Sir, the most serious mischiefs would follow from such a desertion.  Kings are naturally lovers of low company.  They are so elevated above all the rest of mankind that they must look upon all their subjects as on a level.  They are rather apt to hate than to love their nobility, on account of the occasional resistance to their will which will be made by their virtue, their petulance, or their pride.  It must, indeed, be admitted that many of the nobility are as perfectly willing to act the part of flatterers, tale-bearers, parasites, pimps, and buffoons, as any of the lowest and vilest of mankind can possibly be.  But they are not properly qualified for this object of their ambition.  The want of a regular education, and early habits, and some lurking remains of their dignity, will never permit them to become a match for an Italian eunuch, a mountebank, a fiddler, a player, or any regular practitioner of that tribe.  The Roman emperors, almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands; and the mischief increased every day till the decline and final ruin of the empire.  It is therefore of very great importance (provided the thing is not overdone) to contrive such an establishment as must, almost whether a prince will or not, bring into daily and hourly offices about his person a great number of his first nobility; and it is rather an useful prejudice that gives them a pride in such a servitude.  Though they are not much the better for a court, a court will be much the better for them.  I have therefore not attempted to reform any of the offices of honor about the king’s person.

There are, indeed, two offices in his stables which are sinecures:  by the change of manners, and indeed by the nature of the thing, they must be so:  I mean the several keepers of buck-hounds, stag-hounds, foxhounds, and harriers.  They answer no purpose of utility or of splendor.  These I propose to abolish.  It is not proper that great noblemen should be keepers of dogs, though they were the king’s dogs.

In every part of the scheme, I have endeavored that no primary, and that even no secondary, service of the state should suffer by its frugality.  I mean to touch no offices but such as I am perfectly sure are either of no use at all, or not of any use in the least assignable proportion to the burden with which they load the revenues of the kingdom, and to the influence with which they oppress the freedom of Parliamentary deliberation; for which reason there are but two offices, which are properly state offices, that I have a desire to reform.

The first of them is the new office of Third Secretary of State, which is commonly called Secretary of State for the Colonies.