the Crystal Palace Company, at Sydenham; and he was a
director of the Great Eastern Steam-ship Company.

Busy as his commercial life was, he found time to devote to duties
of a more public character. In 1843 or 1844 he was elected one of the
Aldermen of Birmingham. Here he was very active and useful. Up to his
time, the finances of the Borough had been managed with little skill
or system. His great financial knowledge, and his clear vision of the
right and the wrong, in public book-keeping, enabled him to suggest,
and to carry into operation, great improvements in the management of
the Corporation accounts. In 1847 he was Mayor, and in that office
won the goodwill of everyone by his suavity of manner and his untiring
industry. Two or three years afterwards, the pressure of other duties
compelled him to retire from municipal office.

It is needless to tell Birmingham men that in politics Mr. Geach was
a Liberal. His public political life commenced at the time of the
agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws. During that exciting period
he was the guiding spirit of the local Association, and transacted
the whole of the business with the central body at Manchester. He was
active in promoting the elections of his friends, Joshua and William
Scholefield, with both of whom he was on terms of intimate friendship.
His political creed was very wide and eminently practical. He had
no abstract theories to which everything must bend. His eye saw at a
glance the right thing to do, and he set to work energetically to do
it, or to get it done.

In the year 1851 there was a vacancy in the representation of the city
of Coventry, and Mr. Geach was solicited to stand as a candidate. I
saw him on the platform of the old railway station, in Duddeston Row,
on his way to the nomination. He was very reliant, and spoke of the
certainty he felt that he should be successful. There was, however,
no excitement, and no undue elevation at the prospect of the crowning
honour of his life being so near his grasp. He was opposed by Mr.
Hubbard, the eminent London financier, and by Mr. Strutt, who was
afterwards created Lord Belper; but he was returned by a considerable
majority, and at a subsequent election he was unopposed. He held the
seat until his death.

In a very short time after his election, he began to take part in the
debates. He was not a fluent speaker; indeed he was hesitating, and
sometimes his sentences were much involved; but, as he n