an stables just
committed to his care? Who does not know the gentleman at the Home
Office, who means to reform the police and put an end to malefactors;
or the new Minister at the Board of Works, who is to make London
beautiful as by a magician's stroke,--or, above all, the new First
Lord, who is resolved that he will really build us a fleet, purge
the dock-yards, and save us half a million a year at the same
time? Phineas Finn was bent on unriddling the Irish sphinx. Surely
something might be done to prove to his susceptible countrymen that
at the present moment no curse could be laid upon them so heavy as
that of having to rule themselves apart from England; and he thought
that this might be the easier, as he became from day to day more
thoroughly convinced that those Home Rulers who were all around
him in the House were altogether of the same opinion. Had some
inscrutable decree of fate ordained and made it certain,--with a
certainty not to be disturbed,--that no candidate could be returned
to Parliament who would not assert the earth to be triangular, there
would rise immediately a clamorous assertion of triangularity among
political aspirants. The test would be innocent. Candidates have
swallowed, and daily do swallow, many a worse one. As might be this
doctrine of a great triangle, so is the doctrine of Home Rule. Why is
a gentleman of property to be kept out in the cold by some O'Mullins
because he will not mutter an unmeaning shibboleth? "Triangular?
Yes,--or lozenge-shaped, if you please; but, gentlemen, I am the man
for Tipperary." Phineas Finn, having seen, or thought that he had
seen, all this, began, from the very first moment of his appointment,
to consider painfully within himself whether the genuine services of
an honest and patriotic man might not compass some remedy for the
present ill-boding ferment of the country. What was it that the Irish
really did want;--what that they wanted, and had not got, and which
might with propriety be conceded to them? What was it that the
English really would refuse to sanction, even though it might not be
wanted? He found himself beating about among rocks as to Catholic
education and Papal interference, the passage among which might be
made clearer to him in Irish atmosphere than in that of Westminster.
Therefore he was away a good deal in these days, travelling backwards
and forwards as he might be wanted for any debate. But as his wife
did not accompany him on these