Life of Canning (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Life of CanningWithin the last few years England has been pledged to an alliance with one power, and has signed a treaty settling all outstanding difficulties with another. Our alliance has already made a war possible in Asia whilst it would be idle to deny that our settlement with F rance does not imply some change of our policy in Europe. There is here no desire to censure, no attempt even to criticize either of these momentous steps. It is enough to say that before each was taken there was no definite or even perhaps perceptible impulse from the people, who are yet supposed to direct all government. Lack of interest in foreign policy, except in the broadest outline, is a feature of Englishmen to-day. Perhaps this is the reason why the man whom Lord Acton termed our greatest foreign minister has waited so long for his biographer. Mr. A. G. Stapleton, his private secretary, indeed published two laborious works in his defence The Political Life of Canning, and the Life and Times of George Canning. The former is a successful but tedious defence of his later foreign policy, but more of the nature of a polemic than a history. The latter is a collection of letters and memoranda linked together by a most discursive and heavy commentary, golden beads indeed. But strung on the most tawdry and commonplace of threads. Stapleton knew little of Canning's life before 1815, and made no attempt to trace the connection between his earlier and later policies, whilst his argumentative and apologetic attitude did not admit of critical conclusions, broad views, or final estimates.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.