Note 33 — CONNOP THIRLWALL[18].

Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, p. 125. Mill is describing a debate at ‘a society of Owenites called the Co-operation Society,’ in 1825. ‘It was a lutte corps à corps between Owenites and political economists, whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate opponents; but it was a perfectly friendly dispute.... The speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of S. David’s, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard anyone whom I placed above him.’