Russell, John Russell, 1st Earl

Russell, John Russell, 1st Earl,

1792–1878, British statesman; younger son of the 6th duke of Bedford, known most of his life as Lord John Russell. He became a Whig member of Parliament in 1813 and soon began his long career as a liberal reformer. He worked for Catholic Emancipation, leading the attack on the Test and Corporation acts, which were repealed in 1828. As paymaster general in the ministry of the 2d Earl Grey, Russell helped prepare and introduce the Reform Bill of 1832 (see under Reform ActsReform Acts
or Reform Bills,
in British history, name given to three major measures that liberalized representation in Parliament in the 19th cent. Representation of the counties and boroughs in the House of Commons had not, except for the effects of parliamentary
..... Click the link for more information. ). His advocacy of the reduction of Irish church revenues helped bring down the Whig government in 1834, but when the Whigs returned to power (1835), Russell became home secretary and later secretary for war and the colonies (1839). In the meantime he had given the name to the newly emerging Liberal partyLiberal party,
former British political party, the dominant political party in Great Britain for much of the period from the mid-1800s to World War I. Origins
..... Click the link for more information.  and become one of its chief spokesmen. Russell led the opposition during the second ministry (1841–46) of Sir Robert Peel and, following the repeal of the corn laws (which Russell supported), succeeded him as prime minister. During his ministry Russell used public works, grants, and other relief to help the Irish during the potato famine and supported the bill (1847) that limited the working day to 10 hr for many laborers. In 1851 he demanded the resignation of his foreign secretary, Viscount PalmerstonPalmerston, Henry John Temple, 3d Viscount,
1784–1865, British statesman. His viscountcy, to which he succeeded in 1802, was in the Irish peerage and therefore did not prevent him from entering the House of
..... Click the link for more information. , for his unauthorized approval of Napoleon III's coup in France, and the following year Palmerston helped secure the fall of Russell's ministry. Russell served (1852–55) in Lord Aberdeen's coalition government and represented (1855) England at Vienna in an unsuccessful conference to end the Crimean War. He was reconciled with Palmerston and, as his foreign secretary (1859–65), vigorously advocated neutrality in the American Civil War and supported the Risorgimento in Italy. He had been made an earl in 1861 and became prime minister again on Palmerston's death in 1865. For many years an advocate of further parliamentary reform, he attempted to push through a new Reform Bill, but the bill was defeated and caused the fall of his ministry in 1866. Among Russell's literary and historical writings are a translation of Schiller's Don Carlos and biographies of Lord William Russell (1819) and of Charles James Fox (3 vol., 1853–57).

Bibliography

See his Recollections and Suggestions, 1813–1873 (1875); early correspondence (ed. by R. Russell; 2 vol., 1913) and later correspondence (ed. by G. P. Gooch; 2 vol., 1925); biographies by S. Walpole (2 vol., 1889, repr. 1968) and J. Prest (1972); W. P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (1930, repr. 1966).