ecome
Chairman of the London School Board, was secretary. The agitation spread
all over the country, and delegates to a considerable number on one
occasion found their way to Crosby Hall. In the course of the
proceedings a young man in the gallery got up to say that he came from
Birmingham to show how the popular feeling had changed there from the
time when Church-and-State mobs had sacked the Dissenting chapels, and
driven Dr. Priestley into exile. "Your name, sir?" asked the chairman.
"George Dawson," was the reply, and there he stood in the midst of the
grave and reverend seigneurs, calm, youthful, self-possessed, with his
dark hair parted in the middle, a voice somewhat husky yet clear. He was
a Baptist minister, he said, yet he looked as little like one as it was
possible to imagine.

It was a little later, that is, in 1857, Mr. Samuel Morley made his
_debut_ in political life, at a meeting in the London Tavern, of which he
was chairman, to secure responsible administration in every department of
the State, to shut all the back doors which lead to public employment, to
throw the public service open to all England, to obtain recognition of
merit everywhere, and to put an end to all kinds of promotion by favour
or purchase. Mr. Morley's speech was clear and convincing--more
business-like than oratorical--and he never got beyond that. The tide
was in his favour--all England was roused by the tale _The Times_ told of
neglect and cruel mismanagement in the Crimea. Since then Government has
done less and the people more. Has the change been one for the better?

One of the most extraordinary meetings in which I ever took a part was an
Orange demonstration in Freemasons' Hall, the Earl of Roden in the chair.
I was a student at the time, and one of my fellow-students was Sir Colman
O'Loghlen, the son of the Irish Master of the Rolls. He was a friend of
Dan O'Connell's, and he conceived the idea of getting all or as many of
his fellow-students as possible to go to the meeting and break it up. We
walked accordingly, each one of us with a good-sized stick in his hand,
to the Free-Mason's Tavern, the mob exclaiming, as we passed along,
"There go the Chartists," and perhaps we did look like them, for none of
us were overdressed. In the hall we took up a conspicuous position, and
waited patiently, but we had not long to wait. As soon as the clergy and
leading Orangemen on the platform had taken their seats, we were re