Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/186

 Grey justified his conduct at this juncture in his speech upon the second reading of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill in 1829. The death of George IV made him again a possible minister. In 1828 and 1829 there had been occasional rumours that he was likely to join the duke's ministry, and there is some ground for thinking that in 1830 he would not have been unwilling to do so. When the Duke of Wellington proposed to dissolve, Grey delivered a great speech against a dissolution on 30 June 1830, and moved the adjournment of the house, but his motion was lost by 56 to 100. In the new parliament he took his place as leader of the opposition, and his speech upon the address was in fact a manifesto of his party. He warmly advocated parliamentary reform. The duke in his reply, which was a counter-manifesto, committed the blunder of declaring the existing system of representation as near perfection as possible. Reform was thus handed over to the whigs. On 15 Nov. the government was defeated upon Sir H. Parnell's motion with regard to the civil list, and next day the king sent for Grey. His commission was almost a failure at the outset owing to differences of opinion as to the place to be offered to Brougham (Croker Papers, ii. 80). Brougham refused to be attorney-general. Grey knew that without Brougham's co-operation it would be vain to attempt to form a ministry; but to his surprise the king ultimately consented in Brougham taking the chancellorship. The ministry which he formed was characteristic of him; it was almost exclusively composed of peers or persons of title, and his own family was well represented in it. From the first the king showed that he would be difficult to manage upon the reform question. Grey appointed Lords Durham and Duncannon, Lord John Russell, and Sir James Graham a committee of the cabinet, to prepare a scheme of reform, and would have been content with a comparatively limited plan, but the popular enthusiasm carried him away. Parliament met on 3 Feb. 1831, and the bill was announced; it was introduced on 1 March in the House of Commons, and the second reading carried by the bare majority of one on 22 March. Ministers were defeated by eight votes on Gascoyne's motion on 19 April, and with some difficulty they prevailed upon the king to consent to a dissolution on 22 April.

Returning with a much increased majority they passed the bill in the commons by a majority of 136 on 8 July. Grey introduced it into the House of Lords, and delivered a very powerful speech in its favour upon the second reading, but it was thrown out by forty-one. With great prudence he resolved not to resign, but to reintroduce the bill, and thus averted a very dangerous crisis. Accordingly, with considerable alterations, the bill was again brought in, again passed by the commons, and again laid by Grey before the House of Lords. On 9 April 1832 he moved the second reading, and on the 14th carried it by a majority of nine. On 7 May he moved for a committee of the whole house upon the bill. He was met by Lyndhurst's motion to postpone the disfranchising clauses. In spite of Grey's most strenuous opposition and threats of resignation, Lyndhurst obtained a majority of thirty-five. On 9 May Grey announced that the ministry had tendered, and that the king had accepted, their resignation. This crisis had long been foreseen. At the end of the previous year Grey and his colleagues had debated whether, in the event of a further rejection of the bill by the House of Lords, they should urge the king to make a sufficient number of peers to pass the bill. Brougham advocated it; Grey at first opposed it as an unconstitutional use of the prerogative, but on 1 Jan. 1832 the ministry decided, if necessary, to urge this course upon the king. After their defeat in May they did so, but without success; the king declining this advice they could no longer stand between him and the popular pressure for the immediate enactment of the bill. But no alternative ministry could be formed. The Duke of Wellington and Lyndhurst failed in the attempt, in which Peel would not even join. Grey's ministry was recalled. On 17 May the king gave them his written authority to create the necessary peers, and the mere threat, which Grey subsequently declared he had never meant to execute, overcame the resistance of the lords, who saw that a further contest would be hopeless. During the following year, especially upon his Irish policy. Grey was very much under the influence of Stanley, and it was his Irish policy which led to his overthrow in 1834. Both upon the renewal of the Coercion Act and upon the appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish church, dissension broke out in the ministry. Stanley and Graham resigned upon the latter question. Littleton, the chief secretary, anxious to conciliate O'Connell towards his tithe bill, began an intrigue with Brougham's assistance, and induced Lord Wellesley, the lord-lieutenant, to write to Grey on 23 June, deprecating the renewal of the severer clauses of the act of 1833. Hitherto his letters had been favourable to severe coercion. Grey, however, who had a personal dislike of O'Connell, strongly desired the renewal of the whole act, and prevailed