[4] To avoid confusion, I sometimes refer to her before her marriage as "Lady Verney," reserving "Miss Nightingale" throughout for Florence. Florence Nightingale, whether saint or not, was certainly conscious of a "call"; but there was nothing in her descent or inheritance which encouraged her parents to allow it to become readily effectual. Because she was a woman, her early life was one long struggle for liberation from circumstance and social prepossessions. Yet there were features in her mental equipment and intellectual outlook which may well have been inherited, and which certainly owed much to environment. Sir James Stephen adds to the remarks quoted above that if William Smith "had gone mourning all his days, he could scarcely have acquired a more tender pity for the miserable, or have laboured more habitually for their relief." In politics he was a follower of Fox. He was a friend of Wilberforce, with whom he co-operated in the House of Commons in the Abolitionist and other humanitarian movements. Of Wilberforce, as of Thomas Clarkson, "he possessed the almost brotherly love, and of all their fellow-labourers there was none who was more devoted to their cause, or whom they more entirely trusted."[5] In religion a Unitarian, he was a stout defender of liberty of thought and conscience, a persistent opponent of religious tests and disabilities. The liberal opinions, alike in Church and State, which were thus traditional in the family of Florence Nightingale's mother, were shared by that of her father. Her grandfather Shore, in a letter to his son in 1818, referred to "one of the finest pieces of eloquence either in ancient or modern times, given by Sir Samuel Romilly in the Court of Chancery on a motion respecting the right of Jews to the benefit of a charity in Bedford. It does honour to the man and to human nature." Florence Nightingale's father was also a Unitarian; and in politics he was a Whig. "How I hate Tories," he wrote to his wife; and in another letter, after the election of 1835, in which the hated ones had gained ground, he explained that they were mighty only "by Beer, Brandy, and Money." The Whigs, as is well known, were not all lacking in the latter equipment for political success, and Mr. Nightingale was a frequent subscriber to electoral funds on the Whig side. He was an ardent supporter of Parliamentary Reform. He held that "Bentham has taught great moral truth more effectually than all the Christian divines." At a later time he was a follower of Lord Palmerston, of whom he was also a neighbour in the country. One of the earliest notices which I find of Florence Nightingale's interest in politics is in a letter from her father describing a meeting at Romsey to which he had taken her. "Florence," he says, "approved very much Palmerston's exposition of his foreign policy."