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    ofhis school education at Nantwich under Dr . Priestley , and when he removed to Warrington , probably became the pupil of Mr . Houghton , father of the late Rev . Pendlebury Houghton . At the age of fourteen he followed his former instructor to th ^ JW ^™ g ^^ j ^ S ^§ S ^ iy > a"d on

    leaving it entered into his father ' s business . It may be inferred from the manner in which he speaks of his academical studies , in the preface to the volume of sermons which he published in 1817 , that if he had chosen to follow the profession of a

    Dissenting minister , the consent of Ws parents would have been readily given , and those who saw how successfully he discharged the duties of that profession , thou gh assumed late in . life , may have regretted and wondered that his earlier years had not been devoted to it . His life

    would have been more peacefully spent ,-no doubt , whether more usefully may bequestioned , "for the most remarkable event in it , his struggle against the corporation of Chester , could in that case never have occurred . At the present moment , when the light of investigation is about to be carried into the dark and foul

    recesses of municipal corruption , it will not be unseasonable to trace the progress of this struggle , which illustrates both the character of Mr . Eddowes , and the state of this important branch of our institutions . The city of Chester had received from Henry VII . a charter , by which

    the citizens and commonalty were annually to elect a mayor , twentyfour aldermen , and forty common councilrnen ; but only a few years had elapsed , when this charter was ¦ virtually abrogated by a by-law of the corporation , that vacancies

    occurring in the common council should ] be filled up by the mayor , aldermen , and councillors , The commonalty did not tamely acquiesce in this shameless usurpation of . their rights , hut their attempts to obtain their restoration were frustrated , by means

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    which at this distance of time cannot be distinctly ascertained . When Charles II ., towards the end of his reign , remodelled the charters of so many corporations , in order to secure the control of the parliamentary elections , the corporation of-Chester showed a disgraceful eagerness to

    sacrifice the privileges of their fellowcitizens . James II ., in his too late repentance of the arbitrary proceedings which united the nation for his expulsion , had restored the charter , and for a few years after the Revolution the annual elections by the commonalty were resumed ; but the

    select body watched their time , and again usurped the power of nomination . In the year 1733 legal proceedings were commenced unsuccessfully for- the purpose of compelling them to make the elections according to the charter of Henry VIL , and the

    dominion of the oligarchy remained unassailed till 1784 . The parliamentary election which , rtook- . place in that year , ' on the dismissal of the coalition ministry , had convinced the citizens of Chester that till they recovered their chartered rights , they should in vain endeavour to shake

    off the yoke of the Grosvenor family , who filled the corporation with theil own creatures , and through them procured the return of their nominees to parliament . Mr . Eddowes was early invited to take a part in the proceedings for this purpose ; he soon became the life and soul of the

    undertaking , and persevered in it when abandoned by those who had no higher motive than to gratify a pique against the house of Eaton , or to establish one electioneering interest on the ruins of another . The cause was twice tried at Shrewsbury ; in the first the verdict was in favour

    of the charter , in the second ) confirmed by the King ' s Bench , of the self-electing body ; but Mr . Eddowes , now left nearly alone , brought the cause by appeal before the House ° * Lords , and obtained in 1790 a reversal of the decision of the King s

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    216 INTELLIGENCE AND

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1833, page 216, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2617/page/24/