I commence with Judge Hughes' first candidature. There are cases in which gratitude is submerged by prejudice, even among the cultivated classes. There was Thomas Hughes, whose statue has been deservedly erected in Rugby. Three years before he became a member of Parliament I told him he might enter the House were he so minded. And when opportunity arose I was able to confirm my assurance. One Friday afternoon in 1865 some Lambeth politicians of the middle and working classes, whom Bernal Osborne had disappointed of being their candidate (a vacancy having attracted him elsewhere), came to me at the House of Commons to inquire if I could suggest one to them. I named Mr. Hughes as a good fighting candidate, who had sympathy with working people, and who, being honest, could be trusted in what he promised, and being an athlete, could, like Feargus O'Connor, be depended upon on a turbulent platform. I was to see Mr. Hughes at once, which I did, and after much argument satisfied him that if he took the "occasion by the hand" he might succeed. He said, "he must first consult Sally"—meaning Mrs. Hughes. I had heard him sing "Sally in our Alley," and took his remark as a playful allusion to his wife as the heroine of the song. That he might be under no illusion, I suggested that he should not enter upon the contest unless he was prepared to lose ￡1,000.
The next morning he consented. I took him to my friends of the Electoral Committee, by whom he was accepted. When he entered the vestibule of the hall of meeting I left him, lest my known opinions on other subjects should compromise him in the minds of some electors. This was on the Saturday afternoon. I saw that by issuing an address in the Monday morning papers he would be first in the field. On Sunday morning, therefore, I waited for him at the Vere Street Church door, where the Rev. F. D. Maurice preached, to ask him to write at once his address to the electors. He thought more of his soul than of his success, and reluctantly complied with my request. His candidature might prevent a Tory member being elected, and the labours of the Liberal electors for years being rendered futile, education put back, the Liberal Association discouraged, taxation of the people increased, and the moral and political deterioration of the borough ensue. To avert all such evils the candidate was loath to peril his salvation for an hour. Yet would it not have been a work of human holiness to do it, which would make his soul better worth saving? That day I had lunch at his table in Park Lane, while he thought the matter over. That was the first and last time I was asked to his house. That afternoon he brought the address to my home, then known as Dymoke Lodge, Oval Road, Regent's Park, and had tea with my family. I had collected several persons in another room ready to make copies of the address.
I wrote letters to various editors, took a cab, and left a copy of the address myself, before ten o'clock, at the offices of all the chief newspapers published on Monday morning. The editor of the Daily News and one or two others I saw personally. All printed the address as news, free of expense. Next morning the Liberal electors were amazed to see their candidate "first in the field" before any other had time to appear. All the while I knew Mr. Hughes would vote against three things which I valued, and in favour of which I had written and spoken. He would vote against the ballot, against opening picture galleries and museums on Sunday, and against the separation of the Church from the State. But on the whole he was calculated to promote the interests of the country, and therefore I did what I could to promote his election.
I wrote for the election two or three bills. The following is one:—
     HUGHES  FOR  LAMBETH.
 
     Vote for "Tom Brown."
 
     Vote   for a Gentleman who is a friend of  the People.
 
     Vote  for a  Churchman who will   do justice   to
     Dissenters.
 
     Vote for a tried Politician who will support just measures
     and can give sensible reasons for them.
 
     Vote for   a   distinguished writer   and   raise   the
     character of metropolitan constituencies.
 
     Vote for a candidate who can defend your cause in the Press
     as well as in Parliament
 
     Vote for a man known to be honest and who has long worked
     for the industrious classes.
 
     Electors of Lambeth,
 
     Vote for Thomas Hughes.
Mr. Hughes would have had no address out but for me. Had he spent ￡100 in advertisements a day or two later he could not have purchased the advantage this promptitude gave him. I worked very hard all that Sunday, a son and daughter helping—but our souls did not count Two weeks went by—during which I ceaselessly promulgated his candidature—and I heard nothing from the candidate. As I had paid the emergency expenses of the Sunday copyists, found them refreshments while they wrote, and paid for the cab on its round to the offices, I found myself ￡2 "out of pocket," as lawyers put it, and I sent a note to Mr. Hughes to say that amount would cover costs incurred. He replied in a curt note saying I should "find a cheque for ￡2 within"—giving me the impression that he regarded it as an extortion, which he thought it better to submit to than resent. He never thanked me, then or at any time, for what I did. Never in all his life did he refer to the service I had rendered him.
A number of friends were invited to Great Ormond Street College to celebrate his election, but I was not one. This was not handsome treatment, but I thought little of it. It was not Mr. Hughes's natural, but his ecclesiastical self. I withstood him and his friends, the Christian Socialists, who sought to colour Co-operation with Church tenets, which would put distraction into it. Association with me was at that time repugnant to Mr. Hughes. Nevertheless, I continued to serve him whenever I could. He was a friend of Co-operation, to his cost, and was true to the Liberal interests of the people. My daughter, Mrs. Praill, and her husband gave their house as a committee-room when Mr. Hughes was subsequently a candidate in Marylebone, and she canvassed for him so assiduously that he paid her a special visit of acknowledgment.
The Christian Socialist propaganda is another instance of the wilfulness of things which went as you did not want them to go. In those days not only did I fail to find favour in the eyes of Mr. Hughes—even Mr. Vansittart Neale, the most liberal of Christian Socialists, thought me, for some years, an unengaging colleague. General Maurice, in the Life of his eminent father (Professor Denison Maurice), relates that Mr. Maurice regarded me as an antagonist. This was never so. I had always respect for Professor Maurice because of his theological liberality. He believed that perdition was limited to aeons. The duration of an aeon he was not clear upon; but whatever its length, it was then an unusual and merciful limitation of eternal torture. This cost him his Professorship at King's College, through the enmity, it was said, of Professor Jelf. I endeavoured to avenge Professor Maurice by dedicating to Dr. Jelf my "Limits of Atheism." Elsewhere I assailed him because I had honour for Professor Maurice, for his powerful friendship to Co-operation. When the news of his death came to the Bolton Congress it was I who drew up and proposed the resolution of honour and sorrow which we passed.
It was always the complaint against the early "Socialists"—as the Co-operators were then called—that they mixed up polemical controversy with social advocacy. The Christian Socialists strenuously made this objection, yet all the while they were seeking to do the same thing. What they rightly objected to was that the chief Co-operators gave irrelevant prominence to the alien question of theology, and repelled all persons who differed from them.
All the while, what they objected to was not theology, but to a kind of theology not their own, and this kind, as soon as they acquired authority, they proceeded to introduce. They proceeded to compile a handbook intended to pledge the Co-operators to the Church of England, and I received proofs, which I still have, in which Mr. Hughes made an attack on all persons of Freethinking views. I objected to this as violating the principle on which we had long agreed, namely, of Co-operative neutrality in religion* and politics, as their introduction was the signal of disputation which diverted the attention of members from the advancement of Co-operation in life, trade, and labour. At the Leeds Congress I maintained that the congress was like Parliament, where, as Canning said, no question is introduced which cannot be discussed. If Church views were imported into the societies, Heretics and Nonconformists, who were the originators of the movement, would have the right of introducing. Personally, I preferred controversy outside Co-operation. Their tenets. Mr. Hughes was so indignant at my protest that he, being in the chair, refused to call upon me to move a resolution officially assigned to me upon another subject. At the meeting of the United Board for revising motions to be brought before Congress, I gave notice that if the Church question should be raised I should object to it, as it would then be in order (should the introduction of theology be sanctioned) for an Atheist (Agnostic was not a current word then) to propose the adoption of his views, and an Atheist, as such, might be a president. Whereupon Mr. Vansittart Neale, our general secretary, declared with impassioned vehemence that he hoped the day would never come when an Atheist would be elected president. Yet when, some years later, I was appointed president of the Carlisle Congress (1887)—though I was still considered entirely deficient in proper theological convictions—Mr. Hughes and Mr. Neale, who were both present, were most genial, and with their concurrence 100,000 copies of my address were printed—a distinction which befel no other president.
In another instance I had to withstand Church ascendancy.
I was the earliest and foremost advocate of the neutrality of pious opinion in Co-operation; when others who knew its value were silent—afraid or unwilling to give pain to the Christian Socialists, whom we all respected, and to whom we were all indebted for legal and friendly assistance.
But integrity of principle is higher than friendship. Some Northumbrian societies, whose members were largely Nonconformists, were greatly indignant at the attempt to give ascendancy to Church opinions, and volunteered to support my protest against it But when the day of protest came at the Leeds Congress they all deserted me—not one raised a voice on my side; though they saw me browbeaten in their interest My argument was, that if we ass............