"Believe me, sincerely yours,
"F. W. Newman."
Tom Taylor, journalist and playwriter, was born 1817 in Sunderland. For two years he was Professor of the English language and literature at University College. He was called to the Bar of Inner Temple in 1845. He acted as Secretary to the Board of Health and Local Government Act Office. After the year 1846 he devoted himself chiefly to playwriting, and in 1874 was editing Punch.
The following letter is dated September, 1850:—
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"It is not Tom Taylor only who honestly believes the Sanitary Board to be engaged in teaching Central and Local Powers to co-operate, and to be anxious to leave bonâ fide power of the most important kind to the localities. Only a few days ago a friend of mine (a physician) was proving to me this very point in them. We who are not lawyers do not understand points rapidly enough (or cannot remember them) to see where a great principle is violated.
"I do not care about the Sanitary Board per se … but what I think you are most wanted to do is to show that, however much the Parliamentary franchise needs reform, yet a greater need is that of limiting the functions of Parliament, and giving them to County Assemblies or Town Motes.
"That word Mote is almost obsolete! May not the fact itself be a text to you? The modern substitute, 'meeting,' has no taxing powers, no legal officers, no constitutional power any more than a mob…. The sands of the Whigs run fast out, and it is high time for the Radicals to have a creed. Do you find any Chartists listen to you? If you cannot convert a Sheriff, I should be as well pleased with a hundred Chartists, for they learn from one another by contagion."
In this year there was put forward a project for a society to make more local government possible. This was later carried out under the name of the "Anti-Centralization Union."
In November, 1850, decentralization was again to the fore in the minds of Newman and Toulmin Smith, as is shown here; and what the former says he puts very trenchantly, forcibly:—