“By this time my clients had become case-hardened, and finding no particular ill effects from my previous escapades, I gave in in a weak moment to a tempting offer of Macmillan’s, and wrote ‘Tom Brown at Oxford,’ for his magazine. Moreover, I had now made a plunge into public life, and was one of the leaders of a semi-political party. This is how it came about: There had been roused in me lively sympathies with the Abolitionists, and I had followed eagerly the progress of events through the Fugitive Slave, and Free Soil agitations. There was no warmer sympathizer with Garrison and John Brown and Levi Coffin, in England; so when the Lincoln election came, and South Carolina led off the seceding states with jubilant applause of society in England, I went at once fiercely into the other camp. You may judge of the difficulty of getting our public men of note to take active sides with the North (tho’ many of them didn’t conceal their sympathy, and were ready to speak in Parliament, and write,) by the fact that I was about the most prominent speaker at the first great public meeting, which was held in London. This proved to be such an extraordinary success, that there was no further effort on the part of the jingoes (that name hadn’t yet been invented, but it was precisely the same party,) to demonstrate publicly in the metropolis. In other centres there was need of such work, and I went to Birmingham and Liverpool to speak and deliver lectures on the war and its causes and issues. It was supposed that there was to be a row at the latter place, which was the stronghold of the Rebels; but all went off quietly. “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.