canning , the last foreign secretary , had tried for the post himself and , failing , had both refused to join the new ministry himself , and blocked the secretary of war lord castlereagh 's joining it : leaving perceval to make do with lord bathurst and lord liverpool ; good men , but now more than any other time he needed the most gifted there might be , and though lord bathurst had been sympathetic to the cause of abolition , laurence could not but acknowledge he was not the man anyone would choose to have sitting across from talleyrand at the negotiating table .