Excerpt from Recollections of the Old Foreign Office It has been my endeavour to avoid touching on any events, political or personal, the recording of which might be considered injudicious in the public interests, or in the least degree painful to any indi vidual. I trust that in this, at any rate, I have succeeded. There are no doubt many of my colleagues who could add largely to the anecdotes and records which I have ventured to make public and I hope that they may some day be tempted to do as I have done, or at least that they will not be deterred from doing so by any suspicion that the example which I have set them is a bad one. In the Appendix will be found an account of the early creation of the office of Secretary of State, with the names of those statesmen who filled, at various times, the office of Secretary of State for the Northern and Southern Departments respectively, before the appointment, in 1782, of the first Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The names of those who have filled the office of Foreign Secretary since that date are also given in the Appendix. 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.