A close study profiles a prominent statesman by combining psychological portraiture with political analysis, arguing that imaginative temperament shaped public conduct and policy. Chapters explore personality and representation, debates over labour, reform movements and free-trade controversy, relations between church and state, ideas about monarchy, imperial and foreign policy, and responses to America and Ireland. Social life, literary style, wit, and the arc of public career receive attention, presenting the subject’s ideas as coherent tendencies linking private character to public decisions.