WHO IS THE REVEREND JAMES WEST?
la SPECTATOR—Is the Rererend James West a clergyman? Part of his story is a detected fabrication; suspicion is on all of it. You have, however, made it the occasion, if not the foundation, of a very sweeping charge; and are you not bound "to probe the truth of this suspicion"?
[The same question, "But is West a clergyman?" occurred to ourselves last week; and we came to the conclusion that the evidence on which that fact ori- ginally rested had not been shaken like other parts of the story. Mr. Vickery, whom West deceived by pretending relationship to Lord Delawarr, stated that he was a clergyman; and he has not retracted or corrected this statement. The cir- cumstances mentioned by Mr. Vickery, showing that West had officiated as a clergyman, are of a kind that he was not likely to learn from the culprit, but from others. Mr. Vickery knows West's family; managed business for him when he Was graduating at Oxford; and is in every respect a competent witness.—D.]
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