cate, are all important.

The functions appertaining to the ministry for foreign affairs have been
in England during the last two years, and certainly also were from 1793
to 1815, the most important and the most difficult connected with the
public administration. A man to fill such a post properly, requires not
merely elevation and uprightness of character, but experience, tried
discretion, the highest capacity, the most extensive and varied
knowledge and accomplishments. Yet how few embassadors (we can scarcely
name one) have been in our day, or, indeed, for the last century,
elevated into Principal Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs! Such
promotions in France have been matters of every-day occurrence since and
previous to 1792. Dumouriez, Talleyrand, Reinhard, Champagny, Maret,
Bignon, Montmorency, Chauteaubriand, Polignac, Sebastiani, De Broglie,
Guizot, Soult, had all been embassadors before they were elevated into
the higher, the more responsible, and the more onerous office. In
England, since the accession of George I., we can scarcely cite,
speaking off-hand, above four instances.

In 1716 there was Paul Methuen, who had been embassador to Portugal in
the reign of Queen Anne, named Secretary of State, for a short time, in
the absence of Earl Stanhope; there was Philip Dormer, earl of
Chesterfield, in 1746; there was John, duke of Bedford, who succeeded
Lord Chesterfield in 1748, and who had previously been embassador to
Paris; and there was Sir Thomas Robinson in 1754, who had been an
embassador to Vienna. In our own day there is scarcely an instance. For
though George Canning was embassador for a short time to Lisbon, and the
Marquis of Wellesley to Spain; though the Duke of Wellington was
embassador to Paris, was charged with a special mission to Russia, was
plenipotentiary at Verona, yet none of these noblemen and gentlemen ever
regularly belonged to the diplomatic corps. The most illustrious and
striking instance of an embassador raised into a Secretary of State is
the case of Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield The character
of no man within a century and a half has been so misrepresented and
misunderstood. Lord John Russell, in the _Bedford Correspondence_, which
he edited, charges this nobleman with conducting the French nobility to
the guillotine and to emigration. But Lord Chesterfield died on the 24th
March, 1773, sixteen years before 1789, and nineteen years before 1792.
To any man of r