Karl Marx - Secret Diplomatic History of The Eighteenth Century

How much was England not prejudiced by the Courts of Vienna and Paris thwarting the plan of the British Cabinet of ceding Minorca to Russia, and by Frederick of Prussia's resistance against the great Chatham's scheme of a Northern Alliance under Muscovite auspices.

The predecessor is Fox. Sir James Harris establishes a complete scale of British Administrations, according to the degree in which they enjoyed the favour of his almighty Czarina. In spite of Lord Stormont, the Earl of Sandwich, Lord North, and Sir James Harris himself; in spite of the partition of Poland, the bullying of D'Aiguillon, the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji, and the intended cession of Minorca – Lord North's Administration is relegated to the bottom of the heavenly ladder; far above it has climbed the Rockingham Administration, whose soul was Fox, notorious for his subsequent intrigues with Catherine; but at the top we behold the Shelburne Administration, whose Chancellor of the Exchequer was the celebrated William Pitt. As to Lord Shelburne himself, Burke exclaimed in the House of Commons, that "if he was not a Catalina or Borgia in morals, it must not be ascribed to anything but his understanding."

Sir James Harris forgets deducing the main inference, that the Ambassador of England is the agent of Russia.

In the 18th century, English diplomatists' despatches, bearing on their front the sacramental inscription, "Private," are despatches to be withheld from the King by the Minister to whom they are addressed. That such was the case may be seen from Lord Mahon's History of England .

"To be burnt after my death." Such are the words prefixed to the manuscript by the gentleman whom it was addressed to.

Or, to follow this affectation of silliness into more recent times, is there anything in diplomatic history that could match Lord Palmerston's proposal made to Marshal Soult (in 1839), to storm the Dardanelles, in order to afford the Sultan the support of the Anglo-French fleet against Russia?