detected sympathy with the defendant in the foreman of the jury, John Rylands of Warrington. The result, after a summing-up from the bench wholly unfavourable to the defendant, was that the jury were locked up for eleven hours and five minutes, and that between ten and eleven at night they delivered to the judge, in bed at his lodgings, a verdict of not guilty (see A Full and Accurate Report of the Trial, published at the Manchester Gazette office in 1819, with a preface by Taylor, who describes his trial as in his belief the very first instance of a criminal prosecution for libel ‘in which a defendant has been allowed to call evidence in justification, and to prove the truth of the alleged libellous matter.’ Cf. A. Prentice, Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester, chap. ix., ‘Mr. John Edward Taylor's Trial’).
On the occasion of the ‘Peterloo Massacre’ on 16 Aug. 1819 Taylor, who had left the spot shortly before the dispersal of the mob, was one of those who signed the ‘Declaration and Protest’ which asserted the peaceable character of the interrupted meeting, and utterly disapproved of the unnecessary violence used in dispersing it. Before the close of the year he published what may be regarded as the chief monument of his literary powers and political principles, under the title ‘Notes and Explanations, Critical and Explanatory, on the Papers relative to the Internal State of the Country, recently presented to Parliament,’ to which he appended a well-argued ‘Reply to Mr. Francis Philips's’ pamphlet in defence of the Manchester magistrates and yeomanry for their share in the catastrophe of Peterloo. This book, which professed to be ‘by a Member of the Manchester Committee for relieving the Sufferers of the 16th of August 1819,’ is a masterly exposure of a miserable chapter in the history of our national policy, and an unanswerable plea for trust in the people. It concludes with a prescient appeal to the middle classes to profit by their recent discovery ‘that they must interfere with domestic politics, because domestic politics will interfere with them.’
Taylor's successful intervention in political affairs suggested to him the abandonment of commercial pursuits. For a time he thought of the bar. Soon, however, some of his political friends proposed to him that he should undertake the editorship of a weekly journal which they designed to establish in Manchester in support of their opinions. Taylor having accepted their invitation, a sum of 1,000l. was subscribed, chiefly in loans of 100l.; and this formed the first capital in the establishment of the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ of which the first number appeared on 5 May 1821. It is a modest four-page sheet, price 7d.; containing with other matter an elaborate table of statistics as to the condition of charitable education in Manchester and the immediate neighbourhood.
The ‘Manchester Guardian,’ of which Taylor remained editor for the rest of his life, and of the copyright of which he speedily became the sole proprietor, at once asserted itself as the leading Manchester paper, and gradually rose into the front rank of the national press. Taylor was ably assisted in his labours by Jeremiah Garnett [q. v.], who was associated with him from the first days of the paper, and who succeeded him as editor after his death. In 1836 it became a bi-weekly paper, sold at the price of 4d. The political support of the ‘Guardian’ was consistently given to the views of the whig party, though in later years its sympathies with advanced liberalism were perhaps less evident. On labour questions, as they then presented themselves, the ‘Guardian’ seems certainly to have come to be more or less identified with the interests of the employers. In the fearless sincerity, however, of comments on matters of public concern, no change was perceptible; nor was he afraid of coming into occasional collision with old political friends where the rights of the community seemed to him to be at issue (cf. Prentice, pp. 358 sqq.).
Taylor's energies were far from absorbed by his newspaper work. He took a prominent part in the local business of Manchester, where the established importance of his journal had gradually made his position one of widespread influence; and he actively promoted parliamentary legislation in the interests of the town, repeatedly attending deputations to London. For several years he was deputy chairman of the improvement committee of the commissioners of police, and in this capacity did much to improve the condition of the Manchester streets. He died at his residence, Beech Hill, Cheetham, on 6 Jan. 1844. He was twice married: in 1824 to his first cousin, Sophia Russell Scott; in 1836 to Harriet Acland, youngest daughter of Edward Boyce of Tiverton. His second son, John Edward Taylor, is the present proprietor of the ‘Manchester Guardian.’
