spent in articles for furnishing the stalls, but that it should be kept entire and separate.
On the morning of Thursday, March 20th, Sir Thomas Potter expired at his residence, Buile Hill, near Manchester. The League, of the following Saturday, said of him, "He has gone down to the grave full of years and of honours, respected by the wise, mourned by the good, and eulogized by the honest. A new generation in Manchester enjoys the fruits of his toils, for to him that town is mainly indebted for the best part of its municipal institutions." I trust I may be excused in inserting here the more extended notice which appeared in my newspaper at the time:
"Sir Thomas Potter was the son of a farmer, near Tadcaster, whose industry, intelligence, and skill in agriculture, enabled his sons, about the year 1800, to establish themselves in Manchester, with a capital of £14,000, a very considerable sum in those days; and this they had employed so judiciously, that in 1615, when we first know them, and when the eldest brother, the subject of our notice, was forty-one years of age, they were recognised as amongst the first houses in Manchester. They had then acquired the character, which they sustained throughout life, of deep sympathy for the sufferings of the poor, and an earnest desire to elevate the condition of their fellow citizens and their fellow subjects. Since then we have been close observers of their career; but as a history of the exertions of their public spirit, and their private benevolence, would lead us into a detail too wide for our present purpose, we shall notice only a few of the points which tend to illustrate their public position.
"Few men of the present comparatively tolerant days can conceive the bitterness of party spirit prevailing at the period to which we refer. After a long war, in which British blood had been shed as if it had been water, and British treasure had been squandered as if it had been dross, a peace was concluded without a single stipulation for the security of commerce; and this was followed by the enactment of the Corn Law, that landlords might continue to draw, in the time of peace, the rents they had exacted during the war. Deep distress followed. The working classes, driven almost to desperation, met in great numbers, and demanded parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Lay. In 1817, the ministers of the time, on the pretence of disaffection in Lancashire, obtained the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act, and proceeded 10 put into prison, without any intention of bringing them to trial, the