To Thomas Martin 27 August 1855

Dear Sir,

I am very much obliged by your kind attention. The enclosed will need the following explanations – The 3 sermons were finished under the idea that they might direct attention a little more specially than on ordinary occasions – & perhaps reach some who never come to church. You must not view them as laboured productions – the parish papers refer to my method of carrying on such schemes rather by printed information than by personal importunities, which I very greatly object to – to say nothing of the loss of time incurred by running from house to house & feeling like “a busy-body”. The scraps from the Bury Post are a series of letters in which I am still engaged (wanting No.1. of which I have no copy & which referred to our Farmers having had 17 ploughmen in the field this year & 20 of us dining together afterwards; a practice I recommended to every village in Suffolk) – Those letters I intended for purposes of agitation – to provoke a little preliminary enquiry into matters referred to, before we come together next month to form a Labourers Friend Socty. of which notice was given in the papers that it was Sir Henry Bunbury’s intention to call us together – I am afraid that the books named in my lending library list, are not all such as I wish they were – but they were such as I happened to have – I have not sent samples of tickets for Clubs on as you can easily understand what they must be – Pray excuse this hurried note

Yrs very truly

J. S. Henslow