To be viewed with contempt is an occupational hazard for politicians everywhere, but few statesmen have been as reviled as Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822). He spent many years in England's Parliament managing the business of legislation for various Tory governments and served as the British foreign secretary during the Napoleonic wars and their aftermath. He was an inept public speaker—one critic said that he favored "every tax but syntax"—but he was a virtuoso at parliamentary maneuvering and a diplomat of skill and integrity. Not that such qualities won him many admirers.
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