Robert Buchanan | Page 4

his mission had been practical, and had succeeded; but in 1837 he
delivered a formula which made him thenceforth the avowed enemy of
all who held orthodox opinions.
"'ALL THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD,' he said, 'ARE WRONG!'
From that time forth the influential classes entirely deserted him. He
became at once an apostle and a martyr. Personally a Theist, he
preached universal toleration, a form of toleration which is, and always
has 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