Home or Foreign Affairs; nay, rather
quite the contrary is to be presumed of him; for in order to become a
"brilliant speaker," if that is his character, considerable portions of
his natural internal endowment must have gone to the surface, in order
to make a shining figure there, and precisely so much the less (few men
in these days know how much less!) must remain available in the internal
silent state, or as faculty for thinking, for devising and acting,
which latter and which alone is the function essential for him in his
Secretaryship. Not to tell a good story for himself "in Parliament and
to the twenty-seven millions, many of them fools;" not that, but to do
good administration, to know with sure eye, and decide with just and
resolute heart, what is what in the _things_ committed to his charge:
this and not that is the service which poor England, whatever it may
think and maunder, does require and want of the Official Man in Downing
Street. Given a good Official Man or Secretary, he really ought, as far
as it is possible, to be left working in the silent state. No mortal can
both work, and do good talking in Parliament, or out of it: the feat is
impossible as that of serving two hostile masters.

Nor would I, if it could be helped, much trouble my good Secretary with
addressing Parliament: needful explanations; yes, in a free country,
surely;--but not to every frivolous and vexatious person, in or out of
Parliament, who chooses to apply for them. There should be demands
for explanation too which were reckoned frivolous and vexatious, and
censured as such. These, I should say, are the not needful explanations:
and if my poor Secretary is to be called out from his workshop to answer
every one of these,--his workshop will become (what we at present see
it, deservedly or not) little other than a pillory; the poor Secretary
a kind of talking-machine, exposed to dead cats and rotten eggs; and
the "work" got out of him or of it will, as heretofore, be very
inconsiderable indeed!--Alas, on this side also, important improvements
are conceivable; and will even, I imagine, get them whence we may, be
found indispensable one day. The honorable gentleman whom you interrupt
here, he, in his official capacity, is not an individual now, but the
embodiment of a Nation; he is the "People of England" engaged in the
work of Secretaryship, this one; and cannot forever afford to let the
three Tailors of Tooley Street break in upon him