Lawson’s achievement was summed up by Lord Teignmouth in his Reminiscences:
The singular career of one member of the [Cambridge] Union may deserve a brief notice. Lawson was eminent as a university scholar, and was nominated to a fellowship in Magdalene College, where he signalised himself as the professed joker of the combination-room of that small society. He subsequently obtained a seat in Parliament, by setting free, as he maintained, from powerful aristocratic domination the stronghold of Boroughbridge, where he resided, and his family still flourishes highly respected. Cock of his own dunghill, he lost no time in his endeavours to rule the roost in his new sphere, and, during the first week after his admission to the House, introduced four bills, one of which proposed the abolition of the absurd and anomalous wager of battle. So sensible was the government of its importance that the attorney-general relieved him of his task; but Lawson must be credited with a large share of the result. Characteristically enough he requested, but unsuccessfully, the same high functionary to take off his hands a bill for preventing cruelty to ferrets, ‘tame wild beasts’, as he designated these animals in his speech.
Lawson surprised us at the Mendicity Society by offering himself candidate for the vacant office of assistant manager, the duties of which were very laborious, and involved residence in the house in Red Lion Square. Aware of his eccentricities we gratefully declined his services, on the plea that salary, which he generously waived, was indispensable.
Teignmouth, Reminiscences, i. 53.
The ‘aristocratic domination’ challenged by Lawson was that of the 4th Duke of Newcastle who had nudged Lawson’s family out of any say in his Yorkshire boroughs. The duke was taken completely by surprise.
I do flatter myself that I could on all occasions bring somewhat of political merriment, bearing even in an argumentative manner on the question in debate and that I could contribute my mite to the conviviality of the House.
The Whigs did not ‘imagine he would be any gain to us, for he was ... an orator at Ripon at Robinson’s last election, and in his favour’.
On 22 Jan. 1819 Edward John Littleton recorded in his diary: ‘Attended the House when Mr Lawson, a mad Member of Parliament made a laughable speech on presenting a petition for leave to bring in a turnpike bill’. It was a petition for the ‘true and radical’ reform of the Harrogate turnpike road, claimed Lawson. A speech of his three days later on the state of convict ships was considered ‘indelicate if not indecent’ after he had claimed that a crossing of the English Channel was as uncomfortable as a voyage to Botany Bay. Sydney Smith informed Lady Grey, ‘Mr Lawson, the jocular Yorkshire Member is supposed to be the most consummately impudent man that ever crossed the Humber’. The eccentricity of his speeches ‘was not relished in a young Member, though in an old one it would perhaps have enlivened many a dull debate’.
Lawson, regarding himself as a failure in the House, apparently intended to relinquish his seat to a nominee of the Duke of Newcastle, some said for a price; but his mother, unwilling to abdicate the family interest, canvassed so effectively for him, that the electors of Boroughbridge ‘as eccentric as their Member’, re-elected him.
After another contest in 1820, Lawson was unseated on petition. He died 10 Mar. 1823.