He had been a Cabinet Minister for more than half his life.

He liked being a Cabinet Minister.

He thought it well for the country generally that his party should be in power,--and if not his party in its entirety, then as much of his party as might be possible.

He did not expect to be written of as a Pitt or a Somers, but he thought that memoirs would speak of him as a useful nobleman,--and he was contented.

He was not only not ambitious himself, but the effervescence and general turbulence of ambition in other men was distasteful to him.