Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/45

 that, if they can only see their way to believe in one God, they invariably pay twenty shillings in the pound. They are an eminently rational, upright, and progressive people; and politica113^ their services to the country have been invaluable. In all respects Mr. Taylor's educational and social advantages were of the most enviable kind. His father was an ardent opponent of the corn laws, of church rates, and of a limited franchise. The friends of Mr. Taylor's youth were reformers of the highest intellectual grasp, including Mill, Mazzini, Col. Perronet Thomson, and Ebenezer Elliot, the corn-law rhymer.

The man, however, to whom Mr. Taylor owed most was the celebrated W. J. Fox, the minister of Southplace Chapel, Finsbury, where the Taylors, father and son, attended for many years. Mr. Fox was a preacher of extraordinary talent and energy. From being the "Norwich Weaver-Boy," he became simultaneously minister of the most intellectual congregation in the metropolis, member of Parliament for Oldham; and last, not least, he wielded the powerful pen of "Publicola" in "The "Weekly Dispatch." After his death, Mr. Taylor, in one of the best speeches he ever delivered, said of him, with much truth, "His political principles were not so weakly based that he feared to trace the result in the history of various kinds of government; nor his religion so poorly grounded as to fear scientific inquiry. He searched after truth, and followed wherever it might lead him." In portraying Fox's virtues, Mr. Taylor described the leading features of his own mind.

Very early in life Mr. Taylor entered his father's business, for which he showed aptitude of the highest