Printed announcement of a meeting of the Dissenters at  Bristol, 23 February 1790.

Delegates from the Southern and Western Divisions of Somerset (Dr. Farr, Rev. Toulmin, and Mr. Willis), Glocestershire (Mr. Chandler, Rev. Tremlett, Rev. Dunscombe, and Mr. Biggs), Monmouthshire (Rev. Watkins), and Somerset Eastern Division (Mr. Howse and Mr. Rogers), along with Bristol (Mr. Bright, John Harris, John Butler, and John Savery). They resolve to unite in one larger district and to send delegates to a London General Meeting.  Signed by Richard Bright of Bristol.  In their resolutions, they reject the charge of “innovation,” nor are they being “hostile” to the established church, and that “it appears inconceivable to them, that less danger should arise from Dissenters being permitted to participate in the making of laws, than to act in the execution of the laws that are made; less danger, from their being ineligible, as they now are without a test, to a seat in Parliament, than from their being eligible to the office of Magistrates, tide-waiters, or excise-men.”   They simply seek “justice,” so that they can “stand on an equal footing with their fellow-citizens in point of eligibility to offices of trust to which they may be deemed competent.” They have not united from a “desire of a contest for power with the members of the establishment, or to form what has been stiled an ‘alarming confederacy.’” 

Text: Test Acts Papers, no. 87, Unitarian Collection, UCC 3/6/6, John Rylands University Library of Manchester.