GRANT, Charles (1778-1866), of Waternish, Skye and Glenelg, Inverness

Grant, a lanky, sandy-haired man with a long, lugubrious pale face, which the American artist Newton likened to ‘a first sitting to a painter - large outline and extreme whiteness’, was described by Tom Macaulay*, who greatly liked him, as ‘a languid politician’, but ‘d’ailleurs le meilleur des hommes’. Macaulay’s sister Margaret depicted him in 1832 as

the perfect model of a gentleman. High-minded, and most highly principled, intellectual, cultivated, with a retiring manner and a countenance expressive of all these qualities, and of something more interesting still. It might be the expression of a very elevated and refined mind that regarded with contempt the struggles and paltry objects of the men who surround him and that had itself suffered much from the necessity of bending to the drudgery and details of life and sometimes to its littlenesses. Highland Lady, 273; Add. 52447, f. 74; Macaulay Letters, ii. 266; Margaret Macaulay, Recollections, 235.

He had talent and was capable of stirring oratory, but he was notoriously idle and a by-word for unpunctuality. Three Diaries, 307; Holland House Diaries, 213; Greville Mems. i. 356. The product of an Evangelical upbringing by his formidable father, a member of the Clapham Sect, he was nevertheless ‘very liberal and tolerant’ and a staunch supporter of Catholic claims. B. Hilton, Age of Atonement, 226; Macaulay Letters, ii. 144.

His natural charm and ‘amiable disposition’ went down well in Ireland, where he had succeeded Peel as chief secretary in 1818; but his administrative shortcomings were made all the more blatant by his predecessor’s efficiency, and in the disturbed state of the country he eventually became something of a liability. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1394; Lord Teignmouth, Reminiscences, i. 170; N. Gash, Secretary Peel, 367; G. Broeker, Rural Disorder and Police Reform in Ireland, 105-6; B. Jenkins, Era of Emancipation, ch.5. In late 1819 his liberal instincts prompted him to urge on the premier Lord Liverpool a substantial application of public money to promote employment of the Irish poor, but the English treasury was hostile and nothing was done. B. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 84-85; Add. 38282, ff. 43, 74, 314. As agrarian violence and disorder worsened in the west in the winter of 1819-20, Grant found himself at odds with the lord lieutenant, Lord Talbot, and the home secretary, Lord Sidmouth, in opposing any significant increase in the military presence, preferring the use of an expanded police force, supported by troops as necessary, though he conceded at the end of February that things were so bad in Galway that if Parliament had not been on the verge of dissolution following the death of George III it would have been ‘well worth trying to pass the Insurrection Act’. His views generally prevailed, but Sidmouth was vexed by his failure to keep the home office fully informed of developments. Broeker, 110-16; Add. 38458, f. 298. His re-election for Inverness-shire, where he had been returned in 1818 in succession to his father, was not challenged. Giving thanks, he defended the government’s recent legislation to curb popular unrest, fomented by ‘doctrines nearly allied to those principles which had the disastrous merit of convulsing France with revolution and Europe with war’, and attributed the tranquillity of the Highlands to the influence of religion and the benevolence of a resident gentry. NAS GD23/6/745/124, 127-9, 131; Inverness Courier, 9 Mar., 13 Apr. 1820.

Grant defended the size of the viceroy’s salary, 17 May 1820. He acquiesced in the introduction of Parnell’s bill to regulate the removal of Irish paupers from England, 14 June, when he joined in tributes to the dead Henry Grattan I*, though the Whig Member Sir James Mackintosh thought he ‘spoke ill’. Add. 52444, f. 151. He welcomed the government’s advance of £500,000 to relieve distress caused by Irish bank failures and praised the ‘temper and patience’ of the people, 16 June. When Peel’s friend James Daly moved for inquiry into the Irish disturbances and the need for additional powers, Grant, in ‘a Whiggish speech much applauded’ by opposition (whose Commons leader George Tierney commented to Mackintosh that Grant ‘never would be a speaker’), described the Insurrection Act as ‘the worst mode of meeting the evil’ and argued that two centuries of British injustice could only be redressed by conciliation. Broughton, Recollections, ii. 129; Hatherton diary, 28 June [1820]; Add. 52444, f. 180. He allowed Parnell to introduce a bill to reform Irish tithes, 5 July; Mackintosh reckoned that ‘the furious Orange faction in Ireland are straining every nerve to drive ... [him] out of office’. Add. 52444, f. 187. By September 1820 he had changed his attitude towards the Irish peace preservation force, whose ‘frightful’ increase in size and cost had dampened his enthusiasm; but his plan for an alternative rural police force made no progress. In early January 1821 he had to report to Sidmouth that Ireland exhibited ‘many symptoms of the disorders incident to a country without an adequate system of civil authority’, but Talbot saw no cause for alarm and nothing new was done. Broeker, 117-19.

Grant led the ministerial opposition to Lord John Russell’s motion for inquiry into the conduct of the sheriff of Dublin at a meeting in support of Queen Caroline, which was defeated by 124-90, 22 Jan. 1821. His speech of 28 Feb. in support of Catholic relief as part of the Union settlement originally envisaged by Pitt was ‘much cheered’; the radical Whig Henry Grey Bennet* thought it ‘excellent’ and, though ‘bad, coarse and vulgar in manner’, indicative of ‘a vigorous and comprehensive understanding, with a large stock of sound and honest principles’. Hunts. RO, Manchester mss M10 A/3/35; HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 28; Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 28 Feb. [1821]. Next day he promised a bill to implement the recommendations of the Irish education commissioners, but none was forthcoming. On 12 Mar. he asserted that Ireland was ‘in a state of tranquillity’, yet argued that reduction of its military establishment must be gradual. Although he moved the reduced grant of £20,000 for Irish Protestant charter schools, 15 June, he admitted that it did not have his ‘unqualified approbation’ and that Hume was right to say that the schools had ‘completely failed’. He said he would reconsider the size of the grant for publishing Irish government proclamations, 28 June 1821.

After doing his duty during the king’s visit to Ireland in August 1821, Grant found time to attend and chair the Inverness-shire Michaelmas head court, where steps were taken to strengthen his interest. NAS GD23/6/745/151; Inverness Courier, 4 Oct. 1821. On his return to Ireland he found Munster in a state of turmoil, which threatened to run out of control. In late October John Croker*, secretary to the admiralty, who had earlier joked with the hard-up Henry Goulburn* about the idle Grant’s ‘laying by £4,000 a year out of’ a post which Goulburn had turned down for financial reasons in 1818, told the Grenvillite William Fremantle* that

Ireland was going to the devil, in consequence of Grant’s indolence. I said, ‘Surely he is a Catholic, and that suits our views’. His answer was, ‘Yes, that’s true; but he thinks of nothing but devotion; he is a Saint, and can and will do no business whatever. The government of Ireland must be changed, or the country will go to the devil’. Croker Pprs. i. 189; Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV, i. 213.

Talbot, having reluctantly acquiesced in Sidmouth’s insistence on an increase in the Irish military force, called out, with the home secretary’s approval, 3,000 members of the Ulster yeomanry. He did not consult Grant, who, fearing that their notorious Orangeism would make matters worse, cancelled the orders to the Ulster units. Sidmouth was furious, and although Talbot at first backed Grant, he partially gave way to pressure from London. Grant, however, remained resolutely opposed to using the yeomanry. Broeker, 119-22; PRO NI D4100/3/12, Gregory to Talbot, 21 Nov. 1821. In early December 1821 Thomas Wallace II*, vice-president of the board of trade and head of the revenue commission, told Liverpool that there was ‘a loud clamour against Grant’ in Ireland, which he considered unjustified; but by then the cabinet had decided to recall both him and Talbot as part of a general reshuffle which involved taking in the Grenvillites and replacing Sidmouth with Peel. According to Liverpool, Talbot, who was succeeded by Lord Wellesley, blamed Grant for this humiliation. Grant’s successor was the staunch Protestant Goulburn. He was seen to be ‘in absolute disgrace’, and Liverpool did nothing to soothe his wounded feelings beyond assuring him that while there were ‘insurmountable difficulties at the present moment in the way of any official proposal’, he would be given another office at ‘the earliest opportunity’. He may have been offered a place at the India board under the Grenvillite Charles Williams Wynn* in January 1822, but if so he declined it, preferring to meet the anticipated parliamentary call for inquiry into Irish affairs ‘in an independent character than as an office man’. Gash, 367; Buckingham, i. 227-8, 273; HMC Bathurst, 522, 525; Hobhouse Diary, 80-81; Add. 38290, ff. 108, 113; 38743, f. 60; 51574, Abercromby to Holland [Dec. 1821]; NLW, Coedymaen mss 615; Lansdowne mss, Mackintosh to Lansdowne, 28 Dec. 1821, Spring Rice to same, 28 Jan. 1822.

In the House, 7 Feb. 1822, he reluctantly acquiesced in the introduction of the Irish insurrection bill, to mark his confidence in the pro-Catholic Wellesley, but he called for remedial measures, including a ‘complete revision’ of tithes, on which he subsequently sought reliable information. Goulburn thought he gave the ministry ‘a very fair and honourable support’, but the backbencher Hudson Gurney perceived the speech as being ‘dead against’ them. Add. 37298, f. 158; TCD, Jebb mss 6396/147, 149; Gurney diary, 7 Feb. 1822. Grant voted with government against more extensive tax reductions, 21 Feb. At a cross-party meeting of a few leading advocates of Catholic relief, 16 Apr., he was inclined to think that ‘the general motion had better have been brought forward’, but he deferred to the opinion of William Plunket*, the Irish attorney-general, in favour of postponement. Buckingham, i. 314; Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland, 16 Apr. 1822. He made a splash on 22 Apr. with his speech (later published) on the Irish Whig Newport’s motion for inquiry into the state of Ireland, which he opposed as an implied censure of the government, while agreeing with virtually all Newport had said: he urged Irish landlords to assist tenants to improve and advocated reform of the ‘cardinal evil’ of tithes collection and of the police, magistracy and education, to be executed in ‘a spirit of persevering kindness’. Williams Wynn told the duke of Buckingham, who was impressed by Grant’s effort, that it was

excellent, better than I ever before hard from him, but I do not believe ... any ... lord lieutenant would like him as a secretary, as his warmest friends admit his inefficiency and idleness. His total neglect of his correspondence with this country, after repeated friendly admonition, was really inexcusable.

Yet Mackintosh, who regarded the ‘heavy speech’ as ‘an able and liberal dissertation’, thought he acted ‘shabbily’ in voting against the motion. Buckingham, i. 317-18; Bucks. RO, Fremantle mss D/FR/46/10/31; Add. 52445, f. 78; Agar Ellis diary, 22 Apr. [1822]. Grant breakfasted with the Whig Thomas Spring Rice* on 9 May, when Maria Edgeworth noted the ‘sense and goodness, feeling and indolence in his face’. Edgeworth Letters, 402. On 7 June he made what Mackintosh considered ‘a most wise, eloquent and honest speech’ against the second reading of the government’s Irish constables bill, which he condemned as unconstitutional; the measure was significantly modified. Add. 37299, f. 238; 52445, f. 87; Broeker, 145-6. He objected to the grant of £10,000 for the erection of the Scottish national monument on Calton Hill at a time when several Highland parishes had no church, 16 July, but he divided with government for the Canada bill, 18 July 1822.

There was speculation that Grant, one of the ‘dissatisfied’, as Croker called him, would receive office when Canning rejoined the ministry as foreign secretary in August 1822, but nothing came of it. Huskisson Pprs. 142; Add. 40319, f. 57; 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland, 23 Aug. [1823]; 52445, f. 104. At the Inverness-shire Michaelmas head court, which he chaired, he tried to assuage alarm over the impending reduction in the barilla duty, explained that he and other Scottish Members had at least persuaded ministers to delay it for three months and promised to continue monitoring the problem. Inverness Jnl. 3 Oct. 1822. He rejected the Holland House Whig Whishaw’s attempt to entice him to stand for the current vacancy for Cambridge University, being ‘determined to adhere to his Scotch county’. Add. 51659, Whishaw to Lady Holland, 25 Oct. 1822. In January 1823 his father reflected that the recruitment of Canning, who had ‘many friends of his own, throws the reappointment [to office] of Charles, which at one time was thought certain and even near, into more distance and obscurity, especially as it is not easy to allot an office suitable to that which he last filled’. In mid-March, however, he was made vice-president of the board of trade, in place of Wallace and under Canning’s friend William Huskisson*, at a salary of £2,000. He was unable to escape from departmental duties to attend his quiet re-election on 11 Apr. 1823, when his father stood in for him. NAS GD23/6/745/154, 155; Buckingham, i. 417; Inverness Courier, 20 Mar., 17 Apr. 1823. In the House, 22 Apr., he and Williams Wynn mutually glossed over the difficulty created by the latter’s assertion on the 17th that the Grenvillites had only joined the ministry on the understanding that there would be a more tolerant attitude towards Catholics in Ireland, which had seemed likely to produce ministerial embarrassment. Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 229. Grant was in the largely Whig minority for an amendment to the Irish county treasurers bill, 2 May. He failed to persuade Huskisson that his proposed preferential treatment of the West India interest on the sugar duties infringed the ‘sound doctrine that monopoly should be the exception, and non-monopoly the principle’ of commercial policy; he voted in the minority of 34 for inquiry, 22 May. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 199; Add. 38744, f. 204. He bestowed ‘pains’ on the ‘county subjects’ of a tolls bill and the barilla duties, the recent reduction of which he condemned in the House, 5 June, as ‘a gross act of injustice to the kelp manufacturers’. NAS GD23/6/745/156. Next day he welcomed the government’s tithes composition bill, which would ‘go far to alleviate one of the greatest evils with which Ireland was afflicted’; but he objected to an aspect of the compulsory clause. He defended the silk trade bill and was a majority government teller for it, 9 June. He was in the minority for repeal of the usury laws, 27 June, and secured the third reading of the reciprocity bill, 4 July. He chaired the county meeting of 24 July 1824, when he was thanked for his protection of local interests in roads, distilling and kelp. A fortnight later he informed Liverpool from Inverness that while bad weather threatened the harvest and rents were ‘ill paid ... most sensible persons think there are appearances of better times and of general improvement’. Inverness Courier, 3, 31 July 1823; Add. 38296, f. 96. He was in Vienna in late November 1823 when he got news of his father’s death, 31 Oct. He rushed back to London in nine days and proved the will, under £60,000, on 12 Jan. 1824; he did not greatly profit by it. In the following months he tried to arrange the sale of the Skye estate of Waternish, but this was not accomplished until late in 1831. He bought for £85,000 the estate of Glenelg on the west coast of Inverness-shire. PROB 11/1680/21; IR26/998/17; Add. 51659, Whishaw to Lady Holland, 3 Dec. [1823]; NAS GD23/6/746/53, 54, 57; Inverness Courier, 21 Dec. 1831. With an eye to his constituency interests, he secured in February 1824 his appointment as a commissioner of the Caledonian Canal and of Highland churches. He communicated to James Grant of Bught, his confidant in Inverness, news of the proposed reduction of the wool duties; and after consulting Bught he decided that it would be ‘as well’ if he did not take the chair of the select committee on salmon fisheries (30 Mar. 1824), which might create ‘situations of delicacy with my constituents’, but he took an active part on it. In April he wrote ‘public letters’ on a variety of topics to the county conveners’ meeting. Add. 40361, ff. 40, 41; NAS GD23/6/746/59, 60, 64-66. In the House, 9 Mar., he said that the Dublin Kildare Place Association was not guilty of Protestant proselytism, but on 15 Mar. 1824 he again expressed his ‘powerful objections’ to the Protestant charter schools, though he was not prepared to vote against the grant. He acknowledged the ‘many vexatious and useless regulations which fettered the linen trade of Ireland’, 19 Mar., and defended the wool duties bill, 21 May 1824. In August, when Huskisson’s absence abroad obliged him to stay in London to mind the shop, he failed to convince Liverpool of the need to interfere to prevent the ‘fictitious’ rising price of oats from reaching the level at which the ports had to be opened. NAS GD23/6/746/72; Add. 38299, f. 59. The threat of ‘competition’ for his seat that autumn prompted him to confirm his intention of offering at the next general election and to take steps to strengthen his position. NAS GD23/6/583/5; 600/1-3; 746/73; Inverness Courier, 28 Oct. 1824.

Grant voted for Catholic claims, 1 Mar. 1825. He favoured state provision for the Irish Catholic clergy and the disfranchisement of 40s. freeholders as essential adjuncts of the relief bill, for which he voted, 21 Apr., 10 May, after speaking for it. Colchester Diary, iii. 384. He conceded that Parnell had proved that the regulations governing the Irish butter and linen trades had ‘led only to fraud and collusion’, 15 Mar. He warned against uneven interference with Irish charitable institutions, which might ‘collect in Dublin all the pauperism and profligacy of Ireland’, 18 Mar. Bught’s son, a spectator in the gallery, thought he ‘spoke very indifferently’ when backing Huskisson’s advocacy of ‘the removal of our restrictive system’ from commerce, from which ‘gradually rising benefits’ would follow, 25 Mar. NAS GD23/6/583/8. He endorsed Huskisson’s motion for inquiry into the problems created by Hume’s repeal of the Combination Acts, 29 Mar. A month later he made a point of attending the Inverness-shire annual general meeting to safeguard his electoral prospects. Inverness Courier, 4 May 1825; NAS GD23/6/746/76, 77. In the Commons, 19 May, he praised the Whig Thomas Kennedy’s work on salmon fisheries, but doubted that there was time to legislate that session. He explained and defended the quarantine laws bill, 3 June, and on 9 June 1825 commented that the revelation of ‘enormities’ in the management of the charter schools proved that the system ‘must ultimately work out its own destruction’. In December 1825 he covertly mustered his leading county supporters to resist an attempt to promote a declaration of opinion on the corn laws, which he perceived was ‘meant chiefly as an attack on me’. Leaving aside this aspect, he argued that it would be

truly most unwise and impolitic in the agriculturists to be the first to come forward ... They are now in possession of what they wish to retain, and their true policy is to abstain ... from unnecessarily exciting any passion ... For ought they know ... nothing may be done ... But if they make a tumult ... they will infallibly excite a counter-spirit ... and if the public mind be inflamed, it is not easy to foresee the necessity to which ministers may even reluctantly be driven.

His supporters succeeded in preventing the adoption resolutions for enhanced protection, 13 Dec. 1825. A renewed attempt by his opponents to raise the issue in the new year was also thwarted. NAS GD23/6/606/1-4; 746/79, 82, 83, 88-90, 92; Inverness Courier, 30 Nov., 14 Dec. 1825.

Grant defended the government’s promissory notes bill, 13 Feb. 1826, stressing the need to ‘place our currency on a firm and solid basis’ in order to restore confidence after the winter’s banking crash. He did not interfere in the county meeting called to petition against meddling with the Scottish banking system, 8 Mar., but had ‘no difficulty in presenting the petition’, 16 Mar., when he concluded privately that ‘the currency question is as well disposed of for the session as could have been expected’ by its being referred to a select committee; he declined to serve on this in view of the strong feelings in Scotland on the subject. He ‘very much approved the principle’ of restricting the issue of small notes, but questioned ‘the expediency of pressing it at this moment’. NAS GD23/6/746/91-93. He opposed and was a government teller against Ellice’s motion for inquiry into the silk trade, 24 Feb., blaming manufacturers for rash speculations and arguing that an end to prohibition would stimulate domestic production. The Scottish Whigs Henry Cockburn and Leonard Horner sought his assistance in the promotion of parochial schools in March; he was sympathetic, but encountered ‘obstacles in certain quarters’ of ‘the high authorities’. Cockburn Letters, 136, 139. In April he urged Peel not to ‘take a decided line against’ a Scottish law reform bill brought in by his Whig friend John Peter Grant. Add. 40363, f. 188. He was a majority teller against inquiry into manufacturing distress, 2 May, and on the 13th, answering Hume, maintained that relaxation of the navigation laws and commercial tariffs had benefited shipping and trade. He voted against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 13 Apr. 1826 (as he had against parliamentary reform in general, 9 May 1821). At the general election of 1826 he faced opposition from an anti-Catholic (two other contenders having cried off); but after protracted legal wrangling over the composition of the roll the challenge was easily defeated. NAS GD23/6/611; 746/95-98; Inverness Courier, 21 June, 12 July 1826. He asserted himself to frustrate his rival’s bid to have a score of voters enrolled at the Michaelmas head court. NAS GD23/6/746/100; Inverness Courier, 4 Oct. 1826.

Grant was unable to prevent what he considered to be a premature county meeting on the corn laws in January 1827 and, feeling bound by ‘official duty’ to keep ‘silence’ on ministers’ plans, he did not communicate on the subject. The meeting merely set up a monitoring committee. NAS GD23/6/106/3; 746/103; Inverness Courier, 17, 24 Jan. 1827. In the House, where he was in the minority for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., he defended the government’s proposals, 1 Mar., and, obliged by Huskisson’s illness to ‘work double tides’, piloted them through, defeating various amendments, 8, 9, 19 Mar., but conceding one on the 23rd for use of the imperial rather than the Winchester measure. A county meeting, 20 Mar., resolved that the protection it offered was inadequate. NAS GD23/6/583/18; 746/108; Inverness Courier, 28 Mar. 1827. Grant duly presented the petition, 2 Apr., but, moving the second reading of the corn bill that day, he argued that it aimed to secure uniformity of price, protection for farmers and independence of foreign supplies, and ‘deprecated nothing more than the overthrow of this measure by the landed aristocracy’, warning that ‘a starving population would listen to no terms’. He carried the third reading, 12 Apr. By then he had agreed to retain his office in Canning’s new ministry. On 30 May 1827 he told the House that a delegation of distressed Norwich weavers had shown ‘intelligence’, but he had rejected their request for the local regulation of wages as ‘delusive’. It was fancifully reported in mid-July that he had ‘got a fancy to become secretary of the treasury’. HMC Bathurst, 638. On Canning’s death three weeks later, which he described as a ‘most melancholy event ... of deep and deplorable misfortune to the country and the world, he wrote to Huskisson, who was abroad:

On the political consequences ... we can at present say nothing ... The rumour is that the duke of Wellington will be sent for ... I wish you were here, and so do all of us. NAS GD23/6/746/113; Add. 38750, f. 15.

He was promoted to the presidency of the board of trade, with a seat in the cabinet, in Lord Goderich’s administration; but some observers questioned his competence. Huskisson Pprs. 225; Countess Granville Letters, i. 421, 428-9; Add. 38750, f. 22; Wellington mss WP1/896/3; Coedymaen mss 201; NAS GD23/6/746/115; Hobhouse Diary, 142. Grant, who blamed the intrigues of the anti-Catholic lord chancellor Lyndhurst for the collapse of the ministry in January 1828, was one of the ‘triumvirate’, with Lords Dudley and Palmerston*, asked by Huskisson to decide whether he could honourably sit in Wellington’s cabinet with John Herries*, whose objections to Lord Althorp’s proposed chairmanship of the finance committee had precipitated the fatal crisis. Grant concurred in the view that there was no difficulty, provided that Herries was removed from the exchequer; and on this basis he agreed to serve in the ministry as president of the board of trade, though he was concerned that ‘the four places which among them dispose of the whole of the domestic patronage of the country are to be held by decided anti-Catholics’ and that Huskisson was ‘too easily satisfied’ by the duke’s assurances on this score. Add. 38754, ff. 124, 133, 148, 150, 182; 40395, f. 9; Bulwer, Palmerston, i. 216-18; TNA 30/29/9/3/36; Southampton Univ. Lib. Broadlands mss BR 23AA/5/2. He was reluctant to go to Inverness for his re-election, 28 Feb., pleading pressure of business, and he was relieved to be reassured by Bught that his attendance was not necessary. NAS GD23/6/746/115, 117-19; Inverness Courier, 6 Feb., 5 Mar. 1828.

Lord Ellenborough, a member of the cabinet, thought Grant would vote for repeal of the Test Acts, given the chance, but he was not in the division on 26 Feb. 1828, when it was carried against the government. Ellenborough Diary, i. 35, 46. His silence on the front bench began to attract adverse comment, and his intransigence over the government’s modified corn bill, which he was expected to propose in the Commons, came close to destroying Wellington’s uneasy coalition with the Huskissonites in March. He initially joined Huskisson in suggesting a scale similar to that of 1827, but Wellington held out for enhanced protection. A compromise was reached, but Grant continued to oppose it unilaterally, arguing that he stood pledged to the 1827 measure and that the new one increased the pivot price. A further compromise was effected, but Grant, in great mental turmoil, prevaricated and absented himself from the cabinet, despite remonstrances from Huskisson, who saw that he would be obliged to resign if Grant did so, and Wellington and Peel. On 25 Mar., three days before he was due to lay the resolutions before the House, his previous day’s letter of resignation was read to the cabinet. Ellenborough and Wellington’s confidante Mrs. Arbuthnot thought he would be no loss. Later on the 25th Grant wrote to Huskisson proposing an entirely new scale, which Huskisson forwarded to Peel, who saw Grant the following day but, like Huskisson, made ‘nothing of him’. On the 27th Huskisson warned Grant, who was also lectured by Palmerston on the folly of wrecking the government over such an issue, that the king had been informed of the crisis and had reacted with ‘extreme annoyance’. He begged Grant to see sense and put forward the plan as an ‘award between conflicting interests, fears and prejudices, which you offer as a peace-making’, but Grant refused to meet him and contended that ministers were about to propose a measure ‘discreditable to them’. Huskisson replied that when he saw the king the next day he would communicate to him his ‘conviction that our retirement will be received in the first instance with shouts and throwing up of hats by all who are hostile to liberal politics, and afterwards, when the ground of it is to be explained, with incredulous astonishment and ineffable ridicule by every other class of men in the state’. He went to see the king at Windsor on the afternoon of the 28th. At the same time Wellington sent Goulburn, the chancellor of the exchequer, to Grant to learn his ‘final determination’. His response was that he was ‘too unwell’ to move the resolutions that evening, but would do so on the 31st. Peel hastily sent this news to Huskisson, who received it while in audience with the king. The immediate crisis was thus averted. Add. 38755, ff. 155, 160, 178, 180, 182, 187, 202, 205, 256, 265, 271, 271-83; 40396, ff, 85, 87; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 167, 171, 175, 177, 179; HMC Bathurst, 653; Bulwer, i. 232, 235, 239-46; Ellenborough Diary, i. 51-53, 55-58, 60-61, 64-72; Hilton, 287-9; N. Gash, Secretary Peel, 465-9. Ellenborough thought Grant would be conveniently ‘indisposed’ on 31 Mar., but he duly moved the resolutions, presenting them as a compromise modification of the 1827 measure but not disguising his basic disapproval of them, and concluding with ‘a studied panegyric’ of Canning, which, as Croker noted, was ‘not well taken by the Ultra Tories, though cheered by the rest of the House’. Ellenborough, who considered this ‘a foolish flourish’, sensed Wellington’s disappointment that Grant and the other Huskissonites had not resigned. Ellenborough Diary, i. 73-74; Arbuthnot Jnl., ii. 179; Croker Pprs. i. 415; Cent. Kent. Stud. Stanhope mss U1590 C355, Pusey to Mahon, 8 Apr. 1828. Grant rejected as ‘founded in misconception’ the request of Cumbrian lead miners for additional protection against foreign ore, 1 Apr., and dismissed calls for wage regulation in the silk industry, 21 Apr., 1 May. In committee on the corn duties, 22 Apr., he lamely explained the apparent contradiction between his earlier statement that the measure was ‘intermediate’ and his current line that it was ‘permanent’ by saying that it was temporary in the sense that experience of its harmless operation would pave the way for the ‘introduction of a better measure’. He and Huskisson were inclined to adopt an amendment proposed by John Benett which gave more protection at lower prices, but Wellington would not wear it and it was defeated by 230-32 on 25 Apr. Ellenborough Diary, i. 90-91; Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 290. Grant got rid of protectionist amendments for barley, oats and rye, 28 Apr., and next day crushed by 139-27 Hume’s proposal for a fixed duty. He gave an assurance that ministers had no intention of raising the duty on foreign wool, 5 May. He spoke and voted for Catholic claims, 12 May. During these weeks he cut a forlorn figure: for example, Herries told Mrs. Arbuthnot, 21 Apr., that it was ‘impossible’ that he ‘should continue in office, that he did nothing, everything he says dies in his hands and ... he either always is, or pretends to be, ill, and ... for his own sake he had better retire’. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 180-2. Grant seemed inclined to side with Huskisson in favour of granting the Canning pension for two lives, and he joined Huskisson, Dudley and Palmerston in trying to curb Wellington’s hostility to Russia. By the second week of May Wellington, according to Mrs. Arbuthnot, was ‘broken-hearted about his cabinet’ and ‘deeply’ sorry that he had taken in the Huskissonites. Grant he considered ‘obstinate and useless’, though he was ‘seldom there, and takes little part’. Ellenborough Diary, i. 97-98, 103-4; Bulwer, 227. The fatal illness of his eldest sister kept him from the division on East Retford, 19 May, when Huskisson and Palmerston voted in the minority against throwing the borough into the hundred of Bassetlaw. When Wellington eagerly took at face value Huskisson’s hasty offer of resignation, it was thought at first that Grant might ‘stay’. His sister died on 23 May, and in his ‘great affliction’ he had ‘taken no step’ by the 26th; but next day he sent in his resignation to the premier, joining Huskisson, Lord Palmerston and William Lamb as one of ‘the ejected liberals’ who mustered in the Commons, 3 June. Croker Pprs. i. 420; Add. 38756, ff. 127, 185, 247; Ellenborough Diary, i. 106-9, 113, 118-19, 122; Gent. Mag. (1828), i. 571; Palmerston-Sulivan Letters, 205; TNA 30/29/9/5/71. Yet ten days later he explained his personal perspective to Bught:

I do not consider myself as personally bound to ... Huskisson, and should not have resigned merely because he did. But the question was one of deeper influence ... [and] of principle. The mere circumstance of East Retford is insignificant, except as it gave an occasion for the explosion of a long brooding event ... The point at issue for Lord Dudley and me was merely whether we should resign now or six weeks hence. If this division about Retford had never taken place, still I believe that at the end of the session the same result would have happened. Under this impression, not hastily formed, but produced by actual observation and experience, I have acted ... with regret and reluctance ... after full deliberation and consultation I felt I had no alternative. NAS GD23/6/746/120.

He acquiesced in the government’s continuance of the sugar duties for a year, 9 June, but said that they must be soon reduced to stimulate consumption. He presented a Ross-shire agriculturists’ petition for an increased duty on foreign wool, one from Gallowshields woollen manufacturers to the opposite effect, and one from Skye for a bounty on herrings, 13 June. On 17 and 24 June he defended his own and Huskisson’s relaxation of commercial restrictions and urged Members to consider the question on ‘great and general principles’ and not ‘narrow notions ... unsuitable to the enlightened period in which we live’. He voted in the minority against the East Retford disfranchisement bill, 27 June. On the customs bill, 10 July, he supported Poulett Thomson’s amendment for an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent on East Indian silk pieces; and he spoke and voted against the proposed duties, 14 July, when he secured an amendment limiting their duration and opposed the superannuation allowances bill, which would injure ‘real, official, working agents’ in government departments. On 15 July he presented the Inverness-shire petition for protection against foreign wool imports and declared his hostility to the Irish butter trade bill. He again insisted on the ‘soundness’ of Huskisson’s principles when arguing that the silk trade had not been damaged by their application, 18 July. He defended the French trade treaty of 1826, 25 July. On 28 July 1828, when Bught’s son reported that he had found him giving ‘no indication of bad health as I was led to imagine’ and ‘not very decided’ in his holiday plans, he was prevented from moving for returns of information by the appearance of Black Rod. NAS GD23/6/58 3/20.

In December 1828 he went with Palmerston, Lamb, Goderich and Thomas Frankland Lewis* to confer with Huskisson at his Sussex home. K. Bourne, Palmerston, 293. On the address, 6 Feb. 1829, he made what one observer reckoned ‘a capital speech’ welcoming the government’s concession of Catholic emancipation. His speech in support of the measure, 6 Mar., when he equated the Catholic Association with ‘the people of Ireland’, was also a success. Suff. RO (Bury St. Edmunds), Hervey mss Acc 941/56/60; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Denison diary, 6 Mar. [1829]. He said that he disliked the disfranchisement of Irish 40s. freeholders, 19 Mar., but unlike Huskisson and Palmerston he was not prepared to jeopardize emancipation by opposing it. Bourne, 296. Supporting a pro-Catholic petition from Edinburgh, 26 Mar., he admitted that there was ‘a strong feeling’ against emancipation in ‘many parts of Scotland’; and, learning that ‘some Invernessians have done me the honour to burn me’, he asked Bught to report on local feeling, though he himself was satisfied that

the events of this session have been extraordinary, indeed unexampled. There never has been a more wonderful revolution. To those who have always supported emancipation ... it is in many views gratifying, though I certainly cannot respect or admire sudden conversions. The effect ... has I think been to shake all trust in public men and confound all notions of right and wrong. The general notion is that ... [Peel’s] character will not recover.

Bught assured him that respectable county opinion favoured emancipation. NAS GD23/6/746/121. He voted to allow Daniel O’ Connell to take his seat unhampered, 18 May. He supported the prayer of a London East India merchants’ petition for a reduction of the duty on manufactured silks, 13 Apr., and next day backed ministers’ resistance to inquiry into the silk trade, arguing that the ‘restrictive system’ had been unsustainable. He divided for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May. On 25 May he proposed substantial reductions in the sugar duties and was a teller for the minority of 60. He presented a constituency petition in favour of Kennedy’s tailzies regulation bill, 27 May, and called for a reduction in the tobacco duty, 1 June 1829. In October Sir Richard Vyvyan*, the Ultra leader, discussing the possibilities for a coalition government with Palmerston, observed that as Grant was ‘too much identified with free trade’ he could be ‘got out of the way’ by being made governor of Jamaica. Palmerston-Sulivan Letters, 234.

Grant returned to London from an Italian tour, where he was ‘detained by illness at Rome’, in mid-January 1830, ‘well’ and ‘strengthened for my parliamentary duties’. NAS GD23/6/746/122. Taking his seat with Huskisson and Palmerston ‘in their old places below the gangway’ on the government side of the House, he voted for the amendment to the address, 4 Feb. Next day, ‘with great spirit and effect’, according to Lord Holland, he backed Palmerston’s attack on the government’s support of despotism in Portugal and Greece; Grey’s son Lord Howick* considered his speech ‘excellent’. Bourne, 307; Add. 51785, Holland to C.R. Fox, 7 Feb.; Grey mss, Howick jnl. 5 Feb. 1830. His effort on 11 Feb., explaining his intended vote for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham to allay the ‘great excitement in the public mind’ produced by ministers’ refusal of ‘the just and reasonable demands of the people’, was also reckoned to be ‘very good’, indeed ‘very brilliant’. John Evelyn Denison*, with whom he and his brother concerted with Huskisson and Palmerston a line of ‘strict independence’, keeping ‘clear of all factious opposition’ and scrutinizing ‘measures on their own merit’, reported that Grant was now ‘quite at the top of the tree in the estimation of the House’. Howick jnl. 11 Feb.; Agar Ellis diary, 11 Feb.; Grey mss, Durham to Grey, 12 Feb.; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ossington mss OsC 74; Add. 51785, Holland to C.R. Fox, 20 Feb. 1830. However, he ‘defended ministers weakly’, as Howick saw it, against Hume’s motion for large tax remissions, 15 Feb. Howick jnl. He voted silently with them against the Ultra Lord Blandford’s reform scheme, 18 Feb., but divided for the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and investigation of the Newark petition complaining of the duke of Newcastle’s electoral interference, 1 Mar. He voted with opposition on relations with Portugal, 10 Mar., taxation, 25 Mar., the Bathurst and Dundas pensions, 26 Mar., and abolition of the post of lieutenant-general of the ordnance, which he condemned as ‘useless’, 29 Mar. He voted for his brother’s unsuccessful bid to secure Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May, in the minority of 16 against Ellenborough’s divorce bill, 6 Apr., and for reform of the divorce laws, 3 June. On 28 Apr., in what John Hobhouse* described as ‘a bitter and eloquent speech’, he moved a condemnation of ministerial policy towards Portugal as exemplified by their ordering the interception at Terciera of a ship of pro-queen refugees; but many Whigs ‘kept away’ and the division was ‘poor’. Broughton, iv. 18; Agar Ellis diary, 28 Apr. [1830]. He voted for repeal of the Irish coal duties, 13 May, and returns of privy councillors’ emoluments, 14 May. He was ‘satisfied’ to remain silent after Brougham’s rousing speech for abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 24 May, and voted thus, 7 June. NLS mss 24748, f. 89. He divided for Labouchere’s resolutions on Canada, 25 May, though he had welcomed the ministerial statement of policy. He did not vote for Russell’s parliamentary reform motion, 28 May. He would not support the Ultra Lord Chandos’s motion for reduction of the sugar duties to benefit the West India interest before the government’s plan was revealed, 14 June. He presented London and Glasgow merchants’ petitions for equalization of the East and West Indian duties, 15 June. On the 21st, setting aside his own preference for an ad valorem duty, he supported Huskisson’s amendment to reduce the West Indian duty to 20s. Howick jnl. 21 June [1830]. He welcomed the ‘important concession’ of 24s. as ‘the first step towards a better arrangement’, 30 June. He presented a petition for action against profanation of the Sabbath, 5 July 1830.

At about this time Wellington made an overture to Lord Melbourne (as Lamb now was), who replied that he would not join the ministry alone. The duke indicated that he had no objection to Palmerston, but, according to Charles Arbuthnot* and Ellenborough, he deemed Grant to be ‘quite out of the question’. When Melbourne said that he would not come in without Huskisson and Grey the matter ended. Broadlands mss PP/GMC/33; Add. 40340, f. 226; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 306; Bulwer, i. 361; Agar Ellis diary, 18 July [1830]. At the general election precipitated by the death of George IV, the government made a dead set against Grant and his brother, whom they succeeded in depriving of his seat for Inverness Burghs. Grant was challenged by John Norman Macleod* of Dunvegan, on whose behalf ‘all the power of government’ was exerted. Throughout the protracted canvass Grant remained confident, having retained the support of Bught and other influential freeholders, despite their divergence in politics, while Macleod’s blatant partisanship alienated others. At the election, 27 Aug. 1830 (the last to be held in the kingdom), Grant’s nominee won the contest for praeses by nine votes, which prompted Macleod to give up. Before his formal return Grant defended his political conduct since 1828, denied that he had gone into systematic opposition and dismissed allegations of his neglect of local interests. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 305; Add. 38758, f. 214; 40309, f. 151; 40340, f. 226; NAS GD23/6/583/23-26; 746/123, 125-7; Wellington mss WP1/1130/49; 1134/11; 1139/19; Inverness Courier, 7, 14 July, 25 Aug., 2 Sept. 1830. His success delighted the Huskissonites (as one of whom he was listed by ministers) and some leading Whigs. Add. 38758, f. 267; 51670, Bedford to Lady Holland, 2 Sept. [1830]. His views following Huskisson’s death, 15 Sept., when initial feelers were put out to Melbourne and Palmerston by the Whigs and when, twice in October, Wellington sought to recruit Palmerston, are not entirely clear. Ostensibly he agreed with Palmerston and Melbourne that a formal junction with the Whigs would be ‘highly inexpedient’, though cordial co-operation on acceptable issues was desirable, and that they should on no account join the ailing ministry without a total reconstruction, including the admission of Whigs to the cabinet. Yet when Lord Clive* renewed Wellington’s overture at the end of October Grant, who had hastened to London from Scotland (where he had earlier declined an invitation to stand for Liverpool in Huskisson’s room), Inverness Courier, 6 Oct. 1830. told Palmerston that he had misgivings about rejecting it out of hand. In the event he fell into line, and a week later agreed with Palmerston and the other Commons Huskissonites to support Brougham’s forthcoming reform motion if it was ‘vaguely worded’. James Abercromby* reported from Edinburgh soon afterwards that if Grant ‘was stout and firm’, he had ‘been unfortunate in conveying a contrary impression’ and that ‘his silence and that of his friends confirmed that impression, and if he does not forthwith show himself, he will be held in little estimation by the best people here’. Broadlands mss PP/GMC/35, 42, Grant to Palmerston, 31 Oct., reply, 1 Nov.; Bourne, 322-3, 327; Agar Ellis diary, 1 Oct.; Brougham mss, Agar Ellis to Brougham, 4 Oct.; Add. 51580, Carlisle to Lady Holland, 17 Oct.; 51670, Bedford to same, 11 Oct.; Castle Howard mss, Abercromby to Carlisle, 10 Nov. 1830.

In the House, 8 Nov. 1830, Grant deemed the government’s proposed colonial trade bill ‘a wise measure’, though he had some qualms about its effect on Canada. He was in the minority of 39 for a reduced duty on wheat imported by the West Indian colonies, 12 Nov. He divided against government on the civil list, 15 Nov., and was appointed to the select committee. Joining Grey’s ministry with Palmerston, Melbourne and Goderich (to whom he gave way in their competition for the colonial secretaryship), he became president of the board of control - an inappropriate office for one who was notoriously ‘not a man of business’. He was reckoned to be the only member of the cabinet who ‘believes there is a soul’. Three Diaries, 23; Hatherton mss, Littleton to R. Wellesley, 19 Nov. 1830; Ward, Letters to ‘Ivy’, 366. His re-election in absentia was uneventful, after Macleod had failed to muster support for a challenge. NAS GD23/6/746/128, 129, 131; Inverness Courier, 8 Dec. 1830, 5 Jan. 1831. In January 1831 he was reported to be ‘reading very hard’ in order to master his departmental brief, as he knew ‘nothing of India’. Three Diaries, 40. He secured the reappointment of the select committee on the East India Company, which he chaired, 4 Feb. He defended the chancellor of the exchequer Althorp’s controversial stock transfer tax, 11 Feb., speaking ‘very well’, as Brougham’s secretary Denis Le Marchant† thought, ‘but without the earnestness or authority which at the moment was so much wanted’. Le Marchant, Althorp, 283. He had to explain its withdrawal, 14 Feb. Next day he presented half a dozen petitions for the abolition of slavery. On 21 Feb. he concurred in Lord Chandos’s motion for due consideration of the West India interest, which the first lord of the admiralty Sir James Graham treated as one of confidence in the ministry, but said he would oppose it because it would obstruct the progress of supply. He was reckoned by some ministerialists to have gone ‘out of the way to make a blunder and to make the public believe that disunion reigns in our camp’. Holland, a member of the cabinet, commented a week later that Grant, ‘though an able, honest and amiable man, is somewhat whimsical and has not ingratiated himself with his colleagues by the manner or reason with which he urges any difference of opinion he entertains’. Grant indicated that he was ‘decidedly opposed’ to a proposed government amendment to the colonial trade bill affording enhanced protection and ‘must vote against it’; but he was evidently appeased, for he supported the measure, 1 Mar. Three Diaries, 56; Greville Mems. ii. 118; Baring Jnls. i. 81-82; Add. 76382, Poulett Thomson to Althorp, 22 Feb.; TNA 30/29, Holland to Granville, 24 Feb.; St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne-Gladstone mss 197, T. to J. Gladstone, 24 Feb. 1831. He presented reform petitions from Inverness and Peebles, 28 Feb. He had been ‘advisedly’ reported to be ‘disposed to go great lengths’ on reform, yet there were false rumours in early March that he was about to resign. Croker Pprs. ii. 104; Lieven Letters, 297; Greville Mems. ii. 123; Glynne-Gladstone mss 197, T. to J. Gladstone, 10 Mar. 1831. On 21 Mar. he defended the English reform bill as a timely concession, observing that ‘by the delay of a just measure we have only sown the seeds of agitation, which have brought forth an abundant harvest’. He of course voted for the second reading the next day and was in the ministerial minority against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. Criticism of his performance persisted: Agar Ellis reckoned that he had ‘failed lamentably in speaking and courage’, while Holland conceded that he ‘certainly ... takes little pains to ingratiate himself with his colleagues or to assist us in the House’, though he would be ‘very sorry if we part with him, first because I have a very good opinion of him and secondly because he is a staunch friend of peace and in my judgement perceives the right method of preserving it’. Agar Ellis diary, 25 Mar.; TNA 30/29, Holland to Granville, 14 Apr. 1831. At the ensuing general election Grant was initially challenged by a moderate reformer, who soon gave up, so rendering academic his loss of Bught’s active backing on account of his support for reform. Returning thanks, he contended that the ministerial scheme was ‘final in its intention’ and that ‘the time had come when reform was no less just than it was expedient’. NAS GD23/6/614/8; Inverness Courier, 27 Apr., 4, 11 May, 1 June 1831.

According to Thomas Creevey*, who dismissed Grant as a ‘canting puppy’, ‘a despondent Grey’ remarked ‘with the greatest innocence’ at Lady Sefton’s, 6 July 1831, ‘"Everybody told me there was nothing to be done without the two Grants, and they have never been worth a farthing"’. Creevey Pprs. ii. 234. He voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill that day, divided steadily for its details and voted for its passage, 21 Sept. He had nothing to say on it, however, and Macaulay suspected that he was ‘not very hearty’ in the cause. Macaulay Letters, ii. 91. He secured the reappointment of the East India select committee, 28 June, when he promised to consider the difficulties of British merchants at Canton. In cabinet, 21 July, he ‘seemed ... to concur’ in Holland’s argument for British participation in mediation between Russia and Poland. Two days later he and others warned Grey of the ‘dangers and impropriety’ of maintaining an armed yeomanry in Ireland after the Newtownbarry incident; and on 15 Aug., at a cabinet meeting called by himself, he ‘deprecated in an elaborate paper all countenance given to the Irish yeomanry’ and ‘ended ... by rather a strange conclusion to do nothing at all, but to allow the yeomanry silently to expire’. Holland House Diaries, 30. In the House, 1 Sept., he announced that he planned to legislate to allow native Indians to serve on grand juries and to introduce jury trial there. He spoke and voted for the second reading of the Scottish reform bill, 23 Sept. On the 29th he accepted the finance committee’s recommendation of a cut from £5,000 to £3,500 in his salary. In mid-September Sir James Macdonald* began to wonder if Grant was ‘equal to the crisis’ of reform. Add. 61937, f. 125. He of course voted for the motion of confidence in the ministry, 10 Oct., and on 12 Oct. 1831 he deplored the ‘unnecessary heat’ generated on both sides in the debate on recent political meetings and processions. Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, had ‘no notion’ of Grant’s views on the political situation in late October, but three weeks later the opposition whip William Holmes* heard that he and Melbourne had ‘taken fright at these political unions’. Sir James Graham mss (IHR microfilm XR 80), Smith Stanley to Graham, 27 Oct.; Aberdeen Univ. Lib. Arbuthnot mss, Holmes to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 18 Nov. 1831.

In cabinet in December 1831 Grant and Holland argued unsuccessfully for the inclusion of Catholics on the Irish tithes committee. Grant was also inclined to give additional Members to Ireland. Ellenborough heard that he had ‘done nothing’ on Indian business, and a government supporter commented that he had been conspicuously the least successful senior minister. Holland House Diaries, 91, 94; Three Diaries, 161; Baring Jnls. i. 91. He did not attend the Commons when the revised reform scheme was introduced, 12 Dec., but was present to vote for the second reading of the English bill, 17 Dec. 1831. Croker Pprs. ii. 141. He was ‘decisive’ in favour of a creation of peers if it proved necessary to force reform through the Lords, arguing in cabinet, 2 Jan. 1832, that ‘we were not justified in having gone so far if we did not go through with our measure’; but two months later Palmerston reported that he was ‘decidedly adverse to any creation at present, and disposed to be guided by circumstances’. Holland House Diaries, 109, 145; Three Diaries, 202. Littleton noted that he arrived at a dinner at Grillion’s, 25 Jan., ‘with characteristic punctuality, half an hour after we had sat down, as we had all foretold he would, and was greeted with much laughter’. Hatherton diary. In the House, 28 Feb., he supported the enfranchisement of the metropolitan districts and challenged a Conservative assertion that an infusion of ‘democracy’ had destroyed the Roman Empire. He divided silently for the third reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar. Renewing the East India select committee, 27 Jan., he reviewed its progress and secured the appointment of eight subcommittees to expedite matters. He spoke for the Scottish cholera prevention bill, 15 Feb., supported a Whig motion for inquiry into the silk trade and dismissed Attwood’s currency fixation, 1 Mar., and defended the government’s Irish education scheme, 6 Mar. He naturally voted for the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry reform unimpaired, 10 May. He voted for the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, and against a Conservative amendment to the Scottish measure, 1 June. On 4 June, endorsing the enfranchisement of Scottish £10 owners, he said that although he sacrificed ‘much’ as a landowner by supporting reform, as an individual he would ‘gain more than I lose’. He presented a constituency petition for relief of the West Indian colonies and one from the inhabitants of Singapore for the establishment of an independent judiciary there, 17 May. On the Lords’ amendments to the English reform bill, 5 June, he said that Grey, far from being the ‘criminal’ depicted by Mackworth Praed, had saved the country from disaster, and admitted that he had changed his own mind on reform ‘because of the changed circumstances of the times and of the advance of knowledge of every kind among the people’. On 29 June 1832 Macaulay, who had recently become a commissioner of the India board, told his sister:

I have begun work with an energy which makes poor Charles Grant stare. It was with something of an oath that he received two reports which I have drawn up within twenty four hours on cases which occupied a cart load of paper ... The president seemed really to think me a conjuror. Macaulay Letters, ii. 143.

It was later said that Holmes ‘frequently used to send a note’ to Grant ‘to tell him to come to his place’ in the House for divisions. Three Diaries, 307.

At the general election of 1832 Grant beat Macleod, as he did narrowly in 1835. On the formation of Melbourne’s second ministry that year he was appointed colonial secretary and created Lord Glenelg. He oversaw the total abolition of slavery, but his political career ended in humiliation in 1839 when he was effectively sacked for his inept handling of the Canadian rebellion. He was compensated with a commissionership of land tax and a pension of £2,000 a year. Greville Mems. iv. 122-3, 125; Holland House Diaries, 390; O’Connell Corresp. vi. 2589; Oxford DNB. Princess Lieven considered him ‘a charming man of high capacity’, while Hobhouse unconvincingly contended that ‘he was not lazy’, but ‘too scrupulous and critical as to what he wrote’. Macaulay observed that he had ‘a mind that cannot stand alone’, rather ‘a feminine mind ... always turning, like ivy, to some support’. Lieven Letters, 276; Broughton, v. 97-98; Macaulay Letters, ii. 328. He spent his last unhappy years living with Brougham in the south of France. He died a bachelor at Cannes in April 1866.