughes ; this had made him acquainted with that Lady , and the friendship to which it gave rise had been to him * a source of
uninterrupted pleasure and satisfaction . The health of " Mrs . Mary Hughes , Mrs . Price , and the other literary contributors to the Society , " was then proposed , and cordially received . The next sentiment given was , " The Education of the Poor—the great source of public strength , and the best security for public tranquillity and happiness . "
The Chairman on again rising , said , that he had to propose the health of a gentleman , whom he could hardly say that he kuew personally , but whose writings he had much admired , and
whose steadiness to the cause of religious liberty had always given him great satisfaction . After passing some other handsome eulogiums on the Gentleman , lie concluded by proposing " the health of Mr . Fox . "
The following we believe to be a pretty correct report of the substance of Mr . Fox ' s reply : " That in professing his zeal for the objects of this Society he was only declaring that he possessed the feelings of a man and the principles of a Christian , it was entitled to support ,
for it tended to benefit the poor , those who had drawn blanks in the great lottery of life , who were told , and too truly , that for them there was no cover at nature ' s table , who came into the world , but without inheriting their share
of the world , nay with a mortgage on their very labour for purposes in which they had little or no personal interest , and who , b y the very fact of the physical evils and the temptations of their condition , had a moral claim on the beneficence of their more fortunate brethren .
The Society deserved support , not only because its publications tended to counteract these evils by inculcating Christian principles and virtuous habits , but also on account of the high intellectual character of those publications , so far be .
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yond that of most productions clrcafeiteft under the name of religious Tracts : Th ^ growing intellect of the ( | oor , fostered afl it was by the spread of education , the formation of such establishments as the Mechanics' Institute , and the prodigious multiplication of cheap publications
comprising matiy of the' best authors in the language , required a stronger aliment than that which was commonly offered to it , and such their Tracts afforded . The Society had a further claim arising from the industry with which unbelievers were attacking Christianity , and the mental
rauk of some of the authors whose productions were most widely diffused . They found amongst their opponents the acute and brilliant Voltaire , and the coarser but not less argumentative Paine , men
whose productions on any subject were not to be disposed of in a summary way , by the mere application of a condemnatory epithet , and which were certain , btt other' accounts , of engaging attention , and with thousands a favourable
attention . There was one also , who could now only be adverted to with un mingled sorrow , the premature close of whose career in that land to which he had hastened to aid in battlidg for the cause
of human kind , was itself a disproof of his own doubts ; ( for who could contemplate his extraordinary mind without conviction that it was formed for far
nobler ends than had be 6 n accomplished by it here ?) who must yet be placed m the hostile ranks , and some of whose productions were eagerly employed for the purposes of unbelievers . He wa # our enemy , not for his antipathy to the cant of the age ; not for his sympathy
With the oppressed of every region ; not for his indignant reprobation of the sacrifice of the interests of the many to the caprices of the few ; but for qualities in his writings on which it was needless , as it would be painful to dwell , which from these brighter attributes derived factitious attractions and more dangerous
power . This formidable array was not best encountered by the chancery method of abandoning literary property to piracy , which operated as a premium for the multiplication of such works ; nor by the Old-Bailey method of fine and imprisonment , enlisting the sympathies of human nature in favour of those who were
consigned to punishments as severe as usually awaited some of the worst offences against society ; but by the method of this institution which commended Christianity at once to the mind and heart . Thus should we become a
Christian nation * That appellation had been recently denied to us , on the ground of an extension of religious liberty having
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372 Intelligence . —Christian TtaM Society .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1824, page 372, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2525/page/52/
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