John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

Russell entered the House of Commons as a Whig in 1813 at the age of 20. The future reformer gained his seat by virtue of his father, the Duke of Bedford, instructing the 30 or so electors of Tavistock to return him as an MP even though at the time Russell was abroad and under age.[8] In June 1815 Russell denounced the Bourbon Restoration and Britain's declaration of war against the recently returned Napoleon, arguing in the House of Commons that foreign powers had no right to dictate France's form of government.[9] In 1819 Russell embraced the cause of parliamentary reform and he led the more reformist wing of the Whigs throughout the 1820s. In 1828, while still an opposition backbencher, Russell introduced a Sacramental Test bill with the aim of abolishing the prohibitions on Catholics and Protestant dissenters being elected to local government and from holding civil and military offices. The bill gained the backing of the Tory Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel and was passed into law.

When the Whigs came to power in 1830, Russell entered Earl Grey's government as Paymaster of the Forces, and was soon elevated to the Cabinet. He was one of the principal leaders of the fight for the Reform Act 1832, earning the nickname "Finality Jack" from his complacently pronouncing the Act a final measure.[lower-alpha 1] In May 1834 Russell made a speech on the Irish Tithes bill, in which he argued that the revenue generated by tithes was more than was justified by the size of the established Protestant church in Ireland. Russell argued that a proportion the tithe revenue should instead be appropriated for the education of the Irish poor, regardless of denomination.[10] The speech was seen by its opponents as an attack on the established church in Ireland and it cemented a split within Grey's government over the issue of Irish tithes.[11] The following month four members of the Cabinet resigned over the issue, weakening the government's hold on Parliament.[12] Sensing that his position was now hopeless, Grey offered his resignation to the King in July, and was replaced by Viscount Melbourne at the head of the government.

In November 1834, when the leader of the Commons, Lord Althorp, succeeded to the peerage as Earl Spencer, Russell became the leader of the Whigs in the Commons. Russell's appointment prompted King William IV to terminate Melbourne's government, in part because the King objected to Russell's views on the Irish Church.[13] This remains the last time in British history that a monarch has dismissed a government.[14] The subsequent minority Conservative government lasted less than five months before resigning in April 1835. Russell then returned to office as Home Secretary in Melbourne's second government, before serving as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies from 1839 to 1841. Through this period Russell continued to lead the more reformist wing of the Whig party.

As Home Secretary Russell recommended and secured royal pardons for the Tolpuddle Martyrs and partial commutation of their sentences.[15][16] In 1836 he introduced the Marriages Act, which legalised civil marriages in England & Wales and allowed Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to marry in their own churches.[17] In 1837 he steered a series of seven Acts through Parliament, which together reduced the number of offences carrying a sentence of death from thirty-seven to sixteen.[18][19] This number was reduced further by the Substitution of Punishments of Death Act 1841. After these reforms the death penalty was rarely used in the United Kingdom for crimes other than murder. As Home Secretary Russell also introduced the public registration for births, marriages and deaths and played a large role in democratising the government of cities outside of London.

In 1841 the Whigs lost the general election to the Conservatives and Russell and his colleagues returned to opposition. In November 1845, following the failure of that year's potato harvest across Britain and Ireland, Russell came out in favour of the repeal of the Corn Laws and called upon the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel to take urgent action to alleviate the emerging food crisis.[20] Peel had by this time already become convinced of the need for repeal but he was opposed in this by the majority of his own cabinet and party. On 11 December 1845, frustrated by his party's unwillingness to support him on repeal, Peel resigned as Prime Minister and Queen Victoria invited Russell to form a new government. With the Whigs a minority in the Commons however, Russell struggled to assemble the necessary support. When Lord Grey declared that he would not serve in cabinet if Lord Palmerston was made Foreign Secretary it became clear to Russell that he could not form a viable government.[21] Russell declined the Queen's invitation on 21 December and Peel agreed to stay on as Prime Minister. In June the following year Peel repealed the Corn Laws with Whig support, bitterly dividing the Conservative Party in the process. Later that same night Peel's Irish Coercion Bill was defeated after vengeful anti-repeal Tories voted with the opposition and Peel, taking this as a vote of no confidence, resigned as Prime Minister.[22] Russell accepted the Queen's offer to form a government, this time Grey not objecting to Palmerston's appointment.[23]

Russell took office as Prime Minister with the Whigs only a minority in the House of Commons. It was the bitter split in the Conservative Party over the Corn Laws that allowed Russell's government to remain in power in spite of this, with Sir Robert Peel and his supporters offering tentative support to the new ministry in order to keep the protectionist Conservatives under Lord Stanley in opposition. Russell's premiership was frequently frustrated by his lack of a reliable Commons majority, and he was unable to secure many of the measures he wished to enact. Nevertheless, his government was able to secure some notable social reforms such as funding for teacher training and teachers' pensions, the Factories Act 1847, which restricted the working hours of women and young persons (aged 13–18) in textile mills to 10 hours per day, and the Public Health Act 1848, by which local government assumed responsibility for sewerage, clean water supply, refuse collection and other aspects of public health across much of England & Wales for the first time.[24][25]

Russell's government led the calamitous response to the Irish Famine. During the course of the famine, an estimated 1 million people died from a combination of malnutrition, disease and starvation and well over 1 million more were left with little choice but to emigrate from Ireland.[26] After taking office in 1846 Russell's ministry introduced a programme of public works that by the end of that year employed some half million but proved impossible to administer.[27] In January 1847, the government abandoned this policy, realising that it had failed, and turned to a mixture of "indoor" and "outdoor" direct relief; the former administered in workhouses through the Irish Poor Laws, the latter through soup kitchens. The costs of the Poor Law fell primarily on the local landlords, some of whom in turn attempted to reduce their liability by evicting their tenants.[27] In June 1847 the Poor Law Extension Act was passed, which embodied the principle, popular in Britain, that Irish property must support Irish poverty. Irish landlords were held in Britain to have created the conditions that led to the famine.[28]

In the general election of August 1847 the Whigs made gains at the expense of the Conservatives, but remained a minority, with Russell's government still dependent on the votes of Peelite and Irish Repealer MPs to win divisions in the Commons. Following the election of Lionel de Rothschild in the general election, Russell introduced a Jewish Relief bill, which would allow Rothschild and other Jews to sit in the House of Commons without taking the explicitly Christian oath of allegiance. In 1848, the bill was passed by the House of Commons, receiving support from the Whigs and a minority of Conservatives (including future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli). However, it was twice rejected by the Tory dominated House of Lords, as was a new bill in 1851. Rothschild was reelected in the 1852 general election following the fall of the Russell government, but was unable to take his seat until the Jews Relief Act was finally passed in 1858.

Russell frequently clashed with his headstrong Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, whose belligerence and support for continental revolution he found embarrassing. In 1847 Palmerston provoked a confrontation with the French government by undermining the plans of the Spanish court to marry the young Spanish Queen and her sister into the French royal family.[29] He subsequently clashed with Russell over plans to augment the army and navy in order to defend against the perceived threat of French invasion, which subsided with the overthrow of the French king in 1848.[30]

In 1850 further tension arose between the two over Palmerston's gunboat diplomacy in the Don Pacifico affair, in which Palmerston sought compensation from the Greek Government for the ransacking and burning of the house of David Pacifico, a Gibraltarian holder of a British passport.[31] Russell considered the matter "hardly worth the interposition of the British lion," and when Palmerston ignored some of his instructions, the Prime Minister wrote to Palmerston telling him he had informed the Queen that he "thought the interests of the country required that a change should take place at the Foreign Department."[32] However, less than a month later Lord Stanley successfully led the House of Lords into passing a motion of censure of the Government over its handling of the affair and Russell realised that he needed to align with Palmerston in order to prevent a similar motion being passed by the House of Commons, which would have obliged the Government to resign.[33] The Government prevailed, but Palmerston came out of the affair with his popularity at new heights since he was seen as the champion of defending British citizens anywhere in the world.[34]

In February 1851 Russell forced Palmerston to resign as Foreign Secretary after he recognised Napoleon III's coup of 2 December 1851 without first consulting the Queen or Cabinet.[35] Russell tried to strengthen his government by recruiting leading Peelites such as Sir James Graham and the Duke of Newcastle to his administration, but they declined.[36] Out of office, Palmerston sought revenge by turning a vote on a militia bill into a vote of confidence in the Government. A majority vote in favour of an amendment proposed by Palmerston caused the downfall of Russell's ministry on 21 February 1852. This was Palmerston's famous "tit for tat with Johnny Russell."[37]

Following Russell's resignation, on the 23 February 1852 Earl of Derby accepted the Queen's invitation to form a government. The new Conservative ministry could not command a majority in the Commons due to the continuing feud with the Peelites and so Derby called a general election for July, in the hopes of securing a majority. The 1852 general election saw the election of 330 Conservatives and 324 Whigs to the Parliament. Neither party had an overall majority, because 38 members who were technically Conservatives were actually Peelites.[37]

The new Parliament included 113 "Free Traders" who were more radical than the Peelites. They felt that the tariffs on all imported consumer goods should be removed, not just the tariff on wheat or corn. There were also 63 members of the "Irish Brigade," made up of Irish members interested in the Tenant Rights legislation for the protection of the tenant farmers in Ireland. None of these minor groups were interested in forming a government with the Conservatives because of the bitterness left over from the repeal of the Corn Laws. However, John Russell of the Whigs could not attract enough of the minor party members to form a government either. Other issues handled during the recent Russell government had alienated these three minor groups from the Whigs also. Derby's government feel in December 1852 following a vote against its Budget.[37]

Russell, as the leader of the Whig party, then brought it into a new coalition government with the Peelite Conservatives, headed by the Peelite Lord Aberdeen. Palmerston could not possibly be appointed as Foreign Secretary but he had to be a part of the new Aberdeen government and became Home Secretary. Russell continued to serve as leader of the Whig party in the House of Commons. As the leader of the largest party in the Aberdeen coalition government, Russell was needed in the new government. Accordingly, on 28 December 1852, Russell was appointed as Foreign Secretary.

In the eyes of many, including the Queen and Aberdeen, his jockeying for position against Palmerston was one of the causes of the inability of the administration to take a firm direction. It was a contest that Palmerston won. Having entered the administration as the expected Whig heir, Russell left it having been overtaken by Palmerston.[38]

Together with Palmerston, Russell was instrumental in getting Britain to join France in the Crimean War (1853–1856) to thwart the threat of Russia against the Ottoman Empire. They did so as members of the Aberdeen government and against the wishes of the cautious, Russophile Earl of Aberdeen. Lord Russell, frustrated by the Prime Minister's delays, resigned from the government on 21 February 1853. An 1855 motion in Parliament to investigate the mismanagement became a vote of confidence in the Aberdeen government and in the Secretary for War, the Duke of Newcastle. Accordingly, when the Roebuck motion passed, Aberdeen resigned. Russell was unable to form a government. Lord Palmerston formed a new government. John Russell, accepting the Colonial Office, was sent to Vienna to negotiate, but his proposals were rejected and he temporarily retired from politics in 1855.[39][40]

In 1859, following another short-lived Conservative government, Palmerston and Russell made up their differences, and Russell consented to serve as Foreign Secretary in a new Palmerston cabinet, usually considered the first true Liberal cabinet. This period was a particularly eventful one in the world outside Britain, seeing the Unification of Italy (the change of British government to one sympathetic to Italian nationalism had a marked part in this process[41]), the American Civil War, and the 1864 war over Schleswig-Holstein between Denmark and the German states. Russell arranged the London Conference of 1864, but failed to establish peace in the war. His tenure of the Foreign Office was noteworthy for the famous dispatch in which he defended Italian unification: "Her Majesty's Government will turn their eyes rather to the gratifying prospect of a people building up the edifice of their liberties, and consolidating the work of their independence, amid the sympathies and good wishes of Europe" (27 October 1860).[42]

Shield of arms of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, as displayed on his Order of the Garter stall plate in St George's Chapel.

In 1861 Russell was elevated to the peerage as Earl Russell, of Kingston Russell in the County of Dorset, and as Viscount Amberley, of Amberley in the County of Gloucester, and of Ardsalla in the County of Meath in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.[43] Henceforth, as a suo jure peer, rather than merely being known as 'Lord' because he was the son of a Duke, he sat in the House of Lords for the remainder of his career.

When Palmerston suddenly died in late 1865, Russell again became Prime Minister. His second premiership was short and frustrating, and Russell failed in his great ambition of expanding the franchise, a task that would be left to his Conservative successors, Derby and Benjamin Disraeli. In 1866, party disunity again brought down his government. Russell never again held any office. His last contribution to the House of Lords was on 3 August 1875.[44]