Lord Robert Cecil on Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

“It is not, however, by one or two isolated successes that Lord Castlereagh's foreign policy ought to be tried. It is best judged by its general results. During the war his aim was to overthrow Napoleon, and to reduce France within her ancient limits. After the war his aim was to uphold the balance of power, and so to secure lasting peace to Europe. When the direction of England's foreign policy passed from his hands, both objects had been attained... For forty years the peace of Europe flourished undisturbed by one single conflict between any of the five great Powers who adjusted their differences at Vienna... Europe has not enjoyed so long a repose from the curse of war since the fall of the Roman empire. Such an achievement is an ample justification of the acts of the Congress of Vienna and of the minister who bore so large a part in shaping its decrees.”

“It was a mere calumny to call him an enemy to freedom. In its truest and most literal sense—the exemption from oppression—he did more for it than any statesman of his age. We have the testimony of the Duke of Wellington, that he had done more to destroy the slave-trade than any man in Europe; and the struggle which absorbed the best years of his life was a struggle on a vast scale for the liberties of mankind.”

“[F]rom Napoleon's tyranny time gave no respite, and insignificance no escape. His exactions ground down every income, and his massacres, thinly disguised under military names, thinned every village, from Reggio to Lilbeck. To have borne a large part in freeing Europe from such a scourge as this—to have provided securities that made it for the future an impossibility—was to have done a greater service to the cause of freedom than any shifting of the equilibrium of electoral power is ever likely to effect.”