RUSSELL, JOHN 1ST , ( I792–I878), Brit ish statesman, third son of the 6th duke of Bedford, by Georgiana Elizabeth Byng, second daughter of the 4th Viscount Torrington, was born in London on Aug. 18, 1792. After an early education desultory on account of his weak health he spent three at Edinburgh university, living in the house of Professor John Playfair. On leaving the university, he travelled in Portugal and Spain, and in 1813 he was returned for the ducal borough of Tavistock. In domestic questions he cast in his lot with those who opposed the repressive measures of 1817, and protested that the causes of the discontent at home should be removed by remedial legislation. Failing of success, he resigned his seat for Tavistock in March 1817, and meditated permanent withdrawal from public life, but was dissuaded from this step by the argu ments of his friends. In the parliament of 1818-2o he again represented the family borough in Devon, and in May 1819 began his long advocacy of parliamentary reform by moving for an inquiry into the corruption which prevailed in the Cornish con stituency of Grampound. During the first parliament (182o-26) of George IV. he sat for the county of Huntingdon, and secured in 1821 the disfranchisement of Grampound, but the seats were not transferred to the constituency which he desired. Lord John Russell paid the penalty for his advocacy of Catholic emancipa tion with the loss in 1826 of his seat for Huntingdon county, but he found a shelter in the Irish borough of Bandon Bridge. He led the attack against the Test Acts by carrying in February 1828 with a majority of forty-four a motion for a committee to inquire into their operations, and after this decisive victory they were repealed (May 9, 1828). He warmly supported the Wellington ministry when it realized that the king's government could only be carried on by the passing of a Catholic Relief Act (April 1829). For the greater part of the short-lived parliament of 1830-31 he served his old constituency of Tavistock, having been beaten in a contest for Bedford county at the general election by one vote; and when Lord Grey's Reform ministry was formed, in November 1830, Lord John Russell became paymaster-general, without a seat in the cabinet. This exclusion was the more re
markable in that he was chosen (1st of March 1831) to explain the provisions of the Reform Bill, to which the cabinet had given formal sanction. The Whig ministry was soon defeated, but, after the general election, returned with increased strength. The Re form Bill became law (June 7, 1832), and Lord John stood justly in the mind of the people as its champion. After the passing of the Reform Bill he sat for South Devon, and was pay master-general in the ministries of Grey and Melbourne.
Russell had visited Ireland in the autumn of 1833, and had come back with a keen conviction of the necessity for readjust ing the revenues of the Irish church. To these views he gave ex pression in a debate on the Irish Tithe Bill (May 1834), where upon Stanley, with the remark that "Johnny has upset the coach," resigned his place. The latter was abruptly, if not rudely, dis missed (Nov. 1834) by William IV. when the leadership of the House of Commons became vacant and Russell was proposed as leader. In Lord Melbourne's new administration of 1835 Russell became home secretary and leader of the House of Commons. In the third Melbourne administration (1839) Russell was secre tary of State for the colonies and under him New Zealand became a British colony and England claimed the whole of Australia. A fine literary sense and a great love of all forms of religious and civil liberty fed his keen interest in culture for the people and resulted in a Government grant of £30,000 for education and the institution of official inspectors for schools. With Brougham he founded in 1835 the Society for Promoting the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. At the general election of 1841 the Whigs sustained a crushing defeat ; the return of Russell for the City of London was one of their few triumphs. In 1845 he committed himself for the first time to the repeal of the Corn Laws.