SIR JAMES GRAHAM by the Same Author

SIR JAMES GRAHAM By the same author The Factory Movement, 1830-1855 Sir James Graham §IR JAMES GRAHAM J. T. WARD Palgrave Macmillan 1 9 6 7 © J. T. Ward 1967 Softcover reprint of the hardcocver 1st edition 1967 MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED Little Essex Street London W02 also Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbournt~ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED 70 Bond Street Toronto 2 ST MARTIN'S PRESS INC 175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010 Library of Congress catalog card no 67-18374 ISBN 978-1-349-00079-1 ISBN 978-1-349-00077-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00077-7 TO KAY Contents List of I/Juatrati008 page ix Preface xi .Acknowledgements XIX 1 The Formative Years 1 2 The Making of a Whig 24 s The Agricultural Reformer 46 4 The Political Reformer 71 5 The Reform Minister 97 6 The Break with Whiggism 130 7 The Move to Conservatism 158 8 A Condition of England Minister 184 9 The Policy-Maker 209 10 The Peelite 281 11 The Elder Statesman 259 12 Finale 283 Notes 318 Index 339 Index of .Authors 354 List of Illustrations Sir James Graham frontispiece (from T. M. Torrens: Life and Times of the Rt. Hon. Sir James R. G. Graham) James Graham as a child. Portrait by Raeburn facing page 44 (By kind permission ofSir Fergus Graham and Country Life Ltd.) William Huskisson 61 (T.he Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London) Edward Stanley, Fourteenth Earl of Derby 156 (The Trustees ofthe National Portrait Gallery, London) Sir Robert Peel 173 (The Trustees ofthe National Portrait Gallery, London) W.E. Gladstone ~~ (The Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London) Sidney Herbert ~9 (The Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London) Preface Sir James Graham has never been popular. Throughout a long and varied political career he incurred the suspicion and hostility of journalists, and his changes in party allegiance provoked attacks from assorted groups. To Cobbett, in 1826, he seemed •stupid ... empty-headed ... [and] insolent'; to the Manchester Guardian in 1837 he was a •turn-coat', to the Morning Chronicle in 1841 •a busybody', to Blackwood's Magazine in 1855 •wicked and shameless'. As his nominal affiliations altered so contem poraries adjusted their views. For instance, Disraeli, who ha:l known him socially, found him •eloquent and patriotic' in 1837 and •bitter' in 1844. Graham obviously lacked the hack partisan ship of a Tadpole and Taper, but he agreed with too many of their attitudes for Disraeli's taste. In 1834 Taper had suggested a party cry: 'Ancient institutions and modern improvements, I suppose, Mr. Tadpole?' 'Ameliorations is the better word; ameliorations. Nobody knows exactly what it means.' ' ... The time has gone by for Tory governments. What the country requires is a sound Conservative government.' 'A sound Conservative government,' said Taper, musingly. 'I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.' Suspicions of Graham were heightened by his often vague and sometimes ambiguous support of •amelioration', as well as by his party shortcomings. In 185~ Marx dismissed him and his allies as •perambulant Peel monuments ... nothing but [a] staff of bureaucrats which Robert Peel had schooled for himself'.1 Later historians - making at best imperfect use of his private papers -tended to accept the verdicts of contemporary critics. xii Sir James Graham Graham appears m many books as a cold, calculating man, ruthlessly efficient but devoid of humanity and perhaps of principle. He changed parties, disdained potential allies, haughtily offended opponents and lost some of his closest friends. He never sought popular acclaim and rarely obtained it. He appeared to fear the future and the responsibility of shaping it. His career lacked the dramatic attractions and even glamour of some of his colleagues. Historians, like contemporaries, have observed the contrast between his ability to predict long-term strategic dispositions and his weakness on immediate tactics. Recognition of his talents, however, has always been qualified by other considerations. "I begin to be interested for Aberdeen,' Croker told Herries in August 1853,2 for I see not who is to succeed him. Graham seems to me to stand the most forward for the succession, but what between his boldness of language and timidity in action, I should be afraid, for him and for us, of some great catastrophe; but he is, I think, the cleverest administrator in the Cabinet ... Such feelings sometimes prevented even ostensible friends from expressing sympathy during difficult periods; indeed, the sight of Graham in trouble must have brought vindictive pleasure to many who had suffered his verbal lashings in the House of Commons. In February 1845, when Graham was under bitter attack over the secret opening of letters, a young Yorkshire Conservative, Gathorne Hardy, recorded that3 The personality is extreme and the unfairness to Sir James Graham most abominable. However, there are exceptions on the Opposition side who do him justice. Charles Buller rightly enough said that he seemed to have a love for unpopularity, and certainly there is nothing conciliatory about him. Personal unpopularity dogged Graham through his life and after it. In recent years historians have been increasingly interested in the Victorian administrative revolution, the politics of the mid century party desert and the manceuvres of clique and Cabinet now more fully documented with the opening of many family Preface xiii muniments. It may now be possible to see Graham in a new light, as a statesman who made a considerable contribution to the politics of the age of transformation, the period between Lord Liverpool's post-Napoleonic War regime and the era of Lord Palmerston's dominance. As a young \Vhig he opposed Liverpool's tired Ministry, and as an elder statesman (and •a man of peace') he condemned what he regarded as Palmerston's warlike pro clivities. On both occasions, his views were probably unfair.4 But in virtually every political event for four decades Graham played some part, often an important part. Born into a well-connected but not particularly affluent landowning family, Graham never enjoyed the vast wealth of an Earl of Durham or Derby. He earned neither popularity nor notoriety by lavish hospitality or costly excesses. Youthful wild oats were sown rapidly; at 21 Graham regaled Lord William Bentinck with confessions about his romantic life. Thereafter, Graham did not even have the quality of providing scandalous material for the inquisitive, •liberal-minded' gossips of London society. His neglect of •society' played some part in creating his unpopular public image; the hostesses of the party salons were disappointed at the absence of a handsome politician. The family finances rarely allowed Graham to cut a great figure even in his native county. He was nevertheless prominent in public life, at a time when major changes in both political and constitutional arrangements were being made. As a member of the four-man planning committee, he helped to shape the first Reform Act. His role was at least controversial; Durham's first biographer commented that5 Graham was not exactly a man after Durham's heart, and it was probably in deference to Grey that he was appointed. He was certainly the least progressive member of the quartette, a fact which the political caricaturists of the hour were quick to seize, since they represented him as the man in charge of the brake on the new Reform Coach. The brakeman was, however, highly discriminating in his appli cation of pressure. XIV Sir James Graham Despite periodic •radical' outbursts, however, Graham was generally conservative. He supported the Church, as a patron, as a politician, as a member of the Church estates committee and as a practising Anglican. And he often dreaded the possibility of social revolution and subsequent anarchy. Consequently, working class agitations aroused his immediate concern. During the 184~ riots, for instance, he told the Lord Chancellor that •treason was stalking abroad'; and he believed that •force alone could subdue this rebellious spirit'. He bitterly resented what he considered to be the cowardly inaction of some magistrates and even considered taking action against them. 6 •I am glad that you are residing on your property,' he told Kay-Shuttleworth at this time,7 and I am willing to hope that your influence, good advice and good example may contribute in your neighbourhood to win back the poor deluded workmen from the error of their ways ... I am sure that you will point out to your neighbours the madness of concessions made to threats and open violence. The vision of the squire firmly administering his ancestral estate still attracted Graham; but the country gentry must, of course, be backed up during major troubles by soldiers, yeomanry and policemen. Graham introduced the first plain-clothes section in the Metropolitan Police.8 He supported decorum, tradition and moderation in Church and State, but was prepared strongly to oppose any factor disturbing them. Political Radicalism and religious Tractarianism were both anathema. •The Protestants, weary of abusing the Papists, are disposed to turn semi-Papists themselves,' he complained to Croker in 1844, •... and the Church, which has overcome her Enemies from without, is now in imminent danger from the Feuds within her Pale'.9 Graham was inclined to regret the signs, which he only too often suspected, of major changes in society. He tended to see a deep laid conspiracy behind spontaneous, ill-organised protests against social grievances. The campaigns for legislative reform of factory conditions, symbolic as they were of a wide range of operative opinion, failed to rouse his sympathy; and he never professed to accept the varied panaceas for proletarian misery. In a negative Preface XV way, Graham's VIew on some industrial problems thus accord with those of some •liberal' historians.

Load more