Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 93, No. 570, April, 1863

by Various

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.