"Ought country Banks to be encouraged in Great Britain"--A majority of more than two to one were of opinion that they ought not! This was in 1791. There were, of course, topics of a more strictly controversial kind, bearing upon tithes, Church Establishment, Test Acts, &c., the discussion of which was natural enough to a body constituted as the Royston Book Club was, chiefly of Dissenting ministers and wealthy adherents in their congregations. I have, however, quoted enough to show that it was not merely a sectarian conventicle, but a forum for intellectual debate in its fullest sense. Upon this point the following three questions may be added:-- "Is there any foundation in fact for the popular Belief of Ghosts and Apparititions [sic]?--J. Phillips.--Y, 15; n, 26." If fifteen men of education voted for the Ghosts can we wonder at the stronghold they had among the common people, and that it has taken the hundred years which have elapsed to get them generally disestablished? "Whether Old Bachelors ought to be most pitied, envied or blamed?"--No verdict, probably the bachelors were in pretty full force and resented the liberty implied by the question! "Whether Good Sense, with a deficiency of Good Temper, or Good Temper with a deficiency of Good Sense, be preferable in domestic life?--W. Nash.--12 in favour of Good sense, 14 Good Temper." That the debates were often characterised by considerable freedom of thought and utterance is evident from other sources, as when the gifted young barrister of Bury St. Edmunds (Henry Crabb Robinson) {31} by his outspoken sentiments in one of the debates, and admitted leanings to Godwin's philosophy, brought down the reproof from the great Robert Hall upon his friend Mr. William Nash, for receiving the young barrister of freedom of opinion on friendly terms into his family at Royston. But the family of the quiet and eminently respectable country lawyer appear to have had no cause to regret the enduring friendship of the brilliant young conversationalist, who afterwards became an intimate friend of Wordsworth, Southey the Laureate, and the Lake School, with Goethe, Madame de Stael, and many other great names in the world of letters and art, and even had the offer of the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Sax Weimar. At such a time, however, these debates did make a good deal of stir, in fact "as the members were credited with holding what at that time were called dangerous principles, their meetings used to cause a great excitement in the place." The peculiarity of these debates was the prevailing discussion of general principles. The region of practical politics for many of the coming questions was as yet almost half-a-century off, and having no effective means of influencing many matters which did, nevertheless, touch their daily lives very closely, they turned their attention inwards to the mental exercise of debating abstract questions of high philosophy and of morals.