Lord John Russell

“ Good sense, a considerable power of discrimination, a highly cultivated mind, a great equality of temper, are the characteristics of Lord John Russell, and these peculiarly fit him for taking a distinguished part in public life.’ Lady Blessington adds that the only obstacle, in her opinion, to Lord John’s success lays in the natural reserve of his manners, which might lead people ‘to think him cold and proud.’ This is exactly what happened, and only those who knew Lord John intimately were aware of the delicate consideration for others which lurked beneath his somewhat frigid demeanour. ”

“ RUSSELL, Lord GEORGE WILLIAM (1790–1846) , major-general, was second son of John, sixth duke of Bedford, by Georgiana Elizabeth Byng, second daughter of the fourth viscount Torrington. Lord John Russell (afterwards Earl Russell) [q. v.] was his younger brother. He was born in Harley Street, London, on 8 May 1790, and was educated with Lord John successively at a private school at Sunbury, at Westminster for rather more than a year, and at Woodnesborough, near Sandwich. To his brother Lord John he was through life warmly attached. He entered the army as cornet in the 1st dragoons on 5 Feb. ”

“ He declared that ‘there was no man in England whom he respected more in his public capacity, loved more in his private capacity, or from whom he had received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of literature than Lord John Russell.’ The compliment took Lord Russell by surprise ”

“ Gladstone—The jubilee of the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts—‘Punch’ on the ‘Golden Wedding’—Death—The Queen’s letter—Lord Shaftesbury’s estimate of Lord John’s career—His great qualities.
Peace with honour—a phrase which Lord John used long before Lord Beaconsfield made it famous—sums up the settled tranquillity and simple dignity of the life at Pembroke Lodge. No man was more entitled to rest on his laurels than Lord John Russell. ”

“ Peel, his most formidable rival on the floor of the Commons, hinted that Lord John Russell was small in small things, but, he added significantly that, when the issues grew great, he was great also. Everyone who looks at Lord John’s career in its length and breadth must admit the justice of such a criticism. ”

“ In 1850 Lord John Russell, worked upon by a persevering minority in Oxford, startled the House of Commons, delighted the liberals, and angered and dismayed the authorities of the powerful corporations thus impugned, by the announcement of a commission under the crown to inquire into their discipline, state, and revenues, and to report whether any action by crown and parliament could further promote the interests of religion and sound learning in these venerable shrines. ”

“ Lord John Russell once declared that he had no need to go far in search of happiness, as he had it at his own doors, and this was the impression left on every visitor to Pembroke Lodge. Lord Dufferin states that all his recollections gather around Lord John’s domestic life. He never possessed a kinder friend or one who was more pleasant in the retirement of his home. ”

“ It will be clear that Lady John was never at any period of her life a leader of political society in the sense in which Lady Palmerston was. Lady John had neither the temperament, the inclination, nor the health required for such a rôle in the world of politics. Some are of opinion that Lord John Russell's position as a statesman suffered, that he allowed himself to be too much absorbed by his domestic affairs, and that the illnesses of his wife and the care of his young family weighed too heavily upon him. ”

“ Lord John Russell's career, during the last seven years, has ruined him in the public estimation. He has not attempted to govern by principle, but by expediency. He has never risen to the proud elevation of a British statesman—he has simply shown himself to be an unscrupulous party leader. Whether in office or out of it, his measures have uniformly been based upon considerations of Whig supremacy—not upon those [499] higher views of public policy which a Premier of Great Britain should entertain. ”

“ Lord John Russell is precisely the person calculated to fill a high official situation. Well informed on all subjects, with an ardent love of his country, and an anxious desire to serve it, he has a sobriety of judgment and a strictness of principle that will for ever place him beyond the reach of suspicion, even to the most prejudiced of his political adversaries. ”

“ Viscount Palmerston very much regrets to have to say that the adverse feeling in regard to Lord John Russell grows stronger and spreads wider every day, and there is a general desire that he should resign.62 This desire is expressed by the great bulk of the steadiest supporters of the Government, and was conveyed to Lord John this evening in the House of Commons by Mr Bouverie on behalf of those members of the Government who are not in the Cabinet. ”

“ He therefore determined to sound the Cabinet advocates of procrastination as to their real feeling about Reform, with the result that he saw clearly that Lord John Russell’s fears were not groundless, since Lord Palmerston and Lord Lansdowne bluntly declared that they meant to retire from office if the Government went forward with the Bill. ”

“ The Queen has unfortunately very often had to call upon Lord John to check his colleague in the dangerous and unbecoming course which at various times he has so wilfully persevered in pursuing. But Lord John Russell, although agreeing on most of these occasions with the view taken by the Queen, has invariably met her remonstrances with the plea that to push his interference with Lord Palmerston beyond what he had done would lead to a rupture with him, and thus necessarily to a breaking up of the Cabinet. ”

“ Lord John Russell presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He cannot forbear from vindicating himself from the charge of forming or being party to an arrangement "intended to meet personal wants under peculiar and accidental circumstances, leaving the Queen the embarrassing alternative only, either to forego the exercise of her own prerogative, or to damage by her own act the formation or stability of the new Government—both of paramount importance to the welfare of the Country." ”

“ Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell were publicly thanked at this gathering for their action, and the reply of the latter is historic: ‘Our prospects are obscured for a moment, but, I trust, only for a moment; it is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation.’
Meanwhile Lord Ebrington, Lord John’s colleague in the representation of Devonshire, came to the rescue of the Government with a vote of confidence, which was carried by a sweeping majority. ”

“ Yet, when all this is admitted, it does nothing towards proving that Lord John Russell was a mistaken alarmist. The Durham Letter and its impassioned protest have been justified by the logic of events. It is easy for men to be charitable who have slipped their convictions. ”

“ To complete the general confusion of Parties, the Duke of Bedford, who called on Lady Derby this morning, assures her that Lord John Russell does not desire the fall of your Majesty's present Government, and that in no case will he enter into any combination with the Radical Party, a declaration quite at variance with the course he has pursued since Parliament met. ”

“ Still more important was the fact that Lord John Russell, who had distinguished himself already as the most devoted promoter of constitutional reform, was a man peculiarly qualified by intellect and by his skill in exposition to pilot such a measure through the House of Commons. ”

“ The question of education lay always close to the heart of Lord John Russell, who found time even amid the stress of 1847 to advance it. The Melbourne Administration had vested the management of Parliamentary grants in aid of education in a committee of the Privy Council. In spite of suspicion and hostility, which found expression both in Parliament and in ecclesiastical circles, the movement extended year by year and slowly pervaded with the first beginnings of culture the social life of the people. ”

“ The first Reform Bill, which had been drafted by Russell, and worked over by Lord Durham and other ministers, was presented to the Commons on March 1, 1831. Its provisions had been kept profoundly secret, and the house was thronged to hear them explained in the low and measured tones of Lord John Russell. The nation was as eager as the immediate auditory to know how far the government would go in granting the popular demand. Touching upon some of the existing anomalies the speaker imagined a foreigner visiting England ”

“ LORD JOHN RUSSELL has that degree of imagination, which, though evinced rather in sentiment than expression, still enables him to generalise from the details of his reading and experience; and to take those comprehensive views, which, however easily depreciated by ordinary men in an age of routine, are indispensable to a statesman in the conjunctures in which we live. He understands, therefore, his position; and he has the moral intrepidity which prompts him ever to dare that which his intellect assures him is politic. ”

“ We lament feeling constrained to express our strong belief, that Lord John Russell, conscious of having forfeited the confidence of some of his most important supporters, is prepared to throw himself unreservedly into the arms of those who, he knows, and cannot but know, will force him infinitely farther than in his own recently declared opinion he asserted, and in his conscience he believes to be consistent with the safety of the throne, and the preservation of the liberties of the country. ”

“ Before Parliament met in December, Lord John Russell, in despair of bringing matters to a practical issue, informed his colleagues that, though he was willing to remain in the Cabinet, and to act as Leader of the House during the short session before Christmas, it was his intention to relinquish office at the close of the year. The objection was raised that it was unconstitutional for him to meet Parliament in [251] a responsible position if he had arrived at this fixed but unannounced resolution. ”

“ Henceforward, in any Liberal Administration, Lord John Russell can be little better than a cipher. Already there has been talk of deposing him—of electing new leaders for the conduct of the Opposition—of putting forward to the van men who are beset with less scruple, and unencumbered with aristocratic connection. The private history of Liberalism affords more than one instance of such depositions. Lord John must abdicate, or march onward at the head of the progressive democracy. ”

“ She sympathized heartily with Lord John Russell's dislike of the Oxford movement. There are many prayers in her diaries and many religious reflections in her letters, and in all two emotions predominate; a trust in God and an earnest conviction that a life of love--love to God and man--is the heart of religion. ”

“ With Brougham in the upper House, Lord John Russell had become the most prominent man in the lower; but being comparatively a poor man, he was contented to be only paymaster of the forces,--the most lucrative office in the government. His successful conduct of the great Reform Bill gave him considerable prestige. In the second ministry of Lord Melbourne, 1834-1841, Lord Russell was at first colonial and afterward home secretary. ”

“ He had met the widow of Charles Stuart, the young chevalier, in Florence; and had conversed with Napoleon in Elba. He knew Cavour and Bismarck. He was now an ally of Daniel O'Connell, and now of Cobden and Bright. He was the close friend of Thomas Moore; he knew Byron. Lord John Russell had tastes for literature, for art, for philosophy, for history, for politics, and his aestheticism had the advantage that it made him seek the society and appreciate the worth of men of genius and letters. Thus he never remained a mere politician like Pitt or Palmerston. ”

“ Improvements in the practical working of the administration of justice, ‘more especially in the Court of Chancery,’ were foreshadowed, and it was announced that the early attention of Parliament would also be called to certain ‘grievances which affect those who dissent from the doctrines or discipline of the Established Church.’ Such a list of measures bore on its very face the unmistakeable stamp of Lord John Russell’s zeal for political redress and religious toleration. Early in the session he brought forward two measures for the relief of Nonconformists. ”

“ His conduct, nevertheless, afforded Lord John Russell an escape from an embarrassing situation. Becoming colonial secretary in 1846, he found himself everywhere confronted with arduous problems, which in the main he encountered with success. His administration formed an epoch. He was the first minister to proclaim that the colonies were to be governed for their own benefit and not for the mother-country’s; the first systematically to accord them self-government so far as then seemed possible; the first to introduce free trade into their relations with Great Britain and Ireland. ”

“ He was not in favour of the prolongation of the official existence of Lord John Russell's disunited ministry, and on their resignation showed his feeling (23 Feb. 1852) in the House of Lords by declaring that the retention of office by a government which does not obtain the amount of support necessary to enable it to conduct with efficiency the queen's affairs becomes productive of evil to the country. ”