In the course of time a new clubhouse was built by an old friend of
Hull-House much interested in working girls, and this has been
occupied for twelve years by the very successful cooperating Jane
Club. The incident of the early refusal is associated in my mind
with a long talk upon the subject of questionable money I held with
the warden of Toynbee Hall, whom I visited at Bristol where he was
then canon in the Cathedral. By way of illustration he showed me a
beautiful little church which had been built by the last
slave-trading merchant in Bristol, who had been much disapproved of
by his fellow townsmen and had hoped by this transmutation of
ill-gotten money into exquisite Gothic architecture to reconcile
himself both to God and man. His impulse to build may have been
born from his own scruples or from the quickened consciences of his
neighbors who saw that the world-old iniquity of enslaving men must
at length come to an end. The Abolitionists may have regarded this
beautiful building as the fruit of a contrite heart, or they may
have scorned it as an attempt to magnify the goodness of a slave
trader and thus perplex the doubting citizens of Bristol in regard
to the entire moral issue.
Canon Barnett did not pronounce judgment on the Bristol merchant.
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