To the American observer, Britain was a nation in which political justice was denied to all but the monied few The clamour for reform

Wright crossed the Atlantic at a turbulent moment in British politics. In February 1844 Daniel O’Connell (pictured right), the great champion of Irish Catholic emancipation, had been convicted on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy, but was yet to be sentenced. In mid-March, at a packed and stifling meeting in St Mary’s Hall, Coventry, Wright’s assertion that he had come 3,000 miles to see O’Connell caused a determined Irishman to force him through the crowd until the American was on the stage itself. “The convicted conspirator at length rose, a kind, genial looking, gigantic old man. Surely he was born to agitate. His smile is magically captivating, his derision annihilating, his frown terrific… I could not but love as well as admire the man.”

Throughout his stay, Wright denounced the injustice of the Corn Laws, which kept bread prices high, and the taxes on beer and tobacco, asserting that “England may be said to live under a trinity of evil: kingcraft, beercraft, priestcraft”. And it was abundantly clear to him that further electoral reform was needed. “The kingdom has 6 million of men over 21, and yet there are about 800,000 actual voters!”

In late June he stayed at Playford Hall in Suffolk with the veteran anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson, “the patriarch of our cause”, a man who “was at work for the slave before you and I were born”. Although physically infirm at 84, Clarkson’s “mind is bright, and he maintains a lively interest in everything pertaining to slavery, and expressed himself with great energy and animation”.