of the Irish Poor Inquiry Commissioners’ (Parl. Papers, 1836, xxxiv. 427–642). On 4 June 1834 he became a member of the commission of inquiry into the state of religious and other instruction in Ireland (ib. 1835, vols. xxxiii. xxxiv.). At the desire of the chancellor of the exchequer (Thomas Spring Rice) Lewis, in July 1836, wrote his ‘Remarks on the Third Report of the Irish Poor Inquiry Commissioners,’ &c. (London, 1837, 8vo; also printed in vol. li. of the ‘Parliamentary Papers’ for 1837, pp. 253–290). Lewis disagreed with the recommendations of the commissioners, and in a letter to Sir Edmund Head declared that ‘their utter misconception of the entire subject, both the state of Ireland and the English poor law, is less provoking than the impudent way in which they beg the question while professing to argue it’ (Letters, p. 54).
On 10 Sept. 1836 he was appointed joint-commissioner with John Austin (1790–1859) [q. v.] to inquire into the affairs of Malta, where he spent eighteen months in reporting on the condition of the island, and proposed various changes in the laws (Parl. Papers, 1838 vol. xxix., 1839 vol. xvii.). He returned to England in May 1838, and in January 1839 succeeded his father as one of the poor-law commissioners for England and Wales. This post, which was both a difficult and a thankless one, Lewis held for more than seven years. The board was attacked on all sides, and while the local authorities protested that it interfered too much, the philanthropists declared that it did too little. The difficulties of the board, moreover, were intensified by the want of a representative in parliament (Letters, pp. 149–151), as well as by the action of its secretary, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edwin Chadwick, who was the chief opponent of the policy of the commissioners. Matters were at length brought to a crisis by the report of the select committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the administration of the poor laws in the Andover union, and into the management of the union workhouse (Parl. Papers, 1846, vol. v. pts. i. ii.) This report cast a slur upon the conduct of the commissioners, who replied to the charges made against them in ‘Letters addressed … to the Secretary of State respecting the Transaction of the Business of the Commission’ (London, 1847, 8vo). In the same year (1846) Lewis filed a criminal information against W. B. Ferrand, M.P. for Knaresborough, for a libel charging him with conspiracy and falsehood in connection with the Keighley union inquiry in 1842. The rule was made absolute on 24 Nov., but it would appear that the action was never brought to trial. In consequence of the general dissatisfaction with the board, a bill was brought in by the government for remodelling the commission (10 & 11 Vict. c. 109), and Lewis resigned office in July 1847.
At the general election in August 1847 Lewis was returned to the House of Commons for Herefordshire in the Liberal interest, and in November following was appointed one of the secretaries to the board of control in Lord John Russell's first administration. He spoke for the first time in the House of Commons on 26 Nov. 1847 (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. xcv. 254–5), and on 4 May 1848 supported the third reading of the Jewish Disabilities Removal Bill (ib. xcviii. 631–3, 668). On 15 May 1848 he became under-secretary for the home department, and in the following year endeavoured without success to carry through the house a bill for the abolition of turnpike trusts and the management of highways by a mixed county board (ib. cii. 1339–45, 1364, ciii. 417–30, 441). In 1850 his Highways Bill, from which all reference to the turnpike trusts had been omitted (ib. cviii. 746–9), met with no better success.
In May and June 1850 he was examined before the select committee of the House of Lords appointed to consider the laws relating to parochial assessments. His evidence, which was of a very comprehensive character, was reprinted from the report (Parl. Papers, 1850, vol. xvi.) as a separate pamphlet (London, 1850, 8vo). On 9 July 1850 Lewis became financial secretary to the treasury, an office which he retained until Lord John Russell's downfall in February 1852. In September 1851 Lewis was entrusted with Lord John Russell's proposals to Sir James Robert George Graham [q. v.], but the negotiations were unsuccessful (Greville Memoirs, pt. ii. vol. iii. pp. 411–12). He lost his seat for Herefordshire at the general election in July 1852, and in November following unsuccessfully contested Peterborough, where he was defeated by G. H. Whalley by fifteen votes. In December 1852 Lewis accepted the post of editor of the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ in succession to William Empson [q. v.], but the first number really edited by him did not appear until April 1853 (Letters, p. 261). In 1853 he went up to Oxford to examine for the Ireland scholarship, and in the summer of the same year refused the offer of the governorship of Bombay. On the death of his father in January 1855 Lewis succeeded to the baronetcy, and in the following month to his father's seat for the Radnor boroughs, for which he was returned without opposition, and which he
