CHAPTER XXII. JOHN STUART MILL, TEACHER OF THE PEOPLE (continued) Mill was so entirely serious in his pursuit of truth, and entirely convinced of the advantages of its publicity, that he readily risked conventional consequences on that account. He held it to be desirable that those who had important convictions, should be free to make them known, and even be encouraged to do so. In thinking this he was in no way compromised by, nor had he any complicity with, the convictions of others. But this did not prevent him being made answerable for them, as in the case of the distribution of papers sent to him by friends in his company. A copy of it came into my possession which assuredly he did not write, and the terms of which he could never have approved, had they been submitted to him. On one occasion he sent to me a passionate repudiation of concurrence or recommendation in any form, of methods imputed to him. These eccentricities of imputation, supposed to have died by time, were found to be alive at Mills death. The chief resurrectionist was one Abraham Hay-ward, known as a teller of salacious stories at the Athenaeum. He was a man of many gifts, who wrote with a bright, but by no means fastidious, pen. In some unexplained, inconsistent, and inexplicable way, Mr. Gladstone was on friendly terms with him. No sooner was Mill dead, and illustrious appreciators of the great thinker were meditating some memorial to his honour, than Mr. Hayward sent an article to the _Times_, suggesting intrinsic immorality in his opinions. He also sent out letters privately to deter eminent friends of Mill from giving their names to the memorial committee. He sent one to Mr. Stopford Brooke, upon whom it had no influence. He sent one to Mr. Gladstone, upon whom it had, and who, in consequence, declined to join the committee. Hayward was, in his day, the Iago of literature, and abused the confiding nature of our noble Moor.* Yet, when Mr. Mill lost his seat for Westminster, Mr. Gladstone had written these great words: "We all know Mr. Mill's intellectual eminence before he entered Parliament. What his conduct principally disclosed to me was his singular moral elevation. Of all the motives, stings and stimulants that reach men through their egotism in Parliament, no part could move or even touch him. His conduct and his language were in this respect a sermon. For the sake of the House of Commons, I rejoiced in his advent and deplored his disappearance. He did us all good, and in whatever party, in whatever form of opinion, I sorrowfully confess that such men are rare." * My little book, "John Stuart Mill, as the Working Classes Knew Him," was written to show Mr. Gladstone the answer that could be given to Hayward.