Meanwhile it is enough to say that Burke himself had most reasonably looked to some higher post.

There is the distinct note of the humility of mortified pride in a letter written in reply to some one who had applied to him for a place.

"You have been misinformed," he says; "I make no part of the ministerial arrangement.

Something in the official line may possibly be thought fit for my measure." Burke knew that his position in the country entitled him to something above the official line.

In a later year, when he felt himself called upon to defend his pension, he described what his position was in the momentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and Burke's habitual veraciousness forbids us to treat the description as in any way exaggerated.