At a time when the votes of workpeople were generally regarded as the property of employers, Thomasson said: "If the men in his employ were Tories and voted so"--which meant voting for the Corn Laws, to which he was most opposed--" they would remain perfectly undisturbed by him--their public opinion and conduct were free." He was distinguished beyond any Quaker of his day for political sympathy and tolerance. His principle was "to extend to every man, rich or poor, whatever privilege, political or mental, he claimed for himself."
At a memorable occasion in the Bolton Theatre, when the Corn Law question was contested, he may be said to have called Mr. Paulton into public life, by sending him on to the platform to defend the cause of repeal. Mr. Paulton became the first effective platform advocate of that movement Thomasson was the chief promoter of the Anti-Corn Law agitation, and the greatest subscriber to its funds. When the great subscription was raised in 1845, he was the first to put down £1,000. When it was proposed to make some national gift to Mr. Cobden, Thomasson gave £5,000. He subsequently gave,£5,000 to the second Cobden subscription. This is not all that he did. Mr. John Morley relates, in his "Life of Cobden," that Thomasson, learning that Cobden was embarrassed by outstanding loans, raised to pay for his Illinois shares, amounting to several thousand pounds, Thomasson released the shares, and sent them to Cobden, with a request that "he would do him the favour to accept that freedom at his hands in acknowledgment of his vast services to his country and mankind." On a later occasion, when aid was needed, Mr. Thomasson went down to Midhurst and insisted that Cobden should accept a still larger sum, refusing a formal acknowledgment and handing it over in such a form that the transaction was not known to any one but Cobden and himself. After Mr. Thomasson's death there was found among his private papers a little memorandum of these advances containing the magnanimous words: "I lament that the greatest benefactor of mankind since the invention of printing was placed in a position where his public usefulness was com-promised and impeded by sordid personal cares, but I have done something as my share of what is due to him from his countrymen to set him free for further efforts in the cause of human progress."