ABSTRACT
Robert Peel's Conservative party had developed in the 1830s from an anti-reform Tory core to which liberal Tories, returning after 1834, had added diversity and leadership. Grey's government of 1830-34 was a coalition between Whigs and liberal Tories, while Liverpool's Tory government of 1812-27 had grown out of the Pitt Portland coalition of 1794, reinforced by the defection of the Grenville Whigs after 1818. From 1846 to 1852, Lord John Russell headed a Whig Liberal administration which governed with the tacit, and sometimes active, support of the Peelites. Russell, remembering how Grey had acted in 1830, attempted to form a Liberal Peelite coalition but the three Peelites to whom offers were made Dalhousie, Herbert and Lincoln refused, as did Sir James Graham in 1849. From the Whig side, Palmerston, as Home Secretary, and Russell, Foreign Secretary, returned along with Earl Granville, an able young politician who had replaced Palmerston when Russell forced his resignation in 1851.
