Tickets of Leave' (1857), he pushed further his plea that education might cure crime more effectually than punishment.
On the formation of Lord Derby's second ministry in Feb. 1858 Adderley was appointed vice-president of the education committee of the privy council, and was admitted to the privy council. His office also constituted him president of the board of health, and a charity commissioner. The educational situation was peculiarly interesting. On 21 June 1858 Adderley in moving the education vote gave the first official estimate of the cost of a national system of elementary education: he put the amount at a million pounds per annum. At the same time he pointed out that that was the first day on which the University of Oxford was conducting its middle class examinations throughout the country, and was thereby inaugurating a new correlation of the universities to national life. Next day the first royal commission on elementary education was gazetted.
During his brief term of office Adderley consolidated the accumulated minutes of the council on education, prepared the way for the revised code, passed a Reformatory Act amending that of 1854, and (faithful to the principle of devolution) passed a first Local Government Act, the term 'local government' being his own invention.
In March 1859 Adderley, though a minister of the crown, voted against a second reading of his government's reform bill. On the defeat of Lord Derby's ministry he resigned office, and Lord Palmerston became prime minister. The outbreak of the Maori war in New Zealand in 1860 moved him deeply, but he advised the colonists to provide an army of their own, while urging that all parts of the Empire should give mutual help in case of need. In the same year he introduced without success an education bill which aimed at making education compulsory. In Lord Derby's third administration of 1866 Adderley became under-secretary for the colonies, and was immediately confronted by the difficult case of Governor Eyre [see Eyre, Edward John, Suppl. II], whom he loyally defended from the attacks of John Stuart Mill (cf. Finlason's Hist. of the Jamaica Case, 1869). In the same session he carried through the House of Commons the British North America Act (1867), which created the Dominion of Canada. Amid his parliamentary occupations, Adderley published 'Europe Incapable of American Democracy' (1867), in which he sought to reconcile his conservative faith with advanced ideas of social freedom and progress.
Adderley continued in office when Disraeli succeeded Lord Derby as prime minister. He resigned with his colleagues in Dec. 1868, and was made K.C.M.G. next year by Gladstone, the new liberal prime minister, who was a personal friend. 'I am glad our opponents decorate our bench,' remarked Disraeli. Adderley was made chairman of the sanitary commission which reported in 1871 and led to the passing of the Public Health Acts of 1872 and 1875. He took a prominent part in opposing Irish disestablishment.
When Disraeli returned to office in February 1874, Adderley became president of the board of trade, but owing to his frank independence, which the prime minister feared, he was not admitted to the cabinet. 'Single-heartedness, unfailing temper, and unwearied zeal' characterised his departmental work. The amendment of the merchant shipping law was his first official concern in the House of Commons, and he was brought into painful conflict with Samuel Plimsoll [q. v. Suppl. I]. Adderley's bill of 1875 was assailed by Plimsoll and withdrawn. In 1876 another bill which legalised a 'leadline' usually named after Plimsoll, although Adderley claimed it as his own, was introduced and passed. On 8 March 1878 Adderley retired from office with a peerage, assuming the title of Baron Norton. In the same year he presided at the Cheltenham meeting of the Social Science Congress, and he was a frequent speaker in the House of Lords on education and colonial and social questions. In 1880 he refused an offer of the governorship of Bombay. In his speech in the upper house on the Education Code of May 1882 (reprinted as a pamphlet) he practically advocated free education and protested against the complexity of the code with its detailed system of payment by results. He sat on the reformatory and industrial schools commission (1883) and on the education commissions of 1883-4 and 1887. In 1884 he promoted the compromise between the two houses on the liberal government's reform bill.
Norton had long played an active part in religious affairs. As early as 1849 he had published a devotional 'Essay on Human Happiness' (rev. edit. 1854). In his 'Reflections on the Rev. Dr. Hook's Sermon on "the Lord's Day"' (1856) he dwelt on the need of popular parks, gardens, and reading-rooms for Sunday recreation and religious
