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.