CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
On January 7, 1854, an article in the Spectator announced that Francis Place had died at the age of eighty-two. "Few men," said the writer, "have done more of the world's work with so little external sign. . . . He was essentially a public man, but his work usually lay behind the curtain. . . . He loved quiet power for the purpose of promoting good ends."[1]
The lovers of quiet power are soon forgotten. The Spectator article implies that Place's name, even in 1854, was unknown except to his old political associates. During the forty years which have since elapsed, the "Radical tailor of Charing Cross" has only been known from his friendship with Bentham and James Mill, and, it may be, from Robert Owen's apparently absurd statement that he was the "real leader of the Whig Party."[2] That Place took no steps to secure notoriety during his lifetime, was partly because his power over other men depended largely on his readiness to give them the public credit of the work he planned for them, and partly because indifference to popularity was part of his philosophy. But, fortunately, that indifference did not prevent him from taking a good deal of trouble to make himself known to posterity. He knew by what he had learnt from the scanty records of
