Meetings to petition for Parliamentary Reform were held in many parts of the country; and amongst others in Leeds, in the month of January, 1817. At this meeting Edward Baines was the principal speaker. He showed the extreme inequalities and abuses in the representation, which gave members of decayed boroughs, and withheld them from the largest commercial towns, such as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.

During this summer occurred the dismal event in Manchester, which was popularly and not unjustly called the Peterloo Massacre. I was an eye-witness, and was on the hustings, having attended to observe and report the proceedings of the meeting. I was a perfectly impartial spectator, disapproving both of the opinions and the proceedings of Henry Hunt and his colleagues.

On the 16th August, 1819, when seventy or eighty thousand persons were collected at Manchester, on St. Peter's Field, to petition for Parliamentary Reform, and when Henry Hunt was addressing the meeting, a troop of Manchester yeomanry was ordered by the magistrates to take Hunt and others into custody; and in execution of this most unwise and improper order, the yeomanry dashed furiously into the midst of an unarmed multitude, whom they trampled down and struck with their sabres, till they surrounded the hustings, which they threw down, and took all the persons who had been upon them into custody. Then, galloping over the field, they dispersed the immense assemblage, who fled in every direction. Several persons were killed and hundreds wounded by this military outrage.

It is my conviction now, at the distance of thirty years, is precisely the same as it was on the day of the massacre, namely, that the military assault on the unarmed and peaceful multitude was a mad, savage, and wicked act. Henry Hunt was not blameless: but the meeting was perfectly peaceable; and the best proof that the intentions of its leaders were so is supported by the fact that many young women, the daughters of the active promoters of the meeting, were placed on the hustings, from whence they were hurled when the yeomanry overturned the hustings, and were cut and trampled upon in that brutal assault.

The poll for Leeds commenced on the 13th February 1834. For some hours, owing to superior arrangements and energy, Sir John Beckett. was considerably ahead of his competitor. At eleven he had a majority of more than 200 - the numbers being Beckett 718, Baines 515, Bower 6. At one o'clock the Tory majority had been reduced to 125. During the afternoon the majority was slowly reduced but at the close of the first day's poll, to the extreme mortification of the Liberals, Sir John Beckett had a majority of 70. The second day of polling was Saturday, the market-day; and perhaps never has there been so high a degree of excitement in town. The friends of Edward Baines, stung with shame at their position, made every exertion. The clothiers left their places in the Cloth Hall and gathered round Edward Baines's Committee Room. At one o'clock the majority for Mr. Baines was 30. At the close of poll, at four o'clock, the numbers were as follows: Mr. Baines 1,951, Sir John Beckett 1,917, Mr. Bower 24.

Seen from the perspective of the twenty-first century, it is easy to criticise both Baines the politician and Baines the editor for his patronising views and his repeated denials to the lower classes of the same freedoms he demanded for himself and his colleagues. But Baines both influenced and was influenced by the society in which he functioned. He and his compatriots faced problems that no society had ever experienced in the history of the world. They had to devise strategies to contend with economic, social and political crises the like of which mankind had never experienced before. What Baines did was to approach those difficulties with solutions which he believed were always in the best interests of all classes in society. His denial of certain rights to the uneducated working classes was a manifestation of middle-class fears that universal suffrage would bring in its wake social chaos and the extinction of the constitution on which the whole fabric of British society was based.

Though an editor and businessman, he was nevertheless always a politician, thrust into a political imbroglio which inevitably brought him as many enemies as friends. He was also a human being who demonstrated all the weaknesses and foibles of a human being. He was passionate and sincere in his beliefs, a talented journalist, a successful publisher and a caring husband and father. Today, outside the academic world of the historians of the nineteenth century, few have ever heard of Edward Baines. What attention that is given to the family tends to fall on the achievements of Edward Baines Jun. Certainly, the younger Baines deserves much credit for his own contributions to society but without the inspiration, guidance and encouragement of his father his own life would have been vastly different.