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THE AMERICAN WAR.

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along with your own people. Do all the good you can, and I hope you will find, in the blessing that comes, the best assurance of your ordination, I am, dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,

S. MORLEY.

In 1863, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, at an important crisis of the American Civil War, arranged to hold a meeting at the London Tavern, to "reiterate and to vindicate the great principle of the Anti-Slavery movement, and to adopt a resolution expressing satisfaction at the prospective extinction of slavery in the United States." Mr. Morley was invited to co-operate, but he declined upon the grounds shown in the following letter:

To Mr. L. A. Chamerovzow, Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

18, WOOD STREET, E.C., Jan. 22, 1863. DEAR SIR,--I am duly in receipt of your letter, and regret that the views which I entertain on the subject of the American war, will not allow me to co-operate with the committee of the Anti-Slavery Society in the meeting which it is proposed to hold at the London Tavern on February 10th.

In the papers which you have been good enough to send me, there is a tone of partizanship with the North with which I do not sympathize; while the rebuke administered to those who are engaged in this fratricidal war, is far too mild to suit my taste and judgment.

I regard the whole system of slavery with detestation, and while the South disgusts me by its shameless advocacy of its 'peculiar institution' as 'the corner-stone' of its government, I cannot sympathize with the North, for it is, I fear, abolitionist in policy-only through force of circumstances and not from any conviction of the inherent immorality in slavery, or humane consideration for the welfare of the slaves.

I have never committed myself to the extreme principle which would condemn every kind of war as unjustifiable, but I am at a loss to perceive how an armed intervention in favour of slave emancipation, adopted as an extreme military expedient in a crisis of international strife, is an event to call forth the loud and cordial congratulations of philanthropists.

The motives of such a proceeding are so complicated, and the issues of it are so uncertain, and fraught with so many dangers, that I confess it fails to stir my heart with any lively emotions of joy. Amidst the varied features and perplexities of this American struggle, I am most deeply affected by the terrific expenditure of human blood and treasure in the endeavour which the North is making to retain undivided dominion over a people who prefer an independent Government.

Admitting the North to have been constitutionally in the right at the commencement of the strife, I think she would have done wisely to have permitted the South to secede, with the burden and sin of slavery resting on her, rather than to have sought to compel her continuance in the Union by force of arms.

Subsequent events convince me that the cost, by which alone the conquest of the South can possibly be achieved and maintained, is so great, that the North should at once be willing to recognize the independence of the South.

We, as Englishmen, it appears to me, must act with strict neutrality towards the belligerents; and, notwithstanding our abhorrence of slavery, we should not encourage the North to prolong the contest, but, in the name of our common humanity and religion, earnestly appeal to both parties that the war may be stayed.

How far my difference of opinion with the committee may lead me in the course I should take at a meeting convened to express an opinion from the city, I cannot at present determine, but it is in vain for your committee to look to me for co-operation.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,

S. MORLEY.

Such are brief specimens of the public work that was occupying the time and thought of Samuel Morley in these years. But a wider and more in

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fluential sphere of usefulness was opening up to him. For a long time he had been urged by a large circle of friends to allow himself to be proposed as a candidate for Parliament, and arguments, similar to those which Mr. Morley had himself employed when calling upon certain leading Nonconformists to do the same, were pressed upon him. On the other hand, certain of his friends, as well as of his own household, maintained that he could only enter Parliament at an enormous sacrifice of time and strength, and the surrender of the paramount service he was rendering, in divers ways, to the world and the church; and as for honour, they contended that to be at the head of the whole body of Nonconformist laymen, was honour enough to satisfy the ambition of any Christian patriot.

It was not a question of honour or expediency, of like or of dislike, with Samuel Morley. "Necessity was laid upon him" by the dictates of his own conscience, and he consented to stand for Nottingham, the old town of his ancestors.

Before we follow him in his parliamentary career, we must pause to see him in his home at Craven Lodge, and in his business in Wood Street,

CHAPTER XI.

HOME LIFE.

Primary Claims-Family-Letters to his Children-Fatherly Advice - Confidences Sympathy with Young Life - Recollections of Boyhood-Garibaldi Thoroughness - A Birthday Letter-Works of Fiction-No Sportsman-Dancing and Dancing Parties-Not Easily Disturbed-Fire in Wood Street-Idleness-The Black Bag-Travels-A Shooting-Lodge-Visitors-The Study-Music-An Ideal Home.

FROM what has been said in the preceding chapters, of the manifold labours in which Mr. Morley was engaged in addition to the pressing claims of business, it may be thought that he would have little time to devote to the pleasures of home life. Such, however, was not the case. He was a strictly conscientious man, and as he would never have made use of money belonging to others, neither would he make use of time on which others had a just claim. He never allowed any public duties to come between himself and his family. For him, indeed, there was a time for everything, but that time was regulated by the claims of home. It was this that kept him back from taking his place in the political life of the country, to which he had been so often solicited; it was this, as a leading motive, that made him decline many honours, civic and otherwise, that would have

been conferred upon him. He was an intense lover of home, and, while his children were of an age to require his immediate help and guidance, he felt that his chief duty was with them. Thus it was, that not until comparatively late in life did he come before the general public in a prominent position.

We have seen how anxiously solicitous he was for the welfare of his children in their infancydrawing upon himself the rebuke of his father and his friend Thomas Binney in consequence. But they utterly failed to cure him; on the contrary, as the children grew, his carefulness for them grew also. He was an anxious father, who hardly admitted to himself his anxiety, although it was patent to everybody else in the carefulness with which he watched the studies of his children, pondered their doings and their goings, and sought to mould their characters.

His family of eight children-consisting of five sons, Samuel Hope, Howard, Charles, Arnold, and Henry, and three daughters, Rebekah, Augusta, and Mary-were all brought up, as he had been, in a religious atmosphere, and according to the usages of Nonconformists. Each was baptized in the drawingroom of the house by Mr. Binney-who shone in such family gatherings as much as he did in the pulpit—and each, as he grew up, was taught his individual responsibility to live in accordance with the dictates of the Holy Scriptures and of his own conscience.