Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/33

 CHAPTER III

Parliamentary Life in England

On the withdrawal of the Army of Occupation, Sir Henry Hardinge was employed in a less stirring field of action. After serving for a short time in the Grenadier Guards, he entered Parliament, and retained a seat there for more than twenty years. He was first returned as member for the city of Durham in the Tory interest at the General Election of 1820, his colleague being Michael Angelo Taylor, the well-known Whig. He was four times re-elected for that constituency without ever encountering any serious opposition. On the dissolution of Parliament occasioned by the demise of the Crown in 1830, he was proposed as a candidate for the county of Northumberland; but both he and his Tory colleague withdrew before the poll. A seat, however, was at once found for him at St. Germans, in Cornwall, which he held for only a few months, vacating it in December of the same year in favour of the poet, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, and being himself returned instead for Newport in the same county. On the disfranchisement of that borough by the Reform Bill of 1832, he was elected for the adjoining borough of Launceston, which