in which greatness is brought up and spoilt
gives it a right to a less homely style of rebuke (as I grant it does),
still the absurdity of the Duke's claim is not the less evident, nor the
air of it less provoking.

I can imagine but two reasons for the remotest possible permission of
this glaring anomaly--this government of anti-reforming reformers--this
hospital of sick guides for the healthy, supported by involuntary
contributions: first, sheer necessity (which is ludicrous); and second,
a facilitation of church reform through the Lords and the bench of
Bishops; the desirableness of which facilitation appears to be in no
proportion to the compromise it is likely to make with abuses. I have
read, I believe, all the utmost possible things that can be said in its
favour, the articles, for instance, written by the _Times_ newspaper
(admirable, as far as a rotten cause can let them be, and when not
afflicted by some portentous mystery of personal resentment); and though
I trust I may lay claim to as much willingness to be convinced, as most
men who have suffered and reflected, I have not seen a single argument
which did not appear to me fully answered by the above objection alone
(about the "honour"); setting aside the innumerable convincing ones
urged by reasoners on the other side: for as to any dearth of statesmen
in a country like this, it never existed, nor ever can, till education
and public spirit have entirely left it. There have been the same
complaints at every change in the history of administrations; and the
crop has never failed.

Allow me to state here, that any appearance of personality in this book
is involuntary. Public principles are sometimes incarnate in individual
shapes; and, in attacking them, the individual may be seemingly
attacked, where, to eyes which look a little closer, there is evidently
no such intention. I have been obliged to identify, in some measure, the
Power of the Sword with several successive individuals, and with the
Duke of Wellington most, because he is the reigning shape, and includes
all its pretensions. But as an individual who am nothing, except in
connexion with what I humanly feel, I dare to affirm, that I have not
only the consideration that becomes me for all human beings, but a
flesh and blood regard for every body; and that I as truly respect in
the Noble Duke the possession of military science, of a straight-forward
sincerity, and a valour of which no circumstances o