ve subsidized the provincial press
in your favor at a cost of several thousand pounds out of my own pocket
I have compromised three grave actions about to be brought against the
Government. Of the vast sums I have contributed to local charities,
schools, nunneries, societies of various denominations, all in the
interest of your party, I take no account I have spent in these and
like objects a princely fortune, and yet these hundreds of thousands of
pounds are as nothing--mere nothing to the actual personal services I
have rendered to your party. In the great revolution effected by the
sale of encumbered estates, I have so watchfully guarded your interests
that I have replaced the old rampant Toryism of the land by a gentry
at once manageable and practicable,--men intent less upon party than
personal objects, consequently available to the Minister, always
accessible by an offer of direct advantage. I have, with all this, so
thrown a Whig light over the rising prosperity of the country, that
it might seem the result of your wise rule that stimulated men to the
higher civilization they have attained to, and that a more forbearing
charity and a more liberal spirit went hand in hand with improved
agriculture and higher farming. To identify a party with the great
march of this prosperity, to make of your policy a cause of these noble
results, was the grand conception which, for a quarter of a century, I
have carried out. When Mr. O'Connell kept your predecessors in power,
his price was the bit-by-bit surrender of what in your hearts you
believed to be bulwarks of the constitution. In return for my support
what have I got? Some patronage--be it so--for my own dependants
and followers, no doubt! Show me one man of my name, one man of my
convictions, holding place under the Crown. No, my Lord, my power to
serve your party was based on this sure foundation, that I was open to
no imputation; I was the distributor of your patronage to the men best
worthy to receive it,--no more."

"Four o'clock, Dunn; time's up," said his Lordship. "I must go down to
the House."

"I am sorry to have detained your Lordship with so ungracious a theme."

"Well, I do think you might have spared me some of it I know well my
colleagues all know your invaluable services,--an admirable member
of the party, active and able, but not quite neglected, either, eh,
Dunn?--not entirely left in oblivion?"

While he spoke, he busied himself in the search for a