RUSSELL, Lord John. The Life and Times of Charles James Fox. London: Richard Bentley. 1850-1866.
Three volumes, 8vo. Original pulisher's pebble-grained cloth, spines lettered in gilt, covers ornamented in blind, publisher's advertisements on endpapers; pp. xv, 366, 2 (advertisement); viii, 380; xii, 404; near-fine, partly unopened.
First edition. All three volumes are rarely seen together even rarer in the uniform publisaher's bindings. The Whig politician and political writer John Russell here takes on one of his guiding stars, the radical Charles James Fox. The author 'had been born into a great whig house, where he was taught that the aristocracy occupied a middle place between crown and people and held their great estates in trust for the preservation of the constitution. The defining moment in his politics, which occurred nine years before he was born, was George III's dismissal of Charles James Fox in 1783. Throughout his life he worked with a statue of Fox on his desk, and like Fox he thought that even in an age of revolutionary societies and tumults a wilful monarch posed a greater threat to parliament than the people, who were slow. He acknowledged that the French Revolution had been accompanied by acts of violence and outrage. It taught us that "great changes accomplished by the people were dangerous, although sometimes salutary"' (ODNB).
In this thorough biography Russell evaluates the radical's career, who had supported American independence, knew Franklin and Jefferson well, favoured the French revolution and radical movements on both sides of the Atlantic. These three volumes convey much on the transatlantic colonies' struggle and intellectual movements which were to shape the United States. He promoted the work of Tom Paine and other campaigners for Parliamentary reform, and in 1787 formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In 1806 he was appointed Charles Fox as Foreign Secretary, gave a legendary and passionate speech against slavery in the Hoese of Commons, was taken ill, and died soon after.
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