Ingram was one of those men who are swayed by the last person who secures their ear, and as it was not worth my while to be constantly dancing attendance upon him, I severed my connection with the “Illustrated London News,” on receipt of a certain sum in lieu of notice, and early the following year (1843) I started an opposition paper in conjunction with Mr. Andrew Spottiswoode, the queen's printer.

Mr. Spottiswoode was a tory of the deepest orange hue, who had married a daughter of Thomas Norton Longman, the great Paternoster-row publisher. He was a tall aristocratic-looking individual, with finely chiselled features, slightly bald, and whiskered after the Duke of Cumberland pattern. He was reticent of speech, and a trifle imperious in manner, and exacted almost obsequious respect from every one in his employ. He had sat in Parliament for Colchester until compelled to resign his seat as the holder of her majesty's patent. This contretemps was brought about through his having accepted the office of either president or treasurer to a political association, which had been formed for furnishing funds to protestant Irish candidates, and contesting the validity of the elections of those catholic M.P.s, who formed O'Connell's famous tail, by petitioning wholesale against their return. The aggrieved Irish members and their radical allies denounced the association as the “Spottiswoode gang,” and Smith O'Brien, the subsequent hero of the Widow Cormack's cabbage garden, made a motion in the House, which Lytton Bulwer seconded, for the appointment of a select committee on the subject.