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 upon parliament in earlier years. In 1869 he introduced a bill in the House of Lords empowering the crown to create a limited number of life-peerages; it was rejected on the third reading. He was naturally a warm supporter of the Irish Land and Education bills of 1870, but voted against the Ballot Bill in 1871. A letter from him approving in the name of civil and religious liberty the anti-clerical policy of the German emperor was read at a public meeting held in St. James's Hall, London, on 27 Jan. 1874, to express approval of the German government's action in expelling various religious orders. His sympathy evoked the thanks of the German emperor and of Prince Bismarck, who styled him ‘the Nestor of European statesmen.’

Domestic sorrow darkened his closing days. In the spring of 1874 his daughter-in-law, Lady Amberley, and her child died. Early in 1876 he lost his eldest son (Lord Amberley), and he was himself seized with an illness shortly afterwards from which he never entirely rallied. He died on 28 May 1878 at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. The residence belonged to the queen, and she had granted Russell the use of it since 1847. Lord Beaconsfield proposed, with the approval of the queen, that he should have a public funeral and a tomb in Westminster Abbey; but his remains were laid, in accordance with his own wish, in the family vault at Chenies.

Russell married, first, on 11 April 1835, Adelaide (d. 1838), daughter of Thomas Lister of Armitage Park, and widow of Thomas, second lord Ribblesdale, and by her had two daughters, Georgiana Adelaide, who married Archibald, third son of Jonathan Peel [q. v.], and Victoria, who married Henry Montagu Villiers [q. v.], bishop of Durham. He married, secondly, on 20 July 1841, Lady Frances Anna Maria Elliot, daughter of Gilbert, second earl of Minto, who died on 18 Jan. 1898. By her he had three sons and one daughter. The eldest son, John, viscount Amberley [q. v.], is separately noticed.

The excellence of Russell's literary achievement was not proportioned to its quantity. His historical work, entitled ‘Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe’ (1824), is but a fragment, and no more than a creditable compilation. Mr. Gladstone has, however, affirmed that ‘Burke never wrote anything better’ than some passages, especially that running, ‘When I am asked if such or such a nation is fit to be free, I ask in return, is any man fit to be a despot?’ Russell's ‘Essay on the English Constitution’ (1821) is the best work from his pen, while that containing the ‘Letters of the Fourth Duke of Bedford’ (3 vols., 1842–3–6), with an historical introduction, is the most useful and interesting. He also edited the ‘Memorials and Letters of Fox’ (4 vols., 1853–4–7) and the ‘Diary of Moore,’ but he barely realised the duties of an editor; his ‘Life and Times of Fox’ (3 vols., 1859–67) contains more politics than biography. His other works include the ‘Life of Lord William Russell’ (1819), ‘Essays and Sketches’ (1820), and ‘Causes of the French Revolution’ (1832).

His literary skill is most marked in his epistolary writing [cf. art. ], and his speeches and writings abound in happy and telling phrases. No cleverer retort was ever made, according to Mr. Gladstone, than Lord John's to Sir Francis Burdett: ‘The honourable member talks of the cant of patriotism; but there is something worse than the cant of patriotism, and that is the re-cant of patriotism.’ It would not be easy to match the readiness of his reply to the queen and the prince consort, for which his nephew, Mr. George W. E. Russell, is the authority (Contemporary Review, lvi. 814). The queen said, ‘Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified, in certain circumstances, in disobeying his sovereign?’ ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘speaking to a sovereign of the House of Hanover, I can only say that I suppose it is.’ Sir James Mackintosh was struck with his definition of a proverb, ‘One man's wit and all men's wisdom.’ Lord John added a proverb to the nation's stock: ‘A spur in the head is worth two in the heel.’

His training led him to excel as a politician, and he was at home in Downing Street and in parliament. The store of constitutional knowledge which he had laboriously acquired was always at his command, and this gave him weight in the House of Commons. He was not an orator of the first rank; still, he had the gift of impressing an assembly. He had not the faculty of moving an audience by perfervid rhetoric; but, despite certain mannerisms of speech which grated on the ear, he possessed the art of convincing intelligent hearers. It was only on rare occasions, as Bulwer Lytton wrote in the ‘New Timon,’ ‘languid Johnny glowed to glorious John,’ and he roused his audience to genuine enthusiasm. The impression which he made on Charles Sumner, an exacting critic, is noteworthy. ‘Lord John Russell’ (Sumner wrote in 1838 of a night spent in the House of Commons) ‘rose in my mind the more I listened to him. In person diminutive and rickety, he reminded me of a