sion of 1843 he introduced a factories act, of which the education clauses were opposed by the nonconformists; again he failed to be sufficiently conciliatory, and the clauses had to be withdrawn. Similarly a bill for the reform of ecclesiastical courts had to be abandoned, because he failed to consider vested interests. Nor was he more successful in dealing with Irish affairs. An utterance of his that ‘concession to Ireland had reached its limits’ caused great ill feeling, and the arrest and trial of O'Connell were carried out in a manner which many considered to be needlessly arbitrary. Graham became increasingly unpopular; he was regarded as an intolerable coxcomb.
The session of 1844 produced an incident which has made Graham's name most widely known. On 14 June Mr. Duncombe presented a petition from W. J. Linton, Joseph Mazzini, and others, complaining that their letters had been opened in the post office. Graham admitted that, as home secretary, he had, in accordance with a statute of Anne, issued a warrant authorising this to be done. Perhaps his reticence in explaining fully the circumstances was one cause of the storm of popular indignation which immediately arose. As a matter of fact Graham had done nothing more than previous home secretaries; he had not acted on his own motion, but at the request of the foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, who thought it his duty to help foreign governments by discovering plots which were being hatched in England. But Lord Aberdeen held his tongue, and allowed the whole storm to burst on Graham, whose sensitive nature winced under the attacks which came from all sides, and of which the cartoons in ‘Punch’ are abiding memorials. The matter was ultimately referred to a secret committee of nine, which reported fully to the house. Several attempts were made to do away with the power of opening letters, but they were unsuccessful. The power still remains in the hands of the home secretary, but Graham's case is likely to be a lesson enforcing prudence. The whole matter was justly damaging to the government, but unduly damaging to Graham's reputation. He was made a scapegoat, and used to say in later days that when all else that he had done was forgotten he would be remembered in connection with this miserable affair of the post office.
In the session of 1845 the home secretary did not introduce any measures of importance; but the vacation brought proofs of a disease in potatoes and the imminence of a famine in Ireland. Graham joined Sir Robert Peel in his opinion that the duty on imported corn would have to be abandoned; he said that ‘the sliding scale would neither slide nor move, and that was its condemnation.’ He frankly avowed his entire change of opinion, and suffered much from his consequent severance from Lord Stanley, with whom he had lived in close intimacy for twelve years. He had to supervise the measures taken for the relief of the Irish famine, especially the administration of the poor law. In March he introduced a bill for the protection of life in Ireland, a bill which aimed at putting down agrarian crime. This bill was defeated on the second reading, and Sir Robert Peel resigned in June 1846.
Again Graham found himself a member of a small party of dissentients. The tories could not forgive him for abandoning protection, and he was not prepared to join the whigs. The small band of Peelites sat on the opposition side of the house, and were useful only as impartial critics. In 1847 Lord John Russell offered Graham the governor-generalship of India, a post which had been offered him by Lord Melbourne in 1834, and again by Sir Robert Peel. He had refused it before for family reasons; he was now determined that the whigs should not get him out of their way. It was thought that he would have difficulty in finding a seat in the new parliament, but by Lord de Grey's influence he was elected for Ripon.
Graham now showed a disposition to help Lord John Russell's government; in fact, he was offered the admiralty in 1848, but declined through fear of a difference on public policy. He did good work on committees and on commissions, where his capacity for business, his attention to detail, and his skill in examining witnesses made him exceedingly useful. The death of Sir Robert Peel in 1850 left him the most prominent man among the Peelites, and he did good service in resisting Disraeli's attempts to restore protection. When a ministerial crisis occurred in February 1851, Lord John Russell endeavoured to gain Graham's assistance in forming a ministry; but Graham was unable to assent to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which was then before the house. However, the negotiations led to a reconciliation between the two statesmen, and when the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was passed Graham was offered the presidency of the board of control. This he declined, as he thought that the existing government would not long continue in office, and he did not feel called upon to accept a subordinate post to save it.
In 1852 Lord Derby came into office, and Graham thereupon took his place on the opposition benches. In the election of that
