themselves. Of course the Earl's nominee, his lacquey,
as the honourable gentleman might be called, would be returned.
The Earl could order them to return whichever of his lacqueys he
pleased.--There is something peculiarly pleasing to the democratic
ear in the word lacquey! Any one serving a big man, whatever
the service may be, is the big man's lacquey in the _People's
Banner_.--The speech throughout was very bitter. Mr. Phineas Finn,
who had previously served in Parliament as the lacquey of an Irish
earl, and had been turned off by him, had now fallen into the service
of the English earl, and was the lacquey chosen for the present
occasion. But he, Quintus Slide, who boasted himself to be a man
of the people,--he could tell them that the days of their thraldom
were coming to an end, and that their enfranchisement was near at
hand. That friend of the people, Mr. Turnbull, had a clause in his
breeches-pocket which he would either force down the unwilling throat
of Mr. Mildmay, or else drive the imbecile Premier from office by
carrying it in his teeth. Loughton, as Loughton, must be destroyed,
but it should be born again in a better birth as a part of a
real electoral district, sending a real member, chosen by a real
constituency, to a real Parliament. In those days,--and they would
come soon,--Mr. Quintus Slide rather thought that Mr. Phineas Finn
would be found "nowhere," and he rather thought also that when he
showed himself again, as he certainly should do, in the midst of that
democratic electoral district as the popular candidate for the honour
of representing it in Parliament, that democratic electoral district
would accord to him a reception very different from that which he
was now receiving from the Earl's lacqueys in the parliamentary
village of Loughton. A prettier bit of fiction than these sentences
as composing a part of any speech delivered, or proposed to be
delivered, at Loughton, Phineas thought he had never seen. And when
he read at the close of the speech that though the Earl's hired
bullies did their worst, the remarks of Mr. Slide were received by
the people with reiterated cheering, he threw himself back in his
chair at the Treasury and roared. The poor fellow had been three
minutes on his legs, had received three rotten eggs, and one dead
dog, and had retired. But not the half of the speech as printed in
the _People's Banner_ has been quoted. The sins of Phineas, who in
spite of his inability to