Edward Baines (1800–1890)

Sir Edward Baines
Sir Edward Baines, c.1870
Born	28 May 1800 Leeds
Died	2 March 1890 Leeds
Residence	1 Park Place, Leeds, Yorkshire
Occupation	Journalist, politician
Known for	Voluntarism
Political party	Liberal
Spouse(s)	Martha Baines née Blackburn
Children	Thomas Blackburn Baines (1832–1891)
Parent(s)	Edward Baines (1774–1848), Charlotte Baines née Talbot

Sir Edward Baines, also known as Edward Baines junior (1800–1890) was a nonconformist English newspaper editor and Member of Parliament.

Edward Baines, of St Ann's Hill, Leeds, was the second son (and biographer) of Edward Baines (1774–1848), proprietor of the Leeds Mercury and MP for Leeds in the 1830s, and his wife Charlotte Talbot. His elder brother, Matthew Talbot Baines, was also a politician.

Edward Baines junior was educated at a Leeds private school and then at a dissenting academy - the Leaf Square grammar school at Pendleton, near Manchester. From 1815 he worked as a journalist on the Leeds Mercury (in which capacity he was an eye-witness of the Peterloo massacre), becoming a junior editor c 1820 and a partner in the business in 1827. He became sole editor when his father was elected to Parliament in 1834, and, after his father's death in 1848, proprietor of the Leeds Mercury. He served as Liberal M.P. for Leeds from 1859 to 1874. He was knighted in 1880. A political Liberal, he supported the 1832 Reform Act and the 1834 new poor laws; he was an advocate of repeal of the corn laws and of the separation of church and state. He was an opponent of the factory reform movement and responsible for the Mercury's rejection of Richard Oastler's letters to it on the subject. A staunch Dissenter, he opposed state-sponsored education (because it was unthinkable that education should be purely secular, but also unconscienceable that the state should have any involvement with religious instruction) . In 1843 he wrote in the Mercury that education was something individuals could do for themselves "under the guidance of natural instinct and self-interest, infinitely better than Government could do for them". Hence "All Government interference to COMPEL Education is wrong" and had unacceptable implications: "If Government has a right to compel Education, it has right to compel RELIGION !" He withdrew his opposition in the 1860s, when he reluctantly conceded the inadequacy of efforts for the voluntary provision of education . In the 1860s he repeatedly introduced bills to widen the franchise; all were defeated.