“It is not to be expected she can like it much; but she is a good little
woman—she always was a dear little woman,” said the Rector; “and Mary’s
jointure will make a great deal of difference in the manor-house, and
smooth things down considerably. She has been doing all kinds of
upholstery there already.”
“By Jove, I knew how it would be!” said Major Aldborough; “I told you
all how it would be. I said they’d kill him. He may think he’s got off
very easily, in my opinion—cure him of meddling with other people’s
children as long as he lives. What the deuce did he want at Fontanel? a
great deal better to make himself snug, as I suppose he means to do now,
at Summerhayes.”
“Mary will drive down looking just as bright as ever,” said Miss Amelia
Harwood. “I always said she deserved to be happy, poor soul—she always
makes the best of everything. Her heart was breaking that night of
Charley’s birthday. I heard for a certain fact that she fainted just
before the ball—a thing I never heard of Mary doing before. Heaven knows
what all she was afraid of; there was something very mysterious about
that fire; but now, you know, she has recovered her spirits and her
colour, and looks just as she used to look. I shouldn’t wonder a bit if
she began life over again, and was quite happy in the manor-house now
Tom Summerhayes is coming home.”
“And so she ought to be, Amelia,” said good Miss Harwood. “I am sure she
has many a poor woman’s prayers.”
All these good people were walking on the Fontanel road. It was a lovely
evening in the early summer, more than a year after Charley Clifford’s
birthday. Though it was rather beyond the usual limits of Miss Harwood’s
walk, she was here leaning on Miss Amelia’s arm to enjoy the air, and to
look for somebody who was expected. The Rector had strolled out on the
same errand; and that, or something similar, had also drawn Major
Aldborough from his after-dinner repose. The old-fashioned gates of the
Manor-house were open, and some expectation was visible within. Miss
Laura and Miss Lydia, in very summery muslin dresses, were to be seen
promenading before the house, and hastened out, when they saw the Miss
Harwoods, to join their friends.
“It is very trying for us,” said Miss Laura. “Oh, Miss Harwood, it is a
very trying occasion; not that our new house is not very nice and
everything very comfortable; but it is very very trying to us,” said
Miss Lydia, joining in; “and oh, on dear Tom’s part, such an unexpected
change.”
“Your brother is expected home to-morrow, Miss Laura?” said the Rector.
“Yes, to-morrow,” answered Miss Lydia, whose turn it was. “Poor dear Tom
is so fond of travelling on the Continent, it is so good for his health;
and Mrs Summerhayes wishes to be at home to receive him. Lydia and I are
so glad, and yet we are sorry,” chimed in Miss Laura; “it will be such a
change for dear Tom.”
“Not nearly so great a change as for poor Mary,” said Miss Amelia,
“leaving her children, poor soul; but I daresay she won’t complain, and
it must be better for all parties to have it settled. And so you like
your new house? I am told that Mary did all the furnishing herself.”
“Oh yes, she is very kind,” said Miss Laura; “she has made everything
very nice; you must come and see it. Indeed, if it were not for thinking
what a change it is for dear Tom,” cried the sisters both together, with
an evident impression that their brother had been defrauded of something
he had a right to, “we should all be very happy; for dear Mary,” said
Miss Lydia, with a little sob, “is very kind—and look, here she comes.”
She came driving the pony-carriage, as she had appeared so often at
Summerhayes. Poor Mary! if she had been a wiser woman would she have
been loved as well? She came, all beaming, with the smile on her lip and
the tear in her eye—courageous, affectionate, sweet as ever. Charley and
Loo had ridden down with her till they came in sight of Summerhayes, and
then had taken leave of their mother. Mary, with little Mary by her side
in the pony-carriage, drove on to her separate fate alone. She was going
to take possession of the old Manor-house, no longer the mistress of
Fontanel but Tom Summerhayes’s wife, to receive him when he came home
from his travels, and to make life bright, if he were capable of seeing
it, to that imperfect and not very worthy man. The agitation in her face
was only enough to heighten a little her sweet colour and brighten her
tearful eyes. On the whole had she not great reason to be happy? She had
forgotten everything but her husband’s virtues while he had been absent,
and her children were safe and prosperous and close at hand. She
smothered the little pang in her heart at parting, and said to little
Mary, with a smile, that she would have had to part with them all the
same when they were married. So the mother and the daughter drove down
through the soft twilight and the dews to the Manor, not without
brightness and good hope; while Charley and Loo rode away towards the
darkening east, with a deeper shadow on their young faces, not quite
sure how their home would look when their mother was away.
Mary stopped her ponies when she saw the little procession which had
come out to meet her; the tears came into her bright eyes again. “It is
so kind of you all,” she said, kissing her hand to good Miss Harwood,
“and it is so pleasant to think I can see you oftener now.” “God bless
you, my dear!” said the two old ladies who had come for love. And Mary
said “Amen, and the children too;” and so drove her ponies cheerfully,
with smiles and tears, in through the open gates.
Where, however, we will not follow Mrs Summerhayes. Things had turned
out a great deal better than could have been expected. Mr Summerhayes
was a man of the world, and knew how to make a virtue of necessity. He
had given in gracefully and at once, and gained reputation thereby,
nobody knowing what his private feelings were when Courtenay Gateshead’s
discovery came first upon his own widely-different plans. The fire in
the west wing never was explained—nobody, indeed, inquired very deeply
into it—and Mary, for her part, forgot it, or associated it only with
old Gateshead’s nightcap, to which, she remained firmly convinced, the
old man had set fire on his way to bed. The fire at Fontanel was indeed
associated with old Mr Gateshead throughout the county, as was indeed a
natural and perhaps correct supposition. Anyhow, nothing but the
destruction of the west wing had resulted from it, and that was rather
an improvement than otherwise to the old place, in which Loo, till they
were both married, was to keep house for her brother. Little Mary, who
was easy in her temper and happy as the day was long, went with Mrs
Summerhayes to the Manor—and Alf and Harry were to have two homes for
their holidays. When Tom Summerhayes came home next day, he thought some
fairy change had come over the manor-house, and forgave his wife with
magnanimity for all the trouble she had brought upon him. Mary accepted
the pardon with gratitude, and Miss Laura and Miss Lydia thought Tom a
hero; and so, with a tolerable amount of content on all sides, life
began over again for the reunited couple. Mary had her own troubles
still, like most people; but perhaps had not been much more happy as Mrs
Clifford than she was as Mrs Summerhayes.
SIR JAMES GRAHAM.[2]
Footnote 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 the _nom de
guerre_ of 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.