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The Society was represented by their President, the Earl of Shaftesbury; the Chairman of their Jerusalem Section, Mr. Strachan; their two Secretaries, Mr. Goodhart and Captain Layard; their Solicitor, Mr. Wizard; and the Rev. Mr. Cohen. We at once took special objection to the presence of their solicitor, but that gentleman stated that he was there not in his legal capacity but as a member of the Committee, and the President gave his assurance that the Conference would be strictly friendly and sacredly confidential.
The following extract from a Protest, which we felt bound to send in, will show the difficulties we had to contend with from the very commencement of the Conference:–
“Immediately after prayers, and to the amazement of the Bishop and his friends, the President of the Society ppened the Conference by charging them, in harsh terms, with constituting themselves the public assailants of the late Dr. Macgowan's character after he had been six years in his grave, describing the charges he referred to as ‘heinous charges,’ ‘beastly offences,’ and ‘disgusting’ accusations. No charges could have been more groundless than those adduced by Lord Shaftesbury, and no occasion for making them would have been less suitable; and it could not be otherwise but that this remarkable opening to a ‘friendly' Conference should cause both pain and astonishment to the gentlemen who had come to meet the Committee.
The Bishop and his friends had desired a Conference on the basis of the statement which had been submitted to the President and Committee of the Society, and had believed that they had, in good faith, accorded such a Conference on the stipulated basis.
Had the Bishop and his friends responded to the noble President's personal attack upon them in the same tone in which unhappily his Lordship indulged, there must at once have been an end to the Conference, for Lord Shaftesbury delivered his attack before one word affecting the case had been uttered on the Bishop's side.
In mild and suitable language, becoming the gravity and emergency of the occasion, the Bishop, firmly but courteously, on his own behalf and on behalf of his friends, repelled the groundless charge which had been made against them, reminding the Conference that the written statement forwarded to the Committee and acknowledged by them, formed the exclusive basis of its deliberations. And they had hoped, by their conciliatory tone, and by confining themselves strictly to the simple matter in hand, they might have succeeded in eliciting, by sound evidence on both sides, the real merits of the case at issue.”
The President then stated that he would insist that the allegation in the last clause of the nineteenth paragraph of our statement should be disposed of in the first instance; a course which we altogether deprecated, as we had intended to take up the different points in the statement of facts seriatim as they occurred; and it not only disturbed our whole course of procedure, but it was foreign to our purpose, and nothing was further from our wishes than to bring up unnecessarily anything injuriously affecting the memory of the dead. The President was, however, so peremptory in his requirement that the conduct of Dr. Macgowan should be at once gone into, not only as regarded his treatment of the Rosenthals, but as regarded his private character, that we had no alternative but to comply with the demand of the President. We were thus obliged during the first two days of the Con-
