Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament. John Morrison Davidson

of various kinds of government; nor his religion so poorly grounded as to fear scientific inquiry. He searched after truth, and followed wherever it might lead him." In portraying Fox's virtues, Mr. Taylor described the leading features of his own mind.

      Very early in life Mr. Taylor entered his father's business, for which he showed aptitude of the highest ​order, and by 1866 he was able to retire from the firm with a handsome competency. This fact is all the more gratifying that for upwards of twenty years previously he had been giving up much of his time to the public service.

      In quitting connection with the firm, Mr. Taylor addressed a characteristic circular to all the employés. "My friends," it said among other things, "with the close of the old year has ceased, as you all probably are aware, my connection with the business, and therefore with you. I cannot let such a connection cease without just one word of kindly farewell, of hearty good wishes. In wishing you farewell, I reflect with satisfaction that the name of Taylor will still be represented in the house by my brother. Finally, let me say, that, should my name ever reach you in connection with any question of public interest, I can promise beforehand that it will only be on the side ever upheld by my father before me—that, viz., of justice for all, and of political enfranchisement for the working-classes."

      In Parliament Mr. Taylor is rapt and solitary, living in the world of his own ideas. Nevertheless, his singleness of purpose, accuracy of statement, genuine humor, originality of ideas, and clear, effective speaking never fail to secure for him a respectful hearing, however distasteful may be the subject of his address. At home he is a delightful host, an inveterate joker of jokes. His wife, a lady of great accomplishments, is hardly behind him in zeal for the public good. Every post brings heaps of letters from aggrieved subjects of her Majesty in all parts of the world. They are all carefully considered, and parliamentary or extra-parliamentary redress invoked, according to circumstances. ​In his capacity of redresser-general of unheeded wrongs and oppressions, Mr. Taylor has quite a business to attend to; and in this character have some of his greatest senatorial successes been achieved.

      He is the terror of the "great unpaid," whose cruel antics throughout rural England he has done much to curb. Every day "justices' justice" is more of a byword and a reproach. He has striven hard to remove the inequalities of Sunday legislation; and the poor of London in particular owe him a debt of gratitude for taking the sting out of the great harasser of then lives, that too "busy bee," Bee Wright. It is but the other day that Mr. Taylor, at a cost of more than ten thousand dollars, presented the workingmen of Brighton with a People's Club, which will secure to them on Sundays something like the advantages of a local Carlton or Reform.

      In the attempt to bring General Eyre to justice, he was hardly less active than Mr. Mill.

      The "cat," he has satisfied all humane minds, is twice accursed—cursing him that administers, and him to whom it is administered.

      The game-laws he has had the courage to expose in all then naked infamy to a country still held tight in the vice of feudalism.

      He has been one of three in resisting the spoliation of the exchequer by royal princes and princesses; and the most important perhaps of all future parliamentary reforms—the payment of members—he has made peculiarly his own. His speech on the latter subject is one of the most convincing ever delivered by him or any other living member of the House.

      As president of the "People's International League," ​Mr. Taylor in his younger days was untiring in his endeavors to liberate Poland, Hungary, and Italy from the oppressor's grasp. By voice, pen, and purse, he did his best for the popular cause.

      The only conspicuous blunder of his life was his advocacy^ of the Crimean war in opposition to Cobden and Bright. The wrongs of Poland rankled in his breast and blinded his judgment, as it fatally darkened the understanding of so many other true friends of freedom. In the American civil war, needless to say, his sympathies were entirely with the North and the policy of abolition, of which he had long been a -strenuous advocate.

      In America the name of P. A. Taylor is perhaps as well known as in England, and it will be better known to posterity than to his contemporaries. Nor is this to be wondered at; for in this royalty and aristocracy ridden land the member for Leicester is a "rare" figure, and precious as he is rare. He is, in a sense, a "survival" from the great era of the Commonwealth—a mind of the type of Vane, Ludlow, Hutchinson, Scott, and Hazelrig—an idealist in politics, but withal a practical idealist. He is more human than English, his principles being more or less applicable to all times and to all places. Having embraced a principle, he holds to it with the tenacity of a bull-dog, fearlessly pushing it to its remotest consequences.

      This was the distinguishing mental characteristic of all the great republicans of the seventeenth century. Since then an extraordinary blight has fallen on the political intelligence of Englishmen. They waste their best intellect in the defence of palpable anomalies and pernicious compromises. Even Gladstone and Bright ​have not escaped the contagion of compromise. They go to court, and are caught in the net of "society," which sticks to them like a Nessus shirt. Peter Alfred Taylor has never been caught. He has gone to no court but that of the sovereign people. I honor the man and the constituency which has so long honored itself by honoring him.

      "Stainless soldier on the walls,

       Knowing this and knows no more—

       Whoever fights, whoever falls,

       Justice conquers evermore;

       And he who battles on her side,

       God, if he were ten times slain,

       Crowns him victor glorified—

       Victor over death and pain."

      ​

      Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke

       Table of Contents

      IV.

      SIR CHARLES W. DILKE.

      "A greyhound ever on the stretch

       To run for honor still."

      IN treating of Gladstone, Bright, and Taylor, who have preceded the senior member for Chelsea in this series, I have in some measure felt on sure ground—the ground of history or accomplished fact. The youngest of the above trio is sixty, and had entered the arena of public life ere the subject of this memoir had well left his cradle. One could, consequently, speak of them almost with as much confidence as of the dead. Their lengthened past was a clear index to their necessarily briefer future. In due course they will pass over to the majority-, and the places that know them now will know them no more. With Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke it is altogether different. He belongs exclusively to the immediate present. It will take him thirty-five more years to attain the venerable age of the woodcutter of Hawarden. He is emphatically a contemporary, as fine an example as can well be found of the culture and aspirations of this generation. It is his future that is most important, and it is full of promise.

      As Mr. Gladstone in his youth was pronounced "the rising hope of Toryism," so Sir Charles W. Dilke may ​with better assurance be hailed as the rising hope of Radicalism—of all that is sincere, capable, and of good repute in English politics. The odds are heavily in his favor. He has youth, health, wealth, birth, strength, talent, industry, firmness of character, special training, and moral courage of a very high order on his side. Such a combination of advantages seldom fails. If he is spared to his country for the next twenty years, he will almost certainly be able to say with regard to her fortunes, whatever these may be, Magna pars fui. "Never prophesy," said the wise Quaker, "unless thou knowest!" Nevertheless, I venture to predict, that, sooner or later, Charles Wentworth Dilke will be called upon by the people of England to take a very high place—it may be the highest—and he will succeed, too, by the right of the fittest. Like his friend Gambetta, he has been tried in the fiery furnace of political calumny and social hate, and has not been found wanting. "Society" undertook to put him down, and he has put down society. Of the two he has proved himself the stronger, and a better proof