Excerpt from The Life and Times of the Right Honourable Sir James R. G. Graham, Bart;, G. C. B., M. P, Vol. 1 of 2 But biography is not history, and the effigy in the market-place, whose attitude and features the many are to recognize, must be formed of other stuff than that of which retrospective delineations of statesmanship are made, when the interest of its life-battle is passed, and the generation that witnessed it can recall the accents of its voice no more. I have long felt that justice was not done, in his life-time, to Sir James Graham. He had been identified in turn with both of the great political parties in the State; and when he broke from each, sooner than surrender his personal convictions, he came in for the usual amount of reproach and denunciation. No man in political life can expect anything else; and, whatever he felt, he was the last man to complain of it. Neither ought we. But there is a time for all things; and when the grave has closed over the illustrious dead, it is time to brush away the blinding dust of popularity, and the dark mire of odium through which, in the course of a chequered life, it was his fate to pass. The impressions of his character, which many opportunities of close observation have left upon my mind, I shall not pretend to disguise. Neither can I forget that on more than one important subject I found myself, when in Parliament, voting differently from him. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.