Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/633

 end of eighteen months he left Stokes's employment and some months later became representative in Manchester of the 'Sentinel,' a new London weekly newspaper started in the interest of the Anti-Corn Law League. The paper failed, and Edwards received only 10l. for fifteen months' service. He met a debt to his landlord by lecturing for temperance societies at one shilling a lecture. At Manchester he heard Cobden and Bright at public meetings, and became a staunch adherent of the Manchester political school.

In 1845 Edwards went to London, and while maintaining himself by lecturing and journalism developed his interest in political and social reform. He actively promoted the Early Closing Association, and he suggested the invitation which led Emerson in 1848 to lecture on behalf of the association at Exeter Hall on 'Montaigne,' 'Napoleon,' and 'Shakespeare.' He showed sympathy with the Chartist movement but deprecated the use of physical force. The London Peace Society sent him as a delegate to the Peace Conference at Brussels in Sept. 1848, and he was at Paris and Frankfort-on-the-Maine on the like errand in 1849 and 1850.

In 1850 Edwards with savings of some 50l. started 'The Public Good,' a weekly newspaper, which he wrote, printed, and published single-handed in a small room where he lived in Paternoster Row. The paper, though widely sold, did not pay, and Edwards started others, the 'Biographical Magazine,' the 'Peace Advocate,' and the 'Poetic Magazine,' in the vain hope that they would advertise and so support each other. After a three years' struggle his health broke down and he became bankrupt, paying five shillings in the pound to his creditors. Engaging strenuously in journalistic work, he so far recovered his position as to be able to purchase at a nominal price in 1862 the 'Building News.' By careful management the paper was brought to a flourishing condition, and in 1866 Edwards paid in full his old debts, from which he was legally absolved. An inscription on a watch and chain presented by his former creditors on 29 Aug. 1866 at a banquet given in his honour at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate Street, testified to their appreciation of 'his integrity and honour.' In 1869 he also acquired for a small sum the 'Mechanics' Magazine,' which rapidly returned substantial profits.

Edwards's next venture was the purchase in 1876 of the 'Echo,' the first halfpenny newspaper. He bought it from Baron Albert Grant [q. v.], who in 1875 had acquired it from Cassell, Petter & Galpin, its founders in 1868. Edwards became his own editor, and under his control the paper gained greatly in popularity. Its politics were liberal and it advocated the causes of social reform in which Edwards interested himself. After some years he excluded betting news, a step by which the paper gained commercially rather than lost. In 1884 he sold a two-thirds share of the paper to Andrew Carnegie and Samuel Storey for, it is said, 50,000l, but, difficulties of management arising, he re-bought it almost immediately at double the price. He retained control of the paper till 1896, when it was sold at a high figure to a syndicate specially formed for its purchase. The 'Echo' collapsed in 1905. Together with the 'Echo' Edwards also ran for many years the 'Weekly Times,' a periodical acquired from Sir John Hutton.

To all progressive movements Edwards accorded active and continuous support. From 1845 onwards he was on the committee of societies for the abolition of capital punishment, of taxes on knowledge and of flogging in the army and navy. He helped to direct the Political and Reform Association, the Ballot Society, and the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. He became president (in 1894) of the London Reform Union, formed to stimulate progressive municipal legislation in London, and of the Anti-gambling League. He pressed his views on the public in pamphlets like 'The Triple Curse' (1858), which dealt with the effects of the opium trade on England, China, and India, and 'Intellectual Tollbars' (1854), a protest against taxes on paper and newspapers. An almost fanatical member of the Peace Society, he protested in 'The War: a Blunder and a Crime' (1855) against the Crimean war, and in later years strongly advocated the Transvaal's claim to independence. He was president of the Transvaal Independence Committee (1881) and of the Transvaal Committee (1901).

At the general election of 1868 Edwards was an unsuccessful candidate in the liberal interest for Truro, but made no further attempt to enter parliament till 1880, when he was returned with William Henry Grenfell (now Lord Desborough) for Salisbury. An unsupported charge of Bribery led to a petition against Edwards's election, but it was contemptuously dismissed by the court. Edwards was disappointed at the lack of opportunity for