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.