Loyd was nearer to conservatism than to whiggism. Reformers knew from the first that neither Cobbett nor Hope could be returned, and the questions were whether Loyd was a fit man to be returned along with Philips, and, whether the progressive party had strength enough in the electoral body to return two members, without the aid of a considerable number of whigs who had hastily given in their adhesion to Loyd. I had no doubt on the first question. To send a man to the House who, had he been there, would have opposed the most popular parts of the Bill by which Manchester was enfranchised, would have been a most deplorable political suicide. After his appearance on the Chorlton-upon-Medlock bowling green, I felt bound further to show that he was not the man to receive the suffrages of free traders, believing that the exposition of his unfitness might bring another and a better man into the field, and in my paper of August 4th, I said: "When Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd came forward to claim the suffrages of the electors of Manchester in an address which, though abounding in professions of liberality, contained not one single sentence which could enable any one to form an opinion as to what his real principles were, we naturally looked to the characters of the persons who were publicly supporting him, that, from the company he kept, we might and, when we saw that one of the judge what he was; most prominent among them was Hugh Hornby Birley, a man who, with the stain of the 16th August, 1819, upon him, attaches a stain on all on whom he inflicts his friendship; and that three-fourths of the others were the known enemies of reform, and the known persecutors of reformers; that there were not half a dozen of them all who, in their lives, had ever done a single act for the removal of any national or local abuse, we concluded that he was not the man who was likely to unite the suffrages of the newly enfranchised electors of Manchester. Nor was the assurance which Mr. Loyd gave to Mr. John Edward Taylor
