GREY, CHARLES, EARL. 



GREY, CHARLES, EARL. 



men of liberal principle, u Jacobins and levellers. The 

 to Uuporix with the question of reform wu great, but 

 Mr. Ory did not yWd to it On the 6th of May 1793 he presented a 

 petition from ihe Society of the Friends of the People, which elabo- 

 rately exposed th defect! and evils of the existing system of parlia- 

 mentary i lUtsjMOtttlnn ; and in a striking ipeeoh, in which however 

 he did not put forth any plan, be demanded a recurrence to the 

 prindpU* of the constitution. It would appear, from the replies of 

 jy^.k^ (poke against the motion, tbat Mr. Grey was ready to adopt 

 universal tuOrag*, though in the abstract he disapproved of it, rather 

 k.. >>.. to, Tr jriin defecU in the representation should remain 

 uDcomcted. The motion was lost by 282 to 41. On the 25th of May 

 an address wss moved in support of a proclamation which the govern- 

 ment had issued against seditions writing', when Mr. Grey assailed 

 the minister, and read the resolutions in favour of reform which Mr. 

 Pitt, with Cart wright and UorneTooke, had agreed to ten years before 

 at the Thatched House Tavern. 



For many years, especially during the panic which existed in this 

 country respecting ' French principle*,' and in the midst of the extra- 

 vagance in the public expenditure occasioned by the war, it was an 

 arduous if not a th.nH. task which an earnest advocate of popular 

 rights, like Mr. Grey, was called upon to discharge. The country was 

 frequently in a critical state; the minuter was supported by over- 

 whelming majorities ; and events occasionally warranted the executive 

 in adopting bold and vigorous steps which were not precisely consti- 

 tatiooal Mr. Grey's opposition to the measures of the minister was 

 at the time fruitless, but the vigilance of the small baud of which he 

 was the most active leader did much to check any more daring iuroads 

 upon national liberties. In 1794 Mr. Grey endeavoured, though 

 unsuccessfully, to obtain an inquiry into the conduct of government 

 in bringing foreign troops into England without the consent of parlia- 

 ment ; and he was moat zealous in opposing the suspension of the 

 Habeas Corpus Act, which the government passed through all its stages 

 up to the third reading in one day. In 1795 he opposed with equal 

 vigour a bill which was calculated to limit, if not to prohibit, the 

 holding of public meetings. On the 10th of March 1796 he moved for 

 a committee on the state of the nation, in which be animadverted on 

 the enormous expenditure, the large advances made by the Bank, ami 

 the application of money to purposes different from those for which 

 it had been voted by parliament. On the 6th of May he brought 

 forward a charge of misapplication of public money; and in December 

 he exposed another instance of the unconstitutional appropriation of 

 the public money, in which 1,200,0001. had been advanced by the 

 minister to the Emperor of Germany without the consent of the House 

 of Commons, though parliament was then sitting. In 1797 he was 

 one of the committee of secrecy appointed to inquire into the circum- 

 stances connected with the stoppage of the Bonk, and he dissented 

 from the report which that committee made. On the 26th of May he 

 again brought forward a motion for parliamentary reform ; and pro- 

 posed that 113 members should be returned by the counties, each for 

 one division, and that the franchise should be extended from free- 

 holders to leaseholders and copyholders. The remaining 400 members 

 were to be returned by household suffrage, and the elections were to 

 take place on one and the same day. He intimated that, if such a 

 measure of reform were carried, he would, but not otherwise, shorten 

 the duration of parliament to three years. In the course of his 

 address he i ntimated the likelihood of his uot again taking port in 

 the business of the house if his motion were rejected. On a division 

 it was lost by 258 to 93 ; and it was not until 1799 tbat he again made 

 his appearance in the house as a speaker, for the purpose of opposing 

 the first propositions tbat were made for the union with Ireland. He 

 was opposed throughout to this measure, but submitted a plan for 

 securing the independence of the Irish members by abolishing forty 

 rotten boroughs in Ireland ; and he proposed that the addition of Irish 

 members should not increase the numbers of the House of Commons. 



The death of Mr. Pitt, in 1306, led to the formation of a Whig 

 ministry under Lord Grenville. Mr. Grey, now become Lord Howick 

 by his father's elevation, was appointed first lord of the Admiralty, 

 and Fox held the seals of the Foreign Office. On tho death of Fox iu 

 September, the office which he had held was filled by Lord Howick, 

 who met parliament in December as leader of the House of Commons. 

 He and Lord Qrenville were now at the head of the Whig party. 

 The cabinet was broken up in March 1807; but during its brief 

 existence Lord Howick had carried through the House of Commons 

 the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. 



ID November 1807, on the death of his father, Lord Howick became 

 Earl Grey, after nearly twenty years of his public life hod been spent 

 in the House of Commons. In the House of Lords he and Lord 

 Onoville were the leaders of the opposition. One of his first acts as 

 a peer was to protest against the attack upon Copenhagen in tho 

 pnrvunu year. 



In 1809 Lords Grey and Grenville were invited by Mr. Perceval to 

 join bis administration, which had been just weakened by the retire- 

 ment of Mr. Canning and Lord Castlereagb, but the offer was at once 

 declined. On the Prince of Wales being appointed regent, Lords Grey 

 and Orenville prepared, at bis request, the answer to be returned to 

 the addresses of parliament ; but the prince, in the end, did not make 

 use of it. Early in 1812 the regent addressed n letter to the Duke of 



York which he was authorised to communicate to the above two noble 

 lords, in which he expressed a wish that " some of those persons with 

 whom the early habits of his public life were formed would strengthen 

 hU hands and constitute part of hu government." But as neither Lord 

 Grey nor Lord Grenville could join the existing administration without 

 a sacrifice of principle, the prince's wish was not complied with. 

 Again, on the death of Mr. Perceval, fresh negociationa were set on 

 foot, but like the former they resulted in nothing. Lord Moira was 

 then empowered to treat with the two lords unconditionally ; but tho 

 negotiations were broken off in consequence of Lord Moira not being 

 authorised to make the power of removing the great officers of the 

 household a part of the arrangement. The negociations eventually 

 terminated in the formation of the Liverpool administration. 



On the return of Napoleon from Elba in 1815, Karl Urey was 

 averse to plunging into another war, and on this occasion he and Lord 

 Grenville took opposite views. During the period of discontent and 

 distress which the country experienced in the first few years after tho 

 peace, Earl Grey sought to show that the beat way of defending the 

 constitution was to conciliate the affection and esteem of the people, 

 and he urged that the natural mode of removing the discontent of 

 the country was to remove its causes. He therefore condemned the 

 measures of coercion adopted by tho government. He moved for an 

 inquiry into the conduct of the government respecting what has been 

 called the ' Manchester massacre,' and though the motion was rejected 

 by 155 to 34, two members of the royal family, the Dukes of Kent 

 and Sussex, voted with the minority. He was strongly opposed to 

 the punishment of transportation for seditious libel, from its liability 

 to become a dangerous means of persecution and proscription. Earl 

 Grey took an active part in the trial of Queen Caroline, and in 

 opposing the Bill of Pains and Penalties which had been brought in 

 against her. The Act for the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics, 

 which was passed in 1829, realised one of the great objects of his 

 political life. He gave his support to Mr. Huskisaou's measures of 

 commercial reform. 



When Mr. Canning became prime minister, early in 1827, he was 

 supported by most of the leaders of the Whig party ; but Earl Grey, 

 so far from joining his party in this course, bitterly attacked Mr. 

 Canning and treated with contempt his pretended liberalism. Himself 

 tho model of an inflexible patrician, with high connections and a lofty 

 public character, he seemed as if he regarded the prime minister as a 

 brilliant and dexterous adventurer. The only persons who listened 

 with pleasure to this speech were men whose principles Earl (; ivy's 

 public life had been devoted to opposing ; and yet it was commonly 

 felt that this attack on the minister proceeded from a sense of duty to 

 his party and his order, combined with a peculiar temperament. This 

 at the same time led him into a disdain of popular opinion which was 

 no less a feature of his character. In the same session he supported 

 the amendment of the Duke of Wellington which led to tho abandon- 

 ment of Mr. Canning's corn bill. He knew how unpopular his vote 

 on this occasion would be ; but " if," he said, " there should come a 

 contest between this house and n great portion of the people, my port 

 ia taken ; and with that order to which I belong I will stand or fall ; " 

 and, he added, " I will maintain to the last hour of my existence the 

 privileges and independence of this House : " and this lofty view of 

 the rights and privileges of the aristocracy was in fact the key to what 

 was most liberal ia his policy, as well as to what appeared most 

 otherwise. 



The period was now approaching when, as the crowning act of bis 

 long political life, he was to undertake the amendment of the repre- 

 sentative system, the object for which his earliest energies had been 

 exerted in unfavourable times. Up to 1330 the slightest measure of 

 parliamentary reform had been resolutely denied. The Duke of 

 Wellington, who was prime minister when the parliament met which 

 was elected on the death of George IV., affirmed, in allusion to some- 

 thing which Earl Grey had said, that " the legislature and the system 

 of representation possess the full and entire confidence of the country, 

 and deservedly possess that confidence." But the second revolution 

 in France, which had just occurred, hail given a great impulse to 

 questions of political reform ; a new reign and a i.ew parliament had 

 commenced under these influences; and the country generally was in 

 a disturbed and excited state. The duke's administration was com- 

 pelled to yield to tho influence of these circumstances and resigned 

 office. Earl G rey was sent for by William IV. and requested to form 

 a new cabinet. He announced as prime minister that " Peace, Retrench- 

 ment, and Reform" would be the objects of his policy. On the 1st of 

 March 1831, Lord John Russell, as the organ of the cabinet, intro- 

 duced the first Reform Bill into the House of Commons. A brief 

 history of this measure is given in the notice of WILLIAM IV. On 

 tho 7th of May 1832, Lord Lyndhurst carried an important motion, 

 which, it was considered by the cabinet, placed the Reform Bill in 

 peril, and they immediately resigned office. The ministerial inter- 

 regnum was terminated on May 17 by the return of Earl Grey to 

 power. The independence of the House of Lords was for the time 

 virtually destroyed, and means were used, with the king's consent, to 

 prevent the peers who were opposed to tho Reform Bill from attending 

 m their places to vote against it. This may have been an inconsistency 

 in ICarl Grey, who had so lately pledged himself iu favour of the 

 independence of the House of Lords ; but he had to choose betweeu 



