brought forward. Loyd's friends had been in the field, and had obtained many promises of support. To oppose a man of his immense wealth, and so powerful in the local and ledger influence which he possessed by being the head partner in our greatest banking establishment, it was necessary to look out for one who could enlist some equally powerful counteracting influence. It was proposed that some member of the whig administration should be selected. On being consulted on this point, for having the direction of such influence as a popular newspaper possessed, some importance was attached to the course I might pursue, I stated my opinion that a member of the administration was not likely to make the best representative of the district, for although his being in office might be advantageous in matters of minor business arrangement, his position would prevent that healthy influence upon public opinion, tardy, as all governments were, to adopt wide and decisive measure of relief to the people, which a less trammelled representative, speaking in the name of a large and important constituency, might exercise. At length it was proposed that some member of the government who was known to be in advance of his colleagues on questions of reform, and especially of commercial reform, should be sought for, and Mr. Charles Poulett Thomson, then Vice-President of the Board of Trade, was pointed at, the possession of such office being thought, in a great manufacturing district, likely to counteract the ledger influence of the wealthy banker.
Thomson had been the representative of Dover. Jeremy Bentham had thought so well of him, as to leave his "Hermitage," in Queen's Square Place, and personally canvass for him, greatly helping to secure his election for that place. He was understood to hold firmly most of the political doctrines of that great reformer; and he had, in 1830, made an excellent speech in favour of free trade.
