Parliament, 1793; 1797, editor of Anti-Jacobin periodical; 1807-
09, Secretary for Foreign Affairs; 1809, duel with Castlereagh;
1814-16, Ambassador at Lisbon; 1817-20, President of India Board;
1822, appointed Governor-General of India; 1822-27, Minister for
Foreign Affairs; 1827, Prime Minister and First Lord of the
Treasury. Buried in Westminster Abbey.]

During the first twenty years of the nineteenth century Great
Britain, though possessing the most liberal constitution of any
of the powers, was the consistent ally of the absolute monarchies
of Europe. Strange as the situation at first appears, it is not
difficult to trace the causes which produced it.

For the explanation of most of the phenomena of European history
in the first half of the century the student must turn back to
the French Revolution. The social and political ideas which were
at the bottom of that great upheaval were in part suggested by
the success of free institutions in constitutional England, where
parliamentary government had been highly developed while France
lay bound by her Bourbon despots. A large body of Englishmen
numbering some of the greatest names in politics and literature
sympathized deeply with the earlier manifestations of the
revolutionary spirit.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven"

sang Wordsworth, whose youthful enthusiasm over that dawn was
soon chilled by the crimes which were committed in the name of
Liberty--the slaughter of the royal pair, the reign of the