The decree which banished Mill from public life and ushered Smith into it was not to pass unchallenged by the friends of the former. Before the twenty days allowed by statute for lodging petitions had elapsed, one had been filed against the Conservative member for Westminster. Under the law as it then stood candidates were much more in the hands of their agents than they are now, for there was no statutory limit to expenses, and the agent had to be supplied with money according to his discretion; and not the chief agent only, but a whole troop of assistant agents and active partisans besides.

Certainly there had been no niggardliness shown in the supply. While the published expenses of the Liberal candidates, Grosvenor and Mill, only amounted together to £2296, 2s. 7d., those of the Conservative, Smith, mounted up to the huge total of £8900, 17s. 7d. There had also been lamentable indiscretion on the part of one of Smith's warmest well-wishers, Mr Grimston, to whom, indeed, it was greatly owing that Smith had consented to come forward again for Westminster. Mr Grimston had brought up to London a tenant of his brother (the Earl of Verulam), one Edwards, in order that he might act as a sub-agent. This Edwards had already undergone eighteen months’ imprisonment for his part in the malpractices which brought about the disfranchisement of the borough of St Albans.