[117] Chap. ii. p. 80. With Lord Brougham and others, my father, some years before, had been associated in the movement for the “Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” a Society which, in England and Wales acted as pioneers in the good work of publishing cheap and wholesome literature, just as in Scotland did the Chambers Brothers. Unfortunately, Brougham believed himself to be scientific, and contributed to the series an article so full of mistakes that some wag immediately dubbed the Society that for the “_Con_fusion of Useful,” etc. Brougham was a supporter of the postal reform, and my father found in him more kindliness than the world gave him credit for possessing. The great lawyer was a very eccentric man, and _Punch_ caricatured him unmercifully, invariably representing him as clad in the large-checked “inexpressibles” which he is said to have always worn because, in a moment of weakness, he had purchased as a bargain so huge a roll of cloth of that pattern that it supplied him with those garments for the rest of his days. The story is pretty generally known of his causing to be published the news of his death, and of his sitting, very much alive, in a back room of his darkened house, and reading, with quite pardonable interest, the obituary notices which appeared in the different newspapers. He wrote an execrable hand, which varied in degrees of illegibility. The least illegible he and his secretary alone could read; a worse he only; the very worst, not even he could decipher, especially if he had forgotten the matter of which it treated. This story has, of course, been fathered on many bad writers; but any one possessed of a Brougham autograph must feel convinced that to none but him could possibly belong its authorship. [118] How much mistaken the old warrior was as regards the soldiers' letters has been abundantly proved. During the first eight months of postal communication between the United Kingdom and our comparatively small army in the Crimea—and long, therefore, before the Board School era—more than 350,000 letters passed each way; while when the Money Order system, for the first time in history, was extended to the seat of war, in one year over £100,000 was sent home for wives and families. [119] “Life,” i. 352-360. [120] When it passed the Lords, Cobden is said to have exclaimed: “There go the Corn Laws!” [121] Colonel Perronet Thompson was the author of the once famous “Anti-Corn-Law Catechism,” which might, with great advantage, be reprinted now. He was a public-spirited man, one of the foremost among the free-traders, and deserves to be better remembered than he is. [122] The pamphlet was published at a shilling; in those days of paper taxation, when books were necessarily dear and correspondingly scarce, a by no means exorbitant price.