No Man Is Indispensable
One of the Cabinet ministers disagreed with the majority on a vital question, and rose with a threat to resign. One of his friends advised the chairman to do anything to recover his aid, whereupon he sagely said:
“Our secretary a national necessity?—how mistaken you are! Yet it is not strange—I used to have similar notions. No, if we should all be turned out to-morrow, and could come back here in a week, we should find our places filled by a lot of fellows doing just as well as we did, and in many instances better! It was truth that the Irishman uttered when he answered the speaker: ‘Is not one man as good as another?’ with ‘He is, sure, and a deal betther!’ No, sir, this government does not depend on the life of any man!”