You say 'The Whigs have not offered you a Deputy Lieutenantcy; so cheap a distinction could not have hurt them.

But then you are too proud to ask,' &c.

Do you really suppose that I would have accepted it even if it had been offered?
No, by God! I would not accept any distinction even if it were offered by honest men.

I will have nothing but what I can take.

It is, however, both an injustice and an affront to confer this dignity on low people, who do not possess a fourth of my property, and whose family is as ignoble as Lord Melbourne's own, and not to have offered the same to me.