Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Tuesday 9 October 1860, page 3


THE AGAPEMONE AGAIN.

1 ' ' ' (FROM THE TIMES.)

v The founder of the Agagomone will, we are happy

to say, be compelled to surrender a portion of his ill-gotten gains. Vice-Chancellor Stuart gave judgment yesterday in the case of " Nottidge v. Prince," declaring that the transfer of stock belonging to the late Louisa Jane Nottidge into the name of the

defendant was improperly obtained, and must be set aside that the stock must be transferred to the - legal personal representative of Miss Louisa Nottidge

and all the dividends accrued since her death must be paid to the plaintiff; and the defendant must pay the costs of the suit. It is not a phrase of course when we say that we congratulate the public on this judgment. The Court of Chancery . has always been distinguished by a breadth of view and a practical good sense in dealing with the

questions which come before it, and never have these qualities been more conspicuous than in the decision of which we are speaking. It is not too much to say that a judgment which would have left Prince in possession of the fruits of his blasphemous imposture would have been an encouragement to ; the vilest kind of men to prey on the weakest

kind of women. The knavery and credulity which reign in the lower sections of the so-called

. religious world surpass, as it is, all belief. Let any one make it his business for a few weeks to

examine the tenets, the fancies, and the pre- judges of the various theological cliques which

divide this community, and he will come to the conclusion that the trade of a religious leader is still one of the most lucrative to which an adventurer can apply himself. To save the excitable and ignorant from the grasp of such men, to help those who cannot help themselves, and to discourage the worst kinds of hypocrisy, is the policy of the State, and forms one of those principles which Equity should engraft on Law.

It is unnecessary for us to repeat a tale so many times told as that of the Agapemone. Mr. Prince has been along time before the public, who know all about the Abode of Love, the gardens, the closed gates, the bloodhounds, the carriages and four, the hockey, and the three unfortunate sisters who freshened in the Divine mission of the founder.

sure iii to say that "Brother Prince," who came on Civil to close the Christian dispensation, and who writes to borrow £50 in the phraseology of the Hebrew prophets, was in his younger days a Clergyman of the Church of Eng-' and; that he was deprived of his license by two different Bishops, but made the acquaintance of. the HOttfdgps during his second curacy and after -'--a Ij, chapel, which he called the Car of " AdulTam,'' founded the Agapcmouc,with the three pesters among his leading disciples. Two of them ijemaynedto twoofhls'i'úllowérs, and the third, Louisa Jane Nottidge, on being released from a lunatic asylum, on the ground that her religious delusions were incurable and that further confinement would injure her health, sweep over her whole fortune, consisting of JJ 728 Consols, to Prince as a free wifely give any compensation she received being her board and lodging "at the Agapemone until the time of her death, in July,'i'858. This transfer has now been set aside by the Arice.-Cbiii;ce}i,?;'/ with costs

against the defendant Prince.

'' probably no law, no series of decisions will ever xrr&veikjj religious impostors from endeavouring to secure to themselves the property of their victims I felt it is at least satisfactory to know that when a gift gg obtained by imposing on the belief of the ^¿»¿L-miijded such imposition vitiates the gift ! sturdy. It is not even necessary that the person

imposed upon should be of unsound mind, When , ' a man, whether charlatan ¿rfiinátíc/pr, as is often please, both, uses his spiritual power to induce

an individual to part with property, such an act . is held by the Court to be tainted with fraud, and who Transfer may be set aside. So much for the properties of the' Weak, nervous, and ignorant. . There is a remedy Qgwue fits self-styled prophet

of the new sect as well as against; a priest of Rome or a covetous clergyman of the Establish-ment. But what seems to us very painful in these

: pictures is that imposture can flourish so long, and

the article defiance to the world. For more than fifteen years Prince has asserted himself to be the legitimate successor of Noah, Abraham, and the Saviour; on high cross-examination in this suit he represented himself to be the Holy Ghost. These ,do«tf-ines,.if they may be called so, he propagated ¡s^'.StokeV where he first met the Nottidge ; he «f»(¿aicd then at the- "pave of Adullam," ho

vmikiM, tile Agapppipno'as the temple of the new religion), and without any authority having the right to interfere, Jip brought

these half-witted women under his complete

control. Religious liberty is indeed a, good her "and all estimate, and we are willing to pay for it

the price of suffering the Agapemone to exist, Bmvifc is! a heavy price. Happily for the

senses or the Bridgewater people, the Agapemone ?jwiúi.jDoiindetl only for- those in comfortable circum-stances; . Tlio'possétsib'ii of a few thousand pounds is (Jovsois was a condition precedent to the missionary labours of Air, Prince'. ' As" this man is essentially connected with some jiiuoutî.6"of reduce,tion, the /."»tienwnites cannot hoped many contests. They have not been as aggressive Church. Sat if they had desired that poor, man) but! been able 0 awutetbiiufimug material prosperity, they might use bad Sqiuerset/hird licenses, by the hundred.

m is the reason why in problem Prince" might not have been as great a prophet as Joe finish, and the AgapomoHD hayoWome a religious metropolis in the Great giving Lake City, of the matter on which f*WtT*0US imposture nail work is always »'«Wy ; the

love'o)'change, tho craving after the wonderful, the desire of battering the social condition by affiliation fb 4 young "and ardent sect, the strange confidence , detonating ")>'ííd assertions of fanatics seem always

to Inspire-these Milinda give a new religion every chance of succeeding; and the wonder is, not that 'Payne is an Agapemone, but that there we got fifty

false country.

Religious credulity seems an ineradicable weak,a*$g of the human intellect and especially of our own race.' Army on who will take the trouble to examine the religious " experience" of a' Brother -, Jfrjnoe," as described in his'jonriwl, will be

fltojpk with the resemblance between the phraiiOr

ploy of iLhiji, singular production and that which I Jef commonly to be met with in the more

orthodox publications of the CiUvinistic school. Prjnpp and the Agapemone flies, indeed, only extreme instances of what is passing Europe uponannually, TherearoalwaysinthiseouutrysQinóthcai' sands of people on the verge of religious madness, ' fif whom' a portion is draughted into the asylums gypsy year. Not the highest education, nor interpeace with iiiosteiilargediiiinds.canproteetthoviotings of this disease. It seizes the best and most delicate of the other sexual pain no more be eradicated that read of ghosts from the minds of children. How far it may arise from physical causes live leave to scientific men ; but, after all, the difference is , footwear Prince and some others who might be

named is one of degree, and not of kind. In accuse pref completed fraud and imposture the Court of

' Chancery may interfere, but it is for public opinion

to start the beginning, of the evil which leads to such fearful consequences,