all places, and amid surroundings which have been known to test
the moral fibre of more boisterous politicians. Though profoundly
attached to the Throne and to the Hanoverian succession, he was no
courtier. The year 1688 was his sacred date, and he had a habit
of applying the principles of our English Revolution to the issues
of modern politics.

Actuated, probably, by some playful desire to probe the heart of
Whiggery by putting an extreme case, Queen Victoria once said:
"Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified,
under certain circumstances, in disobeying his Sovereign?" "Well,
ma'am, speaking to a Sovereign of the House of Hanover, I can only
say that I suppose it is!"

When Italy was struggling towards unity and freedom, the Queen was
extremely anxious that Lord John, then Foreign Secretary, should
not encourage the revolutionary party. He promptly referred Her
Majesty to "the doctrines of the Revolution of 1688," and informed
her that, "according to those doctrines, all power held by Sovereigns
may be forfeited by misconduct, and each nation is the judge of
its own internal government."

The love of justice was as strongly marked in Lord John Russell as
the love of freedom. He could make no terms with what he thought
one-sided or oppressive. When the starving labourers of Dorset
combined in an association which they did not know to be illegal,
he urged that incendiaries in high places, such as the Duke of
Cumberland and Lord Wynford, were "far more guilty than the labourers,
but the law does not reach them, I fear."