This pamphlet examines British foreign policy from Castlereagh to Disraeli. Focusing on Britain's relations with other European and non-European powers such as America, Afghanistan, South Africa and Egypt, this pamphlet examines the roles of Canning, Palmerston, and Gladstone amongst others.

The explanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of native authorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained to even the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue," he wrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regards empty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have come from across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has so broken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard for small gains."