“And so am I,” said Mr. Roby. “Browborough was always a good fellow.”
“Not a doubt about it; and no good could have come from a conviction. I suppose there has been a little money spent at Tankerville.”
“And at other places one could mention,” said Mr. Roby.
“Of course there has;—and money will be spent again. Nobody dislikes bribery more than I do. The House, of course, dislikes it. But if a man loses his seat, surely that is punishment enough.”
“It’s better to have to draw a cheque sometimes than to be out in the cold.”
“Nevertheless, members would prefer that their seats should not cost them so much,” continued Mr. Ratler. “But the thing can’t be done all at once. That idea of pouncing upon one man and making a victim of him is very disagreeable to me. I should have been sorry to have seen a verdict against Browborough. You must acknowledge that there was no bitterness in the way in which Grogram did it.”
“We all feel that,” said Mr. Roby—who was, perhaps, by nature a little more candid than his rival—“and when the time comes no doubt we shall return the compliment.”
The matter was discussed in quite a different spirit between two other politicians. “So Sir Gregory has failed at Durham,” said Lord Cantrip to his friend, Mr. Gresham.
“I was sure he would.”
“And why?”
“Ah;—why? How am I to answer such a question? Did you think that Mr. Browborough would be convicted of bribery by a jury?”
“No, indeed,” answered Lord Cantrip.
“And can you tell me why?”
“Because there was no earnestness in the matter—either with the Attorney-General or with anyone else.”
“And yet,” said Mr. Gresham, “Grogram is a very earnest man when he believes in his case. No member of Parliament will ever be punished for bribery as for a crime till members of Parliament generally look upon bribery as a crime. We are very far from that as yet. I should have thought a conviction to be a great misfortune.”
“Why so?”
“Because it would have created ill blood, and our own hands in this matter are not a bit cleaner than those of our adversaries. We can’t afford to pull their houses to pieces before we have put our own in order. The thing will be done; but it must, I fear, be done slowly—as is the case with all reforms from within.”
Phineas Finn, who was very sore and unhappy at this time, and who consequently was much in love with purity and anxious for severity, felt himself personally aggrieved by the acquittal. It was almost tantamount to a verdict against himself. And then he knew so well that bribery had been committed, and was so confident that such a one as Mr. Browborough could have been returned to Parliament by none other than corrupt means! In his present mood he would have been almost glad to see Mr. Browborough at the treadmill, and would have thought six months’ solitary confinement quite inadequate to the offence. “I never read anything in my life that disgusted me so much,” he said to his friend, Mr. Monk.
“I can’t go along with you there.”
“If any man ever was guilty of bribery, he was guilty!”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment.”
“And yet Grogram did not try to get a verdict.”
“Had he tried ever so much he would have failed. In a matter such as that—political and not social in its nature—a jury is sure to be guided by what it has, perhaps unconsciously, learned to be the feeling of the country. No disgrace is attached to their verdict, and yet everybody knows that Mr. Browborough had bribed, and all those who have looked into it know, too, that the evidence was conclusive.”
“Then are the jury all perjured,” said Phineas.
“I have nothing to say to that. No stain of perjury clings to them. They are better received in Durham today than they would have been had they found Mr. Browborough guilty. In business, as in private life, they will be held to be as trustworthy as before;—and they will be, for aught that we know, quite trustworthy. There are still circumstances in which a man, though on his oath, may be untrue with no more stain of falsehood than falls upon him when he denies himself at his front door though he happen to be at home.”
“What must we think of such a condition of things, Mr. Monk?”
“That it’s capable of improvement. I do not know that we can think anything else. As for Sir Gregory Grogram and Baron Boultby and the jury, it would be waste of power to execrate them. In political matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his neighbours—and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome. I have found that out before today.”
With Lady Laura Kennedy, Phineas did find some sympathy;—but then she would have sympathised with him on any subject under the sun. If he would only come to her and sit with her she would fool him to the top of his bent. He had resolved that he would go to Portman Square as little as possible, and had been confirmed in that resolution by the scandal which had now spread everywhere about the town in reference to himself and herself. But still he went. He never left her till some promise of returning at some stated time had been extracted from him. He had even told her of his own scruples and of her danger—and they had discussed together that last thunderbolt which had fallen from the Jove of The People’s Banner. But she had laughed his caution to scorn. Did she not know herself and her own innocence? Was she not living in her father’s house, and with her father? Should she quail beneath the stings and venom of such a reptile as Quintus Slide? “Oh, Phineas,” she said, “let us be braver than that.” He would much prefer
