Resigning the secretaryship in 1848, he was elected to the national House of Representatives as an anti-slavery Whig to succeed John Quincy Adams, and was re-elected in 1849, and, as an independent candidate, in 1850, serving until March 1853.
He had declined the Secretaryship of the Interior in 1912.
Subsequently, he undertook first the secretaryship and then the management and chief ownership of some tile-works at Tilbury, but here also he was unfortunate, and his imprisonment in 1703 brought the works to a standstill, and he lost £3000.
Asquith, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, as his parliamentary secretary, and continued in that position when his chief succeeded to the premiership. Early in 'giro he was appointed Under-Secretary for India, at a time when Lord Morley's tenure of the Secretaryship of State for India was drawing to a close.
Thence he was promoted, in the summer of 1916, to the headship of the office of Munitions and a seat on the War Committee of the Cabinet, on Mr. Lloyd George's succession to the Secretaryship of State for War.