rfect the invention of improved street lamps and lighting
material that had occupied him while in prison, and to procure their
general adoption. His place in Parliament, moreover, all through the
session of 1816, was employed not only in seeking justice for himself,
but also in furthering every project advanced for benefiting the
community and checking the pernicious action of the Government. A
zealous, honest Whig before, he was now as zealous and as honest
as ever in all his political conduct. And his devotion to the best
interests of the people was yet more apparent in his unflagging
labours, out of Parliament, for the public good. His great abilities,
rendered all the more prominent by the cruel persecution to which he
had been and still was subjected, made him a leading champion of the
people during the turmoil to which misgovernment at home, and the
distracted state of foreign politics, gave a special stimulus in 1816.

A long list might be made of the great meetings which he attended,
and took part in, both among his own constituents of Westminster
and elsewhere, for the consideration of popular grievances and their
remedies. One such meeting, attended by Henry Brougham and Sir Francis
Burdett among others, was held in Palace Yard, Westminster, on the
1st of March, for the purpose of petitioning Parliament against the
renewal of the property-tax and the maintenance of a standing army in
time of peace. Lord Cochrane, the hero of the day, on account of "the
spirit of opposition which he had shown to the infringement of the
constitution and the grievances of the people," won for himself new
favour by the boldness with which he denounced the policy of the
Government, which, boasting that it was ruining the French nation, was
at the same time bringing misery also upon Englishmen by the excessive
taxation and the reckless extravagance to which it resorted.

A smaller, but much more momentous meeting assembled at the City
of London Tavern on the 29th of July, under the auspices of the
Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor.
Instigated in a spirit of praiseworthy charity by many of the most
influential persons of the day, it was used by Lord Cochrane for the
enforcement of the views as to public right and public duty, and the
mutual relations of the rich and the poor, which were forced upon him
by his recent troubles, and the relations in which he was at this time
placed with some over-zealou