Author: John Mcgilchrist

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 9781230369907

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ... object either of vehement laudation or of impassioned hatred. In truth, however, he is not the fit object of the praise he has received, or the vituperation with which he has been encountered. In a despotic country, a minister may impress his own principles upon the measures of.Government; in a constitutional one he must receive it from the legislature. The Reform Bill having vested the government of England in the class of urban shopkeepers, the majority of whom are imbued with liberal principles, the carrying out of their wishes into our foreign policy became a matter of necessity, to which every minister, however otherwise inclined, must bend." It is hardly necessary to state that the object we have in presenting this passage from the work of the very prince of blunderers amongst historians, whether ancient or modern, is anything but the indication of concurrence with its statements. But the chief allegation made by Alison has been uttered, or sanctioned, in some respectable quarters, and therefore it becomes the initial duty of a biographer, in commencing the narration of that best and ripest portion of Lord Palmerston's life, during which he was responsible for the foreign policy of Great Britain, to disprove the charge that the universally-admitted liberality of that policy was forced on him by circumstances, by the enthusiasm of the people, the increase of their power, and their augmented interest in the progress of liberty on the Continent. While the latter facts must be admitted, it must equally be allowed that Palmerston--in that continuous and consistent course of liberal foreign policy which was addressed by him to the great ends of freedom, at one time in Greece, at another in Belgium, now in that peninsula where Wellington...