Seddon, although described as “a dullish person,” must have been a man of considerable pertinacity, patience and resource, as shown by the manner in which he steered his venture through the difficulties and dangers incident to its establishment, for he had to contend with the doubts, hesitation and luke-warmness of its professed supporters, and the “pleasing spirit of jealous rivalry” which existed between Liverpool and Manchester as to its locality. Liverpool advanced seven “excellent reasons” why the academy should not be settled at Warrington; of these one of the Manchester party writes:—“Some of them are false, others dubious, and all, whether true or not, trifling and impertinent.” This “retort courteous” was naturally followed by “Remarks on a letter from the gentlemen in Manchester to the gentlemen in Liverpool, subscribers to the intended Academy,” in which “the gentlemen in Liverpool” lose their temper most completely. Every fourth word in the remarks is italicised. “The gentlemen of Manchester,” are stigmatised as “the authors of contention and division,” and are subjected to much scathing sarcasm. Evidently the omens were not very propitious, but the wordy warfare eventually spent itself. Mr Seddon got his way; the trustees ultimately settled down to business and on June 30, 1757, the academy was duly inaugurated.
Its first home, immortalised by the lines in which Mrs Barbauld bids us
“Mark where its simple front yon mansion rears,
The nursery of men for future years,”
was described, in terms eminently suggestive of the incomparable Mr George Robins, as “a range of buildings” with “a considerable extent of garden ground, and a handsome terrace walk on the banks of the Mersey, possessing altogether a respectable collegiate appearance.” The “ugly, mean, old brick house,” no longer
“A dim old mansion, hidden half-away
From a dull world grown careless of its fame,”
has been transformed into a place of quiet, old-world dignity, and is now turned to uses worthy of its fame and in harmony with its traditions.
In spite of the seeming unanimity of the trustees, and the zeal and energy of their secretary, Mr Seddon, the fortunes of the Academy were ill-starred from the outset. Dr Taylor, one of the first Arians who ministered to the English Presbyterians, and an erudite and accomplished man—an author so widely read in his day that he is even mentioned by Burns in his Epistle to John Goudie:
“’Tis you and Taylor are the chief,