a
higher degree than any man I have ever come across. He began without
hesitation, and spoke throughout with the trained and facile eloquence
of which he was master. "I shall, I am sure, be believed," he said,
"when I emphatically assert that nothing could be more distressing to
me than the notion--if I should be driven to accept it--that the
liberal measures on which, in my opinion, the prosperity and the true
welfare of the country depends should have, as one of their incidental
concomitants, the withdrawal from public life of such men as our friend
who has just sat down. We need all the intellectual and moral
resources of the country; and among them I count as not the least
valuable and fruitful the stock of our ancient country gentlemen. I
regretted the retirement of Lord Cantilupe on public as well as on
personal grounds; and my regret is only tempered, not altogether
removed, when I see how well, how honourably and how happily he is
employing his well-deserved leisure. But I am glad to know that we
have still, and to believe that we shall continue to have, in the great
Council of the nation, men of his distinguished type and tradition to
form one, and that not the least important, of the balances and
counter-checks in the great and complicated engine of state.

"When, however, he claims--or perhaps I should rather say desires--for
the distinguished order of which he is a member, an actual and
permanent preponderance in the state, there, I confess, I must part
company with him. Nay, I cannot even accept the theory, to which he
gave expression, of a fixed and stable representation of interests. It
is indeed true that society, by the mysterious dispensation of the
Divine Being, is wonderfully compounded of the most diverse elements
and classes, corresponding to the various needs and requirements of
human life. And it is an ancient theory, supported by the authority of
great names, by Plato, my revered master, the poet-philosopher, by
Aristotle, the founder of political science, that the problem of a
statesman is so to adjust these otherwise discordant elements as to
form once for all in the body-politic a perfect, a final and immutable
harmony. There is, according to this view, one simple chord and one
only, which the great organ of society is adapted to play; and the
business of the legislator is merely to tune the instrument so that it
shall play it correctly. Thus, if Plato could have had his way, his
g