mittee had appointed him:[1]—and at the last Convention,—which, owing to sickness in my family, I was prevented from attending,—Mr. W. applied for admission into this body ; accompanying his application with the request that certain statements affecting his private character, and made by the Rev. B. F. Barrett at the previous meeting of the Convention, might be investigated "in an impartial and careful manner," and 41 that the result of the investigation be made as public as the charge had been." Whereupon a Committee of three laymen was appointed by the President to investigate the matter; which, as only one of the parties was present, and witnesses were called only on one side, could not, one would naturally suppose, have been investigated very impartially or very thoroughly. It is not, therefore, a matter of very great surprise, under all the circumstances of the case, that this Committee should have arrived at the conclusion, that Mr. Barrett, "under the influence of a mistaken impression," had "erroneously charged Mr. Wilks with injuring his character;" that Mr. Wilks had "satisfactorily established his innocence;" and that there had been, on Mr. Barrett's part, "a want of conformity to true order, in not seeking to be guided by the divine law" in settling this difficulty "at first." Now, however natural—and a thing to be expected, under all the circumstances—might have been this conclusion of the Committee, I am well satisfied that they would have come to quite a different conclusion, had they been in possession of all the facts and evidence in the case, and had these been duly considered. Heartily concurring, therefore, as I do, in the request of Mr. Wilks, in his memorial to the Convention of last year, that this matter be investigated "in an impartial and careful manner, in order that the truth concerning the unpleasant affair may be satisfactorily arrived at and having myself, without any satisfactory result, taken the first two steps required by the law of charily applicable to such cases, as that law is understood and interpreted by this Convention; and Mr. Wilks having been admitted a member of this body, contrary to my earnest protest,—I now appear before you, brethren, and respectively ask that you appoint an early, hour, when I may tell to you the fault of my offending brother, and lay before you the evidence which I am prepared to offer. And I further ask, respectfully, that the same publicity be given to this memorial, and the conclusions to which it may lead, as was given to that of Mr. Wilks a year ago.
And let me add, that, in what I am now asking and doing, I am not conscious of being actuated by any uncharitable feelings or wrong motives; but I can and do declare, with truth and sincerity, that I should rejoice from the bottom of my heart to see Mr. Wilks' innocence of the offence alleged "satisfactorily established." But as I confess myself wholly unable to see this at- ↑ It is worthy of mention here, that the Convention’s Committee on the Journal garbled this memorial in a very reprehensible manner, without any authority from the Convention, or myself. They omitted, in publishing, just about one half of it—all the first half—all proceeding this asterisk—which explains the reason of my penning such a memorial, and shows how this matter was first introduced into the Convention.
