Prince Hohenstiel's defence of expediency in politics is made by Browning to seem now right, now wrong, because he assumes at one time what is true as the ground of his argument, and then at another what is plainly false, and in neither case do the assumptions support the arguments.

What really is concluded is not the question, but the slipperiness of the man who argues.

And at the end of the poem Browning comes in again to say that words cannot be trusted to hit truth.

Language is inadequate to express it.

Browning was fond of saying this.