GREY, CHARLES, SECOND EARL GREY, was born on March 13th 1764 at Fallowden, near Alnwick, in Northumberland. His family was ennobled in the reign of Edward VI., and, although the peerage became extinct, the family had for eight or nine generations been of consideration. In 1802 Sir Charles Grey, the father of the second earl, was raised to the peerage for his military services, with the title of Baron Grey de Howick, and in 1806 he was created Earl Grey. He died in November 1807 in his seventy-ninth year.
Charles Grey was sent to Eton, and before he had attained his sixteenth year he proceeded to Cambridge, where he remained about two years, and then passed over to the Continent, and made the tour of France, Spain, and Italy, which occupied him about two years.
Mr. Grey's parliamentary career began in 1786, when he was returned as member for the county of Northumberland. He attached himself to the party, and still more to the person, of Mr. Fox. His maiden speech in the House of Commons, in 1787, was in opposition to Mr. Pitt'e liberal commercial treaty with France. In 1788, at the age of only twenty-feur, Mr. Grey was selected as one of the managers to conduct the trial of Warren Hastings; and in the following year he took a prominent part in the discussions on the Regency MIL Not. withstanding his youth, and the short time that be had been in parlia ment, he bad already obtaioed a position in his party of considerable eminence, chiefly no doubt from his aristocratical position and family connections, but he had also acquired a high reputation as a speaker at a Limo when Fox, Burke, and Sheridan were at the height of their fame as orators.
The opening scenes of the French revolution, and still more the future progress of that event, exercised for many years an absorbing influence over both the foreign and domestic policy of England. The Whigs were agitated by differences of opinion, which destroyed party ties and even broke up private friendships. Fox and Mr. Grey were the leaders of the small but able party which constituted the opposition during the first period of the French revolutionary war. Their object was first to prevent the war, and after it had commenced their earnest desire was to bring it to a close.
The first acts of the French revolution were favourable to popular liberty; and the association called the Society of the Friends of the People, which was formed in England early in 1792, with the object of obtaining a reform in parliament, was joined by the more liberal men of the Whig party, and Mr. Grey was one of the founders and
most active members of the society. On April 30th 1792, at the request of the society, be gave notice of a motion for the following ser,sion on the subject of parliamentary reform. The motion was to the effect that "the evils which threatened the constitution could only be corrected by timely and temperate reform." Before the motion could be brought forward in 1793, tho state of parties had undergone considerable change. The Whigs, at least the more timid or con servative amongst them, had become and a section of them under the Duke of Portland were preparing already for the coalition with Mr. Pitt which finally took place in 1794. Fox not only withheld his name from the Society of the Friends of the People, but privately exerted himself to check its proceedings; and it had become popular to stigmatise men of liberal principle. as Jacobins and levellers. The temptation to temporise with the question of reform was great, but 3Ir. Grey did not yield to it On the 6th of May 1793 he presented & petition from the Society of the Friends of the People, which elabo rately exposed the defecta and evils of the existing system of parlia mentary representation ; and in a striking speech, in which however he did not put forth any plan, he demanded a recurrence to the principles of the constitution. It would appear, from the replies of those who spoke against the motion, that Mr. Grey was ready to adopt universal suffrage, though in the abstract he disapproved of it, rather than that the existing defects In the representation should remain uncorrected. The motion was lost by 232 to 41. On the 25th of May an &dare.a was moved In support of a proclamation which the govern ment had issued against seditious writings, when Mr. Grey assailed the minister, and read the resolutions in favour of reform which Mr. Pitt, with Cartwright and Horne Tooke, had agreed to ton year& before at the Thatched House Tavern.