Wellington himself saw the situation with clear eyes, and in a letter, in which a touch of his sardonic humour can be detected, wrote in reply to his brother’s announcement of his resignation that ‘In truth the republic of a cabinet is but little suited to any man of taste or of large views[159].’ There lay the difficulty: the great viceroy loved to dictate, and hated to hear his opinions criticized. Lord Liverpool, in announcing the rupture to Wellington in a letter of a rather apologetic cast, explains the situation in a very few words: ‘Lord Wellesley says generally that he has not the weight in the Government which he expected, when he accepted office.... The Government, though a cabinet, is necessarily _inter pares_, in which every member must expect to have his opinions and his dispatches canvassed, and this previous friendly canvass of opinions and measures appears necessary, under a constitution where all public acts of ministers will be hostilely debated in parliament.’ The Marquess resented all criticism whatever. [159] Wellington to Wellesley, camp before Badajoz, _Supplementary Dispatches_, vii. p. 307. The ministers assured Wellington that his brother’s resignation would make no difference in their relations with himself, and invited him to write as freely to Lord Castlereagh, who succeeded Wellesley at the Foreign Office, as to his predecessor. The assurance of the Cabinet’s good will and continued confidence was received--as it had been given--in all sincerity. Not the least change in Wellington’s relations with the Ministry can be detected from his dispatches. Nor can it be said that the support which he received from home varied in the least, after his brother’s secession from the Cabinet. Even the grudging Napier is forced to concede this much, though he endeavours to deprive the Perceval ministry of any credit, by asserting that their only chance of continuance in office depended on the continued prosperity of Wellington. Granting this, we must still conclude that Wellesley’s resignation, even if it produced no disastrous results--as it well might have done--was yet an unhappy exhibition of pride and petulance. A patriotic statesman should have subordinated his own _amour propre_ to the welfare of Great Britain, which demanded that a strong administration, pledged to the continuance of war with Napoleon, should direct the helm of the State. He did his best to wreck Perceval’s cabinet, and to put the Whigs in power. The crisis in the Ministry passed off with less friction and less results than most London observers had expected, and Lord Liverpool turned out to be right when he asserted that in his opinion[160] it would be of no material prejudice to the Perceval government. Castlereagh, despite of his halting speech and his involved phrases, was a tower of strength at the Foreign Office, and certainly replaced Wellesley with no disadvantage to the general policy of Great Britain.