WORKS BY SIR SPENCER WALPOLE, K.C.B. HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE CONCLUSION OF THE GREAT WAR OF 1815 TO 1858. 6 Vols. Crown 8vo, 6s. each. THE HISTORY OF TWENTY-FIVE YEARS (1856-1880). 8vo. Vols. I. and II. (1856-1870) (out of print). Vols. III. and IV. (1870-1880). 21s. net. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA A HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE CONCLUSION OF THE GREAT WAR IN 1815 BY SIR SPENCER WALPOLE, K.C.B. AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF LORD JOHN RUSSELL" VOL. I. NEW IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 1913 All rights reserved PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION. THE History of England from 1815 to the present time may be conveniently grouped into distinct periods. The first of these periods dates from the Peace, and terminates soon after the accession of George IV. to the throne; the second commences with the reconstruction of the Liverpool Administration, by the appointment of Peel to the Home Office and of Canning to the Colonial Office, and ends soon after the passage of the Reform Act; the third comprises the history of the Whig Ministry from the passage of the Reform Act to the fall of Melbourne in 1841; the fourth, concerned with the gradual adoption of Free Trade under Peel and Russell, was inaugurated by the Budget of 1842, and was crowned by the repeal of the Navigation Acts in. 1849. The first of these periods, during which Englishmen enjoyed less real liberty than at any time since the Revolution of 1688, was a period of Reaction; the second of them, memorable for five great revolutions in law, in commerce, in foreign policy, in religion, and in organic politics, was a period of Reform; the third, which deals not only with the successes of the Whigs under Grey, but with their failures under Melbourne, is concerned with the decline and fall of the Whig Ministry; the fourth relates the triumph of Free Trade. 264650 During the same time the foreign policy of the country was subjected to changes as remarkable as those which charac terised its domestic policy. Under Castlereagh, this country ranged itself on the side of Autocracy; under Canning and under Palmerston, while Grey remained in power, it supported the cause of Constitutional Government; under Aberdeen, it pursued a policy of Non-Intervention; under Palmerston, it adopted the cause of Nationalities, asserting at the same time its right to protect British interests, or interests which were supposed to be British, and by doing so entered on the drift which eventually involved it in the Crimean War. A mere narrative of the domestic and foreign policy of a nation forms only a portion, and, as some people would say, an unimportant portion, of the history of a nation. During the present century the British people has doubled its numbers at home, and occupied and conquered vast territories abroad. In the present work, stress has been laid on the causes which have led to the moral and material development of the nation; and an attempt has been made to describe, in brief outline, the events which have brought India under the sovereignty of England, and have led to the introduction of autonomous institutions into the larger British Colonies. In preparing the work for a new edition, the author has not merely endeavoured to correct the few errors which he has himself detected, or which have been pointed out to him by his critics, but he has also in one or two instances rearranged portions of his narrative, and modified the language in which some of his judgments were expressed in earlier editions. GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ISLE OF MAN, June 1890. |