The Duke of Wellington and the Whigs (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830. Excerpt: ... a war with Turkey, in which it is more than probable that Mr. Canning, had he lived, would from the course he was following have found himself involved. We readily admit that all in whose minds there exists a spark of generous emotion must long for the emancipation of Greece; but Greece was not to be emancipated at the expense of a departure from that position which we laid down as embodying the principles of sound policy. Greece was truly a fine subject for the Whigs, and men who would have made sorry Grecians had they been born in Athens, even when her glory was on the decline, can rake with laudable industry amongst her mouldering ashes, and gather dust to throw upon another every way worthy of her brightest days. The Whigs were ready (if we may use complex epithets) to turn Homer-idolaters and Honesty-despisers, and so long as England had espoused the cause of poetry, they would have cared little, if at all, for the crookedness of her policy. But let us now turn to the course which the Duke of Wellington has pursued, and we shall find that, in spite of the difficulties caused by the treaty of July 1827, he has succeeded in joining just what the Whigs, with all their harangues about Marathon and Thermopylae, could never have combined--England guilty of no aggression, and Greece delivered from her stern oppressors. i It appears by Count Nesselrode's despatch to Prince Lieven, dated the 6th of January 1828 (written, it is to be observed, before the administration of Lord Goderich had been dissolved), that the Russian Government, depending upon its influence with our's, had strenuously urged that the parties to the treaty should, in pursuit of the object of it, forcibly possess themselves of parts of the Ottoman empire. This was not consonant to the views...