The son of a Westmorland squire, Brougham grew up in Edinburgh and became one of the principal contributors to the Edinburgh Review. Brougham’s radical Whig opinions, expressed in the Edinburgh, provoked Scott and others into founding the Quarterly Review, for which Southey wrote scores of articles. Brougham’s politics also brought him into conflict with Southey at the Westmorland elections of 1818 and 1820, when, as a Whig candidate standing against the candidates of the Earl of Lonsdale, whom Southey and Wordsworth supported, Brougham attacked the influence in the nation of aristocrats and their placemen.