Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/274

 In 1869 Mr. Picton succeeded to the pastorate of St. Thomas's Square, Hackney. Here his "tendencies" were as bad as ever. He resumed his evil habit of Sunday lecturing, and the intelligent artisans of the neighborhood flocked to hear him. For two successive seasons the critical period of English history from the reign of Elizabeth to the revolution of 1688 was subjected to systematic criticism, and Mr. Picton was never more gratified than by the appreciation of solid instruction exhibited by his auditors. A working-men's club was next started,—an institution which survives in the Borough of Hackney Working-men's Club, one of the most useful and prosperous undertakings of the kind in London. In 1870 preparations for the first London School Board election began, and Mr. Picton was among those who were solicited by the electors to offer themselves as candidates. He complied; and, though then necessarily but little known to the general London public, secured a seat through the devotion of his friends, more particularly those of the working-class. And the confidence then reposed in him was twice renewed with even greater emphasis by the constituency. For three years he filled a most responsible post on the committee of school management, before which are laid all the details of school affairs.

Throughout an advocate of "education, secular, compulsory, and free," he was not unnaturally believed by many besides myself to have deserted the Radical standard in favor of the present immoral "compromise" of the religious difficulty,—the offspring of a foul liaison between church and chapel. But this, I am assured, is a misapprehension of Mr. Picton's position. Finding that the compromisers, while pre-