“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?