[GOLD RUSH] The noble ship Manchester in great danger, From continuing the services of a Pilot of the Egyptian Bondage Sea, in lieu of a Pilot of the Service of the Free Emigration Australian Sea. de TAUNTON, Edmund

[Drop-head title:]  [Birmingham?] : [s.n.], [1853]. Broadside, folio sheet 430 x 280 mm, with 'Second edition' printed above the title at upper right; verso addressed in manuscript to The Right Honorable Viscount Palmerston, MP, Secretary, Home Department, London with the date of 3 November, and with two contemporary postal markings which record that it was sent from Birmingham on 3 November 1853 and received in London the next day (1d red postage stamp is loose); numerous old horizontal and vertical folds and some minor chipping to edges, the ink from the address and the circular postmarks showing through the fine paper but not seriously obscuring any of the printed text. An apparently unrecorded broadside polemic by one Edward Taunton, self-described as 'an Old Foreign Merchant of 1807'. Taunton bemoans the threat of 'Foreign Exchange' against the trade of Manchester, caused in particular by 'two invincible new opponents': the first is 'the emigration of workmen, that must raise services', and the second is 'the influx of gold, that must raise prices'. The result, Taunton suggests, has been a thirty-three year detriment to 'our national measure of strength and value', only restored thanks to trade with California and Australia. The present copy had the distinction of being sent, presumably by Taunton himself, as a form of petition to Henry John Temple, third Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865), who was then Home Secretary. We have not been able to trace any record of this 'second', nor any apparent first edition with this title.