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[Letter of Francis William Newman to Dr. J. Chapman] 7 Park Village East
NW, Dear Sir, Immediately on receiving the rough outline of your sad state of affairs, I had uncomfortable misgivings as to the principles on which you had managed your business: but my conscious ignorance of the limits which ordinary tradesmen set on their speculations hindered me from pronouncing even to my secret heart that you had transgressed these limits: and if you had followed the all but universal practice of respected tradesmen, it was not for me to judge & condemn you by my own abstract rule, which I had never put to the test in the realities of trade. In the course of a month or six weeks (I cannot guarantee exactly the order of events) I gradually learnt from time to time the judgments of my friend Mr. Darbishire, whose judgment & arbitration you solicited, as that of a man not only kind, just & moderate, but eminently experienced in pecuniary transactions. I have no right to speak for him, nor is it needed; for he wrote to you himself: but undoubtedly his judgment of your conduct was more & more unfavourable,—both of the past events, & of the after development concerning the West. Rev. and Dr. Hodgson. But before those affairs had fully come out, & while my judgment was still in painful suspense, wishing to think best of your proceedings, but grieved to notice the gravely sad caution with which Mr Darbishire had condemned first one thing & then another;—& while I could not help revolving in my mind the ugly fact, that when on the brink of an insolvency which you could hardly help foreknowing, you had taken two new houses,—that in Blandford Square & that in King William St; though it was impossible to suppose that the parties would have let them to you, had they known the state of your affairs:—in the midst of all this came your own circular of justification, in which you confessed that two years previously you had known yourself to be insolvent, & consulted two friends about it. If I remember, they gave opposite opinions; & the result was, that you continued business, entered into new risks, commenced (I think) the Quarterly Series, brought on to Mr J. J. Taylor that great & sad debt, & confiscated the best of Mr Hennell's fortune. All this, while, having persuaded Mrs. Chapman's Trustees to embark her fortune in your business, nothing could justify you but extreme & severe caution. When I found you write in all the simplicity of innocence such a justification as that letter, I felt, & I feel, that we have different moral principles. Soon after, you commenced active assault on a creditor, & wrote to me that he was trying to ruin you, because he thought that you had no right to reserve the copyright of the West R. and (to prevent your reserving it) threatened you with the Bankruptcy Court if you did not. Because of a private exhortation which I had (foolishly, it seems) made to you, you took for granted that that creditor had been calumniating you to me, the calumny consisting not in stating error of fact, but in taking a darker moral judgment of your conduct than you took yourself. Why was I to allow myself to be dragged into that controversy, after experiencing that your justification of yourself had made me hopeless of my justifying you? I had no hope that I could serve you by it. I was likely rather to be driven into a public position of apparent hostility, which would increase the difficulty of continuing in that quiet but more distant amity, which was convenient to me, & not disadvantageous to you. For the same reasons I still deprecate renewing that subject. I have written frankly, & necessarily strongly, but, God is my witness, with no one word which I am aware to be needlessly wounding you. May I add? Mr. Darbishire in the summer was surprized to learn that I had had a dividend of 8/ in the pound, & said he had had none, & had not signed any release. What of the article on Reform? Sincerely yours,
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