English observers in North America before 1640 found much to praise in the character of the Indians. They were a cheerful people, sharing what they possessed with each other, and especially loving as parents. Churlishness was a great crime among them. They were often said to be trustworthy. Above all, they were dignified and courteous; their chief men were grave and wise. In fact, even the most hostile critic allowed the dignity of the Indian. Typical is George Percy in his Discourse of Virginia of 1606, writing of the Werowance of Rapahanna: the Werowance ‘entertained us in so modest a proud fashion as though he had been a Prince of civill government, holding his countenance without laughter or any such ill behaviour’. These words of praise for the Indian were virtually universal, appearing even in the works of men like Ralph Lane, who was fundamentally hostile to them. Moreover, the praise continued from all other colonies after the massacre of 1622 temporarily ended the favourable attitude in Virginia. William Wood, writing in New England in 1634, said that they ‘be wise in their carriage, subtle in their dealings, true in their promise, honest in defraying of their debts…constant in friendship, merrily conceited in discourse, not luxuriously abounding in youth nor dotingly froward in old age…’.

On 3 December 1621 the House of Commons resolved to submit a petition to King James I, asking him for stricter enforcement of the laws against Catholic recusants, asking ‘that your Majesty would propose to yourself to manage this war with the best advantage, by a diversion or otherwise, as in your deep judgement shall be found fittest, and not to rest upon a war in these parts only, which will consume your treasure and discourage your people’, and that ‘our most noble prince may be timely and happily married to one of our own religion’.

The League of Princes (Fürstenbund) was founded on 23 July 1785, when the representatives of Prussia, Hanover and Saxony signed at Berlin a main treaty and several secret articles relating to the domestic affairs of the Holy Roman Empire. During the following months a number of other German princes joined the League, notably the elector of Mainz, the landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, the margrave of Baden and the dukes of Brunswick, Saxony-Gotha and Saxony-Weimar.s Its general objective was the preservation of the imperial status quo. More specifically, it was aimed at the Emperor Joseph II and the innumerable schemes of expansion popularly attributed to him, not always without justification. More specifically still, the League was designed to prevent any renewal of Joseph's most cherished ambition - the exchange of the Habsburg possessions in the Netherlands (which embraced the larger part of present-day Belgium) for the Electorate of Bavaria. From the European perspective, the League was soon overshadowed by the reopening of the Eastern Question in 1787, eclipsed by the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1788 and finally extinguished by the Austro-Prussian rapprochement in 1792, but during 1785–6 it assumed great importance. Not the least affected was Great Britain, whose king - albeit in his capacity as elector of Hanover - was a founder-member of the League and one of its most enthusiastic protagonists. Despite the official British view - repeated ad nauseam to sceptical foreign diplomats - that Georg Kurfürst von Hannover and George III King of England were two entirely separate beings and that consequently the actions of the former could have not the least effect on the latter's domains, British policy could not help but be influenced.

Recent writers have pointed out that the 1834 act often made little immediate difference to the practice of local poor-law authorities. The poor-law commissioners lacked the means or the will to enforce their programme. Poor law unions did not replace the township as the effective unit of administration. The same men (albeit with different titles) remained in control. Authorities continued to vary greatly in efficiency and generosity, strong determinants of leniency or harshness being the fortunes of the local economy and the strength of local impulses towards paternalism or frugality. In Nottinghamshire, for example, relief policy became steadily more stringent from the 1820s onwards, largely owing to the work of cost-conscious magistrates; 1834 speeded the current, rather than changed its course. On the other hand, in the Durham unions surveyed by Peter Dunkley, relief was generous throughout the 1830s, but stingy when the local economy was hit by slump after 1840; in the Hungry Forties, the Durham unions were as ruthless as the poor law commission in their attitude towards the poor – and sometimes, indeed, were more so, the commission protesting vainly against the overcrowding of workhouses. Even local authorities' generous phases reflected a shrewd assessment of the ratepayers' best interests: Rhodes Boyson has shown how the north-east Lancashire unions' insistence on continuing outdoor relief was due in part to a realisation that to enforce indoor relief in all cases would be much more costly.

French foreign policy during the Orleans Monarchy was dominated by the search for an agreement with another power. In the first two years of the new monarchy's existence the fear of isolation exercised a profound influence over the conduct of French diplomacy and almost every French politician and diplomat regarded an entente with another great power as the only remedy. Thus the immediate aim of foreign policy was to divide the enemies of France. Throughout the negotiations in London in 1831 and 1832 on the Belgian question, Talleyrand, the French ambassador in London, regarded the prevention of an anti-French coalition as his major objective. The pursuit of French interests in the Low Countries, however important, had to be subordinated to this overriding aim. It was to England that Talleyrand looked for support; he rightly believed that the Whigs were ideologically opposed to a conservative coalition against France and that it was the English government which had the most to gain from co-operation with France on the Belgian question. Once it became clear - as it certainly had by mid-1832 - that there was little likelihood of the emergence of an anti-French coalition, the search for an agreement with another power could be associated with the pursuit of more positive ends.

In February 1839 Lord John Russell put before the House of Commons a set of proposals for governmental action in the field of popular education. It was a contentious move by the Home Secretary, and the bitter political tussle which it provoked was predictable. In the context of a flagging ministry facing an opposition already scenting office, it seems almost cavalier. The well-known outcome was the formation of a new executive agency for the management of the state's role in the education of the people, the Committee of Privy Council on Education. The whole incident attracts notice in several dimensions of historical commentary. Social and political narratives must record it; students of Whiggery, Russell, reform or radicalism, must give it place and plausibility; it is a turning point for the historian of education; and it provides a case study for the investigation of government growth in the nineteenth century.

An economic theory implies an ethical system, a political purpose, and a psychological hypothesis. Throughout almost the entire nineteenth century in Britain laissez-faire capitalism, with its concomitant values of personal thrift and industry, parliamentary government, and promise of social mobility through self-improvement, was triumphant. Many, if not most, Englishmen believed that the classical political economists had discovered and formulated the ‘laws of political economy’ in the same ineluctable manner that Isaac Newton had determined the laws of physics. ‘To many’, as G. Kitson Clark has written, the political economists ‘were the best minds in the country whose teaching it was folly to question and disastrous to disobey’. However much Englishmen might deplore the social and human consequences of the operation of the ‘laws of political economy’, most were convinced that opposition to those ‘laws’ was futile.

The possibility of Viscount Grey's return to active political life after his resignation from the Foreign Office in 1916 is one which historians have treated with understandable scepticism. Grey's well-documented distaste for political intrigue, his love of things pastoral and aesthetic, his failing health in general and eyesight in particular and hispatent joy at being released from office in 1916 lend force to the thoughtthat he was never likely to be brought back to the world of politics. ‘[H]e was always too blind and often too ill to lead a party, or to aspire to office,’ his friend and biographer G. M. Trevelyan wrote a few years after Grey's death; and more recendy Professor Robbins, whilst he concedes that there was a political dimension within Grey's make-up which Trevelyan was wont to ignore, likewise examines the period after 1916 rather dismissively. One consequence of this view of Grey's political biography has been the neglect of what has been seen to be an attempt on the part of some Liberals to remove Asquith from the leadership of the Liberal party in 1921 and to substitute Grey. The assumption has been that because Grey personally was likely to have been a poor conspirator, conspiracies involving him must have been unpromising or trivial. It is, on the contrary, the point of this article to suggest that the Grey conspiracy of 1921 should be seen as a significant development in the three-party situation which characterized post-war politics; and to argue that the conspiracy had little to do with Grey and a great deal to do with other politicians, of diverse background, party affiliation, position and ambition, who were looking for a new way to obtain some purchase on the politics of the centre.

A problem of crucial importance confronted the British labour movement in the 1920s. The working class - those who earned their livelihood by selling their labour power, as well as their dependents - constituted a majority of the population. To the left it seemed manifest that their interests lay in ending a social system which exploited them and putting socialism in its place. Yet during the decade only a minority of British voters committed themselves to socialism, even at the minimal level of voting for the Labour party. As Philip Snowden lamented, ‘the very people for whom [the socialist] works and sacrifices are often indifferent and seldom show any gratitude’. Why did the British working class lack class consciousness?