"It's what I call downright Radical non- | of mystery that one can never quite know sense," said Mrs. Low, nodding her head what they intend to do." He corrected energetically. "Portrait indeed! Why himself at once however, perceiving that he should we want to have a portrait of igno- had seemed to say something against his rance and ugliness? What we all want is wife, and explained that his general accusato have things quiet and orderly." tion against the sex was not intended to "Then you'd better have a paternal gov- apply to Lady Laura. This, however, he ernment at once," said Phineas. did so awkwardly as to strengthen the feel"Just so," said Mr. Low, -"only that ing with Phineas that something assuredly what you call a paternal government is not was wrong. "Miss Effingham," said Mr. always quiet and orderly. National order Kennedy, "never seems to know her own I take to be submission to the law. I mind." "I suppose she is like all other should not think it quiet and orderly if I beautiful girls who are petted on all sides," were sent to Cayenne without being brought said Phineas. "As for her beauty, I don't before a jury." think much of it," said Mr. Kennedy; "and as for petting, I do not understand it in reference to grown persons. Children may be petted, and dogs, though that too is bad; but what you call petting for grown persons is I think frivolous and almost indecent." Phineas could not help thinking of Lord Chiltern's opinion that it would have been wise to have left Mr. Kennedy in the hands of the garrotters.

"But such a man as you would not be sent to Cayenne," said Phineas.

"My next-door neighbour might be, which would be almost as bad. Let him be sent to Cayenne if he deserves it, but let a jury say that he has deserved it. My idea of government is this, that we want to be governed by law and not by caprice, and that we must have a legislature to make our laws. If I thought that Parliament as at present established made the laws badly, I would desire a change; but I doubt whether | we shall have them better from any change in Parliament which Reform will give us.'

"Of course not," said Mrs. Low. "But we shall have a lot of beggars put on horseback, and we all know where they ride to." Then Phineas became aware that it is not easy to convince any man or any woman on a point of politics, not even though he who argues may have an eloquent letter from a philosophical Cabinet Minister in his pocket to assist him.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

PHINEAS FINN MAKES PROGRESS.

FEBRUARY was far advanced and the new Reform bill had already been brought forward, before Lady Laura Kennedy came up to town. Phineas had of course seen Mr. Kennedy and had heard from him tidings of his wife. She was at Saulsby with Lady Baldock and Miss Boreham and Violet Effingham, but was to be in London soon. Mr. Kennedy, as it appeared, did not quite know when he was to expect his wife; and Phineas thought that he could perceive from the tone of the husband's voice that something was amiss. He could not however ask any questions excepting such as referred to the expected arrival. Was Miss Effingham to come to London with Lady Laura? Mr. Kennedy believed that Miss Effingham would be up before Easter, but he did not know whether she would come with his wife. "Women," he said, "are so fond

The debate on the second reading of the bill was to be commenced on the 1st of March, and two days before that Lady Laura arrived in Grosvenor Place. Phineas got a note from her in three words to say that she was at home and would see him if he called on Sunday afternoon. The Sunday to which she alluded was the last day of February. Phineas was now more certain than ever that something was wrong. Had there been nothing wrong between Lady Laura and her husband, she would not have rebelled against him by asking visitors to the house on a Sunday. He had nothing to do with that, however, and of course he did as he was desired. He called on the Sunday and found Mrs. Bonteen sitting with Lady Laura. "I am just in time for the debate," said Lady Laura, when the first greeting was over.

"You don't mean to say that you intend to sit it out," said Mrs. Bonteen.

"Every word of it,-unless I lose my seat. What else is there to be done at present?"

"But the place they give us is so unpleasant," said Mrs. Bonteen.

“There are worse places even than the Ladies' Gallery," said Lady Laura. "And perhaps it is as well to make oneself used to inconveniences of all kinds. You will speak, Mr. Finn?"

"I intend to do so."

"A man cannot be strong or not as he likes he had been warned not to return to Loughit," said Lady Laura. "Mr. Palliser I be-linter. And then again, did Lady Laura lieve to be a most useful man, but he can know anything of what had passed benever become an orator. He is of the same tween him and Violet? "Where is your class as Mr. Kennedy,-only of course higher in the class."

affair. She might be unhappy with her husband without indulging any guilty love. He had never thought it possible that she could be happy living with such a husband as Mr. Kennedy. All that, however, was now past remedy, and she must simply endure the mode of life which she had prepared for herself. There were other men and women in London tied together for better and worse, in reference to whose union their friends knew that there would be no better;- that it must be all worse. Lady Laura must bear it, as it was borne by many another married woman.

Phineas at once perceived that the note was a hostile note, written in an angry spirit,

written to one whom the writer did not at the moment acknowledge to be his friend. This was certainly the case, whatever Lord Chiltern may have said to his sister as to his friendship for Phineas. Phineas crushed the note into his pocket, and of course determined that he would be in his rooms at the hour named.

On the Monday morning Phineas called at Mauregy's Hotel at ten o'clock, but in spite of Lady Laura's assurance to the contrary, he found that Lord Chiltern was out. He had felt some palpitation at the heart as The debate was opened by a speech from he made his inquiry, knowing well the fiery Mr. Mildmay, in which that gentleman at nature of the man he expected to see. It great length and with much perspicuity exmight be that there would be some actual plained his notion of that measure of Parpersonal conflict between him and this half-liamentary Reform which he thought to be mad lord before he got back again into the street. What Lady Laura had said about her brother did not in the estimation of Phineas make this at all the less probable. The half-mad lord was so singular in his ways that it might well be that he should speak handsomely of a rival behind his back and yet take him by the throat as soon as they were together, face to face. And yet, as Phineas thought, it was necessary that he should see the half-mad lord. He had written a letter to which he had received no reply, and he considered it to be incumbent on him to ask whether it had been received and whether any answer to it was intended to be given. He went therefore to Lord Chiltern at once, as I have said, with some feeling at his heart that there might be violence, at any rate of words, before he should find himself again in the street. But Lord Chiltern was not there. All that the porter knew was that Lord Chiltern intended to leave the house on the following morning. Then Phineas wrote a note and left it with the porter.

I

“DEAR CHILTERN,-I particularly want to see you with reference to a letter I wrote to you last summer. I must be in the House to-day from four till the debate is over. will be at the Reform Club from two till half-past three, and will come if you will send for me, or I will meet you anywhere at any hour to-morrow morning.

66

Yours, always,

P. F." No message came to him at the Reform Club, and he was in his seat in the House by four o'clock. During the debate a note was brought to him which ran as follows:

:

necessary. He was listened to with great attention to the close, and perhaps, at the end of his speech, with more attention than usual, as there had gone abroad a rumour that the Prime Minister intended to declare that this would be the last effort of his life in that course. But, if he ever intended to utter such a pledge, his heart misgave him when the time came for uttering it. He merely said that as the management of the bill in committee would be an affair of much labour, and probably spread over many nights, he would be assisted in his work by his colleagues, and especially by his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. It was then understood that Mr. Gresham would take the lead should the bill go into committee; - but it was understood also that no resignation of leadership had been made by Mr. Mildmay.

The measure now proposed to the House was very much the same as that which had been brought forward in the last session. The existing theory of British representation was not to be changed, but the actual practice was to be brought nearer to the ideal theory. The ideas of manhood suffrage, and of electoral districts, were to be as for ever removed from the bulwarks of the British Constitution. There were to be counties with agricultural constituencies, purposely arranged to be purely agricultu

ral, whenever the nature of the counties would admit of its being so. No artificer at Reform, let him be Conservative or Liberal, can make Middlesex or Lancashire agricultural; but Wiltshire and Suffolk were to be preserved inviolable to the plough, and the apples of Devonshire were still to

have their sway. Every town in the three kingdoms with a certain population was to have two members. But here there was much room for cavil, as all men knew would be the case. Who shall say what is a town, or where shall be its limits? Bits of counties might be borrowed, so as to lessen the Conservatism of the country without endangering the Liberalism of the borough. And then there were the boroughs with one member, — and then the groups of little boroughs. In the discussion of any such arrangement how easy is the picking of holes, how impossible the fabrication of a garment that shall be impervious to such picking! Then again there was that great question of the ballot. On that there was to be no mistake. Mr. Mildmay again pledged himself to disappear from the Treasury bench should any motion, clause, or resolution be carried by that House in favour of the ballot. He spoke for three hours, and then left the carcass of his bill to be fought for by the opposing armies.

He

They will know me soon, and then, may be,
there will be less of this foolish noise, less
of this elongation of unnecessary necks.
Our Rome must be aroused to a sense of its
danger by other voices than these."
was called to order, but it was ruled that he
had not been out of order, and he was
very triumphant. Mr. Monk answered him,
and it was declared afterwards that Mr.
Monk's speech was one of the finest pieces
of oratory that had ever been uttered in
that House. He made one remark personal
to Mr. Turnbull. "I quite agreed with the
right honourable gentleman in the chair,"
he said, "when he declared that the hon-
ourable member was not out of order just
now. We all of us agree with him always
on such points. The rules of our House
have been laid down with the utmost lati-
tude, so that the course of our debates may
not be frivolously or too easily interrupted.
But a member may be so in order as to in-
cur the displeasure of the House, and to
merit the reproaches of his countrymen."
This little duel gave great life to the debate;
but it was said that those two great Reform-
ers, Mr. Turnbull and Mr. Monk, could
never again meet as friends.

No reader of these pages will desire that the speeches in the debate should be even indicated. It soon became known that the Conservatives would not divide the House against the second reading of the bill. They In the course of the debate on Tuesday declared, however, very plainly their inten- Phineas got upon his legs. The reader, I tion of so altering the clauses of the bill in trust, will remember that hitherto he had committee, or at least of attempting so to failed altogether as a speaker. On one ocdo, -as to make the bill their bill, rather casion he had lacked even the spirit to use than the bill of their opponents. To this and deliver an oration which he had preMr. Palliser replied that as long as nothing pared. On a second occasion he had vital was touched the Government would broken down,- woefully, and past all reonly be too happy to oblige their friends demption, as said those who were not his opposite. If anything vital were touched, friends, unfortunately, but not past rethe Government could only fall back upon demption, as said those who were his true their friends on that side. And in this way friends. After that once again he had risen men were very civil to each other. But and said a few plain words which had called Mr. Turnbull, who opened the debate on for no remark, and had been spoken as though the Tuesday, thundered out an assurance to he were in the habit of addressing the House gods and men that he would divide the daily. It may be doubted whether there House on the second reading of the bill it- were half-a-dozen men now present who self. He did not doubt but that there were recognised the fact that this man, who was many good men and true to go with him into so well-known to so many of them, was now the lobby, but into the lobby he would go if about to make another attempt at a first he had no more than a single friend to sup- speech. Phineas himself diligently atport him. And he warned the Sovereign, tempted to forget that such was the case. and he warned the House, and he warned the He had prepared for himself a few headings people of England, that the measure of Re- of what he intended to say, and on one or form now proposed by a so-called liberal two points had arranged his words. His Minister was a measure prepared in concert hope was that even though he should forget with the ancient enemies of the people. He the words, he might still be able to cling to was very loud, very angry, and quite success- the thread of his discourse. When he found ful in hallooing down sundry attempts which himself again upon his legs amidst those were made to interrupt him. "I find," he crowded seats, for a few moments there said, "that there are many members here came upon him that old sensation of awe. who do not know me yet, young mem- Again things grew dim before his eyes, and bers, probably, who are green from the again he hardly knew at which end of that waste lands and road-sides of private life. long chamber the Speaker was sitting. But