170 A Journey to London in 1840. 



pared either to make any particular effort to render himself 

 agreeable to certain persons who were disposed to dictate rather 

 haughtily to himself and his brother professors. When these 

 learned teachers, who were making little or nothing bv their 

 professorial labours, saw an unlearned man like Leonard Horner, 

 erstwhile a linen manufacturer in Edinburgh, which station he 

 left to become warden of the London University, receive an 

 income of £1200 yearly they could not but grumble. They 

 grumbled the more when this person rode on the very top of his 

 commission and exhibited the most inquisitorial interference with 

 the discipline of the professors. The patience of the professors 

 was further tried when Mr Brougham, instead of encouraging 

 them amid their difficulties or upholding their dignity, threw 

 all his weight into the scale with Mr Homer and against them. 

 The result was an open rupture, in which MrM'Cullorh was 

 concerned, and a brief paper war. Some of the Professors, if I 

 recollect aright, resigned at the time, but Mr M'CuUoch did not, 

 I think, withdraw till afterwards, though at present I know not 

 the date. The truth is, as he often told myself, he was glad to 

 accept the Chair of Political Economy as a step to something 

 better, and was resolved to cut it the moment a superior or even 

 an equivalent situation was in his power. He quitted it, how- 

 ever, without having got any berth in its place. Besides he 

 never had a high opinion of Brougham. He always thought him 

 an " arch quack," the very pink of humbug. Whether he carried 

 his dislike of him too far it is not for me at present to say. I 

 only state facts. On the fall of the Melbourne ministry in 

 November, 1834, the Courier newspaper was, perhaps, the 

 most virulent, personal, and untiring in its attacks on this 

 statesman, and all these articles were written by M'Culloch and 

 in his own peculiar and uncompromising style. I remember I 

 thought at the time that these attacks were not only inexpedient 

 but unfounded. Brougham, however, by his unprincipled and 

 capricious conduct since, has con\'inced not only me but many 

 others, indeed the whole nation, that M'Culloch was essentially 

 right. 



Though he had quitted his Professorship and lost the friend- 

 ship of several of his most trusted friends, John Smith, I believe, 

 included, he had still his pen to depend on, a surer source of 

 dependence than any yet known to him. 



