First Earl Russell: known as Lord John Russell till 1861. Born at London, Aug. 18, 1792: died May 28, 1878. An English statesman, orator, and author: third son of the sixth Duke of Bedford. He studied at Edinburgh; entered Parliament in 1813; began his advocacy of Parliamentary reform in 1819; advocated Catholic emancipation in 1826, and the repeal of the Test Acts in 1828; became paymaster of the forces in 1830; introduced the Reform Bill in 1831, and was one of its leading champions until its passage in 1832; became leader of the Whig party in 1834: was home secretary 1835–39, secretary for war and the colonies 1839–41, and prime minister and first lord of the treasury 1846–52; published the “Durham Letter” in 1850; was foreign secretary and later president of the council 1852–55; represented England at the Vienna Conference in 1855; was colonial secretary in 1855, foreign secretary in the Palmerston-Russell administration 1859–65; and prime minister and first lord of the treasury 1865–66; and was created Earl Russell in 1861. He edited the memorials and correspondence of Charles James Fox (1853–57); and of Moore (1852–56); and wrote “Life and Times of Fox” (1859–66), “Recollections and Suggestions” (1875), etc.

Personal

  Lord John Russell was born with a feeble intellect and a strong ambition. He was busied with the battle of valets. A feeble Cataline, he had a propensity to degrade everything to his own mean level, and to measure everything by his own malignant standard.

  Bennoch pointed out Lord John Russell, a small, very short, elderly gentleman, in a brown coat, and so large a hat—not large of brim, but large like a peck-measure—that I saw really no face beneath it.

  Who does not know the personal characteristics of Lord Russell? Who has not seen the square and stunted figure, the large head, the big mouth, the pugnacious nose? No one who enters the House of Lords can mistake his identity. He sits below the gangway on the Liberal side of the House, his head and features almost hidden by a huge broad-brimmed hat. It appears to be a veritable Cave of Adullam which he has formed for himself in this part of the House. Here he is joined at times by Lord Clanricarde, Lord Westbury, or other discontented Liberals, and with them he holds frequent conversations in a voice which almost drowns that of the man who is supposed to have possession of the House for the time being. When he rises to speak, he places his hat upon the seat behind him, clasps his hands behind his back, turns away from the reporters, and says what he has to say in a grumbling monotone. His speech has become so indistinct now, that but little of what he says reaches the peers on the other side of the House, and men like Lord Grey, who do not care much for appearances, and who still regard Lord Russell’s utterances as important, will seat themselves close to him whilst he is speaking, and, with hand to ear, endeavor to catch all that he says. It does not appear, however, that it is from inability to speak clearly and distinctly that he makes his speeches in this unsatisfactory manner. It would rather seem that it is from sheer contempt for the people he is addressing; since, when he chooses, he can speak out in such a manner as to make himself heard all over the House. When he does this, he allows those present to witness once again the old-fashioned peculiarities of pronunciation.

  His manner was singularly cold and repelling. People said that his aristocratic hauteur was indomitable. The joyous bonhomie with which Palmerston could make himself at home amid a group of rural voters was utterly foreign to Russell’s frigid manner. Lord John was said to be miserably parsimonious. He seemed only a formal, bloodless, and fishy sort of little man. He is a very little man, and he has or had a way of folding his arms and expanding his chest and deepening his voice, and, in fact, trying to swell himself into physical dignity, which oddly but inevitably reminded one of a frog trying to rival the ox…. Russell’s voice is at once weak and husky; he is hardly taller than Louis Blanc, and he has not the bright eyes and the wonderfully mobile and expressive features of the French orator. But he studied the ways of the House of Commons, resolved to become a good debater there, and he succeeded. He always watched with keen eyes for any flaw in the reasoning or inconsistency in the statement of an adversary, and he made cruel work with anything of the kind. He was fluent and ready—a kind of slow fluency, a sort of forced readiness; but however achieved, the result was there in a capacity to reply on the spur of the moment, and to speak for as long a time as was necessary. His language was clear, precise, and expressive; there was a cold emphasis about it which impressed it on the listener’s attention like the steady dropping of chilly water. Russell had a broad and general knowledge of history, and was sure to remember something which his antagonist had forgotten or did not know, and which came in with unexpected and damaging effect as an argument or illustration. He brought everything to the test of a cold, sharp intelligence, and had no pity for the enthusiasm or the crotchets of anybody.

  The practical statesman and party leader were equally blended in Earl Russell. He led his party on several occasions triumphantly through times of crisis; and if occasionally he brought disaster upon it, he was exceedingly clever in retrieving its fortunes…. He imbibed much of the spirit and many of the aspirations of his ancestor, Lord William Russell, and in the history of this country his name will occupy an honoured and a distinguished place.

  Lord John owed but a small debt to Nature: undersized, undignified, ungraceful; a bad speaker, with no pretense to eloquence either in thought, word, or action, he yet held a foremost place in the arena, for more than half a century. He said of himself, “My capacity I always felt was very inferior to that of the men who have attained, in past time, the foremost places in our Parliament, and in the councils of our Sovereign.”

  All these gifts—wit, humour, playfulness, high spirits—were the graceful accessories of a nature essentially warm, tender, and true. To his wife and children, and to those who knew him well, nothing has been more amazing than the prevalence in the public mind of the notion, memorably expressed by Lord Lytton in the “New Timon,” that his temperament was cold and repellant. That such a notion should ever become current is an illustration of the unfortunate magic of manner. It is touching to know that, within three months of his death, he said to his wife, “I have sometimes seemed cold to my friends, but it was not in my heart.” They who knew that heart need no such assurance.

  In his advocacy of great legislative measures of reform, as in his desire to find practical remedies for existing grievances, Lord John showed not merely a mind singularly free from prevailing prejudice, but also a firm belief in the ultimate triumph of certain political principles. There was nothing spasmodic about the Liberalism of Lord John Russell. It was not his business, it was not his aspiration, to be always on the crest of the wave of popular feeling. He is the type of a brave, a steadfast, and a patriotic reformer, in fine weather and in foul alike adhering to the principles he professed; and for the simple reason that he believed in them. There was in him nothing of the opportunist or of the agitator. Foresight, steadfastness, courage, and patriotism are the qualities for which, amongst British statesmen, Lord John Russell will always be remembered.

  His physical defects prevented him from becoming an orator. His voice was poor, and he had an awkward manner. Men used to say that “when he placed his left elbow on the palm of his right hand, the house awaited a sentiment in favour of religious liberty.” His weak physique and delicate health explain also why Lord John Russell was such a bad party leader. His manner to his supporters was cold and repellent; he lacked personal magnetism, and ill-health prevented him from properly discharging those social functions which, under the English system, are so important to the union of a party. His coldness was of manner only. “The popular idea of Johnny,” wrote Motley, “is of a cold, cynical, reserved personage. But, in his own home, I never saw a more agreeable manner.” But nevertheless it did as much harm among his supporters as if it had been real. To the same source may be traced that unevenness, which is so often a characteristic of small and weakly men. Lord John’s personality lacked the massiveness of Peel or Palmerston. When he was great, men thought him merely clever; when he was moderate, he somehow failed to inspire all the confidence he deserved. At times he was too reticent; at times he spoke out too plainly, and was too unrestrained. His eternal resignations, always withdrawn under pressure, produced among his colleagues the impression that he was sometimes weak, and thus, though the acknowledged leader of his party, he was not always at the head of the government. To the ordinary reader of his life, this does not seem altogether natural to his character, which was as strong and manly as it was simple and straightforward. Perhaps it was not the consequence of character, but of physique.

General

  Lord John Russell has sent us down what he calls a “tragedy” the other day—and upon a subject no less dangerous than the fate of Don Carlos. Schiller and Alfieri yet live. The Newspapers say Lord Byron is greatly obliged to his brother lord, the latter having even surpassed “Werner” in tameness and insipidity; so that Byron is no longer Author of the dullest tragedy ever printed by a lord. This is very foul to Byron; for though I fear he will never write a good play, it is impossible he can ever write anything so truly innocent as this “Don Carlos.” I would have sent it to you; but it seemed superfluous. There is great regularity in the speeches, the lines have all ten syllables exactly—and precisely the same smooth ding-dong rhythm from the first page to the last; there are also little bits of metaphors scattered up and down at convenient intervals, and very fair whig sentiments here and there; but the whole is cold, flat, stale, and unprofitable, to a degree that “neither gods nor men nor columns can endure.” You and I could write a better thing in two weeks, and then burn it. Yet he dedicates to Lord Holland, and seems to say like Correggio in the Vatican, ed io anche son pittore. Let us be of courage! we shall not be hindmost any way.

  They [Speeches] afford a fair example of his Parliamentary oratory, and are in every way worthy of his great reputation. Indeed, he may well be content to rest his fame on them, for he could not appear to greater advantage; and the student of political history will find them full of suggestive materials…. They are replete both with study and with thought. Reflection, earnestness, nobility, and breadth of sentiment, coupled with a refined and cultivated power of expression, are the characteristics of his style; and lurking beneath, and only rarely rising to the surface, is the latent fire—the true inspiring genius of the orator…. Indeed, alongside any of his contemporaries, his published speeches need not fear comparison. Brougham soared a flight beyond him, though impulsive and erratic; but though Lord Russell had not the lively and sonorous cadence of Canning, nor the powerful ponderous precision of Peel, he has more depth than the first, and more versatility of thought than the last. The metal rings true throughout, nor do the solid and valuable materials of which they are composed lose anything in the setting. Above all, he had the true gift of eloquence—earnestness. He knew what he wanted, and he felt it, a spell which no arts of rhetoric can buy.

  The attempt of Earl Russell to become a poet, by his tragedy of “Don Carlos, or Persecution,” was for the time rather successful; at least the poem went through several editions in the course of a year, but it seems ever after to have been remembered only to the noble author’s ridicule. I have not read it myself, and I do not know anybody who has. This tragedy was written at the time when Lord John Russell was in intimate relationship with the poets, scholars, and wits who frequented Holland House, and was doubtless fired with an ambition to do something which should entitle him to be regarded as one of their number. I fancy those poets, scholars, and wits must have knowingly or unintentionally, and out of mere good nature, flattered our young lord a good deal, and made him think much more of himself than the public outside were likely to think of him.

  He was a writer from his earlier youth, and though he cannot be said to have any stable place in English literature, it is something to have tried his abilities as a dramatist, essayist, and historian…. The good temper and general moderation of these pages do not extend to the record of the party divisions that broke up the Government to which Lord Russell succeeded on the Death of Lord Palmerston.

  On public grounds Lord John stands before posterity in a double capacity. He was not merely a distinguished statesman; he was a voluminous author. If, indeed, he had deserted, as he once thought of abandoning, politics for literature, it is not likely that he would have acquired fame. His best works would, no doubt, have brought credit to any writer. But their warmest admirers will hardly number them among the classics. Those of Lord John Russell’s books which still survive are read because they were written by Lord John Russell; and the light which the author sheds is lustre borrowed from the eminence of the statesman. It is as a man of action, and not as a man of letters, that Lord John will descend to posterity; and it is by his achievements in Parliament, and not by the productions of his pen, that he must ultimately be judged.

  From youth to age Lord John not merely possessed the pen of a ready writer, but employed it freely in history, biography, criticism, belles-lettres, and verse. His first book was published when George III. was King, and his last appeared when almost forty years of Queen Victoria’s reign had elapsed. The Liverpool Administration was in power when his biography of his famous ancestor, William, Lord Russell, appeared, and that of Mr. Disraeli when the veteran statesman took the world into his confidence with “Recollections and Suggestions.”… Literature often claimed his pen, for, besides many contributions in prose and verse to periodicals, to say nothing of writings which still remain in manuscript and prefaces to the books of other people, he published about twenty works, great and small. Yet, his strength lay elsewhere. His literary pursuits, with scarcely an exception, represent his hours of relaxation and the manner in which he sought relief from the cares of State…. The “Essay on English Government” is, in fact, not the confessions of an inquiring spirit entangled in the maze of political speculation, but the conclusions of a young statesman who has made up his mind, with the help of Somers and Fox…. Though it must be admitted that he performed some parts of it in rather a perfunctory manner, the eight volumes which appeared between 1853 and 1856 of the “Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore” represent a severe tax upon friendship, as well as no ordinary labour on the part of a man who was always more or less immersed in public affairs.

  The excellence of Russell’s literary achievement was not proportioned to its quantity. His historical work, entitled “Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe” (1824), is but a fragment, and is more than a creditable compilation. Mr. Gladstone has, however, affirmed that “Burke never wrote anything better” than some passages, especially that running “When I am asked if such or such a nation is fit to be free, I ask in return, is any man fit to be a despot?” Russell’s “Essay on the English Constitution” (1821) is the best work from his pen, while that containing the “Letters of the Fourth Duke of Bedford” (3 vols., 1842–3–6), with an historical introduction, is the most successful and interesting…. His literary skill is most marked in his epistolary writing, and his speeches and writings abound in happy and telling phrases.