Item 32 - William Whewell to Julius Charles Hare

4 pp.

WW sends R. W. Evans's [Tutor of Trinity College] printed reply to Connop Thirlwall's critique ['A Letter to the Rev. Thomas Turton, on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees', 1834]: 'I hold that it has little bearing on the question of the admission of Dissenters'. Evans's lectures were not an imperative issue in the controversy but it will show JCH 'how it may happen that Evans feels very bitterly about what Thirlwall has said'. WW is pleased JCH agrees with most of his reply to Thirlwall ['Remarks on Some Parts of Mr Thirlwall's Letter on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degree', 1834]. As to WW 'making an analogy between religion and knowledge I should not have done it, if I had not known that a dislike of compulsory chapel and compulsory lectures go together in the minds of some of our lecturers here - and being firmly persuaded that such opinions are as destructive of church and college as they are of chapel and lecture room I took the opportunity to say so'. WW did not think Thirlwall's printed reply to him 'very judicious for who can be 'private, reserved, and full in answer to a printed circular from an intimate friend beginning 'gentlemen'?' The seniority met to discuss the issue: 5 persons were in favour of Thirlwall (Adam Sedgwick, Thomas Musgrave, Joseph Romilly, Richard Sheepshanks and George Peacock).