their noses at the Pratts and the Smiths, the Jenkinsons and
the Robinsons of our degenerate days; and never had done
anything for the nation or for their honours. And why should
they now? It was unreasonable to expect it. Civil and
religious liberty, that had given them a broad estate and a
glittering coronet, to say nothing of half-a-dozen close seats
in parliament, ought clearly to make them dukes.

But the other great whig families who had obtained this
honour, and who had done something more for it than spoliate
their church and betray their king, set up their backs against
this claim of the Egremonts. The Egremonts had done none of
the work of the last hundred years of political mystification,
during which a people without power or education, had been
induced to believe themselves the freest and most enlightened
nation in the world, and had submitted to lavish their blood
and treasure, to see their industry crippled and their labour
mortgaged, in order to maintain an oligarchy, that had neither
ancient memories to soften nor present services to justify
their unprecedented usurpation.

How had the Egremonts contributed to this prodigious result?
Their family had furnished none of those artful orators whose
bewildering phrase had fascinated the public intelligence;
none of those toilsome patricians whose assiduity in affairs
had convinced their unprivileged fellow-subjects that
government was a science, and administration an art, which
demanded the devotion of a peculiar class in the state for
their fulfilment and pursuit. The Egremonts had never said
anything that was remembered, or done anything that could be