1826-1830

WHIG optimists in the newspapers at the General Election of 1826 declared that the future welfare of the country would depend much on the intelligence and independence of the new Parliament. Ordinary men accustomed to look facts in the face were not, however, so sanguine, and Albany Fonblanque expressed the more common view amongst Radicals when he asserted that if the national welfare turned on the exhibition in an unreformed House of Commons of such unparliamentary qualities as intelligence and independence, there would be ground not for hope but for despair. He added that he saw no shadow of a reason for supposing that one Parliament under the existing system would differ in any essential degree from another. He maintained that, while the sources of corruption continued to flow, legislation would roll on in the same course.

Self-improvement was, in truth, the last thing to be expected from a House of Commons which represented vested rights, and the interests and even the caprices of a few individuals, rather than the convictions or needs of the nation. The Tory party was stubborn and defiant even when the end of the Liverpool Administration was in sight. The Test Acts were unrepealed, prejudice and suspicion shut out the Catholics from the Legislature, and the sacred rights of property triumphed over the terrible wrongs of the slave. The barbarous enactments of the Criminal Code had not yet been entirely swept away, and the municipal corporations, even to contemporary eyes, appeared as nothing less than sinks of corruption.

Lord John was defeated in Huntingdonshire, and, to his disappointment, found himself out of harness. He had hoped to bring in his Bribery Bill early in the session, and under the altered circumstances he persuaded Lord Althorp to press the measure forward. In a letter to that statesman which was afterwards printed, he states clearly the evils which he wished to remedy. A sentence or two will show the need of redress: ’A gentleman from London goes down to a borough of which he scarcely before knew the existence. The electors do not ask his political opinions; they do not inquire into his private character; they only require to be satisfied of the impurity of his intentions. If he is elected, no one, in all probability, contests the validity of his return. His opponents are as guilty as he is, and no other person will incur the expense of a petition for the sake of a public benefit. Fifteen days after the meeting of Parliament (this being the limit for the presentation of a petition), a handsome reward is distributed to each of the worthy and independent electors.’

In the early autumn Lord John quitted England, with the intention of passing 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 balls and assemblies, and dangling after ladies which you cannot, there is a noble field of ambition and utility opened to a statesman. It is Ireland, suffering, ill-used Ireland! The gratitude 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 Devonshire, 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 emancipation, 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.’

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 fashion. ’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 disenfranchisement, 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 Goderich, 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 Goderich. Relief, however, came swiftly. Lord Goderich, 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 Goderich 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.

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 Sussex 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 associates laid the foundations of constitutional government, seemed to have returned.’ Immediately Parliament assembled, Lord John Russell backed by many petitions 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 asserted 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 passing 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 shirked 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.

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 excisemen, tide-waiters, and even pedlars, were embraced in its provisions. In theory, at least, the penalties incurred by these different classes 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 500l.! 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 circumstances 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 God.’

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 substituted 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 leadership 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 anticipation 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 constitution than to trouble himself too much about the constitution of Church and State. So pray let me have one line to say how you are.’ ’My constitution,’ wrote back Lord John, ’is not quite so much improved as the Constitution 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.’

Lord Eldon had predicted that Catholic Emancipation 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 Association 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 attitude of George III. Lord John was meditating introducing a measure for Catholic Emancipation, 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 Emancipation 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 Emancipation 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 unconstitutional 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 noble 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.

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.’ 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 noble 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 assert that the actual duties of the Paymaster were performed by cashiers; 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.