unfettered inquiry, and on the other, the lessons of experience have
shown that, however eager the Unitarians may be for the widest possible
religious fellowship, they are, in fact, steadily left to themselves by
most of the other religious bodies, especially in this country.
Martineau himself about forty years ago tried to form, along with
Tayler, a 'Free Christian Union' which should ignore dogmatic
considerations; but Tayler died, and so little encouragement was met
with outside the Unitarian circle that the thing dropped after two
years. Nearly twenty years later, at the Triennial Conference (held in
1888 at Leeds), a remarkable address was given by the now venerable
'leader' (whom, as he mournfully said, no one would follow), in favour
of setting up again an English Presbyterian system which should swallow
up all the many designations and varieties of association hitherto
prevailing among Unitarians. The proposal was considered impracticable,
and the dream of a 'Catholicity' which should embrace all who espoused
the free religious position, whatever their doctrines, seemed farther
than ever from fulfilment. In later years the idea has, however,
continued to be mooted, and some Unitarians hope still to see the
development of a 'Free Catholicism' in which the traditional distinction
between Unitarian and Trinitarian will be lost.

Meanwhile, as has been said, the extension of Unitarian worship and the
diffusion of literature goes on with a fair amount of success. In
America, thanks largely to the sagacious toil of a remarkable organizer,
_Dr. H.W. Bellows_ (1814-82), the Unitarian Association has proved a
strong and effective instrument for this purpose, and the British
Association, whose headquarters are now in the building where Lindsey
opened the first Unitarian Church in 1774, has also thriven considerably
in recent years. It is said that the rate of growth in the number of
congregations in the United Kingdom has been about 33 per cent during