For a period I had the opportunity accorded me of editing a daily newspaper—The Sun. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker had been my predecessor. I was left at liberty to say whatever I pleased, and I did. In one week I wrote twenty-nine articles.
But opulent opportunity of working was afforded me. As I was paid ten times as much as I had received before, I thought myself in a paradise of journalism.
In the correspondence of Robert Owen, now in possession of the Co-operative Union Memorial Committee, Manchester, is the following letter from his customary legal adviser, who then resided at Hornsey.
"6, Old Jewry, London,
"February 17, 1853. "R. Owen, Esq.,
"Dear Sir,—I am glad to see your handwriting upon an
envelope conveying to me a pamphlet of yours.
"Holyoake I expect will breakfast with me on Sunday morning.
He comes down by the railway to Hornsey, which leaves London
at nine o'clock precisely.
"I am afraid it is too cold for you, and that the walk from
the railway to our house, which is three quarters of a mile,
may not be agreeable.
"Yours truly,
"W. H. Ashurst.
"H. will return about 12 or 1."
After breakfast Mr. Owen walked briskly with me into town. He was then eighty-two. On his way he explained to me that, when walking as often had done from Birmingham to Worcester, or from Huddersfield to Sheffield—to lecture, I should find it an advantage to use the horse road, as on the footpath there is more unevenness and necessity of deviation to allow persons to pass, which increases the fatigue of a day on foot. So thoughtful and practical was the reputed visionary.
Of letters on public affairs I confine myself to three instances. When the South Kensington Exhibitions were in force, more than twenty thousand visitors a day thronged the Exhibition Road. Mothers with their children had to cross the wide Museum Road, where policemen, stationed to protect the passengers, had enough to do to keep their own toes on their feet, in the undivided traffic of cabs. I wrote to the Times suggesting that a lamp should be erected in the middle of the wide road serving as a light, a retreat, and a division of traffic. All the cabmen who could write protested against the danger, or the necessity, and possibility of the proposal. But it was done, to the great joy of mothers and advantage to the public.
After the fall of the French Assassin at Sedan when Marshal Bazaine was hanging about Europe in obscurity and ignominy, Mr. Arthur Arnold proposed that he should be invited to a banquet in London. Seeing that the citizens of Paris went out at night in bands of twenty or thirty heroically to help to raise the siege—on what ground could we offer to honour Bazaine, who with 192,000 soldiers under his command, was afraid to attempt it? I asked the question in the Press, and the proposal, which had a sentiment of chivalry in it to a fallen general, and was commanding some concurrence—went out—like the Marshal—into outer darkness. *****