I take the liberty of addressing you on a subject which appears to myself and friends of very great importance. I shall impartially state the case, and leave you to judge of the propriety of laying it before your brethren in town or calling together the Committee of Priviledges.

On Monday the 11th instant a meeting of reformers was held at Newcastle for the purpose of expressing their opinion on the Manchester Murders as they call them. 50 or 60,000 people attended, amongst whom were a great number of our people, several of our Leaders and some of our Local Preachers. One of the latter William H. Stephenson, a young man who teaches a school at Burton Colliery in this Circuit went upon the hustings and made a speech, condemning in strong terms the conduct of the Manchester magistrates: this has given very great offence to most of the Travelling Preachers and respectable friends in this neighbourhood and to none more than myself, and I have been advised at all events to put him off the plan. I have had repeated interviews with him and advised him as a friend on public grounds to give up his plan. He replied that he would never give up his plan until he was compelld, that he would be tried by his peers and did not fear the result, that if they expell him he will publish the cause to the world, that I had better let it quietly pass as three quarters of our people are radical reformers, that if he be tried so must hundreds more, that he only went to plead the cause of suffering humanity, that he believed it his duty to go, that he never joined himself to the reformers, nor attended any of their private meetings. I fixed on Friday the 22nd as the day of his trial.