To the official lives of these gentlemen, regarded as works of art, I raise my hat in respectful envy.

They have realised the vision of Lucretius.

From the secure remoteness of their ivory towers they look down unmoved on the stormy and drifting tides below, and they enjoy the privilege, so rare in Ireland, of knowing the causes of things.

To the ordinary man their political origins are shrouded in twilight.

They seem to him to have come like water, but unhappily it cannot be said that they go like wind.
While they are with us they are absolute, seen by nobody, felt by all the world, the Manchu mandarins of the West.