could produce, and their profit was
enormous; it has been estimated by a competent judge to have been as
high as two hundred per cent. They soon became rich, and established
themselves as home and foreign merchants, and when they died, left,
for that period, very large fortunes. They were both men of ability,
but of no education, and they retained to the last the coarse, habits
of their early life. Mr. Charles Shaw, the subject of this sketch,
was brought up in the factory, his daily associates being the working
people of the place. Having himself no _innate_ refinement, the want
of good examples, and the prevalence of bad ones, at this period of
his life, had a permanent effect upon his habits and manners, which
in all his after prosperity he could never shake off. Had he been
liberally educated, and in early life had associated with gentlemen,
he might have risen to be one of the leading men of the nation. He had
enormous energy and great powers of steady, plodding perseverance. He
had great influence over others, and his disposition, and capability
to lead and to command, were sufficient, had they been properly
trained and directed, to have carried him to a front rank in life. His
early disadvantages prevented him from becoming other than a "local"
celebrity; but, even circumscribed as he was, he was a very remarkable
instance of the combined effects of energy and method. He amassed a
very large fortune, and left in full and active operation several very
important trading concerns. Besides his various branches of foreign
commerce, he was a manufacturer of currycombs, iron and brass
candlesticks, frying pans, fenders, cast and cut nails, and various
other goods; and, upon the whole, he may be said to have been the most
active and efficient merchant and manufacturer, of his generation, in
the Midland Counties.

In politics he was one of the very last of the old school of Tories,
and he occasionally acted as a leader of his party in the town. His
extreme opinions, and his blunt speech in relation to these matters,
frequently got him into "hot water." He was not a "newspaper
politician," for, singularly enough, he was rarely seen to look at
a newspaper, even at the news-room (then standing on the site now
occupied by the Inland Revenue Offices, on Bennetts Hill), which he
regularly frequented. Upon political topics, I am not aware that he
ever wrote a single line for publication in his whole life.

Mr. Shaw was very g