At Christmas 1833 a History of Alexander the Great (Geschichte des Alexanders des Groẞen) appeared in Berlin, consisting of almost 600 densely printed pages and accompanied by about 650 learned notes. The author, Johan Gustav Droysen, was an exceptionally gifted young scholar aged twenty-five. Two years previously he had defended his thesis on Lagid Egypt, and had been the pupil, at the University of Berlin, of distinguished teachers, in the areas of Altertumswissenschaft (August Boeckh), historical geography (Carl Ritter) and philosophy of history (Georg Wilhelm Hegel). This Alexander was followed in 1836 and 1843 by two other volumes devoted to what we today call the Hellenistic world (Hellenismus). Although in the meantime Droysen had turned his attention to the modern and contemporary history of Prussia, these three volumes were reissued in 1877 as a Geschichte des Hellenismus.

James Mill’s dogmatic rhetoric in his essay ‘On Government’ (1820) and his rejection in the History of British India (1817) of ocular and narrowly empirical methods, when seen against the febrile political backdrop of the early 1830s, was a gift to utilitarianism’s Whig, Tory, and Romantic opponents. However, his defence in A Fragment on Mackintosh (1835) of Bentham’s jurisprudence and moral philosophy, when placed in the context of his other late writings, suggests a different intention. In both his historical and political writings, James Mill pursued the ‘real business of philosophy’ in which general principles illuminated social phenomena and laid bare the emptiness of Whig empiricism. Only the ‘speculative man’ could appreciate the past’s distinctness by separating general from special causes, and Mill’s indebtedness to Francis Bacon and David Hume is evident in this respect. His attractions to Benthamite utilitarianism and Scottish philosophical history were variously deepened and underpinned by his readings of Bacon and Hume, and those readings, Barrell suggests, may have been encouraged by Dugald Stewart at Edinburgh.

Grey gave a great push to convince his colleagues to consult the French government about activating the House-Grey Memorandum, only to be outmanoeuvred. With this diplomatic alternative set aside, the military successfully pressured the government to assent to a major summer offensive on the Somme. The military also sought to replace the strategy agreed a few months earlier with an economic fantasy: the military was now looking to win the war with an offensive in 1917 instead of in 1916, but refused to accept that Britain would face serious financial problems in continuing the Allies' massive US supplies through a 1917 campaign. Despite fierce resistance within the Cabinet, the House of Commons forced the acceptance of the military's position. The British government suffered a financial scare when McKenna warned that their assets deployable in the United States faced exhaustion by autumn. McKenna was wrong about the timing: Britain had more assets than he thought, enough to last them into early 1917. But the scare resulted in a serious reconsideration of the House-Grey Memorandum when House and Wilson pushed for an autumn implementation of the agreement. The memorandum's proponents were unintentionally undermined by Wilson’s speech to the US League to Enforce Peace.

A sense of crisis emerged amidst growing anxieties over the Allied financial, shipping, and food situations. The British faced hard economic choices for the coming year, but the Cabinet remained divided and paralyzed. Lord Lansdowne finally put to paper the worries that had filled a number of ministers all year: the 'Lansdowne Memorandum' called for a consideration of a negotiated peace, finding a number of supporters within the Cabinet and sparking vigorous debate. Lloyd George rejected Lansdowne's position, determined to force the adoption of industrial conscription and to increase British spending in the United States. Lloyd George rejected the reality of Britain's increasingly fragile economic position even amidst a serious financial crisis. Plotting with Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law and with Edward Carson, Lloyd George sought to eject Asquith and his supporters from the levers of power, but Asquith outmanoeuvred him, holding his government together with a series of compromises and isolating Lloyd George within the Cabinet. Lloyd George responded by launching a desperate gambit to remove Asquith's control over the war. When the dust settled, Lloyd George was on Downing Street.

This final chapter considers Burke’s relationship to what may loosely be termed ‘enlightenment thought’ with an emphasis on Scotland. The Scottish thinkers particularly relevant for Burke were the usual suspects, including Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and William Robertson. Following the work of Isaiah Berlin, Burke is often read as a counter-Enlightenment thinker. But Burke was not the only ‘enlightenment’ luminary to be confounded by the French Revolution. Edward Gibbon was equally appalled, and it eventually disappointed even the likes of Paine and Sieyès as well. This chapter demonstrates that the differences between Burke and Hume were diminished when Burke was freed from partisanship. He now advanced a sceptical defence of party: it was not exclusively the Whigs, but the old Whig and Tory parties alike, which had sustained the British mixed and balanced constitution ‘by their collision and mutual resistance’. This chapter also considers Adam Smith’s thought on party and faction.