Robert Buchanan | Page 4

been, to nine-tenths of mankind, quite intolerable.
"Only those who have carefully followed the history of the Socialistic movement under Owen can have any notion whatever of the condition of England in those troublous times. A freethinker, a proclaimer of the right to private judgment, often carried his life in his hand. The priest and the capitalist, the bigot and the landowner, worked everywhere against the new doctrines, which, they contended, were poisoning the air--the missionaries of Socialism were very generally regarded as agents of the Prince of Darkness conspiring to plunge the country into anarchy and revolution. Owen's views on religion were generally considered blasphemous, horrible, atheistical, but it was his ideas on marriage, in the moral programme which he advanced with persuasive eloquence, that aroused the most frenzied opposition, particularly among the women of the lower classes, who were firmly persuaded that the object was to rob them of their husbands and by reducing all sexual union to a simple contract, revokable at pleasure, to leave them at the mercy of male caprice and to bastardise their children. This delusion drove the wives and mothers of the toiling classes to absolute frenzy, and made them the chief leaders and abettors of the many acts of violence to which Owen's missionaries were subjected."1
The poet's grandfather, known throughout the Midlands as "Lawyer Williams," was a very remarkable man. Quite early in his career he had come under the influence of Robert Owen and had accepted that philanthropist's ideas on social, political, and religious problems--in fact, he was a freethinker of the most advanced school. He fearlessly proclaimed his opinions in and out of season, and this exceptional candour, so far from hindering his progress in his profession, gained for him the respect of his most bitter opponents. It was a favourite dictum of his, that there was no such anachronism as an "honest lawyer," but he himself was honesty incarnate, a living refutation of his own dictum; and his fearlessness, his unselfishness in helping the weak and in denouncing every form of injustice, earned for him the title of the "poor man's friend."
At the time that the war against Capital and Superstition was raging, "Lawyer Williams" followed his profession as a solicitor in Stoke-upon-Trent, and his house became the temporary home of every wandering preacher of the cause who visited the district. He entertained the lecturers, he presided at their meetings, he furthered, both publicly and privately, the dissemination of the new doctrines, and only his great popularity with the lower classes saved him from personal violence. Again and again when the mob rose in its fury, when public halls were wrecked and Owen's lecturers were compelled to fly for their lives, the only refuge in Stoke was the house of "Lawyer Williams," and while some trembling apostle of freethought was being smuggled away through the back door, the "poor man's friend" faced the furies and diverted their attention to his own person. Any other man's house would have been burned down or razed to the ground; any other man would, in all likelihood, have been torn to pieces. Both the men and women of Stoke respected the man who had befriended them in a thousand ways, who had sacrificed time and money and reputation to the legal defence of the poorest and most wretched among them, and much as they loathed the opinions which he fearlessly shared, not one hand in all the crowd was raised against him. Nor was it among the poor and wretched alone that his name was a synonym for honesty, kindliness, and philanthropy. Even amongst the clergy, his bitterest opponents, he had sympathisers and well-wishers. Doctor Vale, the Vicar of Stoke, was the intimate friend of the lawyer and his wife, and on one occasion Mr. Williams protected him from the wild mob of hungry men and women who would otherwise have had his life.
To the lawyer and his wife were born two children, a son and a daughter, the latter of whom became the poet's mother. She was a very beautiful girl--blue-eyed and golden-haired. Almost with her first breath she inhaled the atmosphere of Socialism and freethought. Throughout her long life she had two supreme objects of idolatry--her father, who reciprocated her passionate attachment, and Robert Owen, whom she had been taught to regard as the wisest and best of men.
To the house of "Lawyer Williams" came from time to time all the preachers of the cause. Among these men was the poet's father, who, when quite a boy, had run away from home to seek his fortune. He was a dark, somewhat reserved young man, an omnivorous reader, and a fairly fluent speaker, but it was in the height of fiery argument on the public platform that he appeared at his best. Some