The Little Circle was a Manchester-based group of Non-conformist Liberals, mostly members of the Portico Library, who held a common agenda with regards to political and social reform.
Constituency boundaries were out of date, and the "rotten boroughs" had a hugely disproportionate influence on the membership of the Parliament of the United Kingdom compared to the size of their populations: Old Sarum, with one voter, elected two MPs,[2] as did Dunwich which had almost completely disappeared into the sea by the early 19th century.
Archibald Prentice (later editor of the Manchester Times) called them the "Little Circle" and its members included John Potter and his sons Thomas (later first mayor of Manchester), Richard (later MP for Wigan) and William; Joseph Brotherton (Non-conformist minister and pioneering vegetarian); John Edward Taylor (cotton merchant); John Shuttleworth (industrialist and municipal reformer); Absalom Watkin (parliamentary reformer and anti corn law campaigner); and William Cowdroy Jnr (editor of the Manchester Gazette).
After witnessing the Peterloo massacre in 1819, and the closure of the liberal Manchester Observer in successive police prosecutions,[4] the group decided that the time was right to advance its liberalist agenda.
Parliament passed the Reform Act in 1832, and the group gave Manchester its first post-reform MPs: Mark Philips and Charles Poulett Thomson.