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20BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. the men represented tho none can be freed from such a reviling tongue: acq*: G: W: y*: I ree'd no 1rs from him least it should be extracted: w*h my dear Love to yu both, & W: P: & friends, I have hardly time to read over Tho: Lloyd.-----Addressed These ffor phillip Ford at Bow Lane mercht : London.-----BOOK NOTICES. The Diaries of Edward Pease, edited by Sir Alfred E. Pease, London. Headley Brothers, 1907. i2mo., 407 pp. This is a substantial attractive volume, illustrated by a number of portraits and a few views. The editor is the great-grandson of the subject of the book. Originally intended for private circulation, and afterward offered to the public, there is much detail that would not specially interest those personally unacquainted with the Pease family and its surroundings. Notwithstanding this, few can read the pages of this volume without intense respect for the sturdy North of England Quaker, so independent , often, as seems to us of the twentieth century, so narrow and puritanic, yet always bent on doing the right thing, no matter what might be the cost or result; often in spite of his training—broad-minded and sympathetic, and at all times deeply religious. Born in 1767 and living in the possession of all his faculties until 1858, his life covered a long and extremely full period of human history. He took a deep interest in the important events of his time, and his contemporary comments are often shrewd and always interesting. His life was almost exactly contemporary with that of Nathan Hunt, of North Carolina (17581853 ), a sketch of whose life appeared in the last number of BOOK NOTICES.21 the Bulletin. There is a certain similarity in the character of these two men that must strike every one familiar with the life of each, only emphasized by the difference in the opportunities and surroundings of each. Edward Pease is known to all readers of Smiles's Biography of Stephenson as the "Father of British Railways." It was he who saw the value of Stephenson's work, and furnished the encouragement and means for starting, in 1825, the first practical, public railroad—the Stockton & Darlington Railway; and so, in a sense, he is the father of all railways everywhere. Beginning life as a wool merchant, and following that business with success, he was led into broader fields, his keen business instinct perceiving the possibilities in iron, coal and railways, thus enabling him to lay the foundations of those widely-extended interests so well known in England to-day as "Pease & Partners" of Darlington. For the readers of the Bulletin perhaps as interesting a feature as any is the picture his Diaries give of the change so very gradual, from the Quakerism of the eighteenth century to that of the nineteenth century. It is true that his diaries which have been preserved begin with 1824, but the spirit of the previous century is always evident. One can but feel that if he could have allowed himself greater liberty of thought and action he would have been even a greater power for righteousness than he was. With many Friends of his day he could not believe that it was right for Friends to enter public life. When his son Joseph, in 1832, was about to offer himself as a candidate for Member of Parliament, he told him, says the son: "That unless I was wholly regardless of all parental counsel, the advice of all my best friends, the domestic happiness of my family, my duties as a husband and parent, and a member of the Society of Friends, I could not for a moment entertain the idea of yielding, under any contingency , to become a representative of my countrymen in Parliament." It speaks well for the father, that after this appeal he did not interfere; and for the son, that listening to it respectfully, and giving it due weight, he felt that he was called to fulfill a duty; and, so, doing his best to remove all objectionable features from the election, he stood and was elected, taking his seat as the first Quaker admitted to Parliament...

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