1815, had never ceased to protest against it as a measure most injurious to commerce, and most unjust and cruel to the working classes, whose wages it diminished while it raised the price of fool. With this strong and just feeling on the subject, he was amongst the very first of those who enrolled themselves as members of the League, and throughout its course, from its origination in Manchester till it became a great national institution and made its power felt in Parliament, he gave it his most strenuous and influential support.
"In the election contests for Manchester and Salford, and the neighbouring counties and boroughs, Sir Thomas always took an exceedingly active part, communicating his owu ardour to all around him; and it is not too much to say, that, in a great degree, the stability and power of the reform interest throughout this important and vast district of the expire, is mainly owing to his indefatigable exertions in organising and directing what might otherwise have been the inert strength of the constituencics. He was equally active and equally influential at the last election for South Lancashire, and assisted in laying the foundation of that new movement which promises to rescue several of the counties from the deadening control of the landowners.
"He was ever ready to promote education amongst the people, both by the liberal expenditure of his own money, and by assisting in obtaining the reform of educational institutions. The Grammar School of Manchester, with funds to the amount of £4,000 a year, bad long given instruction to only about two hundred boys, and that not gratuitously, for every branch of education, beyond what in the old parlance was called grammar, was charged for, and at a high rate. Sir Thomas and Mr. Mark Philips, at their sole expense, made application to Chancery, and obtained an order, under which the number of pupils has been more than doubled; and they are taught, without charge, not only grammar,' but writing, arithmetic, mathematics, drawing, and several of the modern languages.
"There had long been exacted from the parishioners of Manchester more than $4,000 a-year under the name of Church Rates. For many years the meetings held to impose the rate had been very stormy, and the exposures of the manner in which its proceeds were expended had become exceedingly distasteful to the clergy; but still the rate was clung to, as if the Church could not exist without it. At length the opposition, headed by Sir Thomas and Mr. George Hadfield, became so exceedingly formidable that the rate was abandoned altogether, and the amount required is now raised by a sort of subscription, which is denominated an 'optional' rate.
"Hand in-hand with his exertion of public spirit went his works of private beneficence, and he did not wait for the applications of poverty,