iety when he could be on equally good terms with the Emperor
Alexander or the duke of Kent, and, on the other hand, with James
Mill, the denouncer of kings and autocrats. He could join hands with
Mill in assailing slavery, insisting upon prison reform, preaching
toleration and advancing civilisation, although he heartily
disapproved of the doctrines with which Mill's practical principles
were associated. Mill, too, practised--even to a questionable
degree--the method of reticence, and took good care not to offend his
coadjutor.

Their co-operation was manifested in a quarterly journal called the
_Philanthropist_, which appeared during the seven years, 1811-1817,
and was published at Allen's expense. Mill found in it the opportunity
of advocating many of his cherished opinions. He defended toleration
in the name of Penn, whose life had been published by Clarkson. He
attacked the slave-owners, and so came into alliance with Wilberforce,
Zachary Macaulay, and others of the evangelical persuasion. He found,
at the same time, opportunities for propagating the creed of Bentham
in connection with questions of prison reform and the penal code. His
most important article, published in 1812, was another contribution to
the Lancasterian controversy. In this Mill had allies of a very
different school; and his activity brings him into close connection
with one of the most remarkable men of the time.[8]

This was Francis Place, the famous Radical tailor. Place, born 3rd
November 1771, had raised himself from the position of a working-man
to be occupant of a shop at Charing Cross, which became the centre of
important political movements. Between Place and Mill there was much
affinity of character. Place, like Mill, was a man of rigid and
vigorous intellect. Dogmatic, self-confident, and decidedly
censorious, not attractive by any sweetness or grace of character, but
thoroughly sincere and independent, he extorts rather than commands
our respect by his hearty devotion to what he at least believed to be
the cause of truth and progress. Place was what is now called a
thorough 'individualist.' He believed in self-reliance and energy, and
held that the class to which he belonged was to be raised, as he had
raised himself, by the exercise of those qualities, not by invoking
the direct interference of the central power, which, indeed, as he
knew it, was only likely to interfere on the wrong side. He had the
misfortune to be born in London