this brother's offence, together with the evidence of it, to be told to it; or whether it would practically, as its President had already done by his advice, repudiate one of its own acknowledged and fundamental rules of discipline, as laid down in the preamble to its Constitution, (see Journal for 1856, p. 55). Accordingly I waited till the next meeting of the Convention in 1856, and then addressed to that body the following memorial.
TO THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE NEW CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.
It is known to some of your body, that at the meeting of the Convention in Portland two years ago, the name of the Rev. Thomas Wilks was reported by the Executive Committee as one whom they had thought proper to appoint Assistant Editor of the Boston N. J. Magazine, although Mr. Wilks, up to that time, had not been received into the Convention. It is also known, that, on the reading of the Report of that Committee, I moved in Convention that the Rev. Thomas Wilks' name be stricken from the list of officers appointed by them "on the ground that he was not a member of the Convention." And I was not then, nor am I now, aware that any person not connected with the Convention had ever before been appointed to office in this Body, if there was one solitary voice opposed to his appointment. Nevertheless my motion to have Mr. Wilks' name stricken out upon this ground, met with strong opposition. And when it became evident that the motion, if pressed to a vote, would be lost, I stated, with much reluctance, but from a solemn sense of duty, that I had other and still stronger reasons for urging the omission of this name ; but that I preferred not to give those reasons to the Convention at that time—that I deemed it most wise, kind and charitable not to do so;—that I was quite willing however, to state them fully and frankly to the Executive Committee, or to any other Committee that the Convention might be pleased to appoint. But the retention of Mr. Wilks in the office to which the Ex. Committee had appointed him, was still insisted on, and it was even thought to be uncharitable in me, that I had declared my strongest reasons for objecting to his premature if not disorderly appointment, to be such as I would prefer not to give to the whole Convention. And after hearing my course characterized in a manner which I am sure it deserved not to be, I felt constrained to add, that, as I disliked innuendoes, and liked plain speaking probably as much as any of my brethren, I would say that my strongest reasons for objecting to Mr. Wilks being appointed to any office in this Convention, was that he had been guilty of a grave misdemeanor—a cruel slander—and one which had never been retracted nor acknowledged,—I have felt myself here, called upon to state thus much, in order that my brethren, who were not present at the Convention in Portland, may see under what circumstances or constraining influences I made the statement that I did. But it was unanimously agreed (and I heartily concurred in the vote) that nothing which had been said or done in relation to this matter in that Convention, should be suffered to appear upon the Journal.
But Mr. Wilks was still continued in the office to which the Executive Com-
