How his Grace might have got through his difficulty had they been left alone, cannot be told. For at this moment the door was opened, and Lady Glencora Palliser was announced.
LVIII
Rara Avis in Terris
“Come and see the country and judge for yourself,” said Phineas.
“I should like nothing better,” said Mr. Monk.
“It has often seemed to me that men in Parliament know less about Ireland than they do of the interior of Africa,” said Phineas.
“It is seldom that we know anything accurately on any subject that we have not made matter of careful study,” said Mr. Monk, “and very often do not do so even then. We are very apt to think that we men and women understand one another; but most probably you know nothing even of the modes of thought of the man who lives next door to you.”
“I suppose not.”
“There are general laws current in the world as to morality. ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ for instance. That has necessarily been current as a law through all nations. But the first man you meet in the street will have ideas about theft so different from yours, that, if you knew them as you know your own, you would say that this law and yours were not even founded on the same principle. It is compatible with this man’s honesty to cheat you in a matter of horseflesh, with that man’s in a traffic of railway shares, with that other man’s as to a woman’s fortune; with a fourth’s anything may be done for a seat in Parliament, while the fifth man, who stands high among us, and who implores his God every Sunday to write that law on his heart, spends every hour of his daily toil in a system of fraud, and is regarded as a pattern of the national commerce!”
Mr. Monk and Phineas were dining together at Mr. Monk’s house, and the elder politician of the two in this little speech had recurred to certain matters which had already been discussed between them. Mr. Monk was becoming somewhat sick of his place in the Cabinet, though he had not as yet whispered a word of his sickness to any living ears; and he had begun to pine for the lost freedom of a seat below the gangway. He had been discussing political honesty with Phineas, and hence had come the sermon of which I have ventured to reproduce the concluding denunciations.
Phineas was fond of such discussions and fond of holding them with Mr. Monk—in this matter fluttering like a moth round a candle. He would not perceive that as he had made up his mind to be a servant of the public in Parliament, he must abandon all idea of independent action; and unless he did so he could be neither successful as regarded himself, or useful to the public whom he served. Could a man be honest in Parliament, and yet abandon all idea of independence? When he put such questions to Mr. Monk he did not get a direct answer. And indeed the question was never put directly. But the teaching which he received was ever of a nature to make him uneasy. It was always to this effect: “You have taken up the trade now, and seem to be fit for success in it. You had better give up thinking about its special honesty.” And yet Mr. Monk would on an occasion preach to him such a sermon as that which he had just uttered! Perhaps there is no question more difficult to a man’s mind than that of the expediency or inexpediency of scruples in political life. Whether would a candidate for office be more liable to rejection from a leader because he was known to be scrupulous, or because he was known to be the reverse?
“But putting aside the fourth commandment and all the theories, you will come to Ireland?” said Phineas.
“I shall be delighted.”
“I don’t live in a castle, you know.”
“I thought everybody did live in a castle in Ireland,” said Mr. Monk. “They seemed to do when I was there twenty years ago. But for myself, I prefer a cottage.”
This trip to Ireland had been proposed in consequence of certain ideas respecting tenant-right which Mr. Monk was beginning to adopt, and as to which the minds of politicians were becoming moved. It had been all very well to put down Fenianism, and Ribbonmen, and Repeal—and everything that had been put down in Ireland in the way of rebellion for the last seventy-five years. England and Ireland had been apparently joined together by laws of nature so fixed, that even politicians liberal as was Mr. Monk—liberal as was Mr. Turnbull—could not trust themselves to think that disunion could be for the good of the Irish. They had taught themselves that it certainly could not be good for the English. But if it was incumbent on England to force upon Ireland the maintenance of the Union for her own sake, and for England’s sake, because England could not afford independence established so close against her own ribs—it was at any rate necessary to England’s character that the bride thus bound in a compulsory wedlock should be endowed with all the best privileges that a wife can enjoy. Let her at least not be a kept mistress. Let it be bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, if we are to live together in the married state. Between husband and wife a warm word now and then matters but little, if there
