It is a remarkable fact that not even now could Sir James Graham command the attention of the House. His great attention to business, his value on a committee, and his administrative abilities, were very generally acknowledged, but as a speaker he made little or no impression. Even his advocacy of what may be called his own measure was felt to be feeble—a strange medley of confused discussion and turgid enunciations. But the bill had other sources of strength to depend upon than the logic of its Parliamentary supporters. Political unions and conspiracies out of doors did the work, and the King and the House of Lords were forced to accept their own humiliation. First came the dissolution on the 23d of April 1831, a step into which William IV. was coerced by the overbearing insolence of Earl Grey and Lord Chancellor Brougham. Then followed elections wherein brute force bore down all opposition, and by-and-by such an assembly at Westminster as struck terror into the hearts of the Ministers who had brought it together. On the top of that wave Sir James Graham was again borne into Parliament—a colleague being given to him of opinions far more advanced than his own. So it befell in the borough of Carlisle, so also in the neighbouring county of Westmoreland. It is quite certain that Sir James Graham did not contemplate the crisis, which he had helped to bring on, without alarm. “We have ventured,” he says, speaking of himself and his colleagues, “to drive nearer the brink than any other statesman ever did before; but we did so because aware that if we let go the reins the horses would be maddened into plunging headlong into the abyss, where extrication would be impossible.”