He is a young Radical in his opposition to anything like injustice,
though frankly admitting that youth is not infallible. One of his
boyish speculations was as to what would become of things if their
qualities were taken away. While on this quest, he got hold of Sir
William Hamilton's _Logic_, and read it to such good effect that when,
years afterwards, he sat down to the greater philosophers, he found
that he already had a clear notion of where the key of metaphysics
lay. The following extract from the _Journal_ shows that he already
had a characteristic point of view:--

Had a long talk with my mother and father about the right to
make Dissenters pay church rates, and whether there ought to
be any Establishment. I maintain that there ought not in both
cases--I wonder what will be my opinion ten years hence? I
think now that it is against all laws of justice to force
men to support a church with whose opinions they cannot
conscientiously agree. The argument that the rate is so small
is very fallacious. It is as much a sacrifice of principle to
do a little wrong as to do a great one.

His friend, George Anderson May, with whom the boy of fifteen has "a
long argument on the nature of the soul and the difference between
it and matter," was then a man of six and twenty, in business at
Hinckley.

I maintained that it could not be proved that matter is
_essentially_, as to its base, different from soul. Mr. M.
wittily said soul was the perspiration of matter.