ut to do the best I can for the country. I tell you so, and
I shall tell the Earl the same."

Barrington Erle turned away in disgust. Such language was to him
simply disgusting. It fell upon his ears as false maudlin sentiment
falls on the ears of the ordinary honest man of the world. Barrington
Erle was a man ordinarily honest. He would not have been untrue to
his mother's brother, William Mildmay, the great Whig Minister of the
day, for any earthly consideration. He was ready to work with wages
or without wages. He was really zealous in the cause, not asking
very much for himself. He had some undefined belief that it was much
better for the country that Mr. Mildmay should be in power than
that Lord de Terrier should be there. He was convinced that Liberal
politics were good for Englishmen, and that Liberal politics and the
Mildmay party were one and the same thing. It would be unfair to
Barrington Erle to deny to him some praise for patriotism. But he
hated the very name of independence in Parliament, and when he was
told of any man, that that man intended to look to measures and not
to men, he regarded that man as being both unstable as water and
dishonest as the wind. No good could possibly come from such a one,
and much evil might and probably would come. Such a politician was a
Greek to Barrington Erle, from whose hands he feared to accept even
the gift of a vote. Parliamentary hermits were distasteful to him,
and dwellers in political caves were regarded by him with aversion
as being either knavish or impractical. With a good Conservative
opponent he could shake hands almost as readily as with a good Whig
ally; but the man who was neither flesh nor fowl was odious to him.
According to his theory of parliamentary government, the House of
Commons should be divided by a marked line, and every member should
be required to stand on one side of it or on the other. "If not
with me, at any rate be against me," he would have said to every
representative of the people in the name of the great leader whom he
followed. He thought that debates were good, because of the people
outside,--because they served to create that public opinion which was
hereafter to be used in creating some future House of Commons; but he
did not think it possible that any vote should be given on a great
question, either this way or that, as the result of a debate; and he
was certainly assured in his own opinion that any such changing of
votes would