The more things change.............................

     Burke's other goals included abolition of the Board of Trade, a perennial target of opposition politicians over the centuries, and of the office of the Third Secretary of State, responsible for the colonies, and specifically America.  But more interesting are the obvious targets that he omitted.  Pensions were known to be widely abused, as were sinecures within the Exchequer itself, yet Burke proposed only modest changes to them.  Politic in seeking consensus, he was also respectful of what he saw as private property, and personally reluctant to deprive any many of what might be his livelihood.  More than this, he believed that it was greatly to the benefit of the nation as a whole that long and disinterested public service be rewarded, and so encouraged, with honours and property.  His goal was a balance between the twin evils of an ossified aristocracy and a politics of court favorites, drones and placemen eagerly shimmying up the greasy pole.
-Jesse Norman,  Edmund Burke:  The First Conservative