at all. I am always very careful not to contract private debts. Sympathy with our fellow-tradesmen who have suffered loss in the execution of Church improvements; would make us regret the circumstances, whether it resulted from the contraction of private or any other description of debts; and when we find not in Mr. Workman's statement, but in the columns of a contemporary that the claims of unsecured creditors amounted to £2278 11s 6d, and that the assets in the shape of property held by the assignees and creditors, amounted to only £30, we are almost constrained to regard the difference between the two sums as one of very considerable disparity, and at the same time to believe that the pecuniary suffering in one direction or another must have been in similar proportion. As, however we still desire to be charitable, we will not obtrusively venture any remarks of our own on this point, but simply quote those of Mr Commissioner Goulburn, who, in granting the discharge of the banrkrupt, said The court has sometimes to animadvert upon the conduct of the uneducated and ignorant; but it was much more reprehensible in a gentleman of position and intelligence like the bankrupt to get so largely into debt and without assets to pay anyone!
Turning again to Mr. Workman's letter to his parishioners, we find him saying For the sake of those who consider my resignation a duty, I have done all I could, but in vain. An unconditional resignation would have been not only impossible, but unjust, and even immoral. It would have involved a reckless sacrifice, not merely to myself, but of interests far dearer to me than anything personal, and of the interests also of others to whom I am pledged to protect. I feel the more strongly with regard to this reimbursement, because a very hard bargain was forced upon me. The Patron did not carry out his original arrangement; and after a long delay, by which I was put to great expense, and when I had gone too far to withdraw, it was insisted that I should pay £250 for the first year, and £300 for all subsequent years of my incumbency. I have since ascertained that £250 is the maximum ever paid by any previous incumbent, even or when the burial fees existed and afforded a considerable revenue. Here or then is a large source of income cut off, and yet I have to pay more for my tenure or to resign and sacrifice all that I have spent in order to make the tenure available! Again, he says "I have incurred severe censure in consequence of a letter which I am informed has given rise to much scandal. Allow me to state that that letter was written on Sunday, Feb 7th, the fifth day after my late accident, and when I was suffering so severely with my head that ice applications were necessary from hour to hour. The party addressed had, as I thought at the time, "undergone some annoyance on my account, and I -
