Edward Baines (1774–1848) was the editor and proprietor of the Leeds Mercury (which, by his efforts, became the leading provincial paper in England), politician, and the author of historical and geographic works of reference. On his death in 1848, the Leeds Intelligencer (a rival of the Mercury, and its political opponent for over forty years) described his as "one who has earned for himself an indisputable title to be numbered among the notable men of Leeds".

Of his character and physical appearance it remarked: "Mr Baines had great industry and perseverance, as well as patience and resolution; and with those he possessed pleasing manners and address, - that debonair and affable bearing, which conciliated even those who might have felt that they had reason to regard him as an enemy… In person he was of a firm well-built frame, rather above the average stature; his features were regular, his expression of countenance frank and agreeable; and he retained his personal comeliness as well as his vivacity and suavity of manners to the last".

Early years Edward Baines was born in 1774 at Walton-le-Dale, near Preston, Lancashire. He was educated at Hawkshead Grammar School (where Wordsworth was a contemporary), (e-published PhD thesis) and then in the lower school of the grammar school in Preston. He then became a weaver, but at the age of sixteen he was apprenticed for seven years to a printer in Preston. In the fifth year of his apprenticeship, he terminated it and moved to Leeds, where he finished his apprenticeship with the printer of the Leeds Mercury, one of two Leeds weekly newspapers. In later years, both Baines and his political opponents would have it that he arrived in Leeds with little more than the clothes on his back, but on completion of his apprenticeship he set up his own printworks with the aid of a loan of £100 from his father. He became a member of the Leeds Reasoning Society (a discussion group which eschewed religious or political issues) and of the local subscription library. He became attracted to non-conformism, and after attending the chapels of both Unitarians and Congregationalists settled for the latter (although he did not formally become a member until 1840). (He married Charlotte Talbot in 1798; she and their children were also lifelong non-conformists, with the exception of the eldest son Matthew Talbot Baines who became an Anglican, and therefore was able to take a degree at Cambridge.)

Journalism Revitalisation of Leeds Mercury In 1801, he was approached to start a third Leeds newspaper to support the interests of Dissent and Reform; the Mercury was not a reliable friend of Dissent and the leading paper, the Leeds Intelligencer, was avowedly opposed. In the event, the owner of the Mercury offered to sell up, and with the help of loans from like-minded supporters Baines bought the paper for £1,552. The paper he acquired was published every Saturday, cost sixpence (including fourpence newspaper tax) for four pages, and had a circulation of 700–800. Baines set about improving content and circulation. Baines rapidly introduced material reflecting the commercial interests of Leeds: regular agricultural and commercial reports, shipping news (from Hull and from Liverpool) and a report of the state of the London markets. Political affairs were not neglected; a digest of parliamentary proceedings in the previous week was also added. The Mercury soon outsold the Intelligencer, and by 1807 it was selling up to 3,000 copies in a good week. Production methods were improved and outclassed those of the Intelligencer, with new fonts allowing more text per page, and cast-iron handpresses allowing clearer printing than wooden ones. He encouraged "letters to the editor" and was amongst the first provincial newspaper editors to make editorial comment a routine feature of their paper. His leading articles could be vigorous and pointed. In the first Mercury under new ownership, Baines promised "Our Paper shall never be made the Vehicle of Party or Personal Abuse",editorial on page 1 of the Leeds Mercury for 7 March 1801 which was reproduced in facsimile as page 7 of the Leeds Mercury of 17 September 1836 but within the year the Mercury was exchanging insults with the Cambridge Intelligencer, which accused the Mercury of dancing to the Government's tune with vague reports of (and editorial comment deploring) nocturnal meetings of the disaffected. In 1805 a new editor of the Leeds Intelligencer attacked the Mercury as "bespattered with ... sedition"; together with Baines' heated response this initiated a long-lasting state of mutual incivility between the two papers which makes each an unreliable source for the other's deeds and motives. According to counsel in an 1820 libel case "When there was a dearth of political news, nothing was more common for one Editor to attack another, and the public appeared to find amusement in their squabbles". The Mercury sent its own reporters to significant events outside its circulation area, such as York Assizes: a Mercury reporter was present and taking shorthand notes at the giant Reform meeting at Manchester which became the Peterloo massacre. That reporter was Baines' second son Edward, who from 1820 onwards progressively took over the everyday running of the Mercury as his father became more involved in local politics. Not only did the Mercury displace the Intelligencer as the leading Leeds paper, by 1832 it could be described by another provincial paper as "the leading provincial paper in England".so described by the Western Times; comment was reprinted in the Mercury, and the Mercury's response reprinted (with sardonic comments on false modesty) as

"The spy Oliver" On 14 June 1817, the first edition of the Mercury reported that ten Yorkshire men were held in Wakefield jail accused of planning insurrection. It noted that they had been arrested the previous week at a meeting near Dewsbury between them and a Mr Oliver, who had represented himself as a delegate from a central organising committee in London; its readers would probably infer that 'Oliver' was a spy. Following the arrest of the men, there had been disturbances at Huddersfield and Ossett. The second edition made three further charges, supported by the evidence of respectable named moderate reformers: firstly that 'Oliver' had repeatedly urged one of them a Dewsbury bookseller, to attend the meeting: secondly, that 'Oliver' had been seen by another of them at Wakefield after the arrests, and with no satisfactory explanation why he was still at liberty: thirdly that he had been seen in conversation with a liveried man-servant of General Byng, the army officer responsible for internal security in the North of England, the man-servant later saying that on a previous occasion he had driven Oliver from Byng's house to Wakefield to catch a coach. The Mercury made no charge against Byng, but asked who were the employers of 'this double-distilled traitor' and called upon local magistrates to investigate. "On the 16th the exposure of Oliver in the Leeds Mercury was read in both houses of parliament, by Earl Grey in the lords and Sir Francis Burdett in the commons. A strong sensation was produced; and those members, supported by the body of the opposition condemned in the most indignant language the atrocious proceedings brought to light".

Byng wrote to the Mercury, denying much of the initial report, but Baines printed the letter the following week accompanied by further evidence supporting the Mercury's account and rebutting Byng's. The report triggered revulsion locally against Oliver and against conviction of those led to crime by government agents. Earl Fitzwilliam, a Whig magnate and Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding, wrote to the Home Office saying that any disturbances in the Riding had been minor and were brought about by Oliver's activities (of which he complained) : the government should not use them to justify a renewed suspension of Habeas Corpus. Fitzwilliam advised the Huddersfield magistrates not to gather evidence against their rioters; that could only come from accomplices and hence be highly objectionable. At York assizes, the judge in his direction to the jury was even harsher than Fitzwilliam on the unreliability of the evidence of accomplices, and no convictions were secured. Whilst the Mercury's exposure of Oliver prevented the conviction of the Yorkshire prisoners, in Derbyshire the participants in the 'Pentridge rebellion' (also triggered by Oliver) were not so fortunate, having by mischance killed a man before dispersing when faced with the magistrates and twenty dragoons. Thirty-five were tried for high treason and twenty-three convicted; four being executed. Baines could therefore claim to have saved the lives of fellow-Yorkshiremen., and the unmasking of 'Oliver' gave Baines a national reputation.

However, critics such as William Cobbett pointed out that it was the suspicions of a linen-draper, rather than any investigation by the editor of the Mercury, that had unmasked Oliver, and objected to Baines's treatment of Joseph Mitchell. Oliver had made a previous tour of the North and Midlands with Mitchell, who knew and introduced him to potential insurrectionists. Mitchell was arrested in early May and Oliver made his second tour alone. After Oliver's exposure, Baines prevented Mitchell speaking at meetings of Yorkshire fellow reformers, alleging that Mitchell was under the gravest suspicion of being a spy too. No evidence (other than 'guilt by association') to support Mitchell being an informer - let alone an agent provocateur - was produced at the time, nor has any been revealed by subsequent investigation in Home Office archives.

"The Great Liar of the North" Baines used the Mercury to advance the causes he supported, and to resist those he opposed, not only in its editorials, but also in its news reporting. This went beyond the selective choice of events to report, and non-neutral reporting of events covered, to the confident assertion of convenient untruths: for example on factory reform the Mercury asserted that Michael Thomas Sadler had never spoken, attended a debate or voted on Hobhouse's Bill of 1831, (a statement promptly contradicted by Hobhouse);untitled editorial item on page 3 following generic header of it put into the mouth of Sir George Strickland a speech in Parliament calling for Sadler's Bill of 1832 to go to a select committee, when Strickland had made no such speech and had called for the bill to be considered by a "Committee of the whole House" and not be delayed by a select committee; when Strickland attended a great county meeting in York on factory reform and disowned the words put in his mouth by the Mercury the Mercury's report put into Strickland's mouth its explanation of its mistake, avoiding any mention of the Leeds Mercury. The report of the county meeting alleged widespread drunkenness amongst the attendees, a point which had somehow gone unnoticed by other newspapers. Offended by the claims of drunkenness, factory reform supporters subsequently burnt Baines in effigy outside the Mercury offices; the effigy was labelled front and back "The Great Liar of the North", an epithet Cobbett had previously hurled at the Mercury and Baines, to whom it had stuck. Cobbett later wrote more memorably, and more quotably, of

"BROUGHAM's grand puffer, "the GREAT LIAR OF THE NORTH," NED BAINES, publisher of that mass of lies and nonsense called the "Leeds Mercury" … this swelled-up, greedy, and unprincipled puffer, who has been the deluder of Yorkshire for twenty years past."

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