Excerpt from The Story of British Diplomacy: Its Makers and Movements Stanhope, whom Palmerston seems to have regarded as the first official who made foreign policy his dis tinctive province. And here in passing I may Observe I am aware of some reasons given by Mr Pike* for seeing in the Northern department rather than the Southern the specific germs of the Foreign Office. As a fact, I have in the introductory Chapter of the present work opened my brief retrospect with a period considerably before that of Stanhope. For the rest it has been my first object, avoiding all excursions into general history, as well as the more universally familiar portions of the diplomatic narrative, to confine myself to the foreign transactions Of the English Government, to the individuals chiefly associated with these, and, for choice, to dwell in detail rather upon those that naturally and properly have occupied less space in the general histories of the time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.