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CHAPTER VIII.

MR. PATTISON'S ELECTION FOR LONDON.

The meeting in Covent Garden Theatre, October 12th, was an extraordinary one, for there was the excitement occasioned by the preparation for the city election, and the promise of addresses from Mr. Villiers, Mr. Cobden, Mr. J. Bright, and Mr. W. J. Fox. Crowded is a weak word to express the condition of the house. Stage, pit, boxes, and galleries were crammed, and every entrance, public and private, was besieged by crowds of eager applicants for admission, but for whom no room could possibly be found although an additional gallery had been re-opened for the occasion, capable of seating from five to six hundred persons. As had been previously announced, the Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P., presided, who, with Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, in the course of eloquent and argumentative speeches, strongly recommended active exertions on the part of every free trader to secure the election of Mr. Pattison. Mr. Fox, in reply to the vituperation against the League for its "interference" in a London election, said:

"I had imagined that if there were men who could point the path of improvement, which could lay their hand on a law and say this is bad, wrong in principle, and injurious in operation, and ought to be repealed —that when they could say that such is the course by which commerce may be extended, labour more amply rewarded, and industry more sufficiently encouraged, I should have supposed that the home of such men, their natural abode, should have been in London. I had supposed that when there was an appeal to be made against the infliction of wrong—