heightened cultural and spiritual education for all. Furthermore, he identified that there had been a long-standing decay of public virtue throughout Britain, by which he meant there was a decline in ‘that spirit which makes a man prefer, before his own prosperity and wellbeing, that of the town or country to which he belongs’.12 Though, as a minister, Dawson was debarred from serving on Town Councils, he was committed to encouraging others to employ themselves in this manner. His influence on local governance and the elevation of the populace soon became evident. Remarkably, for 31 of its first 33 years of its establishment, the chairmanship of the Free Library Committee of the Town Council fell to a member of Dawson’s congregation.13 Dawson divined the vital importance of recruiting ‘the able, the talented and the prosperous to the Town Council and its committee’,14 seeing that effective management by successful businessmen, many of whom attended his sermons, would ‘channel entrepreneurial methods into municipal projects, to the benefit of all’.15 Dawson’s belief clearly came to fruition, more than fifty-five percent of Birmingham’s sixty-four councillors, between 1860 and 1891, were businessmen and a strong majority identified as nonconformists; undoubtedly many would have come into contact with Dawson, who had quickly become the primary figure in the confessional life of dissenting Birmingham.16 Perhaps the most famous of Dawson’s orations was that given at the establishment of the Reference Library in Birmingham. The Reference Library (1865), aside from Hansom and Welch’s Town Hall (1832),17 was one of the few significant municipal projects of early Victorian Birmingham. The library was built by Edward Middleton Barry, son of Charles Barry, architect of the new Palace of Westminster (1840-70). Complete with a handsome classical façade it seemed to exemplify the achievements and spectacle of ancient Rome and Greece, manifesting such civic spectacles in the centre of industrial Birmingham. It was clearly a most fitting setting from which Dawson could preach a culturally progressive
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