r day.

CHAPTER IV.
POLITICS AND THEOLOGY.

Homerton academy--W. Johnson Fox, M.P.--Politics in 1830--Anti-Corn Law
speeches--Wonderful oratory.

About 1830 there was, if not a good deal of actual light let into such
dark places as our Suffolk village--where it was considered the whole
duty of man, as regards the poor, to attend church and make a bow to
their betters (a rustic ceremony generally performed by pulling the lock
of hair on the forehead with the right hand), and to be grateful for the
wretched station of life in which they were placed--at any rate, a great
shaking among the dry bones. One summer morning an awe fell on the
parish as it ran from one to another that the guard of the Yarmouth and
London Royal Mail had left word with the ostler at the Spread Eagle that
George the Fourth was dead; then a certain dull sound as of cannon firing
afar off had been wafted across the German Ocean, and had given rise to
mysterious speculations on the subject of Continental wars, in which
Suffolk lads might have to ''list' as 'sogers'; and last of all there
came that grand excitement when--North and South, East and West--the
nation rose as one man to demand political and Parliamentary Reform. It
was a delusion, perhaps, that cry, but it was a glorious one,
nevertheless; that the millennium could be delayed when we had
Parliamentary Reform no one for a moment doubted. The sad but undeniable
fact that mostly men are fools with whom beer is omnipotent had not then
entered into men's minds, and thus England and Scotland some sixty years
ago wore an aspect of activity and enthusiasm of which the present
generation can have no idea, and which, perhaps, can never occur again.

Far away in the distant city which the Suffolk villagers called Lunnon,
there was a Suffolk lad, whose relations kept a very little shop just by
us, who was born at Uggeshall--pronounced Ouchell by the common
people--on a very small farm, and who, as Unitarian preacher and
newspaper writer, had been and was doing his best in the good cause; but
it was not the influence of W. Johnson Fox--for it is of him I
write--that did much in our little village to leaven the mass with the
leaven of Reform. While quite a lad the Foxes went to Norwich, where the
future preacher and teacher worked as a weaver boy. In after-years it
was often my privilege to meet Mr. Fox, who had then attained no small
share of London distinction, amongst whose hearers wer