best thing he ever did, I do not think with you that the Claphamites were men too obscure for such delineation.  The truth is that from that little knot of men emanated all the Bible Societies, and almost all the Missionary Societies, in the world.  The whole organisation of the Evangelical party was their work.  The share which they had in providing means for the education of the people was great.  They were really the destroyers of the slave-trade, and of slavery.  Many of those whom Stephen describes were public men of the greatest weight, Lord Teignmouth governed India in Calcutta, Grant governed India in Leadenhall Street, Stephen’s father was Perceval’s right-hand man in the House of Commons.  It is needless to speak of Wilberforce.  As to Simeon, if you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.  Thornton, to my surprise, thinks the passage about my father unfriendly.  I defended Stephen.  The truth is that he asked my permission to draw a portrait of my father for the Edinburgh Review.  I told him that I had only to beg that he would not give it the air of a puff; a thing which, for myself and for my friends, I dread far more than any attack.  My influence over the Review is so well known that a mere eulogy of my father appearing in that work would only call forth derision.  I therefore am really glad that Stephen has introduced into his sketch some little characteristic traits which, in themselves, were not beauties.”] With their May meetings, and African Institutions, and Anti-slavery Reporters, and their subscriptions of tens of thousands of pounds, and their petitions bristling with hundreds of thousands of signatures, and all the machinery for informing opinion and bringing it to bear on ministers and legislators which they did so much to perfect and even to invent, they can be regarded as nothing short of the pioneers and fuglemen of that system of popular agitation which forms a leading feature in our internal history during the past half-century.  At an epoch when the Cabinet which they supported was so averse to manifestations of political sentiment that a Reformer who spoke his mind in England was seldom long out of prison, and in Scotland ran a very serious risk of transportation, Toryism sat oddly enough on men who spent their days in the committee-room and their evenings on the platform, and each of whom belonged to more Associations combined for the purpose of influencing Parliament than he could count on the fingers of both his hands.