ch, sixty years before, Moore had addressed to my uncle,
Lord John Russell,

"Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree
Set apart for the Fane and its service divine,
So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree
Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her shrine."

In 1841 that same uncle wrote thus to his eldest brother: "Whatever may
be said about other families, I do not think ours ought to retire from
active exertion. In all times of popular movement, the Russells have
been on the 'forward' side. At the Reformation, the first Earl of
Bedford; in Charles the First's days, Francis, the Great Earl; in
Charles the Second's, William, Lord Russell; in later times, Francis,
Duke of Bedford; our father; you; and lastly myself in the Reform Bill."

These hereditary appeals were strong, but there were influences which
were stronger. A kind of romantic and religious glamour, such as one had
never before connected with politics, seemed to surround this attack on
the strongholds of Anti-Christ. The campaign became a crusade.

Towards the end of 1879 I accepted an invitation to contest "the Borough
and Hundreds of Aylesbury" at the next General Election. The "Borough"
was a compact and attractive-looking town, and the "Hundreds" which
surrounded it covered an area nearly coextensive with the present
division of Mid Bucks. Close by was Hampden House, unaltered since the
day when four thousand freeholders of Buckinghamshire rode up to
Westminster to defend their impeached member, John Hampden. All around
were those beech-clad recesses of the Chiltern Hills, in which,
according to Lord Beaconsfield, the Great Rebellion was hatched. I do
not vouch for that fact, but I can affirm that thirty years ago those
recesses sheltered some of the stoutest Liberals whom I have ever known.
The town and its surroundings were, for parliamentary purposes, a
Borough, and, as all householders in Boroughs had been enfranchised by
the Reform Act of 1867, the Agricultural Labourers of the district were
already voters.

It happens that Agricultural Labourers are the class of voters with
which I am most familiar; and an intimate acquaintance with these men
has taught me increasingly to admire their staunchness, their
shrewdness, and their racy humour. Two or three of the old sayings come
back to memory as I write. "More pigs and less parsons" must have been a
survival from the days of Tithe. "The Black Recr