"Weston-s.-M., 19th Oct., 1880.
"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,
"Behold me (in imagination, as I really am) still at home on our great vegetarian day.
"I warmly thank you for your kind letter, and was purposing to write, but in heaps of letters could not find yours with the new address, which I have now entered in my book.
"I have finally resolved not to bustle about so late in the year, and have resigned my place as President in consequence. But it is reported to me that the Executive will prefer to exempt me from attendance in this month….
"Public affairs make me very melancholy. Mr. Gladstone is not to blame for the state of Ireland; but both in Afghanistan with India and in South Africa, I think he has allowed his colleagues to neutralize his public professions, and has made compromises most calamitous.
"The ministry seems to me not worthy of the Parliament. I do not doubt that the plutocracy in the next ten or even five years will have a heavy and deserved fall, but with how much convulsion and suffering in Ireland, in India, and in South Africa, all inflicting miseries on us—you will live to see: I fear it cannot be small, and that our institutions, called Fundamental, will be very gravely shaken.
"I honour your Piscarian position, and with our society would recognize it; but the discovery that you all eat fish forbids me to glory that I have converted a family to our Rules! With kind regards to Mr. Kingsley and the rest, I am,
"Your sincere friend,
"F. W. Newman."