If I should fail a single
point in the high respect I owe to those illustrious persons, I cannot
be supposed to mean the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of
the House of Peers, but the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale
of Palace Yard,--the Dukes and Earls of Brentford. There they are on the
pavement; there they seem to come nearer to my humble level, and,
virtually at least, to have waived their high privilege.
Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary tribunals, where
men have been put to death for no other reason than that they had
obtained favors from the crown. I claim, not the letter, but the spirit
of the old English law,--that is, to be tried by my peers. I decline his
Grace's jurisdiction as a judge. I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a
juror to pass upon the value of my services. Whatever his natural parts
may be, I cannot recognize in his few and idle years the competence to
judge of my long and laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be
on the inquest of my _quantum meruit_. Poor rich man! he can hardly know
anything of public industry in its exertions, or can estimate its
compensations when its work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's
readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly
suspect that he is little studied in the theory of moral proportions,
and has never learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy and
state.
His Grace thinks I have obtained too much.
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