Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of
the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. The
other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment,
and a firm, sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity,
only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but
meritorious service or real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has
not wanted, and this nation will not want, the means of rewarding all
the service it ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever
will produce. No state, since the foundation of society, has been
impoverished by that species of profusion. Had the economy of selection
and proportion been at all times observed, we should not now have had an
overgrown Duke of Bedford, to oppress the industry of humble men, and to
limit, by the standard of his own conceptions, the justice, the bounty,
or, if he pleases, the charity of the crown.
His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my deserts in the far
greater part of my conduct in life. It is free for him to do so. There
will always be some difference of opinion in the value of political
services. But there is one merit of mine which he, of all men living,
ought to be the last to call in question. I have supported with very
great zeal, and I am told with some degree of success, those opinions,
or, if his Grace likes another expression better, those old prejudices,
which buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth, and titles.
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