ke the Castle, if you mean that."

"Tyrone isn't troublesome, surely?" The Marquis of Tyrone was the
Lord Lieutenant of the day, and had in his time been a very strong
Conservative.

"He finds me troublesome, I fear."

"I don't wonder at that, Phineas."

"How should it be otherwise? What can he and I have in sympathy with
one another? He has been brought up with all an Orangeman's hatred
for a Papist. Now that he is in high office, he can abandon the
display of the feeling,--perhaps the feeling itself as regards the
country at large. He knows that it doesn't become a Lord Lieutenant
to be Orange. But how can he put himself into a boat with me?"

"All that kind of thing vanishes when a man is in office."

"Yes, as a rule; because men go together into office with the same
general predilections. Is it too hot to walk down?"

"I'll walk a little way,--till you make me hot by arguing."

"I haven't an argument left in me," said Phineas. "Of course
everything over there seems easy enough now,--so easy that Lord
Tyrone evidently imagines that the good times are coming back in
which governors may govern and not be governed."

"You are pretty quiet in Ireland now, I suppose;--no martial law,
suspension of the habeas corpus, or anything of that kind, just at
present?"

"No; thank goodness!" said Phineas.

"I'm not quite sure whether a general suspension of the habeas corpus
would not upon the whole be the most comfortable state of things for
Irishmen themselves. But whether good or bad, you've nothing of that
kind of thing now. You've no great measure that you wish to pass?"

"But they've a great measure that they wish to pass."

"They know better than that. They don't want to kill their golden
goose."

"The people, who are infinitely ignorant of all political work,
do want it. There are counties in which, if you were to poll the
people, Home Rule would carry nearly every voter,--except the members
themselves."

"You wouldn't give it them?"

"Certainly not;--any more than I would allow a son to ruin himself
because he asked me. But I would endeavour to teach them that they
can get nothing by Home Rule,--that their taxes would be heavier,
their property less secure, their lives less safe, their general
position more debased, and their chances of national success more
remote than ever."

"You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit. The
Heptarchy didn't mould itself into a nation in a day."