I will not undertake to answer for the rest of the Council, but I doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than the majority. Consequently we went at it with a will: held meetings at six o’clock in the morning (so as not to interfere with our regular work) for settling the rules of our central society, and its offshoots, and late in the evening, for gathering tailors, shoemakers, and other handicraftsmen, whom we might set to work; started a small publishing office, presided over by a diminutive one-eyed costermonger, a rough and ready speaker and poet (who had been in prison as a Chartist leader), from which we issued tracts and pamphlets, and ultimately a small newspaper; and, as the essential condition of any satisfactory progress, commenced a vigorous agitation for such an amendment in the law as would enable our infant Associations to carry on their business in safety, and without hindrance. We very soon had our hands full. Our denunciations of unlimited competition brought on us attacks in newspapers and magazines, which we answered, nothing loth. Our opponents called us Utopians and Socialists, and we retorted that at any rate we were Christians; that our trade principles were on all-fours with Christianity, while theirs were utterly opposed to it. So we got, or adopted, the name of Christian Socialists, and gave it to our tracts, and our paper. We were ready to fight our battle wherever we found an opening, and got support from the most unexpected quarters. I remember myself being asked by Mr. Senior, an old friend of your grandfather, to meet Archbishop Whately, and several eminent political economists, and explain what we were about. After a couple of hours of hard discussion, in which I have no doubt I talked much nonsense, I retired, beaten, but quite unconvinced. Next day, the late Lord Ashburton, who had been present, came to my chambers and gave me a cheque for £50 to help our experiment; and a few days later I found another nobleman, sitting on the counter of our shoemakers’ association, arguing with the manager, and giving an order for boots.