The year 1853 was marked by various domestic events. Lady John’s daughter, Mary Agatha, was born in March. In May Lord John’s stepson, Lord Ribblesdale, was married to Miss Mure of Caldwell; and in June his step-daughter, Isabel, married Mr. Warburton. In July occurred the death of Lady Minto, Lady John’s mother. During these months the world of politics had been going its way. In April both husband and wife expressed their delight in Gladstone’s budget, and it seemed that after the excursions and alarms of 1851 and 1852 there was a chance of things going quietly and prosperously. But by the autumn the circumstances that led to the Crimean War became acute, and a holiday in Scotland was suddenly broken up by the necessity for Lord John’s presence in London, where his wife joined him in October. In the session of 1854 Lord John Russell found himself obliged to withdraw his Reform Bill. Lady John’s letters well show her feeling towards political life, and form indeed a comment on the dangers and difficulties of that career for sincere and disinterested persons. Official friends made it their business to go to see her and to lay before her all the arguments for dropping the Bill, so that she might repeat them to her husband. She was assured that her husband had such a quantity of spare character that it could bear a little damaging. Her notion was that many members were afraid of losing their seats by dissolution, and many others hated any sort of Reform Bill and were glad of an excuse to stifle it. She almost despaired of her country, and wondered how she could prevent her boys growing up cowardly and selfish. But she listened to all, and said nothing, “because there is not time to begin at the first rudiments of morality, and there would be no use in anything higher up.” Another time she wrote: “Politics have never yet been what they ought to be: men who would do nothing mean themselves do not punish meanness in others when it can serve their party or their country, and excuse their connivance on that ground.” When Lord John resigned office in 1855, after his mission as British Plenipotentiary at the Vienna Conference, his wife disapproved his action of writing to Lord Aberdeen, instead of announcing his intention in the usual way at a meeting of the Cabinet. She did her best to persuade him, if he would not do that, at least to tell some of his colleagues before writing to Lord Aberdeen, but without avail.