PREFACE.

DESPITE the brave homilies on virtue which abound, this is a world in which a man may be too good, and become an object of distrust by those who never lay themselves open to this suspicion.   The most misgiving reader need not be afraid of the present writer.   He is not too good.

    In one of Ben Jonson's plays, a servant speaks of his master as "an honest gentleman, who is never at leisure to be himself; he has such tides of business."  That has been the case with the Author.   So much and so long occupied in vindicating the right of others to their own lives and the expression of their own reasoned opinions, he has had, until late years, no leisure to express his own.

    The diversified experience of the writer has been owing to a wilfulness of sympathy with all self-helping efforts of improvement in the State, in society, and in opinion.   He does not belong to those unpleasant and superior persons who have faith in themselves and no faith in others; who, as Robert Burns found in his day, "take pride in showing a proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor insignificant devils, the mechanics and peasants around them"—although they are as much entitled to happiness as those who despise them are.   It is not the few who make the many, but the many who make the few.   Those who live without solicitude for the welfare of others do but encumber the land.   When they die—

They, by their own choice, stand apart from humanity; and should they be suffered to rise again hereafter, it would bring the Resurrection into contempt.   The Author has honour alone for those who have an outside nature, and this record is mainly of movements and men who had this passion.

G.  J.  H.

 
SIXTY YEARS
OF AN AGITATOR'S LIFE.
___________
 

CHAPTER I.

THE OLD REASON FOR WRITING A NEW BOOK.

AN author, however he may disown it, will be suspected of some egotism who writes any account of the events of his life.   He can hardly presume they have interest without assuming that they have some importance.   A favourite way of parrying this inference is to represent that what the author has done has been urged upon him by others.   Yet a story "published by request" is never read for that reason.   The author is usually regarded as having requested himself to do it, or that some personal friends, knowing that he was bent upon it, made the request to him that a colour of outside interest might be given to the act.

    The persons who incited me did really put the idea into my head.   Mr. William White, Door Keeper of the House of Commons, several times said to me that I ought to write some account of the social and political affairs in which I had taken part.   In the midnight and early morning hours I often spent with him in his room at the House of Commons, when lingering debates were dull, we used to converse about the underground actors, who had died in our time, to whom political progress had owed something.

    Thomas Allsop, the friend of Coleridge and Lamb, of O'Connor and Orsini, oft urged me to give some account of the proscribed men of thought and action with whom I had been associated, Sam Timmins, of Birmingham; Joseph Cowen, of Blaydon-on-Tyne; W.  H.  Duignan, of Walsall; R. B. Reed, of Winlaton, who has a journalist's instinct for incidents; Col. R. G.  Ingersoll, of Washington; James Charlton, of Chicago; and James Knowles, the editor of the Nineteenth Century, who proposed to publish the chapters therein—an act of temerity which gave weight to his word—and many others diverse in experience and far apart, said the same thing to me.   Thus I came to believe there might be interest in doing it, and have devoted the intervals of ten years to it.   The reader may think the time might have been better bestowed.

    In citing the names of those who incited me to write this story there is no intention of imputing to them the responsibility of the contents thereof, which they have never seen, and in which no episode that had interest in their minds, may be given here in the same connection, or told after a lapse of years, with the vividness and relevance which excited their advice.   Nothing more is meant by giving their names than to show that any writer might be excused attempting a narrative which such judges had suggested.

    Still I am afraid there is some meanness in citing names of those who (if I am believed) induced me to write the book, since I am exposing them—if the story proves tiresome—to that resentment which ought to fall upon the writer alone.

    Though the narrative has occupied the leisure of years, the procrastination is not wholly loss.   He who delays concluding his book until years of discretion have fairly set in (which arrive at 75 if they come at all) has the advantage of remoteness of view, sees in truer proportion the events he describes.   Time takes out of incidents the effrontery and inflation which their novelty begets at their birth.

    There is a further advantage in delay, memory grows indolent, and a narrator is less likely to weary the reader with too many recitals.   As it is, I remember more things than the public or posterity (should the book reach them) will ever take interest in reading.   Therefore, as I heard Serjeant Talfourd at Worcester ask a jury when his evidence was limited, "Sufficient unto the day—is the evil thereof?"

    At the head of some chapters the reader will find double dates, showing the years over which the chapter ranges.   The book is an autobiography of events, experiences, observations of men, manners, and opinions which came under my notice.   The story is only incidentally an autobiography of the writer, whose life in chronological detail is not of the importance to interest the general reader.   The main endeavour of the author, upon which he depends as his best justification to the reader, is that he restricts these pages to those events which have, he conceives, public instruction in them.   A book of a similar character relating to movements in the earlier part of this century would have been of no mean service to him when he was young, as this peradventure may be to many now.

 
CHAPTER II.
OUTLINE OF THE STORY.

"WHY should I read this book?" is a question I often ask myself on opening a new one.  Books multiply—time seems to be more occupied than when they were scarce, and every new book bears with it the ostensible promise of new wisdom and new experience.  Each work seems to have an equal claim upon the reader.  It is natural, therefore, to wish for an outline (of the kind here given) of its character which may justify him in, or deter him from, undertaking its perusal.

    These chapters are the story of a Birmingham man, born in sight of St.  Martin's Church spire, when it peered above the parsonage trees in the year in which Robert Owen declared in the London Tavern that "all the religions of the world were wrong"—and Jonathan Wooler issued the first number of the Black Dwarf, and St. Jean Godin, founder of the famous Familistère of Guise, was born, so that the writer's days began when social and political ideas were in the air.  Early familiar with economy and industry, a little good fortune seemed great, and activity became a habit which had pleasure in it, and was at once dependence and independence—dependence, because mechanical skill was a personal resource; independence, because the power of working renders any one free of obligation.  Trained in Christianity, he came personally to know that sincerity was not the same thing as truth, and never forgot in after-life that error might be honest.  Knowledge without books was his chief attainment, as knowledge lies about everywhere at hand to those who observe and think.  Seeing that he had to be answerable here for what he believed, and was told it would be so hereafter, he thought it prudent to form his own opinions, since it was incurring superfluous responsibility to become liable for the errors of others.  This gave him the perilous habit of saying what he thought, which led to his being imprisoned for six months in Gloucester Gaol, to encourage him in candour.  These were his college days of learning.  John Sterling says that "the worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that."  In this sense the subject of these pages was well instructed, as during his whole life opportunities of self-denial were continually afforded him.  Graduating in a gaol was not a recommendation afterwards to profitable employment, and he became a wandering speaker on prohibited subjects of usefulness and progress.  At times he might have had some advantageous and accredited position on the press or in popular movements, but it was thought that his name might deter others from doing something who never did anything.  The only opportunities which befell him were those of doing what many agreed ought to be done, and of undertaking responsibilities which, owing to legal risks, or a clearer sense of prudence, others declined.  Controversies befell him in which he was saved from forming any undue opinion of himself by the disparaging frankness of adversaries, and in which the best and surest part of such knowledge as he acquired was derived from the critical malevolence of opponents.  Seeing that spite in argument instructed those whose aim was the mastery of a subject, he regarded even the ill-tempered and malignant opponent as the friend of truth.  He, therefore, encouraged and never humiliated these assistant adversaries.  He who knows both sides of a disputed question is alone able to be fair to the adverse convictions of others.  The spirit of his story is described in the lines of Sir Henry Taylor—

    Whittier relates that he left the "mission he had to fulfil, to turn the crank of an opinion mill."  Whereas if the present author had a "mission" at all it was to turn that sort of crank.  He was an opinion-maker—a very useful business if honestly and intelligently done.  But if the trade is confined to the manufacture of true opinions the "concern" will rarely pay.  The sales will never be large and the profit will be small.  The owner of such a business will be fortunate if he escape loss.  In this respect the writer was not fortunate.  The one quality of his mind was that of a propagandist.  It coloured his aims, his character, his life.  Without foreseeing it, without expecting it, it came to pass, when age and blindness, for a time, overtook him, many eminent persons, who considered him to have rendered some service to the State in his day, contributed, with his humbler friends, means that rendered work no longer obligatory to him.  As he had always acted on George Herbert's maxim, "Never exceed thy income" (when it was precarious and small), a very limited income was a source of health and enjoyment beyond what any who provided it could know.  Opinionativeness and wilfulness are not qualities to be approved, unless they are mainly directed to the service of others.  But, though they bring vicissitude, they bring satisfaction, if public improvement has been their incentive.  Thus the subject of this autobiography may say in a lesser degree, what could be fully said by him [1] who wrote the lines—

The outline of the whole story the author has to tell is now before the reader, and unless he has adventurous curiosity, he need not proceed further.

 
CHAPTER III.
ANCESTORS.
(1817.)

 
WHEN Sydney Smith was questioned concerning his ancestors, he answered that his family went no further back than his grandfather, who disappeared at the Assizes, and they asked no questions.  My paternal grandfather also "disappeared," but we did "ask questions," though to these no answer came until the next generation.  His name was Jacob.  He was a man of unusual stature and strength, and stories were told of his carrying a town watchman home on his shoulder who had been unpleasant to him on his way.  He had a forge on the old river Rea in Birmingham.  His name and business is in the directories of the last century.  Through the fraud of a partner, in a law contest as to a right of way, losses by floods, which washed away his premises, trouble overtook him.  His family having some property he went away alone to repair his own fortune, and his family never heard of him more.  Forty years later an old artizan in Sheffield, made curious by seeing my name on a placard, told me that he had lived in a house in Manchester in which a "Jacob Holyoake" resided—a powerful, wilful man, he described him to be, who, having made a little money, went down one day to meet the Birmingham coach, saying he intended to rejoin his family.  He was too late, and in his disappointment went and leaned over the hospital wall, which one less tall could not have done.  The place contained many patients with a contagious fever, which he caught.  Refusing to believe in his danger when seized, and disliking medicine, he perished.  As he had never disclosed anything concerning himself, he was never identified until the old man told me the story of his isolation and end—forty years subsequent.  And thus for the first time his family learned how he died.

    There was a tortoise-shell tea caddy in possession of my informant's family given them by my grandfather.  It appears that, when death approached, he begged that his friend might be sent for, as he wished to make some communication—doubtless a message to his family; but as the doctors forbade any one to be admitted, the fever being deadly, his friend was not told of his wish until after his death—so that his secret never transpired.

    My grandfather on my mother's side was Richard Groves.  His business was that of a buckle-maker.  In the early years of the long war, when taxes were heavy, men worked from five o'clock in the morning until nine at night—hours which would drive trades unionists mad in these days.  Being provident-minded, during a great part of his life he subscribed to a society from which special provision was to come in his later years; but when the time came the society broke up, as was the way of societies in his day.  In my youth he was a minor dignitary of the Established Church—very minor, indeed, being a beadle of St.  Martin's Church.  There were two or three differing in degree, but whether of service or seniority I never knew.  The office was one of more local awe than emolument.  The beadle's staff at a door was the sign of a funeral, and the beadle walking before the humble burial party gave it, in the eyes of the poor, the character of a sacred procession.  I used to look with wonder at my grandfather's fine long blue coat, red collar, brass buttons, and his tall japanned staff with gilt nails.  When a boy I used to often go round the churchyard with him to see that the gravestones and the grass were all in order.  My great delight was to accompany him to his garden in the Bristol Road, which seemed to me a paradise of fruit, and flowers, and vegetables.  He would go in the summer as early as four o'clock in the morning.  He used to allow me to strike him a light with steel and flint struck over tinder [2]—lucifer matches were not invented then—that he might have a morning smoke in his little arbour.  He continued to go to his garden until a few weeks before his death, which occurred at a patriarchal age.  In the evenings, in his later days, I used to read the prayers to him from the Church prayer-book, when he could no longer do it himself.  I can see him now, kneeling on his chair, holding himself upright by his two hands on the back, bowing his head reverently as I read to him, I sitting on a small chair below him.  He would put on his beadle's coat at this time, as though his dress had religious association in his mind.

    A few years ago an old resident (C. N.), who remembered the circumstance, described in The Birmingham Weekly Post the local respect in which he was held, and the large crowd who followed him to his grave.

    Such were my two grandfathers; my grandmothers I never knew, and never heard described.

    My ancestral inheritance was not of a nature to elate me, though it gave me pleasure.  It consisted of a walking-stick of my grandfather's, of a curious spiral growth, and an inlaid ivory-headed cane belonging to my paternal grandmother, bearing the date of 1699.  This estate of sticks and an habitual wilfulness of opinion and imagination, which had no misgiving—always characteristic of my father and his family—were the only signs I knew of a station superior to that in which their lot was cast.  A strong sense of pride and capacity of submitting without concern to any privation which came through resenting indignity were peculiar to them all.  My father's sisters had property at Selly Oak, near Birmingham.  Often I heard speak of "the Holyoakes, of Selly Oak."  In Nantwich Churchyard may still be read a memorial-stone bearing the name of my grandfather's brother, who had held, up to the time of his death, official appointments in that ancient parish.

 
CHAPTER IV.
PARENTAGE.
(1817.)

MY mother's maiden name was Catherine Groves, and as she took the name of Holy-oak we had a woodland pedigree.  She was a Puritan-minded woman, of clear, decided ideas, and had, later in life, a grave, impressive face.  Of what she knew she was confident, and never had any doubts.  She wished her children to be honest, truthful, and pious, and always set them the example.  It never occurred to her to do otherwise than what she said.  The contrary never entered into her mind.  In those days horn buttons were made in Birmingham, and my mother had a workshop attached to the house, in which she conducted a business herself, employing several hands.  She had the business before her marriage.  She received the orders; made the purchases of materials; superintended the making of the goods; made out the accounts; and received the money; besides taking care of her growing family.  There were no "Rights of Women" thought of in her day, but she was an entirely self-acting, managing mistress.  There were feasts in the house at that time.  I remember stealing out of bed one night to survey from the top of the stairs the well-spread table upon which was the first roasted sucking-pig I saw.  The button business died out while I was young, and from the remarks which came from merchants, I learned that my mother was the last maker of that kind of button in the town.  It was always a peculiarity of Birmingham that numerous small household trades existed, which gave the inmates independence, and often led—if the trade continued good—to competence or fortune.  I recite these particulars, as they denote a state of industry and society which has long passed away.

    My first recollection of my father was seeing him on Sunday and festive days, in drab cloth breeches and boots with white tops, such as are worn now only in the hunting-field, and a brown overcoat, called a "top-coat" then, which looked very rich in my eyes.

    My father was in his sixty-third year at the time of his death.  He was tall and comely.  He had an honest voice and an expression which told you he could be trusted.  His manners were free without familiarity.  Some men, rise to what rank they may, always retain plebeian habits; this was not so with my father, although he spent so large a portion of his life as a workman.  His associates and also his employers showed him respect in their speech.  He owed some of this deference to his mechanical ability.  I passed thirteen years by his side in the workshop, and never saw him addressed as other men around him often were.  What laws of etiquette he had were his own.  When summoned by his employers he always walked up (unless into office or a private room) without uncovering his head, as was usual with others.  His not doing so seemed natural to him.  It was not disrespect, it was self-respect.

    Had the opportunities of learning existed in his youth which exist in our day, his lot in life would have been very different.  Mechanics' Institutions were not invented then, and the acquirements of a middle-class boy in 1800 were not many, and his were limited by the early disappearance of his father, whose loss his mother survived but a short time; and my father was left an orphan, and head of the family, at an early age.  He went when a youth to the Eagle Foundry, where he spent more than forty years.  Holidays in manufactories were not so much a custom then as now.  I never heard that during that long period he was absent through illness or pleasure.  If a vacation time occurred at a fair or Christmas time, he spent it at some ideal invention of his own.  Though entirely without self-assertion, he had a quiet implacable will.  His self-respect once outraged, he never forgot it, and I cannot say he ever forgave it.  Wanting the resources which men acquire in good society, or the power which culture gives, he had no means of protecting himself save by reserve; and his resolution once taken, time did not wear it out.  His resentment became part of his nature.  Though inheriting this implacable faculty myself, it has long been clear to me that it is wasted pertinacity.  An offence which may arise in thoughtlessness, haste, or necessity, is not worth remembering a day, and an intentional offence is sufficiently despised in less time.

    The day before his death, I had come down from London to Birmingham to see him.  He had a pipe of Turkish length, the bowl resting on a chair near him, so that he could smoke at will, and I sat on the bedside and smoked with him.  He spoke at intervals of my mother.  She ever seemed a living mercy in the chamber of the sick.  By day and by night she was ever the same patient, kind, unwearying ministrant—unconscious of the obligations of gratitude she created.  His voice had its old melody.  Once he said, "It is a long time to wait to die, but please God not long."  His natural activity of thought still remained with him, and dying seemed to him as something he had still to do.  Shortly afterwards the end came.

    During all the years of my youth I never remember to have heard my father use an expression which implied that he had ever heard of religion.  He never said anything against it, nor anything for it.  He left all that to my mother.  He seemed to think that she had enough religion for both of them, and in that he was right.  He had a pagan mind, and his thoughts dwelt on the human side of life.

    We laid him in St.  Paul's Churchyard, the burying-place of his relatives, in the grave with "Uncle John," the Yorick of the family.  The Rev. Mr. Scarlett read the Church service.  In all things we consulted our mother's wishes.

    I called upon Mr. Davenport, the rector of St. John's Church, which stood at the back of my father's house, to thank him for his kindness in visiting my father at our request in his illness, and in speaking consoling words to my mother about him.  The Rev. Mr. Buckingham, an evangelical preacher, whose chapel my mother attended, I also called upon, to express my sense of the liberal notions of God's dealings with His creatures, that my mother had heard from him, which had resulted in a more cheerful faith than she had been wont to have.  Afterwards the Rev. William Sharman, a Wesleyan minister, who in later years I knew as a valued friend, was a no less kindly and beneficent visitor to my mother.  Indeed, he was a more merciful visitant, as he held views of universal salvation, more genial and hopeful than the dubious and anxious tenets of one of the Elect, as my mother hoped she was and deserved to be.

    After the death of my father, I advised my mother to rejoin the Rev. John Angell James's Church.  She acquired what she called "convictions," under Mr. James's ministry, which she had attended twenty-five years.  Mr. Buckingham, her minister above named, was leaving Birmingham, it was therefore I suggested her returning to Mr. James's Church, and I offered to accompany her to Carr's Lane, which I accordingly did; and on Sunday, May 15, 1853, I entered the chapel after an absence of twenty years.  What vicissitudes of religious experiences had I gone through since I last walked along its familiar galleries! What an utter, an unforeseen change had my life undergone since then! There was the well-known clock, whose tardy hands I had watched often wearily from the Sunday-school gallery, and the organ with its monotonous peals, which first made me think music an invention for the punishment of our sins.  [3] There, too, were those formal, dull ground-glass windows, which did not let in even the merciful blaze of day; and I used to envy the cheerful sun above which dwelt so high in the sky, and was never cooped up in a Sunday School, but looked out over all the world, even on Robinson Crusoe's Island, and was not forced to go to chapel on the bright Sunday morning.  There, also, I recognized a face almost in every pew which I had known before—faces I never saw smile, and which now looked as though they had never smiled since we met before.  How should those who had read believingly the "Anxious Inquirer" ever smile?  To my disappointment Mr. James did not preach that night, being absent in London, and I never heard, as I wished to do, his mellifluous eloquence once more.

    Nobody seemed to regard me as strong in my youth.  When I was a boy of seven or eight I heard it said of me, "it was doubtful whether I should be reared."  Nothing, however, happened.  Then it was said that "the age of thirteen or fourteen would try me."  Being found actively alive after that period, the years of "nineteen or twenty" were fixed upon as the "critical time."  As I obviously went on living, the prophets of a short life had their opinion that "twenty-nine or thirty" would decide my fate.  Burns, Shelley, and Byron had died before mid-age, but as I was not a poet I felt no uneasiness on that account, so that it was long after before it occurred to me that I was really going to live.  I was not an unregarding hearer of those observations.  I remember mentioning them to my tutor, Daniel Wright, who said he had a friend who had been similarly warned, who actually had consumption all his life, and yet died at seventy-four.  He knew the conditions under which he could live, and observed them.  Mr. Wright gave me the first confidence in living that I received.  My mother, like many pious people of that period, believed that the "three score years and ten" of the Psalmist were the natural end of human life.  Many believing persons in pious circles would have lived longer but for this impression.  My mother was perplexed at living seven years beyond that time.  Mr. Bright seemed to be somewhat of the same opinion in saying:—"What Mr. Schnadhorst or Mr. Harris quoted about the long continuance of the connection between Birmingham and myself is a matter that is extremely doubtful: I think the Psalmist was more right when he made the suggestion which everybody has heard of, and most people come to think seriously of, when he spoke of the threescore years and ten, which means that a man at threescore years and ten is inducted into the order of old men."  [4]

    After the predictions recounted as to my early decease, it was unimaginable to me that I should be writing at seventy-five in pleasant health.  Nor would it happen to me had I been robust.  I can count thirty or forty colleagues, all stronger than myself, who died by my side.  They could live or work, as strong persons usually do, in a regardless manner, until the machine of life breaks down at once.  Temperance in all things, save work, became to me a necessity, and proved a security.

 
CHAPTER V.
EARLY DAYS.
(1818-25)

THE business-like way of beginning a biography is to state when and where the subject of it was born, though it is very rarely that the reader sees any necessity for such particulars.  As, however, they impart a necessary air of veracity to the story, I give them, merely premising that I had no business to be born at all, neither when I was, nor where I was, nor of whom I was—if without filial impiety I may say so.  Parents seldom own it, but many like me have seen aspects of this untoward world when they have felt that they ought to apologize to their children for causing their appearance in it.  My mother had many children; she reared eleven; but I soon came to see how much better it would have been for her—how much more enjoyment, peace, repose, and freedom from anxiety would have fallen to her—had her family been limited to three or four children.

    No.  1, Inge Street, Birmingham, where I was born, still stands, but in a dead street now. [5]  The grime of smoke, of decay and comfortlessness, are upon it.  Then it was fresh and bright.  At No. 2 (next door) Mrs.  Massey lived.  She was a very large old lady, who sold cakes and tarts, which lay enticingly in a low, broad, bow window.  Near hers was a house (No. 5) with green silk curtains, where there resided a neat, little, clean, bright-eyed old lady, who used to charm away warts, and other small maladies.  I was under her good-natured but ineffectual hands, at times, for warts; but I found nothing clear them off like a fall at leap-frog, when the sprawling hands came up quite free from those intractable protuberances.  Higher up the street (No. 12) lived Mr. Hawksford, a baker and flour seller; a quiet, placid, pale-faced, mild-mannered man, who, I always thought, looked like God.  The first idea my mother gave me of God made me think He was like that miller, who never smiled or spoke, but was always kind and gentle to me—when I took pies to be baked.  The idea comes back to my mind as fresh as when it was first formed in my childish, unsuspecting, unthinking fancy.  Dr.  Mansel had not then delivered his Bampton Lectures, and no ideas of the "Absolute" and the "Unconditioned" had been heard of in Inge Street.  Next to the mild, paternal miller, lived a plain, busy, rosy-faced widow, who had no shop window, but kept the best grocer's shop in those parts—where the butter was always fresh.  Opposite to her lived a Mr. Roberts, a pleasant-minded Irishman, who would have been as rotund as Falstaff, if the business of grinding glasses for opticians, which he followed, had been a little more prosperous.  The history and avocations of everybody in this street are still in my mind.

    A little above the wart-witch, with the green silk curtains, dwelt "Sally Padmore."  Her house had two steps to it, and the raised floor always delighted me.  She often came and nursed us when ill.  Well or ill, we gave her trouble enough, kind, patient old soul: but it was the trouble of attachment.  She was never angry.  She was the only old woman I knew in my youth whose kindly voice never changed.  Household trouble came to her, and for three days she was lost.  Going one night into an outhouse, I saw her hanging up dead.  Her ghost was clear before me.  It was shadowy, blue, and well defined.  There was no doubt she had killed herself somewhere.  How could any one see her ghost if she was not dead?  It was the first ghost I had seen, and I was not likely to forget it, and I knew her too well to mistake it.  Next day, while I was alarming all who would listen to me, with the supernatural news, word came that she had returned home as bright and active as usual.  This experience weakened my confidence in ghosts, which was implicit till then.  Two doors below dear, kind "Old Sally" was the home of a stalwart workman given to politics.  I saw his nose chopped off by a soldier in the Bull Ring Chartist Riots many years later.  But the reader will not care to hear about Inge Street and its occupants for ever.

    Before our door where I was born stood, on the opposite side, a considerable clump of well-grown trees, amid which was a hatter's working shop.  On the adjacent corner of Hurst Street stood the Fox Tavern, as it stands now; but then the sign had been newly painted by a one-armed, short, quickstepping, nervous-faced, dapper artist; and a very wonderful fox it seemed to me.  The sharp-nosed, bushy-tailed animal was rushing to cover—on the sign.  I had never seen a fox or a cover, except on that sign.  I had only seen a workshop, and I envied the fox who had such a paradise to flee to.  Yet we were not without glimpses of real nature about us.  Below the Fox Tavern was a "Green"; at the bottom was a garden belonging to a house with a gateway, where one of my father's sisters lived.  The garden fence was not a dead wall, but a low, wood paling, through which children could see the flowers in the garden.  From the end of Inge Street the trees of the parsonage ground made a small wood before us, and apparently in their midst, but really beyond them, arose the spire of the "Old Church"—as we called St.  Martin's.  On summer afternoons and moonlight nights the church spire, rising above the nestling trees, presented an aspect of a verdant village church in the midst of the busy workshop town.  Down through the "Green," the way led to Lady Well Walk, where more gardens lay, and the well was wide, clear, and deep.  Hundreds of times did I fetch water from it.  We had a pump in our own yard, but we did not think much of the pump—and we did it no injustice.  Gone now—gone long ago—is the glory of well, and the Lady's Walk, and the "Green," and the Parsonage Ground, and the trees, and church spire.  The spire is still about, but the sight of it has been hidden by buildings of every order of deformity.  Inge Street, now, looking down from the Horse Fair end, is, as it were, the entrance to a coal-pit, which, when I first knew it, appeared as the entrance to a sylvan glen.

    In the midst of these scenes and persons described, was the beginning of things to me.  If I go back on the principle Prospero proposed to Miranda and state—

That will be far enough.

    The first time I was conscious of being in this world, I was sitting upon a rug on the floor.  A figure in a black dress was vanishing through an open door.  In front another open door disclosed a road.  Trees were bending in the wind, and there were sunlight and shadow on the ground.  I did not know that there was a sound in the world nor a living being save the servant in the black dress.  The quiet shade seemed sad, and the sentiment crept into my mind.  It could not arise from disappointment, I being too young for coherent thought; nor dissatisfaction with the world in general, which would have been as impertinent as premature at that early age.  However, it came—the feeling of sadness was there.  That scene was the beginning of life to me.

    It appears, from what I afterwards came to know, that at my birth my mother wished me to be called "George," after my father.  On the other hand, my aunts on my father's side wished me to be called "Jacob," after my grandfather.  As neither side would give in, both names were given to me—bearing which I became an unconscious peacemaker in the family.  For myself I never liked the name of Jacob.  When I came to have a preference I preferred that of Esau, who was an honest man of wise ways.  A modern writer on Scriptural names explains that Jacob means, "active investigation of belief."  If this be true, it would reconcile me to it; but the recorded antecedents and behaviour of Jacob in the Old Testament are not at all to my mind.

 
CHAPTER VI.
ARTIZAN LIFE SIXTY YEARS AGO.
(1830.)

BEFORE my mother's horn button business ceased, I learned to wind the copper wire on a flat steel turned by a lathe, to stamp the coil into shank form under a press, and to cut the shanks with shears which often strained my little hands.  Afterwards I had to stick the shanks into circular pieces of perforated damp horn, called "moles"—hammer them in—rivet them in a vice, and file them.  The buttons were then shaken in a long bag, which dried and polished them.  They were then strung into grosses, and delivered to the merchants who ordered them.  All the old processes are still distinctly in my mind.

    It was an attraction to me to watch at a tinman's shop window, and see him make lanterns.  At length he consented to take me, when the afternoon school was over, to work through the evening soldering the handles on lanterns.  I was a small boy then, and though I often burned my fingers with the soldering iron, I earned in time as much as 3s. 6d. per week piece-work.  Afterwards I persuaded my father to take me with him to the Eagle Foundry, from a desire to be at work.  I must have been very young then, as I remember asking my father to let me hold his hand as I went along by his side in the early morning; and his hand, enclosing mine, was a new sensation of pleasure, and seemed to put fresh life into me.  The time of being at the foundry was six o'clock, and I was often half asleep as we went up Suffolk Street on the way to Broad Street, where the foundry [6] was, and where I was taught to be a whitesmith, working in white iron and burnished steel.

    I see now the long, dull foundry yard as I saw it for thirteen years from the window at which I worked.  On the right is the little house where the warehouseman lived, who had charge of the premises at night: and, on the same side, the waggon-way leading to the furnaces, the mills, and the casting shops.  The warehouse and show-rooms filled up the right of the yard to the gates.  On the left were ramshackle sheds for storing sheet iron.  Piles of wrought iron bars lay on the ground.  A cold-looking iron pump stood close by, and heaps of old cast iron broken up for blasting.  The foundry cart is loading near the stable door, and at the top, through the open gateway, the town people are passing, and the distant sunshine falls upon the broad road outside.  The sunshine always seemed apart from us.

    One workman at the foundry was a tall, lean old man: he was very gaunt, and I think never had enough to eat; but I had more respect for him than any other man there.  His business was to do the forged wrought-iron work for kitchen ranges and black iron stoves.  Each man made his own tools, and this old workman's pliers and tongs were the most perfect of any one's, everything he forged was excellent in fitness and finish, and, though he was paid no better than if he had done his work slovenly, he never abated a blow on that account.  He had an honest passion for perfect work.  He was a Staffordshire man.  I cannot recall his name, or I would give it to his honour.  He had a daughter named Esther.  She was tall like her father, but did not remind us in any other way of the Esther whose beauty pleaded for the Jews.  She was the only woman employed at the works.  She had a little shop with a fireplace and doorway only, in which she black-leaded stoves, which she did as conscientiously as her father forged at the anvil.  She was always ready for work.  I never remember to have seen her sit down.

    There were two members of the firm—one was Mr. Samuel Smith, a Unitarian, a placid gentleman.  The men were always glad when it fell to him to pay them, as he had a kindly word for them, and would sometimes make them small advances when the wages of the piece-workers fell low.  William Hawkes was the other partner, to whom no workman made any request.  He had a brother Timothy, who was tall and slender, and who had abundant black hair, and a Jewish cast of countenance, quite unlike his brother William, who had red hair, and not much of it.  Timothy, when about thirty years of age, became a Methodist, and grew quite fanatical in his new persuasion; but so far from making him morose, it seemed rather to increase his kindly nature.  A workman was caught by the machinery in the mill, and his leg torn from his body.  He kept his bed until his death, living a year or more, and Mr. Timothy used to go and sit with him, and pray with him, and make small gifts for his comfort.  His brother William—the acting "Master" as he was called—was mainly an unpleasant person.  He was exacting, and always spoke with harshness.  I saw old men who were in such terror at his approach that they would strike their hands instead of the chisel they were using, and were afraid of dismissal or reduction of wages in consequence of the incapacity which he witnessed, and which his presence caused.  Piece-workers and day-workers were so continually subjected to reduced prices and wages that they never felt certain on Monday morning what they would receive on Saturday evening.  There were no trade intimations where other employment might be obtained—no energy in seeking it—there was continual resentment, sullenness, and disgust, but no independence, or self-dependence.  If a man saved a little money, he carefully concealed that he had done so; if he could afford to dress cleanly and moderately well, he was afraid to do it, as his wages were sure to be reduced.  I remember a fine, well-built young man coming to the foundry from Sheffield, where there was always independence among the workmen.  He undertook the deadliest work in the mill, the grinding.  There was great astonishment when he entered the foundry gates wearing a well-fitting, handsome suit of black clothes.  The master was as much astonished at his audacity as the men were.  He changed his clothes in the mill and put on a rough grinder's dress, mounted before the deadly stones, and worked like a splashed, mud-covered Hercules—but he would wash, dress, and leave the foundry like a gentleman.  His employer at once concluded that he had given him too much wages; but the moment a reduction was proposed, he resented it, drew the money due to him, and went away entirely.  It was almost the only example of independence I remember to have seen.

    One incident occurred which filled me with lasting indignation.  The younger brother of a man named Barton who had been years employed in the mill was found by William Hawkes (the acting partner), one meal-time, removing a file from one of the shops.  He was an industrious, well-conducted young fellow—he had not taken the file away, which was worth about 7d., though he probably intended taking it.  He was apprehended, and transported for ten years, on the evidence of the master.  A week's imprisonment would have been sufficient penalty for a first offence in a mill where theft was unknown.  The arbitrary and continual reduction of prices by the master was a far more serious theft of the earnings of all the men.  That was the way in which employers behaved generally, so far as I knew them.  Mr. Hawkes, nevertheless, did kind things in his harsh way which were intended for the welfare of the men, and I used to compare him to a sheep-dog, who kept the wolf from attacking them, but bit the sheep himself when they turned aside.  I resolved not to be bitten, and it filled my mind with hatred to see poor hard-working men about me subjected to the process.

    The condition of mechanics who worked in little workshops of their own was bad.  They had to sell their small manufactures to merchants.  The men who lived in the town, and those who came miles into it, with the produce of their week's work, were kept hanging about the merchants' warehouses until nine, ten, and often eleven o'clock on Saturday night, before they were paid their money; and their wives had to make their little marketings after their husbands reached home.  There seemed no end to this, and no way out of it.  There were no Saturday half-holidays thought of then.

    There stands now, or stood when I last was there, a factory or warehouse at the head of Lady Well Walk, where in my childhood was an open, spacious coal-yard, kept by a Mrs. Gillybrand.  On dark, cold, drizzling Saturday nights children were sometimes sent for a barrow of coals for Sunday fires.  They used to stand by a brazier fire blazing in the coal-yard—sometimes for an hour waiting for barrows to come in—turning themselves round, being half frozen and half toasted.  At the Fox Tavern, and at the mild, white-faced baker's, loads of coals were at times delivered.  No coal came round in sacks at other houses, and a number of small barrows were kept at Gillybrand's, where buyers did their own cartage, or rather barrowage.  As, on Saturday nights, wages, as I have said, were paid late, barrows were in demand often until midnight.  A level barrow-load was 6d., a full one 8d.  The buyer had just what the vendor threw in.  No measure or scales were used.  When a barrow was to be had it was trundled home.  I pitied those who had to go out in the dark and cold on this last errand.  I dreaded it as a negro would being sent out in the snow.  I did not know then that these were the "good old times" of which I should afterwards hear foolish persons prate.

    Though there were no trades unions in my time among whitesmiths, I could see, even then, that excellence of workmanship on the part of a man, intelligent enough to know its value, was a source of independence.  There were two brothers at the foundry named Threstlecock—one did the great forgings for the steam engines, the other fitted the engines—a third man, very large and fat, with a small bullet head, and Welsh impetuosity of manner, made the great castings, which sometimes consumed a ton of molten iron.  These men ventured to dress somewhat better than others, and took more liberty as to time of coming or leaving.  They obtained higher wages for their work, and no attempt at abatement was tried upon them.  My father and one or two other men were all that came within this class, and he would have fared still better but for his known attachment to the place where he had been longer than any other man.  His children took him away at last that he might end his days in sunshine and rest, but he doubtless would have lived longer had they left it optional with him to linger about the old place at will.  His pleasure was in workmanship.

    Long before that time he bought some newly-invented machinery for turning bone buttons, hired steam power at the Baskerville Mill, and placed me in charge of it.  Working one day, leaning closely over my work, the "chock" caught a silk handkerchief, of which the ends were loose, round my neck, I was drawn down in a moment, and nearly strangled.  Fortunately the mill band turning the lathe was a loose one, and I had power to stop the rotation for a short time, but could not extricate myself.  Mr. Roberts, the Irish optician, who lived in our street, was grinding spectacle-glasses in an adjoining room, and heard my calls for help, stopped the machinery, and unwound me, just as the "chock" was beating into my throat; otherwise my head would have been wrung off, and I should have been an observer of the operation.

    By the time I was thirteen or fourteen I made a small bright steel fire-gate, with all the improvements then known, as a chimney ornament for my mother.  All the drilling in the foundry was done by hand: as this was very laborious, I devised a perpendicular drill to be worked by mill power.  At that time I had never seen one.  My delight was in mechanical contrivance.  Not being able to buy mathematical instruments, I made two pairs of compasses for pencil and pen—one with double point and slide, hammered out of bits of sheet iron.  My tutor being pleased with them caused them to be laid on the table at the annual distribution of prizes of the Mechanics' Institution.  This led to my being publicly presented with a proper case of mathematical instruments, given by Mr. Isaac Pitman, the inventor of phonography.  Mr. Lloyd, a banker in Birmingham, caused George Stephenson, one night when he was at the House of Commons, to put my name down on his staff of young engineers.  I was very proud to have my name on his list, though nothing came of it, Mr. Lloyd having probably no opportunity of again calling the attention of the famous engineer to it: and I had no other friend in communication with him.  What a different career mine had been had I been called up!

    Mechanical employment seems to me far preferable to any other open to men in cities.  Had there been in my time means of higher education in evening classes, when degrees could be won without University attendance—impossible to me—I should have remained in the workshop.  There is more independence in pursuits of handicraft, and more time for original thought, than in clerkship or business.  That which made me desirous of escaping from the workshop was the hopelessness of sufficient and certain wages, and the idea of personal subjection associated with it.

    It has sometimes seemed to me that I was born with steel and books in my blood.  About the books I am not so clear, though I have made many after their kind.  But that I had a mechanical faculty beyond the average in my circle was admitted there.  I could tell the quality of steel and other metals just as others can tell textile fabrics at a glance.  When a youth I would fit and finish bright steel work better than men twice my age, and who had twice my wages.  My father, who came of a race of armourers, had, with other attainments, skill in forging.  Sheffield men, who were the best artificers in my time where I worked as a whitesmith, always came to my father to do their difficult forging.  I often swung the striking hammer for my father at the anvil, and to this day I have more pleasure and aptitude for that form of physical exercise than for any other.  Good, well-made, well-contrived, well-finished machinery always gives me as much enjoyment as a good painting.

    The capacity to work as a whitesmith or engineer has always been a source of pride to me.  Anything I could do in my mechanic days I could do ever after.  It gave me a sense of independence.  If speaking, teaching, or writing failed me, I was always ready for the bench.

 
CHAPTER VII.
LEADERS OF THE FIRST BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION.
(1830-3.)

THE most remarkable Birmingham man of that day (1830) was Thomas Attwood.  He was Royalist and Radical, not remarkable for intellectual strength, but had dignity of presence and a persuasive and orotund manner of speaking.  He was the founder and moving spirit of the Birmingham Political Union.  Being a banker, he imparted to it an air of monetary responsibility.  He and Joshua Scholefield were the first members for Birmingham.  Attwood was the member for the town who was most popular with women.  When he was canvassing they were abundant in the courts and streets.  He not only kissed the children—he kissed their mothers.  At one election he was reputed to have kissed eight thousand women.  Though a leader of the masses, he was no democrat, and would have induced the Political Union to accept a £20 franchise, but for the refusal of the more robust politicians of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who, like the late Sir Joseph Cowen, were followers of Lord Durham.  They held a great meeting on the Town Moor, and declared for a £10 franchise.  But for the Newcastle men, the electoral constituency of England would have been "confined to £20 householders." The Birmingham Political Union was the most conspicuous force which impelled the Reform Bill of 1832, such as it was.  Attwood had a theory of currency which he thought would bring prosperity to the people, and he sought a Reformed House of Commons, mainly because he thought he could thereby carry his financial theory into law.   Robert Owen, in like manner, resolved to appeal to the people to carry his social scheme of "Villages of Co-operation," [7] when Lords Liverpool, Lauderdale, and Sidmouth failed him.  Cobden and Bright, with a more genuine political sympathy with the people, were for a broader measure of electoral reform, as better calculated to carry and maintain free trade.  All the £10 voters of Birmingham did was to send a banker and a wealthy merchant to Parliament.  In doing this they had the justification of political gratitude.  Yet George Edmonds was the man who had greater claims than either.

    Joshua Scholefield, Thomas Attwood's colleague in the representation of the town, was a better Liberal than Attwood.  He was a small rotund man, with fire and purpose, and a ruddy complexion.  He menaced the Government with marching on London with a hundred thousand men to inquire why the Reform Bill lingered so long.  The Duke of Wellington took notice of the projected visit.  He was not afraid of us, but did not want us in London.

    In later years, Joshua's son William was elected member for the borough.  He was a man of gentle manners, of good commercial knowledge and authority, who carried through Parliament the Industrial Partnerships Bill, which first made participation of profits with workmen possible.  When in Parliament he had a residence at Runnymede Island, on which Magna Charta was signed, which was enviable.  Runnymede was historic, but Runnymede was damp.  I met him frequently at the House of Commons in his later years. His health was failing, but he was judicious in attendance, which he limited in accordance with his strength.  When a division was due, he infallibly appeared.

    Lawrence Street Chapel, where the Socialist meetings were held in those days, was built by the Southcottians. Mr. Bradley, a tobacconist, was the chief supporter of the little church.  It was he who bought the silver cradle in which the little Shiloh was to be rocked, which Joanna in due time was to bring forth, but never did.  The last occupation of the chapel (1890) is by the Kyrle Society.  The peculiarity of the Southcottian leaders, which excited more prejudice against them than their harmless, Messianic expectations, was that they wore long beards. Ignorance, always intolerant, resented this liberty of differing from their neighbours even in so small a thing as wearing their natural beards.  No one understood then the truth of Schiller's aphorism that "toleration only comes with larger information."

    George Frederick Muntz, who afterwards became member for Birmingham, was the only other man in the town who wore a beard.  He was, when he became member for the borough, the first civilian who wore a beard [8] in the House of Commons—a military officer only was accorded the limited liberty of wearing a moustache.  Mr. Muntz would have been insulted for wearing a beard, but he carried a thick malacca cane, which it was known he would apply to the shoulders of any person who affronted him.  It was this which protected him from ridicule in Birmingham and in the House of Commons.  He was the most powerful and resolute Radical in the town.  A story told of him in my youth was, that going home one night to his house in Soho, he was attacked by two robbers.  He knocked them down and brought them both into town and gave them into custody.  A local writer, one Joseph Allday, was editor of a paper called the Argus, which he enlivened by offensive personalities.  Mr. Muntz, being compromised by some remarks, went down to the office, seized Mr. Allday by the collar, drew him over the counter into the middle of the street, when the editor found that personal allusion to Mr. Muntz was liable to be tempered with an application of his malacca cane.  The assault came before the magistrates, with what results I do not remember.  In the later days of his membership, Mr. Muntz was not edifying on the platform, and swore in his speeches.  Mr. William Cope tells of kindly acts of his.  One day meeting an old woman in Livery Street wheeling coals up the hill, he took the barrow in hand and wheeled it up for her.

    Philip Henry Muntz, a younger brother of George Frederick, also wore a beard, when he came to have one, but his hair was not dark like his brother's.  He had the same brusqueness of manner, but less coarseness.  I heard him make his first speech in public. He afterwards became member for the town.  They were the two fighting Radicals. It is singular that the only descendant of the family in Parliament should be a Tory.  I suppose there is a fatty degeneration of the understanding in well-fed Liberals, as sometimes occurs otherwise in too well-fed men.

    Thomas Clutton Salt, a vehement member of the Political Union, had an ornate style which entertained, but left little impression on his audience.  His quality was best seen in an address which he issued to the town, which now has the merit of showing that Birmingham women took interest in politics before John Stuart Mill's influence urged them to organize themselves as a separate power in the State.  One passage in Mr. Salt's address said "the slave spirit crouches in fear—the tyrant spirit contrives new oppressions—the Jew spirit tortures for gold; therefore do women meddle with politics;" and more to the same effect.  Each paragraph gave impassioned reasons "why women meddle with politics."

    Though no one then thought of giving women any political rights, both parties were ready to avail themselves of their political influence, and when the Liberals of Birmingham were invoking the aid of the women of progress, the Tories of Norwich were issuing the following address:—

“TO THE LADIES OF NORWICH.
"None but the brave deserve the fair.

If ever the sweets of social virtue, the warmth of honest zeal, the earnings of industry, the prosperity of trade, had any influence in the female breast, you have now a happy opportunity of exercising it to the advantage of your country—your cause.  If ever the feelings of a parent, wife, sister, friend, or lover, had a sympathy with public virtue, now is our time to indulge the tender passion.  If ever you felt for the ruin and disgrace of England, and for the miseries and depravities of the obnoxious Reform Bill, you are called on by the most tender and affectionate tie in nature to exert your persuasive influence on the minds of a father, brother, husband, or lover; tell them not to seek filial duty, congenial regard, matrimonial comfort, nor tender compliance, till they have saved your country from perdition! posterity from slavery.  History furnishes us with instances of female patriotism equal to any in the page of war and politics. Oh! may the generous and beatific charm of female persuasions prevail with the citizens of Norwich, to espouse the cause of liberty, of

"STORMANT AND SCARLETT."

It never occurred to these eloquent adjurers that if women were thus able to exercise political influence they were entitled to use it for themselves.

    After the Reform Bill was carried the Union dissolved itself, as the Anti-Corn Law League subsequently did when the Corn Laws were repealed.  Mr. G. F. Muntz proposed that the Union should be hung up like a clean gun, to be taken down if need arose—a figure of speech suitable to a gun-making town.  The gun grew rusty on its nail.

    Robert Kelly Douglas was an active leader of the Union.  He was spoken of as the editor of The Birmingham Journal.  A card of membership which I held—which I still have—is signed with his familiar initials, "R. K. D., secretary," bearing the words, "Birmingham Political Union, Instituted 1830—Revived 1837."  His bold, clear handwriting was like his speeches.  He was fluent, relevant, and forcible.  He was tall, slender, with a fine head of grey hair, and of dignified, cultivated manners.

    At the great meeting known as the "Gathering of the Unions," 200,000 on Newhall Hill sang the Call,

Then others made reply,

    There were nine stanzas containing fifty-four lines in all.  Never did political meeting so large sing a song so long, before or since in this world.

    The Rev. Hugh Hutton put up a sonorous prayer. Unitarians in those days preached in Johnsonian sentences, and used more vowels than any other religionists.  Only Unitarian ministers at that time would pray for Liberals, or who would pray among them.  We had a Catholic priest, the Rev. T. M. M'Donnel, a member of the council of the Political Union; a tall, clear, articulate, well-informed speaker, with grey hair and public spirit; but he never did what Mr. Hutton did.  A Birmingham meeting never asked him.  They would not imagine that a Catholic could have got a blessing down from heaven if he tried.  The one leader who had most force of character, and who was best instructed on Liberal principle, was George Edmonds, a schoolmaster and solicitor, who was imprisoned in 1819 for the part he took at a Newhall Hill meeting.  He had the protruding underlip, the physical sign of capacity for oratory, as might be seen in Lord Brougham, George Thompson, and other orators of mark.  There are orators in plenty without this characteristic, but to those who have, it gives a sort of prehensile advantage over an audience.  More than an orator with a commanding voice and measured force of delivery, Edmonds was a Radical thinker, and friend of Jonathan Wooler in the days of the Black Dwarf Edmonds was tried with Major Cartwright and Wooler, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment, for taking part in the election of Sir Charles Wolseley, Bart., as M.P. for Birmingham, 1820, no Speaker's writ authorizing it.  Jonathan Wooler concluded the twelfth volume of the Black Dwarf in 1824.   In his "Final Address" he states that "he commenced the work under the idea that there was a public in Britain devotedly attached to Parliamentary reform.  This was an error.  It is true that hundreds of thousands have petitioned and clamoured for reform, but the event has proved what the Black Dwarf treated as a calumny, that they only clamoured for bread . . . and were not reformers, but bubbles thrown up in the fermentation of society. . . . The majority has decided in its crueller moments 'for things as they are.'"  Yet within eight years the great Reform Bill was carried by, what even Wellington had to admit, was the universal demand of the country.  This is a remarkable instance of that political despair on the part of an insurgent politician, resembling the darkness which precedes the dawn.

    When Birmingham became a Parliamentary borough, Edmonds came forward as a candidate, but was requested to stand aside in favour of Mr. Seholefield.  In the day of triumph it is seldom that a constituency selects as its representative the man who laboured for it in perilous, unfriended, and apathetic days.  When such a man claims recognition, he is told that he is dividing the Liberal interest—which appears not to lie that way.  Ultimately, Mr. Edmonds was made Town Clerk of Birmingham.  The last time I saw him he was one of an audience at a discussion I held with an adversary in the town.  There was no person among its public men of the days of my youth whose presence could give me so much pleasure.

    The chief Radical critic of the Union, who better understood the principle of democracy and cared more for it than the leaders, except George Edmonds, was one George Russell, who made a little fortune in Moor Street by printing and selling Catnatch songs.  Had Macaulay visited Birmingham he would have gone over Mr. Russell's copious ballad store with delight.  He had the finest collection in all the Midlands.  Unfortunately, Russell, like Mr. Corbett (contemporaneous with him in Radical agitation), had a querulous manner and acted on the Pauline maxim of being "instant in season and out of season," and as he was generally "out," he was disliked. But he had the root of the matter in him in political thoroughness.  He left £12,000 to found a secular school, of which he designated me as the teacher; but the bequest was disputed.  I was examined in the case, but, not being able to take oath, Mr. Arthur Ryland, the Commissioner of the Inquiry, accepted my affirmation.  All the same, legal objection could be taken to it.  The bequest was annulled. Secular teaching was held to be hostile to Christianity, and much against the validity of the bequest.

 
CHAPTER VIII.
CHARACTERISTICS OF BIRMINGHAM MEN.
(1830-6.)

THE habit I had acquired of frequenting chapels and missionary meetings led me to attend political assemblies.  This further enlarged my views of life and duty, which the religion taught me had hidden from me.

    The political impulses by which Birmingham had become distinguished had quickened thought of the human kind in relation to this world.  For five years I was a scholar in the Carr's Lane Sunday Schools, yet save Watts's hymns and reading in the Bible, I had learned nothing.  There was a sand class for seven or eight boys, in which lessons in rudimentary writing were given.  But beyond this, secular instruction in these schools did not go.  Once the Rev. John Angell James, the pastor, delivered a week-night public address, in which he counselled young men to be content in the station and with the lot which Providence had assigned them.  Dissent was no better than the Church as regarded secular progress.  When I heard Mr. James's counsel, I believed it.  It was logical Christian doctrine I knew, and I could see that if acted upon, the Political Union was an organized sin—as its object was to alter and raise the condition of the people.  Had Mr. James. himself acted upon his own principle, he would not have been a preacher. [9]

    Birmingham being in the heart of the Midlands of England, its people have insularity of character as well as of race.  The various nations of invaders who, for more than a thousand years, bestowed on England their malevolent presence, no doubt penetrated more or less to Birmingham.  But the British founders and their descendants probably kept substantial occupancy of the interior of the country.  Our furious incursionists doubtless left behind them turbulent additions to the population—perpetuating a like spirit along the invaded shores.  Thus to this day the coast-land population show energy and unrest of character.  The Midlanders have steadier attachment to independence and to ways of their own.  Insisting upon liberty as an ancient inheritance, they regard as aliens any who would disturb their exercise of it.

    Still in my mind is the perfect surprise with which I first became aware of having the instinct of race.  When the Crimean War came it was popular.  It was found out by the people that we were committed to fighting somebody.  Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden, and a few other great politicians fully understood that me ought not to be fighting at all.  The hereditary instinct of a warlike people once awakened, is quite sufficient to make any conflict popular.  There was much less political intelligence then than now, and hardly any political conscience as regarded foreign nations.  When news came that my countrymen were fighting in the trenches of Sebastopol, my wish was that they might win, whether right or wrong.  The great French war had ceased two years before I was born.  England had never been at war in my time.  There had been no inspiration of battle in the people within my experience.  The martial spirit slumbered as though it were dead in the land, yet I had it and knew it not.  At any lull in the Crimean carnage, I was anxious that diplomacy should intervene to terminate it, but while we were fighting I wished the English to win.  It was not right that we should win if we were wrong.  It means an ill organization of international affairs when any one succeeds who is in the wrong—whether an individual or a nation.  Yet an unknown and unsuspected instinct of race set me wishing that, while fighting was going on, we might succeed somehow or anyhow.  I do not justify the sentiment, but I own to having had it.

    Such was the effect of insularity of birth and race that I for a long time mistrusted all people not English—yet never disliking them as persons; for their physical difference in appearance and alien ways were always attractive to me.  What I mistrusted was their judgment and opinion, until experience taught me that sentiments of justice are, in the main, the same among all people, although their way of displaying it is so different that you doubt whether they know what it is.  Insularity of position gives self-containment of character to a people unused to consulting opinion outside themselves.  They hold their views with obstinacy because they are theirs, and their first instinct is to distrust the judgment of those who differ from them.  If they manifest narrowness of view, which comes from self-sufficiency, it gives intensity to their character, and they maintain their opinion with unity and force, and their determination can be counted upon in any contest in which they engage.  Judging from myself, I regarded the coast towns of England as though they were inhabited by alien races. When Birmingham men enter upon political agitation, the reader will think them likely to be resolute in it.  During the active years of the Political Union my days were passed within a few yards of its office.  I knew its leaders in the street and on the platform, and their conduct accorded with the impression of Birmingham men herein described.  The legend of the town, adopted on its incorporation, is rightly and creditably "Forward"—the family motto of the Duke of Oueensberry.

 
CHAPTER IX.
ORATORS WHO CAME OUR WAY.
(1837.)

IN 1831 a few words on a sheet of paper stuck on Mr. Muntz's warehouse door in Great Charles Street, at nine o'clock in the morning, was notice enough to summon 12,000 or 20,000 persons to Newhall Hill at midday.  When a youth, not fifteen, I had often been out at the meetings, and knew that there was a Reform Bill in the air.
 

The most famous of the oratorical visitors of the Political Union was Daniel O'Connell.  In those days the voices of the great Irish leaders were always given to enlarge English freedom, as they have often been since. On one occasion a vast assembly beyond compute, met on Newhall Hill.  Early in the morning a band of four hundred women had marched from Rowley Regis (locally called "Rowley Rags," which better described it), a place several miles from Birmingham, and had taken up a position in the hollow, near the platform.  The tall form of O'Connell was conspicuous as he rose to speak.  The moment his eye lighted on the unexpected mass of women in front of him, the quick instinct of the orator decided his first sentence, and he began, "Surrounded as I am by the fair, the gentle, and the good," which at once captivated his feminine hearers.  Their occupation prevented them being very "fair," and holding a position amid 200,000 men—the number computed to be present—showed they were not very "gentle"; but they were "good," patriotic women, and they cheered the flattering allusion to themselves.  The men behind cheered because the women cheered; and the crowd behind them, who were too far away to hear well, cheered because those before them cheered, and thus the fortune of the great oration was made.  What Sir Bulwer Lytton said of O'Connell's speaking was true at Newhall Hill:—

    O'Connell had three manners: a didactic tone in the Courts—dignified argument in the House of Commons—raciness on the platform, where he abandoned himself to himself, on the Yankee principle, "Fill yourself full of your subject as though you were a barrel, take out the bung, and let human nature caper."  In London we have seen O'Connell take off his necktie and open his collar to give himself more freedom.  On one occasion, referring to the births in Dublin having decreased 5,000 a year for four years, he exclaimed, "I charge the British Government with the murder of those 20,000 infants" (who never were born).  It was said with so much raciness that the audience did not perceive the delightful absurdity.  Mr. Sam Timmins told me that an Irish schoolmaster who was present remarked to him, "That's worthy of my country."  In one sense, O'Connell was right—British misrule had caused the depopulation of Dublin.

    Another speaker who interested the residents more than any other platform visitor to Birmingham, was Charles Reece Pemberton.  Though born in South Wales, he resided during his youth in Birmingham.  His life was all vicissitude and romance.  Of a sensitive, poetic, and dramatic temperament, he found an unsympathetic clerkship, to which he was confined, unendurable and ran away with a companion to Liverpool, where they were seized by a pressgang then prowling about.  His friend, endeavouring to swim from the warship to which they were drafted, was drowned.  Pemberton remained seven years in the service, and became acquainted with several foreign stations.  He had an irrepressible passion for acting and came to have theatres abroad.  As a lecturer and expositor of Shakspeare he was unrivalled.  He had a handsome, intellectual face, what the French would call spirituelle in expression, and his bright animation of manner, an intense hatred of injustice and sympathy with human progress made him the most popular lecturer whoever entered a Mechanics' Institution, to whose members he chiefly spoke.  In a hundred towns none who ever heard him ceased to speak of him.  His lectures on Shakspeare he illustrated by reciting passages; but his criticisms were not destined to introduce the passages—the passages were selected to illustrate the criticism.  As he excelled in comedy as well as tragedy, every lecture afforded both instruction and delight.  He wrote tragedies and songs, and some autobiographical chapters (sent to W. J. Fox when he edited the Monthly Repository) under the signature of "Pel Verjuice."  The papers excited great interest, which led to Mr. Fox seeking his acquaintance.  The first theatrical representation Pemberton ever saw was in the Birmingham Theatre, and his description of that first night is a memorable piece of writing.  His pen was as vivid as his imagination.  His account of a nomination meeting in the Birmingham Town Hall in 1835 tells the story of the beginning of electoral life in Birmingham.  He wrote or spoke only of that which he had himself seen or felt.  The impressions of the events and experience through which he had passed, he retained with what many thought a supernatural fidelity.  He was playing one night at Hereford, having taken the theatre, as was his wont, to perform a series of "Shakspeare's tragic glories," as he styled them.  Serjeant Talfourd, who was there during the Assize week, hearing that a new actor was in the town, went down to witness his performance, and was so struck by it that, finding but a small audience present, he paid the expenses of the house succeeding nights, that he might witness all the representations.  In the New Monthly he afterwards described Pemberton as "a new actor of real tragic power," who might come to compare with Macready or Kean.  By Talfourd's influence he appeared afterwards at Covent Garden Theatre.  "Critics differed as to the merits of Pemberton's acting, and contradicted themselves more than they usually do, which meant that there was new merit of some kind in the performances.  Mediocrity never excites controversy," as Mr. Serjeant Talfourd said, writing upon this subject at the time.  "The very difference of opinion means much. Mere mediocrity is not thus mistaken.  It has no chameleon hues."

    An affection of the throat, which timely cessation from lecturing might have rendered curable, killed him.  By the generosity of Serjeant Talfourd, who bade him draw upon him for whatever he required, he went abroad, but without advantage, and returned to die at his brother's house in Ludgate Hill, Birmingham.  I was the only stranger whom he wished admitted to his room in his last days.  He felt keenly that when his powers were at their greatest, and when engagements, which would have made him opulent, awaited him, his strength was exhausted.  His mind was filled with brilliant projects of service to the people.  His last thoughts were expressed in lines which he wrote.

His friend John Fowler, of Sheffield, published a volume containing his life and works, and Ebenezer Elliott wrote one of his finest poems upon him, entitled, "Poor Charles."  During his days of health he had given two performances in the Birmingham Theatre for the Building Fund of the Mechanics' Institution, and we erected a memorial over him in Key Hill Cemetery.  I was secretary of the committee, and W. J. Fox wrote his epitaph.

    This eloquent and comprehensive epitaph is his history.  His health was failing when in a crowded room in Great Charles Street he read Fox's "Lecture on Class Moralities," which were then being delivered in South Place Chapel, London. No Sunday evening readings had been heard in Birmingham before.  Since Pemberton's day I have heard hundreds of lecturers and preachers in England and America, but never one who had the animation, the inspiration, and the spontaneous variety he had.  He came into the lecture-room like a flash of light, and the hearer saw new things ever after by it.  He was of the people, and for the people, and owed all his powers to himself.

    One of the men of mark, who, though not conspicuous on the platform of the Political Union, was William Pare—an organizing power on the side of insurgent opinion, and a member of the Town Council.  Societies for the diffusion of Christian knowledge professedly took charge of the affairs of another world.  Lord Brougham formed the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge—an entirely new sort of knowledge not recognized then, which had relation to the affairs of this world.  He sent Mr. Coates to Birmingham to arrange the establishment of a mechanics' institution in the town.  It was Mr. Pare mainly who carried out this intent.  In all municipal enterprises and improvement Pare was foremost.  He had an assuring voice, the genius of enthusiasm, which won others to unity, and made no enemies. He was appointed the first Registrar under the Act legalizing civil marriages, but as he was an advocate of Mr. Owen's views, the Bishop of Exeter brought his name before the House of Lords, which led to Mr. Pare resigning that office.  He was afterwards largely engaged as a railway statist in connection with the construction of railways, and subsequently as managing partner in The Irish Engineering Company of Seville Iron Works, Dublin, and resided at Clontarf.  He was the Governor of Queenwood Community, established by Owen's disciples in Hampshire.  He preserved his youthful animation to a good age, and his fidelity to the social and co-operative movement, and was the best representative of the philosophical principles of Robert Owen of all his disciples.  His angerless voice never varied in the most conflicting counsel, and he was pacific without being passive.  He was considerate to the erring, and at the same time energetic against error.  He had two qualities which seldom go together—advocacy and organization.  I was one of the first persons married in his office, intending to testify in favour of civil marriage, though the prosaicness of the arrangement provided by the Act inspired me with resentment.  No bright chamber, hall, or temple, to give distinction to the ceremony; only the business office of a Registrar of Deaths, infusing funeral associations into a wedding.  Civil marriage had become a necessity; but it was made as uninteresting as it could be, to drive persons back to church.  It was the hope that Mr. Pare would officiate reconciled me to it, and imparted distinction to it in my mind.

 
CHAPTER X.
NATURE OF THE MIDLAND MIND.
(1830-6.)

THE Midland mind is necessarily provincial.  Provincial is not a good term, as the counties are not subjugated districts.  I use the word provincial because there is none other which designates the compeers of the capital, the dwellers in the open land of plain and mountain.  There is a common impression that the provincial mind is of a lower type than the metropolitan.  This arises from overlooking that the London mind has brightness where the provincial mind has strength.  Londoners are the lapidaries of the nation.  They polish the diamond found in the counties, and sometimes, if no one challenges them, they take credit for producing the jewel.  If any one could take out of the metropolitan mind all knowledge, thought, conjecture, imagination, and poetry, which it has secreted from provincial thinkers, many minds would be light as the shell when the egg is out. London abounds in egg-shell minds; nevertheless, it has other minds of a noble order.  The mark of metropolitanism is the mastery of many views.  London is latitudinarian without which there is no tolerance.

    One great advantage of provincial life is the opportunity of originality.  There, originality can be seen by reason of its separateness.  The provincial mind is the spring land of the nation.  The metropolis is but the confluence of its many streams.  Though the metropolis has the merit of attracting them, their origin is elsewhere.  London is the mirror of the counties, where every provincial man of genius who looks into it, sees his own face.  Still the provincial mind has the disadvantage of a fixed eye.  It sees clearly what is before it, and nothing escapes it within its own range, but it sees little beyond and nothing around it.  It does not ignore excellence in others: it does not know of it.  Ignoring implies knowing and intentional disregard.  The tendency of the provincial mind is not only not to know, its tendency is not to believe in anything but itself.  Its secret opinion is that nature exhausted herself in bestowing upon the provincial mind the ideas it has, and that other persons, who profess to know something, are unconscious impostors, being unaware that all true conceptions were other wise distributed before they applied for them.  If this be not so, the provincial mind often gives this impression of itself.  Any observer of local politics frequently sees a citizen arise who supposes himself to know everything from the beginning and previously.  One day he finds himself a member of the Town Council, and confronted by forty or fifty gentlemen each under precisely the same impression of his own attainments.  Then the all-knowing citizen is dismayed at the skill required and the delay which intervenes before he obtains ascendency for his views there.  If it come to pass that the same aspirant enters Parliament, he finds himself face to face with six hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen, each privately convinced that he alone has the right idea of the government of the world.  Then he is amazed at the art, tact, eloquence, patience, and resource necessary to overcome the representative and concentrated obstinacy which he encounters in that assembly.  I have watched a hundred men in the House of Commons of just and strong ambition, grow pale with dying purpose as they stepped into that wilderness of infallibility, when the fierce blasts of contrariety of opinion first beat upon them.  They were discouraged when they discovered how slowly the mill of the gods grind—when they have to turn the wheels. Many leaders who have awakened the courage and hope of the provinces have been the first to feel discouraged in Parliament, and what was worse to propagate discouragement.  The one advantage of the Parliamentary mind is that it has, like a lighthouse, a revolving eye.  It sees all the country around.  Hence Parliament awaits events with an unamazed expectancy.  It is never disconcerted and never despairs.  It knows that common consent to the right is a pursuit of infinite labour and infinite worth, and that victory comes with facts, time, and persistence. Its art is impartiality, its strategy is patience, its grace is deference, and its strength toleration.  It is wise not by its own wisdom, but by wisdom acquired in winning honest concurrence.

    It was not till I began to notice these varying characteristics of local and metropolitan life that it was possible to understand what persistence of effort is necessary in propagandism, or to encounter without surprise the natural obstacles in the way of a new conviction, and the resentments which are awakened by the attempt to create it.

 
CHAPTER XI.
WIDER VIEWS.
(1837.)

REVERENCE for excellence I always had.  It was not called forth or cultivated—it came to me like a sense.  No book of etiquette was needed to teach me how to act towards those whom I had reason to regard.  I used to walk home with my tutor to the other end of the town on dark nights, though less able than he to defend myself, if attacked on my return alone.

    Mr. Daniel Wright had been the tutor of C. R. Pemberton, already mentioned, and a greater Shakspearian critic than any other actor before his time. Pemberton said to me "he owed more to Daniel Wright than to any man, save his own father."  I might, in my turn, say the same of Mr. Wright, who gave me advice as to the conduct of life, and Mr. Hawkes Smith, to whom Mr. Wright commended me, did also—advice which was only in the minds of Unitarian thinkers, and of which no other religious body in Birmingham had knowledge or took interest.  Mr. Wright was at one time partner with Thomas Clutton Salt, a colleague of Thomas Attwood, with whom he was associated in founding the famous Birmingham Political Union, which contributed so much to the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832.  The place of business of Salt and Wright was at the corner of Paradise Street, on the spot on which the Town Hall now stands.  Mr. Wright was a man immovable in a cause he believed to be just.  He had a lawsuit with his partner.  He won his cause but lost his capital.  When the Mechanics' Institution was formed, he was appointed tutor.  Mr. Wright, more cultivated than his partner, had the manners of a gentleman, and his wide knowledge was of a kind always ready for use.  He was about fifty when I became one of his pupils.  He was of middle stature, strongly built, his face was pallid; you could scarcely see that it was pock-marked.  His manner was grave and silent, showing the sense of misfortune and fortitude.  All who spoke of him in the town did it with sympathy and respect.

    In 1839, an exhibition of machinery and art manufactures was held in the Shakspeare Rooms, New Street.  It was said that Prince Albert had in view to promote an International Exhibition (which was held eleven years later) should this experiment excite distinctive public interest.  Some machines of remarkable delicacy of action were supplied by Lieutenant Lecount.  Application was made to Mr. Wright to recommend some student at the Mechanics' Institution, who, with assistants he might select, would explain the various objects to visitors.  Mr. Wright recommended me, and I undertook the duty.  One day Sir Robert Peel came, Prince Albert and other persons of distinction visited the exhibition, Lieut. Lecount came down daily.  He was a short man and wore a rough sea jacket.  He had served in the navy under Constantine Moorson, and spoke with pride of a battle in which he had been engaged with him.  He was liable to fainting fits, and when they were coming on he would crouch down among the machinery against the wall, telling me not to regard him, and when he recovered he rose and continued his survey.  He was spoken of as "the mathematician of the London and Birmingham Railway," as he was engaged in its construction.  At that time the Rev. Timothy East, a saintly and popular preacher, to whose gentle tones and fierce expressions I was oft a listener—who ranked next to the Rev. J. Angell James in his reputation in the town, was accustomed to call at the railway office.  As well as "mansions in the skies," Mr. East had shares in the railway, which Lecount thought incompatible with his spiritual pretensions. Not knowing the lieutenant, and seeing him in his rough attire, Mr. East took him to be a porter, and called out, "Hold my horse."  Lecount replied with a naval oath of rotund quality and explosive as a shell—being provoked by the superciliousness in the preacher's tone, which offended Lecount's self-respect. Mr. East complained of the singular behaviour of "the man at the door," when he was told that he had addressed Lieutenant Lecount, who was a French gentleman of official distinction and of great attainments.  Mr. East excused himself for his mistake, and regretted that his many acquirements did not include a little civility among them.  Lecount, under the name of Dr. P. Y., wrote a book of note at the time, which was published by my friend, Henry Hetherington, entitled "A Hunt After the Devil."  There was little of that person in the book, which was filled with mathematical calculations, remarkably identical with those which Bishop Colenso afterwards made, of the dimensions of the ark and of its inadequacy to contain a ten thousandth part of the inmates which we are informed entered it.

    One morning, which I shall never forget, my tutor came down in his friendly way to see how I was getting on in my new employment.  He shook hands at the entrance with Captain Van Burl, who was treasurer of the exhibition, and died as he was doing so.  We laid him in one of the rooms, and it was hours after before I could persuade myself that he was dead.  Through his influence I had made many friends, whose wider views in religion enlarged my own.  As the Mechanics' Institution could not at once replace Mr. Wright, the committee appointed me to conduct the classes for a time.  Some of the students in whom Mr. Wright had taken interest became afterwards distinguished—among them was Dr. J. A. Langford.

    Mr. Wright was buried in the Old Meeting House Yard, wher