Lord John Russell Part 3

[Sidenote: A SARCASTIC APPEAL]

In the early autumn Lord John quitted England, with the intention of pa.s.sing the winter in Italy. The Duke of Bedford felt that his son had struck the nail on the head with his pithy and outspoken letter to Lord Althorp on political bribery, and he was not alone in thinking that Lord John ought not to throw away such an advantage by a prolonged absence on the Continent. Lord William accordingly wrote to his brother to urge a speedy return, and the letter is worth quoting, since incidentally it throws light on another aspect of Lord John's character: 'If you feel any ambition--which you have not; if you give up the charms of Genoa--which you cannot; if you could renounce the dinners and tea-tables and gossips of Rome--which you cannot; if you would cease to care about attending b.a.l.l.s and a.s.semblies, and dangling after ladies--which you cannot, there is a n.o.ble field of ambition and utility opened to a statesman. It is Ireland, suffering, ill-used Ireland! The grat.i.tude of millions, the applause of the world, would attend the man who would rescue the poor country. The place is open, and must soon be filled up. Ireland cannot remain as she is. The Ministers feel it, and would gladly listen to any man who would point out the way to relieve her. Undertake the task; it is one of great difficulty, but let that be your encouragement. See the Pope's minister; have his opinion on the Catholic question; go to Ireland; find out the causes of her suffering; make yourself master of the subject. Set to work, as you did about Reform, by curing small evils at first.... I am pointing to the way for you to make your name immortal, by doing good to millions and to your country. But you will yawn over this, and go to some good dinner to be agreeable, the height of ambition with the present generation.'

Meanwhile, through the influence of the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, Lord John was elected in November for the Irish borough of Bandon Bridge, and in February, fresh from prologue-writing for the private theatricals which Lord Normanby was giving that winter in Florence, he took his seat in the House of Commons. Lord Liverpool was struck down with paralysis on February 18, and it quickly became apparent that his case was hopeless.

After a few weeks of suspense, which were filled with Cabinet intrigues, Mr. Canning received the King's commands to reconstruct the Ministry; but this was more easily said than done. 'Lord Liverpool's disappearance from the political scene,' says Lord Russell, 'gave rise to a great _debacle_. The fragments of the old system rushed against each other, and for a time all was confusion.' Six of Canning's colleagues flatly refused to serve under him in the new Cabinet--Peel, Wellington, Eldon, Westmoreland, Bathurst, and Bexley--though the latter afterwards took advantage of his second thoughts and returned to the fold. Although an opponent of Parliamentary reform and of the removal of Nonconformist disabilities, Canning gave his support to Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, to the demand for free trade, and the abolition of slavery. Canning's accession to power threw the Tory ranks into confusion. 'The Tory party,' states Lord Russell, 'which had survived the follies and disasters of the American war, which had borne the defeats and achieved the final glories of the French war, was broken by its separation from Mr. Canning into fragments, which could not easily be reunited.'

[Sidenote: CANNING IN POWER]

Sydney Smith--who, by the way, had no love for Canning, and failed to a quite noteworthy extent to understand him--like the rest, took a gloomy view of the situation, which he summed up in his own inimitable fas.h.i.+on.

'Politics, domestic and foreign, are very discouraging; Jesuits abroad, Turks in Greece, "No Poperists" in England! A panting to burn B; B fuming to roast C; C miserable that he can't reduce D to ashes; and D consigning to eternal perdition the first three letters of the alphabet.' Canning's tenure of power was brief and uneasy. His opponents were many, his difficulties were great, and, to add to all, his health was failing. 'My position,' was his own confession, 'is not that of gratified ambition.' His Administration only lasted five months, for at the end of that period death cut short the brilliant though erratic and disappointed career of a statesman of courage and capacity, who entered public life as a follower of Pitt, and refused in after years to pin his faith blindly to either political party, and so incurred the suspicions alike of uncompromising Whigs and unbending Tories.

During the Canning Administration, Lord John's influence in the House made itself felt, and always along progressive lines. When the annual Indemnity Bill for Dissenters came up for discussion, he, in answer to a taunt that the Whigs were making political capital out of the Catholic question, and at the same time neglecting the claims of the Nonconformists, declared that he was ready to move the repeal of restrictions upon the Dissenters as soon as they themselves were of opinion that the moment was ripe for action. This virtual challenge, as will be presently seen, was recognised by the Nonconformists as a call to arms. Meanwhile cases of flagrant bribery at East Retford and Penryn--two notoriously corrupt boroughs--came before the House, and it was proposed to disenfranchise the former and to give in its place two members to Birmingham. The bill, however, did not get beyond its second reading. Lord John, nothing daunted, proposed in the session of 1828 that Penryn should suffer disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and that Manchester should take its place. This was ultimately carried in the House of Commons; but the Peers fought shy of Manchester, and preferred to 'amend' the bill by widening the right of voting at Penryn to the adjacent Hundred.

This refusal to take occasion by the hand and to gratify the political aspirations of the most important unrepresented town in the kingdom, did much to hasten the introduction of a wider scheme of reform.

Power slipped for the moment on the death of Canning into the weak hands of Lord G.o.derich, who tried ineffectually to keep together a Coalition Ministry. Lord John's best friends appear to have been apprehensive at this juncture lest the young statesman, in the general confusion of parties, should lapse into somewhat of a political Laodicean. 'I feel a little anxious,' wrote Moore, 'to know exactly the colour of your politics just now, as from the rumours I hear of some of your brother "watchmen," Althorp, Milton, and the like, I begin sometimes to apprehend that you too may be among the fallers off. Lord Lansdowne tells me, however, you continue quite staunch, and for his sake I hope so.' But Lord John was not a 'faller off.' His eyes were fully open to the anomalous position in which he in common with other members of the party of reform had been placed under Canning and G.o.derich. Relief, however, came swiftly. Lord G.o.derich, after four months of feeble semblance of authority, resigned, finding it impossible to adjust differences. As a subaltern, declared one who had narrowly watched his career, Lord G.o.derich was respectable, but as a chief he proved himself to be despicable. The Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister, with a Tory Cabinet at his back, and with Peel as leader in the House of Commons. Thus the 'great _debacle_,' which commenced with Canning's accession to power--in spite of the presence in the Cabinet of Palmerston and Huskisson--drew to an end, and a line of cleavage was once more apparent between the Whigs and the Tories. With Wellington, Lord John had of course neither part nor lot, and when the Duke accepted office he promptly ranged himself in the opposite camp.

[Sidenote: RELIGIOUS EQUALITY]

Ireland was on the verge of rebellion when Wellington and Peel took office, and in the person of O'Connell it possessed a leader of splendid eloquence and courage, who pressed the claims of the Roman Catholics for immediate relief from religious disabilities. Whilst the Government was deliberating upon the policy which they ought to pursue in presence of the stormy and menacing agitation which had arisen in Ireland, the Protestant Dissenters saw their opportunity, and rallied their forces into a powerful organisation for the total repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Their cause had been quietly making way, through the Press and the platform, during the dark years for political and religious liberty which divide 1820 from 1828, and the Protestant Society had kept the question steadily before the public mind. Meanwhile that organisation had itself become a distinct force in the State. 'The leaders of the Whig party now formally identified themselves with it. In one year the Duke of Suss.e.x took the chair; in another Lord Holland occupied the same position; Sir James Mackintosh delivered from its platform a defence of religious liberty, such as had scarcely been given to the English people since the time of Locke; and Lord John Russell, boldly identifying himself and his party with the political interests of Dissenters, came forward as chairman in another year, to advocate the full civil and religious rights of the three millions who were now openly connected with one or other of the Free Churches. The period of the Revolution, when Somers, Halifax, Burnet, and their a.s.sociates laid the foundations of const.i.tutional government, seemed to have returned.'[4] Immediately Parliament a.s.sembled, Lord John Russell--backed by many pet.i.tions from the Nonconformists--gave notice that on February 26 it was his intention to move the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.

The Test Act compelled all persons holding any office of profit and trust under the Crown to take the oath of allegiance, to partake of the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England, and to subscribe the declaration against Transubstantiation. It was an evil legacy from the reign of Charles II., and became law in 1673. The Corporation Act was also placed on the statute-book in the same reign, and in point of time twelve years earlier--namely, in 1661. It was a well-directed blow against the political ascendency of Nonconformists in the cities and towns. It required all public officials to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England, within twelve months of their appointment, and, whilst it excluded conscientious men, it proved no barrier to unprincipled hypocrites. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts had been mooted from time to time, but the forces of prejudice and apathy had hitherto proved invincible. Fox espoused the cause of the Dissenters in 1790, and moved for a committee of the whole House to deal with the question. He urged that men were to be judged not by their opinions, but by their actions, and he a.s.serted that no one could charge the Dissenters with ideas or conduct dangerous to the State. Parliament, he further contended, had practically admitted the injustice of such disqualifications by pa.s.sing annual Acts of Indemnity. He laid stress on the loyalty which the Dissenters had shown during the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, when the High Church party, which now resisted their just demands, had been 'hostile to the reigning family, and active in exciting tumults, insurrections, and rebellions.' The authority of Pitt and the eloquence of Burke were put forth in opposition to the repeal of the Test Acts, and the panic awakened by the French Revolution threw Parliament into a reactionary mood, which rendered reform in any direction impossible. The result was that the question, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, was s.h.i.+rked from 1790 until 1828, when Lord John Russell took up the advocacy of a cause in which, nearly forty years earlier, the genius of Charles James Fox had been unavailingly enlisted.

[Sidenote: THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE]

In moving the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Lord John recapitulated their history and advanced cogent arguments on behalf of the rights of conscience. It could not, he contended, be urged that these laws were necessary for the security of the Church, for they were not in force either in Scotland or in Ireland. The number and variety of offices embraced by the Test Act reduced the measure, so far as its practical working was concerned, to a palpable absurdity, as non-commissioned officers, as well as commissioned excis.e.m.e.n, tide-waiters, and even pedlars, were embraced in its provisions. In theory, at least, the penalties incurred by these different cla.s.ses of men were neither few nor slight--forfeiture of the office, disqualification for any other under Government, incapacity to maintain a suit at law, to act as guardian or executor, or to inherit a legacy, and even liability to a pecuniary penalty of 500_l._! Of course, such ridiculous penalties were in most cases suspended, but the law which imposed them still disgraced the statute-book, and was acknowledged by all unprejudiced persons to be indefensible. Besides, the most Holy Sacrament of the Christian Church was habitually reduced to a mere civil form imposed by Act of Parliament upon persons who either derided its solemn meaning or might be spiritually unfit to receive it. Was it decent, asked Cowper in his famous 'Expostulation,' thus--

To make the symbols of atoning grace An office-key, a pick-lock to a place?

To such a question, put in such a form, only one answer was possible.

Under circ.u.mstances men took the Communion, declared Lord John, for the purpose of qualifying for office, and with no other intent, and the least worthy were the most unscrupulous. 'Such are the consequences of mixing politics with religion. You embitter and aggravate political dissensions by the venom of theological disputes, and you profane religion with the vices of political ambition, making it both hateful to man and offensive to G.o.d.'

[Sidenote: THE RARITY OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY]

Peel opposed the motion, and professed to regard the grievances of the Dissenters as more sentimental than real. Huskisson and Palmerston followed on the same side, whilst Althorp and Brougham lent their aid to the demand for religious liberty. The result of the division showed a majority of forty-four in favour of the motion, and the bill was accordingly brought in and read a second time without discussion. During the progress of the measure through the House of Lords, the two Archbishops--less fearful for the safety of the Established Church than some of their followers--met Lord John's motion for the repeal of the Acts in a liberal and enlightened manner. 'Religious tests,' said Archbishop Harcourt of York, 'imposed for political purposes, must in themselves be always liable more or less to endanger religious sincerity.' Such an admission, of course, materially strengthened Lord John Russell's hands, and prepared the way for a speedy revision of the law. Many who had hitherto supported the Test Act began to see that such measures were, after all, a failure and a sham. If their terms were so lax that any man could subscribe to them with undisturbed conscience, then they ceased to be any test at all. On the contrary, if they were hard and rigid, then they forced men to the most odious form of dissimulation. A declaration, if required by the Crown, was therefore subst.i.tuted for the sacramental test, by which a person entering office pledged himself not to use its influence as a means for subverting the Established Church. On the motion of the Bishop of Llandaff, the words 'on the true faith of a Christian' were inserted in the declaration--a clause which, by the way, had the effect, as Lord Holland perceived at the time, of excluding Jews from Parliament until the year 1858.

Lord Winchilsea endeavoured by an amendment to shut out Unitarians from the relief thus afforded to conscience, but, happily, such an intolerant proceeding, even in an unreformed Parliament, met with no success. Lord Eldon fiercely attacked the measure--'like a lion,' as he said, 'but with his talons cut off'--but met with little support. It was felt that the great weight of authority as well as argument was in favour of the liberal policy which Lord John Russell advocated, and hence, after a protracted debate, the cause of religious freedom triumphed, and on May 9, 1828, the Test and Corporation Acts were finally repealed. A great and forward impulse was thus given to the cause of religious equality, and under the same energetic leaders.h.i.+p the party of progress set themselves with fresh hope to invade other citadels of privilege.

The victory came as a surprise not merely to Lord John but also to the Nonconformists. The fact that a Tory Government was in power was responsible for the widespread antic.i.p.ation of a bitter and protracted struggle. Amongst the congratulations which Lord John received, none perhaps was more significant than Lord Grey's generous admission that 'he had done more than any man now living' on behalf of liberty. 'I am a little anxious,' wrote Moore, 'to know that your glory has done you no harm in the way of health, as I see you are a pretty constant attendant on the House. There is nothing, I fear, worse for a man's const.i.tution than to trouble himself too much about the const.i.tution of Church and State. So pray let me have one line to say how you are.' 'My const.i.tution,' wrote back Lord John, 'is not quite so much improved as the Const.i.tution of the country by late events, but the joy of it will soon revive me. It is really a gratifying thing to force the enemy to give up his first line--that none but Churchmen are worthy to serve the State; I trust we shall soon make him give up the second, that none but Protestants are.'

[Sidenote: CATHOLIC EMANc.i.p.aTION]

Lord Eldon had predicted that Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation would follow on the heels of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the event proved that he was right. The election of Daniel O'Connell for Clare had suddenly raised the question in an acute form. Although the followers of Canning had already left the Ministry, the Duke of Wellington and Peel found themselves powerless to quell the agitation which O'Connell and the Catholic a.s.sociation had raised in Ireland by any means short of civil war. 'What our Ministry will do,' wrote Lord John, 'Heaven only knows, but I cannot blame O'Connell for being a little impatient, after twenty-seven years of just expectation disappointed.' The allusion was, of course, to Pitt's scheme at the beginning of the century to enable Catholics to sit in Parliament and so to reconcile the Irish people to the Union--a generous project which was brought to nought by the obstinate att.i.tude of George III. Lord John was meditating introducing a measure for Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, when Peel took the wind from his sails. George IV., however, supported by a majority of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, was as stoutly opposed to concession as George III. Lord John Russell's words on this point are significant 'George III.'s religious scruples, and even his personal prejudices, were respected by the nation, and formed real barriers so long as he did not himself waive them; the religious scruples of George IV. did not meet with ready belief, nor did his personal dislikes inspire national respect nor obtain national acquiescence.' The struggle between the Court and the Cabinet was, however, of brief duration, and Wellington bore down the opposition of the Lords, and on April 13, 1829, the Roman Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation Bill became law.

In June the question of Parliamentary reform was brought before Parliament by Lord Blandford, but his resolutions--which were the outcome of Tory panic concerning the probable result of Roman Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation--met with little favour, either then or when they were renewed at the commencement of the session of 1830. Lord Blandford had in truth made himself conspicuous by his opposition to the Catholic claims, and the nation distrusted the sudden zeal of the heir to Blenheim in such a cause. On February 23, 1830, Lord John Russell sought leave to bring in a bill for conferring the franchise upon Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, on the plea that they were the three largest unrepresented towns in the country. The moderate proposal was, however, rejected in a House of three hundred and twenty-eight members by a majority of forty-eight. Three months later Mr. O'Connell brought forward a motion for Triennial Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and the adoption of the Ballot; but this was rejected. But in a House of three hundred and thirty-two members, only thirteen were in favour of it, whilst an amendment by Lord John stating that it was 'expedient to extend the basis of the representation of the people' was also rejected by a majority of ninety-six. On June 26 George IV. died, and a few weeks later Parliament was dissolved. At the General Election, Lord John stood for Bedford, and, much to his chagrin, was defeated by a single vote.

After the declaration of the poll in August, he crossed over to Paris, where he prolonged his stay till November. The unconst.i.tutional ordinances of July 25, 1830, had brought about a revolution, and Lord John Russell, who was intimate with the chief statesman concerned, was wishful to study the crisis on the spot, and in the recital of its dramatic incidents to find relief from his own political disappointment.

During this visit he used his influence with General Lafayette for the life of Prince de Polignac, who was connected by marriage with a n.o.ble English family, and was about to be put on his trial. Lord John was intimately acquainted, not only with Lafayette, but with other leaders in the French political world, and his intercession, on which his friends in England placed much reliance, seems to have carried effectual weight, for the Prince's life was spared.

[Sidenote: WELLINGTON'S PROTEST AGAINST REFORM]

With distress at home and revolution abroad, signs of the coming change made themselves felt at the General Election. Outside the pocket boroughs, the Ministerialists went almost everywhere to the wall, and 'not a single member of the Duke of Wellington's Cabinet obtained a seat in the new Parliament by anything approaching to free and open election.'[5] The first Parliament of William IV. met on October 26, and two or three days later, in the debate on the King's Speech, Wellington made his now historic statement in answer to Earl Grey, who resented the lack of reference to Reform: 'I am not prepared to bring forward any measure of the description alluded to by the n.o.ble lord. I am not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of this nature, but I will at once declare that, as far as I am concerned, as long as I hold any station in the government of the country, I shall always feel it my duty to resist such measures when proposed by others.'

This statement produced a feeling of dismay even in the calm atmosphere of the House of Lords, and the Duke, noticing the scarcely suppressed excitement, turned to one of his colleagues and whispered: 'What can I have said which seems to have made so great a disturbance?' Quick came the dry retort of the candid friend: 'You have announced the fall of your Government, that is all.' The consternation was almost comic.

'Never was there an act of more egregious folly, or one so universally condemned,' says Charles Greville. 'I came to town last night (five days after the Duke's speech), and found the town ringing with his imprudence and everybody expecting that a few days would produce his resignation.' Within a fortnight the general expectation was fulfilled, for on November 16 the Duke, making a pretext of an unexpected defeat over Sir H. Parnell's motion regarding the Civil List, threw up the sponge, and Lord Grey was sent for by the King and entrusted with the new Administration. The irony of the situation became complete when Lord Grey made it a stipulation to his acceptance of office that Parliamentary Reform should be a Cabinet measure.

Lord John, meanwhile, was a candidate for Tavistock, and when the election was still in progress the new Premier offered him the comparatively unimportant post of Paymaster-General, and, though he might reasonably have expected higher rank in the Government, he accepted the appointment. He was accustomed to a.s.sert that the actual duties of the Paymaster were performed by cas.h.i.+ers; and he has left it on record that the only official act of any importance that he performed was the pleasant task of allotting garden-plots at Chelsea to seventy old soldiers, a boon which the pensioners highly appreciated.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _History of the Free Churches of England_, pp. 457-458, by H. S.

Skeats and C. S. Miall.

[5] _The Three Reforms of Parliament_, by William Heaton, chap. ii. p.

38.

CHAPTER IV

A FIGHT FOR LIBERTY

1830-1832

Lord Grey and the cause of Reform--Lord Durham's share in the Reform Bill--The voice of the people--Lord John introduces the Bill and explains its provisions--The surprise of the Tories--'Reform, Aye or No'--Lord John in the Cabinet--The Bill thrown out--The indignation of the country--Proposed creation of Peers--Wellington and Sidmouth in despair--The Bill carried--Lord John's tribute to Althorp.

EARL GREY was a man of sixty-six when he was called to power, and during the whole of his public career he had been identified with the cause of Reform. He, more than any other man, was the founder, in 1792--the year in which Lord John Russell was born--of 'The Friends of the People,' a political a.s.sociation which united the forces of the patriotic societies which just then were struggling into existence in various parts of the land. He was the foe of Pitt and the friend of Fox, and his official career began during the short-lived but glorious Administration of All the Talents. During the dreary quarter of a century which succeeded, when the destinies of England were committed to men of despotic calibre and narrow capacity like Sidmouth, Liverpool, Eldon, and Castlereagh, he remained, through good and evil report, in deed as well as in name, a Friend of the People. As far back as 1793, he declared: 'I am more convinced than ever that a reform in Parliament might now be peaceably effected. I am afraid that we are not wise enough to profit by experience, and what has occasioned the ruin of other Governments will overthrow this--a perseverance in abuse until the people, maddened by excessive injury and roused to a feeling of their own strength, will not stop within the limits of moderate reformation.' The conduct of Ministers during the dark period which followed the fall of the Ministry of All the Talents in 1807, was, in Grey's deliberate opinion, calculated to excite insurrection, since it was a policy of relentless coercion and repression.

He made no secret of his conviction that the Government, by issuing proclamations in which whole cla.s.ses of the community were denounced as seditious, as well as by fulminating against insurrections that only existed in their own guilty imaginations, filled the minds of the people with false alarms, and taught every man to distrust if not to hate his neighbour. There was no more chance of Reform under the existing _regime_ than of 'a thaw in Zembla,' to borrow a famous simile. Cobbett was right in his a.s.sertion that the measures and manners of George IV.'s reign did more to shake the long-settled ideas of the people in favour of monarchical government than anything which had happened since the days of Cromwell. The day of the King's funeral--it was early in July and beautifully fine--was marked, of course, by official signs of mourning, but the rank and file of the people rejoiced, and, according to a contemporary record, the merry-making and junketing in the villages round London recalled the scenes of an ordinary Whit Monday.

On the whole, the nation accepted the accession of the Sailor King with equanimity, though scarcely with enthusiasm, and for the moment it was not thought that the new reign would bring an immediate change of Ministry. The dull, uncompromising nonsense, however, which Wellington put into the King's lips in the Speech from the Throne at the beginning of November, threatening with punishment the seditious and disaffected, followed as it quickly was by the Duke's own statement in answer to Lord Grey, that no measure of Parliamentary reform should be proposed by the Government as long as he was responsible for its policy, awoke the storm which drove the Tories from power and compelled the King to send for Grey. The distress in the country was universal--riots prevailed, rick-burning was common. Lord Grey's prediction of 1793 seemed about to be fulfilled, for the people, 'maddened by excessive injury and roused to a feeling of their own strength,' seemed about to break the traces and to take the bit between their teeth. The deep and widespread confidence alike in the character and capacity of Lord Grey did more than anything else at that moment to calm the public mind and to turn wild clamour into quiet and resistless enthusiasm.

[Sidenote: LORD GREY AS LEADER]

Yet in certain respects Lord Grey was out of touch with the new spirit of the nation. If his own political ardour had not cooled, the lapse of years had not widened to any perceptible degree his vision of the issues at stake. He was a man of stately manners and fastidious tastes, and, though admirably qualified to hold the position of leader of the aristocratic Whigs, he had little in common with the toiling ma.s.ses of the people. He was a conscientious and even chivalrous statesman, but he held himself too much aloof from the rank and file of his party, and thin-skinned Radicals were inclined to think him somewhat cold and even condescending. Lord Grey lacked the warm heart of Fox, and his speeches, in consequence, able and philosophic though they were, were dest.i.tute of that unpremeditated and magical eloquence which led Grattan to describe Fox's oratory as 'rolling in, resistless as the waves of the Atlantic.' On one memorable occasion--the second reading of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords--Lord Grey entirely escaped from such oratorical restraints, and even the Peers were moved to unwonted enthusiasm by the strong emotion which pervaded that singularly outspoken appeal.

His son-in-law, Lord Durham, on the other hand, had the making of a great popular leader, in spite of his imperious manners and somewhat dictatorial bearing. The head of one of the oldest families in the North of England, Lord Durham entered the House of Commons in the year 1813, at the age of twenty-one, as Mr. John George Lambton, and quickly distinguished himself by his advanced views on questions of foreign policy as well as Parliamentary reform. He married the daughter of Lord Grey in 1816, and gave his support in Parliament to Canning. On the formation of his father-in-law's Cabinet in 1830, he was appointed Lord Privy Seal. His popular sobriquet, 'Radical Jack,' itself attests the admiration of the populace, and when Lambton was raised to the peerage in 1828 he carried to the House of Lords the enthusiastic homage as well as the great expectations of the crowd. Lord Durham was the idol of the Radicals, and his presence in the Grey Administration was justly regarded as a pledge of energetic action.

He would unquestionably have had the honour of introducing the Reform Bill in the House of Commons if he had still been a member of that a.s.sembly, for he had made the question peculiarly his own, and behind him lay the enthusiasm of the entire party of Reform. Althorp, though leader of the House, and in spite of the confidence which his character inspired, lacked the power of initiative and the Parliamentary courage necessary to steer the s.h.i.+p of State through such rough waters. When Lord Grey proposed to entrust the measure to Lord John, Brougham pushed the claims of Althorp, and raised objections to Lord John on the ground that the young Paymaster-General was not in the Cabinet; but Durham stoutly opposed him, and urged that Lord John had the first claim, since he had last been in possession of the question.

[Sidenote: THE COMMITTEE OF FOUR]

An unpublished paper of Lord Durham's, in the possession of the present Earl, throws pa.s.sing light on the action, at this juncture, of the Ministry, and therefore it may be well to quote it. 'Shortly after the formation of the Government, Lord Grey asked me in the House of Lords if I would a.s.sist him in preparing the Reform Bill. I answered that I would do so with the greatest pleasure. He then said, "You can have no objection to consult Lord John Russell?" I replied, "Certainly not, but the reverse."' In consequence of this conversation, Lord Durham goes on to state, he placed himself in communication with Lord John, and they together agreed to summon to their councils Sir James Graham and Lord Duncannon. Thus the famous Committee of Four came into existence. Durham acted as chairman, and in that capacity signed the daily minutes of the proceedings. The meetings were held at his house in Cleveland Row, and he there received, on behalf of Lord Grey, the various deputations from different parts of the kingdom which were flocking up to impress their views of the situation on the new Premier. Since the measure had of necessity to originate in the House of Commons, and Lord John, it was already settled, was to be its first spokesman, Lord Durham suggested that Russell should draw up a plan. This was done, and it was carefully discussed and amended in various directions, and eventually the measure as finally agreed upon was submitted to Lord Grey, with a report which Lord Durham, as chairman, drew up, and which was signed not only by him but by his three colleagues. Lord Durham states, in speaking of the part he took as chairman of the Committee on Reform, that Lord Grey intrusted him with the preparation in the first instance of the measure, and that he called to his aid the three other statesmen. He adds: 'This was no Cabinet secret, for it was necessarily known to hundreds, Lord Grey having referred to me all the memorials from different towns and bodies.' Lord Durham was in advance of his colleagues on this as upon most questions, for he took his stand on household suffrage, vote by ballot and triennial Parliaments, and if he could have carried his original draft of the Reform Bill that measure would have been far more revolutionary than that which became law. His proposals in the House of Commons in 1821 went, in fact, much further than the measure which became law under Lord Grey.

Lord Grey announced in the Lords on February 3 that a Reform measure had been framed and would be introduced in the House of Commons on March 1 by Lord John Russell, who, 'having advocated the cause of Parliamentary Reform, with ability and perseverance, in days when it was not popular, ought, in the opinion of the Administration, to be selected, now that the cause was prosperous, to bring forward a measure of full and efficient Reform, instead of the partial measures he had hitherto proposed.'

[Sidenote: LEADING THE ATTACK]