maintained, that
the happiness of every one was secured, so far as law could secure it,
and that the only thing for reasonable Englishmen to do was to open
their eyes and recognize the advantages conferred upon them by the
Constitution under which they were happy enough to live.

The Duke of Wellington probably knew nothing of {109} Voltaire's
philosopher who maintained that everything was for the best in this
best of all possible worlds, but he seemed to be pervaded by the same
sentiment of complete satisfaction when he contemplated the British
Constitution. Finally, he declared that, so far from having any
intention to touch with irreverent hand that sacred political structure
for the vain purpose of improvement, he was determined to resist to the
uttermost of his power every effort to interfere with the
constitutional arrangements which had done so much for the prosperity
and the glory of the empire. We do not quote the exact words of the
Duke of Wellington's speech, but we feel sure we are giving a faithful
version of the meaning which he intended to convey and succeeded very
clearly in conveying. The Duke of Wellington was undoubtedly one of
the greatest soldiers the world has ever seen. As a soldier of
conquest he was not indeed to be compared with an Alexander, a Caesar,
or a Napoleon, but as a soldier of defence he has probably never had a
superior. As an administrator, too, he had shown immense capacity both
in India and in Europe, and had more than once brought what seemed
absolute chaos into order and shape. But he had no gift for the
understanding of politics, and it was happy for him, at more than one
crisis of his career, that he was quite aware of his own political
incapacity and was ready to defer to the judgment of other men who
understood such things better than he did. We have already seen how he
accepted the guidance of Peel when it became necessary to yield the
claim for Catholic Emancipation, and he was commonly in the habit of
saying that Peel understood all such matters better than he could
pretend to. He was not, therefore, the minister who would ruin a State
or bring a State into revolution by obstinate adhesion to his own views
in despite of every advice and every warning, and no doubt when he was
delivering his harangue against all possible schemes of reform he felt
still convinced that he was merely expressing the unalterable opinion
of Peel and every other loyal subject whose judgm