o English rules of
government. He had been regarded as a pestilent thorn in the sides of
all ministers. But now he was a member of the Cabinet, and those whom
he had terrified in the old days began to find that he was not so
much unlike other men. There are but few horses which you cannot put
into harness, and those of the highest spirit will generally do your
work the best.

Phineas, who had his eyes about him, thought that he could perceive
that Mr. Palliser did not shoot a deer with Mr. Ratler, and that Mr.
Gresham played no chess with Mr. Bonteen. Bonteen, indeed, was a
noisy pushing man whom nobody seemed to like, and Phineas wondered
why he should be at Loughlinter, and why he should be in office. His
friend Laurence Fitzgibbon had indeed once endeavoured to explain
this. "A man who can vote hard, as I call it; and who will speak a
few words now and then as they're wanted, without any ambition that
way, may always have his price. And if he has a pretty wife into the
bargain, he ought to have a pleasant time of it." Mr. Ratler no doubt
was a very useful man, who thoroughly knew his business; but yet,
as it seemed to Phineas, no very great distinction was shown to
Mr. Ratler at Loughlinter. "If I got as high as that," he said to
himself, "I should think myself a miracle of luck. And yet nobody
seems to think anything of Ratler. It is all nothing unless one can
go to the very top."

"I believe I did right to accept office," Mr. Monk said to him one
day, as they sat together on a rock close by one of the little
bridges over the Linter. "Indeed, unless a man does so when the bonds
of the office tendered to him are made compatible with his own views,
he declines to proceed on the open path towards the prosecution of
those views. A man who is combating one ministry after another, and
striving to imbue those ministers with his convictions, can hardly
decline to become a minister himself when he finds that those
convictions of his own are henceforth,--or at least for some time to
come,--to be the ministerial convictions of the day. Do you follow
me?"

"Very clearly," said Phineas. "You would have denied your own
children had you refused."

"Unless indeed a man were to feel that he was in some way unfitted
for office work. I very nearly provided for myself an escape on that
plea;--but when I came to sift it, I thought that it would be false.
But let me tell you that the delight of political life is altogether
in oppo