SIR JAMES GRAHAM.[2]

2. ‘The Life and Times of Sir James R. G. Graham, Bart., G.C.B., M.P.’ By Torrens M’Cullagh Torrens. In 2 vols. London: Saunders & Otley.

These are not exactly the sort of volumes which we could have wished them to be. Sir James Graham, though never a foremost, was still a remarkable man in his age, and doubtless left behind, in his correspondence, and in the memories of his friends, better materials than we find here for an elaborate biography. Still, let us do justice to Mr M’Cullagh Torrens. If family archives have not been unlocked to him, and private friends abstained from telling him more than they could help, he has made very good use of stores which were open to all the world, and strung together, with considerable skill, his scraps of past history. The result is a book which will be much and approvingly read; though we cannot anticipate that it will fire the imagination or touch the feelings of any human being.

The family from which Sir James Graham derived his descent is of long standing in the “debatable land.” Its founder seems to have been “John with the bright sword,” a son of Malise, Lord of Menteith, whom a quarrel with the Scottish King induced, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, to migrate beyond the Scottish border. Carrying with him a band of stout retainers, he soon acquired a settlement there, and became by-and-by the boldest and most successful of the moss-troopers, whose custom it was to harry indifferently the lands of the two kingdoms.

The descendants of John gradually extended their influence and enlarged their possessions. Between the Esk and the Eden, and for some miles to the north of the Esk, there lies a district which, till the Partition Treaty of 1552, may be said to have belonged neither to England nor to Scotland. It was there that the Græmes settled, and there, in spite of many a harsh decree issued against them from both realms, they grew and prospered. And finally, when peaceable times came, they were recognised as large landed proprietors, and useful members of the English community.

The first politician in the family appears to have been Sir Richard Græme, who, after acting as Master of the Horse to the Duke of Buckingham, was taken up and enriched by grants from the Crown. He it was who acquired by purchase Netherby Hall, with various manors lying contiguous to it. Espousing the cause of his master in the civil wars, and following him to the field, he was severely wounded at the battle of Edgehill; yet he contrived, malignant as he was, to keep his estates together, though not without heavy fines imposed upon them by Cromwell.

The immediate successor of the first baronet led a quiet life, and died in his bed. His grandson was more ambitious. He made some figure in Parliament, and was in 1682 created Viscount Preston in the peerage of Scotland. This did not oblige him to retire from the English House of Commons, in which he sat as Knight of the Shire for Cumberland; and he ultimately, after serving as ambassador in Paris, took office as Secretary of State under James II. Lord Preston would never stoop to pay court to William III. He even accepted from James, after his expulsion from the throne, a patent of English nobility, which he pleaded in bar of trial before a common jury, when charged with conspiring to bring back the exiled family. The House of Lords, however, would not acknowledge the patent, and the evidence against Lord Preston proved too strong to be rebutted. He was found guilty, and sentence of death was passed upon him, with attainder of his peerage and forfeiture of his property. It is creditable to the memory of Dutch William that he refused to carry the sentence into execution. Enough of blood had been shed on the scaffold; and the King, though strongly pressed by some of the leading Whigs to let the law take its course, adhered to his own determination. Lord Preston’s daughter, it appears, was one of Queen Mary’s attendants. The Queen found her one day gazing at the picture of James II., and weeping bitterly; and desiring to be told why the maiden wept, she received this answer: “I am thinking how hard it is that my father should suffer death because he loved your father.”

Preston’s pardon alarmed the Jacobites as much as it disgusted and offended the Whigs. The former not unnaturally came to the conclusion that he must have betrayed them. The latter, especially Bishop Burnet, himself the meanest and basest of intriguers, clamoured against the act of clemency, as if some wrong had been done personally to themselves. Both parties were, however, in error. Preston had not been many months at liberty before he was again arrested and sent to the Tower as a traitor; and though fortunate enough in the present instance to show that the charge against him was groundless, his health sank under disquiet of mind, and he died soon after his release.

The Scotch peerage became extinct in the third generation from this, and the estates went to two sisters, one married to Lord Widrington, the other single. On the death of the unmarried sister, the whole of the property came to Lady Widrington—a fortunate circumstance for her lord, for he, like his father-in-law, was a stanch Jacobite, and took the field against the established Government in 1715. He escaped with his life after the failure of the enterprise, but found himself landless and a beggar. Happily the law would not allow Lady Widrington’s possessions to be interfered with, and she was thus enabled to afford Lord Widrington an adequate maintenance during the remainder of his life. Finally, Lady Widrington, dying childless, left the Netherby estates to a first cousin, the Rev. Robert Graham, D.D., second son of the Dean of Carlisle. From him, through his second son, the subject of our present sketch was descended.

Dr Graham was a great improver. Immediately on succeeding to the property, he set himself to drain the lands, clear out mosses, build decent houses for his tenantry, and gradually to raise their rents. He built also, or rather rebuilt, Netherby Hall, carefully collecting and depositing in a room set apart to receive them, the many relics of Roman art which were discovered in digging the foundation. Like improvers in general, however, he worked rather for posterity than for himself; and he not unnaturally desired that with their enlarged resources the family should recover the baronetage, which, for lack of heirs-male, had become extinct. His wish in regard to this matter was accomplished, though neither in his own person nor in that of his eldest son. The latter, by name Charles, survived his father barely a fortnight; and as Charles’s only child happened to be a daughter, the estate, strictly entailed on heirs-male, passed to his younger brother James.

There had never been a Whig in the Graham family till the Doctor professed Whiggish principles. Then, as now, the Whigs took better care of their friends than the Tories; and as they came into power within a month of Dr Graham’s death, Dr Graham’s son received immediate proof that his father’s services were not forgotten. He was created a baronet, and gave, of course, his political support to Fox and his friends. But before the year 1782 was out, Fox made way at the Exchequer for Pitt, and such a breaking up and reconstruction of parties ensued as might have easily perplexed men of stronger minds than Sir James Graham. The result was, that, after some wavering, Sir James attached himself to the great Minister, and continued to the end of his days a stanch Tory in the sense which Mr Pitt and the best of Pitt’s friends were accustomed to apply to the term.

In 1785 Sir James Graham married Lady Catherine Stuart, the eldest daughter of John, seventh Earl of Galloway. Remarkable for her personal attractions, Lady Catherine was gifted at the same time with an excellent understanding and a very genial nature. A little rigid she seems to have been in her religious opinions; a great friend, for example, of Dean Milner, the author of a Church History of which it has been justly observed, that in seeking to achieve an impossible object it effected nothing. Her Calvinistic tendencies, however, never interfered with the exercise of a large and widely-extended benevolence. Neither were her prejudices so rooted as to stand in the way of more worldly friendships. Archdeacon Paley, certainly not religious over-much, found a ready and frequent welcome at Netherby. So did Dr Vernon, the Bishop of Carlisle, whose great idea of Episcopal dignity was to maintain as strict a discipline among his clergy as the temper of the times would admit, and to dispense a generous hospitality at Rose Castle. Thus, the geniality of the laird and the high religious temperament of the lady worked well together, and Netherby Hall became, under their united influence, the centre of everything that was kind and good in the social intercourse of the neighbourhood.

Sir James Graham the first married early. He was barely twenty-two, and Lady Catherine twenty, when they came together, and a large family followed. Daughters arrived first, and by-and-by, on the 1st of June 1792, their eldest son was born. Great rejoicings took place on that occasion, and the child was named at his baptism James Robert George—James, after his father; Robert, after his paternal grandfather; and George, in memory of the man among his ancestors who had least claim to the distinction, his only merit having been this, that in difficult times he exercised great prudence, and managed, in consequence, to keep himself from getting into trouble. Young James’s early education seems to have been conducted at home, though how, we are not told. But in 1802 he was sent with his brother William to a private school at Dalston, a village of which the Rev. Walter Fletcher, Chancellor of the Diocese, was the incumbent.

At Mr Fletcher’s school young Graham failed to make the progress in classics which his friends expected from him. The previous training afforded to him at Netherby may perhaps account for this circumstance. At ten years of age he was already an expert angler and a good shot, accomplishments not to be despised in their proper place, but scarcely conducive to rapid advancement in the path of early scholarship. Hence, when removed to Westminster in 1806, he cut but an indifferent figure at entrance, and, though not idle, never managed afterwards to take a foremost place among his contemporaries. It is fair to add that the place which he did take was always a respectable one. He quite held his own against the late Duke of Richmond, then Lord Charles Lennox, to whom he was fag, and suffered nothing in comparison with the present Earl Russell, the occupant with him of the same form.

Westminster boys have always enjoyed the privilege of admission to the debates in the House of Commons; and among them all, between the years 1806 and 1809, none took more frequent advantage of it than young Graham. He came just in time to listen to some of the last speeches of Pitt and Fox, and to be stirred by the scarcely less exciting harangues of Windham, Grattan, Sheridan, and Canning. These, with Wilberforce’s persuasive appeals against slavery, and Romilly’s stern denunciations of the cruelty of the penal code, took a strong hold of his imagination. He yearned for the time when he, in like manner, might be able to carry the House along with him, and already determined that nothing should on his part be wanting to bring about the accomplishment of the dream. It was the memory of what he had himself felt on such occasions, which induced him, at one of the meetings of the old Westminsters, to argue as he did, with great force, against the project for removing the school into the country. No considerations of physical health ought, in his opinion, to be weighed against the abandonment of an intellectual impulse so powerful as was supplied to the boys by their proximity to the Houses of Parliament; and believing, as we do, that the sanitary drawbacks to Westminster where it now stands are grossly exaggerated, we believe also that Sir James Graham took a wise and even a benevolent view of the matter then under discussion.

In 1809 young Graham quitted Westminster, and became a private pupil in the family of the Rev. G. Richards, Vicar of Bampton, near Farringdon, in Berkshire. There he made the acquaintance of Sir John Throckmorton, one of the most eminent agriculturists of the day, and learned from him how much was to be gained by the application of science and capital to the culture of the soil. His sojourn in Bampton did not, however, extend beyond a year. In 1810 he entered as a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, and in 1812 quitted Oxford without having at all distinguished himself there, or even passed for a degree.

It must not be supposed from all this that Mr Graham was either an idler or a dreamer. In his own way he picked up a large amount of knowledge. He was a good Latin and a very fair Greek scholar. In pure mathematics he never advanced far, but he was rapid in calculation, and possessed considerable skill in the arrangement of his own ideas. With all this, he was either indifferent about academical honours, or he disliked the order of studies which led to them. In private life he was somewhat reserved, and what ill-natured people might call stately. His style of dress was in the extreme of fashion; and being tall and well made, with a countenance singularly handsome, it is not to be wondered at if, among casual acquaintances, he was set down as a considerable coxcomb. Nobody, however, could lay to his charge that there was any lack of manliness about him. His vacations he usually spent in the north, where he threw himself keenly into field-sports, and was as forward with the fox-hounds as he was successful on the moor and by the river-side. At the same time, his desire to take an active part in the war of politics never grew cold. His father, a consistent supporter of Mr Pitt, had sat in Parliament as the Tory member for Ripon from 1802 to 1807. Mr Graham’s prejudices were all on the other side; a bias which they seem to have acquired partly through the deference in which he held the opinions of his relative, Lord Archibald Hamilton, partly because he met at his father’s table not always the most eloquent or well-instructed advocates of Toryism. Be the causes, however, what they might, he gave himself up to the Whigs, and in 1812 swore fealty to them, by being admitted, on the recommendation of Lord Morpeth, into Brookes’s Club. It was too soon for him as yet to aspire to a seat in the House of Commons; he determined, therefore, to devote a year or two to foreign travel; and as the only portion of the Continent then open to British subjects was the Spanish Peninsula, he set out with the intention of visiting one after another the principal seaports in Portugal and Spain.

Among these seaports there was none which offered to him so many attractions as Cadiz. It was there that the Central Junta met, and Graham not only became a frequent auditor at its sittings, but formed the personal acquaintance of some of its most distinguished members. The circumstance, however, on which, in after years, he used to dwell with the greatest delight, was this—that in Cadiz he received his first introduction to the Duke of Wellington. That great man, it will be remembered, in the winter of 1812, repaired to Cadiz for the purpose of entering with the Spanish Government into arrangements, to which the Spanish Government never adhered. And Mr Graham, being at the time the guest of Sir Henry Wellesley, had the gratification of conversing with the British hero, not in public only, but amid that entire unreserve into which the Duke was apt to throw himself when he felt or fancied that he was among friends, and could therefore give free and safe utterance to his sentiments on all subjects.

From Cadiz Mr Graham proceeded to Palermo, where Major-General Lord Montgomery held a military command. It will be recollected that Sicily was then occupied by an English army, and that Lord William Bentinck, though absent at the moment, was, properly speaking, at the head of it. To Lord Montgomery, however, besides his military command, a high political trust had been committed; and imagining that he saw in Mr Graham a remarkable aptitude for business, he offered to his acceptance the post of private secretary. Nothing could better fall in with the wishes of the young tourist. He accepted the office, and realised fully the expectations of his patron, by whom he was employed to manage an affair requiring great delicacy as well as firmness in handling it. This was nothing less than to make his way through the heart of the French armies, and to open a communication first with Murat, and afterwards with the Austrian Government. It was while so employed that Mr Graham became acquainted with Sir Charles, then Captain Napier, of the Euryalus frigate, of whom he conceived a very high opinion, and with whom, in due course of time, he quarrelled violently.

Mr Graham, after accompanying Lord William Bentinck through his campaign in Italy, returned to England, and began, early in 1815, to feel his way towards a seat in the House of Commons. It was a season, as a few of our readers may possibly recollect, of great suffering among the people, and anxiety to the Government. The renewal of the war with France added upwards of one hundred millions to the national debt; and peace, when it was purchased by the battle of Waterloo, seemed to bring only poverty in its train. A spirit of general disaffection pervaded the masses, and recourse was had to stringent measures in order to preserve the public peace. Drawn away by old associations, Mr Graham joined the ranks of the ultra-Liberals. Lord Archibald Hamilton was his kinsman, and Lord Folkstone, Sir Francis Burdett, and Lord Althorpe, won his political affections. His father, on the other hand, continued to profess the Tory principles in which he had grown old; so that, but for the sympathy of Lady Catherine, the young man might have found himself ill at ease as an inmate of Netherby Hall. Accordingly, he spent but little of his time there in the interval between his return from abroad and the general election of 1818; when, being assured of the support of Lord Milton, and obtaining through his mother letters of recommendation to Mr Wilberforce, he entered the lists as a candidate for Hull, and fought a hard battle to a successful issue.

We confess not to hold the name of William Wilberforce quite in the same degree of veneration in which it is held by his sons. We believe that there was no slight sprinkling of what is vulgarly called humbug in the good man’s character; and we find some corroboration of this suspicion in the fact that, though well aware of Mr Graham’s ultra-Liberal opinions, he nevertheless, because of the affection with which he regarded Lady Catherine, recommended her son to the constituency of Hull. A like charge may, we think, be brought against Dean Milner, subject, of course, to extenuating circumstances. Dean Milner conscientiously believed that the admission of Roman Catholics to political power would be tantamount to the establishment of idolatry in Great Britain: yet he, too, because Lady Catherine sat at his feet, gave a testimonial to her son, whom he knew to be an advocate of Catholic emancipation. By these means, and through the active agency of two Roman Catholic gentlemen and one clergyman of the Church of England, Mr Graham conducted his canvass with such spirit, that on the day of nomination an immense majority of hands was held up in his favour; and at the end of the second day’s polling he was thirty-three ahead of the gentleman whom he had determined to oust, and whom he succeeded in ousting. Those, however, were times when polling went on for fifteen consecutive days, during which electors and their friends lived at free quarters, candidates paying the piper. When, therefore, the returning-officer declared that Mr Graham had beaten Mr Stamford by thirty-eight votes, and when Mr Stamford’s committee thereupon demanded a scrutiny, Mr Graham’s heart sank within him. His father had with difficulty been prevailed upon to sanction his entering into the contest at all. The funds at his disposal were quite exhausted, and here was the battle to be fought over again. But who, having committed himself to such a struggle, ever willingly withdrew from it? Mr Graham did not; and at the end of a month he was pronounced member for Hull, with a debt of £6000 hanging like a millstone upon his back.

The lesson thus taught him at the outset of his career Mr Graham never afterwards forgot. He was fortunate enough to raise the money at interest, without calling upon his father for a shilling; but he registered a vow to rush no more blindfold into scrapes of the kind; and he kept it, in spite of many a strong inducement in after-times to the contrary.

Mr Graham took his seat on the third Opposition bench, behind his relative Lord Archibald Hamilton. Near him sat Mr E. Ellice (the Bear), Sir Robert Wilson, and Mr F. E. Kennedy; below him, Sir Francis Burdett, Mr Hume, and Lord Althorpe. It was a goodly association, and it produced its legitimate results. The war of parties soon began; and in March 1819, scarcely a month after he had taken his seat, the young member delivered his maiden speech. It proved a signal failure. Abounding in platitudes, and spoken with the air and in the tone of an exquisite, it scarcely commanded the attention of the House for a moment, and was brought to a close amid that buzz of general conversation which, more surely than any violent outcry of dissent, marks the disinclination of the Commons of England to be instructed. Mr Graham felt that his shot had missed, yet he by no means lost heart. He believed that the causes of the failure might be equally shared between himself and the House, and he determined to try again and again till he should compel the attention which was now denied him. Meanwhile, he sought comfort under the disappointment in a connection which proved to be the source, to him, of the purest happiness through life. On the 8th of July 1819 he married Fanny Callander, one of the loveliest women whom England, fertile in beauty, had ever produced. She was the daughter of Colonel Sir James Callander, afterwards Campbell of Arkinglas, and the aunt, as we need hardly stop to observe, of the still beautiful and highly-gifted Mrs Norton.

Mr Graham’s next effort was made during that eventful autumn session when Parliament met in consequence of the Peterloo affair, and the Government demanded powers beyond those of the constitution, to deal with the dangers which threatened the country. One of the bills which Ministers proposed, with a view to stop the organised agitation which Radical delegates kept up, prohibited all persons, not resident in a town, or being freeholders, from taking any part in the proceedings of a town meeting. Here was an opportunity which the ambitious member for Hull could not possibly allow to escape. He rose to demand whether the member for a borough, being neither the inhabitant of such borough nor a freeman, would come within the meaning of the Act; and when, to his great indignation, nobody seemed inclined to reply, he had the imprudence to argue the case, and to state it as peculiarly his own. Just at that moment a sound of suppressed laughter was heard in the House, whereupon the member for Hull lost his head, and, after rambling on for a few minutes without a single cheer to sustain him, sat down, retaining no recollection either of what he had said, or of what he meant to say. “There’s an end of Graham,” exclaimed Mr Henry Lascelles, jeeringly; “we shall hear no more of him.” But Mr Lascelles was mistaken.

Nothing daunted by this discomfiture, the baffled senator stood up again when the bill went into committee. This time he had carefully prepared his speech, and the House listened to it, without, however, evincing any signs that it approved. He was still on the losing side in politics; and though his friends saw that there was good stuff in him, even they scarcely ventured to hope that he would ever prove more than a useful second-rate orator, and a good man of business whenever matters of detail came to be considered.

The death of George III. in February 1820 warned the House of Commons that its days were numbered. The Government was desirous of precipitating the dissolution; and the Opposition took, in consequence, an early opportunity to hamper them, as far as might be, by a small reform bill. Lord John Russell proposed that the writs for Grampound, Penrhyn, Barnstaple, and Camelford, should be suspended, in order to afford the new Parliament an opportunity of inquiring into the corruption with which these boroughs were charged. But Lord John’s motion, which Mr Graham supported, though successful in the Lower House, was thrown out in the Upper, and the members dispersed, each to look after his own interest as he best might.

It would have been idle in Mr Graham to offer himself again to the constituency of Hull. He had done nothing in Parliament to secure a re-election, except at the cost of a second contest, and that he could not afford. The interest of the debt incurred by the first election pressed heavily upon his small income, and he at once made up his mind to look for a seat elsewhere. Now the Lowther influence, powerful as it had heretofore been, was beginning to give way in the north of England. Both the county of Cumberland and the city of Carlisle were growing restive, and the Whigs declared their intention of fighting for both seats in the city, and for one at least in the county. It was proposed to Mr Graham that he should stand in the Liberal interest for Carlisle; while Mr Curwen, up to that time the city member, contested the county against Sir John Lowther. Anxious as he was to return to the House of Commons, Mr Graham had the good taste to decline this proposal. He could not fight under a Whig banner so close to Netherby without greatly distressing his father; and, vaulting as his ambition was, it did not blind him to the impropriety of such a course. He contented himself, therefore, with throwing the weight of his influence into Mr Curwen’s scale as candidate for the county. Mr Curwen succeeded, so did Mr John Cam Hobhouse in Westminster, advocating household suffrage, triennal Parliaments, and counting among the busiest of his canvassers the late member for Hull. Mr Graham’s activity on that occasion fixed upon him the attention of certain gentlemen connected by property with the little borough of St Ives. They took him up, he canvassed the constituency, and on the day of election was brought in at the head of the poll. And well and zealously he redeemed the pledges which he had given to his Liberal supporters. He voted with Mr Hume against a proposed increase to the civil-list of George IV., and for inquiry into the expenses of the Regency during the five preceding years. He took part with Mr Brougham in his attack on the droits of the Crown and of the Admiralty, and joined Lord John Russell in demanding that the report on the civil-list should be deferred till the estimates for the year had been fully examined. Every proposal, in short, which had for its object the weakening of the influence of the Crown and the overthrow of existing usages, received his cordial support. He was, with Mr Curwen and Mr Brougham, a decided enemy to the Corn Laws as they then existed. He went into the gallery with Lord John Russell for the disfranchisement of Grampound, and the transfer of its members to Leeds. In a like spirit, he stood by Lord Archibald Hamilton when denouncing the Scottish system of election, and requiring that the number of Barons of the Exchequer should be reduced. Finally, in the disputes which arose about Queen Caroline, he ranged himself under her Majesty’s banner. This was pretty well within the brief interval of less than a year, as indicating the course which he had determined to follow. But a check came. The electors of St Ives were not at all satisfied with their new member. They presented a petition early in 1821 against Mr Graham’s return, and Mr Graham, rather than incur the certain expense and hazard of a scrutiny, resigned his seat.

Mortified as he was at finding himself thus excluded from public life, Mr Graham possessed too good a digestion to let the circumstance prey upon his spirits. His home was then, as it continued to be to the last, the chief scene of his happiness; and the birth of his first-born son, on the 7th of April 1820, shed additional light over the domestic circle. It suited neither his means nor his tastes to reside in London as an idler; he therefore retired into Cumberland, and, settling down at Crofthead, the unpretending house to which he had carried his beautiful bride, he threw himself with all his energies into country pursuits. It was high time that he should. His father, an easy-going and generous man, had never looked after his affairs as became him. He put himself entirely into the hands of an agent, from whom he exacted no accounts, and who did with the rents of the large estate of Netherby pretty much as he pleased. The consequence was that farms and farm-buildings went to ruin. Payments on account were all that the landlord received, and tenants got into arrear so far that recovery was impossible. With some difficulty Mr Graham prevailed upon his father to transfer the management of the property to him, and the work of practical reform began. But the extent of the difficulties with which he had to grapple may be guessed at, when we say that encumbrances to the amount of not less than £120,000 lay like a dead weight upon Netherby.

Mr Graham had accomplished a good deal. Money was raised on more favourable terms; roads were made, marshes drained, farm-buildings rendered habitable, and a better system of tillage introduced, when, in 1824, his father died, and he succeeded to the title and to the estate. An additional burden was of course laid upon the latter in the shape of dower to Lady Catherine, but for the sisters of the new proprietor scarcely any provision had been made. Sir James, like a good brother as he was, supplied the deficiency out of his own funds. But this done, there remained so little on which to reckon, more especially with his views of extensive improvement, that he thought seriously of selling Netherby, and of embarking, with whatever might remain to him after paying off the mortgages, in trade. He even went so far as to open a negotiation with a London banking-house which happened at that moment to desire an extension of its business, and waited only the judgment of Mr James Evan Bailey of Bristol, to whom, through a friend, he referred the question. “Tell him,” said that experienced banker, “to hold fast by Netherby, and keep clear of banking.” By Netherby Sir James accordingly held fast, and within twelve months the names of Messrs Pole, Thornton, Down, & Co. appeared in the ‘Gazette.’

It had been Sir James’s dream that, as a banker or as a thriving merchant, he would find readier access to the political career on which he desired to enter, than as the owner of a large and encumbered estate. The fate of Messrs Pole and Thornton awoke him from that dream, and he bent all his energies to diminish, if he could not entirely remove, the debt upon Netherby. His own habits were prudent and economical. He chose for his associates practical agriculturists, studied every work that came out on the subject of agriculture, and put in practice such suggestions as appeared to be wise. He read, likewise, with a view to prepare himself at some future time for public life, and read to excellent purpose. The consequence was, that every year saw the burden diminish which at the outset seemed to be intolerable; and that, in 1826, his circumstances, if not easy, were at all events much less harassing than at one moment he had expected them ever to be.

It was at this time that he first came before the public as an author. His pamphlet on corn and currency made a great sensation, taking men of all parties by surprise. Its argument went far beyond the age in which it appeared. Upon the Bank Restriction Act of 1797 he laid the blame of all the evils under which the country then laboured, and censured Mr Peel for returning too hastily to cash payments in 1819. The sliding-scale, as a protection to corn-growers, he entirely condemned, and reasoned in favour of free trade, with a small but fixed duty on foreign corn as some compensation for the peculiar burdens which the land was called upon to bear. We who read the pamphlet now, remembering all that the country has gone through, and looking to the present state both of its manufacturing and agricultural interests, cannot sufficiently admire the audacity of the country gentleman who, in 1826, could thus express himself. But his audacity told. Though all the leaders of party, from Lord Liverpool to Cobbet, denounced and censured, there were multitudes in the ranks who approved the Cumberland baronet’s reasoning, and no great while elapsed ere they gave tangible proof of their sympathy with his views.

At the dissolution of Parliament in 1826, Mr James, who for some time had represented Carlisle, retired. A requisition was immediately sent in to Sir James Graham, who replied to it favourably, and came forward as the Liberal candidate. We do not use the stronger term Radical, because, to do him justice, Sir James never voted for universal suffrage and annual Parliaments; but of everything on the sinking-scale short of these two points he was then the advocate. He declared himself in favour of the immediate abolition of slavery, the total removal of religious disabilities, retrenchment in the public expenditure, and the reduction within moderate limits of the import-duty on corn. The struggle was fierce both in Carlisle and elsewhere, for the Catholic Question was approaching a crisis; and Sir James, supported by all the operatives of the city, came in at the head of the poll. His first vote in the House was against the Government, on a question of an increased grant out of the Consolidated Fund to the Duke and Duchess of Clarence; his next, for an inquiry into the abuses in the Court of Chancery. On both occasions he went into the lobby, one of a small minority. But already prospects began to open for him, on which he had no reason to count in returning to public life. Lord Liverpool was struck down by paralysis in 1827, and that scramble for a successor at the Treasury began, of which, by the way, Mr Torrens gives a very inaccurate account. Following implicitly the story told by Mr Stapleton, he endeavours to show that Canning was no intriguer; that George IV. hated and would have set Canning aside, had he seen his way to any other arrangement; and that the Conyngham influence had nothing in the world to say in deciding the King’s policy. We know better; and we know likewise that not the Tories only, but the most consistent and stanchest of the Whigs never trusted Canning. Sir James Graham, on the other hand, ranged himself among the Canningites, and soon became the friend and favourite pupil of Huskisson. He sat on the ministerial side of the Speaker’s chair while Canning led the House, and he retained his place during the administration which succeeded on Canning’s demise. But Lord Goderich’s reign was short; and on the assumption of office by the Duke of Wellington, Sir James withdrew with his Whig allies to the Opposition benches. His opposition, however, appears to have been a good deal modified by the esteem in which he held Mr Huskisson. The Corn Bill which that gentleman introduced, still being a minister, Sir James Graham supported, though it was framed on a principle at variance with that which he had advocated in his pamphlet; and many years elapsed ere he could bring himself to contemplate without alarm the disturbance of the compromise into which, as he believed, contending parties had entered by its adoption.

In 1827 a vacancy occurred in the representation of Cumberland, and Sir James was easily persuaded to resign his seat for Carlisle and to set up for the county. His return was not opposed, and he entered the House after a brief absence as a county member. Though still ineffective in debate, the House began to consider him a man of promise. He was an excellent member of committees, assiduous in his attendance, and remarkably skilful in sifting evidence. He spoke likewise with effect in moving for an inquiry into the fitness of limiting the circulation of Scotch notes to Scotland itself; and his speech, though overladen, as most of his speeches were, with quotations, was referred to by almost all who followed him, whether advocating or opposing the view which he took of the matter. But his great start was taken, when the Duke, by passing his Catholic Relief Bill, gave the first decided shock to the Tory party. Sir James of course approved the measure, of which, as well as of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, he had always been the consistent supporter. And he did more. He took an opportunity of commending Sir Robert Peel, in his absence, for the sacrifice to duty which he had made of his seat for the University of Oxford, and paved the way thereby for the close intimacy which in due time arose between him and that great though not always straightforward or very consistent statesman.

Whatever the Duke’s conduct and views at that critical moment may have been, those of his subordinates strike us now as not only impolitic, but dishonest. Sir George Murray went out of his way to assure the Whigs that he intended to manage the affairs of the colonies on the principles which they advocated. Sir Henry Hardinge became a frequent visitor at Spenser House, and professed opinions there which led Lord Althorpe to reckon upon him as a willing member of a new coalition. Meanwhile three members of Brookes’s, Lords Rosselyn and Jersey and Sir James Scarlett, held office under a Tory chief, and Earl Grey was approached with a view to conciliation by creating his son-in-law, Mr Lambton, Earl of Durham. All this gave sure evidence of weakness on the part of the Government, and encouraged the discontented among its old supporters to aim at its overthrow. On the other hand, Sir James Graham, as if looking rather to a fusion than to the break-up of parties, declared that he saw little difference, except on the question of the currency, between the opinions entertained by the Opposition on the one side, and the friends of the Administration on the other. And, as if to test the House, he moved, on going into Committee of Supply, that since Peel’s bill of 1819 was accepted as a final settlement of the currency question, the salaries of all public servants should be cut down by 20 per cent. Though listened to attentively, he received small support, either from his own friends or the friends of the Government; but he added, by the vigour of his appeal, to the reputation which he had already acquired, and was by common consent assigned a place with Lord Althorpe, Lord John Russell, and Mr Brougham, as one of the leaders of the Opposition in the House of Commons.

Early in May 1830 the Parliamentary campaign opened in earnest, by a notice of motion by Sir James Graham for a return of all the pensions, salaries, and emoluments then receivable by members of the Privy Council. His speech was, in its own way, a telling one; and the motion was met by a proposal from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to supply the honourable member with a comprehensive enumeration of all civil and military offices and salaries under the Crown. Sir James either felt or affected great indignation, and, in rejecting Mr Goulbourne’s counter-proposal, made use of the expression, “That he was not disposed to stoop to ignoble game while flights of voracious birds of prey were floating in the upper regions of the air.” This was one of the clap-traps in which Sir James on all convenient occasions indulged, and it had its effect. Not fewer than 147 members in a House of 382 voted with him—a remarkable sign of the times, a sure proof that men’s passions had overclouded their reason on many matters, and that Government by party, as it had once existed, was for a season at least at an end.

Encouraged by the plaudits which were heaped upon him, Sir James, after remaining quiet for a few weeks, moved to reduce the grant for special diplomatic missions from £28,000 to £18,000 a year. He was again opposed with all the strength which the Government could muster, and again failed. But failure on this occasion was accepted on both sides as a triumph. In a House of 217 members, the motion was rejected by a majority of 19 only. It was a blow to the Ministers scarcely less severe than that which they received the same evening, when Sir James Mackintosh carried his clause in the Forgery Bill against them—abolishing the punishment of death in all cases except where wills were concerned.

The death of George IV., on the 20th of June 1830, was soon followed by the dissolution of Parliament. Sir James went back to his constituents with a reputation largely enhanced; and while his canvass was at its height, tidings of the revolution in Paris arrived. They set the whole country in a blaze, and two Liberal members immediately started for Cumberland. A fierce contest ensued, of the temper of which some idea may be formed when we transcribe one of the toasts which was proposed and accepted amid a tempest of applause at a public dinner given to Sir James Graham at Whitehaven—“May the heads of Don Miguel, King Ferdinand, and Charles Capet be severed from their bodies and roll in the dust, and the sooner the better.” It would be unfair to the memory of Sir James Graham if we omitted to add that he wholly disapproved of this sentiment, and that, while applauding the revolution, he expressed himself anxious that the French people should use their victory with moderation.

We have now arrived at an era into the history of which it would be out of place, while sketching Sir James Graham’s career, to enter much at length. The elections of 1830 had gone against the Government, and the country seemed to have become a prey to anarchy. There were incendiary fires in many places; and when Parliament met in November to provide a remedy, the worst spirit manifested itself in both Houses. The King’s visit to the Lord Mayor of London was postponed; and the Duke, with extraordinary rashness, gave utterance to a statement which his enemies insisted on accepting as a manifesto against all reform. A coalition between the Whigs and the ultra-Tories to expel him from power ensued, and Ministers, being defeated on a question of the civil-list, resigned their places. In bringing all this to pass Sir James had taken an active part, and he received his reward in the appointment of First Lord of the Admiralty, with a seat in Earl Grey’s Cabinet. He was placed at the Admiralty, however, rather as representing ultra opinions than from any admiration of his talents and industry; for Earl Grey, desiring above all things to throw the authority of Government into the hands of aristocrats, was too prudent to overlook the policy, situated as he then was, of having every great party in the State represented in his Cabinet. Hence the Duke of Richmond, Mr Wynn, Lord Palmerston, Lord Goderich, and Mr Charles Grant, were invited to take their seats beside Lord Lansdowne, Lord Althorpe, and Lord Carlisle; and Lord Durham, Sir James Graham, and Lord Melbourne readily joined them. Among all these there was not one who displayed so large an amount of administrative ability as Sir James Graham, or who with so much frankness acknowledged, when the proper time came, that the improvements effected by him in the department were little more than the execution of plans which his predecessor had already arranged and determined upon.

Earl Grey had taken office pledged to three things,—Retrenchment, Non-intervention in Foreign Affairs, and Parliamentary Reform. Into all these Sir James Graham eagerly threw himself. Returned again without opposition for Cumberland, he took up his residence at the Admiralty, and worked like a slave to keep ahead of the enormous amount of business which devolved upon him. For now his real worth was discovered. What might be wanting in brilliancy he endeavoured to make up by labour; and he held his own, not without a hard fight for it, in the House of Commons. Lord Althorpe, the acknowledged leader of the Ministerial party, was slow and confused. He derived the greatest benefit from the subtle and ambitious promptings of Graham, and often sought for them. Whether the proposal in the first Whig budget to impose a tax on the transfer of stock came from this source does not appear; but the measure, in spite of the eloquence with which Sir James Graham supported it, met with no success, and was withdrawn amid the jeers of the House.

This was a bad beginning, and his speech in defence of the army estimates proved equally unfortunate. The pledge of non-intervention had been thrown over by the Government in the case of Belgium, and an increase to the army was asked for. In advocating this increase, Sir James allowed himself considerable latitude of speech in regard to the condition of Ireland, and O’Gorman Mahon, conceiving that he, among others, had been attacked, called upon the First Lord to retract, or else to give him personal satisfaction. Sir James requested Lord Althorpe to act for him on that occasion, and the quarrel was amicably settled.

The improvements introduced into the constitution of the Admiralty were chiefly these: Sir James abolished the Victualling and Navy Boards as separate establishments; he required the accounts of the office to be kept by double entry; he proposed to throw open the great national asylum at Greenwich to seamen of the mercantile marine; and, failing to accomplish that, he relieved the mercantile marine from the special tax which it had heretofore borne. Nor was he all the while exempt from a full share of the burden of administration in other respects. Earl Grey never lost sight of the pledge which he had given to reform the representative system throughout the United Kingdom, and a committee of four was appointed to investigate the whole subject, and to report upon it to the Cabinet. Lord Durham, Lord John Russell, Lord Duncannon, and Sir James Graham composed that committee, of which no member worked more steadily and with greater zeal than Sir James.

It is not our purpose to tell over again the thrice-told tale of the bloodless revolution of 1831–32. In preparing the scheme which the Government was to bring forward, Sir James Graham appears to have been less extravagant than some of his colleagues. He desired to interfere as little as possible with existing rights in counties, except by adding copyholders and leaseholders to the ancient freeholders. In boroughs he was an advocate for occupancy as a condition to freedom, and was willing that the limit of the pecuniary qualifications should be wide. He objected to the ballot, and to anything like an attempt to establish perfect uniformity of franchise anywhere. Yet such was his infirmity of purpose that he yielded his own opinions to those of men of stronger will, and affixed his signature to a report which recommended the ballot and other arrangements of which he disapproved. It was this weakness, indeed—this apparent inability to arrive at settled convictions and to stand by them—which constituted the great flaw in Sir James Graham’s character as a public man. His biographer, we observe, commends him for the specialty, and endeavours to make what was mere irresolution stand in the light of judicial impartiality. “Half his life,” says Mr Torrens, “was spent in comparing and pondering opposite results, and determining judicially in the silence and solitude of his study on which side the balance lay. ‘Upon the whole’ again and again occurs throughout his private correspondence and public judgments, for judgments they frequently were—a phrase which a statesman of a constitutional country may well employ as eminently expressive of the true candour and humility of wisdom.” Doubtless this is true; but if we find the statesman afterwards going apart from his own conclusions, and falling in with proposals against which he had “on the whole” decided, what can we say of him except that his humility degenerates into weakness, and that, whatever qualities he may possess, firmness of purpose is certainly not one of them?

It is a remarkable fact that not even now could Sir James Graham command the attention of the House. His great attention to business, his value on a committee, and his administrative abilities, were very generally acknowledged, but as a speaker he made little or no impression. Even his advocacy of what may be called his own measure was felt to be feeble—a strange medley of confused discussion and turgid enunciations. But the bill had other sources of strength to depend upon than the logic of its Parliamentary supporters. Political unions and conspiracies out of doors did the work, and the King and the House of Lords were forced to accept their own humiliation. First came the dissolution on the 23d of April 1831, a step into which William IV. was coerced by the overbearing insolence of Earl Grey and Lord Chancellor Brougham. Then followed elections wherein brute force bore down all opposition, and by-and-by such an assembly at Westminster as struck terror into the hearts of the Ministers who had brought it together. On the top of that wave Sir James Graham was again borne into Parliament—a colleague being given to him of opinions far more advanced than his own. So it befell in the borough of Carlisle, so also in the neighbouring county of Westmoreland. It is quite certain that Sir James Graham did not contemplate the crisis, which he had helped to bring on, without alarm. “We have ventured,” he says, speaking of himself and his colleagues, “to drive nearer the brink than any other statesman ever did before; but we did so because aware that if we let go the reins the horses would be maddened into plunging headlong into the abyss, where extrication would be impossible.”

We have alluded elsewhere to Sir James Graham’s reconstruction of the departments in the Admiralty. It is creditable to him that he disclaimed all the merit of originality in such reconstruction. He discovered, on acceding to office, that plans of practical reform were already settled, and he had the good sense to accept and act upon them as his own. He found a willing adviser likewise in Lord Melville, who kept back nothing from him when consulted. Having completed this job, he set himself next to devise some means of getting rid of the necessity of impressment, and was again fortunate enough to have brought to him an important letter, addressed by Lord Nelson to Earl St Vincent. The letter in question suggested that there ought to be a registration of seamen, among whom, at the sudden outbreak of war, a ballot should take place, with permission, as in the militia, to find substitutes. But, anxious as he was to accomplish this object, he shrank as a Minister of the Crown from openly striking a blow at the prerogative. When, therefore, Mr Buckingham moved, “That the forcible impressment of seamen for His Majesty’s navy was unjust, cruel, inefficient, and unnecessary,” Sir James Graham resisted the motion. He fought, however, less for the evil itself than for the manner of applying a remedy, and obtained leave of the House to bring in a bill which has many admirable points in it, but which he was not destined to guide through its various stages till it became law.

The years 1833 and 1834 were seasons of sore trial to the Reform Government. They had evoked a power at home which they found themselves ill able to control. They had entered into treaties and engagements abroad, the necessity of acting up to which involved them in heavy expenses. But most of all were they hampered and annoyed by the operations of the Irish party, which, after helping them to carry their great measure, asked for its reward. The Irish Established Church must be sacrificed; and the better to insure a speedy attainment of that object, an agitation was got up for the repeal of the Union. Now, Earl Grey was not a man to endure contradiction calmly; he introduced a stern Coercion Bill into the House of Lords, which his colleagues fought inch by inch in the House of Commons. In order to conciliate their Radical supporters, they proposed at the same time to reduce the number of Irish bishops, and to substitute for church-rate in Ireland moneys to be raised by taxes imposed on all sees and benefices. Finally, after providing, as was assumed, a better method of managing episcopal and chapter lands, a clause in their bill declared “That it should be lawful to appropriate any portion thence accruing to purposes of secular utility, without regard to the religious opinions of persons to be benefited.” This famous clause (the 147th) was warmly debated, and in the end withdrawn. But neither section of the Legislature seemed to be satisfied. Indeed, in the Cabinet itself diversity of opinion was held in regard to that matter, and no great while elapsed ere diversity of opinion led to separation.

The first overt proof of schism in the Cabinet was presented by the opposite sides which Sir James Graham and his colleagues took on Mr O’Connell’s motion of censure upon the Irish judge, Sir William Smith. Sir James stoutly resisted it. Mr Stanley, Lord Althorpe, and Lord John Russell voted for it. On a division, Sir James went out with a minority of 74, and next morning tendered his resignation. He had proved himself, however, too valuable a member of the Administration to be cast adrift, and Earl Grey refused to part with him. Three nights afterwards he committed another crime by acknowledging in his place that the economy effected by his predecessors at the Admiralty was quite equal to his own. Then followed a discussion upon the Corn Laws, which he defended as they stood; whereas Mr Poulett Thompson, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, proposed to substitute a fixed duty for a sliding-scale. And here an incident befell which deserves notice. Mr Poulett Thompson endeavoured to confute his opponent by reading extracts from a pamphlet which had appeared in 1830, and in which the author, under thenom de guerreof a Cumberland Landowner, advocated entire freedom of trade in corn, as in other commodities. Strange to say, Sir James Graham took no notice of the ironical cheers which followed these quotations, and which marked the conviction of the House that the pamphlet had emanated from his pen. Yet such was not the case. The pamphlet was the work of a Mr Rooke, and was acknowledged as such when, four years subsequently, the author gave to the world a volume on the science of geology. Why Sir James Graham did not decline the honour thrust upon him at the moment, we are at a loss to conceive, and his biographer certainly assigns no satisfactory reason for the proceeding.

The Cabinet worked on not very amicably, and Sir James Graham did it what service he could by taking charge of its bill for remodelling the Exchequer Office. But the time was come when he felt that he could serve it no longer. Lord Wellesley’s measure for converting tithes in Ireland into a permanent rent-charge on the land was cumbered by a question from Mr Shiel, drawing from Lord John Russell something like a pledge, that the Government might hereafter consider the propriety of applying a portion of this rent-charge to secular purposes. And a few days later Mr Ward brought forward his motion, “That the Protestant Episcopal Establishment in Ireland exceeds the spiritual wants of the Protestant population, and that, it being the right of the State to regulate the distribution of Church property in such a manner as Parliament might determine, it is the opinion of this House ‘that the temporal possessions of the Church of Ireland, as established by law, ought to be reduced.’” There was no evading a movement like this. The Cabinet must either resist or accept Mr Ward’s motion, and a majority determined to accept it. Now, however Radical Sir James Graham’s views might be on other points, he was then, as he always had been, a consistent Churchman. On many previous occasions he had declared his determination to defend to the uttermost the inviolability of what he regarded as a fundamental institution of the Empire; and the Duke of Richmond, Lord Ripon, and Mr Stanley agreed with him. When, therefore, this Act for confiscating the property of the Church was accepted by the Cabinet as its own, the four Ministers above named felt that only one course lay open to them: they retired from the Administration, and shook it thereby to its base.

Sir James sat below the gangway, on the Ministerial side of the House, while those gyrations went on which ended in shaking Earl Grey out of the Premier’s chair, and Lord Melbourne into it. With Mr Stanley, and the half-dozen friends who adhered to him, Sir James kept aloof from each of the rival parties, becoming one of the company who, as Mr O’Connell described it, “travelled by themselves in the Derby Dilly.” It is not for us to inquire into the motives which animated the little band at that time. But considerations of delicacy towards old friends were surely rated above their just value when they induced Mr Stanley and Sir James Graham, a few months subsequently, to decline taking office under Sir Robert Peel. Had they met his advances as frankly as they deserved, the Conservative Government of 1835 would have probably stood its ground; and though it be difficult to conceive, looking both at things present and things past, how the commercial system, now in the ascendant, could have been pushed aside, still the progress of that system would have been probably more gradual; it certainly might have achieved its triumph at a sacrifice less costly than the disruption of the great Tory party, which followed on the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.

Sir James was coldly looked upon by the Liberals for abandoning Earl Grey’s Administration, and a cabal was got up to resist his re-election for East Cumberland in the event of his taking office with Sir Robert Peel. He refused to take office, as we have shown, and defended himself well at the hustings against the attacks which were made upon him. East Cumberland chose him again to be its representative, and he again took his seat below the gangway on the Ministerial side of the House. As an independent member, however, he stood aloof from the struggle between Sir Robert Peel and the Whigs, till Lord John Russell brought forward his famous motion “For the appropriation to secular purposes of a portion of the Church property in Ireland.” Then Sir James Graham threw over all party scruples. He delivered against the motion one of the most telling speeches which he ever uttered in Parliament, and went out into the gallery with that gallant band which failed to keep their chief in office by twenty-five votes only. From that moment his severance from the Whigs became a mere question of time, and the bitterness with which the Municipal Reform Bill was argued hurried it on. Sir James had never desired to swamp the poorer voters, either in counties or boroughs, and voted against the extinction of the class of freemen. Having gone out with the Tories, he was preparing to cross the House to his old seat, when a storm of derisive cheering greeted him, accompanied by shouts of “Stay where you are!” He stopped, looked angrily at the benches whence the sounds proceeded, and then sat down with a smile of scorn on his lips on one of the Opposition benches.

For the part which he took in resisting the extension to Ireland of the municipal changes which were effected in England and in Scotland, Mr Torrens severely censures Sir James Graham. This is natural enough. Going far beyond his hero in Radical propensities, Mr Torrens dispenses blame where men of moderate views would award praise. He seems to forget that all legislation for Ireland was undertaken in those days with a twofold purpose only—to conciliate Mr O’Connell, and to humble the House of Lords. The Melbourne Ministry, however, rode their hobby too fast. Not a few of the most distinguished of the old reformers fell off from them. Indeed, to such a height was the spirit of alienation carried, that not Sir James Graham only, but likewise Lord Brougham, Sir Francis Burdett, and Lord Stanley, withdrew their names from Brookes’s, into which Mr O’Connell had been received as a member.

From this date up to the death of William IV. in 1837, party spirit prevailed in Parliament and out of it, with a bitterness which has no parallel in modern times. The Ministers, existing by the breath of Mr O’Connell and the Radicals, seemed indifferent to the consequences of the measures which they proposed. The great body of the Opposition, carried away by personal dislike to their opponents, fought more than one battle which it would have been wise to avoid, and compelled their more judicious leaders to fight with them. On the whole, however, the Duke in the House of Lords and Sir Robert Peel in the Commons managed matters well; and it is only just to Sir James Graham to add, that they found in him a hearty as well as a prudent coadjutor.

The accession of her present Majesty led, of course, to a dissolution, and Sir James Graham had the mortification to find himself opposed in East Cumberland by Major Aglionby, formerly his fastest friend. He received, on the other hand, but a doubtful support from the Conservatives, and on the day of nomination the mob refused to hear him. Naturally proud, and perhaps a little dissatisfied with himself, he quitted the hustings, and went to the poll in bad heart. He was defeated by a majority of upwards of 500 votes, and withdrew, full of indignation, to Netherby. He had suffered not long before this a heavy domestic affliction in the death of his mother; and mortified ambition, coming on the back of private sorrow, wellnigh broke him down. He took no further part in county business; he shut himself out from county society, and spent his time chiefly in reading every new book that came out, and corresponding on important subjects with Sir Robert Peel. It was the interval between his defeat for East Cumberland and his return to Parliament as member for the Welsh borough of Pembroke which made him, what he ever after continued to be, a Peelite to the backbone.

In 1838 Sir James Graham was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, in opposition to the Duke of Sussex. He delivered an inaugural address, which is probably still remembered in consequence of the uproar which it called forth by certain allusions to the necessity of keeping the Church in alliance with the State; for then the fever of Free-Kirk folly was at its height in Scotland. But in 1839 he had graver matters to attend to. That systematic agitation against the Corn Laws having already begun of which Mr Charles Villiers, and not Mr Cobden, was the author. Sir James spoke in his place against interference with the sliding-scale; at the same time he guarded himself from the charge of desiring to secure a monopoly in the corn-market for the English landowner, and went out of his way to warn the House that nothing could be more perilous to English interests than that monopoly in the supply of cotton which had been conceded to America. He was anxious even then that steps should be taken to encourage the better cultivation of the plant in India, and pressed upon the President of the Board of Control the wisdom of originating such a scheme. Words of warning which, disregarded at the moment, come back upon us now with a melancholy echo!

The progress of the struggle, which ended in the withdrawal of the Appropriation Clause and the passing of the Irish Municipal Reform Bill through both Houses of Parliament, is of too recent date to require that we should speak of it in detail. So is the contest which arose about softening down some of the clauses in the New Poor-Law, of which Sir James, though advocating the law itself, was a strenuous advocate. His speech on that occasion, as well as his censure of the job which pensioned Sir John Newport and raised Mr Spring Rice to the peerage, more and more drew towards him the sympathies of the Conservative party, which indeed had already begun to look to him as one of its future leaders. He was equally efficient in his attacks on the Whig mismanagement of affairs in India and in China, and certainly did not spare his old friends when stirred by their rebukes into invective. At last the collapse came, and in 1841 the country declared against the Whigs. A new Administration was formed, with Sir Robert Peel at its head. Sir James Graham accepted the seals of the Home Office, and for five years public affairs were carried on, if not smoothly in all respects, with remarkable success upon the whole. No doubt, Lord Aberdeen’s legislation in the matter of the Church of Scotland proved unfortunate, and there was little in Sir James Graham’s manner to reconcile the discontented portion of the Scottish clergy to the law as it stood. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact, that almost all the failures in Sir Robert Peel’s policy occurred on points of which the management devolved upon Sir James Graham. To him, in a great degree, was attributed the disruption in the Scottish Church. His bill for the amendment of the Factory Act of 1833 hung fire, and was withdrawn; while his attempt to reform the ecclesiastical courts in England utterly broke down.

In 1843 the difficulties of the Administration really began. Ireland was the rock ahead which they found it impossible to weather. They brought in one bill, which they ultimately abandoned, and were content to appoint a Commission, with Lord Devon at its head, to inquire into the state of the country with a view to future legislation. To some of their adherents, moreover, they appeared to be shaken in their adhesion to the sliding scale of duties on the importation of foreign corn; and day by day the great fact became more obvious that Parliamentary government, based on a widely-extended suffrage, is scarcely compatible with the continuance of monarchy. Fortunately, perhaps, for them, Mr O’Connell chose this moment to reawaken the demand in Ireland for the dissolution of the Union, and to inflame the passions of the people by his monster meetings. Great, we should now say unnecessary, forbearance was exhibited in dealing with this movement; but at last a manifesto appeared, which, besides calling upon the masses to assemble at Clontarf, invited the “Repeal cavalry” to attend in troops of twenty-five,—each under its own officers. The Lord-Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor of Ireland happened both to be in London at the time. They met Sir James Graham at the Home Office with the law officers of the Crown, and that decisive step was taken which not only dispersed the meeting of Clontarf, but shut up Mr O’Connell in jail.

We believe that Sir James Graham did nothing more than his duty to the Crown and to the country throughout these proceedings. He contrived, however, to concentrate all the bile of the Opposition on his own head, and a manner, not always very gracious, repelled, if it did not positively disgust, not a few of the supporters of the Administration. It so happened also, that his bill for limiting the hours of labour in the factories did not meet the views either of the mill-owners or of Lord Ashley (the present Lord Shaftesbury) and his friends. The result was, that being defeated on one point by Lord Ashley, and on another by the mill-owners, he withdrew his measure, and sustained, as unsuccessful legislators usually do, some loss of character from the process. But the most damaging event in the course of his Administration was his having authorised, by warrant, the letters of Mazzini and other refugees to be opened at the General Post-Office. A dead set was made at him; and though he showed clearly enough that the law bore him out, he escaped by a majority of only forty-two in a full House—a narrow one, considering the state of parties—the mortification of having his conduct inquired into by a committee of the House of Commons. It is not for us to say why Lord Aberdeen maintained a profound silence in the House of Lords when the subject came to be discussed there. His Lordship was never famous for excess of pluck; and it was generally believed at the time, and is indeed highly probable, that Lord Aberdeen, being Minister for Foreign Affairs, had at least as much to do with the transaction as the Home Secretary. The truth, however, is, that a great deal too much was made of the matter. Lord John Russell and Mr Macaulay, with other leaders of the Opposition, supported Tom Duncombe in his demand; while Sir Robert Peel resisted it, though with his usual caution. At last, on the suggestion of Sir James himself, a committee was named to inquire privately, when it came out that there had not been a Secretary of State for the last hundred years but had signed warrants similar to that issued by Sir James, and that, in doing as he had done, he acted upon precedent, with, as it happened, more than common moderation.

We come now to the Peel policy of 1845, the renewal of the income-tax and the “further lightening of the springs of industry,” by striking out 430 out of 813 articles on which customs duties still continued to be levied. It would be satisfactory to know what share Sir James Graham had in the inauguration and adoption of that policy. Suspicion was rife at the moment, and it still remains, that he took a very active part in pressing its adoption on the Cabinet. But Mr Torrens throws no light whatever upon the subject. He reminds us, indeed, of some witty sayings uttered on the occasion, such as “that the old leaven of Holland House would work till it produced a thorough fermentation,” &c., and chronicles the beginnings of Mr Disraeli’s influence, by quoting his cutting remarks, “that Protection in 1845 was in the same position with Protestant ascendancy in 1828;” and that “a Conservative Government was an organised hypocrisy.” But not a line is given of private correspondence to show what Sir James’s opinions really were with reference to the present or the past. So it is when Mr Torrens comes to describe the course of legislation which led to the permanent endowment of Maynooth, and the setting up of what Sir Robert Inglis called “Godless Colleges” in Ireland. We have a not uninteresting digest of each debate as it occurred, the names of the speakers on both sides being duly recorded; but of Sir James Graham is said no more than of Mr George Bankes or of Mr Ward, or of others even less worthy of notice than the latter gentlemen. This is the more to be regretted that Mr Torrens speaks feelingly of the enormous amount of labour which the subject of his biography underwent, and which, we may venture to add, from our own personal knowledge of the man, the biographer has by no means overrated. The fact is, that Sir James Graham was what has been termed a glutton of work. Such was the constitution of his mind, that before deciding upon any point, whether practical or theoretical, he looked round and round for argument on both sides, and not unfrequently continued to doubt after he had arrived at a judgment. One thing, however, is certain: he had already, in 1845, become a convert to the doctrines of free trade, and was very urgent in his recommendations to the chief of the Cabinet to inaugurate an entire change of system. Now, Sir Robert Peel, as his famous Elbing letter showed, scarcely stood in need of such pressure. Thrown by mere accident into the Tory party, he never made common cause with it, and seemed to rejoice that the time was at length come for humbling the aristocrats who had so long made use of his talents while affecting socially to look down upon him.

We need not stop to repeat the thrice-told tale of the anti-corn-law agitation, or of the potato blight in the autumn of 1846, and its consequences. Enough is done when we state, that from the first appearance of that disease Sir James Graham saw but one remedy for the evil. In the discussions which ensued he ranged himself with Lord Aberdeen and Mr Sidney Herbert on the side of the Premier, and never, as he subsequently declared, gave a vote with greater satisfaction in his life than that which broke up the Peel Government, and dislocated the great party which it had taken years to consolidate. Not very popular at any time either with the Whigs or their rivals; disliked by the former for his desertion on the Irish Church question; distrusted by the latter because of the political creed of his youth,—he now drew down upon his own head an amount of obloquy, more enduring, if not, for the moment, more intense, than that with which the recreant Tory chief was overwhelmed; and the time shortly arrived when, partly on this account, partly because his proud heart rebelled against the dictates of his contemporaries, public life, especially official, if not Parliamentary life, became to him intolerable.

We must hurry over what remains to be told of this versatile yet vigorous statesman. When Lord Aberdeen formed his Coalition Cabinet, Sir James Graham returned to the Admiralty, where the Crimean war took him by surprise, as it did all the other members of the Administration. Sir James, however, put a bold face upon the matter, and having selected Sir Charles Napier to command the worst-found and worst-manned fleet that ever quitted the English shores, he sent him, at the worst season of the year, to try what could be done for the destruction of Russian power in the Baltic. It was unfortunate, both for the First Lord and for the Admiral, that the Reform Club chose to give the latter a dinner. The speeches uttered on that occasion, and especially Sir James Graham’s speech, resembled more the pæans of victors after the strife, than the statements of men about to incur the hazard of a campaign; and the abortive issue of the expedition covered both with ridicule. It did more, however, than this. A bitter quarrel ensued, which was prosecuted not very decorously, sometimes in the House of Commons, sometimes through the press, and which had no other result than to damage both parties very seriously in the estimation of the public.

The break-up of the Aberdeen Cabinet—to which, by the by, Sir James greatly contributed—may be said to have brought his public life to a close. He retained, indeed, his seat in Parliament—Carlisle having returned him as a good Radical member on two separate occasions. And though he seldom spoke, it was always in angry opposition to the Conservative party, once more reunited under Lord Derby and Mr Disraeli. Private sorrows, however, began to tame him down. In 1857 Lady Graham died—a terrible blow, from which he never recovered; and the death of Lord Herbert in August 1861 affected him deeply. To that excellent man, and at heart most Conservative politician, Sir James Graham was much attached. It seemed, indeed, as if to him had been transferred the entire stock of love and respect of which Sir Robert Peel, while living, had engrossed the larger share; and now, when the grave closed over Lord Herbert, life appeared to have no more interest for Sir James Graham. He made a long journey, in very inclement weather, to attend the funeral of his friend at Wilton, and, returning immediately afterwards to the north, scarcely smiled again. Our latest recollection of him is in church—a tall, handsome, yet shattered man, earnest in his devotions, but bearing upon his brow the cloud which was never to be raised on this side the grave. He died at Netherby, surrounded by his children, on the 25th of October 1861.

It has been said of Sir James Graham that he narrowly escaped being a great man. Certainly he possessed some of the qualities which contribute to build up greatness. He was patient, for example, of labour; careful in coming to conclusions; not at all over-scrupulous in changing or retaining opinions; and a first-rate administrator. But there was not a touch of genius about him, nor one shade of originality. His moral timidity was greater than the world supposed it to be. He often shrank from taking a step which his deliberate judgment approved; he often did what he had resolved not to do, and repented afterwards. Such a man was not fit to lead; and the inward consciousness of his own weakness, perhaps, hindered him from ever aspiring to become the head of an administration. His usefulness, on the other hand, as the second or confidential supporter of a great minister, cannot be over-estimated. He had much improved in later years as a speaker, and commanded the attention of the House; but the style of his oratory continued to the last in perfect accord with his intellectual organisation. On ordinary occasions it was stiff, perhaps pedantic; when anything occurred to ruffle or excite, it became sharp and personal—more, perhaps, than the speaker intended it to be. Taking all this into account, we arrive at the conclusion, that the position which he achieved among the statesmen of the passing age was exactly that which nature intended him to fill. He stood neither in the front rank nor perhaps in the second, but took a very prominent place in the third. In private life he was highly estimable, possessing, however, few of those qualities which gather round their owner troops of devoted friends. His manners were reserved, except with those who knew him intimately; his nature was proud, but he was kind-hearted, charitable, and deeply religious—being free from the two extremes of silly mannerism on the one hand, and pharisaical austerity on the other. He was buried in the churchyard of his own village, only the members of his family and a few old friends following him to the grave.

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