on heart-stricken young men; but their final characteristics were not yet apparent.’
It is to a Norwich man that we owe the publication of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. Luke Hansard, to whom they owe their name, was born in Norwich, 1725, was trained as a printer, went to London with but a guinea in his pocket, was employed by Hughes, the printer of the House of Commons, succeeded to the business and became widely known for his despatch and accuracy in printing Parliamentary papers and debates. He died in 1828, but the business was continued by his family, and to refer to Hansard became the invariable custom when an M.P. was to be condemned out of his own mouth—as Hansard was supposed never to err. Recently Hansard has been carried on by a company, but the old name still remains.
Dr. Stoughton has in vain, in a number of the Congregationalist, attempted to record the memory of a man well known and much honoured in his day—the Rev. John Alexander, of Norwich. The portrait is a failure. It gives us no idea of the man with his rosy face, his curly black hair, his merry, twinkling eye, his joyous laugh, when mirth befitted the occasion, or his tender sympathy
where pain and sorrow and distress had to be endured. Mr. Alexander’s jubilee was celebrated in St. Andrew’s Hall in 1867, when the Mayor and a crowd of citizens did him honour, and a sum of money for the purchase of an annuity was presented, thus obviating the necessity of doing to him as on one occasion he in his humorous way suggested should be done with old ministers when past work—that they should be shot. In 1817 Mr. Alexander had come to Norwich to preach in the old Whitfield Tabernacle in place of Mr. Hooper, one of the tutors at Hoxton Academy. When I went to Norwich he had built a fine chapel in Prince’s Street, and amongst the hearers was Mr. Tillet, then in a lawyer’s office, a young man famous for his speeches at the Mechanics’ Institute and in connection with a literary venture, the Norwich Magazine, not destined to set the Thames on fire; latterly an M.P. for Norwich and proprietor and editor, I believe, of one of the most popular of East Anglian journals, the Norfolk News. It was in Prince’s Street Chapel I first learned to realize how influential was the Nonconformist public, of which I frankly admit in our little village, with Churchmen all round, I had but a limited idea. It seemed to me that we were rather a puny folk,
but at Norwich, with its chapels and pastors and people, I saw another sight. There was the Rev. John Alexander, with an overflowing audience on the Sunday and an active vitality all the week, now dining at the palace with the Bishop or breakfasting at Earlham with the Gurneys, now meeting on terms of equality the literati of the place (at that time Mrs. Opie was still living near the castle, and Mr. Wilkins was writing his life of the far-famed Norwich doctor, the learned and ingenious author of the ‘Religio Medici’), now visiting the afflicted and the destitute, now carrying consolation to the home of the mourner. John Alexander was a man to whom East Anglian Nonconformity owes much. In the old city there was a good deal of young intelligence, and a good deal of it amongst the Noncons. Dr. Sexton was one of the Old Meeting House congregation, as was Lucy Brightwell, a lady not unknown to the present generation of readers. To a certain extent a Noncon. is bound to be more or less intelligent. He finds a great State Establishment of religion wherever he goes. It enjoys the favour of the Court. It is patronized by the aristocracy. It enlists among its supporters all who wish to rise in the world or to make a figure in society. By means of the endowed
schools of the land, it offers to the young, even of the humblest birth, a chance of winning a prize. Conform, it says, and you may be rich and respectable. It was said of a late Bishop of Winchester that he would forgive a man anything so long as he were but a good Churchman, and even now one meets in society with people who regard a Dissenter as little better than a heathen or a publican. A man who can thus voluntarily place himself at a disadvantage, to a certain extent, must have exercised his intellect and be ready to give a reason for the faith that is in him. Naturally, men are of the religion of the country in which they are born—Roman Catholics in Italy, Mahometans in Turkey, Buddhists in the East. It requires more power and strength of mind and decision of character to dissent from the Church of the State than to support it. ‘How was it,’ asked Dr. Storrar, Chairman of the Convocation of the University of London, the other day, ‘that the lads educated at Mill Hill Grammar School had done so well at Cambridge and Oxford?’ The reply, said the Doctor, was—I don’t give his words, merely the idea—to be found in the fact that a couple of centuries ago there were men of strong intellect and tender consciences who refused
to renounce their opinions at the command of a despotic power. They had been succeeded by their sons with the same quickness of intellect and conscience. Generations one after another had come and gone, and the children of these old Nonconformists thus came to the school with an hereditary intelligence, destined to win in the gladiatorship of the school, the college, or the world.
Let me now give an anecdote of Dr. Bathurst, the Lord Bishop of Norwich, too good to be lost. It is told by Sir Charles Leman, who described him in 1839 as gradually converting his enemies into friends by his uniform straightforwardness and enlarged Christian principle. One of his clergy, who had been writing most abusively in newspapers, had on one occasion some favour to solicit, which he did with natural hesitation. The Bishop promised all in his power and in the kindest manner, and when the clergyman was about to leave the room he suddenly turned with, ‘My lord, I must say, however, I much regret the part I have taken against you; I see I was quite in the wrong, and I beg your forgiveness.’ This was readily accorded. ‘But how was it,’ the clergyman continued, ‘you did not turn your back on
me? I quite expected it.’ ‘Why, you forget that I profess myself a Christian,’ was the reply.
Of a later Bishop—Stanley—whom I can well remember, a dark, energetic little man, making a speech at Exeter Hall, we hear a little in Caroline Fox’s memories of old friends. In 1848 she writes: ‘Dined very pleasantly at the palace; the Bishop was all animation and good humour, but too unsettled to leave any memorable impression. I like Mrs. Stanley much—a shrewd, sensible, observing woman. She told me much about her Bishop, how very trying his position was on first settling at Norwich; for his predecessor was an amiable, indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course too, all which the present man has to correct as way opens, and continually sacrifice popularity to a sense of right.’