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 or years can diminish the ready firmness, as I doubt the fitness of a man of his education, habits, and political principles, for the guidance of an intellectual age.