He was the editor of the Morning Star in London, the only national newspaper in Britain to support the Unionist cause in the American Civil War.

Lucas married his cousin Margaret Bright on 6 September 1839 who was also from a well connected family in the Society of Friends.

He wrote a Plan for the Establishment of a General System of Secular Education in the County of Lancaster, By 1860 Lucas and his family had moved to London where he became a supporter of the Society for the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge.

[6] In March 1856, his brother in law, John Bright in partnership with Cobden created a new newspaper which was called the Morning Star.

Matthew Arnold described the paper as reflecting the "rancour of Protestant dissent in alliance with the vulgarity meddlesomeness and grossness of the British multitude.

However, he would still oversee the paper, and at times obliged journalists to write a second article that negated an opinion Lucas did not approve of.

He died on 16 April 1865, a few hours after hearing the tidings of the destruction of the slave power in the United States, by the fall of Richmond; an object which he had unceasingly laboured to promote as Managing-Proprietor of the Morning Star.