[Sir Edward Baines, editor of the Leeds Mercury and Liberal MP.] Autograph Letter Signed to James Silk Buckingham, regarding whether the latter’s son might lecture in Yorkshire, and Buckingham’s ‘immense service’ to ‘the Total Abstinence cause’.

An interesting letter linking two similar individuals (like Baines, Buckingham had also served as a Yorkshire Member of Parliament, in his case for Sheffield as a radical between and 1835; and both men were newspaper proprietors). See the entries for Baines, with those for Buckingham and his son, in the Oxford DNB. 4pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged and folded for postage. Addressed to ‘J. S. Buckingham, Esq’ and signed ‘Edw Baines’. He begins by saying that he will try and promote Buckingham’s ‘son’s introduction to this part of the country, as a Lecturer’. (According to L. S. Buckingham’s ODNB entry, his travels with his father had provided him with ‘experiences that he later put to good use when he was a lecturer’.) A difficulty the son will face, Baines feels, ‘will be the name he bears, for his father’s reputation is so high that it will not be easy to sustain the comparison’. Baines goes on to explains a change which has taken place from the former means of ‘negociating between Lecturers & their Institutes in our Yorkshire Union’, adding that if Buckingham will send him the subjects of his son’s lectures, he will ‘recommend it to our Committee for their Mid-Summer list’. He also offers to lay newspaper testimonials ‘before the Committee of our Leeds Institute: but I believe they have made their arrangements for this season.’ He turns to ‘the Total Abstinence cause’, to which J. S. Buckingham has ‘rendered immense service’. Baines has recently published his own ‘Testimony’ (‘of which you may be pleased to see a copy’). He feels ‘a difficulty in advocating the Maine Liquor Law, on the ground of its interference will personal liberty. But the American democrats are putting the wholesome chain upon themselves very fast.’ He ends by conveying his family’s regards to Buckingham’s.