He cared not for the days of courts leet and courts baron; nor for the barons themselves; nor for the honors of a pedigree (why should he ?--no prince in the land could more clearly trace his family into obscurity than himself), nor for the vanities of a court, nor for those of society; nor for aught else of the same nature that is apt to have charms for the weak-minded, the imaginative, or the conceited.

His political prepossessions showed themselves in a very different manner.

Throughout the whole of the five lustres I have named, he was never heard to whisper a censure against government, let its measures, or the character of its administration, be what it would.
It was enough for him that it was government.

Even taxation no longer excited his ire, nor aroused his eloquence.

He conceived it to be necessary to order, and especially to the protection of property, a branch of political science that he had so studied as to succeed in protecting his own estate, in a measure, against even this great ally itself.