Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/18

 himself with ardour into the study of oriental languages, and acquired them so thoroughly that he was made an Interpreter, and in that capacity transacted a good deal of delicate and important business between the Company and the Native Powers. Those were the grand old days when Proconsuls became Nabobs, and the humblest officials in the service of the Company had frequent opportunities of indulging in the pastime of 'shaking the Pagoda Tree.' By 1808 Hume. . . had put by enough for his immediate object, which was to enter the House of Commons. . . . Willing the end, he willed the means, and, returning to England, he proceeded to buy one of the two seats which the Borough of Weymouth then possessed. The transaction was perfectly deliberate, straightforward and business - like. Hume drew his cheque, and the Free and Independent Electors of Weymouth undertook to return him for two parliaments. He was duly elected at a bye-election in January 181 2, but a dissolution occurring in the following November, the vendors of the seat declined to fulfil their bargain, whereupon he brought an action for breach of ontract, and recovered half his money. In 1818 he regained a seat in Parliament, this time for the Montrose Burghs, and he represented in turn Middlesex, Kilkenny, and again Montrose. He was a Radical of the deepest dye, and for thirty years was the recognized leader of the Radical group in Parliament. ... It has always been the portion of Radicals to be dreaded and dispraised by the big-wigs of the Liberal party, and yet all the while to be tracing the path of advance along which, a few years later, the whole party advances to victory. This was as true of Joseph Hume as in later days of Bright and Cobden, of Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Lloyd George. In 1834, amid universal derision, he attacked the Corn Laws, as producing artificial starva-