Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/123

 From pit to Parliament is assuredly a long way and an arduous. It may not be a very great or even desirable distinction to be able to write M.P. after one's name; but nobody will deny, that to earn the right, as matters stand, is an achievement of almost fabulous difficulty for a man that has neither birth nor wealth to recommend him. In Mr. Burt's case both these passports to electoral influence were conspicuous only by their absence; yet here he is with perhaps as attached a constituency as any in England behind him. Other members pay vast sums for the honor of being permitted to represent their constituents in Parliament. Here, on the contrary, you have a body of electors who voluntarily tax themselves in order to pay their member a salary of two thousand five hundred dollars a year for representing them. Was there ever a more daring outrage on constitutional propriety? And, what is stranger still, this phenomenal member, whose praises are alike in the mouths of ministerialists and opposition, is an avowed foe of royalty and aristocracy, of "beer and the Bible." There is scarcely an "ism," from republicanism downwards, that he cannot swallow without so much as making a wry face. Since Andrew Marvell's time there has been no such marvel in Parliament as Thomas Burt, the chosen of Morpeth.

At about fifteen years of age he began, all unconsciously of course, to educate himself for the discharge of his present responsible duties. And he educated himself to some purpose. While "his companions slept," this physically feeble but mentally strong Northumbrian miner was "toiling upwards in the night." He eschewed the public-house, and kept the very best society,—the society of Channing, Milton,