near at hand.  That friend of the people, Mr. Turnbull, had a clause in his breeches-pocket which he would either force down the unwilling throat of Mr. Mildmay, or else drive the imbecile Premier from office by carrying it in his teeth.  Loughton, as Loughton, must be destroyed, but it should be born again in a better birth as a part of a real electoral district, sending a real member, chosen by a real constituency, to a real Parliament.  In those days,—­and they would come soon,—­Mr. Quintus Slide rather thought that Mr. Phineas Finn would be found “nowhere,” and he rather thought also that when he showed himself again, as he certainly should do, in the midst of that democratic electoral district as the popular candidate for the honour of representing it in Parliament, that democratic electoral district would accord to him a reception very different from that which he was now receiving from the Earl’s lacqueys in the parliamentary village of Loughton.  A prettier bit of fiction than these sentences as composing a part of any speech delivered, or proposed to be delivered, at Loughton, Phineas thought he had never seen.  And when he read at the close of the speech that though the Earl’s hired bullies did their worst, the remarks of Mr. Slide were received by the people with reiterated cheering, he threw himself back in his chair at the Treasury and roared.  The poor fellow had been three minutes on his legs, had received three rotten eggs, and one dead dog, and had retired.  But not the half of the speech as printed in the People’s Banner has been quoted.  The sins of Phineas, who in spite of his inability to open his mouth in public had been made a Treasury hack by the aristocratic influence,—­“by aristocratic influence not confined to the male sex,”—­were described at great length, and in such language that Phineas for a while was fool enough to think that it would be his duty to belabour Mr. Slide with a horsewhip.  This notion, however, did not endure long with him, and when Mr. Monk told him that things of that kind came as a matter of course, he was comforted.

But he found it much more difficult to obtain comfort when he weighed the arguments brought forward against the abominations of such a borough as that for which he sat, and reflected that if Mr. Turnbull brought forward his clause, he, Phineas Finn, would be bound to vote against the clause, knowing the clause to be right, because he was a servant of the Government.  The arguments, even though they appeared in the People’s Banner, were true arguments; and he had on one occasion admitted their truth to his friend Lady Laura,—­in the presence of that great Cabinet Minister, her husband.  “What business has such a man as that down there?  Is there a single creature who wants him?” Lady Laura had said.  “I don’t suppose anybody does want Mr. Quintus Slide,” Phineas had replied; “but I am disposed to think the electors should choose the man they do want, and that at present they