In answer to this, it may be as well to remind the reader that, where the slightest movements of public men may be construed into a compromise of public principles, a rigid attention to etiquette becomes a matter of duty. Many acts of the Duke of Wellington, not merely as a civilian, but even as a military commander, have been misjudged, because this obvious principle has been overlooked. In answer to the second charge--that of hostility to the new administration on personal grounds--the Duke referred to the known opinions of Mr. Canning on the Catholic question. How could he be in office under a minister whom he must oppose on, at least, one vital question of domestic policy? How could he give the right honourable gentleman that fair support which one member of a cabinet had a right to expect from another? The principles of the new government could not be those of that of the Earl of Liverpool. The principle of the latter was to maintain the existing laws; of the former, to change them in a fundamental particular. The absurd calumny that he had threatened the king to resign, unless he were prepared to make him prime minister, hardly deserved an answer; and then came his celebrated _nolo episcopari_ speech, which created against him in a year after, so much ridicule and rancour. He said--"Was it likely that he would resign the office of commander-in-chief," a situation so consonant to his feelings and his habits, "for the mere empty ambition of being placed at the head of the government. I know," continued the Duke, "I am disqualified for any such office; and I, therefore, say, that, feeling as I do with respect to the situation which I recently filled at the head of the army; liking it as I did from the opportunity it gave me to improve the condition of my old comrades in arms; knowing my own capacity for filling that office, and my incapacity for filling the post of first minister, I should have been mad, and worse than mad, if I had ever entertained the insane project which certain individuals, for their own base purposes, have imputed to me." His reason for retiring from the command of the army was founded on the peculiar circumstances of his dispute with Mr. Canning. "No political opinions would have prevented him," he said, "under ordinary circumstances, from continuing either at the Horse Guards or at the head of the army in the field; but, from the tone and tenor of the communication he had received from his majesty; from the nature of the invitation to join the administration, contained in Mr. Canning's post letter, and from the contents of the last letter he received from Mr. Canning, by his majesty's commands, he saw it would be impossible to continue his relations with that gentlemen, either with service to the country or credit to himself. His resolution had been adopted after the most mature deliberation."