n to
the liberty taken with you, and the manner in which you were
humbugged when in concert with the London societies, and the absolute
triumph of your cause when conducted with single-handed integrity,
intelligence, and energy. If it shall happen that you do not approve
of all I have said, I am sure you ought, because without you, and
with you, if you had left it to the fellows here, Scotland's
Dissenters would have now appeared the degraded things which, on the
Bible subject, the English Dissenters have appeared in my eyes for
some years past. It is due to you. I was fairly rejoiced when I saw
Lord John's declaration, because I could see from his answer to Sir
James Graham that he meant the thing should be done. Scotland ought
to have a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving, and as I said to a
friend to whom I wrote in Edinburgh, "You ought to have a
monument--the Thompson monument." "That, sir," the guide would say,
"is erected to honour a man by whose honest energy and zeal Scotland
was freed from the most degrading tyranny--that of a monopoly in
printing the Word of God." The tablet should bear that memorable
sentence of yours on the first day of your examination, "All
monopolies are bad." Of all monopolies religious monopolies are the
worst, and of all religious monopolies a monopoly of the Word of God
is the most outrageous.' Alas! I have heard nothing of the Thompson
monument.

Such a man was John Childs. One more busy in body and brain I never
knew. That he was disposed to be cynical was natural. Most men who see
much of the world, and who do not wear coloured glasses, are so. Take
the history of the Bible monopoly. The work of its abolition was
commenced by John Childs, of Bungay, carried on and completed as far as
Scotland was concerned by Dr. Adam Thompson, while the British public in
its usual silliness awarded 3,000 pounds to Dr. Campbell, on the plea--I
quote the words of the late Dr. Morton Brown, of Cheltenham--that, 'God
gave the honour very largely to our friend, Dr. Campbell, to smite this
bloated enemy of God and man full in the forehead.' The bloated enemy,
as regards Scotland, was dead before Dr. Campbell had ever penned a line.
As regards England, I believe it still exists.

It must have been about 1837 that the name of John Childs, of Bungay, was
made specially notorious by reason of his refusal t