EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.
Brief Description of item(s)
A bound collection of at least 160 letters from many major figures of the time to the
Manchester radical, reformer and merchant Thomas Walker (1749-1817). The
collection is arranged in alphabetical order by correspondent, from A to R having
once formed a pair with a second volume, now missing. They date from the late 18th
to the early 19th centuries and are in reasonable condition.
2.
Context
The letters were sold at Bonham’s, 10 November 2009. They were at some point
available to Blanchard Jerrold, who quotes some of them in extract in a publication of
1874, but have evidently been inaccessible and in private hands since.
3.
Waverley criteria
Waverley 1 because the letters provide an extraordinary insight into important aspects
of British life during a period of intense industrial, political, intellectual and cultural
activity, and show that major national campaigns, such as that for the abolition of
slavery (about which there is much popular interest), derived significant power from
the provinces.
Waverley 3 because the letters are largely unknown to scholars and shed new light on
the often interrelated activities, experiences and ideas of key intellectual, political and
radical figures as they shaped the nature of our parliamentary democracy and sought
liberty for the oppressed.
DETAILED CASE
Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item(s).
Waverley 1
Thomas Walker was active during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
involved with several often interrelated matters, including the growth of the cotton
industry; commercial lobbying; religious dissent and politics; radicalism and antislavery. He was co-ordinator of the reform movement in the north west; a leading
spokesman for the textile industries; a celebrated and successful opponent of the 1785
Fustian Tax; the founder of the General Chamber of Manufacturers; a member of the
Manchester Lit and Phil; and chairman of a Manchester anti-slavery committee.
Crucially, Walker acted as a lightning rod for other radicals and reformers. The
survival of this volume of letters is remarkable in that it concentrates, in one gathering
(evidently assembled by Walker himself), an exceptional collection of political,
philosophical and social ideas and information generated by many of the most
important and influential figures of the day, including Joseph Priestley, Thomas
Cooper, John Cartwright, Capel Lofft, William Frend, Charles James Fox and Charles
Grey.
Some letters are of outstanding significance in their own right, such as two (only
partially published) by Thomas Paine, writing about the imminent publication in
London of The Rights of Man.
The letters’ greatest significance lies in the range of perspectives and information
provided by Walker’s many correspondents. The fact that many of these people knew
one another and were involved in the same or similar initiatives lends the collection a
rich interconnectedness and provides a unique insight into the complex workings of
British radicalism and reform at this critical and compelling period of national history
– a period which, with its Romantic and revolutionary resonances is continually reenvisioned in popular cultural contexts, including theatre, cinema, literature and
television.
Even obscure figures in the collection contribute fresh insights into our nation’s
history. On 8 January 1796 John Moggridge writes a letter of introduction for a
young poet touring the Midlands. It states: ‘I am happy to have the opportunity of
introducing to your acquaintance Mr Coleridge from whose conversation, I am
confident you will derive great pleasure, possessed of first rate talents he has
generously devoted them to the Cause of Virtue and Freedom.’
The letters illustrate the critical role played by the provinces in major historical
events. Walker’s activities in Manchester show that the anti-slavery campaign was
truly national and did not depend exclusively on a London elite. In one letter, the
leading abolitionist Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) writes ‘I am glad to hear that the
Gentlemen of your Town will subscribe to the Revolution of France. Glasgow
promises £2000 as her patriotick gift’. Letters from leading politicians such as
Charles James Fox provide further insights into the relationship between local and
national politics and between radicals and those at the heart of government.
However, it is perhaps what the letters reveal of British efforts to abolish slavery that
makes the collection such an evocative record of national and provincial activity.
Public interest in anti-slave trade topics is intense, as recent exhibitions and events
have shown, including the 2007 commemoration of the abolition of the British
transatlantic slave trade (a special £2 coin was struck to mark the 200th anniversary of
the Slave Trade Act), and the opening of major slavery exhibitions in Liverpool,
Bristol, Hull and London.
Waverley 3
I hope a general sense of the scholarly importance of these letters can be gained from
the argument made under Waverley 1. However, I will outline here some more
specific justifications.
Despite the major figures represented, and the richness of this unique material, the
collection is still largely unknown to scholars. A few letters were published in extract
by Blanchard Jerrold in his preface to the 1874 edition of Thomas Walker junior’s
The Original, in turn used by Frida Knight in her 1957 biography The Strange Case of
Thomas Walker. Jerrold had access to the manuscript volume but his extracts are
highly selective; he prints only parts of the Paine letters, for example, and although he
lists seven of Walker’s anti-slavery correspondents, he provides no details about what
they wrote. Very little of what the collection reveals about this topic has therefore
entered the public domain.
The anti-slavery campaign material is of enormous interest. The topic is under
increasing scholarly scrutiny, and the role played by Manchester and other provincial
centres forms part of this. Drescher’s British Anti-Slavery Mobilisation in
Comparative Perspective (1986) argues that Manchester set a crucial example while
Oldfield’s Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (1995) details the valuable part
the city played in the wider national campaign. The collection’s significance radiates
out beyond Manchester. Fourteen unpublished letters from the major abolitionist
Thomas Clarkson are outstandingly significant, particularly as Clarkson destroyed
most of his personal papers, leaving only a scattered and thin record of his activities
and very little from this period, 1788-1792. Clarkson’s entry in the Oxford DNB
notes that ‘if it is now conceded that abolition would have been impossible but for the
forces at work in the age of revolution, it is also understood that the abolitionists were
themselves one of those forces, and without Wilberforce, Clarkson, and the rest
slavery would not have been ended so soon and so completely, and perhaps not so
peacefully.’
The collection tells us much about Walker himself. Although less of a household
name than many of those writing to him, he does attract scholarly attention. He’s
discussed in John Ehrman’s work on Pitt; James Bradley and John Seed’s on dissent
and politics; Albert Goodwin and John Barrell’s on radicalism; and Seymour
Drescher and Christopher Brown’s on the mobilisation of anti-slavery sentiment. The
complexity and interconnectedness of the various spheres of activity in which he was
involved - all recorded in the letters - provide fascinating insights into the
machinations and motivations of contemporary political life. Christopher Brown, for
example, suggests that the experience Walker and other provincial businessmen had
of commercial lobbying helped shape the way they approached abolishing the slave
trade.
Walker was a reformist operating at a time when the Pitt government determined to
take a more conservative line against the backdrop of the French Revolution. All the
correspondence surrounding his trumped-up and ultimately discredited trial of 1794,
where he was charged with conspiring to overthrow the king, constitution and
government, allows us a rare opportunity, in the words of Professor John Barrell FBA
and four other academics opposing an export licence, to ‘point to the smoking gun of
government malpractice.’
In summary, this is a collection which will be of outstanding use to historians wishing
to reconstruct the national political situation of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Walker’s correspondence reveals a rich set of interconnections
between various causes, ideologies, individuals, places and practical concerns, not
least the links between trade and reform and the effort to mobilise the resources and
energy of the rapidly industrialising north in the campaign to abolish slavery. The
collection deserves to remain in the country whose history it helped to shape.
Name of Expert Adviser and Institution
Dr Christopher Fletcher
Head of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library
Date
18 January 2010