Item 61 - Letter from Richard Sheepshanks

4 pp.

RS gives a detailed description of a radical political meeting at York: 'I passed an immense number of people but scarcely a horse or a carriage. These people were quiet and decently dressed but of a very low cast and as I rode past heard more than once some allusions to their hopes of riding soon'. RS estimated that there were 'from five hundred to a thousand decent people there and from fifteen to twenty thousand radicals nearly all from our good town and neighbourhood'. 'After the real business was over a mob orator of the name of Mitchell...got up. He spoke of the affair of Manchester as an eye witness and then entered into the uselessness of petitioning parliament...I believe most of the mob thought that was the object of the meeting'. Eventually they proceeded to the detail of the petition which was easily carried. 'If you ask me if I see any danger I must say that taking the folly of ministers and the disposition of the people together there is much danger for unfortunately the wise heads that rule us seem only to understand by vigour and disdain of laws and prudence...The thing I am afraid of is local damage. I wish my family and property were quietly out of the way'. RS gives his comments concerning Whewell work ['An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics', 1819]. WW should dilute his preface to avoid any confrontation with the old guard: 'I don't myself see any need if softening this part but, if you could speak handsomely of the ingenuity with which they have handled their cumbersome engines without lugging it in'.

One page with later paper pasted over a paragraph, obscuring text.