PREFACE.
In my preface to "Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester from 1792 to 1832," I said: "When I disposed of my interest in the Manchester Times, and retired from its management, after twenty-three years' labour as a journalist, it was suggested to me that as, for a considerable part of my life, I had taken part in movements for important purposes, a biographical memoir would be well received. The suggestion was natural enough from those who, having read my newspaper from the time they left school until they were men, taking an active part in public business, regarded me as their political teacher. My reply was, that there was nothing in the events of my life that would interest any one beyond the narrow limits of a local "School;" but, on farther consideration, I thought that some account of the progress of liberal opinion in such a place as Manchester, and brief notices of the part, however humble, I had taken in its formation, would be not uninteresting and not uninstructive to its inhabitants, and those of the surrounding very
