GREY, Sir HENRY GEORGE, third Earl GREY (1802-94). An English politician, eldest son of Charles Grey, second Earl Grey. He was born at Howick, Northumberland, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He held the title of Viscount Howick from 1807. His long Parlia mentary career began in 1826, with his election to the House of Commons as a Whig, from Win chelsea. When, in November, 1830, the Welling ton Ministry gave place to that of his father, Earl Grey, he became Under Secretary for the Colonies. In this position he introduced a bill for the encouragement of emigration, and op posed the practice of making large land grants. In 1833 he resigned his on account of the refusal of the Cabinet to undertake the emanci pation of slaves in the West Indian colonies. For the first six months of 1834 he was again in office as Under Secretary for Home Affairs, and in April, 1835, became Secretary of State for War in Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, and re ceived an appointment as Privy Councilor. The independence which marked his whole career led in 1839 to his withdrawal from the Cabinet, be cause of his opposition to its measures in regard to colonial affairs, particularly the crisis in Canada. He continued to take a prominent part in Parliamentary debates, and was the author of the amendment to the Irish Franchise Bill in 1841 which eventually led to the defeat of the Government.
He took advanced views in favor of free trade, and his speeches had an important influence in leading his party to accept that doctrine. Upon the death of his father, in 1845, he succeeded to his title and took his seat in the House of Lords, where he soon became the Whig leader. Upon
Lord John Russell's attempt to organize a Minis try in December, 1845, he was offered a port folio, but refused at the time, because Lord Palmerston had also been invited to join it. Six months later he changed his mind, and be came Secretary for the Colonies in the same Cabinet in which Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary. His administration of the Colonial Office, which lasted until 1852, was marked by many experiments, not all of which were success ful, by a policy of extension of representative government to the colonies wherever practicable, and by the establishment of colonial free trade, the later abandonment of which he always deemed to be a mistake. From the close of Lord Russell's Administration in 1852 until his death, although never again holding office, he was an active and important figure in Parliament. He pursued a course of great independence, allied himself with neither party, always sharply criticised both Lib erals and Conservatives, particularly in their ad ministration of colonial and foreign affairs, and was one of the most strenuous opponents of Glad stone's home-rule policy for Ireland. He wrote: The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Ad ministration (2 vols., 1853) ; Parliamentary Gov ernment (1858); Free Trade with France (1881); Ireland: the Causes of Its Present Position (1888); The Commercial Policy of British Colo nies and the McKinley Tariff (1892) ; and edited his father's Correspondence with IVilliam IV. (1867).