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26-550: From 1828 to 1847, the newspaper was edited by Archibald Prentice , a political radical and advocate of free trade . After swallowing the Manchester Gazette , the paper took the title Manchester Times and Gazette in 1831. In 1835 the paper published a series of letters by Richard Cobden , and Prentice subsequently made it a mouthpiece for the Anti-Corn-Law League . In 1849, the paper merged with

52-631: A 40-shilling freehold: the strategy certainly alarmed the Tories . One of the most nationally visible efforts came in the 1843 election in Salisbury. Its candidate was defeated, and it was unable to convince voters regarding free trade. The political parties in the 1830s targeted bigger cities for more support on 'free trade'. However, the League did learn lessons that helped to transform its political tactics. It learned to concentrate on elections where there

78-760: A committed activist. Prentice visited the United States in 1848. On his return he obtained an appointment in the Manchester gas office, and continued to write. An advocate of temperance principles, he became latterly an ardent apostle of total abstinence , and on the formation of the Manchester Temperance League in 1857, he became treasurer. One of his last lectures was on the bacchanalian songs of Robert Burns . Prentice became paralysed, on 22 December 1857, and died two days later in his sixty-seventh year. Prentice published Tour in

104-681: A prominent official position in the League, and who fell out with Richard Cobden . A company was formed in 1845 to run another radical paper, the Manchester Examiner , at the initiative of William McKerrow . The new venture had a major impact on the Manchester Times ; and in 1847 Prentice sold out his stake in the paper. In the following year the two publications became the Manchester Examiner and Times . John Childs regarded Prentice as unfairly treated, as

130-508: A weekly. In May 1821 the Manchester Guardian was founded as an organ of radical opinion. Some, including Prentice, found John Edward Taylor as editor insufficiently advanced; Prentice purchased Cowdroy's Gazette to start an alternative paper. In June 1824, the first number of the renamed Manchester Gazette appeared under his editorship. The year 1826 saw a commercial depression, and Prentice found himself unable to keep

156-600: A woollen-draper in the Lawnmarket . Here he remained for three years, then moved to Glasgow as a clerk in the warehouse of Thomas Grahame, brother of James Grahame the poet. Two years later he was appointed traveller to the house in England, and in 1815 Grahame, acting on his advice, moved his business from Glasgow to Manchester, and at the same time brought Prentice into partnership in the firm. Prentice took an interest in politics, and contributed to Cowdroy's Gazette ,

182-560: The Manchester Examiner , recently founded as a radical competitor after a falling-out between Prentice and Cobden, and became the Manchester Examiner and Times . (The Examiner had been founded by the young Edward Watkin , whose father was noted for his involvement in the Anti-Corn-Law League.) Briefly known as the Manchester Weekly Examiner & Times in 1856–57, the paper settled down under

208-495: The Manchester Gazette' s failure in 1828 and the subsequent inability of the Manchester Times to compete with John Bright's more moderate Manchester Examiner . Towards the close of 1836 an anti-corn-law association was started in London by Joseph Hume and other parliamentary radicals; Prentice suggested that the centre of agitation should be transferred to Manchester. On 24 September 1838 prominent Manchester merchants met him at

234-458: The 1850s and 1860s; however other technical developments caused the fall of wheat prices from 1870 to 1894. The League marked the emergence of the first powerful national lobbying group into politics, one with a centralized office, consistency of purpose, rich funding, very strong local and national organization, and single-minded dedicated leaders. It elected men to Parliament. Many of its procedures were innovative, while others were borrowed from

260-460: The United States , in a cheap form in order to promote emigration. He edited in 1822 The Life of Alexander Reid, a Scotish [ sic ] Covenanter , and was the author of Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester , published in 1851, and A History of the Anti-Corn-Law League , London, 1853. Prentice married, on 3 June 1819, Jane, daughter of James Thomson of Oatridge, near Linlithgow . She survived him many years, and

286-479: The York Hotel, and the result was the foundation of the Anti-Corn-Law League . For the next eight years he devoted himself to the propagation of free trade principles. His paper came to be an organ for the advancement of the movement. Prentice recruited Abraham Walter Paulton as the League's first lecturer. George Wilson came to play a role as moderator of the radical tactics of Prentice, who did not hold

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312-415: The abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws , which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time when factory-owners were trying to cut wages. The League was a middle-class nationwide organisation that held many well-attended rallies on the premise that a crusade was needed to convince parliament to repeal the corn laws. Its long-term goals included

338-642: The anti-slavery movement. It became the model for later reform movements. The model of the League led to the formation of the Lancashire Public School Association to campaign for free, locally financed and controlled secular education in Lancashire. It later became the National Public-School Association. It had little success because national secular education was a divisive issue even among

364-585: The controversy with Protection... The League may be dissolved when you like”. Many of its members thereafter continued their political activism in the Liberal Party , with the goal of establishing a fully free-trade economy. W.H. Chaloner argues that the repeal in 1846 marked a major turning point, making free trade the national policy into the 20th century, and demonstrating the power of "Manchester-school" industrial interests over protectionist agricultural interests. He says repeal stabilized wheat prices in

390-487: The league's way of thinking. When the crunch came, Peel put through a (staggered) repeal through Parliament without a general election, to the applause of Cobden and Bright. The League then prepared to dissolve itself. The Tory victory of 1852 saw preparations to revive the League, however, in order to keep a watching brief on Protectionist forces; and it was only after Disraeli ’s 1852 budget that Cobden felt able to write to George Wilson : “The Budget has finally closed

416-535: The paper afloat. The Gazette was then incorporated with the Manchester Times and he was appointed sole manager of the new paper, the first number of which appeared on 17 October 1828. His handling the paper was controversial, and on 14 July 1831 an action for libel was brought against him by one Captain Grimshawe, of whom he had said that he gave indecent toasts at public dinners. On indictment Prentice

442-516: The popular base. The Corn Laws were taxes on imported grain introduced in 1815. The laws indeed did raise food prices and became the focus of opposition from urban groups who had less political power than rural Britain. The corn laws initially prohibited foreign corn completely from being imported at below 80s a quarter, a process replaced by a sliding scale in 1828. Such import duties still made it expensive for anyone to import grain from other countries, even when food supplies were short. The League

468-474: The removal of feudal privileges, which it denounced as impeding progress, lowering economic well-being, and restricting freedom. The League played little role in the final act in 1846, when Sir Robert Peel led the successful battle for repeal. However, its experience provided a model that was widely adopted in Britain and other democratic nations to demonstrate the organisation of a political pressure group with

494-484: The textile industry. The League borrowed many of the tactics first developed by British abolitionists , while also attempting to replicate its mantle of moral reform. Among these were the use of emotionally charged meetings and closely argued tracts: nine million were distributed by a staff of 800 in 1843 alone. The League also used its financial strength and campaign resources to defeat protectionists at by-elections by enfranchising League supporters through giving them

520-554: The title Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner (or simply Manchester Weekly Times ) in 1858. The newspaper's last issue appeared on 22 July 1922. The 3,973 issues of the Manchester Times , published between 1828 and 1900, are available to read in digitised form at the British Newspaper Archive . This English newspaper–related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Archibald Prentice Archibald Prentice (1792–1857)

546-580: Was a Scottish journalist, known as a radical reformer and temperance campaigner. The son of Archibald Prentice of Covington Mains in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire , and Helen, daughter of John Stoddart of The Bank, a farm in the parish of Carnwath , he was born in November 1792. After a scanty education, he was apprenticed at age 12 to a baker in Edinburgh; but then the following summer (1805) to

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572-557: Was a good expectation of victory. Nevertheless, the League had a restricted capability for contesting electoral seats, and its role in the final act of 1846 was largely that of creating a favourable climate of opinion. 1845 saw Lord John Russell , the Whig leader, declare for complete repeal of the corn duty as the only way to satisfy the League; while the Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel , had also been privately won over by Cobden's reasoning to

598-405: Was acquitted, and was presented with a silver snuff-box. His newspaper ventures were to prove unsuccessful. Biographer Paul Ziegler says that Although his newspapers turned a profit in their early years, his single-minded use of them for reformist causes, to the exclusion of lighter and more attractive features, drove down circulation, and his propagandizing alienated many. This partly explains

624-564: Was buried by his side in the Rusholme Road cemetery, Manchester. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Lee, Sidney , ed. (1896). " Prentice, Archibald ". Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 46. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Anti-Corn-Law League The Anti–Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at

650-451: Was founded, with Richard Cobden and John Bright among its leaders. Cobden was the chief strategist; Bright was its great orator. A representative activist was Thomas Perronet Thompson , who specialized in the grass-roots mobilisation of opinion through pamphlets, newspaper articles, correspondence, speeches, and endless local planning meetings. The League was based in Manchester and had support from numerous industrialists, especially in

676-455: Was responsible for turning public and elite opinion against the laws. It was a large, nationwide middle-class moral crusade with a utopian vision. Its leading advocate Richard Cobden , according to historian Asa Briggs , promised that repeal would settle four great problems simultaneously: The first Anti–Corn Law Association was set up in London in 1836; but it was not until 1838 that the nationwide League, combining all such local associations,

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