ving:

"I consider the act of calling upon me publicly to avow or disavow, to
approve or disapprove, in writing, any religious doctrine or statement,
however carefully or cautiously drawn up (in other words, to append my name
to a religious manifesto) to be an infringement of that social forbearance
which guards the freedom of religious opinion in this country with especial
sanctity.... I consider this movement simply mischievous, having a direct
tendency (by putting forward a new Shibboleth, a new verbal test of
religious partisanship) to add a fresh element of discord to the already
too discordant relations of the Christian world.... But no nicety of
wording, no artifice of human language, will suffice to discriminate the
hundredth part of the shades of meaning in which the most world-wide
differences of thought on such subjects may be involved; or prevent the
most gentle worded and apparently justifiable expression of regret, so
embodied, from grating on the {256} feelings of thousands of estimable and
well-intentioned men with all the harshness of controversial hostility."

Other doses were administered by Sir J. Bowring,[408] Sir W. Rowan
Hamilton,[409] and myself. The signed declaration was promised for
Christmas, 1864: but nothing presentable was then ready; and it was near
Midsummer, 1865, before it was published. Persons often incautiously put
their names without seeing the _character_ of a document, because they
coincide in its _opinions_. In this way, probably, fifteen respectable
names were procured before printing; and these, when committed, were hawked
as part of an application to "solicit the favor" of other signatures. It is
likely enough no one of the fifteen saw that the declaration was, not
_maintenance_ of their own opinion, but _regret_ (a civil word for _blame_)
that others should _think differently_.

When the list appeared, there were no fewer than 716 names! But analysis
showed that this roll was not a specimen of the mature science of the
country. The collection was very miscellaneous: 38 were designated as
"students of the College of Chemistry," meaning young men who attended
lectures in that college. But as all the Royal Society had been applied to,
a test results as follows. Of Fellows of the Royal Society, 600 in number,
62 gave their signatures; of writers in the _Philosophical Transactions_,
166 in number, 19 gave their signatures. Roughly speaking, then, only one
out of ten could be got