420 



GREY 



eighteen years after the death of Perceval. He 

 opposed the renewal of the war in 1815 ; 

 denounced the coercive measures of the govern- 

 ment against the people ; condemned the bill 

 of pains and penalties against Queen Caroline ; 

 defended the right of public meeting ; and sup- 

 ported the enlightened commercial policy of Hus- 

 Kisson. He declined to lend any aid to Canning 

 in 1827. Two years later he had the gratification 

 of seeing the Catholic Emancipation Act carried. 

 O the fall of the Wellington administration in 

 1830, Grey accepted the commands of William IV. 

 to form a government in which he became prime- 

 minister and First Lord of the Treasury. It was 

 understood that parliamentary reform was to be 

 treated as a cabinet question, and the new premier 

 announced in the House of Lords that the policy 

 of his administration would be one of peace, re- 

 trenchment, and reform. The first reform bill was 

 produced in March 1831, but its defeat led to a 

 dissolution and the return of a House of Commons 

 still more thoroughly devoted to the cause of 

 reform. A second bill was carried, which the 

 Lords threw out in October, and riots ensued in 

 various parts of the country. Early in the session 

 of 1832 a third bill was carried in the Commons by 

 an enormous majority, and it weathered the second 

 reading in the Upper House ; but when a motion 

 by Lord Lyndhurst to postpone the disfranchising 

 clauses until the enfranchising clauses had been 

 discussed was adopted, ministers resigned. The 

 Duke of Wellington was charged to form an ad- 

 ministration, but upon his failure Grey returned to 

 office with power to create a sufficient number of 

 peers to carry the measure. Wellington now with- 

 drew his opposition, and on the 4th of June the 

 Reform Bill passed the House of Lords. Grey 

 was the chief of a powerful party in the first 

 reformed parliament, but he was not destined long 

 to remain at the head of affairs. One other great 

 measure, the act for the abolition of slavery in 

 the colonies, he carried, as well as a number of 

 minor reforms ; but dissensions sprang up in the 

 cabinet, and in consequence of his Irish difficulties 

 Grey resigned office in July 1834. He now ceased 

 to take any active part in politics, and spent his 

 closing years chiefly at Howick, where he died, 17th 

 July 1845. Grey was a chivalrous, able, and high- 

 minded man. While not in the first rank of parlia- 

 mentary orators, his speeches on those subjects in 

 which he was deeply interested frequently attained 

 to real eloquence. Though he was the leader of 

 the aristocratic Whigs, his greatest claim to re- 

 membrance in history is the fact that he opened 

 the portals of the Constitution to the people. See 

 George Grey, Life and Opinions of the second Earl 

 Grey ( 1861 ). 



His son HENRY GREY, third Earl, was born 

 December 28, 1802. He was educated at Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, and in 1826, as Lord Howick, 

 was returned to the House of Commons for Win- 

 chelsea. He next sat for a brief period for Higham 

 Ferrers, and after the passing of the Reform Bill of 

 1832 was elected for North Northumberland. He 

 was appointed Under-secretary for the Colonies in 

 his father's ministry, but retired in 1833 because the 

 cabinet would not support the immediate emanci- 

 pation of the slaves. He subsequently held for a 

 short time the post of Under-secretary in the 

 Home Department, and in Melbourne's adminis- 

 tration of 1835 became Secretary for War. In 

 1841 he was rejected for Northumberland, but 

 returned for Sunderland, and now opposed Peel's 

 policy. He succeeded his father in the peerage in 

 1845, and in the following year entered Lord John 

 Russell's cabinet as Secretary for the Colonies. 

 After the resignation of the government in 1852, 

 he published his Defence of the Colonial Policy of 



Lord Russell's Administration. He now took his 

 seat on the cross-benches, and never afterwards 

 held office. He opposed the Crimean war, and at 

 a later period condemned the eastern policy of 

 Lord Beaconsfield. He also frequently adopted 

 a hostile attitude towards Mr Gladstone, to whom 

 he was especially opposed at the general election 

 of 1880. For many years afterwards Lord Grey 

 rarely spoke in the House of Lords, but from his 

 retirement he wrote trenchant letters to the 

 Times upon public affairs, and notably on colonial 

 questions. In 1858 he issued his Essay on Parlia- 

 mentary Government as to Reform; in 1867 he 

 published his father's Correspondence with William 

 IV. ; and on various occasions he printed speeches 

 and letters of his own, including those to the 

 Times on ' Free Trade with France,' which appeared 

 in 1881. He died 9th October 1894. 



Grey, SIR GEORGE, Baronet, English states- 

 man, was the son of the first baronet, and nephew 

 of the great Reform leader, Earl Grey. Born at 

 Gibraltar, May 11, 1799, he was educated at Oriel 

 College, Oxford, where he took a first-class in 

 classics. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's 

 Inn in 1826, but relinquished the law after succeed- 

 ing to the baronetcy in 1828. In 1832 he was 

 returned to the House of Commons for Devonport, 

 which he continued to represent for fifteen years. 

 He was appointed Under-secretary for the Colonies 

 in 1834, having already made his mark in parlia- 

 ment, and Lord Melbourne reappointed him to the 

 same office in 1835. For some years his chief 

 speeches were delivered in connection with Cana- 

 dian affairs and the constitutional difficulties in 

 Jamaica. When Lord John Russell brought in a 

 bill for the temporary suspension of the Lower Cana- 

 dian constitution, Grey ably defended the measure 

 against Mr Roebuck, who had been heard at the 

 bar in opposition to the bill. In 1839 Grey became 

 Judge-advocate, an office which he exchanged in 

 1841 for that of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan- 

 caster, but the same year he went out of office with 

 his colleagues. When Lord John Russell became 

 premier in 1846, Grey accepted the onerous post of 

 Home Secretary. During the time of the Chartist 

 disturbances he discharged the difficult duties of his 

 office with vigour and discrimination, this being 

 the culminating point of his career as a practical 

 and administrative statesman. He carried in the 

 teeth of much opposition the Crown and Govern- 

 ment Security Bill, a measure providing for the 

 more effectual repression of seditious and treason- 

 able proceedings. The Alien Bill was also under 

 his charge. Owing to Grey's measures in view of 

 the Chartist demonstration in London in 1848, 

 when 150,000 special constables were sworn in, a 

 threatened popular rising was averted. In conse- 

 quence of the condition of Ireland, Grey carried a 

 measure in 1849 for the further suspension of the 

 Habeas Corpus Act. Three years later the Russell 

 ministry was wrecked on the Militia Bill. At 

 the general election in August 1847 Grey was 

 returned for North Northumberland, but, being 

 defeated at the election in July 1852, he was 

 elected for Morpeth in the following January. In 

 June 1854 he accepted the seals of the Colonial 

 Office, and on the formation of Lord Palmerston's 

 first administration in 1855 took his old post 

 of Home Secretary. He carried an important 

 measure on the subject of secondary punishments, 

 in which the ticket-of-leave system was remodelled. 

 On the return of Lord Palmerston to office in 1859, 

 after his defeat in the previous year on the Con- 

 spiracy Bill, Grey was appointed Chancellor of the 

 Duchy of Lancaster; but in 1861 he once more 

 returned to the Home Office. He introduced and 

 carried through several useful measures, including 

 the Prison Ministers Bill. After the death of 



