CHAPTER V. PUBLIC LIFE.
My public life began in 1867, when I was 27 years of age. I then joined the Council of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. In the following year (1868) I was elected the President of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, a position I was very proud of. The Society at that time possessed many excellent speakers; we had among others Charles Clark, John Patterson, and James Spence.
During the year I was President, Professor Huxley came down and delivered his famous address on "Protoplasm: or the beginnings of life," and this started a discussion upon the evolution of life, which has continued to this day. Professor Huxley was my guest at Seaforth and was a very delightful man. We had also a visit from Professor Huggins, now the revered President of the Royal Society. He greatly charmed us with his spectroscope, which he had just invented. I had an observatory at the top of my house at Seaforth, with a fair-sized astronomical telescope. The professor gave us some very interesting little lectures upon his discoveries of the composition of the various stars and planets.
In November of the same year I was invited to offer myself as a candidate for the Town Council to represent Pitt Street Ward, in succession to Mr. S. R. Graves, M.P. My opponent was Mr. Steel, whom I defeated, polling 189 votes against his 135 votes. I represented Pitt Street for nine years, and every election cost me £150. I do not know what became of the money, but Pitt Street was a very strange constituency.
Looking back it seems to me that the Town Council was composed of Goliaths in those days, men of large minds, and that our debates were conducted with a staid decorum and order which have long since disappeared. William Earle, J. J. Stitt, Charles Turner, M.P., F. A. Clint, Edward Whitley, J. R. Jeffery, are names which come back to me as prodigies of eloquence. I remember venturing to make a modest speech shortly after I was elected, and one of the seniors touching me on the shoulder and saying, "Young man, leave speaking to your elders"; but they did queer things in those good old days. Many of the aldermen were rarely seen; they only put in an appearance on the 9th November to record their vote on the election of the Mayor.
I was early placed on a deputation to London. I think there were six or seven deputations in London at one time, each attended by a deputy town clerk. We stayed at the Burlington Hotel, and had seats provided for us in the theatre and opera, and carriages to drive in the parks. It was said that the bill at the Burlington Hotel, at the end of that Parliamentary session, was "as thick as a family Bible."