We need not stop to repeat the thrice-told tale of the anti-corn-law agitation, or of the potato blight in the autumn of 1846, and its consequences. Enough is done when we state, that from the first appearance of that disease Sir James Graham saw but one remedy for the evil. In the discussions which ensued he ranged himself with Lord Aberdeen and Mr Sidney Herbert on the side of the Premier, and never, as he subsequently declared, gave a vote with greater satisfaction in his life than that which broke up the Peel Government, and dislocated the great party which it had taken years to consolidate. Not very popular at any time either with the Whigs or their rivals; disliked by the former for his desertion on the Irish Church question; distrusted by the latter because of the political creed of his youth,—he now drew down upon his own head an amount of obloquy, more enduring, if not, for the moment, more intense, than that with which the recreant Tory chief was overwhelmed; and the time shortly arrived when, partly on this account, partly because his proud heart rebelled against the dictates of his contemporaries, public life, especially official, if not Parliamentary life, became to him intolerable. We must hurry over what remains to be told of this versatile yet vigorous statesman. When Lord Aberdeen formed his Coalition Cabinet, Sir James Graham returned to the Admiralty, where the Crimean war took him by surprise, as it did all the other members of the Administration. Sir James, however, put a bold face upon the matter, and having selected Sir Charles Napier to command the worst-found and worst-manned fleet that ever quitted the English shores, he sent him, at the worst season of the year, to try what could be done for the destruction of Russian power in the Baltic. It was unfortunate, both for the First Lord and for the Admiral, that the Reform Club chose to give the latter a dinner. The speeches uttered on that occasion, and especially Sir James Graham’s speech, resembled more the pæans of victors after the strife, than the statements of men about to incur the hazard of a campaign; and the abortive issue of the expedition covered both with ridicule. It did more, however, than this. A bitter quarrel ensued, which was prosecuted not very decorously, sometimes in the House of Commons, sometimes through the press, and which had no other result than to damage both parties very seriously in the estimation of the public.