, Grant
governed India in Leadenhall Street, Stephen's father was Perceval's
right-hand man in the House of Commons. It is needless to speak of
Wilberforce. As to Simeon, if you knew what his authority and influence
were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners
of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far
greater than that of any primate. Thornton, to my surprise, thinks the
passage about my father unfriendly. I defended Stephen. The truth is
that he asked my permission to draw a portrait of my father for the
Edinburgh Review. I told him that I had only to beg that he would not
give it the air of a puff; a thing which, for myself and for my friends,
I dread far more than any attack. My influence over the Review is so
well known that a mere eulogy of my father appearing in that work would
only call forth derision. I therefore am really glad that Stephen has
introduced into his sketch some little characteristic traits which, in
themselves, were not beauties."] With their May meetings, and African
Institutions, and Anti-slavery Reporters, and their subscriptions of
tens of thousands of pounds, and their petitions bristling with hundreds
of thousands of signatures, and all the machinery for informing opinion
and bringing it to bear on ministers and legislators which they did
so much to perfect and even to invent, they can be regarded as nothing
short of the pioneers and fuglemen of that system of popular agitation
which forms a leading feature in our internal history during the past
half-century. At an epoch when the Cabinet which they supported was
so averse to manifestations of political sentiment that a Reformer who
spoke his mind in England was seldom long out of prison, and in Scotland
ran a very serious risk of transportation, Toryism sat oddly enough on
men who spent their days in the committee-room and their evenings on the
platform, and each of whom belonged to more Associations combined for
the purpose of influencing Parliament than he could count on the fingers
of both his hands.

There was something incongruous in their position; and as time went
on they began to perceive the incongruity. They gradually learned that
measures dear to philanthropy might be expected to result from the
advent to power of their opponents; while their own chief too often
failed them at a pinch out of what appeared to them an excessive,
and humiliating, deference to interests powerfully r