Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/120

 before that great national calamity. His father, Peter Burt, was an upright, hard-working miner, much addicted in his spare hours, if he may be said to have enjoyed such, to Primitive Methodism, trades-unionism, and reading. He was a "local preacher;" and his literary' tastes, as may be readily imagined, had a strong theological bias. But he was distinctly a superior man, and no mere narrow-minded sectarian. The truly apostolic Channing was among his treasured authors,—an insignificant fact perhaps in itself, but one which helped materially to stimulate the youthful intelligence of his son, and to cast his character in a noble mould.

Thomas Burt's mother was likewise no ordinary person. She possessed a solid judgment and a tender heart; and while she lived she was the angel of the lowly household, which saw many ups and downs before the member for Morpeth reached man's estate.

When Burt was but seven years of age, the great Northumberland strike began; and he thus early tasted something of the bitter fruit of these labor struggles, which he has since exerted himself so strenuously to avert. Burt, senior, being a prominent striker, his family, with many others, was evicted from its humble abode, and might have perished from exposure but for the benevolent intervention of a neighboring farmer, who contrived to accommodate no fewer than three households in two small rooms. At the end of the strike, Burt's father, being a "marked man," and regarding discretion as the better part of valor, retreated to Helton, in the county of Durham, where he found employment for about a year. Subsequently the family moved to Haswell Blue House,—a hamlet midway between Haswell and Sholton Collieries; and in the