No one, I think, has noted, what a leading historian
pointed out to me the other day, that in his slaughter of the aristocrats Mr. Churchill, himself a grandson of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, has shown himself little less ruthless than a Danton or a Robespierre. In his reconstruction of the Ministry there have disappeared, temporarily at least, from political prominence the ninth Earl De La Warr ; the seventh Earl Stanhope ; the son of the seventeenth Earl of Derby ; the Marquess of Zetland, whose barony dates from 1794 ; the fifth Earl of Munster ; and the fourth Marquess of Dufferin (who has voluntarily abandoned politics for military service). Against them is to be set the reappearance of Lord Cranborne, whose viscounty goes back to 1604. Lord Halifax's viscounty has less than eighty years of history ; his blood is not bright blue.
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