Karl Marx on John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

“Colonial reforms, educational schemes, the "liberties of the subject", public press and public meetings, enthusiasm for war and yearning for peace—all of them were but false pretences for Lord John Russell. The whole man is one false pretence, his whole life a lie, all his activity a continuous chain of petty intrigues for the achievement of shabby ends—the devouring of public money and the usurpation of the mere semblance of power. No one has ever illustrated more strikingly the truth of the biblical words that no man can add one cubit unto his stature. Placed by birth, connections, and social accidents on a colossal pedestal, he always remained the same homunculus—a dwarf dancing on the tip of a pyramid. History has, perhaps, never exhibited any other man—so great in pettiness.”

“The sham power Lord John Russell periodically wielded was not only sustained by the influence exerted by the family of the Duke of Bedford, whose younger son he was, but also by the absence of all the qualities which generally fit a person to rule over others. His Lilliputian views on everything spread to others like a contagion and contributed more to confuse the judgment of his hearers than the most ingenious misrepresentation could have done. His real talent consists in his capacity to reduce everything that he touches to his own dwarfish dimensions, to diminish the external world to an infinitesimal size and to transform it into a vulgar microcosm of his own invention. His instinct to belittle the magnificent is excelled only by the skill with which he can make the petty appear great.”