The Manchester Guardian; A Century of History [Paperback]

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...late in the day to Free Trade and sent a subscription to the League it was generally felt in all the clubs that the Corn Laws were past praying for. He was much the same kind of politician as those whom we knew at a recent election as " Unionist Freetraders," and had the high moral authority, not to say sanctity, of that connection. John Edward Taylor attended the first of his meetings in Manchester, and put to him the question of questions--whether, had he been in Parliament, he would have supported the Reform Bill. The answer was not given without some circumlocution. But Mr. Taylor was satisfied, and from that time forward his candidates were Philips and Loyd. Unhappily the Radicals would not accept Loyd, and at the end of several weeks, in which their proceedings were watched with great anxiety, they produced from their sleeve Mr. Charles Poulett Thomson, Vice-President of the Board of Trade in Lord Grey's Administration, a budding Free-trader, and so good a friend to the rights of man that Jeremy Bentham had personally canvassed for him in Dover. There is no doubt that the Guardian would have liked to support Poulett Thomson, but it held by its pledge to Loyd at the cost of nearly all its enjoyment of the contest. The Tories put up Mr. J. T. Hope, who, having no earthly prospect of success and being a very delightful and aristocratic young man, became the spoiled darling of the contest, and was indulged in everything short of actual votes. New Cross had a candidate almost entirely to itself in William Cobbett. The Guardian never could away with William Cobbett, and its long reports of his speeches are often to be found prefaced with the somewhat curt introduction, " This person said." More specifically, it described him as " an unprincipled...