rely. But I cannot answer the question which you put to me,
and I think I can even satisfy you that with my convictions I
should do wrong in replying to it in any manner. Whatever reason I
may have for being painfully and daily conscious of every kind of
unworthiness, yet I am sufficiently aware of the dignity of
religious belief to have been throughout a political life, now in
its thirty-third year, steadily resolved never by my own voluntary
act to make it the subject of any compact or assurance with a view
to a political object. You think (and pray do not suppose I make
this matter of complaint) that I have been associated with one
party in the church of England, and that I may now lean rather
towards another.... There is no one about whom information can be
more easily had than myself. I have had and have friends of many
colours, churchmen high and low, presbyterians, Greeks, Roman
catholics, dissenters, who can speak abundantly, though perhaps
not very well of me. And further, as member for the university, I
have honestly endeavoured at all times to put my constituents in
possession of all I could convey to them that could be considered
as in the nature of a fact, by answering as explicitly as I was
able all questions relating to the matters, and they are numerous
enough, on which I have had to act or speak. Perhaps I shall
surprise you by what I have yet further to say. I have never by
any conscious act yielded my allegiance to any person or party in
matters of religion. You and others may have called me (without
the least offence) a churchman of some particular kind, and I have
more than once seen announced in print my own secession from the
church of England. These things I have not commonly contradicted,
for the atmosphere of religious controversy and contradiction is
as odious as the atmosphere of mental freedom is precious, to me;
and I have feared to lose the one and be drawn into the other, by
heat and bitterness creeping into the mind. If another chooses to
call himself, or to call me, a member of this or that party, I am
not to complain. But I respectfully claim the right not to call
myself so, and on this claim, I have I believe acted throughout my
life, without a single exception; and I feel that were I to waive
it, I should at once put in hazard that allegiance to Tr