Excerpt from The Queen's Prime Ministers: A Series of Political Biographies IN some considerable reading of books of history, I have found that the most profitable are usually those in which the author, while giving his facts as fully and loyally as he can, makes no secret of his opinions and argues as stoutly as he may for them. Therefore, and not because Lsuppose that these opinions are in my own case of any importance or interest to the world, I think it may not be impertinent to say that this little book is written from the point of view of a Tory. And as I have heard several persons say that they do not exactly know what a Tory means, I may add that I define a Tory as a person who would, at the respective times and in the respective circumstances, have opposed Catholic Emancipation, Reform, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and the whole Irish Legislation of Mr. Gladstone. 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.