ABSTRACT
A GRAVE diplomatic crisis faced Canning at the very moment at which he assumed office. He seems not to have been aware of it, for on the 23rd August 1822 he said at Liverpool, " I see no near prospect of a call upon this country for any foreign exertion." He apparently imagined that more imminent difficulties and dangers lay at home. But then he had been eighteen months out of office, and to be out of office is not only to be without power, but to be without that knowledge which is more important than power. Further-and appar· ently by design-the instructions of Wellington had finally been signed and given to him by Bathurst (the Acting Foreign Secretary) on the 14th September. Thus Canning had neither part nor lot in the drafting of the instructions nor in the appointment of Wellington as plenipotentiary to Verona.1
