In 1856, the Stroud Mutual Improvement Society heard its most distinguished member talk about history and biography. That speaker was experienced in both literary forms. He had published the life of a famous ancestor, and had edited three other biographical works; he had written a history of eighteenth-century Europe and various historical essays. But he was also Stroud's former MP, and the country's former prime minister: Lord John Russell, the subject of this essay. Russell is perhaps a particularly appropriate subject for treatment here. This is partly because of the importance of historical study and example for his own political career. It is also because one of Derek Beales's many interests as a teacher and writer has been to restore Russell from long neglect to his proper place in the nineteenth-century Liberal pantheon. In 1930, Tilby commented that ‘fame has treated few men more scurvily’; fifty years later, the position had hardly changed. Russell's only postwar biographer, John Prest, produced important unpublished material but paid little attention to his views or to many of his policy initiatives. Twenty years ago Derek Beales almost took up the challenge; but in the event Joseph II's gain has been Russell's loss. Recent work, which he has largely inspired, has helped to rectify the situation. But the major reassessment is still awaited.

This essay does not attempt anything so bold. It aims to shed light on Russell's political philosophy, and to examine the part of his career which has done most damage to his reputation, and which Prest treated most lightly: the 1850s.