Lord John Russell - Stuart J. Reid (recommended reading txt) 📗
- Author: Stuart J. Reid
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There was no pressing conflict of opinion between the King and his advisers, but William IV. nevertheless availed himself of the accident of Althorp’s elevation to the peerage to dismiss the Ministry. The reversion of the leadership in the Commons fell naturally to Lord John, and Melbourne was quick to recognise the fact. ‘Thus invited,’ says Lord John Russell, ‘I considered it my duty to accept the task, though I told Lord Melbourne that I could not expect to have the same influence with the House of Commons which Lord Althorp had possessed. In conversation with Mr. Abercromby I said, more in joke than in earnest, that if I were offered the command of the Channel Fleet, and thought it my duty to accept, I should not refuse it.’ It was unlike Sydney Smith to treat the remark about taking command of the Channel Fleet seriously, when ‘he elaborated a charge’ against Lord John on the Deans and Chapters question; but even the witty Canon could lose his temper sometimes.
The King, however, had strong opinions on the subject of Lord John’s qualifications, and he expressed in emphatic terms his disapproval. The nation trusted Lord John, and had come to definite and flattering conclusions about him as a statesman, but at Windsor a different opinion prevailed. The King, in fact, made no secret to Lord Melbourne, in the famous interview at Brighton, of his conviction that Lord John Russell had neither the ability nor the influence to qualify him for the task; and he added that he would ‘make a wretched figure’ when opposed in the Commons by men like Peel and Stanley. His Majesty further volunteered the remark that he did not ‘understand that young gentleman,’ and could not agree to the arrangement proposed. William, moreover, took occasion to pose as a veritable, as well as titular, Defender of the Faith, for, on the authority of Baron Stockmar, the King ‘considered Lord John Russell to have pledged himself to certain encroachments on the Church, which his Majesty had made up his mind and expressed his determination to resist.’ As Russell was clearly quite out of the reckoning, Melbourne suggested two other names. But the King had made up his mind on more subjects than one, and next morning, Lord Melbourne found himself in possession of a written paper, which informed him his Majesty had no further occasion either for his services or for those of his colleagues.
William IV. acted within his constitutional rights, but such an exercise of the royal prerogative was, to say the least, worthy of George III. in his most uninspired mood. Althorp regarded the King’s action as the ‘greatest piece of folly ever committed,’ and Lord John, in reply to the friendly note which contained this emphatic verdict, summoned his philosophy to his aid in the following characteristic rejoinder: ‘I suppose everything is for the best in this world; otherwise the only good which I should see in this event would be that it saves me from being sadly pommelled by Peel and Stanley, to say nothing of O’Connell.’ Wellington, who was hastily summoned by the King, suggested that Sir Robert Peel should be entrusted with the formation of a new Government.
Sir Robert Peel was accordingly sent for in hot haste from Rome to form a new Ministry. On his arrival in London in December 1834, he at once set about the formation of a Cabinet. This is Jekyll’s comment: ‘Our crisis has been entertaining, and Peel is expected to-day. I wish he could have remained long enough at Rome to have learnt mosaic, of which parti-coloured materials our Cabinets have been constructed for twenty years, and for want of cement have fallen to pieces. The Whigs squall out, “Let us depart, for the Reformers grow too impatient.” The Tories squall out, “Let us come in, and we will be very good boys, and become Reformers ourselves.” However, the country is safe by the Reform Bill, for no Minister can remain in office now by corrupt Parliaments; he must act with approbation of the country or lose his Cabinet in a couple of months.’ At the General Election which followed, Peel issued his celebrated address to the electors of Tamworth, in which he declared himself favourable to the reform of ‘proved abuses,’ and to the carrying out of such measures ‘gradually, dispassionately, and deliberately,’ in order that it might be lasting. Lord John was returned again for South Devon; but on the reassembling of Parliament the Liberal majority had dwindled from 314 to 107. It was during his election tour that he delivered an address at Totnes, which Greville described as not merely ‘a very masterly performance,’ but ‘one of the cleverest and most appropriate speeches’ he had ever read, and for which his friends warmly complimented him. It was a powerful and humorous examination of the Tories’ professed anxiety for Reform, and of the prospects of any Reform measures being carried out by their instrumentality.
Lord John now became leader of the Opposition, though the Duke of Bedford dreaded the strain, and expostulated with his son on his acceptance of so irksome and laborious a task. ‘You will have to conduct and keep in order a noisy and turbulent pack of hounds which, I think, you will find it quite impossible to restrain.’ The Duke of Bedford’s fears were not groundless, and Lord John afterwards confessed that, in the whole period during which he had led the Liberal party in the House of Commons, he never had so difficult a task. The forces under his command consisted of a few stalwart Radicals, a number of Whigs of the traditional and somewhat stationary type, and some sixty Irish members. Nevertheless, he promptly assumed an aggressive attitude, and his first victory as leader of the Opposition was won on the question of the choice of a new Speaker, when Mr. Abercromby was placed in the chair in preference to the Ministerial candidate. As the session went on, Lord John’s resources in attack grew more and more marked, but he was foiled by the lack of cohesion amongst his followers. It became evident that, unless all sections of the Opposition were united as one man, the Government of Sir Robert Peel could not be overthrown. Alliance with the Radicals and the Irish party, although hateful to the old-fashioned Whigs, was in fact imperative. Lord John summoned a meeting of the Opposition at Lord Lichfield’s house; the support of the Radicals and Irish was secured, and then the leader marshalled his forces for what he hoped would prove a decisive victory. His expectations were not disappointed, for early in April he brought forward a motion for the appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish Church to general moral and religious purposes, and won with a majority of twenty-seven votes (285 to 258). Sir Robert Peel forthwith resigned, and the Whigs were avenged for their cavalier dismissal by the King.
On the day after the Prime Minister’s resignation, Lord John Russell was married—April 11, 1835, at St. George’s, Hanover Square—to Adelaide, Lady Ribblesdale, the widow of the second bearer of that title. The respite from political strife was of short duration, for at the end of forty-eight hours he was summoned from Woburn to take the seals of the Home Office in the second Melbourne Administration. The members of the new Cabinet presented themselves to their constituents for re-election, and Lord John suffered defeat in Devonshire. A seat was, however, found for him at Stroud, and in May he was back again in the House of Commons. The first measure of importance introduced by him, on June 5, was the Municipal Reform Act—a measure which embodied the results of the Commission on the subject appointed by Lord Grey. The bill swept away a host of antiquated and absurd privileges of corporate cities and towns, abolished the authority of cliques of freemen, rectified a variety of abuses, and entrusted municipal government to the hands of all taxpayers. Lord John piloted the measure through the Commons, and fought almost single-handed the representatives of vested rights. After a long contest with the Opposition and the Lords, he had the satisfaction of passing the bill, in a somewhat modified form, through its final stages in September, though the Peers, as usual, opposed it as long as they dared, and only yielded at last when Peel in the one House and Wellington in the other recommended concession.
The Irish Tithes Bill was subsequently introduced, and, though it now included the clauses for the appropriation of certain revenues, it passed the Commons by a majority of thirty-seven. The Lords, however, struck out the appropriation clauses, and the Government in consequence abandoned the measure. The Irish Municipal Bill shared a similar fate, and Lord John’s desire to see justice done in Ireland was brought for the moment to naught. The labours of the session had been peculiarly arduous, and in the autumn his health suffered from the prolonged strain. His ability as a leader of the House of Commons, in spite of the dismal predictions of William IV. and the admonitions of paternal solicitude, was now recognised by men of all shades of opinion, though, of course, he had to confront the criticism alike of candid friends and equally outspoken foes. He recruited his energies in the West of England, and, though he had been so recently defeated in Devonshire, wherever he went the people, by way of amends, gave him an ovation. Votes of thanks were accorded to him for his championship of civil and religious liberty, and in November he was entertained at a banquet at Bristol, and presented with a handsome testimonial, raised by the sixpences of ardent Reformers.
Parliament, in the Speech from the Throne, when the session of 1836 began, was called upon to take into early consideration various measures of Reform. The programme of the Ministry, like that of many subsequent administrations, was not lacking in ambition. It was proposed to deal with the antiquated and vexatious manner in which from time immemorial the tithes of the English Church had been collected. The question of Irish tithes was also once more to be brought forward for solution; the municipal corporations of Ireland and the relief of its poor were to be dealt with in the light of recent legislation for England in the same direction. 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. One of them legalised marriages in the presence of a registrar in Nonconformist places of worship, and the other provided for a general civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths. His original proposal was that marriage in church as well as chapel should only take place after due notice had been given to the registrar. The bishops refused to entertain such an idea, and the House of Lords gave effect to their objections, with the result that the registrar was bowed out of church, though not out of chapel, where indeed he remains to this day. The Tithe Commutation Act and three other measures—one for equalising the
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