ABSTRACT
C a s t l e r e a g h ’s true field o f activity was no t England bu t Europe. His domestic policy, bitterly attacked by contemporaries, has found few apologists among later historians. His foreign policy, now universally applauded, fared, for half a century after his death, bu t little better. I f he was an ardent ally o f Eldon and Sidmouth at home, he was in Europe a complaisant partner in the crimes o f M etternich and the Continental autocrats; not until Canning replaced Castlereagh was the position o f England retrieved; not until 1822 did England break away from the reactionary and repressive policy o f the Holy Allies. That legend persisted for tw o generations after Castlereagh’s death. One or two isolated apologists attempted to expose its inaccuracy, bu t no t until the last decades o f the nineteenth century was it finally dissipated. Mr. FyfFe, though him self an ardent Radical politician, deserves credit for having been one o f the first, am ong competent historians, to discern the tru th and to proclaim it. ‘The legend’, he wrote, ‘which represents English policy as taking an absolutely new departure in 1822 does no t correspond to the tru th o f history. . . . Two more years o f life, tw o more years o f change in the relations o f England to the Continent w ould have given Castlereagh a different figure in the history both o f Greece and o f America. N o English statesman in m odern times has been so severely judged.’ 1 The reaction in Castlereagh’s favour
1 Modern Europe (1886), II. 211, 253. 298
has, in the last twenty years, proceeded apace. I t received a powerful impulse from Mr. Alison P hillips in The Confederation of Europe (1914); but it is only since the conclusion o f the W orld W ar that research has combined w ith that sense o f realities only to be acquired in the hard school o f experience, to reveal in its true light the policy pursued by Castlereagh, and to establish, unshakeably, his reputation as perhaps the greatest o f our Foreign Secretaries.1
