GREY

Grey’s term was a notable one, seeing passage of the Reform Act 1832, which finally saw the reform of the House of Commons, and the abolition of slavery throughout almost all of the British Empire in 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act. The passing of the Reform Act was one of the most notable achievements of Grey’s premiership. General Rowland HILL, 1st Viscount Hill, GCB, GCH (1772-1842) was a British Army officer who served in the Napoleonic Wars as a brigade, division and corps commander. He became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in 1828. Lord Grey, in his first term as Prime Minister, apparently got wind of Lord Aberdeen being about to propose a motion that would be a “direct Party attack”, in other words, a motion that had partisan motivations at its core, irrespective of the substance of the matter at hand. Grey realised his premiership was under imminent threat, and promptly began rallying support, of which this letter to Lord Hill was central. The next day, January 25th 1832, Grey wrote to the king, via Sir Herbert Taylor, to rally royal support, and Grey referenced this letter to Lord Hill: “I have thought myself justified in expressing in a letter to Lord Hill, an anxious wish that Government may have his support on this occasion” (The Correspondence of the late Charles Earl Grey with His Majesty King William IV and with Sir Herbert Taylor (1867), II: 149). The following day, Lord Aberdeen proceeded as the intelligence suggested, proposing a motion that censured the approach of Grey’s government regarding the Low Countries, but Grey’s vigorous rallying and manoeuvring won the day: after much debate, the motion was defeated, the votes being 132 to 95. Disaster thus averted, Grey was able to continue with his work on the Reform Bill, which has been described as one of the most important shifts in British history: in the words of the historian G. M. Trevelyan, it “saved the land from revolution and civil strife and made possible the quiet progress of the Victorian era”