the rainbow of promise. I had my reward for the tremendous strain of the contest, and felt, like the poet, "better fifty years. of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." That same night I addressed the working-men's club amid equal enthusiasm, and next day found the Exchange packed with a dense mass, through which I had to thread my way to the Town Hall, and then to visit the Exchange News' Room, and address the commercial public among whom I had lived and laboured.

One effect of this election was to fix the eyes of the whole country on social reform. It was the chief political event of the time, so that the Press took unusual notice of it. Being the largest constituency in England, and one so notoriously Conservative, it showed that a programme of social reform was what the people wanted. It was clear that I got in with the aid of many Tory votes. It is, I believe, the only case in the last half century where the Liberal cause triumphed in Tory Liverpool. It was a huge advertisement for all kinds of social reforms. No election had ever been fought on these issues before, but now it became the fashion all over the country. I was continually asked to address meetings up and down the country on these topics, and candidates for Parliamentary honours addressed themselves to these questions in dead earnest. For several years Parliament was taken up with social legislation, and a harvest has been reaped which this election at least helped to ripen. All this I did not see at the time. The pressure was too great. I was like a man swimming for dear life. It was only long after the struggle was over that I saw how at the very nick of time I was enabled to say what was needed. All this may seem egotistical, but I cannot help stating what I believe to be the truth. I was but the mouthpiece of greater and better men, such as Alexander Balfour, the Rathbones, Lockhart, Patterson, Lundie and others, at whose feet I had sat, and whose lives had interlaced with mine. Few of us can claim to be original. Our mental stock is a compound of ingredients drawn from our social environment. We get ideas we can hardly tell how. The difference between minds is more in the power of assimilation than of origination. Some have a resisting medium: others a receptive. The one produces a fossil, Tory type: the other a progressive and reforming one. In pure politics I owed more to Mr. Gladstone than to all my teachers combined, but on social questions mainly to those noble men whose names I have given above.

I was entertained at a dinner at the Reform Club, Liverpool, soon after the contest, and had a further opportunity of developing my schemes of social reform. I put to the front on all these occasions and for several years after, both in and out of Parliament, the need of saving the children. I had found the hopelessness of lifting on a large scale the "submerged tenth," as General Booth calls it-the middle-aged drinkers and wastrels of both sexes who swarmed in all our large cities; and I felt that unless we could save the children we should have a never-ending succession of this social wreckage. Hence I advocated industrial training for the slum children, night schools-mainly technical-the abolition of street trading by children at night, the legal imposition on parents of responsibility for adequate food and clothing, the right of taking children wholly out of the care of abandoned parents, the boarding out or emigration of pauper children, and their separation from corrupt adults. I attacked the corrupt workhouse system of those days, which produced generation after generation of paupers, and, above all, the wholesale temptations to drunkenness which the State permitted to be set up at every street corner. At the time I entered Parliament very few children attended evening schools. The few that did so got nothing but verbal teaching. Our education system in those days was in the hands of verbal pedants, whose sole notion of instruction was accurate reading, writing, spelling and cyphering. The training of the hands or the eye was thought to be outside the purview of elementary education. I worked hard for years to show the need of manual as well as mental training, especially in evening schools. Only 30,000 children attended such schools in all England in those days: now there are nearly half a million, and every form of practical training for hand and eye is encouraged but there is still room for great development. Though anticipating a little, I may say that for several years I introduced a Bill each session to render it compulsory on children leaving school at thirteen or earlier, to attend night schools for two years longer. I never succeeded in carrying it, but I got the unanimous assent of the House to a motion, in 1889, affirming the desirability of a general system of evening continuation schools.

CHAPTER XV

My First Session-Life in Parliament-The Bradlaugh Question-" Overstrain in Education "-Socialism in England-Effect of Parliamentary Life

PARLIAMENT met in February, 1883, and I took my seat, introduced by William Rathbone and Stephen Williamson, who had both given me their heartiest support in my election. I took a house prettily situated on Clapham Common, but found it was too far off. I did not then realize what late hours were kept, and how fatiguing was a drive of four miles after one or two o'clock in the morning!

My first impressions of the House were bewildering. I had been accustomed to the methodical despatch of business, and to punctuality and economy of time. I found the bitterest party feeling, incessant obstruction, and an utter waste of time. The Irish Nationalists were fighting the Government with the most ingenious methods of obstruction. The "Fourth Party," led by Lord Randolph Churchill, was still worse. In all my Parliamentary experience I never witnessed such unscrupulous methods as that party employed against Mr. Gladstone. On the debate on the address I heard Mr. Forster's terrible denunciation of Mr. Parnell as accessory to the awful crimes that then disgraced Ireland. He spoke from behind the Government Bench, above the gangway; and for two hours poured out from a sheaf of notes the most damnatory charges I ever heard made against a political leader. Forster was a man of rugged appearance; he had none of the graces of oratory, but he spoke in a tone of intense conviction which electrified the House, and sorely tried the patience of Mr. Gladstone. No one could help respecting Mr. Forster, but I remain of opinion that Mr. Gladstone was right in liberating Parnell from Kilmainham, and getting back to legality in the government of Ireland.

My first speech was on Irish emigration for the overcrowded districts in the west of Ireland, where a benevolent Quaker, Mr. Tuke, was assisting the starving population to cross the Atlantic. I followed soon after by seconding Sir Joseph Pease's motion against the opium trade. My friend, W. S. Caine, very kindly invited me to a dinner at the Devonshire Club, where eighty or ninety Liberal members met to commemorate the Liberal victory in Liverpool, and there I had a good opportunity of advocating social reform.

I was plunged into a new world, meeting numbers of men of "light and leading" whose names had long been familiar, but whose personality was not known to me. The pressure of "receptions," dinners, etc., and the late hours of Parliament were very trying. I generally arrived home about two a.m.; but as the session advanced and obstruction became more obstinate, it was often three and sometimes four a.m.; and I often came home in broad daylight in the summer time. This was the first session that the two grand committees were set up-one on Trade, and one on Law. I was put on the first, and have sat upon it for nineteen sessions, and have seen many valuable measures passed dealing with trade and industry. That session we had Mr. Chamberlain's Bankruptcy Bill before us, and encountered obstruction almost as bad as in the House of Commons. Two days a week I had to sit for four hours, say from twelve to four, on the Committee, and then usually to one or two a.m. in the House. I found the life very exhaust-ing. I had an enormous correspondence from Liverpool. Whatever subject was before Parliament, some section of that great community was interested. The cleavages of opinion were more acute there than anywhere else in the Kingdom. We had 100,000 Catholic Irish, and perhaps nearly as many Protestant Orangemen. Each side attacked me if I seemed to favour the other. I was fortunate in securing the aid of my old friend, Samuel James Capper, as Parliamentary Secretary. He was well known in literary circles as the author of the letters on the Franco-German War that appeared in the Times when he carried relief from the Society of Friends to the starving peasantry of France.

The first great difficulty I encountered with my constituents arose about Mr. Bradlaugh. He had been elected again and again by Northampton as an avowed Free Thinker. He had offered to take the oath, but had been refused. He had tried to force his way into the House, but had been ejected with much

violence by the police. He again presented himself at the bar of the House and claimed admittance. The general view of the Liberal Party was that he was entitled to take his seat, yet intense repugnance was felt to his views, in which I concurred. Mr. Gladstone introduced a Bill permitting "affirmation" in place of an oath to those who had conscientious objections to swearing. His speech was magnificent-deeply religious in tone, but showing the hopelessness of keeping up religious tests any longer as a condition of entrance to Parliament. He convinced my judgement, and I voted for it, but thereby incurred the reprehension of some of my oldest friends. I felt the position very painful. The Bill was lost, and Mr. Bradlaugh was kept out for some years longer, and by that means was made an idol of the common people, and secured a huge circulation for his infidel papers. In fact nothing could have so well served his self-advertisement. The irony of the situation lay in the fact that when the Conservative party came back to power at the next election Mr. Bradlaugh was allowed to take his seat almost without protest, and for several years proved himself a really valuable member of Parliament, and especially earned the respect of the Conservative party, who found him a bulwark against Socialism!

This Parliament contained a great number of earnest social reformers, and two motions were carried which caused us great satisfaction. Mr. Stansfeld carried a resolution condemning the

Contagious Diseases Acts," which soon led to their abolition, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson carried a resolution in favour of Local Option, which remains unfulfilled to this day, and indeed seems much further off now than it did then! I also brought forward the question of "Overstrain" in our Elementary Schools, on the education estimates, moved by Mr. Mundella (with whom for many years I cordially co-operated). Those were the days of 'payment by results." The unfortunate teacher was expected to pass each child at the same age and at the same grade, whether weak or strong, stupid or clever. School was a place of great drudgery to the teachers, who had to pull up the children of deficient intellect to the common standard, often working in a vile atmosphere without proper ventilation, as was the case in most of the old voluntary schools. Great numbers of them broke down in middle life. The case of the pupil teachers was worst of all. They had to teach nearly all day and work all the evening as well, and I came to know of many cruel cases of ruined health.