"Of all the resources of government, none are so wastefully employed as its powers of conferring honour. This is true of nearly all countries. In Great Britain the waste is not occasioned by profusion, but by caprice, uncertainty, irrelevance. The king (it was in George III.'s time) is asked to give a right of going through the park to some gentleman. "No, no," replies the king, "I cannot do that; but you may make him an Irish baron." The above is not an unfavourable specimen of the way in which honours have been granted."