Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/399

 months he studied laboriously such books on mathematics, law, history, and economics, as he could get access to. He became secretary to his trade club, and in 1794, during another period of slack work, was secretary for several other trade clubs of carpenters, plumbers, and other workmen.

In 1794 he also joined the London Corresponding Society, whose secretary, (1752–1832) [q. v.], had just been arrested. After Hardy's acquittal on a charge of high treason, the society rapidly increased, and in May 1795 it had seventy London branches, with an average weekly attendance of over two thousand. Place was at that time the usual chairman at the weekly meetings of the general committee of the society (see the original minute-book, Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 27813). But after the passing of the ‘Pitt and Grenville Acts’ in November and December 1795, the corresponding society quickly declined. Place, who had always belonged to the moderate party on the committee, resigned in 1797, in consequence of the tactics of the more violent members. In 1798 all the remaining members of the committee, including Place's friend, Colonel [q. v.], were arrested and kept in prison without trial for three years. During that period Place managed the collection and distribution of subscriptions for their families.

Meanwhile Place was not only improving his education, but was building up a connection with customers of his own, and gaining credit with the wholesale dealers. In 1799 he and a partner opened a tailor's shop at 29 Charing Cross, but after about a year the partnership was broken up, and Place moved to a new shop of his own at 16 Charing Cross.

He now gave up politics and devoted himself entirely to his business, reading, however, for two or three hours every evening after work was over. The shop was from the first extremely successful, and in 1816 he cleared, he says, over 3,000l. He had a large family, fifteen children being born to him between 1792 and 1817; five of them died in infancy.

In 1807 Place returned to political life, and took a leading part during the general election of that year in bringing forward Sir [q. v.] as an independent candidate for Westminster. Burdett was put at the head of the poll without cost to himself, and after an unprecedentedly small expenditure by the committee.

For the next three years Place seems to have kept pretty closely to his business, but from 1810 onwards his time was more and more taken up by public affairs. When Burdett (April 1810) barricaded his house in order to resist the warrant committing him to the Tower, Place attempted to bring the sheriff and a body of constables to his help. When Burdett was released (21 June 1810), Place organised a great procession, which, however, was stultified by Burdett's absence. Burdett and Place quarrelled over this incident, and did not speak to each other for the next nine years.

Meanwhile Place was becoming known to the political thinkers as well as to the politicians of the time. In 1810 the elder [q. v.] sought his acquaintance, and borrowed money of him at intervals till Place threw him off in 1814. About the same time Place began a long friendship with (1773–1836) [q. v.], who used to call at Charing Cross on his journeys between Stoke Newington and Bentham's house in Queen's Square Place. In 1813 [q. v.] came to London, and Place helped him to put his essays on the ‘Formation of Character’ into shape. In 1812 Place met Bentham, and from 1814 used to write long weekly letters of London news to Mill and Bentham during their visits to Ford Abbey. Since 1804 Place had regularly subscribed to the educational schemes of [q. v.], and in 1813 he helped to organise the West London Lancasterian Association. When the Royal Lancasterian Society became the British and Foreign School Society, Place was put upon the committee. But Burdett's ill-will and Place's notoriously ‘infidel’ opinions made his position in both societies difficult, and he left the West London committee in 1814 and the British and Foreign committee in 1815.

In 1817 Place prepared to give over his business to his eldest son, and went to stay some months with Bentham and Mill at Ford Abbey. Here he occupied himself in learning Latin grammar, and in putting together ‘Not Paul, but Jesus,’ from Bentham's notes. Sir [q. v.], who met him at Ford Abbey, wrote to Dumont: ‘Place is a very extraordinary person. … He is self-educated, has learned a great deal, has a very strong natural understanding, and possesses great influence in Westminster—such influence as almost to determine the elections for members of parliament. I need hardly say that he is a great admirer and disciple of Bentham's’ (, Life of James Mill, p. 78).

Romilly was elected for Westminster in 1818, but Place, who was always a bitter opponent of the official whig party, did not support him. After Romilly's death, Place helped [q. v.], afterwards baron Broughton, as an independent reformer against George Lamb, Lord