Manchester generally, Mr. Henry having greatly endeared himself to his fellow-citizens by his many munificent acts.

The personnel of the firm now underwent considerable change. Mr. John Snowdon Henry, who had for some time been actively employed in the business, and Mr. Mitchell Henry, the two sons of Mr. Alexander Henry, became principal partners, and they, in conjunction with those other members of the firm who had been taken into partnership by Mr. Henry, continued to carry on the business with undiminished success. Mr. J. Snowdon Henry was elected M.P. for South-East Lancashire in November 1868, in the Conservative interest, and represented that constituency down to 1874. He engaged with much earnestness in many public movements, and was at one time Major of the 40th Lancashire Rifle Volunteers. In 1869 he retired from business altogether.

He has

a country seat at East Dene, Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, and a town residence in Piccadilly. His connection with the firm of A. & S. Henry & Co. lasted through a number of very prosperous years, and when he retired it was as the possessor of a handsome fortune.

Mr. Mitchell Henry now holds the leading position in the firm; but, strange to say, he has never taken any actual part in the transaction of the business affairs of this gigantic commercial undertaking. Born in 1826, educated privately and at University College, he early in life devoted himself to the study of medicine, and at one time held an eminent position in that profession. He attended the St. Bartholomew's Hospital School of Medicine, and was made a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1847.

In 1854 he became, by examination, a Fellow of the same college, and for some years was assistantsurgeon at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He acted as surgeon and lecturer on medical jurisprudence for a considerable period at the Middlesex Hospital, and was in practice in London as a consulting surgeon. When his father died, however, and he found himself placed in an inde pendent position, he gave himself up, in a great measure, to public life, and took leave of the medical profession altogether. Although not engaging himself directly in the business of his firm, he possesses a thorough knowledge of all the affairs of the partnership, keeping himself daily posted in the firm's transactions, and to a considerable extent directing its operations. As early as 1856 he tried to get into Parliament, unsuccessfully contesting Woodstock; and in 1868 he placed himself in the hands of his party at Manchester, and again met with defeat. All this while he was taking a prominent part in the various political movements which came before the country, and in many instances his advocacy proved of good service to a good cause. At length, in 1871, his opportunity for entering Parliament came, and he was elected for County Galway, along with Major Nolan, and has ever since sat for that constituency.

The part that he has played in parliamentary life is well known. While warmly espousing the cause of Home Rule, he has contrived to place himself on a more independent and more intelligible footing than the majority of Home Rulers, and there is no doubt he has been one of the strong elements of the party. The manner in which he has set himself to solve the Irish grievance

entitles him to be considered a practical philanthropist, and a true friend of the Irish people. In 1862 he acquired the sporting rights over a large tract of country in Connemara, and, becoming attached to the place, eventually bought an estate there, upon

which he has built a residence where he resides for the greater part of every year, and where he has the opportunity of carrying out those agricultural experiments which have always had so great an attraction for him. The result of his experience thus far has been to convince him that the true mode of treating the Irish difficulty is to regard it less as a political than as a social matter; and, in Parliament and out of it, he has frequently expressed the opinion that no changes in the laws, whether as respects the land or otherwise, will prove effectual for the removal of Irish discontent until the condition of the population is improved by making the country in which they live more habitable for man. By his By his own experience he has shown what can be done by judicious outlay; and he contends that if some portion of the better class of the waste lands were acquired by the State, it would be possible to settle upon them, in comfortable circumstances, numbers of small tenants who at present live in a chronic state of destitution. The practical suggestion he makes is that, after suitable tracts of country have been acquired by the Government for this purpose, works of reclamation should be constituted, to be carried on by Irish labourers, who would be paid weekly wages, and would be housed in temporary dwellings, and that when, in the course of about two years, these tracts have been made sufficiently fertile to support families, they should be

divided into farms of thirty acres, which should be let to the labourers who have worked upon them, at rents calculated upon the basis of a percentage on the original outlay in the purchase of the estate and of the amount paid in wages, together with a small fund to pay off the whole sum in the course of a term of years, when the holder would become the proprietor of the fee simple of a wellordered farm, and thus become as deeply interested in upholding the rights of property, and securing the observance of the laws, as the larger proprietor could be.

and

Mr. Mitchell Henry's efforts in regard to the reclamation of waste lands have already attracted much attention, and are destined to attract still more. A special correspondent of the Times, writing from Ireland in January last, described Mr. Henry's experiments as of the greatest importance to all those who had at heart the development of Ireland's agricultural capabilities. Tourists passing Kylemore Castle,' he says, 'in view of some of the most marvellous rock scenery in the United Kingdom, where the Twelve Pins present their precipices of black and gray, whole faces of snow-white quartz, with intensely bright green slopes between, may have scarcely noticed the operations of drain-cutting and transporting of hard material, which are likely, as an example, to exert a commanding influence over the future of, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of acres of now wasted bog.' The cost of these reclamations has averaged 137. an Irish acre hitherto, and in some instances the crop of turnips grown in the first year has gone far towards recouping the outlay. The gold medal of the Royal Agricultural Society was recently

awarded to Mr. Mitchell Henry for drainage in the West of Ireland, and, one way and another, this member of one of the leading commercial firms in the country has succeeded in making himself a decided authority on momentous agricultural matters. The appointment of an Agricultural Commission to consider, amongst other things, the question of the reclamation of waste lands in Ireland, and the selection of Mr. Mitchell Henry as a member of that Commission, will probably hasten the solution of the Irish land problem considerably. In these and other matters connected with the amelioration of the condition of the Irish people Mr. Mitchell Henry has shown untiring zeal; and if his English friends feel regret that he should have identified himself so intimately with Irish questions as to cut himself adrift in some degree from more general political projects, his Irish friends, on the other hand, have the satisfaction of feeling that he is still better employed, and men of all shades of opinion will give him credit for honesty, and earnestly striving to come at the best and readiest means of assisting the inhabitants of Ireland.

The other members of the Manchester firm of A. & S. Henry & Co. since 1847 have been Mr. George Wildes, Mr. W. R. Johnson, Mr. W. F. Scholfield, Mr. Thomas Barton, Mr. N. Carter, Mr. H. Hitchcock, Mr. John Mitchell, Mr. James Dawson, Mr. Thomas A. Corry, Mr. John Laycock, and Mr. John Moseley Williams. The five last-named gentlemen constitute the present Manchester partnership.

Mr. John Mitchell has been connected with the firm since 1844. Until 1868 he was concerned in the management of the

Leeds and Bradford branches, and resided principally at Bradford, in which town he acquired considerable influence as a public man. He was for a long period a member of the Bradford Town Council, of which body he was created alderman. Like Mr. Alexander Henry, he was a pronounced Free-trader and one of Kossuth's most intimate friends and admirers. When Kossuth visited Bradford, Mr. John Mitchell entertained him, and he always warmly advocated the Hungarian's cause. During the time that the French Commercial Treaty was being negotiated, Mr. John Mitchell rendered much useful assistance to Mr. Cobdenassistance which the great Freetrader gratefully acknowledged. On commercial matters Mr. John Mitchell was always regarded as a high authority, and both in Yorkshire and in Lancashire he has done much good work for the advancement of the interests of trade. In politics Mr. John Mitchell has always been what is called an advanced Liberal. When the present Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Forster, was first brought forward as a parliamentary candidate for Bradford, Mr. John Mitchell was his chairman, and he seconded Mr. Forster at the hustings. Previous to that he had acted as chairman for the well-known political veteran, General Perronet Thompson. After removing to Manchester in 1868, Mr. John Mitchell was made a member of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, of which important public body he is now a director.

The remaining Manchester partners have all been with the firm many years, some of them having risen from the humble position of warehouse-boy to that of master. Mr. Alexander Henry always

acted upon the principle of rendering the interests of his best and most industrial servants identical with his own, and to the carrying out of this principle doubtless much of the success which has been achieved by the firm is due. The departmental knowledge and long business experience of these gentlemen, their general unity of action, and their determination to carry out the precepts of the highminded and honourable men by whom they were preceded, have kept this firm, through all the mutations of trade, in the same relatively high position which it held in the early years of the century, when the operations of commerce were on a much smaller scale than they are to-day.

The chief branch establishment carried on by Messrs. A. & S. Henry & Co. is at Bradford, where for nearly forty years their turnover in the woollen and worsted trades has been exceedingly great. The present palatial warehouse building in which the Bradford business is carried on may be justly regarded as one of the finest buildings of the kind in the kingdom, being vast in extent and of considerable architectural beauty. This house was started at the right time and with the right men. The worsted trade was just entering upon the most profitable stage of its development, and the gentlemen upon whom the task devolved of taking the full advantage of this circumstance were happily possessed of the requisite trade knowledge and the necessary ability and integrity to make the best of their opportunities. As we have seen, Mr. John Mitchell was for a lengthened period connected with the management of this branch, and after his going over to the Manchester house, the conduct of this

important business chiefly devolved on Mr. Henry Mitchell, who, in conjunction with Mr. D. M. Douglas, who manages the home department, and Mr. T. S. Brailsford, who has charge of the continental business, still continues to preside over the fortunes of the Bradford house. Mr. W. R. Haigh was also, until three years ago, one of the partners in the firm; and at Bradford in the first instance, and subsequently as manager of the branch house at Huddersfield, assisted materially in adding success to the general undertaking. It may be as well to state, perhaps, at this point that the name of Mitchell, which crops up so frequently in this partnership, does not imply relationship. Mr. Mitchell Henry is not related to Mr. Henry Mitchell or Mr. John Mitchell, nor are the two last-named gentlemen related to each other.

Mr. Henry Mitchell has long been one of the leading public men of Bradford. He first came to the town in 1841 as manager for Messrs. Wm. Fison & Co., the firm of which the Right. Hon. W. E. Forster was and is still a member. Mr. Mitchell continued with Messrs. Fison & Co. until 1848, when he he became buyer for Messrs. A. & S. Henry & Co. His success in the latter capacity was such that when he had been four years in the firm's service he was made a partner. From that time (1852) to the present Mr. Henry Mitchell has devoted his energies to the commercial enterprise with which he thus became linked, bringing to the work an intimate acquaintance with all the details of the worsted trade, and an amount of business sagacity and energy which, combined with the ability and tact of his partners, served to place the Bradford house in the front

rank of local merchant firms. At the time when Mr. Mitchell entered the service of Messrs. A. & S. Henry & Co. the population of Bradford was not more than 80,000; the town has now a population of at least 180,000, and the trade of the district has increased in a corresponding ratio. Some idea of the part that the Bradford house of A. & S. Henry & Co. has played in this rapid development may be formed when it is stated that about 600,000 pieces of cloths and stuffs are purchased by this house in a single year. Taking the average length of these pieces as fifty yards, we get the large total of 30,000,000 yards, or over seventeen thousand miles' length of textile fabrics-enough, one would think, to clothe a whole nation. That one establishment, and that only, after all, a branch concern, should be able to turn over such a large quantity of goods as is represented by these figures, is something to marvel at even in these days of gigantic dealings. What formidable array of figures would be arrived at by the addition of purchase returns of the parent house and the other branch establishments is more than the imagination can grasp. During the early years of his partnership Mr. Henry Mitchell devoted himself with rare assiduity and success to the management of the business affairs intrusted to him; and as time went on, and his ability and high principles came to be known and recognised, he was urged to take upon himself the performance of those public duties which he was considered so well qualified to execute. In the year 1870 he was elected a member of the Bradford Town Council; and his services met with such approval that he was afterwards made Alderman, and in 1874-5 became Mayor of

the town. During his term of office as chief magistrate Mr. Mitchell inaugurated many useful movements, and won the esteem of the inhabitants in a remarkable degree. In trade matters Mr. Mitchell has always been looked upon as one of the chief local authorities, and the good work he has achieved as a member of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, and in promoting the scheme for the establishment of a technical school in Bradford, will yield results which will be an enduring monument to his commercial zeal and foresight. Since 1877 Mr. Mitchell has been President of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, and at the meetings of this important body his utterances on matters affecting the mercantile interests of the community have been invariably marked by a strong spirit of practical wisdom, and in many instances have sensibly aided the solution of difficult commercial problems. There is no project, perhaps, with which his name is more intimately associated than that of the establishment of the Bradford Technical School, of which he is president, and which has been largely assisted by his generosity. He has watched the rapid progress made in France and Germany in the manufacture of textile fabrics, and has noted the special attention these countries have given to the imparting of technical instruction. He saw clearly enough that if England was to retain its supremacy in the production of worsted fabrics it was necessary that a higher and more systematic training should be adopted on the part of those whose lot it would be to carry the trade forward in the face of foreign competition; and he set his heart on establishing in Bradford a technical school which should be in advance rather than behind