But, quite independently of this consideration, I should have been very happy, had it been in my power, to avail myself of your offer of service; and your letter is one of the many I receive which too forcibly impress upon me how painful and invidious is the duty which I have been compelled to undertake. I am only supported in it by the consciousness that my desire has been to do justice. I trust, also, that when candidates for parliamentary office calmly reflect on my position, and the appointments I have made—when they review the names of those previously connected with me in public life whom I have been absolutely compelled to exclude, the claims founded on acceptance in 1834 with the almost hopeless prospects of that day, the claims, too, founded on new Party combinations—I trust they will then understand how perfectly insufficient are the means at my disposal to meet the wishes that are conveyed to me by men whose co-operation I should be proud to have and whose qualifications and pretensions for office I do not contest. Disraeli, writing from Grosvenor Gate, September 8, 1841, hastens to explain that he never intended to even suggest, much less to say, that a promise of official promotion had ever been made to him at any time by any member of Peel’s Cabinet. “Parliamentary office,” he says, “should be the recognition of Party services and parliamentary ability, and as such only was it to me an object of ambition.” He ends with a dignified touch of pathos: “If such a pledge had been given me by yourself, and not redeemed, I should have taken refuge in silence. Not to be appreciated may be mortification; to be baulked of a promised reward is only a vulgar accident of life, to be borne without a murmur.”