A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



during such apprenticeship within the said city and in no others. 1 The 

 unseating of John Lowther prevented Carlisle from becoming a pocket 

 borough in the hands of Sir James, who was created Lord Lonsdale in 

 1784, but an arrangement was subsequently made by which he con- 

 trolled one seat and the Howards the other. By the exercise of his 

 powerful influence and his great wealth he could usually return, in ad- 

 dition to the two seats for Cumberland and Carlisle, two members each 

 for Westmorland and Cockermouth, and one for Appleby. These, with 

 the two he nominated for the pocket borough of Haslemere, which he 

 purchased, constituted the political clique known as ' Lord Lonsdale's 

 Ninepins,' who were obliged to vote in parliament according to his 

 directions. This remarkable politician is thus satirized in a contem- 

 porary ballad : 



Even by the elements his power confessed : 



Of mines and boroughs Lonsdale stands possessed, 



And the sad servitude alike denotes 



The slave who labours, and the slave who votes. 



To his credit, however, it must be put down that he returned Pitt for 

 his borough of Appleby, and opposed the American war. 



The leader of the Carlisle Whigs in the election of 1786 was John 

 Christian of Workington Hall, who subsequently adopted the name of 

 Curwen, and who represented either the city or the county with a short 

 interval till his death in 1829. During this long period there is no man 

 who better deserves to have his name recorded, whether he be viewed as 

 a parliamentary representative or a country gentleman devoted to the 

 progress of agriculture. Though he never attained the first rank as a 

 parliamentarian, his public services were considered so great, that he is 

 said to have been offered a peerage by two prime ministers, which, 

 however, on each occasion he declined. It was at Mr. Curwen's feet 

 that young Sir James Graham of Netherby drank in that political 

 wisdom which was to bear such splendid fruit in after years. Carlisle 

 was Graham's first constituency in Cumberland, which he represented 

 from 1826 to 1829. On the death of J. C. Curwen in the latter year, 

 he resigned Carlisle and was returned for the county, where he remained 

 till his defeat in 1837. After serving other constituencies outside the 

 home counties from 1837 to 1852, he was recalled to Carlisle, which he 

 represented till his death in 1861. The political career of Sir J. R. G. 

 Graham is more of a national than a local possession. 2 He was, perhaps, 

 the most illustrious parliamentary figure the county of Cumberland has 

 ever produced, illustrious beyond others in the senate and the state, and 

 no less useful to those among whom he was born and died. When Mr. 

 Gladstone, who had been for twenty years in the habit of seeking his 

 advice, heard of ' the sad and unexpected news from Netherby,' he wrote 

 to the Duchess of Sutherland that he had lost a friend whom he seemed 



1 R. S. Ferguson, Cumbld. and Westmorld. M.P.'s, p. 208. 



A Life of Sir James R. G. Graham has been written in two volumes (London, 1863) by Mr. 

 McCullagh Torrens, and another by Dr. Lonsdale in his series of Cumberland Worthies (1868). 



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