160 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



the British Museum, he visited the heirs of George Hammond and Lord Ham- 

 mond his son, of Sir Robert Liston, of the first Sir Edward Thornton — charge 

 d'affaires 1800-1803, and father of a later minister in Washington — and of 

 Secretary Canning, and received obhging favors from all. Since then he 

 has received, from the Honorable Miss Hammond and her kinsman Sir George 

 Barnes, a small but very interesting group of documents and private letters 

 from and to George Hammond, especial interest attaching to a letter of Lord 

 Wycombe, Shelburne's son, relating to the visit of Talleyrand to the United 

 States. The Misses Thornton also searched their family correspondence, and 

 allowed portions to be copied from an autobiographical memoir of Sir Edward 

 Thornton's early life and diplomatic experiences, prepared by him in later 

 years. Mr. G. H. Liston-Foulis, of Edinburgh, unable at the time of the editor's 

 visit to that city to examine the papers of Sir Robert Liston, has been so good 

 as to carry out the examination of a large part of them since that time. 



Mention was made in the last report of the large collection of papers of 

 Sir Charles Bagot, minister in Washington from 1816 to 1819, preserved at the 

 celebrated residence of Levens Hall in Westmoreland, and of the cordial invi- 

 tation to come and examine them which had been received from their owner, 

 Mr. Richard Bagot, a noted writer. But before the editor could avail himself 

 of this kind invitation, Mr. Bagot was attacked by an illness which proved 

 fatal in October, about the time when the Director was leaving Europe. 



It is impossible to conclude the record of that expedition without making 

 grateful and affectionate acknowledgment of the kindness with which the 

 late Lord Bryce constantly furthered its purposes and those of the contem- 

 plated publication, from the moment when its design was first described to 

 him. It was by his means that, at the beginning, the necessary permissions 

 were obtained from the then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Bal- 

 four. Unwearied in aiding the preliminaries of the expedition, Lord Bryce 

 showed himself particularly so in the four days that intervened between the 

 Director's arrival in London on July 4, 1921, and the veteran statesman's 

 departure for his last voyage to America, to lecture in the Institute of Politics 

 at Williamstown. In those crowded days before sailing, when this marvelous 

 man of eighty-four was making a public speech somewhere every day, he 

 nevertheless found time, of his own motion, to confer helpfully upon this 

 undertaking of a single American historical scholar, and to write, even to the 

 parting with the pilot-boat, letters of introduction that would promote its 

 success. From his final service to mutual understanding between Great 

 Britain and America he did not re^'iu'n to London till after the writer of this 

 report had left England, but, bearing the expedition in mind along with the 

 interests of countless other friends, he soon afterward, on one of the last days 

 of his life, wrote by way of interested inquiry as to its success. If the under- 

 taking succeeds, it will owe a great debt to him, not only for all this constant 

 helpfulness toward its execution, but for the demonstration that his ambassa- 

 dorship and his whole life afforded, that Anglo-American relations can be 

 discussed serenely and without passion, sympathetically and with increased 

 understanding of past and present conditions, and best discussed by those 

 who would wish to see them improved. 



Throughout the history of Anglo-American diplomacy, and somewhat 

 especially in the time of the French war, 1793-1815, the relations of the British 



