“It was mainly in consequence of these doings that I was asked by the working folk in South London to stand for Lambeth in 1865. I did so, and was brought in triumphantly at the head of the Poll, and almost all the expense paid by subscription. From that time I gradually gave up legal business, and in 1868 took silk, as it is called, _i. e._, became a Queen’s Counsel. In 1869 I wrote ‘Alfred the Great’ for Macmillan’s Sunday Series. I now made it my chief business to attend to Social-Political questions in Parliament; sat on two Trades Unions Commissions; got amendments to the Industrial and Friendly Societies Acts through the House, but never took to party politics.
“In 1870, as I hope you remember, I paid my delightful visit to America.
“In 1872 I lost my dear eldest brother, and soon after wrote the memoir of him for my family. Maurice also died, and I became Principal of the Workingmen’s College.
“Before the next election (1874) the Co-operative question had come to the front. The success of the Upper Class London Supply Societies [copies of our working-class Associations in their main principle and features] had roused the tradesmen throughout the country. I was a candidate for Marylebone, and was fiercely opposed by the tradesmen, and supported by the professional and working classes. There were three Liberal candidates for only two seats, so it was agreed to refer it to the Attorney General to say who should retire, and he decided that I had the worst chance of winning the seat (on one-sided and insufficient evidence, as my supporters maintained, and I think rightly). I therefore retired, and got no chance of entering that Parliament. For by this time the Trades Protection Society had been organized, to fight against neither small nor great, but only against those accursed revolutionists who had supported the Co-operative movement, and refused to flinch from it.
“So it happened that I was again thrown out at the election this year. I had consented, on the unanimous and unsolicited request of the Liberal party in Salisbury, to stand there, and all went well till just before the election, when the Trades Protective people permitted the party organization to throw me over. I doubt if I shall ever return to the House, as my views on the Church question make me an almost hopeless candidate in the North of England, and my support of Co-operation a perfectly hopeless one at present in the South. I care, however, very little about it, having plenty to do outside in keeping irons hot, especially that most interesting of all my irons, the Tennessee settlement, which I hope to keep very hot indeed, and look upon as about the most hopeful of the many New Jerusalems which have attracted me during my pilgrimage. I am off to open Chapter II. of that Romance [Chapter I., the getting the titles clear, buying the land, &c., having taken some two years.] on the 12th of next month, and I can’t tell you how much my heart is in it.