kly meetings before crowded
auditories, including along with the members of the Society and their
friends, many hearers and some speakers from the Inns of Court. When
this debate was ended, another was commenced on the general merits of
Owen's system: and the contest altogether lasted about three months. It
was a _lutte corps a corps_ between Owenites and political economists,
whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate opponents: but it
was a perfectly friendly dispute. We who represented political economy,
had the same objects in view as they had, and took pains to show it; and
the principal champion on their side was a very estimable man, with whom
I was well acquainted, Mr. William Thompson, of Cork, author of a book
on the Distribution of Wealth, and of an " Appeal" in behalf of women
against the passage relating to them in my father's _Essay on
Government_. Ellis, Roebuck, and I took an active part in the debate,
and among those from the Inns of Court who joined in it, I remember
Charles Villiers. The other side obtained also, on the population
question, very efficient support from without. The well-known Gale
Jones, then an elderly man, made one of his florid speeches; but the
speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly
every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St.
David's, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation
for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin
and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had
uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever
heard, and I have never since heard anyone whom I placed above him.

The great interest of these debates predisposed some of those who took
part in them, to catch at a suggestion thrown out by McCulloch, the
political economist, that a Society was wanted in London similar to the
Speculative Society at Edinburgh, in which Brougham, Horner, and others
first cultivated public speaking. Our experience at the Co-operative
Society seemed to give cause for being sanguine as to the sort of men
who might be brought together in London for such a purpose. McCulloch
mentioned the matter to several young men of influence, to whom he was
then giving private lessons in political economy. Some of these entered
warmly into the project, particularly George Villiers, after Earl of
Clarendon. He and his brothers, Hyde and Charles, Romilly, Ch