All the same he doesn’t seem to have liked this talking business in Parliament at all, for in a letter written in July, 1806, he says: “You will have seen that I am in Parliament, and a difficult and most unpleasant game I have had to play in the present extraordinary state of parties.” From this it will be seen that Arthur Wellesley, like any other good man of action and capable Empire-Maker, had a wholesome contempt for the miserable and sordid game which is called party politics. All the same we find him a few months afterwards as Chief Secretary for Ireland, buying, that is to say bribing and corrupting with open candour and unconcealed disgust, a sufficiency of votes and influence to keep the Ministry in power. He said plainly: “Almost every man of mark in the state has his price.” And when he was taxed with bribery and corruption, he remarked with that marvellous insight of his, that an inquiry into such practices would open up the whole theory of constitutional government. We are supposed to have improved ourselves out of the venality of buying and selling votes and seats, at any rate for cash down, but we still bribe and we still corrupt. There are still titles for rich men who will spend lavishly to support their party, there are still innumerable advantages for the tradesman, and the contractor who are loyal to their party and their ticket, and so it will be while constitutional government and human nature remain what they are; but for all that we may learn a good deal from a remark like this made by a man who was so absolutely incorruptible that when he was made Captain-General of the Spanish Army, he refused to draw his salary, and who later on when his justly grateful country presented him with an estate, paid the rent of it into the Treasury as long as the war lasted. It is not often, even among the great ones of the earth, that you meet with an absolutely honest man, but there is no doubt about Wellington. After a little subordinate foreign service in Denmark, in which he distinguished himself as usual, he went back to the Irish office for about eight months. This particular eight months was a very critical period indeed, and looking back at the facts across a gulf of eighty years, one is inclined to wonder how it was that no better work could be found for the already well-proved genius of Arthur Wellesley than the ordinary routine work which a very much smaller man could have done, if not as well, at least sufficiently well. It will have been noticed more than once by those who have managed to get through the foregoing pages, that one of the greatest and most dangerous faults of British officialism, has been the employment of giants to do the work of pigmies. But officialism would not be official if it were not dull, so I suppose there is no help for it. One of the elements of greatness is the faculty of recognising greatness in others, and officialism is very seldom great.