Bent on the extirpation of the system, he had no ill-will towards the men who had happened to flourish in it.

"I never will suffer," he said, "any man or description of men to suffer from errors that naturally have grown out of the abusive constitution of those offices which I propose to regulate.

If I cannot reform with equity, I will not reform at all." Exasperated as he was by the fruitlessness of his opposition to a policy which he detested from the bottom of his soul, it would have been little wonderful if he had resorted to every weapon of his unrivalled rhetorical armoury, in order to discredit and overthrow the whole scheme of government.

Yet nothing could have been further from his mind than any violent or extreme idea of this sort.

Many years afterwards, he took credit to himself less for what he did on this occasion than for what he prevented from being done.