John Benjamin Smith
First Chairman of the Anti-Corn Law League.
John Benjamin Smith (1794-1879), whose account of Peterloo follows, was better known as a strenuous advocate of Free Trade; even in this capacity, however, a breakdown of health some years before the Repeal of the Corn Laws, robbed him of much of the credit which was due to him for the important spade-work that he had done. He was the first Treasurer of the Anti-Corn Law Association, and when that developed into the Anti-Corn Law League, he became its first Chairman. He contested several elections on Free Trade principles, and used himself to tell how he had converted Cobden to “total repeal.” He sat as member, first for the Stirling Burghs, and afterwards, during more than twenty years, for Stockport. His correspondence with John Bright has recently been placed in the Manchester Reference Library. During the American War he strongly espoused the cause of the North, and he was one of those who urged the Government to encourage the growth of cotton in India.
Mr. Smith was a Trustee of Owens College under the Founder’s will; and he subscribed liberally towards its extension. His name is perpetuated in the “Smith” Professorship of English Literature, which was endowed in memory of him by his two daughters and his son-in-law. A short memoir of him, which appeared in Alderman Thompson’s History of Owens College, has been reprinted and published separately. (Manchester, J. E. Cornish, 1887.)
At the date of Peterloo he was only twenty-five years of age, but he had already shown great promise as a business man. Entering the office of his uncle, a Manchester merchant, at the early age of fourteen, he was made responsible for the whole correspondence of the firm five years later; and before he was twenty he had negotiated some very profitable purchases of cotton at the sales of the East India Company.
The account of Peterloo which follows is an extract from his “Reminiscences,” which were written towards the close of his life at the earnest request of his family. The manuscript of these is now at the Manchester Reference Library, as is also a typed and bound copy presented by his daughter, Lady Durning Lawrence. Among his other manuscripts (also at the Manchester Reference Library) is a shorter account of Peterloo, apparently written immediately after the event. The statement made recently that Mr. J. B. Smith was the author of the well-known Impartial Narrative of the Melancholy Occurrences at Manchester seems to be due to an error: apparently the Impartial Narrative (which seems to have been written by another hand) has been confused with Mr. Smith’s shorter and earlier account.
We have already pointed out that Mr. Smith’s narrative, which is not so detailed as those of Stanley and Jolliffe in its description of the charge of the troops, is specially valuable for the account it gives of the circumstances immediately preceding and following the catastrophe, and its estimate of the character of the crowd. In these details it is strikingly corroborative of Bamford’s story, as told in his Passages in the Life of a Radical, and of the information given by Mr. John Edward Taylor, who—under the pseudonym of “An Observer”—edited the contemporary tracts entitled The Peterloo Massacre.
The portrait of Mr. Smith which appears here is from a photograph kindly lent by his daughter, Lady Durning Lawrence.
AN EXTRACT FROM THE