Benjamin Flower

Benjamin Flower (1755–1829) was an English radical journalist and political writer, and a vocal opponent of his country's involvement in the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars.

He was born in London, the son of a prosperous tradesman, George Flower, and Martha Fuller, sister of William Fuller.Richard Flower, who helped found Albion, Illinois and wrote on the English Settlement in the state, was his brother, and Richard's sons George Flower (cofounder of the Settlement) and Edward Fordham Flower therefore his nephews. His sister Mary married John Clayton.

Attending several schools, from 1766 Flower was at the dissenting academy of John Collett Ryland, an associate of his father, in Northampton.

Flower was given a legacy in 1778, when his father died, but lost the money in speculations. John Clayton took this badly, and blackened Flower's reputation, breaking also the family link. to a share in his father's business. Flower was in business in 1783 with William Creak, a London dealer in tea, but Clayton interfered, and Flower had to take a job as a clerk.

From the early 1780s Flower belonged to the Society for Constitutional Information. In 1785 he accepted an engagement to travel in business on the Continent for half the year, spending the other half with the textile Smale & Dennys at Tiverton. He visited the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, and spent six months in France in 1791.

In 1793 Flower printed William Frend's Peace and Union Recommended in its second edition, and in 1794 The Fall of Robespierre, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey.

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