John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

Russell entered the House of Commons as a Whig in 1813. 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.[7] In 1819, Russell embraced the cause of parliamentary reform, and he led the more reformist wing of the Whigs throughout the 1820s. When the Whigs came to power in 1830 in Earl Grey's government, Russell entered the 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.[8] In 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. This appointment prompted King William IV to terminate Lord Melbourne's government, the last time in British history that a monarch dismissed a prime minister.[9] Nevertheless Russell retained his position for the rest of the decade, until the Whigs fell from power in 1841. In this position, Russell continued to lead the more reformist wing of the Whig party, calling, in particular, for religious freedom, and, as Home Secretary in the late 1830s, played a large role in democratising the government of British cities other than London. During his career in Parliament, Lord John Russell represented the City of London.[10]

A. J. P. Taylor emphasised Russell's central role in the expansion of liberty and in leading his Whig party to a commitment to a reform agenda.[11] In 1845, as leader of the Opposition, Russell came out in favour of repeal of the Corn Laws, forcing Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel to follow him. In December 1845, with the Conservatives split over this issue, Queen Victoria asked Russell to form a government, which he was unable to do since Lord Grey refused to serve with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary.[12] In June the following year the Corn Laws were repealed but only by virtue of Whig support. The same day Peel's Irish Coercion Bill, which the Whigs did not support, was defeated and the Prime Minister resigned.[13] Russell became Prime Minister, this time Grey not objecting to Palmerston's appointment.[14]

Russell's government secured social reforms such as funding teacher training and passage of 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.[15] His premiership was frustrated, however, because of party disunity and infighting, and he was unable to secure the success of many of the measures he was interested in passing. Russell was religious in a simple non-dogmatic way and supported the "Broad church" element in the Church of England. He opposed the "Oxford Movement" because its "Tractarian" members were too dogmatic and too close to Romanism. He supported Broad Churchmen or Latitudinarians by several appointments of liberal churchmen to vacant sees. In 1859 he reversed himself and decided to free non-Anglicans of the duty of paying rates (taxes) to the local Anglican parish. His political clumsiness and opposition to Church finance made him a target of attack and ridicule in many Church circles.[16][17][18]

He fought 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.[19] 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.[20]

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.[21] 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."[22] 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.[23] 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.[24]

Palmerston was forced to resign when he recognised Napoleon III's coup of 2 December 1851 without royal approval. 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.[25]

Palmerston turned the vote on a militia bill into a vote of confidence on the Government. The 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," a revenge for his dismissal by Russell as Foreign Minister.[26]

The July 1852 general election saw the election of 330 Conservatives and 324 Whigs to the Parliament. Neither had an overall majority, because 38 members who were technically Conservatives were actually Peelites (followers of the late Robert Peel). The Peelites had deserted the Conservatives to vote for the repeal of the Corn Laws in June 1846. The Corn Laws had imposed a tariff on all cheap imported wheat and thus kept the price of wheat and the bread made from wheat high. This served the interests of landed aristocracy, which was the main body of support for the Conservative Party. However, the high price of wheat and bread added greatly to the desperation of the poor and hungry in England and Ireland.[26]

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. Thus, Queen Victoria asked the Earl of Derby to form a minority government. It only lasted until December 1852.[26]

Portrait of John Russell by Francis Grant, 1853

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 Minister 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 Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

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.[27]

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.[28][29]

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[30]), 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 independence: "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).[31]

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.[32] As a suo jure peer, 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.[33]

• Beales, Derek (1974). "Peel, Russell and Reform". Historical Journal. 17#4 (4): 873–882. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00007950. JSTOR 2638561.
• Loades, David Michael (2003). Reader's guide to British history.