Family and Education

b. 1 June 1792, 1st s. of Sir James Graham†, 1st bt., of Netherby and Lady Catherine Stewart, da. of John Stewart†, 7th earl of Galloway [S]. educ. by Rev. Walter Fletcher at Dalston, Cumb.; Westminster 1806; Christ Church, Oxf. 1810; continental tour 1812-15. m. 8 July 1819, Fanny, da. of Col. James Campbell (formerly Callander) of Craigforth, Stirling and Ardkinglas, Argyll, 3s. 3da. suc. fa. as 2nd bt. 13 Apr. 1824; GCB 15 Apr. 1854. d. 25 Oct. 1861.

Offices Held

First ld. of admiralty Nov. 1830-July 1834, Dec. 1852-Mar. 1855; PC 22 Nov. 1830; sec. of state for home affairs Sept. 1841-July 1846.

Rect. Glagsow Univ. 1838-40.

Prov. Grand Master Cumb. Masons 1827-60, Cumb. and Westmld. Masons 1860-d.

Biography

According to Harriette Wilson, who once took him to the opera, Graham was ‘a beauty: a very Apollo in form, with handsome features, particularly his teeth and eyes; sensible too and well educated’.1 His Scottish mother, a devout Evangelical, had influenced his religious views, while clandestine assignments entrusted to him in 1813 and 1814 as private secretary to Lord William Cavendish Bentinck*, the permanent envoy in Sicily, intensified his political ambitions and mistrust of Lord Liverpool’s administration.2 Deferring to his Tory father and Lord Carlisle, he did not contest Cumberland, but came in for Kingston-upon-Hull in 1818 on the Fitzwilliam interest, espousing ‘genuine Whig principles’ of economy, peace, religious freedom and ‘a moderate reform of Parliament’. His early speeches failed to impress, but he divided steadily with opposition and became a reliable supporter of Henry Brougham* and the Whig aristocracy against the Tory Lowthers in Westmorland and Cumberland, where he took a prominent part at the Peterloo meeting of 13 Oct. 1819.3 His prospects of a second return for Hull at the general election of 1820 were good but beyond his means. Dissension among the Whigs in Cumberland, where John Curwen’s* candidature threatened Lord Morpeth’s† return, troubled him, and he turned down requisitions to stand for Carlisle or the county and distanced himself from the fray by going to support John Cam Hobhouse* in Westminster and contesting St. Ives, where he topped the poll.4 Informing the Whig Sir James Mackintosh* of Morpeth’s defeat, 30 Mar., James Abercromby* noted that Graham was ‘also a great sufferer, for his pretensions to represent either Carlisle or the county are strong ... and now he finds both the city and county filled to his exclusion’.5 In August 1820 Graham chaired the first Cumberland Independence dinner.6 He divided steadily with the main Whig opposition in the Commons and supported the 1820 and 1821 parliamentary campaigns on Queen Caroline’s behalf.7 He received a month’s leave on account of illness in his family, 22 Feb., and divided for the additional malt duty repeal bill, 21 Mar., 3 Apr.; his ‘radical’ speech at the Cumberland agricultural distress meeting, 5 Apr. 1821, was acclaimed by the Whigs.8 His vote for inquiry into costs in the naval dockyards, 7 May 1821, was his last that Parliament. His seat for St. Ives had been under threat since Sir Walter Stirling† had petitioned against his return, alleging bribery, 9 May 1820. His election was confirmed, but he lacked the money to defend fresh charges and vacated. It emerged that his opponents had relied on perjured evidence.9

Out of Parliament, Graham read widely, studied the works of David Hume, John Locke, and the political economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo*, and initially spent more time with his wife and children at Croft Head near Longtown, Cumberland, where he relieved his ailing father of much of the management of their neglected 26,000-acre Netherby estate, which had a gross rental of £17,946 in 1818.10 He ‘scouted’ Curwen’s proposals for a county meeting in March 1822 to petition for an additional protective duty on corn, believing it ‘could yield no benefit to the farmer’, and informed Brougham:

I ever have been and ever shall be opposed to high prices attained by any such exaction. If it were of use, I am most ready to join in a petition for a large reduction in our overgrown establishments, and for a correspondent diminution in the taxes, which sustain them. The reduction is most requisite in the civil list and expenses of the collection of the revenue, for these are at once the causes of the most corrupt influence and the most profligate expenditure. The relief likewise is certain and immediate, for the taxes might be instantly taken off to the amount of the reduction, and, not withstanding all the jargon on the subject of prices, it is clear that taxation curtails the demand of the consumer and the net profit of the grower. I say, if it were of use, I am ready to petition; but ... I never again will join in a petition to Parliament which does not mention the necessity of some reform in the representation, because to me it appears worse than delusion to address a body with the air of confiding hope, from which I expect nothing but scorn, contumely and evil. The ... Commons constituted as it now is, seems to me the greatest curse of this unhappy country, for it keeps up the semblance of free government when the reality is torn from us and lost. The petition of this year would say no more than the petition of last, and would be treated with the same indifference and contempt. The country people also are weary of meeting and petitioning in vain. Annual attendance destroys the novelty, and, with it, the interest of these proceedings; and thus by frequent repetition it diminishes their importance ... Retrenchment of expense and reduction of taxes must advance together and at equal paces; for I confess I am an advocate for a clear surplus [of] revenue, thinking it of the most importance to the landed interest that credit should be maintained.11

On succeeding his father in April 1824 he contemplated selling out and becoming a merchant banker with the ill-fated Pole, Thornton, Downe and Company, a scheme he had been considering since 1822, but the Bristol banker James Evan Baillie* dissuaded him.12 He appointed John Yule as his steward, oversaw his work closely and in 1825 borrowed £45,000, in addition to the £55,000 recently raised by his father, to improve the estate. To economize, he closed Netherby, took a cottage at Sidmouth, Devon, and various London lets and returned to Cumberland only for the races and agriculturists’ meetings, where he drew on the expertise of his schoolfellow William Blamire*, Curwen, the Tory churchman John Rooke of Akehead and Joseph Saul of Greenrow, and formulated his own theories.13 He remained in correspondence with Brougham and the Cumberland Whig hierarchy, but turned down their offer of support at the Carlisle by-election of March 1825, and when a dissolution was anticipated that summer, he refused to declare ‘prematurely’ for Cumberland in order to create a diversion to assist Brougham’s Westmorland campaign.14 He stood for ‘troublesome’ Carlisle on the ‘Blue’ interest at the general election of 1826 with a view to strengthening his position in the county, and topped the poll in a violent contest.15 The Tory Carlisle Patriot, in which he had inherited his father’s shares, dismissed him as a ‘good-looking gentleman; clever, but too irritable ... a rash and inconsistent politician’.16 A report that he ‘disgraced himself’ afterwards by taking a group of Carlisle weavers to support Brougham in the Westmorland election was unfounded.17 His pamphlet On Corn and Currency was published that month, favourably reviewed in The Times, and generated replies from William Jacob† and William Cobbett†. It ran to at least four editions and established him as a landowner who ‘understood’ that ‘the alternative evils of redundancy and scarcity, unsteady prices and uncertain rents are the inevitable consequences of the present system of our corn laws’. He also opposed all monopolies ‘whether East Indian, West Indian or Bank interests’. Despairing of the way the government had handled distress in 1822, he suggested remedying it through retrenchment, ‘free importation with an ample protecting duty’, joint-stock banking, pound notes, currency reform and a tax on incomes.18 Writing to Lord Holland, 29 Oct. 1826, shortly before leaving Netherby for Parliament, he warned that it would be impossible to stifle discussion of the plight of the distressed manufacturing districts and concluded:

If the country gentlemen were half as honestly resolved to enforce a reduction of expenditure and of establishments [as the urban working classes] some hopes of averting a serious convulsion might still remain, but the knowledge of flagrant abuses on the one hand, weighed with bitter suffering, and on the other, the boldest adherence to the corrupt system without the least regard to consequences, would seem to lead inevitably to some fatal crisis, which may shake even property itself.19

He criticized the ministry’s projected emigration schemes to relieve distressed manufacturing districts like Carlisle as ‘contrary to the spirit of our laws, and opposed to many of our most ancient regulations’, 7 Dec. 1826. Next day, the colonial under-secretary Horton replied that the matter remained unresolved and would be decided by a select committee on emigration. (Graham was appointed to it, 15 Feb. 1827.)20 His intention, he later informed Edward Davies Davenport*, had been to ‘experiment’ preparatory to raising the currency question, in order to ‘overcome that fear of my audience’ which had marred his previous performances in debate.21 He hectored ministers on matters of concern to Carlisle, such as alehouse regulation, 13 Dec. 1826, 21 Feb., 21 Mar., the billeting of troops, 16 Feb., and machinery exports, 19 Mar. 1827. By prior arrangement with the home secretary Peel, he presented petitions of complaint against the deployment of troops there at the general election, 3 Apr.22 Rejecting inquiry by the privileges committee whose report on a similar Carlisle petition in 1820 had not been implemented, he called for the establishment of an adequate civil force under the Carlisle police bill, and carried it in the teeth of opposition from the Tory corporation, 14 June.23 He presented two Carlisle petitions for corn law revision, 19 Feb., and divided for a 50s. pivot price, 9 Mar.24 He voted against the duke of Clarence’s grant, 16 Feb., and divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., for inquiry into Leicester corporation, 15 Mar., for the spring guns bill, 23 Mar., and for inquiry into the conduct of the Lisburn Orange magistrates, 29 Mar. He voted to delay supplies until the ministerial crisis following Lord Liverpool’s stroke was resolved, 30 Mar., and for inquiry into chancery arrears, 5 Apr. (and 14 Apr. 1828). Returning from a visit to Cumberland, 28 Apr. 1827, he confirmed his allegiance to the 3rd marquess of Lansdowne, who delayed joining the new Canning ministry as minister without portfolio until 20 May:

If it be your wish that I should support the new administration, I am only desirous that it should be known I do so as your follower ... It is possible that owing my seat to a popular election I may be compelled by a sense of duty to give an occasional vote in favour of particular measures, which it may not be expedient for a minister of the crown directly to sanction.25

He spoke, 18 May, and voted, 28 May, for the disfranchisement of Penryn, and for Lord Althorp’s bill limiting election expenses, 28 May, and presented constituents’ petitions for Catholic relief and repeal of the Test Acts, 7 June.26 He pleased his relations and other Scottish Whigs by moving their amendment to the Edinburgh bridewell bill and carrying it (by 68-56), 11 June.27 He cast a majority vote for the Canadian waterways grant, 12 June. Writing on the 29th to Rooke, whose pamphlet Free Trade in Corn, the Real Interest of the Landlord, he was now instrumental in publishing, he observed:

The recent struggle of parties has been highly injurious to the public interests; and never was a session less productive of solid advantage to the community. I am not pleased with the present position of affairs; and I fear that for some time the government will be disorganized and public attention dedicated to the character and conduct of men without much reference to measures. Every day’s additional experience convinces me more and more of the soundness of our views respecting the currency; the bill of 1819 lies at the foundation of all our difficulties. Corn laws, customs regulations, emigration reports and relief to the manufacturers, all are but the fringes of this one great first cause, on which our difficulties and our fate depend.28

He dined with the Whig leaders at Charles Tennyson’s*, 8 July 1827, and, after sounding opinion at Boodles, left with his family for Switzerland, so distancing himself from Carlisle, where his brother-in-law Wilfrid Lawson lost narrowly to a Tory at the by-election in August.29 When he returned in September Canning was dead, Curwen close to death, Lord Goderich premier and Lansdowne home secretary.30 John Herries’s* appointment as chancellor of the exchequer, which in conversation with Lord Grey’s son-in-law John Lambton* in Lyons he had dismissed as impossible, dismayed him and he informed Lady Holland that he despaired for their friends still in office.31 He found ‘some excellent reasoning backed by strong facts’ to commend in Davenport’s letter to Huskisson that month.32 By October Abercromby found him ‘very agreeably impressed with the state of things’ and preparing to contest Cumberland.33 Assessing his potential as a lobbyist for Scottish interests early in 1828, Henry Cockburn cautioned that he had yet to establish himself in debate and as a man of business:

Graham has sometimes occurred to me, because he would probably work, is connected with Scotland, with the great advantage of being [in] England, is judicious, steady but moderate, and perfectly well disposed. But no one can appreciate the fitness of any person for the situation of representative for Scotland, without knowing his weight in the House; and as to Sir James’s I know nothing.34

He kept a high profile throughout the 1828 session, querying the expenditure proposals of the duke of Wellington’s new administration, attending to the ailing Curwen’s constituency business and matters affecting Scotland and the Borders. He voted, 26 Feb., and presented a petition from South Shields for repeal of the Test Acts, 2 Apr., and brought up others, 24, 30 Apr., and divided for Catholic relief, 12 May. He promoted bills for the better regulation of elections and turnpikes and made the campaign to retain one and two pound notes issued by country banks his own. In July the radical Whig John Hobhouse* described him as a ‘favourite’, who ‘has £15,000 a year and the prettiest woman in London for a wife, and is besides really a clever, painstaking, and prepossessing man’, and ‘foremost’ with Edward [Smith] Stanley* ‘of the youngsters’.35

Graham refused to accept that the appointment of a finance committee by Wellington precluded investigation into official salaries and moved successfully for detailed returns, 27 Feb. 1828. His speech seconding Hume’s motion for information on the ‘profligate’ sale of commissions by half-pay officers embarrassed the secretary at war Lord Palmerston, 12 Mar.; but his questions to George Bankes on the remit of the select committee on public works were confused and inappropriate, 24 Mar. He was pre-empted in his plan to expose abuses in the Irish registry of deeds by the Irish secretary William Lamb, 27, 31 Mar.36 ‘Though not wedded to any general theories’, he harried Horton over emigration and the attendant passenger regulation bill, 4 Mar., before deciding to support a similar measure promoted by government, 25 Mar. He saw no justification in opposing the navy estimates as the Russo-Turkish war precluded reductions, 16 May. Following the Huskissonite secession, his hostility to the ministry became more marked. He forced a division, which he lost (by 70-38), on the governor of Dartmouth’s salary, 20 June, and voted to reduce the payment to the Cork Institution, 20 June, and in condemnation of the Buckingham House expenditure, 23 June. Realizing that ministers intended imposing the salary reductions recommended by the finance committee on clerks and dockyard labourers, but not on political officers, he encouraged Althorp to press for a reduction in the salary of the lieutenant-general of the ordnance and supported him with a ‘very good speech’, 4 July. Hobhouse, who disliked it, thought it ‘personal and sarcastic, and not without point’.37 He voted against the grant for North American fortifications, 7 July. He voted against sluicing the franchise at East Retford, 21 Mar., opposed the disqualification bill as a minority teller, 24 June, and voted against recommitting the disfranchisement bill, 27 June. Lord Lowther strenuously opposed the freeholder registration bill he introduced on 10 Mar. as a measure to ‘diminish the expenses of elections, rescue the voter from the trammels of predominant influence, increase the facilities of voting, and, pro tanto, to enlarge the elective franchise’, and although he carried its second reading (by 32-17), 25 Mar., it was repeatedly deferred and killed by adjournment, 13 June.38 He divided for the corporate funds bill, 10 July 1828.

Perpetuating the assumption that Graham was the author of Rooke’s Free Trade in Corn, on 27 Mar. The Times recommended it ‘to all legislative landowners ... as a sedative to their alarms and a text book for their speeches on the approaching discussion of the corn laws’.39 In the House, Graham pressed the president of the board of trade Charles Grant for information on average taking and urged the inclusion of Scottish and Irish data in the statistics, 3 Apr. He voted for a reduction from 64s.-62s. in the corn pivot price, 22 Apr., and highlighted the anomaly of Manx flour imports, 28 Apr. Criticizing the intended restriction of low denomination bank notes to Scotland under the promissory notes bill, he announced a counter-measure, 5 May, which he reformulated as an amendment for inquiry by select committee, 22 May. Supported by petitions from Carlisle, 23 May, and backed by the former Canningite Thomas Henry Liddell, he led the unsuccessful opposition to the government’s measure, ‘a premature, a theoretical remedy for an evil which is not yet in existence’, 3 June. He quoted from Hume, Locke and Alexander Baring* and urged the Members who had voted with Peel in 1819 to join him in rejecting Ricardo’s theories. He criticized the failure to introduce joint-stock banking uniformly following the 1825-6 collapse and accused ministers of trying to tackle the currency that ‘flows’ from a bad system rather than the system itself. He did ‘not wish to be understood as being enamoured of a paper currency, in the abstract’, but deemed it the only safe one then viable. He failed (by 82-17) to prevent an adjournment, which gave Peel time to intervene and allege that his speech had been riddled with misquotations, 5 June. He had corresponded with Lord Lauderdale and the Scottish bankers throughout, and remained convinced that the measure was ‘unnecessary and unfair’ to England and ‘delusive’ to Scotland and Ireland. He added that a law that prohibited him from banking with a Scottish house made that currency a ‘contraband of war’.40 Taking charge of legislation on Scottish vagrants and customary tenures, 19, 20 Feb., 11, 14 Mar., he refused in both cases to bow to ministerial pressure to agree to a pre-committal withdrawal or postponement. He moved the second reading of the Wakefield-Ferrybridge canal bill in Lord Milton’s absence, 3 Mar., but failed to prevent its defeat (by 179-91 and 110-105) at the hands of Lord Lowther and his fellow shareholders in the Aire and Calder Canal Company. He brought up Carlisle’s petition for repeal of the 1827 Malt Act, asked Peel if remedial legislation was planned, 17 Mar., and spoke briefly on coroners’ fees, 3 Apr. Motivated by difficulties encountered when renewing the Carlisle and Bampton roads bill, and with the Longtown Act about to expire, he introduced a General Turnpike Act amendment bill to simplify procedures, 23 May, but it was thrown out by the Lords. His amended bill, introduced, 10 July, received royal assent, 15 July 1828.41 (On 27 Feb. 1829 the select committee confirmed his premise that ‘once established a trust ceases to be a speculation’, and he overcame Hume’s objections to the new fee structure they recommended.) His advocacy of a clause in the alehouse licensing bill giving county magistrates concurrent jurisdiction with city and borough magistrates incensed the Whig Member for Chester, Lord Belgrave, 19 June, while his endorsement of the Hull ship owners’ distress petition, 24 June, was seen as a ploy to revive the currency question. He divided for the assessment of lessors bill, 12 June, and inquiry into the Irish church, 14 June. As ‘a warm friend to the church establishment’, he called the additional churches bill ‘injudicious’ and voted against its second reading, 30 June. He presented petitions from Cumberland and elsewhere requesting the abolition of colonial slavery, 17, 19, 24 June, 10 July 1828.

Predicting possible ministerial blunders following O’Connell’s return for county Clare, he wrote on 15 July to urge Smith Stanley to ‘take the field in force’ and grasp a ‘golden opportunity of forming a party in the ... Commons on some broad and intelligent principle, without any reference to leaders in the ... Lords and without any direct compact with Brougham’.42 Meanwhile, commenting on speculation that Graham might be won over to widen the government’s base, the Tory John Croker* informed Peel:

Personally, I know nothing of him and what little I have heard from the Lowthers has not prepossessed me in his favour; but he speaks remarkably well with a natural flow of words and a great deal of good sense. Once or twice he has left the violents to vote and even speak with us and I suppose [he] might be induced to come over under the shadow of Calcraft. I doubt whether in real powers he be second to Stanley, but (at worst) he is the next to him at that side of the House.43

Abandoning the immediate prospect of minor office, Graham helped Althorp, Brougham and Smith Stanley to dictate the pace of Peel and Wellington ‘conversion’ to Catholic emancipation in the closing months of 1828. The rise of the Brunswick Clubs alarmed him:

This appeal to club law is insane on the part of the aristocracy: the reaction is certain; conflict is the tendency; religion will infuse only the venom of its hatred, but redress of civil wrongs will be the cry; and the appeal to numbers and to physical force is madly made by the weaker party. Brunswickers will be met by reformers, No Popery by Dissent from the church establishment, the government, feebly hesitating, will be overborne and a convulsion ensue, which may shake the whole fabric.44

Directly Curwen died, 11 Dec. 1828, Graham vacated Carlisle and declared his candidature for Cumberland, whereupon the Tory Cumberland Pacquet commented waspishly:

His corn law dreamings the farmers ... justly consider inapplicable to men who are awake and have their senses about them. His party pledges and connections are certainly not of a kind best calculated to secure his independence; the trading politicians, for their own special purposes, are understood to have obtained too great an ascendancy over his inexperience’.45

Abercromby also had reservations about Graham, ‘who has almost an undue importance in the House’. Fears that the Lowthers would intervene or Lord Carlisle (as Morpeth had become) seek to regain a Cumberland seat for his son proved unfounded and he was unopposed, 16 Jan. 1829.46 On the hustings he said he would be ‘ashamed of myself, could I be capable of paring down my political sentiments to suit the views of party’, opposed all ‘jobs’ and ‘unnecessary outlay’, and pressed for reductions in public expenditure, ‘unnecessary places’ and taxation. Elaborating, he described himself as

an adherent of that small party still remaining in the ... Commons who maintain the rights and privileges of the people in opposition to the power and influence of the Court; and although I consider party as the best depository of public principles, by the power it has in holding men to their professions, I am no advocate of faction and can never be made the tool of any party.

He expressed qualified praise for Wellington, whose concession of Catholic emancipation he endorsed, and condemned the violence of the Catholic Association and the Brunswick Clubs.47 The strength of anti-Catholic feeling in Cumberland surprised him. When their hostile petitions were presented, 4 Mar., he attributed them to undue Lowther influence, praised the political realism of Peel and referred to the favourable petitions he was due to present on 9 Mar.48 He divided for emancipation, 6, 30 Mar., objected to Hume’s time-wasting interventions on the Irish franchise bill, 25 Mar., and voted to permit Daniel O’Connell to sit without taking the oath of allegiance, 15 May. He voted to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May. Presenting a protectionist petition from the landowners of Leath ward, he confirmed their distress, but he refused to join them in attributing it to cheap wool imports and declared that he would campaign afresh for a review of currency and banking, 11 May. He endorsed petitions from Carlisle and Cockermouth against renewal of the East India Company’s monopoly and high corn prices, 12 May. He was ‘altogether’ opposed to the settlement by hiring bill, 3 May, and harboured doubts over the friendly societies bill, 15 May, but he strongly supported the anatomy regulation bill that day, including the use of unclaimed pauper corpses. He called for ‘some public tribunal’ to deal with the French claims, 5 June 1829.

Speculation that he would be offered a place by Wellington remained unfounded.49 He appreciated that ‘the duke’s position is critical ... but it is not the confusion of a beaten army, without a leader and without a plan’.50 Illness severely curtailed his activities during the recess, but with a view to ‘producing a splash’ he promoted the adoption in Cumberland of a contentious distress petition calling for ‘a reversal of the measures adopted since 1819 ... the strictest economy in the public expenditure and the repeal or reduction of ... taxes, such as the duties on malt and beer, which press most grievously on the poor’. At the county meeting, 26 Jan. 1830, he also expressed qualified support for the government and pressed them to act on the currency as they had on emancipation.51 He voted for Knatchbull’s amendment regretting the omission of distress from the king’s speech, 4 Feb., and led the subsequent attack on the government’s failure to implement the economies recommended by the 1828 finance committee. He announced that he intended moving to reduce official salaries to their 1797 levels on presenting the Cumberland distress petition, 8 Feb., voted next day to limit the estimates to six months, and introduced his resolutions in a celebrated two-hour speech when the supply committee reported on the 12th.52 He prefaced his call for retrenchment from official salaries downwards by reiterating his criticism of the Small Notes Act and attributed currency depreciation and rising prices to the 1797 Bank Restriction Act. He criticized the 1819 Bank committee for interpreting inflation solely in terms of gold prices, excused his own vote to restore the gold standard to youth and the influence of Ricardo, and described how shortfalls in agricultural profits and rents contributed to the distress of the labourers. Deliberately excluding the privy purse and the royal household, he specifically targeted colonial governors’ salaries, expenditure on public debt management (£11,500,000 in 1797; £27,366,000 in 1828) and excise profits. Outbid by the treasury secretary George Dawson’s conciliatory counter-resolutions promising inquiry and a £1,000,000 tax reduction, he did not force a division, and there were signs of resentment in Whig ranks at his rapid promotion.53 He voted to cut taxes, 15 Feb., presented the lead workers of Alston’s distress petition, 16 Feb., and proposed and was appointed to a select committee on the emoluments of clerks of the peace, 23 Feb. His wife’s illness rendered it uncertain to the last whether he would be able to introduce his motion condemning the ‘unnecessary’ office of navy treasurer, 12 Mar. 1828.54 A veiled attack, as incumbent, on the erstwhile Canningite Thomas Frankland Lewis*, it exposed a ‘schism’ among the Whigs, for Althorp, Brougham and Lord John Russell deemed it too hostile to government.55 To the secretary at war Hardinge, it was a regrettable sign that Graham ‘thought under the present circumstances he could be a more considerable man out of office than he would be in a subordinate situation’ under Wellington.56

He dissociated himself from Davenport’s intended motion on the state of the nation, 3 Mar. 1828, and stayed away, like Morpeth and Smith Stanley, from the Whig meeting that day which invited Althorp to become leader ‘for one definite object, namely the reduction of expenditure and of taxation’. Althorp’s friends in turn (he reported to Smith Stanley) tested his loyalty with ‘a sort of motion respecting the treasurership, from which the sting of censure has in great measure been extracted: if I move it in this shape they will support it; if in my own, I conclude they will move it as an amendment’. Biding his time, he consulted Littelton, Palmerston ‘and others’, ordered returns, 5, 9 Mar., and voted for information on the interference of British troops in Portugal, 10 Mar. Supported by Grey’s son Lord Howick, but not Althorp, and with Huskisson in his minority, his motion criticizing ministers for missing an opportunity to save the treasurer’s £3,000 salary failed by 188-90, 12 Mar.57 He divided with the revived Whig opposition against the Bathurst and Dundas pensions, 26 Mar. Moving to abolish the office of lieutenant-general of the ordnance from ‘a quarter of the House where the principal friends of ministers have of late been found’, he acknowledged that ‘the character of an economical reformer is at all times obnoxious ... and that its being joined to that of a parliamentary reformer, will not render it more acceptable’, and lost by 200-124, 29 Mar. Continuing, as he did until 6 July, to divide with opposition, he prepared to introduce a motion hatched by Edward Littleton and Lord Wellesley and originally drafted by Huskisson with Hume in mind, for an account of all privy councillors’ emoluments, excluding the royal family.58 Its announcement, 30 Apr., angered the chancellor of the exchequer Goulburn and added bite to Graham’s interventions on the navy pay bill, 3 May, French claimants, 6 May, and supply, 10 May. Its execution on the 14th confirmed him as one of the most talented politicians out of office and the best speaker on finance.59 Defining retrenchment and value for money as his objectives, he stated that his patience had been exhausted by repeated referrals to ineffective select committees and called for inquiry into the continued receipt of public money by 113 out of 169 privy councillors, whom he called ‘birds of prey’. He censured in particular payments to the former ordnance office clerk Penn, and Lords Cathcart, Melville and Rosslyn. Challenged by the Whig General Grosvenor, he conceded that at the start of the session the currency question had been the only major issue separating him from government and attributed his growing disaffection to their refusal to implement the reductions recommended by the finance committee. Hobhouse (no doubt irked by Graham’s refusal to support an inquiry motion targeting the Irish solicitor-general John Doherty*, 12 May) considered defeat by 232-174 ‘a poor minority for such a question on the eve of a dissolution’ and suspected Graham of having ‘more than a public motive for his present virulence against government’ and taunts at opposition.60 Howick thought

it would ... have been better had he confined himself more strictly to the subject. Superannuations had nothing to do with it. He also exaggerated his case most amazingly, which, as it happened, was all in our favour, but if it had been exposed, as it might have been, would have told very much against him.61

He presented petitions and agitated for concessions on the Clyde navigation bill, 17, 21, 26, 28 May, 10 June, Scottish paupers, 21 May, lead imports, 25 May, and the corn laws, 26 May. According to Lord King, ‘he got a great victory’ over Peel on the four-and-a-half per cent Barbados and Leeward Island duties, which the minister promised to place under parliamentary control, 4 June.62 His follow-up motion was timed out. He ‘spoke well’ and failed by only 118-99 to procure a reduction in the grant for South American missions, 7 June, and by 121-98 to cut that for consular services, 11 June 1830.63

Graham divided for Lord Blandford’s reform proposals, 18 Feb., the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., 5 Mar., the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., inquiry into Newark’s petition of complaint against the duke of Newcastle’s electoral influence, 1 Mar., and Lord John Russell’s parliamentary reform motion, 28 May 1830. He voted to reform the divorce laws, 3 June, and to abolish the death penalty for forgery, 24 May, 7 June. He moved for correspondence on the 1829 Greek blockade and accounts of civil list pensions, 8 June. His recent dealings with Huskisson encouraged speculation, and he still considered an overture to Grey from the Wellington ministry likely when he attended an opposition meeting at Althorp’s for the first time, 4 July. As he and Smith Stanley had hoped, they resolved to ‘go into regular opposition’ in the next Parliament should the Wellington administration ‘do no better’.64 According to Charles Arbuthnot’s* informant, Graham had ‘declared that he was a Whig, and that he certainly should not leave his party; but that he had been in contact with Huskisson on matters of business, and that this he intended to continue’.65 Assessing the session in a letter to Rooke, 21 June 1830, he expressed regret that the currency question had ‘not been touched’.66 He passed on information about Hull to Palmerston at the dissolution in July and came in unopposed for Cumberland, where he resisted pressure to stand with a second Whig. The increasingly radical Carlisle Journal regretted that there were Tories among his pre-election dinner guests at Dalston and Whitehaven and complained that he had ‘trimmed his sails’ to please both parties. In his speeches he approved the French revolution, promised to support ‘further reduction in taxation [and] moderate but effective reform in the representation’, including opening more polling stations, the enfranchisement of copyholders and customary tenants, a redistribution of corrupt borough seats and a £10-20 borough franchise.67 He neither approved of nor was party to the electoral pact between Brougham, Lonsdale and Lord Thanet, which left Westmorland undisturbed, and maintained with the benefit of hindsight that he had been prepared to make way for Brougham at Carlisle in 1826, to give him an ‘honourable retreat’ from Westmorland.68

Before Parliament met, he assumed an interest in the Scottish representation with a view to joining Brougham in pressing for reform in the new Parliament. He predicted that Wellington would ‘yield’ only ‘to the extent of conferring the elective franchise on some of the larger towns’.69 He regarded any arrangement between him and the former Canningites as ‘political suicide’ for the latter, notwithstanding the precondition of ‘total reconstruction’ they imposed, and discussed opposition tactics with Huskisson on the eve of the ill-fated opening of the Liverpool-Manchester Railway, 15 Sept. 1830.70 He saw Huskisson’s death as a temporary ‘God-send’ for Wellington and corresponded frequently afterwards with Lord Durham (as Lambton had become), the Lansdowne Whigs and Brougham, to whom he wrote that a

junction of the Whigs with Palmerston and the Grants, if it took place, should precede the meeting of Parliament; and ... the leading principles on which the new party is formed should be announced to the public, comprehending, as it were, the scheme on which the government would be conducted if the duke were removed from power; and in my humble judgement this scheme should include a substantial measure of parliamentary reform, a reduction of salaries and of establishments, a review of the taxation of the country in the sum of [Sir Henry] Parnell’s* admirable book, law reform on your model, commutation of tithes and a better provision for the working clergy ... by a new valuation of tithes and first fruits; and the abolition of the feudal game laws, substituting in their stead the right of property. In a word the new party should stand pledged to the maximum of reform consistent with the safety of our present form of government, and believe me this maximum after all will be found the minimum with which public opinion will rest content. A pledge also should be given not to accept office separately. A leader should be chosen, and constant attendance promised when notes by his desire are sent. Something of this sort should be done before the fight begins; for the duke has no chance unless from divisions and disorganization among Members.71

Mistrusting him still, in October Edward Ellice* suspected that Graham was the author of The Answer, an influential pamphlet which independently reviewed the state of the parties and suggested coalition.72 Liaising with Howick and encouraged by the Tory renegade Sir George Warrender*, he tested the response of the Whig hierarchy and Palmerston’s friends to Brougham’s reform scheme, which deprived each rotten borough and certain small boroughs of one Member in order to enfranchise the large towns. It suggested an inhabitant householder franchise.73 The Whigs at Althorp’s, 31 Oct., backed it, and Graham persuaded Brougham, who hosted a pre-session dinner, 7 Nov., not to move it as an amendment to the address, but as a motion for inquiry, scheduled for 16 Nov., three days after the Whig muster, in order to give it a realistic prospect of success.74 Hobhouse, who was present, wrote in his diary that Graham also reported [from Palmerston] that the Huskissonites were ‘prepared to go to any lengths, so far as excepted turning out the administration. That they would vote for enfranchising the great towns and would assent to Brougham’s motion if vaguely worded’.75 According to Howick, Grey had recently convinced Graham that ‘the plan of taking only one seat from each of the rotten boroughs will never answer’.76 Launching into outright opposition directly the cancellation of William IV’s visit to the City was announced, 8 Nov., Graham deplored Wellington’s anti-reform declaration and accused him of being ‘too fond of running alone’ and too ‘obstinately attached to that policy which he thinks is right’. Two days later he alarmed ministers by proposing a motion censuring their appointment of the dean of Durham Dr. Phillpotts to the see of Exeter while holding the lucrative Durham living of Stanhope in commendam.77 Targeting the civil list, he stated that he would vote for nothing before receiving the returns he had ordered on 6 June. He presented petitions for the abolition of colonial slavery from Cumberland and Westmorland, 10, 11, 15 Nov., and, bringing up another for parliamentary reform that day from Lonsdale’s borough of Cockermouth, he urged the reform of Scottish representation. He voted to bring down the ministry on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830, and, after much haggling, he postponed his motion on Phillpotts, 17 Nov. He was an intermediary for the Whigs and Huskissonites in negotiations pending the formation of Grey’s reform ministry, in which he was passed over for the home office, declined the war office and accepted the admiralty with cabinet rank and a seat on the privy council. He became one of the main government speakers in the Commons. Abercromby (and the new lord chancellor Brougham) considered Graham and Smith Stanley ‘Lansdowne’s props’, and Abercromby was one of the few to approve Graham’s ‘prematurely high’ appointment.78 The caricaturist ‘HB’, in ‘Drawing for the Twelfth Cake’, caricatured Graham saying, ‘Who ever thought of seeing me first lord of the admiralty?’79 Predicting his failure, Greville traced his conduct over the previous decade and commented: ‘it is one thing to attack strong abuses and fire off well-rounded set phrases, another to administer the naval affairs of the country and be ready to tilt against all comers, as he must do for the future’.80 With the paymaster Lord John Russell and the commissioner of woods and forests Lord Duncannon, he was one of the committee, chaired by the lord privy seal Durham, to whom Grey entrusted the task of preparing the ministerial plan of reform. Cartoonists depicted him as the brakeman on the reform coach.81

Graham’s re-election was unopposed, 8 Dec. 1830, and afforded him an opportunity to ascertain the views of the radical Member for Carlisle William James on the ballot and annual parliaments.82 Left to manage the House in its leader Althorp’s absence, 20 Dec., his response to the ‘sharp and most rancorous’ attack by Dawson on government’s overhaul of Irish legal appointments was found wanting.83 Next day he presented his constituents’ petitions against colonial slavery and the coastwise coal duties with others for Scottish parliamentary and burgh reform. That had been largely entrusted to Henry Cockburn, solicitor-general for Scotland, and Thomas Francis Kennedy, Member for Ayr Burghs, with whom he liaised to ensure a uniform tax qualification.84 He refused to be provoked by Hume into discussing the civil list when Josiah Guest questioned Mrs. Arbuthnot’s entitlement to a £1,200 pension, 23 Dec. 1830, nor would he resurrect the currency question in response to a written plea from Western.85 Despite the furore generated by the president of the board of trade Charles Grant’s threatened resignation over the civil list allowance for Queen Adelaide’s clothes, on 24 Jan. 1831 Graham wrote confidently to Morpeth that

excepting the corn laws, there is hardly one great subject in our domestic policy, which we shall not be prepared to deal ... Croker and the underlings breathe fury. Peel and the duke pretend moderation; but with the latter forbearance is only caution, and boundless hostility is common to the crew ... I like my colleagues and we are firmly united. If we fail, show me the government that can save the country’.86

Making light of opposition by Calcraft and Hunt, he defended the civil list in what the Wellington ministry’s president of the India board Lord Ellenborough considered ‘a very high Tory speech’, 4 Feb., and commended the stock transfer tax proposed in Althorp’s budget, 14 Feb.87 His hasty, waspish defence of Palmerston’s foreign policy and the cost of policing Ireland, 18 Feb., haunted him, for he fell victim to Peel’s invective and Sir George Murray and North pounced on his use of the term ‘demagogues’ for ‘certain agitators’ seeking repeal of the Irish Union, and accused him of preaching ‘English supremacy’. The issue escalated and was resolved only after William Macnamara*, acting for The O’Gorman Mahon*, who treated the remark as a personal slander, met Althorp (as Graham’s representative), 20 Feb., and agreed to ‘be satisfied’ by an ‘explicit’ Commons statement. Graham apologized when Daniel O’Connell revived the issue, 21 Feb.88 To make matters worse, when opposing Lord Chandos’s motion for inquiry into the distressed West Indian colonies that day, Graham contradicted his colleagues (Grant and Poulett Thomson) and ‘stood alone’ in contending that this ‘would not obstruct the committee of supply’. He added, ‘I have made too many of these motions myself to know that it is intended to be and would be considered in the nature of an indirect but intelligible censure upon government’. He later defended Althorp’s decision to give priority to tax reductions on candles and coastwise coal in a ‘tight’ budget (21 Feb.). According to Ellenborough, ‘it was said at the levee’ that he ‘tendered his resignation’ afterwards; but Greville wrote that ‘Graham declared a vote against ministers would make them resign’.89 In February 1831 he was said to be preparing to ‘eat his words’.90

In view of the king’s close interest in the navy and the need for retrenchment, Graham consulted the Tory Admiral Hotham and Sir Samuel Pechell* on naval matters, and Palmerston on developments in the Mediterranean and the Scheldt, and read Wellington’s secret evidence to the finance committee on the defence of the Canadian colonies before drafting his estimates.91 On 24 Jan. 1831 he informed Grey that he was disposed to ‘ask for 22,000 seamen and 10,000 marines’ and that he would promise not to exceed that number ‘without the consent of Parliament’, or, in case of an emergency, ‘without a frank statement of the excess and of the cause of it, so soon as Parliament shall reassemble’.92 With the king’s approval, he moved for £1,081,600 to finance them, 25 Feb.93 His speech, in which he also trailed his scheme for separating the navy and victualling boards, helped to restore his reputation and government morale, for he demonstrated that he could deploy naval expertise and expose previous malpractice to advantage. For example, he dismissed and deflected questions from Hume, the Tory admirals and the comptroller of the navy Sir Thomas Byam Martin, a personal friend of the king, on the escalating cost of the Bermuda garrison and Robert Torrens’s* appointment as deputy adjutant-general of marines.94 He refused to be provoked by opposition taunts over the reorganization of the marines, the exclusion of warrant officers from court, and the half pay, 28 Feb. However, as the reform bill crisis deepened, and with a negligible majority to rely on, he struggled to see through the mutiny bills, 7 Mar., and estimates, 21, 23, 25, 28 Mar. 1831, despite being ‘up to his business to a remarkable degree’.95

Conservative by comparison with Duncannon and at least initially more pragmatic than Russell, his ‘two sine qua nons’ for the reform bill became a uniform £10 voter qualification in the boroughs and the principle of disfranchisement; but he also, at different times, advocated the ballot and quinquennial elections, registration, short polls, increased county representation and enforcing a residence qualification. He initially recommended a £20 franchise.96 Dealing primarily with registration, he liaised fairly effectively with his colleagues on the committee and deliberately summoned Durham to the cabinet meeting, 28 Jan. 1831, when Althorp sought to lower the householder voting qualification to £10.97 Hardinge expected him to try to secure a compromise.98 He presented reform petitions from Cumberland and elsewhere, 9, 26, 28 Feb.99 With a sense of impending doom, he informed Grey on 17 Feb. that he doubted ‘whether the draft of any one of the three bills is complete’ and that modifications had yet to be agreed. He urged their discussion ‘in the cabinet clause by clause’, in the presence of Russell, Duncannon, the lord advocate Jeffrey and the attorney-general Denman, warning that ‘without some such preparation I anticipate disaster and we have already suffered much from the imperfect discussion of great questions in the cabinet before they have been brought forward in the House’.100 He called for patience when information remained unavailable two days after the bill’s introduction, 3 Mar. Promoting the bill, 8 Mar., he tried to justify it according to Charles James Fox’s† premise that ‘the best system of representation was one which secured to the country the largest number of independent voters, and the worst was one which embraced the largest number who, from being in dependent circumstances, were incapable of deliberation and act as they were commanded’; but his speech was apologetic, statistical, and according to the Whig Sir Henry Bunbury* ‘failed sadly’, and gave the impression that he cut ‘a sorry figure in Parliament’. He struggled to overcome the opposition’s taunts that his £5,000 salary was a ‘privy councillor’s emolument’, and his speech was memorable only because of a misapplied simile which, as the Tory admiral Sir Joseph Yorke promptly noticed, inadvertently likened the bill to a foundering ship.101 He was confident of carrying the second reading, but ‘anxious as to its fate in the committee; if it be emasculated there, it will fail to produce the healing effect which is the real benefit it is calculated to bestow’.102 He introduced several favourable petitions, 19 Mar. To his embarrassment, his attempt to dismiss the anti-reformer Sir Robert Inglis’s breach of privilege allegation against The Times was scotched by Charles Williams Wynn, who had resigned as secretary at war rather than support the reform bill. Deputizing for Althorp, Graham failed to restore order when feuding over reform petitions disrupted the House, 29 Mar., and his poor response to Peel’s speech for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment was said to have contributed to the bill’s defeat, 19 Apr. 1831.103 He predicted a government victory at the ensuing general election, ‘for the voice of a united people is irresistible’.104 He sent Sir Edward Troubridge* and Joseph Marryat* to contest Sandwich on the admiralty interest and eventually settled on Byam Martin and George Elliot† for Plymouth.105 He correctly anticipated a hard struggle in Cumberland, where the Lowther-controlled press were unstinting in their criticism of the budget, naval reforms and his parliamentary conduct; but he failed to appreciate that the momentum to field two reformers there was unstoppable.106 Forced to revise his plans to ‘stand alone’, his return at the top of the poll was engineered by Blamire, who defeated Lord Lowther and was elected with him.107 His hasty condemnation on the hustings of the Whig renegade Scarlett’s return for Cockermouth, as the Lowthers’ replacement for his cousin Lord Garlies, almost resulted in a duel and fuelled his hatred of a partisan press, which he assuaged by selling his shares in the Carlisle Patriot and investing in the Whig Whitehaven Herald.108 Reassuring him that the incident had not cost him the king’s confidence, the duke of Richmond quipped, ‘it would be inglorious to be shot by a special pleading lawyer, who knows but little of the law of honour’.109 He failed to tempt his uncle Lord Galloway out of retirement to support reformers in the Scottish peerage elections.110

He attended the pre-session reception at Lansdowne House, 27 May 1831, and, before Parliament met, he authorized additional dockyard provisioning and dispatched Codrington’s squadron to the Mediterranean, a frigate to the Tagus and guardships to Ireland, where, he advised Smith Stanley

no government can allow its people to starve according to the most approved rules of political economy: only be it observed that the necessity of such extraordinary aid proves the urgency of taking into consideration some scheme for the relief of the poor by local assessment.111

He moved the adjournment in Althorp’s absence, 14 June, and met his colleagues regularly over the next week to discuss alterations to the reform bill.112 Resisting pressure from the shires to waive the division of counties, he upheld the right of the aristocracy to a voice in the representation of county divisions as a counterpoise to the increased ‘democratic influence’ created by the enfranchisement of large towns, and advised Grey:

No more important change can be made in our original measure; none which will more justly excite the alarm of the aristocracy. If the £10 qualification for cities and boroughs be sacred, this countervailing arrangement of the subdivision of counties cannot be reversed without seriously affecting the whole measure.113

On 27 June, responding to criticism from Lord Mahon, who attributed the dissolution to his failure to carry the army and navy supplies (28, 29 Mar.), he explained that the discovery of a surplus fund had rendered voting them through unnecessary. He afterwards defended the ministry’s Irish policy. Francis Thornhill Baring* noted that his reply ‘showed more pluck than last session’.114 Presenting the navy estimates, 28 June, he explained that they were unchanged and emphasized that he sought 1,000 fewer men than his predecessors, ‘soon to be 2,000 fewer’ through natural wastage and his policy of appointing officers to one vacancy in three, to reduce the half-pay list. He left it to the radicals, whom he ignored, and the naval experts, whom he addressed deferentially, to quibble over the details. Keen to preserve cabinet unity, he countered rumours that Palmerston was about to defect, defended public salaries when these were criticized by Hume, 30 June, and justified the arduous timetable the reform bill imposed, 8 July, and the wine duties, 11 July.115 Challenged by Robert Gordon over consular salaries, 18 July, he admitted, without elaborating, that he had indeed considered the system unsound. A week later, when the grants for Newfoundland and Sierra Leone were voted, 25 July, he turned Gordon’s comments on the benefits of running on the estimates according to the French practice to good effect, and he refused to be drawn by Hunt’s questions about the Dover packet boats, 27, 29 July. He failed to prevent Thomas Wyse obtaining leave for bill to establish a national education system in Ireland, 8 Aug. Writing to Robert Shapland Carew* on the 15th for advice on a suitable preparatory school for his eldest son, he conceded that Irish affairs pressed ‘most grievously’ on government.116 Returning to the House, 30 Aug., after an absence of about ten days caused by a fever, he was unable to reply to questions about Brazil and the whereabouts of the American squadron without Palmerston’s assistance. Byam Martin’s failure to support him on reform and admiralty matters had troubled him for some time;117 and in September he risked the wrath of William IV by refusing to reinstate Lord Dundonald, to authorize naval expansion or to sack Torrens, who, at a City common hall, had uttered a rash threat to abolish the Lords unless they backed reform, 21 Sept.118 In each case, he ensured that he had the consent of the cabinet before informing the king of his decision.119 He acquiesced in Palmerston’s policy of giving tacit support to the rebel Dom Pedro in Portugal, and joined him and Smith Stanley in declaring against Brougham’s call for wholesale peerage creations at the coronation to safeguard the bill.120 Privately, he had already recommended his brother-in-law Lawson for the honour.121 He naturally divided for the reform bill in crucial divisions and helped to vote through its details when present, but he spoke only to justify the inclusion of Workington in the new Whitehaven constituency, which the Lowthers opposed, 6 Aug., 1 Sept., and the award of three rather than four Members to Dorset, 13 Aug.122 After the bill’s passage, 21 Sept., he carried a ‘vote’ for a further £27,000 for the Royal Clarence dockyard at Gosport without a division, 30 Sept., but his utterances on naval half-pay, 7 Oct., and chain cables, 13 Oct. 1831, were censured in the press.123

He initially regarded the reform bill’s defeat in the Lords as a resignation matter, and wrote to Grey, 8, 17 Oct., pressing for proof of the king’s loyalty in the prorogation speech that month and requesting the dismissal of Byam Martin and Lord Howe from his department for failing to support reform.124 Palmerston thought he would ‘not be sorry to see ... [the revised bill] a good deal mitigated’.125 Official business in Plymouth prevented him attending the cabinet, 17, 19 Nov., when they revised their strategy on reform and left the peerage question open. He accordingly set out his case for a single and prompt mass creation of peers, in a memorial he sent to Grey, 26 Nov.126 Althorp, the only other cabinet member authorized to read it, write to Grey on the 25th:

Probably ... Graham will save us the trouble of having many more difficulties to contend with. For if he goes out on the grounds that he has now taken [immediate peerage creations] the people will desert us because we have not followed his advice and the peers, knowing that we have not secured the power of creating as many as we like, will be totally unmanageable.127

He sent a letter of support to the 15 Nov. Cumberland reform meeting, and his protest to the sheriff over the Carlisle Patriot’s subsequent misrepresentation of the reformer Philip Howard’s* speech elicited a vicious response from the Lowther newspapers. They also exploited the recent appointment of his brother Fergus Graham as postmaster of Carlisle.128 Croker thought he ‘seemed zealous for’ the revised reform bill introduced on 11 Dec.,129 and he was depicted in caricature smiling ‘sardonically’ when Smith Stanley demolished Croker’s arguments against it at its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831. He afterwards conveyed Lord Huntingdon’s proxy to Grey.130 Alerted by Littleton to ‘misplaced’ reports of his ‘inattention to Members in the House’, he said it was ‘owing to his being jaded to death with official business before he could come down ... and promised amendment’.131 During the Christmas recess, he tried in vain to persuade Garlies to allow his name to be put forward for a peerage.132 He was rumoured to have declined to retire with a peerage to make way for Althorp at the admiralty when ministerial changes were contemplated in February 1832.133 In March, when Brougham wanted Althorp called up to assist him in the Lords, Graham, like Smith Stanley, threatened resignation on account of the additional work it would give him.134

He divided with his colleagues on the Russian-Dutch loan, which he privately conceded he would have attacked in opposition, 26 Jan., 12, 16, 20 July 1832.135 He brought in the quarterly estimates successfully, 13 Feb., maintained a show of force in the Tagus and the Scheldt and planned a complete overhaul of his department under the navy civil departments bill, which ended civil appointments and replaced the admiralty, navy and victualling boards with separate departments for accounts, stores, victualling, physicians and surveying, each controlled by an admiralty lord, making an estimated annual saving of £20,000 in salaries and £10,000 in messengers’ fees.136 According to Littleton, on 9 Feb.

a party of eight or ten met at the admiralty in consequence of a suggestion of mine ... to hear an explanation of his plan of reduction of the navy civil establishment ... We were all charmed with Graham’s expose, and urged him to introduce as part of his plan a curtailment of the right to sit in Parliament now belonging to the lords of the admiralty ... to three. He promised to consult the cabinet and the king. I expect a great effect from his statement.137

He forwarded the draft bill to William IV that day, requested his opinion on the anticipated charge that it created placemen by replacing the commissioners with admiralty lords, and warned that Clerk, Cockburn, Croker and Byam Martin, ‘a weight of authority and of official experience’ were against it.138 He obtained leave for the bill, which had his predecessor Lord Melville’s tacit approval, despite their objections, 14 Mar.139 He carried the preamble (by 118-50), 6 Apr., and the bill received royal assent, 1 June. The revelation by The Times, 15 Feb., that a commissioned officer, Admiral Sartorius, had assumed the command of Dom Pedro’s fleet, publicized a disciplinary matter raised repeatedly since December 1831 by the king, who considered it a contravention of his prerogative. Graham, supported by Grey and most of the cabinet, objected to implementing the Foreign Enlistment Act in the case.140 When questioned by Yorke, 17 Feb., he argued that that Sartorius was unpaid and his conduct unauthorized. To opposition taunts, he confirmed on 19 Mar. that Sartorius had been dismissed from the navy for being absent without leave. He spoke briefly against abolishing the sixpenny monthly levy on merchant seamen for Greenwich Hospital, 8 Mar., and dealt adequately with Clerk’s criticism of his strategy and office practices on moving the estimates, 16 Mar. 1832. Showing a 5,000 reduction in manning and a saving of £983,000, they were carried without a division on the 26th.

Convinced that it was both prudent and the king’s wish, in cabinet, 4 Mar., he again recommended creating peers sooner rather than later to avert a second Lords defeat.141 Before they considered Durham’s proposals on the 11th, he wrote to Grey suggesting 50 as a suitable number, he voted with Grey and Russell against precipitate action to avoid the risk of being obliged to resign.142 He lay ‘on the floor at the end of the House of Lords opposite the throne, all night’ to hear the Lords debate, 10 Apr., and was a party to the subsequent negotiations with Lord Wharncliffe at Newmarket.143 When the bill’s defeat on 7 May put a ministry headed by Wellington in contemplation, he resigned with his colleagues and commenced his Cumberland canvass in anticipation of a dissolution. He was reinstated, 16 May.144 He was appointed to the committee of secrecy on the Bank of England’s charter, 22 May, and to the select committee on the West Indian colonies, 30 May, from which he reported, 6 Aug., notwithstanding Burge’s objections. According to the abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton

Graham came into the committee ignorant of the subject and indifferent about it. I am much mistaken, if he did not leave it convinced of the policy, or rather the necessity of a rapid emancipation. He made the best of chairmen.145

He struggled to overcome Hume and Byam Martin’s criticism of the navy estimates, 29 June, and announced ‘after further scrutiny’ that he had waived his objections to half-pay naval officers receiving their salaries while on coast guard duty, 8 Aug., and justified the admiralty’s inaction in the case of the deserter Popjoy’s compensation claim, 11 Aug. 1832. He went to Goodwood for the races directly the king’s prorogation speech was agreed and to the Isle of Wight on the admiralty yacht.146 In December Denis Le Marchant† echoed the general criticism of Graham, who was accused of ‘giving his best patronage to the Tories’:

He certainly is a very timid, irresolute man. He speaks in the House as if he was under an awful sense of his responsibility, which is singular, as he was remarkably bold and splashing when on the opposition side. No man ever was more changed by the move. In private life he is agreeable, mild, courteous and well bred, and more modest than perhaps beseems a cabinet minister ... He has not much general information but he is well skilled in figures and very practical in his views. Lord Althorp does not approve of his opposition to Peel’s bill, but I fear Ld. A could not write so well on the subject as Graham has.147

Patronage requests, Torrens’s unauthorized absence, voter registration and resignation threats by Brougham and Smith Stanley, which he tried to avert, preoccupied Graham before the general election that month, when he stood jointly as a Liberal for Cumberland East with Blamire and came in unopposed, advocating ‘some protection for agriculture’, and was criticized over the ‘economy’, ‘retrenchment’ and ‘the Dutch war’.148

He resigned from the cabinet with Smith Stanley in April 1834 over the Irish church question, kept his Cumberland seat at the general election of 1835, but lost it in 1837 following his defection to the Conservatives with the ‘Dilly’. Seats were found for him at Pembroke Boroughs, Dorchester and Ripon in the next three Parliaments. As rector of Glasgow University, 1838-40, he organized the Scottish Conservatives and opposed the church seceders. ‘Frenetic’ as home secretary ‘Paul Pry’ in Peel’s second ministry, he had to contend with social unrest, Chartism and the campaign for Irish home rule. He resigned with Peel from the Carlton Club over the repeal of the corn laws, came in for Carlisle as a Liberal in 1852 and returned to the admiralty as first lord in Lord Aberdeen’s coalition ministry. He resigned, embittered, from Palmerston’s administration in 1855 rather than face inquiry into the Sebastapol defeat, in which he was implicated. He remained an important political figure and a Liberal until he died of a heart attack at Netherby in October 1861. He had been predeceased in 1857 by his wife, and was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by his eldest son Frederick Ulric Graham (1820-88). His will was proved in London, 12 Nov. 1861.149 Devout and an Evangelical to the last, he was also a leading freemason. He rarely attended personally to the business of his province, but his funeral at Arthuret was celebrated with full Masonic honours.150 Heeding the contemporary condemnation he evoked, Graham’s obituarists recalled him as a fluent but pompous debater and able and hard working administrator and statesman whose ‘frequent changes of party prevented him from enjoying the confidence of any’.151 Historians, however, have contrasted his personal shortcomings with his pragmatism and analytical grasp of policy and management, and portrayed him as a major force in creating and dismantling ministries.152

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Margaret Escott

Notes

See T.M. Torrens, Life and Times of Sir James Graham (1863); H. Lonsdale, Worthies of Cumb. ii (1868); C.S. Parker, Life and Letters of Sir James Graham (1907), whose annotated partial transcripts of Graham’s correspondence contain many inaccuracies; A.B Erickson, Political Career of Sir James Graham (1952); J.T. Ward, Sir James Graham (1967).

• 1. Harriette Wilson’s Mems. (1929 edn.), 68, 70.
• 2. Oxford DNB.
• 3. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 53-54; Carlisle Jnl. 16 Oct.; The Times, 18 Oct. 1819.
• 4. Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 7 Feb.; Castle Howard mss, Morpeth to wife, 8 Feb., 7, 9, 11, 14 Mar.; Northumb. RO, Middleton mss ZM1/S76/29/4; 35/1-5; Add. 52444, f. 99; Ward, 37-38.
• 5. NLS mss 5319, f. 195.
• 6. The Times, 10 Aug. 1820.
• 7. Sir James Graham mss (IHR microfilm XR 80), 1, bdle. 1, Graham to Lyndhurst, 21 Aug.; Whitehaven Gazette, 13, 20 Nov. 1820.
• 8. The Times, 10 Apr. 1821.
• 9. Ward, 40-41; TNA E197/1, p. 285.
• 10. Ward, 41-42.
• 11. Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 3 Mar. 1822.
• 12. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, W. Vizard to Graham, 20 Dec. 1822; Torrens, i. 164-5.
• 13. Ward, 50-62; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, Graham-Yule corresp.; Carlisle Jnl. 11 Aug., 29 Sept. 1821; D.J.W. Mawson, ‘Agricultural Lime Burning: The Netherby Example’, Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. (ser. 2), lxxx (1980), 137-51; D. Spring, ‘Netherby under Sir James Graham’, Agricultural Hist. xxix (1955), 73-81.
• 14. Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 22 Mar.; Carlisle Jnl. 26 Mar., 2 Apr.; Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 25 July, 22 Aug. 1825, W. Brougham to Graham, 16 Feb. 1826.
• 15. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, Graham to Yule, 5, 15, 18 May; Carlisle Jnl. 6, 13 May, 10, 17, 24 June; The Times, 16 May 1826.
• 16. Reading Univ. Archives, Printing coll. (Folio 324.4285 SQU), Carlisle Elections, ff. 28-33; Carlisle Patriot, 10, 17 June 1826.
• 17. Lonsdale mss, Beckett to Lonsdale, 25 June 1826.
• 18. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, Graham to Yule, 15 May; The Times, 12 July 1826; B. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 270.
• 19. Add. 51542.
• 20. The Times, 9 Dec. 1826.
• 21. JRL, Bromley Davenport mss, Graham to Davenport, 31 Dec. 1826.
• 22. The Times, 14 Dec. 1826, 17, 22 Feb., 20, 22 Mar. 1827; Add. 40318, f. 1.
• 23. CJ, lxxxii. 122, 315, 427, 558.
• 24. The Times, 20 Feb. 1827.
• 25. Canning’s Ministry, 266.
• 26. The Times, 8 June 1827.
• 27. Cockburn Letters, 172; The Times, 12 June 1827.
• 28. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, Graham to Rooke, 29 June 1827.
• 29. Broughton, Recollections, iii. 208; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 22, 26 July; Carlisle Jnl. 28 July, 18 Aug. 1827.
• 30. Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 10 Sept. 1827.
• 31. Add. 51542, Graham to Lady Holland, 10 Sept.; 69366, Greville to Fortescue, 15 Sept. 1827.
• 32. Bromley Davenport mss, Graham to Davenport, 21 Aug. 1827.
• 33. Castle Howard mss, Abercromby to Carlisle [Oct. 1827].
• 34. NLS mss 24749, f. 42.
• 35. Broughton, iii. 283.
• 36. Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 24 Mar. 1828.
• 37. Broughton, iii. 283.
• 38. CJ, lxxxiii. 139, 153, 202, 431.
• 39. The Times, 27 Mar. 1828.
• 40. Wellington mss WP1/940/18.
• 41. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, Graham to Yule, 17 May 1828; CJ, lxxxiii. 364, 382, 477, 509, 517, 537, 534.
• 42. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, Graham to Smith Stanley, 15 July 1828.
• 43. Add. 40320, f. 51.
• 44. Palmerston-Sulivan Letters, 211-12; Add. 51542, Graham to Holland, 4 Nov.; 51564, Brougham to Lady Holland, 13 Aug.; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 2, Graham to Brougham, 8 Oct. 1828; NLS mss 24770, ff. 23, 29.
• 45. Cumb. Pacquet, 16 Dec. 1828.
• 46. Castle Howard mss, Abercromby to Carlisle, 14 Dec., Lady Carlisle to same, 19 Dec.; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 15 Dec.; Cumb. Pacquet, 23, 30 Dec. 1828, 6 Jan. 1829.
• 47. Lonsdale mss, Abercromby to Lonsdale, 21 Jan., Benn to same, 24 Jan.; Carlisle Jnl. 17 Jan. 1829.
• 48. Lowther to Lonsdale, 4 Feb.; Cumb. Pacquet, 3, 17 Feb. 1829.
• 49. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 290, 293.
• 50. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 18-19, 60; NLS mss 24770, f. 35.
• 51. Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 6 Oct. 1829, Crackenthorpe to same, 9 Feb. 1830; Lonsdale, iv. 287; Carlisle Jnl. 23, 30 Jan.; Cumb. Pacquet, 26 Jan. 2 Feb.; Lonsdale mss, bdle. on 1830 Cumb. meeting.
• 52. Grey mss, Durham to Grey, 8 Feb. 1830; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Portland mss PwH 149; Broughton, iv. 8.
• 53. Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 11 Feb., Howick jnl. 12 Feb., Durham to Grey, 13 Feb. 1830; Greville Mems. i. 37; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 334.
• 54. Howick jnl. 11, 12 Mar. 1830.
• 55. Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss, Littleton to Sneyd, 24 Feb. 1830; A. Mitchell, Whigs in Opposition, 222-8.
• 56. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 201.
• 57. Castle Howard mss, Graham to Morpeth [3 Mar.]; Howick jnl. 12 Mar. 1830; Mitchell, 227; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 344.
• 58. Hatherton mss, Huskisson to Littleton [May 1830].
• 59. Add. 51564, Brougham to Lady Holland [13 May] 1830; Croker Pprs. ii. 62; Ward, 85; N. Gash, Secretary Peel, 613-15; Hopetoun mss 167, f. 142; Wellington mss WP1/1166/8; Broughton, iv. 8; Greville Mems. ii. 77.
• 60. Add. 56554, f. 98; Broughton, iv. 21.
• 61. Howick jnl. 13-15 May 1830
• 62. NLS mss 24770, f. 50.
• 63. Howick jnl. 7, 12 June 1830.
• 64. Ibid. 28 June 1830; Broughton, iv. 36.
• 65. Add. 40340, f. 226.
• 66. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 3.
• 67. Ibid. Palmerston to Graham, 25 July, 4 Aug.; Castle Howard mss, Graham to Morpeth, 31 July; Carlisle Jnl. 31 July, 7, 14 Aug.; Hants RO, Carnarvon mss 75M91/L3, H. Howard to Lady Porchester, 9 Aug.; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 16 Aug. 1830.
• 68. J.R. McQuiston, ‘Lonsdale Connection and its Defender’ Northern Hist. xi (1975), 176; Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 16 Aug. [1830].
• 69. Add. 61937, ff. 116, 118; Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 1 Sept. 1830; Cockburn Letters, 239-42.
• 70. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 3, Huskisson to Graham, 26 Aug.; Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 1, 7 Sept. 1830.
• 71. Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham; Grey mss, Durham to Grey, 4 Oct.; Lansdowne mss, Macdonald to Lansdowne, 22 Oct. 1830.
• 72. Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 28 Oct. 1830.
• 73. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 3, Warrender to Lansdowne, 21 Sept.; Howick jnl. 7 Nov. 1830; Mitchell, 242-3.
• 74. Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 1 Nov.; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 3, same to same, 2 Nov.; Add. 51564, Brougham to Lady Holland [8 Nov.]; Broughton, iv. 60; Agar Ellis diary, 12 Nov. 1830; Mitchell, 243-4.
• 75. Add. 56555, f. 45.
• 76. Howick jnl. 6 Nov. 1830.
• 77. Wellington mss WP1/1150/20, 23; 1151/9; R.N. Shutte, Life of Phillpotts (1863), i. 283-9; Grey mss, Grey-Van Mildert corresp. Oct.-Dec. 1830.
• 78. Oxford DNB; Northumb. RO, Blackett-Ord (Whitfield) mss 324/A/36; Erickson, 78-80; Greville Mems. ii. 75, 75; Ward, 96; Add. 51575, Abercromby to Holland, 19 Nov. 1830.
• 79. M.D. George, Cat. of Pol. and Personal Satires, xi. 16395.
• 80. Greville Mems. ii. 88.
• 81. D. Howell-Thomas, Duncannon, 143-5; Reid, Lord Durham, i. 216; M. Brock, Great Reform Act, 136.
• 82. Carlisle Elections, ff. 202-4; Carlisle Jnl. 27 Nov., 11 Dec. 1830.
• 83. Add. 51569, Ord to Lady Holland, 21 Dec. 1830.
• 84. Gash, Politics in Age of Peel, 39; Cockburn Letters, 274-5.
• 85. Arbuthnot Corresp. 140; Sir James Graham mss 1 bdle. 3, Western to Graham, 26 Dec. 1830.
• 86. Castle Howard mss, Graham to Morpeth, 24 Jan. 1831; Lambton mss, same to Durham, 27 Jan.; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 3, Palmerston to Graham, 31 Jan.; TNA GD30/29, Holland to Granville, 1 Feb. 1831.
• 87. Three Diaries, 46; Greville Mems. ii. 112-13.
• 88. Three Diaries, 54; The Times, 22 Feb.; Cumb. Pacquet, 1 Mar. 1831.
• 89. Three Diaries, 58; Greville Mems. ii. 118.
• 90. St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne-Gladstone mss, 197, T. to J. Gladstone, 17, 19 Feb. 1831.
• 91. Ward, 123; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 4, Graham to Palmerston, 11 Jan. 1831; Wellington mss WP1/1157/8, 12; 1173/2.
• 92. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 4, Graham to Grey, 24 Jan. 1831.
• 93. Ibid. same to same, 28 Jan., 2, 4 Feb.; Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 7 Mar. 1831.
• 94. PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/27, Smith Stanley to Anglesey, 28 Feb. 1831; Add. 34614, f. 119; Baring Jnls. 82.
• 95. Gurney diary, 28 Mar. 1831.
• 96. NLW, Coedymaen mss 476; Lansdowne mss, proposals for the English, Irish and Scottish bills, 15 Jan. 1831; Brougham mss, Russell to Brougham, 15 Nov. 1837.
• 97. Lansdowne mss, Duncannon, Durham, Graham and Russell to Grey, 14 Jan.; Lambton mss, Graham to Durham, 27 Jan. 1831.
• 98. TNA 30/12/7/6.
• 99. Carlisle Jnl. 5 Feb. 1831.
• 100. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 3, Graham to Grey, 17 Feb. 1831.
• 101. Bunbury Mem. 160; Glynne-Gladstone mss 197, T. to J. Gladstone, 9 Mar.; NLS mss 24748, f. 120; Three Diaries, 65-66; Greville Mems. ii. 127; Russell Letters, ii. 328; Agar Ellis diary, 25 Mar. 1831.
• 102. Add. 51542, Graham to Holland, 15 Mar. 1831.
• 103. Hopetoun mss 167, f. 257; Baring Jnls. 85.
• 104. Southampton Univ. Lib. Broadlands mss, Graham to Palmerston, 18 Apr. 1831; E.A. Wasson, Whig Renaissance, 212.
• 105. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, memo. 22 Apr. 1831.
• 106. Cumb. Pacquet, 15 Feb.-29 Mar.; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, Browne-Graham corresp. 4 Apr.-1 May, Graham to Rev. E. Stanley, 11 Apr.; The Times, 28, 29 Apr. 1831.
• 107. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, Graham to Grey, 5 May; 80/29, bdle. re Cumb. Election, Blamire-Graham corresp. 25 Apr.-1 May and undated; The Times, 10-12, 24 May 1831; Northumb. RO, Hope-Wallace mss ZHW/2/14.
• 108. Wellington mss WP1/1207/1; Greville Mems. ii. 147; The Times, 30, 31 May, 2 June; Sir James Graham mss 29, bdle. re. Cumb. Election, Wilson to Graham, 31 May, 1, 2 June, Graham to Rooke, 18 June 1831; A. Aspinall, Politics and the Press, 367.
• 109. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, Richmond to Graham, 2, 3 June 1831.
• 110. Ibid. Graham to Galloway, 20 May 1831.
• 111. Macaulay Letters, ii. 16; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, Graham to Grey, 5, 7 June, to Stanley, 31 May, 6 June 1831; Ward, 112.
• 112. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, Richmond to Graham, 2 June; Cockburn Letters, 288; Hatherton diary, 29 June 1831.
• 113. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, Graham to Grey, 17 June 1831.
• 114. Baring Jnls. 88.
• 115. Hatherton diary, 29 June 1831.
• 116. TCD, Shapland Carew mss 4020/28.
• 117. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 5, Graham to Grey, 28 June 1831.
• 118. Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham 21 Sept.; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 6, Graham to Grey, 25 Sept. 1831.
• 119. Holland House Diaries, 51, 54, 60; Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 6, Graham to Grey, 28 Sept. 1831.
• 120. Holland House Diaries, 51, 59; Herts. Archives, Panshanger mss D/Elb, Palmerston to Melbourne, 3 Sept. 1831.
• 121. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 6, Graham to Grey, 22 Aug.; 29, bdle. re Cumb. Election, Graham-Lawson corresp. 25, 29, 31 Aug. 1831.
• 122. See Wasson, 234 on Graham’s relative silence in debate.
• 123. The Times, 22 Oct. 1831.
• 124. Sir James Graham mss 1, bdle. 6, Graham to Grey, 8, 17 Oct., Smith Stanley to Graham, 27 Oct. 1831.
• 125. Broadlands mss PP/GC/RI/11.
• 126. Holland House Diaries, 80-81; Add. 51542, Graham to Lord Holland, 14 Nov. 1831; Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 1.
• 127. Add. 76373.
• 128. Carlisle Jnl. 19 Nov. 1831, 7 Jan. 1832; Carlisle Patriot, 19 Nov., 10 Dec.; Sir James Graham mss 29, bdle. re Cumb. Election, Mounsey-Graham corresp. Oct.-Nov. 1831.
• 129. Croker Pprs. ii. 141-2.
• 130. George, xi. 16834; Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 9, Grey-Graham corresp. 10-21 Dec. 1831.
• 131. Hatherton diary, 25 Dec. 1831.
• 132. NLS Acc 6604/1, J. Stewart to Garlies, 20 Dec. 1831, 3 Jan. 1832.
• 133. Three Diaries, 189; Hants RO, Malmesbury mss 9M73/403, Clive to Malmesbury, 4 Feb. 1832.
• 134. Add. 75941, Althorp to Lord Spencer, 17 Mar. 1832.
• 135. Hatherton diary, 29 Jan. 1832.
• 136. Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 9, Graham to Grey, 6, 7, 13 Dec. 1831.
• 137. Hatherton diary, 9 Feb. 1832.
• 138. Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 12, Graham to king, 9 Feb. 1832.
• 139. Ibid. Melville to Graham, 30 Mar. 1831.
• 140. Ibid. Graham to Grey, 21 Dec. 1831; Holland House Diaries, 103, 106.
• 141. Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 9 Jan. 1832; Holland House Diaries, 144.
• 142. Holland House Diaries, 152; Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 10, Graham to Grey, 10 Mar. 1832.
• 143. Three Diaries, 221; Baring Jnls. 94; Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 12, Graham to Grey, 22 Apr. 1832; Greville Mems. ii. 290-1.
• 144. Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 13, Graham to Saul, 11 May, to Lawson, 11 May, Palmerston to Graham, 14 May; Croker Pprs. ii. 169; Grey-William IV Corresp. ii. 418.
• 145. Brougham mss, Buxton to Brougham, 2 Aug. 1832.
• 146. Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 14, Graham to Smith Stanley, 29 July, 16 Aug. 1832.
• 147. Three Diaries, 288-9; Add. 51563, Brougham to Holland Sept. 1832; Broughton, iv. 257.
• 148. Sir James Graham mss 2, bdle. 14, Graham to Wood, 8 Sept., to Smith Stanley 3 Nov.; Cockburn Letters, 428; Brougham mss, Graham to Brougham, 19 Nov., 6, 18 Dec.; Cumb. Pacquet, 25 Dec. 1832; Gash, Politics in Age of Peel, 324.
• 149. Lonsdale, ii. 258.
• 150. K.W. Bond, New Hist. of Freemasonry in Province of Cumb. and Westmld. (1994 edn.), 66-68.
• 151. Ward, pp. xi-xiv; The Times, 26, 28 Oct.; Gent. Mag. (1861), ii. 681-2.
• 152. A.P. Donajgrodzki, ‘Sir James Graham at the Home Office’, HJ, xx (1977), 97-120; Oxford DNB.