2-914-116 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Viscount Ebrington, M.P. for Marylebone - from a daguerreotype by Claudet, 1854. British peer, soldier and politician: Deputy-Lieutenant of the county of Devon, Lieutenant-Colonel in the North Devon Yeomanry Cavalry, Lord of the Treasury, Secretary of the Poor-law Board. 'To the foreigners it seems a strange result of our "democratic" Constitution that all the principal offices of State should be filled by aristocrats; and the domestic critics attribute the same phenomena to an obvious cause - that is to say, the undue influence of family interest in the distribution of patronage. ...[However,]...the young aristocracy of the British empire differs from that of almost every other country in the admirable training for public life received by its members, and in their average fitness for the service of the State, whether in military or civil capacities'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.