Russell, John, 1st Earl Russell of Kingston Russell

Russell, John, 1st Earl Russell of Kingston Russell (1792-1878), British statesman, prime minister of Great Britain and Ireland (1846-1852; 1865-1866), and liberal reformer. Born in London, he was educated at Westminster School and at home, where he was immersed in the liberal tradition of his family, before attending the University of Edinburgh. He entered Parliament in 1813, representing the family seat of Tavistock where he supported the Whigs, making one his earliest speeches attacking the decision by the government of Lord Liverpool to suspend Habeas Corpus during domestic unrest following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

As member for Huntingdonshire from 1820 to 1826, and for the Irish borough of Bandon thereafter, Russell became a persistent advocate of extending the franchise and granting political equality to Roman Catholics. His proposals for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act in 1828 and for a Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829 received support from Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, although Wellington’s government refused to support parliamentary reform. Russell was appointed paymaster-general in the Whig ministry of Earl Grey and played a leading role in the drafting and passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, which liberalized the British electoral system.

In the first reformed parliament Russell took a leading role in supporting further reforms, including the Dissenters’ Marriage and Irish Tithe Bills. As home secretary from 1835 to 1839 in the government of Lord Melbourne he introduced the Municipal Corporations Act, which delivered increased democracy in urban government, and he was also responsible for the establishment of the civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths. The death of William IV in 1837 caused a general election to be called, reducing the Whig majority and stemming the flood of reforms. Russell also served as secretary for war and the colonies from 1839 to 1841 until an attempt to repeal the Corn Laws brought down the Melbourne government. It was succeeded by Peel’s first Conservative government.

The issue of Corn Laws repeal eventually split the Conservative Party and caused Peel to resign, but only after cooperation between Russell and Peel secured their final repeal. As a result, Russell was appointed prime minister. He helped pass legislation limiting working hours in factories to ten hours (1847) and establishing a public health system (1848), and ended restrictions on colonial trade by repealing the Navigation Acts (1849). His government's efforts to prevent widespread starvation as a result of the Irish famine were ineffective, despite allocating £10 million to public works in Ireland in an attempt to relieve poverty.

Russell resigned as prime minister in 1852 over his sacking of Lord Palmerston, his foreign secretary, and he stepped down from government after his colleagues refused to support a new reform bill. His alternate support for and dissent from the government's policies during the Crimean War caused him to lose the leadership of the Liberal Party to Palmerston. Russell returned to government as foreign secretary in 1859 under Palmerston, supporting Italian unification and antagonizing the United States during the American Civil War by actions that seemed to favour the Confederacy. In 1861 he was raised to the House of Lords as Earl Russell. He succeeded Palmerston as prime minister in 1865 following the latter’s death, but his proposals for further reform were once again defeated and he resigned from office. He continued to attend the Lords until his death, a staunch advocate of the Reform Bill of 1867 and the Education Act of 1870.