In 1825 there was published in Liverpool a pamphlet of 59 pages entitled The present state of Ireland, with a plan for improving the position of the people. Its author was James Cropper, a quaker merchant of that city and senior partner of the firm Cropper, Benson and Co. As a young man he had been apprenticed to the firm of Rathbone, Benson and Co., living and working in the small circle of liberal radicals in the city, of whom the Rathbones, the Binns and the Roscoes were perhaps the most famous. In 1799 he had set up business on his own account, and later joined in partnership with another quaker, Thomas Benson, son of Rathbone's partner, as Cropper, Benson and Co. The firm engaged in a wide variety of commission trading, but increasingly specialized in cotton imports from the United States of America, acting also as the Liverpool agent for the Black Ball line of packets which from 1818 provided the first regular passenger sailings between New York and Liverpool. As an ‘ American ’ merchant in Liverpool, Cropper helped to form the American chamber of commerce in the port, serving as treasurer and later as president. Besides his trading activities Cropper was a founder-director of the Liverpool-Manchester Railyway and he also invested heavily in the New York State canal system.
