He came from a well-known Liverpool slave-trading family with a Whig background, and was educated at Harrow, before joining the British Foreign Service.
While working as an attaché at the embassy in Paris, from 1857 he supplied Benjamin Disraeli, who was leading the opposition in the House of Commons, with secret diplomatic information to use against the government of Lord Palmerston.
[3] Disraeli sent him to Paris in 1858, on a confidential mission to the Emperor Napoleon III, without consulting the Foreign Secretary, Malmesbury, in an unsuccessful attempt to influence events in Italy.
After a further spell in opposition, he accepted the post of Parliamentary Secretary to the Poor Law Board when the Conservatives returned to office in 1866, and Disraeli ceased using him as his confidant.
[10] Having left Parliament, he became agent for Baron Hirsch in his Turkish railway negotiations, earning £10,000 in commission (worth some £1.2 million today).