The Society of Friends have found 1,200 members to memorialise
Mr. Gladstone against the un-Christian character of the Irish Crimes Act of 1887, the memorial being signed by nine Members of Parliament who are Friends. In Thursday's Times, however, a protest signed by the great benefactor of Ireland, Mr. J. H. Tuke, by Mr. Thomas Hodgkin, of Newcastle- on-Tyne, by Mr. F. Seebohm, of Hitchin, and nine other eminent members of the Society of Friends, appeared, declaring that the great majority of the Society of Friends resident in Ireland, and a very large section of those in Great Britain,—including, of course, Mr. Bright,—are not at all of the same way of thinking, and that the Society, as a Society, is committed to the duty of obedience to the civil government ; and they quote the " Book of Discipline " very pertinently on the subject. "A Septuagenarian Quaker" adds, in a sensible letter of his own,—" Surely it is some- what ridiculous that a Society which proclaims theunlawfulness of war should encourage the very worst and most revengeful
forms of lawlessness and violence on the part of private indi- viduals, in opposition to laws deliberately framed by repre- sentatives of the people, and in order to escape the payment of just debts." Certainly for the Church which proclaims the duty of turning the other cheek to the smiter, to throw its shield over the" Plan of Campaign "and over boycotters, does seem the highest extravagance of religious partisanship.
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