Rev A Brandram Private
Montreal 12th March 1840
My Dear Friend,
This morning at three o'clock I arrived in this city from a town in the Upper Province, the particulars of which with notices of other visitations and operations during the winter will be set before you in due time. On my arrival I found a letter from Quebec, stating that certain matters between the Bible Society in that place and your Agent here have been forwarded to you, and upon which I hasten and to write a few lines that you may at once have the whole subject before you entire.
The matter before you for adjudication is very simple, and containable, I may say, in a nutshell. It is this: Are the Agents, and other officers of the British and Foreign Bible Society excluded by their office from speaking at all public meetings except those for Bible Society purposes? – And are they excluded from having their names on the Committees of all religious associations, not immediately connected with Bible Society concerns? – I am blamed by the Quebec Bible Society for having spoken at a public meeting in the city of the French Canadian Missionary Society, a Society formed, not on sectarian views, but on precisely the same catholic, general, broad grounds as the British and Foreign Bible Society; and I am blamed for having my name on the Committee of the same; and am further told, that it is wrong in me to have my name on the Committee of any local institution. If it was wrong in me to speak at a public meeting of the Society formed on broad catholic principles, like those of your Society, it must of course be worse to speak at a public meeting of any body bearing a distinct denominational character, and hence it would be wrong in all cases for any of your Agents to speak at any Missionary Meeting whatever.
As to local Institutions, – Are your Agents excluded from lending their aid in Committee or otherwise in favour of the particular denomination to which they belong? And if not, how much less blamable are they in their addressing a Society grounded on general principles like your own liberal institution? I have not used the first mentioned liberty, but I have used the second, in accordance with the wishes of our friends here, and that, in the case of the Religious Tract Society, which is an auxiliary of the Society of the same name in London, and in the case of the French Canadian Missionary Society, formed as I have before stated on the same principles.
The question you have now to decide, is not, what is more or less suitable and prudent in particular cases and circumstances, but what are the principles of your Society in the matters here stated.
But your decision of the case before you will involve also the permission or prohibition of your Agents as to preaching in any church belonging to any individual body or denomination; for the great constant, and only argument of our Quebec friends against your Agent was the lending of his influence obtained through connection with you, in favour of sectarianism, that is, any ism except the Bible Society ism. Now I thought I was within the sphere and limits of the last mentioned ism in lending my little aid to the two societies before named whose isms sympathize with yours, if they are isms at all, which they are not.
But you will wonder how our friends in Quebec could discern or descry sectarianism in the act or acts referred to, seeing they were exclusively in connection with special non-sectarian societies. unriddle the matter I must let you into the secret of it, and upon which it all hinges. For a considerable time past, not less than two or three years, whatever move the Quebec Bible Society has not felt quite well towards the Society in Montreal, and mainly or entirely on the supposed grounds that Mr. Wilkes was the chief mover in it, and that he led the Society on according to his own views, and that he was building up through their means his own denomination, that is Independency, and against the Church of England, also the church of Scotland, and the Wesleyans, of whom the objectors consist, but chiefly of the body first mentioned. Now the fault found by the Quebec Committee against the Montreal Committee was that it, (the Committee of the city,) allowed Mr. Wilkes to ascend their back, and stand up on their shoulders, and from this vantage ground to promote and advance his own sectarian views. And again the fault found with me was, that I also had allowed Mr. Wilkes to climb up on my back, and to stand on my shoulders, from whence also to play the same evil part; and further, it was alleged that my shoulders were very high, because of your great height which lengthened me up. It was moreover supposed that the French Canadian Missionary Society had been got up through Mr. Wilkes's influence, and for the same evil purposes. You will wonder at this statement, and will hardly believe it. It is nevertheless perfectly true, for all that I have here stated to you of it jocosely, was gravely and very seriously stated to me in conversation by the three or four leading persons who began and have carried on this affair which is now before you. And further, Mr. Willoughby, who has had much more intercourse with these parties than I have, more than stated and confirmed to me all I have said.
Now the evidently main object in attaching me, was to get a hit at the Montreal Bible Committee, and through this to bring down if possible Mr. Wilkes from all his height. It was intended by the parties, and distinctly mentioned to me by them, that a copy of their disapprobation of my aiding the French Canadian Missionary Society, was to be sent to the Montreal Committee, and with the views in question. I begged privately and publicly that the Quebec Bible Committee would not thus communicate with the Committee of this place. If you do, I said to them, you will produce a collision between the two Societies, for the Montreal Committee will immediately pass a resolution, I am perfectly certain I said, approving of what you have disapproved of. I knew this well, because my aid to the French Canadian missionary Society was all given in the face and with the full understanding and approbation of all our Bible friends here. I at length succeeded in this request, and no communication was made. That my view of things in this was correct became evident as soon as the objections made at Quebec were known. The members of the Committee here were individually much dissatisfied with the fault found with your Agent in the case, and none were more so than the members of the Committee belonging to the Church of England. There was however no official communication, and therefore there could be no official disapprobation expressed, and thus the two Societies were kept from a formal collision.
The very day after I returned from Quebec, I formerly withdrew my name from the French Canadian Missionary Society, in order to meet the wishes of our Quebec friends, and in my letter of withdrawal, I stated in the simplicity of my heart the cause of my doing so. I sent a copy of my communication to Quebec. Not long after I received a letter objecting to my having mentioned as a cause that which was openly and uniformly mentioned as such in all the conversations and discussions on the subject, and asking me to contradict and counteract what I said. A happy loophole let me out here, for I would no more have done what I was thus required to do than I would have signed a declaration stating that I had never been in Quebec or in London.
This odd request and other things that transpired led me as a duty to write with more point than I would have wished in some of my communications to our friends in Quebec, as you will most probably discern in the papers now before you, which I understand were sent off from Quebec to you on the 22nd February.
It is very painful to me to write of these things to you at all. I wished you should never hear of them knowing how would you would be grieved at that occurrence, and how reluctant you would feel to give a judgment in the case. Things however have turned out otherwise, and you will have to judge in it. Judge righteous judgment therefore, under the influence of the Spirit of God, and in accordance to the spirit of the Bible Society. For my part I promised not to take in dudgeon what you may say, although perhaps I may rally you if I think you are wrong.
One word before closing in respect to what is said of Mr. Wilkes. The allegations and suppositions referred to are totally unfounded; and to this all the members of our Society here connected with the Church of England would I am sure subscribe. One or two accidental circumstances have led to the suppositions in question, but nothing can be more incorrect than the idea that he is using the Bible Society here to build up his own denomination. A good number of the best and most active members of the Committee, and who are constant in that attendance, are of the Church of England, and this would seem to be pretty fair proof that matters are not and cannot be as is somewhere supposed.
I have told you more than once in my communications from this country, that there are contentions and collisions here not a few, both political and religious. To travel through among all these is like traveling through our fields here, and over many of our roads. The traveller often bounces against these on his way, and not infrequently has his vehicle overturned by them. I thought I had been rather fortunate in escaping such accidents, and hoped to get away from the country in safety, when lo and behold I drove against this stump at Quebec, and who could have seen it before him covered over with snow as I have described it. And now whether the stump or the vehicle suffers injury by the shock is in your hands to state.
Believe me ever, My Dear Friend, Very Truly Yours,
James Thomson.