John Russell

Prime minister of Great Britain (1846-1852; 1865-1866)

• Born: August 18, 1792
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: May 28, 1878
• Place of death: Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park, England

One of the leading Whig politicians of nineteenth century Great Britain, Russell held cabinet offices for all but seven of the years between 1830 and 1866, and was twice prime minister. He was not always the most effective British political leader of his era, but he played important roles in some of the most sweeping political reforms of the nineteenth century.

Early Life

A younger son of the fifth duke of Bedford, John Russell came from a family that had historical ties with the English Reformation, the parliamentary cause in the Civil War, the opposition to the Catholic king, James II, the Glorious Revolution, and the Whig opposition to William Pitt the Younger’s anti-French measures. Russell lived and breathed his family’s history, and the events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were as real to him as those of the nineteenth. His ancestor Lord William Russell was executed in 1683 for his part in the plot to exclude James II from the throne. Parliament over king, Whigs over Tories, Protestant truth over Roman Catholic obscurantism: These were the principles for which Russell believed his family stood.

Born two months prematurely, Russell, when fully grown, stood only about five feet, five inches tall and was frail of health. His size was a handicap in politics and a caricaturist’s dream: His friends called him “Jack the Giantkiller”; his enemies drew him as a child. He married a widow, and the nickname “the widow’s mite” followed. After study with tutors, Russell attended the University of Edinburgh; he also traveled in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, and he visited Napoleon at Elba. He enjoyed the title “Lord John” Russell as the younger son of a duke, and it is by this name that history knows him best.

Lord John entered the House of Commons in 1813 for the family pocket borough of Tavistock. He represented this area and several other constituencies until 1841, when he was returned for the City of London; he held that prestigious seat until 1861, when he was elevated to the peerage. His early political career, from 1813 to 1830, proved him to be an advanced Whig, supporting parliamentary reform, Dissenters’ rights, and Roman Catholic Emancipation. Although not a great debater, he was able to hold the attention of the Commons through the force of his argument. This ability united with his family background to bring him to a position of leadership among the Whigs.

Life’s Work

Russell was not immediately given a cabinet post when the Charles Grey ministry came to power in 1830. He served on the committee that drafted the Great Reform Bill, and he piloted it through the House of Commons. His great national popularity as a reformer dates from this period. He served as home secretary (1835-1839) and colonial secretary (1839-1841) under Lord Melbourne. During these years, Russell continued to express his advanced Whig views, supporting Dissenters’ rights, reform of Irish grievances, the rationalization of the revenues of the Church of England, the Municipal Corporations Act, and other reforms in the areas of prisons, the Poor Law, and education. Although distasteful to the more conservative Whigs (Lord Stanley, the earl of Ripon, and Sir James Graham resigned over Russell’s proposal to confiscate revenues of the Irish church), Russell’s proposals did not go far enough to suit the Philosophical Radicals, the Irish, and the militant Nonconformists. They had little choice but to support him, however, for the Conservatives were worse.

Lord John emerged as the leader of the Whig opposition during Robert Peel’s ministry (1841-1846). When the Conservatives split over the questions of endowing the Irish Roman Catholic seminary at Maynooth and repealing the Corn Laws, Russell formed a government. He was prime minister from 1846 to 1852.

Russell’s ministry continued the pattern of moderate Whig reforms set during the 1830’s. The state’s role in education, factories, and public health expanded. The Whigs supported representative and responsible government for the colonies. They persevered in their policies of free trade and laissez-faire economics, eliminating the last vestiges of protective tariffs. In the three areas of Ireland, foreign policy, and religious policy, however, the Russell ministry was unfortunate.

Russell’s ministry coincided with the Irish Potato Famine. The government did not respond well to this disaster. Although it attempted to alleviate the famine with a large public works program, it believed that free market economics would solve the problem of famine. Although free market economics did not work, given the special circumstances of the Irish situation, the government, determined not to deviate from economic orthodoxy, refused to permit the direct relief necessary to prevent starvation. This policy promoted Irish discontent and terrorism, and it created the myth, still held in the twenty-first century, that the British had tried to starve the Irish.

In foreign policy, Russell came into conflict with Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston. Russell imagined that the unification of Italy would both promote liberal political institutions and damage the Roman Catholic Church. Palmerston, although himself a liberal, was an experienced diplomat concerned to promote international stability and British national interests. Moreover, Palmerston ran his foreign policy independently of his cabinet colleagues. This created conflicts that made it rather difficult for the government to respond effectively to the revolutions of 1848 and to the rise of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III) in France.

It was Russell’s religious policy, however, that caused the loudest quarrels, that helped bring down his government in 1852, and that ultimately destroyed his career. As has been noted, his support of Dissenters’ rights and of church reform alienated Anglicans and Conservatives, yet he did not go far enough to satisfy the more extreme Dissenters. When it came to Roman Catholics, his policies were so contradictory that they managed to alienate everyone. Russell supported the Maynooth endowment, and he proposed the concurrent endowment of Anglicans and Roman Catholics in Ireland. However, he denounced Roman Catholicism as “superstitious” during the Papal Aggression crisis of 1850-1851 (when a papal hierarchy was created for Great Britain) and passed penal legislation against its bishops. His measures, offensive to Roman Catholics, were too weak to satisfy the anti-Catholics.

Russell was not blessed with a docile cabinet, and some of his ministers, especially Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Wood and Lord Privy Seal the earl of Minto, were inept. Russell was more liberal than most of his colleagues, who prevented him from introducing measures for further parliamentary reform.

All these factors combined to bring the Russell ministry to such a state of weakness by February, 1852, that Lord Palmerston (who had been fired from the cabinet the previous December) was able to bring it down.

Significance

It is the judgment of Lord John Russell’s biographer, John Prest, that Russell ought to have retired from public life in 1852. Despite all the problems of his ministry, he stood in high public esteem as a reformer and as a man of honest and dedicated character. Russell, however, had not known when enough was enough. He continued in public office: foreign secretary, minister without portfolio, and Lord President of the Privy Council in the ill-fated Whig-Peelite Aberdeen Coalition (1852-1855); foreign secretary in the Palmerston ministry (1859-1865); and prime minister again (1865-1866) after Palmerston’s death.

Russell’s record in those offices was dismal, as he could not escape Palmerston’s domination. During his tenure as foreign secretary, Russell directed most of his energies to domestic matters, especially abortive reform bills, and relied upon Palmerston and the rest of the cabinet to set foreign policy.

Russell was not the most successful of Queen Victoria’s prime ministers. He issued public statements and committed his cabinet to policies without consulting his colleagues and without considering the consequences. Oftentimes, he announced a policy without having any idea of how to translate sentiment into practical legislation. He did not have a firm grasp of foreign policy and seemed to believe that foreign rulers were prepared to adopt without debate schemes that Lord Palmerston thought nonsensical. Russell was especially troubled when it came to religion, for he seemed unable or unwilling to devise programs that were politically feasible; he constructed schemes that were impracticable, unsystematic, and superficial.

The roots of Russell’s muddle are to be found in his religious peculiarities. He was a Protestant insofar as he was hostile to Roman Catholicism, but he was no orthodox Christian. He believed that a religious establishment should be maintained to propagate rational religion and honest behavior, but he denied that Anglican clergymen were more than a species of civil servant. With respect to his personal faith, Russell had inherited eighteenth century skepticism, anticlericalism, rationalism, and latitudinarianism. His second wife, née Frances Elliot, daughter of the earl of Minto, influenced his views. A Scots Calvinist of unusual scrupulosity, Lady John was an extreme anticlericalist who eventually gravitated to the Plymouth Brethren sect. She encouraged Russell to extremism in his views.

Russell’s character and career reflect both the contributions of the Whig Party to Victorian politics and that party’s limitations. He consistently supported measures that he thought would improve British institutions, but all too often he was unable to translate his ideas into programs that would work. He died on May 28, 1878, at Pembroke Lodge, a royal house in Richmond Park, placed by the queen at Russell’s disposal.

Bibliography

Arnstein, Walter L. Britain Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present. Vol. 4 in A History of England. 4th ed. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1983. A very readable survey of English history, useful for background.

Brown, Lucy M., and Ian R. Christie. Bibliography of British History, 1789-1851. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1977. This bibliography of writings on British history for this period is organized by subject and is well indexed.

Ellens, J. P. “Lord John Russell and the Church Rate Conflict: The Struggle for a Broad Church, 1834-1868.” Journal of British Studies 26 (1987): 232-257. A thoughtful and well-researched study of Russell’s views and actions on an important issue connected with church-state relations.

Kerr, Donal A. A Nation of Beggars? Priests, People, and Politics in Famine Ireland, 1846-1852. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Examines Russell’s efforts to improve the life of Irish Catholics by changing the landlord-tenant system and upgrading the status of the Catholic Church.

Paz, D. G. “Another Look at Lord John Russell and the Papal Aggression, 1850.” Historian 45 (1982): 47-64. Analyzes Russell’s actions in an important religious controversy and argues that his anti-Catholicism stemmed from his unique religious views and his impetuous personality.

Prest, John. Lord John Russell. New York: Macmillan, 1972. The definitive biography; integrates Russell’s public career and quirks of personality.

Russell, First Earl. The Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1805-1840. Edited by Rollo Russell. 2 vols. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913. More poorly edited than Gooch’s work (see below), with errors of transcription, but it does make the documents available.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Later Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1840-1878. Edited by G. P. Gooch. 2 vols. London: Longmans, 1925. Not well edited, but useful.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Recollections and Suggestions, 1813-1873. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1875. Russell’s autobiography. Although Russell himself was not especially self-perceptive, this memoir reveals much about his character.

Scherer, Paul. Lord John Russell: A Biography. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1999. The first scholarly biography since Prest’s book (see above). Scherer bases his biography on new documentation, focusing on Russell’s career after 1852, his work as foreign secretary under Prime Minister Palmerston, and his private life.

Walpole, Spencer. The Life of Lord John Russell. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1889. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. A typical Victorian “double-decker” biography. Although replaced by Prest, its virtue lies in the documents that it prints, for Walpole was a good historian and careful transcriber.