The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 was indeed the one large measure of reform that became law between the French Revolution and Castlereagh's d… - G. M. Trevelyan

It is perhaps in the sphere of political institutions that the English have been most original in their native invention, from the time of Magna Charta downwards, or even from the time of William the Conqueror. Certainly it is in politics that the world at large has borrowed most from us; for our literature, though as great as the Greek or Latin, has had relatively little influence outside the English-speaking nations. In politics modern Italy, under Cavour, went to school in England, borrowing thence her constitutional monarchy and parliament. Yet even in the realm of political ideas, where we have taught more than we learned, how much we owed to Ancient Rome! The Conservative idea of respect for law and of the sovereign regal power was throughout our history sanctioned by the glamour of classical association hanging round the words Lex, Rex, Imperator. Our Plantagenet and our Tudor foundations were built on the Roman model. And no less in the realm of Liberal thought, the ideal of Roman Republican virtue, perpetuated in Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus, did as much to inspire Milton, Sidney, and the opponents of the Stuarts as the Old Testament itself.

One outcome of the Norman Conquest was the making of the English language. ...the speech of Alfred and Bede, was exiled from hall and bower, from court and cloister, and was despised as a peasant's jargon... It ceased almost, though not quite, to be a written language. … Now when a language is seldom written and is not an object of interest to scholars, it quickly adapts itself in the mouths of plain people to the needs and uses of life. ...it can be altered much more easily when there are no grammarians to protest. During the three centuries when our native language was a peasant's dialect, it lost its clumsy inflexions and elaborate genders, and acquired the grace, suppleness, and adaptability which are among its chief merits.

As regards "predominance in Europe," whether "Germany wished" it or not, she would have got it, if she had once more overrun France. And she would have overrun France as well as Belgium if England had not intervened. Then there would have been an end of the independence of all Continental States in face of Germany, and in face of such a Europe British independence could not have been maintained. German predominance would have been just as fatal to us whether it had been intentionally or unintentionally acquired. Such at least was Grey's view, and it will always be the view of many Englishmen.